I stumbled out of my quarters, my body heavy and unyielding, as though I was dragging chains with every step. The weight of exhaustion pressed down on me, a physical burden that no amount of sleep could relieve. I attempted to shake off the final vestiges of tiredness and fatigue. But the days had grown long and the nights short. My body felt heavy, worn down by days that blurred together and nights that refused to offer quarter. Sleep offered me no solace.

My legs felt like lead, aching from the endless strain. My back ached with each step. My head throbbed, and my arms hung by my sides, lifeless, as though no bones or muscles could support their own weight. My body was an empty shell, a cage for my fraying thoughts. My very form had turned against me, hollowed out by the endless strain.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had truly rested—truly slept.

I wandered through the hallways, my feet dragging. My mind drifted further away from me with each step. The world around me grew distant, as though I were drifting in some deep, cold ocean.

The endless halls, the dim flicker of the torches lining the walls—they were all part of a dream.

No, a nightmare.

I wandered the twisting corridors of the keep for what felt like hours, but I had made this walk so many times I knew better.

Then, in the dimmest of light, I turned a corner and saw her.

For the briefest of moments, she was there—seated at the threshold of the doors to my quarters. Her form was a shadow in the dim light, but her presence was unmistakable. Her hair. Her eyes. That smile. It was her. So vivid. So real.

And just as quickly, she was gone.

A phantom? An illusion? A cruel trick of the mind?

I stood frozen, my breath catching in my chest, the air thick and suffocating.

The faintest hope from the fracture in my heart and the splinter in my mind painted her in the corner of the dark hallway. A candle in the dark. A single star in my night sky. I clung to hope. My heart needed it to be true—that she was still there, just out of reach. But I knew better. There’s no such thing as ghosts.

Hope welled inside of me, sharp and sweet, like a poison injected straight into my veins.

I felt sick.

Her image lingered in my mind, like sand slipping through my fingers. It burned inside me, a hot coal pressed tightly in my hand.

Hope is poison.

I dropped my head, my eyes returning to the dark corner in which I had seen her sitting just moments before. My hands trembled as I placed them against the cold stone wall. I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead to its smooth surface. The world felt distant. Her warm presence was the only thing occupying the walls of my mind.

But it was an illusion.

It had to be.

But that feeling, that fleeting moment of something real, was enough to make my heart break.

I closed my eyes again, and I prayed. I prayed to the Almighty that she would be there once more when I opened them. That the illusion would return, and maybe—just maybe—she would stay this time.

I opened my eyes… And she was gone.

Gone. 

Hope is poison.

I didn’t bother to look at the door as I pushed it open, the wooden door giving way under the failing strength of my faltering hands.

I knew. I had known from the moment I saw her, and I had known when I closed my eyes, that the room behind it would be empty. That the cold void would greet me like it always did. The same emptiness. The same suffocating darkness.

Hope is poison.

I stepped into my quarters, the whole interior shrouded in the deepest darkness, and I felt the air chill my skin and seep into my bones.

Nothing but the void.

The warmth that once filled this room was replaced with a chilling cold.

I made my way to the small desk in the corner where I had spent countless hours poring over histories, letters, and maps. I didn’t need to see to find my way. I’d sat here a thousand times over—a life spent in service to something that had long since stopped caring about me. My fingers hovered over the surface, tracing the lines of a well-worn map of a world long lost.

My body, though exhausted beyond measure, obeyed the silent commands of my mind. The exhaustion was no longer limited to the physical anymore—it was something deeper, something that reached into my bones, the weariness now a part of my soul.

My mind wandered. The only sounds were my slow, shallow exhalations and the rhythmic beating in my chest.

I’ve lost so much, I thought, but even that thought seemed hollow somehow, like an echo of something long since forgotten. Time had become irrelevant. The past, the present, the future—none of it mattered. There was nothing left to wait for.

I sat for a moment. And then another. And another.

The weight of the silence pressed in on me, and the darkness seemed to expand, swallowing everything around me.

The warmth that once filled this room, her warmth, was gone. The room, once alive with the light of memory now felt like a tomb. Cold. Empty. Forgotten.

My heart began to race, but my body didn’t move a muscle. A shiver ran down my spine, burrowing deep inside me, and a piercing cold gripped my heart. An emptiness crept in where hope had once lived.

And then, just as quickly, it shifted. The fire within me was stoked anew. The cold that gripped my heart gave way to a rush of heat that flooded through my veins, sharp and sudden. My body burned, my pulse quickened.

But it wasn’t warmth—it was pain. A fire that consumed without mercy, igniting every nerve, every thought, every feeling.

In an instant, the fire that coursed through my veins dissipated just as quickly as it had been stoked.

Hope is poison.

It was the poison of my own making. A sickness of the mind, a weakness of the heart. A false promise, a fleeting shadow. Hope—foolish hope—had shattered me.

I lifted my head, staring at the window where the first light of dawn began to break across the horizon. The soft glow of the rising sun painted the sky with hues of gold and pink.

“A new day,” I whispered.

Hope.

The bitter taste of it still lingered on my tongue. But it wasn’t just bitterness. It was all I had left.

Hope is all that’s left. Hope is all I have.

Hope was all I had now, a fragile ember in the ashes of everything I had lost. The chill in my chest slowly faded, and for a moment, I felt something stir deep within me—an ember that refused to be extinguished.

I stood from the desk, feeling the weight of the world settle back onto my shoulders. I knew what came next.

Hope vanished, but the fire in my heart had been rekindled.

I turned toward the door, my hand steady now, my resolve hardening like tempered steel.

I had been forged in the fire of loss, of pain, and of betrayal. And still, despite it all, I would rise once more.

“Begin again,” I muttered, the words heavy, laden with all that had been—and all that was yet to come.

And I returned to my duties. 

I was forged in the fire.