There was still Good left in their leader.
Perhaps it was to be expected. Their leader had once been called "Purehearted", after all. One doesn't spend their whole life swaddled and saturated in Good and expect to not carry even some of it with them during their descent into Evil.
Oh, but he'd acclimated so well to the change. Those who hadn't know him, even those who had, would swear he'd become rotten to the core. Even the King up in Swordhaven, his once greatest friend, could see no more light in the now-Emperor of the Shadowscythe.
They were blind.
They couldn't see what he saw.
He saw their leader pause sometimes when he was alone, staring off into the distance—always in the direction of Swordhaven, he would later discover—almost reverently quiet, and stiff as the dead.
(He never saw their leader kill the King, in another life. He never saw the man elevate the corpse to one of his most treasured undead, for as little a time as that could last.)
He saw their leader tense, the slightest little twitch of his fingers, when the dying scream of a child could be heard among the razing of a village. The man would keep moving forward without the slightest delay—but he would not look in the direction of the scream.
(He never saw the child that appeared in a beam of light, nor the newly-dead man that swore to protect her from harm.)
He saw their leader receive a bust of the Queen, a gift from a hopeful supplicant that knew of his past, and gaze at it mesmerized before having it destroyed. The man claimed it was of slipshod quality when questioned, and had the supplicant flayed.
(He never saw what lay hidden at the bottom of the necropolis, but he had his suspicions.)
He saw their leader in a daze sometimes, wandering the halls after weeks without rest, occasionally reaching for a sword that was not there, and repeating a circuit he'd since cross-referenced with a map of Swordhaven Castle.
(The paths taken were not identical, but they were damn sure close.)
He saw their leader's interactions with the child that called him "Father". He saw her unable to cast dark magic. He saw her breathing and sleeping and bleeding. He saw her unknowingly repel the dead that came too close to her small form. Their leader made excuses for why this might be. Rationalizations and lies that became the man's truths. They both saw through such a ruse, though their leader would never accept it, and he would never say.
(He never saw their leader refuse to kill her. He never saw the man sacrifice himself for the child that he was destined to kill. He never saw her try to avenge him in another life.)
But then, he never needed to see.
He was not blind.
A thing came to me while I was staring off into space. Not a very good thing, but a thing nonetheless.
Sorry for not writing lately, I haven't had much will or inspiration.