The Wound

The blade finds you in your sleep. You wake pressing the wound, but your fingers close on nothing. The steel is gone; what it left weighs more. The wound keeps its own pulse. In the silence before the nerves send the pain, it asks: What will you make of me?

The Path

The body screams: Kill the nerve. Bury the memory before it speaks. You refuse those mercies. You stay in the break while the nerves still burn. How did you get past my guard? The blade did not create the gap. It found it. You trace the path to the blind spot you defended with everything but eyes – and see it. Flesh answers flesh. Skin closes over all that it learnt, holding what the blade gave it. The sword asked: Are you weak? The scar answers: I was.

The Shadow

Some refuse to answer. The Inviolate seals the wound before it bleeds. He watched his mother hollow out while still breathing, her silence swallowing the house room by room until she fit the void her husband left. Standing in that quiet, he swore: That won't be me. Now he closes every wound before it can name itself, his smile arriving a half-second before the pain. Someone leaves; he is already in the next room. But the body holds what the mind will not hear. His hand finds the back of his neck when certain names come up. Someone across from him goes quiet, and his shoulders drop, his breathing slows. He has known this hush his whole life. The house grows quiet, room by room. ❖ The Consecrated has chosen the wound. She learns the exact pause before revelation: the silence that makes a room lean in. A story told at dinner, a sentence left unfinished. Then the held breath before the telling, the angle of light that makes the scar gleam. Her fingers find the seam each morning, pressing until the edges part. She unravels the night's work before the scab can set. Don't close, she breathes. I'm not done with you.

The Cut