❛ … Rin? D'you think we made the right choice? ❜ Falling stars set the world ablaze as ash rains down like snow in a scene that might be beautiful if it weren’t horrifying. It’s far too late for second thoughts, too late to turn back and choose differently; they’ve come too far, they’re in too deep. Yet ever the temptation that hindsight is, it offers little clarity when so much of their future as shrouded in smoke as the city before them. Still, she can’t help the stray thoughts that drift to Andi and Jia'ying.
❛ Suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it? ❜ she sighs. Shifting closer, she links her arm through Irhen’s, hand sliding into hers, fingers lacing together, and drops her head onto Irhen’s shoulder. ❛ Wouldn’t have chosen different anyway. ❜ @aetheiryte
𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑫𝑼𝑨𝑳𝑰𝑻𝒀 𝑶𝑭 𝑴𝑨𝑵. After everything they’ve done, the choices they’ve made and the lives they’ve snuffed out like the candles flame, there still sits room for doubt in the back of her mind. How silly, Irhen muses with a bittersweet smile, that even at the end she’s second - guessing herself. The heavens weep in bloodied red, smoke billowing from the earth below as flames engulf the lands, and she swears she can hear the cries of despair as the people give in to their fates. A part of her, a small and broken part that she’s locked away in the deepest recesses of her mind, cannot help but wonder about her parents. Are they well? Did they, too, give up in the face of the end? Are their forms twisted masses of flesh, now?
( She’s sure they died fighting after all, she inherited this stubborn nature of hers from him. )
❛ I told you before, didn’t I? This world, this shard, all of these shards they could burn to the ground and I wouldn’t bat an eye. ❜ Lie, lie, lie. Flashes of the other two shards of her heart, horrified eyes and tear - streaked cheeks when they’d realised her betrayal. Jia’ying’s disbelief, Andi’s desperate pleas for them to stop acting, she recalls them with such clarity that it rends her already tattered heart to shreds. Still, despite the war of emotions waging in her chest and the way her throat constricts painfully around a wail of regret she won’t allow to escape, Irhen’s voice remains steady and sure. She’s good at pretending. She has to be. ❛ But you? I’d never let you become ash. ❜
Her fingers weave with Senah’s, clasping like a lifeline, and it’s only this that allows Irhen a moment’s respite in the planet’s swan song’s crescendo. It’s too late for regret, she tells herself as she lets her own head fall to rest atop Senah’s, far too late to turn back. This world is an ugly thing, filled with ugliness that must be rooted out at its core, but the idyllic dream of starting anew has soured in Irhen’s mind. She’s forgotten her reasoning now, the reason why she’d turned her back to her cause and her friends and her family, but she knows why she’s stayed the course all this time.
❛ So now, we do what we do best. ❜ Her sole reason for living, now, is tucked securely by her side. Senah’s warmth anchors her here, warding off the regret she feels trying to claw to the surface. ❛ We let it burn. ❜
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