[open] you and i both know that the ghost is me [any]

[magnus]

you and I both know that the house is haunted
and you and I both know that the ghost is me

It had felt like death, but it had been anything but. His life had become an orb of erupting colors. Brilliant shades of joy from his time with Minette and their budding life. Fog of an unrelenting angst and guilt—memories like an anchor pulling him down. Furious flames of anger washing up his throat as he prepared for war. They had collided in his chest, melting into a catalyst of emotions that he had struggled to swallow. They had driven him to work every day; rarely sleeping, wandering amongst the bodies of Heaven’s inhabitants with a feverish desire to watch over them and protect them all from the coming despair.

He had been foolish. So foolish.

He had thought he could protect them.

He had flung his past away from him and whispered the words he had told himself he would never utter again. He had told them he would protect them. He had promised them that he would. He had made pledges to them; he had made an oath. And then, when they needed him most, the ground beneath him had become a wide, gaping chasm that had swallowed him whole. He had fallen, fallen until the wings given to him from Heaven had disintegrated and dissolved—leaving him bare and scarred and alone. So alone.

Magnus wasn’t sure when the falling stopped, but eventually it did.

He had been suspended in the nothingness. The dark so tangible that he felt its weight, the abyss stretching onward and onward, lonely fingers crawling into the horizon. Over time, he felt shadows of others more than he saw them. Heartbeats pulsing around him before echoing into the distance. At first, he had tried to cry to them, screaming for someone to hear him, but they never responded.

Eventually, he gave up.

He didn't know why he was pulled. He didn’t know where he was. He could only assume that death had come to claim him once more, pulling him back into the salty, oceanic grave he had first crawled from. But this purgatory, this prison of silence, was not death. Whispers came. Whispers telling him of the danger he had been in—that their bloodline had been in. Whispers telling him of twins born into blood magic who needed the family to survive. Whispers telling him of a plot to protect the souls they could find.

Selfish, Magnus had thought. He had screamed it. He had pled with the voice to let him go—to let him return and fight and die if that was needed. But the whispers had not cared. They went from lethargic to annoyed. Magnus had been called unappreciative. He had been called petulant. Finally, he was called nothing. The whispers withdrew, leaving him to himself and his thoughts. Leaving him to his silence.

Then, it had ended as quickly as it had begun. He was spit out into the meadow, the whispers simply telling him the danger had passed. He was no longer needed; his life was no longer worth protecting.

So, here he stood. Untouched, unchanged for the time past except the lack of wings protruding from his shoulders. It felt odd to have lost the appendages, the lack of eagle-feathers leaving him as awkward and off-balance as they had made him when they first appeared. But their absence was not what caused the aching hole in his heart. It was the time stolen from him. It was the home he had once again let down. It was the love that he had almost found again only to have it ripped away once more. Grief and fury melded together and crashed down around him. What was there to do now but give into the regret?

MAGNUS

once general. once lord. once king.