"This blade is laced with Light Quintessence, the bane of Heirs belonging to the Phoenix Clan, Heirs like you. A strike to the solar plexus with this is fatal, as that is where the core of our souls reside." Tenebria wiped away the blood Erik coughed up as it began to ignite into azure blue flames, burning away from her skin. "The Sovereign Creator managed to send me a message three days ago. He needs us, Ike and Luna included. I don't know what awaits us, but Lazarus said he is struggling against a powerful enemy, someone he and I had thought was long gone."

   "I don't- I don't understand." Erik choked out. He reached up and grabbed the hand holding his cheek as tears welled up in his eyes. "I thought you said you'd protect me. I thought y-you were different. I d-don't want t-this. I don't w-want this. Please."

  Erik's eyes began to feel heavy. His heart was racing, but it began to slow down. Erik sobbed, clenching Tenebria's hand as hard as he could. He wanted to hurt her too, but his hand was too weak and he was rapidly losing strength.

   "I will, but I need to kill you like I have been ordered to first. Ike and Luna will be next, then... Myself. We will go together. I will protect you from the dangers that await us, and I will protect you from Lazarus."

 Fucking liar. It wasn't fair. Nothing in this fucking universe was fair. All he ever wanted to be safe, to no longer know only fear and numbing despair. Why must Tenebria be like this? Be just like the universe? So sick, so cruel. How dare she promise to keep him safe while her blade is lodged in his back?! He was tired of this! Erik was so tired of everything! He hated everything!

   He wanted to destroy everything!

   "I remember you now." A man's deep voice said from several directions. Tenebria snapped her head up and saw the Godsbane from earlier now standing behind Erik on the ledge, and her face hardened with contempt. Several other Godsbane crawled up the ledges of the building. Each were malformed beasts lacking hair, rotted with strange large maggots and roaches festering throughout their flesh. They were Category 2, intelligent enough to think before attacking and strong enough to kill Archons and Lessor Heirs. They all groaned and whined, some even clacked their jaws together repeatedly, making rhythmic gunshot noises. They all spoke together with the same voice. Erik noticed the familiar glimmer he saw in the Lycan Godsbane's eyes now adorning all of the others. Their gaze zeroed in on Erik. The pupils of their eyes were round, but the shape was eerily familiar. He felt like he had looked at them before for hours on end. The color was different from what he remembered, but he knew the curves and flecks of everything within the iris by heart. "I remember that sweet fear. I believe your name was Erik back then."

   "Back then? But Lazarus was the one that named him..." Tenebria said before a look of horrified realization befell her face. "He already knows..."

   "I have suffered three billion years, and ten agonizing Cycles. After all this time, my blood still burns with hate for the people who r**** and killed my Salvation. Those people have returned once more, but this time." Each Godsbane pointed at Erik, but the one behind him cupped his cheek from behind. It leaned down and pressed its mouth against Erik's ear. Erik's eyes widened as a chill ran down his spine. "So to has my Salvation."

   "Guess again." Tenebria stood up as her scythe wretched itself out of Erik's back and flew into her hands. She spun her scythe around herself in elegant twists and spins like a dance. Small magenta orbs and aurora-like lights radiated off the scythe's blade and danced in the air around Tenebria as she swung her scythe in a wide downward angled sweep, slicing Erik's head clean off. The magenta particles and light swirled in a mesmerizing circle around them as all of the Godsbane were cut in half. Both the building and the world were both cut in dozens of perfectly sliced segments and began to slide apart.

   Tenebria jumped into the air and conjured a magenta platform to stand on. She watched as Erik's head and body fell off the room's ledge and down a newly formed abyss between two departed segments of the world. All of the Godsbane cried out blood curdling screams filled with horror and grief, and scrambled after Erik with their severed upper halves. They plunged themselves into the abyss and grabbed onto Erik's body. They all vanished into the Darkness, but their screams still echoed out from below as they fell into the Dark Sea.

   Tenebria stood there, her long air flowing in the wind and her scythe propped behind herself in hand. Her eyes burned, but her tears had finally run dry. That was it then. In a universe bereft of love and kindness, all she had left to offer it as succor were her tears. There was nothing left she could offer this place, to the Kindred. She was strangely glad, but broken beyond measure. Tenebria wanted to meet Erik, to get to know him before she had to kill him. She was glad the last of her tears fell for him. Lazarus had said that Erik was special, the greatest miracle to ever defy the Natural Order, and he was right. But not for the reasons Lazarus intended.

   Do you want to die...? Like I do?

   His words echoed in Tenebria's head like a sung requiem. She turned her head and stared off to the crimson star. Erik reminded her of her brother, Yamato. So kind, so hurt, so desperate for affection. Like Yamato, Erik was too innocent for this universe. And now he was in Lazarus's hands. Lazarus knows who Erik belongs to, so there was no point in hiding Erik's connection to the Forsaken, and Tenebria is afraid she knows which Forsaken it was. Of all the Forsaken Erik could belong to, it was the one Lazarus said would only lead to death. Tenebria had hoped Erik wouldn't have that kind of connection to them. Lazarus said his experiment wasn't guaranteed to pull someone the Forsaken cared about or hated. Yet one of them called Erik their Salvation. He was someone precious to them beyond measure, enough to destroy everything for. 

It reminded her of how she felt about her family, the ones that were her own Salvation. 

   Tenebria reached up into her cleavage and pulled something, a photo she kept in pristine condition for as long as she could remember. Within it, an image of herself when she was younger. She was with three others. Tenebria was hugging a girl who had chocolate skin and long dreadlocks that were neatly braided and done up in a ponytail. Her hair was black from her roots to half way down the length, but it gradually turned blue toward the ends. Her left eye was sky blue. She was Cleo, the Sovereign Savior. Next to them was Cleo's twin brother, Lazarus. He had fair skin and his olive taupe hair was a sharply styled undercut, and his left eye was jade green. He was hugging Cleo with a a mechanical arm he invented to replace his left arm and had his right arm wrapped around the back of Yamato's neck. Yamato was lightly tan and had an entire foot and a half on Lazarus, as well as several pounds of muscles. His eyes were sharply shaped unlike everyone else, and his left eye was ruby red. His hair was jet black, frosted blood red on the front left side, and lightly spiked. He had a shy smile as Lazarus was kissing him on the temple. Yamato was the only person who sparked this softer side of Lazarus. Tenebria remembered screaming ew at Lazarus as Cleo laughed while the picture was taken.

   They were all just teenagers at the time. Tenebria and Yamato were nineteen, and Lazarus and Cleo were eighteen. It was hard to believe they were only kids back then. It had been a month after Eden was saved from the Forsaken and they were in front of the first newly built capital of the Empire, celebrating the first day of peace for the new age of Eden. It was hard to believe they were only kids back then. So much changed for everyone that day, but what Tenebria will always remember was that it was the first day she felt true happiness, and it was all thank

   That happiness is gone now, and so was the girl she used to be in that photo. None of the Sovereign Heirs will be the same anymore. Humanity has taken too much for Tenebria to bear.

   Do you want to die...? Like I do?

   "I don't know what I want anymore..."