Grief.
Damien was no stranger to grief.
He had lived in it. Breathed it. Slept beside it since the day he was cast out of his family.
Since the first time a hand reached out to him with warmth, only to twist the knife deeper once he let his guard down.
He had been betrayed. Forgotten.
Called a waste. A failure. A mistake.
And he had survived it all.
He thought he had mastered grief.
Conquered it.
Locked it away somewhere deep where it couldn't touch him anymore.
But as Jiang Xiao Yu's body grew still in her mother's arms, as her final breath faded into the air, as her blood soaked into her uniform and the warmth left her skin…
Something inside him broke.
Not slowly. Not gently.
It shattered.
A scream tore through him, not with sound, but with mana.
