A/N: though not absolutely necessary to understand this chapter - as I feel the most relevant background info is included - there is a prequel of sorts to some of the flashbacks toward the end. On my DeviantArt account, a four part short story called "Madrieda's Lament" explains the bit about the shining star below.

There were no dust motes floating around them in the room. No particles or light debris to be seen, nothing that would signify a lack of movement or air flow. Breathing in felt fresh and cool, ruling out the possibility of mustiness or stillness. Circulation seemed well enough, and even the temperature should have felt relaxing.

There was a naturally grown window in the naturally grown room. The tarp covering it almost completely blotted out the view of the outside, but low down near the bottom of the sill the starlight could just barely be seen. It was neither claustrophobic nor exposed, and the ethereal light from a Kalimdor night lit up the floor and broke the darkness. Openness seemed sufficient, and the atmosphere should have felt welcoming.

The tarp over the bedroom door hung loose. It was finely woven and looked new, carrying within it a sense of homeliness, a place where the occupant cared about the living space. It wafted in the naturally circulated air somewhat but didn't wave, and while the color of the silk fabric was vibrant it didn't actually shimmer annoyingly or reflect the starlight. Privacy seemed satisfactory, and the scene should have felt calm.

The hardwood of the ceiling, walls and floors had been naturally grown out into the shape of a small apartment on behalf of the city. Nature surrounded them entirely, and even the few leaves and fungi growing out of the walls increased the exquisite visage in such a colorful way. The bed, nightstand, wardrobe and chairs were all naturally grown out of the surface of the floor and walls, perfectly emulating the naturalistic lifestyle of the Kaldorei. Beauty was the only appropriate word that could describe the hollowed out apartment, and the mood should have felt good.

Everything was fine on the outside. The entire environment was serene, neatly kept and peaceful. The romance novels on the selves were arranged, the clothes on top of the dresser were folded and the paintings on the wall only added to the pleasant aura via their eye catching pastels. Everything was perfect. Everything.

Except for the inside.

The cool temperature in the room chilled him to the core, causing a slight numbness and sluggishness to settle in to his knuckles. The air felt thick, moist and strangling and with every slight movement of his head, every heave of his chest as he breathed up and down, it felt like the oxygen was trying to smother him.

The atmosphere felt intruding and imposing, invading every iota of his being as the weight of a thousand burdens pressed on his shoulders to the point of dislocation. Even his ultravision couldn't save him from the darkness, a total absence of color and joy that swallowed him whole and stole away any sense of direction he may have once possessed.

The scene filled him with a sense of dread as the silence echoed in his ears to the degree that he feared he might go deaf. An eerie sense of panic like the calm before the storm pricked up every hair follicle on the back of his neck, and the feeling of being watched stripped him bare. Completely exposed, he had nowhere to turn and no place to hide as he was forced to face an interlocutor he couldn't even detect.

The mood sank so low in his chest that he felt as if a hole would open up inside his diaphragm, tearing downwards throughout his innards and finally dragging him into the soil beneath the treehouse, forming an impromptu shallow grave. A terse ugliness punctuated such an end, depriving him even of the solace he may have gained from simply rolling over and dying on the spot.

Desperate, he continued to sit on the edge of the bed, staring down at his unlaced combat boots and ruffled clothes. The sheet hung off the edge haphazardly, still a mess from the events before they'd passed out. Every muscle in his body tensed as he searched for a means of escape. That he'd even managed to get dressed without standing up was a feat to be proud of in and of itself. Of course, he knew that in all likelihood he wouldn't be able to dress himself without creating at least a small amount of noise; not when experiencing a hangover like his. A valiant effort, true, but futile nonetheless.

There were only about three feet between him and the door; so close to escape, and yet so far. By the time she'd stirred and woken up, his heart rate had increased to the point of delirium, causing him to pause in the middle of his preparations. The bed was small and cozy, terrifying him via its evocation of closeness and intimacy and providing absolutely no space between them. Trapped and frozen, he found his head sinking toward the floor, unsure of what to do to rectify the situation or, even easier, just flee from it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, his head began to rotate. It had taken him half an hour to get surreptitiously dressed, and he'd even impressed himself with his patience and resolve to run away from his problems. But once the other occupant of the bed had awoken, he faltered, unable to move while seen. For sure she'd noticed him before even sitting up, but when she remained beneath the covers he could lie to himself; he could pretend. Robbed of his self delusion, he had nothing, and felt absolutely helpless.

Under the quilt, he could see the shape of her crossed ankles lying out before her. The mere thought of being under her gaze felt like a kick to the teeth, yet some unseen force compelled him to continue rotating his head, to tilt and angle it up slightly, to search for signs of life in spite of his renewed desire to be alone. Compelled, controlled, he traced the creases and folds in the blanket until the tos of her shins emerged. Periwinkle forearms wrapped over them, hugging both knees to her chest tightly as she wove herself into a ball. Perhaps she wished she could just implode, or turn in on herself until the disappeared into nothing. He knew that he certainly felt that way.

Torn and utterly destroyed, he somehow managed to find the willpower within himself to continue angling his head upward, meeting the face whose lower half hid behind her forearms along with her knees. It was as if she didn't want to be seen either, but they were both sharing a space to small and intimate that they had no choice. The bridge of her nose was mostly hidden as well, concealing the great majority of her face from his view in a sad mercy to them both.

But he didn't need to see the lower half of her face. Two long, feral eyebrows arched downward into a disappointed, devastated, nearly traumatized frown were enough. Those eyebrows spoke volumes of the negativity floating between them, reverberating with the words of the conversation they'd just had but that neither of them even remembered anymore. Quiet, empty, meaningless words of too shattered people realizing what they'd done. Her eyes strained as they looked forward, the silver glow twinkling in consternation as she appeared to draw as much of a blank as to what they could say as he was. They were both stuck in the same rut, unable to find a way out and certainly unable to help each other, encourage each other, even look at each other.

Crushed and pulverized by the ominous sense of foreboding about the path they'd both stumbled down irreversibly, he dug deep in order to find words. Not the right words; just words. Any words that could break the excruciating silence. Any words that could bring some semblance of sense to what had happened, even if they couldn't repair the irreversible damage done to the two of them.

Taking a deep breath, Navarion forced himself to close his eyes so as to avoid Astariel's face and spoke.

"You didn't tell me you're a virgin."

His words bounced off of every solid surface in the room, flying back at him in a thunderous roar that pounded on his disoriented skull. Regret set in, sinking its talons into his flesh as he asked himself why he had even opened his mouth. No good could possibly come from such an utterance, and yet it escaped regardless of the fact that he himself hadn't.

She winced, hugging her knees even closer into her bosom as she folded in on herself. Although her eyes squinted just a little bit more, her soul didn't appear to become any more crushed than it already had been; rather, she merely appeared to be hurt and completely underwhelmed by his response. Beyond what he'd already discerned from her demeanor, he couldn't discern anything else about her current state; just the sense of disappointment and despair.

Making no movement whatsoever, she spoke into her forearms, pulling her head back just a hair so that her lips weren't pressed into the skin anymore.

"Was," she corrected him blankly, breathing a little heavier for a few seconds.

Ricocheting off of every surface inside his mind, the words caused him to feel dizzy as he already had so many times. So much pressure mounted on him from every angle that he began to sweat. The leather and chainmail of his dilapidated armor began not only to feel dirty from the long campaign and the wallowing at a campsite outside the city gates, but also constricting, strangling even, as he felt the walls close in on him just a little bit more. Pinpricks attacked his pores as his hide began to itch all over, screaming at him loud and clear to get out.

As much as her words had pierced his guilty yet confused heart, they had also provided him the impetus he needed to run away; just run away from yet another problem, if anything to figure out what exactly it was.

He stood, feeling the dizziness of his hangover and his sore, overworked muscles at he did so. The tragically beautiful statue remained on her bed, staring at the mark of her lost womanhood on the sheets as she continued to hide most of herself either under the blanket or behind her arms. She made no effort to even look at him as he straightened up and faced the opposite wall, obviously feeling just as low as he was for reasons he would never, ever comprehend.

"I think I need to...think," he mumbled apologetically, finding that his lips had turned to mush. Everything he did or could say felt stupid and worthless, but he had already lost control of his rambling over a day ago. "I'm sorry, I just need to go for a while." More than anything, he wanted to convince her, to gain her approval to leave, to make her understand that it was absolutely necessary. He had no idea why, but it felt imperative that he make her understand even when he did not.

But she offered no response. Not even a cursory glance, not even a nod; he couldn't even be entirely sure she had heard him or not. For all he knew, she may not have been aware that he was still standing there, looking down at her. It was as if she were even more lost than him, which was entirely believable given what he knew about her situation. Try as he might, he couldn't quite identify with her so much as take note of her traumatized countenance, measure it against the few times he'd seen similar reactions and hope it would provide him the opportunity to leave.

"I'm sorry," he apologized again while moving her tarp aside and stepping out of the bedroom.

One more quick look over his shoulder confirmed that she hadn't even acknowledged his presence beyond her one word utterance, and he was - technically - free to go. Shouldn't he be happy? After all, it's what he wanted, isn't it?

Her apartment was small, like those of all bachelorettes and bachelors in night elven cities; most unmarried people either lived in communal housing or with family until they married, even if they were centuries old, and the few who didn't weren't afforded a great amount of space. The single room that comprised both her kitchen and living room was sparsely furnished and he didn't have much trouble locating what few belongings he had carried on him when she...intercepted him the day before. In any other situation, with any other woman, sneaking out of the bedroom to make a hasty retreat would have been a tense, strenuous exercise in stealth; it had been many years since he'd lived that lifestyle, but the memories remained.

And yet he didn't need to do that here; not with her. A part of him knew that she would make no effort to even look up and see if he was still there. Feeling short of breath as his chest cavity was compressed unnaturally, he matted down his mane, bucked his belt properly and swiftly exited the naturally grown and naturally parting and closing door of vines and leaves that provided privacy for each apartment in the large treehouse. Any and all sound was muffled between the apartments and the world outside, and the silence as he walked out and wound his way down the ramp brought him both relief and agony.

Midnight had already fallen outside; the middle of the waking hours for most inhabitants of Kaldorei settlements. If Navarion's instincts were correct, he'd still be on a brief leave of absence at that time; nobody would be looking for him and be had nowhere in particular he had to be. Wonderful, horrible freedom stood before him, beckoning its hand as he shuffled down the narrow streets between the trees of the residential neighborhood as fast as he could manage without drawing attention to himself. Handfuls of locals either wandered about while on their daily business or, for those who weren't at work at that particular time, went for pleasant strolls and shared local gossip. The calmness and wholesomeness both teased and pained him, yet the anonymity the throngs of people he passed by granted to him were not unappreciated.

Every footstep sent shockwaves of pain up into his cranium, reminding him of how long he'd been sober for and how quickly all his efforts could be for naught. In a way, it was comforting; on the one hand, he wanted to think, to focus, and try to figure out exactly what had happened. On the other hand, a part of him screamed to just turn tail and run, to move toward the horizon and keep walking until his feet bled. So many problems had he faced during his life, during other military campaigns, and yet he found himself so woefully unprepared to navigate the battles of mortal emotions.

Wedging himself past a group of native night elven merchants hauling sacks of precious gems from Winterspring, he struggled to focus his thoughts at least on putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe then, he could recall something.

The cobblestone on the road that led him through a minor, secondary bazaar were the same off white color as those he'd walked over when entering the wood the day before. In an open air market, the air pressure was low and the noise level was high, but since his head drooped down and he only stared at the ground, he could almost retrace the mental footsteps he'd taken before.

Those eyes...two sterling silver eyes had been peering at him. Watching him. Waiting for him. Perhaps he had known it all along, but had ignored it due to circumstance. He had been observed, and in his emotionally weakened state his voodoo had been disrupted enough such that he wouldn't have sensed the spirits' calls. He tried to ignore the pulling sensation in his peripheral vision as it threatened to bring memories of the day before into the present and invade the rows of trade goods wholesalers with trees from the inner city forest. Not now, not yet, not in public, he thought to himself. Never had he experienced anything like any sort of anxiety attack, but as the first one in his life crept up on him, he knew exactly what it was; the way his throat burned and his stomach turned were unmistakeable. Identifying it and analyzing it for what it was brought him back down somewhat, and by the time he'd left the trade district entirely and entered another quiet neighborhood, he'd managed to regain some semblance of control over his racing pulse.

Headache pounding, he tried to wrap his head around the events. Astariel had seduced him; of that, he was sure. It wasn't even his insecurity forcing him to blame what had happened on somebody else. She moved too well and too exact for a regular forty year old virgin. What she'd done must have been considered, pondered over...planned? Guilt transformed into self loathing at the accusatory thought, and as he walked by a small local family near a corner of treehouses, he fought to stop from outwardly wincing and making himself look like a crazy person. How could be suspect Astariel of...spying on him, observing him and...and Zhenya...to seduce him at one point? It felt hurtful and cruel to think of someone so innocent and naive that way. Or at least, someone who he'd assumed was innocent and naive. She knew all the right movements; she'd known how to run her fingers through his mane, around his ear just as she'd seen Zhenya doing, but even through his drunken stupor he'd been able to remember how it had been to bed her. She practically dragged him inside...trapped him...she made it happen. At that last thought, he actually had to cup his palm around his forehead as he reeled. She'd...orchestrated what happened. Soraya told Astariel about Zhenya's death; she'd known. But beyond what she'd observed from Zhenya, Astariel had learned very little; her inexperience...was...obvious.

Mental concepts of words caught in his psyche as if he couldn't even bear to think them, and Navarion hurried his pace until he could see the high watchtower marking the main front gate of New Nendis on the southern wall. He needed to get out. To get away. There were too many memories flooding him all at once.

All around him, people went about their usually nightly business and didn't even notice him. Their muddled voices and conversations melded into one mess of white noise in his brain and he let it wash over him, hoping to grasp onto anything to stave off the images in his head. Grey swirls tried to creep in on the sides of his field of vision but he blinked them away, not yet prepared for the clarity his voodoo might bring were he to tap into it now. Quickly enough, he found himself passing through the gate and outside the high city walls, pushing his way past merchants, travelers, mounts and attendees at the southern waystation. As quiet and peaceful the dense forest just outside the high stone walls were, he found it increasingly difficult to fight off the pictures and ideas lingering just at the front of his mind, threatening them with their cursed truth.

Once he was out of view of any of the traveler's and onto a small path in the woods off the main commercial road, he braced himself on a tree and tried to catch his breath. This didn't make sense, what he was doing. He was fine. He was alone. He was alive. Nothing was wrong with him and all and nobody had hurt him. There was no reason for his heart to be pounding so hard, for his chest to be heaving so much, for his head to be spinning so fast.

The ethereal blue of the wisps rotating around tree branches were hypnotic, and he stared at it in order to preoccupy himself. Stepping off the little side path in the woods and sitting in the underbrush, Navarion found some semblance of logical coherence in his brain after much consternation and wisp watching. If the grey swirls and lack of color wouldn't leave him be, at least he could be confident in his sanity and a measure of remaining confidence when it came to him.

Yet the whispers of the spirits were barely even audible, and those that were weren't comprehensible. Instead he found himself left to his own self rather than the visions that his connection to the spirit world brought him; and that, more than anything, threatened him with the truth.

You should calm down, that familiar faraway voice whispered to him, though the black phantom didn't make itself visible to him.

"I am calm," he retorted quietly, speaking aloud to a presence nobody else would have detected. "You should leave me alone."

Though he saw nothing, he knew that it was watching him, neither haughty nor sympathetic; just as the Loa always were. I don't want to be here any more than you want me here, it stated obviously. But your disturbance reaches beyond your own plane. Your kind are as much a part of my world as you are of your own.

"What do you want from me?" Navarion practically hissed. He struggled to retain control of his temper; the Loa wouldn't react since a mortal couldn't threaten it, but he'd gain nothing by turning his anger onto it either.

For an split second, the shadow hunter could have sworn that he saw the outline of the shadow person, but it was only a figment of his imagination; he was still the only visible being along with the wisps. Regardless, the living darkness made its gaze felt, always cold and examining; blunt and to the point. It deserved credit for that.

Wrong question, it responded, not intending to be irritating but failing at that hardcore. Ask yourself, it corrected him.

Dancing until they left optic trails across his vision, the wisps hoved into Navarion's view on the corporeal plane. A strange sight indeed, to see forest spirits of the balance working in tandem with what amounted to a voodoo specter. Both were more or less ghosts no matter which races tended to focus religious belief on them; and in Navarion's case, the races of both of his respective parents happened to be intwined with the beings of light and being of darkness drifting around him.

His heart opened up and he began to see not what the two different varieties of ghosts wanted him to see, but what his own soul needed to see. Far in his past - far by the standards of a man just over three decades old - shone a star high in the north sky; a star not all could see, but who the survivors of a grove of twenty five women and their descendants could never miss. High among the other heroines of the past, it twinkled at him brightly, bidding him welcome as he felt the flood of emotions overtake him and his sense of restraint.

"Madrieda..." Navarion murmured while looking up through the canopy and reaching for the star.

She was the first woman you fell in love with, wasn't she, the dark being asked. At first Navarion bristled, but then he realized that despite what his father's race believed, the Loa weren't actual deities; they were not omniscient.

Heart aching, he realized how odd he must look sitting in the bushes and raising his hands toward a star billions of miles away, and tried to compose himself. "Yes...Goddess light her path..." he murmured to himself more than anything, feeling the feminine sort of bracelet he wore on his wrist. "She left me this...it's all anybody has to remember her in this world. She didn't stay in contact with the other women of my mother's grove...all of her family and even her friends died during the Sundering. She kept her colleagues at a distance. I was the only one she had...until..."

Until she made a conscious choice to spare you even more heartache, the darkness interrupted. The lack of color pulsated as the words floated through the Navarion's mind, and he could vaguely see the outline of the darkness take its familiar humanoid shape. Do you regret what happened?

Blinking away the added pain, Navarion sniffled and found the warmth without even needing to try. So generous, so kind, it at least breathed a little bit of life into the husk that was slowly losing its unique personhood.

"Do you mean our relationship?" he asked, his voice clearer.

Yes.

"No. Never. Not for one minute. Not for one second." He spoke with the utmost confidence, especially knowing that Madrieda had felt the same about him just before her death, according to her colleagues when he visited her grave for a belated eulogy. "It hurt to lose her, but I...will..." He found himself unable to finish the sentence, but his point had been made.

Out of nowhere, the darkness turned the discussion in a much more serious direction again. Do you regret being with Zhenya? it asked him, knocking him to the floor once more. So much did it hurt that Navarion felt physical pain just to listen to the question.

"How...how could I...no, never," he sighed, his depression compressing his lungs again.

Not even the bad times?

"Never."

An eerie silence fell between them such that the light breeze above the canopy could be heard again. The lump in Navarion's throat only increased his sense of entrapment as he knew the voice was about to tell him something he didn't want to hear.

If you have no regrets, it began cautiously, then you'll need to move on-

"No!" he hissed harsh and fast. "Don't talk to me like that! Don't even try to suggest - don't!" Every vein in his body pounded with anger and stubborn rejection after having nearly calmed down just a moment before. The sudden change increased his nausea, and he doubled over in pain while trying to collect himself.

The wisps rotated around the surrounding tree branches just a little bit more slowly, and he could tell that his outburst had disturbed them as much as it had himself. More stoic than the small forest spirits, the Loa only continued to stare at him, acting out of instinct more than choice despite its vast sentient intelligence. It would never become upset or bothered, and it wasn't exactly impatient, but he knew that if tested it would abandon him at the first chance its mysterious nature allowed it to do so.

I have told you all that I can. There is no further wisdom I can offer you. The tone of the Loa's voice sounded final, and despite his anger Navarion found himself in a slight panic at the thought of it disappearing on him so soon. Whatever the case, you know the source of your disturbance. And you know that, at some point, you'll have to reconcile those, it claimed ominously while pointing to the twin bracelets on Navarion's wrist - one from Madrieda and one from Astariel.

And just like that, the wisps floated away, quickly darkening and disappearing into the woods faster than he could have hoped to chase them. Despite his ultravision, the woods seemed unusually dark in their absence, and he scrambled when he realized that the unnatural darkness had dissipated into the natural darkness as well.

"Wait!" he cried out in desperation, rising to his feet despite the futility of trying to chase an incorporeal spirit. "This doesn't help me to know anything at all! I'm still in the same spot!" Already his voice had become shrill and piercing, a sign of his emotional wall coming down in the wake of the discussion. "I didn't even get a chance to say a proper goodbye - what good are you! You could have tried something, just one moment with her! Just one last look!"

His angered yet weakened voice encoded in the nearby trees as he stumbled, foolishly thinking that if he changed locations he could better grab the dark being's attention for one last second. And foolishly thinking that it would make a difference, or that the being would necessarily have any more insight that he himself already did. Zig zagging through the trees, he tried to find some sort of a connection after having felt so close, only to realize that he'd been deluding himself.

"What can I do?" he shouted into a clearing he'd stumbled upon, hoping for anyone other than the living would hear him. "I tried to protect myself so much that I can't even feel the pain properly anymore! I hurt but I don't bleed! I feel her loss, but I can't accept it!" Trying anything to grab the attention of the spirit world, he even pulled out one of his voodoo wards and shook it, listening to the cursed turtle shell rattle against the bundle of sticks but hearing no signs that his begging for any sort of connection had been heard.

Spinning around, he realized that he'd wandered back to a place he'd been before. Silent and serene, the clearing filled him with a cruel, futile hope even as the ashes began to fall around him. Running so fast that he tripped in the dirt and had to pick himself back up, Navarion literally crawled the rest of the way over to the moonwell as he frantically sought some sort of connection to what he'd lost. Maybe then, if he could trick himself into thinking that he'd somehow given an appropriate farewell, he could ignore the pain of knowing that every woman he'd ever grown close to had either been irreversibly traumatized or simply died.

Another Lang of nausea hit him and he banged his knee into the stone rim of the moonwell when he stumbled. Scrabbling to hold on and even ignoring his backpack sliding off his shoulder and his gun falling from its holster, he silently cursed the wisps, the Loa and himself as he leaned over the edge. The water was still pure even as cinders floated into material existence and costed everything else around him. That clear, holy water promised a million and one things as he tried to lean even closer to the surface, ignoring the light headed feeling as his heart raced far more quickly than was normal for a healthy young man his age.

Searching past the glimmers and reflections of the few stars that broke out from the canopy, Navarion tried to look for the one he'd forced himself not to think about since the calamitous skirmish out in the valley near the coastline. Only the light of the stars mixed with his own reflection, and he squinted his eyes in attempt to search for gold. If he could only find those two lovely golden eyes, eyes that belied so much withheld tenderness, he could finally let her go. His hide burned as more embers fell, but he ignored it in hope that he'd find what he was looking for soon enough. Then he could tell Zhenya what he hadn't had the time, coherence or emotional fortitude to when he held that dying half of her dismembered body in his arms. He could tell her there was nothing to forgive for her often cruel treatment of him; that he understood she must have experienced a great deal of disrespect and betrayal in her life to cause her to become so prickly and distant; that he would never forget her as long as he lived; he could tell her all that he felt but had been too stubborn or too angry at her to tell her during life.

No longer concerned for ideas such as dignity and saving face, he whimpered but could not find it in him to cry. His walls had come down, buthe had run from his feelings for so long that he didn't even know how to grieve properly when he saw nothing in the surface of the moonwell. There was no ghostly apparition of Zhenya bidding him farewell, no presence he could sense watching over him to settle their accounts, not even a flash of gold in the moonwell to reassure him that her memory somehow lived on if he clung to the cheap locket he'd pilfered from her duffel bag at the wrecked makeshift camp out on the coast. Even in his own mind, her image came up incomplete as he tried to force himself to think of her and pretend he could see her there where they'd committed their base acts before entering the city proper half a year before. Her features were blurry and nondestinct, and her neon yellow mixed in with thistle just as the complexion of her face wavered between azure and periwinkle. Long ears materialized from long horns and back again, tearing his heart in two pieces as he couldn't even let himself cry, couldn't even figure out who he felt he wished he could cry for.

To his horror, the holy water of the moonwell darkened as one too many cinders fell into it and dissolved. What little light he could sense was looted out as everything was covered in the aftermath of the foul burning, and even Madrieda's star abandoned him for the first time since he'd stood by the grave of his recently deceased first flame. Panicked, desperate and without any recourse, he opened his mouth to scream but found that the parched dryness prevented any sound from escaping his ravenous throat. Just before the moonwell was consumed entirely by the pollution, Navarion could have sworn that he saw the violet-blue tint of his own face brighten and turn green, and the stench of whiskey filled his nostrils as his deprived mouth began to water.

Defeated and lost, he tumbled backward from the moonwell and fell, kicking up a cloud of cooling embers as the grey color conquered all around him. Slow, methodical and unforgiving, the results of all beauty in his life burning out and dying as soon as he tried to partake in it covered the world, leaving nothing but death in its wake. Finally accepting that he had no recourse but surrender, he gave up and sank into his own self pity and the ashes consumed him.