A Torch Against the Night

So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.

Your emotions make you human. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don't lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.

Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.

But you, Helene Aquilla, are no swift-burning spark. You are a torch against the night - if you dare to let yourself burn.

It takes only a split second for life to go horribly wrong. To fix the mess, I need a thousand things to go right. The distance from one bit of luck to the next feels as great as the distance across oceans. But, I decide in this moment, I will bridge that distance, again and again, until I win. I will not fail.

Perhaps I have become so accustomed to the burden of secrets that I do not notice their weight until I am free of it.

Don't lock yourself away from those who care about you because you think you'll hurt them or they'll hurt you. What point is there in being human if you don't let yourself feel anything?

Fools pay attention to words in a fight. Warriors take advantage of them.

Elias and Laia are each other’s countermelodies. I am just a dissonant note.

Don't look so worried. Most successful missions are just a series of barely averted disasters.

Laia is curled in a ball on the other, one hand on her armlet, fast asleep. "You are my temple", I murmur as I knee beside her. "You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release."- Elias

Children are born to break their mothers’ hearts, my boy.

True suffering lies in the expectation of pain as much as in the pain itself.

Perhaps grief is like battle: After experiencing enough of it, your body’s instincts take over. When you see it closing in like a Martial death squad, you harden your insides. You prepare for the agony of a shredded heart. And when it hits, it hurts, but not as badly, because you have locked away your weakness, and all that’s left is anger and strength.

The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.

Failure doesn’t define you. It’s what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.

So you've made a few bad decisions. So have I. So has Elias. So has everyone attempting to do something difficult. That doesn't mean that you give up, you fool. Do you understand?

She chuckles again. “Because sane plans never work, girl,” she says. “Only the mad ones do.

Mercy is weakness. Offer it to your enemies and you might as well fall upon your own sword.

Secrets are a snake’s way of doing business.” “And snakes survive,

Veturius is a Mask like the rest of us, yes. Bold, brave, strong, swift. But those were afterthoughts for him. Elias sees people as they should be, not as they are. He laughs at himself. He gives of himself - in everything he does. [...] He's the things that I can't be. He's good.

You fool, Helene. When you love, there is always more pain.

So long as you fight in the darkness, you stand in the light.

Family is worth dying for, killing for. Fighting for them is all that keeps us going when everything else is gone.

You are my priest. You are my prayer. You are my release.

I thought you told me you loved stories Have you ever heard a story of an adventurer with a sane plan?" "Well... no." "And why do you think that is?" I am at loss. "Because... ah, because—" She chuckles again. "Because sane plans never work girl," she says. "Only the mad ones do.

If your sins were blood, child, you would drown in a river of your own making.