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Trigger and Content Warning:
This story contains intense and sensitive themes, which may be distressing to some readers. The following content warnings are provided:
- Self-harm – The narrative includes depictions of self-harm, both in thought and action, which may be deeply disturbing.
- Suicidal ideation – The story explores thoughts of death and suicide, as well as the character’s emotional and mental struggle with their existence.
- Child abuse – There are implied references to psychological and emotional abuse by a caregiver, including neglect, verbal abuse, and manipulation.
- Mental health issues – Themes of depression, self-loathing, and existential despair are central to the story.
- Violence – The presence of violence is expressed through the internal conflict and physical harm depicted.
- Emotional trauma – The character experiences deep emotional and psychological trauma, which is conveyed through their inner turmoil and distressing reflections.
- Guilt and self-blame – The character grapples with overwhelming guilt, feelings of failure, and self-blame, which contribute to their mental anguish.
- Isolation and abandonment – The story touches on feelings of loneliness, alienation, and abandonment, particularly by familial figures.
This narrative is emotionally heavy and may trigger distressing thoughts or feelings for those who have experienced similar situations. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
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Status: Draft #1
Last Edited: November 26, 2024
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The cold edge glimmers in the dim light, a serpent’s tongue poised to strike. Deon Fonias, the weakest thread in the great tapestry of eternity, grips the blade with trembling hands. Small, fragile, trembling hands. Two years old but aged far beyond her fleeting breaths, her soul is a chasm—black, endless, suffocating.
Mama says I must become more.
Stronger. Better.
A disappointment doesn’t belong among stars.
The words thrum in her skull like a pulse, each beat carving fissures into her sanity. Love. She craves it like dying lungs beg for air. But her mother’s “love” is a whip that leaves no scars for others to see—only the deep, festering wounds beneath her skin. Her very existence is an affront. Her tiny heart, so stubborn in its insistence on beating, feels like a betrayal to everyone she has failed.
A blade. Cold steel. A surgeon’s precision to cut away the dead weight—her.
Deon traces her pale wrist with the tip of the knife, watching the thin, fragile skin stretch and dip under its touch. It would be quick, she thinks. Scientific. Efficient. No grand mess, no lasting inconvenience. Just a quiet exit for the black sheep of the Methuselah line.
But her mind won’t stop screaming.
She sees herself through her mother’s eyes: a broken, whining machine. Not good enough. Never enough. Every imagined sneer pierces deeper than any blade could. The ghost of her mother’s voice whispers over her shoulder.
“I only hurt you to make you better. You’ll thank me one day, my daughter.”
Deon believes her. Of course, she believes her. She has to. If her mother’s cruelty isn’t love, what else could it be? Her heart won’t accept an answer darker than her bedroom at midnight.
And still, she craves.
She craves arms that will never hold her. A voice that will never soothe her. Laughter that will never spill from her lips. She wants to be like the children in the stories, the ones with soft blankets and softer words. She wants to matter.
But love is a currency she cannot afford, and hope is a knife’s edge that cuts deeper the longer she clings to it.
The blade gleams brighter as her grip steadies. Her pulse pounds in her ears, her breaths shallow and uneven.
“What if this is the most I can ever be?” she wonders.
“What if Mother would smile if I was gone?”
Her thoughts are thick, sticky as tar, pulling her down into the depths of herself. The weight of the knife is nothing compared to the weight of her failures. Her selective silence feels like a curse now, her muted voice unable to cry for the love she so desperately needs.
The first press of the blade draws a crimson thread. Thin, bright, alive. She stares at it, mesmerized. Science speaks of surface tension and viscosity, but all Deon sees is proof that something inside her is still warm. Still alive.
Why does it hurt? Why does it sting so beautifully?
Her mind spirals faster now.
Do it.
Stop the noise.
Stop the disappointment.
Her love for her mother is a chain, dragging her back into memories of harsh words, colder gazes, and the haunting promise of a better tomorrow. A tomorrow that never comes. But even as her body shakes with sobs she can’t voice, her love doesn’t shatter.
She blames herself. Always herself.
If only she’d been better.
Smarter.
Stronger.
Worthy.
Her tiny body folds in on itself as she hugs her knees, knife still pressed to her flesh. The taste of iron fills her nose, and the scent is oddly comforting—like metal bars on a cage she’s always known. She weeps without sound, her silent sobs trembling through her small frame.
This is the end. Isn’t it?
Death waits just beyond the threshold, patient and inviting, its shadow curling around her like a blanket. But still, Deon hesitates. Somewhere, in the hollow echo of her despair, she wonders:
“If I go now, will Mother even notice?”
The thought twists her heart more than the blade ever could.
For the first time in a long time, she pulls the knife away, her trembling fingers releasing their hold. She stares at her reflection in the blade—red-rimmed eyes, a face too young for the burdens it carries.
And for now, she sits in the quiet, her tears pooling on the floor.
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The blood pools beneath her like a dark sea, the slow, viscous rise of crimson liquid staining the pale floor, its warmth an eerie contrast to the ice that has overtaken her veins. The knife, once held with such fragile hope, lies discarded—a metal carcass waiting for its owner to follow.
Deon’s body trembles, every inch of her small form wracked with the agony of existence. Her head spins, her thoughts frayed and torn like cloth unraveling from the seams. The silence around her is deafening, crushing, yet within it, she hears the echo of her own soul screaming to be heard, to be loved. Her silent tears fall like raindrops, each one an unspoken confession, a desperate plea that the universe refuses to answer.
Mama…
The thought of her mother is a jagged shard lodged deep in her heart, a love so pure and painful that it twists her insides. She imagines her mother’s arms around her, warm and enveloping. But it’s a fantasy. A lie whispered in the dark corners of her mind to soothe the unbearable truth. Her mother doesn’t hug her, doesn’t kiss her forehead, doesn’t tell her that she’s loved. Instead, the cold, biting words slice through the air, each one cutting deeper, carving out the very pieces of herself that she thought she could cling to.
Is it too much to ask?
Deon presses her tiny hand to the floor, blood seeping between her fingers like a slow river of regret. Her chest tightens, breath catching in the way only a tortured soul can experience. A fractured mind. She curls into herself, shuddering with the weight of her guilt, the crushing suffocation of knowing that she can never be enough.
Her thoughts tumble, spiraling downward, spinning in a dizzying dance of self-doubt, self-loathing, and quiet desperation. She knows she’s a failure. The harshness of the truth beats against her skull, a relentless hammering that refuses to let her rest. She is too small, too weak, too much of a burden.
In the murky fog of her mind, she sees the image of a happy family—a mother smiling down at her child, hands cupping her face with a tenderness that no one has ever shown her. It’s all so simple in the books, in the stories they tell, where love is abundant, and happiness flows like a river. But those stories are lies, aren’t they? A cruel illusion of warmth and belonging. Because if they were true, she wouldn’t be lying here, alone, cold, and bleeding.
She is broken.
Deon knows it with every cell in her body. She is wrong. She is the flaw in the beautiful picture that could have been. Her existence is a crack in the porcelain, an imperfection that must be smoothed over or discarded. Her mother has other things to worry about. Better things. Other children who don’t break as easily. Other goals to chase. She’s only a weight. A stain. A child who doesn’t measure up.
Mama doesn’t need her.
If she were gone, it would be easier for Mama. It would be easier for everyone. They would be free of the burden of Deon, the black sheep who can’t do anything right. She could rest, they all could, without the shadow of her failure hanging over them. She would never have to hear Mama’s disappointed voice again. Never have to see the cold, dismissive look, the subtle sighs that scream louder than any words ever could.
Wouldn’t it be better this way?
The question lingers in the hollow space of her chest, a dagger twisting deeper with every passing thought. She thinks of her mother’s smile again—how it would stretch across her face when she was finally free of the weight Deon had become. How her siblings would flourish without her dragging them down. How the family would thrive without the crippled failure at the bottom of their feet.
It’s a sickening kind of love, isn’t it? The kind that sacrifices itself so the others can live. So that the others can be happy.
She just wants Mama to be happy.
Deon’s fingers twitch in the pool of blood, but it feels distant, as if her own body is no longer hers. She is a ghost, fading away in the silence, a memory of something that was never meant to be. Her eyes flutter closed, the pain lessening, as if her soul is trying to escape the weight of her body, trying to slip away before her mother can see how much she’s failed.
But the tears still fall. Silent, endless. She never wanted this.
Her thoughts flicker once more to her mother’s face. The longing is almost unbearable, a sharp, gnawing hunger inside her that tears at the edges of her mind. Maybe, just maybe, Mama will love her if she’s perfect. If she can disappear into the quiet, never to cause another tear, another frown, another sigh.
Perhaps in the absence of her, in the peace that will come with her quiet departure, her mother will finally be free to love.
And then, maybe, just maybe, Deon will have been worth something.
But the silence stretches on, thick and suffocating, and the world fades to darkness.
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The world spins, a blur of shapes and shadows. The blood pools deeper beneath her, staining the floor like a grotesque mockery of the innocence she once dreamed of. Her tiny, fragile body trembles with the weight of existence, every breath a rattle in her chest, as though life itself is trying to break free from the prison of her skin. But it is too late for that now. Too late for any escape.
In the fading light, Deon’s mind begins to race—faster, faster, spiraling into a suffocating black hole of lost hopes and dreams. She wants love. She wants to be loved. The image of a mother’s embrace, a father’s warmth, siblings who laugh together, who share their lives like the families in the books she read, plays before her eyes like a cruel puppet show. But it’s all false. A lie. A mask they wear for others, the fragile mask of a perfect life, but behind it there is nothing. Nothing.
She wants to scream. But no sound escapes her lips. She wants to tear the lies apart, but she is too weak, too small, too insignificant.
Why is it so easy for them? Why do they get to love, to laugh, to have happiness?
Why does the world give that to everyone except her?
She imagines a family who isn’t obsessed with power, with profit, with ambitions too vast to ever hold. A family that would see her—not as a weapon, not as a tool, not as a disappointment—but as a child. A small, fragile, trembling child who just wants someone to hold her, someone to whisper that everything will be okay, someone to let her rest in their arms. But that is nothing more than a fantasy, a picture she’s painted in the darkest corners of her mind, a hollow dream to fill the void that yawns so wide within her chest. It is all a lie.
Her eyes flicker shut for just a moment, and when they open again, it’s as though the weight of her life is pressing down on her harder than ever. Her body aches. Her bones creak. Her soul is dying.
What if this is all there is? she wonders. A life built of nothing but pain, a heart too small to ever fit into the world, hands too weak to grasp onto anything of worth. What if love never existed at all?
Her heart cracks under the strain of the thought, the sharpness of it cutting through her chest, a jagged edge that leaves nothing but a hollow echo in her veins. No. Love doesn’t exist. Not for her. Not for someone like her.
She was born to be the broken thing, the one who never quite fits, the one who is always a step behind, always a disappointment. The truth settles in her like a dark river flowing into her lungs, drowning her: Love is fake. It exists for others, for the people who can live up to the expectations, for the ones who are worth something. But for her? There is no love. There never was. It was just a figment of her imagination, a cruel mirage that she kept chasing until she could no longer breathe.
She is not worth it.
Her pulse slows, her vision dimming, the blood beneath her beginning to cool. The knife is still there, somewhere in the wreckage of her mind, waiting for her to return to it. She is tired. So tired.
Her body aches with exhaustion, each muscle crying out for rest. Her mind shudders, the weight of her thoughts pressing down like a lead blanket, suffocating her, and she wonders, Why do I keep breathing?
The answer is simple: because she cannot stop. The life that has been forced upon her is a nightmare she can’t wake from. It drags her, kicking and screaming, through every second of every day, telling her she is nothing. She is nothing. She will never be anything more than a disappointment, a stain on the family’s shining legacy.
And maybe, just maybe, if she’s gone, if she disappears into the abyss, they will finally be free.
Her family. Her mother. They won’t have to look at her anymore, won’t have to suffer the burden of her failure. They won’t have to listen to the whispers of her broken heart, or bear the weight of her silent, pleading eyes.
Her mother will be happy. Her siblings will be free. The world will be a better place without her.
Deon’s vision blurs, a single tear slipping down her cheek. She hopes her death will give them all the happiness they deserve. She hopes it will lift the burden, end the suffering that she has caused. She hopes that when she is gone, they will finally be able to smile.
The blood, once warm and thick, is now cold, congealing in a pool that will never be noticed. But her heart is still warm—so warm, burning with the last flicker of a dying dream.
She doesn’t matter. She never did.
And as her body begins to slip into the abyss, a final thought crosses her mind, one last whisper before the darkness takes her: Love doesn’t exist for her. But maybe, somewhere, it does for others. Maybe they can have what she was never meant to know.
Let them have that. Let them be happy.
She exhales, slow and deep. The last breath she’ll ever take.
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Before you start reading God’s Protagonist, make sure to read the following:
- Introducing God’s Protagonist: A Dark Fantasy Epic by Fang Dokja [General Info]
- The Purpose of “God’s Protagonist”
- Content and Trigger Warnings for God’s Protagonist
- Why God’s Protagonist is Rated Mature (23+)
- Comprehensive Content and Trigger Warnings for God’s Protagonist
- How God’s Protagonist Works: Major Arcs and Chapter Posting
- Coping with “God’s Protagonist”: Taking Care of Yourself as a Reader
𝐆𝐨𝐝'𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 