Shadewood sandwiched between heaven and hell

mad asf I couldn’t get to the other posts being swamped sucks turtle dick

Cry had nearly perished quite a few times under his mental duress. The strain of it all-

Ice could hold, but eventually it would crack, and send it’s cargo plummeting into arctic seas.
And the ex-assassin had developed several cracks what seemed eons ago, when truly it had been only a few days prior...or had it? Had it been a week? A month? Had it been merely hours? His concept of time was unhinged, unstable as he sped in a pirouette direct to mindless droning. Slade had already begun to visit the sick man, darkness creeping closer to his peripherals as the Nightmare King stalked his prodigy, followed and whispered endlessly

”You would learn, eventually.”

And he had. Learned that love was a beast that could not be buckled and tamed under any hand whether it be experienced or not. It was not some beast that could be hunted and slain to fulfill any belly. And in the unrighteousness of it all, Slade was right.
He wasn’t meant to love. 

His despair had had wittled him to reclusiveness within the woods, to wander in makeshift circuits around the territory as though he were defending it from some unknown enemy. Unending, and never stopping to even eat nor drink, he kept to his duty while it drained him of life. He, while once robust and healthy, was a shade now. A true sprite of shadow, thin and wispy in lank, haggard and stench-drenched from his own uncontrolled bodily functions. They were stale however, as he hadn’t eaten nor drank since he began relinquishing his existence. What had been a thick and lavish pelt hung from him now in sloppy strands, unkempt and wet. What were very perceptive icelandic jewels were now dull gusts of ice against the haze, and drowning in a fog of near lifeless haze.

But on he kept, he though. Following those trails that he had thought he had made earlier though they be askew by miles, he kept to doing his job. A job of warding evil from his family, his imagination filling in blanks that only grew longer and more dramatic. He had chased off bears, giant birds, and even old members of the Nightmare Elm, providing he was still useful, or so he though.

Until even his fantasies couldn’t hold him up as he collapsed in the embrace of the snow,

the last words from a cracking voice-

“I love you.”