─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆
❛ Here we are at the end of the world, waiting for the sky to break into flames─but we are together, as if the stars had aligned. ❜
Percy Jackson never thought he would fall in love with a traitor.
[completed - editing]
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✩━━━ chapter twenty-one, butchered tongue. ❝You may never know your fortune, until the distance has been shown between what is lost forever and what can still be known.❞
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I AM HERE, BROTHER.
Four innocuous words, strung together in a concise arrangement, yet they seemed to choke him, as if every syllable tightened into a noose, tightening around his throat and snarling his vocal cords. With every attempt to utter those words, the rope seemed to constrict further, pulling his voice into a strangled silence. I am here, brother—those four simple words, rather than flowing effortlessly as language should, transformed into a battleground within his mouth. Each vowel was a knot of ache and regret, a tangle of unspoken truths that had been building within him for far too long. He was one of three, but Morpheus and Phantasos wove tales with an effortless mastery of words, their narratives intricate and captivating, while he remained bound by the chains of his own silence. What a curse it is—Endless eons drifted by, and yet Icelos remained a prisoner of his own voiceless existence, enslaved by a longing to express what remained unsaid, unable to find the right combination of syllables to speak and say, Hiroki, I am here, brother.
When would he learn to speak, to articulate the thoughts and emotions that consumed him? It seemed as though the weight of his silence only grew heavier with each passing day. Speech dissolved within his mouth, incapable of passing his lips. And as he witnessed his youngest brother succumb to the clutches of the shadows that haunted their lineage, Icelos felt so old.
Even now, the memory of his brother's birth remained vividly etched within his mind. Hikori Matsuoka emerged into this world cradled in the embrace of love, engulfed within the warmth that his family's hearts exuded from the very instant he drew his first breath. Born from the wish of a lonely young boy who dreamt of a sibling—the embodiment of hope and joy, banishing any trace of sadness or loneliness that lingered within Hypnos' eternal soul.
Recollections of a bygone time flooded the god's mind, recalling the vividly colored eyes of Hiroki, glowing with innocence and radiating a clear and unabashed love. His youngest brother betrayed no inkling of fear, even in the face of the very night terrors that had conceived the god—a silent connection that transcended their lack of words, even if Hiroki could never speak his true name as a mortal. Now, as he thought of what that child had become, cloaked in the shadows of darkness and consumed by despair, Icelos couldn't shake the overwhelming guilt that his own inability to speak out had led to his brother's damnation as well.
