Blink

Jere loomed over the last surviving human soldier.

Corpses sprawled in every direction, a sea of torn armor and leaking blood. His wings dripped with it - slick, dark, glistening. The final soldier shook uncontrollably. His sword slipped from his hands and clattered to the wet ground.

Jere stopped.

He regarded the knight with a brief flicker of contempt, then nodded at the fallen weapon.

“Pick it up.”

The soldier didn’t move.

Jere glanced around the battlefield. Not a single intact weapon suitable for him remained. He looked back at the soldier.

“Pick it up. We’re dancing.”

Something in the knight’s eyes changed - an ember of understanding. A chance. However pathetic.

He bent, retrieved his weapon, and steadied himself. Jere nodded approvingly.

“Good. Now parry.”

He twisted, wings flexing. The soldier reacted on pure instinct, bringing his blade up just in time to deflect the sweeping strike. Jere allowed it. He could have shattered the man’s guard with a flick of his wrist, but he let the illusion hold.

The soldier, emboldened, countered. Jere slid aside and brought his wing around, the flat of the inverted diamond plates slamming against the knight’s blade in a shower of sparks. The knight stumbled but recovered quickly and lunged.

Jere blocked with ease, lips curling in a predatory smile.

“Good. You’re starting to lead.”

The dance continued.

Jere opened the vents in his wings; the air sang with every pass. Each parry let out a ringing clang as metal vibrated on metal. The knight grunted, breath ragged, movements growing sloppy as fatigue gnawed at him. Openings appeared - clean, perfect - but Jere ignored them, stepping back, inviting the knight deeper into hope.

Again and again and again, the battlefield rang with shrieks of steel.

Then Jere let his processors “slip.”
His wings flared wide. His stance opened.

An obvious, fatal mistake.

The knight took it.

He swung for Jere’s neck - clean, decisive-

-and the blade simply stopped.

The sword, sharp enough to carve through iron plating, rested uselessly against the skin of Jere’s throat.

The knight froze, eyes wide.

Jere looked at him for a heartbeat, expression unreadable, then grinned.

His wings snapped.

Jet-black plates speared through armor, piercing the knight’s abdomen and lifting him clear off the ground. The soldier dangled, legs kicking weakly. Blood poured down Jere’s wing, dripping in thick lines.

The knight gasped, choking on pain.

“W… why?”

Jere tilted his head, as though inspecting a freshly caught animal.

“Why, you ask?”

He chuckled - low, dark - and the sound twisted into a growl.

“Because you are one of the reasons I am about to go bury my wife. And after that, the world will suffer at my hand.”

The knight’s mind fled to his own wife, his children waiting at home. Fear knifed through him - not for himself, but for them. What would he do if his own wife were murdered?

He didn’t know.

But the Angel clearly did.

Nothing he said would matter.

His strength faded. His breathing slowed. His eyes drifted shut.

Jere smiled gently.

“But thank you for entertaining me. You will be remembered.”

He flexed his wing.

The body slammed into the ground with a brutal, jarring thud.

Jere looked around.

The battlefield was nothing but ruin - a twisted landscape of mangled bodies, demon and human so interwoven that limbs couldn’t be matched to torsos. A grotesque mosaic of war. For a fleeting, hollow second, he felt pride. This was his power. His wrath. His will made manifest.

But then he remembered why he had done it.
And what he still had to face.

The pride evaporated.

The tears returned.

His great wings unfurled - vast, dramatic, mournful - and he rose into the sky. As he drifted slowly across the lake, the sobs finally broke free. His vision blurred until he couldn’t see at all; his processors handled the flight for him as tears streamed down his face.

He cried because he had lost the person he loved most.
He cried because he would never feel her hand warm in his again.
He cried because everything had been taken from him, again and again, like he was a toy in the hands of some higher power eager to test how far he could be pushed before he shattered.

But they would never break him.

He was immortal.

He would outlast the gods, the world, every cruel hand of fate. And when he was finished - when the world lay ruined and unrecognizable - he would switch his reactor to its limited D-T reserves, launch himself into space, and drift. Wait out the century. Then join Ylfa, wherever she rested.

He knew she would hate him for it.
Knew she would cry.

Knew she would ask why.

But his mind was set.

For a moment, he considered doing what Eny did - just… delete the memory. Erase the pain. Remove the wound entirely.

And then, as soon as the thought formed, disgust washed through him.

He would never forget Ylfa.
Never forget how she changed him.

Never forget how she loved him despite the monster caged inside his ribs.

More tears fell, streaking down as he descended. His wings opened wide one last time before folding, and he touched down gently on the grass beside Ylfa’s cooling body.

And then - he was ambushed.

Arms wrapped around him, tight and familiar. For a moment his mind froze, processors scrambling for data, trying to reconcile the impossible.

But he recognized that touch.
He recognized the shape that pressed against him - the contour that fit him perfectly, the warmth he’d memorised.

His breath hitched.

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, and a curtain of reddish-brown hair filled his sight. Wolf ears stood tall atop the woman’s head.

His lips trembled.

“Y… Ylfa…?”

The woman lifted her face to his. Her red eyes shimmered with tears, her tail swaying gently behind her. A fragile, radiant smile formed - real, alive, impossibly soft.

“It’s me, darling.”