Lucifer stumbled through the smoke, each step grinding fragments of bone and metal under his heel. The war-torn plain had fallen silent but for the distant crackle of dying fires and the low, broken moans of the few demons still writhing where they lay. Ash drifted in slow spirals around him, clinging to his blackened armor like a mockery of snow.
Ahead, Trin remained on one knee, head bowed, hand resting loosely on the ground as though he had simply paused to think instead of surviving the end of an age.
"You look smaller when you lose," Lucifer rasped, dragging his sword in a lazy arc through the dirt. "All that creation, all that divinity…and here you are, kneeling like any other fallen thing."
Trin lifted his head slightly. His gray eyes were dull with exhaustion but steady. "You've won a field of corpses and cinders," he said quietly. "Is that all you ever wanted?"
Lucifer laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "Do you still pretend your will shapes the cosmos, Creator? Look around you." He gestured at the ruined wasteland. "Your angels are dead. Your hope is dead. Your 'paths' are closed."
At the mention, Trin's gaze flicked briefly to where Althera's bisected body had fallen, now little more than a torn silhouette in the smoke. Something tightened in his jaw, but his voice remained calm. "You misunderstand what paths are."
Lucifer narrowed his eyes. "And you misunderstand what it means to lose."
He reached Trin and placed the tip of his sword under the kneeling being's chin, lifting his head. Up close, Trin's leather armor was split and charred, streaked with celestial ichor and mortal blood. His hair clung to his forehead, damp with sweat and soot.
"Look at you," Lucifer murmured, almost gently. "The great Trinity. The architect of worlds. Reduced to a tired man in rags." His tone sharpened. "Do you feel it, yet? Your power slipping?"
Trin inhaled slowly. There was something wrong in the air—something hollowing. It did not feel like simple exhaustion. The ambient hum of creation that usually thrummed at the edge of his awareness now felt distant, weakened, as though wrapped in chains.
He tried to pull at it, to draw even a fraction of power to his fingertips. A spark answered and then guttered, pulled away like water draining through a crack.
His fingers twitched.
Lucifer's smile widened. "There," he whispered. "You do feel it."
Trin's brow furrowed. "What did you do?"
"Nothing…that you didn't let me," Lucifer said, savoring every word. "Every time you intervened, every moment you tried to 'correct' what I wrought, you weakened the threads that bind you to your precious creation. You're bleeding through your own handiwork."
Trin tried again, forcing his will into the broken sky, into the shattered ground. Light flickered at the edge of his vision, then recoiled, sucked away into the unseen depths beneath the battlefield. The drain was sharp now, not gradual: a pull in his chest, a theft at the core of his being.
His body shook.
Lucifer pressed the blade harder against his throat. "You were never invincible," he whispered. "You were only *plugged in* to something bigger than you. And now that something is dying. You poured too much of yourself into your toys."
He leaned closer, his breath hot with ember-scent. "You made everything vulnerable. Including you."
Trin's vision blurred around the edges. He tasted iron and ash. His chest ached as if someone were driving hooks into his lungs, dragging his essence outward, strand by strand.
Yet even as his power slipped away, he lifted a hand, more out of instinct than strategy, palm facing the sword that threatened him.
Lucifer chuckled. "Still trying?"
Trin's fingers glowed for a heartbeat—a tiny, defiant radiance—but the light was snatched from him, sinking into the ground like water into desert sand. The drain intensified, ripping at him with sudden violence, and his back arched as a low groan escaped his lips.
Lucifer's eyes glinted with satisfaction. "There it is. Now you know what your creations felt when you allowed them to wither."
He drew back slightly, lifting the sword with both hands, black flames licking along its edge. "No more second chances, Trin. No more rebirths, no more songs of dawn. Your story ends on your knees, in the ashes of your failure."
Trin forced himself to stand, shakily, muscles shaking with the effort. His legs nearly buckled, but he found his footing, raising both hands as if to ward off the blow. Power sputtered weakly in his veins—less than a flicker of what he once commanded—yet instinct drove him to defend himself.
Lucifer brought the sword down.
Trin met the strike with bare palms, pushing back with everything he had left. For an instant, there was resistance: a clash of forces, dark and dimmed light grinding against each other.
Then the drain hit him in a tidal wave.
His strength poured out of him in a sickening rush, flowing into the blade, into the soil, into the empty sky. His knees buckled again, arms trembling, fingers burning as though they were pressed against a star. Every attempt to hold the line only pulled more from him, spiraling into nothing.
Lucifer's laughter rose over the crackle of fire. "Look at you—unraveling."
Trin's vision narrowed to a tunnel: the black gleam of the sword, Lucifer's cruel grin, the ashen horizon. His own power fled him, not slowly now but in ragged chunks, as if something had broken inside the fabric connecting him to the cosmos.
His hands slipped. The sword pushed closer, the edge hovering a breath from his throat.
Lucifer's voice dropped to a gleeful hiss. "Go on, Creator. Make something now."
Trin exhaled once. He did not beg. He did not curse. A small, tired smile ghosted across his lips—resigned, sorrowful, and oddly peaceful.
Before the final stroke fell, the air to Trin's left twisted.
A ripple in space formed, a vertical fracture of light and shadow spiraling into existence. It was not the clean, practiced gateway Althera used to carve through reality—but it was similar enough that Trin recognized its pattern instantly.
The portal bloomed open, unstable edges crackling with silver sparks. Wind roared inward as the broken plain tugged at the tear.
Lucifer's eyes widened. "No," he muttered.
Trin's faint smile deepened, a glimmer of genuine warmth crossing his weary face. "You were wrong," he murmured. "Their paths aren't closed."
Lucifer swung his sword, furious, bringing it down in a killing arc.
But the space where Trin had stood folded inward like the surface of a pond struck by a stone. The blade cut through only air and loose ash.
Trin's body slid into the portal, form stretching into streaks of light and shadow, then vanished.
The gateway snapped shut with a sharp, ringing crack.
For a heartbeat, there was only silence.
Then Lucifer screamed.
It was not the calculated rage of a general or the theatrical fury of a tyrant; it was raw, animal fury, the roar of something denied its final triumph. His wings flared with unstable fire, his sword plunging into the ground where Trin had knelt.
Ash exploded outward in a violent wave.
"Coward!" he howled into the empty sky. "You can run, but you cannot hide from the end! There is nowhere left that I do not touch!"
The battlefield answered with only the whisper of cooling embers and the distant collapse of a broken spire.
Lucifer stood alone amid ruin, chest heaving, fingers digging into the hilt of his sword until black ichor dripped from his palms.
"Find him," he growled to the scattered remnants of his host. "Wherever he has fled, whatever world he's crawled to—I will *unmake* him."
The ash swirled in grim assent.
***
When Trin's body reappeared, the world was quiet.
The impact jarred him even in unconsciousness; his form tumbled through undergrowth and came to rest half on his side, half against the exposed roots of an ancient tree. Leaves shuddered overhead, filtering pale light through a canopy of green and gold.
Gone were the scorched plains and broken skies. Here, the air smelled of damp earth, moss, and distant rain. Insects hummed softly. Birds called to each other in the distance, unconcerned.
Trin did not move. His leather armor was still torn and stained, his skin smudged with soot and blood, but his chest rose and fell shallowly. The faint hum of creation within him was little more than an ember now, but it remained.
The forest around him rustled.
"—I'm telling you, I heard something fall," a voice said, low and wary. "Nothing natural weighs *that* much."
"Relax," another replied, this one lighter, edged with amusement. "If the forest wanted us dead, it's had better chances than now. Probably just a tree branch."
"Since when do tree branches *groan*?" a third voice cut in, annoyed. "Let's just check. If it's a beast, we deal with it. If it's nothing, we move on."
Through the brush came three figures, pushing aside branches and weaving around thick trunks.
The first was a tall, broad-shouldered human man clad in worn chainmail and a faded tabard marked with an emblem half-scrubbed by time. A sword hung at his hip and a shield, nicked and scarred, rested against his back. His hair was tied in a rough knot, dark eyes scanning the undergrowth with the reflexive suspicion of someone who'd seen too many ambushes.
Beside him walked a smaller figure—an elf with ash-blond hair braided tightly back, leather armor patched in several places, a bow slung over one shoulder. Her eyes were sharp, restless, always moving, taking in details most would miss.
Trailing slightly behind was a third being, cloaked in layered fabric that bore faint symbols along the hems. Their features were obscured at first by the hood, but slender hands clutched a wooden staff banded with metal, its tip carrying a faint, dormant glow. Their gait was measured, cautious, as if listening to something beyond the sounds of the forest.
The human's boot caught on a root, and he nearly stumbled—only to stop dead as he saw the body at the base of the tree.
"…Oh," he said. "Well. That's not a tree branch."
The elf stepped past him, eyes narrowing. "He fell from where?" She glanced up through the canopy, then back down. "Doesn't matter. Look at him."
They approached cautiously.
Up close, Trin looked less like a warrior and more like some exhausted traveler who had wandered into the wrong war. No visible insignia marked his armor. No weapons lay nearby. His hair, silver under the leaves' filtered light, contrasted starkly with the grime on his face.
The cloaked figure drew nearer, staff held at the ready. A faint, almost imperceptible crackle passed through the air as they extended a hand. "He's not dead," they said, after a moment. Their voice was calm, ambiguous in age and tone. "Faint, but alive."
"Alive and dressed like that?" the human muttered. "He looks like he crawled out of a burning cathedral."
The elf knelt, inspecting Trin critically. "Armor's not local," she said. "Design's…old. Very old. And whatever did this to him, it wasn't bandits." Her fingers hovered over the charred edges of the leather. "These are burns. Magic, or something worse."
The cloaked figure's eyes, now visible under the hood, studied Trin's face. "There's something…wrong," they murmured. "Like…a hollow where something should be. And yet there's still a flicker."
The human frowned. "You can feel that?"
"Anyone with even a scrap of sense could," they replied quietly. "He's—" They hesitated, looking suddenly uncertain. "He's not ordinary."
"That makes him a problem," the human said. "We're already carrying enough problems."
The elf glanced up at him. "We can't just leave him here to die."
"We found a man in ruined armor in the middle of the forest," he said. "If someone did this to him, they might come looking. If something did this to him, it might still be here."
"Or," the elf countered, "he's the only reason we're still alive and the forest decided to drop him in our path."
The human shot her a look. "Since when do forests deliver half-dead men as gifts?"
"Since never," the cloaked one said thoughtfully. "But I agree with her. There's…a pull. Faint, but real. Something significant tied to him."
The human folded his arms, weighing options. The woods creaked softly around them, birds going quiet before starting again.
Finally he sighed. "If he dies out here and it turns out he was important, I'll never hear the end of it from either of you, will I?"
"Correct," the elf said promptly.
"Absolutely not," the cloaked figure added.
He muttered a curse under his breath and stepped forward, kneeling beside Trin. With practiced care, he slid an arm under the unconscious man's shoulders, testing his weight. "Light for someone who looks like he's been through a furnace," he noted.
"He's not light," the cloaked one said. "You're just stubborn."
"Help me, then," he grumbled.
Between the two of them, they lifted Trin, the elf checking quickly for hidden injuries as they moved him. He remained limp, breath shallow but steady, eyes closed as if in a deep, dreamless sleep.
"Where do we take him?" the elf asked.
"Back to camp," the human replied. "I'm not hauling him all the way to the city without knowing if he'll wake or try to kill us."
The cloaked figure nodded. "I can keep him stable. Maybe learn something when he stirs."
"And if he's dangerous?"
The elf glanced at the silent, broken figure between them, then at the sky beyond the leaves. "If he's dangerous," she said, "then the world already has bigger problems than three wanderers in the woods."
They turned as one and began the trek back through the forest, branches parting and closing behind them. Trin's head lolled slightly against the human's shoulder, silver hair catching stray beams of light.
He did not wake. Not yet.
But somewhere deep inside the husk of his drained power, an ember glowed—small, fragile, and impossibly stubborn.