The Lost Flame [PK]

[Burnt Toast 198]

 

⥇────────────────The Lost Flame────────────────⬾
 

   Bitter cold and pain flicker within the young wildfire. An ache of grief, and relief as her suffering is soon to end, or so she thought. Her soul, once bright and strong, is no longer her own, doomed to hell through her parent’s magic. Her pilgrimage has only begun, yet she is already resigned to her fate. There is nothingness here, yet it is filled with a suffering she has not yet fathomed. The only thing she can remember through the agony were her final moments…

 

⥇────────────────Why am I here?────────────────⬾

  She had gone to visit her brother, memories now twisted in her cruel afterlife, recollections of pain only serving as a fuel for the suffering she was destined to endure. Her beloved brother… she remembers something, through the haze. Her brother, kind and righteous, it is he who never strays, never wavers, never breaks. Yet he was crying, tormented by something she feels responsible for. What… what is the feeling nagging at her heart, long thought dead and abandoned? It was guilt. A feeling she had tried to chase away through reckless imbibement and ruined solace. It takes but a moment for her to remember. To remember the sadness in his eyes, as he freed her from her misery. But for him, it will take a lifetime to forget. To forgive.

 

⥇────────────────What did I do?────────────────⬾

 

   There was not much to her life. If one could even call it that. She chased after false hopes before resigning herself to a fate of nothingness. She had always hoped to be someone one day. To change the hearts of people who scorned her. But such luxuries are not afforded to her, nor her kind. She was cursed, simple as that. And from there, she would never amount to what she truly aspired to. Yet with this hopeless situation, she made the worst out of it. She chased off family and ruined relations with loved ones out of hatred. Yet what they did not see was who she directed it towards…

 

⥇────────────────Who was I?────────────────⬾

 

   Through the haze, a name calls to her. Nocte. Her last name was long lost and forgotten, as it had been reshaped for her entire life. Forbidden from associating with her mother, and never quite fitting in among her adoptive family, she eventually thought of her last name as a joke. A simple jest to make people smile through the darkness she too was facing. If only they knew her pain…

 

⥇──────────────Who was I… to them?───────────────⬾

 

She was a failure. A drug addled lunatic who only was good for a jest and a smoke. Someone who let their addictions define them and their attitude rot. But, perhaps, they failed to see what lay beneath. A deep self loathing, and a care for those like her that was covered through harsh words and difficult truths. She gave everything for her family, and left before they could be risked in her downfall. Vriza, a cruel and heartless being, took advantage of her weakness. What little compassion she had. With his promise, she could no longer hide herself behind the guise of innocence. She became a killer, praising the name of Velkuzat behind closed doors. While her victims were not men, they held lives, and she was forced to watch their final moments, cursing her with what little they could. But it was all worth it, to ensure her siblings were kept safe from the being which made her choose between her safety and her sanity…

 

⥇────────────────────────────────────────────⬾

 

With her final moments of sentience, before being presented to Ixris himself as nothing more than fuel for his machinations, she thinks to herself, a lone thought given to a lone woman…

 

Finally… it’s all over

Edited August 20, 2025 by Burnt Toast

[Turbo_Dog 3569]

Spoiler

The goat is gone <\3 

 

[ReverseNebula 373]

Telemachus had felt his breath falter when she had asked him to free her.

Something she'd believed he could do, yet he only told her he couldn't. He didn't know how.

But the two of them, in truth, knew there was only one way, for the woman to find redemption.

 

And so she looked unto his eyes, despite the visor that shielded them.

And she gave unto him, the hardest trial he'd ever been asked.

"Please... I don't want to suffer anymore."

 

The words were enough for his actions to grow resolute, despite the disgust that wracked his mind.

His words, were like droplets of honey, draped unto the sweetest of treats.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you... I love you."

Words, left to ring amidst silence, as she was never given the chance to respond.

She wasn't given a painful death, merely a quick snap of her neck.

 

 

That was when the pain truly set in.

For once, Telemachus wailed.

He wailed, as the walls seemed to grow tighter around him, and his hold amidst her refused to waiver.

He wailed, as he was left with the remnants of his actions, and his promises broken.

He wailed, as one of few, that he promised to protect...

Was lost.

 

[_AzureLexi 766]

 Bearing dark robes and ivory hair, a woman meditates in the dunes of a far-off land. "Creator," she wills out, black and white aura dancing around her like fiery yin and yang. "I forsook Your ways. I answered the call of the Dark, and when a miracle came my way, I still followed the Dark. I failed You, I failed my kin..."
 

So long ago, she had left Aevos. 

 

So long ago she had ran.

 

"I know I left them. But I beg of You, if You are real. Keep them safe. May they keep each other safe." Her hands clench the book within her hands ever-tighter, crested with the visage of a dying willow tree.

"I know they will stay together, no matter what. They will protect each other no matter what. I know they are strong."

 

A prayer soaked into the desert sands, as easily wicked away to nothing as the tears staining into her robe.

 

Spoiler

Nocte's mom is canonically not on Aevos... so a cruelly ironic self-post is what we get :D

 

[Frostdrop1 1843]

They say a parent was not supposed to hold favourites. Perhaps such was true, and yet he had one anyway - and for the first few years, upon his first taste of such an experience that he had craved so long, it was her. It mattered not that the relationship was something he had suddenly found himself loaded with, built upon lies he could not have forseen. She was the first, and she was perfect. 

When she cried in distress of her brother's hurt, it was he who moved after her. It was he who tried to tame the wrath and guide each to love themselves - each, to deaf ears. When danger knocked, it was he who found them protection, whether they liked it or not. Their room was decorated with gifts from festivities, their hands laid with permits he had stretched himself to acquire. Each step out to market was consumed in thought of what each would like, utterly enthralled in giving them everything he never had. He was proud enough to share them with his family eagerly - to seek them connection beyond their town and be his own. He was proud, too, that their future would be theirs - or so he thought. No matter what lay beyond, he knew himself able to guide them - it was, afterall, what all his early years had been for.

It came naturally as a shock how things shattered so abruptly. That he, in his scouring for help, had let slip to the wrong person and was thusly confronted by her. That all of a sudden, affection had turned to malice. And it was his own fault, for daring to scream for help. He should always, perhaps, have been quiet and then it never would have been so. In some firm manner, he offered honesty. Honesty. He had come to believe in it, yet the first telling of how wrong he was to do so was apparent at her reaction. He had never hurt anyone; rather, it was he who was threatened. It was often he who was hurt. He who was used. He had even loved his own father despite the things he did, in what ways he could manage. And yet, she held wrath for him in a way he simply could not understand, and would hear nothing of the truth further. She was the first to see him as dead for that which was inflicted upon him, but not the last. He loved her unconditionally, even through it. He departed with a heart-felt gift to her mother, something which he had clung to in wait for just the right night. It was not to come, and so he gave it then. 

Reinhard had been distant many years - or he assumed so, from her perspective. Of course, he was anything but distant to those that knew him, and anything but one to give in. It was not uncommon that his thoughts would drift to Nocte and how she was doing, then be reminded of her silence. He thought sometimes he might ask Melia how she was doing, and then found himself tongue-tied, reminded of the last thing she had given him. Not a gift was ever recieved from her, of course, but he kept that blood-written letter all those years, as he had Telemachus'. It was a response for attempting to remind her that she was loved, even when he himself was crumbling at the seams, languishing in substances without support in some attempt to live up to what his wife expected of him. Often had he fiddled with parchment in his hands, then scolded himself in reminder that it was not his choice to make. He feared for her, after he learned of what had happened to Melia. He feared for each of them, and yet was stuck in an impossible position. He aided what he could, of those who allowed - and the rest was hopes and prayers. He feared so much, back then.

No matter what he thought, or when he thought, connection did not lay within his palm. It was unto her that the address was left, that he may merely be a letter away if she so required. Never, had that changed. Never would it change, for any of them. As always, he was a bleeding heart no matter his jading. She never heard, and yet it was he who murmured on the side-lines, wary of her mother and the place she had come to be. Each rare time she came to be in his vacinity, there had come to be concern just as there had for Melia. 

But Nocte would never know it.

Still, presently, were there days when he rifled through the mail and imagined names signed that were not there, hers included. Yet, after all his long years of fighting for something better, things had finally began to be better. He could only hope the same for the little girl he came to love as his own first. And so each morning, he sorted though his mail and did not find her name. And, each morning, he would do the same again and again as he had for the decades prior.