A faint shimmer sliced through the air, vertical and smooth, before unraveling outward like ink bleeding through ancient parchment. The edges crackled with the chill of inevitability—an aura so potent, so final, that even Hespera, bathed in the blood of her enemies, felt her breath catch.
The rift was shaped like a scythe.
And from it stepped a woman carved from elegance and extinction.
Death.
Draped in robes of living shadow that clung to her like whispered sins, she moved with the fluid grace of a slow, inevitable end. Her long, sculpted legs carried her over mangled bodies and shattered wings without a single drop of blood daring to stain her. In her pale, delicate hand, she carried a scythe forged from bone and stardust, humming with the weight of harvested souls.
"Cutie~!" Death's voice rang out like a lullaby spun from silk and sorrow, playful and haunting all at once.
Hespera blinked, then promptly choked on her own breath.
"Wi—!" she started, catching herself mid-word, eyes briefly widening before she coughed into her fist. "Wifey—Eh—I mean, Death! Hey."
She cleared her throat with unnecessary force, turning slightly to hide the flush rising to her cheeks. Smooth. Real smooth, she scolded herself internally. Great job, Hespera. You just almost proposed with blood on your face.
Death paused mid-stride.
Her sly grin widened slowly—deliberately—as her violet eyes locked onto Hespera's now very pink cheeks. She arched one elegant brow.
"Oh? Wifey, you say~?" she echoed, voice dripping with silken amusement.
Hespera stiffened. Her mouth opened—then closed. Then opened again. "I—I didn't mean—That was a slip, a mental—verbal—uh… glitch."
Death's sharp grin only widened, her eerie eyes gleaming with far too much amusement.
Hespera's blush deepened. "I said nothing. You heard nothing."
Death twirled her scythe and purred, "I heard everything~" She stepped closer, boots clicking against broken bones with musical grace, the grin never once leaving her lips. "So don't backpedal now, darling~ You already proposed."
"I did not propose!"
"You called me your wife, darling. In my realm, that counts."
Hespera groaned and covered her face with her hand. "Noctis, help me."
On. Your. Own, Mistress, the blade said flatly, entirely amused.
Death twirled her scythe lazily, her tone impossibly smug. "Don't worry, cutie. I'm not saying no."
Hespera peered at her through her fingers, mortified but undeniably flustered. "You're enjoying this way too much."
"Oh, absolutely," Death replied cheerfully. "You're adorable when you blush. Covered in blood and still shy? I could just eat you up."
Hespera made a strangled noise somewhere between a squeak and a growl as she turned away dramatically, pretending to check the corpses. "Tch. I take it back. You're not wife material. Too annoying."
Death's laughter rang out like silver bells chiming through a midnight graveyard—eerie, enchanting, and impossible to ignore.
"Too late, Cutie~" she purred, voice like velvet dipped in starlight. "You already said the vows."
Hespera groaned, dragging a blood-streaked hand down her face. "I knew I should've stayed quiet."
Desperate to reroute the conversation before her cheeks combusted, she pivoted—hard.
"A-Anyway!" she huffed, straightening her posture and pointing her still-bloody katana at Death with exaggerated dramatics. "Why are you even here, huh? I know we've got a link, thanks to the whole 'Reaper Angel' nonsense—which, yes, I'm aware is technically 'tainted' with chaos, phoenix fire, and whatever the hell else Azazel stuffed into me—but you…"
She narrowed her eyes.
"…you're a Primordial, Death. You were crafted by the Powers Themselves—the architects of the multiverse, the big cosmic puppeteers, the beginning and the end. Isn't there, like, a divine HR policy that says you're not supposed to interfere like this?"
Death merely arched a dark brow, thoroughly amused. 'She really I adorable~'
"I mean, couldn't you have just sent Thanatos?" Hespera continued, grasping at anything to derail the flirting. "He's technically your agent in this world. This falls under his jurisdiction, doesn't it?"
There was a beat of silence. Then:
Death grinned.
"Oh, sweetling," she said, stepping forward once more, voice lowering to a purr. "You really think I'd let Thanatos come near you after what happened the last time?"
Hespera's soul flinched. "That wasn't my fault. He fell into that void rift on his own." (A story for another time, dear Readers😘)
"He said you dared him to walk across it blindfolded."
"…Details."
Death chuckled, the sound deliciously dark. "Besides, you're not just a project, Cutie. You're mine. Chaos may have blessed you, but I claimed a piece of your soul the moment you tasted death and laughed back in its face."
Hespera blinked. "Wait, when did I laugh in death's face?"
"Oh, probably the seventh time you died in the Gap," Death said cheerfully. "You were still sleep in your cherub state. It was adorable."
Hespera groaned again, this time into her hands.
Chaos, watching from wherever Primordial beings people-watch, was howling.
"She's trying so hard to stay cool," Chaos wheezed, jotting down a mental note. "This is better than the time I tossed Chronos (Time's real name) into a time loop with a goat. I should really start charging admission to this slow-burn divine romance."
Death tilted her head slightly, twirling a finger in the blood-thick air, her nail slicing the breeze like a whisper of fate. "So, Cutie... how did all of this happen?" she asked, gesturing toward the battlefield strewn with fallen angel corpses. "Last I heard, you were on a sweet little date with baby dragon momma."
With a lazy flick of her wrist, she released a slow-spreading fog of black-violet mist—her signature Death Fog—that slithered across the ground like a living creature. One by one, the bodies began to be claimed, their souls quietly harvested with eerie reverence.
Meanwhile, Hespera had summoned a small sphere of water magic, floating it above her palm before letting it wash across her entire body in a glittering rush. The blood and gore melted away, leaving nothing behind. A sharp wave of fire and wind followed, drying her skin and clothes with practiced ease.
She let out a long, exaggerated sigh, stretching her arms behind her head.
"Okay, so what had happened was…"
— Flashback Begins —
It had started so innocently.
They'd just returned to the mansion after that whole "Underworld family dinner extravaganza," as Hespera had dubbed it. Ophis had been unbothered as always but Hespera had been exhausted by the sheer amount of aristocratic nonsense.
So, naturally, she dragged Ophis to a quiet little park tucked just outside the city's spiritual veil.
They had crêpes.
Ophis had tried strawberry syrup for the first time and declared it "acceptable."
Hespera had actually—dare she say it—relaxed.
Until, of course, the air shifted.
It was a subtle thing. A slight crackle in the fabric of existence. A tingle at the back of her neck that screamed ambush.
By the time she stood up from the bench, the sky had already darkened with wings.
A battalion of fallen angels. Heavily armed. Seals of capture glowing in their palms. Each one bearing the symbol of the Grigori.
Raynare. Kalawarna. Dōnashīku. Mittelt. All of them… and about a hundred others.
"You are to be taken into custody," Raynare had declared, wings unfurled, her voice high and cold with false authority. "You will answer for your role in the imprisonment of Lord Azazel!"
Hespera had blinked.
Once.
Then smiled.
The kind of smile that made gods rethink their theology.
"...Excuse me?" she'd said sweetly.
Kalawarna stepped forward. "He was taken by the angels. Imprisoned for his 'crimes' against you. We will ensure he is released—"
That's when everything stopped.
Her smile faded. Her expression turned blank.
She had not known.
Her chaotic energy twisted violently, dark and white mana curling around her form like sentient smoke. The emerald of her right eye burned like a newborn star, while the amethyst in her left turned void-black.
"He's in Heaven's custody…" she whispered, voice shaking—not with fear, but fury.
"They got to him first?"
"They took my prey?"
Ophis had quietly placed her crêpe down and moved back, recognizing the rising storm. "I'm heading home," Then she opened a portal and walked through.
The room had cracked. Literally. The space around Hespera began to split with jagged veins of Nihility and Chaos. Pandemonium Noctis appeared in her hand like it had been waiting.
"No," she said softly. "No, no, no…"
The next moment was a blur.
The ground exploded.
A wave of chaotic flame, void mist, and slashing wind erupted from Hespera as she launched forward, her katana gleaming with murderous intent.
She wasn't graceful.
She wasn't methodical.
She was a hurricane—of power, of vengeance, of divine wrath wrapped in chaos.
One fallen tried to speak—he never finished the sentence. His head was gone before the first syllable left his lips.
Raynare managed to dodge one blow, only for her wings to be shredded a second later. Dōnashīku tried to cast a barrier—it failed. Mittelt screamed something about surrender.
Hespera didn't care.
They had interrupted her fun.
They had invoked her fury.
But more than anything… they had Stolen. Her. Prey.
— Flashback Ends —
Death let out a low, appreciative whistle. "You do have a flair for the dramatic, Cutie."
Hespera gave her a lopsided grin and a cute tilt of her head. "Don't I always?"
Death sighed dreamily, her mist coiling around the last of the fallen. "You really are my favorite mass murderer."
Hespera rolled her eyes, even as a smirk tugged at her lips. "Flatterer."
She then huffed, crossing her arms and looking vaguely pouty despite the blood-slicked battlefield around them.
"They were his loyalists. Idiots trying to bargain with corpses. Thought they could trade me for Azazel's release," she muttered, still simmering.
Death blinked, then slowly grinned.
"Ohhhh~ They tried to negotiate with the little white-feathered chickies?" Her tone was delighted.
"Negotiate," Hespera scoffed, "with them? Like that would ever happen. The exchange wouldn't have made sense anyway. The Heavens hold no jurisdiction over me. In their eyes, I'm nolonger a 'pure Seraphim'."
The misty fog thickened, wrapping up the last twitching soul. Death's eyes gleamed like twin crescent moons. "Remind me never to interrupt your play time, darling."
Hespera flicked blood from her blade. "Wise choice."
Death cackled, delighted beyond measure. "My cutie really is a work of unpredictability."
From far above, Chaos—still unseen—sighed dreamily from their perch between realms.
"My daughter causes one massacre-level event, and suddenly everyone's obsessed again. Hmph~"