The Last Strokes Of Divine

Emperor saya pov

The throne room had long emptied, but Saya remained seated in its shadowed heart, hands clasped around nothing, green eyes fixed on the space where light used to fall.

Azeriah.

That name.

That weight.

She had always stood like a contradiction before him. sunlight bound in flesh, yet distant as a star. Divine yet unknowable. Her art, her silence, her purpose. Her soul. She had never belonged to the palace. Not even to this world, perhaps.

And yet, she had taken root in his world .

From the moment he first saw her, head bowed, fingers stained in divine pigment, eyes closed as if listening to something only she could hear. Saya had felt the shift. That pull. A thread stretched taut between them, though never acknowledged. Not aloud. Not in action.

He had admired her from the sanctity of distance.

And now… she had fallen.

Disgraced, they called it. Madness, others whispered. Stripped of her title, of her purpose, of her brush.

They dragged her name through the dirt with the ease of those who never knew her.

But he did. Or thought he did.

He should have gone to her. Demanded the truth. Reached into the silence and pulled her from it.

But he didn't. He sat here, and let them burn her image down.

Because he was afraid.

Not of her.

Of himself.

Pulling her more into his darkness.

Because what did it mean if someone like her could fall?

And what did it mean that even now, especially now he couldn't stop thinking about her?

It had been days since the fall of Azeriah, yet she haunted his steps like a ghost that would not fade. A figure in the corner of his vision. A whisper in the hollows of his sleep. He told himself it was guilt. Logic. Concern for the Sanctum's balance.

But it was more than that.

She had plagued his thoughts. Her absence a louder presence than her silence ever was.

He hadn't even known what punishment to assign her. Banishment? No. He would not cast her into oblivion. Death? The thought made him feel ill, he could never. So they made her a servant. Reduced to shadows. That would keep her safe. Close. Hidden.

But even so, he worried.

He remained alone in the meditation chamber, flames dimming low along the walls. The Hollow Flame curled lazily around him, more shadow than light today. The scent of scorched myrrh hung faintly in the air. It was quiet. Always quiet around him. A silence born not of peace, but of suppression.

Saya stood barefoot on the obsidian inlay at the chamber's center, his outer robes cast aside. His hair dark and uneven, just brushing his shoulders, damp with sweat. He had been training again, not for strength, but control. The Hollow Flame responded not to his body, but to his will, and that will had been… fractured lately.

He raised his hand slowly, watching the fire shift along his palm, no heat only cold light. With a sharp breath, he closed his fist and forced the flame to extinguish. Not even a wisp remained.

He was trying to disappear.

Not from the world. From himself.

And then he felt it.

A flicker. not flame, not magic, not even soulthread. But a presence.

Faint. Quiet. Hovering just outside the arched entrance to the chamber.

He straightened.

Not a servant. Not one of the Sanctum Guard.

Not a threat.

But something.

It was oddly familiar, and yet completely wrong. Like hearing a song you once loved in a stranger's voice.

He turned slowly.

And there she was.

A girl? no a woman half-hidden behind the shadows of the entry, her face slightly obscured due to the lightening , but her posture too still. Too stiff. Too… aware.

Azeriah!

His heart didn't race. It stopped!

Something was wrong.

She looked like Azeriah.

But she did not move like her.

Her posture, her aura. Her silence was different. Not quiet serenity, but uncertainty. The way she clutched the basket, as if using it to shield herself. The way her eyes darted like a stranger in her own skin.

Still, when she glanced toward him—really looked at him—he froze.

Because in that moment, she saw him.

Not the emperor.

Not the Hollow Flame.

Him.

And he knew.

She had seen the scar.

The one that burned down from the ridge of his right brow, slicing across the bridge of his nose, a jagged ruin of flesh that he kept buried under illusion, concealed beneath the Hollow Flame's shroud.

Except when it faltered. When emotion cracked its shell. When he slipped. Which almost never did.

He hadn't felt it waver.

But her gaze told him she was it regardless .

And she hadn't looked away.

No disgust. No pity.

She had looked through it.

Through him.

Straight into the hollow place he had buried for so long. That gaping emptiness that no power or crown could fill.

And somehow… she'd seen it. Known it.

Felt it.

Just as he had felt hers.

Because when their eyes met, truly met it wasn't Azeriah standing before him.

It was someone else. Someone lost.

Someone he recognized.

Saya stood alone now in the meditation chamber, flames dimming low along the wall. The Hollow Flame whispered around his shoulders, soft and cold as ash, flickering in rhythm with his thoughts.

He reached for the scar, fingers brushing air, the illusion sealed intact .

What was that? The look on her face.

Like she had seen him whole.

No fear , no disgust

What was that? No one ever looked at him that way.

The truth had already passed between them like a thread neither of them asked for but could no longer ignore.

Was she truly Azeriah?

Or something, someone else ?

He didn't know yet.

But he intended to find out.

Because whatever she was, whoever she had become…

He was greatly pulled.

And if someone was behind this, he would definitely drag them hell, and watch them burn a million times.