【❄】 Anything that the king touched would fall to ruin.
✦ However outlandish the idea was, Red had come to accept it. His hands had been rendered as weapons of mass destruction by some unseen force. The earth he'd seated himself on had died away, warped and twisted just at the brushing of his fingertips against its surface. When he'd tentatively backed away from his seat, into an unsuspecting tree trunk—that had been morphed in awful ways, as well. The weight of the realization settled upon his whole being and made his chest heavy with the truth. He couldn't come into contact with even the smallest bit of his environment without vitiating it, making it a glitch in the system. And he dared not even consider laying a finger on his team's capsules. Not with them contained inside—not when he could corrupt their entire being.
✦ Should he leave again? Leave, so that he couldn't harm anyone or anything?
✦ Isolate himself again, at least until the curse played its course? If the curse ever played its course? Should he warn those he loved first? Or should he flee without so much as any parting words once again? Arceus knew he'd learned the consequences of that years ago. But even so, he was dangerous.
✦ Red's hands trembled at the notion (or was it from the hex placed upon them?). He couldn't afford to trap himself alone again, but he couldn't hurt anyone, either.