Woke up in a cold sweat again. The dreams aren't of the mines anymore—they're worse. It's me, standing in the guild hall, surrounded by everyone I've ever fought alongside, and I'm trying to cast a simple flame and nothing comes out. My hands are empty. My magic is just... gone. And they're all laughing. Not at me. At the idea that I ever thought I was strong.

Spent the day testing it. Burnt a hole through my favorite blanket. Set the kitchen table on fire. Nearly lit the bathwater boiling when I slipped and panicked. The power's still there. It's fucking there.

But so is the fear. The fear that one day, it won't be. That everything I am—the fire, the will, the fucking defiance—is just a fluke. A temporary spark before the dark swallows me back up.

Sometimes the only thing that shuts the fear up is feeling so completely owned I can't think. Pinned down, a hand around my throat, a cock buried so deep in my ass it feels like it's reaching my soul. In those moments, I don't have to be strong. I can just be... full. Used. Wanted for the raw, messy need of it. To have someone look at my terror and not flinch, just fuck it out of me until the only thing I'm scared of is how much I never want them to stop.

Pathetic, right? An A-rank adventurer who melts dungeon doors for a living, brought to his knees by a nightmare and the desperate need to be fucked stupid until he forgets his own name.