Clang.

The fallen sword rolled to the ground. 

Rose looked down at the kneeling holy knight with a bitter expression. 

“I can’t do it.” 

“……” 

“I just… I can’t…” 

Rose, crouched beneath the stairs, gently stroked the holy knight’s face. As her touch trailed down his cheek, the man’s slightly parted jaw froze. The face that had once been filled with rage and desperation to kill her was nowhere to be found.

In the end… 

“…how could I bring myself to strike you down?” 

It had come to this. 

“If even the tip of your finger was injured, I…” 

Unable to finish, the holy knight bowed his head in silence. Rose stared at him in silence. 

Suddenly, she thought of the spring when they first met. 

A year ago he had come here to kill her. 

He had killed her former husband, the Demon King, and had come for her next, intending to end the life of the one who had taken the throne as the new Demon Queen. That was his mission as a holy knight. 

Rose respected that. She admired and loved his noble destiny of condemning evil for the sake of humanity. That was why she had accepted the condition he had offered. 

“No, my love. You know it as well as I do.” 

A promise to give her life in exchange for just one year of marriage. And the condition of destruction he had presented. 

“Even if you don’t kill me, I will disappear because of the power of the contract.” 

Today, the promise she had made to the man who had never loved her – that if he couldn’t kill her, the contract between them would – would be fulfilled. 

The morning sun streamed through the window, illuminating everything on the platform, as sharp and radiant as the blade of a holy knight’s sword punishing evil. 

Beneath the blazing rays, Rose closed her eyes and reflected on the past, as if savouring every memory. 

The four seasons she had spent with the man, the sweet and heartfelt year they had shared, and the early spring when they first met. 

Rose watched the Holy Knight in silence, frozen like a lifeless sculpture before the fallen sword. Looking into his face, reality began to sink in. 

Ah, this really is the end.