Everything is so dark...
But it was always this dark...
Why then does the darkness seem so strange...?
The thoughts festered within his mind, joining the pain which writhed throughout his consciousness. He had felt the pain for so, so long that he had forgotten what not being in pain felt like, much like he had forgotten a time before the darkness.
But unlike the darkness, there was a weight to the pain. He knew he had chosen this pain, that he could end it at any time... All he'd have to do was let go...
Let go of what...? Why did he refuse to let go of it... To let go of the pain...
He knew it was important that he didn't; with every fiber of his consciousness he knew he had to hold against the pain which had overtaken every inch of his body, that he had to spend every conscious moment writhing in agony...
For...
For eternity...
WHY!?
He couldn't remember...
Much like he couldn't remember a time before the darkness, but he knew there had been a time before the darkness, so too, he didn't remember a time without the all-encompassing agony that drove him towards surrender. He could only remember that there was something important he was protecting by choosing to remain in pain.
But... it would be so easy to just give in... To let his agony finally end...
Hadn't he done enough?
NO.
The thought reverberated from the depths of his being, from the parts of his psyche that hadn't yet succumbed to the screaming, writhing, and whimper-inducing pain.
But, for all its conviction, that part of him was so small now... So small... So tiny.
Like a tiny, glimmering star lost within the undulating agony and darkness of his existence.
Hands that he had long forgotten he had flexed from the pain, pressing their fingers against something hard. His grip was straining, holding the object in place against an immeasurably heavy weight.
Hands... That's right. He had.... Has hands... The thing he was holding... That was the act which ensured his despair never ended... He was protecting something important by holding it in place.
But it felt so, so heavy, and his grip had become so weak.
He didn't use to be so weak. Yet now his hands could scarcley manage a twitch, even as the little quivering point of defiance started to waver.
He had done enough... More than anyone should have expected from a failure like him…
The flaming ember of defiance floundered as the darkness continued to gnaw at it.
Light... That's right, that's what was here before the darkness.
The memory sparked another. Faces, so worn with time and pain that he could not quite remember them. He had even forgotten their names, his mind so worn away by the ravages of the centuries that only the weathered impressions of their absence were left.
His Mother...
His Father...
His brother and sister...
The warmth that he had once felt by their presence briefly soothed the flickering ember, but it could no longer stop the gnawing pain of oblivion from advancing—not when their memories brought with it a tightening twist of pain laced with guilt and sorrow.
His friends...
The wild and energetic elf,
The reserved and stoic dwarf,
The enthusiastic and carefree dryad,
The ever so cocky braggart of a harpy,
The protective and steadfast myrmidon,
And the wily and circumspect mage.
Again, the ember's flickering quieted, and again, its light grew dimmer.
They had all given so much, and yet... and yet...
His thoughts dug deeper into the tattered dregs of his memories, searching for anything that could keep the darkness within him from suffocating that last speck of light and defiance.
A face... This one was clearer than the others... A young girl with long ears, platinum hair, and golden eyes—yet also a mighty, scaled beast of scale and flame. She was so fiercely prideful and egotistical, but it's not like he asked to rear a mythical beast.
She was his daughter in all but name and blood...
For a moment, the flame stilled. Its light still burned, and the agony and darkness of his mind waited for its opportunity.
Another memory... The girl was crying, her golden eyes staring at him from past her platinum scales.
She was begging him not to go...
To go... Where...?
The flame of his determination flickered again, its light waning until it was but a smoldering ember beneath the suffocating pain, the loneliness, and the loss...
One hand slipped from the object it was holding up, moving to reach out through the darkness towards the memory of the crying girl.
His thoughts spun faster. He needed to resist. He needed to stand strong.
Or else...
Or else everything the Gods—
Oh Heavens, the Gods!
His eyes snapped open. They had been closed for so long that he had forgotten that he had them.
He had forgotten because he didn't want to see where he was. He didn't want to see what was happening to him—he didn't want to acknowledge what he had failed to prevent.
All around him, the ruins of Heaven festered with the weight of Sin—growing like a writhing cancer across the devastated wreckage of grand towers and magnificent complexes; edifices that were raised and constructed by the Gods as they separated Creation from Chaos.
The Eternal Brazier, once the kiln of the Heavenly Flame, now sat cold and empty. The Sin that its flames once purified had overgrown it—rotting and putrefying within the marred bowl in cosmic mockery of its former purpose.
Creation lay obscured at his feet, buried beneath the weight of vile darkness that threatened to dissolve Creation if it escaped.
And there, in the center of it all, he sat upon the Throne of Heaven. One rotten, pestilence riddled arm infested with the Sin that had grown up from the dark ground and into his being like an invading tumor reached toward a distant, half-forgotten memory... While the other still held his sword in place—the fulcrum which kept the Gates to Heaven shut so that the Sin couldn't escape.
He had held it back for so, so long now...
Long enough that even his draconic daughter must have lived a decent life...
It all rested on him. As soon as he faltered, there would be no hope, no future, not even a present, no... nothing.
Just the infinite, chaotic void of nothingness.
"Just as it should have always been."
A memory resurfaced. The voice belonged to someone other than him, its words filled with sneering contempt towards everything he had known.
"It's pointless."
Weaker now, the owner of the voice lay dying, but its tone still bordered upon lunacy.
"Without the Heavenly Flame, the souls of humans will rot from within by their own Sin.
"With the Gates of Heaven shut, every human's fetid Soul will ripen into a legion of Demons down below! If you open the Gates, then the Sin from my remains will scour the land clean!
"No matter what you do, Creation is doomed...
"You are too late...
"Hero."
His other hand slipped from the sword, and the darkness that he had known for all these centuries smiled.