The once-proud forest that had guarded the castle for centuries was no more. Trees that had towered like eternal sentinels were slowly being devoured by flas, their trunks split and blackened. The air was heavy with smoke and ash, a suffocating veil that turned the night into an endless twilight.
Most of the vampires that protected the castle weren't present anymore. Only the sounds of the roaring of flas remained... And a faint breath.
And at the center of the devastation, where earth had been torn apart and nature reduced to cinders, stood Rose.
Her once-immaculate gown of white silk and froststeel was shredded and burned, little more than tattered rags clinging desperately to her scorched skin. Bruises marred her arms, her pale skin blistered from the heat that clung to her like a curse. Her long blue hair, though dirtied with soot and ash, still spilled like sapphire fire in the wind, her beauty that was her pride, had dwindled with her current fearful expression.
She stood barefoot amidst the destruction, the ice that had once bent to her will lting into lifeless puddles at her feet. Her breath ca ragged, but her eyes… her eyes burned with defiance.
The flas parted as though commanded, and Lucifer erged through the inferno.
He had his hands behind his back as he walked slowly. A god striding through the ruin he had birthed. His obsidian hair flowed behind him, his golden-red eyes glowing brighter now against the backdrop of annihilation. If Rose was the last vestige of beauty left clinging to the ashes, then Lucifer was beauty incarnate—terrible, absolute, and eternal.
Rose's lips curved, though her body trembled. "So it is true," she said softly, her lodic voice carrying strangely far amidst the silence of death. "The rumors that haunted the vampires, the whispers in the dark. That you once walked the earth. That you spread terror across kingdoms until the witches bound you in chains."
She straightened, clutching her chest as she forced her cracked lips into a smile. "I was only a normal vampire when it happened. Days before I beca Countess, I rember hearing of the battle. The covens uniting, and their desperate struggle to seal you away."
Lucifer paused, his molten gaze fixed on her. Then...
"Hahahaha..." he laughed slowly.
Rose flinched at the sounds of his laughter, shivering.
"They were… foolish," he said, each word heavy with disdain. "I was too." He stepped closer, his bare feet walking over ash and ruin as if it were his throne. "And yes, they succeeded. For a ti. But it was a mistake."
His smile widened, cruel and radiant. "A mistake that shall not repeat itself."
Rose narrowed her eyes, though the flas continued to gnaw at her body. "Why?" she asked.
Lucifer's eyes glead. "Because HE is dead. And so are the witches who supported HIM."
The words struck her. A chill colder than her own frost coiled up her spine, though not from fear. Sothing she rembered.
Her lips trembled, then stretched into a strange, wistful smile. She tilted her head, strands of sapphire hair falling over her soot-streaked face.
"So, even you admit it," she said softly, almost reverently. "That person… 'Him'…" She shook her head, her blue eyes shimring like frozen stars. "Even the devil himself speaks his na without speaking it."
Lucifer's expression hardened. For a fleeting mont, the fire dimd, as if the forest itself shuddered at the weight of that unnad being's mory.
Rose's smile widened, blood trickling down her lip. "If that person were still here… you would never have dared walk this world again. You know it, don't you, Lucifer?"
Lucifer's jaw tightened. Flas surged violently behind him, roaring high enough to swallow the sky. His beauty twisted into sothing wrathful, terrible to behold.
Then, he smiled again.
"You better watch your mouth, countless. I might just spare your life."
To others, the beautiful smile of the godlike figure in front of her would have srized them, to jeez it was like an on of death, a wish too good to be true.
He raised his hand, and the fire coiled into a spear of pure white-hot destruction, its brilliance so bright it made the night itself retreat.
"I have one question for you, and one alone. If you can answer it, I would let you go. How's that?" Lucifer pointed at her, making her levitate off the ground.
Rose struggled against the invisible force holding her neck, gritting her teeth.
"Where is the daughter of the Phoenix?" He asked, his gaze becoming serious.
"I... Ack! I don't know..." She answered with a struggle.
"Oh co on! Surely you would know her, I can feel her presence on you. Where! Is! The daughter! Of Lisa!"
The fires roared in response to their master's voice and anherz but then Rose seed to have an epiphany in that mont, a sudden realization...
She rembered tasting Dextersrblood back at Dracula's castle and seeing a bit of his mories. She knew Lisa's daughter.
Rose smirked.
"She's with soone that might be able to beat your ass?"
Her voice was low. But then the grip on her neck tightened even more.
"That's not what I asked, I asked a simple question. Answer now or I'll send you to a place where you'll suffer for eternity!" He demanded, this ti.
Rose could hear desperation in his voice this ti.
She smiled raising a hand and showing him the middle finger, a white light flashing within.
"Go fuck yourself." Thɪs chapter is updated by noⅴelfire
Just then, the spear of white fla surged in his hand. But just as he unleashed it—
FWOOOSH!
A radiant white light enveloped Rose, swallowing her burned form whole from that location. It was sothing else entirely—sothing purer, gentler, older.
Lucifer's spear of fire struck the spot she had stood in—only to sear empty air. The spear stopped advancing and vanished, revealing Lucifer with a surprised expression.
She was gone.
"Tsk..." Lucifer looked up to the skies, he could feel a lot of eyes on him, and then he smiled.
"So you are all watching this world huh? Well, enjoy the show."
He vanished in a torrent of flasz leaving the ice castle devoid of life.
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