A Silence Only the Broken Know

Her hand was still on my chest.

Not for comfort.

Not for affection.

But for survival.

The silence between us wasn't awkward.

It was safe.

A sacred silence shared only between people who had nothing left to scream.

For the first time in days—maybe in my whole cursed life—I felt something.

Warmth.

Not the fake kind.

Not the warmth of battle, or blood, or fire.

But the kind that felt like you were freezing to death in a snowstorm…

and then the sun broke through.

Her fingers trembled against my shirt, but they didn't let go.

Neither did I.

The sky outside the inn's cracked window was bleeding with the colors of dawn—

pale orange and ash grey.

The light didn't cleanse anything.

But it reminded me that we were still alive.

Still here.

And maybe… that meant something.

I told her everything.

My voice didn't crack this time.

It was hollow. Distant. As if I were reading from a book written in blood.

I told Annya about the curse, the rage, the voice that whispered in the blackout.

How it felt like something else was wearing my skin, puppeting my limbs, drinking the screams like nectar.

I told her about the guilt. The bodies.

How every time I closed my eyes, I saw limbs fly, heads burn, children fall without faces.

Her eyes widened—not with fear, but with something sharper.

Hope.

And something else, too—deeper, darker.

Pain.

But not just pain for the dead.

Pain for me.

She didn't interrupt.

Didn't pull away.

She just listened.

But I saw it—buried behind the flicker of candlelight and swollen eyes.

The same thing I felt.

There was a child inside her too.

And inside me?

There was a screaming child.

Not the cursed one. Not the warrior. Not the weapon.

A boy. Small. Tired. Fragile.

A boy who had seen too much death.

Felt too much guilt.

Lost too many people too fast.

A boy who just wanted to cry.

Not for blood.

Not for power.

But for someone to say: You don't have to carry all of this alone.

But I couldn't cry.

Not now.

Because if I broke—

Annya would shatter.

She was barely holding herself together. Her grief, her curse, her guilt—it all clung to her like frostbite.

So I buried the crying child.

Again.

And I stood up.

With Jonathan gone… the road ahead wasn't just cruel—it was suicidal.

There would be more attacks.

More hunters.

More blood.

The Devil Banishers wouldn't stop until they erased every last one of us.

And worse—

That thing inside me…

That voice, that rage, that yokai-shaped curse…

It wanted out.

Again.

If I didn't learn to control it, it would control me.

And Annya—she wasn't safe from her curse either.

I had seen the shimmer of it, the way it pulsed when her heart cracked open last night.

It was watching her.

Waiting for a moment of weakness.

We were both dancing on the edge of something catastrophic.