The plaza had been grand once.
You could still see it in the bones — in the shattered archways and the half-buried mosaics, in the way the broken pillars leaned like bowed giants. Even the dust didn't settle properly here — too light, too fine — clinging to every surface like regret.
No people. No birds. No wind.
Only ruin. And two figures, alone at the center of a world that seemed to have stopped.
She was on her knees.
Blood pooled beneath her, soaking into the cracks of the tiled floor — a floor once polished for kings and courts, now fractured like glass. Her armor had once gleamed: white-etched silver, crested with a golden lion above the heart. Now it was split. Scorched. Torn.
The lion's head was cracked down the center.
She wasn't trembling from pain. Not anymore. That part had passed. What remained was harder — a stillness that didn't belong to someone her age. Royal poise, twisted by something quieter than pride.
Her sword was broken. The blade lay in two pieces at her side. Her gauntlets were scorched. Dirt streaked her cheeks. But her back remained straight.
She looked up at him.
He stood a few paces away — coat ripped, boots half-sunken into blood-muddied stone. His shadow stretched long behind him in the gray light. One arm hung at his side, wrapped in black material that hummed softly when he moved. Not steel. Not cloth. Something else.
His other hand held the blade.
No runes. No shine. Just a flat, wide edge dulled at the tip. The kind of weapon that didn't belong to armies or titles — only to people who needed something to end.
His face was not blank — it held something.
A strange glint. Not joy. Not cruelty.
But a raw, deep satisfaction. A strange happiness like someone who had finally found the right note in a song they couldn't remember — and didn't know why it mattered.
And yet, he looked tired.
So impossibly tired.
She looked at him, eyes wide with something bitter. Not hate. Not rage.
Fear.
"…The Devil," she whispered, almost breathless. "That's what they called you. In the cities. In the camps. The man with the smile. The Devil's smile."
She coughed, blood trailing down her lip.
"I didn't believe it, you know. Thought it was just a story. Thought no man could smile like that… while ending everything."
She lowered her gaze, swallowing pain.
"Now I know. It's real."
A pause. Her fingers dug into the fractured stone.
"What… did I do?" she asked. "I don't remember. But my body does. It hurts like guilt. Like I wronged something I can't name."
She raised her head again.
"And even if I forgot it... even if the world forgot it… please… forgive me."
He stepped forward.
Each step echoed too loud on the stone — not because of weight, but because the rest of the world refused to make a sound.
He stopped in front of her.
Close enough to see the cracks in her lip. Close enough to smell blood and soot. And something older.
He knelt. Slowly. No urgency. No drama. Just eye-level now. Two strangers in a place that had once meant something.
His voice came low, without emotion. As if commenting on the weather.
"Forgiveness isn't given by mortals. It belongs only to gods."
A pause.
"And I am beneath mortals."
Then the blade moved.
Fast. Clean. Not brutal — final.
Her body pitched forward.
He caught her. Just for a moment. One arm around her back, the other still holding the blade, now stained at the base.
Her breath left her in a single, soft exhale.
No more words. No plea. Not even a twitch.
Then he let go.
She dropped soundlessly.
He stood again.
The silence didn't break. The world didn't move.
He looked down at her for a moment — a statue now, surrounded by rubble and dust.
Then… he laughed.
"Heh… heheheh… hahahaha… hah… hahahahaha… ahh-hahahahah… AH-HAHAHAHAHA—HAHAHAHAAA—haaahh… hehe… HEHEHEHEHEHE—AHAHAHAHAHA—hhhaHAAHAAHAha—ahhhhhh…"
Not madly. Not mockingly.
But like someone who had waited too long to feel anything.
A Devil's laugh.
Because that's what they called him.
Not in this moment — not in this place — but everywhere else.
The Devil.
A name whispered in burnt cities and broken kingdoms. A name given by survivors who spoke of a man who killed with a smile. A name the kingdoms feared, remembered, hated.
The Devil's Smile.
And now, here it was again.
Wide. Quiet. Unstoppable.
Until —
The world trembled.
He stopped laughing.
The wind returned. The ground sighed.
He turned his head slowly toward the sky — and there, it began.
A fracture. Pale gold. Then another. And another.
Branching. Spreading.
The air grew thin. The ground dipped.
And for the briefest instant — before the collapse — he saw her face again.
Dead.
Smiling.
Then:
Black.
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