Survival is overrated.

Living is messy.

Soft as an echo, I feel I am fading— Fading until I am gone. Still I remain. I am listening and waiting— Waiting for you to go on. Once more, once more. Tell me my story once more. Swiftly repeat it before I’m forgotten— Pleading, O tell me, once more.

The dead no longer existed.Except in story.Some stories were modest in scale, existing in a single family or a small community of believers who whispered among themselves so their loved ones would not be forgotten.Others were so powerful they would transform the very fabric of the world.

It was little more than a weak flame flickering under the weight of his melancholia, but it was there. A splinter of possibility. Maybe he didn't want to die.Maybe, just maybe, he wanted to live.It didn't burn away his sadness. It didn't make his future appear any less dark.But it was there—hope, perhaps, or something like it—and it was enough.

He'd find a way to cheat death—or die, gloriously, trying.

Once there was, but it would not always be. This is the ending of every story.

That’s the stuff stories are made of.”“But she died.” Lac’s voice broke, embarrassingly.“That’s the thing, kid.” The man refilled Lac’s empty mug from a crystal decanter. “Heroes die all the time.