who we are and all that we're trying to be
Terror and horrors bent, accumulated, in a myriad of ways. What once echoed along his nightmares had long since settled into his bones, so they were an outstretch of lines and figures, of scars and all their worn shapes, from loss and failure, to devastation and ruin. He could feel them keenly now, even as he laid his hands into the Stonesong’s shallow depths, even as he ached to crawl into its mass and simply bask in the water for half a second –
But there would be no bending, no breaking, no tying over. A clench to his jaw, and his hands cupped the liquid, bringing it to the surface of his face, his beard, striving to wash away the grit, the dirt, the earth, the multitudes of chaos from his features. From the shoreline, Zuriel and Belial were sentinels, and he the etched Sword, gathered by wits’ ends and not much else. A very long, slow sigh flickered and filtered through his lungs, and he didn’t know what to feel any longer.
Despair? Frustration? Rage? What if they all seemingly came together and he was just some cold, demolished being again?
Maybe it didn’t matter, and the reactions simply hadn’t collided through his head yet. Maybe they would align into sanctions and sectors and he could figure, parse, them out from there.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
