#but yeah thanks to that and Zenos using his Resonant during it his brain got jump-started into feeling things a little

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Well look at me reviving this blog for once. I had the power of the muse consume me a few days ago, so I wrote an in character thing for Zenos in DT since I bring him back in Arkhe's portrayal. Under the cut due to final zone spoilers.

Monochrome tedium, the endless mire of nothing to drag myself through, the culmination of nothing rousing this dead being of mine. Not until his raging inferno of passion and destruction set me ablaze. He was the only thing that could make me feel alive, to allow me a teasingly brief glimpse into the feelings of excitement, of joy.

Of hope. Of sorrow so weighty on the mind, body, and soul that I had briefly felt as if the muck that had trapped me before was nothing more than a shallow puddle.

Dynamis... what a curious thing. A curious and meddlesome thing that now pervades my every waking thought, now that it has lured me away from the endless mire for eternity through the siren song of his voice. Despair even now is a banal thing, I have no need of it and have yet to understand it, and I doubt I ever will. I can, however, think back to my hubris enshrouding my mirror and I with that overwhelming feeling of everything and nothing at all.

Do I regret this? I'm not sure. I can at the very least assure myself that it gives me a new vantage point with which to stand beside my mirror, gazing out upon the star and the myriad happenings of it all in search of a true meaning for it. In search of the answer on if this life was a gift or a burden.

It has taken me places I would never have entertained the thought of even in my dreams, this new collar and chain to the world around my throat that I share with him. We're never to be allowed to indulge in the thrilling taste of death again, and so we must make do with the days dragging by, a bell feeling like an eternity all its own.

I have no aim, no goals, and my purpose I sought for myself was fulfilled when our blades clashed at the edge of existence. A realm that was within his complete control thanks to that gift of his, and it was his gift that allowed me to send him off with my reward. The reward of life, of survival, of seeking ever greater challenges to bring him closer to the precipice in hopes he would find the answer to our shared question.

I've no care for the happenings and people around me even now, my mirror is the only one able to elicit any feeling out of me, and his gift has linked us to each other in a way that grows more intriguing by the day. Intriguing, yet troublesome.

Among the golden glow of a desperate fool's artificial paradise, desecrations of the dead meander about, none the wiser towards their meaningless existence at the cost of the living that go about their merry way.

My mirror and I are alike enough to have already taught me that this tedious processing and soul consumption does nothing to reduce one's self, does nothing to remove the imprints their actions have left upon them. The night in Garlemald I stole his body to lure him and he returned to me within my own said as much. It is all a pointless endeavor, a cursed loop that is doomed to fail. But even so, why...

Why do you weep so? And why, as I watch you sob into your hands, do I feel my chest tightening as if I struggle to breathe?

I don't understand. My mind can't for the life of it grasp why you've been moved by such a situation. You swatted the very embodiment of despair to the side as if it were a fly, yet as we traverse this doomed false paradise, your knees grow weaker and your resolve wavers. You need breaks to cry, not to savor the sting of a decent bout. You cannot look these empty fascimiles in the eye, as if they had the mind to realize your unease around them.

Why? Why do you feel these things? I can't understand why. I can't understand why you feel so much sorrow when you never did before, at least to my knowledge.

I can't understand why seeing this sorrow feels as if my insides will rip themselves apart, or why I feel the need to touch you so gently. To cover you and hide you away from all of this pain.

Is this due to the dynamis? Your gift punishing my hubris that day? Something about us is now newly linked, yet it eludes me.

I hate it. I hate this. I hate this tedious and maddening cycle of emotional weakness. I hate the newfound hesitation locking my limbs in place when I go to deal an otherwise fatal blow to you. I hate this alien discomfort that has never once before sullied my mind or stayed my hand. I hate that I now actively desire the fleeting, feather-light touches we would grace each other with during our hunt, desire to see myself reflected back at me through your piercing eyes as you hold me close.

Why do these things spark something in my mind, body, and soul now, when they never did before? That curious power has caused more trouble than not, has not given me nor my mirror a single beneficial boost to our power until he himself took control of it. It does nothing but permeate, dig deep, and plant in roots that regrow tenfold as a single one is cut. This thrilling yet haunting newfound experience of joy, excitement, sorrow…

Of love.