It does not come with a warning. It comes slowly ... coiling around the parts of you that are already tired. Around the habits you told yourself were harmless. Around the voice in your head that says you are not enough, that it is too late, that men like you do not make it out. It tightens when you are distracted. It tightens when you are weak. And if you let it, it finishes the job quietly, in the dark, while the world moves on without you.
The gold is not an accident. What tries to destroy a man rarely looks like destruction. It looks like comfort. Like relief. Like something you deserve.
But the man on this shirt did not drop the weapon. He is coiled. He is constricted. He is in the worst of it ... and his arm is still raised.
That is who this is for... The man still in the fight with what is trying to kill him. Not the man who has won. The man who has refused to lose.
The serpent must be crushed. And you already know that. That is why you are still here.
