Elise and I walked this path side by side from dawn 'til dusk. We always did. It was routine, something special shared between the two of us.

She meant the world to me, and so wouldn't have it any other way.

Hand in hand, she showed me a world that layed beyond the mist, the dark clouds and dreary sky overhead.

It was a brilliant thing, that world. Bright and warm like the summer. peppered with wonder and stars and flickers of joy unlike anything I had ever known.

Sometimes I looked at her in awe as she smiled at me with a mischievous sparkle in her ocean-blue eyes, sunlight catching her inky hair while we strolled along.

Other times we walked in silence under the soft silver light of the moon, illuminating her pretty face while she took in the view, stealing a kiss here and there —an angel. My angel.

It was our own slice of paradise, bringing light to my otherwise dark world and adventure to hers, night or day.

Our lives couldn't be more different. She, a clever princess —a bird trapped in a golden cage. I, the son of criminals, destined to rule the shadowy underworld that stretched all over Japan.

Until it wasn't.

It was only when we were free that I was able to discover the truth. It wasn't real, that world. None of it.

It was fake, an cruel illusion she created all on her own with nothing but the magic on her fingertips, manipulating the light around us to do her bidding.

She deceived me this whole time. I was forced to watch as she ripped that oh so special place away from me.

My heaven.

My hell.

But that was only the beginning.

Slowly but she ate away at other sources of light in my life: starting with the friends I loved so dearly since were children, tearing my heart to ribbons.

From there she unraveled their lives too, one by one.

I was never the same after that.

Now I walk this path alone, wandering around in the ruins of what once was.

The mist stretches ahead, far and wide.

It swallows me, and I lose myself.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Deeper. Darker. Further.

Falling into the depths and beyond.