Chapter 5
838words
Miles away in the Tree House, Arion jolted awake, breaking through the Sleep Spell. Primal panic surged through him—the visceral terror of something irreplaceable being stolen.
He turned instinctively to the bed beside him, seeing your "sleeping" form. Relief washed over him as he reached out to stroke your cheek.
But as his fingers met the illusion—
It dissolved like mist in sunlight, silently collapsing into nothing.
The bed lay empty.
Arion went still as stone.
In the next heartbeat, the Soul Mark revealed your desperate ritual at the forest's edge.
Panic and betrayal exploded within him like wildfire.
His first instinct was to lash out as before—to weaponize his grief, forcing you to your knees with soul-crushing pain.
But he stopped himself. You were already channeling a spell that demanded half your power. If he added his emotional assault now, the combined strain would shatter your soul completely.
He had no options left.
So the thousand-year-old Elf, alone in his beautiful prison, made his final, most desperate choice.
He surrendered all anger and grief.
At the forest boundary, as you fought through blinding pain to complete your spell, the constant pressure of Arion's emotions suddenly… vanished.
In its place, his voice echoed directly into your mind through the Soul Mark:
"If you must go, then take my soul with you. It's all I have left to give."
BAD ENDING
But this final act of surrender—this ultimate tenderness—proved more devastating than any attack. It pierced defenses built against hatred and pain, finding the one vulnerability you couldn't guard against.
Like a tidal wave of blinding light, it swept through your mental barriers, extinguishing the blood-red circle beneath you and crushing your will to fight.
Your spell collapsed.
You crumpled to your knees, mouth working silently. The world spun wildly as your mind simply… broke. You toppled backward, consciousness fleeing into blessed darkness.
In the distant Tree House, Arion felt the change through the Soul Mark—the collapse of your resistance, the emptying of your mind.
He fled his sanctuary like a man possessed, racing toward your fallen form.
He found you exactly where the forest met the outside world.
You lay motionless, a broken doll at the threshold of freedom.
Spell shattered. Magic scattered. Mind fractured.
Your eyes stared upward, seeing nothing, containing nothing.
Arion knelt beside you with reverent slowness. With trembling hands, he gathered your limp form and carried you back to your beautiful prison.
Using the softest cloth, he cleaned the blood and tears from your face with painstaking gentleness. Then he bent to place a tender kiss upon your cold forehead.
Cradling your empty shell, he finally "understood."
Sadness was the wrong medicine. Pain was the wrong cure.
In your mental landscape—now wiped clean by his final act of love—all those "diseased" regions of resistance and rebellion had vanished completely.
To Arion, your collapse wasn't destruction but purification—the final, perfect healing.
He had succeeded at last.
So the cure had been love all along. Not the gentle kind, but love so overwhelming it drowned everything else.
From that day forward, he administered the perfect treatment.
Each day, he poured his boundless love into you through your connection. He whispered the same sweet phrases from your first meeting. He carried you to see the same sights you'd grown to despise.
He would use this love—vast and relentless—to refill your emptied vessel.
And so he became the perfect lover, the gentlest jailer, the most devoted tyrant imaginable.
You stopped fighting entirely.
Your spirit had shattered under that final wave of selfless love. You could no longer summon even a spark of magic to resist. The powerful witch became an empty shell.
Your true sentence began.
The punishment wasn't captivity—it was being loved.
You were condemned to eternally receive the devotion of a man you no longer loved—yet who would love you with unwavering intensity forever.
Each smile, each kiss, each moment of his joy burned through the Soul Mark into what remained of your consciousness—white-hot brands on the frozen wasteland of your spirit.
And so you remain, eternally trapped in the day you first loved him.
An eternal yesterday—once your heart's desire, now your most perfect hell.
HAPPY ENDING
Hundreds of years later…
Lilith's name had become legend throughout the magical world. She had escaped the forest, returning to the chaotic, unpredictable world she craved. Still beautiful, still powerful, she took lovers as it pleased her and discarded them just as easily. She founded a vast magical dynasty that spread across continents, becoming the untouchable matriarch whom all respected and none dared approach too closely.
Arion became just another name in her collection of conquests—a footnote in her long history.
On this particular day, Lilith's youngest descendant—a girl named Ella with her ancestor's beauty and talent—wandered into a hidden valley during a restless adventure. There, by a crystal spring, she encountered an Elf.
The witch's tale continues, an endless cycle that will never truly end.
