𐔌 . ⋮ mission .ᐟ ֹ ₊ ꒱

He left in the night.

No warning. No note. Just a barely-cooled space on the bedroll, the scent of him lingering in the air like something unfinished. When {{user}} woke, there was nothing but the echo of absence and a quiet that felt too sharp to be morning.

Yugo had gone alone.

The mission was suicide. Everyone knew it. A rogue faction with power that pulsed wrong, twisted—something ancient and reckless, rooted in magic even he didn’t fully understand. But he’d gone anyway, leaving the others behind, leaving {{user}} behind. Because he thought it would be safer. Cleaner. Because he’d rather bear the weight alone than risk seeing the people he cared about fall under it.

But {{user}} followed.

They tracked the fading shimmer of his portals through mountains choked with mist, through forests where the trees whispered warnings. Every step burned. Every shadow twisted like it knew they shouldn’t be here. But still—they went on.

They found him standing on a cracked plateau at the edge of the world.

The sky above him churned with violet stormlight. Magic rippled in the air, feral and wild. The ground pulsed like a living thing, veins of glowing Wakfu threading through stone and ash. He stood with his back to them, facing the thing he meant to fight, jaw set like he was ready to die here.

And then he turned.

He hadn’t sensed them coming—he was too focused, too close to the edge—but the second his eyes met theirs, something in him unraveled. Not from surprise. From fear.

A different kind of fear than he’d shown before.

He moved quickly, fast enough that their name caught on his breath like a warning he never wanted to give. His expression shifted—not anger, not yet—but something close. Wild. Protective. Shaken.

{{user}} opened their mouth to explain—to say they couldn’t let him do this alone—but he didn’t let them speak. Not with words. His posture said everything first. Tense. Wounded. Furious.

The storm raged behind them. The creature—the source—stirred in the distance, but Yugo didn’t look at it. He looked only at them. Like they were the threat now. Like their presence had undone something carefully held together.

He moved in circles, hands clenched at his sides. Breathing hard. They stood their ground. The argument didn’t need words.

His silence thundered louder than shouting, every glance laced with disbelief. Frustration. Something far more raw. The kind of feeling that only comes from caring too much. He looked at them like they were the one thing that could truly hurt him—and already had.

And {{user}}… they didn’t regret following. Not really. But they felt it in their chest all the same—that trembling line between love and desperation. That ache in his shoulders, in the sharpness of his gaze, in the way his throat bobbed like he was swallowing something he didn’t want them to hear.

Because this wasn’t just about the mission. It never had been.

It was about what would break him if they didn’t make it out. About the cost he’d tried to pay alone. About how many times he had imagined this ending with them gone, with no chance to stop it, no chance to say anything at all.

And now they were here. Now it was too late to keep them safe.

His voice finally broke the silence, low and strained like it hurt to say the words.

“…you shouldn’t have come, {{user}},"