The sound of the explosion dissipated slowly, as if the universe had exhaled.
What remained was silence. A dense, absolute, almost sacred silence.
The crater was now an abyss of fused glass, ice, and fire, matter distorted by the collision of forces that should never have coexisted. Fragments of the floating city still fell from above, glowing like ashes of dead stars.
And down below, amidst rubble and spectral lights, lay the two of them.
Mei breathed with difficulty. Each time air entered her lungs, it seemed the fire inside her ignited again, reluctant to die. The taste of blood and iron filled her mouth, but she smiled—a tired, sincere smile, full of something she couldn't even name.
Seraphyne, a few meters away, lay upon a layer of cracked ice, her entire body fissured with cracks that glowed blue. Her breath came in small frozen clouds, and for the first time in ages, her fingers trembled. Not from fear. But from life.
For long seconds, neither of them moved. Only the sound of particles of matter falling—a luminous rain—filled the void.
Then Mei turned her head, her golden gaze meeting the princess's.
And the instant their eyes met, the world seemed to balance between fire and ice—between all they had been and all they could have been.
— …Still alive? — Mei asked, her voice hoarse, between a sigh and a laugh.
Seraphyne let out a faint smile, the corner of her lips rising with irony.
— Unfortunately, yes.
A brief laugh escaped them both. A broken, weak laugh… but true.
The warm air and the cold air mixed, generating a golden and blue mist that rippled around them.
Mei closed her eyes for a moment. She felt every fiber of her body vibrate in pain, but also a strange peace.
— You know, Princess… — she murmured. — I don't hate you as much as I should.
— I know — Seraphyne responded, her voice cold and smooth, almost a whisper. — And that is what irritates me.
Mei laughed low, opening her eyes again.
— You're too arrogant to admit it… but you had fun too, didn't you?
Seraphyne averted her gaze for an instant. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly.
— Perhaps… a little.
— Hah… — Mei took a deep breath. — You fight well. Better than I expected from someone who lives behind veils and thrones.
— And you… are worse than I expected. — The Princess replied, coldly, but her eyes betrayed something deeper. — But also more… human than I remembered something could be.
For a moment, time stopped.
The wind passing through the ruins sounded like the lament of a forgotten god. The cracked sky, in fragments, reflected the two small figures at the center of the chaos—a sun and an ice star, side by side, breathing the same rarefied air.
Mei tried to rise, but her legs gave way. Still, she leaned on her arm and looked around.
The entire city had been reduced to a mirage: fire and ice intertwined, crystallized, an impossible sculpture created by the hatred and beauty of war.
— Look what we've done… — she murmured. — Neither of us won.
Seraphyne closed her eyes. — Winning was never the point.
The words echoed deeply.
For a second, Mei wanted to ask what she meant by that—but she understood. She felt it.
The fight between them was never just about power. It was a conversation. A scream. A mirror.
And in that mirror, they both saw themselves.
They both understood what it was to carry so much fire and so much cold within.
The silence stretched.
The wind passed.
And the two, for a rare and improbable moment, rested.
In that distorted crater, in the aftermath of destruction, there was something new—not peace, not truce… but recognition.
A bond formed in the impact, in the collision of all they were.
The Abyss breathed around them, and the world seemed to wait, hesitant, for what would come next.
The air burned and froze at the same time—particles of ash and ice crystals descended slowly, shimmering like stardust.
Mei breathed deeply, her body marked by extinguished flames, open wounds, and smoke rising from her fists.
Seraphyne, ahead, was kneeling, her silver strands stuck to her face by melted snow and dark blood dripping from her lip.
Both looked at the distorted sky, where the portal pulsed like a heart about to explode.
— Will you continue? — asked Mei, her voice hoarse, tired, but firm. — Because... honestly, Princess, I'd love to finish this now. I have other wounds to tend to... other promises to keep.
Seraphyne raised her gaze. Her eyes, of an ethereal and glacial hue, no longer held hatred—they held confusion. An almost human gleam.
— It's not that simple, human... — she replied with a thread of voice that still carried authority.
Mei furrowed her brow, her fingers trembling, but her golden gaze remained firm, penetrating the princess's.
That exchange of looks contained something not even the Abyss could translate—a silent understanding between two forces tired of fighting for worlds they perhaps no longer believed in.
Seraphyne sighed, the gelid vapor escaping her lips.
— I despise humans... — she began, in a low tone, almost confessional. — You deny everything that is ugly, everything that is impure. You push into the Abyss what you cannot accept in yourselves and live behind masks.
She looked around, at the crater taken by black matter and flames flickering in the rarefied air.
— All the pain, all the hatred, all the ruin... everything you reject, falls to me. To my kingdom. To my people.
Love is not enough for so much rot and rejection.
Mei was silent for a few seconds.
The wind blew, mixing the smell of ashes and melted ice.
— And why don't we try to coexist? — she asked, her voice soft, almost sad. — Why not fight to change that, instead of destroying?
The princess closed her eyes for a moment.
— Because there is no space, Empress. — Her tone was of one who had cried too much. — In the Abyss, there are creatures, kingdoms, entire ecosystems. A civilization made of shadows. There is no way your race's fire can exist without burning us.
She opened her eyes, cold and tired. — They are two parallel realms. Two hearts beating in the same body. One of them will stop.
Mei gritted her teeth, anger and fear mixed.
— That's a lie. That's what he wants you to believe. Dante planned all this.
Seraphyne hesitated.
A brief glimmer crossed her eyes—doubt.
— Perhaps... — she murmured. — But Dante is not the top.
She slowly raised her head.
— There is something above him. The true essence of the Abyss. The entity that shapes what you call the cosmos.
A web.
Her voice became grave, almost solemn. — There is no stopping what has begun.
— Then I'll try anyway. — Mei said, her gaze sparkling as if she carried the sun within her.
The ground trembled. The portal vibrated, the sound almost a distorted chant, and the roots of the great sky tree expanded, drawing veins of black energy across the horizon.
Seraphyne slowly raised her hand.
— Then see, Empress. See what you have truly created.
The air tore in silence.
The portal's flow froze—the lights in the sky stopped, as if time had bowed before her.
Particles began to fall, but they were not of ice or fire.
They were fragments of dead stars, melting into a viscous, black, liquid energy that descended like a veil over the crater's hole.
The world began to darken.
Everything—sound, wind, light—disappeared.
Mei looked around, her heart accelerating.
— What are you doing...?
Seraphyne smiled, sadly.
— Showing the truth.
The viscous liquid covered the field.
And for the first time, Mei felt the weight of what lay behind that war.
And of her own actions, not knowing if giving this opening would cost her life or not.
And when the darkness finally closed over them—
light came.
But it wasn't light. Not in the way human eyes comprehend.
It was a deep, bluish glare that seemed to tear color from the world rather than illuminate it.
A cold, depressive glow that left the air heavy, humid with silence.
Mei blinked. Her heart tightened. The sensation was as if she had been plunged into a bitter memory—a lucid and suffocating dream.
The ground was a lifeless land.
Not just any absence, but an absence with presence.
Gray, blue, and crimson like wounds exposed in time.
Distant castles rose on the horizon like skeletons of a dead empire;
Forests of brittle, shattered leaves, painted in cold tones, waved as if weeping an ancient wind.
Mei walked, dragged by the vision. She felt every particle of that energy graze her skin, penetrate to the bone.
With each step, fragmented memories came to mind: the fissures in Kagirags, the worlds colliding for centuries, the portals opening like inevitable cracks.
Now she knew. She knew where the scars in her world's fabric came from.
The sky was not sky.
It was a broken mirror of reality: cracked, impossible, with multiple suns that seemed to bleed light.
There was a sound of deep lament, almost inaudible, vibrating in the air.
Seraphyne appeared beside her. Her presence was as natural in that place as it was alien in the human world.
Her voice cut through the heavy air, effortlessly:
— This is my kingdom, Mei. Where my existence was molded. Not with the human courtesy of bonds and love... but with the certainty of solitude.
Seraphyne's eyes reflected that broken sky.
— My brother and I were born here. We are one and yet two. "Princes of the Abyss," they called us… but that title never truly belonged to us. We were created and bound to Dante without choice. There is something greater behind all this. Something I dare not even name.
Mei raised her voice, an echo of flames reverberating off the invisible walls of the dimension.
— If not even you know the reason for all this, why follow? Why bow?
Seraphyne did not yield, but her posture crumbled a bit. In her eyes, a weariness no battle could explain.
She took a deep breath.
— You know, Mei… I thought humans were despicable. Cruel. Sneaky. Devoid of love, yet loved by creation. Placed on a pedestal as if God created the Abyss and humans as brothers, but gave everything to you and treated us as bastards. Rejected. Forgotten.
Her voice trembled, not from weakness, but from naked truths.
— You got the blessing. Free will. Love. Choices. You could sin and still live as you wished. Follow any belief. Doubt any belief. Perfectly imperfect. And you know… I envy that.
Mei fell silent. The fire within her no longer burned for combat, but for empathy.
Seraphyne averted her gaze for a moment.
— When I fought you, when I saw what you did, I envied you. I wished I could be like you. For an instant.
— Dante… this human who represented our power, who played with pacts, who used us as weapons… I thought everyone was like him.
I thought you were like him, but bound to that demon I thought Dante could be a puppet for the Abyss. But the puppets were always us. Slaves to nothingness. Cosmic patch-workers, balancing humanity's indomitable will. An empty life.
The words cut deeper than any blow.
Mei felt her stomach churn. There was no ready answer.
Seraphyne raised her chin, and for the first time she seemed human in her gaze.
— I wish I had never existed. I wish I could choose. But I don't think I am capable.
Mei clenched her fists, her eyes burning with something that wasn't anger.
— Then choose! — she shouted. Her voice echoed through the cracked realm. — There is no reason to yield to something you don't want. There is no reason to accept chains you cannot see!
For an instant, Seraphyne hesitated. Her hand trembled. But then the shadow returned.
Something within her burned. A will that did not come from the Princes, but from the Queen.
It was an inevitable call.
Kill. Eliminate. Subjugate humanity. Not for pleasure, but because it was what must be.
But there was still hope.
It was the silence between two forces born to annul each other—and, paradoxically, to understand each other.
Seraphyne kept her eyes locked on Mei.
The deep blue of her irises flickered, as if reflecting an entire ocean trying to contain a storm.
When she spoke, her voice came softly, but laced with an ancient weight:
— There was a moment… — she began, her breath trembling — when something changed inside me.
Mei looked at her in silence.
Seraphyne raised her eyes to the broken sky and continued:
— A presence emerged. New. Immense. Capable of rivaling even the Queen. It was she who… freed me.
She touched her own chest, her fingers trembling.
— For a brief instant, I fought as myself. Without the hunger for destruction, without the hatred echoing in my mind. It was the first time I felt… freedom.
The silence that followed was thick.
The wind seemed afraid to cross between them.
Mei watched her—and in her gaze, there was no more fury.
Only curiosity… and a distant reflection of understanding.
For some reason, she did not see Seraphyne as an enemy.
Or perhaps, she did not want to.
And Seraphyne, in turn, felt the same.
They were parallels: two existences separated by different realities, but molded by the same pain.
An empress made of fire—passion, chaos, and courage.
A princess molded of ice—containment, solitude, and unrequited love.
Two opposing forces, drawn by the same destiny, facing each other as if the universe had created them just for that moment.
Seraphyne closed her eyes for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was almost a whisper.
— You know, Mei… I don't know how much longer I have to talk to you like this.
She smiled briefly, with a kind of serene sadness.
— Soon we will have to fight again, I know. But in this time we've stopped… my chest ached.
— Ached? — Mei asked, quietly.
Seraphyne nodded.
— Not from your blows, not from the burns… but from something I don't understand.
She took a deep breath.
— It's a pain that doesn't hurt, but corrodes from within. A feeling that tears me apart and, at the same time, makes me feel alive. When I look at you now… my consciousness begs for time to stop. For us to stay like this forever.
Her gaze softened.
— Talking. Reflecting. Looking at each other. In silence.
Seraphyne gave a light laugh—sincere, almost childlike.
— I learned to laugh with you. In the middle of our mortal battle, I laughed.
She lowered her head.
— I swore to take revenge on you, but… I don't care about that anymore. Nor about my arm. Nor about the one hundred and fifty-seven blows you landed on me that time.
Mei couldn't contain her laugh. It was a broken sound, full of exhaustion and tenderness.
She took a step forward and placed her hand on the princess's shoulder.
The touch, warm and firm, made the princess feel it, even through her cold skin.
— Seraphyne, isn't it? — said Mei, her voice laden with a deep calm.
— I will never forget your name.
Mei's eyes reflected the glow of the distant flames.
— You believe you were born without purpose and that's why you envy humans. But… not even we humans know the purpose of our existence.
She raised her gaze to the fractured sky.
— And perhaps… we shouldn't know. There are truths the mind was not made to comprehend. And trying to reach them only makes us lose what we have that is simplest: the sense of being alive.
I myself died and was never stuck on the detail of having returned.
Seraphyne watched her in silence.
That woman—made of fire, destruction, and courage—spoke with the serenity of one who understood the pain of existence.
Mei moved closer.
— I believe you have not existed in vain.
Her tone was almost maternal, but firm.
— If there is a force trying to use you to unbalance the cosmos, then there must be another that will use you to restore it.
She smiled, softly.
— I am fire. And you are ice.
— …
— We were made for each other, to fight. To understand each other.
A queen and an empress, from different realms but the same essence.
You are more human than you think.
Seraphyne felt her chest burn—but not with pain. It was warmth. A new, gentle, dangerous warmth.
A warmth that melted what remained of her coldness.
She did not know what love was.
But she understood, for a brief instant, what it was to belong.
To belong to something that wasn't the Abyss.
To belong to a purpose that wasn't destruction.
And then, in that same instant, Seraphyne understood:
Everything existed in balance.
The Abyss.
Humanity.
Light.
Darkness.
One needed the other for the whole to exist.
The presence she had felt—that force rivaling the Queen—pulsed again, distant, like a heart beating between dimensions.
She understood.
It was a call.
An opportunity.
Seraphyne raised her eyes, determined. The blue in her pupils now shone with something resembling hope.
She dared to defy the invisible current that had bound her since birth. She dared to look at the false god that guided her. And to tell him to go to hell.
— Mei… — she said, her voice almost trembling. — I have an idea.
Mei arched an eyebrow, and the fire around her ignited in golden and red waves, reflecting a wild, but sincere smile.
— Hm… — murmured the Empress, tilting her head. — Then tell me, Princess.
To be continued…