The walk down the spiral stairs of the watchtower felt like descending into a tomb. Every step was a heavy, dull strike against the masonry, echoing the leaden rhythm of my sadden heart. I didn't look at Eren, though I could hear her soft footfalls behind me. By the time we reached the courtyard, the twilight had deepened, and the first fires of the refugee camp were casting long, flickering shadows that danced like mocking spirits against the fortress walls.

  Alan and Joshua were waiting at the base. They didn't ask what happened. They didn't need to. They saw my face, the same hollow, thousand-yard stare that had become our collective uniform. Joshua started to say something, his hand reaching out, but he stopped mid-gesture. He saw the way I looked through him, not at him. I was a ghost inhabiting an empty cage.

  We began to move through the courtyard toward the gates where Barnaby was waiting with the wagons. To get there, we had to pass the fenced-off area where the orphans were being processed.

  The sound was what hit me first. It wasn't the wailing I expected. It was low murmuring, the sound of children who had already cried and had nothing left to cry for, they had now settled into a terrifying, compliant silence.

  I kept my eyes fixed on the cobbles, but a flash of red caught my peripheral vision. I stopped. My feet simply refused to move another inch.

  There she was.

  She was sitting on a bale of damp straw, Her tiny little legs swinging. Her tattered red coat stained with the dark, wet earth of the valley, and the spray. She wasn't crying. She was leaning forward, her bright blue eyes focused on something in her lap. It was a metal cylindrical item, heavy and brass-colored. She was turning it over and over in her small, grime-streaked hands, tracing the jagged edges where it had been torn or spent.

  Then, she did something that shattered the last of my resolve.

  She smiled.

  It was a small, fragile thing, a genuine glimmer of child-like curiosity at the way the metal caught the light of a nearby torch. How could she smile? Her father had been erased from existence mere minutes ago, turned into a humane necessity by the very person who was currently staring at her. That smile was a blade, cleaner and sharper than any sword Alan carried. It cut through my outside, through the attempted clinical detachment, and straight into the meat of who I was.

  I couldn't breathe.

  It started as a hitch in my diaphragm, a small, sharp catch that prevented the air from reaching the bottom of my lungs. I tried to inhale, but the atmosphere of the Valley had suddenly turned into something thin and useless, like trying to breathe in the vacuum of space.

  A feeling of Fight or flight. My nervous system screamed. I didn't want the children to see me. I didn't want my friends to see me fall apart. I didn't want to exist in a world where a child smiled at the remains of a massacre.

  I turned and bolted.

  I didn't head for the wagons. I ran toward a row of dark, half-collapsed stables near the rear of the courtyard. I could hear Joshua calling my name, the panic in his voice distant and hollow, but I didn't stop until I hit the back wall of a stall smelling of old hay and horse manure.

  I collapsed.

  The onset was a tidal wave. I was drowning in open air. Every gasp for breath brought in nothing but a phantom weight. It felt as if my lungs were filled with liquid lead, heavy and unyielding. I fought to expand my chest, but the muscles around my ribs had tightened into a vice-like grip, a physical manifestation of the sadness that was trying to crush the life out of me.

  The world began to "zoom out."

  The stable around me didn't feel real. The wood of the stall, the straw beneath my knees, it all felt like a stage set being pulled away by invisible wires. Joshua’s voice, the distant shouting of the guards, the low lowing of the horses, it all became hollow and metallic. It sounded as if the world was being played through a long, rusted pipe, distorted and far, far away.

  My vision began to fail. My peripheral view darkened, blurring into a murky shadow until I was trapped in a narrow tunnel. The only thing that existed in that tunnel was the crushing, agonizing weight in the center of my sternum. It felt like an iron fist was squeezing my heart, trying to wring the blood out of it.

  Then came a static.

  It started as a cold, buzzing tingle in my fingertips. It crawled up my arms like a thousand needle-sharp insects, a frantic misfiring of my nervous system as it tried to "run away" from a pain that was coming from the inside. My hands began to claw at the hay, then at my own shoulders, trying to physically hold my atoms together. It felt like I was literally drifting apart, like the whole reason that brought me here was finally taking its toll and dissolving me into the air.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  A system shutdown.

  I realized, with a terrifying clarity, that I couldn't "out-think" this. I wasn't just sad. I wasn't just guilty. I was a biological machine that was overheating from the friction of its own despair.

  I folded over, my forehead pressing into the dirt, my hands gripping my platinum hair so hard I felt my scalp burn. I was making a sound, a high, jagged whimpering that I didn't recognize as my own.

  "Taylor!"

  The stable door was thrown open. I saw a pair of boots through the tunnel of my vision.

  Joshua.

  He didn't hesitate. He saw me crumpled in the muck, and the "Argent Bastion" vanished. He didn't reach for his sword. Instead, he began to frantically strip off his armor. I heard the heavy clang of his gauntlets hitting the floor, the hiss of the leather straps being torn loose.

  He lunged forward, his massive, muscled frame, no longer shielded by gold or steel, colliding with me. He pulled me into the largest, most crushing bear hug I had ever experienced. His skin was hot, smelling of sweat and woodsmoke, and he held me with a desperate, primal strength.

  "I've got you," he rumbled, his voice vibrating against my chest. "I've got you, Taylor. Just breathe. Look at me. Just breathe."

  Eren was there a second later. She didn't say anything, but I felt her small, soft arms wrap around both of us, her chin resting on my shoulder. She was a warm, furry weight, a tether to the world I was trying to leave.

  Alan stood at the entrance of the stall. He didn't move. I couldn't see his face, it was lost in the shadows, but I could see the silhouette of him leaning against the doorframe, watching us with a cold, terrifying stillness.

  The attack peaked. My body convulsed one last time, a violent shudder that racked my entire frame, and then, finally, it broke.

  It didn't end with a "fix." It ended with a jagged, ugly single sob that tore out of my throat, followed by a sudden, bone-deep exhaustion. The adrenaline that had been keeping me upright vanished, leaving me chemically empty.

  My muscles felt like they had run a marathon through the mud. My brain felt bruised, as if it had been physically rattled inside my skull. There was no "relief" in the aftermath, only a cold, quiet numbness. The panic was gone, but the sadness remained, now settled at the bottom of my soul like silt at the bottom of a stagnant pond.

  I stayed there for a long time, held between the two of them, the smell of hay and Joshua’s warmth the only things keeping me from dissolving.

  "What... what happened?" I asked softly, unsure of what that attack was.

  The "purr" was gone. My voice was thin, cracked, and entirely human.

  Eren pulled back slightly, her eyes wet but her expression blank. "A panic attack," she said. She looked at my hands, which were still trembling. "Your body just... ran out of room for the things you were feeling."

  Joshua helped me up. He moved slowly, his eyes welling with a concern so deep it made me want to look away. He looked at the amazing otherworldly suit, the matte-black skin that was supposed to make me invincible, and I saw him realize for the first time that it didn't protect me from anything that mattered too.

  "Let's get out of here," I whispered, my voice barely a breath. "Quickly. Please."

  Barnaby was waiting by the wagons. He looked at me, saw the state of my hair and the dirt on my knees, and he didn't say a word about the grain or the trade. He simply reached under his seat and pulled out a heavy, stone bottle of hard spirit he had managed to scavenge from the guards. He handed it to Joshua without a word.

  We climbed onto the lead wagon. We didn't sit on the benches. We crawled into the back, huddling together. The sun was almost gone now, a final sliver of red bleeding across the horizon as the wagons began to creak, a small almost non existent drizzle appeared.

  The cursed wagon. Every time we boarded it, it seemed to carry us deeper into a new kind of misery. It was a box of wood and iron that carried the weight of our sins from one town to the next.

  Alan sat at the very back, his legs dangling over the edge, his eyes fixed on the receding towers of the fortress. He didn't look at us. He didn't drink from the bottle. Instead, he began to dictate a poem.

  His voice was thin and melodic, a haunting tune that seemed to catch the wind and carry the dust of the valley with it. It wasn't a game song. It was something personal, something that belonged to the mud and the blood of this world. Something here

  The wheels turn slow in the heavy mud, Past the smoke and the scent of blood.

  The driver sighs and the horses pull, The wagon is empty, but the hearts are full.

  He doesn’t choose where the road will bend, Or which poor life is meant to end.

  He only drives where the shadows fall, To the people we cannot save at all.

  Creak and sway on the wooden floor, To another town, to another door.

  We sit in the back and we watch the rain, In the little wood box that carries the pain.

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .

  .