Brulee Gren: The Wrong One Left Sitting

They didn’t pick the right Gren.

I know that now.

Mousse should’ve been the one to rise.

Rumbaba had the grit and the mind.

Mango could make the world weep and want to help.

Hell, even Streusel could’ve browbeat death into retreat if you gave him two minutes and a podium.

But not me.

I was the wrong Gren. And I didn’t wake up. I got dragged back.

When I hit the stones—face-first, ribs shattered, breath gone—the first vial on my belt cracked beneath

me like a snapped tooth. I didn’t even hear it at first. Just felt it: a heat that wasn't heat, a pulse through

fabric, dragging like spilled oil into the wound that had been my stomach. My shirt wicked it in, like it

was hungry.

Then came the screaming.

Not out loud. The vocal cords hadn’t come back yet. No, the screaming was under everything. In the

nerves. In the marrow. The potion didn’t heal so much as remember what I was supposed to be and force

me to become it again.

It filled in muscle like mortar poured into split rock.

Ligaments yanked tight like pulled bowstrings.

Tendons threaded themselves through torn meat with all the grace of a fishhook in an open eye.

And I felt every. Godsdamn. Stitch.

I think I blacked out.

But time in this place isn’t time. Seconds thickened like honey. Minutes collapsed into themselves like

spoiled lungs. I might’ve been dead a heartbeat. I might’ve been alive for days.

The second vial cracked under my hip. Another slow spill, another bloom of burning in my back, sinking

into bruised kidneys and splintered vertebrae. I twitched. Spasmed. Felt things knit, jagged and wrong.

Felt ribs pull inward, scraping each other like ill-fitted gears. Felt my jaw unlock and teeth grind—not

from fury, but from bone memory slamming back into place.

Somewhere far away, I laughed. A breathless, cracked sound. The kind you give when you know you’re

the punchline.

Eight potions. I counted each like a miser counts sins.

One for the gut. One for the back. One for the shattered wrist. One for the missing fingers. One for the rib

that had skewered my lung. One for the chunk taken out of my thigh. One for the neck wound I hadn’t

remembered getting. One for the heart—because apparently, the gods needed to twist the knife and start it

last.

There was no reason for this, to be forced back to being like a vase being poorly glued. I never asked for

the mantle, the legacy, or the hammer. I was supposed to be the safe one. The spare. The one who walked

into the Feywild and pissed off Mab without knowing it, because she’d taken the memories with her rules

after I just finished reading them. Their idea of a joke—make him forget, then punish him for not

remembering.

And now here I was again.

Surviving by accident.

Being rebuilt, by force.

Somewhere around the seventh potion, I started keeping track in a ledger in my head—petty, bitter math

scratched across my skull:

Potions spent: 7.

Blood still owed to me: ∞.

Gratitude given: 0.

Favors owed: None.

Gods to thank: Absolutely. Fucking. Not.

Glass crunched beneath his palm as he crawled, hand half-knitted to wrist. He didn’t crawl toward safety.

He crawled toward the hammer. Toward the inheritance. Toward the last thing anyone had wanted him to

hold.

The city around him stank of meat and magic rot. Ash clung to his tongue. Blood had turned the cobbles

to slick mirror. Somewhere, a raven picked at the remains of nobility.

As he wrapped trembling fingers around the hammer’s haft, he didn’t rise in triumph. He dragged it into

his lap like a limb he’d forgotten how to use. The weight settled into his bones. A constant. A curse.

And in that moment—slumped against a shattered wall, body half-made, legacy unwanted—he made one

vow. Whispered it not to gods, not to ghosts. Just to the cracks in the stone.

A line drawn in ash.

Not fate. Not Mab. Not the Hunt. Not legacy. Not even Death.

You don’t get me for free. No one does.