Chapter 248 – A Father's Burden
Fear is death to reason.
A poet would say that.
Or another might go as far as to claim: the frightened man eats himself.
The words were different, but the message was the same.
It meant fear was something to avoid. Something to suppress in order to keep the mind stable, fluid, and alert.
Many would agree with those words, for they carried truth.
But Rea Thornspire would not.
Even though she understood the reasoning behind them, her very being could never acknowledge them — because she was fear.
Not the wild, frantic fear lesser men felt in the face of an ordeal, but a stable, grounded fear that nestled deep inside her like the heartfire of a phoenix — always burning, always feeding.
And that feeling only deepened when she succeeded in her quest and became an Intermediate.
