You are shaking fists & trembling teeth. I know: you did not mean to be cruel. That does not mean you were kind.

What is left here? Only the quivering of the trees, only the rippling of the lake. Head in lap, check. Sorry, check. I won't do it again, check, check, check.

Sometimes, I think you forget.
I am not God.
I do not forgive.

VENETTA OCTAVIA / The Burning

Looking back, you should've twisted the knife harder. Dig it deeper like an animal sinking its teeth into its victims with no remorse. Count the stab wounds, aim for the worst spots, watch your victim as they squirm and plea, screaming their apologies they don't mean in exchange for their life. You replay the memory over and over again and you regret not doing more damage and you feel sorry for the damage you had already caused.

You seek solace in the hells that had crafted you into the very person you are today. You look back, memory upon memory, and you watch each version of yourself standing in one place, immobile and bound to a room where nostalgia often visits to show you all the good and the bad parts of the life you had lived. There's that feeling, the heaviness of the weight when you look back to the old days and you feel so much rage to know everything had changed and it was no longer the same.

You need the reasons. You need the apologies. You cannot live like this but you cannot move on because the weight of your grief is heavier than your will to live.

I can't be someone else when I don't know who I am now. I don't want to be someone else when this version of me had found a home in my heart. I think I'll always be like this. I'm going to spend forever hating the things I want to love.

So many unsaid words left in the dark, so much grief lingering in the air of your empty walls. You can't believe you are growing older on your own. You can't believe you are doing this on your own.

You don't want to do this on your own but the dead stays dead no matter how many times you pray for a miracle.

You will forever be bound to the same burning house whose walls you no longer recognise. You will lay in your childhood room and ignore the far-away voice of your father calling you down for dinner. You will not walk through the door. You will not face your ghosts. You will not face the dead no matter how many times you had wished for that moment to come true.

You will be a door away, locked in a burning room and Grief will be there to hold your hand in the wreckage, refusing to let go no matter how many times you beg. It will bruise your entire body if it means keeping you here with the burning smoke suffocating you until all you can do is repeat the days until you were too tired to do it again.

A new war is brewing and you cannot find yourself in your own great void. You cannot inhale the fresh air without choking back the sob. You cannot live life when you keep reminding yourself you are alive and they are not.

A new war is brewing and you should've twisted the knife harder to satisfy your rage. The world had given you a chance to let it all out but all you did was count the stab wounds and lay your victim to rest.

There are no second chances. Forgiveness will never be welcomed in your burning home when you had spent so long spilling blood and tears on its floors.

As Described / ROBIN HOLLOWAY

I looked at him and I thought,
if I was very brave or very honest,
I would tell him.

Lucas Till / JASON GRACE

&&&

Louis Partridge . . . Theodore Holloway
Whitney Peak . . . Erin Vance
Kristine Frøseth . . . Rain Kielman
Maxence Danet-Fauvel . . . Malcolm Pace
Felix Bossuet . . . Samuel Sinclair
Xolo Maridueña . . . Leo Valdez
Amber Midthunder . . . Piper McLean
Eva Green . . . Enyo
As Described . . . Frank Zhang
As Described . . . Hazel Levesque
As Described . . . Annabeth Chase
As Described . . . Percy Jackson

✹ This would be the first ever 2022 book I published! Depending on when you're reading this, ROYI is messy in both past and present and there would be plot holes I would eventually fix in the future when I do finish Act One. I've already noticed some scenes lacking and needing more background despite only being on Chapter 3 right now and I would love to edit it but I think waiting till I finish Lost Hero would be a better idea. This is part of the Evergreen series ( this is book two even though i had yet to publish ch1 of ODYSSEY ). You do not need to read book one to understand everything. This could be a standalone! It just contains spoilers.

✹ ROYI covers grief and loneliness a lot and it'll get tiring. I'm sorry! Act One would continuously talk about the past and the depths of grief and everything in between before it is toned down in Act Two.

✹ Credits: I do not own PJO ( if i did i wouldn't be bed rotting ) and its characters besides their minor changed plots. This layout was made by entrywounds and the prophecy line for Act One was frivolouse's Idea. All credits go to them.

✹ Warnings: violence, death, strong language, ptsd, trauma, and mentions of suicide. I will put a trigger warning for the last one listed!

✹ Dedications: surfenergy, dollsluts , sourenergy , and frivolouse.