The Divine Realm was breaking apart.
Once it had shimmered with columns of white flame and rivers of light that never dimmed. Now the marble of its great courts lay split and bleeding brilliance into the wind, like veins leaking divinity. From every fracture drifted motes of dying prayer. They rose and vanished, taking the color out of the sky.
Auren knelt among the wreckage, his hair a pale spill against the blackened floor. The hem of his cloak was torn, its embroidery of constellations dimming one star at a time. Across his lap rested the still body of the one being he had ever allowed near enough to touch him.
Zephyxion.
The dragon's human form looked almost peaceful. Silver hair clung to his temple; a line of faint scales shimmered along the curve of his neck, catching the last glow of the realm. Beneath his closed lashes, the faintest trace of violet lingered — the color that once lit battlefields when he took flight. His wings had vanished at death, but the air still remembered their outline; light bent strangely above him, as though unwilling to forget.
Auren brushed a thumb across that too-cold cheek. The skin yielded without life.
"Zephyxion," he said, and the name left a tremor in his throat. "Open your eyes."
No answer. Only the soft collapse of another pillar somewhere behind him.
He tried again, quieter. "You are my shadow. You don't have permission to leave."
The words sounded wrong. A command, not a plea — the only language he had ever known. But the body in his arms no longer obeyed, and the silence that followed was not reverent but final.
Once, Auren had believed himself incapable of loss. He had forged empires, rewritten laws of nature, and taken the hearts of his followers as easily as breath. Love, to him, had been a shape made of control. Zephyxion had been no different — a dragon bound by his seal, a creature of fire that he caged and called beloved.
Only now, with the cage open and empty, did he understand what the word meant.
Lightning traced across the shattered sky. The storm above had no rain, only light dissolving into dust. From within that radiance came a voice — old, formless, filled with the calm of judgment.
"His soul has entered the path of reincarnation."
Auren lifted his head. "What do you mean?"
"The dragon desired release. He severed his bond to you. His wish was silence, his final thought—" The voice paused, as though tasting sorrow.
" 'Let me be free of him.' "
The air left Auren's lungs. He stared at the body again.
"You wanted to be free," he whispered. "Of me?"
The voice did not answer. It no longer needed to. Around him the realm continued to die, folding in on itself, and he could hear only the bloodless rush of wind through hollow corridors — his kingdom's last breath.
He bent over Zephyxion and pressed his forehead against the dragon's. The faint scent of iron lingered in his hair, the smell of burnt wings.
"You called me Majesty," he murmured. "You never called me by name."
---
In the memory that surfaced, the world was still whole.
They stood on a balcony of obsidian glass overlooking a sea of light. The air had shimmered with stars that never set. Auren remembered the weight of Zephyxion's hand on the rail beside his, claws dulled into a human's fingers.
"You may look," Auren had said then, amused by the dragon's wonder, "but you will not fly unless I say so."
Zephyxion had smiled — a small, dangerous curve of lips. "Majesty, if you never let me fly, how will you see what you've created from above?"
That tone — half reverence, half rebellion — had unsettled him. It was the first moment Auren had noticed that the creature he owned possessed a soul that did not bow completely. He had silenced it the only way he knew: by touching Zephyxion's throat where the sigil burned, reminding him who held dominion.
The dragon had flinched but not looked away. "You think chains make love?" he had asked softly.
The memory ended there — on the echo of that question. Auren had never answered it.
---
Back in the ruins, he realized the question was his punishment.
He could feel the divine thread that once connected them — the soul-bond he had carved — snapping strand by strand. Each break sent a sharp pulse through his chest, a sensation like ribs cracking under invisible weight. Grief bled into obsession, and obsession, finding no vessel, became purpose.
"No," he breathed, clutching Zephyxion closer. "You will not vanish into the mortal cycle. You belong to me."
The light of the realm flared as if in protest. The same voice spoke again, softer now, almost pitying.
"You cannot follow the dead, Auren. To descend is to forfeit divinity."
He laughed, a low and broken sound. "Divinity? Look around you. There's nothing left to forfeit."
Black mist coiled around his feet — the remnant of his power, corrupted by despair. The once-radiant sigils on his arms turned the color of ash. Feathers of shadow burst from his back, unfurling into wings vast enough to blot the collapsing heavens.
He looked down at Zephyxion one last time. The dragon's expression was tranquil, as if the word freedom had finally found meaning in death. That serenity enraged and humbled him all at once.
"Even if you wished to forget," he whispered, "I will remind you in every life."
He pressed a kiss to the cold forehead. It was neither tender nor cruel — only final. Beneath his lips, the skin held no warmth, yet he imagined he felt the echo of a heartbeat, as if the world itself refused to let the story end.
The temple cracked. Streams of divine fire poured through the fissures.
Auren straightened, gathering Zephyxion in his arms. His cloak of stars disintegrated into a trail of black motes.
"If souls remember," he said, his voice carrying through the storm, "then let mine chase yours across eternity."
The voice above tried once more to halt him.
"The underworld does not return what it takes."
"Then it will take me too."
He spread his wings. With one beat, the air shattered; marble and light scattered like glass. The Monarch of Darkness rose amid the wreckage, every feather trailing smoke and lightning. His eyes, once gold, now burned the color of eclipse.
And then he fell — not downward, but through the heart of the dying sky. The gate to the underworld tore open beneath him, a vortex of shadow and memory. He descended without hesitation, carrying his dragon's body as if it were the last fragment of creation worth saving.
Behind him, the Divine Realm imploded into silence.
---
When the light closed, nothing of the heavens remained—only a whisper that drifted after him, a trace of pity or perhaps admiration.
"Love remembered is the curse of gods."
But Auren did not hear.
He had already vanished into the darkness below, cradling what he had lost, determined to defy even the laws of death.
And somewhere far beyond the broken heavens, a new star flickered into being—unaware that it was the beginning of their next life.