My sleep gets interrupted by a knock on my door. I feel like I have slept for just a few seconds but when I open my eyes, I can take a look out of the window and see that the sun is already high in the sky. It's almost noon. I must have slept longer than it feels like. I sigh because I still feel exhausted but then stretch my arms and legs and sit up on my bed. "Come on in" I say.

The first thing I see is Meliodas' blonde hair as his head peeks in the room, before the rest of his body follows him to step inside. A smile forms on my lips when I see my best friend because no matter how bad I feel, just knowing to have a friend like him never fails to make me smile. And even tho the circumstances aren't good, I'm glad I get to spend time with him again. I haven't seen Meliodas in such a long time and every day I spend with him, makes me realize how much I've really missed bim.

"I didn't know you were a slugabed" he says playfully and places a glass of water on the table next to my bed.

"I didn't even know I was a good sleeper at all."

"You could think 5.000 years of nightmares is long enough to get used to them" says Meliodas and sits down on the bed next to me and looks at me worriedly.

"I'm not having nightmares lately" I say and am not even lying. How could I even have nightmares when I don't sleep at night at all.

"What's it, then?"

"Just stress, I think. Why haven't you woken me up earlier?"

"Yeah... about that..." he begins and runs his left hand nervously over the back of his head and I know that something is off. I look at him questioning, waiting to spill out what's going on. "There aren't any demons attacking the kingdom. So... we are like having a day off."

"What do you mean? What are they attacking then?"

"Well, that's it. They aren't attacking anything. They're gone."

"They are what? Why should they be gone?"

"I don't know."

I sit up, take a sip of the water Meliodas has brought me and then move my head to look into his green eyes. "What do you think is going on? Do you think the Ten Commandments are behind this?"

"No one else could, hm? I just don't see the reason why. They surely haven't given up."

"Maybe they want us to believe so?"

"Yeah... maybe..." he mumbles as he tries to figure out what's going on. But then he turns to face me and his look is all serious. "There's something else I'm here for."

"I can tell. So what is it?"

"Elizabeth wants to talk to you about something."

"She does? What's it about?"

"I can't tell you. Just know that I'll be there for you, okay? I'll always be there for you, Yami."

"Meliodas, you're acting weird. What's going on?" I ask him and tilt my head to the side in confusion. This whole situation feels so awkward and I haven't seen Meliodas feeling so uncomfortable around me before.

Without answering me, Meliodas gets up and walks over to the door before he turns around to look at me once more. "I love you, Yami. I'm here if you need someone" is the last thing he says before he leaves me alone.

Confused by his actions, I sigh and get up for good. I walk into the bathroom and grab the linen cloth out of the wooden bucket that is filled with fresh water and begin to wash myself. The dirt from last nights experience vanishes but I don't feel any better. The guilt, confusion and pain can't get washed away with water.

I get dressed and then leave the bathroom, walking downstairs, only to find Meliodas, Elizabeth and Hawk sitting there in silence. Now, this is weird. Hawk usually never shuts up, so whatever Elizabeth wants to talk about, it must be really serious and unpleasant.

"Good morning everyone?" I greet them kind of confused and take a moment to take a close look at each one of them.

"Morning..." Hawk mumbles and I'm already getting tired of the tension in the room so I roll my eyes but no one notices.

"Come on, Hawk, there's some cleaning we need to do upstairs" says Meliodas and Hawk nods as he follows my best friend quickly, leaving Elizabeth and me alone.

I sigh and let myself drop on the nearby seat. "So... Meliodas said there's something you want to talk about?" I ask the princess. When I look at her, I can see that her appearance has changed quite a bit. Her bangs are shortened so that both of her eyes are clearly visible now and the blue color of her one eye is no longer there. They're back to the orange color with the goddess sign that I am used to from old times. She also looks more confident than when I met her a few weeks ago. And she doesn't seem like the 16 years old princess anymore but is more of a grown up woman by now. I know that we were something like friends so many years ago but to be fair, the princess Elizabeth and I were much closer to being good friends than the goddess Elizabeth and it feels weird to be around her because I don't know how to handle this situation.

But Elizabeth is the same as always. Her voice is angelic, kind and comforting when she speaks up. "Meliodas and I sensed that you still feel uncomfortable around me because it seems like you blame yourself for the returning of my memories."

"Lady Elizabeth..." I say quietly and look down at my hands as I don't know how to continue. She's right. "How can I not? After all, it my fault. I promised Meliodas to keep you safe but I failed. I am sorry."

"There's nothing you should blame yourself for" Elizabeth tries to comfort me. "I would have done everything to help Meliodas. You know that. I don't regret what I did because it was the only way to bring him back."

The only way? Isn't she kind of overreacting right now? I know that Meliodas wasn't in a good condition but he would've woken up sometime anyway, right?

I slowly lift my head to look into the eyes of Elizabeth, that are filled with kindness and love. She's still the purest angel that has ever lived and it's no surprise Meliodas fell for her. "But time is running out for you again, princess."

"Please keep on calling me Elizabeth, Yami. We're still friends, aren't we?"

"We are?" I ask her and she nods with a warm smile on her lips.

"There is something I need to tell you, Yami. Something about the day I tried to help Meliodas."

And then she tells me everything that has happened and that neither Merlin nor I could have ever guessed. She tells me about the moment she found herself in Meliodas' mind that was nothing but a dark place and whilst she went to search for some light that could lead her to Meliodas, she met Zeldris. She tells me that Zeldris' eyes widened as he recognized her and got mad at her for all the things she had put Meliodas through and that she cried because she couldn't remember and her only wish was to knew why everyone knew and remembered her and why she couldn't remember Meliodas. In the end, she tells me that Zeldris was the one who brought back her memories to make her realize all she pain and suffer she had put his older brother through but that she was able to expel Zeldris from Meliodas' mind right before she found herself in his bedroom again and that I'm not to blame at all because if she wouldn't have done what she did, Meliodas would still not be awake.

The more Elizabeth tells me, the harder it gets for me to keep listening to her. The more I find out about what Zeldris did, the stronger gets the pain in my chest, whilst at the same moment, my heartbeat fastens until I think I'm losing at least one more of my hearts because it's going to jump out of my chest or will bleed to death.

When Elizabeth is finally done, we sit there in silence and I try my best not to show any tears that try to form in the corner of my eyes. Why did she have to tell me all of this now? Why did she tell me that Zeldris tried to kill Meliodas with this curse just hours after he regained his memories? Why did she have to share those informations just shortly after Zeldris confessed his love for me before I told him that we're still enemies?

It's too much for me to handle right now and I begin to start shaking. I clench my hands into fists as I try to keep the control over my body and emotions as the dark power inside me tries to overwhelm me. I take a deep breath to keep the upper hand and then get up from my seat.

"I'm sorry, Yami" Elizabeth says. "Meliodas has told me what Zeldris had meant to you and still means. I just wanted you to know that there's nothing you should blame yourself for."

"I admire your honestly, Elizabeth" I say, standing in front of the goddess as I feel a wave of coldness flowing through my body. It feels like it's freezing me from the inside and for a short moment, all my emotions leave me and I feel nothing. For the very first time, I feel nothing at all and the storm inside me that was always raging inside me, sometimes more, sometimes less, vanishes for the first time, too. I'm empty.

"But you're wrong" I continue my answer. "Zeldris means nothing to me anymore. He's nothing but an enemie to us and we'll fight him, just like the other Commandments. Your kingdom will be safe."

And with these words, I leave her alone in the tavern and walk upstairs into my room and lock the door by putting a chair underneath the doorhandle.

I walk over to my bed, sit down on it and pull my knees close to my body, as my tears are finally allowed to roll down my face and all the emotions come back to me.

Maybe I fooled myself for way too long. Maybe I don't know Zeldris at all.

Maybe he isn't anything close to the Zeldris I knew for 2.000 years, no matter if I had his memories erased or not. Maybe the Zeldris I knew and loved doesn't even exist anymore.

Maybe there's no other option than fighting him and the other Commandments because maybe they'll never stop this stupid war because their hearts are filled with too much hate already.

And maybe, just maybe, the past hours were nothing but a game to Zeldris as he doesn't even care about me at all and it was just to fool me.

Maybe this is not Zeldris. Maybe this is Zeldris the Piety, new leader of the Ten Commandments and no one and nothing else.