The storm passed hours ago, but the monastery still sounded like rain.
Water slipped through the old stone in lazy drips, tapping metal and wood like an absent rhythm no one could stop. The lantern on Nytherra's desk flickered with every chill that squeezed through the cracks.
She wasn't frightened by the sounds — she grew up with them.
What unsettled her was the quiet.
Too quiet — as if the night were holding its breath.
She sat cross-legged on the floor, the old green-wrapped book resting in her lap. She had seen it thousands of times as a child, stacked carelessly beneath toys, scribbled on with clumsy ink when she believed drawing horns on the prince made him funnier.
It was part of her childhood — not destiny.
But tonight, when she turned the pages slowly — when her eyes found the painted prince standing in moonlit water — the familiarity felt different.
Not comforting. Not frightening. Just… relevant in a way it never used to be.
The lantern hissed. The window clicked against its loose frame.
Nytherra turned the page.
A painted dragon curled around a tower — wings like stormclouds, scales glistening violet and silver. She didn't remember that color. She would've remembered.
She leaned in, curious —
And felt it.
The sense that someone was there before she even looked up.
Not footsteps.
Not a sound.
Just presence — like heat where there shouldn't be any.
Nytherra's breath stilled.
He stood near the window — not dramatic, not looming — simply there, watching the book in her hands as though it were speaking in a language only he understood.
His damp hair clung to his forehead, dark storm-gray strands catching the lantern light. He wasn't dressed like anyone in Eirvale — his clothes were simple but finely made, stitched with patterns she didn't recognize, fabric that didn't belong to any market she'd ever walked through.
"Do humans always leave their windows unlocked?" he asked, voice calm — not mocking, just blunt curiosity.
Nytherra shut the book slowly. "You shouldn't be here."
He tilted his head slightly. "And yet I am."
Her pulse kicked once — sharp — but she stayed seated.
His gaze fell to the book again.
"That story," he said quietly, "is older than the kingdom built around it."
"It's a children's tale," she corrected.
"Children," he murmured, "were always better at seeing the truth than the kings who feared it."
She swallowed — inexplicably uneasy.
"Who are you?"
He met her eyes — and for a moment she felt as if the air thickened, warmed, reacted.
"You don't need my name."
There was no threat in his tone — no arrogance — it was delivered like a fact.
A rule.
Before she could argue, he lifted his hand.
Something rested in his palm.
A scale — dark violet at the edges, fading to moon-silver at the center — warm light rippling just beneath its surface like a heartbeat.
He offered it without stepping closer.
"This is yours."
Nytherra didn't reach for it.
"What am I supposed to do with it?"
"That," he said, "is for you to decide."
Her fingers curled around the book.
People didn't simply hand each other scales.
They didn't walk through windows and talk about children seeing truth.
And they certainly didn't gift something that felt this… intimate.
"Why?" she whispered.
He considered her — not her face — not her fear — but something deeper, as if he were listening to a sound she couldn't hear.
"Because something changed the night you touched the water."
A pause — brief, weighted.
"And I don't yet know what that means."