The abyss was restless. It searched.

The underworld was not kind to those who defied it. It did not forget. It did not forgive. It simply waited, patient and unyielding, for the day its wayward son would be dragged back into its embrace.

For centuries, it had searched for him.

The prince. The one who abandoned his throne. The one who left behind the weight of a name too heavy to bear. He had severed the chains that bound him to Hell, carving his own path among mortals, unseen, unknown. But the abyss never let go of what was once its own. And now, it was growing impatient.

Somewhere, far from the shadows that hunted him, she sat alone beneath a city sky, a sky devoid of stars. A rejection letter lay crumpled in her trembling hands, its words blurring beneath tired eyes. "We regret to inform you..." How many times had she read those words? How many times had she convinced herself that one day, something would change?

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But nothing did.

She was alone. Cast out. Forgotten.

No home.

No family.

No purpose.

And perhaps, worst of all—no one to notice if she disappeared.

Yet something had noticed.

The abyss reached for her—not to destroy, not to consume, but to use. She was nothing in the grand scheme of the cosmos, a mere mortal whose existence barely left a ripple in fate. But she had unknowingly become something far more dangerous.

She had become his tether.

The one thing keeping him anchored to a world that was never meant to be his.

And so, Hell took notice.

And so, Hell made its move.

And so, her fate was sealed.

For if the abyss could not drag its lost son back into the darkness—

It would take the one thing that kept him in the light.