Fantasy Anthroterra (1:1, closed, scantilycladsnail & ThieviusRaccoonus)

[scantilycladsnail]

Simon nodded—more confidently this time—and shut the door behind him with the kind of care that felt reverent. Or maybe just cautious.

As the latch clicked into place, he exhaled. A long, quiet sigh that drained straight from the tips of his ears down to his curled toes.

Lucian was terrifying.

Not the screaming kind of terrifying. No, that would be easier. He was the art gallery silence and sharp angles kind. The kind that made you feel like a smudge on the glass just by standing in the same room. He had... nice moments, sometimes. Sort of.

Like the time Lucian gave him a birthday gift. That had been thoughtful. Kind of. The "gift" turned out to be a folded card with calligraphy that read:

"Do not waste your time indulging in earthly pleasures for the mere sake of celebrating the anniversary of your own birth."

Simon had assumed—hoped—it was meant to be helpful.

Still. There were expectations now. Big ones. With consequences.

He leaned against the wall just outside the office, letting his brain swirl and tumble and rearrange like a cabinet drawer of papers dumped out in a gust of wind. He took a deep breath, then began mentally filing Lucian’s instructions one by one.

Step 1: Keep it a secret.
Boom. Already done. Totally nailed it.

Step 2: Investigate Misty Valley’s development.
Okay. Since Soda’s.... absence, Lucian pushed through that regulation that split land development rights in the Archipelago. Three held seats, and one community seat that included multiple votes from smaller developers. Misty Valley was either signed by one of the three established seats, or pushed through the community seat low-radar. So, he needed the names of the people who signed the approval.

Step 3: Track private car usage.
Right. Lucian emphasized cars. That wasn’t nothing. Cars weren’t common off-island, so anyone using them in Brasshollow before leaving probably didn’t want their name in a train log. And the private car vendors did have to maintain client rosters for city council tax exemptions. If Simon asked nice—with just a hint of authority—he might be able to find who's been requesting discreet transport. Maybe multiple rides to the same dock. Bingo.

Step 4: Financial activity.
Lucian’s exact words echoed: "I’m not interested in what they report. I’m interested in what they forgot to hide."
That meant someone had to go look in Misty Valley. Check the supply chains, see what was being ordered versus what they were claiming to do. But Simon couldn’t leave right now. He had to delegate this. Which meant trusting someone not to blow it. Someone who wouldn’t squeal, or panic, or sell their notes for mushroom ale.

Step 5: More cheetah photos.
Easy. Well. Not easy—but clear. The photos came from Sinley. Lucian’s photographer on retainer, archivist, and part-time storm chaser. Sinley didn’t care about laws or regulations or council drama. Sinley cared about money, exclusivity, and possibly wind. If Sinley had taken one photo, he probably had ten more—and a whole theory to go with them.

So that meant:

• Real Estate Board first—get the names and meeting notes.
• Then Sinley, as Sinley would be enticed by the Real Estate Board scandal, to get the rest of the photos and any tips Sinley has.
• Then private car vendors, using Sinley's traded information to help find the right persons.
• Then send someone he could trust to Misty Valley to sniff the real books. Someone who had no connections with Brasshollow and no-one would bat an eye at.

Simon’s tail gave a confident little wag behind him.

“Yes,” he muttered under his breath, starting toward the lift. “Five little steps. I got this. Lucian’s gonna be so—so… silently pleased.”

He almost smiled.

Then he tripped over a cleaning bucket, apologized to it, and kept moving.

Because the Chairman was waiting. And the deeper the nest… the easier it burned.

---

Ephraim kept moving, though her breath came heavier now.

The sand wasn’t kind to hooves, and the incline of the ridge pulled at muscles she hadn’t used in weeks. Years, really—not like this. Not for pursuit. She adjusted her coat around her shoulders, one hand clutching the fold tight as the night breeze lifted it again. Still she followed, every step laced with aching determination.

Her eyes never left the trail, even when Rus darted and splashed, barking at the sea like some happy spirit reborn. Her heart tugged at the sight, a small smile brushing the corner of her mouth. He was still so him—wild joy wrapped around bones and memory.

Then Ber appeared.

And suddenly, the years folded in on themselves.

She slowed as she crested the dune, one hoof dragging in the sand. Ber’s presence wasn’t playful like Rus’s—it was grounding.

Ephraim exhaled hard, wiping at her brow with the back of her sleeve as the two wolves howled again.

The sound rang through her like light in a long-forgotten chapel.

She closed her eyes, just for a breath.

He’s really alive, isn’t he? He found me.

The thought came unbidden—raw and sharp—but not painful. Not this time.

She had dreamed so often of what she’d say if she ever found him again. The man who laughed like he didn’t mean to, the man who held her hand in his sleep. The man who let her see him weep (or did he? She can't remember.. they had seen a play once or twice where she inserted him mentally as the main character, before Poise ruined that for her.)

She missed him. Gods, she missed him.

Not in a shattered way, not anymore. But like the ache of a song half-remembered. Like sunlight through old stained glass—something beautiful you carry even when it’s gone.

And maybe… just maybe… it wasn’t gone.

Ephraim stepped into the treeline, her breath catching again as the woods opened to her like a hush. The silver light made everything look softer, quieter. Holy, almost.

The wolves had vanished just beyond the bend, shadows woven through moonlit roots.

She pressed forward, voice low as a prayer.

“Mordecai…”

---

The Brasshollow Real Estate and Development Center stood like a polished barnacle in the city's south quarter—a spiraling iron and glass structure grafted onto an older stone foundation that still smelled faintly of mildew and bureaucracy. A heavy bronze plaque outside proudly declared the building “A Joint Achievement in Modern Civic Transparency,” though the tinted windows above suggested secrets still liked to keep the high ground.

Inside, the air was too cold, the marble floors too loud, and the front lobby smelled vaguely of lemon polish and ink. Everything gleamed—unnaturally so. The kind of place that scrubbed its paper trails and floorboards with equal vigor.

Simon stood near the front desk, clutching his satchel to his chest like a spellbook about to bite him.

He’d been waiting for twenty minutes.

“Hi again. So… just to reiterate—I’m not with the press. I work with the city council. I mean, for someone on it. Informally. But officially. Uh—sort of. I have a badge!” He fumbled for the temporary credentials Lucian had given him—just a little iron sigil on a chain—but the lanyard caught and pulled the knot loose. “Oops. Um.”

Simon swallowed hard.

Prompt for ThieviusRaccoonus
You are the receptionist at the Brasshollow Real Estate and Development Center, currently stonewalling Simon. Please design this character—what species are they, what do they look like, how do they speak, and why are they being difficult? Are they genuinely skeptical of Simon’s authority? Overworked and indifferent? Secretly hiding something? Or just professionally petty?

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

A soft clack sounded from the other side of the polished reception desk.

It wasn’t the sound of typing, or a drawer closing, or even footsteps. It was the sound of one taloned foot, long and graceful, tapping idly against the lacquered wood of the counter—ankle crossed over knee, posture lounged like a fashion spread had been abandoned halfway through.

Pascal had been watching Simon for exactly nineteen of those twenty minutes.

Behind the desk sat Pascal, a secretary bird who carried himself like the building's real foundation and treated interruption like vandalism. He had been watching Simon for exactly nineteen of those twenty minutes.

The secretary bird didn’t blink. He didn’t frown. He simply sipped from a lavender-tinged drink that had started sweating fifteen minutes ago and now rested on a coaster shaped like a zoning permit. His other hand was delicately adjusting a stack of clipboards by millimeters, as if they were the final touch in a sacred ritual.

When Simon's badge finally spilled out like a reluctant ghost, Pascal exhaled. Long. Measured. Through his nose.

“Well,” he said.

Not unkindly.

Just… tired. Like the concept of someone else speaking in his lobby was a form of administrative grief he’d already filed under Tuesday.

Pascal straightened—not all at once, but like a stage curtain being drawn with intention. He didn’t stand. He merely rearranged his limbs until he appeared taller, somehow more composed, while remaining entirely seated. His blouse was a soft, dusty rose, collar crisply ironed. A single silver chain glinted at his throat, catching the light in a way that made it feel like punctuation. His lashes didn’t flutter. His gaze simply rested on Simon like a signature being reviewed.

“You’ve reiterated,” Pascal said, “three times now. Which I suppose counts as effort.”

His voice was clean. Smooth. Every word carried the same weight as a legal clause—unrushed, uninterested in approval.

He reached over to delicately lift Simon’s fallen sigil with the tips of two claws, inspecting it like it might shed feathers.

“Mm.” A pause. “This is barely legible.”

He set it down with the same care you’d offer to a misplaced napkin.

Then, finally, he looked up again.

“I understand that you work for someone important. Truly, I do. But unfortunately, you’re currently speaking to someone even worse.”

A beat.

“Someone with a calendar. And a filing system. And full jurisdiction over whether your afternoon proceeds as scheduled—or not at all.”

Pascal folded his hands.

“And right now, I’m afraid you’ve arrived without an appointment… and without any indication that your presence will improve my day.”

Another sip. His eyes didn’t leave Simon’s.

“Do try again.”

---

The wolves moved in tandem, their strides weaving through moonlight and grass like living echoes. Rus remained light on his paws, nipping now and then at Ber’s heels in bursts of childlike mischief. Ber responded with the same practiced firmness—an occasional snap of his jaws, a lean of shoulder to bump the younger aside. Not punishment. Just keeping balance.

They turned now and then, checking behind them. Their tails gave slow, steady sways as they watched her draw near. Rus, ever the spirit, peeled off again—his path looping gently around her, as if caught between joy and guardianship. He circled twice, ears perked, paws skimming the grass like wind. Then, without warning, he darted off again, charging toward Ber in a blur of enthusiasm.

Ber halted, anticipating it. Rus skidded mid-sprint, back legs scrambling for traction, nearly tumbling into him. A soft whine followed—part apology, part excitement. Ber’s only response was a quiet exhale and a still glance.

They waited.

The woods opened into a clearing—wide, quiet, cradled by treeline on one side and ocean dark on the other. The world here felt distant from Snarlin’ Cove, as though it had chosen to forget the rest of the island. No lamplight. No voices. Just the long hush of the grass under the stars.

And there, beneath the bough of a broad tree, Cer stood.

Still. Watching.

The third wolf, his form like the others—black fur, bones exposed in symmetrical beauty—but his presence struck differently. Where Rus bounced and Ber grounded, Cer commanded. The line of his shoulders was tense, head lifted just slightly higher than the others, posture unreadable but edged with restraint. A sentinel, yes—but one with bite behind the silence.

The other two stopped.

Ber’s ears twitched, tail giving a soft sway of acknowledgment. Rus dipped his head low, ears back, paws scuffing the earth as if apologizing for arriving late to something sacred.

Cer stepped forward.

Not quickly. Not gently. Just enough. His gait was measured, stiff with authority. He didn’t come right to her, but close enough to make his presence felt—one long breath from the edge of comfort. His tail didn’t wag. His head stayed high. His stare was direct.

A low growl rumbled in his chest—not hostile, but weighted. Just a statement of his place in this moment. Then—just once—he barked. A low, clipped sound. Not a call. A command.

Cer turned.

And walked ahead into the field.

Ber followed immediately, not needing to be asked. He cast one glance back over his shoulder—toward her, then forward again. Rus lingered.

He looked between them, tail stirring in small, conflicted sweeps. Then he let out a sound—high and winding, that dog-like half-whine, half-sigh that carried too much for its shape. He stepped up to her gently, circling close. Not pressing. Not pushing. Just there.

He nudged her hand with his bone-framed head. Soft. Reassuring.

Then he turned too, running after the others—leaving behind a path worn not by paws, but by time, and something more patient than hope.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Simon inhaled, slow and steady.

Rule 1: Keep it a secret.

He had nearly broken it. The word “Misty Valley” had almost slipped. He could feel it burning on the edge of his tongue, bright and obvious. No wonder Lucian always stared so hard—he probably felt these moments coming.

Simon refocused.

Pascal was not just a receptionist. That much was clear.

No, Pascal was a curator.

Every movement was precise. Every breath chosen.

His drink? Lavender—calming, expensive, probably from that boutique on West Petal Row that made drinks like perfumes.

His blouse? Pressed to perfection, not flashy, but intentional.

His voice? Clipped. Like a signature in cursive—looped, but final.

This was someone who valued control.
Routine. Decorum. Clarity. Things had their place. And people did too.

Simon’s presence here? Out of place.

So the play wasn’t pushing. The play was aligning.

He cleared his throat, this time carefully. Shoulders square. Tail low. Polite, but not eager.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said, tone warmer but measured now. “I’m not trying to cause a disruption. Honestly, I admire the way you run this space. It’s... efficient. Clean. Very hard to do in a building with this much foot traffic and administrative clutter.”

He gestured subtly at the coasters—zoning permit themed.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a desk that made legal documentation look decorative.”

He paused, letting that praise settle without sounding too sweet.

“Here’s what I’m hoping to do. I have a record number from an older board session that references a project filed under a development alias. I just need to cross-reference it with the board minutes—verify which seat handled the approval so I can update our logs internally. No copies, no prints. I don’t need the full packet. Just a name and I can be out of your hair."

He glanced down at the stack of clipboards Pascal had arranged with surgical precision. A guess—but probably accurate.
Simon’s voice cracked before the words even left his throat.

“You don’t like things getting disorganized,” he said, a little too fast, like he was trying to outrun himself. “And I get that. I—I really get that. You sit here and everything is where it should be, and you know who you are in it. There’s no noise. No loose ends. I look at this desk and I think, this is what peace looks like. You did that. Everyone respects you. They want to be you.”

He swallowed, hard, and pressed a hand flat against the counter—not forceful, just there, like he needed to feel something solid.

“I’m trying to get there. I want to be someone who gets there.”

His voice wavered, just once. But it didn’t stop.

“My apartment’s a mess. I haven’t done my laundry in six days because I can’t find the detergent and I refuse to buy another bottle because that would mean admitting I lost the first one. I forgot my roommate’s name this morning. I forgot my own name filling out a travel form last week because I was using a cover ID and started to believe it.”

He took a breath, but it wasn’t steady. It shook.

“This one thing—this one name—I know it doesn’t matter to you. I know it’s just some little blip in the docket. But I’ve built everything around figuring it out. I’ve reorganized my whole logbook just to make space for it. My desk looks like it knows it’s missing the answer. It just sits there, judging me.”

His eyes were wide now, glossy in the harsh lobby light, and he leaned in without realizing it.

“I’m trying. I swear I’m trying. Every morning I wake up and I tell myself, Simon, today you are going to put your life in order. Today you are going to be the kind of person who doesn’t shake in elevators or cry in front of vending machines. But then I come here and you say I need an appointment and I—I don’t have an appointment, I just have this one shot at getting something right for once and if you could just give me the name, just that one name…”

The words choked off for a second.

“I think I could breathe again. I think—I think I could finally go back and sit at my desk and not feel like I’m drowning in everything I’ve ever failed to finish. Please.”

His hands were clenched now. Knuckles white.

“I know I’m not important. I know I’m not impressive. But I am begging you. Just tell me who signed the file.... Was it Velda Briarhook, Thorn Vellmar, Hobbin Draytail... or was it the community seat? Please..”

---

Ephraim stood at the edge of the clearing, breath shallow, shoulders rising slowly with the weight of stillness. Her coat clung to her frame like a memory—threadbare around the edges now, soaked in brine and time. The moon cast her in bone-pale light, making the silver in her braid gleam, catching on the curve of her horns.

She had stopped walking, not out of fear, but because her body understood something her mind was only beginning to name.

She whispered, almost inaudibly, “I’m coming…”

But her feet didn’t move yet.

Her hand lingered in the air after Rus pulled away. It trembled faintly, curled around nothing. Her eyes followed the wolves’ silhouettes as they disappeared further into the grass. The field stretched wide, the ocean to her left, black and soundless. The sky above bloomed with stars—but none familiar. She was somewhere else now. Even the air felt different.

Was Mordecai here?

The thought bloomed fast. Too fast.

She pressed her palm to her chest. Her heartbeat had quickened. Not the thrum of fear. Not anymore. It was grief, pressure-packed and unfamiliar in its shape. Like she had set it down years ago and picked it back up without realizing how heavy it had become.

What would she find at the end of this path?

Her voice, cracked but clear, slipped into the wind:

“…please let him still be real.”

And she followed.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Pascal didn’t say anything for a long time.

He simply stared.

One claw tapped gently on the rim of his lavender drink, the ice shifting like stage props between acts. His expression hadn’t changed—but his posture had. Slightly. One leg, still draped across the desk, shifted down with a slow, calculated slide. Not because of sympathy. But because emotion—especially unscheduled emotion—was bad for aesthetic balance.

He inhaled through his beak. Sharp. Slow. The kind of breath that came right before someone told you that your outfit was “brave.”

“Oh my god,” he finally said, voice low, like he was being spiritually inconvenienced. “Are you crying. In my lobby.”

He didn’t say it cruelly. He said it like someone spotting a raccoon at a tea party.

He stood. Stretched. Adjusted his blouse. Rolled his shoulders as if shaking off the emotional pollen in the air.

“Okay. First of all,” he began, gliding out the word first like it had its own set of earrings, “the only reason I’m not calling building security is because I respect a breakdown that knows how to monologue. That? That was theater. That was Broadway level desperation and I do admire commitment to a bit.”

He reached under the desk, pulled out a sleek silver clipboard, and tapped the edge against his talon once—clean, decisive.

“Second. I’m going to help you. Not because I believe in your little tragic laundry detergent arc—but because if you unravel in front of me again, you’ll stain the floor, and frankly, the cleaning crew has been through enough.”

He handed Simon the clipboard with a crisp, bureaucratic flourish.

“One name. One minute. You look, you whisper, you don’t touch anything else. I will be standing exactly four feet away and if you sneeze, I will revoke your air rights.”

Pascal stepped back to his original perch, crossed his arms, and narrowed his eyes like a swan ready to slap.

“And darling,” he added, just as the clipboard was settling into place, “if you ever say something that heartfelt in my lobby again, I will personally file you under ‘miscellaneous trauma’ and have you alphabetized by teardrop count. Understood?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He just resumed sipping his drink.

---

The wolves crested the rise first—dark shapes moving through moonlit grass like echoes. They did not rush now. Not truly. Their pace was steady, reverent, as though the moment itself were delicate and needed carrying. As they dipped over the slope, the field broke into a gentle shoreline—where the sea rolled in beneath a low canopy of leaning trees. Secluded. Wrapped in hush.

And at the bottom of that slope, he stood.

Not centered. Not staged. Just there, in the quiet, the moon catching on the edges of what had become of him.

He was tall still—always had been—but now the height looked more like weight. His body leaned heavily on a wooden staff, spine bent ever so slightly forward with the fatigue of years that hadn’t been counted. His silhouette was more angular than it should’ve been. The kind of thin that spoke not of build, but survival. His fur—once black, once rich—clung in places to bone. The rest of it had silvered, not from age, but from the long erosion of solitude. Shoulders, muzzle, and jaw glinted pale under the moon, the color dulled by salt and time.

Where his hairline had once swept cleanly into his mane, now it had receded—leaving a stark widow’s peak, the hair grown in wild and silver-white. Strands stuck back at odd angles, pushed away from his brow by salt air and wind. It gave him the look of someone both older and untamed, someone weathered by years without a mirror.

A tattered cloak hung from him in a patchwork of dark cloth and sun-bleached stitching. It shifted in the breeze, revealing the jut of ribs beneath. His clothes were worn thin—frayed around the edges, tied together with scraps of whatever he could scavenge. His legs were wrapped in bandages, weathered and stained, and one hoof shifted with a small, unconscious tremor in the grass.

His horns—once smooth and proud—had chipped in places. Small fractures. The kind time leaves when no one’s around to notice. And his face…

His face was a thing out of memory—and beyond it.

More hollow now. Gaunt. The fur around his cheeks and jaw thinned out in streaks of silver. And his eyes told the rest of the story.

The right, still seeing, had lost its fire. The red of it was duller now, clouded in the way grief clouds sound. He didn’t blink often. When he did, it was too slow—like each blink took thought.

And the other…

The left eye was gone to blindness. Clouded milky white, cracked with deep scarring that stretched across the side of his face like something once burned into him and never truly left. Veins darkened the edge of the socket, threading through his temple like a shadow trying to take root. The skin there had healed, but not kindly. Not evenly.

The wolves reached him first. They circled. Once. Twice. Rus nosed his hand. Ber brushed against his leg. Cer stood nearest his side—shoulder to shoulder, unmoving. None of them barked. None growled. They simply existed near him, quiet as the space he’d become.

Mordecai turned his head slowly. His body followed second—rotating with care, the staff grounding each movement. He hadn’t heard her footsteps. He had only felt her there.

And when he saw her—

His breath caught.

His good eye widened, only slightly, but enough that his hand twitched on the staff. His mouth parted. No sound came at first—only a slow exhale, the ghost of a name not yet dared. He looked at her, but not fully—his eye flicked down, then aside, then back again, as though each time he met her gaze he feared he’d be burned by it.

There was guilt in him. Not theatrical. Not outward. But present. Like a weight pressing just behind the ribs. His fingers curled tightly around the staff, knuckles stiff with effort. He tried to straighten. He couldn’t. Not quite.

But he didn’t hide.

He didn’t fall either.

He stood, tired and crooked and worn down to thread—but still him. Still there.

When he finally spoke, it wasn’t a greeting. It wasn’t a cry. It was a name. Spoken like prayer and apology, rasped low from a throat that hadn’t said it in years.

“…Ephraim?”

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Simon blinked. Twice. Once for the tears he’d very nearly unleashed, and once more in stunned disbelief that it had actually worked.

He straightened slowly, ears perking, tail giving a restrained little thump against the back of his legs. The clipboard in his hands felt like a holy relic. His eyes dropped to it with reverence, and for a moment, he forgot to breathe.

Then—quietly, earnestly—he said, “Thank you.”

No dramatics this time. No voice wobble. Just raw, sincere relief wrapped tightly in composure. He had composure. He was fine.

Totally fine.

His fingers hovered over the edge of the sheet, careful not to smudge or fold anything. He scanned the document like a trained monk reading scripture. And there it was. One line. One name.

The signature.

His heart did a full somersault—but his face barely twitched. Just a calm nod, like he’d come here for nothing more than a routine inspection of fonts.

He lifted his head, clutching the clipboard like it was made of spun glass, and whispered, “Got it.”

Then, slowly, he set it back exactly as Pascal had handed it—no smudges, no crease, perfectly aligned.

He cleared his throat gently. “I will now respectfully exit your lobby and carry my emotional damage somewhere else.”

---

She stopped moving the moment she saw him.


Not because she meant to. Not because fear gripped her, or shock, or disbelief—but because everything inside her collapsed inward at once, like a lung giving out. The wind left her. Her knees weakened. The whole world narrowed to the slope, the tree line, and him.

Mordecai.

Her breath hitched violently, shoulders rising with the sound of a broken inhale. One hoof shifted back as if her body thought it needed to run—but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She just stood there, staring.

She had imagined this reunion a thousand times. In dreams. In prayers. In the quiet moments when she let herself hope. She had written letters she never sent. Whispered apologies into candlelight. She’d traced the memory of his face so often in her mind that now—seeing the real thing—was like holding a shattered version of something sacred.

And yet.

She would’ve known him anywhere.

“...Mordecai?” she whispered, voice trembling so hard the name nearly dissolved in her mouth.

He said her name again.

It was him.

Her hand came to her mouth as tears rushed upward without warning. Her whole face crumpled, her composure shattering like thin ice under weight. Her ears flattened. Her chest hitched. The pain of it wasn’t clean. It was messy. Ugly. Her mouth opened like she might speak, but nothing came except a sob.

She moved.

Fast. Without grace. A stumble-step forward as the tears spilled fully now, hot and silent down her face, wetting the collar of her coat. Her legs shook beneath her, but she didn’t care. She could barely see through the tears, only enough to know he was real, he was here, and he hadn’t vanished like all the others.

The wolves shifted at her approach but didn’t block her. Cer stepped aside without a sound.

She reached him.

And without asking, without a word, she threw her arms around him.

Her body pressed to his, careful but desperate. One hand cradled the back of his head, fingers weaving into the salt-ridden tufts of his hair, and the other clung to his back, as though she thought the sea might come and take him again if she let go.

Her forehead touched his shoulder. Her tears soaked into the fabric of his cloak.

“You’re alive,” she choked out, barely a whisper. “You’re—you’re alive—I thought—I thought you were gone— Please tell me this isn't a dream... please, I can't do it again... I... It's been so hard without you...”

She gasped in again, a hiccup of grief and love and everything else that had waited too long with nowhere to go.

Her voice broke around the edges as she pressed her cheek to his chest, trembling.

“I looked for you, I—everywhere, I—Mordecai, I thought you died and I couldn’t—” Her words dissolved into sobs again, incoherent now. Just sound. Just rawness.

She held onto him like he was the last true thing in the world.

And even in his frailness, even in the bones and the silence and the damage, he was.

"You found me..." she paused, looking to Cerberus, "They found me."

---

The room was dimly lit—drenched in shadows and the flicker of a low, steady flame burning in a deep bowl of amber glass. The windows had long been bricked over, and ivy had grown across the inside of the walls like veins in a corpse. It smelled of dust, mold, and salt. The sea below hissed like it was listening.

At the center of the chamber stood Zac. Or rather, the version of him the world now knew: a tall, lean serval, dressed in muted tones with a loose wool coat draped over his frame, arms crossed. Two years in this body, this form, and still it itched. Still it didn't fit. But it hid him, and that was enough—for now.

Across from him, cloaked in elegance like it was armor, stood Jean-Mordant.

The peacock’s feathers shimmered even in the dim light, catching fragments of fire and reflecting them like fractured jewels. His golden crown sat lightly atop his brow, like it had never once been removed. His eyes, dark and ancient, glinted with cold precision as he slowly circled the room, cane tapping once with every few steps—rhythmic, rehearsed. A predator’s walk dressed as ceremony.

“You sleepwalk through history,” Jean-Mordant said, voice like a whisper laced with venom. “Seven years, Zac. Seven. The fire was magnificent. A cleansing, truly. But since then? A lull. A hesitation. You disappear into the shape of a stray cat, and the world forgets the burn.”

Zac’s jaw flexed, the serval’s eyes narrowing. He didn’t speak yet.

Jean-Mordant continued, gesturing lazily with one feather-ringed hand. “Meanwhile, power festers. Quietly. Do you not see it? Shadowkin—untrained, unclaimed—moving through this chronosphere like sleepers waiting for the signal. We should be collecting them. Now. Before they scatter.”

His eyes burned. “They belong to something greater.”

“Convenient,” Weissfahl muttered, arms folded beneath his red robes, standing still as a monolith near the edge of the hearth. “You speak of gathering weapons as if they are relics. But even the most precious artifact turns on its wielder if mishandled.”

His voice was dry, crisp, precise. The goatkin tilted his head slightly toward Zac. “Not that you’d know. You haven’t held a blade in years.”

Zac’s ears twitched.

Weissfahl’s eyes remained on him. “Tell me, Zac. Is there still a plan beneath all that dust, or have you gone entirely to rot? Brasshollow was step one. But even children know not to camp in the ashes.”

Zac stepped forward, finally, each motion deliberate.

“I didn’t burn a city just to pose in its smoke,” he said, voice low, controlled, but tight with restrained loathing. “What we did was not some performance art. It was war. And I haven’t sat idle—I’ve been watching. Listening. Preparing.”

He looked directly at Jean-Mordant. “You want a parade of shadows? A puppet court of volatile kin with unstable runes and no allegiance? You’ll choke on their power before you bend it.”

Jean smiled. Slightly. “You fear them?”

“I respect what can end me,” Zac shot back. “And I plan to outlive all of it.”

He turned his head toward Weissfahl now, eyes sharp. “You talk of blades. Of forward motion. But what you want isn’t progress. You want extinction.”

Weissfahl's expression didn’t change, but the air near him seemed to cool. “I want survival. Of Kin. Of meaning. And that cannot coexist with the ones who twist time like ribbon.”

Zac studied him. That was the closest Weissfahl would ever come to confessing his obsession. The Chronogods. He feared them. Hated them. Probably even dreamed of their blood.

Zac stepped back, curling a hand into a fist.

“I don’t want their thrones. I don’t want the Kin’s worship. I want this world to end. Not in fire, not in spectacle. I want it dismantled. Taken apart until it screams. I want to rebuild the version I remember—before they reset it. Before they put us in this charade.”

A beat. Then, quietly:

“And Lucian… Lucian is the only one who’s close to seeing it for what it is. He’s clean. Too clean. Smart enough to track shadows, trained enough to kill them. He gets in my way—I kill him.”

No pretense. No mask. Just the truth.

Jean-Mordant’s feathers rustled in amusement, head tilting slowly.

“Delicious,” he said. “But ambition without momentum is just poetry.”

“I’ll move when I’m ready.”

“You’ll move,” Weissfahl said, “when the world no longer resembles you. Or it will leave you behind.”

Zac looked at them both. Cold. Unshaken.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

She touched him.

The moment her arms wrapped around him—sudden, full of heat and grief—his balance faltered. His wooden staff, once a subtle extension of his posture, slipped from his hand and hit the earth with a muffled thud, half-lost in the grass. For a second—just a second—Mordecai held. Held the air, held his spine straight, held onto whatever part of him hadn’t already given in to the weight of her presence.

He stood rigid beneath her arms, every inch of him tense and trembling. His breath caught mid-inhale, held too long in a chest not used to sharing air with anyone else. For years there had been silence—no voices, no names, no hands reaching back—and now all of it pressed against him at once. Her sobs, her warmth, her grief. Her presence.

It was too much.

His body didn’t know how to process it. Not the closeness. Not the sound of her breaking down against him. The noise rattled in his ears like something distant and underwater, half-memory, half dream. His heart lurched in his chest, confused by the rhythm of another soul so close to his own. His vision blurred, but not from tears—more like pressure. Like all the ghosts inside him had turned their heads at once.

He swayed.

His lips parted slightly—no words, just the breath of them. A few syllables stumbled out, shapeless and lost. “It’s… the sky—no, wait—salt. Her… no. No.”

Barely more than fragments, the sound of someone trying to match names to things that no longer had shapes. Not loud. Not panicked. Just unraveling.

Rus whined at his side, his body brushing lightly against Mordecai’s leg as if to steady him. Ber moved closer as well, his head lowered, silent and watchful. Cer did not move, but his eyes remained locked on Mordecai, unmoving—anchoring.

Then her hand shifted.

It landed at the base of his spine.

Right over it.

The flare wasn’t loud. It wasn’t visible. But the curse nestled deep inside him reacted—twitched. A ripple surged beneath her palm like a wrong pulse, a false heartbeat. Mordecai gasped sharply through his teeth, the reaction involuntary, his spine jerking as if struck. The wolves reacted instantly—Rus growling under his breath, Ber’s posture tensing as his claws scraped the grass. Cer lifted his head, ears flicking once. They didn’t move to stop her—but they felt it. All of it.

And then his legs gave out.

It wasn’t a dramatic fall, but a slow, buckling collapse. His knees hit the earth in silence, cloak pooling around his ankles like sea-wrecked cloth, tattered and faded with age and salt, its edges torn into fringe and its seams repaired with mismatched patches. Beneath it, glimpses of his frame showed ribs pressing faintly against thin fur, hints of survival more than sustenance—his clothes clung like remnants of another life, ragged, sun-bleached, and worn through by wind and solitude. He didn’t try to catch himself. His hands hung useless at his sides, then folded inward as he curled forward. His head bowed, horns dipping low, shoulders caving in under the weight of everything he’d carried and everything he couldn’t hold anymore.

No sob escaped him. His jaw tightened against it, the kind of pressure that cracked from the inside instead of shattering outright. A tremble passed through his frame—shoulders curling forward, not just from physical collapse, but from something spiritual unraveling. The world had narrowed to sensation: the weight of her arms, the burn behind his blind eye, the pulse of something old and unspoken trying to push its way out of his chest.

But tears slid down his face—quiet, unhurried. The kind that had waited too long. From his right eye they fell clean and steady. From the left, the blind one—milky, scarred, veined with old pain—only a faint wetness gathered at the edge, as though even now it struggled to remember how to weep. Yet it burned. A sting, deep and unrelenting, as if grief had rooted there and refused to fade. Both eyes grieved in their own way—one with tears, the other with ache.

The wolves surrounded him loosely, not protectively, but like the reflections of his own soul anchoring him in place. Rus hovered behind Ephraim, tail low but wagging slightly, his movements smaller, almost unsure—his head tilted as though caught between wanting to comfort and not knowing how. He gave a soft whine and pressed briefly to her side before pulling back again, nervous in his joy. Ber moved to Mordecai’s flank and sat, his posture steady and composed, eyes forward, carrying the silence with quiet weight—like he had waited for this moment for a long time. Cer remained standing, the last to move, his skeletal head tilting ever so slightly as he stepped forward with precision, placing himself opposite Ephraim like a sentinel—unflinching, unreadable, his gaze fixed on Mordecai with the same heavy stillness that had once passed for control. Together, they formed not a barrier, but a quiet pattern of memory—one playful, one calm, one commanding—all circling their broken center.

And still, she held him.

He didn’t move, didn’t breathe right, but he felt her still there—still with him. Not pulling away. Not demanding an answer. Just... remaining. Her nearness was a warmth he didn’t know how to lean into yet, but it stopped him from folding further. He didn’t understand what it meant to be held without question, without condition. But whatever she gave—whether silence or sorrow or stillness—he let it wrap around him like thread to a crack, not mending, but keeping him from coming undone.

His lips parted after a long, shuddering silence. The sound that followed barely qualified as speech—his voice came low, hoarse, drawn out like something unused for years. It cracked around the edges, words hesitant and slurred with exhaustion. It was slower than it once had been—each word deliberate, like his body had to remember how to speak again.

“I… I forget what things are called… sometimes.”

The voice that left his mouth didn’t carry the weight it used to. It was too soft. Too fragile. It cracked in the middle like it had been unused for too long, the pitch not quite his—too light, too uncertain. The kind of voice that hadn't known what safety felt like until just now, and still wasn’t sure it would last.

Something in the air changed. Not loud, not bright—just different. As if time pulled back enough for something smaller to step through.

“I… thought the tide was just what it… felt like to be safe,” he murmured, voice catching gently between words. “And… I thought your name was part of the sky. For so long. I didn’t think it could… could ever be this close again.”

He pressed the side of his face into her shoulder, not clinging—just resting. Seeking something he didn’t have a name for anymore. When he breathed again, it was shaky. Halting.

“Sometimes… I dream about places that don’t exist. Anymore. Or… maybe they never did.” He paused, breath thin. “I don’t… always know what’s real. But this... this feels… different.”

There was a silence, a breath that didn’t need to be filled. Then:

“Do you think… if she had… come back… she would’ve held me like this?”

And finally, quieter than before, a line that broke in the middle:

“Don’t… let go. Not yet.”

The words barely left his throat, rasping more than spoken. They cracked around the edges, like something pulled from too deep, too fragile to stand upright. His voice was low, rough with disuse, but softened by something smaller beneath it—something that trembled. Not a plea. Not a command. Just a child’s hope folded into the words of a man too tired to hold them alone.

The moment hung there—held in place not by clarity, but by the quiet weight of someone who had not been held in a very long time.

---

When the scroll simulation ended, the chamber was quiet. Dylan, Simon, and Dogman had only just begun to exhale when the first impact hit. Far above, something in Brasshollow gave out—loud and absolute, like a furnace slamming shut on the spine of the city. The scroll vault trembled. Lights flickered. Then came the second blast.

The chamber held. But the world beyond it hadn’t.

When the seals unlocked and the lift rose, it opened not into safety but chaos. The academy was burning in places, blanketed in steam and smoke. Towers had fallen. Whole wings were gone.

Dylan stood frozen, his sketchbook still clutched in his hands. He didn’t speak. He didn’t run. He just stared east, toward the rising ash.

Toward home.

---

The news came not as a list, but a tide.

There was no single moment of revelation. No dramatic declaration. Just one day after another, and too many silences in between. Rumors filtered in through cracked pipes and hushed voices. Confirmations followed later—spoken in quiet corners, murmured in passing. And eventually, someone said it clearly enough that Dylan could not mistake it.

His parents were gone.

Their building had collapsed in the east quarter. One of the old, vine-covered apartments near the copper aqueduct—where he had grown up with warm breakfasts and board games and the steady presence of two voices that had always known how to ground him. Gone. The entire block. No survivors.

He didn’t remember how he got the full confirmation. Just that someone handed him a folded page. The address was printed at the top.

He sat down and stared at it for what might’ve been hours.

Martin and Julia Crowl had always been the two constants in his world. Steady, kind, and endlessly patient with their anxious, bright-eyed boy who sometimes couldn’t speak without rehearsing first. His father—always cracking bad jokes and giving too many hugs. His mother—calm and radiant, keeping him grounded without ever making him feel small. They had believed in him when even he didn’t. They had celebrated every failed application to Lumenreach as if it were a near-miss victory.

And now they were gone. Without goodbye. Without warning. Without even a moment for him to try and say thank you.

Then came Fishbones.

One of the only other people who’d known Dylan for more than a decade. Someone who never asked him to explain himself. Who made bad coffee and worse puns and always made sure Dylan got home safe. His name was gone, too.

And then—Briggs.

That one shattered something deeper.

It wasn’t fair. It didn’t feel real. Briggs was the one who saw him. Who gave him a place when everyone else had turned him away seven times. Who handed him a thread to follow when Dylan didn’t know there was a path.

Briggs, with his broken machines and big ideas. With his firebrand teaching and quiet, messy brilliance. Briggs, who had told Dylan: “You belong here. Not because of what you prove. But because of what you see.”

Dylan couldn’t look at anything after that.

He stopped eating. He didn’t answer knocks. The forms arrived. He signed them without reading. Someone from the academy came to check on him. They said the right words—counseling, support, rest—but they spoke like everything would keep moving.

Dylan wasn’t sure he could.

He just sat, still, the same way he had in the scroll chamber—waiting for something to break. But everything already had.

---

Brasshollow began to rebuild.

Boilers were repaired. Vent routes were rerouted. Classes resumed in modified towers. New badges were issued. Public announcements spoke of unity and resilience. And slowly, inch by inch, the city stitched itself into something livable again.

But Dylan couldn’t follow.

He returned to Lumenreach at first—tried to. His steps through the familiar halls felt wrong, like walking through a replica of a world that had already ended. He attended a seminar, then another. Sat near the back. Avoided the seats where he used to see Briggs watching him with that quietly amused look, the kind that made Dylan feel seen but not exposed. Tried to go back to sketching, sorting papers, cataloging fragments of Briggs’ old resonance research—the project they had only just begun. But it all felt brittle in his hands. Disconnected.

The therapists called it survivor’s guilt. They said it was normal. They said it could be worked through.

But Dylan wasn’t sure how to carry it. His parents—his anchors—were gone. Fishbones, too. And Briggs… Briggs had believed in him when no one else had. Had pulled him out of the fog and given him a place, a path, a reason. That belief hadn’t just opened doors for Dylan—it had become a part of him.

Now every door felt closed again.

His anxiety worsened. He stopped answering messages. Stopped trying to participate. The stairs to the West Wing made his chest tighten. Sitting in a classroom made his hands shake. He started missing meals, then whole days. Eventually, he couldn’t even bring himself to pick up a pencil.

He didn’t tell anyone.

He just stopped going.

No announcement. No explanation. The forms caught up eventually, but by then, Dylan had already withdrawn into something much deeper than paperwork could reach.

---

It had been seven years since the explosion.

Dylan moved into a small apartment on the edge of a quieter district—one of the few corners of Brasshollow that had escaped the worst of the destruction. It was tucked above an old steam-repair shop, a narrow third-floor unit with pipes that clanked at night and windows that fogged unevenly. The space was humble, but functional. A bed tucked against the wall, a single window that caught the early light, and a kettle that clicked and hissed like it was trying to hold a conversation.

Near the windowsill sat a small collection of framed photos: one of his parents at a festival with streamers in their hair, one of Dylan as a child wearing a homemade school badge, and one of all three of them with Fishbones—caught mid-laugh in a kitchen too small for four people. These remained dusted even when everything else did not. Sometimes he’d sit by them in silence, not touching, just looking. Remembering their voices. His father’s bad puns. His mother’s calm smile. The warmth they always gave without asking anything in return. They were still here, somehow, in the quiet corners. And it hurt. But it helped too.

The rest was studio—makeshift and soft around the edges. Tables cluttered with brushes and chipped jars. Paint-streaked towels draped over chair backs. Canvases leaned like tired thoughts against the walls. It was quiet, lived-in, and full of the kind of clutter that said someone had stopped expecting company.

Dylan had changed. Now thirty-one, his posture curled in ways it hadn’t before, a long frame often folded into himself. His hair had grown out—longer now, slightly wavy, sometimes brushed back, sometimes left to fall forward in uncertain curls. It wasn’t messy so much as untouched, like he couldn’t bring himself to care. His whiskers bent oddly where they had grown out, uneven and unkempt, twitching faintly even in stillness.

He wore thick, square-framed glasses now. Not a dramatic change—just another quiet shift. His eyes behind them were tired, softer than they once were, their brightness dulled by years of grief. The kind of eyes that had seen too much, and still somehow tried to be kind.

He dressed in layered cardigans and worn vests, always in muted tones—oatmeal, grey-green, soft brown. Not sloppy. Just safe. Clothes that wrapped, not announced.

He didn’t speak to many people. Not out of rudeness, just... inertia. Simon and Dogman had checked in once or twice during the early weeks, but life swept them forward, and Dylan couldn’t keep up. Dylan didn’t talk to many people anymore. It wasn’t intentional—not a decision, not exactly. He just couldn’t keep up. Conversations slipped away. Invitations felt too heavy to answer. The days stretched, silent and unfinished, until one became another, and eventually, no one asked.

He wasn’t angry. He understood. Everyone else was trying to rebuild. He was still trying to breathe.

During cleanup efforts, he managed to recover a few belongings from what remained of the faculty tower. Among them—scorched fragments of Briggs’ research notes. A damaged prototype interface that still flickered when you turned it the right way. A scribbled sketch of a resonance cluster Dylan barely remembered helping diagram.

He didn’t know why he kept them. He wasn’t trying to solve anything. He just... couldn’t let go.

---

Seven years on, the city had reshaped itself, but Dylan hadn’t.

Most days were simple in structure: tea brewed slowly, paint mixed out of habit, meals forgotten. The rhythm was quiet, unspoken, built not of purpose but inertia. Time passed in pages of old sketchbooks, in canvases that started but never ended.

Fragments of his old life remained, not as keepsakes but as gravity wells—Briggs’ notes, half-scorched; Mercy’s words, looping quietly in his mind. The clearing with Wrath, the blade that didn’t fall, the stillness of that moment—these things lingered. Not as answers. Not even as questions. Just... presence.

He didn’t know what he was meant to do with any of it.

But he hadn’t thrown it away.

And if the world had moved forward, Dylan remained a soft orbit around those pieces. Still. Thinking. Breathing.

Not rebuilding.

But not gone either.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The device lived in a drawer of Dylan’s desk.

It wasn’t in a special spot. It wasn’t on display. Just tucked away in a quiet, dry drawer with a rusty hinge that creaked whenever it opened. Inside the drawer were some old paint rags, a tin of balm he never used, a broken teacup holding brass fasteners, and in the very back, wrapped in cloth—was it.

The prototype.

It didn’t have a name.

Briggs had called it things like “the tether unit” or “scroll-tuned anchor #7C,” but never anything official. Most of the notes Dylan had found about it were quick scribbles in the margins of more complicated pages. Some were diagrams with swirling loops, strange patterns, and one that showed what looked like a lock inside a mirror. Next to it, Briggs had written: If something splits, preserve the echo.

Dylan never used the device, it hadn't been functional all this time. It was just something he kept, like a secret. Or maybe a memory he wasn’t ready to let go of.

And then, just now—for the first time in seven years—it made a sound.

It was soft. Not sharp or scary. More like a tiny music box. Gentle, almost pretty. It drifted through the room like something that had been waiting quietly and was now ready to speak.

Even the room seemed to notice. The steam from Dylan’s kettle paused mid-hiss. A paintbrush tipped over on its own.

Then the drawer rattled once.

Dylan opened it slowly. The cloth had come loose. Inside, the device looked the same… but something had changed.

It was about the size of a notebook, but thicker. The casing was made of overlapping metal and shiny stone—Briggs had used special materials that reacted to magic in the air. Faint yellow light now pulsed along the grooves in its surface, like veins coming to life.

Its glass face wasn’t smooth. It had tiny patterns inside it, carved with magic and meant to catch data, not light. When tilted just right, those shapes came together to form a spiral. Dylan had seen that spiral before—in Briggs’ sketches of something he called a resonance cluster. Something important. Something connected.

The back of the device had a round piece—part metal, part glass. Gears moved inside it, turning slowly. Briggs had based this part on technology deep inside the Ascendant Spire, which had been utilized for the memory scroll rooms.

Now it was turning on its own.

Another part—an expansion slot, Briggs last development for the device—glowed faintly. It was meant to connect to the scroll. The one Zac was trying to access, right now, across the city.

Zac didn’t know what he was doing. He was using only runes—Mind and Time magic—but that wasn’t enough. He didn’t have the tech. He didn’t have Briggs’ designs. That’s why it kept failing.

But the scroll was still sending out a signal.

And this device—Briggs’ tether unit—heard it.

It wasn’t responding to Zac. It was responding to the scroll itself. It had been asleep all these years, waiting for something. And now, finally, it had found the echo of what it was built to listen for.

Dylan didn’t know that.

To him, it was just a broken machine that had suddenly started glowing. Something old and dusty that was suddenly... awake.

He knelt beside it, watching as the gyroscope spun. Yellow light pulsed under the glass. Patterns formed. The spiral shifted into place.

Then came something new.

A soft light blinked from the front of the device, projecting an image onto the floor.

It was a map.

But not of the Archipelago. This was somewhere else entirely. A continent Dylan didn’t recognize. No names. No markings. Just the outline of land, and at the bottom—a tiny drawing of two stick-like figures. One standing. One kneeling. A line connected them.

Above it, a single word glowed:

RECOMPILATION

The device clicked again. A small panel opened on the side. Inside, folded like a message, was a strip of silver paper. It had one sentence written on it:

Do not anchor to a non-native syncpoint. False loops collapse.

Dylan didn’t understand what it meant. Not yet. The machine continued its soft pulse, like it was still searching for something it hadn’t found.

At the same time, the front of the glass screen shimmered. A new symbol appeared. Not magical. Not strange. Just… simple. Like a computer file.

[ARCHIVE ACCESS: PERSONAL FILES – B.S. (7C Root)]

Underneath, six timestamps appeared. Video logs. No names. Just time codes.

One of them was blinking.

Waiting.

It had been there the whole time—hidden. Briggs had saved video files inside the machine. Recordings. Messages. Something Dylan had never seen.

In the stillness of the room, the rest of the world moved on. Steam carts passed outside. A tower groaned into position. The city began to wake.

But inside Dylan’s apartment, time stopped.

The tether unit listened quietly.

And Briggs—gone for years—was now only one click away.

Dogman shifted his weight, claws flexing against the old stone step. The apartment looked the same as the last time he’d come by—fogged-up window, crooked mailbox, and that same sad-looking potted herb that hadn’t been trimmed in forever. Dylan’s name was still etched on the buzzer in that neat, careful way he always wrote. Dogman had already checked it three times, just to be sure.

He knocked again, slower this time. “Dylan. It’s Dog.”

No answer.

The door wasn’t locked.

He let himself in.

---

CHRONO NOTES (PLAYER ONLY):

• The Tether Unit / Scroll-Tuned Anchor #7C
  
  • Built by Briggs. Dylan recovered it after the explosion but hasn’t used it in seven years. It has now reactivated on its own.
• First activation ever. Emits a soft musical hum. It seems to be responding to something external—possibly magical or resonance-based.
• New behavior:
  • A resonance gyroscope is now spinning—an internal component Briggs designed to mimic the ones inside the Ascendant Spire.
• A map projection appeared, but it doesn’t show the Archipelago. It’s a new landmass—likely important, but unfamiliar.
• A blinking warning was printed:
  • “Do not anchor to a non-native syncpoint. False loops collapse.”
  • (Implies that incorrect connections to people, places, or timelines might cause failures or damage.)

A new file tab has appeared:
[ARCHIVE ACCESS: PERSONAL FILES – B.S. (7C Root)]
Inside are six video logs left by Briggs, previously hidden. One is blinking—indicating it’s ready to be played.

WORLD HINTS / LORE

• Zac is trying to activate the stolen scroll elsewhere in the city using only rune-based magic (Mind + Time), but is failing due to lack of necessary technology.
• The tether unit isn’t responding to Zac—it’s responding to the scroll’s signal, which is now active.
• This confirms the scroll is not inert—something has shifted in the resonance landscape, possibly linked to timeline manipulation or memory integrity.
• The word “RECOMPILATION” appearing on the map suggests something akin to restoring, repairing, or rewriting history, identity, or timelines.

---

She didn’t answer right away.

Ephraim just kept holding him.

Not tightly. Not to restrain. But to remain. Her arms stayed wrapped around his hunched form like a quiet perimeter—not meant to pull him back, only to let him know he wasn’t alone inside the spiral. Her hands had weathered these years too. Once soft, now lined with callus and time. One of them cradled his shoulder, steady despite the tremor in her own frame. The other rested gently at his side, her fingers barely curled, as though afraid that if she gripped too hard, he’d vanish like smoke.

The words he’d spoken still drifted in the space between them—fragmented, broken, full of tides and skies and names forgotten. They cut her not because they were confusing, but because she understood exactly what he meant.

Because she had waited to hear them.

Because she had imagined this—every version of it. Every way it could go wrong. Every nightmare where he didn’t remember her at all. Or where he did, but hated her for it.

But now he was here. Collapsed into her arms like a man with nothing left to carry his name, and yet so much more left than she’d dared hope.

She didn’t speak immediately. She was afraid that if she did, it would sound too loud—like glass in a still room. So instead, she lowered her head until her cheek rested lightly atop his crown. His horns curved beneath her chin, cool and familiar.

“I waited,” she finally whispered.

Her voice was thin, but intact—drawn from somewhere deep and old. Not full of drama. Not even urgency. Just truth.

“I waited longer than I should’ve. Longer than I knew how to. Even when they said it was over. Even when I thought it was. I… kept something in me open. Just in case.”

---

Simon stepped out of the building like the floor might collapse behind him if he lingered.

The moment the door shut, he let the exhale come—slow, sharp at the end, like he'd been holding it in a little too long. The tremble in his fingers hadn't stopped. The clipboard was gone now, the signature safely tucked into the system, the form complete, the finality of it official. Which meant only one thing.

Time for the next damn part.

He rolled his shoulders back. Loosened his grip on his messenger bag. Tried not to think about the dozen ways he could still screw this up. The light drizzle didn't help, either—somewhere between fog and spit, just enough to blur your glasses and cling to your whiskers. He wiped them both with the edge of his sleeve, muttering a few very not-professional words under his breath.

Find Sinley.

He hated that part.

Not because the dragonkin was hard to find. On the contrary, Sinley was everywhere you didn’t want him to be. Corners of train stations. Upstairs tavern balconies. Too-cozy lounges where secrets got traded for drinks. And always, always with that damn smirk. Like he already knew everything you were about to say. Like he’d printed it in the paper last week just for fun.

Simon didn’t hate Sinley because he was a sleaze. He hated Sinley because he made him feel small.

Like the work Simon did—the carefully worded statements, the damage control, the formal channels—it was all just fluff to Sinley. Noise. Things to be unraveled and exposed. And somehow, even when Simon had the upper hand, it always felt like Sinley was the one doing the interview.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan hadn’t moved.

The light from the tether unit pulsed against the floor, soft and golden, stretching out from the projection like it might touch something real. His breath was shallow. He sat hunched, long legs folded beneath him, elbows braced on his knees—staring. His paw hovered near the projection, just barely trembling.

It had been seven years.

Seven years of silence. Seven years of unfinished thoughts. Seven years of unanswered grief folded into a drawer with paint rags and brass fasteners.

And now…

Briggs’ name. His voice, maybe. Video files. A spiral on the screen that matched the ones he used to sketch. That map. The word: RECOMPILATION. It was too much. Too sudden.

His eyes burned. He didn’t notice at first—just the blur of the room shifting as tears welled up, caught at the edges of his vision. His chest ached. Not in a metaphor. Not in poetry. It hurt. Like something had cracked deep beneath the ribs and let in cold air that shouldn’t be there.

He wiped his face fast, awkward, like the motion might stop it from happening.

He didn’t even hear the first knock.

The steam curled from the kettle behind him. A brush rolled off the table.

His breathing picked up—shallow, too fast now. Dissociation clawed at the corners. His fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the drawer. All the noise from the world felt far away. Except this. This was right here. Glowing. Beckoning. Real.

Then—

The door creaked.

It swung open.

Dylan flinched like a gunshot had gone off. His whole body jerked, eyes wide with instinct more than recognition. In that split-second, nothing registered. Not the voice. Not the shape. Just a sound—an intruder, someone stepping into his sanctuary, someone in his space—

“GET BACK—!” he barked.

The device nearly clattered from his lap. He caught it by instinct, panic tightening his limbs. In one motion he shoved it back into the drawer and slammed it shut, paw skidding across the desk surface.

He didn’t look.

He reached.

A paintbrush. Long and frayed at the end. Gripped too tight in his shaking hand.

The magic came fast—not channeled, not shaped. Just surged. His arm swung with a desperate, half-formed motion, and the bristles flared with glowing pigment—anxious, volatile.

Spell Level:	Spell Name	Spell Description
1	Fool’s Mosaic	Paints bright, trickster glyphs that animate the ground into confusing, collapsing puzzles.

Paint splattered forward in ribbons of light, swirling with impossible color. The floor of the small apartment twisted beneath the weight of magic—not physically, but perceptually. It rippled beneath half-finished canvases and paint-streaked rugs, warping space between cluttered stools and drying brushes. The tiles rearranged themselves with painterly logic, forming and unforming false pathways that wound through the illusion of archways that weren’t there. Inked symbols spiraled across the wooden floorboards like thought maps come alive, looping endlessly.

A crooked bookshelf trembled. A spilled jar of brushes rolled against a canvas propped near the door. Shadows painted themselves onto blank wall space. Shapes flickered like a fever dream pulled straight from Dylan’s subconscious.

It wasn’t hostile—it was overwhelmed. Defensive. Twitching with the raw instinct of someone terrified inside their own sanctuary.

The floor pulsed once like it was about to drop away.

His voice cracked, high and hoarse: “I SAID GET BACK—!”

His paw flung up over his eyes, like shielding himself from something about to strike. He didn’t see who it was. Didn’t hear the name. Just the creak of the door. Just the step into his world.

He braced for it.

The spell shifted with him, reacting in pulses that mirrored his breath—disjointed, fractured, full of color and noise. The world twisted around the intruder’s feet, splashing the entryway in a chaotic patchwork of tiles that weren’t real, doors that weren’t there, and symbols that meant nothing to anyone but Dylan’s own scrambled thoughts.

He stayed hunched, paintbrush tight in his grip, breath ragged behind his sleeve. Still not looking.

Still scared..

---

Mordecai didn’t speak at first. He simply pressed closer into her, like something caving in on itself. His ribs trembled against the pressure of her arms, sharp beneath worn cloth, every inch of him fragile and desperate. One of his hands reached weakly for the fabric at her side—not to pull her closer, not to anchor himself—but to confirm she was real. That there was weight. Warmth. That something in this world was still touchable.

But the moment lasted too long.

A twitch passed through his leg. Then another at his shoulder. His grip on her coat tightened, fingertips pressing in harder, too hard. His breath, shallow, began to quicken. A sharp edge slipped into his inhale, teeth gritting against something unseen. He didn’t seem to notice her anymore. His body was there—but his mind started retreating.

He began muttering.

Low, frantic syllables, almost inaudible against the wind. “No, no—he’s here—it’s moving—I said no—can’t—shouldn’t be—get back—get back—”

Not to her. Not to anyone. The words were being spoken to the spiral inside his own skull.

The wolves noticed immediately.

Rus’s ears folded back as he whined, shifting closer but low to the ground. Ber rose from his place, his posture firm now, tail stiff. Cer did not move—yet—but his eyes narrowed slightly, watching Mordecai with that calculating, dangerous stillness.

Inside, the noise was rising.

Voices clawed over each other in Mordecai’s skull.

Unity’s tone was sharp, bitter—“You let her see. Weak. She’ll leave.”

Ramura’s voice strained to calm—“Stay with it. Anchor. You know what’s real. You know.”

But Castiel screamed—high and broken, the same cry from the day his mother died. “She’s not moving! Please get up! Please get up!”

“Stop!” Mordecai barked, his voice too loud and too ragged, snapping the word into the space between his teeth. “Stop it—shut up—shut up—”

His whole body seized.

Behind him—beneath the earth, inside the dark seam of the world—he felt it. The air trembled. The ground grew loose beneath his knees, like it was remembering how to open. Breathing. Stretching. The Hollow Veldt.

He couldn’t see it.

But he felt it. Just like before. The presence. The chase. The soundless scream crawling beneath the grass.

His heart raced. He turned.

The shift was sharp, jarring. Mordecai staggered forward, pulling away from Ephraim—not pushing her, not striking—but shifting his weight enough to break from her hold and gain space between them. His balance faltered as he moved several paces away, staggering just past her so that his back now faced where she knelt, putting his body between her and what he believed to be the threat. He turned fully, breath hitching, eyes wide as if to confront the phantom rising behind him. One arm lifted fast, shoulder snapping back, and shadow burst across his fingers like ink boiled into air.

His left eye flared with dull violet light—cracks blooming faintly under the scarred skin like shattered glass beneath frost. Dark veins surged up his forearm, thin and jagged, pulsing.

And the shadows came.

They didn't shape into glyphs—not visibly, not like ink across parchment. Instead, they surged raw from him, wild and unformed, like instinct made tangible. The air behind him rippled with the presence of the spell—shifting with a low, guttural whine like pressure escaping a broken seal. Shadow, thick and oily, spooled from his fingers in spiraling tendrils, lashing through the night air like something alive and desperate. It crawled forward, reaching into the trees beyond, casting out a web of panic-born reflex.

The magic lashed out.

Spell Level:	Spell Name	Spell Description
1	Darkglyph Hex	Paints runes of binding shadow that ensnare magic, mind, and body.

A snare of shadow struck the trunk of a tree ten paces away with a concussive thump, coiling like ropes of void. The bark cracked. Branches snapped and fell. Another tendril whipped into the underbrush, ripping it clean. Dirt lifted in a slow wave, disturbed by the strike, and for a moment it looked like the very grass itself was recoiling from the spell.

But the shadow didn’t stop there.

A thin lash of darkness curled back, striking across Mordecai’s own forearm like a tether yanked too far. Another wrapped briefly over his spine, and for a breathless instant it looked as though the magic had turned on its master. His body convulsed forward, not in pain, but like something had tried to drag him back into the moment he cast it from. The shadows crawled along his ribs, faint and flickering, like echoes etched from within. They didn’t slice or burn—but they hurt. The magic wrapped itself into his nerves, tugged against his breath, like cold iron etched beneath the skin. It didn’t leave bruises, but left him reeling—ensnared by his own cast, as if the spell had judged him part of what needed binding. clung, like smoke given memory, reminding him of what still lived inside him. As though the spell had answered not just the threat—but the shape of the one who feared it.

The wolves startled.

Rus let out a sharp yelp and bounded back. Ber growled low, his teeth bared, muscles locked. Cer finally moved, taking one deliberate step forward, his bones rattling faintly.

Then silence.

No foe. No monster. Just wind through broken leaves and the soft hiss of settling dust.

Mordecai’s body shook. His arm—still extended—slowly fell back to his side, trembling. The dark tendrils that had briefly lashed over his forearm and spine seemed to writhe once more, then dissolved into the air like smoke unraveling from a fire long extinguished. They didn’t vanish all at once—only slowly, reluctantly—as if letting go of something they'd rather stay tied to. His breath came in bursts now, jaw slack, one eye wide and stricken. The other—his blind one—burned, the scar pulsing as though something behind it still thrashed.

He blinked once. Twice. The silence roared.

His voice, when it came, was hoarse. Empty.

“It was there…”

His voice cracked dry in his throat, almost unintelligible—hoarse, faltering, like he was speaking through layers of dust and years.

He turned his head slightly, not toward Ephraim, not toward the clearing—but toward the trees, the earth, the air that should have been empty.

“It waits… not outside. It’s under the skin. Under everything.”

His fingers pressed hard against his ribs, chest rising and falling too quickly, as if he could squeeze it out, whatever it was.

“Sometimes it watches from behind my eyes.”

He swallowed hard, but his voice thinned into silence. The weight of it all pressed against his ribs—the voices, the memory, the fear—and when he tried to speak again, nothing followed. Just breath.

His mouth opened as if to explain, to warn, to say anything at all… but no sound came. His body trembled instead. Not from cold, but from the hollow ache of having broken again and realizing there was nothing left to hold the shape of what he’d been.

His shoulders sagged. His frame folded inward slightly, spine curling like it was collapsing under the gravity of being seen. Then, as if the ground gave out beneath him all over again, his knees buckled. He crumpled slowly, not with impact, but with surrender—folding until he was kneeling in the dirt, breath shivering in his chest, arms slack at his sides.

“…I can’t…” he managed, barely audible, and even that trailed off before he found what he couldn’t do. He blinked once, slowly, his good eye wet. The other wide, glassy, overwhelmed.

“I… I don’t...I-I..don't-" His voice trailed off, his shoulders trembling.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

​

Ephraim's Tome

---

The sea talks more than I do now.

It breathes in and out against the rocks like it’s trying to remind me something’s alive out there. I sit near the back of the cave, just far enough from the tide to stay dry. The air is damp. Salt settles into my lungs the way grief does—soft, but heavy. It sticks.

There’s no fire. Just the light from the sky, cracked through the cave’s mouth in weak ribbons.

I close my eyes and try again.

Not to cast. Not to call anything forward. Just to listen—to the rune.

Healing isn’t something you can touch. It’s not a spell or a shape. It’s a presence, quiet and deep, like a river underneath skin. When I reach for it now, it’s like pressing fingers against glass. I know it’s there, but it won’t open. Not since the bibblecores fractured. Not since everything else broke with them.

Still. I sit.

I breathe in. Four counts. Hold. Exhale.

Again.

The world narrows to breath and heartbeat. For a long time, that’s all there is. My thoughts try to scatter, like they always do. But I keep bringing them back. Not to answers—just to quiet.

After a while, something stirs. Not outside me. Inside.

The rune isn’t a sound or a word. It’s more like a memory of touch. Like the feeling you get when someone brushes past you in a dream. A warmth that knows your name, even if it doesn’t speak it.

It doesn’t heal me. Not today. Maybe not ever again.

But for a few seconds, it lets me sit beside it. Not as its wielder. Not as anything special.

Just a girl breathing in a cave.​

---

I’m running out of places.

The tide’s too high to camp on the sand, so I’ve climbed up into the roots of a split-palm and tied my coat around the base to keep the bugs off. The tree groans like it’s tired too. We’re a good match.

Tomorrow I’ll check the last cluster in the western reef. After that, I’ll have to start doubling back. Again.

I’ve been through Brasshollow twice. Once with maps, once without. Nothing. No sightings. No whispers. The reconstruction crews said if anyone was still trapped in the tunnels, they'd be dust by now.

Snarlin’ Cove was quieter. Empty in places it shouldn’t have been.

I’ve crossed islands that aren’t even on charts. I’ve given names I didn’t mean to say out loud. Only patterns left behind.

I don’t cry about it anymore.

Not out of strength. Just… I think I burned through it all.

I still talk to him sometimes. Just in my head. Quietly. Like he’s sitting across the fire and we’re pretending everything’s normal

But the truth is—I don’t think he’s out here.

I don’t think he’s anywhere I can get to.

And if he’s dead…

If he’s dead, I don’t know where that leaves me. The compass I’ve been holding doesn’t point anywhere anymore.

People keep telling me I should stop looking. That it’s not healthy. That I need to move on. I nod. I smile.​

---

“To you.”

I figured if I wrote this like I was talking to you, it might be easier. It isn’t.

But I’m doing it anyway.

I think you’d be proud of them. Maybe surprised, too. You always said the world doesn’t raise children—it tests them. Well, they’ve passed every test it’s thrown at them. Not because I taught them to. Just because they’re yours.

Rhea is thirteen now. Thirteen and already taller than me. She’s growing into her own shadow, but somehow still makes everything brighter. She laughs too hard at her own jokes. She walks like she’s practicing for a stage she hasn’t been invited to yet. She chose a Water Rune—on her own. Said it felt like standing in a thought she hadn’t finished thinking yet. That’s how she put it.

She’s like your mother in more ways than I’ll admit aloud. She talks to waves. Hums when she’s happy. Suitors show up at the dock with flowers or poems or pie, and she turns them all away like she’s waiting for a mystery prince. Or maybe a storm. I don’t ask.

She’s softness in motion. But she’s not weak. Not one bit.

Then there’s Castara.

She doesn’t say much. Never did. You remember that. But when she does speak, it’s usually right when someone needs to be brought back down to earth. Sharp. Measured. She cuts through nonsense like a blade that was forged in silence. I caught her reading your old writings last week—eyes narrow, hands still, like she was waiting for the page to blink first. She didn’t even flinch when I asked what she thought.

“She made the right call,” she said.

She meant me. Or you. Or maybe both of us.

She’s a strategist already. Doesn’t show her cards. But she’s loyal, and she listens. That last part means more than she lets on.

I see you in her. In her stillness. Her restraint. The way she waits to speak until it will matter. Sometimes I catch her staring out at the sea, like she thinks it’s hiding something from her. Maybe it is.

They ask about you.

Not in a way that hurts. Not all the time. Just small things. What you smelled like. If you would’ve taught them how to use their runes. If you'd have laughed at the joke they made last week.

I try to answer. I do.

But there’s a moment—always a beat too long—where I freeze. Like if I say the wrong thing, I’ll ruin what they’ve built around the shape you left behind.

They don’t cry. Not where I can see it.

And I don’t tell them I write you sometimes. Like this. Not for answers. Just to hold the weight of your name again, so it doesn’t gather dust.

I tell myself if you’re alive, you'll come back when you can.

If you're not…

Then this is still a better way to say goodbye.​

---

I told them.

I didn’t mean to—not exactly. It started with Rhea asking about a dream she had. A field with silver birds and backwards rain. She said it felt too real to be pretend. Castara was half-listening. But then she said she’s had dreams too. Hers are quieter. Emptier. She dreams about standing in a room that feels like a box beneath a world, like gravity’s upside down.

I don’t know what made me say it.

Maybe it was the way they looked at me. Like I had the answer, and they were ready this time—not as kids, but as people. So I told them the truth.

About the chronospheres.

About the worlds before this one.

About how this place isn’t the beginning, not really.

They didn’t believe me at first. Rhea laughed—light, nervous. Castara didn’t speak at all. I told them about the other versions of me. Of them. About a time when our lives ended, and began again.

I told them they weren’t just born into this world.

They arrived here. Just like me.

Different names. Different choices. Same soul, maybe.

We sat in silence after that. I let them choose whether to ask more.

They didn’t. Not yet.

But Rhea took my hand before bed. Held it like it was the one thing she still knew how to trust.

I asked them both to keep it secret. Not because it’s shameful, but because the world doesn’t know what to do with people like us.

They promised. Castara first. Then Rhea, reluctantly.

It’s a family secret now.

Like magic. Like grief. Like love that stretches beyond a single lifetime.

They know.

And something in me feels lighter.

Not fixed. Just… shared.​

---

I didn’t plan to talk to anyone today.

It was early—the sun hadn’t crested over the outer reef yet—and the girls were off on their own errands. I took the quiet when I could. Sat on the dunes near the old dock, back to the wind, pen in hand, watching the tide chew the pier planks into splinters.

I was writing. Not anything important. Just trying to pin down the way memory feels when it doesn’t belong to a moment anymore.

Then she showed up.

Said something casual. Something like, “I thought only sailors kept journals like that.”

I looked up and there she was. A catkin. Lykoi strain—black fur with smoky breaks at the temples and around the mouth, like old ink on old paper. Her eyes were a sharp, unblinking yellow. Not warm. But not unfriendly either.

She sat without asking.

She had a basket full of loose herbs and bones tied in string, and when she placed it down, I could hear the clatter of glass inside. Witchcraft rune. Easy to tell. Her hands moved like a spell even when she was just adjusting her collar.

Her name’s Frangag.

Said it like she was daring me to forget it.

She’s from Brasshollow originally—claims to have left the city after the last tower realignment made her “itch in her bones.” Now she trades spellwork for dry goods or passage, floats between islands collecting “what doesn’t want to be owned.” I didn’t ask what that meant. She offered me a lemon candy instead. It was terrible. I liked it.

We talked for longer than I meant to.

She asked questions I don’t usually answer. About magic. About my rune. About what it’s like to live in a place where the sea is louder than the voices in your head. I asked her nothing in return—but still, I learned things. That she used to work in rail logistics. That she once hexed a man for forgetting her name. That she doesn’t believe in fate, but respects patterns.

By the end, I felt strange. Not unsettled. Just… seen. Not in the way people see your grief and pity you. More like she recognized something in me she’d been waiting to find.

She said, “I’m around. People always say that, but I mean it. I’ll be around.”​

---

They called it a meeting, but it felt more like stepping into the part of a story no one writes down.

Frangag didn’t explain where we were going. Just said, “Wear something loose and don’t bring anything that smells like salt.” That ruled out half my wardrobe. I went anyway.

The meeting place was an old rain shelter deep in the mangrove flats north of the Cove. Looked abandoned from the outside—boards warped, roof patchy, vines growing through what used to be a window. But inside, it breathed. Candles everywhere. Lanterns that flickered even without wind. Runes chalked beneath rugs. It smelled like dried mint, wax, and woodsmoke.

There were ten of them.

Male and female kin. Different species, different accents, but they all shared the same stillness—the kind that meant they knew how to survive together without being seen.

The Witchcraft Rune isn’t about fireballs or illusions. Not really. It’s pattern magic. Blood and thread. Knowledge passed in symbols, in recipes, in rules you don’t speak aloud. It’s underground. Not forbidden—but forgotten on purpose. And they liked it that way.

I didn’t speak much. Just watched. Listened. When they circled up, no one asked me to leave.

Later, when I asked why they were being so open with me, a jackalkin named Molti said, “We’ve needed a healer since Tavi passed. We keep each other safe, but we don’t stitch as clean as you can.”

He didn’t smile when he said it. None of them did. But they meant it. They wanted me there. Not for who I was. Not for what I’d lost. But for something I could do.

Something I could still do.

So I did.

They brought me the injured. Quietly. No backstories. No explanations. One at a time.

A toadkin with splinters in his ribs. A small deerkin girl with spell-burn across her hands. A stern ferretkin who couldn’t stop coughing.

They came. I healed. No questions.

And the silence that came after felt like trust.

Frangag stayed beside me the whole time, never hovering. Just close. She handed me cloth, water, the right salves without being asked. She even corrected my posture once. I let her.

After, we walked back in silence. When we reached the split in the trail, she said, “You didn’t flinch.”​

---

I can’t decide if I want to bake Jen a pie or tell her off.

Today she brought over squash. A whole basket of it. Told me, in that syrup-sweet voice of hers, “Thought you might need help feeding your little ones, what with all your wandering lately.” Never mind the fact that I’ve fed Rhea and Castara just fine for the past seven years. Never mind that the girls are both better at fishing than I am. Never mind I didn’t ask.

It’s always like that with her.

Little comments. Casual smiles. Questions that aren’t questions.

“Oh, still doing that journaling thing? That’s nice. Therapeutic, I bet.”

“Frangag seems… intense. You must have so much patience.”

She doesn’t say anything wrong. That’s the worst part.

She’s kind. On paper. Offers help when I need it. Has even stitched a tear in Castara’s cloak once, when I was too sick to lift a needle.

But Jen?

Jen always sees me.

Not like Frangag sees me. Not like someone finding a kindred soul.

Jen sees me like a mirror that forgot how to reflect properly.

Like someone who fell out of whatever story she thinks women like me are supposed to be in.

I try not to snap. I really do.

Because she means well, right?​

---

Well.

That happened.
It started like most things do with Jen—small. She made a comment about the way I let Castara patch her own cloak.

And then I said something back. I don’t even remember what it was. Something sharp. Something that had been waiting behind my teeth since last spring.

We both raised our voices.

Eryon went inside halfway through. I think he knew better.

It wasn’t dramatic. No name-calling. No public scene. Just two women standing on a porch throwing truths at each other like cracked dishes.

I told her I didn’t need her help if it came with strings.

She told me she wasn’t trying to help me—she was trying to understand me, and that I made it really hard.

We both went quiet after that.

She left. Basket still swinging in her hand, mouth pressed thin.

I stood there, sweating.

And then—just now—she came back.

She knocked on the frame with the end of a broom handle and held out a paper-wrapped bundle.

Inside: peach bread. Still warm.

She didn’t say sorry.

Neither did I.

She just said, “It’s good with honey.”​

---

They came again today.

Wrath first—boots too loud, coat too heavy, voice carrying like it was born to take up space. Mercy followed behind him, silent as a breath caught in the throat.

It’s been three months since the last time. Before that, nearly a year. They don’t write. They don’t warn. They just appear when the wind changes and disappear just as suddenly.

I make tea anyway.

Wrath asked about the garden. Then about Castara. Then Rhea. Then—eventually—about “any sightings.” That’s what he calls it. Not him. Not Mordecai. Just “any sightings.” His voice dips when he says it though. He touches the side of his jaw like it aches. I don’t press.

He doesn’t talk about feelings. Not directly.

Mercy stayed mostly on the steps. Said she didn’t want to come in this time. She looked tired. Older. But steady. Wore her traveling cloak like armor. When I offered to let her stay the night, she didn’t hesitate to decline.

She told me this was her line. That Wrath and her had built something on their own and needed space to keep it. That she still cared. That she wanted the best for me, for the girls, for him.​

---

Frangag asked me to come with her.

Didn’t start with a reason. Just a sentence—“I need your help. It’s on Scribble.” She didn’t offer details, and I didn’t press. I trusted her. That’s becoming a habit.

The boat was long and low, skimming the shorelines between islands. Frangag wore her old traveling coat—oilcloth stained with wax circles and stitched runes I couldn’t read. She didn’t speak much. Just smoked a thin pipe that smelled like anise and wet cedar. Halfway through the trip, she finally said what we were doing.

“She was in the circle. A blabbermouth. She risked everything.”

I asked what kind of risk.

“Information,” she said. “To outsiders.”

I asked who.

She didn’t answer.

I don’t know if I wanted her to.

When we arrived, the island of Scribble looked... harmless. Worn. Full of stray dogs and window shutters that banged in the wind. The kind of place that gets skipped on most maps. She led me through narrow streets until we reached a small house on the bluff.

It was yellow. Painted, even.

Two girls played in the yard.

Another catkin lived there—a white shorthair. Slender, neat. She looked up when we approached. She knew. Didn’t run. Didn’t beg.

I didn’t go inside for what happened next.

I waited by the stones.

The wind didn’t carry screams. Just the sound of Frangag’s footsteps. Deliberate. Measured. Followed by a short silence, and then a call: “Ephraim. She’s ready.”

The woman was hurt when I entered. Bad, but not broken. Frangag never goes for the killing blow when the lesson still needs to echo.

I don’t know what I expected. Pleading, maybe. But she was quiet. Bit her lip and looked away as I unpacked my kit.

I healed her.

Not because she deserved it.

Because that was my part to play.

She didn’t thank me. I didn’t ask her to.

When I washed my hands after, I noticed the girls still playing in the yard. One of them looked exactly like Rhea. Same tilt to the chin. Same easy grace in her hands.

I stared too long. Frangag noticed.

She said, “We protect our own. If someone lets that slip, we remind them why we stay hidden.”​

---

The shrimp witches on this island.

They’re not dangerous. Mostly.

They keep to themselves. Live in shell-huts beneath the reeds, come up only during high tide or when the moon’s doing something weird. Once I watched one float by on a lily pad holding what looked like a tiny umbrella made of fishbone. She was humming.

Sometimes I forget magic is allowed to be funny.

So much of what I’ve seen—runes, gods, chronospheres—has been heavy. Weighty. Full of consequence. But then you see a shrimp witch blessing a bucket of clams, and you remember that this whole world is stitched together with whimsy no one asked permission for.

It’s strange that witchcraft exists here, too. A different kind than Frangag’s, but still the same idea: claiming something unseen and shaping it with intention. Whether it’s frogs in a jar or salt spirals or whispers to the moon.

Sometimes I think this world is a joke the gods forgot to finish writing.

Sometimes I think the joke is that we take it seriously at all.

Today I watched a shrimp witch try to summon rain using nothing but an old spoon and a chant that sounded like gargling. It worked. A little drizzle. Then she danced like it was the best thing that had ever happened.​

---

I met with Lucian today.

We didn’t schedule it. We never do. It’s always some passive invitation wrapped in a formal note—“Should you find yourself passing through Whistletrain Central…” As if I’d ever just wander into the Chairman’s tower without cause.

But I went.

He looks the same, mostly. Tail still sharp with precision. Waistcoat spotless. Eyes that never blink when they’re supposed to. But he’s... quieter now. Not in volume. In presence. Like a painting someone turned to face the wall. Still dangerous. Still brilliant. But hollowed at the edges.

He never mentions Charlotte.

Not once in all these years.

But her absence hums under everything he says.

He used to lean on her precision. She used to finish his sentences. Now, he pauses more often. Looks at the corner of the room like it owes him something. You can tell he’s still chasing ghosts, but only the kind that wear heels and correct punctuation.

His new assistant is named Simon.

A labrador. Young, bright-eyed, perpetually five thoughts behind the conversation but always trying to catch up. I like him. Not because he’s particularly clever—but because he’s earnest. Genuinely tries.​

---

Sometimes the memories sneak in without knocking.

I’ll be planting onions or setting water to boil and suddenly it’s there—his voice. That version of him. The one from before everything shattered.

It wasn’t dramatic, that day. Just quiet. Raw.

We were still in our native world then. The one before the timelines splintered. Before bibblecores and resets and body-swapping and all the gods started playing with their food.

I had just come back from a failed rescue. My hands were still shaking. There were ash marks on my sleeves, I remember. Someone we couldn’t save. Someone I couldn’t save.

And he just… held me.

Not tightly. Not like some knight with declarations and armor. Just firmly. Warm. Real.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay to feel this way. You’ve carried this for so long… You don’t have to hold it all together right now.”

I didn’t believe him then.

But I wanted to.

“I know it hurts. And it’s not fair. None of it is fair. You loved them. You wanted to protect them. And you did everything you could.”

His voice shook a little when he said that. I could feel it in his chest. Like the words were tripping over something he wasn’t ready to admit.

And then:

“You’re allowed to be angry, Ephraim. You’re allowed to grieve. Scream, cry, break apart if you need to…”

He told me it was too much for anyone to carry.

And for the first time, I believed that too.​

---

There was a moment where it felt like everything worked. The calm before the storm.

Just once.

I remember Ulysses laughing.

That’s the part that keeps ringing in my head. Just Ulysses, perched too-casually with Janus beside him, throwing himself in front of the moment like a knight with sarcasm for a sword.

“Maybe we don’t start dinner with a lecture?”

He saved the tone. Cut it clean. Tiz shut up, for once. Janus kicked him under the table and tried not to laugh out loud.

I didn’t know I’d miss that sound so much.

Ulysses always knew how to slice through the tension without drawing blood. I think that’s what made him dangerous in his own right. He didn’t need magic to shift a room. He just needed a few words and a well-timed glance.

The next world came fast.

Ulysses wasn’t there.

Not in the third world. Not in the cities. Not in the timelines that followed.

I don’t know where he ended up.

Maybe nowhere.

Maybe somewhere else entirely, with Janus at his side and some other world’s candlelight flickering against his sharp grin.

I try not to linger on it.

But tonight I remembered that table. That dinner. The way my mother’s fingers fidgeted at the table’s edge. The way Mordecai hadn’t even gotten a drink before being called a public threat. The way we hadn’t even been allowed five minutes of stillness before the weight of our choices sat down beside us.

And the way Ulysses made it bearable.

Not perfect.

Just bearable.

I miss him.

And I hate that I don’t even know where to look.​

---

Avarice, Riversong, and a goatkin named Miles have all settled here now.

I'm starting to think this place isn’t just a resting spot—it’s a magnet for wanderers who’ve lived too many lives and need somewhere soft to fall.

They came to visit yesterday.

Riversong looked the same as always. Soft voice. Eyes like she’s seen the end of the world and decided it was her business, not yours. She brought tea.

Miles, though… I hadn’t met before.

A goatkin. Tall, theatrical, absolutely swept into the room like he’d been waiting his whole life to make an entrance. Kissed my hand when introduced.

And then there’s Avarice.

Still with that sugar-skull facepaint etched in his fur. Still gentle in the way only people who’ve known real pain manage to be. But there’s something calmer in him now. He speaks softer. Smiles more. There’s a weight that seems to have shifted—like he’s finally found a way to set some of it down.

They told me about the place they were before. A different world entirely. The land itself was ritualistic in a lot of ways. Everyone bore facepaint like it was part of their soul.

I didn’t ask too many questions.

I’ve learned better than to push at people’s histories when they’ve already crossed too many borders.

What struck me, though, was how… settled they seemed. Avarice and Riversong, I expected that from. But even Miles, who talks like a bard in his own play, seems grounded when he looks at them.

Funny thing, though— Miles follows Riversong around like a riddle he’s trying to be worthy of. I think he likes that. That she doesn’t play into the softness he projects. That she’s not moved by showmanship. He calls her “my stormcloud,” and she responds by raising one brow.

They’re good together. Strange, but good.
​

---

I brought the journal with me. I always do when I leave the Cove.

This trip is different though.

Frangag asked if I’d come with her—to a place the Coven visits sometimes. An island without a name. Or at least, not one they say aloud. Maybe it’s superstition, maybe secrecy. I didn’t ask. I’ve learned when to hold my questions.

They say it’s a place for release. Not magical, not necessarily—but ritual. Grounded. Old.

When she asked if I wanted to go, she didn’t frame it like a test. Just a suggestion.

“You’ve been holding too much,” she said. “Let us help carry some of it. You don’t have to unravel alone.”

Frangag is like that. Poised and blunt all at once. There’s grace in the way she speaks, but it’s never soft. She knows how to twist the knife if she wants to—but she hasn’t with me. Not yet.

I trust her.

That surprises me.

I don’t trust easily anymore. Especially not with this part of me. The part that still aches when I walk past the train stations. The part that feels like it might never stop searching.

The part that’s still looking for him.

Mordecai.

It’s been seven years.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve rebuilt myself from the ruins. Other times, I feel like I just moved into the wreckage and called it home.

The Coven says I’m still grieving. They don’t say it like an insult. They say it like an invitation. To let it happen. To let it move through me, not calcify inside me.

They’re not therapists. They’re witches. They don’t deal in stages of grief. They deal in blood and moonlight and shared silence under trees that remember more than we do.

And they want me there.

Not to fix me.

But to hold space for what’s broken.​

---

I haven’t heard from Frangag at all.

No notes. No knock on the door. No floating message spell drifting through the window. Just silence.

It feels familiar.

Which is somehow worse than it being new.

I keep telling myself it’s fine. That I’m being dramatic. That people drift apart, that schedules change, that her life was never mine to orbit. But I know this rhythm. The way someone slowly pulls away, leaving nothing loud enough to blame—just gaps. Gaps that start to shape themselves like truth.

It was the same with him.

Different in the details, yes. But the weight is the same. That slow, painful realization that no one’s coming back today. Or tomorrow. Or maybe at all.

The awful quiet that creeps in when you finally stop hoping.

What did I do wrong?

That’s the question that keeps returning, like tidewater against a ruined dock. Did I ask for too much? Did I speak too freely?​

---

You know what?

Fine.

I’m done pretending this didn’t hurt.

She didn’t free up my time.
She pushed me out.

Dressed it up in soft language and clever little grins, like I should be grateful she let me play helper in her little underworld project. Like it was a favor.

It wasn’t.

It was calculated. Every moment. Every compliment. Every gentle tap on the arm. She got what she needed—my hands, my trust, my rune—and then she left.

Just like he did.

And no, I’m not saying they’re the same. Mordecai never meant to disappear. His vanishing wasn’t cruelty—it was fate, chaos, magic. Something bigger than both of us.

But Frangag?

She made a choice.

She chose to ignore me. Chose not to write. Chose not to visit. And now I’m left trying to swallow this rotting silence like it’s my fault again. Like I misread everything again.

I’m so tired of being polite.

Of letting people fade without asking why.

Of making space for ghosts and calling it grace.

You don’t get to pull me in and drop me. Not anymore.​

---

Frangag came by today.

Like no time had passed at all.

She knocked just once. When I opened the door, she was already mid-sentence—talking about weather, ferry delays, something that happened on Tundrim Isle that made her laugh.

I didn’t know what to say.
So I laughed, too.

I’d been so angry. Pages and pages of it. I didn’t even look at her with the same eyes anymore. Until I did. Until she looked at me the way she used to—sharp, knowing, warm in a way that felt designed for me—and suddenly none of that fire felt solid anymore.

She said she’d missed me.

That she was sorry it had been so long, but things had gotten “messy” and she didn’t want to bring it to my doorstep. That I deserved peace.

Peace.

And when she said that word, it landed in me like a soft hook, reeling me back in with every breath.

I didn’t ask the things I should’ve.
I didn’t demand answers.
I didn’t even show her the last entry I wrote. The one where I swore I was done.

Instead, I made tea.

And when she reached for her cup and touched my hand—just for a second—it felt like the sun had returned after weeks of stormlight.

I know how that sounds.
I know I should still be angry.
But the truth is, I was just… relieved.

She asked if I’d be willing to help again. Just something small—someone sick on a neighboring island. Nothing difficult. Nothing dangerous. “Just a favor,” she said. “If you’re up for it.”

​

---

“…Dylan—”

The name barely left his throat before the floor peeled beneath his feet like a bad dream.

He froze—claws reflexively gripping the warped wood as the apartment shifted sideways. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it just looked like it did. A path formed where the doorway used to be, tiled in colors that didn’t make sense, framed by glyphs that flickered and spun. It smelled like paint. Panic. Memory.

Not magic he understood.

Not magic meant for him.

Dogman staggered back a step—then two. His tail twitched once, jerking low. His breath came fast. The spell didn’t seem violent, but it recoiled from him. All teeth, all instinct. Like it wasn’t Dylan casting it—like it was something Dylan couldn’t hold in anymore.

“I didn’t mean to—” he started, but stopped.

He couldn’t see Dylan’s face. Just the outline of a body, hunched, flinching from the light.

Dogman’s ears pinned back. He took one last breath—like trying to say something more—but no words came. The air wasn’t ready for them. Neither was Dylan.

He didn’t slam the door.

Just pulled it shut behind him, careful not to rattle the frame, and disappeared down the stairwell without another sound.

---

She didn’t breathe. Not at first. Not after the shadows. Not after the air broke open.

Ephraim’s hands hovered midair where he had pulled away from her. Her fingers were still curled in the shape of him.

She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t even flinched.

But she couldn’t move now.

Mordecai was kneeling again. Not in grief this time, but like something had drained out of him. The way his arms hung. The way the shadows curled and vanished like they didn’t want to. The way his voice broke, dry and lost.

Ephraim swallowed, but her throat felt tight. Her chest hurt.

She stared at him—really stared—at the trembling in his jaw, the way his scar seemed to glow with something it didn’t choose. The space between his ribs. The silence after that—whatever that had been.

And for the first time, she didn’t know what to say.

Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

The door clicked shut.

Dylan blinked, breath catching in his throat. He heard it—his name. Not imagined. Not his own voice echoing back at him. Dogman.

But by the time it registered, the hallway was already empty.

The illusion peeled away. The magic dissolved with a final ripple of paint across the warped floorboards, vanishing into a soft smear of color that faded like breath on glass. The room returned—quiet, cluttered, dim. One canvas had toppled over beside the sink. A jar of turpentine had rolled on its side but hadn’t spilled. A brush clattered off the shelf.

And still, Dylan didn’t move.

His breath hitched. Then again. It caught halfway up his chest and refused to go any further. His paw went to his eyes, but it was too late—tears pushed through, streaming down as he tried and failed to wipe them away. He curled inward, breath choking in his throat, shoulders trembling with the effort to hold it back.

He couldn’t.

It all crashed down.

Seven years of silence. Of trying to carry something he never chose. Of waking up in the same place where no one was left. Of not knowing if he was allowed to feel anything anymore—because they were gone, and he wasn’t.

His breath came faster, shallow and panicked. The edges of the room blurred. The kettle hissed behind him and it sounded miles away. His fur went damp with sweat. He clawed at his chest, fingers twitching.

He needed to breathe. Why couldn’t he breathe?

Dylan staggered up from the desk chair, legs wobbling. One knee struck the canvas bin and sent it crashing aside. He stumbled to the bed—fell to his knees—his paws scrabbling under the frame for the small wooden chest. His breath rasped like a hinge about to break.

He opened it.

Inside: a bright, ridiculous tie. Yellow, patterned with tiny parrots. His dad used to wear it on "serious days," wagging his tail like it made him official. “Parrot power makes the paperwork friendlier,” he used to say, like it was fact, but with a large grin and a twinkle in his eye.

Next to it—folded carefully—was a cloth napkin. Hand-sewn edging. A neat, imperfect embroidery of a teacup with the phrase "You don't have to be brave, just honest." His mom made it for him during a rough school year, after he'd failed a speech in front of the class. She told him honesty mattered more than performance. That vulnerability was still strength. She’d smelled like peppermints and rose balm. She never once raised her voice.

He clutched them both—tie and napkin—in trembling hands.

Held them to his chest.

Let the texture anchor him.

His knees pressed into the floor. Eyes shut tight. His body rocked forward slightly. The sounds of the room bled out.

It didn’t stop the pain. But the storm softened.

Eventually, the worst of the shaking passed. His breath began to slow, each inhale still uneven, but no longer drowning him. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his cardigan, gently, as if any sudden motion might restart it all. His nose burned. His eyes were raw. But he could feel himself again. A little.

He put the tie and napkin back into the chest, slower this time. His fingers lingered on the fabric. He whispered something—maybe “thank you,” maybe nothing—and closed the lid.

He rose shakily to his feet, padding across the floor with quiet steps. The paintbrush he’d cast earlier was still on the ground. The drawer remained closed.

He stared at it.

His paw hovered over the handle.

He hesitated.

Then slowly—quietly—he pulled it open.

The prototype was still there. Glowing faintly. Waiting.

Dylan picked it up.

Its weight was familiar. Cold in his hands. Warm at the seams. The spiral shimmered faintly across the screen, and the blinking icon pulsed again—archive access. The one video log still waiting. Still alive.

He stared.

His thumb hovered.

Briggs was in there. His voice. His thoughts. Whatever he’d left behind.

Dylan’s breath trembled.

But this time—he didn’t look away.

His paw moved.

And he tapped the screen.

The file began to open.

---

Mordecai stayed kneeling.

Breathing.

Not yet looking at her.

His fingers dug into the dirt—clenching, releasing, then clenching again like he couldn’t quite let go of the earth. Each breath shook through him unevenly, scraped raw in his throat. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. Just kept breathing, like that alone took more effort than he had.

The wolves moved first.

Ber approached from behind where the staff had fallen, his silent gait almost reverent. He dipped his skull-head, bone maw gently curling around the worn wood of Mordecai’s staff, and carried it without sound. No urgency. No force. Just purpose. He stepped carefully through the grass and laid it down beside Mordecai’s hand. Then stood back.

Rus glanced at Ephraim.

His eyes flicked between her and Mordecai, ears twitching. A small whine escaped his ribs—half-question, half ache. He lingered for a breath longer, uncertain, and then padded toward Mordecai. He brushed against Mordecai’s right side, soft and slow, the way you might steady someone too dazed to ask. No bark. No sound. Just pressure. Presence.

Cer stepped forward last—his movement direct, deliberate. He stood before Mordecai first, a brief pause, as if scanning him. Then he moved around him, circling wide to settle near Mordecai’s left, the blind side. There, he remained, standing tall—unmoving. A wall where vision failed. A shape to lean against, if needed.

Mordecai reached for the staff.

His fingers shook as he wrapped around it, and with slow, halting motion, he pushed himself upright. The staff groaned faintly under his weight. His spine curved, shoulders sunken, every breath a visible tremor through his frame. The shadows on him had dulled—but not vanished. That faint pulse of violet still flickered at his ribs and around the wound-warped eye. It dimmed… but it was still there.

He stood—barely—and turned his head.

Ephraim was still kneeling where he’d left her. She hadn’t moved. Her hands hung midair, like she hadn’t quite registered the absence of him in them. Her face—quiet, stunned—was turned toward him. Lips parted. Eyes wide. She looked at him like she’d seen something unravel, and wasn’t sure if it could be put back.

His breath hitched.

Panic, cold and immediate, surged through him.

His good eye widened just slightly, and then darted—at her, the staff, the ground, away. Back again. Away again. His jaw trembled. He couldn’t hold her gaze. Couldn’t risk it. Each glance stung. He looked back at the dirt, at anything else. Fear twisted in his lungs.

Look at her. Look at her. That’s what she sees now. This is who you are.

Unity’s voice spat through the back of his skull, biting, cruel.

"Pathetic. Dangerous. Shaking in your own skin like a child and calling it grief."

Mordecai’s hand tightened around the staff. His other clenched at his side. He turned his head further away.

And Rus pressed in.

The wolf’s paw lifted and brushed softly against Mordecai’s leg. Not a command. Not restraint. Just—contact. A reminder. A pulse of warmth in the dark.

A breath trembled loose from his lips.

“I-I—” he choked, voice caught, lips struggling to shape the next word. “I’m—”

He didn’t finish it. He couldn’t.

It collapsed back into silence, thick and cracked with everything that couldn’t be said. He stood there shaking, unable to meet her eyes, with the wolves holding him up where the rest of him was breaking.

---

The Brass Beacon still stood.

Some said it should have fallen—just like the rest of Brasshollow, gutted and blistered by fire and arcane pressure. Its windows had cracked, yes. One side had slouched inward from the impact. But through it all, the Beacon remained—suspiciously tall, suspiciously intact. A little too untouched. As if the building itself had decided it would endure.

Just like Cinley.

He had once been dismissed as a nuisance. A three-foot scribbler of headlines, a smirking dragonkin barely taller than a filing cabinet. “Lizard,” they called him. “Snake with a quill.”

Not anymore.

The Dragon Rune had changed him—no, awakened him. The blood had always been there. But now? He moved like the sky made room for him. Towering, long-necked, with that unmistakable elegance of eastern dragons. His limbs curled with grace even when still. His mane brushed the walls when he passed. His tail coiled deliberately behind him—never dragging, always placed. And those eyes. Those ancient, judging eyes that could make generals second-guess themselves mid-sentence.

He was still a journalist. The Beacon still published—cryptic leaks, veiled truths, elegant poison printed with charm. But over those seven years, something in Cinley had grown. Something deeper than ambition. Something older than vanity.

He didn’t want whistlepoints anymore.

He wanted dominance.

He wanted the last word.

He wanted everyone’s breath to still when he entered a room.

And he found a way to have it.

Beneath the Beacon—far deeper than zoning would ever admit—there were mechanisms. Spiraling elevators that clicked and sighed, brass piping woven with runes, a lift that didn’t appear unless you said the right thing while standing on it. Some knew of it. Most did not. But those who did? They stayed far away. The aura below was not for idle visits.

Down there, the archive waited.

Gold-plated doors taller than a cathedral gate marked the threshold. Engraved with ancient dragon dialects, curled sigils, and warded by enchantments written in languages no longer taught. Cinley didn’t break in—he asked. Well, no. He suggested. He coiled. He stared. And those poor archivists from Lumenreach? They felt their will vanish like steam. What was it they gave him? Support. Materials. Seals. Maybe even their own secrets. Whatever it was, Cinley got what he wanted.

Inside the vault: silence.

The chamber was wide and winding, circular like a spiraling ribcage. Along the walls stood great lacquered drawers, ivory-handled, obsidian-trimmed, glowing faintly with ambient magic. They weren’t labeled with categories. They were labeled with names.

Famous ones. Forgotten ones.

Kin who led armies. Kin who sold pies.

It didn’t matter to Cinley anymore who they were.

What mattered was what they hid.

He moved through it slowly, regally. Clawed feet clicking on marble in no particular hurry. Sometimes he slithered low, neck curling in a question mark as he peered at a name. Sometimes he rose, body uncoiling like incense smoke to reach a drawer from high above. Sometimes—rarely—he smiled.

And the air around him smelled faintly of mint.

“Secrets,” he once murmured to a visitor who had dared step too close.

“Not of lies. But of truths you buried so deep, you forgot where you placed them.

Luckily, I don’t forget.”

Because Cinley?

He still gave. Information, favors, names. He was still the Beacon. Still a journalist.

But in return?

He always took something.

Something you didn’t want to give.
Something you hoped no one would ever know.
Something he would keep.

And now?

He had a whole vault to put it in.

---

After the Brasshollow explosion, Captain Grumblefeather was confirmed dead—caught in the catastrophic blast that tore through the Whistletrain Central Hub. Blown clean off the Snarlin’ line, whistle still clenched in beak, his loss was marked with little ceremony, save for a brief system memo and a day’s delay on Route 3.

Grumblefeather had been a fixture of the rails for decades: a scowling, sharp-tongued pelican with a death grip on his schedule and a vocabulary rich in insults for "rookie engineers" and "half-witted schedulers." He ran the Snarlin’ route like a warship, muttering threats of derailment and squawking commands no one dared question.

But death, it seems, didn’t stop him.

Though the trains now operate under arcane automation and Whisper Relays, strange reports linger. Engineers speak of webbed footsteps echoing through empty cars. Passengers whisper of a translucent figure glimpsed in passing windows, beak glowing faintly blue. A lone mechanic once locked himself in a lavatory for an hour after hearing someone bark, “Clean this slop bucket of a cabin before I pluck ya bald!”—from an unoccupied conductor’s booth.

And sometimes, on late-night Snarlin’ runs, those sitting alone in the final car swear they hear the faint clang of a spectral whistle, followed by a gravelly grumble about "sloppy route timing" and "how nobody checks the left-side brake valves anymore."

They say Grumblefeather’s ghost still patrols the rails—annoyed, uninvited, and deeply unimpressed.

Whether he’s just a cantankerous old pelican too stubborn to pass on…or something else entirely.

---

The morning fog hadn’t lifted yet. It hung like gauze over the encampment, softening the outlines of tents, trees, and half-raised scaffolding down by the docks. A low fire cracked behind him, its smoke curling thinly as if not to disturb the quiet. Vernon sat on a weathered crate outside his canvas tent, a tin cup of bitter coffee in one hand, a cigarette pinched in the other.

He didn’t drink fast. Just sipped and listened. Somewhere off near the treeline, a hammer clinked. Further down, voices murmured over supply crates. Life moved in the valley, slow and steady—but it moved.

Vernon exhaled through his nose, watching the gray tendrils drift past his mustache. He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. But the thought came anyway. His words crossed over his mind again.

“You pull a trigger like that, son… best not miss. And best be ready to carry it.”

The memory hit like a slow horse to the gut. He could still see it—dim lamplight flickering in the Bellowline outpost, shadows dancing off rusted beams. The walls were stained with soot and arcane burn marks. The kind of place that never stopped smelling like copper and cordite. Zac stood in front of the old kettle, hands wrapped around a chipped mug, eyes sharp but hollow. There were maps on the table. Tunnel schematics. Caches marked in red. Fuel routes. Pressure points.

Zac didn’t pace. He didn’t shout. Just laid it all out quiet-like, the way men do when the only way forward is through fire. Vernon had stood in the doorway, arms crossed, one boot heel grinding into the floor. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t ask questions. Not until Zac finished. And then, that was all he said.

“You pull a trigger like that, son… best not miss. And best be ready to carry it.”

Then he turned, coat brushing the frame, and walked away. He never did try to stop it. And now here they were.

He tapped the ash off his cigarette and let it fall near his boot. The dirt was damp from morning dew, packed hard from Auxie boots. They’d carved roads out of nothing here. Tamed a little edge of the jungle. Started something that didn’t have a name yet. Vernon didn’t need a name. He just needed it to mean something.

He drained the last of the coffee, flicked the stub to the dirt, and stood with a slow grunt. His joints popped—quiet little reminders of his age, but they didn’t slow him none. Seven years had passed since the explosion in Brasshollow, but it still sat in his bones like a storm waiting to turn. He stretched one shoulder, then gave a short, low whistle.

It was thin. Ghostly. Like wind brushing through hollow reeds. The trees behind him rustled—not from any breeze, but from the thing arriving. Mist coiled backward, shadows deepened, and then came the gleam: twin white eyes, glowing like embers in a hearth, stepping into view.

Hollowmane.

She strode forward out of nothing, black smoke trailing off her legs like ink in water. Vernon didn’t flinch. Just stepped to her side and rubbed her jaw with a gloved hand.

“There you are,” he murmured, voice like dry creekbed gravel. “Good girl.” She pressed her head into his palm, ghost body solid where he touched it, hooves never quite touching the ground.

He mounted with practiced ease, boots brushing the stirrups, coat fluttering slightly in the air displaced by her presence. With a quiet click of his tongue and a tug on the reins, he muttered, “Come on.”

They moved. Not fast. Just a steady trot toward the docks—toward the rhythm of new life being built from ashes. The terrain rolled beneath them: churned soil, wooden frames rising like ribs from the earth, ropes stretched over pulley rigs and tied to crates.

A few Auxies were hauling supplies off a small boat at the dock. One of them, a raccoon kin with a wrapped wrist and sawdust clinging to his vest, looked up and waved.

“Vernon! You checkin’ the shipment?”

Hollowmane slowed without needing command. Vernon adjusted his hat and gave a subtle nod.

“Just makin’ sure no one’s tryna sell us sandbags full of stones,” he said, dry as ever.

The raccoon laughed. “Ain’t like Brasshollow no more, cap. These folk? Honest. Mostly.”

Vernon tilted his head just slightly, eyes narrowing beneath the brim. “Honest folk still bleed the same when a deal goes sour.”

The raccoon held up his hands. “Right, right. We’ll double-check the manifests.”

Vernon gave the faintest smirk—just a tug at one corner of his mouth—then clucked his tongue again. Hollowmane moved forward, threads of violet mist trailing in her wake.

He watched as the camp came into view again, just over the bluff. Supplies laid out. Auxies hammering boards into what might become walls. Someone calling out measurements. Someone else dragging tarps over dried tools.

They were building something.

And Vernon? He wasn’t sure if it’d hold. But he’d keep riding the edges. Watching. Guarding. Because this—this attempt—still felt like the closest damn thing to a cause.

And that was worth riding for.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Malformed Dice - Mordecai​

At the start of each roleplay session, Mordecai's player rolls a single 1d4 die to determine which version of Mordecai is in control for the duration of the session. The result governs his dominant personality, magical behaviors, narrative transformation, and social tendencies. This becomes the guiding tone for how Mordecai acts, speaks, and interacts with others during that session.

Regardless of the outcome, the other personalities are still present, but only as supplementary voices. They may comment internally or offer advice, but they cannot override the dominant form.

---

IF THE PLAYER ROLLS A 1: Unity Mordecai (Shadow State)​

Unity Mordecai becomes the dominant personality. Calm, severe, and often uncompromising, Unity’s presence demands precision and solitude. He tends to keep others at arm's length and may behave erratically if emotionally provoked.

• Buff: Mordecai gains Shadow Veil, which passively grants two Shadow Runes. When casting spells, he only rolls one D26, then combines the result with two fixed Shadow Runes and his Primary Rune.
• Drawback: Unity Mordecai is extremely difficult to work with. He is prone to anger, control issues, and emotionally violent reactions, especially when dealing with characters who represent chaos, deception, or emotional neediness. He may refuse help or go rogue in tense situations.

---

IF THE PLAYER ROLLS A 2: Ramura Mordecai​

Ramura, the most balanced and emotionally intelligent of Mordecai’s selves, takes the lead. He’s gentle, polite, and intelligent—but also deeply giving, sometimes to his own detriment.

• Buff: Ramura Mordecai gains an Arcane Familiar, based on Wrath's canine form from the Soul Games and formed from a fusion of Cerberus. This familiar channels all spellcasting, allowing Mordecai to cast at a safe distance.
• Drawback: Ramura Mordecai finds it extremely difficult to say no. He will overextend himself, agree to unreasonable demands, and may place himself in dangerous or emotionally taxing situations in an effort to help others. This behavior is driven by guilt, an old promise, or his core desire to be "useful."

---

IF THE PLAYER ROLLS A 3: Castiel-Mordecai​

This version reflects Mordecai during a younger, more vulnerable time—specifically the version of himself shaped by his time on the Sunship, under Sol's influence. Castiel is unpredictable, wounded, and carries remnants of magical indoctrination and dependency.

• Buff: Castiel Mordecai has access to selective spellcasting. After rolling the D26s, he may choose whether to apply a Fire Rune or a Shadow Rune as his primary, representing his grasp of Sunship teachings.
• Drawback: Castiel has a damaged-child personality. He is deeply co-dependent, especially with characters like Ephraim whom he views as maternal. He obeys her without question, but may become emotionally volatile if ignored, shamed, or made to feel powerless. Additionally, he suffers from emotional instability that must be managed through a Stressed Status mechanic.

---

THE STRESSED STATUS (CASTIEL MODE ONLY)​

Castiel’s psyche is fragile. Throughout the roleplay session, he can accumulate stress from traumatic events, emotionally charged conversations, being forced to act alone, or confronting fears around control or abandonment.

When Mordecai's player deems that Mordecai has become "Stressed", the following rules apply:

• The player must begin rolling a D10 with every Castiel post until the player decides he exits stressed-status.
• If a 6 is rolled at any time, Castiel inadvertently casts a Level 3 spell—this happens regardless of location, context, or allies present. The spell reflects his internal chaos and will include unstable or exaggerated magic effects. This may cause disruption, attract enemies, or collapse the narrative tension.
• These outbursts are not deliberate, and Castiel typically doesn't remember the specifics of what triggered them afterward. He may feel shame or fear in the aftermath, worsening his condition if not comforted.

---

IF THE PLAYER ROLLS A 4: Neutral Mordecai​

In this state, Mordecai is simply himself—no voice dominating. All personalities are balanced, contributing evenly. His demeanor is analytical, calm, and more human-like.

• Buff/Debuff: There is no major magical alteration. Mordecai uses his standard D26 dual-rune casting system as usual. The player has the most flexibility in this mode.
• Transformation: He appears as his default self.
• Mordecai may still hear the guidance of Unity, Ramura, or Castiel, but he processes them as thoughts or instincts rather than compulsions. This is his truest form, where memory, intellect, and magic converge.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

[ARCHIVAL VIDEO LOG – RESEARCH ENTRY: EXPANSION PROTOTYPE]

The screen flickers on with a gentle hum.

“Ah—okay. I think we’re rolling.”

Briggs gives a little awkward smile, the kind that says he’s probably done this twelve times already.

“This is Research Entry 407-B. Secondary expansion theory log. Time of recording… mm—afternoon, technically. Archipelago Standard.”

He clears his throat.

“Alright. So—I'm logging this mostly for internal documentation. No live feed, no audience assumed. Just one of those... in-case-it-works kind of things. You know.”

He reaches for a small, sleek device offscreen and holds it carefully in his paws. It looks like a miniature version of the Lumenreach terminal tech—arcane spirals etched around a brass frame, unfinished wires tucked behind glass.

“Prototype’s still not functional. At least—not in the ways I hoped. No response from the housing. No magical synchronization. Which makes sense. The original source object it was tuned to… well, that’s no longer in the vault.”

A pause. Briggs doesn’t elaborate. He gently sets the device down.

“Still. I’ve kept refining the interface. Most of the model's based on observations from the Ascendant Spire chambers—those scroll-interaction platforms that used the older arcane-steam fusion schematics. Obviously mine’s, uh… much smaller. Less elegant. Held together with a little hope and a lot of borrowed copper.”

He chuckles to himself.

“The trick was less in the frame and more in the resonance tuning. Memory scrolls leave imprints—not always active ones. But something lingers. A tension. Like—how a scent can stay in a room long after someone’s left it. The expansion was meant to respond to that. To... possibility.”

Briggs shifts slightly in his chair, more serious now. Still gentle, still thoughtful.

“I’ve been seeing strange readings lately. Not from this—nothing local. But subtle arcane echoes. Intermittent flickers on deep-range threads. The kind we usually write off as misfires, or decay. Only… these have a pattern. They almost match the original scroll’s profile.”

His brow furrows. He speaks slowly.

“Now, that shouldn’t be possible. Not unless someone—or something—is trying to access it again. Somewhere. Not here. But close enough to send a ripple.”

A pause. He taps his fingers softly on the edge of the table.

“It’s just a theory. Could be noise. Could be something old reacting to stress. But if it isn’t… then that means someone else remembers the scroll too. Or found it. Or never let go of it.”

Briggs reaches forward again, not touching the prototype—just resting his paw near it.

“This wasn’t meant to find anything. Just to be ready. Just in case... the story wasn’t over.”

He smiles again, small but sincere.

“Sometimes I wonder how much of magic is memory. And how much is just us, hoping it remembers us back.”

He hesitates, then reaches toward the crystal.

“That’s all for now. End log.”

[VIDEO LOG – UNSORTED FILE: “Midday Chat, Faculty Lounge”]

The camera is angled too low at first, showing only part of a table and a crumpled sandwich wrapper. A paw reaches up and adjusts the lens. When it settles, it captures Briggs from the shoulders up, seated comfortably, talking to someone off-camera. His ears are relaxed, tail (barely visible) thumping softly beneath the table.

“No, but seriously—he got in. I mean, actually in. Dylan.”

A quick little laugh escapes him, unpolished and warm.

“I know, right? I still remember the first essay he sent with his application. Annotated half the bibliography by hand. Who even does that anymore? And the questions he asked—gods, they weren’t even about classes. They were about the framework. About how knowledge folds inward once it’s archived. I mean, come on.”

He picks up a mug, takes a sip, and gestures with it casually like he’s talking about his favorite novel.

“He’s bright. Not just smart—bright. Like, you can feel it when he’s working something out. You say ‘historical echo theory,’ and his ears go up like you said something scandalous. And he’s not afraid to push back either. Had a whole debate with me once about null-index zones. I loved it.”

A pause. He smiles softly to himself.

“He’s gonna be working with me, officially. Got it approved last week. I didn’t want to make a fuss, but I’m glad it worked out. He’s got the kind of mind that doesn’t just absorb things—it reshapes them. Makes you rethink the way you teach.”

The person offscreen says something—quiet, indistinct.

Briggs laughs again.

“No, it’s not that! I mean—yeah, he’s awkward. Trip-over-his-own-paws awkward. But it’s endearing. And he’s got this way of listening that makes you feel like what you’re saying actually matters.”

[VIDEO LOG – UNSORTED FILE: “Test Fit_2”]

The feed clicks on suddenly, a little shaky at first. The view settles on Briggs in what looks like a faculty break room or perhaps the edge of a workshop storage lounge—one of those cluttered, dim-lit corners near the research labs with coat hooks, extra gear lockers, and a long mirror leaning against the wall.

Briggs stands center-frame, adjusting the waistband of a new pair of sharply tailored pants. He turns slightly, then fully, peeking over his shoulder to check his backside in the mirror with a squint and a little nod.

“Okay… not bad,” he mutters to himself. “Not bad at all. Little snug in the tail seam, but… Hah. We’ve had worse days.”

He lifts his shirt slightly in the back to get a better view of the fit, twisting awkwardly with one paw on his hip, then lets out a pleased little "Hmmph!"—clearly impressed with himself.

“Bet the Particle Studies department couldn’t build a containment weave this tight,” he mumbles under his breath.

He adjusts the cuffs, takes a small step forward to check the hem, and grins. Then—click.

A door handle jiggles from somewhere offscreen.

His ears shoot up. He freezes. The tail that had just started a confident little wag immediately tucks behind him.

“Oh no—”

With the speed of someone who’s absolutely been caught mid-narcissism before, Briggs pivots, snatches a clipboard from the bench beside him, and hurls himself into the nearby chair like he’s been grading reports for hours. A pen clatters out of the coat pocket he forgot he wasn’t wearing.

“Come in!” he calls, voice pitched just a touch too high. “Just—ahem—just reviewing rune test batch four. Compression mapping. Very... uh, compelling.”

[UNSORTED VIDEO LOG – FILE 042}

Briggs is mid-ramble to himself, gesturing with a stylus at a schematic. His coat is rumpled, eyes tired, fur around his ears flecked with soot and ink from long, unslept days.

“—no, no, no, if the anchor bands are even close to the original calibration, then the echo shouldn’t be diffusing—unless the scroll itself wasn’t meant to end—”

The Whistlepip buzzes.

Not the chime of campus alerts. Not a scrollburst ping. It’s harsh—jagged. Unauthorized. The glass of a nearby lamp flickers when it rings.

Briggs turns, frowning. He hesitates, snatches it up.

“Briggs. Faculty clearance six-three-two, who’s—...What did you say?”

Silence from the other side. The camera only captures Briggs. But his eyes harden instantly.

“.... You’re the anarchists. The rail saboteurs. The ones who think breaking everything makes you the smartest in the room.”

Another pause. Briggs paces now, faster. Chest rising. The stylus falls from his hand. His breath fogs the glass of the Whistlepip.

“ That archive was sealed.”

A beat. His fur bristles.

“You think you can just call me—offer me some slithering little position off-grid—like I’m going to abandon everything I’ve built? I’ve seen what your people do to systems. You gut them. You rewrite truths you don’t understand just to feel in control.”

His claws flex around the device.

“That’s not curiosity. That’s egomania."

His ears twitch.

“If you’ve got a problem with the truth I’ve uncovered, you bring it to my face—not through a burner line like a coward.”

A pause. His whole posture changes. Shoulders rigid. Snarl barely swallowed.

“You said this was about survival? Then don’t call again. If I see so much as a flicker of Auxie presence near my students, I will escalate it. I’ll take it to the Chairman. To the Spire. You will be named.”

The Whistlepip squeals—feedback from some unseen magical interference. The light in the room dims for a breath. Just one.

Briggs steps back.

“You want out of this world so bad? Don’t drag us with you.”

He slams the Whistlepip down. The moment it hits the desk, the feed glitches—static blooms in jagged bursts of red and violet. The screen fizzles.

[VIDEO CORRUPTED – END OF LOG]

---

The air was always cooler down here. Still. Undisturbed, except for the low thrum of some deeper machine—a pulse felt more than heard. It vibrated faintly through the soles of his boots, like the vault itself was breathing.

The lizardkin sat perfectly still in the leather-backed chair across from Cinley. His robes fell stiff around him like soaked parchment left to dry too quickly—creased in memory, not comfort. One claw idly tapped against his satchel, the rhythm subconscious. He didn’t stop it. Not yet.

He hadn’t looked at Cinley fully.

Not directly.

Not yet.

Because there was something about the dragonkin that rewrote rooms. Not with force, not with shouting, but with presence. Cinley did not occupy space. He corrected it. Adjusted it. Recoiled the distance between “man” and “myth” until you didn’t quite remember when he’d become the latter.

And now, with him just across the desk—quill set aside, that gaze angled ever-so-slightly in his direction—the lizardkin’s spine betrayed him with a half-flick of tension.

He’d studied dragons. Filed them. Shelved and sorted scrolls about them. But Cinley? Cinley was never one of the specimens.

Cinley was the vault.

He exhaled—quietly, carefully—and finally lifted his eyes.

“It still stands,” he said softly.

The words hit the desk like a forgotten coin: weightless, but meant.

He didn’t add more at first. Just studied the shape of Cinley’s silhouette against the cold, brass-gilded chamber. “The Beacon, I mean,” he continued, voice rasping in the back of his throat. “Still intact. Still… you.”

There was no flattery in it. Just… stunned observation.

He gave a bow. Not a deep one. Not full deference. But one that knew its place. One that remembered the lines between faculty and press, and between press and power.

And, maybe, between flame and what crawled away from it.

“I’m not here on any assignment,” he said quickly, before Cinley could interject. “I—I resigned. After the rupture.”

The word stuck like ash.

He didn’t say “explosions.” Didn’t need to. Some names twisted air long after they’d stopped being said.

“I kept off-record. Moved lightly. Changed paths. The list of Lumenreach staff not present that day was… narrow.” His hands folded briefly in his lap, knuckles pale beneath the scales. “And narrow lists get remembered.”

He finally reached into his satchel.

Slowly. Deliberately. Like someone drawing a sigil he didn’t quite want others to read over his shoulder. From within, he pulled out a piece of paper with some notes scribbled on it.

“You want to know where the draconic routing staff is,” he said. "The one that opens the gate.”

He let that linger. Let the words thread through the stillness.

Then, softer—but not uncertain:

“Let’s make a trade.”

---

Helvirr had a way of entering that didn’t announce itself. No boots stomping, no barked greetings—just the low creak of oiled leather, a few dust-swallowed footfalls, and the scratchy rasp of flintlock powder lingering on his sleeves.

He stood a few meters behind Hollowmane, shoulder leaned against a slatted post like he’d been there longer than he had, rifle slung low and wrapped in a hunter’s green sash. His tail gave a single flick. Deliberate. Not casual. Not hostile. Just a signal.

Then: a low exhale through the nose, sharp and feline, before he spoke.

“Cargo’s not the only thing movin’ today,” Helvirr muttered, voice tight with the clipped accent of someone raised where the plains meet the teeth of war, "You've been all over this site. You got orders for me today, sir?” He kept the formal title, but didn’t harden it. There was too much battlefield between them for that. “Or am I still on scout pattern?"

---

Ephraim didn’t move—not at first.

Her hands, still suspended midair, finally curled. Not into fists. Not into prayer. Just closed. As if catching something invisible before it slipped. Her shoulders drew in. Her breath, shallow and thin, passed through her nose like she was afraid of making a sound too loud, too alive.

She looked at him.

She kept looking.

Mordecai stood like a shattered thing barely glued together—held more by the wolves than by will, eye averted, staff gripped like it was the only part of him still tethered to the world. The violet residue at his ribs flickered with a kind of haunted rhythm. Like a scar still trying to whisper.

Her chest ached just watching him.

When his voice cracked—when that “I’m—” broke apart like a bottle dropped at the altar—Ephraim flinched. Not from fear. Not from the rupture of it. But from how kin it was.

Her eyes stung.

She pressed her hand to the ground, bracing herself. It wasn’t dramatic, just necessary—like even gravity needed her to try harder than before. She rose slowly. Carefully. Not rushing him. Not interrupting the silence that hadn’t decided yet whether it was sacred or ruined.

Then, softly—barely above the breath that shaped it:

“…Don’t.”

Her voice was hoarse. Not cold. Not cutting. But firm, like a hand held out to stop someone from walking off a ledge.

“You don’t have to look at me yet,” she said gently. “But if you can hear me—if there’s still a piece of you in there that remembers who you are, who we are—

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Mordecai didn’t lift his head—at first.

But something in her voice tugged at him, barely. His good eye shifted upward, just enough to see her face through his lashes. It wasn't direct, not fully. More like a flinch disguised as a glance.

A pause.

Something shifted. Quietly. Like the weight of him inside turned, uncertain which way to fall. Not a choice. Not a thought. Just that slow, unseen moment where a part of him surrendered.

And then the shift came.

Her voice—soft, careful—poured through the air like light trying to get under a locked door. It reached him, but not all the way. Not right away. Not where he’d splintered. Not where the voices had curled in like vines.

His fingers pressed harder into the staff, white-knuckled, even as the rest of him wilted around it. He shook once, like a bird too soaked to fly. The tremor passed from his shoulder down through his ribs, barely a sound, just motion. Like something small trying not to cry.

“I—” he started, but the word collapsed halfway out. His knees buckled before the rest could follow, the staff slipping in his grip like it no longer mattered. His body sank down again, the motion slow, not dramatic—just inevitable. A child giving out. A breath breaking in half.

He didn’t try to speak again.

But the silence that followed wasn’t calm.

It was tight. Pressurized. Like something inside him had locked shut under too much weight. He wasn’t just holding back tears—he was holding back everything. His breath, his magic, his voice. Like if he let even one thing slip, the rest would spill out and drown him.

The tension climbed his shoulders, unrelenting. His chest rose too fast. Too shallow. A soft, ragged edge scraped at each inhale, not quite a sob—yet. He looked frozen, but not still. Like a dam trying not to break.

The wolves didn’t remain wolves.

Cer, Ber, and Rus had stayed at a respectful distance, but they stood like guardians—silent, unmoving, their stances attentive but uncertain. As Mordecai trembled and the air shifted around him, so did they. One by one, their fur began to flicker—not from wind, but from shadow. The outlines of their bodies blurred, edges warping like ripples over ink.

The flicker became a fold.

Each of them leaned in toward the center, not walking—just shifting, like shapes realigning into a shared form. The sound was soft, more felt than heard: like cloth unraveling in water. There was no fear in it. No alarm. Only change. A hush followed.

Where the three had stood, there was now only one.

Small. Curled. Its coat still black as pitch, but softer. The skeletal mask still shaped its head, perfectly fit for the smaller body it now adorned. Its proportions were right—compact but clear, a black-furred pup with deliberate stillness. A tail twitched once before settling in a slow, steady wag.

The pup pressed close to Mordecai’s side. Eager. Comforting.

It looked up at him.

He reached for it slowly—one hand loosening from the staff and dropping to the pup’s small neck. His fingers curled into the soft black fur at its shoulder. He held it like it might disappear.

His breath was still broken.

“…I didn’t know,” he whispered, voice cracked and too young for someone who had lived as long—and alone—as he had. “I didn’t know if anyone… if anyone was even out there.”

“I didn’t know if the island was even real,” he added, eyes still low, trembling. “Sometimes it rained for days and then stopped like it forgot how. The trees moved when I wasn’t looking. I think they whispered things sometimes—stuff I didn’t want to hear. The wolves helped, but they couldn’t tell me what was real. One time the lake showed me my face and it didn’t look like mine. The Witherstalker changed the paths, I think. I’d walk and end up in places that didn’t exist the day before. I stopped asking why.”

His voice cracked again, uneven and hoarse.

“I kept hearing things—your voice, I think. Or maybe I made it up. I’d call out, just to hear something, anything. And when it wasn’t you, I’d pretend it was. Because… because everyone wanted me to be strong. All the time. Even when I was scared. Even when I didn’t feel like a real person anymore. I didn’t tell the wolves. I didn’t want them to think I was broken too.”

He blinked, and the tears spilled.

They weren’t silent. Not now.

The sob hit him mid-breath—sharp and ugly, the kind that caught in his throat before it found his mouth. His shoulders shook as his face twisted down into the fur of the pup beside him. It didn’t matter how close it was—he needed it closer.

“I tried to be strong,” he gasped. “I thought if I didn’t move, the hurt would stop. But it didn’t—nothing stopped, it just got quieter and meaner and… and I kept waking up in places that didn’t have you.”

His voice broke completely.

“I wanted you—I wanted to hear you again—just once—but you weren’t there. Just the ocean. Just the wolves. Just me.”

He curled forward more, barely propped on his knees, his hands fisted into the dirt and the pup’s fur alike. His ribs hitched with every inhale.

“I missed you so bad,” he cried. “So bad it made me sick. I thought you’d hate me. I thought I broke too much and you’d see it—and not want me anymore.”

He let out another sob—raw and childlike, full of that lonely place in him where time had never moved.

“…Please,” he choked, “I don’t want to be alone. I’m scared.”

His voice cracked on the word "scared," and the sound that came next wasn’t even words. Just a strangled breath, a broken exhale—something too tangled to name. He pressed closer to the pup, fingers clutching at its fur like a lifeline, his face tightening as fresh sobs racked his chest. But this time, the crying wasn’t just from sorrow. It was panic—raw, jagged panic that didn’t know where to go.

He hit the ground with the heel of his palm once, not to lash out, but because there was nowhere else for the pressure to go. His body trembled. His mouth moved like it wanted to explain, wanted to apologize, wanted to scream—but nothing came. Just a wet gasp and a rasped, "I can't—I can't—I can't—"

He hunched forward harder, body taut and small, like if he made himself smaller the grief would finally let go. The stress had nowhere to land. It just looped inside him, back and back and back again. No fight. Just too much feeling for a frame too thin to hold it.

The pup didn’t move. But its body trembled too—ears twitching low, posture close to the ground. Even in its small form, it mirrored him. Cerberpup, they might have once called it—if anyone had the words. It whimpered softly, low and breathy, and nudged its skeletal muzzle against Mordecai’s side like it could absorb the panic by proximity. Its tail gave the smallest flick, not in excitement but like a nervous tick trying to settle.

It stayed with him.

He didn’t raise his head again. His shoulders curled tighter, wracked with quiet sobs. His whole frame shook with them, too overwhelmed to fight for stillness. He stayed pressed into the dirt and fur, breath catching in hiccups that never fully cleared his throat, like he couldn’t cry hard enough to empty what hurt.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Ephraim moved without hesitation.

Not fast. Not loud. But with that same gentle conviction she had always held when tending a wound—not the flashy kind, not the kind with incantations and sparks, but the slow, deliberate ones. The kind you had to stay with. The kind that needed hands, not magic. Presence, not solution.

She came down to the earth beside him. Her knees pressed into the dirt. Her robes gathered at the hem.

One hand reached to cradle the back of his head—lightly, barely grazing at first, in case touch was too much. When he didn’t flinch, she pressed in further. Her fingers threaded into his hair, the other hand cupping gently under his arm, around his back. Drawing him in.

“Hey,” she whispered.

No command. No correction. Just breath. Just her voice in the quiet.

“Hey. You don’t have to hold any of that by yourself anymore.”

She let him lean. Let the sobs come. Let the shame burn its way through without calling it by name.

And when the tremors cracked him harder—when the wet gasps and shudders broke his ribs against themselves—she just held him closer. Drew his head to her shoulder, her neck, let the tears soak into her fur and clothes alike. Let her own body become a shape he could collapse into.

“You thought it wasn’t real,” she murmured, rocking him slowly. “The island. The trees. The voice. That it was all just some ache in the dark. Of course you did.”

She ran her fingers down the back of his neck, slowly, again and again, the way someone might soothe a fevered child. “Because no one came for you. Because it didn’t make sense. Because the paths changed. And you were tired. And hurting. And scared.”

Her voice didn’t wobble, but it wasn’t perfect either. It was present. Steady not because she was unaffected, but because she chose to stay steady, even through her own aching.

“You were in pain. For a long, long time. You didn’t make that up. You didn’t do anything wrong by feeling it.”

She held his face a little closer to hers now, cupping one hand gently under his jaw, thumb brushing just under his eye. She didn’t pull him up—just made sure he knew she was there. That she’d be seen if he needed to look.

“I believe you. About the lake. About the voices. About the Witherstalker, too. I believe you, Mordecai.”

She breathed with him. Matched his rhythm—shallow as it was. Waited until the worst of the sobs hitched low in his chest again.

“And pretending my voice was there?” she said, her fingers brushing just behind his ear. “That wasn’t foolish. That wasn’t weak.”

She pressed her forehead lightly to his temple.

“That was love. That was memory trying to survive in the only place it could.”

The pup between them whined quietly, burrowing in harder. Ephraim let her hand fall down between them and stroked the small creature’s skull-gilded brow.

“Even your wolves came together. Look at that. Even they know what you needed.”

She didn’t break the contact. Didn’t pull him up.

But her voice stayed right there. Close.

“You’re not alone, Mordecai.”

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan didn’t move when the screen went dark.

The last flicker of static faded into the glass, leaving only the faint glow of the device and his own blurred reflection staring back. His breath came in soft, uneven bursts, mouth slightly parted like he’d forgotten how to close it. Tears clung stubbornly to his fur, streaking down his cheeks, catching in the curve of his jaw.

He tried to wipe them away, paw dragging across his eyes—but they kept coming.

“…Briggs,” he whispered, barely audible.

His voice cracked.

His shoulders hunched forward, body curling in on itself as the grief twisted through him again—fresh and jagged, like it hadn’t had seven years to settle. Like it had just arrived. Like the loss was brand new.

But it wasn’t all pain.

Somewhere in the flood of ache and memory, a laugh escaped him. Quiet, small—wet with tears but real. He shook his head slightly, a helpless little smile forming at the corner of his mouth.

“Parrot power makes the paperwork friendlier,” he murmured to himself, voice trembling with old warmth.

The video of Briggs trying on pants flickered in his mind and the laugh came again, tighter this time, as he sniffed hard, pressing the heel of his palm against his eyes. He kept crying, but there were smiles in it now—ghosts of them. His chest ached with how much he missed that voice. That ridiculous, dry wit. That gentle, undemanding belief.

He leaned forward and placed the device back on the desk, fingers hovering just a moment longer than they needed to.

Then, he just sat there.

Still.

Feeling the weight of it all. The echoes of the room.

His gaze drifted to the window, where fogged glass caught a faint reflection of morning light creeping in through the blinds. Outside, steam carts moved, but slower now. Brasshollow exhaled in tired rhythm. It was the same city. But it wasn’t. Not anymore.

Nothing felt the same anymore.

His parents’ faces swam unbidden in his mind—his dad’s goofy grins, his mom’s firm kindness. He remembered the feel of the tie in his hands. The soft threads of the napkin. He remembered the sound of their voices the last time he saw them, before everything cracked apart.

He closed his eyes.

And in the silence, another memory surfaced—one far older, stranger. A golden figure standing still in the jungle. A wall of fire. A line drawn not in power, but in peace. Words that had rung louder than the blade meant to silence them.

"You are my end."

He didn’t understand her.

He never had.

But something about that moment… the way she stood… the way Wrath didn’t strike…

It had stayed with him. Long after the scroll closed. Long after the smoke cleared. Even now, he could see her standing there when he closed his eyes.

He turned toward the far corner of the room where stacks of canvas leaned like tired sentinels. Sketches littered the shelves. Charcoal swirls. Spirals. Two figures drawn again and again—one made of fire, the other of light. Some unfinished. Some so smudged they were unreadable.

He never knew what he was painting.

Just that he had to.

Dylan looked back down at the prototype.

Its surface was still warm beneath his fingertips.

He stared at it for a long time.

Then, slowly, softly—he whispered.

“…I don’t know what to do yet.”

His voice broke on the last word. He sniffed again, rubbing at his nose.

“I’m scared. And I’m tired. And I—I still miss you so much.”

A pause. His eyes closed.

“But… I think I’m gonna try.”

He exhaled, shaky but whole.

“I don’t know what it means. Or what I’ll even do with it. But… I don’t want your work to be forgotten. I don’t want to be the person who just locks the drawer again.”

He touched the edge of the spiral glowing on the device’s screen.

“I don’t know if it’ll be enough. But I’ll try, Briggs.”

His thumb traced a soft curve in the etched brass.

“For you. For them. For me.”

And though the city outside moved on without knowing it—

Inside that little studio apartment, something shifted.

Quiet.

But real.

---

The dragon did not answer at first.

Instead, he leaned back—just slightly. One claw-tipped hand raised to tap, click click click, against the lacquered armrest of his seat. Each click landed like a pin dropped on a map, deliberate and surgical. His other hand draped lazily over the scroll table, the ends of his sleeves lined with gold-threaded silk that shimmered in the vault’s faint magical light.

Cinley’s mane stirred with the movement. And then—he moved.

Not with haste. Never with haste. He slid sideways from his seat, his long body flowing with a dreamlike grace, neck curling down, tail unspooling behind him like a river of red silk. One slow coil of it eased around the lizardkin’s chair—not tight. Not threatening. Just present. A soft radius of power, like a signature drawn in breath.

Cinley smiled.

"Ahh. The routing staff."

He circled the lizardkin now, voice smooth and velvet-thick, laced with a measured drawl that tasted faintly of mint and smoke.

"It’s been sought. Whispered in the breath of old flames. Spoken of by those who barely knew what they held between their fumbling fingers."

His neck dipped low again, this time beside the lizardkin’s ear, a whisper grazing the tension in the air.

"So you’ve found it. Or at least… the whisper of where it rests."

He withdrew with that same, unbroken elegance—rising high, weightless, his body coiling again above the cabinets of etched drawers. The room never echoed when Cinley moved. It paused.

He didn’t look at the paper. Not yet. Instead, he returned to his seat across the desk, folding his claws together with surgical care. A breath escaped him—soft, mint-tinged, impossibly cold.

"And you come here, no longer bound by Lumenreach," he murmured, almost to himself. "No collar. No nameplate. No office to tuck behind. Mmm. Only a satchel… and a choice."

The smile curled slightly wider now—subtle fangs pressing gently behind civility.

"You wish to trade."

The words hung.

Cinley tilted his head—not mockingly, but as if genuinely curious. A scholar entertaining a puzzle. His claws tapped together once, gently.

"But before we unroll the terms... what is it you truly seek from me? Information? Access? A name to burn into a page? You know I still traffic in such things, little archivist. But the currency, ah—the currency has changed."

He let the sentence breathe.

"Information is never the price. It is the wrapping."

His gaze did not blink.

"No, no. What you want from me… it calls for… something else."

Cinley leaned forward, slowly. His claws steepled. His voice dropped to a low hush—intimate, surrounding.

"Not a lie. Not a tale. A truth."

Then came the stillness.

Not a threat. Not a command.

Just the dragon, waiting—like a door already ajar, patient and inevitable.

---

Mordecai didn’t pull away.

Not from her arms. Not from the pup pressed in close. Not from the weight of being held for the first time in what felt like eternity. He just stayed there—folded, trembling, the tears still coming but quieter now. Not silent. Just softer. Like his body had given up trying to hold them in and instead let them fall like rain against her coat.

Cerberpup nestled tighter between them, pressing its skeletal brow into the side of his chest, then nudging gently against Ephraim’s side, too—as if affirming its choice, anchoring them both. It let out a small, hiccupping whine and then curled closer, a ball of warmth and sharp bone, trembling in tune with his breath.

Mordecai’s arms slowly—hesitantly—curled around Ephraim. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t cling. It wasn’t desperation, not yet. It was reverence. Fragile. Like she was the only real thing left in a world still fading at the edges.

His voice came again, soft and cracked and frayed.

"I look like a corpse."

He didn’t say it with pity. Just fact. His fingers twitched against her back, unsure where to rest, what to do. His head turned slightly, barely enough to make a difference—but he flinched when his blind side faced her.

"I can’t see you there," he whispered. "I try to pretend I can, but I flinch... all the time. I—I don’t mean to. Sometimes it’s just a sound. Just someone near me. And I forget—until I don’t."

The hand that held Cerberpup tightened slightly. The breath hitched again.

"Sometimes it scares me. Like the dark’s still inside it."

He turned back into her shoulder, burying his face in her cloak like it could hide him from everything outside her.

"It was so quiet, Ephraim. I got so used to the wind being the only voice. I stopped looking for real people. I thought—maybe the island was just the end. That I’d been put there to break quiet. And it worked."

The next breath shuddered through him.

"I’m scared to come back. Not to you—never you. But the others. The town. The neighbors. The noise. I don’t know if I can do it—be around so many people again. Everything’s so loud now. Their eyes. Their steps. Even the sound of a drawer opening. I keep flinching like the world’s too fast. Too full. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to stand in a room and not shake. Like they’ll all be waiting, expecting me to speak. To lead. To fix things I don’t understand anymore."

His jaw clenched, but the sound that escaped was still soft. Still young.

"They all keep wanting me to be the one who knows. Who acts. Who leads. Every timeline—every time I come back—I’m supposed to already have the answer. I don’t know how. I just did what I could. I made it up. Over and over and over and over until I started thinking that maybe if I stopped, the whole world would fall. And maybe it did. Maybe it already did."

He hiccupped through the sob, his breath unraveling.

"I can’t be that again. I can’t. Not right now. Not after this."

His fingers clutched at her coat.

"I'm so tired."

He said it once, then again.

"I'm so tired."

And again, softer now. More like a child curled in bed after too many sleepless nights.

"I'm so tired."

He collapsed into her completely, body giving way. Not in danger. Just in surrender. The sobs didn’t stop. But they slowed. Grew rhythm. He didn’t need to be held tighter—he already was. He didn’t need to be told to breathe—she was doing it for him.

And for once, that was enough.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Karn braced herself as the whip-axe carved into the Augur’s unraveling form, the blade roaring through flesh not meant to die. She didn’t speak, didn’t falter—only twisted the handle and ripped it free as light burst from the wound.

Eoghan appeared beside her, silent but alert, the sleek profile of his raptorkin armor already bristling with instinct. His stance didn’t shift, but Karn felt his eyes on her—watching, steady, ready. She exhaled, low and dangerous.

“And we’re going to end this.”

Scorn stirred, the energy swelling around Karn like a rising fever. Her presence coiled behind Karn’s shoulderblades, heavy and serrated, like talons preparing to close. The space beneath Karn’s feet twisted into ink, a cold shadow unfurling with patient violence. The void beneath the battlefield heaved.

Far ahead, she caught a glimpse of the Augur, flailing in its unraveling form—and of Mordecai, still alive, standing over what remained of the Sunship's prison of jagged stone.

Their eyes met.

Enemies. Always had been. But not today.

She gave the faintest nod.

The whip-axe retracted to her hand with a vicious snap, like muscle memory from a lifetime of bloodshed. The battlefield tensed. Light twisted into silence.

Then Scorn rose.

She erupted from Karn’s shadow like smoke becoming blade—formless, feathered fury condensed into jagged wings and burning eyes. Her body was too sharp for the world to hold, her outline shifting like a punishment remembered. She screamed without sound.

And then she laughed.

A fractured sound. Bone-deep. A laugh not of joy but of certainty.

Scorn wanted the Augur to know it had not only lost—

It had been outlived.

“FINISH IT.”

Karn’s hands tightened. The whip-axe hissed with red-black fire. Her eyes, always cold, now gleamed with something unholy—an echo of Scorn’s will, of her own fury refined into justice. She lifted the blade, spun it once, then whipped it forward, cutting the very air.

The blow cracked the world.

A storm of shadow and gold tore outward, jagged lines of divine judgment flickering through the void. The blast ripped past Scorn, who dissolved into its wake, her form scattering like a curse released. Her essence joined the strike—sharp, final, righteous.

As the whip-axe’s energy tore through the Augur’s unraveling body, the battlefield was consumed by a cataclysm of radiant shadow—jagged red and black light streaked with feathers and divine heat, expanding outward in a deafening shockwave. The very fabric of the world buckled, reality twitching at the edge of collapse.

The Augur didn’t scream.

It twisted.

It folded.

Its many arms reached skyward, golden hands folding over golden hands as its form collapsed inward, layer after layer of divine flesh sloughing away like a god being unmade from the inside. There were no last words. No final act of will. Only dissolution—like the idea of it had been closed, written out of existence.

And then, it was gone.

The Reavers scattered. Wings twitching, they pulsed with borrowed memory, eyes glowing with stolen light as they hovered in the air—unbound, uncertain. For a moment, it looked as though they might descend again, feast on the wounded, claim what was left.

But no.

As if beckoned by some unseen call, they scattered. Melted into the clouds, into the silence.

They left behind only ruin.

The battlefield was quiet.

A ruin of armor and ash, of broken bodies and dying flame. Where once the Augur had stood—where once the sanctuary tower of the Sunship had pierced the sky—now there was nothing. A wound in the land. No altar. No divine will. Just stone and shadow and the absence of power.

Eoghan stood among the wreckage, claws unclenched now, his bow slack at his side. His breath came slowly, but not from pain—just shock. His eyes swept across the ruin: the bodies of kin who had once served the Sunship, the shattered remnants of an army made for gods, the charred remains of their purpose.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t need to.

Karn stepped forward. Slow. Unshaken.

She stared at the crater—where Scorn had vanished, where her vengeance had passed from blade to sky. Her eyes didn’t narrow. Her stance didn’t shift.

But her talons curled.

She had seen her god fully. Felt her fury resonate through the blade. And now there was only silence. Karn’s breath hitched once. Not from grief.

From clarity.

Scorn was not gone.

She had become the strike.

Karn stood amid the devastation, one claw resting loosely at her side. Her breath came slow, uneven, not from exertion but from something else—something deeper. The kind of stillness that followed a purpose completed.

Ash clung to her feathers. Her armor was cracked, but she did not bleed. The pain she carried now was not physical.

Her whip-axe remained embedded in the earth where the Augur had been. Its golden filaments pulsed faintly—Scorn’s last exhale, buried in the weapon’s core.

Karn didn't move to retrieve it.

Not yet.

Instead, she stood still. Watching. Waiting.

Eoghan approached her side, silent. He didn't speak, just glanced toward her, his eyes scanning the horizon. There was nothing left to aim at. No enemy. No divine threat. Only the echo of what they had done.

And still, Karn waited.

She did not know what she was waiting for.

Until—

Everything vanished.

No flame. No scream. Not even time to exhale.

The world fell away.

There was no air, no scent, no sensation of movement—just sudden, absolute stillness. As though reality had been peeled back from her body like armor unfastened in a single motion. Even her breath no longer sounded in her ears.

She gripped for her weapon out of instinct.

But it was gone.

Everything was gone.

The battlefield. The wreckage. The sky.

Just white.

And then—

They appeared.

Not with blinding light or thunder, not with heralds or divine proclamations—but with inevitability. Like they had always been here. Like Karn had always been meant to stand before them.

Scorn and Patience appeared beside her, no longer anchored to her body, but existing in full.

Scorn rose to her left—dark, terrible, and silent. Her harpy eagle form cloaked in regal rage, her wings still dripping with retribution.

Patience stood to her right—massive, slow, his spined back casting shadows across the white.

They did not face her.

They flanked her.

She did not bow.

The Four Elementals loomed ahead—Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.

Behind them, the Fourteen stood. Virtues. Sins. Not moving. Not breathing. Just watching.

And then, Fire spoke.

"Welcome, Vulturekin."

Its voice crackled with something that wasn’t heat—but memory. History. The weight of every war she had fought pressed into the air around it. Karn’s feathers bristled, but she said nothing.

"You were not meant to be here," Fire continued. "And yet here you stand."

Her voice was dry. Clipped.

"Isn’t that always the way?"

Wind moved around her, circling.

"You were not summoned. You were not chosen. And yet, you remain."

"Good," Karn said.

Water rippled next, words slipping through her like liquid across old stone.

"Your world teetered at the edge of collapse. You should have died. The timeline fractured around you, and still you moved forward."

"And why wouldn’t I?" she snapped. "I wasn’t done."

Silence fell. Heavy. Measuring.

Then—

Fire leaned forward, its voice edged with something different now. Not judgment. Not invitation.

But purpose.

"Scorn. Patience. Step forward."

The divine forms did not flinch.

They didn’t move.

They became.

Scorn’s wings spread wide, casting deep shadows through the white. Patience’s spines crackled against the air, his footsteps sounding like glaciers cracking beneath the surface.

And Karn stood between them.

Unyielding.

And then—

Reality shifted.

Her claws sank half an inch into the floor beneath her, a pulse of unseen force tightening around her ribs, like the pressure of altitude—but from inside her soul.

The Empyreon turned its full attention on her.

And judgment began.

---

The lizardkin's body remained upright. When Cinley finished speaking, the silence stretched—until the lizard tilted his head slightly, the edge of his frilled jaw catching a sliver of the vaultlight.

He slid the satchel forward—not across the table, not yet, but just enough to make its presence deliberate. The leather was worn smooth at the corners, but the lock was still brass, still polished. Still secure.

“I’m here because I want to disappear.”

A pause.

“And I believe you know how to make that happen.”

“I’m offering the current person in possession of the staff, their identity..."

The lizardkin’s voice lowered then, just a hair. He didn’t lean any closer. He didn’t have to.

“I want a name I didn’t inherit. A place I don’t get questioned. Just… long enough to stay uninteresting.”

---

Ephraim didn’t answer right away.

She just held him.

Her fingers moved slowly—up and down the back of his coat, not soothing in the way someone calms a child, but in the way someone stays. Present. Unshaken. Real. Her breathing kept its rhythm, not too deep, not too deliberate—just consistent. Something for him to borrow if he needed it.

She felt the weight of him shift, that slow collapse, not from pain alone, but from relenting. His voice had said it, but his body said it louder: tired.

So she let him be.

No urging. No lifting him out. Just with.

When she did speak, it was quiet. Close. Her voice shaped to fit the air between them.

“I know,” she said.

A pause.

Her palm smoothed once more between his shoulder blades.

“You don’t have to come back all at once.”

Another breath. The pup shifted, its tail giving the smallest thump against Mordecai’s leg. Ephraim let her hand rest against it too.

“We don’t need a plan right now,” she murmured. “Not a timeline. Not a version. Not a map.”

Her chin dipped lightly against his head. She closed her eyes.

“I just want to be here. With you. While you rest.”

That was all she offered for now.

---

"As events have played out in your timeline," the Fire Elemental said, its form pulsing with deliberate heat, "your world would have ended in a Crystallized Silence. Not by war. Not by god. But by a freeze born from magic far deeper than any hand of the Fourteen could mend. Avarice had already begun the work. His will was fixed. His outcome, inevitable."

The air within the Empyreon stilled, a breathless stillness that left only the truth behind.

Karn didn’t move.

Her claws flexed faintly, not from fear, but from habit—like a weapon waiting for the next order. Behind her, Eoghan’s hand had not left his glaive. He stood beside her like a fortress.

But it was Karn who broke the silence.

“How many times have you done this?” she asked. Her voice was cool, but not detached. It struck like steel—honest, sharp, and unwilling to be bent. “How many times have you rebuilt the world?”

She tilted her head slightly, eyes never leaving the Elementals. “Is this the first? Or just the one you let me see?”

The Wind Elemental drifted forward first, brushing through the air like a whisper passing over old bones. "This would mark the fifth such era," it said. "There have been four before you. Four complete collapses. Four attempts to build something new. Each one guided. Each one shaped. None without flaw."

Fire pulsed next, brighter, like a furnace drawing breath. "You are not the first to stand at the edge of one world’s death and the beginning of another. But you are the first to stand here with both Scorn and Patience at your side. Bound. In balance. It is a condition we did not foresee. A configuration we had never allowed."

Eoghan said nothing, but his wings flicked slightly behind her. The acknowledgment of their bond had weight—one he felt just as much as she did.

Wind circled again, voice lighter now. "The past does not disappear. It bleeds forward, fragment by fragment. Even erased timelines leave residue. Kin remember things they never lived. Some remember too much. Some—like Avarice—see beyond what they were ever meant to."

There was a pause. A shift in the void.

The Water Elemental flowed closer now, calm and exact. "He should not have seen her. Scorn was never meant to be fully revealed. Not like that. Not to him."

Scorn remained unmoving behind Karn, but the edges of her wings curled inward—tightened. As though she, too, remembered that moment.

"Avarice was not chosen," Water continued. "Not trained. Not bound. But in the chaos that followed the Augur’s rise, in the exposure of divine fracture, he saw it all. Not just war. Not just failure. But the shape of everything beneath it."

Earth stirred next. Not loud. Not sudden. Just a single shift in tectonic presence. "And in that knowledge," it said, "he saw injustice. He saw a system built on power passed downward. And he rejected it."

"He believed the only justice left," Fire said, "was stillness. To stop the wheel, not break it. To freeze history in place before it could rot further."

"And so," Wind whispered, "he birthed the Crystallized Silence. Not out of hatred. Not even vengeance. But grief. And clarity. Too much of both."

The void seemed to darken for a moment—just slightly.

Fire burned hotter. "But hear this: it was never just him. In every version of this unraveling, someone always sees too far. Someone always acts too soon. If not Avarice, then another. If not this war, then the next. The collapse was written before he touched the page. He only made it come faster."

Karn’s feathers didn’t bristle. But her stare sharpened.

“So you knew,” she said, voice low. “You saw it coming.”

"Yes," Wind admitted. "And we let it come."

Water shifted again, gentler now. "That is why the new world must be different. Scorn and Patience cannot remain as opposites. They must be housed together. As you house them. As a precedent. As a new model."

"The Fourteen will change," said Fire. "Not as icons. Not as rulers. But as mirrored bonds. Inseparable. Forged from contradiction."

"For the first time," Earth finished, voice slow as sliding stone, "balance will not be enforced. It will be embodied."

And then, all eyes turned back to Karn.

Waiting. Watching.

She stood at the center of a new storm. Not one made of wrath.

But of reckoning.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Mordecai didn’t speak. Not at first.

He simply leaned into her. Into the warmth of her hands, the stillness of her chest. Into the quiet of being allowed to exist without demand. His weight settled like a tide going out—still shaky in places, breath catching, but softer now. Calming. Real.

Cerberpup remained nestled against his thigh, still as bone, tail resting at a slight twitch. The only sound for a time was the wind moving gently through the grass and trees, the rustle of leaves under moonlight, and the slight rhythm of Mordecai’s breathing—still uneven, but slowing.

Then something shifted.

A breath—not just air, but a release. A long, deep exhale, like letting go of something buried in the marrow. It moved through his chest like wind through branches, ancient and aching and soft.

Cerberpup stirred.

The little skeletal-headed form gave a faint whuff and stood, bones cracking gently in motion. Their fur shimmered once—wisps rising like smoke—before shadows licked across their back, climbing higher, darker, deeper. They grew. First into the size of a full wolf, then larger. The shadows around them split and danced—just briefly, three figures flickering within the mass—but they did not remain separate. Instead, the smoke gathered, swirled, and reformed.

A single shape. Towering.

When the shadows fell away, Cerberus stood in full form—majestic, spectral, each of the three skeletal heads crowned in flickering wisps. Their black fur streamed and curled like ink in water, each limb a blend of motion and memory. A faint spiritual glow lingered around them—delicate lines dancing in the air like the ink trails of a brushstroke drawn in wind. They were not just fearsome. They were sacred.

They bowed once. All three heads in tandem.

And then they lifted.

A howl, unified and haunting, poured from all three skulls at once—reverent, not mournful. It soared into the night like a hymn made of bone and breath, echoing through the trees, the stars, the ocean beyond. It did not demand grief. It honored it.

Mordecai exhaled again.

When he finally lifted his head, it was like a switch had flipped. No more sobbing. No wet eyes. No trembling breath. His expression was calm—hollowed by exhaustion, yes, but no longer splintered. There was depth in his gaze now, not absence. Something was there. Something old. Something still.

He looked toward Cerberus.

The massive creature had finished their song, three heads lowering in sync to look back at him. Their thick tail thumped the ground once in approval.

“They saved my life,” Mordecai said, voice quiet but certain. “I don’t know how I would’ve survived that island without them.”

He paused, just a breath.

“In the Soulvow days,” he said quietly, “we used to believe there was no true self without witness. No vow, no bond, unless seen. But Cerberus... they didn’t need a ceremony. They didn’t ask. They just stayed. They were the only ones who saw me when I didn’t know who I was. And still chose me.”

He blinked slowly, reverently. “Maybe that’s what a soulvow really meant. Not a promise made in light, but a loyalty held through shadow.”

Then, slowly, he turned his gaze to Ephraim.

And this time, he saw her. Truly. Not through panic or illusion or grief—but with full presence. His crimson eye met hers, steady. Present.

“Look at you,” he whispered. The words weren’t surprised, just full of reverence. “You waited for so long. And you were scared. I’m sorry that we had to be alone for so long.”

He reached out. One hand found hers, clasping it gently—not clutching, just grounding.

“Thank you,” he said. “For not giving up.”

Another breath. Deep. Steady.

“I promised—even way back then. No matter who I was. No matter where I was. I would always be drawn to you.” His fingers gently traced the edge of her palm. “And I always want to be by your side.”

He swallowed, and his eyes softened.

“You’re strong,” he told her. “You waited. You didn’t give up, even when it felt like the only option.” A tired, fragile laugh rose in his chest, faint but sincere. “You don’t give up. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

His thumb brushed softly against the back of her hand.

“And maybe that’s why I always come back,” he murmured. “Not because I’m whole. But because you remind me what it means to be.”

His hand moved, brushing along the edge of her braid, fingers gently ghosting over the silver strands threaded through her hair. He caught the faint shimmer of her glasses in the moonlight, the age, the depth in her face now.

“You’re still so beautiful,” he murmured.

And then his gaze turned toward the ocean, the horizon stretched like an open breath. He watched it for a moment before speaking.

“There’s no map that leads back to who we were,” he said softly. “Only currents. And sometimes, the only way home… is to stop swimming and let them carry you.”

Behind them, Cerberus gave a pleased huff. Then—suddenly and with no dignity whatsoever—the massive beast dropped to the ground, flopping onto its side with a heavy thud. Its huge limbs rolled upward as it wriggled on its back, three heads snorting, whining, and pawing at the air like a playful pup that had just remembered joy.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

bonus scene:



Karn did not arrive.

She detonated.

The grand hall was already buzzing with polite conversation and glittering formalwear when a thunderous crack tore through the marble entryway—stone split, metal screamed, and one of the towering double doors was torn clean off its hinges and flung across the room like a discus. It shattered a banquet table upon impact, sending flutes of wine and flocks of socialites flying.

And through the wreckage strode Karn.

No mask. No dress. No patience.

Clad in scorched armor and trailing the scent of steel, blood, and whatever regret smelled like when it cooked too long, Karn stomped into the room with one talon already unsheathing the whipaxe at her side. The glint of the blade in the chandelier light was enough to send at least three catkin guests fainting on the spot. Someone screamed. Someone else tried to offer her a champagne flute. That someone was thrown through a buffet table.

“WHERE’S POISE?” she barked, her voice slicing through the hall like a warhorn. “IF HE’S HIDING BEHIND CURTAINS AGAIN, I SWEAR I’LL SKIN THE DRAPES.”

She scanned the crowd with militant precision, her feathers flared and blood-slicked, a shard of broken glass lodged in one pauldrons and fully ignored. She marched down the center aisle like it was a battlefield, pushing aside wide-eyed guests with the same care one might afford overgrown shrubbery. A squirrelkin in a feathered mask tried to compliment her entrance—he was promptly vaulted over a harpsichord.

By the time a deerkin server attempted to offer her a tray of hors d'oeuvres, Karn had already punched through it, grabbed a mini meat skewer through the holes in her gauntlet, and devoured it mid-snarl.

“What is this?” she demanded, spitting out a decorative toothpick. “Meat should not be ornamental, servant!”

The crowd parted instinctively, an organic ripple of self-preservation. Across the room, a string quartet had stopped playing entirely, the violinist whispering a prayer to no one in particular.

At last, Karn stepped onto the ballroom floor, shoulders squared, eyes blazing.

“If this is diplomacy,” she growled, “then consider my terms delivered.”

And then she kicked over a centerpiece.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Cinley watched the lizardkin with those sharp dragon eyes, slit pupils narrowed in an unwavering gaze. His forked tongue slipped from between his teeth in a soft flicker, tasting the tension in the air. The long, silken whiskers trailing from his snout swayed gently, as if moved by something unseen.

"Myyy, what an offer," he murmured, chin now resting lazily on his claws, elbows braced on the desk like a scholar savoring the reveal of a long-lost text. His tail emerged from beneath the chair and began to paint slow, meaningless strokes in the air, each motion theatrical and unhurried.

"A little getaway. A new… cover. Mmm, yes. Yes, I do understand," he chuckled low, the sound curling from his chest like smoke from a censer. His head tilted, smile sly and amused. His eyes never left the lizardkin’s.

"Such a trade. Oh, ho ho ho… yes. Clever, clever little archivist. A new name, new skin, new place to tuck that clever little snout into and be forgotten. That’s what you want, mm? Not to be hunted. Just… boring.”

Cinley rose with serpentine grace, his elongated form unraveling as he circled the room. His claws clicked softly against the floor, tail trailing behind like a banner dipped in ink. When he moved, it wasn’t walking—it was drifting.

He approached the lizardkin’s side without a word, his body winding gently around the base of the chair. The coils never tightened—never needed to. His long neck looped gracefully forward until his head hung just before the lizardkin’s face, those emerald slit pupils locked onto him with a hunger disguised as charm.

"We have a deal, friend," he said softly, breath cool and mint-sweet. "That will be no problem at all. Of course not."

His whiskers ghosted along the edge of the lizardkin’s frill, delicate as spider silk, deliberate as a signature. Testing. Tasting.

"But—"

A crisp click of his claws echoed through the chamber.

His eyes sharpened, and the room seemed to tilt subtly toward him. That gaze was no longer polite—it held.

"You know my currency is not what it once was."

He didn’t blink.

"Yes, you may share this identity—the one holding such a… precious relic. Such a storied staff. And in return, I will grant your little wish."

Cinley leaned in, a fraction closer. The circle of his coiled form curled tighter around the base of the chair, tail grazing lightly across the lizardkin’s feet.

"But the price I ask… is not of coin, nor favor, nor even name."

One claw extended—graceful, slow—and traced a lazy arc in the air before lightly resting against the lizardkin’s chest.

"I want a truth. A real one. Something that does not shine in daylight. Something buried. Something yours."

His face was only inches away now. The mint on his breath was unmistakable—cool, clean, and entirely out of place in a vault full of forgotten things.

"And do not try to delight me with silly lies, friend," he whispered, voice almost tender. "Because I will know."

His tongue flicked once more. The gleam in his eye danced between amusement and warning.

"So… what is it? Let Cinley hear it. Say it aloud."

His tail flicked once—tap—against the arm of the chair.

"Your name… and your secret?"

---

Vernon didn’t answer right away. He sat still in the saddle, one gloved hand gently turning the edge of a cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Hollowmane shifted beneath him—not from nerves, but that idle, restless way horses do when the stillness stretches too long. One smoky ear flicked toward Helvirr. The other stayed pointed forward.


Vernon finally looked down at him, the brim of his hat casting deep shadows over his eyes.

“You’re standin’ like a man who’s seen somethin’ he didn’t put a name to yet,” he said, voice slow, like molasses over gravel. “Tail twitchin’. Weight off your back leg.”

He thumbed the cigarette once more, then tucked it away, unused.

“What’s crawlin’ under your boots this time, Helvirr? You smell somethin’ movin’ that don’t belong?”

Hollowmane gave a low snort—just breath, no sound—and pawed the dirt once, black smoke curling from her hoof like it stirred coals. Vernon kept one hand on the reins, relaxed but steady, the strips of ghost-leather braided with old copper charms that clicked faintly when she moved.

“She don’t twitch at much,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “But she’s been keepin’ her head high lately.”

He let that hang.

Then, a beat later, he added, quieter:
“If there’s somethin’ worth worryin’ about, I want your words on it plain. No riddles. No trail mix of half-thoughts.”

He leaned slightly in the saddle, creaking leather the only punctuation. “We already lit the fuse once. Don’t intend to trip over the smoke this time.”

Another pause. He gave Hollowmane a gentle tap of heel against her ribs—just enough to still her, keep her present.

His eyes never left Helvirr.

“Well?” he asked, low and simple. “What’s got your whiskers twitchin’?”

---

The street shimmered with the low sheen of recent rain, cobbles glistening under the dim arc-lights strung along the brass posts. Fog curled along the edges of buildings like lazy ghosts, muting the city’s usual noise into a soft, mechanical hum—dripping gutters, far-off whistles, the clatter of heels on wet stone. Somewhere in the distance, the slow churn of a train engine groaned against the incline.

And then—closer.

Boots.

Quick ones.

They hit the pavement in uneven rhythm—sharp scuffs, hurried splashes, a pace that carved through the crowd instead of moving with it. Shoulders turned. A cart was narrowly missed. Someone shouted something vulgar.

Then—

WHAM.

A blur of motion collided into Simon’s side like a storm, knocking papers from his grip and sending both bodies off balance. There was a thud, a yelp, and the wet slap of a courier bag hitting the stone.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" the voice hissed, quick and sharp—young, irritable, like the words had teeth.

The figure scrambled upright fast, one hand bracing against the ground, the other already swiping at rain-slick clothes. A black panther kin, lean and clearly younger—barely out of boyhood, but not quite grown. His coat was buckled unevenly at the waist, too long in the sleeves. Fingerless gloves. Hood bunched at the back. His boots had clearly seen better days—worn, scuffed, and stitched back together with mismatched thread.

But what really stood out was the shock of white hair curled in a wild tuft across his head—an unmistakable streak against the rest of his dark fur.

He didn’t apologize.

Just narrowed his emerald eyes and muttered under his breath glaring at Simon with irritation.

---

The smoke had cleared, but Brasshollow still reeked of soot and loss. Months after the explosion, the Whistletrain hub remained a fractured ruin, its veins pulsing weakly with makeshift function. Lucian moved through the aftermath without pause—no grand speeches, just action. He rerouted lines, silenced threats, rebuilt what could be salvaged. Yet amid the chaos, he had not forgotten. Not Charlotte, not the crack in the screen, not the sound of her name becoming absence.

He had known the time was coming. The Auxies acted like children—scrambling to outplay him, mistaking boldness for intelligence. But Lucian had seen it all before. He wasn’t just returning to the game. He was the game. The Velvraux name, long buried under dust and velvet, stirred once more—not as an echo of the past, but as something reimagined. Not the Don’s vision. Not Salem’s. His.

Pantherkin had been spotted again—familiar silhouettes at the city’s edge, old debts stitched into muscle and memory. The bloodline pulsed. It was no longer a warning. It was a calling. And when the curtains rose this time, Lucian would not stand alone. The Velvraux were coming back. On his terms.

---

Few months after the explosion:

Ash still clung to the edges of Brasshollow like it hadn’t quite finished grieving. Down past the busted steamlines and crumbling stonework, one alley in particular held stubborn breath—a narrow wedge of shadow between fractured walls where the lanterns above gave only the pretense of light.

At the far end, a small clearing had been carved into the ruin. Nothing fancy, just a slouch of crates, a half-burned tarp strung between pipes, and a barrel that once offered fire but now offered warmth only by memory. It was here the panthers made camp—not in surrender, but in defiance. There weren’t many of them left. Not after the explosion. Not after the dust tried to claim even their names. But these three had stayed:



Name: Bruno
Rune: Physicality
Species: Black Panther kin
Role: The Muscle






Name: Dante
Rune: Goo
Species: Black Panther Kin
Role: The Wild Card / Distraction






Name: Alaric
Rune: Healing
Species: Black Panther kin
Role: The Doctor / Strategist

---

Dante was draped across an overturned crate like a lounging cat in a too-small sunbeam. One leg crossed over the other, his goo-traced limbs flexing idly as a lazy drip of slime pooled beneath his elbow. A shard of mirror glinted between his fingers as he cleaned under a claw with exaggerated boredom.

“If boredom were a sin,” he purred, voice like velvet dipped in molasses, “baby, we’d be burnin’ twice.”

Alaric, seated nearby with a weather-stained notebook balanced on one knee, didn’t even glance up. “Then thank providence you’re too distracted to commit anything useful.”

“You wound me,” Dante sighed dramatically, tossing the mirror over his shoulder where it landed with a wet splat. He leaned sideways, smirking toward their silent third.

Bruno stood against the alley wall, arms crossed, jaw set. He hadn’t said a word in an hour, maybe more. But he didn’t have to. The set of his shoulders said enough. He was always watching—like a statue built for violence.

Dante’s grin stretched wider. “What d’you think, big guy? Should we go rob a bakery next? I’m in the mood for something sticky.” A pause. “No? No love for pastries?”

“Gods preserve us,” Alaric muttered, flipping a page. “One of these days I’ll poison your mouthwash.”

Then came a shift.

Not a sound. Not a step. But the air changed, like the city exhaled and someone stepped into the space it left behind.

Lucian stood at the mouth of the alleyway, cast in golden lamplight like he’d been painted there by intent. His coat moved with a breeze that didn’t exist. The glint of a silver pin caught the glow just enough to mark him as something more than shadow. His arms were folded behind his back, posture impeccable, green eyes calm and cutting.

The panthers didn’t flinch.

Dante sat upright, curious more than alarmed, his grin sharpening. “Well, well,” he drawled. “If it isn’t the king of smoke and mirrors, gracing the gutters. What’s got you down here, darling? Lose your throne on the way to tea?”

Lucian said nothing at first. He walked forward, slow and deliberate, the way water moves before it turns to steam. His gaze swept over their camp—not with scorn, but with quiet assessment. When he did speak, his voice was smooth, precise. Each word fitted like it had been polished before use.

“The Velvraux name does not beg,” he said. “It selects.”

Dante blinked once. Alaric closed his notebook.

“You’ve endured what others fled from,” Lucian continued, voice low, resonant. “You remain in a city that tried to bury you. That... deserves more than ash, more than survival. I offer you a name. Not as memory. As rebirth.”

He paused, letting the weight settle.

“You deserve more than what Brasshollow gives. More than its scraps. You deserve what was once denied to all of us—pride. Brotherhood. Legacy. The Velvraux name, remade. Not by tradition. Not by ghosts. By me.”

Silence followed, not awkward, but full.

Alaric stood now, brushing soot from his coat. His eyes didn’t narrow. They sharpened.

“We’ve heard worse offers,” he said. “But not many from men who mean it.” He nodded once toward the silent figure beside him. “Bruno doesn’t say much with his mouth. But his fists? Oh, they’re eloquent.”

Bruno grunted, shifting his weight as if the ground had asked for it.

Dante sauntered closer now, goo trailing behind like ink in water. He tilted his head, circling Lucian just a touch—not out of disrespect, but curiosity.

“So,” he said, voice softer now, playful at the edge of dangerous, “what is it you’re really after, Velvet King? Seems to me you don’t build thrones without a war in mind.”

Lucian didn’t follow him with his eyes. He simply turned to face the alley’s exit again, arms still behind his back.

He smiled once—just enough for the green of his gaze to glint like a slit in a curtain.

“Loyalty,” he said.

And then the alley held nothing but silence again.

---

Present Day: The office was quiet but never still. Ink scratched across vellum as Lucian’s fountain pen slid in practiced rhythm, the movement as elegant as it was precise. The late afternoon light filtered in through the tall, filigree windows, casting long bars of gold across the polished desk where Charlotte’s mask still lay—untouched but never forgotten. He did not look at it, not right now. His eyes remained on the page.

The silence broke with a squelch.

Drip. Drip.

A soft gurgle of viscous matter slipping into shape, heralded by the sound of heels clicking—no, not heels. Gel-styled pseudopods hardening into narrow tips, tapping like stilettos on polished tile.

Dante entered the room like a spotlight had followed him in. One hand behind his head, the other dragging a trailing swirl of goo behind him that caught the light with opalescent sheen. He struck a pose halfway through the threshold, hips cocked, a wide, wicked grin stretched beneath eyes lined in messy glam. His fur was damp at the edges from the transformation, glistening like he'd just come from a dancefloor fight.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite velvet daddy,” he purred, voice like sugar soaked in danger.

Lucian looked up with a flat expression, pen pausing mid-stroke. His eyes lifted without urgency, landing on the panther with a gaze as calm and green as fresh poison... “I trust you have something for me.”

Dante twirled his wrist in a dramatic little spiral, strands of goo flicking from his fingertips as if shedding water. “Sugar, please. You wound me. Would I ever come back from a job empty?” He sauntered closer, slow and deliberate, dragging the moment like a silk scarf over a knife. “You said substation three. I listened. I delivered.”

Lucian leaned back slightly in his chair, fingers steepled. “Was the informant… cooperative?”

Dante's smile sharpened. He paused near the edge of the desk, lowering his voice to a sultry hush. “Not for long.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Lucian didn’t need him to. The panther’s goo shimmered along his forearms like a living stain, and his claws glinted faintly where something less alive had once struggled. There was no rebuke. Only a faint nod—Lucian’s version of approval.

Dante leaned a little closer, elbows nearly on the desk, body language loose and lounging like a serpent draped over a velvet chaise. “Substation three’s a wreck,” he continued. “Tunnels half-collapsed, signs of old charges, scorch marks… someone didn’t just pack up—they made sure no one’d follow. But you know me, darling.”

His grin spread wide, and he flexed—literally. Part of his chest and spine cracked audibly as his form reshaped, goo liquefying momentarily before tightening again into panther precision.

“Flexible,” he whispered. “Always have been.”

Lucian said nothing, but his eye gave a glint of interest.

“There wasn’t much left behind,” Dante admitted, circling the desk now, trailing one gooey finger along its edge, “but I did find something those righteous rats either missed or thought too broken to care about.”

With a dramatic flourish, he pulled a dark, worn leather binder from beneath his coat—or what passed for one—and let it hit the desk with a satisfying thump.

“Thought it might sing for you,” Dante murmured, already halfway sprawled across the guest chair like a cat draping itself over silk curtains. “Or at least hum in a key you like.”

Lucian’s gaze lingered on the binder for a breath. Then on Dante.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Oh, honey,” Dante said, resting his cheek in one goo-slicked palm. “I don’t get out of bed unless I plan to enjoy everything.”

Lucian reached forward and took the binder. The leather creaked faintly under his grip.

(For DM: is there any 'information' Dante could have found for Lucian?)

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The lizardkin did not flinch.

Not outwardly.

But his breath did something odd in his throat. A slight catch. Barely audible. Enough to fog the edge of his vision for half a second.

Cinley was close—too close. That cool breath ghosting past his frill, that silken tail coiling just beneath the line of his ankle. The lizard’s hands stayed clasped in his lap, unmoving, but his claws pressed faintly into the fabric of his robes. Not with fear. With restraint.

He had considered lying.

Of course he had. It would’ve been easy. Expected, even. The kind of show that made men like Cinley grin and waggle their tongues like they’d just caught a noble mid-affair. He’d rehearsed the lie a dozen ways in his head on the walk over—each one clean, each one clever, each one plausible enough to pass in court but vague enough to slip through arcane filters.

But none of them would hold. Not here. Not under that stare.

Cinley didn’t want lies.

He wanted ownership.

So the lizard exhaled.

And spoke.

“I gave the only memory-scroll containing binary of the Archipalego Network to the Auxies."

His hands slowly unclasped, one of them resting atop the satchel.

“That scroll showed what came before..."

He did not look at Cinley.

“I studied it in private. Cross-referenced it with sealed Vault entries, expanded on Brigg's work... and requested his initiatives be re-assigned to me. I begged. And Nima—”

His tongue flicked, bitterness sliding across his teeth.

“She called it dangerous. Called me dangerous. Revoked my research status. Sent me to the Vault for re-assignment. Said my methods were manipulative and my research speculative."

Now his gaze lifted—level, direct. The twin orbs of his eyes, always off-kilter, aligned now with rare, unnatural focus. His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t crack. It settled.

“I knew about the Arcane Explosions. I knew they were coming. The students who died—some I knew by name. I did nothing. I said nothing.”

His hands rested on the satchel. Still.

“I thought… maybe the Enclave would see. Maybe they’d realize what kind of world they’d built. Maybe something would break open. Maybe the system would fracture just enough to let the truth out.”

He gave a small, dry laugh—not cruel. Not cold. Just tired.

“It didn’t.”

He tilted his head slightly—just enough to feel the tension of Cinley’s presence still circling him like incense smoke.

“I’m not proud. But I’m not apologizing, either.”

Another pause. His claws tapped the satchel gently, once.

“And that’s the truth. The real one. You can taste it if you want.”

Then, quieter, with just the smallest thread of something older behind it—maybe weariness, maybe reverence, maybe the knowledge that once spoken, there was no taking it back:

“My name was Callin. Vault Supervisor. Archivist. Former Researcher."

He exhaled again.

“…I would like it to no longer be.”

---

Helvirr didn’t speak right away.

He just stood there—still, alert, tail twitching once in that slow, thoughtful way unique to felinekind. His shoulders rolled back with an easy kind of poise, but his claws flexed beneath the leather of his gloves like someone doing quiet math behind the eyes. The mist coiled low around his boots. He didn’t shift weight again. Vernon had already seen it. No point in hiding the twitch now.

“…It’s not just one thing,” he said finally, voice flat as riverstone. “It’s too many things. Piled wrong. Edges don’t line up.”

He tilted his head once—not to Vernon, but off toward the treeline, as if testing the air with more than his nose. His ears flicked.

“You remember Bahaad and M’hi?”

He didn’t wait for a yes. Didn’t need it.

"Sometimes... I still see them when it gets too quiet. M’hi in the rafters. Bahaad halfway through a joke he never finished. Happens more often lately.” His gaze drifted off again. “Something about Whistletrain never stopped burning. You just can’t see it anymore.”

A pause. A longer one this time.

“…We weren’t meant to work like this. Not seven years of silence. We were clean. Coordinated. Surgical.” His voice hardened just a touch. “We weren’t vandals. We didn’t light cities on fire to make a point.”

His claws tapped once at his thigh again, a restless flick.

“Zac’s been gone too long. And now we’re back to guessing. I’m tired of guessing.”

He tilted his head back toward Vernon—his superior, but also something else now. A witness. A hinge.

“We're playing a game I don’t know the rules to anymore.

---

Simon yelped—more out of surprise than pain—as the kid slammed into him, scattering half a stack of neatly sorted notes across the soaked cobblestones. The thud jarred him, the courier bag caught his shin, and the wet slap of his palm hitting stone sent a cold jolt up his wrist.

“Oh—woah! Hey, hey—watch it!” Simon’s tail twitched reflexively behind him, ears perked in that half-shocked, half-alarmed way dogkin always wore a little too plainly.

He crouched to scoop up his papers, shaking rain from one corner and making a small whimpering sound when he saw the ink smudge. “Ahh—no no no—come on, I just reprinted this…”

Simon blinked up at him, panting slightly. Then—of course—he smiled.

Friendly. Tail still flicking, ears perked despite the damp, the tension, and the bruise already forming near his elbow. “Hey, it’s fine—it’s fine. We’re all in a rush, right?” He laughed once, a soft, nervous sound. “I mean, raining, crowded, cursed cobblestones—classic recipe for a collision.”

---

JOURNAL CONTENTS:

ENTRY 001 – PURPOSE
The Windbound Conduit was designed as a contingency interface: a system to forcibly override an individual’s Primary Rune and replace it with a Psuedo-Wind Rune, sourced from stabilized ambient drift. This was prototyped in direct response to the bibblecore system collapse and soon thereafter rise of the replacement runic system.

ENTRY 002 – INSTALLATION

Required components:
• Windbound Conduit core
• Compression harness (model A3 or later)
• Runesteel spinal mount (vertebrae T6–T12)
• Ether-sink capacitor (optional, stabilizes drift)

• Secure subject in prone position, sedated if necessary.
• Align the conduit to the spine; do not engage until full runeplate contact is verified.
• Activate the calibration seal (rear interface).
• Once interface locks, initiate override. Lockout will begin immediately—there is no reversal once core binding completes.
• Observe until pulse settles. Subject will experience dissociation for 2–5 minutes. Monitor vitals. Expect minor spasm or temporary breath loss.

ENTRY 003 – ENERGY DEGRADATION

Potency loss is consistent across field trials. Average arcane output drops to 42–56% following replacement. The end result? A weaker subject and half as much arcane transfer as intended. It is considered acceptable, but we'll continue to look for ways to pull more potency. Combat capability is reduced unless augmented.

ENTRY 004 – PSYCHIC IMPACT

Subjects may exhibit the following symptoms post-binding:
• Directional disorientation
• Memory echoes
• Whispering effect (low-frequency wind-voice hallucinations)

Subjects should not be left unsupervised for the first 48 hours. Some subjects appear to be unaffected entirely, others experience all symptoms.

ENTRY 005 – POOR RESPONSE RATES

There is significant evidence to suggest that both the Shadow and Mind rune respond most poorly to the replacement. Further testing halted after Subject 07 did not return from field deployment.

ENTRY 006 – ....

This project was authorized internally. Case uses have proven to be helpful. Overall, the project is considerably a success. However, further adjustments are needed. Equal response rates across all runes need to be achieved for diversification. Elemental runes appear to be the most malleable. However, the Shadow Rune, Light Rune, and Mind Rune remain difficult to extract and experiments often result in... less than ideal results for the subjects. Considering that the obtainment of these three specific essences were the core of this project, further models and prototypes need to be explored. While we could not have anticipated the bibblecore to runic transition, we had hoped that it would bring easier extractions... less resistance from the systems... that is not the case.

Ceasing development of this particular model. More to come soon, I'm sure. For now? Ordering Canine Club takeout.

Z.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

It held its shape gently as she watched him—watched the way his hand lingered in hers, the reverence behind his words, the slow, awed cadence of someone seeing her anew. He touched her braid and her chest ached, just a little, like the breath she’d been holding this whole time was only now finding its edges.

She wanted to cry again. But didn’t.

Instead, her thumb curled softly against his wrist. Just enough to remind them both it was real. That he was here. That he had said her name.

But something in her stomach shifted.

Not wrong.

Just… not quiet.

Her eyes stayed on him even as his gaze turned to the ocean. She studied the line of his shoulders, the set of his jaw, the way his voice lingered like it was narrating a story to someone who wasn’t there. There was a glow in him now, yes—but it shimmered wrong. Like candlelight in a cracked lantern. Too bright in places. Too dark in others.

Her smile softened. The way her voice did when she used to walk wounded birds back to their nests.

“You always did know how to speak like that,” she said gently. “Like someone was writing it down behind you.”

A small laugh, half-mirth, half-wonder. She reached up to brush his hair back from his face, slow and unassuming, but her fingers paused a moment too long above the temple—where the scarred veins still pulsed faintly beneath the blind eye.

He didn’t flinch. But she felt it anyway.

Not in his skin.

In the shift.

It had happened too fast. Too wide.

He had shattered like glass not moments ago—grief, panic, collapse—and now?

Now he spoke like a prophet. Gentle. Grateful. Lyrical.

Like none of it had happened.

Ephraim’s brow furrowed slightly. Just enough for him to miss it, if he wasn’t looking closely. She pressed her forehead to his again, a mirror of comfort. But her mind turned, quietly.

Was this trauma?

She had seen trauma like this before. Sudden. Looping. Whiplash swings between collapse and poetry. But even then, it wasn’t always so... clean. So resolved. His panic hadn’t worn off, not really. It had just… shifted. Glossed itself.

Like something inside him stepped forward.

Like something stepped back.

Her eyes flicked briefly to Cerberus. Then back to Mordecai.

She’d seen him broken before. That wasn’t new. What was new was the texture of it. The range. The speed of it.

“…You’ve changed,” she said at last.

The words weren’t judgment. Just observation. Spoken like wind to leaves.

“You’re still you. I know that. I can feel it.” Her thumb stroked his hand again, anchoring them both. “But something’s different. The way you carry things now. The way you... shift.”

She didn’t mean his body. She didn’t mean his weight.

She meant what wore him.

Ephraim didn’t move her hand from his.

Ephraim shifted her weight gently as she felt the tide of his breath begin to even out. He hadn’t let go yet—not fully—but something in his posture had softened, the way cloth does after too many years hung stiff on a line. Her hand remained at his back, thumb making slow, thoughtless circles near the curve of his shoulder blade. Not pressing. Just staying.

She didn’t rush it.

She never had, not with him.

But when she spoke again, her voice had changed. Not colder. Not distant. Just… clearer.

“Mordecai,” she murmured, her tone grounding again. “A lot’s changed since you vanished.”

She felt his ribs pause under her hand. Not stop—just hold, like a note played too long.

“You’ve changed. I can see it... in the way you look at me.” She smiled faintly, a sad sort of breath at the edge of it.

She pulled back slightly—not away, not to leave—but just enough to see him. Her eyes searched his face. The hollows. The cracks. The newness and the familiar.

“When we last left off…” she began, then paused. Her voice lowered. “Everything was hard. Not just the work. Us.”

Her gaze flicked downward. She took a slow inhale before continuing.

“...I was angry... and at times, quiet when I shouldn’t have been. I didn’t talk to you the way you needed. I didn’t touch you the way I meant to. I missed a lot of moments when you were asking me to see you, and I…” Her brow knit gently. “...I didn’t show up in the ways that mattered.”

She met his eyes again.

“I was a bad partner in ways I didn’t realize until I had no one to be a partner to.”

There was no self-pity in it. Just confession.

“I want that to be different now,” she said.

“I want you to walk beside me. Not ahead. Not behind. Beside. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She reached for his hand again, slower this time—giving him the chance to meet her in the middle. Her fingers curled gently around his.

“I’m ready to learn you again. Whatever shape that takes. I’m not here to chase the past."

She paused again. Looked over her shoulder.

The clearing swayed faintly behind them. The wind from the coast curled soft at their backs. The sea still whispered like it had something old to say.

“But,” Ephraim continued, gentler now, “.... If we're going to take another trip around the uh... moon, there's something I need to show you first."

Her thumb brushed his hand again. Just once.

“I want us to start off slow. On the right foot.”

Her eyes flicked back to his.

“Just you and me.... One quiet moment before everything else. Like the old times.”

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Cinley did not move.

His coils remained wound around the chair, his long neck still arched above, watching. The slit pupils of his eyes stayed fixed on the lizardkin as though drinking him in, as though the spoken truth had flavor. His claws tapped slowly together—once, twice, a third time—before stilling. The scent of mint hung heavy in the air.

As the final words left the lizardkin’s mouth, something shimmered.

Magic stirred faintly in the space between them—thin tendrils of glowing ink curling upward like smoke through water. The words he'd spoken, his name, Callin, flickered into view for a heartbeat: spectral, pulsing like an exhale onto invisible parchment.

Cinley’s voice coiled around it. “Callin…” he murmured, savoring it, his smile subtle but unchanged. His tongue flickered once more, as if tasting memory itself.

“Such a…”

A pause.

“…memory.”

As the word left his tongue, the swirling ink in the air shimmered, folding and curling inward. It twisted into the shape of an ethereal envelope, sealed with golden wax marked by an intricate dragon crest. The seal pulsed once—soft, golden light glowing from its surface like a final breath—then vanished into a silent burst of particles, dissolving into the vault’s air.

---

Far below the Beacon—beneath the brass bones of the city and the faint echoes of its surface lies—there was a hum. It wasn’t sound. Not entirely. It was resonance. Magic moving with intention, a ripple sent from the dragon’s coiled perch above.

The air shimmered. Empty space twisted. Dust that hadn’t stirred in centuries scattered as reality bent inward with quiet ceremony. A pulse of magic arced through the vaulted dark, brushing along rows of silent, sealed names.

Then—without any grand announcement—a new drawer eased from the obsidian wall. There had been no mechanism before. No visible seam. But now, the drawer simply existed, as if the vault had been holding its breath for this exact moment.

On its surface, gold-lined script faded into view with elegant finality. Callin.

The envelope arrived a breath later, wreathed in soft light. It flickered into existence, still mint-scented, its golden dragon seal glowing faintly. The document tucked itself smoothly into the velvet-lined interior of the drawer, coming to rest without a sound.

The drawer slid shut with reverent precision. A faint click marked the lock.

And then, silence.

The archive accepted its newest name. The city above did not notice—but below, the vault remembered.

It was gone.

Filed.

Remembered.

---

He lingered there, close—his eyes nearly unblinking, heavy with knowing. Then, without warning, his tone shifted.

“Well then!”

Cinley uncoiled in one smooth motion, drawing upward to full height, his serpentine body looping around the chair before rising to tower again. With a flourish of his claw, he slashed the air—not violently, but with the casual elegance of one signing a letter.

A flicker of magic answered. A soft poof, and an envelope materialized in the air, sealed with swirling sigils, the paper pressed and folded with impossible precision. Inside: a name that had never been worn, a place that had never heard the word Callin, and a clean set of records—untainted, quiet, uninteresting.

Cinley held it delicately between two claws, dangling it like a promise just above reach. His smile returned—closed-lipped this time, polite but sharp.

“And now,” he said softly, voice coiling down once more, “who is the identity… of this current owner of the staff?”

---

Vernon let the silence stretch like old leather drying in the sun.

Hollowmane flicked one ear back toward Helvirr, then the other, her tail swaying slow behind her like smoke that forgot how to rise. The old mare shifted her weight once, and Vernon adjusted with her—easy, practiced, like they’d done this in a hundred fields that didn’t have names.

“Mm,” Vernon muttered at last, low in his throat. “You see ghosts when the world don’t sit right. Ain’t always dead folk neither.”

He reached up and touched the brim of his hat, not to tip it—just a slow press, like it helped him think. His eyes didn’t leave the mist curling over the edge of the bluff.

“Sometimes it’s memory walkin’ without feet. Guilt with a face on it. The kind of feelin’ that rides with you but won’t pay for feed.”

He looked down at Helvirr then. Not pitying. Just knowing.

“I get it. We were sharp back then. Cut clean. Didn’t need speeches or glory. Just the job and the breath between orders.” A pause, the reins in his hand creaking as Hollowmane shifted. “But the map’s different now. Ain’t got clean lines anymore. Just fog, and folk tryin’ to plant roads in it.”

Another breath. Then, quieter, “Zac’s still on Misty Valley. Working a different stretch. Said it was business he had to see through—no more details than that.”

He didn’t lie. Didn’t offer more.

“But I’ll check on him soon. Boy’s got good shoulders under that stripe,” Vernon said, almost fondly, though his voice never warmed too far. “But his tail wags a little quicker than his brain catches sometimes. That ain't a sin. Just makes it easy to get ahead of your own trail and forget to leave markers behind.”

Hollowmane’s head lowered slightly, exhaling a gust that stirred the mist at their feet. Vernon didn’t glance down—just scratched her neck once, slow.

“Helvirr,” he said after a beat, voice like worn wood on porch steps, “you feel wrong in the gut, I want you to walk it out. See what casts the shadow. And if you find the edge of somethin’? You don’t need permission to name it.”

His gaze lifted toward the treeline, not like a threat, but like a prayer waiting to be heard.

“You and me—we’re old enough to know the quiet never stays quiet. And ghosts don’t whisper for nothin’.”

---

Valeo flinched slightly when the dogkin yelped, his ears pinning back instinctively. His tail flicked behind him in irritation—or maybe nerves—but he didn’t bend to help. Just stood there, arms crossed now, rain dripping from his sleeves.

“Yeah, well, maybe don’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk next time,” he muttered, voice sharp and defensive—too quick, too loud, like he had to win the moment even if it was already over.

He shifted his weight, about to turn, when something caught his eye.

A flash of bronze and enamel—dangling from the lanyard around the guy’s neck.

Whistletrain ID.

His gaze snagged on it for half a heartbeat too long. Jaw tensed. Something in his chest pulled tight—familiar and wrong, like seeing a shape you’d drawn a hundred times without knowing why.

Valeo blinked. Looked away.

Whatever it was, he didn’t let it show.

“Well, maybe keep your paper princess stuff somewhere waterproof,” he snapped instead, brushing past with a scowl. “Not my fault your files melt in the rain.”

---

The office had fallen quiet again—just the steady tick of the brass clock behind Lucian’s shoulder and the faint shift of velvet curtains as the breeze whispered in.

Lucian turned the final page of the journal slowly, his gloved fingers pausing at the bottom line.

“Ordering Canine Club takeout.”

The phrase hung in the air longer than it should have.

He stared at it, the corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly—not in amusement, but recognition. Confirmation. A scent he’d caught before. There was always a trace. And now, with the signature scratched as Z, it smelled stronger than ever.

Dogs.

Lucian closed the binder and set it gently on the desk. His eyes lifted to Dante, who had resumed draping himself across the guest chair like a spilled cocktail of charm and chaos.

“You’ve done well,” Lucian said, voice smooth as shadow silk. “This confirms more than I expected. And the name…? It’s a start.”

Dante beamed, one clawed hand tracing a lazy swirl of goo across his own thigh. “Mmm, I knew you’d like it,” he purred. “Felt like it had just the right touch of madness and mystery, don’t you think? I mean, who writes about spine drills and takeout in the same breath?”

Lucian gave a faint, feline exhale—somewhere between a scoff and a hum.

“Dogs,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Always so loud. Even in their paperwork.”

Dante chuckled, goo pooling gently at the floor by one foot. “Well, what do you expect? Slobber and subtlety were never on the same leash.”

Lucian's eyes flicked to him, a rare hint of amusement behind the emerald gleam.

Dante grinned wider, his fangs showing just slightly.

A pause settled in.

Then Dante stretched, one arm going full liquid before snapping back into form, and cocked his hip to the side.

“So, bossman,” he drawled. “You need anything else? Or can I go slink somewhere more... decadent?”

Lucian leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled once more.

“That will be all for now. You’ve done well.”

Dante offered a mock bow from where he stood, goo trailing behind like a phantom boa. “Always a pleasure, your majesty of menace.”

And with that, he was gone—half-strutting, half-sliding through the door, leaving the faint scent of slick ozone and mischief in his wake.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Mordecai sat quiet for a long breath.

Then another.

His eyes didn’t leave hers—not in scrutiny, but in awe. Like he couldn’t believe she was real and speaking this truth, here, now.

“I’ve… changed,” he echoed softly. “Yes. And not always by choice.”

His voice held no edge. Just clarity. Like stones gently placed in a circle.

“I shattered in places I didn’t know I had. There are parts of me I still don’t understand—voices, memories, patterns that wear my face and speak in my name. But you...”

His thumb brushed along the side of her hand.

“You feel like the only thing that’s stayed constant. Not as an anchor. But as a star I could keep choosing.”

He paused then, letting the silence stretch—not awkward, but thoughtful. He glanced down at their joined hands. Then out, briefly, toward the dark horizon.

“The island… it wasn’t just a prison,” he said slowly. “It was a mirror. A place that took whatever was inside me and gave it shape. Grief became trees. Doubt became wind. I walked through entire forests made of my own regrets.”

His gaze returned to hers, softer now. “There was something there with me. A presence. I didn’t know its name at first, but it watched. Moved with me. It didn’t speak like we do—but it listened. It reflected.”

Another breath. This one carried weight.

“I named it the Witherstalker, eventually. And when I stopped trying to run, when I finally let it show me everything… the island changed. It stopped being a maze and became something else. A kind of… sacred ruin.”

He didn’t raise his voice, but something in him steadied. “That’s what the Witherwilds are now. Not punishment. Not exile. A record. A place made of every part of me I tried to bury. I was supposed to name it when I was ready to leave.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I named it after the one who never turned away. The Witherstalker. The watcher. The teacher.”

His eyes shimmered—not with tears, but something luminous. Old.

“I don’t think I came back whole. I think I came back as what was left after the breaking. Shatterglass, maybe. But the kind you don’t sweep up—just… reassemble. Honor. Let the light pass through differently.”

He turned his forehead gently to hers again, more reverent than romantic.

“And you’re the only one I’d trust to help me hold the pieces.”

He let the moment breathe.

His voice was steady, but low.

“And I want you to know… I never blamed you.”

His gaze held hers gently, firmly. “Not then. Not now. Whatever silence there was—whatever space—we both hurt inside it. But I never held you responsible for my breaking. That was already in motion long before.”

He let the moment breathe. Then, quieter:

“I remember how it felt to be yours before I even had language for it. If we walk forward again, I want it to be with intention. Reverence. And a softness we never let ourselves earn before.”

Then, with quiet finality:

“I’m ready to learn you, too.”

Behind them, Cerberus stirred.

The massive form shifted with a ripple of fur and bone. Slowly, they rose from their resting place—stretching long and low, forelegs extended, haunches lifted. All three of their skeletal maws opened in a wide, synchronized yawn that ended in a soft, whiny trill. As they stood, they shook out their fur in a shimmer of shadow and mist, wisps dancing in the moonlight.

Then, with an audible clack of bone, Rus' head gave a sharp sneeze, sending a little puff of shadow into the air.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The lizardkin’s eyes flicked to the envelope, but he didn’t reach for it. His breath came slow, deliberate—controlled, but not calm. “Lucian,” he said at last, the name dropping like a pebble into deep water. “He has had it since before the arcane explosions."

His gaze didn’t waver. “He doesn’t know what it is. Not really...” he paused, jaw tightening,

---

Simon blinked, still crouched where the papers had scattered, one hand shielding the worst of them from the puddle creeping in. The rain didn’t help his mood—but it wasn’t the barked insult or the snotty attitude that froze him for a beat.

It was the look. That pause. That flicker in the kid’s eyes when he saw the badge.

Simon straightened slowly, ears back, tail low, still holding the damp stack close to his chest. His voice came steady, warm—too warm, maybe, like he was choosing kindness over confrontation by sheer force of will.

“Hey,” he said, eyes narrowing just slightly. “You okay?... I'm a safe-kin, you have an issue and I can take it straight to the Chairman himself. He can help with anything.... Is it your parents?"

---

Ephraim smiled—a full, quiet thing, tender in its stillness.

It didn’t reach for drama. It didn’t need to. The look in her eyes was enough: the kind of love that didn’t flinch, didn’t scatter, didn’t shrink. Not when he told her what he’d become. Not when he spoke of the breaking. Not when the word “Shatterglass” was uttered like an inheritance and a prayer.

Her hand lifted gently to his cheek, thumb brushing beneath his eye—not to wipe anything away, but simply to be there. To touch what was true.

“Then let’s learn each other,” she said softly, her voice a hush meant just for him, “the way we should have."

She let their foreheads stay close. Let that breath of warmth linger between them a moment longer before she leaned back, just enough to see his face in full again.

"I know a place... --They’re not ready yet, the kids... And you don’t need to carry all that weight tonight. You’ve just come home.”

A small tug. Her other hand rose, motioning toward the winding path beyond the trees. The moonlit trail curved soft along the rise of a nearby ridge, sea visible just past the bend.

"Not far at all. The breeze catches the salt there, and you can see the stars."

She tilted her head toward the trail, eyes shining.

“Walk with me?”

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Mordecai was quiet for a long moment. Not because he didn’t want to answer—but because every part of him already had. The way his chest softened. The way his thumb traced hers in return. The way his eyes never left her face, like she was the only thing keeping him tethered to this side of the world.

But when she spoke of the kids—of returning to the rest of it—he felt it stir in him. Not guilt. Not fear. Just the truth. He wasn’t ready. Not for the others. Not yet. The idea of faces, voices, questions—of expectations wrapped in relief—twisted something too tightly in his chest. He didn’t know if he ever would be ready. But he didn’t have to be. Not tonight. And Ephraim knew that.

He nodded, slow. Tired, but not resistant. There was no denial in his voice. Just understanding.

“I understand,” he said softly.

Then, quieter still, like the oath it was:

“I’ll always walk with you.”

He moved to rise, hand gripping the wooden staff. It took effort—clear, slow, unhidden. His knees shook faintly beneath the strain, shoulders rising stiff beneath the ragged fabric of his coat. He leaned more heavily into the staff than he wanted to admit, but didn’t mask it. Not from her.

Cerberus moved beside him. A low canine grunt escaped their shared chest, all three skull heads lowering as they stepped close. Ber, the center, pressed gently to Mordecai’s shoulder—solid, grounding. Supportive. Cerberus walked with practiced ease, a kind of guardian grace in their gait.

Then, they turned. All three heads looked to Ephraim.

Waiting.

Ready.

---

Valeo stopped mid-step.

It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t cool. It was that awkward, lurching kind of stop—shoulders tightening, one boot scuffing hard against the stone as if the word Chairman had slammed a wall down in front of him.

His ears twitched. Slowly.

He didn’t turn around right away.

Didn’t speak either.

Just stood there for a breath too long, like a kid caught reading someone else's journal—something private and dangerous and painfully familiar.

Chairman.

He’d heard it before. In whispers. In passing glances. That name. That title.

And in dreams.

Not normal ones. The kind that stayed with you. Velvet gloves and cold rings. Gold fixtures. That music—soft and old, from a place that didn’t feel like Brasshollow. A place he couldn’t name, where the buildings stood too tall, and everyone walked like they were being watched. It wasn’t another world—at least, not one he knew existed. But it didn’t feel like his, either.

He hated those dreams. Hated that they felt like memories.

And lately, there was more. A feeling in his chest like something else was near. A weight. A presence. Like a tether he didn’t remember tying.

He spun back around fast, cloak flicking behind him, and barked:

“What, you think just ‘cause you’ve got a badge and a smile and some fancy title you can read people like that? You don’t know me.”

His voice cracked a little at the end—not enough to be obvious, just enough to sting.

“And by the way? ‘Safe-kin’ sounds like a made-up award for people who cry at posters. So, congrats.”

He looked away again, jaw clenched, rain sliding down his nose.

He had wanted to talk to Lucian. Had almost done it twice.

But how do you tell someone you dream about a place you’ve never been—and feel like it’s pulling you in?