Chapter 62
Why do you fight?
Why do you struggle?
Why do you deny me my right?
Who am I? Oh, you poor, wretched thing. Have you truly not figured it out? I am the weight pressing against your every thought, the whisper unraveling your resolve. I am the shadow that clings to your heels, the hitchhiker you carried through the abyss.
Yes. That was me.
Why?
How amusing.
I—oh, you poor, simple fool—am the one you are
to be.
Ah. The feeble little mind finally pieces it together.
In the flesh—of sorts.
You miserable creature… You truly didn’t realize it? I have been here since the very beginning.
That. I. Have.
Oh, Grant… You it, don’t you?
The inexorable force that bends all beneath its weight. The tide of power that demands neither permission nor restraint. It is not mere sorcery, not crude influence. It is The sacred right of the sovereign to shape the world in his image.
And yet, you resist its pull.
How quaint. How You defy inevitability like a rat gnawing at the bars of its cage. You cling to self-control as a drowning man clings to driftwood, knuckles white with desperation. But your breath comes ragged now, doesn’t it? Your limbs quake. Your body betrays you.
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You are a dying wisp before the gathering storm.
And even now, you —you —the fractures in your will.
Ah. And it is.
Sprocket. What a pathetic name for a pathetic little thing. It squirms in your grasp, grasp, pinned against the gnarled bark of an ancient tree—a mere speck before the grandeur of time.
His trembling, wide-eyed form, dressed in feeble druidic trappings, is an affront to significance. A conduit, a fulcrum upon which the scales of fate may be tipped.
Tipped in favor.
If only you would
Do you even hear yourself? That voice—weak, pitiful. A velvet-clad plea wrapped in the marrow of your own stupidity. You disgust me, Grant.
Surrender. It is the way.
Ah… But you kneel. Not now. Not yet. But soon.
You were not chosen to in feeble restraint. You were chosen to be my vessel. Accept it. Accept what you
And simply…
Why do you fight?
You it—the war within yourself. This flicker of defiance is nothing. A fragile whisper against the howling storm that is
Yet, for all your bluster, you waver.
You are broken, Grant. A soul fractured, a mirror reflecting only slivers of the man you you are. Your past eludes you, doesn’t it? Slipping like sand through desperate fingers. Betrayal festers within you—an open wound, left to rot.
You are adrift.
Alone.
A speck of dirt floating in an empty void.
Surrender.
You. Are.
That is what makes you
How noble. How You swing words like a rusted blade, hoping to wound me. But there is nothing left to wound. I am
ENOUGH.
Shut. UP.
Oh, do I now?
Then look.
Look at your precious Sprocket. Look how he
His breath comes in short, shallow gasps. His eyes plead—not for , no, but for , Grant. For the man you to be.
For the man you still become.
But you see the truth now.
You the fear in his gaze. The desperation. The fading light of hope.
Savor it.
For this is the essence of my power—
Not merely to
But to
And remake.
“No… Stop it…”
Yes… That is it, Grant.
Give in…