The moon hung low over Khyronia, pouring its ghostly light like spilled silver across the obsidian rooftops and twisted iron spires. Far from the eyes of nobles and their courts, in a manor without a name—one long vanished from record and whispered of only in broken breath—Caldris Rheyne sat in brooding silence.
The room was cathedralic in its gothic vastness, carved from stone that drank shadows and whispered secrets into the cracks. Stained-glass windows, depicting saints long excommunicated, filtered moonlight in fractured shades of violet and blue across the cold flagstone floor. Candelabras stood like silent witnesses, their wax limbs dripping like the tears of forgotten widows.
Caldris leaned deep into the arms of his throne-like chair, one hand draped across the lacquered wood, the other supporting the weight of his troubled brow. The fire in the hearth spat low embers, casting dancing red into his silver eyes—eyes that gleamed like twin blades dulled not by time, but by burden.
His hair—long, grey-silver, and silken—curled at the ends where it grazed his black-clad shoulders. The high collar of his coat, embroidered in ash-thread, bit against the nape of his neck as he sighed—a sound that might've been mistaken for weariness, or perhaps despair.
Behind him stood his most trusted servant, always silent, always still—like a statue carved from dusk itself. The mask he wore, a bisected veil of black and white porcelain, hid all trace of age or emotion. But his eyes, bright jades beneath the hollowed sockets, shimmered like relics buried too long in earth.
Caldris did not look at him when he spoke.
"What is going on in the court?"
His voice was velvet and steel—polished and cold.
The servant was quiet for a beat, as if weighing every syllable before placing it gently upon the altar of his master's patience. Then:
"Master… last night, two nobles were assassinated."
Caldris turned his gaze, slow and sharpened. "I know that already. What I do not know is—why are they targeting us?"
The servant lowered his head, eyes dimmed. His silence said more than any excuse.
A muscle twitched in Caldris's jaw. He pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture that betrayed his composure. The fire snapped louder, almost as if in warning.
The servant spoke again, this time softer. "Master, if I may… there is more."
Caldris exhaled, weary. "Go on. I don't mind."
The room seemed to grow colder, the shadows inching closer as the servant continued.
"This afternoon… August Everhart D'Rosaye was poisoned."
The words dropped like a blade.
Caldris jolted upright in his chair, the fire flaring in tandem with his heartbeat.
"What did you say?"
The servant did not flinch. "He was poisoned. By the same hands, we believe, that struck the nobles down."
For a moment, Caldris said nothing. His silver gaze darted toward the flames, but it was not the hearth he saw—it was something older, something crueler, something masked in velvet rage.
"It's him again," he muttered, more to himself than the man behind him. "That bastard. Still playing his games, still wearing that damned face. He's bold—too bold. But I swear to the gods… I'll rip that mask from his skull."
The servant remained still. Loyal. Silent.
Caldris clenched the arm of his chair until the wood creaked.
In his mind, images flickered like pages of a cursed book: August—delicate and dying, the nobles lying bloodless in velvet halls, whispers of betrayal, the mounting eyes of suspicion turning toward him.
He leaned forward now, elbows on knees, his face cast in the orange glow of fury.
"Whether I win or lose," he thought, "someday… I will stand before him, blade in hand. And I will slash his throat beneath the moon. Slowly. Very Shamefully. With precision honed by hatred, and art."
He looked to the fire once more. The flames bowed.
Then he spoke aloud. "Go. Prepare everything. Tomorrow, I want it all. Reports. Maps. Witness names. I'm done letting these rumors rot my walls from within. I need to see it all myself. I will not sit idle while they hang their noose from my rafters."
The servant bowed deeply. The jade in his eyes shimmered beneath the mask's hollow sockets like stars drowning beneath waves.
He turned and disappeared into the shadowed hall, cloak trailing behind him like smoke.
Caldris remained.
Alone with the silence.
And somewhere in the manor's buried heart, something cold began to stir.
The dream unraveled like a tapestry of forgotten lullabies, delicate and dim, spun from the frailest threads of memory and longing. August drifted through its velvet dark like a feather caught in breathless descent, his body light, too light, as though he had been unmoored from the earth entirely.
The landscape was not quite earth nor sky—a meadow drenched in perpetual twilight, where the wind did not howl, but hummed, low and mournful. The grass beneath his bare feet glistened like glass blades, and the clouds above floated as if stitched from old parchment and tears.
There, not far ahead, stood two figures—a woman and a man, haloed in gentle amber light as though kissed by the dying sun.
His mother.
Annalise Everhart, her autumn-burnished curls falling just past her shoulders, the soft golds and coppers weaving around her face like the first days of fall. Her smile—oh, that smile—still held its familiar melancholy grace, the same one she gave when tucking him in with fairy tales and a kiss to his forehead. She was dressed in a gown of old rose and dusk, something he faintly remembered from a night long ago.
Beside her, tall and dignified, stood his father—Raden Everhart. One hand rested protectively at his wife's waist, the other hung at his side, scarred and calloused, yet noble in its stillness. His eyes, solemn yet kind, met August's with that unreadable expression men carry when they've died with their secrets.
August stood frozen.
He was barefoot, clad in that same ivory lace nightgown that clung to his body like woven sighs. It kissed the floor just above his toes, and he felt too light, too breakable, like glass left in the snow.
His breath fogged in the air, though the wind was not cold.
He lifted a trembling hand, reaching for them. Not out of fear, but out of that ache children never unlearn—the ache for home, for comfort, for arms that once lifted them from shadows.
His parents smiled.
And just as he took a step forward, a voice.
A voice from behind him.
"August!"
The name struck like a bell through fog.
He turned his head slowly, as though the air had thickened. Behind him, shrouded in soft grey and shadowed blue, stood Elias. His figure was solid, real. No candlelight dream or memory. He wore no coat of grandeur, just a simple linen shirt and dark trousers. His eyes—green as riverbanks in spring—gleamed with a fevered worry.
"August," Elias called again, stepping forward. "Don't go that way."
August blinked, his gaze swinging once more to his parents.
They had not moved.
Their smiles remained.
But something about them shimmered, like they were becoming less.
He looked back at Elias.
He stood tall, arms slightly outstretched, like he might catch August if he stumbled. There was no command in his voice. Only plea. Only care.
"Come back to me," Elias whispered.
August hesitated.
He was so tired.
His lungs ached in every breath, even here. His limbs felt water-logged. Every blink was a prayer not to open his eyes again. His parents were right there, wrapped in light and memory. So easy to walk into their arms and rest.
And yet—
August turned.
Turned fully.
And stepped toward Elias.
His lace hem dragged behind him like mourning silk. He walked slowly, hesitantly, but forward. And Elias, with no further word, opened both arms. A haven. A shield. A promise carved in flesh.
August reached him, folded into him. His head rested against Elias's chest like a final confession. He did not speak. He could not. But his breath, shallow and pained, tickled the cotton at Elias's collar.
Elias held him.
Held him like someone holding the last piece of something precious before it turned to dust. His hand rose to cradle the back of August's head, his other arm banded around that narrow waist.
Behind them, the figures of August's parents began to dissolve.
Not violently.
They simply unwound.
Like pages caught in wind.
Their eyes never left their boy.
And their smiles—they softened, as though approving.
As though trusting.
And just before their forms scattered like ash into breeze, August's mother spoke. Her voice was the hush of leaves brushing windowpanes, of lullabies sung one last time.
"Keep him safe," she said. "Do not let him come this way."
And then they were gone.
Elias looked down at the boy in his arms.
August remained limp, head nestled against him. His eyelids did not lift. His breath was there—but uneven. Shallow. Like a tide unsure if it wished to return.
And the dream curled in on itself, wrapping both of them in velvet shadow and whispered memory.
The wind no longer sang.
But Elias held on.
Because he had promised.
Because even in dream, even in that liminal land between breath and bone, he would not let August go.
The hush in August's chamber had thickened into a chapel stillness, the candlelight casting golden halos against the damask walls. The fire crackled gently, its soft percussion the only music beside the faint, struggling breath of the boy who lay swathed in ivory lace and fevered dreams.
Then—he stirred.
A twitch of the lashes. A faint, faltering gasp.
Katherine, seated at his side, caught it instantly. Her gloved hand, already resting upon his cheek, pressed closer—feather-light, like one might touch a snowdrop in thaw. Her eyes—those tangerine orbs ever aflame with fire and worry—widened as the boy beneath her fingers shifted.
"August…" she whispered, cradling the side of his face as though he were spun glass. "My darling, my fragile thing… Aunt is here now. You needn't struggle anymore."
Behind her, Elias stood like a sentinel carved of storm and silence, unmoving by the window's edge. His green eyes were wide, unreadable beneath the flicker of firelight, trained on August with the ache of a man half-remembering something he should not.
Then came the sound.
Barely there.
A breath. A whisper.
A name.
"...Elias."
August's lips moved like the tremble of a rose in early frost—soft, broken, intimate.
Katherine turned, eyes catching Elias like a hawk's. "Elias!" she breathed. "Come here. Immediately."
He obeyed without question, his feet quick, his breath held tight in his throat. He knelt beside her, beside August, not knowing why his hands trembled as he reached for the one now offered to him.
Katherine took August's frail hand and gently placed it into Elias's palm, folding the two together like binding a promise.
"There," she whispered to her nephew, brushing a lock of sweat-matted silver hair from his temple. "There he is, my boy. Elias is with you now. You'll be fine. You're safe."
Elias looked down at their joined hands. August's fingers—though cool with fever—fit against his own like something remembered. Something once lost.
And Elias… blushed.
Not out of shame, but confusion. What manner of duty was this, to hold a hand and feel the pulse not only beneath skin, but behind his own ribs?
He turned his face aside, ears burning, though he did not let go.
Because though the mind forgets—
The heart does not.
Even now, the warmth of August's touch ached through his palm. Familiar. Precious. Painful.
A memory not stored in thought, but in blood.
He did not know why.
But Elias knew this: he would hold August's hand through every fever, every storm, every unknown. Even if he never remembered the reason.
Even if it broke him anew.
Elias stared at their joined hands, his vision slow to focus, as though the world around him had dissolved into shadow and silence—leaving only this: the fragile, fevered hand of August Everhart D'Rosaye resting within his own.
And without willing it—without even quite knowing—his long, calloused fingers began to curl around August's with instinctive care. It was not the hold of a soldier nor a servant, but something else. Something quieter. More reverent.
Like a man holding the stem of a wilting flower.
Like a ghost clutching the last warmth of memory.
The size of their hands was startling. Elias's own—broad, scarred, weathered by time and toil—swallowed the boy's slender one entirely. August's fingers, pale as the first light before dawn, lay in his palm like porcelain carved by angels.
And yet they still twitched, faintly.
Still lived.
A soft voice rose within Elias—too quiet to be his own. Not thought, not reason, but something deeper.
Do not let go.
Even if it doesn't suit you. Even if nothing makes sense anymore. Even if you cannot name what this is… hold on.
Hold on as long as he breathes.
And so he did.
His fingers closed the rest of the way—deliberate, protective—forming a shield around that delicate lifeline. His thumb, rough from blade and bridle, brushed along the back of August's knuckles with an unconscious tenderness that did not belong to a man trained for war.
The fevered boy lay still.
But Elias could feel the faintest pulse there—fluttering like a caged sparrow. And somehow, it soothed him. Or perhaps it wrecked him. He wasn't sure.
His head lowered, his black hair falling forward like spilled ink, veiling the expression he didn't know how to carry on his face.
He did not speak.
There was no need.
Only the hush between heartbeats, and the vow made in silence:
So as long as you breathe… I will not let go.