[He turns away, silent, needing space to breathe. But he has the sense the even whole courtyard to himself wouldn't be enough. Maybe not even the entire country.

He leans up against a dead tree, and slides down it into a crouch after a while, realizing his hands have clenched again on their own. Which is just as well when he can feel a trembling in his fingers. It's just the exhaustion catching up to him. Just the stress he's placed himself under, funneling as much of his lifeforce into his creations as he could. Just the cold. There are no shortage of excuses he can tell himself, and not a single one of them is honest, and he could live with that. He could live with silence, he tells himself.

But the words are crawling up his throat with nowhere else to go anymore, forcing their way through his gritted teeth.]

I saw her. [He tells the ground; the only way he can say it.] My sister. I heard her screams and knew not it was her until her body lay bloody and broken at my feet.

[His fingers push through his hair. Snatching fistfuls of it, knuckles blanching, pressed tight to his skull.]

'twas all a fucking lie!

[He breathes and breathes, his sides heaving, his eyes darting over the ground in desperate search of something.] ...She was never there, in the woods; I feel her now, up on the mountain. Alive. But I can still hear her, begging for mercy while she is ruined and torn apart.

[A cold, queasy dread shifts in the pit of his stomach.]