what do you do when all your systems no longer cooperate with your mind? when you literally freeze when called to action and harbor the inviting sense of apathy? when you play ignorant as disorder play out while at the back of your head you secretly hope order will naturally rise out of the chaos? when your heart betrayed you to logic? should not soul take over, and not be so frustratingly mute? sure, help comes from the other side, but it's either just biding its divine time, or busy in its own war.

Fragile fringes -

Forged from forced freedom.

Forlorn fights -

Fed flighty fists.

Faithless friend -

Forgiven.

Fiendish foe -

Forgotten.

The stab in the back is the easiest

At least in the immediate instant

Empty

First, a moment of no consequence

The previous unfathomable curiosity slowly being answered

Will the blood spurt?

Will the odor reek?

Will the thirst linger?

Will the hand stop shaking?

Upon the execution

Of this only known solution

Will the heart be finally satisfied?

Next, the activation of the senses

Of normalcy

The air is suddenly breezy

The soul is suddenly cold

Earth, o how solid

This is not the other world

Finally, the most hateful of all

Reason

The arrows of logic that shot through the mind

Neon streaks upon their wake

Clarity in its silence

Only,

The expected answer

Had spouted more confusion.

Get me out of here.

As a person, your life has to be garbage. Surround yourself with all-approving morons that nods at everything you do. Thread through the cynical guidelines so you will not be dismissed as a coward. Nothing seethes of the ideas of greed but the perfunctory disposal of your ordinary days, looking down on people who wanted to make this world a better place. For what is greed if not the thought of a selfish bastard, who entitles himself to all functions and materials, eternally thinking himself as the better one. The first. The upper hand. Never the best, because people will see through the fake edifice. Just the right position to get everything you need with your words, your time, your influence, your confluence of them all. Also a position to choose someone you can paint with the same garbage of life as you have. Go inside their filthy, webbed closets and dig for their crumbling skeletons. That way you control them. And in the end, play the victim. Plant the notion that you are incapable of any creative disposition of life, that you are a thoughtless, needless imbecile whose only fault is dreaming the way just like any other. Bask in the hope of redemption, without fully knowing that a special kind of hell is waiting for you.

The Knife was lent to him by his slaymaster, who told him it was crafted long before by a man called "He-of-Red-and-Rum". It was also well-known among everyone in the school as the "Craven Knife", a practitioner's tool, as anyone who has been known to have handled it have not been capable of killing.

He held the Knife in his breast, and his tormentor's gaze shifted to it. All around, students were laughing. He thought they must have been thinking how brazenly foolish he must be to take out that repulsive, blunt weapon (if one can call it that) for everyone to see. But of course he alone know the secret that powers the Knife.

"Knife, let your cut be true this day," he recited silently. "Blade, I commit to your purpose. Hilt, drive my will to your own. I am one with your intent." Then it is done.

"Praying your last, coward?" his great bully said. "Good. I will end you here. You were never meant to be a slayman. The Guild is wrong to pick you. You can never kill."

Time to know, he said to himself. He was curious to carry out his first...

I have the power to deny you of your will. I only but touch you, and your heart is mine. You have one immunity against me: an inner passion that endures. For only those who have realized what they want in life can resist me.

I was young when my power awakened, and I had the greatest opportunity in our household to nurture it. My parents would have separated if not for my gift. I took their own wills from them, and replaced it with a passion to be together for the sake of their only son. I practiced on their cruel, selfish hearts, and I made them stay together, for as a child I was afraid to lose any one of them. It was easy to fan a flame inside their empty souls, and when I was done with them, I simply left. They died purposeless and wasted.

Eventually I met my match: someone who made me see the paradox of my existence. My own life is aimless. I do not have my own personal zeal. It was a blow in my psyche.

Thus, I resolve to nurture others: assist them to look deep within themselves and kindle their own fire, use it for good. I named myself Ardor.