Kaiser stood frozen, not out of pity, but calculation. The girl's memories unspooled before his mind’s eye — not dreams, but raw, jagged scars hammered into the soul of a survivor. She wasn’t a monster born of malice; she was a relic of endurance, a broken blade that refused to rust. And where lesser men would have wept or recoiled at what they saw, Kaiser felt a different fire awaken inside him — the possessive urge to seize what the world had tried and failed to destroy. To take her, as he had taken countless cities and lives, and carve something stronger from the wreckage.

  Their eyes locked, hers hollow and lifeless, her rosy hair matted with blood and grime, the brightness of youth strangled into a filthy mockery. Her frame looked slight, brittle, as if a harsh wind might topple her — but Kaiser knew better. Fragile things broke cleanly. She had endured too much; she had twisted, splintered, but she had not broken. He stepped forward, unflinching as she raised her arms slightly in surrender, her voice scraping out like the last breath of a dying ember. "Just end it," she murmured, hopeless. "This world isn’t worth living in if everyone just wants to kill me. I can only pray death is kinder than this."

  Kaiser’s lip curled slightly, not in scorn, but in recognition. Her despair wasn’t a wound to be mended; it was a poison eating at her marrow, a slow rot that would hollow her out completely if left unchecked. Mercy wouldn’t save her. Words wouldn’t save her. Only pain, only the violent bleeding out of that poison — only then would there be something left worth forging.

  He watched as the grotesque spiders dragged themselves from her sockets, obscene little things crawling over her skin with the slow reverence of priests performing a funeral rite. She made no move to stop them, nor even to acknowledge them, and in that moment Kaiser understood: these horrors were her only witnesses, the last tether binding her to a world she no longer trusted.

  “They're all I have left," she murmured, voice distant, almost dreamlike. "I never wanted them… but they stayed. They let me see again. I hated them, once. Then... I got used to them. Maybe that's pathetic... but I don't want them to die with me."

  The spiders paused at her collarbone, shivering on the brink of departure. She shuddered but did not cry. Even her pain had calcified into something unfeeling. And yet Kaiser did not move to comfort her — not yet. He waited, impassive, allowing the poison to surface, the old wounds to split open under their own pressure.

  The spiders skittered away into the darkness, leaving her empty, hollow in both form and spirit. She turned her broken gaze to him, a flickering ghost of a smile on her cracked lips. "It’s funny, isn’t it?" she whispered. "How something so awful can become a part of you?"

  Kaiser stepped forward, his shadow swallowing her whole, and when he spoke, it was not with sympathy but with the iron certainty of a man who had conquered greater demons than grief. "No," he said, his voice low, unrelenting. "That’s survival. And survival is never funny."

  He reached out without hesitation, one gloved hand descending onto her head, not gently, but with a controlled, undeniable weight of a claim. She flinched under the contact but did not pull away, and that was all the permission he required. He was not offering kindness. He was staking a claim. She was his now — stolen back from the jaws of despair, ripped from the teeth of a world too weak to keep her.

  "You are poisoned," Kaiser said, his voice steady and cold, vibrating through her trembling frame. "But not dead. That poison must bleed out, even if it rips you apart in the process. Cry, scream, hate me if you must. I don’t care. But you will not fall. Not here. Not while you are with me."

  At those words, she finally collapsed into him, not as a child seeking comfort, but as a soldier finally collapsing after the battle was done. Her hands clutched desperately at his coat, her face buried against the worn fabric, her hollow sobs beginning to rip from her throat like jagged glass.

  "I’m scared," she whimpered, the words fractured and raw. "I’ve always been so scared..."

  Tears began to flood from the empty wells of her eyes, thick and unstoppable, and Kaiser tightened his grip on her, holding her upright, forcing her to remain standing even as her body betrayed her. The dam had broken, and he would see it bleed dry if necessary. Weakness was a poison, and he would tear it from her by force if need be — so that what remained would be something even the gods would flinch to face.

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  "I didn’t want any of this," she sobbed against him, her voice barely coherent. "I just wanted to live."

  "You still can," Kaiser answered, not with comfort, but with command. His hands did not tremble. His voice did not break. "You will live, because I demand it. You will rise, because I refuse to watch you rot."

  She wailed against him, her cries raw and pitiful, but beneath the grief, he could feel something else stirring, the first rebellious twitch of a soul refusing to die.

  When her sobs finally began to dull, tapering into whimpers, Kaiser exhaled once, a slow, controlled breath. He allowed himself the faintest smirk, something cold and savage. It was almost amusing how such a frail, broken thing could weep against him, and yet command more respect than the kings he had trampled underfoot.

  Her trembling arms clung tighter, desperate and shaking. Kaiser unflinching wrapped his arms around her fully, not gently, but securely, like a black iron shackle closing shut. "You’re safe now," he murmured into her hair, his voice low, steady, almost kind.

  'And you’re mine now,' he thought, his crimson gaze hardening as he stared beyond her to the twisted wreckage of the world she came from. 'This world broke you once. It won't get the chance again. You belong to me now.'

  He felt her breathing calm slightly against his chest, small, shallow gasps becoming steadier. "Your scars," Kaiser said, pulling back slightly to tilt her chin up with two fingers, forcing her to meet his gaze, "They're mine to carry now."

  'And your strength,' he thought, cold satisfaction curling inside him. 'Strength you don't even realize you have. If you could slaughter those knights without any training, I could only imagine what you’ll do with it when it’s sharpened and mastered.'

  Aria's lips quivered, but she said nothing, her eyes locked onto him like he was the only thing keeping her from crumbling again. "Your worries," Kaiser said next, his thumb brushing lightly across the edge of her cracked, bruised cheek, "They’re mine to shoulder."

  'And your future,' he finished silently, the corners of his mouth tightening into the faintest, cruelest smile she couldn’t see. 'Your future is mine to forge until there’s nothing left but what I need you to become.'

  She stared at him, a thousand emotions churning behind her battered hollow gaze. "Where would I even go?" she asked, voice fragile, barely audible.

  Kaiser crouched lower, still holding her with one strong hand, still steady as a monolith. He extended his other hand, his palm open, offering, but with the weight of command heavy in the gesture. "Forward," he said simply. "With me."

  For a heartbeat, the world held its breath. Then, slowly, Aria's trembling fingers slipped into his hand. Her touch was cold. Fragile. But she moved on her own. Kaiser closed his hand around hers and pulled her to her feet as if she weighed nothing at all. She stumbled, and he caught her. And when she wavered, he stood still, letting her find her balance against his certainty.

  "You’ll stumble," he said, his voice like distant thunder, steady and absolute. "You’ll bleed. You’ll fall apart before you’re whole again." He leaned closer, until she could feel the heat of his words against her battered skin.

  "But I will be there through it all."

  He watched her, watched the way her broken spirit strained against his presence, not recoiling, but reshaping.

  'And only then,' Kaiser thought, the words dark and sweet in the back of his mind, 'Only after you’ve been torn down and rebuilt in fire, only after you’ve clawed your way through hell itself — only then, will you be worthy to stand with me.'

  He released her hand finally, but stayed close enough that she could lean into his shadow if she chose. Aria wiped at her face with the back of her sleeve, her breathing still ragged but growing steadier. Her footsteps soon fell into rhythm beside his as they started walking, side by side, away from the corpse of the forest that had tried so hard to bury her alive. Kaiser cast one last glance back at the twisted trees, the webbed ruins.

  The forest had failed.

  The world had failed.

  She hadn't.

  And he would see to it personally that they both learned to regret that mistake.

  As they moved forward through the thinning mist, the girl’s voice finally broke the silence, fragile but no longer cracking apart at the seams. "...My name," she said, almost like she was confessing a sin. "It’s Aria."

  Kaiser didn't slow his pace, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward, into a faint, predatory smirk. "Kaiser Dios," he answered simply. "But you will call me Kaiser."

  She glanced up at him, something fragile sparking behind her exhausted gaze. "Okay... Kaiser."

  The morning light began to tear golden gashes through the thinning mist, illuminating the stubborn, battered girl walking at his side. Kaiser allowed himself a rare thought, a cold satisfaction curling deep within him.

  'Aria... I can’t wait,' he mused silently, a savage smile tugging faintly at his mouth, 'To see what kind of weapon you’ll turn out to be.'

  POV: You said ‘I’ll handle the group project’ and she actually believed you.