[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/77Zbroq.png[/img]

[color=#758173][H1]Mina Blackwood[/H1][/color][/center]



[color=#758173]Time:[/color] Middle of the night, Sola 26th 
[color=#758173]Location:[/color] Her room 
[color=#758173]Attire:[/color] 
[color=#758173]Interaction:[/color] 
[color=#758173]Mentions:[/color] Munir
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/BCGMDwO.png[/img][/center]

[Center][color=red][b][u]FLASHBACK[/u][/b][/color][/center]

The brush trembled in her grip.  

It wasn’t hesitation. It was rage. It was sorrow. It was something raw and ugly clawing its way up from the hollow cavity of her chest, threatening to spill from her throat in a scream she didn’t dare release.  

The first strokes were wild, unhinged. Black, deep and endless, swallowed the canvas whole. Gold followed—jagged streaks, violent slashes that cut through the darkness like open wounds. Her hands trembled, but she didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Shadows stretched long and distorted across the room, twisting like silent specters along the walls. Bottles—half-drained, some shattered—littered the nearby table, the sharp scent of turpentine and absinthe thick in the air. The glass of her latest drink sat abandoned beside her, forgotten as the brush moved with reckless, feverish desperation.  

A figure began to take shape—tall, proud, his posture one of unwavering strength. But his face… his face was shattered, a hollow abyss where warmth had once lived. Around him, golden chains coiled like serpents, binding, choking. His hands grasped at them, desperate, but the chains pulled, yanked, dragged him into the abyss.  

[Url=https://i.imgur.com/atudbMx.png]Munir.[/url]

Her breath hitched, a sob catching somewhere between her ribs. The truth was painted there, exposed in every desperate brushstroke. He had been her light. And she had snuffed it out.  

A splatter of paint dripped onto her bare arm, stark against her pale skin. She exhaled, shaking, and stepped back. The candlelight flickered, casting the painting in shifting hues, making it seem almost alive—the chains tightening, the figure struggling, the void devouring him.  

She couldn’t sleep.  

Not with the weight pressing down on her chest like a corpse. Not with the phantom warmth of Munir’s touch still haunting her skin. The way his hands had once held her like something precious. The way his golden eyes had searched hers, desperate, pleading, when she told him she felt nothing.  

[color=#758173][I]Liar.[/I][/color]

The word echoed in her skull, cruel and unrelenting.  

She had shattered him. Broke him so completely that she feared she had broken herself in the process.  

[color=#758173][I]It was for his own good.[/I][/color]

That had been the justification, hadn’t it? The lie she whispered to herself over and over again, hoping it would one day take root as truth. That pushing him away, cutting him out like a festering wound, had been the only way to protect him. From her uncle. From the inevitable storm that followed her. From herself.  

But gods, it had hurt.  

It still hurt.  

She reached for the glass, only to knock it over, absinthe spilling across the floor in a slow, spreading stain. A bitter laugh escaped her lips, raw and humorless.  

[color=#758173]"Figures,"[/color] she murmured to no one.  

Mina sank to the floor, her back against the wall, arms draped over her bent knees. The painting loomed above her, a cruel reflection of her sins, a truth she couldn’t outrun. The alcohol burned in her veins, numbing but never enough. Never [I]enough[/I].  

Her fingers traced the rim of the overturned glass absently, her gaze unfocused. Munir would never know. He could never know why she had done it. That she had [I]loved[/I] him—deeply, fiercely, in a way that had terrified her. That her lies had been the only way to protect him from the monster pulling the strings behind the curtain.  

That she had broken his heart to save his life.  

And in doing so, had destroyed herself.  

The night stretched on, long and unforgiving. Mina remained on the floor, lost in silence, in the wreckage of her choices. The ghosts of regret whispered around her, unseen but relentless.  

And in the dim glow of candlelight, the painting stared back at her.  

A wound she could never close.