My chest heaved as I stood at foot of The Precipice. Numb fingers clutched a sword some two feet shorter than it once was. I had made my escape, away from the civilizations of the giants and the titans. Away from comfort and memory.

My heart ached as the shattered fragments of my soul sublimated into the air. Trunks and branches and rocks around were etched with evidence of my mania. My fury. My sorrow.

Sliding the blade back into me felt like swallowing glass. I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling. Savoring something other than the numbness I’d felt these past months. Years? I’d lost track of time; it wouldn’t be the last.

I gasped as the cracked edge of my soul caught on something. A feeling? A memory? It didn’t matter, the pleasant ache was gone and I just felt cold inside. I slid the blade the final few inches into myself and felt the hole where the missing edge should have been for the first time.

Taking a step away from the sheer face of The Precipice I walked into The Dark. A ragged shadow carved its way across the dim light that drifted down from above as limbs and leaves crowded out the sky. Branched and twisted like the path that led me here. Like the path I was just stepping onto.

Dry brooks wound through the wood like the tired veins of my arms. Roots and trees ignored them. No animals wandered around seeking to relieve their thirst. Not even the wind dipped down to rustle leaves or branches.

Each step ran hollowly, as if I were walking down one of My Titan’s stately halls of flagstone and woven trunks. The ground was clean-swept off leaves and twigs and debris if anybody kind really. The trees themselves seemed overwrought with it, as if a wind would never blow to let them drop their burdens with a final, crackling gasp.

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It had been ages since I’d last tried true speech. The voiceless wails that had subsided some time ago didn’t count, but this wasn’t the place to test my rusted cords. The silence wasn’t heavy, nor was it light, instead it felt like it was waiting. Some pressure beyond my senses screamed that until the quiet pulled away like a veil I shouldn’t add to it.

In silence I walked though The Dark. Small breaks in the canopy lit up the sky like constellations. I could follow them to make sure I was still walking away from The Precipice and into whatever was beyond here.

Shafts of light pierced though at impossible angles. I avoided those, knowing that if something was watching in the gloom it would see me shine like a beacon. I had no idea what might make its home here. Whatever lay in the dark, waiting, had taken every other human that had ventured from the open sky.

A trip into The Dark was a lie that parents told their children. It added mystery and hope to the certainty of death. If a small titan or giant played too roughly with their human pets and one didn’t wake in the morning, well it would be quietly vanished away more often than not. Rare was it that a titan would behave like My Titan had and grieve one of our losses.

That was why I was here. I knew My Titan, he grieved even as he let me go. I was sure he would have told his small titans that I had just take a trip into The Dark. That I was in some wild place more suited to me, where I could be free and perhaps, someday, I would be back.

”My Titan,” I breathed as I paused just being a small patch of light. I would NOT be the reason he lied to another. I would come though the other side of this ordeal. Maybe I would see my sons, maybe I would see my daughter, but without fail I would see My Titan’s words as—