The cold was the first truth.
It was a predatory thing, seeping up from the obsidian floor of the Demon King's throne room. It bypassed the tears in his cheap leather tunic and sank its fangs directly into his bones, a chilling finality that was more real than the searing, liquid fire steadily dissolving his insides. His vision swam, the ornate, rib-like arches of the ceiling blurring into a smoky, indifferent vortex.
He tried to push himself up. His arms, thin and trembling from a decade of hauling gear rather than wielding a sword, gave way instantly. A wet, gurgling cough rattled in his chest, and the coppery tang of his own lifeblood filled his mouth, a grim final taste of a life spent in service.
It was over.
Twenty feet away, the Demon King—a mountain of black-scaled flesh and shattered obsidian armor—lay dead. Its six eyes, once burning with abyssal fire, were now glassy, staring into an eternity of defeat. The legendary sword, 'Light's Vengeance', was still buried to the hilt in the beast's heart, its holy light a faint, victorious pulse in the gloom.
They had won. Humanity was saved. He should have been cheering.
Instead, he was dying.
And his saviors, his comrades, his friends… they were watching him do it.
"Is he… still breathing?" The voice belonged to Leo, the Hero. A golden, resonant voice meant for rallying speeches and royal decrees. Now, it was flat, devoid of all warmth, laced with the casual annoyance of a man checking if a campfire had gone out before breaking camp.
Ashe, the party's F-Rank Porter, tried to turn his head. The effort sent a fresh wave of fire through his torso, a pain so profound it was almost a sound. He could only manage a slight twitch, a pathetic, spastic jerk just enough to bring their perfect, heroic forms into his failing line of sight.
Leo stood with his arms crossed, his radiant silver plate armor miraculously unstained. He looked magnificent. He looked bored.
Beside him stood Celeste, the Saintess. Her white and gold robes were pristine, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. Her silver hair seemed to catch the dying light from the enchanted braziers, framing her face in a beatific halo. The same face that had smiled at him just this morning, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she promised they would share a bottle of the King's vintage wine when they returned victorious. The memory was a fresh, hot twist of the blade in his gut.
Her smile was gone now. Her expression was one of mild, distant pity, the kind one might give to a stray dog struck by a carriage. It was a practiced, perfect mask of compassion that held no actual warmth.
"It doesn't matter," she said, her voice like the chiming of a tiny, perfect, crystal bell. "The Abyssal Poison is absolute. Another minute, at most."
Poison?
The word screamed in the silent, ruined cathedral of Ashe's mind, a bolt of pure, white-hot panic. No. It was a stray spell. An attack from the Demon King's royal guard that slipped past Leo's shield. An accident. It had to be an accident.
He remembered the moment. A flash of purple light. The searing pain. And then Celeste's hands on him, her touch a gentle, reassuring warmth as a golden glow enveloped his wound. She had told him she was healing him, holding the poison at bay while the others finished the fight.
She had been lying.
The pieces of the puzzle, so scattered and meaningless before, slammed together in his mind with the force of a physical blow. The way his morning rations had tasted faintly bitter. The way Leo had ordered him, the party's glorified baggage carrier, to the most exposed position, "to guard the retreat path."
There was no retreat path. He had been the designated sacrifice.
His gaze, a last, desperate plea, flickered to the third figure standing in the shadows. Silas. The shadow-cloaked assassin, his face hidden, as always, behind a dark, featureless leather mask. Silas, his oldest friend. The one who had pulled him from a gutter in the capital's undercity and taught him how to survive. The one whose silent companionship had been the one, true, unwavering anchor in his life. He was a statue of indifference.
Silas… say something. Please.
The assassin remained silent. Unmoving. A ghost who had already departed.
Rage, pure and undiluted, began to burn away the pain. It was a black, hideous fire, a supernova of hatred consuming the memories of their shared laughter around a campfire, the promises of a future where they would all be hailed as legends. It was all a lie. A grand, beautiful, and meticulously crafted lie.
Celeste took a graceful step forward, her shadow falling over him. She knelt, her face close to his, a perfect, porcelain doll of a killer. She smelled of lilies and betrayal.
"Don't look at us like that, Ashe," she whispered, her voice a venomous lullaby meant only for him. "You were never one of us. You were a means to an end. Your knowledge got us here, and for that, we are grateful. But a legend has no room for baggage."
She reached out, her gloved hand gently brushing a strand of sweaty, blood-matted hair from his forehead. It was the most intimate gesture she had ever offered him. It was also the most obscene. He flinched, a weak, pathetic tremor.
With her other hand, she drew a small, ornate dagger from her sleeve. Its blade was coated in the same viscous, purple poison that was even now dissolving his insides.
"This is a mercy," she said, her eyes, the color of a winter sky, utterly devoid of all light. "So you don't have to die alone."
Ashe opened his mouth, wanting to curse her, to scream, to spit his own blood in her angelic face. All that came out was a choked, bloody sigh, a final, wet exhalation of a life wasted.
The dagger plunged into his heart.
There was no pain. Only a profound, final cold that extinguished the fire in his gut. His last sensation was the distant, triumphant sound of Leo laughing as he finally kicked open the Demon King's treasury, the joyous clang of gold on stone.
Then, nothing.
Blackness. Silence. A prison of pure consciousness. He floated in the abyss, a disembodied soul stripped of name and form, of sight and sound. Was this it? The end? An eternity of nothing, his last memory one of absolute, soul-crushing betrayal?
Then the memory started again.
"Don't look at us like that, Ashe."
The whisper, a venomous lullaby. The scent of lilies. The cold shock of the dagger. The distant laughter. It replayed, a horrifying, fractured loop, each repetition as vivid and agonizing as the first. He was trapped in the final moments of his own murder, forced to relive his powerlessness, his pathetic, trusting nature, his ultimate foolishness.
He screamed, but in the void, there was no sound. He wept, but he had no eyes. He thrashed, but he had no limbs. He was a raw nerve of pure, undil-uted suffering.
He did not know how long he was trapped in that hellish loop. Minutes? Years? Eons? Time had no meaning in the abyss. The pain of the poison, the shock of the blade—it all eventually faded, worn away by endless repetition until it was just a dull, phantom ache.
But the rage… the rage did not fade.
It was all that was left. It was an ember that survived the death of his body, the loss of his name, the erosion of his very self. The constant, looping memory of their faces—Leo's boredom, Silas's silence, Celeste's pity—was the fuel that kept it burning. Through the eons of torment, the rage was honed. The hot, messy anger of a dying boy cooled, compressed, and crystallized. It became a cold, hard diamond of pure, undiluted hatred.
It became his new soul.
And in the infinite, silent darkness, something finally answered.
A line of cold, sterile text shimmered into existence before his consciousness. It was a language he had never seen, yet understood with an absolute, chilling clarity.
[Soul Signature Confirmed: Ashe. Cause of Death: Betrayal.]
The text was a validation. A confirmation of his suffering.
[Profound Regret and Malice Levels Exceed System Threshold.]
[Activating Hidden Protocol: Last Will.]
A flicker of impossible, savage hope ignited within him. A second chance. A chance to see their faces again. A chance to make them pay.
[Initiating Emergency Reboot...]
The text shimmered. The diamond of his hatred pulsed with a triumphant, murderous light.
[GOODBYE, ASHE.]