Tao doesn’t know how badly he’s ed up until he sees the sidewalk thirty stories below his feet on the edge of the building. Kris is airborne in front of him, watching him. The dragon that once symbolized his power of flight, which once shone with an inviting, iridescent glow now radiated a power darker than the miasmic void. It writhes around behind him, the foreign third eye flaring up veins of red in its forehead. Flame froths violently in its muzzle, waiting for a simple command to attack.

Tao merely touches his bracelet, the swirl of the sands of time ringing steady in his ears.

Kris takes a breath, the dragon hisses. “Don’t,” he whispers.

Tao can’t help but scoff. “Or what? I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been here. Or back home. Or with the others. Or by ourselves. Night after night. Three lifetimes on one day. It doesn’t matter what I do. Or what you do. I’ll just do it again. And again,” he raised the bracelet up to show the cracks and eroded marks of his power symbol. “…and again.”

Kris’ red eyes blink slowly, a realization dawning in them for the millionth time. “How many lifetimes have you lived, Tao?”

Tao laughs, a breathy, strained sound, hair falling into his eyes as he desperately tries to keep his emotions in check.  “Enough to know that you’re a ing for leaving the way you did.”

Kris’ anger flared up, his eyes bright as his dragon screeched. “We were being held back!”

The world went still as Tao exhaled, looking up at the dragon that was about to strike out at him, at the cracks in Kris’ skin from the evil breaking him down from the inside out.

The links in his bracelet clinked together, and he hadn’t realized he had been reaching out to Kris since time stopped.

Tao had run out of tears tens of years ago. But knowing why Kris left….all he knew was that he or any of the others weren’t worth staying for.

It takes him a while to find the will to move, to stop looking into Kris’ red eyes. He moves a hand over the hourglass, watches it turn and glow. “……Again,” he breathes. He hopes it’s not for the last time.