Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you.
You turn again, but the storm adjusts.
Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn.
"I thought we were friends. I trusted you.
I told you everything I am, everything I wanted. Everything. And you used it against me,
I handed you a weapon and you fired away"
Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away,
something that has nothing to do with you.
This storm is you.
Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time.
Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones.
That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
"Because, eventually, they will. Just like Shang Lix. You trusted her, you gave her all yours secrets, all your truths. You proved yourself loyal to the order, became one of them. And for what? Just to be betrayed, abandoned and destroyed. What about the father you so deeply love. Or Black. All of them, do they really love you? Do they really want you? Because, if you think about it, every tie that binds you to them is long gone. You wanna know what this is all about? Fear. They fear you, and everything you could be. The djinn, every hunter you’ll meet, it is not because of you, they don’t choose to be around you. They are terrified of what you are. You know this, little one. You will always be alone. Because wherever you go, death follows. But me, I can give you purpose. I can offer you so much more. We can embrance death, together."
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it:
it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades.
People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
“I don’t wanna do it. I won’t let them do this to me.
Shang, I won’t let them.”
“What if it worked. What if they pulled the right strings. What if, after all this time, I face him and find myself on my knees before him.
What if he really broke me. I can’t go back there.”
And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive.
You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over.
But one thing is certain.
When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in.
That’s what the storm is all about.
“ I don’t think I’ll ever be.”