¹ Fallen Star.

Rage, it is in your veins.

What pain the stars have,
HUMBERT WOLFE The Fiddle and the Bow

❅

SHE had seen something in the name many didn't. She was bred by the pristine depths of perfection–never a flaw within the system. She was always doing what they bid and maybe that's how she lost herself in the end. Because while they bathed in all their glory, pocketing their sins while they traded in prosperity as their facades, she grew hungry. She would never be one of them, she knew of that but tangled in their diamond shaped lies and spiteful netting she had become yet another heedless victim to their growing web.

But as it started with her, it would end with him.

Atlas Black is aware to the poisoned roots that have slithered to create a noose around his neck and keep him in a chokehold. He's unable to leave, or maybe he refuses to, but it's iron grip exhibits the weight of how much power they have. So instead of leaving–like the wilted leaves before him–he lets himself rot like the polar opposites who had stayed and let themselves be plucked too early and too raw from their brittle branches and untimely youth and dropped to the ruins that bleed as dark as their last name.

The shun of his father has lit a fire inside him, almost like a plea of how much he differentiates himself from the man. He despises him; despises the dishonour he created upon the House of Black and the name he besmirched upon his family. Yet he hates the name even more. And hates that he's succumbed to it.

Yet the name bleeds on and it's inevitable and necessary in the eyes of his family. He's just another plaything in their ever growing web–bound to their everlasting loyalty that few ever really escape. And even if it's beyond reason and far too knowledgeable for either of their understandings of how much of a straining root he is in their already withering tree, there's one thing those dreaded Black's do know; they're waiting for his downfall and willing to greet him with open arms.