"I think this is enough?" Andrew asked, placing down the last polished plate on the dining table. His voice carried the casual weariness of someone who had been performing small chores for far too long.
The "room" they were in wasn't exactly a room in the traditional sense, though it carried the function of one. This particular section was reserved for dining. At its center stood a round table made of polished greywood, wide enough to seat five comfortably. The chairs, arranged in a neat semicircle, gleamed with lacquered finish. There was little in the way of ornamentation; no embroidered tablecloths or dangling chandeliers, yet the quality of every piece of furniture betrayed a refinement that exceeded the ordinary. Even in its minimalism, the room whispered wealth.
"Maybe. This should suffice, I think," Talen replied in a muffled voice, already half-distracted as he bit into a muffuletta sandwich. He chewed noisily, the impatience of hunger evident in the way his jaw worked.
Isabella, watching him from across the table, arched a brow. "This is surprisingly good. I didn't think you could cook, Andrew." Her tone was reserved but undeniably complimentary. She took her own bite, though in stark contrast to Talen's ravenous approach, she ate with quiet dignity. Isabella had always carried herself with restraint, the cultivated posture of someone who belonged to the nobility.
Her eyes flicked toward Talen briefly, studying the unpolished way he devoured his food. She couldn't reconcile it–how a member of the Fraglariss line could conduct himself with such vulgar eagerness. Every fiber of his being seemed detached from the aura of aristocracy.
Andrew only smiled faintly at her words. "There's a lot you don't know about me, Isabella." He sat, finally claiming a seat for himself, and reached for a sandwich.
The three of them ate in relative silence for several minutes. The tray of muffuletta shrank steadily, the bowl of fruit slices vanished piece by piece, and the plate of cold-cut roll-ups was reduced to crumbs. It was astonishing how quickly the meal disappeared, though one didn't need to guess long where most of it had gone.
Isabella dabbed her lips delicately with a napkin, every movement careful, refined. Beside her, Andrew simply wiped his mouth with his thumb, less concerned with appearances. His eyes, however, shifted toward Talen, whose appetite had bordered on monstrous. The young blonde looked as though his stomach were bottomless, as though food simply dissolved into nothingness inside him.
"Since your hunger is satiated, you can begin," Isabella finally said. Her tone carried no sharpness, no overt command, yet it pressed down on the room with a natural weight. It was the way she always spoke–measured, calm, and yet instinctively authoritative. Andrew still hadn't deciphered how she did it.
"Hmm, very well then. This is going to take some time. You should get comfortable," Talen said. He leaned back, hands resting over his now-filled stomach. There was no tension in him, no visible trace of fear. Too comfortable, Andrew thought. Considering the harm Isabella had inflicted on him in the past, one would expect Talen to be cautious–perhaps even desperate to escape.
But he had tried that once before.
Andrew remembered it vividly: the moment Talen attempted to Rift away, only to be dragged back down, subdued by some unseen force Isabella commanded. Whatever her method had been, it had shattered his attempt at freedom. Since then, he had made no further effort to flee. In its place was this odd composure. Andrew begrudgingly admitted–it spoke of intelligence.
From what Andrew had gathered, Talen's Rift ability wasn't like Isabella's. It carried limitations, conditions that she seemed able to exploit. That imbalance made him uneasy. As with so many things surrounding Isabella, he had no full understanding of how she operated. She was an enigma draped in silence.
"Quit your blabbering and start already." Isabella's words were calm, but what followed them was not.
The air grew cold. Not the ordinary chill of draft or stone, but a sharp bite–an autumnal frost that clung to bone. The plates still littering the table shivered with a crystalline glaze as frost spread across them in delicate, branching patterns.
Andrew's chest tightened. He didn't know why his hand moved, whether compelled by instinct or something deeper. But he found himself reaching across the table. His fingers brushed Isabella's hand.
Softness. Unthinkably delicate, like the untouched skin of a maiden sheltered from the world. A warmth bled through her touch; an intimate, piercing warmth that seemed to travel up his arm and lodge itself in his chest. His heart stuttered at the contact.
'Don't be weird, don't be weird, don't be weird…' Andrew's mind screamed as he caught her frown. Isabella's eyes had dropped to their joined hands, her expression betraying her usual composure for the briefest moment.
Then, slowly, the temperature receded. The frost melted back into droplets. Isabella withdrew, prying her hand away with the help of her other. When she looked up again, the stoicism had returned, her face once more unreadable.
"Go on. I'm waiting." Her voice was smooth, stripped of emotion.
Talen had watched the entire exchange silently, his lips curled in the faintest of smirks. To him, it seemed a play, a performance staged for his amusement. Now, it was his turn to step onto the stage.
"So," he began, stretching out the word, "let's start from six days ago, when it all began…"
*****
The life of a member of House Fraglariss is often misinterpreted. Outsiders look at us and see only grandeur–lavish halls, ancient prestige, authority that bends nations. They imagine a life gilded in ease and joy.
They could not be more mistaken.
Nobility, in my house at least, never equaled an easy life. If anything, it stripped away the very possibility of one. From the moment I could walk, my existence was carved into a relentless shape. Tutors filled my mornings, training masters dominated my afternoons, and silence–lonely, cavernous silence–haunted my nights.
House Fraglariss has endured for over five hundred years. Every ancestor etched their ambition into the foundation. We, their descendants, are forced to uphold it. The weight of that history presses on us like an iron yoke.
I once read a passage in a book called 'Time & Bond', written by Sir Maverick. It struck me so deeply I memorized it:
"Stagnation precedes their degeneration. They are from another time, and another time were they meant to remain. You either break all you've built to create something better, or continue to build on a weak and fragmenting foundation. The inevitable outcome is ungrasped only by the fool."
A fine read, that book. One of the very few I actually enjoyed in my years of isolation. Most of my "education" was what we called structuring–and don't ask what that entails. Some mysteries are best left untouched.
I learned one thing through all of it: humans can adapt to anything, even torment, if it becomes constant. Loneliness gnawed at me, threatened to shatter my sanity, but over time it became a companion. Familiar. Almost… comfortable.
When it all began, I was once again drowning in that same monotony. My days blurred into one another–lessons, sparring drills, endless reading. I watched from afar as others my age lived ordinary lives. They laughed, they played, they failed and stumbled. I envied them more than words can say.
Imagine desiring something so simple, yet knowing it will never belong to you. It drives a person mad. The elders of my house understood that yearning. They used it against me, dangling promises of freedom, wealth, and luxury as the carrot to my endless training.
They thought me a fool. Perhaps they believed I didn't realize what the training was shaping me into. But I knew. The day my "structuring" reached its end, I would cease to desire such mundane joys. I would be remade into someone incapable of longing.
But not everyone in my family agreed with this path.
My elder brother… he was different. An eccentric, they called him. He defied tradition openly, nearly earning his erasure from the family annals. My parents were merciless; they banished him to some distant place I was never told of. Yet before he left, he gave me something. A gift.
A phone.
It sounds absurd, doesn't it? But in that object I found a fragment of the world denied to me. Through it I glimpsed freedom, connection, the illusion of choice. That gift kept me sane. It reminded me that outside the chains of Fraglariss expectations, there was still a world worth dreaming about.
*****
"I thought you were going to tell us about the people who call themselves 'Immortals.' Why are we hearing your life story?" Andrew interjected. His brows drew together, irritation flickering in his tone.
Isabella didn't speak, but her gaze–steady, cold, unreadable–was sharper than any words. Talen understood immediately he had tested their patience too far.
"My apologies," he said, his tone shifting. The carefreeness slipped away, replaced with something more deliberate, more serious. "I've never truly spoken to others like this. I was trained in communication, yes, but the lessons were mechanical. Scripts. I struggle with… the natural flow of it. I don't always know where to begin."
Andrew's expression softened slightly, pity flickering across his face. "Start simple. Tell us how you got your abilities. Then what you did after. Then, how you met this group calling themselves the Immortals. Not every detail, just enough to give us the full picture."
Talen nodded, grateful for the direction. "Ah… yes. That makes sense." He paused, gathering his thoughts, then leaned forward, his voice lowering, pulling them in.
"Very well, then. Where was I? Ah, yes…"