The world distanced itself around me; it was just me and the road ahead, yet somehow even that felt outside of my reach. Shadows parted upon my approach and half of me wondered if it was because of who I had been or who I’d become. I was neither a King nor a Monster, so perhaps I was a mixture of the two. Perhaps that’s why I found myself hovering again in the Deep Forest hoping that it would bring me a sense of myself that I had been missing since returning from the Wilds. How queer it was that such agony and isolation had managed to leave an impression on me. Cruel shades of grey leapt from the yawning depths of the dark forest and I had no qualms about moving alongside them and relaxing into them until I too had hidden myself from the brightness beyond.

Tall pines and old, twisted oaks looked down upon me from above but I found no solace within their gaze where I had once found comfort. I could not blame them for their hesitancy, after all I’d been received oh so well by just about everyone else. A small smile crept onto my lips and though it felt more natural than the rising feeling of shame that threatened to drown me in emotion, I halted it in its path nonetheless. Though time was supposed to heal all wounds, I felt that I carried far too many for it to ever heal them all. I’d witnessed the emptiness that death could impale upon the heart and I’d dealt with the ache of longing for a friend who was as gone as the summer heat. I’d suffered from the hatred I’d erected for my own monument after abandoning my own daughter and I’d felt the tinge of jealousy after knowing I’d been replaced on the throne. The emotions all surged under my skin like a riptide threatening to burst through my earthly seams. I was like a porcelain doll, so fragile and complacent until dropped…

As dusk fell over the forest, I let it come with no intentions of returning to the Edge until morning. I felt all too natural sleeping beneath the stars under a canopy of red and yellow leaves. In fact, I’d barely slept since welcoming the Edge back into my life. Somehow, I felt as though my tired eyes had been waiting for this exact moment for the past year. As I gazed around, I couldn’t help but chuckle lightly. Tamira’s face was everywhere. It was intoxicating. It was painful. But most of all, it was the moment I knew that my heart was breaking all over again.

“I don’t know how to figure out who I am.”

Oh how her words still echoed in my mind. She had been suffering, questioning, and searching for so much… I had lost her before I could even truly get her to understand. Now she was gone from the mortal world and I was left with the fragments of her memory. How weak I’d been, still looking for her in all that I did. She had replaced my being with her own and now I felt consumed. It was a dangerously thin veil between sanity and insanity and I couldn’t help but raise it occasionally, wondering what it felt like to lose myself as she had done in the shadow of Myriad. I was a sick man- that was certain. But I needed to replace her in my heart. I had to be rid of her if I ever wanted to find my way back to my past in order to begin the healing.