Letter #3,977
Dear Skylenna,
Today marks thirty years without my girl by my side.
Last night, Krimson asked me, Dad, if you knew the day Mom was going to pass away, what would you change?
What do you think my answer was, baby?
Not a damn thing.
I get to go to sleep every night at peace with the man you helped shaped me into.
Why? Because I gave my wife everything she wanted.
I was not one of those Emerald Husbands that ignored the mother of their children, neglect, and treat her lesser than.
I get to go to sleep every night knowing that I worshipped the woman I fell in love with.
I never let a day go by without bringing you flowers, giving you lots of kisses, and telling you how absolutely stunning you looked.
I never took you for granted. Not a single day in our marriage. Not a single moment since the day I locked eyes with you in the thirteenth room of that asylum.
Now, with all that said, I miss you terribly.
I didn’t realize how euphoric your laugh was until I’d never hear it again. Kane has not resurfaced since the day he buried you. But he does live a comfortable life in the inner world, dreaming of the day we all get to see you again.
I’m going to try and keep writing these letters, but my hand isn’t as strong as it once was, and writing has become a tormenting chore.
I’d ask Krimson or Sapphire to write them for me, but I don’t think I will.
There is something precious and private about letters from a husband mourning his wife, don’t you think?
Something that should stay whispered between the two of us.
So, I apologize, baby. This may be one of the last letters I’ll ever write you.
I’ve continued adding to the castle in ways I thought you’d like. Different additions I know would have made you smile. I’ve built in almost every single letter I wrote you into the walls. And then added the ones you wrote me when I was in the coma.
I’m not ashamed to say I’ve read those letters thousands of times since you’ve moved on without me.
They’ve kept me going. In the cold winter nights when I needed to feel the warmth of your body next to mine, I’d read your letter about being too warm when you were pregnant.
On the mornings I’d visit your grave and didn’t know how to leave, I’d read a letter.
Thank you for writing them. I know they were born out of the darkest days in your life, but please know…they’ve kept me alive during mine.
Marilynn passed on a few nights ago. She asked Krimson to take her back a few decades to when she was pregnant with Niklaus.
Krimson warned her that traveling to a time when she was already alive would be fatal.
But Marilynn was on her deathbed. She said she wanted to pass on in the arms of her soul mate.
And that’s exactly what she did. Krimson watched from a distance as an elderly Marilynn woke Niles in the middle of the night and asked that he hold her.
Ruth and Warrose are still kicking. He is far too stubborn to die without her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they go at the exact same time, holding hands, warm in their bed.
How badly I wish that’s how we met our end. But God had other plans for us.
Thirty years without you. And I’d do it all again to make sure these roles weren’t reversed.
You have been through too much to be in my shoes right now.
You watched me die with that sickle slicing through my back.
You raised our babies for twenty-one years without me there to hold your hand and carry you through the hard days.
I’ve spent these years caring for your castle. Playing with our grandchildren. Giving Sapphire and Krimson advice. Watching your garden grow. Reading books that could fill a hundred libraries.
Thank you for waiting for me somewhere in heaven.
I’ll see you soon, baby.
Your sweetheart,
Dessin
I blow out the last candle after I finish sealing this last letter into the wall of our bedroom.
The cane I walk with does little to keep me from falling to the ground now. Warrose made it for me, and it’s served its purpose years ago. Now, it’s barely keeping me from crawling from one side of the room to the other.
But I didn’t want my kids to know how slow I’ve become as of late. They would have asked to move in with me again. They’d beg me to come live with them.
That’s what they tried to do when Skylenna passed away. They sat me down for an intervention after the small funeral we held for her. They begged me to come live with them.
But how could I leave their mother?
How could I leave our home?
Niklaus offered to clear out the Dellilian Castle in the present day and let me live there. But it’s not the same. This castle still smells like my girl. It still carries the ghost of her laugh. I can still hear her singing down the hall while she’d take a bath.
I’d never leave the home we built together.
For a long time, I struggled with understanding my purpose after the love of my life no longer breathed. I’d walk through the forest for days, afraid to go home and sleep without her there. I’d spend all day sleeping. All night enduring countless nightmares.
But then I started to write.
All of our lives we have been a pawn on a chess board and a puppet to entertain a live audience. Skylenna and I were children turned monster. We never stood a chance, did we?
We were children.
To fight. To witness gruesome death. To suffer long and cry for our mothers and fathers who would never come.
We were children.
Why us?
I don’t know the answer to that.
And even though our story was written into history books, it wasn’t written in our hand, in our voice. Skylenna would have wanted that. To leave the world in a better way than we found it.
That is why I wrote this.
And I have left it for Krimson and Sapphire, tucked away in my safe for the day they’ll say goodbye to their father and finally stop visiting the past to check up on me.
I close the book and pat it.
“I hope you like it, baby,” I say to my wife, somewhere in the clouds, watching over me.
I take one last look at the leather cover before closing the safe.
The Chronicles of The Pawn and The Puppet
Written by:
Dessin
Greystone
Kalidus
Aquarus
Syfer
Cricket
Church
Foxem
And Kane Valadawell
Only a few more steps until I reach the bed. I grunt, passing my weight to one side, and collapsing as the cane slips out from under me—hitting the ground does not hurt like I thought it would. I’ve fallen before and broken ribs. I’ve been concussed. I’ve blacked out for hours.
But this is shedding a heavy, wet blanket. It’s unlatching the shackles of the asylum from my ankles and wrists and finally running free again.
This is aging backward and being released of an impossible weight.
“Stand up, my love. Heaven has waited a long time for this.”
I lift my head to see that long, wavy, mermaid hair and the golden halo shining down on her. Not a day older than the day I fell in love with her in that asylum.
“Skylenna,” I utter breathlessly.
My soulmate grins down at me with misty eyes and rosy cheeks.
“You waited for me,” I say in a whisper. Tears are running down my cheeks. And I’m no longer just Dessin, am I?
I am Kane.
I am every alter and none at all.
I am one soul in death.
“I waited for you,” she weeps happily. Her kisses come softly, passionately, intimately.
Her words are like ice melting after centuries of winter.
I reach for her with trembling hands, afraid she might vanish if I move too fast, afraid this is another cruel illusion stitched together by exhaustion and old age.
But she’s warm. Real. Alive with light. So much light.
My fingers bury into the fabric at her waist, anchoring myself to her body as if gravity itself has finally decided to stop fighting me.
I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in—the familiar sweetness of her skin, the echo of home I memorized in another lifetime.
My knees nearly give again, not from weakness this time, but from relief so sharp it hurts.
“You’re real. You’re back.”
She cups my face, wiping tears I didn’t know were falling, her thumbs steady, reverent.
“I never left. You just couldn’t see me,” she murmurs softly.
My Skylenna’s kiss is devotional. Slow. A reunion written into the bones of the universe long before either of us were born. And God, my heart jolts in my chest, then steadies, beating in rhythm with hers, finally remembering how it was meant to live.
In her arms, the asylum finally dissolves. The restraints fade. The prison is obliterated from our scars. I am home. I am holding my girl again.
My heart explodes from my chest as the others step out from the light around my wife.
At first, they are only silhouettes—shapes carved from gold and dawn—but then the glow thins, and faces begin to form.
Each one hits me like a wave, stacking grief on top of joy until I can barely breathe beneath it.
I stagger back a half-step, clutching Skylenna’s hand as if she is the only thing keeping me upright. My vision blurs again.
Niles first, holding hands with Marilynn.
Then Chekiss surrounded by the wife and daughter he lost long ago.
Gauranthian’s towering form emerging like a mountain next to Asena, their white wolves, and Runa.
Knightingale’s stoic stance. Dellilian’s dark shimmering, eyes reflecting starlight.
Each presence presses into my chest with memory—battles fought, blood spilled, laughter stolen between our darkest moments.
I laugh, though tears cool my burning cheeks.
Before I can say anything at all, they part for a woman running to me with open arms.
“My son!”
I break apart completely.
Years of silent rage. Of suffering alone. Of living in an endless cycle of watching this woman lose her dignity and life all in one blink of an eye.