Chapter 0: A Blade Between Us
The battlefield was silent.
Not the silence of peace, nor the eerie stillness before a storm. This was the silence of the end—a stillness so absolute that even the wind hesitated, as if afraid to disturb what had been done there.
The sky was burning. Fires crackled in the distance, consuming the remnants of a once-proud capital. The scent of ash and iron thickened the air, mingling with the stench of death.
Bodies littered the blackened earth—humans and demons alike, fallen where they stood, their blood soaking into the ground as one. The war that had lasted years, the war that had defined her very existence, had finally reached its conclusion.
And yet, she felt no victory.
Because before her stood him.
The Demon King.
His silver armor was cracked, black blood seeping through its fractured plates. His dark hair, usually immaculate, clung to his sweat-slicked face, strands matted with soot and crimson. His golden eyes—once burning embers of power—were dimming, flickering like a candle in its final moments.
His sword was buried in her chest.
And hers was buried in his.
They stood there, locked together by the weapons that had once defended their people. Neither moved. Neither spoke.
She should have felt something—rage, relief, sorrow—but her mind was numb, her body growing weaker with each passing second.
She had won. She was the Hero.
She had slain the Demon King.
...Hadn't she?
A strange, lingering ache gnawed at her chest, deeper than the blade piercing it. She couldn't remember why.
The Demon King's lips moved. A whisper of a voice, hoarse from battle, but she couldn't hear it. The roaring in her ears drowned everything else out.
His hand trembled as it reached toward her—not to strike, not to defend, but to touch.
Something in her mind screamed that this was wrong. That she was forgetting something. That this wasn't how it was supposed to end.
But the darkness was already pulling her under.
The last thing she saw was his face—so close, yet impossibly distant—before the world shattered into nothingness.
She awoke gasping for air.
Pain—searing, twisting—burrowed into her skull like molten steel. Her breath hitched, her fingers digging into her chest where the sword had pierced her, but there was nothing. No wound, no blood.
Just a memory.
A dream.
She was alive.
She was a Hero.
And the war... was long over.