The grand dining room stretched like a chapel built for hunger — tall windows veiled in brocade, chandeliers blooming overhead with crystal light, and silverware that gleamed like tiny weapons laid for ceremony. Every detail whispered of wealth: from the mulberry jam poured like garnet blood to the figs dressed in honey and thyme. It was a feast carved from a painter's dream — yet the room felt curiously starved.
Elias sat in the long-backed velvet chair at the center of the long table, devouring the breakfast like a man returned from war. He tore into warm bread with impatient hands, letting the yolk of a poached egg spill like soft gold against his plate, biting through the sugared crust of roasted pears with the same quiet ferocity as a beast cloaked in manners.
Manners he no longer remembered having.
His hands remembered more than his mind did. They reached, unthinking, for a cup before it was even passed. They broke a scone the way they'd always done. They tore at sausage with a rhythm too precise to be new. But his face remained blank, his eyes flicking only now and then toward the far end of the table — and away again, as if unwilling to admit what they sought.
Across from him, the chair sat empty.
It was not an ordinary emptiness. No — it was the kind of absence that roared. That howled like wind through abandoned halls. The kind of emptiness that made the sound of silver on porcelain feel cruel.
A few maids moved about with gliding grace, not speaking unless spoken to, their movements folded in reverence. One filled his tea. Another retrieved a dropped napkin. Yet no one touched that empty chair, nor the untouched setting laid before it.
Someone had once sat there. He felt it.
Not in his head — no, the mind was a locked corridor. But his heart… that old, stubborn drum, that traitor… it whispered. It ached.
Not for a meal companion.
But for him.
Whoever he was.
Why did it feel like someone used to sit beside him — scowling perhaps, or primly rearranging the forks, or refusing to eat at all until coaxed? Why did he imagine a voice — quiet, smooth as silk, full of reluctant barbs — saying: "You eat like a street rat."
And why, by all the cruel gods above, did that imagined insult make his chest twist like a wine-stained napkin wrung out in grief?
He sat back in his chair, full — not with food, but with silence.
So much had gone into his mouth, and yet everything that mattered still clawed inside his chest, trying to escape.
His plate was empty.
But he was not satisfied.
The loneliness had a taste. He could feel it settling in his throat, like soot.
He didn't know its name.
He didn't know what he had lost.
But something — someone — was missing.
And even though Elias was a man without memories,
his body remembered how to ache.
Elias rose from the carved oaken chair as though rising from the weight of a thousand unspoken things. Behind him, the maids—graceful as whispers—bowed their heads and moved with delicate precision, their silks rustling like moth wings against the still air. They began to clear the table, silver spoons and porcelain plates disappearing like memories into the arms of duty.
The dining hall—opulent, vast, echoing—remained hushed, save for the distant call of a bird beyond the high-paned windows. Elias stood a moment longer, a shadow in his own silence, then turned toward the garden, guided by instinct, not memory.
Outside, the world glowed with a morning soaked in melancholy. Roses freshly pruned glistened with dew like shy tears, their fragrance soft and sorrowful. The garden was immaculate, lovingly preserved—as though time itself dared not touch it—because it bore the weight of someone's laughter, someone's silence. August's.
Once, a child with cheeks red as late-autumn apples and lashes pale as snow had graced this place, cloaked in ivory lace gifted by an absent aunt. Sometimes seated in the velvet lap of summer grass, other times cradled in his mother's arms like a sacred bloom. That child, fae-like and wordless, belonged to this garden the way the roses did—fragile, watched, and unyieldingly beautiful.
Now it was empty.
Elias stood among the memories, sword in hand—an incongruous image: the tender-hearted boy turned solemn warrior. How odd, and yet how fitting, that the hand which once trembled when brushing against August's had not forgotten how to grip cold steel. The long sword gleamed dully, catching the light like forgotten truth, and as he exhaled—a long, quiet breath that bent the rose leaves—he stepped into motion.
One lunge. Another. He moved like a poem in the language of war—fluid, deadly, elegant. The blade hissed through the air, an extension of his will. A soldier's memory resided in the bones, even if the mind had forgotten. "Swords have no eyes," he had once heard. And yet, Elias swung with grace, as though his sword were seeking not to kill, but to remember.
High above, behind the velvet-curtained window of the west wing, August stood like a thief of moments. His slender fingers clutched the violet drapes, his smoke-grey eyes locked onto the man below. The blush that crept across his cheek betrayed the dream that still clung to him—of Elias, mouth against ear, voice like hunger, breath like sin.
August's gaze wavered, trailing down Elias's frame—the green Victorian shirt clinging to his form, the black trousers tucked into gleaming boots, and the sheen of sweat tracing the angles of Elias's jaw. He looked not like the beast from the dream, but worse—he looked real.
And that, somehow, was more dangerous.
With every slash and turn, Elias carved silence into motion. And August watched, a prisoner behind lace and glass, his heart tapping out an ache too ancient to name.
The garden bloomed. The blade danced.
And the ghost of a dream watched from above, blushing like a boy too proud to look away.
Yet in the hush of that morning, where the roses still held dew like teardrops unshed, August remained frozen behind the violet velvet drapes—his breath caught in the slender throat like a song unsung.
He had watched Elias with secret hunger, the kind that bled between shame and longing.
Outside, Elias moved with the blade like it was not a weapon but a waltzing partner—each swing not a strike, but a memory carved from forgotten blood. The sun kissed his brow, illuminating the sheen of sweat that clung to him like a crown of labour. Muscles taut beneath a forest-green shirt, trousers hugging his long legs, he looked every inch the noble soldier, summoned from legend, not flesh.
But then—
As if stitched by fate's cruel thread, Elias stilled.
His hand halted mid-air, sword lowered not by weariness but by instinct.
His head rose, slowly—deliberately—
and his gaze lifted toward the upper window.
August's breath seized.
Time, cruel mistress, slowed.
Their eyes did not meet—for surely, they could not—but something felt.
A flicker. A pulse. A tug beneath the ribs.
A ghost of recognition beneath the veil of amnesia.
August stumbled back from the glass with the panic of a thief caught in moonlight.
The curtain fell like a closing stage.
His back pressed to the pane.
His hand, pale and trembling, flew to his chest, where his heart betrayed him—
thudding wild and loud, as though trying to escape its cage of bone.
Did he see me?
He could not have.
The window was locked, the curtain thick, the sun on his side.
And yet…
The silence felt watched.
The stillness felt intimate.
August closed his eyes.
And behind them, Elias's voice still echoed from the dream—not as a soldier, but as a man whispering sin and sorrow into his throat.
He shook the thought.
But the blush would not leave him.
Nor would the memory of that sweat-drenched grace, carved into daylight like an unfinished poem.
August exhaled. Once. Sharply.
Like he was trying to rid himself of a ghost that clung too close to bone.
"Foolish," he muttered beneath his breath, the word curled with disdain—not for Elias, but for himself.
What use were fluttering hearts and dreaming eyes?
That was the weakness of poets and paupers.
He turned from the window as though it had wronged him, the velvet curtain brushing his shoulder like an unwanted touch.
Each step toward the desk echoed—soft leather against marble, measured and stiff.
His posture perfect, chin held with the pride of a man carved from frost.
But his heart, the traitorous thing, still thudded a rhythm that did not belong to him.
He must forget.
The dream.
The glint in Elias's eyes.
The way his name tasted on August's tongue—even in sleep.
He seated himself with all the grace of a prince and none of the comfort of a man.
The chair creaked beneath his lean frame—oak and leather worn with memory.
It still bore the scent of old ink, dried roses, and time.
Before him lay the burden of duty—documents stacked like graves awaiting inscription.
He narrowed his eyes, slender fingers poised in silence.
Ink met parchment.
The scratch of the quill was the only sound now, precise and ruthless.
Work was the only thing that had never asked for his heart.
And then—
A quiet knock, followed by a door eased open on whispering hinges.
A maid entered, head bowed, tray in hand.
The silver glinted as she approached, balancing a single glass of milk—still steaming gently, as if cradling the warmth of someone else's home.
August did not look up.
His face was a marble sculpture, expressionless, immune.
No kindness softened his gaze, no tension cracked his composure.
Because women—
Women with their soft mouths and fragile dreams—
Held no flavor to him. No meaning. No peril.
He had long since turned away from the taste of sweetness.
The maid lowered her head once more, placing the glass on the corner of his desk with utmost delicacy, as if frightened to wake a sleeping wolf.
Then, with a silent bow, she retreated—
And the door shut behind her like a coffin lid.
Still, August did not move.
He stared at the parchment before him, the ink drying slowly.
He picked up his quill again.
And again.
Yet his thoughts betrayed him.
That dream—vivid, disarming, cruel.
That voice—Elias's voice—whispering things no ink could contain.
Those hands. That sweat.
The way Elias had looked at the window, at him, without ever seeing.
August clenched the quill too tight. The nib cracked. Ink bled.
He exhaled once more—slowly, quietly.
And resumed writing.
As if nothing had shattered inside him.
As if the mirror hadn't cracked the moment Elias stepped into his sleep.
But inside—
The mask was slipping.
Not with a scream.
Not with a cry.
But with a tremor.
Soft.
Insistent.
Like spring thawing the first layer of a winter that had forgotten how to end.
The hands of the clock pirouetted toward mid-day, their ticking a silver needle through silk silence.
August, still as a painted ghost beneath the study's veiled daylight, lifted his gaze to the untouched glass of milk.
It stood like a monument to neglect—its warmth long since abandoned, its purpose unfulfilled.
But he, being what he is—trained, bred, sculpted into the polished austerity of noble bearing—
took the cold draught without flinching, swallowing not milk but duty itself,
and placed the empty glass upon the desk with the grace of a coronation.
The room was steeped in quiet—
not the comfort of peace, but the tight-laced silence of a palace that forgets it once had children's laughter.
He reached for his quill as though it were a blade, not a pen,
but memory struck first—
a treacherous whisper crawling through the seams of his mind.
With a suddenness rare for a man so composed,
he opened the desk drawer.
There it lay.
The emblem—
a sigil of grief unspoken, of power decayed but not dead:
an eagle, wings spread in sovereign defiance, pierced through the heart by a falling sword.
August's breath caught like a leaf in windless air.
The metal felt colder than the milk,
colder than the marble floors of his boyhood home after the blood had dried.
Maralise...
If Elias was truly her son—if the boy lived—
then... the others? Could it be? Could they still breathe in some corner of the earth?
Could they still carry the fire of a legacy left to smolder in silence?
He stood abruptly, the chair skidding back as if even it feared the storm awakening in his blood.
His gloved hand clenched the emblem so tight the ridged edge left crescents on his skin.
He had to go—
to the Althérian Dominion.
To see with his own eyes what the past had buried and the present refused to speak aloud.
But something strange, something curiously barbed and elusive curled in the back of his thoughts—
Why had he never heard of this kingdom until now?
Why did its name sound like a forgotten lullaby and a warning all at once?
He sat again, not in defeat, but in renewed purpose—
his mind no longer drifting,
but marching.
The ink met paper like hoofbeats in snow.
Work began once more,
but now each word, each line,
was a step toward a truth that would not stay buried.
And yet—
beneath it all, beneath the precision, the posture,
his heart thrummed the memory of a name he dared not say aloud,
a name that lingered like candle smoke behind his breath.
Elias.