Elarith Vale did not sleep.
It waited.
Carved into the ribs of a forgotten mountain, shrouded by forests too ancient for maps and too quiet for birds, the citadel of the Eclipse Elite loomed like a wound stitched into the world's underbelly. Its towers stretched crookedly toward a starless sky, dark stone blackened with centuries of smoke and sorrow. Ivy bled from the cracks like old veins. Lanterns burned blue, not gold, casting cold glimmers onto walls that had heard too many secrets.
A door opened.
The silence held its breath.
Footsteps—measured, deliberate—echoed against the marble floor of the inner hall. Cloaks dragged like spilled ink behind them.
Killian Vesper stepped first into the chamber, his eyes unblinking beneath the low candlelight. Elysian followed in perfect silence, a ghost of a man, pale and unreadable, his silver hair untouched by the wind that howled beyond the mountain's throat.
The hall before them was vast. Pillars rose like petrified giants into shadow. A single throne sat at its heart—not gilded, not bejeweled, but carved from obsidian so deep it reflected no light at all. Its shape was not regal. It was raw. It had no back, only a jagged crest behind it, as though its master preferred the feeling of nothing pressing against him.
And upon it—
He sat.
Motionless.
Draped in layered black, his face veiled by a hood of raven-feather silk, only his mouth visible—thin, unsmiling. The Master of the Eclipse Elite had many names. None spoken. None needed.
Only his silence had a voice.
Killian bowed first, slow and low. Elysian followed like a shadow folding upon itself.
"Master," Killian said, voice crisp as a blade drawn through frost.
No reply came.
Not yet.
Killian lifted his gaze. "We followed them to Blackwood. We watched. We listened. He stayed longer than he should have. He responded to the boy more deeply than predicted."
A faint breath.
The Master did not move. But the veil of silence trembled, as if the stones themselves leaned in to hear.
"His actions betray his condition," Elysian added. "He moves without memory, but not without feeling."
At that, the Master's hand stirred.
Just the smallest motion—one finger brushing the throne's edge.
"And the wound?" the voice came at last.
Soft. Cold. Deeper than bone. The kind of voice that could fracture glass without lifting above a whisper.
Killian's mouth curled. "Still bleeding."
"He does not know why he bleeds," Elysian murmured, "but the blood remembers."
A long pause.
Then the Master sat straighter—not by much, but enough to shift the room's air. "So the lion has forgotten his claws. And yet... he paces."
Killian's gaze darkened. "More than that. He lingers at ghosts. At portraits. At the boy's bedside."
Another pause.
Then—
"Interesting," the Master said.
That word did not echo.
It rooted.
It took up residence in the silence like mold blooming in stone.
Killian's eyes flickered. "Should we strike now?"
"No." The voice was still calm, but colder now. "Let the rot deepen. Let the ache become unbearable. There is a moment when memory becomes poison. When love turns to madness."
The Master stood.
The veil of his cloak spilled across the steps like black oil over water.
"When he reaches that moment…" The voice dropped low—no louder than a closing tomb.
"…bring him to me."
Killian inclined his head. "As you command."
"Leave the boy untouched for now," the Master added. "Let him be the mirror. The wound needs reflection to see itself."
Elysian nodded once. "He'll see it. Sooner than later."
The Master returned to his throne like smoke falling back into a bottle.
"Then go," he whispered. "And watch the dream turn to fire."
The chamber dimmed. The lanterns guttered low.
And Killian Vesper turned once more toward the shadowed hall—his cloak whispering across the marble as he vanished into the dark with his companion behind him.
Above them, the mountain groaned in its sleep.
And far away…
within a manor draped in moonlight and memory,
August stirred beneath warm blankets
while Elias still has the thoughts of the dreamt of a hand on his wrist,
and a woman who smiled like she already knew how this would end.
Beneath the hush of midnight and the weight of fevered sleep, August dreamt again.
The chamber around him faded like ink dropped into water—slow, swirling, dissolving into memory's tender mirage. The fire in the hearth became a flicker of distant sun. The bed beneath him turned to grass kissed by dew. The ceiling melted into an endless sky, pale and golden as a half-forgotten lullaby.
And there—
They stood.
At the edge of the meadow.
Far beyond reach, framed in the hush of light, like figures stitched into the hem of a dying summer. His mother, Annalise—her golden hair cascading like spun sunlight, her amber-brown eyes wide and warm, watching him the way only a mother could. Not with pity. Not with apology. But with love, untamed and unburied.
And beside her—
Raden Everheart.
His tall frame still, dignified. The silver of his hair catching the light just as August's did now. And those eyes—those same smoke-grey eyes—mirroring August's gaze across the distance. A silent bridge of blood and bone and sorrow.
They smiled.
Both of them.
As if they had never died.
As if they'd never left him in that manor, that night, with blood on the walls and silence in his throat. As if this moment, here, now—was the one that had always waited to find him again.
August's breath caught.
He took a step forward.
Then another.
The grass beneath his bare feet was soft, but the distance between them remained cruel. His heart pounded like wings against a cage. He wanted to call out. To scream their names. But his throat held no voice. Only aching silence.
Still—they smiled.
They did not move. Did not beckon.
They simply were.
As though their presence alone might stitch the broken edges of him back together.
August's hand rose—fingers trembling, reaching toward the golden light.
"Wait…"
His lips formed the word, but the wind stole it.
He walked faster now. Then ran.
The world blurred around him—light bending, grass parting, time unraveling like threads pulled from an old tapestry. His parents remained where they were, unmoving, as though carved from the dream itself.
And then—
as he drew close—
as his fingers stretched within breath's reach of her gown—
They vanished.
Like dust in a shaft of sunlight.
Like names no longer spoken.
Like warmth leaving the bones.
The light collapsed into shadow.
The meadow split like torn canvas.
And August was left alone—reaching for air that would never embrace him.
The sky darkened to ash. Wind swept through the emptiness, cold and biting. His chest tightened, ribs pulling taut around a heart that beat too loudly for this silence.
He fell to his knees.
The ground beneath him no longer grass—but stone. Cold, cracked stone.
The warmth was gone. The color. The faces. The memory.
Only the ache remained.
Only the echo of what might have been, had fate been kinder and the world less cruel.
And in that hollow where the light had once touched him, August whispered to no one—
"I would've followed you."
But dreams did not answer.
And neither did the dead.
The silence in the dream thickened—
Not empty now, but waiting.
August knelt alone upon the cold stone, his hands limp at his sides, breath shallow in a world that no longer remembered color. The space where his parents had stood shimmered faintly, as if time grieved the loss as much as he did.
And then—
a hand touched his shoulder.
Soft.
Steady.
Weighted not with comfort, but with sorrow.
August turned.
Slowly.
And there—standing behind him—
was her.
His breath caught.
It was his mother.
And yet—not.
The golden curls remained, but dulled somehow. Her amber-brown eyes no longer carried the warmth of lullabies or the calm wisdom of maternal light. They were rimmed with something heavier now—grief. Ancient, bruised grief. The kind of sorrow that did not weep but endured. Her gown was different too—no longer ivory lace, but something darker, dusk-colored, veiled like mourning.
This was not Annalise as he remembered her.
This was Maralise as something else.
And yet still, she looked at him—looked through him—like a woman bearing secrets too long held in her bones.
August tried to lift his hand.
To reach her.
To touch the hand upon his shoulder and know if it was real.
But before he could—
A shift.
Behind her…
a figure.
Small. Quiet. Barefoot.
A little boy had emerged from the shadows behind the woman. Not quite toddler, not quite child. Wrapped in pale sleepwear, his outline flickered like a reflection cast in unsteady water. His face—
August blinked.
Blurred.
No matter how hard he tried to focus, the boy's features refused to sharpen. A ghost wearing skin too soft to hold shape. But he was real. His presence undeniable. Familiar, even.
Maralise—if it was her—turned to the child.
Then, wordlessly, she reached down and took the boy's hand.
And gently placed it into August's.
Their fingers brushed.
The boy's hand was warm. Delicate. Trusting.
And before August could speak—
Before he could even breathe—
Annalise vanished.
Gone like breath from a mirror.
Gone like the sun when clouds swallow it whole.
August's head snapped around.
The boy was still there—his hand resting in August's palm.
But his face… his face…
Still blurred.
Still unknown.
Still known.
Then—
He vanished too.
August was left alone once more. The silence now rang louder than any scream. He stumbled backward, breath snagging in his throat, and clutched his head in both hands. The stone beneath him spun. His ears rang. His chest heaved.
None of it made sense.
Not the woman.
Not the boy.
Not the feeling rising in his throat like a memory with no name.
He shook—violently.
In the waking world, his body shivered beneath fever-heavy blankets. His fingers curled into the linen. His breath hitched like the ghost of a sob caught too long beneath his ribs.
The dream clung to him like cobwebs—fine and clinging and cruel.
He whispered into the darkness, though no one heard:
"What are you trying to show me?"
But the night did not answer.
Only the fire cracked softly in the hearth.
And outside, far beyond the safety of the manor walls, the wind began to howl again.
The darkness held him.
Not gently.
Not cruelly.
But with the detached patience of a shadow that had grown used to watching men break.
August gasped awake.
The chamber was still. No light but the faint orange flicker of the hearth. No sound but the soft rustle of linen as he sat upright, breath trembling, hand clutched to his chest as if to quiet the storm beneath his ribs.
His skin was damp with sweat. His hair clung to his temples. The room swam for a moment—half-dream, half-memory—as though the veil between realms had not yet sealed.
And still… the ache remained.
Still… her eyes.
August pressed the heel of his palm to his sternum, as if it might still the painful rhythm that surged beneath.
"Why…" he breathed, voice barely more than wind over glass.
His gaze flicked toward the fire, but it gave him no warmth. Only flickering shadows that danced like lost souls across the walls.
He swallowed.
And asked the dark:
"Why does she always come to me in sorrow?"
The question was ragged. Not angry. Not demanding. But aching—drawn from somewhere deep and unspoken. A child's voice wrapped in a man's restraint.
"She smiles from afar… but up close…" His throat tightened. "She looks as though she's mourning."
The silence answered only with stillness.
As always.
He looked to the side of the bed, but no one was there. Not Elias. Not Giles. Only the hush of linen and stone and night.
His hands trembled slightly as he lowered them to his lap, veins pale against pale skin.
"I remember her laughing…" he whispered, more to the fire than to himself. "In the garden. Beneath the apple trees. She would spin until her curls caught the sun…"
His voice cracked like old parchment.
"But now she looks at me like I've done something wrong."
"Because She Is Not my mother, She want's me to protect her child she is my aunt
His gaze dropped.
But It still look Like "I failed her."
The wind outside scratched faintly against the pane, like fingernails across old glass.
He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Not for warmth—but as if hiding might shield him from memory itself.
For a long while, he simply sat there—caught between the world that had passed and the one that remained, his breath shallow, his eyes reflecting flames that did not reach him.
And in the hollow of that hour, a single thought nestled cold in his chest:
Even in dreams… she does not stay.