I wanted to shout.
To scream at the sky.
To tear my throat raw with curses that would never be heard.
I wanted to give up.
I had seen things no one should have. Survived monsters that defied logic, stared into the mouth of Leviathans that could end continents with a breath. I had bled across oceans. Had fought with broken limbs and a half-shattered soul. I had looked into the abyss and I didn’t blink.
But not once—not even when death grinned in my face—had I felt this close to falling apart.
This was different.
This wasn’t a monster I could stab. This wasn’t a force I could curse or curse back at. This was cruelty so quiet it rotted from the inside. This was grief with a heartbeat. Despair with a face. I looked at them—the six girls I’d carried out—and I felt something tearing in me. Not like a wound. Not like pain. Like something that wasn’t meant to break had finally snapped under the weight of it all.
Maybe I wanted to kill, but not like this.
Not her.
This wasn’t vengeance. This wasn’t justice. This was loss.
Raw. Bitter. Endless.
I wanted to sit. I wanted to sink into the blood-soaked deck and let the salt and silence eat me whole.
But I couldn’t.
Not when there was still one more.
Not when there was still a chance that one more girl was alive in that cabin.
Breathing. Hurting. Waiting.
If I gave up now, I wouldn’t just be turning away—I’d be condemning her.
So I stood. Again.
Because rage could keep me standing where hope couldn’t.
The same death-stench punched into my lungs the moment I stepped toward the cabin. That rotting stink that had become so familiar I swore it had carved itself into my memory. It greeted me like a cruel joke. Like a reminder that this place was its own kind of hell.
And then—the snoring.
Still there.
That demon—that fucking demon—still asleep like the world owed him rest. As if he hadn’t ripped lives apart with the same hands now folded under his filthy head. As if he wasn’t surrounded by the wreckage of everything he had destroyed.
He slept like a king on a throne of broken bones.
And I stood there, teeth grinding, heart thudding like a war drum in my chest.
You’ll die.
But not quick.
Not clean.
You’ll beg for death when I’m through with you.
And it still won’t be enough.
Because no blade could match what you’ve done. No pain could echo the horror you’ve carved into these girls.
But I’ll try.
I swear I’ll try.
And when I’m done, even hell will look away.
For now, only she mattered.
Not the blood on my hands.
Not the weight in my chest.
Not even the monster still snoring behind me.
Just her.
And there she was—buried in the rubble of my doing.
Her hand was the only thing visible, stretched out from beneath the broken wood like a final plea. Fingers frozen mid-reach, dirt under her nails, blood dried along her wrist. That one fragile limb had been calling for help long before I even noticed it.
And I hadn’t noticed.
I hadn’t even cared.
I fired that cannon for what?
A warning?
A power play?
No—worse.
For a thrill. For the fucking giggles.
And now she was here. Trapped. Mangled. Maybe dead. Maybe not. I didn’t even know.
They could’ve lived.
They could’ve been spared.
If not their lives, then at least their bodies.
Whole. Intact. Recognizable.
I could’ve given them dignity, even in death.
But now?
Now they were in pieces. Torn by my arrogance. Scattered by my stupidity. Their bodies incomplete in the same way their souls had been broken long before I showed up—only now it was irreversible. Now, there was no fixing it. No making it right.
This was me. This was my consequence.
I dropped to my knees, hands trembling as I lifted the wood from her. Plank by plank. Nail by nail. Each one heavier than the last. Not because of the weight, but because of what it meant.
This wasn’t just rubble. This was my guilt, stacked high and rotting.
And then—I saw her face.
Her beautiful, shattered face.
God.
Even beneath all the filth, all the blood, all the soot—there was something delicate there. Something that hadn’t completely died. Not yet. Even in stillness, her face spoke. Not in screams or sobs, but in silence. That unbearable silence that said she had waited. Waited too long. Waited for someone who never came.
She was beautiful.
Not in the way men speak of beauty. But in the way the broken sky is beautiful after a storm. The way cracked glass still catches light.
She was lonely.
That kind of lonely that lingers after death. The kind of loneliness that isn’t about being alone—but about being forgotten.
I stared at her. My throat ached and all I could do was kneel there like the coward I was, caught in the gravity of what I had done.
She didn’t deserve this.
None of them did.
But especially not her.
Not buried under my rubble.
Not left to rot because of my decision.
"I’m sorry," I whispered—not because it was enough, not because it changed a thing—but because it was all I had left.
And even that felt hollow.
The rubble slid off her face—dirt and ash falling like dust from forgotten ruins. And that was all that remained. Her face, untouched by mercy, and an arm still clinging to whatever scraps of torso hadn’t been crushed. Still connected. Still trying to be whole. As if her body, even in death, refused to let go of itself.