Every night, he'd obliterate and corrupt and defile this land by his own hand. Every night, he'd make eye contact with her as he did so. There was no dragon to aid him, but it mattered none. Not for him, whose touch was lethal, and by all accounts, perhaps on a technicality, equally divine.
After all, it was he who ascended to the Golden City and found it rotten. But it was holy land he stepped into, all the same, albeit desecrated.
Haven would be covered in crystals in each iteration, and fires too erupting all the same with equal fervency as the embers would happily leap from structure to structure while the crystals erupted through the ground like eager weeds. Beautiful reds and oranges would cover the place she held so dear every time without end, all in this constant game of cat and mouse.
That's all this was. Wasn't it?
This time, instead of rushing in, he stands at the edge of haven, waiting for her to appear, and like clockwork, she does.
His voice carries across Haven. Loud. Powerful, and deep.
"Here we stand at the precipice of another combat. Just like all nights before."
In his hand, wrapped around his one wrist, he raises it out to be observed.
"I hear your heartbeat miles away, false herald. It beats like a rabbit's. Fragile. Scared."
He's kept it close. And it's been the very thing that's bound them to one another so intimately.
"To what end shall tonight bring in your restless slumber? Your death? Or my own? Do you tire yet of our constant quarrel? Do you feel any inclination to sometimes yield? Or must I continue to endlessly chase you in your sleep until one of us ceases to be?"