"What is dark within me, illumine."

━━ PARADISE LOST

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

On the morning of Tom Riddle's death, a storm gripped the countryside like a steel press, ravaging the serene landscape as the skyline grimaced at the carnage of uprooted trees.

Inkeri had droned out Asha's idle chatter, to which Adrielle was responding with monotone one-word answers, as a strange queasiness curled in her gut. She felt as though she was going to be sick— though was unable to pinpoint why. 

Touching back to reality was like being hit by a wall, each idle conversation a brick in the din of the Great Hall. Inkeri tried to focus on what Asha was saying. From what she could gather, the Ravenclaw was fretting about something she had predicted in Divination. 

It had taken a long time for Inkeri to trust, let alone reciprocate, Asha's unconditional warmth. She hadn't understood why the girl acted toward her with such fondness, hesitant to embrace the tender friendship she was being given. Soon however, Inkeri had come to learn how Asha managed to befriend even the most morbid soul of Adrielle Selwyn, her luminance infecting the ghostly girl in a subtle manner that was invisible to an outsider. 

"Professor Orson actually fainted when she saw it," Asha said in a hushed voice, looking as though she may pass out herself. Inkeri realised they were studying a star chart, and tilted her head to read it. "It fits into place with everything I've been doing in Astronomy too— Venus and Mars will align in two weeks' time!"

Adrielle crossed her arms, entirely unconvinced. She frequently scorned Asha for her "woolly" subject choices, and certainly never heeded any of the girl's warnings or predictions. "We have exams coming up soon," she deadpanned. "You would do well to focus on those instead of idiotic divination predictions, of all things." 

Asha looked at her forlornly. "What is the use of worrying about exams when I may be dead before I can take them?"

Groaning loudly, Adrielle buried her head in her hands with frustration. "At this point your death does not even seem so bad," she said, her voice muffled. "At least it would allow for some silence in the morning." Asha threw her a reproachful look. 

"Be cautious, but not paranoid," Inkeri advised, touching Asha's hand in an attempt to appease her. "Death is everywhere; no amount of precaution will save you if it's predestined."

Asha's eyes widened at these words, and Adrielle snorted, face still hidden and raven hair falling like a fountain about her. "That is really reassuring, Koskinen, good job." 

"At least I am trying," Inkeri shot back, but she tried to rack her brain for something that might distract Asha— and maybe herself— from the looming concern of death. "It's this castle," she deduced. "It's far too gloomy. Let's go out somewhere, we are free today are we not?"

Asha gave her a weird look, and even Adrielle lifted her head to give a judgemental stare. "Out? In the midst of this storm?" the Ravenclaw asked doubtfully, looking to the window that revealed the entire horizon quivering from the force of the weather. "Is that really a good idea?"

"Why not? The wind cannot kill us," Inkeri said lightly, trying to push down her nausea as she got up from her seat. She swayed slightly, steadying herself with the table, though it did not go unnoticed by Adrielle who frowned but said nothing. 

"A falling tree could actually kill us," Asha protested, but Inkeri pulled her up out of her seat regardless. Adrielle had seemed resistant to the idea, but followed them out of the castle all the same, face already buried once again in a book.

The wind beat at the three girls with voracious delight, howling its obscenities at them as it threatened to tear apart the very cobblestones upon which they walked. They linked arms to avoid being pushed back by the force of the gust, and how Adrielle managed to keep reading with one arm without having her book blown away was mystifying. 

"Remind me why we are doing this again," Asha said loudly to be heard, one hand gripping Inkeri and the other clutching her hat in a futile attempt to keep it on her head. 

"To get out of the 'gloomy castle'" Adrielle responded with a roll of her eyes as she looked up pointedly at the sky, where dark storm clouds loomed threateningly over the landscape, casting their foreboding promises for the day ahead.  

Inkeri did not even try to prevent the puerile smile which lit up her face. Her hood had been knocked down since both her arms were locked by her companions. "Do you not feel suffocated, spending all of your time indoors?" she questioned. 

"No," they both responded in unison. 

The blonde witch sighed. "Well now that we are out, we may as well head to Hogsmeade and find something of interest." 

Surprisingly, it was Adrielle that came to her defence. "I could do with a firewhiskey," she muttered, not removing her keen gaze from the pages of her volume. It was black and leatherbound, the title etched onto the spine in gold lettering. Demonic Possession of the Soul: Internal Putrefaction of Your Enemies. 

She turned to Asha to comment on the title, to find the Ravenclaw witch staring at her strangely. "Your hair," she said in shock, reaching out to touch the blonde locks. "It's glowing." 

Inkeri let her friend lift a strand of her luminescent hair, wondering how she should react to the awe. A part of her had the instinctive urge to pull out her wand and obliviate Asha right there.

Most of her however, wanted desperately to trust someone in this godforsaken world where everyone sought only to manipulate her. 

Adrielle snorted. "Have you never noticed?" She asked Asha dryly. "You truly are oblivious." 

"We've established that a long time ago," Asha said, releasing Inkeri's hair and focusing her concentration back on the road, without demanding an explanation. That was perhaps the reason why Selwyn and Lohiya's friendship flourished; Asha never forced an enigma to unravel itself. 

The Three Broomsticks was, shockingly, bursting to the brim, as lively as on a summer's day with a fireplace crackling in the corner, spreading warmth and the scent of firewood and painting a cosy atmosphere for those in refuge from the storm. No other Hogwarts students, however, had dared to make the trek. 

Adrielle and Inkeri chose a booth, while Asha went up to the counter to order, hesitantly taking after much insistence a few galleons from Inkeri to pay for the drinks. The blonde witch detangled her scarf from around her neck, but just as she was about to set it down, something caught her eye. 

Lestrange and Nott sat in the far corner, but neither seemed to be indulging in any beverage. Instead they talked in hushed voices, heads low and eyes narrowed as they flitted among all those that could be listening. 

Triton had his back to her, and all she saw was his messy chestnut hair, but Orpheus was facing her directly, and it didn't take long for him to notice her. When she met his gaze, his dark eyes widened as he nudged and whispered to his companion, who swivelled round in equal alarm. 

Inkeri smiled at them, falsity dripping from the action, as she turned her back to the boys and sat down opposite Adrielle, who was too busy reading to notice anything. 

The sickness she had felt earlier threatened to rise as bile in her throat, and as the waitress set down a glass of water in front of her, she downed the entire thing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two Slytherins approaching, and quickly suppressed any visible signs of her growing ailment. 

"This is a pleasant surprise," Lestrange said suavely, sliding into the space beside Adrielle, who raised her green eyes to look at him dully. "How did you both battle the storm without being knocked away by the wind?" 

"Probably the same way you did," Inkeri said evenly, raising an eyebrow at him, as Nott took the seat next to her.

"Who invited you both to sit?" Adrielle demanded, slamming her heavy book shut with such force that it made them all flinch. "Why don't you go and slink back into whatever hole you crawled out of?"

Orpheus smiled, courageously putting his arm around her. "Welcoming as ever, Selwyn. I missed that delightful expression of yours." Adrielle threw him a glare so nasty it could have sent the gorgon Medusa reeling, but he just smiled and nodded, looking to Inkeri. "You see? Delightful. Warms my heart." 

Adrielle picked up her full glass of water and threw it in his face before shoving his arm away from her, making him gasp as the freezing liquid trickled down his neck, drenching his robes and hair, and Triton suppressed a grin at his plight. Inkeri thought Lestrange was lucky that the Selwyn girl had not cursed him through the roof.

As Lestrange stole a towel from a passing waiter, Asha returned with a cheque, her doe eyes widening when they landed on the two Slytherin boys that had decided to join them. 

Lestrange nodded at her warmly. He seemed to look at her with a sort of fondness, as though despite the formal dissolution of their friendship, some of the warmth he had once held for her still lingered. "Lohiya," he greeted with a nod. 

Asha looked at Orpheus's soaked condition with mild concern. "Has it started raining outside already?" She asked, peering through the window, making Triton spat out his water. 

"Yes," Lestrange responded dryly, handing Nott the towel. "The rain cloud seemed to target only me. It was rather strange." 

Oblivious to the sarcasm, Asha merely shrugged and took off her coat, and Triton quickly rose to hang it for her on the rack. Inkeri tilted her head suspiciously as she watched her Ravenclaw friend blush, and tuck a loose strand of onyx hair behind her ear. 

"We cannot stay, unfortunately," Orpheus informed them, while Asha stole Triton's seat in his absence. "Nott and I have business elsewhere." 

"What a pity," Adrielle deadpanned, as her firewhiskey was set in front her. She drank the entire glass unflinchingly in one go, but they all knew better than to question her. 

"What kind of business?" Inkeri asked suddenly, the words slipping out before she could stop herself. 

A mocking sneer painted across Lestrange's face. "The kind that is not of your concern," he said rather heatedly, "but if you must know, we are going to Tomes and Scrolls. Nott needs a new inkpot." 

"You needn't sound so hostile," Inkeri said coolly, as Triton approached with his and Lestrange's coats, evidently equally eager to leave. The blonde witch didn't notice the disappointed look Asha levelled at him. "I actually also need to visit Tomes and Scrolls." 

Nott and Lestrange fell into a momentary silence, before Triton shattered it with it a drawn-out and surprised "Really? Why?" 

"Yes," Adrielle questioned pointedly, looking at Inkeri with a raging intensity in her jade green eyes and sceptisism evident in her voice. "Why?"

Trying to fight the heat which rose to her cheeks under the intense scrutiny, Inkeri stood up, ignoring the firewhiskey which a waiter set in front of her now vacant seat. "I need a new quill," she stated, redoing the scarf she had just untied. "You can have my drink, Selwyn." 

Lestrange was eyeing her belligerently, but she feigned innocence, gesturing with her hand in front of her. "Shall we leave?" 

They watched each other, neither wavering in their firm stature. Inkeri knew they were not there to buy quills and inkpots— scarcely anyone had ventured out in the brewing storm, and wherever Riddle's acolytes were, he was, scheming outside the walls of the castle. 

Since she had burned down the garden of Hufflepuff, he had been actively avoiding her, and even when she tried to seek him out, he remained hidden by a cloak of obscurity. Time was slipping from Inkeri's fingers, and she did not have enough of it to play hide-and-seek with him. 

Nott and Lestrange exchanged a glance, with the lanky boy making the first move, following Inkeri's gesture and moving to exit the inn. Inkeri followed him, and Lestrange trailed behind her, his eyes burning holes in the back of her head. 

Once they were hit with the cold onslaught upon exiting the warm inn, Inkeri tried to diffuse the tension of her imposition by swinging her arms around the two boys, forcing them to bend slightly to her height. "Isn't this nice?" She said brightly. "We Slytherins have not spent some quality time together in a while."

Nott tried to force a pleasant smile. "That is true," he said warily, "it is always pleasant to see you though, Koskinen."

"Is it?" Inkeri said, and before she could stop herself the words slipped out of her mouth. "Is that why you saved my life, Nott, after Riddle tried to kill me in the alleyway? I never thanked you for that, did I? Well, thank you."

She trailed off as she felt Lestrange tense beside her, and Nott froze entirely, his limbs seized with a sudden, rigid stillness, as if caught between shock and dread. Inkeri realised too late the irreparable line that she had made visible. 

"You do not need to say anything," Inkeri murmured, when she realised neither boys were going to speak, retracting her arms and shoving them deep into her pockets. Any humorous quality she had found in the conversation was irreparably lost. "I know that you are all just Riddle's pawns. One cannot hate a puppet for the actions of the puppeteer." 

Lestrange's jaw clenched. "You don't know the half of it," he said quietly. 

She gave him a half-smile, one that resembled almost pity. "I do know that he left you with a mark of such dark magic that you begged me for help," she pointed out. 

"You don't know the half of it," Lestrange repeated, this time with more emphatic anger. Nott was still silent, ghostly pale with either guilt or anxiety. 

Inkeri sighed. She wondered at the sheer level of manipulation Riddle had used on these boys to get them to do his bidding; morbid souls though they were, none of them lacked the surface-level humanity which seemed to have buried them in a tomb of guilt. 

When the two boys finally recovered the feeling in their limbs, Inkeri stayed silent for the rest of the walk, only speaking to murmur thank you when Nott held the door of the shop open for her. 

Inkeri's vivacity was revived when she saw Riddle, lingering by a bookshelf near the back of the small store. He had his back to her, but she had learned to recognise him by the magnetic pull of his drained soul, and the manner in which his hands moved as he spoke to Rosier and Dolohov. 

It was the latter that first noticed her, cold eyes piercing through her and widening in an instant, wordlessly signalling alarm to Tom, who turned around, a look of pure annoyance crossing his face when he saw her.  

Pushing something into Rosier's hands, he left with suspicious haste, not glancing at her as he walked round her, but being sure to let their shoulders knock harshly. 

The bell to the entrance of the shop dinged, and Inkeri turned to see Abraxas entering, her theory confirmed. Whatever Tom Riddle was scheming was too sensitive to be revised within the castle, so he had summoned his followers to the outskirts of Hogsmeade, on a day when hardly a soul ventured so far from comfort. 

Lestrange, whom she had forgotten was right behind her, nudged her slightly, and it was then that she realised she was alone in this shop with the five acolytes, spare for the busy shopkeeper tending to the counter. 

Malfoy looked around in confusion, approaching Rosier and Dolohov from a parallel aisle. "Where is Riddle?" He demanded Niklaus in an oddly accusatory tone. The boy just gestured in Inkeri's direction, and she quickly averted her gaze, pretended to be busy searching for a quill. 

The pretence didn't work. She looked up, and Malfoy had levelled his wand against her temple. "Why are you here," he asked lowly. 

It was Nott that spoke in her defence. "She n-needed a n-new quill," he said, reaching out and lowering Abraxas' wand. "We let her come with us."

"You idiot," Malfoy snarled, "that's obviously not the reason." Abandoning his magical threat, he grabbed her by the front of her robes, slamming her against the shelf with enough force to knock down the items there. The shopkeeper tried to see what was going on, but Dolohov threatened him wordlessly with his knife to retreat. 

"I'll ask again," Malfoy said slowly, recovering his temper. "Why are you here?"

Recklessly, Inkeri burned with rage, the magic she drew from the full moon of the approaching night burning like a drug in her veins. "I don't know," she snarled, "maybe I had an inclination that you were planning to kill someone again!"

Malfoy stepped away, apparently stunned. Wow, Inkeri really was breaking all of her knowledge of their happenings to them today. 

"Are you insane?" Lestrange said, seemingly aghast. "Don't say things like that— not here."

A momentary silence transpired. 

Rosier cleared his throat. "I will walk you back to the castle," he told her. She turned to argue, but he cut her off with an abrupt look. "I see storm clouds, anyway, and I want to avoid the rain." 

Inkeri was rooted to her spot, and Niklaus pulled her out gently by the elbow, barely touching her aside from the loose fabric of her coat. Once they were outside, he exhaled with what seemed to be relief, the warmth of his breath leaving mist visible in the cold air. 

"If it were up to only Malfoy and Dolohov in there," he informed her, "you would not leave that shop in one piece."

"Don't paint yourself like my saviour," she snapped. "Not when you are just as much the enemy as they are."

Niklaus let out a low chuckle as he lit a cigarette, letting it rest against his lips. He offered her one, but she waved it away. "You are not juvenile enough to talk about childish things such as enmity. There are no enemies or friends, just as there is no good or bad." 

"That is a cowardly way of living," Inkeri said bitingly. "Your erudition has done nothing but isolate you."

If her words stung, he didn't let on, just continued walking down the promenade with his head held upward in aristocratic fashion, breathing out cigarette smoke into the evanescent twilight. "Perhaps," he acknowledged, and that was all. 

They walked a few steps further in silence, but she couldn't stifle her questions from brimming to the surface. "I just don't understand," she said, her words piercing the distilled quiet. "Everyone with eyes knows that you despise Riddle and Malfoy, so why are you a part of their gang?"

"We are not a gang," Rosier corrected sharply. 

Inkeri scoffed. "Fine," she said, "your after-school club. Your cult. Your brotherhood. Call it whatever you want."

"I merely associate myself with a camaraderie of like-minded individuals who propel my intellectual pursuits," he replied calmly, throwing his cigarette in the bin and pulling out another. As soon as he lit it, Inkeri took it from his hands, receiving a look that was somewhere between irritation and amusement.

His words sounded awfully rehearsed; she wondered if the justification was for her, or for himself.  

After exhaling a lungful of the toxic smoke, Inkeri watched it drift upward into the evening sky. "It sounds like a gang to me," she commented impassively. He scowled at her, and she smiled. 

"Call it whatever you want," he said mimicking her, though there was little humour in his voice. "It is in your best interest that you stop interfering with us. With Riddle. I will not always be around to help you."

"I have no need for your protection, nor am I afraid of Riddle," she sneered brazenly, as they stopped just in front of the castle gates. "Not anymore."

Niklaus shrugged. He pulled out his wand, and vanished the cigarette in her hand before the professor that walked past them could see it. "Maybe not," he said simply. "But you should be."

He entered the castle, leaving her standing there with the dawning cold and his words of warning. 

｡･:*˚:✧｡

Raindrops danced in a frenzied waltz, accompanied by a haunting melody sung by the harsh zephyr, in an ode to the second full moon of the Gregorian calendar year, who hid her face behind a veil of turbid clouds, oblivious to the coquetting. Though her luminance was hardly visible, Inkeri knew it was there; she could feel the magic surge in her veins, almost threatening to spill out from her skin like blood from a wound.

Inkeri pulled her coat further up her neck, teeth chattering with cold as her wet hair stuck to her forehead. Being outside in this weather was unideal, even for her. Ora's letter was clenched tightly in her fist, the edges turning translucent as rain water slowly dissolved the parchment. 

The Forbidden Forest, 23.00. 

The trees of the forest were still bare from the harsh winter winter, though so dense that she could hardly move without being grazed by an emaciated claw. The distant echoing of thunder made her skin crawl, and she quickened her pace, ignoring the scratches against her exposed face. The rain had soaked her to the bone, and her lower jaw chatter with the cold, hair plastered to her forehead.

She'd already had to escape Riddle tonight, and although the way she had left him sparked some vindication, she didn't want to be the victim of another unwanted altercation.  

About her, the air shifted, and someone else now walked beside her, though their stride was more of a leisurely skip of glee. Ilona Koskinen— or whatever twisted version of her was still hellbent on haunting Inkeri— fell into step, pale skin glowing unnaturally in the dim light, eyes gleaming with malevolence.

"You're in for a treat," Ilona said brightly. "Well, I am at least."

"Fuck off," Inkeri snarled, as her gut roiled and her hands began to shake with feverish fervour. "You're not real." 

Ilona shrugged. "There's ghosts in the castle that you have no trouble believing in," she pointed out. "And anyway, if I'm not real, then you're going mad. Do you prefer that alternative?"

As a branch snagged its claw into her cheek, drawing blood, Inkeri tried not to cry out. "I prefer the alternative where you leave me alone," she said, voice breaking with the strain of emotion. 

"I'm sure you do," Ilona hummed with agreement. "But didn't I tell you before? You'll never be left alone, Inkeri. You've shrouded yourself in blissful oblivion, but when the mist clears—"

"Yeah, the guilt will gnaw me alive and all that," Inkeri cut her off impatiently. "You've told me already." 

Ilona opened her mouth to say something else, but fell silent when Inkeri reached the clearing where she had found Ora last time. Indeed, there he was, sitting at the top of the sigil which he had seemingly drawn into the muddy grass. Ora's deep amethyst eyes opened directly on her. 

"Wow," Ilona said. "He's horrifying. I never imagine the Seer to be this unsightly."

Ora did not make any indication that he could see or hear the phantom, which just worsened Inkeri's suspicion that she was, truly, going insane. "Ora," she said in greeting, though still he remained silent. "What is it? Why the sudden urgency?"

"The boy," he said bluntly. "Have you been watching him?"

"Of course," Inkeri said immediately. 

Ilona scoffed. "More like he's been watching you," she said teasingly in a sing-song voice of amusement. 

Inkeri didn't even look at her. Swallowing her nervousness, she spoke. "He's planning something," she told the Seer, "something bad. I don't think we should wait any longer."

Closing his eyes, Ora beckoned her to come forwards. She moved until she was in the centre of the circular sigil, then knelt to be level with him. Before she could cry out, he reached forward and pressed his index against her forehead. 

Inkeri was thrust back into the unforgiving vision of the future. She was back home; but everything was burnt, burning, or about to burn. She could hardly breathe, drowning in the suffocating smell of smoke. 

A sob built up in her throat, as she knelt beside the charred and broken body of a valiant hunter who had probably gone out to fight. She touched the side of his burnt face, closing his lifeless eyes before moving forward. 

The village was deeper in the heart of the blazing forest, but the screams and cries of agonizing fear echoed to reach her ears even from the distance. Inkeri's knees almost gave out. She turned away from that direction, and sought instead, the hill upon which she would be able to see everything. 

The flames licked her skin but she was immune to the them, a mere apparition in this timeline that was not her own. As she reached the edge of the cliff, Inkeri saw someone already standing there. 

They were gazing down at the fire, wand in hand with sparks emanating from the tip. The arsonist watched the destruction he had caused with some sort of fragile awe. As though in his crazed fury, he had lit the fuse of something far bigger than he had ever intended. 

Tom Riddle turned to face Inkeri directly. As his onyx eyes met hers, and his lips stretched into a smile, Inkeri felt the world slipping away.

Pulled back to reality by the cord on her soul, she realised her own tears were mixing now with the rainwater. She could no longer see Ora, nor Ilona, and she was alone with the unbearable truth; Tom Riddle had to die, and her hands would be stained with blood forever. 

"I've brought him here for you," she heard Ora say, though his voice sounded like hardly a whisper carried by the wind as a final favour to the girl. 

Inkeri forced herself to open her eyes and, turning around, was met with another person, watching her carefully. Onyx eyes, glimmering in the dark. 

Tom must have seen her intentions written on her face, for he drew his wand. Stupefy, he cast at her wordlessly, but she deflected it without having to move a muscle. Tears streamed down her face and her hands shook with anticipation. 

Taking a step back, Tom cast another flurry of spells at her, all of which seemed to him to disappear into thin air. The magic of the full moon glowed in her veins, and he met a brutal realisation. Tonight, he could not win. 

They stared at each other, under the full moon, with only the raging storm witness to the sinners, as Inkeri's eyes burned with luminous magic. 

Riddle cast a shield charm just as Inkeri shot a dagger of light, which pierced through the barrier with ease, burning Riddle's right arm with such agonizing intensity that he almost cried out. Almost. 

Now, his lip curled, as he summoned another shield; this time one made of hell-fire, scattering the inferno in front of him as she watched with wide eyes. She seemed to recognise the ghost of something in the flames, and it made her blaze with a newfound fury replacing the guilt. 

Impossibly, she quelled the fiendfire with a blanket of shadow, and before Tom could react, she had his limbs locked in place with a silent, unspoken charm. 

"That's not possible," he managed to say, voice hoarse and raspy with what she could pinpoint as fear. "It is not possible to put out a fiendfire." 

She laughed, the manic sound echoing through the clearing. "My darling Tom," Inkeri said, placing her hand on his chest and letting it illuminate. They were so close, she could feel his panicked breaths warm against the dew on her skin, their knuckles grazing. 

"You have no idea of what is possible." 

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

AUTHOR'S NOTE [PLEASE READ]

I don't leave author's notes very often, but I kind of feel like I owe an explanation to anyone that's persisted with this story despite my inconsistent and frankly appalling updating schedule, because I truly do appreciate you guys.

Truthfully, I feel as though I've set the stakes too high for myself. It took nearly a year for TLF to gain even a single reader, and back then I used to be able to spend months on a single chapter, perfecting it and whatnot. I also had a really high motivation to make my writing ornate, searching perfect synonyms for words, fixing my grammar, etc since I'm not a native english speaker.

Now though, as the plot is progressing, I think I'm struggling to accurately portray the dramatic scenes I envision in words, which honestly just leaves me frustrated and hating my writing. On that note too— my writing in general, I fear, has just plateaued in quality, maybe even going downhill (particularly in this chapter and the previous one). The last thing I want to do is engage my readers at the beginning and then just start feeding them garbage chapters.

It's also a lot less darker, because I think as a person I'm just in a much better mental state than I was back when I started this. I was away from my family for the first time, and completely alone, so I channelled my thoughts into Inkeri. Now though, both myself and my main character have made a lot of friends, so the tone has become a lot brighter.

I've of course decided ultimately to just persevere really, because I'm pretty sure it's just a phase that most writers go through. I'll definitely never be the update-twice-a-week author (literally where do these gods come from), but I will just push through my doubts and keep writing despite them, because I love this story too much to let my insecurities ruin it for me :) I can always do a rewrite later if it comes to that point. I just really needed to put that explanation out there, whether or not people choose to read it <3

Happy new year everyone <33 I hope '25 treats you so well.