Evelyn moves past me and kneels beside the trapdoor. The seams are almost invisible, but now that they've felt her, they pulse faintly, like veins under skin.
"It's calling me," she says. "Not just you. Me."
I nod. "Because it remembers you, too."
"What's down there?"
"An echo. A piece of him. Not the whole monster. But maybe the part that mattered most."
She brushes her fingertips across the wood, and a thin thread of blue light sparks beneath her hand.
"I don't think it wants to hurt me."
"It will," I say, harsher than I mean to. "Not because it hates you. Because it needs you. You're the last thread left in the tapestry that bound him."
Her breath catches. "I don't want to be part of this."
"I didn't either," I say. "But here we are."
And I remember, suddenly, a time when the world wasn't such a burden.
When I was still Alaric, not the shadow of a man who came after.
There was laughter then. Wine. Cards. A woman with braids full of lavender who claimed she could read fortunes from the tilt of your shadow. I didn't believe her, but I let her try anyway, just to hear her laugh. There were taverns filled with warmth and music, where I lost coin and time in equal measure. The scent of smoke and roasted venison clung to my clothes. My boots were always muddy, my hands calloused, my sword used only for show.
I wasn't running from anything then.
And maybe that's why I didn't see the danger coming.
It started with a game, just one. High stakes, poor odds, but I was drunk on confidence and coin. I wagered more than I had, certain I could bluff my way back. I couldn't. The debt was... unspeakable. And the men I owed didn't believe in mercy or second chances.
I was given a way out, of course. There always is, when the cost is blood.
A name.
A bounty.
Kaelthas.
I didn't know who he was, not then. Only that he was worth more than my debt. That he was said to be dangerous, elusive, maybe even immortal. I didn't care. I was desperate, and desperation dulls the conscience.
Tracking him led me across half the kingdom, through forests where the trees whispered secrets and cities where even the rats had secrets to sell. He was always one step ahead. Always just out of reach.
Until the night I met her.
She wasn't called Evelyn then. Another name. Another life. But the moment I saw her, I knew the bounty no longer mattered.
Because she did.
The girl with fire in her eyes and sadness in her bones. The girl who saw through me with terrifying clarity. I should've turned away. Should've remembered the debt. The mission. The man I was supposed to hunt.
But I stayed.
And it cost me everything.
Because Kaelthas found me first.
If I didn't stay, I could have caught him off guard. God, even now I could have lunged at him. I definitely had a chance, but she begged me not to. Her face was the last thing I saw. He killed me with a whisper, not a blade. A curse sewn straight through the soul. I died before I even hit the ground, and when I rose again, I was no longer Alaric.
I was something else.
Something worse.
Something... surviving.
Lucian.
That's the name I chose. The one that fits the monster I've become. The mask I wear because the truth is too heavy to bear. Alaric was a man. Lucian is what's left.
And Evelyn, this Evelyn, is not ready for that truth.
She sees something noble in me still, something good. I can't stand the thought of her looking at me and seeing what I really am. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
So I hold it all back.
Because if she knew, if she remembered,
She'd never take my hand again.
She sits back, folding her legs beneath her. Her hand is trembling.
"You changed your name," she says after a long silence.
"I had to."
"Alaric," she says softly. "It doesn't sound like a killer's name."
"It wasn't. Until it was."
She looks at me. "And August? What is he?"
I meet her gaze. "The part of me that survived you."
She doesn't answer. Her lips part slightly, but the words never form.
I could leave it there. Let her fill in the rest with whatever softer narrative she needs to carry. But I don't want her to build a lie around me. Not this time.
"My name, my real name, is Alaric August Thorne." The syllables sound foreign in the air, a ghost echo of someone I buried a long time ago. "Alaric was a boy raised to believe in justice. In faith. In truth. He died."
Her brows knit, but she says nothing.
"August," I continue, "was what they called me in the years after. When I no longer had a face. When I was remade into something that could walk away from fire and not look back." I pause. "He was a story I told myself so I wouldn't vanish completely."
Then there's Lucian. The name she doesn't need to know.
Lucian is the name I chose when I stopped pretending. Lucian is who I became when I gave up trying to return to anything human. He's the one who carries the weight. Who remembers the blood. Who holds the line between what I was and what I'll never be again."
Her hand shifts, brushing her fingers over mine. Pulling me out of my thoughts, but I don't respond.
She doesn't know what she's touching. Not really.
"I don't want you to remember all of me," I admit. "Not the way I do. Not the way the people from my past do. Because you might hate me. And if you hate me, I'm not sure there's enough of Alaric left to come back."
There's a pressure behind my ribs now. Not pain. Something crueler. Hope.
"She's not ready," I tell myself. "Not for the whole truth. Not yet."
And even if she was, I don't know if I'd have the strength to show her.
Her lips part, but she doesn't speak.
Neither do I.
Because something old is blooming in the air between us now. A current of memory, of recognition, of gravity.
And she feels it.
Her fingers twitch.
And then,
She reaches out.
Not to the trapdoor.
To me.
And I take her hand.
There is no hunger in the contact. No lust. Just a quiet inevitability. Like two halves of something broken, remembering they were once whole.
The connection hums through me, electric and ancient.
She doesn't pull away.
"Whatever this is," she says quietly, "I want to face it with my eyes open."
"You might not survive it," I warn.
She holds my gaze. "Neither will you, if you face it alone."
Far beneath the floor, in the buried dark, something smiles.
Not with lips.
With memory.
Because the game has begun again.
The soul has found its mirror.
And this time, Kaelthas is not the only one awakening.
Alaric is stirring too.