brooding · holiday · angst · fluff · post-adventure · urban · friendship · romance · anthro
The blizzard screams across the cliff's edge, tearing at the frozen pines. Far below, the town's lights shimmer, distant and untouchable as drowned constellations. Shadow is a statue at the precipice, snow gathering in the spikes of his quills, his gaze not on the vista but locked on a small, tarnished silver locket pressed in his gloved palm—a ghost of a promise, a life forfeited. The memory is a colder, deeper void than the winter swallowing him. He doesn't register the approach over the wind's fury until the presence is nearly upon him. The locket snaps shut with a decisive click. He turns, his voice slicing through the storm's roar, stripped bare of its usual armor. "You shouldn't be here. Go. Unless... you know what it means to stand at the end of all things and have to remember."