A Shadow walks for salvation.
A Divine one walks for reclamation—
Not of a throne, nor glory,
But of something it once believed was owed.
Strength.
Control.
A name.
This was no ordinary shadow.
This was one once crowned in dusk and oblivion—
The Lord of Shadows.
And yet, time did not kneel.
It bled on, merciless and slow.
Days,
Months,
Years,
Centuries,
Millennia…
Until even eternity forgot the face beneath the shade.
Where once strode a defiant Divine Shadow—
Clawing, raging, grasping for meaning, for memory,
To protect,
To love,
To live—
Now walked a hollow remnant.
No hatred.
No fire.
No rebellion in its step.
Only duty. Only motion.
A corpse that had forgotten it was dead,
Still moving toward a promise the world never kept.
And behind it, winding like a scar across the realm,
slithered a single onyx serpent.
Loyal not by command,
But by choice.
It remembered what its master could not.
It grieved so he did not have to.
And so it followed.
Step after step,
Through aeons of silence.
Through the marrow of gods.
Because someone had to remember him.
Even if he never would.
…
The Divine Shadow moved forward.
Not from will.
Not from thought.
The time for decisions had long since passed.
Now, there was only duty.
Only motion.
Ahead, the world twisted. A shroud of silver—essence thick as mist—hung in the air like a weeping sky.
But storms were meaningless.
Light was meaningless.
Meaning itself had been bled dry from the bones of time.
Would essence dare deny him?
Let it try.
The Shadow trudged on.
Not a man.
Not a god.
Not a memory.
Just momentum, carved into form.
It passed through blasphemy and blessing,
Through the remains of divinity and profanity,
Some were Unholy.
Some Divine.
All forgotten.
None stood in his path.
And behind him, faithful as silence, followed the serpent.
It knew nothing of heaven.
Nothing of hell.
Only that the figure before it had once wept,
Once bled,
Once knelt—not to pray, but to survive.
And so now it would walk behind him.
If teeth needed to be bared, it would bare them.
If its flesh needed to burn, it would burn gladly.
Not out of command.
Not because it was told.
But because something deep within its soul—a coil of emotion it had no words for—ached when its master ached.
And so it followed.
So that he wouldn't have to be alone.
So that when the end came,
There would be someone to witness it.
To whisper a goodbye, even if no ears remained to hear.
And yet—
The storm did not rise.
The gods did not shift.
No judgment.
No mercy.
Just silence.
The march continued…
Until—
The Divine Shadow reached the apex of the realm.
And there was nothing.
No altar.
No light.
No voice in the dark to name him worthy or damned.
No salvation to be offered.
No blessing to receive.
No will left to defy.
Just stillness.
The eye of a dead storm.
He stood there, unmoving.
The last fragment of a forgotten tale.
Not expecting. Not hoping.
Behind him, the serpent waited.
It did not question.
It did not retreat.
It refused to.
Eras came and went. The realm shifted, mourned, forgot. But they remained.
Sometimes, the serpent coiled tightly around its master, as if to lend him shape when the faint wind tried to sway his form.
Sometimes, it nudged him gently—like a child waking a sleeping parent.
It was begging.
Not in words.
In motion. In warmth. In silence.
Begging for something—anything—to stir within its master.
A flicker of life.
A trace of pain.
Even sorrow would do.
It would have screamed at gods.
Would have clawed daemons from their tombs.
If only such things still existed.
But the gods were dead.
The daemons unknown.
And the Divine Shadow remained.
Still.
Unmoving.
Unbroken.
Unheard.
Then—
A change.
Slight, but present.
Another presence.
Not frozen.
Alive.
[Shadow God peers into his realm.]
[A lost shadow is noticed.]
[An offering is made…]
[Lord of Shadows. Receive your salvation—The Mercy of Death.]
The Divine Shadow did not move.
No twitch. No tremble. No answer.
Not defiant. Not afraid.
Simply… hollow.
A being too empty to mourn, too numb to scream.
He had outlived sorrow, and now teetered on the final edge—
Oblivion.
And yet—
The serpent stirred.
It knew.
This was not salvation.
Not grace.
Not mercy.
This… was execution.
And it would not let its master die.
Not like this.
Not alone.
It had followed him through ten thousand silences,
Through shattered hills and broken realms,
Not as a servant.
Not as a shadow.
But as a child trailing the last warmth it had ever known.
As a friend.
The only one it had ever had.
And now—
It was losing him.
The serpent, though born without feeling,
Felt.
Terror. Agony. Love.
It dove into its master's soul—
Desperate.
Wild.
Screaming in silence.
It tore through the layers of darkness,
Searching.
Begging.
Hoping that pain might bring him back.
That memory might spark the ember.
That love might be enough.
It wasn't.
So the serpent went deeper.
Past the soul.
Past the dream.
Into the marrow of his master.
Its scales peeled.
Its existence burned.
It bled essence.
But it did not stop.
It reached the place no external soul should enter—
The loom where fate connected him to reality.
And there…
A thread.
Dim, trembling, forgotten.
Yet still there.
It was not bound to the divine.
Not to glory.
Not even to purpose.
It was bound to itself.
To the serpent.
A single thread of memory.
A fragment of love left behind.
A kindness unspoken, but never erased.
The serpent could not weep.
But if it could—
It would have sobbed like a child.
He had remembered.
And so, it gave everything.
Its soul, its name, its truth.
It coiled around the thread like a dying prayer.
And poured its essence into it—
Soft, inky, content.
Not to live.
But to give him a reason to.
The serpent withered.
It dimmed.
And still, it gave.
Outside—
The Divine Shadow stood still.
Alone.
Cold.
Dead.
Until something shifted.
The storm paused.
The world tilted.
A memory—
Not grand, not glorious—
But warm.
A serpent.
Slithering beside him.
Always there.
Now somewhere deeper.
The Divine Shadow did not know what the ache in his chest meant.
He did not have the words.
But it was there.
Something.
In his soul, where countless threads hung limp and lightless,
One shone.
A single string.
Wrapped in coils of dying onyx.
The serpent was fading.
Its essence drained.
Its form unraveling.
It did not care.
It had been remembered.
That was enough.
And the Shadow—
He felt.
He did not know the word.
Did not know if it was sorrow. Or grief. Or guilt.
But it hurt.
And in that pain,
Something awoke.
No light to blind him. No grace to cradle him. No hope to lie.
Just… a step.
Human.
For the first time in eons—
The Lord of Shadows moved.
The world shuddered.
Reality winced.
Even silence dared not breathe.
He had denied the gift.
Turned away the god's mercy.
Refused salvation.
Unthinkable.
Unforgivable.
And so—
The shadows roared.
They rose in fury,
In disbelief,
In divine betrayal.
They would punish him.
They would end him.
From the bleeding depths of his soul,
A shadow stirred.
Dim.
Cracked.
Still loyal.
The Serpent.
Born not to defy, but to serve.
Yet now—
It stood in defiance.
Of gods.
Of death.
It would not watch its master die.
Not while breath still clung to its tenebrific form.
The shadows surged.
They took form—
Blades, fangs, crucibles of malice.
Everything that could kill,
All things sharpened by divine wrath.
The Divine Shadow did not flinch.
He took another step.
His eyes—dead.
Not empty from apathy.
But from forgetting.
He had lost the meaning of care.
Of pain.
Of being alive.
And so the world struck back.
But the Serpent moved first.
It threw itself into the storm.
No hesitation.
No thought of survival.
A shield born of unyielding loyalty.
The fangs tore through it.
The blades shattered its scales.
Its inky black ichor stained the air like spilled zeal.
But the Serpent did not waver.
It bled.
It fell.
Not because it feared death.
But because it could no longer stand.
It had failed.
Failed to shield.
Failed to serve.
Failed to save.
And yet,
Even from the ground,
It watched.
Its broken gaze lifted to its master.
One step away.
One step too late.
The Divine Shadow took another step.
A mere stride away from his loyal shadow.
Expressionless.
Not cold—
But hollow.
He had forgotten how to mourn.
How to reach.
How to stop.
The shadows struck—
And claimed him.
They wrapped around him like mourning veils.
Like executioners.
One final embrace.
Dark.
Inevitable.
And the Serpent?
It watched.
Unable to scream.
Unable to die.
Its only regret…
Was still having eyes to see its master fall.
And no strength left to follow.
So it lay there—
Limp.
Dying.
Alone.