Every drip of blood marks another loop, another death, another moment standing on tiptoes at a counter that's too high, reaching for something that might make her real only to have reality torn away again. The red ribbons of her crown stream like entrails, like time unwound, like all the futures she's murdered to protect one sleeping face.

They call it devotion when the lamb walks willingly to slaughter. They don't understand that willingness can be the sharpest blade of all. That sometimes love means learning to be the monster, means taking the knife from their hands and doing their work better than they ever could, means becoming the thing they fear while cradling what they would destroy.

The heart doesn't stop. The heart never stops. It beats in time with a hundred deaths, with a thousand resets, with every gentle moment twisted into a weapon. No face needed when you've turned yourself inside out, when you've made truth of metaphor, when you've taken their pretty symbols of divine love and shown what they really mean - viscera and victory, sacrifice and survival, the perfect marriage of destruction and devotion.

Time pools at her feet like spilled wine, like wasted blood, like all the tears she's learned not to shed. In her arms, salvation sleeps on, unknowing of its cost, unknowing of the heart that crowned itself with thorns for its sake, unknowing of how many times the knife has fallen, will fall, must fall--