It's putrid and noxious, he knows, though poisons and heals him in equal measure both. Once just a festering disease, it's now an almost comforting sludge that slinks through his body. He feeds it and it rewards him in kind. And although it's trying, like it always does, to keep Ardyn alive against his best wishes- Maybe, just maybe, it's giving him the ultimate gift instead and letting him go. With no Bahamut, no prophecy, no anything- Why would it, after all?

He's died before though. Repeatedly, continuously, for eons. He died in that damp, dark cave only briefly before awakening again to pain and nothing. Just the same as now, he knows: Even if does die, he'll come back. "Just for now," he manages, a sardonic whimper of a sound pulled from him as those daggers pierce his wrists.

He knows he isn't as strong as he used to be. He felt it immediately, told on himself even by admitting his inability to warp. Yet, he still hasn't needed to eat. Sleep. Even if not as strong as he was, The Scourge ensured he yet lived. Even now, it's a smart thing that Ignis pinned his wrists since he can feel it doing its best to keep air in his lungs and blood running through his veins even as it sluices out of his wound to water the earth below. "Weakened, but still there. As long as..." A wheeze, his vision blurring to the point he can only make out vague blocks of color. He can hear Ignis move and feel the air move with the weight of what he picks up.


"... it's still part of me, you'll see. You'll see."

That's all Ardyn has the strength for though. He feels the searing pain of the axe contacting his neck, severing nerve and tendon and vertebrae with a sickening sound- And then he feels no more. He dies, truly, and despite his words will have wished he hadn't uttered them at all once he is brought back not by The Scourge but Charlie's own hand.

But for now, he rests. Still and silent and head severed from his body with another axe swing or so.