*
Her shield is cracked, her light grown thin. The silence louder than her sin. No answers come from skies once bright. A paladin lost to the fading light.
The demon laughs with crimson eyes. Where love once lived, now fury lies. She tears through steel and prayer alike. And drinks the pain from every strike.
Eliza pleads, her strength undone. No glory left, no rising sun. She meets the dark she swore to face. And finds no god, no last embrace.
*
—
“Now…” Her voice purred, dripping with the aftertaste of ecstasy. “…let’s try that again.”
Eliza did not lunge. Did not strike. The memory of Ysara’s sudden vanish still clawed at her nerves. She only raised her shield, steel groaning under her grip, and braced herself. Her sword hovered, steady, but she dared not waste strength in reckless blows.
Ysara saw the hesitation. She giggled—a soft, girlish sound, disturbingly innocent against the carnage she stood in. Her bare feet padded across the stone as she tilted her head, hair plastered to her blood-soaked skin.
“Oh, my dear Eliza,” she cooed, circling. “So careful now. So wary. If you had been stronger—if you could have held onto that lovely little relic of yours…” Her gaze flicked toward the battered shield. “…then I might actually be in trouble.”
Eliza said nothing.
Ysara’s smirk widened. She glided closer, circling, her steps light, mocking. Her eyes slid to the shield in Eliza’s grasp—the once-blinding Aegis, its holy radiance snuffed out. What had been a bulwark of divine fire now looked like little more than hammered steel, marred by scratches, its earlier glow reduced to faintly sputtering runes.
“How pitiful,” Ysara crooned. “Such a glorious thing… reduced to scraps.” She drifted around Eliza like a predator, her eyes drinking in every inch of the paladin’s armor. “And that shell you hide in—ah, I remember how it burned me to even stand near it. How it seared me with your god’s will. Yet now…” She let her words linger, her bare toes brushing the stones in silence. “…now it’s just metal.”
Her laughter spilled, low and taunting, echoing across the chamber.
“Relics as powerful as that…” she mused, her tone almost thoughtful, though her grin betrayed the venom in her words, “…they always come with restrictions, don’t they? Perhaps it was never meant for your hands. Perhaps you were just a vessel, a poor knight meant to borrow a strength too great for you.” She leaned in slightly, voice dropping to a whisper that still carried across the space. “If you tried to summon it again… you couldn’t. Not like before. Not as you are now.”
Eliza’s silence was answer enough.
Her heel scraped stone as she turned with Ysara—never breaking eye contact, never lowering her shield. And Ysara delighted in it—every heartbeat Eliza gave her without a word, every ounce of restraint.
“You know…” Ysara’s tone sharpened, her smirk curdling. “…I remember. I remember everything.”
Her steps slowed. The circle broke. She stood, one arm stretched at her side, her eyes burning crimson as they locked on Eliza.
“The cult will pay,” she hissed. “For every chain. For every scream. For every day they left me to rot. I will never forgive them.” Her lip curled, the smirk bending into something feral. “And you, Eliza…” Her voice dripped acid. “…I will never forgive you for leaving me. For letting me waste away here for so many years.”
The words landed like knives. Still, Eliza did not flinch.
Ysara’s laughter twisted into a sneer. “And your lord.” The way she spat the words were venomous, vile. “That pathetic wretch you kneel to. He is no god. He is nothing but a blind tyrant—an arrogant child playing at divinity, demanding worship from fools too weak to see his leash.”
Her one arm lifted, spreading wide, blood glistening down her pale frame. Her chest rose with a sharp, rattling breath, and her voice climbed, rising to a fever pitch.
“There is only one goddess,” she cried, voice reverberating through the broken chamber. “One who is the epitome of beauty, of strength, of sin itself.”
Her head arched back, throat bared, and her scream tore through the air, wild, ecstatic, cracked with madness.
“She is my mother! My mistress! My goddess!”
Her voice broke into a shriek, then melted back into a sultry whisper, her head bowing low, hair spilling like a dark veil across her face.
“Just thinking of her…” Her lips parted, her eyes hooded, the tremor in her voice almost delirious. “…fills me with love. With ecstasy…”
Her crimson gaze flicked back to Eliza, sharp, alive, terrifying.
“…and you… will feel her truth.”
The chamber seemed to shrink around the words. Even the torches faltered, their flames guttering as though starved of air. Eliza’s grip tightened on her shield, but her body refused to move—caught in the weight of that promise.
Ysara’s lips trembled, not with restraint but with delight, and a low chuckle slipped past them. She pressed her hand against her face, fingers curling into her cheek as though to hold herself together, yet the sound swelled, rippling through the chamber—half-suppressed, half-indulgent—until it broke into a low, throaty chuckle.
“Hhhnhhh… ahhh… hhhnnnhhhahah…”
With unhurried grace, her lone hand slid upward, gathering the blood-matted strands that clung to her face. She pulled them back slowly, smoothing them over her crown, revealing eyes that gleamed with liquid fire. Crimson light burned within, hypnotic, dangerous—like a predator’s gaze that took pleasure in being seen.
“You’re lucky, Eliza…” she purred, words quivered between mockery and ecstasy. Her lips curved into a smile too sharp to be kind. “My mother told me… to keep one alive.”
Her head tilted, her grin widening until it was nearly unhinged. “But before that…” A sharp tremor ran through her jaw, her expression twitching as if torn between rapture and rage.
Around her eyes, dark veins flared, spreading like cracks in porcelain, pulsing with each beat of her heart. Her lone arm flexed—slow, deliberate—muscles tightening, blood glistening down her skin. She looked at it, savored it, then turned her burning gaze back to Eliza.
“I’ll savor you,” she whispered, her voice dropping to something husky, intimate. Her lips split wider, twitching, almost breaking into laughter. “Every second of it.”
The floor shuddered beneath her bare feet as she lunged. No hesitation, no warning. Just raw speed, a blur of crimson eyes and blood-streaked flesh, hurling herself toward Eliza with the promise of violence sweetened by desire.
Steel met flesh in a flash of motion. Eliza barely had time to raise her shield before Ysara was on her. The impact resounded through the hall like thunder—but Ysara didn’t collide; she twisted. Her body spun mid-air, her single hand catching the rim of Eliza’s shield. With inhuman strength she yanked it sideways, tearing Eliza’s guard open.
A heartbeat later, a kick struck her square in the chest.
The sound was like stone cracking under pressure—a concussive boom that rippled the air. Eliza was flung backward, spinning, armor scraping deep scars into the marble floor. She slammed her blade into the ground, using it to slow her momentum, gouging a long, smoking trench before finally coming to a halt.
Her breath hitched. Her ribs screamed beneath the dented plate. She barely had time to lift her gaze when—
Thud.
Ysara’s heel caught the side of her helm. The blow rang out like a bell.
The world spun white. Eliza’s sword flew from her grip, clattering somewhere out of reach as her body crashed into the wall hard enough to crack stone. Dust fell like rain.
She groaned, pushing the rubble aside with her shield—but before she could rise, a shadow fell over her.
Ysara was already there.
Her hand shot out, fingers digging into Eliza’s shoulder blades, finding the joint where steel met flesh. With a sudden, brutal motion she wrenched the arm backward. The joint popped.
A scream tore from Eliza’s throat—raw, human.
Ysara’s lips parted in pleasure, the sound feeding something primal inside her. She shoved Eliza onto her back and straddled her waist, knees pinning her down, the weight of her body heavy and deliberate.
Eliza grit her teeth through the pain and swung. Her gauntleted fist cracked across Ysara’s face. The impact snapped her head to the side, spattering blood across her cheek.
For a moment—silence.
Then Ysara’s tongue flicked out, tasting the blood on her lip. A grin followed. She turned back slowly, just as Eliza swung again.
This time, Ysara caught her fist mid-arc.
“Oh… still fighting?” she purred, tightening her grip. “How precious.”
Pressure built—metal groaned. Eliza’s muscles strained, veins standing out along her neck inside her armor.
“Tell me…” Ysara leaned in, her breath ghosting over Eliza’s face, eyes alight with cruel mirth. “…where is your Lord now?”
She twisted her wrist. The gauntlet screamed under her fingers. Bone followed.
Eliza’s cry broke the air, a sound of both defiance and agony. Ysara drank it in like music, her expression pure ecstasy.
The paladin’s gauntleted hand trembled as she pressed it to the battered shield still clutched beside her—its light faint, sputtering, but alive. She could still feel it pulsing against her palm, the whisper of its true name clawing at her lips. Power. Hope. Salvation.
Even if it burned her soul away, she would call it again. She had to.
Her mouth opened, breath shuddering as she began to speak—
“Shie—”
A blur.
Ysara’s body moved before the sound could form, a sneer curling her lips. Her fist—no, her whole arm—whipped forward, connecting with Eliza’s helm in a brutal crack. The impact rang out like thunder trapped in iron, the world spinning around the paladin as her body folded backward.
“Do you really think,” Ysara purred, leaning close, her breath hot and venomous against the metal, “I’d let you finish this time?”
Eliza coughed, her voice lost under the ringing in her skull. Ysara’s grin widened.
“Or was that little relic supposed to kill me this time?” she whispered, eyes gleaming with mockery. “You had your chance, little paladin. And you wasted it.”
Her words melted into a soft, manic giggle as her clawed hand grabbed the edge of Eliza’s helm. She slammed her again, and again, each blow a percussion of dominance, each strike making the metal scream. Then, with a low growl, she hooked her claws beneath the battered rim and ripped.
The helm tore open like paper.
Eliza gasped as cold air met her bloodied face. The left side was swollen purple, lips split, one eye barely open. Blood traced down her chin, thick and trembling with every breath.
Ysara’s expression softened into something almost tender. She tilted her head, brushing away a lock of hair, her eyes drinking in every broken detail.
“Much better,” she whispered, voice like velvet over razors. “Now I can see you.”
Her hand trailed lower. Metal grated and screamed as her claws sank into the armor at Eliza’s chest. She tore it apart piece by piece, each pull deliberate, savoring the resistance until it yielded completely—until the steel fell away and the vulnerable flesh beneath was bare to the cold.
Eliza’s body trembled. She could barely lift her arms. The strength that once shone from her now bled away into stillness.
Her eye met Ysara’s—no more fury, no more faith. Only exhaustion.
For a heartbeat she stared into those crimson eyes and saw nothing but cruelty and hunger. No room for mercy. No chance of winning.
Something inside her cracked. The fight drained out of her like water from a shattered vessel. Her body sagged, the shield slipping from her grasp.
Her lips parted, the words barely a whisper.
“…kill me.”
A tear slid down her cheek, glimmering in the dim light.
“Ysara… please… end it…”
