I'm speechless💔🥀. I don't even know what to say because these characters are really messing up my mind over here. But I trust this season will pass. This chapter is long, I know, but I just couldn't split it like the previous chapters, and the scene isn't even over 😔💔. Well, what do you think Jocelyn will do now? Find out in the next chapter. This funeral morning is already feeling like endless decades of pain and suffering.
~ JOCELYN ~ A long silence stretches between us. His words are still hanging in the air, burning my chest like a fire I can’t breathe through. I want to scream at him. I want to tell him that none of it matters, that the pain he caused me can’t be erased by tears and late confessions. And yet… I can’t move. I can't talk. I can't even look at anything else in the room. All I can do is stare at him. At the man who ripped me apart five years ago, the same man who is now standing here before me, broken, baring his heart as if it’s mine to shatter all over again. My fingers curl into fists at my sides, trembling with pain… and something else. Something I’ve been fighting against since the moment his blue eyes found mine at the funeral. That same something that has haunted me through the years no matter how hard I tried to kill it. Love. I hate that I still love him. I hate that I want to touch him, to feel him, to remember what it was like to be his light before everything went to dar
~ JOCELYN ~ I keep watching the burning pyres, still frozen and wondering why I felt so useless and powerless against Thanox last night. What happened? What is wrong with me? “Jocelyn, stay with me.” The voice mutters softly in my ear. Elian. His hand brushes my arm before I close my eyes and lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder and choking on a silent sob that doesn't want to break free. I'm silent, not crying, but deep inside me, I’m screaming. “Please don't lose yourself inside your head,” Sarah murmurs in a broken voice that cuts through my veins. When I open my eyes and glance her way, I see her watery eyes filled with a sadness I've never seen in her before. Her fingers curl around my hand, squeezing tight. Last night and this funeral are painful memories that we will never forget. I don't know why my tears are trapped inside me. Maybe I need to be away from the crackling fire and the water waves. Maybe I need to be somewhere else. Maybe I need to be ALONE. ~
“No one is going to give you a prize for not crying. No one is going to praise you or reward you for bottling it all up. So, just cry when you feel like it.” - Yoon Shi Woo, Moorim School: Saga Of The Brave ~ CASPIAN ~ After the procession is over, families gather behind the pyres of their fallen. Some are carrying flowers. Others are holding their children too close, as if letting go for even a moment might invite Thanox to strike again. Their faces are streaked with tears, their voices crying out names that will never be forgotten. A hush settles over the place when the Head Elder begins delivering the tribute of passage. “Today, we’re gathered not as the living and the dead, but as a people bound by war, death, and sacrifice. Last night, the darkness came for us. He tried to break us, to tear apart everything we’ve ever fought for. And many of our own… they fought bravely and gave their lives so the rest of us could still be here this morning. They reminded us that our strengt
“Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love.” - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. ~ CASPIAN ~ “I forgot to tell you all that this is only the beginning.” Those words reverberate like thunderbolts before they are gone again, their absence shifting the battlefield into a silence heavier than fear. Heavier than pain. Heavier than loss. It is heavier because death has claimed so many of our own. Countless bodies of my warriors—my people—are sprawled across the field. A warrior never fears death, but tonight, seeing the field littered with corpses of those who promised their families they’d return home, I'm shattered. Torn apart and left with nothing but the painful reminder that I'll never forget this night. Thanox did this, leaving us with wounds we never asked for. His armies of monsters are gone, but I know this is not the end. The ground is scarred and blackened with the ashes of his dead beasts. The wind catches the ashes, sweeping them aw
“We can look at the darkness and let it consume us, or we can recognize that it’s only temporary, trusting that once it passes, the light will return.” - Crestoria Vossendi Kildarion, The Prison Healer #3 The Blood Traitor. ~ JOCELYN ~ It’s nice meeting you in flesh, little Phoenix.” His words scrape down my spine like icy claws, his voice as deep as the grave, all too familiar just like in my dreams. Dreams he invaded with threats that made me wake up sweating and shaking. Hearing his voice now, in the flesh, on the battlefield where blood already paints the dirt black, makes my stomach twist. He is here, standing in front of me as though he owns this night, as though he owns me. But he doesn't. He is a curse to our world, and I won’t tremble before him. Not when Sarah, Elian, Caspian, and everyone else is out here fighting, bleeding, dying. Not when the fate of more than one pack hangs on the outcome of this battle. “You should have stayed in the dark where you belong!” I spit
“Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.” - Kahlan Amnell, Sword Of Truth #6 Faith Of The Fallen. ~ JOCELYN ~ The moment Caspian’s voice rips through the air, our world erupts into chaos. The creatures slam into us like a tidal wave of nightmares. Screams. Howls. Bombs and cannons going off and burning up large portions of the swarms. The thick smell of Wolfsbane gunpowder in the air nearly chokes me, but I know how to breathe through Wolfsbane during a war or a raid because the technique has always been one of the core lessons taught to every warrior in every pack and handed down to the next generations to come. For that, I'm deeply grateful. Right then, something inside me snaps wide open, like a dam bursting through invisible walls and intensifying the crackling light dancing around my hands and body. It starts when one of the beasts lunges at Sarah from behind. I don’t think. I just react. My hands flare with the blinding light exploding from my palms. It strikes the