When his mask cracks Novels & Stories

For making me believe he wanted more, only to bury himself back under that damn mask. I wanted to tear it off his face and scream until he saw me. Until he remembered who he was when no one else was watching. Honestly, all I could do was just stand there, totally mute, choking on the words that stubbornly stuck in my throat. And then he glanced at my direction. Just for a second. Our eyes locked. I swear I saw it. The flicker. The crack in the mask. The plea, the desperation he couldn’t say out loud. Help me.

A chuckle rumbled through his chest, “yet you couldn’t see through your step-mother’s facade for sixteen years until your eyes were opened when you heard her talk to Fin in this academy.” “Because some people don’t wear masks, they solder it with their soul. A mask so thick, it becomes their skin.” I leaned forward, my hands on the table as I lowered my voice to hold the gravity. “And such people… cannot be unmasked without tearing off their skin, behind which they are nothing but a mess of blood, muscles and bones.” My past replayed in my mind when I said those words. I blinked back my tears and took another sip of my tea.

The normally impenetrable mask shattered like glass under the onslaught of my powerful blow, revealing nothing beneath - faceless. He crumbled to his knees, an ethereal apparition, his countenance veiled in every darkness. As he fell limp to the floor, I felt a fleeting sensation of victory, realizing the key to our liberation – the masks. "It's the mask." I breathed. "Their weakness is in their mask." then I strode toward the second man in front of Simon. With renewed vigor, my friends and I lashed at the remaining assailants, aiming for their cursed masks. Each strike of my claws shattered them into oblivion, releasing the men beneath from their silent torment.

“And look what that trust earned us. Bugs in the walls. Names in tabloids. Betrayals stacked like dominoes.” I swallowed hard. “And yet you still show up. You still fight to keep it alive.” For a moment, his mask cracked. He leaned back against the desk, rubbing a hand over his jaw. The gesture was almost human in its vulnerability. “You don’t understand,” he said, quieter now. “Every time I let someone close, I wait for the moment they break me open. And when it comes, I don’t know how to put myself back together without turning cruel.” The confession landed heavy between us.

And he didn’t know which mask would crack first—the one he wore at the office, or the one Evan forced onto him every night. Either way, Adrian was certain of one thing: when it broke, it wouldn’t just be him who paid the price.

I felt like there wasn’t anything physically possible that I couldn’t do. My fist crashed into the jaw of one of the masked people and I heard and felt it snap. The person’s mask cracked into two as they crashed to the ground from the force of my blow. It was a man, I could tell from the horrible scream he let out and he cradled his broken jaw. The other three stopped short at this. They had obviously been expecting a weakling, not someone who could break a person’s jaw with one punch.

That mask of his was second nature—his last line of defense and the only thing that kept him sane after all he’d been through. I didn’t care if he kept it, used it to give him some semblance of stability, but not with me. Never with me. Without an inkling of hesitation I closed the distance between us, stepping into his space until the gravitational pull that circled Dain yanked me in. His breath came in short pants, escaping lips that were tightly knitted together. I had to sink my teeth into my own to stifle the sound I made when he flinched under my touch. Like clockwork, I could hear his mask shatter a second time, and when his eyes opened, they were brimming with a century’s worth of un

I didn’t want safety if it meant absence. My vision blurred with fresh tears, and I turned my face away, ashamed at the cracks splintering through me. The ceiling swam, sterile white bleeding into haze. “Who are you?” I asked. “Why do you sound like you’ve known me?” For the first time, his mask cracked. Not much, just a flicker in his eyes, a shadow of something softer. Regret, maybe. Memory. “I’m someone who made a promise,” he said, voice rougher now. “To Damien. And to you, though you don’t remember it.”

The mask stretched into a smile, making it look even more grotesque than before. "The Catalyst would live as long as you do," the mask said. Miguel suddenly dropped the box. "Boss," he said, pointing at the mask. I turned to look at it. The mask was spewing a black inky substance, and immediately it entered my mouth. I fell as I struggled to breathe. I clawed at my throat as I felt I was being drowned by the strange substance.