The pendant slipped from his fingers.

It hit the dirt quietly while Dorian was in a state far greater than grief. Something beyond any word I could put to it.

While kneeling he looked at his own hands. And the expression on his face told everything about how much hatred he was holding toward them. And why wouldn’t he? Because those were the hands responsible for countless lives. And for his Mirena.

His hands were shaking under his own stare. Whether from the weight of his gaze or from the revelation that had just torn through his entire existence, I couldn’t tell.

Then he said with a broken demonic voice that was barely holding itself together. "I killed her."

And this time the tears that dripped from his eyes weren’t black anymore. They were red. His own blood leaking from those hollow sockets.

He started punching the ground. Not just hitting it. Destroying it. Each fist came down so hard that tremors shot through the earth beneath us. I had to put some distance between me and him and sit on the ground because staying upright that close to him was no longer possible.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

He was destroying his own hands with each impact.

"She was saving me." His voice cracked with every word. "She was cutting herself open so that I could walk away alive. She took a pain far greater than mine. Far greater than I could have ever imagined."

CRACK.

I heard the cracking of fingers. Each hit on the ground splashed dark red blood across the shattered stones. Or what was left of them. Only dirt remained now with his bloody imprints pressed into it.

But he only went harder. Faster. More violently.

"And what did I do?" His fists kept hammering the earth. "I came back. I killed her. I killed her daughter. I killed my own daughter. The daughter Mirena would have been so eager to introduce to me."

BOOM.

"I killed everyone who used to feed me. Who used to train me. Who used to care for me. Who thought of me as family."

Then he stopped.

His fists hovered above the cracked ground as streams of bloody tears flowed down his grey face. And when I looked at his hands they were already healed. Every shattered bone, every torn piece of flesh had regenerated completely.

He stared at those healed hands with more disgust than he had shown anything that night.

"I used these to hold her throat." His voice was barely audible. "I used these to end her while she was looking at me with those eyes. Those same eyes that used to look at me like I was the only good thing in her world."

He was trembling from head to toe.

"And the worst part is that I did all of it while smiling. I felt satisfied. I enjoyed watching the life leave the one person who destroyed herself to keep me breathing."

His gaze found the diary lying in the dirt. It had fallen from my hands due to his shockwaves.

And then his anger, his grief, his pain, every emotion that had been building inside him reached its absolute peak.

"I didn’t deserve Mirena." His voice was raw and shredded. "I didn’t deserve this body. I don’t deserve the air in my lungs or the ground beneath my knees or any of the seconds I’ve been given since that night. I don’t deserve to exist. I hate it. I hate myself. I hate these hands which..."

He didn’t finish his words.

His mouth opened wide and his teeth sank into his own arm. Crunching through flesh and bone with pure rage. Pure self-directed vengeance. Like a beast turning on itself. He didn’t stop until he had bitten his arm clean off and thrown it away from himself with absolute disgust.

THUD.

But those arms regenerated in seconds. Grey flesh and bone growing back like nothing had happened. And looking at his new hands, the same hands that kept coming back no matter how much he tried to destroy them, the frustration and anger on his face was beyond anything I had seen tonight.

"Fine then. You won’t let me die." He grit his teeth. "So take this."

His hand reached for his own chest. His claws pierced through his grey skin and dug into his ribcage. He was going for his heart. Going to rip it out himself.

But before he could reach it something happened that I couldn’t explain. His hand instantly left his chest and shot to his head. Gripping his skull like it was splitting apart from the inside.

He started speaking to himself. Or rather to someone else inside him.

"No! Get away from me! Don’t you dare interfere again! I just want to end this! I can’t live with this!"

He was crying and screaming at something only he could hear. A voice in his mind that was fighting to keep him alive.

He shouted back at it. "No! You are wrong you haven’t given me anything. You gave me nothing but misery! You filled me with rage! With hatred! With everything that turned me blind! It was all your fault! It was..."

Then he stopped mid-sentence. Because he realized he was just throwing every blame onto that voice when deep down he knew the truth. He shared the same blame.

"Mine."

That single word carried more weight than everything he had said before.

Then a resolve hit him. Something final settled behind those bloody eyes.

"Screw your pact. It was never real to begin with. It all started with lies. You twisted the pain and the suffering into a weapon and pointed it at the people I loved."

His claws aimed at his chest again.

"So I will end everything here."

Hearing the confidence behind that move, seeing the certainty in his eyes, I knew this wasn’t just another attempt. If he went through with it this time it would actually work. His soul would vanish. Carrying a weight and a pain he would never forgive himself for even in whatever comes after death.

I hated this. Every part of this situation made my stomach turn. But I never hated Dorian. This man was just another soul, another victim hunted by this accursed world. Chewed up and spit out just like so many others. What I hated was his story.

So I needed to stop him.

"Dorian!" My shout made him freeze mid-attack. His claws hovering an inch above his chest.

I walked toward him. Picked up the pendant from the dirt. The same one he had dropped earlier.

I looked at the small images inside it for a moment then said. "You asked me where I got this, didn’t you?"

He was staring at me with those broken, bloody eyes.

"So hear me out. Mirena gave this pendant to someone else. And that someone else carried it with her all the way to today. That someone else was there the day you did the massacre."

I closed the pendant. "And that someone else is none other than your daughter."

His face went blank with shock. His already messed up mind was struggling to process what I just said. So to make it easier I simply pointed in one direction.

Behind a tree a few meters away stood two figures. The old woman from earlier and her granddaughter. I had already told them the whole story before coming here. They had read the diary. And after that they had insisted on coming along.

"Your daughter." I looked at him. "The one you tried to kill. The one you were this close to ending. She survived."

His eyes were locked on the old woman.

"The old lady you see right there, you might recognise her. She was the maid of the household you grew up in. She was there at the birthday celebration. And she was the one who protected your daughter. Got her out alive. And then raised her as her own."

Dorian’s bloody tears had stopped. Not because the grief was gone but because this revelation had broken through every other emotion and replaced them all with something he didn’t know how to feel.

He turned to me. "My daughter?"

I simply nodded.

And at that moment this demon kneeling in the dirt with his own blood smeared across his face and hands didn’t know what to do. He just stared at the girl who had stepped out from behind the old woman and was now walking toward him.

He stared at her tears dripping as she looked at him. Looked at whatever was left of the father she never knew.

When she was close enough to touch him, Dorian refused to meet her eyes. Turned his face away.

"Don’t come near me." His voice was barely there. "Don’t look at me with those pitying eyes."

She kept walking.

"Don’t you understand what these hands have done? They killed everyone... your mother... father.. every single one. They took away the royal life you should have grown up with."

She was right in front of him now.

"I am a monster. So look at me with those eyes. Say what your heart tells you. Throw every curse you have. Slap me..."

And hearing that last word a hand did come to his face.

But it wasn’t a slap.

It was the gentlest touch he had felt in years. Her small fingers hovering across his ruined cheeks. Turning his face toward her. Making him look at the eyes he had been running from.

And through her broken, sobbing voice she said the one word that shattered everything.

"Fa... father."