Status Updates From A Shadow Watching (A Fractu...

“A wounded predator does not wait. It feeds.”

“Brother,” “You with me?”
The smoke shifted in his eyes. Focused, and recognition flickered.
“I am here,”

“If you must break every law and every bone to get there first, do it with my blessing.”

“This was a man spending himself like currency, deciding the world was worth the cost, and doing it without asking permission from anyone who might tell him to slow down.”

“The life of the world was worth more than either of them.”

“That’s how you saved the world, then,” he said quietly. “By giving it your own past.”
😭😭😭

“He was supposed to be the one who made it out of all this. The one who got the quiet dock and the small boat. Not this.”

*this WRECKED me

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. You hear me?”

“You don’t have to do this alone,”

“My real name’s Thaddeus.”
Theron blinked. “Thaddeus.”
“Yeah.” Rook shrugged, poking at the fire with a stick. “People called me Tad when I was little. I hated it. Sounded like a boy who tripped over his own boots chasing butterflies. So I buried it. I was compared to a rook, once, and it stuck.”

“When you return, the world will be changed. Or it will be gone.”
Rook rubbed the back of his neck. “No pressure, then.”

“I only wanted to keep walking. To fix what I broke.” His voice faltered. “Meeting you made that bearable. You are my friends.”

“You made us tools. You made us complicit.”

“There’s always a choice. There will always be a cost. You just need to decide what you’re willing to pay.”

“All power is borrowed. And eventually, someone comes to collect.”

“We are the Veydran. We are the hollow sum of all things. The eater of every world, the hunger that comes. Your world is as all others. It is seeded, tended, and ripe for the reaping.”