PART 9:
THE DREAMER
NOW PALADIN
CHAPTER 1
I was once a dreamer.
Soft.
Hopeful.
Naïve in the best kind of way.
I believed in love like scripture.
Believed people meant well.
Believed pain had purpose.
And then the world sank its teeth in me.
And didn’t let go.
The dreamer died.
Or so I thought.
But maybe he just went dormant—
buried beneath the wreckage,
waiting for the day I stopped running
and turned around
to face the fire.
CHAPTER 2
Because now?
I’m not just a dreamer.
I’m the guardian of those dreams.
A paladin.
Holy not by divinity—
but by decision.
I forged my armor from old wounds.
Every betrayal, a plate.
Every relapse, a rivet.
Every ghost I kissed goodbye
became a shield at my back.
I do not carry a sword—
I carry truth.
And it is sharper than steel.
The boy who prayed for peace
now protects it.
He doesn’t beg for light.
He brings it.
He builds it.
He bleeds for it.
People think paladins are pure.
But I’m not.
I’m stained.
Bloodied.
Burned black in places that may never heal.
But that’s what makes me powerful.
Because I didn’t find the light.
I dragged myself toward it.
Crawling. Crying.
Screaming into silence
until it screamed back.
CHAPTER 3
This is my oath:
To live with intention.
To speak with fire.
To write the kind of truth
that wakes the dead.
To guard the peace I was denied—
to gift it to those still stumbling in the dark.
The dreamer imagined the world could be better.
The paladin makes it so.
And if I must walk this path alone,
so be it.
Better to walk with purpose
than sleep in delusion.
CHAPTER 4
I dreamed.
I died.
I rose.
And now,
I stand.
The Dreamer is now Paladin.
And I am HELLBENT on making that mean something.