[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/NvqYYuh.png[/img]
[img] https://fontmeme.com/permalink/240301/afc2e4e091f5e77155a2bde75504f79e.png[/img][/center][right][b]Interactions:[/b] The Sycamore Tree Coven [/right][right][b][code]The All-Verse[/code][/b][/right][hr]

[center][hider=Beyond the Shores (Excerpt I)][youtube]https://youtu.be/H7AewSqPgaE?si=9IqQtHZF_IgSz3pR[/youtube][/hider][/center]

The illusions faded, and they left Jack in the real world again. Watching all of their faces twist away into thin trails of smoke scraped at something inside Jack, a recess in his heart that had gone untouched for so long. He watched things blur and wash away, and not once did he question the miasma of what might have been, until there was less of it than cold, unforgiving, unavoidable rainfall. Jack had seen many people draw their last breaths in his life, and he had always found the strength to carry on. After all, what more could one do? But that paradise, that promise of halcyon days beyond this strife had given Jack security. He believed it to be real, and it hurt all the more for it when that illusion fell to pieces. Something sharp burned behind Jack’s ribs, they were [i]together[/i] again. Everything was good again, they had won against Father Wolf, and all that was wrong had been made right.

That pain in his chest rose up into his throat, hot and threatening to split him open. People often said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. But for a fleeting moment, Jack had just that and more. Wealth of a rare kind in the All-Verse, and all of it no less. His head tilted back, as he gazed absently into the pitch black clouds above. Jack had a feeling that he’d rather never find that love at all, then to have it and lose it so easily. The rain fell down and soaked him. His boots sank an inch into the mud, the wind laid itself into stillness. No mistake could be made, this was real.

And he could hear others shouting.

Jack was many things, none of them anything particularly virtuous; Vindictive, wise, possessed by great wanderlust, wistful beyond reason… But he often dwelled on the feeling that he could not count loyalty and trustworthy among those things. What good were the things he discovered and accomplished if there were none to share them with?

All the universe slowed to stasis, just long enough for Jack to come to terms with the fact that he was so very tired. Not in a way that sleep could remedy, but in a way that only others could. Auri was counting everyone. Making sure they were all still alive. Jack could’ve slipped into the Void, and let these awful emotions out in a place where no one would see. He would’ve screamed, raged until every last denizen of the empty realm feared him. He could have composed himself, and maintained the appearance of that untethered, whimsical scholar he styled himself as. Jack wanted to. It was so tempting, but he didn’t.

He simply appeared among the group around Sloane, in a puff of dark smoke. Jack made no attempt to conceal the wounded, forlorn expression on his face. He didn’t care enough to, anymore.

[color=6644ff]”My friends,”[/color] he began. [color=6644ff]”Let us leave this place. I will send everyone where they wish to go. We are alive, and today, that is enough.”[/color]

Today, and only today, he told himself.

[color=6644ff]”We drove them to retreat, and they did not win. One day, the 8th Street Coven will make their last mistake.”[/color] Long, wet hair cling to his face as he managed a smile that came with the catharsis of a parent discovering their child survived a plane crash, of someone seeing their friend escape from a burning building.

[color=6644ff]”I am glad you are all still here.”[/color]