Chapter LXI
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"Long time no see, Dot."
The cat's voice came uncertain, green eyes fixed on him in the dim cell light.
Dot's hand shot to his chest, fingers digging into his shirt as if he could force his lungs into working order.
"How—" The word barely made it out between ragged breaths. Air rushed in and out too fast, never enough, his chest tightening with every panicked pull.
His heart hammered against his ribs.
"How is this possible," he whispered. The room seemed to tilt around him.
Then the memory surfaced — sudden, total. Hidenheim. Liora's death. Everyone's death, all at once, crowding into the same breath.
"Are you okay, Dot?" Ser Rick's feline face managed something that looked almost like worry.
"Hey. Dot!"
"It's fine." Dot wiped at the tears on his face, voice soft, steadying.
"You sure?" The cat stared harder, studying him.
Dot lifted his face and looked at him properly.
"I'm glad you're okay." The tears kept coming, but the smile underneath them was genuine — relief, finally, after a long time without any.
Ser Rick went still for a moment.
Then he shifted — fur receding, shape lengthening — reappearing suddenly in human form just outside the cage bars.
"You've really gone through a lot, kid," he said quietly. "I know you have a lot of questions. I'll answer them. One at a time."
Dot opened his mouth to start.
"Not here." Rick cut him off gently. "Let's get you out first."
The knights unlocked the cage, let Dot through, and slammed it shut again before Rusty reek could follow.
"Freak," one of them muttered under his breath.
"He's my friend," Dot said, turning back toward Ser Rick.
"Fine, fine — I'm buying him," Rick said to the knight, already reaching for his coin purse.
"You've got to be joking," the knight said, but unlocked Reek's cell anyway.
Reek bolted out and landed directly on top of the knight, sending him sprawling.
"Reek — come on, he's not food," Dot said, already walking.
Me. Food. The knight's thoughts scrambled as Reek abandoned him and trotted after Dot without a backward glance.
The streets of the capital were already alive by the time they emerged from the dungeons beneath the keep.
Merchants shouted over each other from packed stalls. Carriage wheels rattled hard over uneven stone. Nobles moved beneath banners strung color to color between the buildings, the whole city humming with a kind of noise that never fully stopped.
Dot followed Ser Rick through all of it in silence.
Eventually they turned away from the crowded avenues into one of the capital's wealthier districts — iron gates, high stone walls, the noise of the streets falling away block by block until it disappeared almost completely.
They stopped before a three-story manor of pale stone overlooking a quiet square.
"Home," Rick said simply.
"It's big." Dot cut himself off, staring up at it.
A servant opened the gates before they'd even reached them. Reek sniffed suspiciously at the man before trotting after Dot into the courtyard.
Rick led them through the manor into a private study lined with bookshelves and old maps. A fire crackled quietly in the hearth despite the warmth outside.
Only once the door closed did Rick finally turn to face him.
"Now," he said, pulling out a chair. "Tell me everything."
"Where to begin." Rick opened a book on the desk, not really looking at it.
"Ask," he said. "I know you want to."
He kept his eyes on the page. "I know you resent me for not helping the night Liora was killed."
"No." Dot's voice came sharp, immediate, fast enough that Rick actually lifted the book away from his face to look at him properly.
"It wasn't your fault." Dot's voice stayed firm. "I'm to blame. I wasn't strong enough to protect her. That's on me."
"My guilt. My sin."
Rick searched for something to say and found nothing that fit. He could only look at how deep the past had carved itself into this boy — the shackles Dot kept wrapped around himself for a crime he hadn't committed.
"We're much alike, Dot," he said finally.
"So what are you," Dot asked, blunt. "A mage?"
"No." Rick stood and crossed to the window. "I'm far from a mage."
"A cat, then."
"Can a cat transform into a human?" Rick glanced back at him — Dot was already tearing into a plate of meat on the table without waiting for an invitation.
"I wouldn't know. Cats always have these eyes — the ones I've seen, anyway. I'd guess maybe." Dot shrugged, mouth full.
"No. Cats don't transform. Don't shapeshift." Rick turned fully toward him.
"I'm a shapeshifter. I've lived so long I can barely remember my own original name anymore. Over the years you change enough times, and pieces of yourself just... go."
"As for how I ended up in Hidenheim — I have to take you further back than that."
Year 200 — The Era of Magic and Order
Born of deception, they called them.
Born without a face.
The Faceless were like any other mages— born into the world carrying mana, gifted by the old gods for the purpose of order. Mages existed to push back the dark. That was the whole of it. The entire reason for them.
But the Faceless condition wasn't a gift. It was closer to a curse, attached to the circumstances of their birth.
The First Forty-Nine mages born within that generation — born of forbidden union rather than natural lineage — emerged faceless. The mage orders, cruel as they were, called it justice to keep such a mistake far from Hidenheim. They banished them all to the Nameless Realm.
Hiding their failure, the orders developed a cleaner method of making mages going forward. No one spoke of the first forty-nine again.
In the Nameless Realm, the banished grew and multiplied. The weak died quickly — the realm itself was full of beasts even the old gods had struggled to contain, the same creatures they'd imprisoned there generations earlier.
Until adaptation came. A gift, in its own strange way — mimicry, copying the beasts down to the smallest detail.
The Faceless became shapeshifters. They blended into the packs around them and survived by becoming what was already there.
Year 230 — The War of the Incursion (The Death of the Old Gods)
Every realm felt the instability when the barriers — the anchors holding reality in its proper shape — began to fail. The Nameless Realm felt it hardest of all.
And then, finally, the incursion broke wide open.
Most of the Faceless were free to leave for the first time in their lives.
"Let's go, guys!" one of them yelled — already mid-shift, four-legged, jaw unhinged in a beast's silhouette — as the rift tore further open.
The sacrifices their ancestors had made, the lives their parents had lived and lost inside that realm, finally bought a way out. Saying goodbye to the place was harder than anyone expected. Some stayed behind. The rest left and never looked back.
Those who left broke through into the human realm.
There, they took the faces of men — a horrible thing to do, but necessary to survive. The mage orders eventually discovered them. Decided, as they always had, that the right answer was extermination.
But the Faceless had always adapted. So they adapted again.
Year 430 — Valdheim, the Human Realm
Duskfall — Blackwater Cove
"Where are you going. I'm a little dizzy — help me up." Rowan clung to his brother's arm.
"Steady." Lucien guided him onto the steps, and they both sat, exhaling together.
"Move!" A man yanked his cart past them down the stairs, ignoring the obstruction entirely.
"Old man, you need help?" Rowan called after him, clearly drunk.
"Mind your business," the man shot back without turning, and the two on the steps dissolved into laughter.
"Rowan." Lucien's tone shifted, gentler. "You have a wife now. The drinking has to stop."
"She yells a lot. I'm scared of her, honestly." Rowan said it with such sincerity that Lucien nearly choked laughing.
"Lucien, you'll always be my brother — even from a different mother and father." Rowan took another gulp. "But get yourself a wife. Then you'll know how this feels."
"No wife. Not for me," Lucien said, standing.
"Come on, brother — your pregnant wife needs you," he added, pulling Rowan up by the arm.
"Sit a while longer. She can wait." Rowan reached for the bottle again.
Laughter rang out from somewhere down the street — children sprinting through the dark, jumping the stairs two at a time.
"Be careful!" a young woman called after them, then turned to Lucien with a small smile. "Boys will always be boys."
"Yeah. Boys." Lucien said it flatly, until Rowan elbowed him hard and winked, clearly trying to push him toward conversation.
"Hey — lady!" Rowan called out, staggering to his feet. "My brother here's single." He pointed directly at Lucien.
"Shut up," Lucien hissed.
She smiled, twirling a strand of hair around one finger. "I've got to go."
The Rain had started falling, fine and cold.
"Wait—" she added, already turning to run.
"Go after her," Rowan said.
"No. I'm getting you home."
Rowans Home
"Welcome home, Dad!" Rowan's daughter ran toward him, arms wide. "Uncle Lucien!"
"Here — I have something for you." Lucien knelt and held out a flower.
"Thank you!" She beamed.
"Where's your mother, Gali?" Rowan asked, already trying to dodge the question of his own absence.
"Mom says she's going to kill you, Dad," Gali said cheerfully, already running off again.
"Oh, I'm dead. Help me, brother." Rowan turned to Lucien with mock terror.
"This is all on you," Lucien said, hands up, backing away just as Rowan's pregnant wife appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, expression saying everything that needed to be said.
"You've been drinking again, haven't you?!" She closed the distance fast.
"No, my heart, I passed by it but I didn't—" Rowan waved his hands in protest.
"You jerk." She pinched his cheek and dragged him bodily across the threshold.
"Ow — ow!" He yelped the whole way. "Help me," he muttered to no one in particular.
"Hi, Lucien — stay for dinner," she added, completely ignoring her husband's pleading.
"Sure," Lucien said, smiling.
After the noise settled, they sat down together as a family to eat.
"Lucien, dear — still working the tavern?" Rowan's wife asked.
"Yes. Daily pay, nothing more."
"Hard times in this city," Rowan said, jumping into the conversation easily.
"Other kingdoms — I hear they eat three square meals a day. Here, we barely see the man we call a king. Coward, I say."
"Mom, I want more meat." Gali reached for the plate.
"Stop, Gali — I've told you not to grab," her mother said, distracted, already trying to push more food toward Lucien's plate.
"I'm fine. I'm full," Lucien said.
"You sure, brother? I bet you could eat more." Rowan tried again.
"No — I have somewhere to be." Lucien stood, kissed Rowan's wife's forehead, then her belly, then Gali's head. "Thank you for the meal."
"Bye, Uncle Lucien!"
"Wait." Rowan followed him outside.
"You can always ask for help, brother. If you need to." Rowan clapped him on the back.
"I'm fine, brother. Really."
"You know — you were always the weird one. Everyone called you that when we were kids." Rowan grinned. "Now you're the cool one. I'm the weird one. Funny how that switches."
"You're still cool, brother."
"Look around you. You have everything." Rowan gestured at the house behind them, the light from the windows, the sound of Gali's laughter still drifting out.
"You have us too."
Something in that landed deep in Lucien — a feeling he hadn't expected, of actually belonging somewhere.
"Goodnight, brother," he said, already walking, raising a hand in the dark.
Somewhere in Town
Lucien walked past taverns full of noise, the town busy the way it always was after dark.
A voice called out near an alley mouth.
"Here — you have a visitor," the man said, and left without waiting for a response.
A figure dropped from the rooftop above, landing without a sound.
Lucien's mouth curved into a smirk as he recognized who it was.
"I knew you were one," he said.
"Too obvious." The woman stepped closer.
It was her — the one from earlier, the one Rowan had been not-so-subtly pushing him toward.
"I cut ties with all of you," Lucien said, turning to face her fully.
Two more figures dropped down beside her — her sons.
"What do you want," Lucien said, his hand already stretching, shifting, reshaping into the heavy outline of a hammer.
"The House of Ouroboros requests your presence," the woman said. Her voice had changed — layered now, more than one voice speaking at once.
"Tell them to go eat shit," Lucien said, smirking.
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— To Be Continued —