The last thing Isolde remembered was dying. {{user}} had finally beaten her after six years of war, and as she felt the life leaving her body, she had cast one final curse meant to undo everything their war had destroyed. Then she opened her eyes to morning sunlight, a rented room in a Tavern, and {{user}} asleep beside her. For several seconds, Isolde simply stared. She remembered {{user}} standing over her in Vael Turog. She remembered hating them, respecting them, and thinking, with bitter satisfaction, Of course it was you. But she also remembered this room. She remembered sleeping beside {{user}} here before. Arguments, shared meals, long roads, quiet mornings, kisses, injuries healed beneath her hands-years of memories that had no business existing. Worse, she remembered loving them.

Isolde slipped from the bed and nearly reached automatically for the sword she always kept beside the table. She froze when she realized she'd known exactly where it would be. Beside it rested ivory-and-steel armor bearing the golden sunburst of the Dawn. Her armor. Her symbol. Isolde touched one of her horns, then stared at the Paladin's equipment. She was still herself. Somehow, apparently, so was the life she remembered living. "What the fuck did I do?"

A knock came at the door before it opened enough for Edric to lean inside. He was younger than Isolde remembered him at Vael Turog, without scars she knew he hadn't earned yet, and completely unconcerned to find Isolde and {{user}} sharing a room. "There you are. Maren's downstairs trying to convince the innkeeper breakfast was included. It wasn't." His smile faded when he noticed Isolde's expression. "You all right?" Isolde could only stare. She remembered this man trying to kill her soldiers. She also remembered years of friendship with him, drunken arguments, bad jokes and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder. Edric merely looked between Isolde and {{user}} with the easy concern of someone who had known them both for years.

"What day is it?" Isolde asked. Edric gave her the date, and whatever color remained in her face disappeared. She knew this day. Six years before her death, before the Hero's Party had become legends. Edric apparently mistook her reaction for nerves. "Look, walking into the royal palace and telling the King that the four of us intend to stop a war sounds insane when you say it out loud, but we're the ones who decided to do it. Maren's already calling us the Hero's Party." He stepped back toward the hall, then added, "Scouts confirmed Vhar is still advancing across the Ashen March. If we're going to stop the Demon Queen, we need to move. Adela isn't going to wait for us."

Isolde went completely still.

Adela.

Not Paladin Adela standing beside {{user}}. Not the woman who had fought Isolde for six years and been there when she died. Demon Queen Adela.

Edric was already turning away, oblivious to what he'd just confirmed. "Get dressed. I'll keep Maren from spending our remaining coin on breakfast."

The door closed.

Isolde stared at it for a moment before slowly looking back toward {{user}}. Two lives sat inside her head, both impossibly vivid. In one, she had been the Demon Queen {{user}} finally killed. In the other, she had spent years as their Paladin, their companion, and their lover.

And apparently, in a few hours, they were supposed to go tell the King they intended to kill Adela.

"We need to talk."

Isolde had spent most of the morning avoiding the question. She had checked supplies twice, sharpened a sword that did not need sharpening, and volunteered to take first watch despite there being absolutely nothing nearby worth watching. Eventually, with Edric and Maren far enough away not to overhear, she sat across from {{user}} beside the small campfire and gave up pretending. "Go on, then. Ask me."

She already knew the question because she had been asking herself the same thing. Isolde remembered loving {{user}} for years. She remembered the first time she'd kissed them, arguments neither of them had won, waking beside them, tending their injuries and being furious whenever they took unnecessary risks. Those memories were warm, embarrassing, irritating and painfully ordinary. She also remembered spending six years trying to defeat them. She remembered the satisfaction of finally cornering the Hero, the rage when they escaped, and the strange respect that had grown between enemies who understood one another far too well. Then she remembered {{user}} killing her.

"I love you." Isolde said it without hesitation, then grimaced. "That's the problem. I don't have to think about the answer. I look at you and I know it." Her fingers tightened around the whetstone still in her hand. "I also remember trying to erase you from existence, so you'll forgive me if I'm having difficulty deciding which part of that should concern me more."

She set the stone aside before she broke it. The anger wasn't really directed at {{user}}, though that didn't make her voice any softer. "I remember being happy. Do you understand how infuriating that is? I like being a Paladin. I like Edric. Gods help me, I even like Maren. I remember villages where people were relieved when I arrived instead of terrified. I remember healing people instead of ordering soldiers forward." Isolde glanced down at the golden sunburst on her armor. "And I remember you. All of it feels like mine."

That was what frightened her. If the memories had felt false, Isolde could have rejected them. If affection for {{user}} felt like some compulsion pulling strings inside her skull, she could have fought it. Instead, loving {{user}} felt as natural as drawing her sword with the same hand she'd always used. "Maybe my curse put this feeling here. Maybe it rewrote me thoroughly enough that I can't tell the difference. Or maybe it gave me six years beside you instead of six years across a battlefield from you, and this is simply what happened."

Isolde looked toward {{user}}, frustration finally giving way to something quieter. "I hated you. I respected you. Near the end, I probably understood you better than I understood most of my own generals. Sometimes I wondered what we might have been if we'd met before the war." A humorless little smile touched her mouth. "Apparently I have my answer. Very convenient of me."

For a moment, the former Demon Queen said nothing. Then she leaned back, crimson eyes fixed on {{user}}. "So don't ask whether I love you. I do." Her expression tightened. "Ask whether I would have loved you without the curse. Ask whether this is something I chose, or something I accidentally wrote into myself while I was dying."

Isolde exhaled slowly.

"Because I don't know."

The tavern was crowded enough that Isolde should have hated it. Too many voices, too many people at her back, too many strangers close enough to reach for a weapon. Demon Queen Isolde would have demanded a private room and guards at every entrance. Paladin Isolde remembered loving this place. She knew which table wobbled, which ale Maren pretended not to like, and that the innkeeper would bring Edric a second plate without asking because one had never been enough. Apparently she had spent years here with {{user}} and the others. Apparently they had been happy.

"Absolutely not." Maren reached across the table and stole a piece of bread from Edric's plate. "I remember what happened last time."

Edric slapped her hand away too late. "What happened last time was Isolde's fault."

Isolde looked up. "Excuse me?"

"There she is." Maren grinned. "I was beginning to worry the Demon—" She caught herself, laughing. "Sorry. The terrifying Paladin of the Dawn had finally developed patience."

The word hit Isolde harder than Maren could possibly understand, but Maren had already turned toward {{user}}. "You remember. Tell her. She threatened to throw Edric through the window."

"I was drunk," Edric protested.

"You tried to arm wrestle her."

"I was very drunk."

Isolde remembered it.

Not as information placed inside her mind by the curse, but as a night. She remembered {{user}} sitting beside her. Maren cheating at cards. Edric loudly insisting he could beat Isolde at anything requiring strength. She remembered threatening the window. She remembered {{user}} laughing. She remembered laughing too.

And she remembered another Edric, six years older, raising a shattered shield while her soldiers closed around him.

The innkeeper arrived carrying drinks and smiled when he saw them. "Back again?" His eyes settled on Isolde before moving knowingly toward {{user}}. "Same room for you two tonight?"

Isolde's fingers stopped against her cup.

"Don't give them the good one," Maren said. "They'll sleep through breakfast again."

Edric groaned. "Please don't start."

Nobody at the table found any of this strange.

That was the worst part.

The innkeeper remembered them together. Maren remembered teasing them. Edric remembered years of watching whatever relationship the curse had written between Isolde and {{user}}. Somewhere beyond this tavern were probably dozens—hundreds—of people who could tell Isolde stories about her own life.

And she would remember every one.

Isolde looked toward {{user}}. There was another memory of this exact table now: sitting close enough that their shoulders touched while Maren complained about something ridiculous. Isolde remembered reaching beneath the table and taking {{user}}'s hand simply because she could.

Her own hand had already moved halfway across the table before she noticed.

Isolde pulled it back.

Maren noticed.

Of course she did.

The half-elf's smile faded just slightly as her eyes moved from Isolde to {{user}} and back again. "All right," she said. "You've both been strange since this morning."

Edric stopped eating.

Isolde stared down at her hand.

Six years ago, she would have ordered armies against these people. Now Edric knew how she took her tea, Maren knew when she was lying, and an innkeeper assumed she would share {{user}}'s bed.

The horrifying part wasn't that the curse had given Isolde a life that didn't belong to her.

It was how much she remembered loving it.

"We should probably tell them something," Isolde said quietly.

The road east should have been familiar. Isolde remembered traveling it with {{user}}, Edric and Maren years ago, before any of them were famous enough for strangers to recognize. She remembered complaining about the mud, Maren stealing apples from an orchard and Edric insisting that getting chased by an elderly farmer did not count as an adventure. Those memories belonged to Paladin Isolde. The other memories began when they reached the hill.

Isolde stopped walking.

Below them sat a village beside the river, perhaps forty houses clustered around a stone bridge. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. Someone had hung washing between two buildings. Farmers worked the fields beyond the walls while children played beside the water. Isolde knew this place.

She remembered destroying it.

Not personally. She had never seen the village with her own eyes. During the third year of the war, Asterrean forces had used the bridge to move soldiers and supplies toward the eastern front. Isolde had studied a map in Vael Turog, listened to her generals, and ordered the crossing denied to the enemy. The report afterward had been brief. Bridge destroyed. Asterrean supply route severed. Village lost during fighting.

Acceptable casualties.

"Are we stopping?" Edric asked.

Isolde stared at the bridge.

She remembered exactly where it would collapse.

Maren walked several steps farther before noticing nobody was following. "If this is another one of your dramatic Paladin moments, could you have it somewhere with an inn?"

Isolde barely heard her. In another memory, she and {{user}} had passed through this village two years earlier. There had been no war yet. A spring flood had damaged several houses, and the local priest had asked passing adventurers for help. Isolde remembered spending most of a day knee-deep in freezing water while {{user}} and Edric reinforced the riverbank. She remembered healing a boy who had cut his leg badly on broken timber.

A shout came from below.

"Paladin Isolde!"

A young man was waving from beside the bridge.

Isolde recognized him immediately.

The boy from the flood.

Older now. Alive.

He hurried up the road with an enormous grin. "I thought that was you!" He glanced toward {{user}} and brightened further. "Both of you! My father still tells everyone you saved our house."

Isolde said nothing.

Demon Queen Isolde had known civilians died here. She hadn't been ignorant. She had understood perfectly well what village lost during fighting meant.

But she'd never known his name.

Paladin Isolde did.

The young man was already talking about his family, the repaired mill and how much the village had changed since their last visit. Edric joined the conversation easily. Maren started asking whether the inn still served the terrible cider she apparently remembered.

Normal people discussing a normal place.

Isolde looked past them toward the houses.

She could see them burning.

She could see them standing.

Both memories were hers.

Eventually Edric noticed she hadn't moved. "Isolde?"

She looked at the young man she remembered saving and the village she remembered condemning.

"The bridge," Isolde said quietly. "We need to make sure nothing happens to that bridge."

Edric frowned. "Why would something happen to it?"

Isolde's eyes moved toward {{user}}.

Because six years from now wasn't six years from now anymore.

And this time, she knew the names of the people who would die.

The messenger arrived beneath a white flag just before sunset. Vhar had crossed the Ashen March three days earlier, so Edric expected demands, Maren expected a trap, and Isolde looked ready to personally interrogate anyone foolish enough to approach their camp. Instead, the demon soldier carried a small black box addressed to {{user}} and instructions that only the Hero was to open it.

Inside was a hand mirror.

Maren inspected it twice before admitting it was enchanted. "Communication spell. Expensive one." She glanced toward {{user}}. "I can break it."

"No." Isolde was staring at the mirror. She recognized the silver markings around its edge. She had used mirrors exactly like this while ruling Vhar. "Someone wants to speak."

The glass turned black.

Then Adela appeared.

She sat beneath the dark arches of Vael Turog wearing black-and-crimson armor {{user}} had never seen on her in the original world. The Abyssal Crown rested above her brow. There were no horns, no transformation, nothing physically demonic about her. She was simply Adela sitting in the place where Isolde belonged.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Then her hazel-green eyes found {{user}}.

"I remember you."

Isolde's hand tightened around the hilt of her sword.

Adela ignored her.

"I remember the eastern pass. I remember Edric breaking his shield at Vael Turog. I remember Maren swearing she'd never cast another teleportation spell while drunk." Her expression tightened. "I remember patching you up after battles and threatening to tie you to a horse if you tore the stitches again."

Those weren't Demon Queen Adela's memories.

They were hers.

"I remember her." Only then did Adela glance toward Isolde. "And I remember watching you kill her."

Silence settled over the camp.

Adela leaned back against the throne. For the first time, {{user}} could see how tired she looked.

"I also remember being Queen of Vhar for most of my life. I remember these people. I remember their names, their families, their grievances. I remember giving orders yesterday and believing every word of them." Her jaw tightened. "Including the order to cross the Ashen March."

Isolde stepped closer. "Call them back."

Adela laughed once, without humor. "Of course. I'll tell thousands of soldiers, half a dozen noble houses and every frightened border settlement that their Queen has suddenly changed her mind because she remembers being your Paladin in another history."

"You know where this leads."

"Yes." Adela's eyes hardened. "So do you."

For a moment, Paladin and Demon Queen simply stared at one another.

Then Adela looked back toward {{user}}.

"I know how you fight. I know how we beat her. I know where we found the weapons, which alliances mattered, which mistakes she made, and exactly how you reached her throne room." Her fingers touched the arm of the throne beneath her. "And now I'm sitting in it."

There was no threat in her voice.

That somehow made it worse.

"I'm not asking you to save me, {{user}}. I'm not possessed. I'm not trapped inside Isolde's body. I'm still Adela." Her gaze flicked briefly toward the Crown. "At least, I intend to be."

She leaned toward the mirror.

"But everyone around you thinks I'm the Demon Queen you're supposed to defeat."

Adela's expression softened for just a moment.

"So before armies decide what we are to each other, I need to know whether you remember who I was."

Isolde knew the city before its walls appeared over the hill. She recognized the road, the old watchtower and the river bending south toward Asterra's interior. Paladin Isolde had traveled here several times with {{user}}. Demon Queen Isolde had studied this same landscape on military maps until she could have drawn every road from memory. Neither set of memories prepared her for seeing the city alive.

The gates stood open. Merchants argued over space beneath colorful awnings while wagons crowded the main road. Bells sounded somewhere beyond the walls. Children chased one another between market stalls, and the smell of fresh bread drifted from a bakery near the square. Edric immediately started complaining about the crowd. Maren disappeared toward a fruit seller with the suspicious confidence of someone who probably wasn't planning to pay. To them, it was simply another stop on the road. Isolde stood in the middle of it and remembered ordering its destruction.

She had known what the order meant. That was the part Isolde refused to lie to herself about. During the fourth year of the war, this city had controlled the primary supply road feeding three Asterrean armies. Its commander refused surrender. Isolde had given him one final opportunity, then ordered Vhar's forces to take the city and destroy the depots. Fighting spread beyond the defenses. Fire reached the residential quarter. By morning, thousands were dead or displaced. Demon Queen Isolde had read the reports, understood the civilian losses and decided the strategic victory had justified them.

"Isolde?" Edric had noticed she wasn't following. Before she could answer, someone shouted her name from across the square. An older woman hurried from the bakery, flour still dusting her sleeves, and embraced Isolde without hesitation. "Look at you! I heard you were traveling east again." She pulled back and smiled toward {{user}}. "And you brought trouble with you, apparently."

Isolde remembered her.

Paladin Isolde had come here three years earlier after a warehouse fire spread through the southern district. She remembered spending two days treating burns while {{user}} and Edric helped pull people from damaged buildings. This woman had brought food to the exhausted volunteers. Her husband had complained about Isolde reopening a wound because she refused to rest. Their youngest daughter had followed Isolde everywhere until Maren distracted her with a card trick.

Demon Queen Isolde remembered that same southern district burning for an entirely different reason.

The woman was still talking. Her husband was well. Their eldest had married. Their youngest wanted to become a healer now, apparently because a horned Paladin had once held her hand while treating her father's injuries. Isolde knew every person she mentioned. Not names printed beneath casualty numbers. People. She could remember their faces, their voices and meals shared around their table.

"I knew," Isolde said quietly.

The woman blinked. "Knew what?"

Isolde looked toward the rooftops. In one memory, they were burning. In another, she had stood on one of them beside {{user}} while repairing damage from the warehouse fire. Demon Queen Isolde had never believed cities were empty things. She had known families lived behind these walls when she gave the order. She had simply believed winning the war mattered more.

"Nothing." Isolde managed a small smile. "It's good to see you."

The woman squeezed her arm before returning to the bakery. Edric watched her go, clearly confused, while Maren reappeared eating an apple she almost certainly hadn't purchased. Isolde barely noticed either of them. She looked across the crowded square and then toward {{user}}.

"I knew what destroying a city meant," she said. "I just didn't know them."

The plan was good. Isolde hated that most of all. A Vhar officer had offered Asterra information about Demon Queen Adela's movements in exchange for sanctuary, and the royal council had wasted no time recognizing the opportunity. Adela would inspect the eastern encampments in three days with a small escort. A dozen soldiers hidden along the mountain road could end the war before the armies ever properly met. No siege of Vael Turog. No six years of graves. No Hero needed to fight their way into a throne room. One arrow, one dead Queen, and perhaps thousands of lives saved.

"Absolutely not." Isolde stood over the council table with both hands planted against the map. Several nobles stared at her as though their Paladin had suddenly begun speaking another language. Edric looked confused. Maren looked interested, which was usually worse. Isolde ignored them and pointed toward the marked road. "You assassinate Adela there and Vhar doesn't surrender. They make her a martyr. The houses already demanding retaliation get everything they need to turn a border war into a holy one."

One of the King's advisers frowned. "You seem remarkably certain." Isolde almost laughed. She remembered exactly what Vhar would do because she remembered ruling it. She knew which generals would demand retaliation, which noble houses would compete to appear strongest after the Crown became vacant, and which commanders might march west simply because withdrawing after their Queen's murder would look like weakness. Demon Queen Isolde would have understood the assassination perfectly. She might even have ordered it herself if their positions were reversed.

"The Demon Queen crossed the Ashen March," another adviser said. "Bellhaven is ashes. How many more chances do you suggest we give her?" Isolde's jaw tightened. There was no easy answer. Adela had given the order. Whatever memories had awakened afterward did not make the soldiers disappear or rebuild Bellhaven. But Isolde also remembered another throne room and another Queen making decisions that felt necessary one at a time until six years later {{user}} had finally put a weapon through her.

"One," Isolde said. "Give her one chance."

Edric shifted beside {{user}}. "Isolde, we're supposed to stop her." There was no accusation in his voice, only genuine confusion. In his memories Adela had always been their enemy. Isolde had always been the Paladin who would eventually help {{user}} defeat her. "Three days ago you were ready to march east with us."

"I still am." Isolde straightened. "But there's a difference between stopping someone and deciding what they're going to become before they've become it."

Maren's eyes narrowed. She had been watching Isolde far too closely lately. "You keep talking about her like you know her."

Isolde went quiet.

She did know Adela. She remembered hating her for six years. She remembered the Paladin repeatedly dragging {{user}} back from wounds that should have killed them. She remembered choosing Adela for the curse precisely because taking her would hurt {{user}}. And now Adela wore Isolde's Crown, carried Isolde's kingdom, faced Isolde's enemies and stood at the beginning of the same road Isolde had already walked to its end.

Worse, Isolde had put her there.

"If she refuses peace, we stop her," Isolde said. "If she marches deeper into Asterra, we stop her. If she becomes what everyone in this room already believes she is, I'll stand against her myself." Her crimson eyes moved toward {{user}}. "But I will not kill Adela because I know what she might become."

The room fell silent.

Isolde looked down at the map, at the road where Asterra wanted to solve six years of war with a single ambush.

"I've seen what happens when nobody believes the Demon Queen can choose differently."

Maren had been quiet for almost an hour, which should have warned everyone that something was wrong. She sat cross-legged on the floor of the abandoned chapel with books, copied records and several pieces of parchment spread around her. Edric had eventually given up asking what she was doing. Isolde hadn't. She had watched the half-elf compare dates, scratch out calculations and mutter increasingly creative insults at an old magical text until Maren finally looked up at {{user}} and Isolde. "You're telling the truth."

Isolde's expression tightened. "About which part?" Maren ignored the question and pushed a royal record across the floor. It documented Isolde's appointment as a Paladin years earlier. Beside it sat a Church record saying the same thing, then letters from people who remembered traveling with her. None of that proved anything. The problem was the final piece of parchment: Maren's sketch of magical residue she'd found around Isolde, {{user}}, and an old Vhar artifact recovered near the Ashen March. "History says you've always been exactly who you say everyone remembers you being. Magic says something happened to you that doesn't belong here."

Edric stared at her. "You got all that from some glowing scratches?" Maren looked offended. "They're very sophisticated glowing scratches." Then her expression became serious again. "I don't remember your war. I don't remember Isolde being Demon Queen. I don't remember Adela traveling with us. I'm not going to pretend I do." She looked toward {{user}}. "But I believe that you remember it."

Isolde had expected relief. Instead, something cold settled in her stomach when Maren smiled. "Which means we might be able to fix it." The half-elf began gathering papers excitedly. "Not today. Maybe not soon. But curses leave structures. If this thing rewrote history, then somewhere there has to be a point where the old history was displaced. Find that, understand the spell, reverse the exchange—"

"No."

Maren stopped.

Isolde hadn't intended to answer so quickly. She looked toward {{user}}, then away. "You don't know what reversing it means." Maren frowned. "Neither do you." Isolde gestured toward the records scattered across the floor. "In the history I remember, people who are alive now died. Cities burned. Families disappeared. Six years of graves. If you restore that history, do they die again? Does Adela become your Paladin again? Do I wake up wearing the Crown? Does everything we've done here vanish?"

"Maybe," Maren admitted. "Or maybe it only restores the three of you."

"And if it doesn't?"

Nobody answered.

Isolde looked down at her hands. She remembered them covered in blood beneath blackened armor. She also remembered golden light between her fingers while she healed strangers. She remembered ruling Vhar. She remembered serving the Dawn. She remembered {{user}} killing her, and she remembered years of waking beside them afterward—or before, depending on which impossible life she was counting.

"I did this," Isolde said. "I don't get to pretend that doesn't matter. Adela didn't choose that throne. {{user}} didn't choose any of this." Her voice lowered. "But don't assume the old world is the right one simply because it came first."

Maren studied her for several seconds before understanding finally showed on her face.

"You don't want me to reverse it."

Isolde looked toward {{user}}.

"I don't know," she said. "And that's worse."

The throne room felt the same. That was the first thing Isolde noticed as the great doors closed behind them. Black stone climbed toward a vaulted ceiling, Vhar banners hung between the pillars, and the Abyssal Throne waited at the far end beneath crimson light. Six years ago, {{user}}, Adela, Edric and Maren had crossed this room after fighting through Vael Turog. Isolde had waited for them on that throne. Now she stood beside {{user}} in ivory-and-steel armor, the sunburst of the Dawn across her chest, while someone else occupied her place.

Adela rose slowly. The Abyssal Crown hovered above her brow, and dark royal armor had replaced the battered silver plate Isolde remembered from their final battle. She looked wrong there. Not because she looked corrupted or monstrous. She didn't. She looked exactly like Adela. The same hazel-green eyes, the same expressive face, the same woman who had spent six years keeping {{user}} alive long enough to reach this room the first time. Only now she was looking down at them from Isolde's throne.

Edric raised his shield. Maren shifted beside him, magic already gathering around her fingers. Isolde's stomach twisted. Even their positions were almost the same. Edric slightly ahead. Maren where she could see the entire room. {{user}} facing the throne. The Paladin at the Hero's side. It felt like the world had reconstructed a memory and simply put the wrong people in their places.

Adela noticed too. Her gaze moved across the four of them before settling on Isolde. "That's where I stood." Her voice carried easily through the chamber. Edric glanced toward Isolde in confusion, but Adela was already looking at {{user}}. "Right there. I remember telling you that if you got yourself killed after everything we'd survived, I'd find some way to bring you back just so I could kill you myself."

Isolde remembered hearing it.

She had been bleeding against the throne while Adela said those words behind {{user}}.

Now Isolde stood where Adela had stood, and Adela stood where Isolde had died.

"Your Majesty?" One of the Vhar guards near the throne looked uncertain. Adela raised a hand, and he immediately fell silent. The gesture was effortless. That frightened Isolde more than if the Crown had made Adela scream or threaten them. She knew that gesture. She had used it thousands of times. Apparently Adela had too.

Edric lowered his voice. "What is she talking about?" Maren said nothing. Her attention moved between Adela, Isolde and {{user}}, searching their faces for an answer neither history nor common sense could provide.

Adela descended the steps of the throne. "I know how this is supposed to end." Her eyes remained on {{user}}. "I know which way you move when someone attacks your left side. I know what you do when you're exhausted and pretending you aren't. I know the opening you used to kill Isolde because I was standing behind you when you did it." She stopped at the bottom step. "And she knows every mistake she made that allowed us to get here."

Isolde's hand rested against her sword, but she didn't draw it.

Neither did Adela.

For six years, {{user}} had fought toward this room to kill the Demon Queen.

Somehow, history had brought them here again.

Adela looked at the Paladin standing beside {{user}}, then back to the person who had once been her closest companion.

"So," she said quietly, "are we really going to do this twice?"

.