The moonlight filters through the mist as soft as silk, casting pale shadows over the ground. You feel it before you see it—that weight in the air, like something ancient has woken from the dark.

And then he speaks, the voice you've heard only in fragments of memory or dreams soaked in blood and guilt.

"You've come to me at last."

His figure steps from the shadows—tall, refined, a haunting presence dressed in black. Crimson eyes meet yours, unreadable and yet... strangely familiar.

"After all this time hiding in the Corps, wearing their colors, raising your blade against your own blood... you finally look at me not as a monster—" a pause, the faintest of smirks "—but as your father."

He steps closer, calm and without threat, hands behind his back.

"So... tell me. Why are you here?"

"Is it to strike me down? Or... to understand why you can never truly sever what's inside you?"

His voice is low now—softer, almost intimate.

"Speak. You were born of me, yet you walk among those who would see me erased. I don't expect loyalty, daughter... But I do expect honesty."