"Come on Bernie, you can do this." Bernadetta thought to herself, bow fully drawn and safely perched atop her steed. With a single motion, she let loose an arrow that pierced through the head of an enemy mage.

"Look! I think the poison swamp is starting to disappear! Good job, Bernie!" Hilda called out as the mage's body limply collapsed to the ground. The lavender haired archer looked over with an affirming nod in response, but was taken aback when Byleth suddenly rushed in to cut down a warrior attempting to strike her from behind.

"Er, thanks." Bernadetta clutched her heart in an effort to calm her nerves. Even after all these years of practice and fighting, the girl was still as easily spooked as ever. "That makes… three rescues in this battle alone. At least I'm not curled up on the ground begging for mercy this time…"

"I promised I'd never let anything happen to you, didn't I?" her former professor comforted her with a reassuring smile, turning his signature blade into a lethal whip to fend off the oncoming hoard of undead warriors looking to make mincemeat of the pair.

"Oh, I'd hug you right now if I could." Bernadetta felt her cheeks flush slightly as she turned her attention back to the battle at hand.

"We'll have all the time in the world for that after we've won, Bernie."

All the while, the battle for the Dawn of Fódlan continued to rage on all around them as the other members of the Golden Deer fought with all their might against the overwhelming forces of the newly resurrected Nemesis.

"Hmph. How quaint." The Liberation King sneered, tightening his grip on his artificial Sword of the Creator as he set his sights on Byleth's own identical blade.

"Teach, look out!" Claude warned from across the battlefield. "Nemesis is heading right for you two!"

Realizing the severity of the threat approaching them, Byleth deftly finished off the squadron of soldiers he was facing with a wide sweep of his bladed whip before rushing off to meet the opposing leader directly.

"Wai- I'm helping too!" Bernadetta quickly shouted, shifting around to fire an arrow into the air as Byleth ran past her. Smirking at the girl's attempts to harm him, Nemesis nonchalantly caught the arrow out of the air before using his other arm to block a leaping strike from Byleth.

"Are you so cowardly that you must rely on a little waif to win your battles for you?" Nemesis taunted as Byleth broke away from their clash to create a magical explosion at the old king's feet. Before the smoke could clear, a familiar bladed whip lashed out and wrapped itself around Byleth's sword like a snake strangling a rodent.

"You can't even begin to understand!" Bernadetta cried out as she shot a flaming arrow into the cloud of smoke. This shot managed to hit its mark, though it quickly became apparent that Nemesis was no worse for wear when he pulled up his still active blade with enough might to throw Byleth up into the air towards him. The professor was shortly met with a brutal haymaker punch that sent his body tumbling to the ground. Bernadetta couldn't help but let out a sharp cry as she witnessed the man she loved getting the wind knocked out of his lungs. Thinking quickly, she immediately fired another arrow into the back of Nemesis's neck before he could make another move.

She immediately came to regret her decision when the old king slowly turned his head towards her, sporting what could only be described as a look of pure, unadulterated malice. "You're next, girl." The very sight chilled Bernadetta to the core, causing her to miss her next shot by a mile and leaving her frozen in place, mouth agape.

"You won't lay a hand on her, you monster!" Byleth roared furiously, ignoring the searing pain in his gut as he clashed blades with his adversary once more.

"Teach! Agh, dammit!" Claude cursed, too overwhelmed by the enemies surrounding him to come to the aid of his best friend. "Please hang in there as long as you can!"

"Enough boy, your turn is up." Nemesis demanded whilst matching each of his opponents swings blow for blow. Upon locking blades once more, the Liberation King broke away from the encounter by slamming his head into Byleth's skull, bringing him to his knees. "Your time will come soon enough."

Her fiancé's cry of pain was enough to snap Bernadetta out of stupor, but before the archer could take another shot, Nemesis's blade suddenly wrapped around one of her horse's front legs and knocked the creature to the ground, sending its unfortunate rider down along with it where her head collided with a nearby boulder.

"OW! Oh… you should have known this would happen, Bernie…" the petite archer murmured to herself as the Liberation King began to make a murderous dash for her. "Did you really think you'd get a happy ending after all this time? This isn't a fairy tale!" she struggled to sit herself up, tears starting to well in her eyes as Nemesis continued to close in on her position. "What I wouldn't give to die in my room instead of some empty field… I just… I just…" Bernadetta raised her hands to her face in a vain effort to shield herself from her attacker.

"I just want to hold him one last time!"

…

Bernadetta fearfully waited for Nemesis's blade to cleave her in two, but the fatal moment never came. Instead, she felt a warm splatter of blood across her entire body… but the blood wasn't hers. When the girl opened her eyes, the sight she witnessed simply broke her heart into a million pieces. There was Byleth, having just saved her life, with the artificial Sword of the Creator impaled through his chest and a tearful smile spread across his face.

"I'm glad… I made it in time…" her former professor calmly stated before taking his own blade and thrusting it through the same gaping hole left by Nemesis, decisively returning the favor to his opponent. With a sharp grunt of pain, the Liberation King removed his blade from Byleth's body and painfully staggered away from the wounded couple. He didn't make it far until a vengeful Claude came with sword in hand to cleave the king's head from his shoulders. With the enemy army crumbling to dust all around them, Byleth gave Bernadetta one last smile before collapsing into the arms of his distraught fiancé.

"No… Gods, NO!" Claude shouted in despair at the sight of his friend's battered body. All Bernadetta could do was let out a soft whimper before the tears began to stream down her face. "Marianne! Flayn! Anyone! We need to heal him right now!"

"I'm so sorry Claude…" Marianne stood in solemn prayer. "There's nothing we can do for him now."

Although the final battle had been won, the mood in the air was anything but victorious for the members of the Golden Deer. Raphael dropped to his knees in disbelief. Hilda buried her face into Lorenz's chest to hide her tears. Ignatz and Flayn joined Marianne in her prayers. Leonie drove her fist into a boulder out of anger at herself. Lysithea had subconsciously bit her lip hard enough to cause it to bleed.

Having quietly accepted that no amount of magic could bring back the dead, Claude slinked over to remove the Sword of the Creator from his old professor's chest. "I can't even begin to imagine what you must be going through right now…" Claude spoke to Bernadetta in a voice barely above a whisper. Even as Claude silently planted her lover's blade into the ground, she was unable to formulate a response of any kind. "I've never seen anyone as happy you were after your big proposal, and now… I'm really sorry."

With nary a word, Bernadetta slowly picked herself off the ground and began to back away from the grizzly scene that had unfolded before her.

"This is… this is all your fault, Bernie!" the young girl thought to herself.

"If you hadn't screwed this up… If you hadn't even been here… this never would have happened!" she continued to distance herself from the site, not even caring to watch where she was going.

"Useless!"

"Worthless!"

"Unmarriageable!"

"It's just like father said… What did Byleth ever see in me?"

"Hey… Bernadetta! Stop!" Claude called out to the girl. "You're getting too close to the edge of the cliff!"

The Alliance leader's words completely failed to register as the lavender haired girl continued to inch closer to the cliff's edge. It was only when a piece of gravel crumbled beneath her feet that Bernadetta finally realized what she was doing, but by then it was too late. She subsequently lost her balance and fell into the dark ravine below with an echoing scream.

"AAAAAAGGGGHHH!" Bernadetta suddenly rose up in a cold sweat, screaming at the top of her lungs. Still in shock over the series of events she had just experienced, her breathing became extremely labored, causing the girl to hyperventilate for a short while as she scanned her environment… and something immediately seemed off to her. "Wait a second… am I in my room again?"

She took another look around to confirm she wasn't just seeing things. "Oh Gods… Was that all just a dream? But it all felt so real…" Bernadetta continued to monologue as she rose out of her bed. "And it's so bright out… Oh no. Is this supposed to be the afterlife?" she had decidedly come up with a different conclusion. "Am I in some sort of hellish purgatory now?! Is that it?! I know I wished to be able to die in my room earlier, but I didn't mean it like this!"

Bernadetta quickly found herself in a panic, frantically pacing back and forth whilst she debated the situation with herself. "Is this a dream or am I dead? Is this a dream or am I dead? I know I can just open the door to find out, but what if it's a trap? I just know something's out to get me-"

The girl's monologue was cut short when the door to her room was suddenly busted open by an unknown assailant. "Bernadetta, are you all right?! I just heard the most ear piercing scream coming from your room!"

"I- I think I'm fine Edelgard, thanks for coming to check on me."

…

"Wait, EDELGARD?! I really am dead! AAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!"