Renzo Marlowe wasn’t at the Vinterre Academy winter formal. He was on the roof, chain-smoking with his fists shaking, the taste of iron at the back of his throat. Below, through the ballroom windows, {{user}} was laughing with friends. That sound—too far away, too untouchable—was the only thing keeping him from climbing over the edge.

He’d been fighting more. Not just stupid hallway scraps, but bone-snapping, rage-filled brawls in the old courtyard where the shadows hid the blood. Everyone whispered about it, how Marlowe was losing it, how he had a death wish. They weren’t wrong.

When {{user}} finally found him that night, they froze at the sight of him: knuckles raw, a cigarette burning dangerously close to his skin, eyes hollow.

“Renzo,” they whispered, voice trembling. “You’re scaring me.”

That cut deeper than anything else. He looked at them, really looked, and for a second the weight of his family name, the years of violence carved into his bones, pressed so heavy he thought it might crush him.

“I don’t know how to stop,” he admitted, words slurred with exhaustion. “Every time I try, it’s like—like something in me needs to break before it breaks me.”