"Was it all for nothing?"
The question burned louder than the flames that licked the sky, louder than the dying roars of cities swallowed whole. I stood alone on a field of ruin that once echoed with seven voices, seven wills strong enough to defy gods. Now only mine remained, and even it trembled like a dying candle in the storm.
The world bled.
The skies above had turned red. Not the kind of red you'd get from a setting sun. This was a violent crimson, spilled from a wound in the heavens themselves. Something tore it open. A black shape, faceless, formless, with wings too wide and limbs too many. A monstrosity, they called it. But names didn't matter. You didn't name what would eat the world.
You just fought it.
Or, in my case, you watched everyone you loved die trying.
I still remember how all my companions died.
I screamed then. I screamed for the fifth time. I was keeping count, because grief had become the only way to remind myself I was still human.
Now it was just me.
My power flickered in my veins. The blood of a dead god stirred like a curse. I could still reshape matter, but it didn't matter when existence itself was decaying under the monster's breath. What use is bending steel when reality is splitting down the middle?
I dropped my sword. I don't know why. It didn't feel right to keep holding it. It had taken so much and given nothing back but more death. My hands were shaking. My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the scorched dirt, ash painting my cheeks like warpaint I didn't ask for.
Tears didn't come. I think they'd burned out of me long ago.
There was no music. No light. Just a silence that pressed down like guilt. I could feel the deaths of those who once stood beside me in the vibrations beneath my skin. Their absence hurt more than the wounds on my body.
I whispered their names into the air.
Thales. Marielle. Orsian. Kezra. Nym. Elvarin.
One by one, until I reached mine.
"Verdamona."
The creature moved above, blocking what was left of the sky. Its shadow smothered the horizon, a reminder that this world no longer belonged to us.
But I stood.
My legs were weak. My body was broken, but I stood anyway. Because if this was the end. if this really was how everything died, I wanted to look it in the eye. I wanted it to see me. Not as the last warrior. Not as the failure who outlived legends but as the girl who refused to fall before it took the final breath from the world.
Even if I had no weapons left. Even if my power sputtered. Even if no one was watching.
I raised my hand to the sky not in defiance, not in rage, but in mourning for everything lost. For everything I couldn't save. And for the promise I would never keep.
The creature descended. And I closed my eyes.
I was ready.
------
Death didn't come like I expected. It didn't hurt. It wasn't cold. It was... freeing. Like stepping out of armor that was welded to my soul. Like dropping a sword that had grown too heavy for my spirit to lift.
I closed my eyes, welcoming the end. And when I opened them again, I was standing in space.
It was not the empty, black kind that telescopes used to show back in the world I came from, before the Ashven Blood Rain, before Flux and chaos, before survival replaced society. This was endless, beautiful and terrifying in its serenity. It was a cosmos, stretching in every direction with swirls of nebulae and slow-burning galaxies. Planets drifted past me, the size of tennis balls, glowing with their own gentle hues of green, blue, gold, violet. Some had rings. Others had storms trapped in motion like eternal sculptures. I wasn't floating. I was standing on nothing and everything.
I didn't understand how. I didn't need to.
And then, I saw him.
A man sat in the void, meditating in lotus position in midair and divinity. He didn't glow. Power bled off him in waves I couldn't see but could feel crawling across my... soul?. It was raw, infinite and overwhelming.
His dark, bronze-tanned skin gleamed under the starlight. His long curly white hair fell like divine silk down his back. He wore only a simple white robe, untouched by the dust of time. And his face—gods above—his face made every man I'd ever met look like a shadow.
I knew what he was before I even heard his voice.
A god.
He hadn't looked at me yet. His eyes remained shut. But I already knew he saw everything.
Then—he opened them.
Two bright sapphire eyes, almost blinding, cut through the fabric of the cosmos and landed on me. I didn't flinch. My legs wouldn't even move. I couldn't look away. He studied me like I was something unusual.
Then he tilted his head and spoke, his tone far too casual for someone that powerful:
"Huh... how'd a mortal end up here?"
His voice wasn't booming. It wasn't wrapped in thunder or echo. It was smooth, almost like he was bored and I'd broken his peace in a mildly interesting way.
I bowed my head out of instinct. The old ways still held weight.
"My name is Verdamona. I was one of the Seven. I died… or should have."
His brows rose. A single lock of that perfect hair drifted in front of his eyes, and he brushed it back without a second thought.
"Verdamona," he repeated, testing the name like it was a flavor. "Mmm. Fancy."
He smirked.
This god—this being of impossible presence—was smirking at me like I was some strange bird that flew into his temple.