She was right. I was a fool, and worse than that, I was an optimist.
Not the loud, blustering kind that believes everything will turn out well, but the quiet and corrosive sort that convinces a man the world will correct itself if he simply endures long enough.
An optimism rooted in patience mistaken for virtue, one that let time pass unchecked while decisions softened and decayed in my hands.
I had survived by waiting. I had ruined everything the same way.
The world was no longer slipping away from me. It did not blur or sink or pull itself out of reach when I tried to stand within it.
It resisted my weight. It acknowledged my presence.
Today marked the first day of the new year.
I had died. I had been stripped down to something indistinct and unclaimed, emptied of form and consequence, and yet I had returned anyway.
The world had not paused for me. It had continued on, unburdened, already learning how to exist without my interference.
That truth did not hollow me out as it once would have. It clarified something I had spent my life avoiding.
I could not afford to stop again.
I would win the war we had lost. I would reclaim what had been taken from us piece by piece. I would pull Mirabel back from the path she had walked because I had failed to walk at all.
Fertical lay to the southwest, its borders pressed against Anstalionah like an old wound that refused to scar over.
Kingdoms rose and fell, rulers changed names and banners, but the shape of the conflict remained intact.
Battles ended. The pattern did not.
By the end of this year, I would sit on the throne, not as a preserved prince waiting for history to bend around him, but as a king who forced history to respond.
Before that, I had to become stronger.
Not simply in body or in magic, but in the part of me that had always gone silent when effort demanded desire.
Stronger than the sickness that ground constantly through my bones, turning every movement into negotiation.
Stronger than the distortion that twisted my power into something unreliable.
Stronger than the fatigue that whispered how easy it would be to sit still and allow the world to continue without my participation.
That whisper had always been my greatest enemy.
Failure no longer meant only my death.
This time, it would cost her.
The haze faded as I rose from the chair.
Pain bloomed immediately in my lungs, sharp enough to steal my breath, followed by dizziness that urged me to sit back down and let the moment end unfinished.
The urge arrived alongside it, familiar and intimate, as though it had been waiting patiently for me to notice.
Just stop.
I felt it fully. I acknowledged it without flinching. Then I moved anyway.
That alone told me I had changed.
Mirabel sat on the bed, her scarlet hair loose over her shoulders as she gathered it together with practiced motions.
She watched me approach, not hovering, not intervening, but attentive in the way one becomes when they have learned what stillness can hide.
Her gaze tracked each step, not out of fear, but out of awareness.
I braced myself against the mattress before reaching for her hair.
My fingers trembled, the sickness asserting itself through every small movement, but I did not withdraw them.
I forced my hands to remain steady, to finish what I had begun.
Sloth had never been about effort.
It was the absence of want. The moment where the self stops caring whether it continues. The place where existence becomes optional.
I had lived there for years.
She leaned forward slightly, trusting me to finish. That trust pressed against my chest with a weight I could not ignore. It demanded presence, not endurance.
When I finished tying her hair, I sat beside her, folding my hands together to still their shaking.
The room remained unchanged.
Moonlight spilled across the black carpet. The walls stood quiet and orderly, as though the world had not ended and restarted without permission.
"You cannot keep living like this," she said.
There was no accusation in her voice. Only concern sharpened by familiarity and restraint.
"I know," I replied. "And I am not going to."
Something stirred beneath my skin as the Mark of Sloth on my arm flared faintly, heat spreading slow and deliberate. It did not burn. It reminded.
Her eyes flicked to it, then returned to my face. "Why now."
I considered giving her an answer that would satisfy her without exposing anything real.
The habit surfaced instinctively, smooth and practiced, the kind of half truth that let conversations end without consequence.
It would have been easy. Comfort always was.
She noticed the pause immediately.
Her fingers tightened slightly against the bedding, not impatient, not demanding, simply waiting.
She always waited like that, as though she knew silence itself would betray me if I let it linger.
I exhaled and spoke anyway.
It was not disbelief. It was curiosity edged with caution, the kind that listens even when it does not yet agree.
"Because I finally understand what it is," I said. "It is not weakness. It is not exhaustion. It is the point where desire runs out and the body follows after it."
She did not interrupt.
"I have grown enough to recognize when that pull begins," I continued. "And strong enough to resist letting it decide for me."
Before my parents died, they had chosen her for me. Not for obedience or purity, but because she moved when others stalled.
Because she endured without waiting to be pushed forward by circumstance.
I had admired that even while resenting what it revealed about me.
"You speak as though you have already fought yourself," she said quietly.
"I have," I answered. "Every day."
She flushed faintly at my next words and looked away. "You should not speak so lightly."
Her presence surged, pressure rippling through the room.
My legs nearly gave out as weakness surged again, but she caught me instinctively, her hand closing around my arm.
Fear crossed her face, followed by recognition.
I remembered the day she had surpassed me in sparring without intending to. I remembered ordering her to restrain herself. I remembered how easily she had obeyed.
"You should never have listened to me," I said.
She did not deny it. "You were afraid of becoming unnecessary."
She was right.
Sleep had never been a necessity for me.
My body did not demand it. I sought it because it was comfortable, because it allowed me to stop existing without fully disappearing.
I had mistaken that comfort for peace far too often.
"I have plans," I said. "Plans that require action even when I do not feel like wanting them."
She hesitated, studying me. "You are changing."
"Yes," I said. "Because remaining as I was would be worse."
I took her hands, grounding myself in the warmth and steadiness she offered. "Do not quiet yourself for me again. Speak when something feels wrong. Hold back only when you must."
Her devotion did not waver, but it sharpened. She studied me not for reassurance, but for truth.
Keeping her close would not be enough. Knowledge of the future meant nothing if I repeated the same internal failure that had shaped it.
"Send letters to Malachi," I said. "Tell him war is coming."
She stiffened. "You are declaring this yourself."
"I am," I replied. "Waiting for certainty is how I lost everything."
She looked into my eyes, and whatever resistance she had prepared never surfaced. She saw it, the difference where absence used to live.
"I am tired of being myself," I said. "So I will ensure I cannot remain that way."
The Mark of Sloth pulsed, neither resisting nor urging, simply existing as proof of what I had been.
She understood, even if she did not yet agree.
I am ultimately worthless, and so the betrayal would amount to nothing.