#rhnwrites

Humingang malalim, pumikit na muna At baka sakaling, namamalikmata lang (Take a deep breath, close your eyes Maybe your eyes are just playing tricks)

Pale eyelids cover bloodshot eyes as Sylus takes a jagged, stuttering breath, trying to anchor himself to the present. He is the leader of Onychinus; he is the man who fears nothing, yet here he is, trembling in a crowded terminal.

Not two seconds ago, a girl had drifted past him. She had the exact same silkiness to her hair, that specific shade that used to catch the morning light on the pillows. She smelled of the same rainfall and vanilla that used to cling to his skin after a long night. His head swerved with a violent, desperate hunger—a hunter spotting a ghost.

His heart hammered a rhythm of pure, agonizing hope. Why would you be here in the N109 Zone? Why would you walk past him with such cold, vacant eyes, as if the years of shared breaths and whispered promises were nothing more than static?

He blinked, his vision fracturing. When he looked again, the girl was gone. The space she occupied was filled by the gray, smog-choked air of the city. It wasn't you. It was never you. It was just another cruel trick played by a mind that refused to accept its own ruin.

“Sylus…!”

The voice was airy, a soft vibration that seemed to come from the very walls of the penthouse.

Sylus, who had been trying to lose himself in the dense prose of a book, froze. The silence of the room was suddenly heavy, expectant. His ears perked, his head snapping toward the empty doorway. For a heartbeat, the lethal edge in his eyes vanished, replaced by a raw, naked vulnerability that would have sent his enemies into a frenzy.

Then, reality settled in like a layer of ash. His eyebrows furrowed, a deep, bitter shame burning in his gut as he turned back to his book, glaring at the ink until the letters looked like crawling insects.

Who was he kidding? He was alone. The twins were out on a mission, and Mephisto’s cage was unnervingly still. The silence wasn’t a peace; it was a vacuum, sucking the air out of his lungs.

With a frustrated snarl, he slammed the book shut and stood, his leather chair groaning under the sudden movement. He paced to the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring down at the glowing, neon veins of the empire he ruled. On the mahogany table sat a crystal glass of whiskey, the ice long since melted into a watery grave. He grabbed it, downing the lukewarm amber liquid in one go, desperate for the burn to reach the places where he felt nothing but a hollow chill.

He had tried to bury it all. He had stitched the wounds you left behind with iron thread, covering the scars with expensive silk and cold indifference. But the stitches were rotting. Why did your voice still echo in the marble hallways? Why did you haunt the quietest moments of his life?

Sylus was a man of infinite means. If you had asked for the moon, he would have dragged it from the sky by tomorrow morning. If you wanted to own a star, he would have laid a map of the galaxy at your feet and told you to choose.

But he couldn't buy the one thing he actually needed. He couldn't command the one wish that kept him awake until the sun turned the horizon into a bruise.

The wish to let you go.

Because in every dark corner, in every reflection of the glass, your face was the only thing he could see.

The mission had been a success by every objective standard, but as Sylus stood in the wreckage of the warehouse, he felt like he was drowning in lead.

An innocent had been caught in the crossfire—a little girl, barely ten years old, with eyes too big for her face. Her father had been a coward, a man who traded his daughter’s safety for a few more seconds of his own pathetic life.

While the twins held the man into place, Sylus pulled out his gun and aimed for the man’s head. But as soon as that happened, a little girl came out from her hiding spot and guarded her father.

Of course, Sylus was no monster. He lowered the gun and told the girl to leave. But she stayed put and told Sylus no. Sylus reached out, his hand steady and slow, intending to gently move the girl behind him. He didn’t want her to see what came next. "Move, kid," he muttered, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "This isn't your debt to pay."

But the father didn't see a rescue; he saw an opening.

As the girl hesitated, the man’s face contorted with a frantic, ugly desperation. Before Sylus could blink, the father lunged forward—not to save his daughter, but to seize her. He snatched her by the shoulders, wrenching her small frame backward to use as a human shield, his fingers digging into her arms.

But the father had tripped. A sickening, metallic thud echoed through the hollow warehouse as the girl was shoved onto the sharp, protruding steel corner of a crate.

The silence that followed was a physical weight. The girl didn't scream; she simply stopped.

Sylus didn't wait for an explanation. The fury in his chest turned into a lethal, blinding red light. A small, muffled explosion followed—the sound of a man’s life ending in a spray of bone and regret.

Now, hours later, the phantom image of that girl’s pale hand was burned into his retinas. He had someone to lean on once. Someone who would have held his face in their hands and whispered that the world was cruel, but he didn't have to be.

He got on his bike and rode until the city was a blur of neon streaks. He stopped at the furthest, most desolate edge of the N109 Zone and began to walk. He had walked this path a thousand times before.

The difference was, you used to be there. You used to walk on his right side, your fingers interlacing with his, swinging your joined hands back and forth as you hummed a melody that made the darkness feel less like a threat and more like a blanket.

Now, his right hand hung heavy and cold at his side.

But as the sun began to dip below the jagged skyline, he felt it. A pressure. The ghost of a sensation—small, warm fingers sliding into the gaps of his own. A warmth engulfed his palm, so real he could almost feel the pulse in your wrist. He looked down, his breath catching in a throat that felt like it was filled with glass.

A shadow filled the space beside him. A silhouette of a person, perfectly matched to his stride, holding his hand as if you had never left.

He squeezed back, but his fingers only met the cold, biting air. He felt like he was being buried alive, the dirt filling his mouth, his lungs, his heart, until there was nothing left but the suffocating weight of what used to be.

Sylus couldn’t let go—God, he was losing his grip on everything else, but he couldn’t let go of that.

Not when you broke into his mind every night like a thief who already owned the keys. You roamed through the corridors of his consciousness with a terrifying familiarity, moving the furniture of his thoughts until his head didn't feel like his own anymore. It was your home now; he was just the hollowed-out shell left to guard it.

Whenever he sought the mercy of sleep, your eyes were there, staring back from the underside of his eyelids—vivid, haunting, and agonizingly present. He couldn't even claim the sanctuary of a dream anymore; you were the only dream he was allowed to have, a recurring ghost that woke him up just to remind him that the bed beside him was cold.

In the pitch black, when the world disappeared, the sensory memory of you became a physical weight. He could feel the phantom pressure of your ghost-weight against his side, the static electricity of your skin that wasn't there. He found himself perching on the edge of madness, genuinely wanting to never wake up again. He wanted to drown in the darkness of his own "fucked up" head, because in the wreckage of his mind, you were still beside him. In there, the world hadn't ended yet.

But the haunting was cannibalizing him.

He was deteriorating, his iron will fraying like an old rope. Every time you "popped" into his mind, it took a piece of him back to the grave with you. He was a man dying in the light of a memory. He was starving for a way out, desperate for someone—anyone—to light a candle, to flick a switch, to burn away the shadows of a feeling he couldn't outrun.

He was being haunted by a presence he couldn't grasp, trapped in a house of mirrors where every reflection was a version of you he could no longer touch.

"Damn it, let me fucking go!"

The scream was a jagged thing, tearing his throat raw as he collapsed onto the dirty, frozen gravel. He clutched his head, his fingers digging into his scalp as if he could physically pull the thoughts of you out by the roots. His shoulders heaved, the first sob breaking through him like a dam bursting.

“I can’t go on!” he choked out, his face pressed against the grit of the earth. “I can’t live in this wreckage when you keep turning up in places you shouldn’t be!”

His voice was a wreck, cracking and splintering with every word. “Stop showing up. Stop making me feel you. Stop... stop fucking haunting me!”

The silence of the wasteland offered no answer. He slumped, his forehead resting on the ground, hot tears carving tracks through the dust on his face. “Just stop,” he whispered, his spirit finally snapping under the pressure. “Leave me alone. Please.”

He forced himself to stand, his eyes swollen and burning, the world blurring into a smear of gray and red. He took a long, shaky breath, tasting the salt of his own grief, and finally turned his head to look at the thing he had been avoiding all night.

The shadow was gone. There were no humming voices, no warm fingers.

Only the cold, unyielding beauty of a marbled gravestone.

Your name was carved deep into the stone, the edges sharp and clean, mocking him with its permanence. Below it, the dates of a life that had ended far too soon. Red daturas—the flowers of death and obsession—grew in a wild, suffocating tangle around the base, their petals looking like fresh blood against the white marble.

Sylus stared at the place where you really were, buried beneath six feet of earth and a million regrets.

“I miss you so much,” he whispered, the words sounding hollow and frail in the wind. “But you have to let me go. Because I don't think I'll ever be strong enough to let go of you.”

(Won’t you leave me? Isn’t torturing me enough? Will I ever be at peace? Will I ever be at peace?) Hindi mo ba ako lilisanin? Hindi pa ba sapat, pagpapahirap sakin? Hindi na ba, ma-mamamayapa? Hindi na ba ma-mamamayapa?