"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
— E.L. Doctorow
The first light of dawn should've been approaching, but it seemed like the sun might never rise. The night felt unending.
The flames flickered as winds howled louder. Theron's voice barely audible due to the storm, "A blizzard, huh? Perhaps it's our fate to die here." He trudged forward, voice heavy as his feet sank deeper into the snow with each step, walking towards the temple, his mother cradled in his arms while he dragged me with all his strength.
I tried to heal myself, but something—something I couldn't name—prevented me. Not as forcefully as before, but by now, I'd lost the will to try again.
His hands were stiff cold, Soon snow showered against the winds. the sharp cold mixing with the dying warmth of the flames. The sound it made, the strange crackle of fire meeting frost, absurdly reminded me of chicken frying in oil.
"What am I even thinking?" I muttered, laughing faintly to myself.
Theron laughed too.
I blinked at him, looking up. "Now, what are you laughing about?"
"It's funny," he said, his voice tinged with mockery but weaker than usual. "Hilarious, really. I don't think my legs are moving anymore."
And just like that, he collapsed.
So did I. With nothing left to hold me upright, I fell beside him, the blizzard swallowing us whole. The fire, the snow, and the wind merged into pure chaos, destruction swirling all around.
He turned his head to me, his breath—cold smoke. He laughed in his now sore, coarse voice, "Never had I ever imagined, I'd be living my last moments stranded in a ruined temple. Laying beside you."
"We won't die," I said firmly, forcing a smile.
"I want to believe you, cultist!"
For the first time, the man before me didn't sound like a bitter, spoiled prince or a sarcastic brat. He sounded like someone who truly, desperately wanted to believe in something.
"Believe your fate!" I said, grabbing on to the snow as it flickered away like sand.
He blinked, shifting his gaze upward to the sky. "Lucian…"
"Yeah?"
"There are no stars."
He was right. There were no stars.
"Our world ends today," he murmured. "What makes you want to keep breathing?"
The question, nobody had asked me that before. Nobody the fifteen times I died.
What was it that made me want to live? Was it the desire to defeat her? The wish of returning to where I came from? The faint hope that we might somehow destroy even a statue of Eloven?
But if there was one reason I wanted to live this life, it was…
"I don't know," I admitted with a soft laugh. "But I suppose it'd be nice to live another day. Or at least die in a better way."
Theron smirked, his lips cracked and pale. "Fair enough."
For a moment, he didn't answer, his gaze still fixed on the sky. Then, with a faint chuckle, he said, "I'd never admit it, but you already know, don't you?"
"Know what?"
"That I write. You stole the paper when you came to the palace."
I jolted upright—or tried to. "You knew?"
"Of course, I knew. Bold of you to think I'd forget my own work."
"So, the story you're writing," I asked, "is that why you'd want to live another day?"
"Yes." He closed his eyes briefly, his face unusually gentle. "It's the reason. But I doubt I'll make it long enough to finish it."
"You aren't dead yet are you?"
"Not yet. A few hours, maybe."
"If you die today, your story will never be told. Isn't that a waste? You've been writing since you were young, haven't you?"
I didn't mean to give away how much I knew, but he didn't react. He just nodded.
"The way you write," I said, my voice quieter now, "it takes years to master."
He tilted his head towards me. "I write about a world where she loses."
He paused, before continuing, "A world where… she suffers the same fate as my mother."
"What fate is that?" I whispered, almost afraid to ask.
His eyes darkened. "The fate of dying by her son's hands."
The blizzard roared louder, and a chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
It was real. Every word I wrote as a careless fantasy—a random Tuesday idea—was his reality.
His entire existence, summarized.
I understood him in that moment more than anyone else ever could. A writer whose pain drove his craft. A son who killed his mother. Or maybe it was the other way around—maybe killing her made him a writer.
Or perhaps…I was projecting my own truth.
"Your book will never become reality," I said softly.
"I know," he replied, his voice breaking. "My mother loved the goddess. Even when her body was rotting, even when her flesh oozed with pus, she prayed to her. She loved her."
"…"
His words weren't in the book I wrote.
"But that wasn't enough for me," he continued, his voice trembling. "I prayed for a devil. I begged him to save my mother and kill that goddess. And then one day… I awakened divinity instead."
A single tear fell from his eye, vanishing into the snow.
"And that night, I killed her," he said, his voice barely audible.
"You stabbed her until she stopped moving," I murmured, the words spilling out how I'd written them. "You healed her wounds after, hoping to undo what you'd done but by then you had already lost your divinity and became a sinner."
His face twisted into something I couldn't place. "You've seen through everything. You really are her favorite."
"No. Not everything. Tell me, Theron, why do you write? Your story will always remain just that—a story."
He hesitated, his hands trembling as he gripped the snow. "Because mother, even with her last breath… loved the goddess. More than anyone. More than me. And I hate her for it. I still do."
The cracks in my own story had been filled on its own. Not a word I wrote said this was the reason he was a writer.
"At least in my story, she loses." His voice broke, bitter and raw. "If nowhere else, then in the words I write, I win."
It resonated with me, my own story. I guess our books were only manifestations of our own fantasies—unfortunately, mine became a reality.
"Perhaps your story Theron… the story of real you, was buried by the point of view of somebody else." I realized.
"I'd love to read your story someday," I said, smiling faintly.
"You would've," he muttered. "But I doubt we'll see the light of dawn."
"Get up," I said firmly. "We must."
But he only smiled faintly, his voice softening. "I feel peace. If I'm to die, I'd like it to be watching the sunrise."
It was something my father would have said—a man who loved sunsets and dawns more than life itself.
"Did you forget, we still have one thing to help us."
"What?" He blinked, curious.
"Time to repay the favor b!tch." I shouted, mocking. Towards my shadow.
She finally came out,
Eira.
There was no way I were to let that statue survive.