“Hey, I have a question for you. I’m not sure who I’m talking to right now, but since I’m going to die, I’d like to think someone can hear me,” a woman said, a sad smile resting on her face.
She had long pink hair and golden eyes, two small moles under her left eye, though the pair of crooked, broken glasses barely hanging from her nose made it difficult to see them clearly.
A long black dress covered her body, most of it hidden beneath the thick ropes binding her tightly to a wooden stake.
Even if she wanted to struggle, there was nowhere for her to go.
Massive iron bars surrounded her on every side, forming an enormous birdcage suspended high above what remained of a city.
From where she sat, Iris could see ruined buildings, collapsed streets, and distant fires still burning beneath a sky that had long since lost anything resembling peace.
“I tried my best, you know. I’m the last survivor out of everyone else. I watched everyone I cared about die. I miss them.” Iris sighed, lowering her head as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
There wasn’t much anger left in her voice anymore.
Not because she had forgiven anyone, but because after everything she had endured, exhaustion had finally begun to outweigh hatred.
She had fought until there was no one left beside her, and now even she had reached the end.
A slow clap sounded from behind her.
Quiet laughter followed.
“Are these really your last words, Iris, my dear? I was expecting something a little more fiery from someone who caused me so much pain.”
The demon stepped into view, carrying himself with the relaxed confidence of someone who already knew he had won.
At first glance, he could almost be mistaken for a handsome human man, if not for the cyan scales scattered across his skin and the long spiraled horns rising from his head.
Long hair of the same unnatural cyan color fell behind him, while crimson eyes remained fixed entirely on Iris.
He smiled as he approached the cage, looking less like someone preparing to execute his greatest enemy and more like a man visiting an old friend.
“I was busy asking my friend a question… just let me finish,” Iris muttered.
“You really have gone crazy, haven’t you?” The demon smiled as he stopped in front of her.
“You know you don’t have to die. All you’d have to do is agree to become my bride.”
“I’d rather die a thousand times over. Go to hell!” Iris yelled, pulling uselessly against the ropes.
Yet instead of angering him, her response seemed to please him even more.
“There it is. That fire I loved so much.” His smile widened as he watched her struggle.
“So beautiful. I thought I’d managed to smother it completely, yet here you are, still burning just as brightly.” He tilted his head, amusement dancing in his crimson eyes.
“Now you’ve made me curious. What was this insane question you were asking the air?”
“I was just wondering…” Iris stopped struggling and turned her attention toward the ruined city beneath them.
For a moment, she simply stared at it.
Twenty years of mistakes, victories, deaths, and disasters stretched out beneath that cage, all ending in this one miserable scene.
“If you could go back in time to any point in your life, how much would you change? Would you be afraid of the butterfly effect? Would you worry that changing one little thing might somehow make everything worse… or would you just hope whatever future you created would be better than the one you already lived through?”
For the first time, the demon fell quiet.
Then he laughed.
“So you desire change, don’t you?” He slowly walked closer to her.
“That can be arranged. If the great Witch of Flames were sent back in time, all the way to the beginning, do you think she could stop this miserable world from ever coming to be?”
Iris’s eyes widened.
Before she could respond, his hand wrapped around her throat.
He pulled her closer, forcing her to look directly into his eyes while laughter escaped him once again.
Realization slowly crossed Iris’s face, but there was something else beneath it now.
Hope.
Dangerous, desperate hope.
“Is that what you desire, Iris?” he whispered.
“To restart from zero? To go back and fix this horrible bad-ending?”
“Yeah.” Iris glared directly into his crimson eyes.
Whatever exhaustion had been weighing down her voice disappeared in an instant.
“I’d do anything. If I could go back, I’d change everything. And this time, I’d kill you. I’d find out who you were back then, what human life you were pretending to live, and I’d rip your heart out myself!”
The demon stared at her for several seconds before bursting into laughter.
His voice echoed throughout the cage, louder and louder until even the dying city beneath them seemed silent by comparison.
Then, without warning, his hand drove through her chest.
Iris’s body jerked violently against the wooden stake.
Her eyes widened as blood spilled from her mouth, running down her chin and staining the front of her dress.
For a moment, she couldn’t even understand what had happened.
Her body simply felt cold.
“Then catch me if you can, Miss Iris Blackwell.” The demon leaned closer, his voice almost affectionate despite the blood now covering his hand.
“My dear Bad-Ending Witch. Let my name be engraved into your nightmares, because I’ve already won once. I merely wish to win a second time.” His grin stretched wider as Iris’s vision began to fade.
“I am Superbia, the Devil of Pride.”
“I’ll kill you…” Iris coughed, struggling to force the words out while what little strength remained in her body disappeared.
Even then, she refused to look away from him.
“Just wait for me. I’ll kill you.”
Superbia’s expression softened into something almost gentle.
“Then I’ll send you back to where it all started. The moment you first entered the world of the supernatural.”
The ruined city blurred around her.
The cage, the flames, Superbia’s smiling face—everything began disappearing beneath a growing darkness as Iris’s eyes slowly closed.
“The weekend of the Applecrest Massacre.”
Her eyes shut completely.
Then, a moment later, they opened again.
Something was wrong.
Her body felt smaller.
Lighter.
Iris blinked several times before looking down at herself, and the sight made her freeze.
The long black dress she had died in was gone.
Instead, she wore a yellow dress covered in small butterfly patterns.
Blood stained the fabric in several places, splattered across her arms and smeared over her knuckles.
Her breathing grew uneven as she stared at her hands.
They weren’t the hands of a thirty-six year old woman scarred by decades of fighting.
They were smaller.
Younger.
A groan came from beside her.
Iris slowly turned her head.
A boy sat on the ground nearby, clutching his face with both hands as blood poured from his broken nose.
She recognized him.
She recognized the clothes she was wearing.
She recognized this place.
Her breathing stopped.
“No way…”
With shaking hands, Iris reached for her phone.
For a moment, she nearly dropped it before finally managing to turn on the screen.
Her eyes immediately locked onto the date glowing in front of her.
August 22nd, 2020.
She stared at it.
Then checked again.
August 22nd, 2020.
For several seconds, Iris couldn’t move.
She was sixteen again.
Superbia hadn’t lied.
He had sent her back twenty years.
Back before the seven sins.
Before entire cities were erased from the map.
Before humanity learned just how terrifying the supernatural world truly was.
Before countless friends became nothing more than names she desperately tried not to forget.
Before anyone had ever heard of the woman who would someday become known as the Witch of Flames.
Back to the beginning.
Iris continued staring blankly at the phone as memories flooded through her mind faster than she could process them.
There were so many things she could change.
So many people she could save.
So many tragedies she knew were coming.
Then one memory rose above all the others.
Her grip tightened around the phone.
“In three days…” Iris whispered.
Her eyes slowly widened.
“My mom will die.”