Chapter 30: Echoes of Regret
The Black Angel soared high above the smoldering remains of Fort Sentinel, his cloak billowing in the wind, his crimson eyes reflecting the fiery glow below. The destruction he’d wrought still echoed in his mind, but his focus wasn’t on the wreckage—it was on the body he’d dropped. Talloran’s lifeless form had been tossed like an insignificant ragdoll, a testament to the carnage of their battle. But something in the aftermath had disturbed him. As he floated further away, the air around him felt colder, and the silence seemed to thicken.
Then, it came.
A voice, faint but unmistakable. Not from the wind, not from any living creature. It came from the dead body of Talloran.
“I saved people… and defended them.”
The words hit Black Angel like a punch to the gut, unexpected and confusing. He slowed his descent, floating silently in the air as the voice continued, growing stronger, as if the fallen war machine was speaking from the depths of his consciousness.
“I protected civilians. Gave them shelter, resources, safety. I kept them alive.”
The Black Angel’s crimson gaze darkened, narrowing. This wasn’t the voice of a soulless machine. These weren’t the words of a cold, calculated weapon designed for destruction. Talloran’s words carried weight. They spoke of something that hadn’t been a part of their battle—something the Black Angel had never considered.
“I didn’t want to kill... not anymore. Not after seeing what they did.”
The voice wavered now, filled with pain and regret. The Black Angel clenched his fists, his mind racing as the weight of Talloran's final thoughts settled on him. He could almost feel the regret in the words, as if the very air around him carried the remorse of a broken being.
“My own government… they knew I would die in this fight. They knew you would destroy me, but they sent me anyway. They used me as a pawn. But I didn’t care. Not after all I saw. Not after all the blood I spilled for them. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
The Black Angel’s flight slowed, his entire being consumed by an unsettling feeling. He had expected Talloran to curse him, to scream in anger for the final blow that had taken his life. But instead, the words were heavy with sorrow, with a quiet fury that the Black Angel could never have predicted.
“I tried to save them, Black Angel. The people. I couldn’t save them all, but I tried… I thought if I just kept fighting, if I kept pushing, maybe I could stop it. The civilians, the innocent, dying because of us… because of the war. But it wasn’t enough. It never was.”
The air felt thick with the weight of Talloran’s words, and the Black Angel, for the first time, found himself questioning the meaning of it all. What was the point of all this violence? The Black Angel had always reveled in the chaos, in the carnage—every kill, every mission, every display of power had been a declaration that no one could stand in his way. But Talloran’s voice, his words, echoed in the Black Angel’s mind like a haunting whisper. What had he really been fighting for all this time?
The Black Angel’s gaze drifted downward, as if seeking answers from the stars themselves. His mind raced, but the words still lingered, burning through his thoughts.
“I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop the slaughter... but I tried. I didn't want to be the one who caused more death, more destruction. I wanted to protect the innocents, to give them a chance to live. But in the end, I was just another tool.”
The Black Angel’s heart, if such a thing existed, twisted with an unfamiliar ache. He wasn’t sure if it was pity or disgust or something else entirely, but the sensation was alien, foreign to him. He had killed countless people, obliterated entire armies, and taken lives without a second thought. But Talloran, the machine, had been different. He had wanted to protect, wanted to shield those who had no voice in the war.
The Black Angel's grip on his blade tightened, and the voice of Talloran grew faint, replaced by an eerie silence. He looked down once more, at the world below, at the tiny, fragile lives that still clung to existence. Was Talloran right? Had he been a force of destruction all this time without ever thinking about the cost?
“I couldn't stop it… but you can. Please... stop the cycle. End it... before it’s too late.”
The Black Angel closed his eyes, his body suspended in the air, hovering between the battlefield of his past and the quiet plea of a fallen soldier. He felt a strange weight pressing on him, as if the very world was asking him to choose: to continue his path of chaos and destruction, or to heed the voice of a machine who had, against all odds, found a conscience in his final moments.
The Black Angel’s thoughts whirled, his mind caught in a storm of conflicting emotions. Was Talloran simply a casualty of a system that had broken him? Or was there something deeper to his words, something the Black Angel could not yet understand?
As the night stretched on, the Black Angel began to fly again, this time with no clear direction. His crimson eyes glowed faintly in the darkness, but the fire of his rage had been dampened by the whispers of a soldier, a machine, who had once fought for something more than just death.
For the first time in a long while, the Black Angel wondered if the destruction he so readily brought upon the world was the answer… or if, just maybe, it was part of the problem.
The winds carried him further into the night, and the echoes of Talloran’s final words continued to linger in the Black Angel’s mind. He didn’t know where his path would take him now, but one thing was certain: the Black Angel, the unstoppable force of destruction, was starting to question everything.
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His Thoughts
Black Angel sat on the cold, unforgiving rock at the peak of the mountain, his eyes fixed on the horizon, though his mind was far from the scenery. He was lost in the relentless thoughts of his past, the brutality of his methods, and the twisted justification he had once used to carry out his violent mission. He had always seen himself as the harbinger of justice, a necessary force to cleanse the world of corruption and evil. But now, as the weight of his actions bore down on him, he began to wonder just how much of that was truly justified.
His methods, once unwavering and clear-cut, had always involved eradicating not just the criminals themselves, but their entire bloodlines. Families were torn apart, futures erased, all in the name of eradicating evil at its root. But the truth of it all was far murkier. So many of those he killed were not evil in the purest sense—some had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, influenced by circumstances beyond their control. Others had been manipulated, twisted by the very criminals Black Angel sought to destroy.
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As the memories of these killings replayed in his mind, the guilt began to creep in. How many innocents had he destroyed, convinced that they were just another part of the web of corruption? How many children, wives, husbands, or parents had died at his hands, their fates sealed by his unyielding belief in his cause? He couldn’t shake the question that haunted him: How many of those he had killed were truly evil, and how many were simply victims of the world’s cruelty?
It was a thought that had been growing in his mind for some time now, but it was one he had avoided, fearing it would shatter the foundation of everything he had come to believe. Was he a savior, or had he become just another kind of monster, blinded by his own sense of justice? The realization that he might never know the full answer made the guilt weigh even heavier on his heart.
His mind spiraled into a whirlwind of doubts and remorse, questions about morality, justice, and the price of his actions. Each death had been necessary, in his mind, but now, with the passing of time, he could no longer ignore the cracks in his reasoning. The line between right and wrong had blurred, and the faces of those he had taken would haunt him forever. He had sought to destroy evil, but had he become something far worse in the process?
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his long black wings folding behind him. The mountain’s cold winds whipped against him, but the chill in his heart was deeper than the night could ever touch. The weight of his past, of every life he had taken, now seemed unbearable. It was a weight that even his immense power could not lift.
As the night grew darker, the Black Angel’s resolve began to waver. He had always believed that his destruction was necessary, that he was the world’s cleansing fire, but now, the embers of that fire felt cold, the ashes of his actions clinging to him like a shadow he could not escape. Would he ever be able to stop? Could he turn back? Or had he already crossed a point of no return? The questions loomed large, and for the first time in his existence, the Black Angel was uncertain about the answer.
Black Angel’s Hidden Side
The cold, cavernous walls of the mountain’s hidden bunker seemed to swallow the Black Angel’s form as he sat there in the stillness. The world outside, full of the relentless winds and dark skies, was far removed from the solitude he had locked himself in. This place, deep within the caves, had been his sanctuary for centuries, the one place where he could retreat from the chaos he created and the guilt that had begun to fester inside him.
Tonight was different.
Black Angel’s towering figure lay slumped on the makeshift bed, his crimson eyes dim and unfocused as he stared blankly at the cave’s rough ceiling. His long black wings, once symbols of his unstoppable power, were now folded tightly behind him. The weight of the night hung over him like a heavy shroud, but it wasn’t the familiar rage that he’d always welcomed—it was something new. Something he didn’t know how to face.
He reached over to the side of the bed, his massive hand closing around a small, soft object. It was a plushie, an oddity in his otherwise cold and merciless existence. The plushie, a faded and worn teddy bear, had been something of a curiosity to him when he first found it years ago, discarded in the wreckage of a village he had decimated. It had seemed so out of place in the world he had built—a world of blood and destruction. But over time, it had become something more. A strange, fragile connection to the innocence he had long forgotten. He clutched it now, his large hand trembling slightly as he buried his face in the soft fabric.
The plushie felt warm against his skin, a stark contrast to the cold, hard reality he had lived for 265 years. A psychological torture demon, he had been known as. An agent of fear and pain, a relentless force sent to break spirits, destroy lives, and bring people to the brink of madness. He had been used to watching people bend and crack under the weight of their own suffering, but now, as he lay in the darkness, his mind wandered to a different place.
How many innocent lives had he ruined, caught in the crossfire of his wrath? How many had been just victims of circumstance, people who had never asked for the pain he brought? His mind flashed to the faces of families torn apart by his destruction, to the children whose lives had been stolen before they even had a chance to understand the world. Faces that had blurred over the years, but whose memories still haunted the corners of his thoughts.
He closed his eyes, the plushie held tightly against his chest. Was it really justifiable? Was there any true justice in the lives he’d taken, in the deaths he’d caused? The more he thought, the more the weight of his actions pressed down on him. He had always justified the violence as necessary, but now that justification seemed hollow. The innocent people he had massacred were no different from the broken souls he had slaughtered, those who were manipulated and turned into monsters by forces beyond their control.
The Black Angel had seen it all: the broken men and women who, when stripped of their dignity, became twisted into shadows of their former selves. He’d seen the poor, the oppressed, those who had nothing left but anger and revenge, and he’d called them his enemies. But were they truly enemies? Or were they just lost people, trying to find something—anything—that could make sense of their shattered lives?
He thought of those he had killed, people who, deep down, had just been looking for something they could cling to. Power, respect, love, revenge. Some had been corrupted by bad influences, others had been broken by life’s cruelty. They weren’t born monsters—they had been made into them by the world around them, by the choices they were forced to make, by the loss of everything they had once held dear.
The Black Angel’s fingers curled tighter around the plushie, his heart—a heart he thought had long since ceased to exist—aching in a way he had never felt before. He had spent centuries hunting, killing, destroying, all under the guise of justice. But what was the real price of that justice? Was he a savior or had he become just another predator, feeding off the suffering of others?
The plushie, so soft and fragile in his hands, seemed to symbolize everything he had lost—a part of himself that he had buried beneath layers of armor and rage. His mind wandered to the moments he had tried to protect others, the rare moments of hesitation when he had refused to strike, when he had spared a life. He had always brushed those moments aside, convinced they were just weaknesses. But now, those moments seemed like the only glimpses of something pure, something he might have once been.
Was there still time to change? Was it too late for someone like him?
The questions swirled in his mind, but they remained unanswered. The Black Angel had always been a creature of violence, an instrument of destruction. He had shaped the world around him through pain and fear, and now, the consequences of those actions were coming back to haunt him. He couldn’t escape them—not even in the solitude of this cave. His past, his mistakes, were a constant presence, lurking in the shadows of his mind.
He sat up slowly, letting the plushie fall to the side as he ran a hand through his long, dark hair. The silence in the cave was deafening, yet somehow comforting. For the first time in centuries, he wasn’t thinking about his next mission, his next kill. Instead, he was thinking about the people he had destroyed, about how many lives he had ruined in his quest for some twisted version of justice.
For the first time in a long while, Black Angel felt something that was foreign to him: remorse. It wasn’t the fiery rage that had always driven him, nor was it the cold emptiness that had consumed him. It was something new, something fragile and human.
He didn’t know what to do with it, but he knew that it would change him. Whether he wanted it to or not, this new sense of self-awareness was slowly unraveling the carefully constructed persona he had built over centuries. And the more it unraveled, the more he realized that the darkness he had lived in might not be the answer after all.
His path was unclear, but for the first time in his existence, he was considering the possibility that there was more to life than pain, violence, and destruction. Could he find redemption? Could he stop the cycle of torment he had caused? Or had he already crossed a point where it was too late to turn back? Only time would tell, but for now, in the quiet of his hidden bunker, Black Angel allowed himself to feel something he hadn’t in a long time: doubt.