The room was quiet, only the lamplight casting mottled shadows on the wall.
Gamzee hugged his knees tightly, his chest heaving, the pain crashing over him like waves that refused to recede.
Yet his hands never let go of the scripture. His fingertips trembled at the edge of the pages, but still he read—line by line, slowly.
“Form is emptiness… emptiness is form.”
His voice was hoarse, as if each breath released a thread of prayer.
The cross around his neck gleamed coldly in the light—tied to it hung the shadow of a withered lotus leaf.
Buddha and God, he clung to both, as though grasping the only thread keeping his soul from scattering.
The pain drew cold sweat upon his brow, but he pressed his palms together, firmly against his lips, as if to press his groans into prayer.
His breath came uneven, but a stubborn strength carried him still, whispering:
“May this chant extinguish the fire within my heart…”
At last, he exhaled slowly, eyes falling onto the words of the scripture.
The pain remained, yet a corner of his heart seemed lit by a spark of light.
This was his way—turning pain into prayer, surrendering himself to that mysterious faith.
He had once raged, once lost control, until the world feared him.
In the shadow of blood and madness, he had seen the ugliest version of himself—
a monster hollowed out by numbness and void.
But that was never his true soul.
Now, he chose not to walk that crooked path.
No longer chasing the ecstasy of destruction, he turned suffering into the seed of creation.
He understood: to shape a God, a Buddha, a myth of his own—
it was never through tearing the world apart.
It was through gazing, through chanting, through the faint yet unyielding wish within his heart.
He sat cross-legged in the dark, the symbol of cross and lotus overlapping upon his chest.
His eyes no longer scattered, but focused, awake.
Sometimes he felt his inner sea was too deep, too deep for anyone to truly see through.
Layer upon layer of shadows floated there—things he had once swallowed:
sedatives, sugar, slime, laughter.
They were never salvation, only ways to forget.
Yet no amount of sedation could suppress the urge to cry.
The fantasies still rose, the pain still tore.
At times he even ate until his soul went numb, swallowed into blankness, dazed and unaware.
He no longer swallowed those things.
even if they were heavy, even if they crushed him like waves pressing out his breath.
Suddenly he asked himself:
“If I must reject, deny my own feelings…
Sorrow arises, sorrow fades.
Anger arises, anger fades.
Frenzy arises, frenzy fades.
Destruction arises, destruction fades.
Form is emptiness, emptiness is form;
sensation is pain, pain is illusion.
Desire is no enemy, illusion no foe—
all are shadows of the mind, coming and going.
No rejection, no grasping, no clinging, no casting away.
The heart drifts, seeing both the waves and the sea.
Sorrow has no dwelling, anger no refuge.
Destruction has no root, frenzy no trace.
Thus observed, the heart is at rest.
No need to flee, no need to numb.
Amid the scriptures and verses, he began to sketch a new universe—
not of madness, but of vow and myth.
stormborns
baratheonpilled
titsay
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