VOL.5- A Love as Dark as Midnight

To Love a Hollow Thing

Ash, faces, and a maddening gray...

The memories clung like cobwebs— sticky, inescapable. The Faceless One's demand still vibrated in Ru's bones: "Bring me my son!" Its monstrous silhouette had blotted out the ashen sky, reducing the world to cinders and smoke.

Ru’s arms remembered the weight—horrible, frail, far too light. The kiss he’d pressed to Jazz’s lips had been a plea, not a farewell.

One heartbeat. Just one -

Then everything shattered.

"Jazz!"

Ru's scream cut through the bedroom's stillness like shattered glass. He jackknifed upright, silk sheets coiling around his legs like living things. His hand shot out—grasping, desperate—but met only the mocking click of the cuckoo clock’s closing door.

His fingers trembled, not with the subtle shake of exhaustion, but with violent tremors that traveled up his arm and settled like ice in his chest.

"Why?" The word tasted like blood on his tongue.