I had stopped fighting.
The world collapsed on me without warning, as if the sky itself had decided to fall the day she left.
Everything lost meaning. The music, the light, the air.
Only a constant noise remained, like the echo of something that would never return.
I sat among the ruins of who I once was.
Without tears, without hope, just watching how the love I swore to protect with my life crumbled into dust.
And that’s when he appeared, the devil didn’t come with fire or threat.
He came weary, almost human.
He sat beside me, looked at the wreckage with me and said he understood.
I wasn’t afraid of him.
How could I fear when I would already lost the only thing that ever made me tremble with love?
He spoke of comfort, of rest, of how pain could become a place to live in.
In his voice I found a quiet that soothed me, a presence that demanded nothing, a shadow that knew how to listen.
Months passed like that.
Him beside me, feeding on my sadness, letting me believe that what he offered was relief.
And when I finally saw him without the mask, when I recognized his compassion as poison, I was already sinking too deep.
But even then, it only took a thought of her.
Remembering her laughter, the warmth, the way she said my name as if she were inventing me each time.
And the devil stepped back.
Not out of fear, but because he cannot exist where love still survives.
Sometimes he returns on the coldest nights, when the world feels too heavy and my mind begins to crack.
He sits again, offers his shadow, promises oblivion.
But I think of her, of what we were, of what I still hope we will be again.
And something inside me lights up, something even he cannot extinguish.
Because even if my life remains in pieces, even if the pain still lingers, her love still lives in me.
And if one day she returns, if fate takes pity and brings her back, then the darkness will leave me completely.
