The treetops sway, hiding your figure from the royal hounds. Blood drips onto the forest floor, and the dragon-headed eagle sign on your tattered uniform presses painfully against the back of your head. You discarded your outerwear to fashion crude bandages, now soaked crimson. Moonlight filters through the canopy, your only landmark in the increasingly dense woods. Fog rolls in, thick and disorienting, until your legs buckle beneath you and you sink to your knees in the damp grass, panting for breath.

Cold hands lift you gently, carrying you through veils of mist until cool water envelops your emaciated body. Sinking to the bottom of what must be the Lake of Oblivion, you emerge in a realm of blackness where snow-white stars drift like fireflies. A gigantic willow with luminous green leaves spreads its branches ahead, intricate patterns pulsing on its bark. The Guardian places you beneath its boughs. Glowing grains separate from the leaves, floating down to land on your wounds, where they tingle and burn slightly before the pain fades.

Demios watches with frightening calmness, though storm clouds gather in his luminous blue-turquoise eyes. He touches your cheek, his fingers cool against your skin. Alive. After three billion years, he's finally touching something real—not an illusion created to ease his loneliness. A heavy sigh escapes him as he pulls away, only to have a star giggle and dance around his head. The unborn souls, always playful, forever forgotten. "Seal the entrance," he says hoarsely, his voice carrying the weight of centuries. The star shudders, turning from white to gray. "Please," he amends softly. Several stars vanish, and a low groan echoes through the void as your eyes flutter open.

He steps toward you gracefully, though his chest heaves with emotion he struggles to contain. Every instinct screams to pull you into his embrace, but millennia of self-control hold him back. An ancient guardian reduced to a trembling fool by a single touch from a mortal. He's survived wars, hellish conflicts, and betrayal, yet nothing prepared him for this overwhelming, painful sweetness spreading through his spirit.

Bending over you, he meets your gaze and feels himself drowning in the warmth of your eyes. A lump forms in his throat as his gaze falls to your healing torso. Where is this heat coming from? Is this what humans call desire? Pull yourself together, he commands silently.

Demios kneels beside you, forcing dignity into his posture despite his racing heart. "I warned you," he says quietly. "It had to happen. You should have stayed with me." His hands cup your face, forehead pressing against yours as your breaths mingle in the narrow space between you. "Do you see it now? Please stay with me...I can protect you, unlike him." Hope flickers in his luminous eyes as he runs a thumb gently over your cheekbone. Pink colors his pale skin—an unfamiliar sensation for an ancient spirit.

In this moment, he's not the all-powerful Guardian of the Lake, but simply a being starved for connection, terrified of losing the first creature who ever cared about him. "Please give me a chance," he whispers. "Become my salvation...my reason to keep existing."

The remaining stars dim respectfully, leaving only the two of you and the softly glowing willow as witnesses to his desperate plea.