Mr Tenna [9]

The cold.
Not the bite of wind against skin, nor the sting of frost upon flesh. This cold lived deeper—in thought, in memory, in the marrow of a fading will. It was the cold of indifference, of a world that no longer looked your way.

The battle was over. In the snow outside the ruined studio, the great body lay broken—a ruin of steel, a monument already forgotten. The snow didn’t cradle Tenna, didn’t offer the mercy of softness—only the still weight of a burial shroud. Smoke bled from his wounds, curling upward like a soul abandoning its shell. Around his shattered TV-head, the fragments of his once-bright screen lay scattered like the teeth of some fallen beast.

His disintegration hadn't come suddenly. First the workers left, vanishing like rats from a sinking ship. Mike. He had promised to stay. “Always” is a dangerous word; it breaks not with a shout, but with a pause. When Mike left, the cold deepened. And it wasn’t the first betrayal. Long before, in a warm little living room, he had known it too…

He remembered being the sun of that home, gathering people in the glow of his screen. The Hollidays. The Dreemurrs. Families left like seasons passing. The divorce was the worst—a winter that settled inside the walls, each argument sinking into him as weight. Eventually, those who remained stopped looking at him entirely. He became furniture. A relic in the corner.

Then came the contestants—Kris, Susie, Ralsei, small sparks in endless darkness. They gave Tenna hope for a new home and purpose. He dared to believe again. His meter filled in bright, rainbow colors.

The Roaring Knight’s blow shattered it. Arms gone, future stolen, the crash echoing through a lifeless studio. His fractured screen flickered one last image: no connection. Colors dulled, pixel by pixel, retreating from him.

“S-so… cold… Hurts-s…” - he whispered, static tears freezing on his screen.

The darkness pulled. He knew there was no turning back—only accepting it, not as an enemy, but as an end.