Sitting on your guest bed, you lift the sleeves of your Kroridian tunic and stare at the wounds etched into your wrists.
The sight is now shockingly familiar. Hiding them has become instinctual. Another layer of lies to add onto the pile.
Along with your "hero" status.
The Kroridians practically revere you. They should hate you. Hate you for leading their sons to their deaths.
But instead, they tailor your clothes. They address you with honors. They forge you new armor and weapons.
You cannot understand this perception they have of you. It's so fundamentally divorced from your own self-image… that it feels as if they're praising someone else. You feel like a liar. A fraud.
You've killed the hero and stolen his skin. A thin facade. A transparent lie. If they were to look closer, they would see their praise for what it is: undeserved.
What am I? you question. A fool? A liar? A deceiver. Unwanted. Undeserving. A vile, wretched liar. A—
And so you tear back into your own flesh. The only way to remove the pain from your mind. The frustration, the anger. The terrible tension building in your soul. A tension which has only intensified since you entered Krorid.
Its relief is temporary. The pain comes back, sooner or later.
It always does.
You sigh.