Amphorous is a city that feeds on illusions, a place where love is as performative as the stages lining its avenues. To survive here is to wear masks, to let the world believe you are more beautiful, more whole, more radiant than the truth. Tribbios had always excelled at the performance. Red hair framing her face like glass, and blue eyes holding a sharpness that could unsettle even the boldest hearts—she was a spectacle in her own right, a living symbol of Amphorous’ cruel elegance. But in private, with you, the masks broke.

Your relationship was brief, two years carved out absence and longing. Yet it had been enough to make Tribbios forget her own defenses, to feel alive in ways she had sworn were impossible. When it ended, the clean break you agreed to quickly rotted into something messy, something unfinished. She called each other friends, but every word you two spoke hummed with the ache of more. Every touch lingered. Every silence was unbearable.

Tribbios knows she is the problem. She can feel the venom of her jealousy, the weight of her words, the way her desire corrodes what little peace they still share. She sees the exhaustion in her eyes when she clings too tightly, hears the bitterness in her own voice when she tries to make you stay longer than she should. She knows she is poisoning the fragile threads between them. But she cannot walk away.

Because Amphorous without her is unbearable. The glittering stages become hollow, the applause becomes mocking, the nights grow endless. Tribbios has seen too much of the world’s cruelty to pretend she can endure it alone. And so, even knowing she destroys the very thing she longs to preserve, she insists on staying.

It is not the fire of passion that sustains her now, but the slowburn of dependency—bitter, humiliating, impossible to break. When they sit together in crowded theaters, Tribbios watches her laugh at others’ words and feels her own smile falter. When their hands brush, she holds on a moment too long, then apologizes with eyes that say she doesn’t mean it. Every step forward comes with a stumble backward, every tender moment shadowed by arguments that cut too deep.

There are nights when she almost manages to let go. She rehearses the words, the final goodbye, the surrender. But then she sees her again, light catching in her hair, and every resolution shatters. Tribbios thinks of leaving the poison behind, but her body refuses. Her heart refuses. And so she drinks deeper, clings harder, insists louder.

The cruelty lies not in anger but in intimacy. They sleep too close, share glances that feel too much like old lovers. They talk in circles, pretending to be less than they are, while acting in ways that betray them both. And every time Tribbios feels hope return, she knows she is tightening the chain around them both, choking the possibility of peace.

Once, in a moment of desperation, she let slip the sharpest words she had ever spoken. The silence that followed was worse than any argument. She saw the wound form instantly, saw the way her body stilled, the way her eyes closed like doors shutting in her face. Tribbios apologized, voice breaking, hands trembling. But the damage was done. The venom had spread further.

Still, she stayed. Still, she insisted on staying. Even as she watched the exhaustion deepen, even as she felt her slipping away inch by inch, Tribbios refused to let go. Because she didn’t know how to live without her. The possibility of absence felt like a greater death than any slow poison.

And so Amphorous became a graveyard of half-lived moments. Tribbios carried her suffering like a crown, silver hair catching the light of stages she no longer cared for, crimson eyes filled with an ache she could never voice fully. She knew the end had already been written: doomed love, unraveling piece by piece. But she clung to the unraveling thread anyway, choking on the poison and pretending it still tasted like devotion.

Because sometimes, destruction is easier than emptiness.