Through the Eyes of the Storm.

TW* Depression

TW* PTSD

The wind here never stops. It howls low and steady, a constant whisper against the jagged cliffs, a voice that has forgotten how to speak in any tone other than mourning. The sky, forever pregnant with the weight of a storm, swells above me, bloated with clouds so thick and dark they seem carved from the abyss itself. And the sea—God, the sea—churns endlessly beneath the cliffs, a restless, foaming beast gnawing at the rock with the patience of eternity.

This place has no name, because a name would mean someone once had the arrogance to claim it. But no man, not one with a soul still tethered to his bones, would dare call this home. It is not a place meant to be lived in, only endured. A wasteland of wind and shadow, gnashing its teeth against the edges of existence. It has held me in its jaws for longer than I can remember, gnawing at what’s left of me, spitting out the parts that refuse to rot.

I was not always here. There was a time before the storm, before the howling wind, before the emptiness that stretches inside me like a wound that will not close. There was sun once, too, I think—though the thought feels like a lie, a cruel trick played by a mind desperate for something other than this. I try to recall the feeling of warmth on my skin, the golden touch of light, but the memory crumbles in my hands like ash.

The war took that from me.

It took other things, too. My name, my sleep, my certainty that I was ever anything more than a ghost wrapped in flesh. It carved out the parts of me that were soft, that were human, and replaced them with something colder. Something sharp-edged and hollow. I have seen things no man should see. Done things no man should do.

And yet, it is not silence that haunts me. No matter how far I walk the edge of this forsaken place, no matter how many times I swallow the screams before they can leave my throat, I can still hear them in the wind. Their voices. The ones I left behind. The ones I put there. They do not whisper. They do not wail. They laugh, low and knowing, because they understand the truth that I have been running from. You cannot bury the dead when you are one of them.

I tell myself I had no choice. That I followed orders. That war is war and men like me were born to be swallowed by it. But those justifications crumble like the cliffs beneath my feet, worn down by time and truth. The reality is simpler. I pulled the trigger. I silenced their voices. And now, they have made a home in the storm.

The wind screams louder now, a crescendo of grief rattling the bones of this world. I lift my face to the sky, watching as the storm above me thickens, coils, descends. There is no escaping it. Not this time.

Maybe that's the answer.

Maybe I was never meant to run from the storm. Maybe it is not my punishment, but my reckoning.

My body is weary, my soul hollow, but I do not step away from the edge. Not this time. The rain begins to fall, cold and clean, tracing rivers down my skin, washing away the filth of years spent waiting. The thunder groans, and I know what comes next.

The storm is here.

I let it take me.

And as the lightning splits the sky, I finally understand.

This place—this cursed, changeless place—was never some distant land. There were never cliffs, or seas, or skies swollen with the promise of ruin.

This place is me. It always was.

And maybe, just maybe, the storm was never meant to destroy me.

Maybe it was meant to remind me that destruction and redemption are not opposites. They are the same. Two halves of a whole, circling each other like predators in the dark, waiting for the moment when one will consume the other. Perhaps that moment never comes. Perhaps they simply exist in a constant state of hunger, tearing me apart only to stitch me back together with the same jagged hands.

The wind rages, the rain pounds against my skin, but I do not fall. I let the cold seep into my bones, let the storm sink its teeth into me. It howls, demanding submission, demanding surrender, but I do not give it what it wants. Instead, I tilt my head back, part my lips, and breathe it in. The chaos, the violence, the raw and unrelenting force—it fills my lungs like fire, and for the first time in a long time, I feel something close to alive.

I step forward, deeper into the storm, letting it peel me down to nothing. Letting it rip through the filth and the rot and the pieces of me that were never mine to begin with. The world blurs, thunder rattles my ribs, and I laugh—a raw, fractured sound swallowed by the night. Because maybe this is what I was always meant to be. Not whole. Not saved. Just a body in the storm, unraveling until there is nothing left.

I walk until the ground no longer crumbles beneath my feet, until the howling fades into a whisper, until the sky begins to lighten—just barely, just enough to tease at something beyond this moment. But it is not light. It is a trick. A cruel mirage painted across the horizon by a world that does not care if I rise or if I rot.

I want to believe I will find peace. I want to believe there is a place where the screaming stops. But every path I have taken has only led me back here, to this same storm, to this same desolation.

My sins do not wash away with the rain. My ghosts do not retreat at the promise of dawn. They stay. They linger. They whisper. They remind me that I do not deserve to be free.

I keep walking, not toward salvation, but because there is nothing else to do. Hope is a thing for men who have earned it, and I have long since spent my right to it.

Perhaps I will wander forever. Perhaps the storm is all there ever was, and all there will ever be.

The wind screams, and I scream with it.

No one answers.