Desmond seemed empty inside. And that was how he felt too.

He felt like some kind of puppet hanging by invisible strings. Invisible? No, they were his wings. That's where the puppet named Desmond hung.

He took a few steps forward.

As he did so, he moved in a most unnatural manner. Stopping abruptly, starting up again just as abruptly. He wasn't stepping steadily, but crookedly. His arms were crooked, as were his feet. It was not as if they had received damage. As if they were broken.

They were perfectly fine, they just weren't listening to his brain's commands as they should.

Something was wrong with the process.

He didn't know what, or how by the way, but on the way to being transmitted to his body, the orders ended up twisted.

He would say it was as if his body was failing.

As if his brain was shutting down and his body was following it to its cruel fate. But it wasn't like that.

No.

Actually…

He felt good. He felt powerful.

There were enemies all around him. Beasts that wanted nothing more than to see him dead. The nearest beast, the one that had recently speared him with a smile on its face, enjoying every second of it, now turned and ran away like a terrified child as it saw him advancing.

Of course, he felt powerful.

He was powerful. Even his enemies could feel it, without him needing to do anything.

Except that he had already done something. Ah, yes, yes, I forgot.

The world was shaking. Everything was falling apart. And at the center of it all was him. The storm was coming, just as Abigail had said so many nights ago that he now saw that memory as a distant dream.

But it hadn't been a dream, and Abigail had been absolutely right.

Nothing and no one could stop him. Not anymore. They had had a chance, but it was too late for that.

The world was shaking, literally, and it was because of him.

Desmond threw his head back, his wings folding beneath him as if to stop a fall if one occurred. He stretched his arms out to his sides as if to embrace the sky, clouds and all, with a big smile on his face. A big smile and the bright eyes of a child.

This… is freedom, isn't it?

He wondered if Abigail knew this would happen from the beginning. He came to the quick conclusion that it was likely. She had lived for so long, after all. He doubted anything could take her by surprise.

Desmond lowered his arms, put his head down.

He focused again on what really mattered.

Namely, the enemies he had to defeat. Before he got to celebrating, he had to squash them like the cockroaches they were.

But first…

He screamed from the back of his throat.

He wasn't in agony. Even though the physical reinforcement had fallen and his condition, the old wounds, the spears stuck all over his body, the pain was just a memory.

He screamed and, as a result….

The spears were pushed out of his body, as if by invisible hands. The holes they had left closed in the blink of an eye.

He heard a scream.

There was nothing strange about that. The air was full of screams. Desperate people were running, to and fro, trying to save themselves, without stopping to scream.

But this scream caught his attention because it came from one of the soldiers.

A soldier who fell backwards, on his ass. As if he couldn't take it anymore.

"It's just an abomination!" shouted one of them, amidst the chaos. However strong he may be, he is only one. And he is at the heart of our vast Empire. We can take him.

"I am too strong for you to stop me." Only then did he realize that the hole in his throat, which had also been pierced, had healed. Good to know, "No matter how many soldiers you throw into my jaws. This is over now."

Yes. The game had come to an end. Now all that remained was to pick up the toys, to put everything in order.

A tedious job. But it had to be done.

It couldn't be all fun, after all.

Desmond took another step forward. As if that had been the last straw, another of the buildings fell. He wouldn't mind in the least, but he noticed the trajectory. This one would fall on Abigail, who was lying on the ground, practically unable to move. She wouldn't get out of there on her own.

He would have to do it.

He had to do something.

And, once again… Desmond's will left the building. Well, he was a puppet. He had said so from the beginning.

Desmond didn't move toward Abigail, to catch her in his arms, get her out of there in time. Because he knew he wouldn't make it in time. He knew that would be too much even for him. But in this, of course, it didn't matter what he knew and what he judged right. Because he wasn't even following his own will after all.

Anyway.

Instead, what he did was to pull the sword back.

Suddenly there was a shadow wrapping around the blade of the sword, very close, tightly. The sword practically vibrated with that power.

Desmond swung the sword, a straight cut, perfect. And the darkness of the blade shot out like a guillotine. It didn't split the building in half. It made it practically disappear. All that was left was a cloud of dust that kept falling and the debris, in other words, small stones.

From that distance and at that speed, even small stones could hurt someone. Kill them even.

Most humans weren't very tough, after all.

But things like that would do nothing but tickle Abigail, so he'd done his part.

Speaking of Abigail… Looking at her closely, he realized that she was temporarily dead. From a deep gash in her neck that had nearly taken her head off. And he remembered that he had witnessed how she had gotten that cut, who had done it to her.

They looked dumbfounded. They didn't understand what was going on, how he had done that. Too many surprising things, one after another, hadn't helped them, he imagined.

He didn't understand anything either.

As he had said, it hadn't been his own free will.

But he didn't feel surprised. It was as if he was capable of doing that sort of thing from the start. He wished it were so — after all, they wouldn't have ended up in this situation if he had been this strong from the beginning.

With this power, I could have…

I could have protected them all.

I could have… I could have had it all.

Everything, as greedy as it sounded.

It's too late now, he told himself.

It didn't take long to find the thing that had slit Abigail's throat. It wasn't difficult, after all it was one of the few who wore that special armor. Incidentally, he wished he had a better name for them. It sounded stupid. A bit childish.

Anyway, he had to work with what was at hand.

The soldiers finally woke up from their reverie.

They ran off, trying to put distance between them and him, still firing. Desmond didn't bother to evade the shots. The bullets went through him easily, but just as quickly, the bullets were ejected, the ones that stuck, and then the wound closed.

A faster regeneration than ever, which couldn't be explained only by his proximity to Abigail.

It was tempting to do so, to reduce it to something so simple. But it wasn't.

He was regenerating faster because…. Everything had changed, inside him. Some things for the better. Others, no doubt, for the worse. Because everything had some downside. But it had changed.

And there was surely no turning back.

Good.

He reached his target, the animal that had slit Abigail's throat. He thought about cutting its throat. Do it himself. But in the end he just grabbed its head with both hands, squeezed, squeezed, squeezed until its head, along with the helmet, burst like a melon. He had good lungs, he thought as he let go, letting the headless corpse fall to the ground.

He didn't want to go back, anyway.

This was better.

Two hearts beat in his chest… and he realized, at last, that there was something strange about that. Desmond turned around.

He looked at Abigail, lying on the floor.

She still hadn't recovered. The second set of beats in his chest should belong to her. But that woman's heart wasn't beating, she was still dead, for the moment. So... What were those heartbeats?

Where were they coming from?

They had to be hers. No one else would be so deeply connected to him. It didn't make sense, but that remained the only explanation. Desmond had a bad habit of thinking about that sort of thing at the most inconvenient times.

He could think about that later. Now it was time to fight to protect his own life... and Abigail's life.

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The way of life he dreamed of. That bright future, by her side...

He would pile up a mountain of corpses that would reach the moon if it would earn him that wonderful future.

He turned on the guards in special armor.

Part of him had expected them to show great resistance, because of what had happened that night.

Part of him had been afraid of this, he realized.

That night, they had faced less than half of those soldiers.

All of them.

Abigail, he and his team… and a girl who was no longer in this world. Despite that, they had been almost defeated.

They had killed him and Abigail, and they had been the ones to settle the fight while they recovered.

But now…

Now, it was surprisingly easy.

The darkness with which the edge of his sword had been wrapped, before practically disintegrating the falling building, didn't appear again.

But he didn't need it.

That night, it had taken so much effort, so many blows, to make a dent in that armor.

Yet now he cut through the armor as if it were made of paper. Desmond couldn't help but laugh.

They were like… Like…

Not animals, anymore. Well, not a dangerous kind of animal.

They were… cockroaches, as insignificant as the lab assistants and the rest of the staff, whose lives he had spared simply because it would take too long to squash them. Or…

Ants, yes. Ants.

Even below cockroaches. Ha.

They shoot at him from all directions, tearing holes all over his body.

But every wound, no matter how severe, was quickly healed. He wasn't using his signature magic, his exceptional physical reinforcement.

Desmond scoffed.

So what, it's not like he needed it.

Of course, he didn't just have to worry about the enemies with the special armor. There were all the other soldiers.

Normal ones, dozens and dozens. And then there was…

There was what he had feared and revered as death itself. One of those spiders, the most powerful war machine in the Empire, whose heart burned with blue fire.

But all that was insignificant to him.

If the biggest obstacles so far couldn't even hinder, what would normal soldiers do? Nothing of course.

He considered them mere filler. Besides…

Also, he felt that the world was on his side.

There was no need to believe in his own victory now. It wasn't something in the air, but a near future he could see with his own eyes, right now.

All that was left was for it to come true.

For it to truly come true.

In other words, he wouldn't make it come true with his own hands. Because thanks to circumstances, he had outgrown the need to put effort into this, as he had already explained.

Something hit him. A piece of debris, in the back. Almost knocking him out of the air.

Yes, he was flying.

It wasn't that he hadn't noticed. It was just that it was nothing special. For him now, being in the air and being on the ground was like the difference between walking and running.

Nothing remarkable.

He moved through the air with the effortlessness of a bird.

And, when he came down to the ground, he was also dominant.

The debris reminded him of what was going on around him. It was easy to forget the surrounding catastrophe, still in progress.

He supposed because he didn't feel vulnerable at all.

The world was shaking.

The world was falling apart, along with what these animals dared to call civilization.

Cars smashed. Glass, blood and debris everywhere.

Even the road was suffering. Filling with cracks, here and there. In some places, the ground had caved in. It looked as if it might break in half at any moment.

Desmond didn't feel vulnerable at all.

However…

He imagined that, to his enemies, this might look like signaling the fucking end of the world.

A shadow loomed over him, and it wasn't the shadow of another building that had collapsed, but the shadow of the spider.

Oh, he'd forgotten it was there again. But that reminded him.

He supposed the spider couldn't be allowed to unleash its full destructive potential, in the middle of the city?

Wait, what was he saying, the city was already being destroyed!

The war machine threw another spider web at him.

Old tricks.

Desmond swung the sword around, cutting the spider web into dozens of pieces the very instant it came within his reach.

After that, the spider raised a leg.

And brought it down, hard, on top of him.

Desmond smiled.

He raised a hand. With that hand, he caught the leg, the entire body weight of that giant beast.

With astonishing ease. Even for him, he had to admit. Unlike everything else, he was now truly surprised.

In a good way. Of course.

He hadn't exerted force to stop the blow. Now, however, he did.

A little force… was more than enough.

The spider staggered and fell on its back, crushing vehicles and debris, cracking the ground, adding to the intensity of the tremors that shook the world.

But it didn't crush any of those animals.

Well…

If it had, they would have been animals buried under the rubble, that he couldn't see.

That would probably be dead by now, after that.

It didn't really count, one way or the other.

That there were more dead Empire dogs would, of course, always be a wonderful thing. Important.

But to see them die with his own eyes?

That was almost as significant.

Desmond was going to get back into action. But, then, the world-shaking tremors stopped as abruptly as they had started in the first place.

So, instead, he stood up, looked around.

"Desmond." A quiet voice. A voice he knew all too well. "Is that you?"

He turned his head.

Abigail.

——

The question left her lips before she could think better of it.

It was Desmond, no doubt.

His eyes told her so. And, aside from that, she felt it in her heart. She could not mistake him for anyone in the world.

Yet, at the same time, there was something different about him.

Something that cast a shadow of doubt.

And she wasn't talking about the wings on his back. She wasn't used to seeing him with those wings, but they were natural. Up to a point. Part of the 'gift' she had so cruelly forced upon him ten years ago.

It was something else. Something more fundamental.

Invisible to the human eye.

Well. She wasn't a human being, but that 'something' was invisible even to her eyes.

Or not invisible, but transparent.

She knew something was wrong, she just couldn't see it clearly enough to know what it was. And, therefore, she couldn't even begin to worry, or, on the contrary, feel grateful.

She didn't know where she stood, in short.

Desmond came running up to her, propelling himself with his wings as well.

He moved lithely. As if he had never been hurt. As if he hadn't been fighting for so long, being on the brink of death…. And certainly not even his body reflected that this had been the case anymore.

He was intact. No burns, no cuts.

He hadn't even been touched by blood.

Desmond came and crouched down in front of her.

"Are you all right?"

Abigail blinked, looking at him. She kept silent.

Still…

Unsettled.

She looked around as if she expected to find the answer to all her doubts over there.

Not only that, but she hadn't recognized Desmond at first glance.

The same was true of the world around her.

In the time she had been dead, everything had changed. And those changes were very visible. Very real, not at all blurry, transparent.

The world had become hell.

Piles of rubble.

Bits of corpses scattered on the ground. For some reason, he thought of rapeseed blossoms.

They had been surrounded in every direction by skyscrapers.

Now, however, his view was virtually uninterrupted wherever he looked.

Not far away, one of those spider-like war machines of the Empire was writhing on the ground like a wounded animal.

It was letting out strange animal-like sounds, too.

But they were just the sounds of its inner machinery, at work, trying to fix this.

She didn't understand how all this had happened.

She could hardly believe it was the same place as before, when her neck had been cut. But it was... Wasn't it?

"Mom, are you okay?

Mom, he says. Abigail looked back at him. And, for the first time, she felt something more than love or hope for him.

She told herself that that expression, and the shadow that covered his face, made him look....

Sinister.

Abigail tried to put it out of her mind.

"Yes. Yes, but..." One way or another, he didn't have time to explain anything to her. It would be a long story. She couldn't have been dead long, though. "Get us out of here."

So that was all she said, in the end.

Desmond helped her to her feet.

He flapped his wings to take flight again. But then they stopped, he dropped them. And the way his expression twisted told her the rest of the story.

"Why don't they work? I don't understand, shit, why now?"

"There's no point in asking ourselves that kind of thing."

"You're right, of course." Desmond shook his head as if to gather his wits. The vulnerability in his expression at her response made him look more like the Desmond she'd always known.

But she should stop thinking about it, one way or another.

That brief impression...of something sinister, it had just been her head playing tricks.

Desmond may not be a great person, but he was the world to her.

He was her savior.

The man who would free her from hell, the destined person she had been waiting for two thousand years. There was nothing she wouldn't do for him.

And the same went the other way around, of course.

So...

There was nothing to worry about, whichever way she looked at it.

Together, they moved forward through the destruction. That crumbling world that looked like hell on earth.

——

The wings weren't working for him, damn it. Suddenly it was like they weren't able to lift his weight.

Desmond cursed that shit.

He had been so strong, so unstoppable. A force of nature.

But Abigail hadn't witnessed that because she'd been dead in the meantime. And, after she'd opened her eyes, he'd had to humiliate himself again.

How embarrassing. He tried, he tried so hard, but in the end he always, always, always....

He felt like screaming.

I haven't failed, he thought. That had been humiliating, certainly.

But he was far from having failed.

He had defeated their enemies and opened a path to the future. Abigail had nothing to complain about. He had come here to save her and that was precisely what he would do. Save her. He could save her, he would prove it to her.

They passed by the spider, which was trying to get back on its feet, resting its legs on one of the collapsed buildings.

Dangerous.

Abigail moved even closer, put a hand over what covered the heart... and ran.

She was in a hurry because, soon after, what looked like glass exploded, spitting blue fire.

That wouldn't kill the machine.

But it was without its power source and sooner or later it would shut down, grinding to a halt. That was something.

Mind you, that spider was only one of hundreds.

And they were in the capital of the Empire. They could send them all after them. One after another.

So, it didn't matter too much what she'd just done, but....

At least it would buy them some time.

He kept his gaze fixed forward, toward the distant horizon whose brightness promised freedom. Far, far away from here, he would enjoy the freedom he had earned.

He walked, holding Abigail tightly by the hand.

She had recovered at least enough to move under her own feet.

However, he didn't want to let go of her under any circumstances.

Nor let her out of his sight for even a second.

At least until they were done with this.

But he soon forgot to think.

He felt as if something... as if a 'string' in his brain had burst.

He heard...

"What is it, Desmond?" Abigail asked him. Why? Well, for a good reason. His feet had stopped without him noticing.

There was nothing but ruins all around him.

No matter where he looked, everything was a ruin. Y...

And the air was filled with the smell of death.

And he would swear... he would swear it smelled like burning flesh. Echoes of the screams of people who wished they were dead, but who would take a long time to die. To be released from suffering.

Cries. Pleas.

I know this. I…

"Desmond?"

He could feel sweat running down his face. His face was probably very pale, too. No wonder.

It wasn't surprising at all, because….

I know this.

The scenario from ten years ago surrounded him, slowly crushing him, with no chance of escape.

The man in the mirror: FIN