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The tower no longer felt the same.
Zam was not used to being alone in this place. Heck, she was not used to being alone in this cycle, full stop. It was only hours prior that she was in this exact area with the three people from whom she’d been inseparable for months at that point. It still felt so recent, the memory of running frantically from trial chamber to trial chamber alongside Jumper, complaining to Yungy over team comms, trying to save Pentar from the consequences of his own endearing idiocy. As it should - it was literally just a few hours ago after all - but in the time between then and the present Zam felt like she’d already aged five hundred years and the once vibrant world had suddenly become barren and unrecognizable.
It had been hours since Zam had pulled the bandage off, but the wound itself was yet to heal. It felt like it never might.
Standing right in front of the tower of friendship - of unconditional love - that Pentar and Yungy had built for her so long ago, she could not bear to tear her eyes away from it. Like the moment she looked away she’d instantly forget everything that led up to this moment. Like it would be some sort of betrayal.
Though perhaps, what she did to them today was already worse than any betrayal could be.
Perhaps a betrayal would’ve been kinder. At least then, the thought of scrubbing away the memories wouldn’t feel as painful. At least then there’d be no lingering naive hope of rediscovering each other by the end. At least then she could deceive herself into thinking it was a long time coming and not something that’s her doing and hers alone.
At least then, they could all move on.
But Zam didn’t want to simply “move on” like they meant nothing, and she knew they wouldn’t want that either. But the thought was not comforting at all. It was suffocating, excruciating, cruel.
She had hoped that she’d’ve been able to put this indiscriminant cruelty behind her by now.
Feeling something thin and viscous dripping from her left eye, Zam raised her metal hand towards her face and patted at the familiar liquid for a bit before pulling away and being met with a familiar sight she’d hoped she’d never have to see again.
Blood.
There was a thin line of blood red - a tear track - forming under her left eye.
And it was what made her realize that she hasn’t changed.
The first time Zam had cried blood was three whole cycles ago at this point. The cycle which had kickstarted her rapid descent.
She’d originally thought that the blood was dripping from an injury caused by Vitalasy’s claws when he’d swiped at the left side of her face earlier, but then wiping at her eye and cheek to clean it had revealed a different story. The blood was coming directly from the eye itself, not from any pre-existing or even recently formed injury; and even though the tear track formed slowly and always ended just short of the level of her chin, the blood flow showed no signs of stopping. For the rest of the event, her vision in that eye was blurred by a dark red splotch she could not get rid of, even as it got progressively more blurry and splotchy through the fog of both her actual tears and the foreign blood she helped spill.
The following cycle did not do anything to improve her circumstances.
The Zam of back then had surprisingly been capable of genuine tears from even her earliest recollections; sometimes even spilling them over the very man she’d sworn to herself she’d kill over and over again, however many kills it takes to return to a semblance of sanity. Ironically enough, the first thing to make her cry blood in that cycle had been the sight of that same man’s unmoving body.
Whether she was mourning the lost potential of a future reconciliation or simply not being able to deliver the final blow, though, she was never sure.
She naturally even remembered, as if it was yesterday, the unending pain and suffering of her previous cycle which had left her in crimson tears day after day with no respite in sight. Still, against all odds, she’d not only managed to make it to the end of the cycle in relatively one piece but also calm the bleeding of both her eye and heart for the first time in what felt like an eternity. The current cycle especially helped cement the idea in her mind that she was on the road to recovery, that she was thriving, that eventually all her anguish and hardship could become a thing of the past and that it was okay for her to believe things would be better.
She believed in it too hard. And now here she was, once again crying tears of blood.
“Fuck my stupid life,” she cursed at herself like it was all deserved.
Dear Jumper, Pentar and Yungy:
I know that none of you are ever going to read this. I know that this is a message for my eyes only, one that I will bury into the depths of my ender chest as soon as I finish it. But you deserved better than the bombshell I dropped on you today without warning. You’ve given me so much and all I gave you in return was pain (don’t argue that it’s not true, we all know it is). It’s just not fair to you guys, and I could not live with myself if I left it at that. I still have so much I’ve yet to get off my chest.
The last seven months of my life have been the happiest I have ever been since the beginning of the world’s cycles, and I have none but you three to thank for all of that. I had long since resigned myself to the fact that I was just forever doomed to suffer in solitude from the moment I started my descent, I was so convinced that my dreams of joy and relief would forever remain dreams.
The formation of our team was the start of something I could never have imagined being as blissful as it turned out to be, it felt like stepping out into the sun for the first time after centuries of endless stormy nights. For so long I’d been simply trudging along, looking in vain for something that could rekindle my will to live. And just as I’d given up hope, you three entered my life with the kindling I’d been searching for, and I cannot possibly thank you enough for that.
Please believe me when I say, I wish things didn’t have to turn out like this. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve cursed my fate, how much I’ve wished I could enjoy the simple pleasures of life alongside my team and not put myself dead last for once. But this world has never been fair, least of all to me. And if sustaining the cycles of the world has to come at the cost of my happiness, so be it. If only you three didn’t also have to get caught in that crossfire.
To Jumper, thank you for letting me into your team back when you did. However turbulent our relationship might've been in past cycles, I'm glad that this cycle brought us closer together than ever before. I know how much you wanted to stay with me after I left, but nonetheless I have faith that you'll be able to achieve great things even without me by your side. You've always been strong like that.
To Pentar, thank you for trusting me with your life and being someone I can trust in return. I might've complained loudly about it at the time, but I would gladly farm ominous vaults for heavy cores a thousand times over if it meant we didn't have to part. It's going to be hard getting used to the absence of your antics.
To Yungy, thank you for spending so much of your first cycle with me. The first connections you form in this world can transcend any cycle, be it good connections or bad ones, so I am grateful ours were as pleasant as they were. May this world continue to smile at you, even if I'm not there to witness it.
From the bottom of my heart, I love you guys. I love everything we have done together. I love the Tower of Friendship. I love Team Bing.
And most importantly, from the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry.
—PrinceZam
She placed the signed book right between the apology books written by her team, right where it belonged.
Maybe one day, they too would get to read it.