The desert

Chapter 20: The Edenian and the Nephilim.

“I hate sand,” Fenrir muttered as he dragged his boots through the coarse, wind-bitten ground. He looked over the endless stretch of pale dunes and shattered stone, squinting beneath the merciless Edenian sun. “Seriously, how do you enjoy places like this?”

Jade did not answer right away. She moved ahead with effortless grace, her staff cutting a clean line through the sand as though the harsh terrain had been made for her alone. At his complaint, she slowed just enough to glance back over her shoulder, a playful smile touching her lips.

“It is not so bad,” she said, her tone calm, almost teasing. “You are simply being cranky, darling.”

Fenrir let out a low huff that was half annoyance and half amusement, but he did not deny it. Heat shimmered across the broken landscape around them, turning the horizon into a wavering illusion. The sun hung above them like a watchful eye, pouring its light over a land that had once been lush and proud, and was now nothing more than a vast desert of dust, ruin, and memory.

The two monarchs pressed onward in search of the ancient Delian tree, if the old stories still held any truth. Their path led through the remnants of the Edenian southern highlands, though there was little left of the highlands now beyond collapsed stone, wind-carved pillars, and the bones of a civilisation that had once stood among the greatest in the realms. In the distance, half-buried beneath drifting sand, rose the broken silhouette of the temple of Argus, or what remained of it.

Fenrir's gaze swept across the wasteland, and the weight of that truth settled in him with each step. The merging had been a violent, brutal thing, a force of domination that did not merely claim a realm but twisted, swallowed and either stitched it into Outworld’s flesh or erased it from memory altogether. Shao Kahn had built his empire on that cruelty. He had celebrated each conquest, each collapse, each realm bent beneath his heel. Zaterra. Osh-Tekk. Vaeternus. Edenia. One by one, they had been taken, their borders dissolved, their people broken into slaves, soldiers, concubines, labourers and trophies.

Outworld had become greater because of it. Richer in land. Larger in armies. Feared by the realms that remained. But every expansion had been paid for in blood and shackles.

And yet Shao Kahn’s greatest prize had also been his greatest arrogance. Edenia had not only been a realm to conquer; it had been one of the six great realms, a jewel of beauty and power. He had taken its queen by force and thought himself untouchable for it. That same madness had pushed him toward Earthrealm, where a weaker world had dared to stand against him, and from that defiance had come his end. It was hard not to think of that now. Hard not to feel the old history pressing in from every direction.

Those days were supposed to be over, at least the new emperor hoped they were over.

As ages slid past the unified realms, a grim oblivion slowly took root. Many of the conquered peoples had come to accept their place in Outworld. Some had even embraced it. The Shokan, for all their loss, had found power and purpose in war. Others had not been so fortunate. The Zaterrans and Osh-Tekk still carried the ache of what had been stolen from them, and their grief lived on in their people; like Syzoth and Kotal, living reminders that a wound could survive even after the blade was gone.

The Edenians, however, had never forgotten.

Their memory endured in whispers, in old prayers, in forbidden songs, and in a prophecy spoken long before the world had changed. It was said that Edenia would one day return. That an Edenian would rise to separate the long-imprisoned realm from Outworld, and with that act, restore life where there had only been ruin. It was the sort of prophecy that children recited, and elders guarded, half as hope and half as a stubborn refusal to let oblivion win.

Perhaps, with Fenrir Kahn on the throne now, such a prophecy was no longer impossible.

He did not know if he was meant to be the one to fulfil it. He did not even know if such a thing could be fulfilled at all. But the thought lingered with him as stubbornly as the heat.

“I’m not,” he said at last, offended in a way that was too theatrical to be sincere. He turned his head toward Jade with a wounded expression. “You are clearly enjoying yourself because, for some reason, this miserable stretch of wasteland has been nicknamed ‘Jade’s desert.’”

Jade’s smile widened, bright against the harsh gold of the landscape. “What can I say?” she replied, her voice warm with amusement. “My reputation precedes me. Perhaps one day you will be given a desert of your own, handsome.”

He snorted, unable to help the grin that tugged at his mouth. With Jade, even the most unforgiving places seemed lighter. Her humour cut cleanly through the heat and dust, and the ease between them made the journey feel less like a march and more like a shared memory in the making.

Her steps were sure and light, almost gliding over the sand. She used her staff with the practised ease of someone who had spent years reading the land beneath her feet, letting it guide her along broken paths and through long-abandoned ruins. There was a natural precision to her movement, a balance that could not be taught in any court or training yard. It came from this place. From roaming it. From learning to survive in it. From returning to it over and over again until the desert had stopped being a wasteland and become something else entirely.

A home, perhaps. Or the closest thing she had left to one.

The guards at the palace had given the terrain a name long ago: Jade’s desert. Not because she ruled it, but because she alone visited it with any regularity. Others considered it dead land, cursed and useless beyond the occasional salvage expedition. Jade had never treated it that way. She came here in solitude, sometimes to train, sometimes to think, sometimes to simply walk until the noise in her head fell silent.

And every time she returned, she felt that same tug in her chest. A pull. A call. Something ancient and familiar that she could never quite name.

Only much later had she learned that the desert had not always existed in this form. Before the merge, it had been a different place entirely; a plain, broad and fertile, like much of old Outworld. Edenia’s arrival had torn the land open and remade it into what now stretched before them: a desert scattered with ruins that seemed to rise and vanish in the same breath, as though the earth itself could not decide whether to preserve the past or bury it.

No one knew where all the ruins had come from. But the architecture told its own story. Elegant lines. Ornate curves. Fragments of artistry so distinct that even the most unlearned could tell they were Edenian. The desert was not merely a place where the kingdom had been lost.

It was its tomb.

A burial site for a people who had not been allowed to rest.

A little while later, the pair reached the first unmistakable sign that they were drawing near one of their landmarks. Half swallowed by sand lay a giant statue split apart by age, war, and time. Its body was shattered into pieces across the dunes, but its head remained visible, weathered and solemn. Even broken, the likeness was unmistakable.

Queen Sindel's resting place.

Fenrir slowed as they approached it. The sight of the ruin sobered him instantly. He crouched near the inscription at the statue’s base, brushing away a layer of sand with his fingers. The words carved there were worn, but still readable. He stared at them for a long moment, and then bowed his head.

Sindel had been a queen, a mother, a martyr, and a tragedy shaped by the violence of a tyrant’s ambition. In the old histories, she was remembered for the impossible choice she had made when Shao Kahn set his eyes on Earthrealm. She had cast a death spell that delayed his invasion and forced the Elder Gods to force Mortal Kombat. That single act of defiance had changed everything that followed. Earthrealm’s victory. Shao Kahn’s downfall. The eventual rise of the one now seated on his throne. All of it could be traced back, in some way, to her last stand.

Earthrealm owed her more than it could ever repay.

Fenrir could not change the past. He could not restore the queen, or undo the centuries of suffering that had followed her death. But he could honour her. He could kneel before what was left and acknowledge that this broken monument represented more than a forgotten grave. It represented courage. It represented Edenia’s refusal to vanish quietly.

Jade placed one hand upon the fractured stone. Her face softened; she lowered her gaze. Her lips moved in a low prayer, spoken in a language Fenrir did not know. He listened only to the shape of it, the rhythm, the reverence in it, and guessed it must have been the old Edenian tongue.

When she was finished, he rose to his feet and studied her gently. “Did you ever meet her?” he asked.

Jade blinked, her concentration slipping as she turned toward him. There was a distant sadness in her eyes now, the sort that came when a memory had been disturbed after years of silence.

“Sindel,” he clarified softly, offering her a small, apologetic smile. “I meant Sindel.”

Jade shook her head once. “No,” she said quietly. “I was only a child when Edenia was merged. I remember very little of that time.”

Fenrir's brow furrowed. “You were a child?” He straightened slightly, genuine confusion colouring his voice. “Then how old was Kitana? I assumed she had not yet been born when the merging happened.”

“She had not,” Jade replied. Her expression was calm, but there was pain beneath it. “That is why she never knew what Shao Kahn had done to our people. He made her believe she had been born in Outworld. He let that lie live for centuries.”
Fenrir's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “And you?”

“No,” Jade said, her voice gentling as she looked back at the tomb. “Not at first. I did not understand the truth until much later. By then, I had already lost everything. I was separated from my family when the merge happened and forced into slavery. I only learned of my origins from another Edenian slave who fought beside me in the arena.”

The words hung between them, heavy and bitter.

Fenrir's jaw tightened. “And by then, speaking the truth to Kitana and Mileena would have put you in danger.”

Jade’s gaze remained on Sindel’s tomb for a moment longer. “Yes,” she admitted. “I was too afraid of Shao Kahn’s wrath. If I had spoken too soon, I might have condemned them both. It was safer to remain silent.” She turned back to him, and when she touched his hand, there was a tenderness in the gesture that seemed to steady them both. “It does not matter now. Not in the way it once did.”

Fenrir looked from Jade to the broken queen’s remains and then back again. A different thought had begun to form in his mind, one that refused to leave him alone.

“There is something I do not understand,” he said slowly. “If Kitana and Mileena are both descendants of Sindel, both Edenian by blood...” He paused, his eyes returning to Jade’s face. “Then why does Mileena bear Tarkatan features? Shouldn’t Edenian heritage have prevailed over anything Outworld might have contributed?”

Jade frowned, visibly unsettled by the question. “I do not know,” she admitted after a moment. “I never questioned it. By the time I arrived, Mileena had already been born, and Sindel had been dead for years.” She hesitated, then added, “I always assumed she was the result of Sindel’s relationship with Shao Kahn. Though from the records and the rumours, it was never a loving union.” Her expression darkened slightly. “I would rather not imagine the circumstances of the night that led to Mileena’s conception.”

Fenrir understood her meaning well enough not to press further on that point.

Instead, he nodded slowly. “The records I have seen stated the same. Both sisters were listed as daughters of Shao Kahn and Sindel.” His gaze sharpened. “But now that we know Kitana’s true father was not Shao Kahn, I cannot help but wonder whether those records were built on more lies than truth.”

Jade frowned, looking at him with a flicker of offence that quickly gave way to uncertainty. “You think Sindel might not be Mileena’s mother?”

“I am not saying that,” Fenrir replied, lifting a hand in mild defence. “Only that something about the story does not sit right.”

Jade exhaled through her nose, considering it. “It cannot be otherwise,” she said at last. “Mileena looks too similar to Kitana for them not to be related. And she is only a year younger. If Sindel passed away only a few years after the merge, both girls would already have been born by then. The timeline fits.”

Fenrir said nothing for several seconds. He looked once more at the tomb, then past it, toward the long line of ruins stretching into the distance. Something about the matter still felt wrong, but the shape of it remained just beyond his reach.

At last he let out a quiet breath and shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. Then he turned to Jade with a reassuring smile and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “We should continue. If we linger too long, night will catch us before we reach the temple, and I have no interest in being stranded out here after dark.”

Jade gave him a small nod, though her thoughts had clearly not yet left the tomb.

Together they moved on, leaving Sindel’s broken monument behind them. But the conversation had stirred something in both of them, something that would not settle easily. Mileena had been different lately. Quieter in some moments, sharper in others, as though some invisible pressure were tightening around her from the inside. Her behaviour toward Kitana had changed so dramatically that it could no longer be dismissed as mere sibling rivalry. And Kitana, for her part, carried a resentment that seemed older than any recent argument should have allowed.

Jade did not know how to help her. That helplessness gnawed at her, made worse by the fact that she could feel something in Mileena’s silence that she could not name.

Fenrir, too, had noticed it.

In the private hours they spent together, Mileena had become distant in a way that was difficult to ignore. She still sought him out, still longed for his touch, but there was fear beneath the desire now, fear she had not found a way to speak aloud. Their nights had become shorter, quieter, more fragile. And that frightened him more than any open fury ever could.
He could see sorrow in her eyes when she thought no one was watching. He could feel her trying to hide it from him. And though he did not know what had caused it, he knew with painful certainty that something was wrong. Something deeply wrong. Yet neither Kitana nor Mileena had spoken of it.

---

The two of them continued through their exotic and perilous adventure throughout the desert; as they coursed through their path, they faced local beasts of the desert such as the giant scorpions and deadly vultures.

Fenrir and Jade's combat skills combined gracefully despite how little time they had known each other. Jade guided him to strike the weak spots of the beasts, working as a field-tactician, whose strikes and orders were measured, precise and balanced. Fenrir's movement and strikes were just as deadly and sometimes unpredictable; it wasn’t that they lacked order and reason, but it had to do more with the fact that the young Nephilim was a creative force of nature in the heat of combat. That trait that Fenrir carried was something that surprised Jade in a good sense of the word. It didn’t mean that he was a poor warrior; on the contrary, he was outstanding due to it. That made her proud. Sometimes, in those battles, she stood defensively and looked at him from a short distance, admiring him. The way he moved, fought and thought was a joy to watch and appreciate.

His skills were another reason why she loved him so much. It made her feel connected to him on a deeper level, especially when they sparred and trained together. Their bodies moved in a dance of fists and strikes that captivated whoever had the pleasure of watching them in that moment.

“A little help over here?” Fenrir said as he slid underneath the scorpion, raising his sword, Arondite, upwards. Piercing and cutting the stomach of the beast along its length.

Jade blinked, returning to earth. Focused. “Right. Sorry!” She said as she threw her bladed star boomerang at the beast from afar, supporting him.

The two of them had reached their final milestone: the temple of Argus. Or what remained of it. The temple was made of dark granite stone with an imposing stature. A giant broken door remained of the entrance, with one statue on each side of Argus, the god-protector of Edenia and his oracle wife Delia.

The temple was well-abandoned by now, seemingly having been teleported to the desert with many more Edenian temples and ruins when the merge happened. If the legend was true, then the Delian tree of legends was somewhere inside the temple, still alive.

To verify the validity of those legends, they needed to defeat the beast that had made its nest there.

The giant golden desert scorpion hissed at them, from its three tails spitting venom that would rot any flesh that clashed with it. Indeed, this beast was no ordinary desert scorpion; it was an apex. There was a myth that was shared in the city nearest to the desert, Dun Lang, of a golden scorpion that had made the temple its territory. Though no one could prove its existence because everyone who dared to hunt it never returned. The scorpion had gained the name of Sekhmet, the golden rot. A myth and a precaution for anyone who dared to wander the desert without caution.

The beast had a golden appearance; its exoskeleton covered its upper body as hard and sturdy as the scales of a dragon. Its stings were as deadly and venomous as the deadliest of snakes. Its pincers were deadly daggers capable of gripping you as well as cutting you in half if you were not careful. Its fangs could open a cow in seconds; its hunger was not to be tested. The beast’s eyes never slept, and its mind was as sharp as the mightiest of predators. Deadly and territorial, this beast was.

Fenrir dodged and sliced the beast with deadly precise strikes. Jade, on the other hand, provided support and attacks that switched between close and long range.

“Watch out!” Fenrir cautioned Jade as the beast tried to pin her with one of its arms. Unluckily for the beast, Jade was swift enough to not only dodge but counter him by hitting it with her staff. After those precise and rapid blunted hits, Jade made an acrobatic jump backwards, providing herself distance for her next cautiously chosen move.

Just like Jade, Fenrir provided support for her in that moment. Shooting at the beast's eyes with his revolvers, Sekhmet cunningly covered his face with one of its arms. But it was in that moment that the two of them proved their connection.

“Jade, now!” Fenrir ordered.

Jade jumped from each ruin column with grace and speed, flanking the beast. Before Sekhmet could realize, Jade had already made her move. Jumping on top of his back.

Fenrir cast spells towards the beast to distract it, simple ones such as fire and electric attacks. Once he saw her on top of the beast, he grinned. Muttering a collection of magically imbued words for Arondite. The sword imbued itself with its distinct shining black and blue fire all across its blade. Nothing would survive a cut coming from its length. And they knew it.

Fenrir tossed the sword with accuracy for Jade; the girl grabbed it with ease. Their connection was made of instinct. Their souls combined not only emotionally but mentally, fighting as the same.

Jade smirked when she received the sword, especially after finding the beast's weak spot. Indeed, the scorpion had a piece of her upper exoskeleton broken, just slightly. Leaving it open for those who had the audacity and skill to reach it. Jade didn’t waste a step, turning the sword downwards and lifting it with all her strength. The nephilim power of Arondite coursed through her, guiding her hand as she pierced the beast twice in the same spot.

The golden scorpion hissed in pain; the blade not only pierced through his flesh and organs, but its magic burned Sekhmet’s insides like wildfire. With a final death rattle, the beast fell to the sand, the ground shaking with might once Sekhmet’s body touched it.

Jade slid down from the beast with graceful confidence, swaying Arondite playfully as she approached the sword’s owner. “Got to say, I can see why you are so fond of it.” She stopped her teasing walk once there were only a few steps between them, placing one hand on her hip while the other held Arondite gracefully. “I do look really good with it.”

Fenrir couldn’t help but grin seeing her like that. His wounds began to heal on their own, a trait that his demonic blood gave him. “You are right,” He called Arondite back to him; the sword dematerialised from Jade’s hand and returned to him. The tables turned on Jade as Fenrir now teased her as he cleaned the blood from the sword. “But I look better with it.”

Jade laughed softly at his comeback, then she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Show-off.” Jade planted a sweet peck on his lips, joyful and proud of their victory. “Though if I’m not mistaken, I was the one who made our attack strategy.” She added teasingly.

Fenrir looked at the beast that lay dead on the ground; its green blood dripped from its body, the sand draining it. “And I suppose you deserve a reward from it?” He said as his hand lay on her hips while her arms kept themselves wrapped behind his neck. Both of them had adapted to this romantic position by now, naturally positioning themselves in it when their eyes fell on each other.

Jade hummed playfully, relaxing herself after a well-earned victory. His touch warmed and gave her safety. “’Tis only right.”

Fenrir couldn’t deny the request once he saw her smile. That gorgeous smile of hers always made him weak to whatever demands she had for him. Fenrir's lips met hers once more, this time the kiss lasting for as long as they could hold their breaths. Neither of them wanted to break apart from it. Once it finished, Jade hummed, pleased. “That’s more like it.”
“You are dangerous.” He glanced at the scorpion’s body. “In more ways than one.”

Jade chuckled, “I never got any complaints from it.” Then she gave him a small, fast jab at his abdomen. “Especially from you, handsome,” Fenrir grunted once the hit impacted.

Jade turned around, breaking the position they were in. Her gaze landed on what they were looking for. “I want to believe that the legends are true; it will be a shame if we came all this way for nothing.”

Fenrir crouched next to her, double-checking if the deal was done regarding it. “You can say that again.” Assured, he stood up, and together they headed towards the entrance. “Do those legends mention traps that we should be aware of?”
“Not that I know of; besides, it’s unlikely there are any.” She said confidently. “The temple was active when it got teleported here.”

“So, I suppose only priests' remains are to be found,” Fenrir said sombrely.

Jade nodded with sorrow. “Likely.”

The two of them stepped inside; their steps measured and precise, with hope that the legendary tree was somewhere to be found.

---

Fenrir and Jade searched the temple with the same hope they had carried into it, though the deeper they went, the more the place seemed determined to punish that hope for daring to exist.

The halls of Argus’s sanctuary stretched long and narrow, their stone walls lined with cracked reliefs, faded celestial motifs, and old inscriptions worn down by time and the desert’s patient cruelty. Dust lay thick across the floor in places where footsteps had not disturbed it for centuries. In others, the sand had drifted in through fractures in the walls and settled into shallow dunes, as though the temple itself were slowly being reclaimed by the wasteland outside. Their torches cast wavering light against the chamber walls, but every time the flames moved, the shadows seemed to deepen instead of retreat.

They searched room after room.

They checked prayer chambers, storage alcoves, side sanctums, and passageways hidden behind collapsed arches. They turned over broken pedestals, examined murals, and brushed away layers of sand from sealed stone boxes that turned out to be empty. Fenrir kept an alert hand near Arondite, while Jade inspected each corner with the stubborn focus of someone who refused to surrender a truth simply because it had hidden itself well. Yet the Delian tree remained absent.

Not hidden.

Not waiting.

Absent.

At first Fenrir assumed they had merely missed a chamber. Then he assumed the tree might be deeper within the structure than the legends suggested. But with each passing hall, each dead end, each room stripped bare of anything living or sacred, a different thought began to settle over him.

What if there was nothing here at all?

He did not speak it right away. He could feel Jade’s determination beside him like a second flame, and he did not want to be the one to smother it. But the hour was slipping. Outside, the sun had already begun to bleed lower into the horizon, and the light filtering through the broken temple windows had shifted from hard gold to a duller, bruised amber. Night would not be kind to them in this desert. The creatures that came alive after sunset had already proven the first time they crossed the sands that they were not welcome guests here. If the Delian was not in the temple, then they would need to turn back before darkness made the journey impossible.

Fenrir's jaw tightened as he followed Jade into the final corridor.

She did not slow down. If anything, her steps had become more purposeful, as though she sensed the answer waiting just ahead and refused to let it outrun her. That feeling she had spoken of earlier, the one that had drawn her to the desert again and again, had grown stronger the deeper they entered the temple. Fenrir could see it in the sharpness of her gaze, in the way her fingers brushed the stone walls as they passed, in the quiet concentration with which she studied every detail. She was certain the Delian was here somewhere. He could feel that certainty in her as strongly as his own unease.
By the time they reached the last chamber, her hope had begun to turn brittle.

The room they entered felt different from the others. It was wider, higher, and far more sacred in its design. This had once been the grand priestess’s celestial room, the sanctuary of Delia herself. Though time had stripped it of any splendour, the chamber still carried the memory of reverence. The vaulted ceiling above them was cracked but decorated with remnants of star patterns. The floor had once been inlaid with a circular design, now fractured in several places. At the far end stood a long ceremonial table, and upon it lay the broken remains of devotional objects once used in worship: a shattered bowl, a cracked lamp, fragments of ritual vessels, and faded offerings reduced to dust.

But there was no tree.

No living root. No divine branch. No Delian, nothing. Only ruin remained.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Jade stared at the chamber with an almost frightening stillness. Fenrir had seen her calm, her poise, her composure under pressure, her ability to stand unshaken in the middle of war and chaos alike. But this was different. This was what happened when a woman who had carried herself with perfect balance for so long came face to face with the last thing she had hoped to preserve. The mask of serenity cracked not with noise, but with silence.

Then she exhaled sharply and turned her frustration on the room itself.

“Goddamnit,” she snapped, her voice rough with anger as she shoved the ceremonial objects from the table.

The broken items scattered across the floor in a small burst of sound, one piece striking stone and skidding into the shadow of the wall. Fenrir had never seen her like this. Not truly. Jade could be fierce, of course, and sharp when needed, but desperate? Raw? Wounded by disappointment to this degree? That was new. And it shook him more than he expected.
She looked around the chamber as though refusing to accept what her eyes were showing her.

“There must be something,” she said, already turning toward the walls, her voice quickening as the thoughts tumbled out of her. “We must have passed something. A hidden panel, a release mechanism, a switch, perhaps a false wall. There has to be something we overlooked!”

“Jade,” Fenrir said gently.

She did not hear him at once, or perhaps she heard him and simply could not stop. “Maybe the main hall. We should go back and search it again. There could be a concealed trigger or a passage beneath the floor. Argus’s priests would not have hidden a legend like this in plain sight, not after—”

“Jade!” His voice sharpened, not in anger, but enough to cut through hers. It was the first time he had raised it, even slightly, and it brought her attention back to him at once. He stood where he was, his expression firm but soft around the edges. “That is enough. Let it go.”

Jade stopped moving, though the emotion in her face remained. Her breathing had become tighter, more uneven. For a moment she looked less like the balanced warrior who had guided him through the desert and more like someone trying very hard not to fall apart.

“You do not understand,” she said, the words strained. “I cannot just let it go.”

Fenrir took a careful step forward. “Why?” he asked, not with challenge, but with honest confusion. “Why is this legend so important to you? We came here because we thought the wood might be useful, yes, perhaps for the throne, perhaps for something else, but that is not all of it. Not for you.”

Jade’s head turned slightly, and when she spoke again, her voice was no longer controlled. “It is not about wood!” The words rang out through the chamber like the snap of a blade. “This is the last of them,” she said, her tone rising as the pain at last forced its way through. “The last of my people.”

The silence that followed was heavy and immediate.

Jade’s expression changed the moment the words left her mouth. She seemed to realise what she had let loose too late, but it did not matter. The chamber had already heard her truth. Fenrir had already seen it.

And he didn't move. Because he understood.

He understood more than she realised. They were both rulers now, both survivors of worlds that had tried to erase them in different ways. Edenia had been taken from her. His own kind had been scattered and hunted, his place in the world shaped by violence and exile. They were not the same, but they were alike in the only way that mattered in that moment: they both knew what it meant to stand in the wreckage of a people and wonder what remained.

“I cannot let it disappear like this,” Jade said again, but softer this time. The anger had not gone, only the edge of it. Beneath it lay grief, old and layered and still bleeding. “Not after everything.”

Fenrir closed the distance between them slowly, as though approaching something fragile. He reached out and let his hand settle on her arm, warm and steady. Then, with the same tenderness he had used so many times before, he lifted her chin so she would meet his eyes.

“I understand,” he said quietly. “Believe me, I do.”

Jade gave a faint, broken laugh that held no humour in it. “No, Fen,” she answered, and there was sorrow in the way she spoke his name. “You do not. You still have your realm somewhere out there. Whatever you might have lost, it has not been erased. Not entirely.” Her eyes shimmered, and a few tears gathered there before falling in silence. She did not wipe them away. “What do I have? False hope that one day Shao Kahn’s crimes against my people will be undone? I could live forever and still never see my home restored. Tell me, Fen. What will I have when I leave this desert empty again?”
The question landed between them like a wound reopening.

Fenrir did not answer at once. His hand remained on her arm, and for a heartbeat he seemed to search for the right words, though his expression made it clear that no ordinary answer would be enough. When he finally spoke, it was not with the careful tone of a king or a strategist. It came from somewhere quieter, deeper and honest.

“You would have me.” Jade’s breath caught.

Fenrir's voice softened further as he took her hand in his. “There is so much I wish I could tell you about myself,” he admitted. For the first time that evening, something in his confidence wavered, just for a moment. “You have no idea how much it pains me that I cannot. But know this: when I say that I love you, Jade, I mean it with everything I have.” His thumb brushed against her knuckles as he held her hand more tightly. “I understand what you are going through. I know I cannot take this grief away from you. I know I cannot fix what was done to your people. But I will not leave your side. I would rather die than let that happen.”

Jade looked at him as though she had never seen him quite this way before.

Not as the emperor or warrior...Not even as the man she loved.

He was fragile there, in that moment, and yet he offered her the whole of himself anyway. That foolishness, his willingness to bare his heart when he had every reason to shield it, made something in her ache and soften at once.
And in that moment, they both truly understood what had been growing between them all along. Not duty. Not convenience. Not even desire, though desire had its place too.

Something deeper. Something that had taken root in silence, in battle, in trust, in grief, in every shared glance and every unspoken concern. Something they had not named at first because naming it would have made it real, and real things could be broken. Yet here it stood, unbroken despite the ruin around them.

Jade had known love before, in fragments and in passing, but never like this. Never with this force. Never with this clarity. When she looked into Fenrir's eyes, she could see herself as he saw her: not as a symbol, not as a surviving relic of Edenia, but as a woman worthy of devotion, admiration, and tenderness. That realisation struck deeper than she expected. It was a strange and frightening thing to be seen so completely, and yet it was also the safest she had ever felt.

How had she fallen so deeply for a man she had known for so little time? The question had no simple answer.

The truth was that it should not have happened. It should have been impossible. They had met too recently. Their lives had changed too fast. Too much had been lost, too much had been demanded of them both. And yet the impossibility only made the feeling stronger. Deep in her soul, Jade knew she had found something rare enough to outlast fear. Something like a soulmate, though even the thought of that word made her chest tighten.

She had never understood someone so deeply while still learning who he was. She had never felt this safe in another’s presence. She had never been loved in a way that made the world itself seem quieter when he looked at her.

And she suspected, with equal certainty, that he felt it too.

Perhaps the day they first stood together in that arena had not been luck at all. Perhaps it had been destiny... or fate.
Something had been set in motion there, and now, standing in the ruined sanctuary of Delia, she could feel it more clearly than ever. Her duties as queen and empress still frightened her. They were vast, heavy things, and she carried them with the burden of someone who knew how much could be broken by even one wrong move. But with Fenrir beside her, the fear no longer stood alone. It had something to lean against. Something that would not vanish in the night.

Tenderly, she lifted her free hand and caressed his cheek, answering the comfort he had given her with the same gentle touch he often offered to her. It was a quiet language between them now: touch for reassurance, protection. For love. A promise that no matter how dark the world grew, neither of them would have to face it alone.

“Fen,” she said softly, her voice suddenly small in the vast chamber. “I am sorry I reacted that way.”

“No,” he answered at once, placing his hand over hers where it rested against his face. “You have nothing to apologise for. I understand, believe me. I do.”

Jade nodded, and gratitude shone quietly in her eyes. “Still,” she said, her tone gentler now, more composed, “it was uncalled for.” For a moment she said nothing more. Then, with a calm certainty that made her words feel sacred, she added, “I love you, Fen.”

Fenrir lowered his forehead to hers in answer, the gesture wordless but full of meaning. “I love you too, Jade.”

The words carried a weight they had never quite carried before.

They may have spoken them once already, on the palace rooftop the day their relationship first began to bloom, but those earlier words had only been a beginning. These were deeper. These had been forged in grief and longing, in the wreckage of a lost hope and the strength it had taken to remain standing within it. They settled into the chamber around them as though the temple itself had paused to listen.

The air seemed to still.

No wind intruded through the broken stone. No distant creature disturbed the silence. Even the dust hanging in the light above them seemed suspended for that single moment, as if the world had chosen to hold its breath so they might have this peace intact for a few precious seconds.

It was a rare kind of love; Weathered. Fierce. Permanent in the way only things that had survived ruin could be. A love that had looked into the abyss and chosen, somehow, to build something beautiful there anyway.

They stood together for a long while after that, holding each other in silence. No words were needed. Their heartbeats, their breathing, the warmth of their hands; all of it spoke more clearly than speech could have managed.

When at last they separated, it was not because the feeling had faded, but because the moment had become too still to remain untouched forever.

Jade turned away first, swiping at her face with the back of one hand before forcing out a breath that was half laugh, half defeat. “Damn it,” she said, though the anger had gone out of her voice now. In its place was something lighter, more candid, almost relieved. “I really wished we had found it, you know?”

She knelt and began setting the scattered devotional items back upon the table, arranging them with a care that suggested she could not quite bring herself to treat them as useless even now. Fenrir watched her for a moment before crossing to the centre of the room.

The cracked circular floor beneath his boots caught his eye then. A decorative emblem had once been set there, its ornate design still faintly visible despite the damage. It was a Delian symbol of some kind, set into the stone like a seal or marker.
He gave it a thoughtful look and let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Who knows,” he said, standing over it with renewed steadiness. “Perhaps fate has other plans for u-”

He did not get to finish. The floor gave way beneath him with a sharp crack, the stone splitting open like brittle paper. The emblem fractured. Dust burst upward. And before Jade could even fully turn to him, Fenrir was falling.

“Fenrir!”

Her cry tore through the chamber as she rushed forward, the last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed him being the black, widening hole where the floor had been a moment before.