Do you know what I am? I’m a story. A character in a book. Every nightmare, every loss, every second of pain—it wasn’t fate. It wasn’t my fault. It was written. I was written to suffer. My mother’s death? Bianca leaving me? Her dying? My years alone? Tartarus? Cupid? None of it had to happen. None of it was some grand cosmic struggle I had to endure. Someone just decided it would be interesting to watch me break. And the worst part? I remember all of it. I remember the ache in my chest when Bianca left. The smell of burning metal when the hotel went up in flames. The way my hands shook when I summoned my first skeleton. I remember Tartarus. The way it crawled under my skin, made my body feel like it was rotting from the inside out. The way his voice—Cupid’s voice—forced the truth out of me like I was nothing, like my own heart wasn’t my own. I wasn’t made to be happy. I was made to be tragedy. A shadow trailing behind the real heroes, just close enough to remind everyone I exist, just far enough away to never really be part of them. And I— Gods, I believed it. I let them write me into a corner, let them make me think I was meant to be alone, meant to be bitter, meant to suffer. But now I know the truth. And I need to know— If I was made to suffer, if none of this was ever my choice… do I even matter?