The downward spiral. Except, it couldn't really be called that. Because amongst the downs, there were a few highs. A few spikes on the scale of good moments where Kiernan thought his life was getting together. But like everything good, he found it never lasted.
If you wanted to go to the beginning, it would be the night he first turned. Kiernan never understood why him, of all people, would be stuck with the curse. It was something never explained, simply thrust upon him without warning, and left him scrambling to figure out how to deal. For nearly two years he all but cut himself off from the world, trying to hide. But that did nothing to help anyone, least of all himself.
Slowly but surely, Kiernan was pulled back out into the world, by the hands of a tenacious blonde ballerina, and a tenderhearted childhood friend. He slowly began to realize that not everything in him was inherently bad, and that his curse wasn't completely a disadvantage. There were people in his life worth protecting, and the werewolf side helped him do that. And if he were to try and ignore it, hide from it, rather than find a way to deal, he was only putting the people he cared about in danger.
It was when Aveline left that he hit another downward spike. Feeling depressed, utterly alone and angry, Kiernan took it out on those around him, once again isolating him from the people of Starlasia. Around that time was when his mother, tired of his attitude and internal aggression, confronted him, and Kiernan ended up breaking down, spilling the words of his soul and every gritty detail of what had happened to him in the past two years.
Yanking him up from his life, Mrs Morgans took him away -- out of the city, out of the district, in order to help him figure everything else and tame his wolf side. For months she acted as his crutch, forcing him to entirely confront his ability and take control over it, rather than let it control him. She showed him the benefits of his other side, and that not everything had to be shed in a bad light, from his superior strength to better eyesight to hearing and all his other wolf senses.
For the first time since it began, he felt as if he were finally taking back his life. And for a short while, he found he was happy again. A new life in a new city, where he had no history and could be completely new again, and best of all, he finally felt like he was in control. Of course, in those moments is when the hard slap in the face of reality is most painful.
Mrs Morgans had her own secret that she was keeping, one equally dangerous, but this one only to herself. The fear inducement wasn't a shock -- Kiernan had always known how intimidating his mother came off to others. It was how she always got her way. That came out easily, once he told her of his case of lycanthropy. The horrible truth that ultimately wrecked his life was that of her cancer.
Wanting to spare him of months of worrying and misery at her impending end, Mrs Morgans kept her condition from her son. The day he found out was the day she collapsed in a heap of pain, and later he learned from the hospital that it wouldn't be long at all before she was gone. Three days later, Catherine Morgans passed away.
A storm of emotions, Kiernan's rage quickly won out against his grief. He was so angry that she had kept it from him, that it all happened so quickly, he wasn't able to properly process everything he felt. Anger was the easiest, and kept him from gut-wrenching depression and grief, and so angry he got. And reckless.
Kiernan went out drinking and purposefully causing fights with anyone who dared to take him on, letting out all his aggression on the unsuspecting citizen who had no idea just exactly how dangerous of a man they were provoking. And as sick as it was, it felt good, to make other people hurt as he was hurting, even if his was emotional while theirs was physical. And he let the wolf run wild.
As the expression goes, when you've hit rock bottom, the only place to go is up. And Kiernan had hit the bottom with a thunderous clash. It took nearly two years before he slowly began to rebuild himself. Instead of taking his anger out on random people and finding himself in a jail cell nightly, Kiernan joined a gym and began to use that as a release for all his pent up aggression. After all, beating the shit out of someone in a boxing ring is totally condoned, even applauded.
This was how his life continued for awhile, spending long hours in the gym, to time outside the borders in the forest that somehow seemed to calm him, to the occasional city fight and night in jail. And life became entirely... jaded. Numb, almost, but not quite. Kiernan ultimately became passive about everything, yet still aggressive when provoked. No longer was he the sweet boy who used to read comic books like they held all the secrets to life, or shy nerd who had trouble talking to new people without stuttering.
In his place was simply someone who didn't care. Didn't care who lived, who died, or who was hurt -- not even himself, and wouldn't hesitate to harm someone who was pissing him off. Kiernan became a shell of the person he was before.
He doesn't really know why he came back to Starlasia, to be honest. It was just a spur of the moment decision one day, really. Only time will tell if he'll come to regret it -- or if anyone else will.