In my dreams I’m still there trapped in that boardroom.
The piercing pain of the explosion tearing apart wounds that refuse to heal, the final breaths of dad echoing through my muddled mind slowly being drowned out by a wheezing, malicious laugh.
I can’t move, I can’t see, I can’t do anything but listen to that laughter echo as five final moments seem to last for an eternity.
At first I refused to believe this is how it all ended. Then I was enraged, that everything we’d fought for stopped at the hands of this pathetic monster.
Then I prayed to any god that would listen to survive this, to make this right. Then as a single tear dripped down my cheek, I accepted that this was the end.
But it wasn’t, was it?
James Rijen did die that day, but only the boy passed, leaving a bitter, empty shell of a man consumed by grief he could barely comprehend.
So he lashed out, became angry, violent. Tossed aside every good part of him, watching as his faith and hope slipped through his fingers. Lost, confused, broken, it took fallen into a mist of madness to finally accept the truth.
Death is for the living.
For those who die, it’s quick, simple, and the pain fades away as they’re carried into oblivion.
For those they leave behind, it’s slow, torturously complicated and a burning agony that is seemingly never ending. Even as the grief mellows, even as the pain flickers to a cool dull ache, the echo of survival never gets easier.
It always leaves a scar that never heals and Nox, my body is covered in them because of you.
Not just the lives you’ve stolen but the last ten years you have ripped away because of one singular action.
A childhood burnt to the ground, years spent searching for futile answers to impossible questions. Drowned in a pool of your pawns treachery, every single bit of pain and misery over the last decade a result of you pulling our strings.
But that night not only severed those strings Nox, they gave me the control bar and for the little time you have left in this world, I’m ready to make it a living, breathing hell.
You gained power, fame, control. Created puppets and allies and they all mean jack shit as they have lead you down a path of extinction. No more tricks, no more subterfuge, just a mewling, pathetic coward begging on his knees as the blade of Judgement is drawn to his throat.
In those final moments, how will you deal with your grief?
Will you be bewildered unable to understand why? Will you taunt me with tired witless mockery? Or will you bargain? Offer me the world to spare your life? Or will you accept that the moment you targeted my family this was inevitable.
The man with nothing left has finally come to collect from the monster who took everything from him.
And your Final Breath is the only thing I desire.