Ankyra Sound Don't want to let you down, but I am Hell-bound.

his siblings’ departure had left Lycaon reeling. old feelings of abandonment lost no time chiseling back into his life; chipping away at his self-worth until all that was left was an edge so sharp and needle-thin it would snap from the burden of a feather’s weight. 

there were no extenuating circumstances that would make this breach of faith forgivable to him, and he’d withdrawn so entirely from the world that it was to the detriment of his functioning. forborne a sense of appetite, Lycaon’s muscles wizened and the skeleton beneath his skin was writ large. 

it was her screams that drew him out that day. barely able to hold himself upright anymore from the lack of nourishment, the once-gallant sought out his smothered flame at a labored pace, wearily drifting like a helmless bark at sea, years of his life seemingly spent in the span of weeks.

his face became fully cast in pallor as he loomed closer to the grotto and the stench of decease came instantly upon him.

Lycaon stepped outside of himself. the time amidst passing through the scent’s pall and arriving at the site of carnage was void in his memory. he came to, absently staring at the hecatomb—at the rufescent wash of the walls, the floor, Nyx. the thought of her brought his eyes up from the ground to the woman’s presence, crumpled like a first-draft epistle of contrition and sobbing with gruesomeness stippled across her coat and blood smeared incriminatingly across her lips; droplets on every whisker for every life she took.

only loud static roared in his ears, he didn’t hear her wailing cries or even himself try to eke the words "they were… ours?" from his throat. it was like a mumbled whisper echoing back to him from a faraway place in his head—he was unsure he’d even said them out loud. his lungs drowned for air.

it was once so easy. breathe in, breathe out.

but the smell. the smell. it crawled and clung and lingered. it was floral, it was flat, it smelled like grey and white. unease caused his vision to swim.

his eyes briefly came into focus and corresponded grief, but vacancy soon filmed over them again as he looked upon each broken body and the static screamed even louder into his limbs. his forelegs fell out from under him and he folded into the dirt, gazing catatonically at the stained earth and conferring to the circumambient anguish without a fiber of resistance to hold him together as he, too, sobbed.