Worry.

People worry all the time.

There are bigger and lesser worries, some with reason and some without. There are worries so big that they crush a man’s Soul, make him unable to sleep, or, worse, to act. Paralyzing fears that everything will go bad. Everything, not even a single tiny bit of success.

Some people saw the world in that optic, in such a dark way that death was a relief, a pure, uncontaminated rest. And it came easy in the new world; it could be you ‘wandering’ too close to a Demonic Beast or maybe eating the ‘wrong’ Alchemical concoction.

Some people were good with worry, though. they transformed it into action, into powerful action. They managed to make something out of the worst, take the unshaped fear, and turn it into a weapon. Anxiety became, for them, just another iron in the fire, another thing to work on.

Some worried so much because, well, it’s natural to worry, and you can easily spiral out of control, even when you do everything in your head. Some, instead, worried a lot because the very future of humanity rested on their shoulders.

And even if Jacob had gotten used to being judged by others, he was still the harshest person to himself. He would berate himself for stupid errors, for mistakes that might have cost people their lives. He would blame himself for not thinking hard enough, not attacking fast enough, not being great enough.

And for all it made him the person who had acted swiftly and ended up the Charybdes and, possibly, saved the other towns from the roaming Demonic Bloody wolves, he was still… heavy.

It was a feeling in his guts, a very precise one. On the lower part of his abdomen, it was the heaviness of the weirdest kind, as if something was sitting on him. He had mostly just learned how to deal with it. There wasn’t anything else he could do with that. Jacob would sometimes forget that he had it, that some part of him was still afraid, that some part of him wanted to curl up under the blankets as he had done in his previous life.

He felt powerless and angry in those moments. He would calm a second later, as if nothing had disturbed him. But, for that second, he would be a human torch of anger and resentment, the most bitter person on Earth.

Jacob, to put it simply, feared falling behind.

He had so many eyes on him, so many people who, consciously or not, counted on him. Even Epagogia: whenever she looked at him, she was envisioning the grand hero he had become in his past life, a person who didn’t exist anymore.

And it was hard on him, so, so hard.

People were not made to bear all this stress. They were made so that they let them forget of it most of the time; they would deal with it once the executioner came knocking on their door. So you might as well enjoy the time before you get felled, right?

Jacob wasn’t enjoying anything at this moment in time.

He was building a new future for humanity, a grand one. They would chase the Dragons and slay them, one by one, even the biggest, worst, and most terrifying Dragon.

But why were the others given a better talent than him? Why did he have to struggle so much to get stronger when it came so easier to all the others? Epagogia had come back with her memories and a better talent. Why couldn’t it be the same for him?

What was in it for him? Why was this meant to be so hard?

Jacob took a long puff and looked up from the map that he had stopped analyzing ten minutes ago to ruminate about his life.

There was a lot to unpack, to analyze, to think over, and ponder.

So, so, so many things.

He looked outside the window; it was dark.

It was dark, and he was a bit lost. Not too much, mind you. He knew where he was going, he knew which steps to take. But, he just felt… a block. He felt like the heaviness in his guts would get heavier, that it would tilt him over and make him fall. And would he get up once again?

“Humans were never made to be alone, Jake,” he heard Juliet's voice. She opened the door and stepped into the room he was using as an office.

“I—” Jacob knew through the Ancestral Bond that she was here to keep him a little company, that she felt what he had been thinking.

“People go crazy when they are alone. Even the strongest, greatest, last warrior of humanity needs some rest and some people to rely upon.”

“I do rely on you and the others,” Jacob said.

“You delegate a lot. But in your heart, you are alone. You feel like everyone could die any moment, and that thought keeps you standing; it’s really what made you survive the extinction of your own race. And remember, these are your thoughts, not my assumptions,” Juliet gave him a sad look, “but if you can’t rely on others for real, if you can’t tell yourself ‘I can’t lose this person, I can’t lose this person for any reason in the world’, you can’t really live, can you? But, again, I’m just telling you what I’m feeling. These emotions are beyond me, to be honest.”

Jacob looked at Juliet and silently thanked her for her presence even before answering. There was something when she entered the room, a comfort he had never felt before, all thanks to their bond. The fact that she understood what he had to struggle with made everything easier just by itself.

“If I tell myself that, the next thing you know, I’ll be telling myself that I can lose battles, that I can lose people, even if I could save them, that I can be weak sometimes, that I don’t need to be the strongest and slay the monsters on the front lines.”

“I think that’s exactly what you need to be, Jake, to be mortal, to be fallible. You are not a hero. Frederick tried something heroic, and he died like an idiot. You are smarter, maybe, or just more self-conscious; but it only means that you will die like an idiot, all the same, just a bit later.”

Jacob looked at the girl—no, the woman who stood in front of him slowly nodded. Even if he thought of it as inappropriate, he knew where to start.

“I really cannot lose you, Juliet. I think I would go crazy.”

He didn’t need to elaborate on the why thanks to the Ancestral Bond.

“I think I would go crazy too, Jake,” she smiled at him, and that was all he needed to go on for another night.