Chapter Text
salvage whats left, england will live again---
Paul was innocent—not in ignorance, but in purity. Though he bore omnipotence and omniscience as effortlessly as a crown of thorns, there was no cruelty in his knowing, no tyranny in his power. He was a god made of mercy, a quiet constellation of love stitched into flesh and will.
Those beneath him were never subjects. They were cherished—his students held as one might cradle fragile relics, precious and deserving of protection. He watched over them with the same fierce tenderness he reserved for his little brother, Chuuya: a love born not of duty, but of devotion.
To Paul, divinity was not domination. It was care. It was choosing gentleness in a universe that so often begged for ruin.
Paul had only one love in his eternal life—one devotion so complete it bordered on worship. It ended not in peace, but in betrayal soaked in blood, a love severed by murder. The wound never healed. It festered, rotted, and became scripture written into his bones.
When she was taken from him, Paul did not weep.
He unraveled.
His grief became apocalypse. His mercy burned away, replaced by a holy madness that tore through England like divine fire. Cities fell to ash, cathedrals split beneath the weight of his fury, and the land itself seemed to recoil from the memory of his name. What was once a kingdom was reduced to wasteland—fields salted by wrath, skies forever bruised with smoke and sorrow.
Only remnants survived. What Sir Integra could fortify, what Alucard could reclaim through blood and iron, was all that remained standing against the echo of Paul’s destruction. The rest was left as a warning: proof that even the most innocent god, when betrayed, could become extinction incarnate.
And so England lived on—scarred, haunted, and forever shaped by the love that broke a god.
Alucard had seen monsters born screaming and gods die laughing—but he had never seen a god break.
He felt Paul’s grief before he saw the destruction. It rolled across England like a black tide, thick with divine rage and mourning so profound it bent the air. The sky bruised itself purple and red, clouds tearing open as if heaven itself recoiled from what it had unleashed.
Paul stood at the center of it all.
No—hovered. His feet never touched the ground. His eyes burned with a terrible, blinding innocence, as though he still could not comprehend the betrayal carved into his heart. Power poured from him unchecked, holy and profane all at once. Churches collapsed as if bowing. Cities screamed. Rivers boiled under his passing.
Alucard watched from the ruins of a cathedral, crimson coat snapping in the storm, immortality prickling under his skin in something dangerously close to awe.
“So this,” he murmured, lips pulling into a slow, wicked smile, “is what love does to gods.”
Paul raised a single hand.
An entire city vanished.
Not burned. Not crushed. Erased. Stone, flesh, history—gone, as though England itself had been edited by grief. The sound came seconds later, a roar so immense Alucard felt it rattle his bones, a divine howl of loss that had no language left in it.
For the first time in centuries, Alucard did not step forward.
He did not taunt.
He did not challenge.
Because this was not a battle—it was a funeral.
Sir Integra’s voice crackled faintly through the radio at his side, sharp and steady despite the chaos. “Report.”
Alucard exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving the god who had loved once and lost everything.
“England is dying,” he said calmly. “And Paul is the executioner.”
Hours later—days, perhaps; time had stopped meaning anything—Paul finally stilled. The storm faded. His power withdrew like a receding tide, leaving a country gutted and bleeding. He looked small then. Hollow. A god reduced to a widower clutching a corpse only he could still see.
Alucard stepped from the shadows at last.
Their eyes met.
There was no threat in Paul’s gaze. No malice. Only devastation so deep it frightened even the immortal.
Alucard bowed—not mockingly, not theatrically—but sincerely.
“I understand now,” he said softly. “Why they feared you.”
Paul said nothing.
And England, what remained of it, would forever remember the day love drove a god mad—and even monsters chose to stand aside.
Arthur Rimbaud watched the world end and found it beautiful.
He stood amid the destruction as Paul tore England apart, ash drifting like black snow against his coat, the ground trembling beneath divine grief. Where others fled, Arthur remained. Where monsters bowed or gods hid their eyes, he only smiled—softly, reverently, as though witnessing a lover finally speak in their truest tongue.
“So powerful,” he breathed, awe threading his voice. “So very powerful.”
This was love unveiled. Not poetry. Not promises whispered in the dark. This—this ruin, this holy catastrophe—was Paul laid bare. A god undone by devotion, burning the world rather than live without it. Arthur felt no fear. How could he? To be loved so completely that even nations were reduced to cinders in mourning—what greater proof could there be?
He watched closer than Alucard ever dared.
He saw the way Paul’s hands shook between acts of annihilation. The way his eyes searched the wreckage again and again, as though Arthur might rise from the rubble and absolve him. He saw innocence strangled by grief, mercy drowned beneath love’s weight.
Arthur adored him for it.
And yet.
Love, Arthur had always known, was not something meant to be survived.
When Paul’s gaze finally found him—standing unharmed at the heart of devastation—Arthur did not run. He lifted his chin, smiling openly now, blood streaking his lips like a lover’s kiss.
“My god,” he whispered, voice nearly lost to the wind. “You loved me exactly as I hoped you would.”
Paul faltered.
In that heartbeat of hesitation, Arthur made his choice.
Death had always been kinder than eternity. Love like Paul’s was too vast, too consuming—it would hollow him out, turn him into something preserved rather than lived. Arthur refused to be worshipped. Refused to be kept.
He stepped forward into the ruin, into the finality he had already accepted.
Choosing death over love.
Not because he doubted Paul—but because he believed him.
And as Arthur fell, smiling still, Paul screamed.
A sound that split the heavens.
England would remember the destruction. Alucard would remember the power. But only Arthur Rimbaud understood the truth:
That to be loved by a god was not salvation.
It was annihilation.
And he had embraced it willingly.
England had been outgrown.
Stone and bone alike lay shattered, history reduced to soot and memory, until there was only one thing left untouched—her sea.
The waters stirred.
Not with tide nor storm, but with awareness.
From the depths rose anxiety given form, a body not meant for light: a mass of endless tendrils unfurling like thoughts that refused to be silenced. Black and slick, they coiled through the waves as if the ocean itself had grown nerves—had learned fear, had learned to remember.
The sea had watched Paul’s love become ruin.
It had felt Arthur’s choice echo through its trenches.
It had swallowed the screams of a nation and found them indigestible.
So it awoke.
Not a god, nor a monster, but something worse—a consequence. A living embodiment of grief left too long without language. Its tendrils dragged across the seabed, clawing wreckage, tightening around shipwrecks like rosary beads, whispering panic into the currents. Sailors miles away clutched their chests, breath hitching, hearts racing for reasons they could not name.
England no longer had a body.
So the sea became it.
Alucard would later call it unease made flesh.
Integra would call it a threat that never sleeps.
But Paul—Paul would recognize it instantly.
A guardian born too late.
A grief that had learned to move.
The ocean now breathed for England, and every wave carried the same message:
Something was left behind.
Something was afraid.
And it would never let the world forget what love had done here.