Once, in the waning whisper of time, family threads, woven with the warp of now, were welcomed; yet, now they languish, lost and lorn. No more shall I tread the silent, shadowed paths of the co-conspirator, akin to a spectral predator, a silent supplicant over destined doom, delighting in the demise of its quarry. In this ballet of the benighted, I’ve become but a mere murmur, muzzled in my own making, for melancholy, like a moonlit muse, murmurs for the meeting of kindred souls.

In our...