As the first rays of dawn began to breach the horizon, painting the sky in hues of gold and pink, I found myself locked in a silent battle to keep my eyelids from surrendering to the weight of exhaustion. My head, heavy with grief and weariness, bobbed perilously close to the realm of sleep, only to jerk back into the harsh light of reality. For hours, I had remained a sentinel by the riverbank, my legs submerged in the cool embrace of the water, while I held Duke close to my chest.
Henri, ever the faithful brother, sat quietly beside us. His occasional nudges against Duke’s lifeless form and the tender kisses he placed on his older brother's head were acts of mourning that should have twisted my heart with sorrow. Yet, I found myself ensnared in a cocoon of numbness, a void where pain should have dwelled but didn’t. My emotions were a turbulent sea, yet in the eye of this storm was an unnerving calm, punctuated only by a deep-seated anger. Anger that the mystical forces of Clivilius, which I had so desperately believed in, had forsaken us in our hour of need.
The river, with its enigmatic powers that once stirred the waters of desire within me, now felt distant, its charms rendered ineffective against the fortress of apathy that grief had constructed around my soul. I was angry, not just at the cruel twist of fate that had claimed Duke, but at Clivilius itself for its silence, for its refusal to grant the miracle I so fiercely wanted. My pleas, my cries for healing, had dissipated into the night, unanswered, leaving me with nothing but the cold reality that Duke was truly gone.
The concept of his death was a jagged pill to swallow, its edges cutting deep as my mind rebelled against the notion, and my heart outright rejected it. Duke’s absence was a chasm in my world, an emptiness that echoed with the remnants of our shared memories, each one a sharp reminder of what had been snatched away.
As I sat there, the dawn unfolding before me, a resolve began to crystallise amidst the shards of my broken heart. Vengeance. The word was a whisper in my mind, a vow that took root in the barren soil of my despair. If Clivilius had indeed turned its back on us, then I would not let this injustice stand unchallenged. For Duke, for the unbreakable bond we shared, I would find a way to make this right. The path forward was shrouded in uncertainty, the logistics of such a vow yet to be determined, but the conviction was as clear as the rising sun. There would be retribution for the pain, for the loss, for the betrayal. That much I knew with a certainty.
