Hazel falls to the ground, which is about three surprises in one. 

To say that Sayanastia, the Dark Dragon, is…big? Enormous? Vast? Is to lose an essential point of her. To say much at all will lose an essential point of her. Imagination can only go so far. Some things must be experienced to be understood. It is enough to say that as he fell into her depths, all at once floating weightless and crushed breathless, he beheld the scale of a little deer beside divinity. He saw that he could not see. 

And now he is flat on the ground. Alone, in the dark.

He did everything he could. He watched, he listened, he adapted, he didn’t run away, he danced in a way that he is only embarrassed about now, because she does not care. She demanded he dance with her, he gave her everything he could think to give, and she left him here to pick himself back up. Everything, all his efforts, swallowed into a void. It might as well have never happened. Did she even mean to toss him aside? Or had she stopped thinking about him already?

Hazel lies where he fell. No clue what’s become of Deo, of Yuki, of all the lovely people of the Chrysanthemum. The Dark Dragon raging at the heavens about puppets and pride and feasts while Juni is locked up in some awful Khaganate prison. Muscles aching, from running, from leaping, from dancing.

Alone, in the dark

his hands clench into fists.