Night had no mercy here.

It stretched on forever, swallowing the horizon, choking the moonlight until the only thing left was a bruised sky—painted deep purple and black, cracked by cold stars.

Somewhere in that darkness, something watched. It had waited lifetimes for this moment, drifting between worlds, slipping through the gaps that desperate hands and broken hearts left behind.

It watched a boy with gentle green eyes and a scar pressed over his chest like a curse, laughing with friends who did not yet know how fragile their days were.

It watched a man with crimson eyes and a star etched beneath one of them, hiding blood on his hands behind crooked smiles.

It watched a soldier whose eyes flickered yellow and pink, the taste of duty forever sour in his mouth.

It watched gods who had long abandoned mercy.

Watched Angels who would one day bleed white across shattered fields.

And in the spaces between these souls, it felt the tremor of something older still—a grief that crawled through every timeline, whispering of fates already written.

Of victories that meant nothing.

Of monsters born not of nightmares, but of prayers that no god ever answered.

⸻

"Do you ever wonder," someone once said, voice swallowed by wind, "if we were meant to fail from the start?"

"Maybe," came the reply. "But I'd rather burn trying than live under their chains."

⸻

When the first of the stars cracked, the world didn't notice.

Not at first.

It would take time for the heavens to truly split open. For halos to shatter. For his grin to stretch impossibly wide across dusk-soaked battlefields.

And by then, all anyone could do was bleed.

⸻

Somewhere far away, under a sky that forgot how to dream, the story began again.

It always did.

Because freedom was stubborn.

Because even broken things keep fighting.

Because somewhere, somehow, someone always believed—

This time, we can save them all.