Tattoo You (and Apparently It's a Big Deal), Meet Rah: Wild Hair, Wilder Theories, and My New Skin Art Nightmare, and One Mother of a Reward (If I Don't Screw Up the Multiverse).
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Author Note: Okay, so that weird tattoo wasn't just a bad dream after all. Turns out "Crazy Rah" might have been onto something (shocking, we know). And now, a tiny king with a flair for the dramatic is dangling the ultimate carrot: Mom's back... if Sawyer can just prevent the small issue of interdimensional apocalypse. No pressure!
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He stepped closer, closing the last few feet between them, until Sawyer could see every tiny detail of his youthful face — the faint freckle beneath one eye, the way the light seemed to catch in the depths of his pupils, ancient and ageless at once.
There was no hesitation, no flicker of doubt in Samu'el's expression, only an unwavering certainty that Sawyer found both terrifying and painfully out of reach.
Without a word, Samu'el reached out his hand — small, but firm, and strangely warm — and grasped Sawyer's forearm.
His grip wasn't forceful, but there was no mistaking the quiet strength behind it.
It was the kind of touch that left no room for retreat.
Gently, insistently, Samu'el tugged back the sleeve of Sawyer's oversized hoodie, exposing the pale, goosebump-roughened skin beneath.
Sawyer looked down, the world narrowing to the sight of his own forearm, and the strange mark that adorned it.
The tattoo.
It sprawled across his skin in intricate, looping patterns — a labyrinth of dark, near-black ink that twisted and wove itself into unfamiliar symbols.
It pulsed faintly under the hall's golden light, as if it were a living thing, breathing with some hidden energy he couldn't name.
In the chaos of everything that had happened, he had almost forgotten it was there — a souvenir from a moment he had dismissed as nothing more than an unsettling dream.
"Ah, yes," Samu'el murmured, a faint, knowing smile touching his lips.
There was a glimmer of something in his gaze — understanding, maybe even sympathy — but it was buried deep beneath the layers of ageless knowledge etched into his young face.
"You must have met Rah."
"Rah?" Sawyer repeated numbly, the name tasting foreign and unwelcome on his tongue.
He stared at the tattoo, then at Samu'el, struggling to piece together the fragments of memory that suddenly felt far too important to ignore.
"You mean that… that crazy guy?" he said, his voice picking up a slight edge of incredulity as the memory clawed its way into the forefront of his mind.
"The one with the wild hair? And the even wilder theories?"
Sawyer shook his head slowly, almost in disbelief at the absurdity of it all.
"He… he just came up to me out of nowhere," he continued, the anger he hadn't realized he was carrying flaring to life.
"Grabbed my arm and gave me this… this thing," he gestured sharply to the tattoo, his hand trembling slightly.
The memory was so vivid now — the manic gleam in Rah's eyes, the cryptic words he had muttered under his breath — and it left Sawyer with a fresh wave of confusion and a deep, gnawing sense of unease.
It had felt so random then.
So meaningless.
But now, standing here, under Samu'el's unflinching gaze, that encounter felt like a thread he had tugged unknowingly, unraveling a tapestry far larger and more terrifying than he had ever imagined.
"Yep. That Rah," Samu'el confirmed, his voice light but carrying an unmistakable weight underneath it.
He gave a small, enigmatic nod, his expression betraying a deeper, almost painful understanding of that seemingly random encounter — a depth Sawyer couldn't even begin to fathom.
There was something knowing in his eyes, something that suggested Rah's actions, however insane they had seemed at the time, had been anything but random.
Sawyer shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the old wood beneath them creaking faintly in the heavy silence.
His eyes dropped again to the tattoo snaking across his arm, the dark ink standing stark and vivid against his pale skin.
The air around him seemed to hum, as if the mere acknowledgment of the mark had awakened something dormant inside him.
"But… what does this intricate marking actually mean, Samu'el?" Sawyer finally asked, the words spilling out faster than he intended, thick with a frantic edge.
His voice cracked slightly under the pressure of the emotions roiling within him — fear, confusion, desperation.
"What does it do? Why is it suddenly so important?"
He couldn't tear his gaze away from it now.
The tattoo almost seemed to pulse faintly in rhythm with his heartbeat, its complex network of sharp angles and looping curves both beautiful and terrifying in their mystery.
His mind raced, grasping at fragments of logic, trying and failing to decipher the secret that felt so close — so maddeningly just out of reach.
A heavy sense of urgency was beginning to build inside him, like a fire he couldn't smother, a desperate, clawing need to understand how this all tied together.
Because somehow, deep down, he knew everything depended on it.
"That, my dear Sawyer," Samu'el said, his voice lowering into something almost tender, almost sorrowful, "is something I cannot directly tell you."
His small hand remained resting firmly against Sawyer's arm, grounding him, keeping him from spiraling too far into panic.
His intense gaze caught Sawyer's own, locking him in place, refusing to let him look away.
There was no malice there, no manipulation — only a heavy burden of truth that he could not yet share.
"You have to figure it out for yourself," Samu'el continued, his voice soft but unyielding, like steel wrapped in velvet.
"In your own time. In your own way. That understanding — that moment of realization — it's a crucial part of the test you must face."
Sawyer's mouth opened slightly, as if to protest, but no words came.
The idea of finding answers on his own — when he felt so small, so overwhelmed — was almost too much to bear.
"But," Samu'el added, a small, encouraging tilt to his lips, "I can offer you a vital clue. A guiding principle."
He squeezed Sawyer's arm gently, anchoring him again, drawing his attention away from his rising panic.
"You must first believe," Samu'el said, the words falling slowly, deliberately, like stones into a still lake.
"Believe in the power of the mark. Believe in its potential."
He paused, letting the weight of his words settle between them like a thick fog.
"And perhaps even more importantly, Sawyer… you must learn to believe in your own."
Sawyer stood frozen, the world shrinking down to the sound of his breathing and the steady beat of his heart hammering against his ribs.
He stared down at the tattoo, his fingers unconsciously brushing over the raised ink, tracing the intricate lines with a kind of reverence he didn't yet understand.
The curves and angles seemed less chaotic now — not clearer, but alive somehow, as if waiting for him to see them for what they truly were.
He said nothing for a long moment.
The silence stretched between them, thick and almost sacred.
Sawyer's mind was a hurricane of doubt and longing, skepticism and the fragile, flickering flame of hope that refused to be extinguished.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime wrapped inside a single heartbeat, he lifted his gaze back to Samu'el.
His eyes were clouded with a thousand fears, but buried somewhere underneath was something else — something fragile but growing.
A beginning.
His expression was a complex mixture of lingering skepticism, battered self-doubt, and a fragile, burgeoning hope that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't as powerless as he had always believed.
"You… you mentioned something earlier," Sawyer said hesitantly, his voice barely more than a broken whisper, thick with the weight of uncertainty and fragile hope.
His hands fidgeted nervously at the hem of his hoodie, twisting the fabric between his fingers as if trying to anchor himself to something solid, something real.
"Something about a… a reward?"
"Indeed, I did," Samu'el replied with a small, almost imperceptible nod, the kind that felt heavier than it appeared.
There was a gravity to him now, a quiet solemnity that made the air around them feel denser, harder to breathe.
The boy-king's voice was soft but unwavering, his ancient eyes watching Sawyer with a patience that almost hurt to be under.
"If you succeed, Sawyer," Samu'el continued, taking a careful step closer, his tone dipping into something that almost sounded like reverence, "if you manage to close the gate and save not just this world, but countless others — if you can prevent the incursion of those dimension-warping monsters and stop the catastrophic collision of realities — then…"
He paused, letting the words settle, letting their weight wrap around Sawyer's chest.
"I will tell you how to bring your mother back."
The words hit Sawyer like a physical blow.
His breath caught painfully in his throat, his whole body freezing as if the world had tilted out of balance.
"My… my mother?" he croaked, his voice cracked and raw with disbelief, as a buried, festering wound deep inside him tore open without warning.
A wave of intense, long-suppressed grief surged through him, rising like a tide that threatened to drown him where he stood.
It was too much, too cruel.
The mere mention of her — of the possibility of her — felt like a brutal tearing at old scars, wounds he had carefully ignored for years just to keep functioning.
"You… you've got to be joking," Sawyer rasped out, his heart pounding so hard it was a wonder Samu'el couldn't hear it.
"That's… that's impossible."
He shook his head, more to himself than to Samu'el, as if trying to physically reject the hope trying to take root inside him.
The idea of resurrecting his beloved mother — the woman whose death had broken him in ways he had never truly recovered from — was not just absurd.
It was dangerous.
It was the kind of hope that could destroy a man if it turned out to be false.
But Samu'el offered no verbal reply.
He didn't argue.
He didn't try to persuade.
He simply stood there, utterly still, his small face carved into a mask of solemnity, his intense gaze boring into Sawyer's, giving nothing away.
Not pity. Not reassurance. Just… truth.
Unyielding. Uncompromising.
And somehow, in that silence, Sawyer knew.
He didn't know how he knew — maybe it was in the way Samu'el's hands trembled ever so slightly at his sides, or in the depthless, ancient sadness in his eyes — but he knew.
Samu'el wasn't lying.
He couldn't be.
"Wait… wait a minute."
Sawyer staggered back a half-step, the ground feeling uncertain beneath his feet, as if he were standing at the edge of a cliff he hadn't realized was there.
"You're actually being serious right now?" he asked, his voice rising slightly, a tremor of something wild and electric threading through it — something that tasted dangerously like hope.
The sheer enormity of Samu'el's impossible promise began to crack through the thick armor of Sawyer's skepticism, slithering into the cracks, demanding to be felt, to be acknowledged.
His breath hitched in his chest, and he clenched his fists to stop them from shaking.
"I… I can really bring my mother back?" he whispered, the words escaping him like a prayer, half-terrified, half-exultant.
The thought — the dream — once nothing more than an unreachable fantasy locked away in the furthest corners of his broken heart, now flickered before him like a fragile, precious light.
A light so delicate that even breathing too hard might snuff it out.
And yet, despite everything screaming inside him to protect himself, to shut it down, to not believe… the ember of hope had already been lit.
And it was growing.
Without waiting for a confirmation, without sparing even a heartbeat for second thoughts, Sawyer lunged forward, his desperation overriding every ounce of caution or rational thought he might have otherwise possessed.
The need inside him was too vast, too raw, too all-consuming to be reasoned with.
Instinct took over — messy, human instinct — and he bent down, grabbing Samu'el firmly by his small, narrow shoulders.
His fingers dug in with an urgency he barely noticed, his movements jerky, almost trembling as he shook the boy slightly, not out of anger but out of sheer, frantic need.
"Tell me!" Sawyer cried out, his voice cracking under the pressure of so many unspoken years of mourning.
"Please, just tell me! How? How in God's name can I bring her back?"
The words tore out of him like they had been waiting, festering, aching in the darkest corners of his heart.
The raw ache of his loss — the bitter, gnawing emptiness of countless silent nights spent staring at ceilings, trying to forget — now surged to the surface, uncontrollable and furious in its hunger.
He wasn't thinking clearly anymore; he couldn't.
All he could see was her — the memory of her smile, the warmth of her arms, the sound of her voice calling his name.
He needed this.
He needed her.
"How? Just tell me how!" Sawyer repeated again and again, almost like a prayer, his voice climbing higher with each repetition, the edges fraying with desperation that bordered dangerously on hysteria.
He gripped Samu'el harder without meaning to, the boy's small frame shockingly solid beneath his shaking hands.
The world around him blurred at the edges; nothing existed now except this single impossible hope that had been dangled before him, cruel and sweet and unbearably tempting.
The thought of reclaiming his mother — of pulling her back from the silent abyss he had learned to live beside — had once been a fantasy so distant, so painful, that he had locked it away inside himself like a prisoner.
Now, with Samu'el's words, that dream had been resurrected, sudden and alive and real, and Sawyer clung to it with a fierce, manic intensity, terrified it would slip through his fingers like smoke if he let go.
But Samu'el, despite his small size and youthful appearance, stood firm against Sawyer's desperate assault.
He met Sawyer's frantic eyes without flinching, his expression grave, almost sorrowful.
With a controlled strength that spoke of a power far beyond what his body suggested, Samu'el slowly and deliberately pulled himself free from Sawyer's trembling grasp.
"I cannot tell you the specifics now, Sawyer," Samu'el said, his voice steady and unyielding, cutting through the fog of Sawyer's panic like a sharp wind.
His small chest rose and fell with deliberate, measured breaths, as if steadying himself for the pain he knew his next words would cause.
"Even if I were to lay out the intricate details before you at this very moment… you wouldn't possess the necessary understanding," Samu'el continued, his tone both gentle and unrelenting.
"You don't have the strength yet — not in your mind, not in your soul. To even grasp the beginnings of such a profound act, you must first become more. You must grow."
Sawyer stared at him, wide-eyed, breathing hard, his body taut with the tension of a coiled spring.
His hands, now empty, hovered uselessly in the air for a moment before falling limply to his sides.
"You must learn the hidden pathways of power," Samu'el said, his gaze softening slightly, a flicker of sympathy — or maybe regret — passing through his ancient eyes.
"You must become the person you were destined to be. Only then — only when you have faced the fire and come out stronger — will you be ready."
He took a single step back, as if giving Sawyer the space to absorb the immensity of what he was being asked to do.
"First," Samu'el said, voice dropping into something low and solemn, "you must accomplish the task at hand. Kill the sun. Close the gate."
His eyes locked onto Sawyer's with a ferocity that left no room for doubt, no room for negotiation.
"Only after that — when you have proven your will, your endurance, your heart — will I reveal the secrets you seek."
Sawyer's eyes narrowed sharply, his body stiffening instinctively as a familiar seed of suspicion began to take root in the soil of his mind.
The fragile tendrils of hope that had only just begun to bloom inside him now trembled under the cold weight of doubt.
He folded his arms tightly across his chest, a subconscious attempt to shield himself, to protect what little trust he still dared to give.
"How do I know you're telling me the truth, Samu'el?" Sawyer demanded, his voice low and edged with growing skepticism.
His gaze locked onto the smaller figure's face, searching desperately for any crack, any hint of deceit.
"How can I be certain that this isn't just another elaborate setup? Another manipulative tactic, crafted by Joe to coerce me into doing exactly what he wants?"
The words tumbled out, each syllable carrying the bitter weight of betrayal Sawyer had suffered before.
His mind raced, piecing together the fragments of what he knew — or thought he knew — against the strangeness of the moment.
"You… you look like me," Sawyer said, the words heavy with accusation and confusion, "but you're also... a king? And now you're talking about multiple lives, about worlds colliding, about impossible things."
He shook his head slowly, the disbelief thick in his voice.
"None of this makes any damn sense," he said, feeling the cold, familiar grip of mistrust curl tighter around his heart.
Samu'el, instead of responding with anger or defense, chuckled softly.
The sound wasn't cruel, but it carried a peculiar, almost condescending lilt that grated against Sawyer's already frayed nerves.
It was the sound of someone who knew something you didn't — someone who didn't feel the need to explain themselves to you.
Without a word, Samu'el turned on his heel and strode back toward his massive, imposing throne at the far end of the gilded hall.
The oversized red coat he wore billowed and swirled dramatically around his small frame with every purposeful step, making him appear both ridiculous and strangely majestic all at once.
Sawyer watched him go, his chest tightening with a complicated mixture of anger, unease, and something even worse — something that felt dangerously close to reluctant awe.
Once he reached the throne, Samu'el paused and turned back to face him.
His small hand rested lightly on the enormous, intricately carved armrest, but his gaze — sharp, piercing, and impossibly old — locked onto Sawyer's with unsettling precision.
"A king never lies, Sawyer," Samu'el said, his voice carrying an unwavering confidence that echoed off the golden walls and seemed to vibrate through the floor itself.
The simplicity of the statement should have made it easier to dismiss, but instead, it weighed heavier on Sawyer's mind, sinking into the cracks of his doubt.
Despite the barrage of questions still raging in his head, despite every instinct honed by pain and betrayal telling him to run, to resist, Sawyer found himself hesitating.
The sheer certainty in Samu'el's voice, the absolute conviction radiating from his small figure, sent an involuntary shiver down Sawyer's spine.
For reasons he couldn't fully explain — maybe not even to himself — a stubborn, persistent part of him, buried deep beneath the layers of fear and mistrust, whispered that somehow...
Somehow, against all logic and sanity, he could trust this bizarre, miniature reflection of himself.
Sawyer swallowed hard, his throat dry, his heart pounding against his ribs with the ferocity of a trapped bird.
He stood there, caught in the silent battlefield between fear and faith, knowing that whichever he chose would shape everything that came next.
"How much time do I have to… to do all of this?" Sawyer asked hesitantly, his voice thin and strained beneath the immense weight pressing down on him.
The sheer enormity of the task Samu'el had laid before him — saving not just his own world but countless others — felt almost paralyzing, like chains tightening around his chest.
Visions of the apocalyptic futures Samu'el had spoken of — of worlds collapsing, skies burning, dimensions folding in on themselves — flashed vividly across his mind's eye, leaving a cold pit of fear gnawing at his gut.
"Not nearly enough, sadly," Samu'el replied, his small figure now nearing the base of the towering throne.
He threw a glance over his shoulder, his voice carrying a casual sadness, as if he were discussing the inevitability of a setting sun.
Then, without another word, he began his improbable ascent up the invisible steps leading to the throne, his red coat trailing behind him like a flame caught in an unseen breeze.
"You have until the next dark sky," Samu'el added, his tone cryptic, the phrase hanging in the golden air like a riddle Sawyer had no time to solve.
Before Sawyer could even begin to wrap his mind around the ominous meaning of those words, a sudden, sharp crack split the heavy silence.
The sound echoed across the vastness of the golden hall, reverberating against the walls and floor with a jarring finality.
Both Sawyer and Samu'el snapped their heads toward the source of the noise.
One of the towering golden statues — a striking likeness of Sawyer himself, depicted holding a jeweled scepter aloft like a conquering hero — shuddered violently.
A jagged fissure, thin at first but widening quickly, raced down its gleaming surface like a bolt of dark lightning.
With a brittle groan, small fragments of gold began raining down, clattering against the polished marble floor in a sharp, metallic cascade.
Sawyer instinctively took a step back, his heart pounding erratically as dread coiled tighter inside him.
"It is time for you to return now, Sawyer," Samu'el said.
Remarkably, his small voice remained calm, steady, even as the air around them grew charged with a growing instability that seemed to seep from the very stones of the hall itself.
The towering golden walls, once symbols of permanence and grandeur, began to crack and crumble before Sawyer's eyes.
Fine spiderweb fractures spread across the ornate ceiling above, delicate but relentless, as if an unseen force were prying the very reality apart.
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From these widening fissures, brilliant, otherworldly light poured through — not the warm, familiar light of a sun, but a strange, fractured radiance that bent and distorted everything it touched.
Long, warped shadows danced wildly across the floor and walls, their shapes shifting and writhing as the tremors grew stronger, shaking the ground beneath Sawyer's feet.
"Remember my words, Sawyer," Samu'el continued, his voice cutting clean through the chaos like a blade.
His gaze, sharp and almost painfully intense, locked onto Sawyer's with an unflinching focus.
"You possess a strength within you that you have yet to fully realize... a power far greater than you currently know."
Sawyer opened his mouth to respond — to argue, to plead, he wasn't sure — but the very fabric of the golden world around him began to splinter and break like thin, brittle glass.
The once-opulent hall dissolved in an instant into a swirling vortex of fractured light and chaotic color.
The towering statues crumbled into glittering dust, the massive throne shattered into shards that spun away into the void.
The world twisted violently, and with a lurch that made his stomach heave, Sawyer felt himself falling — or perhaps being pulled — through the collapsing dreamscape.
He jolted awake with a violent gasp, his whole body convulsing as if he had just surfaced from deep underwater.
For a long, panicked moment, he could do nothing but lie there, clutching at the bedclothes, dragging in ragged, shallow breaths.
His heart thundered painfully in his chest, and his skin was slick with a cold, clammy sweat that stuck uncomfortably to his trembling frame.
The familiar walls of his bedroom, dimly lit and silent, slowly came into focus through his blurred vision.
But the terror, the vividness of what he had just experienced, clung to him like a second skin, refusing to be easily shaken off.
And somewhere deep inside — beneath the fear, beneath the confusion — a small, stubborn ember of something else smoldered quietly.
Hope.
He sat bolt upright in the now-lukewarm water of the bathtub, the sudden, jerky movement sending a cascade of sloshing water spilling over the edge onto the cold, tiled floor.
His chest heaved, his lungs straining with the effort to drag in breath after breath, each gasp feeling like fire scraping against his raw throat.
For a moment, he simply sat there, trembling and disoriented, the pale bathroom light casting long, distorted shadows across the walls.
His heart hammered against his ribs with a wild, frantic rhythm, like a trapped bird beating itself against the bars of a cage, desperate for escape.
The vivid remnants of the apocalyptic visions — burning skies, fractured worlds — clung stubbornly to his mind's eye, refusing to fade into the oblivion of sleep.
And underneath it all, Samu'el's cryptic yet strangely hopeful words echoed, threading through the chaos like a fragile lifeline he didn't yet understand.
Gritting his teeth against the panic still clawing at his insides, Sawyer forced himself to move.
With clumsy, shaking hands, he gripped the edges of the tub and hauled himself upright, the cool, stagnant water sliding off his skin in heavy, reluctant sheets.
The sudden bite of the air against his wet body raised a field of goosebumps across his arms and chest, but he barely registered the discomfort.
His mind was too crowded, too loud.
Snatching a thick towel from the nearby rack, he wrapped it hastily around himself, the fabric heavy and rough against his hypersensitive skin.
He staggered toward the door, each step feeling strange and precarious, as though the ground beneath him wasn't entirely stable.
The bedroom greeted him with its usual dimness — the single bedside lamp casting a warm pool of light that somehow felt foreign, like he had stepped into someone else's life.
He moved on autopilot, his muscles aching with exhaustion as he reached for his phone on the small bedside table.
His fingers fumbled over the device, slick with leftover moisture and trembling slightly from adrenaline and lingering fear.
When the screen finally lit up under his touch, the brightness stabbed at his eyes, forcing him to squint.
The time read: 12:30 AM.
A flood of notifications filled the screen, their stark, digital glow a jarring contrast to the rich, otherworldly gold that still seemed to tint the edges of his vision.
Several text messages caught his attention immediately — all from Aiden, his best friend.
Worry bled through every line: "Where are you, man?" "You okay? Answer me." "Seriously, call me. Now."
There was also a curt, impersonal message from his landlady, the subject line coldly blunt: Overdue Rent - Immediate Attention Required.
A tight knot of guilt twisted in Sawyer's gut.
The normal world — bills, friendships, responsibilities — was still waiting, utterly oblivious to the surreal experience that had just upended him.
He hesitated, his thumb hovering uncertainly over Aiden's messages.
Part of him wanted to tell his friend everything, to spill the wild, terrifying truth in hopes of making sense of it through someone else's voice. But some instinct — old and stubborn — warned him to keep it close for now.
So, swallowing back the lump rising in his throat, he quickly typed out a short reply: Family emergency. Will be out of touch for a while.
He stared at the blinking cursor for a moment longer, then hit send.
Turning his attention briefly to the landlady's message, he felt a fresh wave of dread ripple through him.
The problem of rent — of reality — loomed large, but it felt almost absurd against the backdrop of collapsing worlds and prophetic warnings.
He locked the phone without replying, stuffing it face-down onto the table, as if hiding it could somehow push all the overwhelming demands of life just a little further away.
For a few precious seconds, the room was still again.
And Sawyer just stood there, dripping water onto the worn carpet, the towel clutched tightly around him, feeling like a man teetering on the razor's edge between two worlds — and unsure which one was more dangerous.
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to quell the frantic storm raging within his mind.
The world around him felt too sharp, too immediate, yet somehow distant, as though he were caught between waking and dreaming.
Without another thought, he collapsed heavily onto the soft mattress, the bed sinking beneath his weight with a low, sympathetic groan.
For a moment, he simply lay there, staring up at the cracked ceiling, feeling the pounding of his own heart like a second pulse in his ears.
His thoughts raced in a dizzying, unstoppable spiral — flashes of the horrific visions, Samu'el's impossible promises, the staggering reality that the fate of entire worlds could somehow rest on his seemingly insignificant shoulders.
The images blurred together until they became a suffocating tapestry of fear, doubt, and raw disbelief.
He squeezed his eyes shut, as if doing so might block it all out, but the darkness behind his lids only made it worse — vivid scenes flashing like cruel slideshows he could not escape.
Yet slowly, inevitably, the sheer exhaustion of the day — the emotional battering, the mental strain, the weight of it all — began to take its toll.
A heavy weariness seeped into his muscles, dulling the sharp edges of his anxiety, pulling at him like unseen hands.
He forced himself, with a primal, desperate instinct, to push the overwhelming thoughts aside.
Right now, he needed rest.
Not plans, not answers — just enough strength to survive whatever awaited him next.
Sleep came reluctantly, a troubled, restless thing.
It claimed him like a rough tide dragging a weary swimmer under, giving no comfort, only the cold mercy of temporary oblivion.
With a heavy sigh, a sound that spoke of both physical depletion and emotional collapse, Sawyer's eyelids finally fluttered open.
The pale, washed-out light of early dawn filtered through the half-closed blinds, cutting the room into stark bands of muted gray and soft gold.
For a long moment, he lay perfectly still, as though his body had not yet decided whether it had the will to move.
His mind was sluggish, weighed down by the residue of nightmares — dreams tangled with images of crumbling worlds, shattering skies, and a boy king's piercing, knowing gaze.
The unfamiliar surroundings pressed in on him, the air heavy and silent, carrying none of the casual sounds of a familiar morning — no birdsong, no distant hum of traffic, just an oppressive stillness that seemed to hold its breath alongside him.
As full consciousness returned, so too did the memories.
And with them came the crushing weight of the reality he now faced.
Tomorrow — the word rang hollow and terrifying inside his chest.
Tomorrow was no ordinary day.
Tomorrow was the day he would have to confront the impossible.
The day he would stand against forces he could barely comprehend, forces vast and ancient and cold.
It would be the day he would either crumble under the enormity of it all, succumbing to the fear that gnawed at his spirit, or somehow, against every logical expectation, rise to meet the challenge laid before him.
Tomorrow would be the beginning — or the end — and there was no clear way of knowing which.
The thought was enough to make him feel sick with dread, yet somewhere, buried deep beneath the fear, there flickered the tiniest spark of stubborn resolve.
Samu'el had believed in him — or at least, believed in something within him.
Maybe it wasn't much.
Maybe it wasn't enough.
But it was something.
With a low groan, Sawyer finally dragged himself out of bed, the floor cold beneath his bare feet, the muscles in his body protesting every movement.
The silence of the room seemed to amplify every sound — the creak of the bedframe, the faint brushing of the towel still abandoned on the floor, the soft patter of his own heartbeat thudding against his ribs.
He stood there for a moment, alone, exhausted, and very, very human, feeling the enormity of what was to come settle over him like a mantle too large for his frame.
And yet, somehow, he knew he would have to carry it all the same.
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Note: The Riverdale Tattoo Removal Clinic would like to advise all residents that while they offer a wide range of removal services, they are not equipped to handle magically imbued, potentially world-saving (or world-ending) ink. Please consult a qualified (and possibly interdimensional) magic practitioner for such matters. Side effects may include existential dread and the sudden urge to save the universe.