The Eternal Pearl

"Kou… Kousi…"

His name barely escaped her lips, strangled beneath the suffocating weight of the void. A heavy lump formed in her throat, choking her, making it nearly impossible to speak.

"Why…?" Her voice wavered, cracking under the strain of grief. "Why did you do this?"

Tears streamed down her face, hot and unrelenting.

She hated him.

She hated him too much.

No matter how many times she pushed him away, no matter how much she hurt him—even when she killed him—he still came back.

Always.

"Why…?" The question fell from her lips again, hoarse and broken.

The Heartbane—no, Kousi—gazed down at her, his form flickering against the churning abyss, barely holding shape.

"Don't worry," he murmured, his voice—a voice she had once loved—coiling around her, sinking deep into her soul. "Everything you longed for, everything we were denied, has been written into the depths."

The flames curled hungrily around them as he stepped forward.

"We are finally together. Nothing can take this from us. We are free."

A slow, unsettling grin stretched across his face.

"Isn't this what we always wanted?"

Tridnya recoiled as if struck.

"No…" Her scream tore through the emptiness. "This is never what I wanted!"

For a fleeting moment, something almost human passed through Kousi's face. But then—rage.

"Have you forgotten?" His voice darkened, the flames around him rising with his fury. "The vows we made under the long-lost sun?"

Tridnya trembled.

"Those were the dreams of children," she whispered, voice raw with sorrow. "Back when our shoulders were light, when the world had not yet bound us."

Her gaze fell, unwilling to meet his.

"I always wanted you, Kousi. Only you… but I was never meant to have you."

A confession centuries too late.

Kousi stiffened.

"You dare blame fate?" His fury flared, his form flickering wildly, the void pulsing in response. "You think our love was so weak that fate could deny it?"

His next words slithered through the air like a curse.

"We are bound by the Devil's own love, Tridnya."

Her breath hitched.

Devil?

What did he mean?

And then—

She heard it.

A laugh.

Not his.

Not hers.

Something else.

Something far worse.

A sound that should not exist, a sound that clawed at the edges of her mind, unraveling her thoughts like frayed threads.

It had been there all along. Watching. Waiting.

Tridnya's heart lurched as the realization struck her like a dagger to the chest.

Her body turned on instinct, searching, desperate to prove herself wrong.

But there was nothing.

Only a world devoured by fire.

Only a sky twisted beyond recognition.

Only endless, blood-tinged mist curling through the void.

Kousi turned too, confused—blind.

Because he couldn't see it.

Because neither of them could.

Because they were inside it.

Inside the prison.

Inside the pearl.

And Cupid—the Devil of Love—held it in his hand.

He twirled the smooth, blood-red gem between his fingers, watching them, reveling in their torment.

And he laughed.

Soft at first.

Then louder.

Twisting.

Echoing.

Unending.

Tridnya trembled, her fists clenching at her sides. Her grief burned into something sharper. Something colder.

She raised her head, her aura swelling, voice laced with fury.

"What have you done?"

Her fingers curled tighter, her body vibrating with barely contained rage.

"You monster!" Her voice rang like a blade through the void.

A pulse of jade light erupted from her fist, crystallizing into stone-hard armor. It gleamed beneath the ceaseless inferno, reflecting the unholy glow of their prison.

She had ended him once.

She would do it again.

But as she stepped forward—

She hesitated.

Just for a moment.

Her fist wavered, breath caught in her throat.

Because this wasn't just the Heartbane standing before her.

It was him.

Kousi.

The boy who had always found his way back to her.

The man who had destroyed the world for her.

Her love.

Her nightmare.

His swirling, fractured eyes met hers. And in them, she saw everything—the regret, the obsession, the pain.

Her hands shook.

But she struck anyway.

Her jade-coated fist crashed against his chest, straight into the heart—the gleaming, fractured core of his existence.

A shattering sound echoed through the void.

For a moment, the flames recoiled, as if the world itself had held its breath.

Then—

The Heartbane broke.

The monstrous, fractured shell collapsed.

And all that remained… was him.

Kousi—the man, the boy, the fool she had once known—lay beneath her, his body battered and torn.

Their eyes met, holding a thousand unsaid words between them.

And that's when it hit her—

Kousi was her soulmate.

But soulmates aren't always saviors.

They are just mirrors of your deepest, darkest fears.

Cupid's putrid laugh echoed across the void, dancing in the shadows of the flame.

The ritual was complete.

It had always been leading to this.

The weight of centuries, of every whispered promise and shattered dream, had led them here.

To this moment.

This curse.

Time froze, unnatural and absolute.

The flames halted mid-flicker, their writhing dance suspended in eerie stillness.

Cupid smiled from his throne, his fingers unfurling.

The blood-red pearl—their prison—rose from his hand, ascending into the lovesick sky.

And there, in that endless abyss, it joined countless others.

Twisted love stories, sealed in pearls, trapped forever.

Just like them.