Hopeless.

[Ennui]

"I don't get why you think you have to do everything alone. We'll beat him together, like we did before."

"Your word means nothing, your promises mean nothing, for you lack the strength to uphold them."

"I'll show you you can rely on me."

"You say one thing, and yet the results say another. Again, and again, and again."

"Will you marry me, Iris Aubreen?"

"...You know we can't do that."

"I heard he's getting married to Akecheta..."

"He's become the Commander of Gloomlight."

"You can always still come say hi to me, you know."

"...What would I ever want to do that for?"

"It matters not who you are... One thing is always certain: Death awaits all."

---

There is always someone who says they will save the world. One hardship is enough, usually. All it takes to bring their expectations crashing back down to reality. Today's plucky eyed child is tomorrow's cynical, broken idealist.

How many times did I watch you get back up?

They told me you're dead. My first thought was I wouldn't believe it until I saw it myself, because you'd beaten death so many times that she probably curses your name. And so these legs take me to where I thought I'd never return, the home I ran away from, the home I was forbidden from, where my blade was leveled at not one, but two Oracles.

I cast aside what I loved most, my family name, to master the sword. I burned every bridge. I shut everyone and everything out. I became a ghost, a whisper, forgotten. No one will remember me, for strength without purpose, under no banner, is meaningless. Who would remember some wraith, spurned even by her God, estranged from her family, who'd lashed out at everyone who tried to save her?

...you, I suppose. You would never forget me.

And now you're dead.

And I wasn't even there.

I left you to these idiots, and they let you die.

I let you die.

I want to dig up this grave and see your face myself. Who could have killed you? You were kidnapped by RISE and I tried to trade myself for you. Arlyss, Miko and I fought our way through the doors and there you were in your underwear, fighting the man who captured you. You looked at me with that stupid fucking grin, that insufferable fucking grin I could never wipe off of your face, no matter how many times I beat you. Even when I hunted your knights like cattle, wrought with my grief and my rage and my frustration, and you rose your steel and tried to tell me what I did was wrong, you still lost. I screamed in your face that this damned city you'd helped create didn't care about you, that they'd turned against the Pantheon, that they'd never appreciate you, or your efforts. 

But I couldn't break you. No one could. You were unbreakable.

...and you were right all along. So what if I was strong? These hands...never created anything. They only destroyed.

From where you rest, Ezra, look at all you started, at these crying faces, devastated by your passing. At the man you saved, at the city everyone called you a fool for trying to build, an Aphrosi foothold outside of Unreality, so soon after Na'ria and Xarxes' forces razed the home we fought to protect while the army fled. Everyone swore the Fel would just raze it again. They'd deny it now, because they'd look like idiots, but I remember when you first showed me Gloomlight, and no one was standing in it but us. How Eivor and Sabathiel grumbled that some of the Aphrosians had set up in the Citadel, trickling out of a portal that flickered all around the continent, and now look...

"Look at you. Look at what you did. So many faces, so much laughter, and love."

Everyone has to fight with time to find their place before their inevitable death. No human is ever a one man show. Every decision you make will affect the countless people who care about you, and there are no clean breaks. No matter how sharp my sword, I could never cleanly sever my ties. I could never make you see the way I did. Alone, with my swordsmanship, I'm just one woman, on a trajectory to find herself in an unmarked grave. You will survive in people who will never forget.

I saw some kid with your scarf on. Will someone else wear those goofy ass shades, too?

You embodied Hope better than any of Pylae's champions. I will not say you were a hero, because you still are. You will never die. Whether they know it or not, countless people owe their lives to you never faltering across decades. None were more faithful to Athelios. None embodied Aphros's principles like you. None are more worthy.

You can finally rest. Hopefully, I won't be long behind you.

And you can forgive me for what I must do.

"Those who know me might say...Iris has never been particularly good at letting go of a grudge."