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Someone stands in the dust, blood dries tacky on their hands. Someone breathes ash and blood and survives the end again and again through will and luck alone. Someone lives, no matter what.
This someone is named Grian, though he is feeling less and less like Grian everyday. Maybe he ought to change his name again - it did wonders for him the last time he lost everything. He doesn’t know what he would call himself this time, maybe nothing at all. Maybe it would suit, to be a nameless, forgotten thing.
(There is a man, he stands on the edge of a void, a world he destroyed.)
(There is a man, he is dragged away from the death of everything, hanging limply in the grasp of those responsible.)
(There is a man - though he is hardly a man anymore, no, there is a thing, and he watches as the world turns to ash, his hands turned bloody with bruised knuckles, as he refuses to survive again.)
(He cries, he screams, he smiles.)
(He feels less like him everyday. He finds it hard to care as everything ends, it has happened before, it will happen again, and he is tired of fighting.)
Grian used to care about death. He used to fear it, that loss. He isn’t afraid anymore - he’s more afraid of surviving, of standing alone and smelling decay, of rubbing fingers raw in some attempt to help, of burying his friends in shallow graves, attempting to hurry as the crows peck their eyes out.
He hates the smell of blood, but that of decay feels comfortable, he has spent so long in broken worlds. He has cradled broken, cold bodies to his chest, and just barely gathered the strength to walk away, again and again. So often, he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to lie down in those worlds and die with it. He wonders if that would be selfish.
Grian has seen the end again and again, it is becoming expected. It is becoming the norm.
(There is a man, he screams his throat raw, and it is so quiet. There is nothing left to make noise.)
(There is a man, he sobs silently, he doesn’t wish to break the silence - it feels sacred.)
(There is a thing, the only noise he makes is the crack of impact and one final, shaky breath.)
Three times, he has survived the end of everything - three worlds crumbled to ash with him as the only remnant. Grian is a survivor, often, he wishes he wasn’t. He envies the first to die, they need not experience the heartbreak of watching everyone else fall, and knowing you will be the only to walk away.
He thinks it is kind, to die in ignorance, rather than live in agony. He stays, though, if only to help those who still believe, if only to soften the blows. Grian is nothing if not selfless, he would sacrifice everything to make things easier for those who care for him.
Even so, he thinks that maybe, he is reaching his limit. He thinks that his continued survival might be too much to ask. He thinks he is done giving and giving and giving, he wants to be selfish just this once.
Maybe it is rage that curls in his gut when they speak of life, of winning - they want so badly to survive, and Grian knows they will not, and it is not fair that none of them will get what they want. Grian doesn’t want to survive, he’s got a bad feeling he will anyway. He always does.
It isn’t fair.
It is that resolve that fuels him, his patience pushed just a bit too far, and it is that resolve to take what he wants that swings his sword, it is the thing that buries his blade in Mumbo’s gut. He is done giving, now, he is going to take, and take, and take.
It is that resolve that throws Jimmy off a roof, he knows Jimmy has survived before, back before they had taken him - he doesn’t want him to have to do it again.
Maybe it is mercy, to kill the others. They think they want to survive, Grian thinks they want to live - they haven’t yet realized they will never be alive ever again, maybe it is kinder to never let them. Maybe it is kinder to let them die fighting, screaming, rather than sobbing. It is always easier to be killed than to let yourself die - it is always easier dying when you wish to survive, than to survive when you wish to die.
Maybe it is mercy, Grian has never been particularly merciful, few have ever called him kind.
Grian is strong, Grian has survived far longer than he should have, but everyone has a limit, maybe the gods have finally found his - maybe they have finally broken him.
He doesn’t care, and he doesn’t think he’s Grian anymore.