How? How did it come to this?
I did everything I could, and it still wasn't enough. I begged. I stood my ground. I even used force. And still, here I am, in a place I never thought I could bear to stand.
Why? Why, Youri? Why?
Just when I thought life had finally given me a purpose, you got up and left. And what's worse, you left for reasons you won't tell me. What did I do wrong? You refuse to give me an answer, and that leaves me powerless. But never, not once, did it cross my mind that what you did would push me here.
Leonora's steps echoed down the long hall of the palace. Her head hung low, and she was lost in her thoughts. By the Emperor's decision, she was to execute Youri, the man they had been using as bait to lure the Tartarusios in. The danger she was walking into didn't bother her. It hadn't even entered her mind. What shook her to the core was the impossible place she had been put in: a decision someone else had made for her, and a trigger she had been ordered to pull. A trigger she knew she could never convince herself to pull.
The echo of her steps came to an end.
She stood before the great balcony doors, her head still bowed. Her silver hair hid her face, but anyone who saw it would have known everything they needed to know. There were no tears on it. She had none left to shed. In the span of three days she had withered into a small, quiet woman, bound by love and pain to the one person who had hurt her most. The proud, powerful woman she had once been had ceased to exist. What remained was a shell of her former self.
And she knew it. Whatever fate had in store for her, if pulling that trigger was her order, she had already come to her final decision.
The balcony doors swung open.
Wind and ash struck her at once. The two royal knights standing guard bowed slightly as she passed, and there, just a few feet ahead, stood him. The core of all her pain. The man she called her husband. The man who had once promised her a life for just the two of them, and who had broken every vow he had ever made to her.
The wind threw dust and ash across the balcony. Beyond the railing lay the destruction that had been brought down on Fansilia: the smoking crater to the east, the shattered towers, the grey sky hanging low over a city that no longer looked like a capital. The old Leonora would have thought of her family first. Her father. Her brother. Her empire, betrayed and burning in front of her. But none of that crossed her mind now.
She stepped slowly forward, her hair streaming in the wind, until she stood in front of Youri.
He was kneeling on the stone. He didn't raise his head. He didn't say a word. Deep down he knew there was only one decision she could make, given what had been placed in front of her. And because he knew it, he slowly rose to his feet.
The knights lunged forward the moment he moved, but Leonora raised her hand and stopped them.
"It's alright," she said. "I want him to face the destruction he brought upon the capital."
Youri turned and looked out over the city.
Despite everything he had suffered here, he had once called this place home. He still had friends living somewhere in those streets. And once again, he was staring at the one thing that had always followed him: chaos. The kind that clung only to him, and swallowed everyone he had ever cared about.
"This is you, Youri," Leonora said behind him. "What you're looking at is you, in a different form. The form you promised me you had cast off."
The wind tugged at both of them, tangling their hair.
"Since it has come to this, I won't ask you for an explanation. I know you won't give me one."
She lowered her hand to her waist and drew a pistol. She raised it and aimed it at his back.
"At the very least, let me see your face before I do it."
Youri turned slowly to face her.
Tears were running down her cheeks. The tears she hadn't been able to shed had found their way out at last, in this exact moment. And yet a soft smile rested on her lips.
"I would have burned the world for you," she said. "But your world had already been burned long before I ever had the chance."
Then she turned the pistol and pressed the barrel against her own temple.
The knights rushed forward.
"I order you to stand your ground!" Leonora shouted. "I expect you to obey your orders!"
The knights faltered and stumbled to a halt, caught between their duty and their horror, not knowing what to do. Leonora never took her eyes off Youri. The same soft smile stayed on her face.
"But I can't bear to live knowing I was the one who took your life," she said. "So I'll give mine instead. This way, I stay loyal to both of them. My husband, and my empire."
The moment she finished, the world slowed.
Her finger pressed down on the trigger, moving a fraction at a time. In front of her, Youri lunged forward, his head lowered. Ash and dust hung motionless in the air. The knights who had broken into a run seemed frozen mid-stride, barely moving at all. Youri drew closer and closer, one impossible inch at a time.
Then time snapped back, and the roar of the gunshot rang out across the balcony.
The knights stopped dead, staring.
Youri stood right in front of Leonora. He had driven his head into the barrel of the gun and knocked it away from her temple, so the bullet tore across his own forehead instead. Blood ran down his face from a deep gash above his left brow.
Leonora couldn't move. She stood there, frozen in shock, as Youri leaned in and whispered something into her ear. Whatever he said, no one else heard it. Then he stepped back, slowly, a few paces away from her.
At that moment the balcony flooded with knights. Behind them came the Emperor himself, and at his side, Alan.
Alan was clapping as he walked forward.
"Leonora, Leonora." He shook his head. "I knew you didn't have it in you to kill him. But to think you were willing to take your own life just to find a loophole? Now that was clever."
He turned toward Youri.
"I've come to the conclusion that you're immortal, Kronos. It baffles me. Every time you stand in front of death, you somehow walk away from it, like a cockroach that refuses to die." He chuckled and stepped closer, brushing the dust from Youri's shoulder. "Well. In your case it isn't that you don't want to die. It's more as if fate itself wants you around."
"No fate will save you this time," Johan said from behind him.
The Emperor stepped forward, his cloak whipping in the wind.
"You and that ship of yours will never leave this place. You are destined to become part of history, as the monsters who attacked the innocent. And your deaths will be celebrated for centuries to come."
Youri chuckled.
"You're right, Emperor. I have killed the innocent. Worse, I've killed the innocent of Terria. I'll never deny that." He wiped the blood from his eye with the back of his hand. "But what did you expect from a monster? That he'd spread happiness and love? Or that he'd just be a good dog and follow orders?"
"Take it however you wish," Johan said with a shrug.
Youri chuckled again. Then he leapt backward and landed on the balcony railing.
Every weapon on the balcony snapped up and pointed at him.
"What is this?" Johan said. "A last-ditch attempt to spoil the pleasure of killing you, by jumping to your own death?"
Youri smiled. Behind him there was nothing but smoke, ash and the long drop to the ruined city below. The wind tore at his hair.
"No," he said. "This is farewell. Despite all the shit you put me through, I can't bring myself to hate you. I thought I did, but I was wrong. I was just angry. Angry at the hand I was dealt. A full house that could never win, in a game where the stakes were destiny itself."
His gaze moved across them: the Emperor, Alan, the knights, and finally Leonora, who still hadn't moved.
"And by taking me in, you showed me your hand. That was the biggest mistake you ever made. Because I'm destined to burn. And I never burn alone. I burn along with everyone who ever meant something to me."
"Kill him!" Johan roared.
But it was too late.
Before a single shot was fired, Youri let himself fall backward off the railing and was gone.