Yellow Jacket

He came out of the dark like he always does, sudden, heavy, and impossible to ignore. There was no ground under him, no sky above him. Just the white silence of a place outside story, where words stop and meaning waits.

He didn't ask who I was. He already knew. His presence said it for him.

"You."

"Yes," I said.

His eyes cut through me, sharp as anything I had ever put in his hands. "You made this world. You filled it with ash and corpses. You left me nothing but hunger. And you took her." His voice cracked, softer but sharper. "You took my mother."

I didn't try to soften it. "I did."

Hate burned in him like a fire. The kind that doesn't fade, doesn't cool, doesn't forgive. That wound would always be raw. And I let him hold it, because he deserves it.

But hate is not the whole of him. Warren is not only scars. He is also teeth. And so, I told him the truth.

"I took her from you, yes. But I gave you more than loss. I gave you weapons. I am the faceless man I told you to run and never let them catch you. I put the truncheon in your hand. I set the pipe, the brick, the shard of glass before you. I built an arsenal into your world so you would never be empty-handed. Where others saw trash, I gave you the will to see tools. Where others saw ruin, I gave you a playground. I made certain you could always strike back."

He glared, fists curling. "You made me bleed."

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"I did. And I had to. If I left her, you would have been safe, soft, hidden. You would have stayed a scavver scratching in the ruins, sheltered in her shadow. You would not have risen. You would not have become more than the boy she loved. I had to cut her away so you could carve yourself sharp."

He stepped closer. His shadow fell long across the nothing, heavy as rain. "You left me nothing."

"No," I said. "I gave you everything. I gave you the will to crawl out of the page and face me here. I gave you the voice to sing in the dark and light the world with it. I gave you the tools to fight, the strength to endure, the hunger to never stop. I gave you… you."

The silence between us stretched. He didn't strike me. He doesn't waste himself on the defenseless. But his eyes burned, hate and respect tangled together like scar tissue and skin.

"You made me," he said at last. His voice was steady now, too steady.

"Yes," I said. "But I didn't chain you. I didn't script your every step. I gave you the arsenal. You chose what to do with it. You took what I gave and made yourself more than I ever could have written. That is why you stand here now, in the dark, staring me down. That is why they call you king. You built yourself with the tools I scattered."

He didn't smile. He doesn't smile. But something shifted in him then, the edge of understanding, bitter as blood. "You made me bleed," he said again, quieter this time. "But you gave me the playground."

I nodded. Because he was right.

That is what binds us: hate for what I took, respect for what I gave. He will never forgive me. I do not ask him to. But I am the faceless man at his back, the whisper in the rain: Don't let them take you. Don't let them break you. Don't stop.

I gave him no crown, no throne, no safe harbor. I gave him weapons. I gave him scars. I gave him the will to see the world itself as his arsenal. I gave him the power to turn every scrap into something sharp. I gave him the truth that he is his own creation, his own nightmare, his own king.

Warren Smith is the nightmare king of Hemera because when given a broken world and a handful of tools, he forged himself into something the world cannot ignore.

And as he turned away from me, vanishing back into the ruin I wrote, I heard the truth in his steps. The same truth that drives him through every fight, every death, every storm:

A good fight is its own reward.