Savior in Shadow Slave

The sky was no longer red.

No longer cracked, no longer roaring with light or judgment.

It was a gentle grey, veiled in morning mist, like the world had finally dared to exhale.

And in that grey world, between ruins and soot, between the bones of a village that once dreamed, walked a child.

He was no taller than a sword, his hair soft gold, his skin kissed by divine fire. A child born not of womb, but of Samsara—rebirth paid in time, in pain, in eternity. Murphy, now a boy again.

And beside him, for a single, impossible day, walked the woman once called Terror.

Kaenaria.

She no longer floated. She did not whisper like a spell or cast shadows with her gaze. Her body was worn, her strength shallow, her steps slow. But her presence—her presence—was whole. Human. Barefoot still, her feet red with old blood, her eyes rimmed with the ache of lifetimes she never asked for.

They said nothing as they walked.

What words could explain a life spent in chains?

What lullaby could make up for centuries of screams?

So instead, they made memories. Quiet ones.

They crossed the broken village square where the statue of the Beast God once stood. Its head had long since fallen, shattered into dust, but the moon behind it still glowed faintly, like a scar that refused to close.

Murphy stopped there, staring. As if he remembered something not in thought, but in soul.

Kaenaria knelt beside him.

"You stood here once before," she whispered, brushing hair from his forehead. "Your hands were red then. With grief. And you still smiled."

He reached up and touched her face, clumsily. His fingers barely reached her chin.

She smiled.

They wandered toward the market street, now a graveyard of shattered carts and burnt fabrics. Once, she told him, she'd stolen apples here. Not out of need, but just to feel real again. He laughed. Just once. A sound so small, it echoed.

In the ruins of the slums, they found the well where Shen Xi had braided her hair. Where Alex had once dragged him after a spar. Where the old drunk used to talk to ghosts.

Murphy reached for the bucket, but it crumbled in his grasp. He looked at his hands, surprised.

"Some things," Kaenaria said softly, "are meant to fade."

They sat on the temple steps by noon, sharing a meal that wasn't real—bread made from her memory, water drawn from a dream. But it was enough.

He told her about the butterfly he chased. About the bird's nest he found on a broken roof. He couldn't speak well yet, not fluently—but she listened like he was reciting scripture. Like every word was the answer to a riddle she'd long forgotten.

And as the day wore on, as the sun curved lower in the sky, her breathing grew shallower.

Her hands trembled when she lifted him.

Her feet dragged more than danced.

Still, she carried him to the hill above the village.

There, beneath the old shrine tree—where destiny had first cracked and fate had first bloomed—they watched the sunset together.

He curled up beside her, tired. Content. Glowing with childish joy.

She looked at him then.

Her son. Her undoing. Her salvation.

The one who cut her down and the one who gave her a day to live.

"I was made a monster by gods," she whispered to him. "Shaped in pain. Filled with hate. I wanted freedom, but you… you gave me more. You gave me a moment of peace."

Her voice trembled.

"You gave me... you."

"Didn't you asked why was I chained for centuries? I don't know, Murphy. But Griesha does."

The light began to fade from her skin, not violently, but gently—like a candle giving its last flame to the dark.

Her fingers reached for his cheek. Not to hold. Just to feel.

"I love you," she whispered, voice trembling like a dying flame. "And as my parting gift... I return to you the weapon you once forged for me—long ago, in a different turn, when you still believed I could be saved."

Her hand gently reached into the void beside her heart, and from it emerged a wheel—etched with runes, pulsing faintly with remnants of divinity and pain.

"This…" she said, cradling it like a newborn, "was meant to kill you. The Spell twisted it. Refined it. Turned your sacrifice into a noose. How cruel, how poetic."

She looked at him, eyes shimmering with unspent tears.

"But how could I ever raise a blade—no matter how beautiful—against the boy who bled just to give it shape?"

She placed the wheel in his small hands, like a mother returning a fallen crown.

"No… let it be your salvation now, not your doom. Let it turn for you, not end you."

And then the world sighed.

Kaenaria dissolved, not into ash, but into thousands of silver petals—floating upward, toward the sky she had never seen free.

But just before she completely disappeared, Murphy worded:

"I love you too...Mother."

Hearing this the petals smiled blissfully.

Murphy woke as the first starlight touched the ruined shrine tree.

He looked around. Alone, but not abandoned. He didn't cry. He didn't scream. He just sat there, tiny hands resting in his lap, as something soft and white drifted down from above.

A single flower petal.

The last piece of her.

He cupped it in his hands, and the wind paused.

[Wake up, Murphy! Your nightmare is over.]

[Prepare for appraisal…]

A melody resounded, that were seeped with hidden malice.

[Volume One: 'A God and A Devil' End.]