Happiness.

The great lie. The illusion. The pretty little story people tell themselves to make the suffering bearable.

Harold Attano, El Mariachi Muerte, The Night, Gemini—you chase happiness, convinced it’s something you can own. You tell yourselves you can steal it, carve it out of someone else, make a deal for it, or worse—pretend it never left.

But happiness is not a thing to be had. It’s a ghost, a whisper, a cruel mirage that fades the moment you reach for it.

Harold, you wear vengeance like a crown of thorns, believing that if you spill enough blood, if you make them pay, you’ll finally feel whole. But vengeance is just grief with a mask, and when you carve out your pound of flesh, the hunger will remain. Because revenge doesn’t heal. It festers. It spreads.

And I have already rotted.

What can you take from me that I haven’t already lost? You think I would break under the weight of your wrath? You are nothing but a shadow chasing ghosts.

And shadows cannot kill me.

Gemini, you believe happiness is found in not knowing. You think ignorance is safety, that if you never look too hard, you’ll never have to see the ugliness beneath it all.

I used to be like you. Before my ignorance was seared from my skull. I, too, believed in beautiful illusions. But illusions shatter, Gemini. They crack and crumble, and when the truth comes crawling in, it devours everything.

What will you do when your lies betray you? When the truth rips your illusions apart, leaves you bare, leaves you raw?

You can’t fight it. You won’t survive it. You will crumble, because your happiness is hollow.

And hollow things break.

Then there’s you, El Mariachi Muerte, the man who bartered for his happiness. You tried to trade your soul for a safe little corner of the world, convinced that if you got what you wanted, that was enough.

Pathetic.

Real power is not in what you are given, but in what you take. And you—oh, you needed Zeus to allow you to be happy.

That’s weakness.

And weak men cannot break me.

And The Night… You grieve. You rage. You think you can use your pain as fuel, that if you let it consume you, it will make you unstoppable. But pain doesn’t make you stronger. It makes you desperate. And desperate men make mistakes.

You think if you take down Narcissa, it will all be worth it. That she’ll somehow rest easier. That vengeance will give you peace. But the dead stay dead, don’t they?

You’re just another fool who cannot accept loss.

You cannot kill what is already gone.

You all think you can break me. But you misunderstand.

I am not standing in your way.

For I am the storm that outlasts you.

The ruin that remains when your happiness is stripped away.

The truth waiting at the end of all your lies.

You cannot break me. You cannot end me.

Because I am not what you destroy.

I am what survives.