"You were never meant to survive this."
The words echoed in Elara Vane's skull long after the man who spoke them fell silent.
Her blade shook in her hands.
Not because she was weak.
Because she was standing at the edge of the world's grave, and she was about to kill the only person who had ever tried to save it.
Across from her, Lucien Ashfall stood in the middle of ruin, silver eyes calm in a place where nothing else was.
The capital lay broken beneath their feet—towers split in half, streets reduced to ash, bodies half-buried beneath fallen stone. The air reeked of burned magic and iron. Every breath tasted like blood.
The final seal lay shattered at Lucien's feet.
The world had lost.
"You're late," he said quietly.
Elara swallowed. Her throat burned. "You could have stopped this."
Lucien tilted his head, gaze lifting toward the colorless sky, as if searching for something that no longer existed. "I did."
The ground trembled beneath them.
Somewhere behind Elara, someone screamed as reality cracked open, shadows folding in on themselves like dying stars. Time itself screamed as it came apart.
Her grip tightened around the blade.
"This is your fault," she said, even as doubt clawed at her chest. "All of it. The oceans boiling. The skies bleeding. The world—"
"—was already dying," Lucien finished softly.
He looked at her then. Really looked.
There was no madness in his eyes. No hunger for destruction. Only exhaustion. Grief so old it felt carved into his bones.
"I did it for them," he said. "For a world that never wanted me."
Elara's vision blurred.
This was the villain history would curse forever.
The monster children would fear.
The name whispered when the world needed someone to blame.
And yet he stood there like a man already mourning something he had lost.
"You don't have to do this," she whispered.
Her voice broke. She hated herself for it.
Lucien smiled faintly. Not cruel. Not victorious. Just tired. "Do you remember what you said the first time we met?"
Her heart lurched.
'You're not the villain they say you are'
Tears spilled before she could stop them. "I'm sorry."
"So am I."
The world screamed.
Elara raised her blade.
Her hands shook violently now.
The weight of choice crushed her chest until breathing hurt. But she didn't lower it.
She brought it down.
Light exploded.
It swallowed Lucien whole, tore through the sky, burned away sound and pain and thought itself.
And still—
The world ended.
****
Elara gasped.
Air slammed into her lungs as she collapsed onto cold stone, hands clawing at the ground like she was drowning. Her heart thundered so hard she thought it might tear free of her ribs.
The sky above her was blue.
Not fractured.
Not bleeding.
Blue.
She froze.
No ash. No ruins. No screams.
She pushed herself up slowly, breath shaking. The shattered capital was gone. In its place stood polished marble paths, sunlit towers, blooming flowerbeds. Laughter echoed across an open courtyard.
A bell rang.
Clear. Bright.
Elara's blood ran cold.
She knew that sound.
The Academy.
She turned.
Across the courtyard, surrounded by laughing students, stood a young man with dark hair and unmistakable silver eyes. Relaxed. Untouched. Unbroken.
Lucien Ashfall.
Before the world ended.
Before he broke it.
Before she killed him.
Her hands curled into fists.
Magic hummed beneath her skin, familiar and dangerous. Fate tightened around her chest like a noose she remembered too well.
Lucien glanced up.
Their eyes met.
For a heartbeat, the world stilled.
He didn't know her. Not yet. But his smile faltered, as if something deep inside him remembered dying at her hands.
Elara turned away, heart hammering.
She had failed once.
Not again.
She would find the moment everything went wrong. She would uncover the curse, the corruption, the lie that turned him into the destroyer of worlds.
She would stop the apocalypse before it was born.
She would find out what led him down that path. She would learn where the corruption began, what cursed him, what turned him into the destroyer of worlds. She would stop him.
Even if it meant breaking fate itself.
Even if it meant never forgiving him.
Even if it meant never loving him again.