It starts with a blade, brought by a Champion and claimed to be pure, it starts with whispers in the night and a slow fall none of them noticed, it starts when Lor'themar Theron, Lord and Regent of Quel'Thalas, drives a blade forged of the blood of an old god through the heart of Thrall while possessed of a dark and terrible madness.

They run now, the Alliance and Horde together, their differences torn away by mad dragon's fire and the horror of the blade and its wielder, and beneath their feet the spreading horror of their masters. Some speak in hushed whispers of another Arthas, of their Lord being hollow inside like the fallen paladin, and Rommath has to hold himself back from screaming at them, from telling their lingering stares and the conversation that quickly hushes when he passes by that the monsters didn't take Lor'themar because he was weak like Arthas, they took him because he was the strongest and brightest of them, because he was pure and they thrive on corruption.

It ends with a blade, handed to him by Tirion Fordring with the hollow explanation that he might be able to get close enough to strike his Lord down, while Rommath tries not to let it rankle that all these desperate people know that he and Lor'themar were lovers, that they wish him to use that as the cloth with which to cloak the dagger.

It ends in the ruins of a Kaldorei town at Mt. Hyjal, where he sees Lor'themar again for the first time since the cursed blade took him, Rommath had hoped that the corruption would destroy his body as it had his mind but Lor'themar is still a regal and breathtaking as ever, and when he spots Rommath he smiles as though they had not been parted. He had always been swift and graceful, but now Lor'themar stands before Rommath in the blink of an eye, and he stretches out the hand not holding the sword, tracing the curve of Rommath's cheek with the gentle edge of a claw.

"Beloved, you've come home." Lor'themar says softly, wonderingly, as though Rommath were what he had been waiting for all this time.

It ends when Rommath drops the blade, and steps forward into his lover's waiting arms.

Notes: Because Rommath is a 'take the third option' kind of guy and honestly, Lor'themar was the only important thing in his world, so why should he care if it burns.