The shadows in Zarius's bedchamber were softer tonight. They didn't feel like the encroaching walls of a tomb for once, but more like a heavy velvet curtain drawn against the biting Northern wind outside. Zarius leaned back against the headboard, his eyes tracing the carvings of the ceiling beams.
It was quiet. Not the suffocating, ringing silence of a fever dream, but a genuine, peaceful stillness.
He remembered taking a slow, deep breath earlier that day. No hitch in his lungs. No jagged cough threatening to tear through his throat, no heavy pressure blooming behind his eyes like some dark flower. For the first time in what felt like forever, he hadn't spent daylight counting the seconds between waves of pain. A proper day of life. Honestly, it felt amazing.
