Knight didn't sleep.
Not in any way that mattered.
He'd close his eyes, yes—but only because his body begged for it. Only because the ache in his bones made staying conscious unbearable. But sleep never came clean. All he did was stay up the night with his eyes closed.
Every time he slipped under, it dragged him back to that moment—Toby, laughing, mid-sentence, turning his head—and then gone.
Just a blur of red and noise and nothingness, the sound of something wet and final.
He stopped trying to sleep by the third night.
It only made things worse.
The pain in his body never went away—but now it sat under a layer of exhaustion that made his vision double. His limbs shook constantly, his thoughts drifted out of reach, like leaves on water he couldn't grab.
But he didn't let himself rest.
He couldn't.
Because resting meant seeing it again.
The fourth morning, someone knocked, passing a bowl of soup through the door. He didn't answer.
His stomach growled like it remembered being alive.
He sat up to reach for the bowl. His hand trembled so badly he spilled half of it onto the floor.
He tried again and picked up the spoon.
As he barely made it to his lips, he vomited bile into the blanket.
He just cleaned it with the same towel he used to wipe the blood from his sword days ago.
On the fifth night, he sat by the window.
Not for the view nor for the moonlight.
Just because sitting felt better than lying down.
He kept the blanket over his shoulders and stared at the floor.
His arm still throbbed and his back still burned. His ribs still stabbed when he shifted wrong. But the worst of it was the emptiness.
A vacuum in his chest that swallowed everything—hunger, thirst, thought.
Even guilt, by now, had grown quiet.
What was left was just… silence.
But it wasn't the quiet he used to cling to. Not the safe, numb quiet of a sealed room and a monitor humming in the dark.
This was the kind of silence that waited to bury you.
And somewhere, deep beneath all of it—under the nausea, the sleeplessness, the weight of rot clinging to his lungs—he realized:
He was rotting again.
Only now he didn't have the excuse of a dying world or a broken family.
He was in a world that had given him a second chance.
And he was letting himself waste again.
His hands clenched slowly in his lap, the tremble hadn't gone away.
He didn't want to move but he also didn't want to stay.
He didn't want to be alive but he didn't want to die either.
He just didn't want to be this anymore.
And that feeling—quiet, horrible, desperate—was what made him stand.
If he stayed, he would disappear. Fade into a corner again and let the grief consume him molecule by molecule until there was nothing left.
And Toby would never forgive him for that.
He couldn't forgive himself for surviving—but rotting?
That would be worse.
Knight stood. Swayed. Put one foot forward, almost collapsing. He then grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself.
He grabbed his cloak with numb fingers and slung it over his shoulders. It was heavy. Everything was heavy.
And next to it—
The helmet.
Caked with blood around the edges. Scratched from fangs and stone. One dent across the left temple from where the snake had slammed him against the wall.
Knight stared at it.
Just for a second.
Then he reached for it with his good hand.
The metal was cold. He gripped the inside, raised it slowly, and lowered it onto his head.
The world narrowed to the familiar slit of his vision.
His breathing evened out—only slightly. Like the weight of the helmet centered him. Like putting it on meant becoming someone else.
He didn't know what time it was.
He opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
The boards creaked under his weight.
No one was awake. Or maybe they were and just didn't want to see him.
He descended the stairs slowly, carefully. Half-holding the railing, half-falling.
When he stepped outside, the air hit him hard.
The coldness burned through the thin cloth on his arms. It stung the healing wounds across his ribs. The light from the street lanterns made his eyes squint.
The town wasn't quiet. Not completely. Some carts still rattled past. Drunken laughter from a distant corner. A door slamming shut across the street.
But compared to the noise in his head, it was nothing.
He walked.
He didn't have a destination nor a plan.
But he knew he had to get away from that room, from the bed that felt like a coffin. From the silence that waited to choke him in his sleep.
He didn't know if this was the right thing to do or if he deserved to keep walking.
But something in him moved anyway.