Private Under the Oak Tree

[Corazona von Ascania]

- Ukatis -​

At the crest of a hill overlooking the Von Ascania family manor stood an oak tree. Its great, broad trunk rose from the earth like a silent sentinel, giving way to a network of sturdy branches that clawed in gently arched paths toward the sky.

Cora sat with her back to the chestnut bark. There were a few smoother dips in the otherwise rugged texture.

This was where they would rest.

A rainy summer had transitioned into a lush autumn. This was the time of year when, for just a few weeks, the Ukatian foliage blazed with a dazzling mix of bright reds, fiery oranges, and sunset yellows.

Cora watched as an ochre leaf drifted lazily through the air. When it passed over the swell of a nearby field, she heard laughter. His laughter. Golden curls bouncing in the spring sunlight, bright and clear.

The memory made her smile, but then it made her hurt. It stirred the muted ached that lived beneath her breastbone.

Then, it dissipated into something softer. Longing and guilt and betrayal bled together until she couldn't quite name them - didn't want to name them.

When her eyes fluttered closed, she could still see the leaves falling. One by one, in their own time. Nothing hurried, not yet. Communication hadn't been their greatest strength. There had been no designated meeting, no timetable.

But when the Force had called her beneath the oak tree, Cora answered.

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania​

His freighter pierced Ukatis' upper atmosphere, illuminated by the golden hues of a dying sun.

Here, in this peaceful setting, he noticed that the light was softer, devoid of the harsh glare of warzones he’d seen and the cruel horizons of Korriban. It was almost apologetic, as if begging forgiveness for the atrocities Lysander had committed.

By the time word of Coruscant’s fall reached him, he’d already been en route to Arkania, chasing a bounty. He hadn’t expected to feel her there, his sister’s Force signature, ever bright. Adrenaline had drowned the desire the reach out; for the stakes were high, the mission clear. And afterwards, in the quiet between jumps, it had begun to gnaw at him, a cruel and merciless shadow that followed his every move.

He was weary, beyond exhausted. He longed to stop fleeing the ghosts of choice and consequence.

Only once before had he passed beneath these skies since the king’s death, a visit of necessity, once the Sith’s specters had vanished; only then had Lysander been granted a moment to finally stand beside his father's grave. But this time around, there was no need for coordinates as his hands moved over the ship's controls, guided by memory.

The family manor rose in the distance, unchanged, though the years between now and his boyhood felt like lifetimes. Moments later, a ramp descended. Boots met firm earth with a thud. Mid-step, he faltered; the silence pressed close.

Lysander didn’t hide who he was. The black Sith armor clung to him like a confession. Absent was the helm that often erased his identity, revealing the one thing that still tied him to the boy who’d once run freely in these hills–the hair of summer fields.

At his hip, the serpent‑like curve of his saber’s hilt was plain to see, its presence a warning to any who might be watching, who might dare to cross him. Only a few had seen what he was truly capable of unleashing.

It was the same weapon his sister had guided his hands to build, shortly after his first trip to Illum as a Padawan.

His gaze ascended; even from here, he could see it. The oak tree. Lysander had written about it once, in a letter before the Galactic Kaggath. When he half believed he was ready, when part of him wished the tournament might deliver redemption through death.

The journey from his ship felt longer than it should have, each step dragging the time he could never take back.

With every pace, her presence in the Force grew sharper, cutting into him like a blade.

Then, there she was - the one person who had mattered most, and the one he had failed all the same.

But now, as he approached, the ancient branches reached out more like skeletal fingers, their grip tightening around his heart.

He stopped beneath them, the black sheep of the von Ascania lineage - a creature that had spilled innocent blood without a trace of hesitation, who had savored the satisfaction of revenge upon rivals time and again. A scar sliced through his brow, a reminder of the pain endured, and the hidden burn marks that still marred his chest and back whispered stories of failure upon Ruusan.

Buried even deeper, where no mortal eye could see, his soul lay in shards - shattered by a break that began on Voss.

A thin line drew across his lips, absent of a frown yet far from neutral, a carefully crafted facade. Several loose strands fell over his forehead, shifting in the wind.

The space between them now felt wider than the hill itself.

"Did you ever stop to wonder if I'd return?"

His words lingered like smoke in the air; and for a moment, he only heard the shifting of leaves.

"Or did you simply learn to exist without me, as I was forced to learn without you?"

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

"Wonder?" Eyes closed, Cora chewed on the word as if there was something more there than a simple question. She drank in Lysander's presence slowly, one sense at a time, for trying to absorb him all at once might be too big of a shock for her to handle.

"No," she decided. "But I have always hoped."

A stray gust carried a swirl of leaves between them, as if partitioning the two siblings. Cora opened her eyes just as they drifted out of view.

There he was. Clad in armor the color of night, with all the particularities she'd come to associate with the Sith. Bearing a saber with their ichor. What struck her most was not his newly forged, surprisingly entrenched ties to the Dark – though that did insert another barb of sorrow into her failing heart – but the lack of baby fat in his face. His visage was more angular now, the sharper lines of a boy on the cusp of manhood.

A surge of emotion rolled up her chest, and into her throat. Cora lurched forward, covering a sharp gasp with her hand. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, shaking her head."I didn't...by Ashla, you're alive. You're here. And you...you've gotten so tall, Lysander!"

The last time they'd met, he'd been nearly her height. If there was anything that underscored the passage of time, it was witnessing a younger sibling grow.

Even if the direction they were growing in was drenched in shadow.

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania
​

The wind worried at the oak’s high branches, a murmur that sent leaves skittering over the slope. A few brushed against the greaves of his armor.

Lysander heard his sister before he allowed himself to see her; not just her words, but the tremor that caught in her throat, a sound that seemed to reach him through the years.

Another lock of hair slipped free from its constraints, tugged across his cheek by the same wind, and with it too came the shadow of Korriban, and the drilled reflex to cauterize feeling before it could be wielded as a weapon. The remembered voices echoed in his mind, sharp and certain: family is a chain, mercy is a flaw. Now, that old certainty began to falter, and something buried deep shifted in that grave.

And beneath it all, another truth: he was looking at the murderer of their father.

That knowledge remained a frozen dagger in his heart, impossible to thaw, driven deep.

For the first time, Lysander was weighing which truth would inflict the least amount of pain.

"Don't think I came back for Ukatis," he said, voice low, the words carrying the venom of wounds left to fester in the dark. "The hills, the manor.. the tree, they're just familiar shapes. I could've left those buried."

Amidst the turmoil and inner struggle, there was a clarity that had not been present in months, a mind free from the haze of medicinal herbs and the seductive influence of spice. That clarity hurt. He found himself still aching from memories revolving around the Kaggath. Those very thoughts scraped against the inside of his skull.

It was a trail of guilt that he could not escape from.

"I kept hearing your name through every trial. No matter how far I ran, I couldn't burn that out of me."

He drew a slow breath, and the plates of his armor naturally shifted with the movement.

They felt heavier now.

“I don’t know if that’s a curse.. or the only thing keeping me connected to my humanity.”

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

A curse or humanity?

Cora blinked back tears. Her fingertips remained pressed over trembling lips until they could steady themselves. An inhale through her nose, followed by a slow exhale helped to control the cadence of her breathing.

Lysander did not approach. His armor caught the light, sun glinting on the points of black plating.

In the Force, her wound stirred. It had carved itself beyond her flesh, beyond her lungs and the vessels of her heart. Another slow breath lifted her chest in time with Lysander.

Cora was struck with a ghastly similarity: how many times had she stood across from a Sith? Only this time, she did not stand tall. No lightsaber snapped to life. Her senses did not stretch out into the weave between them, probing for weakness.

Instead she remained seated beneath the oak tree. Hands now folded in her lap. Pale, haunting him like a ghost.

Her eyes fell to the hilt of his lightsaber, and the ache in her chest bloomed further. Wider. Her lips parted in a murmur that carried on the wind.

"Have you come to discern whether I am a shackle, or a tether?"

Cora's gaze rose back up, meeting his own. The deep, blue irises they shared had paled since her ordeal on Arkania.

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania
​

Lysander’s gaze was fixed on the tremor in her expression, stirring ghosts of memories he’d spent far too long on Korriban trying to bury; for a singular breath, the steel of his posture eased. The shadows gave way to something more human.

Already, he was mustering the strength to bury it again.

Even from a distance, he could see the moisture in her eyes. It was an impossible sight to miss, much like the fact that she had not risen to meet him, a curious lack courtly manners. That was.. strange. For all the etiquette drilled into them as children, she remained enveloped in a ghostly pallor beneath the oak.

There was a shift in her demeanor that he couldn’t quite place, but it registered as a warning, leaving him unsure if he was truly prepared to face whatever secrets lay beneath the surface.

His jaw tightened, not out of anger, but from a sorrow he could no longer mask. The plates of his armor shifted with the hesitant rhythm of his breath.

“Call it a shackle, call it a tether. I don’t care,” he said softly, “It’s the only burden I’ve carried that never loosened, the only hurt I’ve never learned to escape.”

One of two chains; the other he would not name just yet.

A step closer was taken. “I kept my distance because I thought the truth would hurt you. But when your silence came, I learned how to carry my own. I told myself it didn’t matter.”

His voice dropped, pulling from somewhere deep. “I lied. That’s a wound the Dark can’t cauterize.”

The scent of autumn filled the silence that lingered after.

It reminded him of the games they used to play here.

Once, that tree was a fortress, and he the commander. She never let him fall.

That was, until the galaxy taught him how to stand.

“I don’t care about the crown of Ukatis, not the manor, not the bloodline.”

Only the faint flex of his gloved fingers betrayed him.

In an instant stolen from time, the Sith vanished, and in his place stood the boy who once looked up to her with adoration.

“Just you, Cora. My sister. My first shield. That’s the truth. From the Outer Rim to the Core, I have kept that promise.”

​

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

A burden.

Once, familial ties were all that mattered. Underneath the watchful eye of their father, Cora had thrown herself into the fire for duty. Duty became burden, a noxious thing that crushed her soul as it sucked the air from her lungs.

Her expression fell into quiet sorrow. Had she become that to Lysander? An inescapable tie that bound you to something you sought to break away from?

Silence had become a familiar harmony between them. The galaxy could be overwhelming, and Cora told herself that Lysander was simply trying to find himself in the Outer Rim. Then, she returned to her council duties and her classes and her wars.

She looked to Lysander. Really looked. Determination worked the sharp line of his jaw, but something softer and human stirred beneath the surface. Beneath the glint of black armor and the grim restlessness of his demeanor, traces of her brother shone through.

"I was there," she murmured. "At the kaggath. I saw you…fall." She looked away here, her own jaw now tensed, the curve of her cheekbone catching the autumn light.

An echo of her own scream reverberated in her chest, twisting and turning as the wound fed upon her staggering emotions.

"I tried to find you, but they said you'd been taken off-world."

Cora's voice shrunk as she recounted yet another failure, stacked neatly atop a mountain of missteps and mistakes.

A deep breath lifted her chest, and again she looked to Lysander. This hurt. It hurt to see him bearing the insignia of those who sought to either burn the Galaxy or bend it to their will. What the dark offered tasted like freedom; but a puppet danced easier when they thought they were the one in control.

Cora bit back the admonishment. She bit back the sorrow and the shame and the guilt, laying them to the side rather than at his feet. She'd nearly died on Arkania. She might be dying now. Only one thing cut through the kaleidoscope of sentiment and remorse. Only one thing still mattered.

"The only thing I will ask you to be here…"

She lifted a hand towards Lysander, fingers spread, a silent gesture that beckoned him closer.

"…is my brother."

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania
​

Every sound that passed around them was one he’d heard a hundred times in his youth, but now they scraped like the red sands of Korriban over an open wound. Knowing Cora was a witness to that fall crushed him like a ton of durasteel. The Galactic Kaggath rose from the depths of his mind, taunting him with visions of the roaring crowds, the sweat, the blood, the lights, and the exact moment his footing slipped when attacked by droids.

Preparedness undone by a single, rookie mistake.

Those specific memories were more than pain in the flesh; it was humiliation, loss, and the shattering of something inside that had never quite healed.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he spoke in a low, regretful tone.

"I was taken to Voss shortly after. They healed the body.. but inside?” His gloved hand rose briefly to tap his chest, just over the plating that covered his beating heart. “It left a dagger lodged here; one still buried deep."

Lysander could feel it now.. anger. The Dark coiled and writhed, curling its fingers around the edges of his consciousness, whispering that it could make him strong enough to never fall again.

And beneath that.. fear.

Fear that she could feel it through the Force, that she would sense the flicker of flame he was trying so hard to smother.

Sibylla's face flashed before his mind's eye, a reminder of the comfort she had brought through messages over the Holonet during his darkest days. The thought of what could have been if only he had remained on Naboo, pressing him with cruel reminders that he bound himself to the harsh teachings on Koriban just before they met. They all bled into the next, a shower of regrets that was heavy on his soul.

And yet, as he allowed himself to remember, he felt the sting at the corner of his eyes, the tightening in his throat, and the ache in his chest.

He forced it back, swallowing hard, his jaw locking.

The Sith would never permit him to wear that kind of softness.

It brought to mind something else, something that had been kept from him.

It tasted like betrayal.

The teen's gaze sharpened, and his words were edged with bitterness. "Malum was there."

With her organic hand suspended between them, he stared at it for a long moment, the space heavy with so many things never said. Then, slowly, he took the final step. Lysander’s fingers closed around his sister’s, and with a reluctant sigh, he lowered himself from that guarded position to sit beside her. Once again, he was the boy who found safety in her presence, who truly believed she could protect him from anything in the galaxy.

“I thought I could carry it alone.” The confession drifted like smoke from a dying fire.

“But I was wrong. Every time I tried to burn the past away, you were still there.. in the ashes.”

He slowly turned his head, meeting Cora’s gaze. “I don’t know if I can be the brother you remember. But I can try.. for you.”

​

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

What hurt the most was neither his anger, nor his fear. They slipped through the Force a little too easily, finding the path of least resistance to her. The wound in her chest stirred, and she tasted his loathing – whether it be for himself or his circumstance or something else – a little too keenly. A silent shudder wracked her spine as Cora steadied herself, anchoring her presence to the ancient oak.

It wasn't the betrayal that hurt the most, though that did sting somewhere deep. It wasn't his pain, which tried to claw her wide open, reminding her of something that she couldn't have saved. Didn't save. It wasn't his guilt, though some small part of her was relieved that his conscience was still at least partially intact.

It was his hesitance.

Malum.

Cora's heart lurched. A name she'd not heard in...several years, was it? No, she hadn't seen Malum since they'd discovered their shared blood. Her expression softened further, if possible, in regret. For what exactly, she couldn't quite pin down.

"You know then," she murmured. Guilt swirled around her like miasma, sinking into her skin and igniting every nerve with untouched sensation. By keeping their relation to the Marr family hidden, she thought she was protecting them. Him. The family.

There were those in the galaxy who sought to destroy not only Sith, but those who carried their blood.

The creases on her face suddenly drew downward into a frown, and the clouds above shaded the sun enough to throw deep shadows across her expression. Something vigorous sparked in the harshening of her gaze.

"Did he hurt you?" The words felt dry in her mouth, and Cora took a moment to wet her lips, letting the silence draw its own picture. She knew enough of how the Sith trained their acolytes. Mustafar lingered not far from the corners of her mind.

"Did they hurt you?"

The clouds parted, washing her features in late summer light once more. Cora closed her eyes and allowed herself to exhale the lingering frustration as Lysander sat beside her. She found a smile for him, one where fatigue and joy lingered at the corners of her lips in equal measure.

Her hand came to rest upon his cheek, soft and gentle. "Just be here as you are, Lysander," she whispered, voice wavering as the urge to cry tried to work its way in. "Perhaps I'm not quite the sister you remember, either." Slowly, she drew in another shuddering breath as her fingers slid up to brush golden curls from his face.

"The galaxy changes people. I'm sorry that I wasn't there for you when you needed me. You shouldn't have to sift through ashes."

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania
​

The wind combed through the high branches, the leaves stirring like his restless thoughts. A few skittered and brushed against the graves of his armor with a soft scrape as he sat there. Soft, yet still sharp enough to remind him of Korriban’s red sands, the way they hissed against stone.

He listened intently to his sister, bringing his head back slowly to lean against the tree. His gaze flicked up to the sky, allowing the world to simply move around him; the distant sound of a bird, the creak of the tree's limb.

It was Ukatis, yes, but it felt foreign now, like a dream he’d simply forgotten.

Perhaps, the words on Malachor V among the cavorted killers of The Dark Court had always been true. He just hadn’t wanted to believe them. Not while some part of him still thought he could possibly keep the claws of destruction from tearing through the Mid Rim.

That part was dead now.

The light was golden, but not warm, no comfort in the glow. Instead, it seemed to dance around the pale figure of his sister, like a ghost tethered to something he didn't understand. By now, he knew this wasn’t fatigue from battle, but from carrying something else. He remembered her differently, not like this. Now, she looked at him with eyes that had seen too much, impossible to ignore.

The Force pulsed between them, quiet but insistent. It carried her sorrow to him, and his guilt to her.

Shifting slightly, the plates of his armor groaning with the movement.

The question didn't surprise him, for Lysander, still seated beneath the gnarled oak, could feel the weight of each potential answer like a heavy chain.

A bitter smile flickered across his face, only to vanish in an instant as Cora's gentle touch turned into a fire that seared his skin, for it was used to only the shadows and darkness.

"No," he spoke softly. "Our cousin taught me how to bleed without making a sound. That wasn’t pain, it was a lesson in discipline.”

Vulnerability seeped through the exterior. “They taught me how to survive. But surviving isn’t the same as living, is it?” He hesitated on meeting her gaze, so it lingered instead, reflecting on everything he’d lost, on both Ukatis and Naboo.

“But the worst hurt?” Finally turning to her, the emerald inferno in his eyes caught the sun’s rays. “That came when I waited for you to come find me, waited for you to save me. And you didn’t.”

He swallowed hard, the words pulling something jagged and heavy. “And not long after.. I lost someone else. Someone I thought I was capable of loving, of giving my entire being to.” Lysander’s gaze dropped, shadowed with something far deeper than regret. “I’ve never in my life wanted someone so badly. Not just to be near her, but to be enough for them; to be the one who could protect her.

The words were laced with an echo of his own sorrow. “But I don’t think she ever really looked at me. Not the way I looked at her. I was just chasing a dream, born of my desperate imagination, even when it was only slipping further away.”

The stray curls brushed aside were stirred by the breeze; he let them fall back into place.

“No. You’re not the sister I remember.” His voice was heavy with emotion. “But then, I’m not the boy you left behind.”

His line of sight didn't meet hers right away. It remained on the horizon, where the manor stood like a monument.

He held the moment like breath in his lungs, knowing that once he stepped away from his homeworld, everything was going to change.

For so long, Lysander purposely danced along the edginess of darkness, never fully stepping in, always safeguarding that last flicker of light.. an ember he refused to let go, even as it slowly faded.

When one falls, one chooses

A truth Darth Anathemous offered had lodged itself deep. The need for it had never left him; it had only grown in the silence since his visit on Canto Bight.

The Outer Rim was awaiting his return.

Desevro was calling to him.

And he was finally ready to surrender.

Completely.

Sibylla was slowly becoming a distant memory, though the ache of her absence was forever a constant torment. He was tired of hurting, tired of being broken. It was time to harness that pain and use it to forge it into something the galaxy could not ignore.

When his attention returned to the other blonde, it wasn’t with sharpness. He was simply exhausted.

“The galaxy doesn’t change people, Cora. It breaks them. And we rebuild with whatever pieces are left."

Lysander lips twitched, and a brittle smile ghosted across his youthful features. “The truth is in the ashes, after everything burns down.” His jaw tightened while trying to hold it.

“But I’m glad it’s you, Coco. If anyone were to see me in this state.. I'm glad it's you."

​

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

I waited for you to come find me, waited for you to save me. And you didn't.

A sharp breath drew her chest inward, gnawed with guilt. It wasn't the influence of the wound. It was her. Herself, and him, and all of the feelings that had stretched between their diverging paths.

Until now, those feelings had laid quite dormant, left to fester and stew. Cora could not help but think that if they'd crossed paths during a more tense situation, those smoldering emotions would’ve risen like a tsunami and swallowed them whole.

Each revelation hit her like brick to the chest.

Discipline. Survival. A love lost.

Cora's hand fell away from Lysander's face. It drifted into the grass that separated them.

"I suppose I had wanted to give you space," she murmured. Sorrow and guilt dragged the creases of her face down in equal measure.

"I never imagined what you would do with it."

Her fingers shifted, twining through verdant blades, careful to keep her hand from tensing. Nature had always felt so grounding, but Lysander's presence was discordant against the harmony she'd tried so desperately to cultivate.

She welcomed him all the same.

"I wish things had gone differently. I wish I had paid closer attention. I wish I had communicated more often. I wish that I had…"

The thought of him suffering alone was almost too harsh to bear, and it had her voice wavering.

"…gone after you before it was too late. I’m sorry, Lysander. I wasn’t the sister you deserved.”

Cora paused, letting her words settle as she gathered her thoughts, gathered her breath. Lysander might've been different, but he spoke with the same sort of dramatic finality that she sometimes did. That thought, and that thought alone, brought a measure of fondness back into her expression.

"The Light will welcome you back, Lysander. If only you'll let it. I…" she trailed, chewing at the inside of her cheek with uncertainty. Cora knew that Lysander had once viewed her as an unbreakable paragon of purity, which couldn't have been further from the truth.

If it meant being honest with him, was it worth shattering that image?

"I walked a similar path as you did, once. I was hurting. I was lost, and the Dark felt like the solution."

Cora’s eyes fluttered closed as her thoughts cast themselves backward, over a decade ago. On the edge of desperation, when a Sith had come to her with comfort. With answers. With the love and affection she'd desperately wanted.

A slow exhale through her nose had those memories dispersing into the wind. With distance came clarity.

"Would you have let me save you?"

Lysander von Ascania

 

[Lysander von Ascania]

Corazona von Ascania
​

All that was invisible was not lost on Lysander; it sliced through the quiet slowly, a scalpel upon his own heart. His sister’s voice may have carried apology, but the sound of it was much heavier.

And when the wind shifted, carrying the scent of earth, it should have grounded him in a place that felt like home, but instead, it fell over him like a veil.

Cora’s words landed with the thud of something he’d heard before, but never from her. The young Sith could feel the truth of it in the Force: her guilt, her sorrow.

He didn't need to read her thoughts to know she was right either. He was just the wrong note in the wind’s song now.

That would never change.

A breath was drawn. His gaze lingered on her hand in the grass.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, the words pulled from somewhere deep. “I filled it with the only thing I had left. The Dark. It doesn’t care if you’re lonely. It doesn’t care if you’re bleeding. It just.. stays.”

His jaw worked once, and the plates of his armor groaned from leaning forward, forearms resting on his knees.

“If you’d gone after me,” he continued, the storm in him lifting to her at last, “you would’ve found me halfway gone. I was already committed back on Naboo.”

Shoulders shifted in a roll to shake off the memory, yet it clung to him all the same. A hand flexed as the manor came into view, only to blur in his vision, fading into somewhere else in the Mid Rim.

He saw her in a rare, unguarded moment, hazel eyes warm, alight from within. From the gentle slope of her cheek to the grace of her jaw, nothing compared to the memory of that one holocall: the time she smiled for real. Not the courtly one meant to keep the galaxy at bay, but something unrestrained, radiant in its honesty.

That recollection arrived like a blade, its beauty only serving to wound him; so, his jaw tightened, a passing flicker of the ache it left behind. When his focus returned to Cora once more, the manor loomed behind her. But it was a hollow, a mausoleum. The Light she spoke of was different; to Lysander, it had a face, a voice.

“The Light?” A sigh escaped him, not of weariness, but something emptied so long ago. “That was never mine, Cora. I only ever borrowed it from you.. like a lantern carried through a storm.”

The golden rays of autumn tried in vain to thaw the frozen depths building within his countenance.

Syllables drifted from him like smoke did from a snuffed candle.

“And lanterns go out. You can’t welcome back what’s already gone.”

The silence stretched until it became suffocating. “No. You can’t save what’s already ash.”

A request, lingering like embers from a dying fire, was all the blonde had left to give, his final plea before the flames would soon rise to claim him entirely.

“Stop pretending you see who I was and accept what I’m becoming.” The darkness coiled around his soul, patient, merciless, peeling away every layer of belonging he dared to hold.

“That way I don’t have to cut you out with the rest.”