Clive
They think I'm noble. That's the lie I let them believe.
Truth is, I didn't start this because I wanted to save anyone. I started because I couldn't stand being powerless. I wanted it all back. My soul, my strength, my choices.
Even if others burned for it.
When Maedra took the first piece of me, I felt nothing. The second, I wept. By the third, I understood—she wasn't destroying me. She was hiding me from something. Something bigger. Something worse.
I didn't care.
I only wanted to feel whole again.
My parents died protecting me. I never asked them to. I told them to run. But they stayed. Believed in the "chosen" child. In the Bear-God's bargain. My mother's last words were, "Don't let it take you."
Too late.
Now I hunt the woman who saved me in the only way she knew how.
Because the truth is, I want the pieces back not to seal anything but to feel like a god again.
But sometimes between the anger and the lies I hear my mother's voice in the shards. And it whispers,
"Don't become the monster that survived."
I wonder if I already have.
Grimpel
There's a story beneath the jokes.
A wound behind the teeth.
Long ago, I wasn't cursed or carved or clever I was just a man who wanted to bring his daughter back.
Lena. Her name was Lena. She was six when the sickness came. And I was a scholar what good are books when your child is coughing up stars?
I begged the priests. They said it was fate. I begged the mages. They said time was irreversible.
So I rewrote time.
I peeled back the skin of the world and stepped inside. I made deals. I broke rules. I won.
But I didn't bring her back. I brought something else. Something that wore her face and laughed in her sleep.
By the time I undid it, I had lost my body, my name, and my place in the world. I bound myself to this skull as penance.
I thought I could guide others better than I guided myself.
Then I met Clive.
He was strong, but soft. Furious, but still reaching. I thought, If I helped him close the gate, maybe the gods would forgive me. Maybe I'd see Lena again, just once.
But... every time I hear the gate hum in the distance, I wonder.
Do I want forgiveness?
Or do I want to watch the world that failed me end?
Maedra
I never wanted to hurt him.
When I saw Clive in the visions, I didn't see a weapon I saw a boy sobbing in a storm he didn't cause. A child gifted a god's burden without his consent.
So I took his soul fragments not to destroy him, but to protect him.
I scattered them across cursed grounds and sealed them in sorrows. Not because I wanted him broken, but because whole, Clive would awaken what slept beneath the moon.
I begged the College to help. They called me mad.
I begged the forest. It wept.
So I did it myself.
I kissed his brow with blood and salt. I said, "This will hurt. But it will keep you safe." He didn't understand. How could he?
He was twelve.
I buried the pieces in suffering because pain is the only thing that scares gods.
Now he comes for them. For me.
And I can't tell him the truth—not all of it.
Because if he stops, it wins.
And if he continues...
He becomes the very thing I tried to save him from.
And the louder the moon laughs, the closer the gate creaks open.