Chapter Text
Ramiel
Illyria
Night Court
Midnight, Winter Solstice
Inarius
Death was warm. Comforting. Perhaps even loving in its eternal embrace.
Life was cold. Maddening. Perhaps even hateful in its finite clutches.
Silver, unseeing orbs—twin stars plucked from the night sky—stared lifelessly back at him, their once-vivid light now snuffed out, leaving behind nothing but empty, frozen voids. He could almost see the echoes of what they had been, of what they could have been.
His fingers trembled as he cradled the eyes in his palm, their weight unbearably light, and yet heavy enough to drag him into the abyss. He turned his gaze to the child. His daughter. Her tiny body lay still, wrapped in bloodied cloth, her lips parted as if caught in a final breath that never came. Her skin was moonlight turned to stone, a fragile warmth forever stolen by the hands of fate. The fragile rise and fall of life had long since stilled, leaving only silence in its wake. Six months. She had only known six months of existence before fate wrenched her away.
A sob clawed its way from his throat, raw and broken. His knees buckled beneath him as grief poured through his bones like molten iron, searing and all-consuming. He had failed her. He had failed them all. The despair in his soul screamed in agony, twisting, writhing—until something colder, sharper, settled within him. Defiance. It pulsed through his veins, quiet but steady, hardening against the tide of anguish.
Then the sky split apart with a deafening roar.
Belial.
A shadow loomed over him, vast and monstrous. The air thickened with the scent of burning flesh, of death, of ruin. The heavens themselves seemed to recoil in horror. There would be no salvation. No second chances.
His eyes drifted back to her. His daughter. So small, so helpless. But in her silence, she became something more. A promise. A prayer.
“My daughter,” he whispered, voice cracking, “may you bring us peace.”
And drove the dagger through her heart.