Losers

Levi was born with a gaze of stone. The world has taught him to master it —with every disgrace, through each night of hard-earned survival. He wears it like a crest, every day, to make sure everyone will live a little longer.

There is nothing under the sun that can break it so easily. Nothing but this, the sight of carnage.

The trees bend to his speed, opening a passage to the devastating scenery. On each and every one of them, his eyes linger — all around is the smell of precious life, spilt to the ground without a care.

Nothing but powerless. It is the only feeling. Even humanity's strongest soldier must bow his head in front of death.

It is their damnation, the one crease in his unbreakable soul. He acknowledges it as the only condition he cannot win, and the one he would do anything to avoid.

Anything to see one more life spared, in the bloody sunset, at the end of each long day.

Of all things, this is the one he finds truly terrible — how they are condemned to fall in flocks, torn apart, for every light joke of destiny. For each fragment of mistake, dozens never see the light again. They are so small.

His glance runs over the faces of his squad, tender and desperate. On their dishevelled features only, rigid and sprayed in blood, his eyes soften.

This — death in vain — is the only regret he still affords to have.

He can't, he won't, get over it.


Chapter 30. Inspired by that infamous, beautiful splash page.