#mizereem

August DWC 2025

Day 3: Twitterpated/Primal

The world always narrows to the circle of glass.

Through the scope, there are no kingdoms, no factions, no words. Just the pulse of prey moving against the weight of silence. The sniper’s eye finds it, drinks it in, studies the rhythm. Every gesture, every careless breath, every twitch of a hand is recorded, measured, anticipated.

His own body obeys a different law in these moments. The breath slows. The heartbeat grows heavy in his chest, each thud echoing like a drum in a cave. The finger rests against cold steel, not yet commanded, but ready. Muscles coil, honed by years, as steady as stone yet alive with the tension of the strike.

The predator lives here, just behind the calm. Waiting. Patient.

Then comes the stillness. The breath halts, held between ribs as if the whole world is asked to stop with it. For that single suspended instant, the distance between hunter and hunted is gone. Two lives, one eye behind the glass and one oblivious within its circle, tied together by nothing more than the weight of a fingertip.

And then the choice to end it. The surrender. The shot.

The world exhales with the rifle, and the silence shatters like glass.

Sometimes, I catch myself thinking about it... what if the contract had ever fallen on him? What if Lukel’s name had been scrawled in black ink on thin parchment, laid at my feet as so many others have been? I can see it so clearly. The glass rising to my eye, the crosshairs settling against that starlit skin, my breath drawing down to stillness. His figure caught perfect in the circle. The way it always is. The way it has to be.

But him… no. Him, I know it would have been different. I can almost see the moment Mizereem’s pale eyes would have turned, unhurried and unflinching, meeting mine through the scope as though he’d known I was there all along. That gaze white as bone, stripped of all warmth would have cut through the calm I’ve trained into every sinew of myself. I would have felt the tremor, the slip, the hesitation that no hunter can afford. He would have pierced me before the bullet ever left the chamber.

And gods, the worst of it is I know I’d have felt the same thing then that I feel now. The way my chest stutters, the way my blood rushes sharp and hot, the way something ancient inside me bows its head in recognition. Even if I’d never touched him, never heard his voice, never known his name, that heartbeat would still have betrayed me. That inevitability. That pull. Even the Butcher, especially the Butcher, would have undone me and I’d never have understood why until it was far too late.

Day 7 Punish/Infinite @daily-writing-challenge with mentions of @lukel-sunshadow and @sanguinesorceress

It had been weeks since the moment Vaelsnipe had stood hidden at the edge of the Ghostlands, watching from the trees as Mizereem manifested to meet the Sorceress at that bridge that gaped between life and undeath.

She was a threat. That much had been clear. The way her voice coiled with power, the way even the air around her seemed to curl back in fear. Lukel, no, Mizereem had stepped between him and danger, and for the first time since their bond had begun, Vael felt it. Not fear. Not anger. Not even the old ache of betrayal. It was jealousy. Ugly and acidic, unfamiliar as a wound in a place he'd never been cut before.

He hadn’t even known what it was until Mizereem turned those pale eyes on him later, leading him far from the bridge and asking, demanding, to know why. Why had he followed and hidden himself. Why had he put himself at risk. Why his breath was fire and his jaw clenched so tightly he thought his teeth might break.

And damn him, Vaelsnipe had lied at first. Something about strategy. About not wanting to appear weak. But the truth clawed out from under his ribs like something feral. "I watched you speak to her like an equal," he'd said, voice sharp and brittle. "Like someone who deserved your full presence."

It was a child's wound from a man who had bled on battlegrounds. It was rediculous and yet it burned through his veins and he could not help it. But Mizereem hadn’t mocked him. He’d touched him. Softly. As if the monster, the Butcher, knew this wasn’t just about jealousy. It was about longing. About wanting all of someone, even the parts that had been buried deep in blood and silence.

Vael remembered Mizereem’s voice then... deep, rough as gravel dragged through fire, telling him he had never looked at her the way he looked at him. That she had never kissed his face, had never held his attention, his reverence, his hunger. That every facet of himself had come out that night to stand between Vaelsnipe and death because he loved him.

And in that moment, everything in Vael’s world tilted.

The punishment of jealousy wasn’t doled out by Mizereem, it was internal. It was the sting of realizing how much he needed someone. Of wanting something that deep. It was the ache of desire twisted by fear, fear that he wasn't enough to call all of Lukel's terrible and beautiful self his own.

But Mizereem didn’t punish him for feeling. No. He rewarded him.

That night, when Mizereem took him home, he wasn't met with cruelty, not with dominance, but with awe. With reverence. The Butcher, the thing that had carved his name into bones and blood, gave himself willingly, fully, and whispered “I love you” into the quiet between breaths.

Vael thought of that now, alone in the dark, hand brushing absently over the place where Mizereem had once pressed his own. There were parts of love that still scared him. That clawed at him with restless hunger and left him raw.

But he would never forget what it felt like to be the reason infinity bowed down. To be the only one the monster had ever chosen to be soft for.

The blood splattered across the walls and puddled on the polished marble floor gleamed like a fresh painting, streaks of fingerprints still visible in the gore. It was beautiful, he thought, the contrast of the bright, livid red against the pale moonstone slabs; how it ran together in streams, a macabre memory of the veins that had once held it secure. A broken laugh escaped through cut lips, flecking crimson across the face of the dead man that lay in the Butcher’s lap. Long, clawed fingers combed through the fiery hair that was still damp with blood, brushing it away from the Raven’s still face. “It wasn’t meant for you, was it?” The words were spoken in a half-mad whisper, both a question and a statement. “You were greedy. You tried to hide from me and you knew better. You knew it was only a matter of time before I came back for what was mine.” Despite the silver bladed dagger that was still embedded in the center of his chest, the Butcher leaned down towards the dead prince, his voice gravelly and soft. “It was hard to hold, wasn’t it? Painful? I never got to ask you if you ever heard them too…” The beast’s words trailed off as he paused to listen to the chorus of screams that echoed in his head, his constant companion of so many years. A smile touched his face that was at once both divine and horrific as he reached to slowly withdraw the piercing blade from his body. “How I wish you had. It’s a song unlike any other in existence.”

Threads had snapped and reformed in a flash after Landon had released his hold on life. The sliver of Mizereem that had lingered in the Raven’s soul returning to its proper place within Lukel at long last. And now he was whole. Horrifyingly so. It was agony and bliss, madness and ecstasy. He was being torn apart and stitched back together and there was no stopping the blinding memories that flooded him. Some were his own - lost and now returned - and some were only lingering fragments of the man who had been infected with the Butcher’s Misery.

Misery, Mizereem, Misery.

The blade clattered to the floor with a lethargic surge of blood that slowly slid down Lukel’s ruined chest. Perhaps he would keep some of these scars. The vicious, angry marks left on his skin when realization had finally hit the Raven - when he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was not going to be the one walking away from this encounter. He had fought as Lukel had expected him to - with everything he had and to the very last breath. There was a certain pride in that, he thought, to not lay down and accept your fate with a bowed head. The Butcher gained his feet slowly, moving to rest Landon on the floor with a gentleness not befitting his killer’s hands. “It was a glory and a privilege, Master Lanphere. But our game has finally come to its end.” A sigh escaped him as he turned towards the ruined front hall, the shattered door hanging off its hinges, pieces of crystal from the broken chandelier overhead littering the path like crystallized tears. With each step the Butcher took towards the exit, he left droplets of blood in his wake, left to mix in with the splinters of wood and pieces of broken glass. He would leave behind ruin and death, as he always had. It was what he had been created to do, after all.