JUST LIKE YOU SAID IT WOULD BE

He presumed something else would fall apart again – it always did here, in this time, in this place, with meek traces of hope plummeting down into nothingness. The granules of triumph were frequently defeated by the constant onslaught of terror, horror, and destruction. It was all he knew now, all he understood, and he’d give anything to return back to where they once belonged, to those trifle seconds and instances where everything didn’t seem so bleak, so scattered, so ripped apart and torn (but hadn’t that always been the way – he’d searched for fragments of the past and be so bitter towards the present). The insurrection plagued over his limbs, over his heart, danced wicked, deceit throngs, murmured catastrophic nothings, so when he stood over the sanction, over the clearing of shadows and misery, he waited for the caustic plunge, for the distant rubble to return, smash against his sides, brutalize his form. Cruelty was the oblivion now, was the enduring sorrow, was the thing that fed and feasted on their ambitions, on their yearnings, on their dreams; and he almost thought to tell Enna as she sprang towards him, to run, to run, to run back the other way and never return (nothing for her here; naught but scars and sorrow, ghosts with misery muses). It wouldn’t be fair for her, for anyone, to have to stay amidst these hollowed hills. The youth simply didn’t have anywhere else to go – and maybe it was fitting, how he’d plunged and descended straight into hell the moment he’d delivered Calstron’s fitting fate upon his malicious, embittered hide.

But he folded too the instant she came to his shoulder, curled his cranium over the top of her and tried not to sink into her embrace. He’d been holding himself upright for a while now, had been drawing from endurance and might, had been painstakingly tied to fortitude and anger, and the toxic, persistent doldrums simmered away at her touch; he sighed, loosened the thousand, vicious, hostile breaths he’d been holding, the lifetimes of damnation coiling over his soul. The youth didn’t even say anything at first, just believed and held, listened to the way sanctuary portrayed a significant clamor, scent, and presence, pushing his way along her frame until his cheek rested against hers, and he didn’t give care that someone else was nearby, wafting, waiting, hovering, feeling something other than complete, utter hatred in what seemed like eternity. “You’re all right?” He questioned, he implored, the single note of apprehension wavering along the horizon, upon the tips of shadows and darkness, the Stygian brutality stirring between his lungs. She’d know what could occur if anyone had caused her harm, if anything had reached out and scalded her, if any phantoms had already gone wandering too far-

Then her inquiry seemed to rumble along his mind, echoing through a hundred instances as she realized one vital piece of him was missing (along with so many others; buried, gone, tossed in the fall, in the disasters, in the ruins) - Enyo - and he pulled away, stared into the dark, at the stranger nestled beyond, at the interplay of acrimony and fire. “This place took her.” It was a warning and a declaration, because if Enna knew him at all, understood the way he worked and the way he sketched and the way he designed, plotted, schemed, there would eventually be a moment where the world would’ve wished it’d never done such a thing. Perhaps, at that insistence, she too would go the way she’d come, or twist around to find another path, to fly away and never return – so she wouldn’t be pulled, maligned, and become another one of the wounded, rancorous souls searching for answers.

Erebos

i have nothing, but then the have is not as good as the want

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@Rohan @Enna