Bryan's Arc

Chapter 4 of 21

Bryan worked past one in the morning, the shoulder pad drying under his lamp. He needed a break for his eyes. He opened the Discord server he'd been part of for years, scrolling past the usual painting threads. Then he saw it. A channel he'd never noticed before, tucked under the finalist tags. The name made his stomach drop. He hovered the cursor over it, hand still smelling like thinned red paint, and clicked. The channel was finalists only, and someone had pinned an image at the top. It showed a green gorgon kneeling before Sanguinius, spilled beans and soup at their feet. Beneath it, the thread tore the piece apart. Judges don't reward clean. They reward risk. One finalist wrote that safe red armor never places. Another said the winning models always look like they're bleeding light, not painted with it. Bryan read every post twice. He closed the laptop, picked up his brush, and scraped the careful highlights off the shoulder pad. He'd been painting to not lose. Starting now, he was painting to win. He stared at the stripped pad. The clean blends he'd been proud of were gone. His hand shook a little as he loaded the brush with the brightest red he had. He pushed it onto the armor harder than he ever had before, letting the pigment pool in the recesses like something wet and burning. It looked wrong. It looked alive. He kept going. By two in the morning, the shoulder pad held a glow he had never managed before. It was raw and uneven, more wound than highlight. But it pulled the eye the way the pinned image had pulled his. He set the brush down and saw it clearly. The clean painter he used to be was finished. Whatever came next would be louder, riskier, and harder to hide behind.