ᴡᴍᴍᴀᴘ: ᴏɴᴇꜱʜᴏᴛꜱ

Goodbyes.

The audience room is terrifyingly cold, almost as if there were no people within the chambers but simply ice in a cave past human civilization.

Emotions running too high for comfort and all too rampant as hundreds of eyes look from one end of the room to the other, their breaths stifled, hoping to kill their presence in the standstill that two people were currently having in front of them.

Two emperors locked eyes on the other, and everything was still.

And then Claude's hand reaches out with a speed that he didn't know he still had, his mana crackling with a fury that would raze the empire to the ground, and finds himself choking on the mass of dark mana that surrounded him. 

Anastasius quirks his lips up, amused by his little brother's futile struggle, and decides to give him the one thing he might have desired most, perhaps that too was in the past. But he would still give it to him.

Locked in place as he feels his throat close up from the suffocating mana that was leaving him, Claude feels something pierce his head, and he lurches forward, eyes wide. Diana- Athanasia, chimera- fakefalseitcouldn'tbefakefakeithadtobefaKEFAKE.

Athanasia enters the room, her gem eyes were cold, as if not seeing the hundreds of nobles begging for mercy, and her heels click against the floor before it meets soft carpeting. "It's her highness, Athanasia! Please, your highness, save us! Please!" Their voices are filled with a light, strange feeling. Hope. Something she had long since forgotten it seems. When she refuses to answer them, they backpedal.

Her heart winces at the way they plead for her to look their way, how they were sorry for laughing at her, so sorry for disrespecting her- but she blocks her ears and continues fowards. She stands next to Anastasius, looking up at him with an odd look in her eyes, and he pats her on the shoulder. 

"Go on then, dear niece." The nobles fall silent at the sight, their princess wasn't on their side. A feeling of collective betrayal falls over the crowd, and some can't understand why she would choose to do such a thing. But those with a conscience look away, for they know why.

She hadn't been on the side of the angels or the demons. She was only on her own side. And when they hadn't helped her, of course she wouldn't help them. She was only here for one thing, and then she would say her farewells to this empire. It had to be done.

"This was always going to happen, daddy. One way or another, I was going to leave you." A tear slides down her cheek, her eyes still cold as her voice, and she doesn't seem to notice the salt upon her lips as she continues. 

"But still, I thought of you as a good father for these years. At least before then." He shakes on the throne, the memories still rushing through his head. His voice escapes him at last. "Athanasia, wait-" A small smile on her face, she could feel freedom licking at her ankles. "In the end, this was how we were meant to be. Goodbye, daddy."

As if it couldn't get any worse, Claude was powerless against everything that was happening, he couldn't speak, his voice was cut, and he watched as Athanasia moved further and further away after getting Anastasius' approval.. just like that time at her debutante. But he knew that this time, if she moved out of his sight, he would never see her again. 

The fates- ah the fates were cruel, you see.

Anastasius watches his niece leave her father behind, silently laughing on the inside because until the very end, he never tells her that her father's memories had returned. He wonders to himself, would she too break apart if he tells her of what she's done?

He chuckles before setting fire to the room. He could always build a new throne room. Black magic swirling up to the ceiling as he slammed the doors shut to the sound of screams, and desperate pounding as he watches the smoke escape from the small gaps under the doors. Exhilarating.

A single sentence repeating in his mind, the mortal body that locks him in place releases him as he passes. "Goodbye, daddy." He hadn't wanted to hear that again. Never again. 

And the lone figure sits upon the throne, surrounded by figures dancing within the blackened flames of Anastasius, and his gem eyes still stare at the doors as his flesh melts away, exposing his jaw as he rasps out his last words as the heat burns at the gold that covers the white bones.

"Don't leave me behind, Athanasia. Don't go."

But she does. This time- forever.