Grief
Morning came, but it felt wrong, like the sun had made a mistake rising on a world that should have stayed dark. I was still on the ground, stiff and hollow, trying and failing to process the horror of losing both my parents in a single night. I didn't know how to think or breathe or move. I was suspended, trapped somewhere between shock and reality, unable to step into either.
I had already cried myself empty. My throat burned from screaming. My eyes ached as though someone had scraped the tears out of them. Nothing was left. I just sat there, staring at nothing, staring at everything, lost in a storm inside my head.
Over and over, I replayed their death. The way they fell. The way their hands slipped from mine. The sound of it. The smell of it. The way the world dimmed. And every time I replayed it, I wished for a chance to rewrite it. To run faster. To fight harder. To stop fate from reaching us. But fate had already taken what it wanted.
Then Grand Master Valkin's words echoed in my skull like a curse, "a guardian always ends up alone."
Again.
Again.
Again.
Did fate plan this for me? Was I meant to be alone? Is this the burden of the chosen? If it was, then I did not want it. I did not want to carry the weight of losing everything I loved. Not anymore.
I was tired. Devastated. Broken. And beneath the numbness, beneath the ache, something dark pulsed in my blood… revenge. I didn't want to be a Guardian. I didn't want destiny. I didn't want to be chosen. I wanted payback.
I looked around, searching for Giselle, but she was nowhere. Did she run?
I lifted my head and saw Doya approaching with Bali. He had gone to bring my horse back to me. Behind him, the surviving sages lingered by the bushes, giving me space, watching me with quiet grief of their own.
But I wasn't leaving this place. Not yet.
My parents were here. Their bodies were here.
How could I walk away?
I had gone through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, but I refused the last stage. I refused acceptance. I wasn't going to accept that they were gone. Not yet. Not now. A part of me clawed at any sliver of hope, searching for the impossible.
I turned slowly to Doya, my voice barely a whisper.
"C-Can the Cranium bring them back?"
His face shifted with worry, anger, pity, and a deep, painful understanding.
"I'm sorry, Dana."
Sorry?
What did he mean sorry?
"Can it bring them back?!" I screamed it this time, and somehow another tear escaped down my cheek. I didn't even know there was water left in me.
Then Doya knelt beside me, opening his arms. He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.
I fell into him, my face buried in his chest, and I broke all over again.
The tears poured harder than before. My body shook. My breaths came in fragments.
I clung to him like he was the last solid thing in a collapsing world.
I held my parents' hands with one hand and held onto Doya with the other. Minutes blurred into hours. I couldn't count time anymore. All I could feel was the emptiness in my chest.
Eventually the tears stopped again, not because the pain was gone, but because my body was too weak to keep releasing it.
I looked at my parents one more time, and something inside me hardened.
He took them from me.
He stole everything.
And he would pay.
I was exhausted, but we had to go. They needed to be buried. They needed peace.
Before we left, I asked Doya, my voice raw, "When you went to get Bali, did you search for the scroll and compass?"
"Yes," he replied. "They weren't there. I believe Giselle's Dad took it."
A bitter laugh almost escaped me.
I lost my parents.
I lost the scroll.
I lost the compass.
All this pain and for what… what did we even achieve?
I looked around and saw the bodies of those I had killed. I didn't regret it. Not one bit. They deserved it. Every single one of them.
"Let's go home," I said quietly. "Can you veil-walk us back?"
"Yes, but the sages will have to find their way."
He walked over there and spoke to them. They nodded, mounted their horses and rode toward the coven.
Doya returned to me, and with Bali beside us, he veil-walked us home.
When we arrived at my shack, pain slammed into me with fresh force. I saw my mother crouched in my memories, picking roots. I saw my father chopping wood. Their laughter, their voices, their presence, all of it stabbed at me.
I placed their bodies gently outside the door and went in to get a shovel. Doya tied Bali by the tree, then followed me silently. His presence was steady, grounding. He didn't push, didn't rush me. He just stayed.
We walked to the backyard in silence. The air felt heavy, almost suffocating. I tried to dig, but Doya took the shovel from me without a word.
For hours he pressed the shovel into the earth. He dug until the holes were deep enough.
He carried my parents himself, laying them gently into the ground.
The sky was already dark by the time we covered the graves and placed the wooden crosses.
Night came, and I couldn't go inside. I stayed by the graves, staring at the mounds of earth that held my whole heart beneath them. I couldn't sleep. I just sat there, breathing through the ache, feeling like the world was tilting.
Doya sat with me the whole night. He didn't sleep either. He didn't leave me for a second.
At some point, the truth slipped into my chest like a blade.
They were really gone.
And I accepted it.
But the acceptance didn't bring peace.
It brought devastation.
---
Morning again.
Two nights without sleep.
My body felt heavy. My stomach twisted. I couldn't eat. I couldn't even think of food.
Doya cooked something small, trying to help, but I couldn't swallow anything.
Still, he stayed. He hovered, but gently. He made sure I wasn't alone for a single moment.
When I looked at him, something broke in me.
"Please don't ever leave me," I whispered.
He looked at me with an expression I couldn't fully read. Then he walked to me and pulled me into a hug, steady, warm, grounding. He didn't promise anything.
But the way he held me… it felt like a promise of its own.
I hadn't stepped outside since we buried them. Doya kept me calm, kept me steady, kept me alive in a way.
But reality doesn't wait forever.
The pain shifted inside me, turning sharp.
Cold.
Focused.
I didn't care about destiny.
I didn't care about the Guardian's path.
I didn't choose this life. This life chose me.
But I would choose revenge.
I would find him.
I would make him pay.
For my parents.
For everything.