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

Reader mode
Ephraim didn’t rush. Just rose in tandem, brushing the loose folds of her shawl with a small, habitual motion, as if to catch her breath between movements. Her gaze lingered on the ground before them—stone path glistening faintly with dew, soft underbrush parted like memory itself had tread this way before.

“It’s just ahead,” she murmured, nodding toward the narrow trail. She let her steps fall slow beside his—matching pace, not adjusting. Cerberus’ gentle weight behind them was a comfort, not an interruption. The forest canopy stretched above like a cradle, faint moonlight carving silver lines between the leaves.

Ephraim glanced sideways at him, voice easy, even warm.

“You said the island gave your pain shape.” Her fingers brushed a fern’s edge as they passed, just enough to disturb the dew. “Grief turning into trees. Doubt becoming wind.”

A longer pause.

“That’s beautiful, in a way,” she said softly. “Not just metaphor-beautiful. Real. Sacred. Not holy, not safe, but honest.” Her brow knit gently. “To know you walked through that... alone..."
 
Mordecai’s steps were slow, but not stumbling now. Just worn with the kind of weight that had settled into him, not as a burden—but as part of his spine. His staff tapped gently with each movement, syncing with the softer pads of Cerberus’ paws behind them. Ephraim’s presence beside him was a quiet balm. Her voice, her pace, even the way she disturbed the dew—it made the world feel more breathable.

When she spoke of the island, of pain turned sacred, he didn’t answer right away. His eyes followed the way the moonlight ribboned through the leaves. His breath slowed with memory.

"Pain always wants a form," he said gently. “On the island, it didn’t ask permission. It became whatever it needed to be. Sometimes trees. Sometimes wind. Sometimes... teeth."

He let that hang, not heavily, but like an old bell chime echoing faint in the background.

“There was a place below,” he continued, his voice more distant now, eyes not on her, but on the trail. “A cavern that felt like it had no bottom. The deeper I went, the quieter it got. But it wasn’t peace. It was pressure. Like being watched by something ancient that didn’t blink.”

He didn’t describe the Hollow Veldt. But the way his hand tightened briefly on the staff, the way his posture shifted—it told more than words.

“And I remember drowning,” he said, soft but with a tremor that wasn’t fear. “Not in water. In memory. A version of me found me there.”

His gaze flicked to her, watching not to see if she understood—but to witness her being present.

“He looked like control. Clean, composed. A shadow stitched in all the right places. And he spoke like everything was already decided.”

He spoke of the figure carefully, like recalling the edge of a dream—sharp, but dissolving if held too tightly. There was no contempt in his voice. Just the kind of caution you offer a mirror that might still be listening.

“I almost listened. Almost stayed with him. Let him speak for me. Because it’s easy to call that clarity.”

Mordecai exhaled slowly, the air leaving him like prayer smoke.

“But then… another found me. He didn’t speak loud. He just... reminded me to breathe.”

A pause.

“And when I finally climbed again, when I reached the peak... a tree had grown. Where there had only ever been stone.”

His voice softened.

“It wasn’t large. But it bloomed. Pale blossoms. The kind that only bloom when no one’s watching. There were silk ribbons in the branches. Like the ones we tied in the wind, long ago.”

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t claim it was his doing. Just let it rest there, a gift left on the altar of the conversation.

“The island reflects, but it doesn’t create. It only grows what you’re brave enough to bury.”

He turned to look at her fully now, eyes gentle.

“I wouldn’t have found the tree, if I hadn’t drowned first.”
 


Ephraim walked quietly as he spoke, letting each word take root between their steps. The night wasn’t cold, but the dampness in the air kissed her skin like memory. Everything felt remembered.

She didn’t interrupt. Just watched him. Listened. Let the cadence of his voice stir the tide within her.

When he spoke of the tree—the ribbons—they passed beneath a branch overhead, "I remember that... I think about it all the time."

And then she smiled, slow and steady, as if that warmth could wrap around him.

“This is the place,” she said softly. “The one Rhea brought you to. Do you remember?”

Her voice wasn’t testing. Just offering. A thread pulled gently through time.

“She told me about it years later," Ephraim continued, gaze tracing the edges of the path. “Said she followed something that called to her. That you had found her. Like you always did for me..."

She looked over at him again. “She never forgot it. Not the creatures. Not the water. Not you. I think she believed it meant something—that the world had made a small place just for that moment. Just for the two of you.”
 
Mordecai’s steps didn’t stop—but something shifted.

Not dramatically. Not even visibly to most. Just a faint tension in the shoulder. A stutter in his breath. His hand, resting on the staff, tightened for half a second too long. The kind of pause that meant something old and delicate had been touched.

When she spoke Rhea’s name, it was as if a thread deep inside him had been plucked—but the music didn’t follow.

Cerberus responded almost imperceptibly. The three heads, previously swaying in gentle sync with the rhythm of the walk, faltered. Ber’s skull turned slightly, not toward Ephraim, but toward Mordecai—watching him. Rus tilted just enough to catch his scent, a low flicker of instinct checking for something beneath the surface.

Mordecai’s lips parted.

And nothing came out.

Not yet.

He blinked slowly, like trying to trace a shape in fog. His jaw moved slightly, as if rehearsing the answer before offering it. But it never settled. He exhaled instead, soft and low.

“I… don’t know if I remember,” he admitted, voice still gentle, reverent, but wrapped in a quiet guilt. Not shame. Just the ache of absence.

He didn’t look at Ephraim first. He looked to Cerberus.

The three-headed guardian met his gaze. They didn’t speak, didn’t move forward. But they watched. Steady. Present. As if waiting for the rest of him to arrive.

Mordecai nodded faintly to himself, accepting something without the memory to prove it.

“But I believe her,” he said quietly. “I believe the world makes places like that. For just a moment. For just enough. And I believe it found her… even if I can’t hold it.”

His eyes turned back to the path, lids half-lowered, as if following something only spirit could sense.

“Some memories don’t root in the mind,” he murmured. “They bloom in others instead.”
 
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Ephraim stepped a little ahead now, where the light from the cave began to bloom blue and slow across her legs. Her fingers trailed toward the stone, but didn’t touch it—hovering like memory itself.

“I wasn’t even here. I was in Brasshollow, caught in something that didn't matter. You were the one who found her.”

She glanced back toward him, not with guilt—but with reverence. As though the story still didn’t feel real.

“You woke up to an empty house. She was gone. No note. No noise. Just the quiet weight that something had shifted. And you followed.”

The glow from the portal brushed under her chin, casting soft ripples in her eyes as she spoke.

“She left a trail without knowing it—hoofprints in the sand, pressed so gently it was like she was trying not to disturb the world. But you found them. Traced her past the cliff brush, through the tidewind trees.”

Ephraim paused as she neared the portal, letting her breath match the rhythm of the light.

“There was something in the woods,” she said quietly. “Some kind of creature. The one with the golden medallion.”

Her voice dropped a little more, weighted now with awe and grief in equal measure.

“You followed her into this place. You found her kneeling by the pools, hands soaked, catching things mid-hatch like it was instinct. Like she belonged there.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“She looked up and didn’t even seem surprised. She said she knew you'd come."

She turned now, facing him fully. Her voice was gentle—but anchored. She was very familiar with this story.
 
Mordecai stood still at the edge of the light, where the stone walls breathed faint blue into the air. His gaze drifted—not sharply, not lost—but slowly, scanning the gentle arc of the cavern, the low shimmer of water against stone, the soft pulse of the portal ahead. The rhythm of her voice pulled at something. Not memory, not fully—but the ghost of it.

Rhea’s name. The trail. The pools. They echoed, but not clearly. Like looking through rippled glass.

His ear flicked once.

Then, quietly, he raised a hand to his temple—his blind side—and rubbed it in a slow, thoughtful circle. Not in pain, but as if chasing the edge of something half-formed. His eyes closed. Held. Then opened again.

The good eye stared into the portal. Still. Slightly distant.

"It... sounds..."

A pause. He didn’t finish the thought.

Not a lie. Not a truth withheld. Just... space. A breath between knowing and not.

He let his hand fall again and took a careful step forward—not toward the memory, but toward her.

“I don’t know if I remember all of it,” he said at last, voice low, deliberate. “But I believe you.”

A beat. He looked at her fully now.

“And if this is the place... then I’m glad it brought me back here. Even if I have to meet it again, through you.”

His voice softened further, almost a vow beneath the words.

“I’ll walk beside you. Always.”

Behind them, a droplet from the cavern ceiling splashed directly onto Cer’s skull. The skeletal head twitched in clear irritation, ears pinning as he growled down at the offending puddle like it had personally insulted him.

Rus, ever the opportunist, turned sharply and gave a sharp bark—high-pitched, teasing. Their shared tail started wagging wildly, knocking against stone with soft thuds.

Cer responded with another growl, deeper but begrudgingly playful. Ber, in the center, gave a long-suffering sigh and shook his head, not at Mordecai or Ephraim, but clearly at the antics of his brothers.

Mordecai didn’t look back at them, but a quiet smile pulled faintly at the edge of his mouth.
 


Ephraim guided Mordecai through the portal, Cerberus in tow. Her eyes lingered on the gentle shimmer of the tidepool ahead—the way the light bent and breathed like a living memory. She watched the curve of the stone, the soft dance of water on the surface, and let the silence stretch between them before she spoke again. Her voice was quiet. Reverent.

“I came here a lot while you were gone.”

She didn’t say "after you disappeared." Just gone. Like a tide pulled out too far. Like something the sea forgot to return.

Her hooves moved slowly across the smooth cavern floor, guiding him forward—her fingers brushed lightly over the moss-lined walls, as if the cave were a friend she hadn’t spoken to in some time.

“This place…” she exhaled, almost like it hurt, “It was the only place that made sense. The world outside kept asking for things I didn’t have—answers, hope, calm. But here? No one asked."

She glanced at him then, her expression warm but haunted.

“I thought about that story Rhea told me, about the night she led you here. Over and over. The way the creature showed her the trail, how it called her. I wondered why it brought her here… what it wanted her to see.”

She paused at the water’s edge and looked down into the tidepool. The glow washed over her face in pulses, like breath. Her voice dipped low, almost meditative.

“I started wondering what this was meant to be. The pool. Why it was hidden."

The word hung in the air like salt.

Her eyes flicked up to meet his—soft, calm, but firm now.
 

Mordecai stepped slowly, letting Ephraim guide him, the dim cavern light folding across his blind side in quiet waves. The staff remained firm in his grip, and though his good eye adjusted, it moved often—glancing toward the walls, the moss, the pool’s edges. He followed her, but something in him had begun to turn inward.

Cerberus sniffed at the air as they entered. Rus dipped his skull to a shallow puddle, water trailing faintly down bone and fur. Cer flinched as another droplet fell on his head from the cavern ceiling, growling quietly, almost insulted by the repetition. Ber didn’t react. Not physically. But his gaze was aware. Following everything.

When they reached the tidepool, Ephraim spoke—but Mordecai didn’t answer.

Not yet.

Ber moved first, his head lifting as he turned to the edge of the water. He gave a single bark—measured, direct—then walked closer, each step deliberate. Cerberus stopped near the pool’s edge and sat, three heads still but alert. Ber turned to look directly at Mordecai, his skeletal head tilting once. Then he dropped his gaze toward the water and back again. Cerberus stared only at him.

Mordecai stopped.

He didn’t move. His chest rose, paused. His breath caught—not from memory. From pressure.

He stared.

At Cerberus. At the water. At something not quite visible.

The moment was repeating.

A reflection without glass.

He said nothing at first. His mind pulled in every voice it held. Castiel’s breathless ache. Unity’s demand for control. Hollow Mordecai’s silence. Even now, with the gentleness of spirit guiding him, he felt them—stirring like wolves in tall grass. Ramura remained present, but he wasn’t alone.

His ear flicked. Another droplet hit stone. Cer growled. Ber barked again.

Mordecai’s mouth opened slightly. His voice was low. He didn’t face Ephraim.

“The last threshold you showed me. It opened inward.”

His words faltered. He wasn’t speaking to her.

Only to Cerberus.

Cerberus didn’t move. But each head began to shift. Cer, head lowered, growled deeper now, fur bristling. Aggression simmered like embers. Ber watched, still. Measured. Unblinking. Rus gave a pitiful whine, ears pinning back, skull dipping low—not frightened. Ashamed.

"So the thread's come full circle," Mordecai murmured—quiet, distant, like he wasn't fully in the room.

Not a question.

An offering. Only Cerberus would know what it meant. asked, quiet, distant.

Not rhetorical.

A real question.

Ber barked again. Cer growled louder. Rus whimpered, turning away, his whole body drooping with invisible weight.

Mordecai stared at them, the glow of the pool catching faintly in his eyes. For a long time, he didn’t speak.

Then, quietly:

“The third piece... it sank before the name took root.”

He exhaled, soft and slow, like acknowledging a name not spoken in years.

“Still beneath. Still whole. But only in the way a shadow remembers light.”

Cer turned away sharply, his body tensing, growling low toward the cave wall like a shutter closing. Rus followed, head still low, spine curled—not turning from Mordecai, but from the moment. Like it hurt. Like looking too long left a mark.

Only Ber remained. His gaze did not waver.

Mordecai stood still, the staff in his hand like a tether. Then, softly—just to them:

“…Alright.”

He stepped forward, slow and hesitant, toward the water. Ber’s head followed him, unmoving, eyes steady.

Mordecai didn’t speak again.

But he stood at the edge.

And looked.
 

1747712473297.pngCastara was smaller then. Not in height, not in presence—but in the way guilt had carved hollows into the space where ease should’ve lived. The cloak she wore didn’t fit. It sagged off one shoulder, the hem dragging damp across the stone. Her hooves pressed into the sand-packed ledge outside the cave. Not quite cold, not quite warm—just there. Like she was.

Her hands fidgeted constantly. Not nervous. Not idle. Just always doing something. Today it was the corner of the cloak—a seam that had started to fray. She’d tried to stitch it last week. The thread didn’t match. The needle had bent. But she kept worrying it anyway, fingers tracing the uneven patchwork like it might explain something.

The sea below didn’t speak, not to her. But she listened to it all the same. Listened the way children do when they want to be told something without having to ask for it. The tide moved. The sky dimmed. The hours passed like water over a wound—slow, quiet, salt-stung.

Ephraim didn’t interrupt. She didn’t crouch, or whisper, or fill the air with the kind of softness people mistake for comfort. She just sat a few feet away. Not watching. Not turning away either. Like someone keeping a vigil without announcing it.

Time, in that place, stopped pretending to be linear. Days folded into one another. Sometimes Castara fell asleep on the stone. Sometimes Ephraim carried her inside without waking her. Sometimes she didn’t. And Castara would wake up alone and find the silence still intact, as if no one had dared to disturb the ache that lingered in it.

But over time, she began to follow. Not like a shadow. More like a witness.

Ephraim's work never looked like magic to the untrained. No fire, no spectacle. Just bowls of water, jars of herbs, the scratch of mortar against stone. The way her fingers moved when tying knots. The breath she took before placing a hand on someone’s shoulder. The quiet rhythm to her actions—not hurried, not hesitant. Just deliberate. Like the act of staying calm was part of the spell.

Castara never asked what she was doing. She just watched. Memorized the way water changed temperature in a bowl after a wound had been washed. Noted which jar made someone’s pain ease faster. Counted the seconds it took her mother to close her eyes, center herself, and then open them again—present, ready.

Healing, Castara realized, wasn’t something you cast. It wasn’t a moment. It was a stance. A discipline. A willingness to be near something broken without trying to fix it right away. Without fear of being cut by it.

And slowly, her stillness began to shift. Less like silence, more like listening. She sat straighter. She started tying her own knots. Pressed her palms into warmth instead of wrapping her arms around her knees. The guilt didn’t leave. But it softened, stretched into a quieter shape inside her.

By the time the cloak was properly mended, she had stopped wearing it.
The stars were quiet that night.

It had come after Ephraim told them the truth—about the chronospheres, the past lives, the worlds that existed before this one. Rhea had laughed, high and nervous, not quite ready to believe it. But Castara hadn’t said anything at all. She had simply stood there, still as stone, eyes narrowed like she was waiting to see if the stars would blink.

Later, after the fire had dimmed and Rhea had drifted inside, Castara stepped out alone. The night air pressed gentle against her skin, damp with salt and space. She didn't speak. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even frown. She just sat, hooves tucked beneath her, arms around her knees, spine pressed to the weathered planks of the porch.

The sky above her stretched wider than it ever had. Not in shape—she had looked at it a thousand times before—but in meaning. As if each star had a twin self in another world, flickering through her like memory. Not memories she owned, but echoes that somehow belonged to her anyway.

It didn’t make her angry. It didn’t make her curious. It just… settled into her. Like dust in an old book. Like knowing she had always been more than just this timeline, but never having the words for it until now.

She thought about the dreams. The box beneath the world. The gravity that pulled sideways. And suddenly it made sense—not in a logical way, but in the way grief makes sense after enough time has passed that you stop needing it to justify itself.

Castara didn’t sleep that night. When she finally lay down, it was with her eyes still open, tracing the grain of the ceiling, cataloging every creak of the house like she was waiting for something else to shift again.

Her dreams changed after that. Not loudly. Not all at once. But they became harder to describe. Rooms that curled at the edges. People with voices that echoed before they spoke. Stairs that led inward. Oceans that didn’t end. Her mind became a map with no compass—just corridors.

She didn’t tell anyone. Not Rhea. Not Ephraim. Not even in the soft, secret ways children sometimes confess to shadows. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t distrust. It was something else. Something quiet. A need to carry it without disturbing it.

It wasn’t a burden. It wasn’t a gift. It was something older than either—like a second spine, threaded into her when she wasn’t looking.

She walked differently after. Not with pride, not with certainty—but with a kind of contained gravity. Her silence deepened. Not to retreat, but to hold. Her gaze lingered longer on the sea, the stars, the moments people didn’t think to notice. And she began to ask fewer questions—not because she lacked the need, but because she had begun to recognize which answers weren’t meant to be spoken aloud.
It happened in the stillness between seasons.

She was older now—fifteen, though the years felt looser in her skin than they used to. The island had grown quieter, or maybe she had. The days passed in tides and chores, and the weight in her chest had settled into something she could live beside. Not peace, not resolution—just a rhythm she knew how to match.

The rune came in the early hours before dawn. Not as a bolt, not as a burst. It arrived like a held breath—present before she noticed it, waiting for her to catch up. A heat bloomed behind her ribs, quiet and undeniable. Then, between her brows, a weight—light at first, then anchoring. As if something old had pressed a finger gently to her third eye and whispered: now.

Castara didn’t cry out. She didn’t panic. She simply sat upright in bed, blanket pooled at her waist, breath steady. The house was still dark, the window cracked just enough to let in the sea wind. The moment wasn’t dramatic. But it was full.

What flooded her next wasn’t memory—it was possibility.

The feeling of fire, sharp and alive, ready to devour and remake.The pull of shadow, deep and cool, like standing in a cathedral of silence.The shimmer of memory, heavy with forgotten names and folded truths.

Shadow lingered the longest. It didn’t frighten her. It felt familiar. Like a closed door she’d leaned against for years. Like the absence she’d grown up alongside. It reminded her of her father—not in pain, but in quiet. In how much space he left behind.

She almost reached for it. Almost.

But her thoughts shifted—without force, without drama—toward something else. A memory of her mother, kneeling in dirt, one hand on someone’s shoulder, the other tying off a salve-soaked wrap. Not trying to save. Just staying. Just being present in the ache.

That was the moment the choice formed.

Healing.

Not because it was gentle. Not because it was easy. But because it was true.Because it didn’t flinch from pain. Because it sat with it. Waited with it. Carried it without needing to conquer it.

The rune marked her gently. No flare. No sound. Just a pulse through her—soft, steady. Like a breath taken and kept. Like something ancient had bowed its head in recognition.

She didn’t rush to tell anyone.She just sat there, in the hush of early light, hand resting lightly against her chest, and let the truth of it settle into her bones.
The rain came soft, a rhythm like breath against the windowpanes.

Castara sat in the far corner of the room she shared with Rhea, legs folded up on the edge of her bed. The window was hers—by quiet claim, not discussion. Above her, the old lantern buzzed faintly, casting a rust-colored glow that painted the pages of her notebook like old newsprint.

Her side of the room was clean, but not curated. Stacked books leaned against the wall—not rune texts exactly, but strange mixes of anatomical sketches, notes on aura fields, and a few hand-scrawled pages folded between. A chipped mug held her pencils. Her shelf had practical things: binding gauze, storm matches, a pocketknife, and one lone, busted music player with half its buttons missing. She never played it aloud. That wasn’t the point.

A faded jacket hung on the bedpost, still damp from where she'd left it out in a passing mist. Her boots were by the door, never quite tucked away. And the wall above her mattress had a single pressed flower thumbtacked beside a checklist written in blunt, even script. Nothing flowery. No secrets. Just marks of a person who kept things simple because it made them easier to carry. 1747712516819.png

The notebook wasn’t sentimental. She didn’t write feelings. Just fragments. Notes. Muscle structures. Resonance traces from failed castings. A doodle of a frog wearing a bandage and a suspicious expression, with the note: "Don't trust him—he tried to eat the salve." It was all quiet order—not because she needed control, but because she didn’t like wasting space.
She didn’t check the time. The room was quiet, and that was enough. Some silences had their own kind of purpose.

Her gaze slipped to the window. Rain left streaks down the glass, and beyond it, the ocean moved like it had something to say but wasn’t in a rush to say it.

It still hurt. Not all the time. Not like before. But it was there—in the shape of the silence, in the back of her mind where his absence folded itself in.

She didn’t flinch from it. Didn’t wallow in it either. She just… let it exist. Like weather. Like background noise.

Healing wasn’t about undoing what happened. Ephraim had taught her that gently—through action more than words. It was about learning to live beside the wound without letting it define you. Castara knew her mother had accepted that Mordecai might never return. She’d seen it in the way Ephraim moved now—with grace, with steadiness, with a kind of peace that had been earned. But Castara also saw the other thing—the space Ephraim still left open, quiet and unspoken. A place at the edge of the day where hope still sat, not loud, but present. And maybe that was healing too: not giving up the ache, but choosing to carry it with love.

So she didn’t close the curtain. She didn’t press harder into the moment. She just breathed. She wrote. She sat in her corner with her notebooks and her gear and her rhythm.

And when the rain kept falling, she kept going.
 


1747713736217.png
Ephraim didn’t move right away. She watched him, the way he stared into the water without seeing it, as though some version of himself had risen to the surface and refused to leave.

Cerberus had gone still now—no more growling, no more whimpering. Just presence. Silent, weighty, and unresolved. Rus’s skull was tucked low. Ber remained like a statue. Cer’s hackles trembled faintly with the effort not to snap.

The air around them felt suspended. Not just quiet—sacred. As though the cave itself understood it was holding the edge of something old.

Ephraim stepped closer, slowly, letting her hooves press soft indentations into the moss-slick stone. She didn’t reach for him. Not yet. She knew that look. That inward stare. That moment when the world is a mirror and you’re trying not to recognize the shape staring back.

Instead, she looked past him, toward the tidepool.

The surface had stilled. Almost perfectly. As if it, too, was listening.

She crouched near the edge—not in reverence, but in ritual. Like she had done this exact motion a hundred times, alone, in the years he’d been gone. Her fingertips brushed the smooth rock beside the water. Cool. Familiar. She let them linger there, grounding herself in the sensation.

She inhaled.

Let the silence settle.

And only then, with a voice tempered by memory and years of unsaid truths, did she speak.


“I want you to know I understand. Even though seven years have passed, I... still understand the emotions that drive you.” Her voice was low, intimate. Not heavy, but grounded—like something that had lived in her chest for a long time and finally found its shape.

“I was there that day,” she said, eyes on the tidepool, “when the Primordials gave you that choice. When you stood at the edge of decision, your voice shook—just enough—and you turned to me. Not asking for an answer, not really. Just… asking me to witness it. To be apart of the future.”

She smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“I remember the way you carried yourself after Sky. In the Blossom Chalet. Your posture, your voice, it was all different. In my memories, he feels so young now... but you bore his pain after what happened like a sentence passed against yourself. Sky… no one had joy like him. No one could lift Bazza the way he did. And yet, Wrath’s dice landed wrong. Again. Now Wrath’s off somewhere. Decommissioned, inactive, who knows. But here we are. Still living in the ash he left behind.”

She took a breath. Steady. Level.

“It must’ve been difficult for you. The time you've spent away..." She hesitated, "I blocked it out for so long... but when my children were taken away from me, in Unity Haven... I spent a long time in a similar space. Kin can’t know what that feels like unless they've lived it. I remember feeding them myself. I remember when you told me… that Ashen said it to you directly. That he’d killed them. And laughed about it. I couldn’t even picture it. My mind wouldn’t let me.”

Her voice dipped lower. “We never talked about it much after. You didn’t know Kami. Or Malakai. The stillborn didn’t even surprise you. And Callabassas… he was mine in most ways. Not ours. A kindness, maybe. But not something you bore."

She turned to glance at him, only briefly.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

She moved across the cavern slowly, letting her hooves guide her steps across the ancient stone. The pool cast small waves of light onto the curve of her legs. Mordecai remained at the edge, silent.

“I imagine it was hard. Seven years away from them. Away from Castara.”

She turned back, now watching him, watching the way his gaze stayed half-lowered over the water.

“She is your favorite, isn't she? Your spitting image. I know we're not supposed to say... but we're kin. We love who we love."

Her tone wasn’t accusatory. If anything, it was warm. Confessional. Honest in the way only people with deep history can be.

“In those years, I watched them grow in your absence. Rhea—so much like me. Soft. Dreamy. Humming songs in the woods. Castara? She’s you. Sharp. Reserved. Steady. Doesn’t need watching like Rhea does. Doesn’t need… fixing.”

She smiled faintly. The kind that accompanied a thought too complex to say aloud.

“I still remember the first time I sat here for hours. Watching creatures come to the pool. All following the same pattern. Just like in Rhea’s story. Bringing their young. Laying them down in the water as though the pool itself had claimed them.”

Her eyes drifted downward to the glimmering surface.

“Even after Rhea’s visit… it didn’t stop. More creatures came. The same instinct. The same pull. They didn’t need her to hatch. But that night… they beckoned her.”

Something shimmered in the pool. A flicker of Rhea’s young face, lips parted in wonder. Then, faintly—Riversong’s reflection overlaid it, soft as mist.

Ephraim’s voice grew gentler, hushed like prayer.

“She has the same gift, you know. Rhea. That water affinity. Just like Riversong. It’s funny. She’s not your real mother—the one from Unity. Not the one you grieved. Riversong, who I burned with rage when I found out what she did to you. Riversong… she's something else entirely. I learned to love her. She carried that gentleness I never had. And Rhea—Rhea inherited it.”

She paused, swallowing something down. Not guilt. Not yet.

“And me? Water has always been... unkind to me. The Tear of the Goddess. Atticus.... Umbrafane. That monstrous hand I nearly brought down. It’s always been a warning for me. But for her… it was calling.”

Ephraim exhaled, gaze unmoving from the tidepool.

“The tidepool didn’t need her that night. The young would’ve hatched regardless. But they brought her anyway. And I wonder... maybe it wasn’t about need. Maybe it was recognition. Mercy. Or something older than even her.”

She finally looked back at him, something weighted and full behind her eyes.

“Rhea, my daughter. So soft. So vulnerable. She looks for your face in strangers, you know. Never learned to hold back the way Castara did. And in this chronosphere—this safer, quieter place—where even you and I had stopped fearing death... looking at Rhea... seeing myself... it was hard to imagine how she would survive. Easily influenced, gullible... had I always been that way too? It was hard to remember."

“And then I lost you.”

She said it plainly. Without pity. Without drama.

“You were gone. Mercy had left me. My... indiscretions caused the bibblecores to collapse, renewing the terms of death in this world. And I thought the safety net was gone, too. Until I realized... maybe it wasn’t.”

The cavern echoed faintly, just water and silence between them now. Her voice, when it came again, was softer than ever.

“We all make our choices. Mercy bound herself to me, only to sever me when it mattered most. Wrath kept choosing to save her, over and over. You and I? We chose each other. Always. That was our vow. Across timelines. Across pain. Across death.”

She let the silence stretch, just long enough to make the words behind it ache.

“I don’t sleep well. Haven’t for years. I lie in the house that doesn’t smell like you anymore and think of everything we could have done differently. Escaping Sol. Ending the games. Dying together. Maybe that would’ve been mercy in its own way.”

She looked again into the water.

“And then we made two daughters. Complete, even when we weren’t.”

A long pause. Something unseen curled under her words.

“I was surprised when Castara told me she wanted to heal. I had spent years focused on Rhea. And it was Castara—quiet, withdrawn Castara—who bloomed behind me. She chose healing not because it was gentle, but because it was true. She reminds me of you, you know? If you’d taken a different path. If you’d been allowed to.”

Her voice thinned again, like she was nearing something she couldn’t uncross.

“In Unity, you healed. That’s what you did, wasn't it?" She asked, knowing the nuance already.
 

Mordecai didn’t look up when she finished. He stayed at the edge of the pool, his staff anchored beneath one hand, the other resting across his ribs as though to quiet something internal. Not pain. Just... presence.

A long breath passed between them. The water didn’t ripple.

When he did speak, it was low—like stone wet with memory. “I remember the houseboat,” he said. “Not the fear. That passed. Not the hunger either. That became habit.” He shifted slightly, just enough to ease his weight from his left side. “What I remember is the quiet.”

His eyes traced the surface of the pool without ever really landing. “No one understood. They saw filth. Saw rats. Shadows. They thought I was dying in there. Diminishing. But I wasn’t. Not exactly.” He paused. “I was shaping. Into something that could hold still.”

A faint twitch passed his brow, his voice thinning to a whisper—not out of shame, but reverence. “I carved myself into silence because silence didn’t ask me to be anything else.”

His knuckles flexed on the staff. The faintest tremor. “And still, it wouldn’t have lasted. Because then... he came.”

A beat. “Avarice.” His name lingered, but only as a hinge. Mordecai did not sharpen when he said it—only accepted its place. “I don’t think I would’ve had a life with you... if he hadn’t broken that peace.”

Finally, he turned toward her. Just slightly. Enough for his voice to find her. “Everyone keeps trying to define healing. What it should look like. What it should feel like.” His eye, half-lidded, found the pool again. “But sometimes it’s not soft. Sometimes it’s not bright.”

His voice lowered. A thread of breath caught beneath it. “Sometimes healing is the version of yourself that no one else understands.”

He let the silence hold that truth. “I had that once. For a while. Even if it wasn’t pretty.”

Cerberus shifted beside him. Rus thumped his tail once. Cer remained stiff, ears tense. Ber did not move.

Mordecai closed his eye. “There was a day on the island,” he said quietly, “when I sat at the top of a hill. The field below was empty, wind passing through wildflowers that didn't exist yet. The wolves were with me. They didn’t speak. They just stayed. Like they always do.”

His voice grew softer. “I told them: 'You know who you are.' I think I was jealous of that. They never questioned it. They didn’t need to reconcile who they were. They just… were.”

Cerberus still stood there. All three of the heads looking at Mordecai now.

He paused, gaze distant. “I told them to run. Let them have their fun. Chase each other like they do. Told them they deserved it. And they did.”

A breath.

“They ran like shadows. Wild. Weightless. And the flowers bloomed behind them—hundreds of them. Colors I hadn’t seen in years. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t magic. Just... life, returning to something that remembered how.”

His brow lowered slightly. “The Witherstalker was there. At the edge of the forest. Watching. It didn’t move. Didn’t threaten. Just… saw. Reflected and shaped it into the island. It's there now. On the Witherwilds. Still there.”

He exhaled, slowly. “That was the day I stopped asking myself what healing was supposed to feel like. It didn’t feel like victory. It didn’t feel like a cure. It felt like being allowed to stay, even if nothing inside you had been resolved.”

His free hand lifted slightly, almost gesturing to the pool, but stopped. Not from hesitation—just restraint. “That’s what I think now. Healing isn’t about repairing what broke. It’s about learning how to carry it without cutting others. It’s what I am now." Quiet for a moment. "It's all of them."

He looked at her—truly, this time. “I am what holds them. And walks anyway.”

His voice didn’t ask for her to agree. It wasn’t seeking permission.

He simply sat down. The motion was quiet. One hand to the stone. One fold of his legs. A slight twitch of nausea—an old, dull ache stirring in his back that made his ribs contract, subtle. Almost unnoticeable. He exhaled through it. Blamed the hunger. The fatigue.

It didn’t matter.

He sat with her now. By the water. Not healed.

Held.
 


Ephraim didn’t look at him at first. Her gaze remained on the pool, the way the ripples cast soft light across her knees. But the way she breathed—slow, steady, like she was matching him—said she’d heard every word. Held it. Let it settle alongside her own.

“That houseboat you talk about,” she said quietly, “I used to picture it. Not just as a place, but a way of being."

Her voice was low, a current under his stillness.

“I envied that. The way you could stop. Stay still long enough to let yourself settle into the ache. That was never easy for me. I kept trying to keep everything moving. Keep things growing. Healing the way I thought healing should look. Bright. Useful. Visible.”

She glanced at him now. Just briefly. Just enough.

“But you’re right. Sometimes it’s not soft. Sometimes it’s just... surviving in a shape no one else understands. Holding the ache like it belongs.”

Her fingers traced a small arc on the stone beside her. Thoughtful. Then:

“That’s why I kept coming here. To this tidepool. Because it didn’t need me to explain myself. It didn’t demand I be wise or useful or whole. It just… held space. Let things pass through it and become what they needed to become.”

She inhaled. Not sharply. Just long.

“I didn’t notice the pattern at first. I thought it was just where creatures came to nest. A kind of cradle tucked into the rock. I’d sit here for hours. Snails the size of lanterns. Shrimp witches. Eel pups too soft to cast shadows. Always birthing. Always alone.”

Her voice dimmed again, softer now.

“I expected danger. Something dramatic. A surge of energy. A creature with too many eyes. But it never happened. The births weren’t violent. They weren’t even painful to watch. They just... happened. The young slid out and shimmered. Like they’d already been waiting.”

She turned toward him, gentler now.

“It wasn’t healing magic. Not like anything I’ve cast. Not Mercy’s touch, either. I tested it. Offered fur. Trinkets. Little offerings. Nothing. I tried fragments of death—bone. Eggshell. A frog I’d found curled, gone stiff in the night.”

Her lips quirked faintly—not a smile, but a wince at how clinical it sounded now.

“Still nothing. The water didn’t care. But those creatures kept coming. And I started to unravel it."

She looked into the heart of the water, voice threading with the same wonder he had once spoken of wildflowers and wolves.

“I started thinking about what this world was built on. Harwin would’ve hated it. It’s too strange. The rules are inconsistent. Kin reproduce like they always have. But these creatures?” She glanced at him. “They don’t. Not in any way that tracks.”

A beat.

“Creatures in this world. They're male or female by design. The male creatures are finite, limited. Once all of them have been killed, they cease to exist."

Her eyes wandered, "Perhaps Dave used the males to test designs. Easy to replace when they started to get low in count."

She paused, "The females... they're the core creatures in this world. Consistent. A constant. But... in a cruel turn of nature, their young... always die. Every time. Over and over again. Unless they're at one of these things. The tidepool was the spot for both their last and first breath. It reacted not to a state of death, but the action of death."

Her voice, for a moment, went quiet again.

“It started feeling familiar.”

She looked down, fingers flexing once at her knees.

“I’d lost so much, Mordecai. My sons. My stillborn. Callabassas. My brother. My parents. You. I stopped keeping count after a while. But I kept loving anyway. Because that’s all I had left to give. I wasn’t analytical like you. Wasn’t a soldier like Eryon. Or clever like Lucian, gods help me.”

She let out a slow breath.

“But I loved. And I loved those creatures. Watched them suffer the same ache I’d known—but be granted mercy from it. Like someone had designed a fail-safe just for them. One I never got."

She looked over at him again, steady now.

“It made me wonder if this was the only tidepool like it. Turns out, it’s not. There are others."

A faint shimmer passed over the surface of the water—an echo, maybe, or just the shift of breath in the chamber.

“I asked Lucian for research. Lumenreach had stacks of it that they had used as inspiration for their own technology. I found when some of the creatures die in the wild... they reappear in in places like this. Respawned."

She let that sit for a moment. A fact suspended like dust in blue light.

“I envied them,” she admitted finally. “The creatures. They didn’t have to watch what they loved decay. They didn’t have to hold the memory of breath going still. They just came back. As they were. No questions. No pain.”

“And maybe it’s selfish. But when I realized what this place was—what it could do—I started thinking... maybe I could protect just one child. Just one.”
 
Malformed Change - Ramura New
  • Index
    • 1747775128354.pngMordecai stayed still for a moment, seated next to her before the tidepool. Cerberus lingered across from them, the three heads watching Mordecai in their usual quiet synchronicity—then slowly, all three turned to watch Ephraim. Then back again.

    The silence wasn’t empty. Something in his body shifted—not tense, but processing. A stillness in him that felt less like peace, more like alignment recalibrating. Cerberus stood slightly, fur briefly flickering, the form wavering just enough to suggest a shift—but it passed. They remained whole, in their three-headed shape. Ramura was still present.

    Mordecai exhaled. Shoulders unwound slightly as something in him gave. A weight released. Cerberus shook out their fur, gave a soft, resonant whine from three throats, then padded behind the pair. They settled with a dramatic huff behind Mordecai and Ephraim, flopping sideways. Their thick tail thumped the ground once. The heads curled around toward Mordecai’s side. Rus’s skull nestled closest, whining gently until Mordecai’s hand lifted, fingers curling gently through the inky fur behind bone.

    "Water is a funny thing, isn’t it," he murmured. His voice was soft, not amused, but observant. "Not just here. All of it. The Unity flood. The Tear of the Goddess. Atticus. That cursed water hand. So many pieces tied to it. Not even just for you… but for me."

    He glanced sideways, slow. "And now Riversong. She always stirred something different. Pain, sometimes. But never rejection. Something stayed with her." He looked back to the pool. "And you say… Rhea inherited that."

    He waited for a moment and spoke the name again, knowing, "Rhea."

    Cerberus gave a low rumble, almost like agreement.

    He didn’t respond right away. His gaze drifted upward, tracing the curved ceiling of the cavern. "You said this place made sense to you. That it didn’t ask. That it held." He looked back to the pool, voice lower. "I understand that. A lot’s changed. But everything’s still connected."

    His hand moved again through Cerberus’s fur. "That’s how the wolves were for me. They never asked. They never tried to drag me somewhere else. They watched. They reflected. They stayed. That was the only thing that made sense for a long time."

    He paused, gaze thoughtful. "They reflect more in me now. I’m sure you’ve noticed. They shift when I shift. They feel it before I do."

    Quiet.

    "Water," he repeated. "After the bibblecores collapsed, I didn’t understand what happened. One moment I was in the bibblecore’s space—this in-between—with the wolves already there. Next, I wasn’t. I was in the ocean. Drowning."

    The word lingered. Drowning. A silence followed.

    He looked to Cerberus. Ber’s central skull had lifted slightly.

    "Ber saved me. I don’t know how long I was down. Just that I was gone. And then he pulled me up. Dragged me to the shore. Cer and Rus were waiting. They never left."

    He looked to the tidepool again. "But things echoed. Almost repeated. One night I woke to find them gone. They never left my side—so I followed. Found them at a lake. They were staring. Not at me. Not even at the surface. Just… watching. Cer with his back turned to it. Rus shaking. Ber pacing. They wanted me to look. So I did."

    His voice tightened—not in pain, but gravity. "And I saw the shatter. In my own reflection. Three shards. The parts of me that survived everything, even when I didn’t want to."

    He let that linger.

    "You know the old myths. Folklore, legend, across every chronosphere. The names change. But the themes don’t." He looked to Cerberus, then to Ephraim. "Cerberus. A guardian. A hound of death. Keeper of gates. Not meant to protect the living—but to keep the dead where they belong. To hold the line."

    Cerberus gave a long grunt, one head flopping to the stone in protest.

    He almost smiled. Almost.

    "But they didn’t stop at the edge. They didn’t drag me back into death. They walked beside me. Pulled me from it, then stayed close. Not as chains. But as shadow."

    He looked to the water again. "And here I am. Water, again. And somehow, it always brings me back. Even when it pulls me under first."

    The silence settled in again. Then his voice, quieter now:

    “I shattered. You let go. The tidepool still took us both, didn’t it?”

    He turned his head slightly toward her. Not pushing. Not pressing.

    Just giving her space.

    To speak.
     
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  • Index
    • Ephraim’s eyes didn’t leave the water, even as his words sank into her. They moved through her not like knives, but like heat through deep muscle—slow, permeating, hard to shake. The soft shimmer of the tidepool refracted against her face, casting pale ribbons beneath her eyes, across her jaw.

    “It gives me a moment out of the ego,” she said quietly. “The pool, I mean.”

    She didn’t clarify, didn’t defend. Just let the statement sit. Her hands shifted slightly in her lap, fingers curling, uncurling.

    “I come here when I need to remember I’m not that important. Not in the way pain likes to pretend we are. Not in the way grief convinces us we’re the center of it all. This place doesn’t need me to be special. It doesn’t care what I’ve done.”

    She looked at him then, finally. Her expression was unreadable, but open. A softness that didn’t try to soothe—just stood beside him.

    “That helped me,” she said simply.

    She leaned back, bracing herself on one arm, her other hand trailing across the stone absently. “Did I ever tell you,” she asked, her voice slower now, thoughtful, “about my first partner? In the City of Unity?"

    A pause.

    “The father of Kami and Malakai.”
     
    Mordecai didn't move for a moment. He didn’t lean back. Just sat there—silent, spine stiff, hand buried in Cerberus’ fur.

    When she spoke of something neither of them had truly touched before—something old, distant, personal—he froze.
    Unity Mordecai: "What is this? Some sentimental detour? A soft-eyed stroll through memory before she forgets again? Before she leaves?

    She wants to talk about the past—as if it matters now. As if it changes anything. As if we aren’t already ruined.

    She’s looking at you. Not with love. With pity.

    You are a specter, Mordecai. A ruin held up by a stick and shadow. Seven years alone and still dragging your ribs behind you like chains. And here you are, letting her speak to the hollow that’s left.

    You're pathetic.

    You should have stayed on the island. At least there, the silence was honest."
    Mordecai blinked.

    His eye twitched. His ear followed, a flick like static against his temple.

    "Stop," he said—short, under his breath. The word cracked out like a reflex.

    He swatted lightly at his ear, as if brushing away a bug that wasn’t there. A breath passed.

    "No—not you," he said quickly, eyes not lifting from the water. "You don’t stop."

    He exhaled again. The sound carried weight. “No... you didn’t,” he murmured, voice softening like an old page creased open. “But granted, we’ve had a lot that’s kept us from really sharing earlier Unity Haven days. Not deliberately. Just...”

    A pause.

    “We were busy.”

    Another pause, one that held.

    “But... I’m listening.”
    Unity Mordecai: "She doesn't love you. She loves the memory. The ghost. She'll walk. Just like before. You'll see."

    Castiel Mordecai: "No—no, she wouldn’t. Right? She said she wanted to stay. She understands now."

    Unity Mordecai: "You're still that boy waiting for someone to reach for him. Let it go. No one is coming."
    Mordecai’s ear flicked again. Shoulders tensed—a ripple that barely reached his arms. He rolled them once. Exhaled through his nose.

    “I’m listening, Ephraim,” he said again, softer.

    And he meant it.
     

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    The water didn’t shimmer. It just settled—glass-still and glimmering as if the tidepool had finally chosen to listen too.

    Ephraim’s posture didn’t change. She remained still, composed, watching Mordecai just long enough to clock the twitch at his ear. Not a flinch, not quite—but a familiar flicker. The kind of movement she used to notice back in the earlier days of Ramura, when Wrath would whisper suggestions into the hollows of his thoughts, when Mordecai’s face would still be present but... his focus wasn’t.

    This was gentler than that. Quieter. She noticed it all the same. But she didn’t call it out.

    Not yet.

    Instead, she looked back to the pool, one hand ghosting against her ankle, thoughtful.

    “Well,” she said after a beat, “he was a goat. Obviously.”
    (MORDECAI EYES ONLY. Ephraim is telling the story below, but he can visualize it through the tidepool. Ephraim cannot see the visualization.)


    And the pool answered.

    It didn’t glow. Didn’t ripple. It revealed.

    Not for Ephraim. For him.

    Like a lens had just cracked in reverse—fracturing inward to show someone else’s memory.
    The light along the tidepool curled. Subtle at first. Barely perceptible. But Mordecai would see it: a shape forming beneath the surface—not of fish or stone, but of walls. Corners. Fabric. A bedroom.

    It wasn’t the one they shared. It wasn’t even from this world.

    A room within Unity Haven. Young Ephraim’s room.

    Rich, soft curtains draped across wide windows that overlooked a street where clouds always hung too low. The floor was velvet-padded, soundless under bare hooves. The bed was tall, with a wide carved frame shaped like antlers. Not her choice—it had been a gift. Most of the room’s furnishings were.

    And she was there. Young. No older than thirteen. Already poised, already tired.

    She knelt beside a small table. The game was laid out in circles of polished bone, arranged like a sunburst. Ninth Man’s Tail. A game for girls. A game of lies and timing. Of feints and emotion-reading and knowing when to fake sincerity. A noble’s pastime.

    She held her hoof against the center tile, as if in thought.

    Then a voice entered the memory.

    “You’re cheating,” it said.

    From the right. From the door.

    He stepped in. Slender frame, dusky brown fur, a neat red sash tied around his waist. Horns short and curved like calligraphy. His voice wasn’t mocking. Just amused.

    Tarlon.

    “You always start with a center stall,” he added, folding his arms. “That’s the pattern your brother taught you. It’s not your instinct. You just think it looks smarter.”

    “You’re not supposed to be here,” Ephraim muttered, not looking up.

    “Why?” he asked, stepping closer. “Because only girls play?”

    She flicked a glance up at him—then dropped it again to the board. Her ears didn’t pin, but her shoulders pulled tighter.

    “Boys don’t play,” she replied.

    “I do.”

    He crouched opposite her, not waiting for an invitation. And for a moment, the shape of the room softened—just a bit. Her brow quirked, not in irritation, but in a surprise she didn’t show often.

    He didn’t look like he was trying to prove something.

    He looked like someone who needed this. Someone who knew the rules and had learned them sideways.

    “My sister used to make me play,” he explained, arranging his pieces. “She needed a partner. I was closest. Turns out I’m good at it.”

    He looked up. Their eyes met. Dark on deep.

    “You want to learn something new?”

    ....
    The tidepool didn’t ripple—but the scene beneath it turned.

    Where once there had been velvet-curtained girlhood and polished bone games, now the water seemed warmer, colored in candlelight and polished gold. A long, narrow dining hall came into view—not vast like a palace ballroom, but still opulent, a chamber meant for private royalty.

    The table stretched between two ornate chairs, though neither of them sat properly now. The plates had been cleared save for two small bowls—dessert half-finished, the edges of cream and honey-glazed petals clinging to the rims.

    The servants were gone.

    Ephraim sat forward, elbow on the table, chin on the back of her wrist. The candlelight caught in her hair, in the hollow of her collarbone. Her eyes never left him.

    Tarlon, now older—seventeen like her—sat across, posture a little too perfect. His fingers tapped an empty wineglass, then stilled when her gaze didn’t waver. His sash was darker now, matched his eyes, and his shoulders were broader, but he still carried that same quiet caution. That same quiet distance.

    The room held its breath.

    “Do you remember,” Ephraim asked, voice soft, “when you told me boys could play Ninth Man’s Tail?”

    Tarlon smiled at that, but it was faint. The kind of smile used to deflect—not the kind that invited.

    “Mm,” he said, eyes dipping. “I was a better liar back then.”

    She didn’t laugh.

    Instead, she leaned forward. Smooth. Unhurried.

    Their plates had been cleared, the wine untouched for several minutes. The warmth in the room wasn’t from food or drink. It was her.

    Tarlon didn’t move—not at first.

    And then Ephraim tilted her head, closing the space between them.

    It was soft. Curious. She kissed him.

    Or—meant to.

    He turned.

    Her lips landed on the edge of his cheek.

    Not harsh. Not flinched. Just... shifted.

    The kiss was brief. Clean. Strange.

    She didn’t pull back immediately. Her eyes stayed near his. Searching.

    His voice came too quickly.

    “I—sorry,” he said, too formal. “That just... caught me off guard.”

    He straightened slightly in his chair, hand brushing his knee like it gave him a reason not to meet her gaze.

    ...
    The tidepool dimmed.

    Its light folded inward like hands clasped in prayer. What rose next was softer, darker, steeped in the hush of silk and ceremony. The air felt thick—not with passion, but expectation. Cloaked lanterns lit the walls of a private royal suite. Woven tapestries hung quiet, the crest of Ephraim’s noble house muted by shadow.

    The bed was too large. The sheets were pressed too tightly. And everything smelled like rosewater and lavender, as if trying to mask something older.

    Ephraim stood near the edge, her nightdress already on. Her hair was pinned loosely. She wasn’t trembling. She wasn’t giggling. She was ready.

    Not with eagerness.

    But with that quiet certainty that came from knowing one’s place in a long, gilded story.

    Tarlon entered from the antechamber, robe belted, his feet silent on the marble. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes—dark and downcast—didn’t quite meet hers.

    They stood in silence.

    Ephraim tilted her head slightly, studying him. “You’re being quiet.”

    He gave her a small smile. One that didn’t settle into his face.

    “We don’t have to do anything,” he said gently, hands staying at his sides. “Truly. You don’t have to... go through with it.”

    Ephraim blinked.

    There was no confusion on her face—only a kind of stillness. “But we’re married.”

    “I know,” he said, “I just— I want you to know I won’t force you. We can say we did. I won’t tell anyone.”

    She stepped toward him.

    Not accusingly. But with weight.

    “They’ll know,” she said plainly. “When I don’t have a child. When the bedsheets don’t stain red.” Her voice didn’t rise. But it held something pointed. “What is it? Are you nervous?”

    Tarlon looked away.

    For a moment, he said nothing.

    And then, in a voice barely above a whisper: “It’s not that.”
    Ephraim didn’t speak right away.

    The final image still lingered in the tidepool’s glassy surface—Tarlon’s silhouette half-turned, lit only by the ceremonial lanterns, face gentle in the wrong way. A way that told its own story, even if it never dared to say it aloud.

    The water didn’t ripple. It held.

    And so did Ephraim.

    She exhaled quietly through her nose, her eyes on the pool, as though watching not the memory—but the space it left behind. Her voice, when it came, was steadier than it should’ve been. Almost practiced.

    “He never hurt me.”
     
    Mordecai didn’t look at her.

    Not once while she spoke. Not as the memory unfolded. Not even when she breathed those final words.

    His eyes stayed fixed on the tidepool.

    He watched—saw everything. The fractured memory etched in saltlight and soft candleglow. The childlike games. The missed kiss. The marriage built not from love, but performance. The aching kindness that meant more than rejection, and hurt more because of it. The look in Tarlon’s eyes. The way the room pressed around them like a velvet tomb.

    He tried not to show it.

    Sometimes, when it got too much, his gaze would flick—not to her but to the side. To Cerberus. To the rock wall beside them. Once or twice, he tilted his head so his blind side faced the pool, as if that small tilt could spare him.

    It didn’t.
    Castiel: I don’t want to see this. I don’t like it. I don’t like this. Stop. Please stop. I don’t want to.
    Mordecai’s ear flicked again.
    Castiel: I don’t want to be abandoned. Please—we’re going to get abandoned. I don’t want it. Can we stop? Please, why are we doing this?
    He didn’t speak.

    Another breath.

    His eye twitched, but he stayed still.
    Castiel: This is getting too much! I’m tired! I-I don’t want this! I’m tired! Why are we talking about this? She misses him, not us. She wanted to go to Lucian. I want this to stop. Everything’s too loud. Why is she saying all of this?! STOP. Please, stop this!
    His ear flicked again. A wince—not enough to draw attention, but enough to register.

    Cerberus stirred.

    Not all of him. Just Rus, who lifted his skull-headed gaze, ears pricked. The skeleton head tilted, watching Mordecai for a long moment, silent save for a faint rattling breath that passed from his empty jaw. Then he slowly laid it back down—but his gaze stayed.

    Cer turned his head away.

    Ber kept his gaze fixed on the water, unmoving.

    Rus let out a quiet, skeletal whine.
    Mordecai exhaled.

    His voice came low, almost quiet enough to be missed.

    "You don’t owe me an explanation."

    He didn’t look away from the pool.

    "But... thank you for trusting me with it."

    His fingers shifted gently in Cerberus’ fur.

    "I’m still here."
     
    The water didn't immediately return to stillness.

    Not this time.

    Even after the memory folded, the tidepool’s surface pulsed once—twice—like a held breath refusing to exhale. The cavern dimmed, shadow and reflection blending at the edges, giving the moment nowhere to run. The silence returned... but it was no longer gentle. It pressed.

    Something ancient had been exhumed.

    Something raw.

    ....

    The room was dim, suffocating in its silence. No harp music. No warm perfumes. Just the stale breath of a dying fire and the cold standoff between two lives long past tenderness.

    A royal chamber. Gilt-edged, yes. But hollow. Dust on the corners of oil paintings. A rug folded beneath one leg of the table and no one had fixed it. The kind of neglect that crept in over time, like rot under gold leaf.

    Ephraim stood at the center of it all, her spine drawn like a blade, breath thin through her nose. Her hair was down, long and sharp as obsidian, her silhouette backlit by the fire’s remains. Her jaw ached from clenching. Her fists had been balled so long her nails left half-moon dents in her palms.

    Across the room, Tarlon stood like a statue that had forgotten how to pose. Hands open, then closed. Open again. Still as ever. But older now. His body no longer awkward, but hesitant. Withered not by age—but by avoidance.

    There was a stillness between them, but it was the kind before a storm, when the wind dies just long enough for everyone to start praying.

    Ephraim broke first.

    “Do you think I care?” Her voice was not loud. Not raw. It was precise. Too honed to tremble. “About the way you watch the squires at council? About the valet with the long lashes? About the boy with the torn glove who lingered too long folding your sleeve last week?”

    Tarlon looked at her, and said nothing.

    She stepped forward—measured. Not angry yet. Not even hurt. Just done.

    “You never look at me when I dress. When I undress. When I speak with softness in my voice. And I kept making excuses for you. I told myself maybe it was nerves. Or piety. Or guilt. But you’ve had years, Tarlon.”

    Her laugh came hard and sharp, like the crack of ice splitting underfoot.

    “You think I don’t see you?” Her voice climbed. “I don’t care if you’re interested in the company of men, Tarlon. I get it. Gods, I get it. This palace is a cage. I don't care about your perversions."

    He flinched, a step back. “Ephraim—”

    “No,” she snapped. “Say it. Say the thing you won’t let yourself say. Say why, after years of marriage, you haven’t touched me. Not once. Not even when I begged you.”

    She drew closer, voice sharp enough now to wound.

    “Do you think I don’t deserve to be a mother? That I will be unjust to them? Is that it?”

    His jaw opened—then closed. His shoulders shook, ever so slightly.

    “It’s not—”

    “You’re a liar.” The word struck like iron. “A coward in silks. You’ve wasted my life, Tarlon. Years. And for what? For who?"

    Something broke in him. He stepped forward, fists clenched. “You think I didn’t try? You think I didn’t lie awake night after night, staring at the ceiling, praying to any god that would have me that I could just do it, just get it over with so you wouldn’t have to keep looking at me like this?”

    She screamed.

    It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t royal.

    It was animal.

    A scream torn from the deepest part of her—rage, grief, betrayal—years of swallowed silence given form. She turned and grabbed the edge of the table—swiped it clean. The Ninth Man’s Tail board clattered violently across the floor, pieces scattering like dice from a rigged game.

    Wood struck stone. One tile cracked clean down the center.

    And suddenly he was moving, scrambling—not with apology, but reflex. He knelt, gathering the pieces frantically, as if fixing the board might fix the silence between them.

    That’s when she saw it.

    The edge of red silk—not loud, but deliberate. Folded too neatly in his coat pocket. Not just silk. Not his.

    A design no one else used. A mark of intimacy, not alliance.

    She froze.

    “…How long?” The words dropped like a guillotine.

    He stopped moving.

    She stepped forward, slowly, voice like shattering glass.

    “Tarlon.”

    He turned.

    Her eyes didn’t blink.

    “Is that it?” she whispered.

    His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

    A silence stretched. Not awkward—reverent. The kind people hold at funerals.

    Then her mouth curled into something too bitter to be a smile.

    “Why not cast a fucking spell on yourself?” she snarled. “Illusion me into looking like him—go on. Pretend it’s his mouth on your neck, his voice saying I want you. Would that help? Would it work if he was lying next to us, quiet as breath, just close enough for you to feel him there while you fucked me and kept your eyes shut? Or better—do you want me to step out of the room, and let him crawl into my place, tuck himself between my legs and moan your name while you lie to yourself in the dark?”
    Her voice cracked—violently.

    Her voice cracked—violently. The kind of break that didn’t sound like grief. It sounded like something splintering.

    “Tell me, Tarlon. Would it help if I dressed you in his colors? Let you fuck me wearing his sigil around your neck like some wedding token?”

    His face twisted. A noise—small, broken—escaped him. “Don’t—”

    She turned away.

    “Why not?” Her voice was hoarse now. Stripped bare. “It’s already happening.”

    Her hands gripped the bedpost like she might rip it from the floor. Her knuckles blanched. Her shoulders heaved. Not from crying—she couldn’t cry anymore. It was too far past that. This was the kind of sorrow that scorched the tears out before they could even form.

    Tarlon stepped forward. Slowly. Careful not to break what little space was left between them.

    “I didn’t want it to be like this,” he whispered. “I loved you. I still do, in some way. Just not...”

    She didn’t move.

    Her voice came back hollow.

    “Say his name.”

    Silence.

    She turned her head, just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye.

    “Say it, Tarlon.”

    His lips parted. His jaw worked.

    Still, nothing.

    So she gave it to him.

    “Is that what this has been? All these years? My brother?”

    He winced like the word struck him physically.

    “My brother.” Her mouth curled into something ugly. Her voice dropped, venomous and small. “You didn’t just lie to me. You’ve been fucking my ghost.”

    His face broke open—shame and grief etched in every line.

    “I didn’t mean for it to happen—”

    “You didn’t mean?” she cut him off, voice low and guttural now. “You kept his token. You looked him in the eye at every feast. You walked beside me like a husband and burned for him like a whore.”

    He staggered back a step, stricken.

    “I didn’t want to lie to you,” he murmured again.

    “But you did.”

    “I didn’t want to need him.”

    “But you do.”

    He swallowed. “I’ll give you the children. I’ll make it real. We’ll say what needs to be said. And when I see him—” His voice broke. “You’ll never have to see it.”

    “I want two children. And I want them mine. You will give them to me and then you two will journey to Pawspring and not return after they have birthed. I will make sure this never reaches the council's ears in exchange... All I've ever wanted to be was a mother... to have a son, do not ruin this for me too," She said, taking slow steps to the window, "Leave me."
     
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    The tidepool had gone still.

    But Mordecai hadn’t.

    The echo of what he saw lingered behind his eyes—too vivid to dismiss, too sacred to speak aloud. Ephraim hadn’t shared it. Not in words. But the water had. And he’d seen enough.

    He exhaled—soft, careful.

    Not with pain. Not with judgment. Just the kind of breath that comes when there’s too much to say and none of it feels right to speak.

    His gaze didn’t move from the tidepool. It stayed on the reflection, now empty, but weighted. Like it still remembered.

    He opened his mouth. Paused. Closed it again.

    Not because he was retreating. But because, somehow, it felt like saying anything would cheapen what had passed between them.

    So he didn’t speak.

    Instead, his hand shifted—quietly, gently—reaching across the small space between them.

    He placed it over hers.

    No squeeze. No dramatics. Just presence.
     
    Ephraim blinked when his hand touched hers.

    Not flinching—just pausing. Like a ripple had passed through her and she wasn’t sure if it came from the water or from him. Her body stilled for the first time in what felt like hours. Maybe days. Maybe years.

    She looked down at their hands.

    Then she breathed.

    “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

    The words came quiet, like something half-grown in her chest. They weren’t embarrassed or perfunctory—just real.

    “I dragged you all the way down here, promised stillness, and then poured my whole damn soul into the water like it was a basin made for bloodletting.” Her smile twitched. Dry. Self-aware. “Somehow it always turns into that with me.”

    Her eyes stayed on the tidepool, but her fingers turned slightly beneath his—just enough to catch, just enough to anchor.

    “I meant to let you rest. To breathe.” She shook her head, gaze softening. “Not make you shoulder more of me.”

    She exhaled. Not dramatic. Just necessary.

    “And I wanted to talk about Rhea,” she added, voice gentler now. “I did. I wanted to explain something. Ask for something, maybe. But not like this.” Her tone grew quieter, more reverent. “The rest of that story… it’ll shape when it’s ready. Like she did.”

    A beat.

    Then she turned to look at him. Not searching, not pushing. Just offering.

    “What do you want, Mordecai?”

    The question didn’t hover in the way people usually asked it—not framed by duty or legacy or timelines waiting to be fixed. It was softer than that. Present.

    “What do you want?” she repeated, more gently this time. “Not for them. Not for me. Not for some version of you that used to answer to Wrath or to Unity or to ghosts.”

    Her eyes didn’t leave his.

    “Just… for you. Right now. You don’t have to know yet. But if you do—if you even have a whisper of it—I want you to speak it. Say it out loud. Let it live in the air.”
    1747794824734.png​

    1747795004685.png
    The morning air hadn’t burned off yet, and the room still carried last night’s damp.

    Hanzi struck the match against the side of the table—twice before it caught. She lit the end of her cigarette with steady hands, inhaled, then exhaled slow through her nose. The smoke curled up past the faded tapestry overhead, where gold thread had begun to fray into the velvet-blue weave. She didn’t bother to fix it anymore. Let time do its needlework. It knew how to stitch in silence.

    The kettle on the stove murmured, not boiling—just thinking about it. She reached for the chipped teacup left on the sill. Poured what was left from yesterday’s pot. Lukewarm. Still drinkable. She sipped it without blinking.

    Outside, a creature shouted once, then was quiet.

    She turned toward the crystal on the table, not to read it—just to watch the way the early light bent around its base. The candle had gone out sometime before dawn. She hadn’t noticed. Her notebook sat beside it, pages full of numbers and names, some crossed out. She ran her thumb down the spine once. Then again.

    The door opened.

    She didn’t turn right away. Only tapped the ash from her cigarette into a saucer that had once belonged to her grandmother, back when people still thought the future could be charted in palms and promises.

    Then, without looking:

    “You’re late, Alaric."

    A beat passed. The floor creaked, the kind that came from deliberate, measured steps. Familiar. Expected.

    “I wasn’t going to wait on the fire all day. It’s cold in here,” she muttered, taking another drag. Her voice held no bitterness. Only the kind of bluntness reserved for people you saw often enough to stop pretending.

    She glanced over her shoulder.

    “You want coffee or something stronger?” she asked, already reaching for the bottle near the edge of the shelf.

    No smile. No performance. Just an invitation that had been made a dozen times before—and would be made again.

    “You always come when the air gets heavy—I lit your candle an hour ago.”
     

    1747797927323.pngMordecai stayed still.

    Ephraim’s question lingered in the air, soft but inescapable. And in his head, everything else roared.

    Unity seethed in frustration—sharp, bitter, impatient. Castiel hurt quietly, panicked and craving comfort. And the one in the middle—the self who had no name anymore—just listened.

    They were all tired.

    He blinked, still staring toward the tidepool, as if hoping the answer would reflect itself back to him. It didn’t. But the question remained.

    What do you want?

    He exhaled, the breath uneven but honest.

    "What I want..."

    The words felt foreign in his mouth. They didn’t belong to Unity. Or Ramura. Or even the child.

    He paused. A small sigh slipped from his chest. Then—

    "Ephraim," he said simply. "I need help."

    Another pause.

    "But not like before."

    His voice shifted, grew quieter, more real. He turned toward her, just slightly. His good eye met hers. The blind one—milky, scarred, unmoving—pointed just as directly, but saw nothing.

    "You say I shouldn’t answer as Wrath, or Unity, or the ghosts. But Ephraim... that’s all still here. Even now. When you’re talking to me.”

    He hesitated. His shoulder twitched slightly.

    "We," he corrected softly.

    He glanced away, shame flickering through his posture, then slowly back.

    "I’ve stopped trying to label myself. I used to define everything. Unity. Ramura. Some ideal version that made sense depending on who was asking. But the truth is... it’s not one of them anymore. It’s all of them."

    He shifted again. The words came slower now, more careful.

    "I know myself in Ramura. I was grounded. I listened. I tried. And right now... right now, he’s here. With you. He always was, in moments like this."

    He paused, voice thinner now.

    "The wolves—they showed me something. When I was still on the island. In the lake’s reflection. That third one... it was Castiel. Not just the boy who escaped the Sunship. But before that. The child. The one who lived high in the mountains, who loved his mother, who didn’t know anything except the quiet warmth of her arms. Until they took her. Killed her. Right in front of me."

    He swallowed.

    "And I haven’t been the same since."

    His fingers twitched in Cerberus’ fur.

    "They’re all in me now. Castiel. Unity. Ramura. The one who broke on the island. The one who survived it. I don’t know which one’s in control. I don’t always get to choose. But they’re... real. And I hear them. And I’m tired of pretending I can do this alone."

    He met her gaze again.

    "I need you."

    His voice barely held together—quiet, but threaded with something more fragile than anything he’d said before.

    "Not just... emotionally. I mean day to day. The quiet parts. The things no one sees. I'm not managing them well. And I’ve kept trying to act like I am—but I’m not. Not really. Not anymore."

    He didn’t want to burden her, but it was the truth. The quiet, painful kind.

    A beat.

    "I don’t know everything. But I know what’s inside me isn’t going away. It’s not something I’ll outgrow. It’s not something I can cleanse. It’s me."

    His voice dropped.

    "Please don’t go."

    Another silence stretched.

    "I don’t even know if any of that made sense," he added, voice quieter now, fragile and frayed.

    He shifted slightly where he sat, his body giving more than it used to. Malnourished. Hollow. The fabric of him loose around the bones.

    He didn’t speak again.

    Cerberus lifted their heads.

    And then, in a sharp, startling bark—Cerberus let out a call directed at Ephraim.

    1747798784114.pngAlaric stepped into the hut with the quiet precision of someone who lived his life in footnotes—measured, annotated, and mildly disappointed in the lack of proper indexing in most conversations. The morning light caught the sharp angle of his coat as it shifted around his shoulders—dark wool, faintly dusted with ash, a few surgical pins still clipped haphazardly to one cuff. His doctor’s satchel hung neatly at his hip, the clasp polished to a mirror shine. A small brass charm—a serpent twined through a laurel branch—swung gently from the strap, clicking softly with each step like punctuation.

    His rectangular glasses slipped to the bridge of his nose as he exhaled. A long breath—not weary, just resigned. The kind of sigh that followed an unsolvable equation scrawled by someone else in permanent ink.

    “I must apologize, Hanzi,” he murmured, voice calm but exacting. Not cold—just filtered. Like everything he said passed through three layers of internal approval before surfacing. He removed his coat and hung it with methodical care on the rack, aligning the sleeves without looking.

    “Dante,” he said next, with the tonal flatness of a man reciting a known chemical irritant. “He decided to infiltrate an upper-tier distillery last night—disguised as a shipment of his own goo—and got himself partially fermented. When I found him, he was spread across a crate of plum brandy, humming show tunes and holding a spirited debate with a bottle about the ethics of reincarnation.”

    He glanced toward her, half-lidded eyes behind glass, one brow raising a fraction.

    “But of course, he’s a masochist,” Alaric added, plucking the ash-smeared saucer from the table and inspecting it as if it might contain some hidden thesis. “So wasting my time was, evidently, its own reward.”

    He set the saucer down with scientific finality. A beat passed. Then another, as he adjusted the angle slightly until it pleased him.

    “I’ll take a coffee,” he said, clipped and clean. And then, after a pause: “With cardamom, if it hasn’t been hoarded for dreams. And the smoked fig, if it’s properly treated. Something about warming the body encourages honesty, or so your people believe.”

    There was no sarcasm—only curiosity, masked beneath a veil of academic detachment. A part of him, perhaps, still believed in patterns older than medicine—how certain herbs bent the spirit, how warmth summoned truth, how rituals stitched the unseen. A man who didn’t dismiss belief systems, just catalogued them.

    It wasn’t just a drink. It was a ritual. Her candle. His coffee. The controlled ecosystem of familiarity between two people who never needed to explain what had already been understood.
     
    Ephraim didn’t flinch at the bark. She simply turned, gaze soft and unwavering as she looked from Cerberus to Mordecai.

    Her hand remained beneath his. Steady. Not comforting in the way most people meant it—but present. Firm. Anchored like stone warmed by the sun.

    She didn’t answer right away.

    Not because she was hesitant. But because she was listening.

    To him.

    To all of him.

    When she did speak, her voice was level. Low. Worn at the edges, but certain.

    “You made sense,” she said. “All of it.”

    No fanfare. No question.

    Just fact.

    “And I’m not going anywhere.”

    Her eyes held his—not with pity, or sadness, or some false hope that things would be better if he just tried hard enough.

    But with belief.

    “I don’t want to fix it,” she added gently. “I’m not here to make you into something new. You’ve had enough of that.”

    She looked down for a moment—at the tidepool, still quiet, holding its mysteries close. Then back up at him.

    “I don’t need to meet you as Unity, or Ramura, or Castiel, or whoever else rises to the surface. I just need to meet you where you are.”

    A pause.

    “Whoever that is... I already know him. I always have.”

    1747799673181.pngHanzi didn’t speak at first.

    She didn’t look up, either—not until the soft clink of that saucer being nudged into alignment. Until the cadence of his voice, so characteristically droll, signaled that the ritual had begun.

    Instead, she moved.

    Two fingers slid along the shelf beneath the cracked apothecary cupboard, passing over a dozen jars before landing on one wrapped in blue string. She pulled it down, not even glancing at the label—cardamom. Another jar followed, this one with a bit of wax still crusted near the rim. She didn’t bother scraping it clean. Her other hand plucked a small tin from the uppermost ledge, its lid already loose. Smoked fig. Properly treated. Because of course it was.

    A flick of her wrist set the kettle humming over the small copper stove in the corner.

    “You speak like the god's have already failed you,” she said finally, voice low and even. Not judgmental. Just amused. “There is always time. Perhaps too much."

    She turned then, and only then—pulling a small porcelain cup down from a mismatched rack, the rim chipped just enough to be familiar. It was his. Always had been.

    The mortar and pestle came down next, and she worked in silence for a moment, grinding fig into paste, cardamom seeds crackling gently as they joined.

    She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t pry.

    Instead: “You can sit."

    The cup clinked against its saucer a few seconds later, the mixture poured slow and precise, steam rising in thin, perfumed threads. Her fingers lingered near the lip of the mug—not as a flourish, but because the warmth was welcome. It was never about the drink. Not for either of them.

    She placed it in front of him without preamble. Then she returned to the stove, reaching for the cigarette tin with her free hand and sliding one between her fingers. The matchbook was balanced behind her ear.

    No words, still.

    But her eyes finally met his again.
    Hanzi moved with ritual ease, but not reverence. Reverence was for things untouched. This was touched, lived in—her space, her work, her rhythm. She folded the cloth beside the burner twice—once for balance, once for silence—and set the bronze filter tray atop it with a dull clink. Her cigarette hung from the corner of her lip, tip glowing like a slow eye, tracking nothing in particular.

    She didn’t look at Alaric when she spoke.

    “You remember what I told you,” she said, fingers skimming the jar lids, selecting one by feel. “About the difference between a wound and a fracture."
    (READER NOTE: In Varnicism, a fracture refers to the hidden point within a person where their soul, self, or sense of control is most likely to break under pressure. It’s not a flaw—it’s a fault line of truth, shaped by past choices, buried pain, or unresolved tension. To name your fracture is to understand where you're most vulnerable—and most defined.)
    "A wound heals. Scar tissue, time, poultices, spells if you’re lucky. But a fracture? That’s not something you mend. It’s something you carry with accuracy.”

    She plucked the fig resin from the jar and crushed it between her fingers. The scent unfurled—sweet, but burnt at the edges.

    “You know this better than most, doc. There’s pain you can pull from a body with your hands. And then there’s the kind that won’t leave until it’s named. Until it hears itself spoken aloud.”

    A pause, long enough for the coffee to finish steeping.

    She poured with a steady hand, adding a flick of cardamom with the kind of precision that could only come from intuition or obsession.

    “No one thinks there’s a system to it,” she went on, voice low, steady. “They think it’s chaos. I disagree, of course. We Varnicists have seen how the cracks always show up in the same place. Over time. Pressure tells. And pressure’s got a pattern.”
    (READER NOTE: A Varnicist is a practitioner of Varnicism—someone trained to detect, interpret, and articulate the fractures within others. They do not heal, guide, or command. They observe, name, and reflect the precise place where a person is most likely to collapse or change. Varnics are not prophets or priests; they are quiet witnesses to pressure—and those who know how to read its shape.)


    Her gaze slid toward him now—not sharp, not soft. Just open.

    “Your kind of work doesn’t just bruise the soul. It warps where the fracture goes.”

    She passed him the cup, same as always.

    “The question was never if you’re cracked. We all are. The question’s remains whether you’ve learned to hold it without letting it bleed into your work."

    Another pause. This one thinner.

    Then, with just a glint of something behind her tone:

    “But that’s why you come, isn’t it?"

    She tapped her ash without looking, then leaned back—quiet, watching, already half inside the next thought.
    Hanzi stubbed out her cigarette against the rim of the burner—slow, deliberate. The paper hissed faintly as it met the iron, the ember extinguished with a soft finality. Her fingers lingered over the smoke for a moment longer, as if tasting the shape of its disappearance.

    Then, she reached for the sphere.

    It wasn’t presented. It wasn’t framed. She moved it with the same ease someone might adjust a lamp. Not precious. Not sacred. Just true.

    She cupped one hand beneath the glass, her fingers curling around its base—not to cradle it, but to tether it. The way a Reader did. The way a Varnicist knew to.

    “You’ll see three,” she said quietly. No drama. No mystery. Just fact.

    She turned her head slightly, not looking at him—but not avoiding him either.

    Light churned inside the glass like breath held underwater. Then the first image formed—sharp silhouettes caught mid-motion. Two figures—panther-shaped—locked in a confrontation. One raised a glowing hand. The other pointed, accusatory, sharp enough to pierce without touching.

    1747800706798.png

    “The fracture of Burden.”

    The words landed soft—but settled deep.

    “That break comes when someone thinks care should be enough. When they give, and give, and it still twists. When the ones they protect don’t see danger until it’s already on them. Tell me about that, Alaric. Why are we seeing this?"
    ( READER NOTE: In a Varnicist reading, when a Reader presents a fracture and asks, “Why are we seeing this?” the expected response is not confession. It is recognition.

    Alaric is not required to explain himself. He is not expected to justify, defend, or reveal his whole truth. Instead, he is meant to engage the fracture—to acknowledge it, argue with it, deny it, or question its shape. That’s part of the process.

    Varnicism teaches that fractures do not open in silence—they open in pressure. So his words matter. How he reacts guides the next image.

    Hanzi, as a Reader, will not correct him. She may clarify or deepen, but never interrupt. Her silence is part of the reflection. The shape of the fracture comes not from what is shown, but from how it is received.

    There is no “right” answer. There is only whether or not he knows the pressure when he sees it.)
     
    Varnicism New
  • Index
    • 1747802996482.png


    What Is Varnicism?
    Varnicism is a deeply personal belief system that teaches every soul contains fractures—hidden points of internal strain where you are most likely to break. These fractures are not flaws—they are structural truths formed by memory, emotion, and choices.

    Varnicism is not a religion of salvation. It is a practice of recognition.
    There are no prayers.
    There are no temples.
    There are no priests.
    There are only Readers—practitioners who interpret the fault lines in others.
    Mythology
    Varnicism is built around a central myth: Before time moved, the Prime Form stood whole and unchanging. But it was too perfect to live. So it cracked itself. From that First Fracture came motion, identity, pain, and thought. Each soul carries a fragment of that divine break—and it speaks in pressure. This First Fracture is the origin of all struggle, and all transformation.
    The Gods of Varnicism
    Varnicism recognizes three divine figures, but they are not worshipped. They are studied—treated more like primal forces than personal deities.
    • Chersin, the First Fault
    • Sabray, the Pressurekeeper
    • Tessane, the Clean Break
    These gods are not beings to pray to. They are used as interpretive tools—categories of fracture, ways of understanding where and how someone is under strain.
    What Is a Fracture?
    A fracture is the point within you most likely to snap, shift, or define you under pressure. Fractures do not heal—they shift. They move with you. They evolve. You have many fractures.

    But only one is active at a time.
    A Varnicist helps you identify the fracture that is listening now.
    What Is a Varnicist?
    A Varnicist (like Hanzi) is a trained Reader. They use intuition, ritual, and subtle magic to identify a person’s active fracture. They do not offer healing or advice.

    They:
    • Create pressure through quiet ritual
    • Show metaphorical visions tied to your fracture
    • Invite reflection and interpretation
    • Never correct you. Only observe.
    Varnicism accepts runic magic and believes the two concepts co-exist.
    What Happens in a Reading?
    A ritual begins—usually with shared tea, a familiar object, silence.

    The Varnicist uses a magical device (e.g., a crystal sphere) to reveal three images—not literal prophecies, but symbolic pressure points.

    Each image corresponds to a different fracture.

    The Varnicist describes them, then ask questions such as:

    “Why are we seeing this?”

    The client is expected to engage. Not confess. Not explain. Just recognize.
    What the Client Does

    The client:
    • Reflects on the image
    • Reacts with honesty, resistance, curiosity, denial—any form of pressure counts
    • Understands: the way they respond shapes what the fracture becomes
    There is no right answer.
    Only the truth under strain.
    Why Get a Reading?
    People seek readings when:
    • They feel near collapse
    • They’re caught between choices
    • They fear their leadership or loyalty is fracturing
    • They need to know: what will break first?
    Some use it to prevent failure.
    Some to embrace it.
    Some just want someone to see it.
    “We’re not looking for all the cracks. Just the one that’s closest to giving.”
    — Hanzi, Varnicist Reader

    What Is the Goal?
    A Varnicist crystal reading is a guided, magical-reflective ritual meant to identify a person’s currently active fracture—the specific spiritual fault line under the most pressure. This is the break that, if left unchecked, is most likely to impact their choices, relationships, or stability.
    Key Concepts
    • Everyone has many fractures, but only one is active at a time.
    • Fractures shift with time, stress, identity, memory, and context.
    • The active fracture is not always obvious—it often hides beneath denial, loyalty, or distraction.
    • A reading is the only way to pull that fracture into focus.
    How It Works
    • The Reader (Hanzi) guides the ritual—setting a calm, controlled space and preparing the magic (tea, smoke, crystal, etc.).
    • The crystal displays symbolic images—each representing a potential fracture under pressure.
    • The reader names the possible fractures (e.g., Burden, Alignment, Containment).
    The client is asked:

    “Why are we seeing this?”

    The client’s responses shape the session—through recognition, resistance, questions, or silence.

    Through this dialogue, the Reader narrowly guides the focus toward the fracture that is actually active.
    Why Only One Fracture?
    Because Varnicism teaches that people don’t fall apart all at once.
    They fracture at a single point—the point of greatest pressure.
    Identifying this pressure early gives them the power to:
    • Reroute the break
    • Act before it snaps
    • Or even let it collapse on their own terms
    “The fracture you carry today may not be the one you carry tomorrow. But if you ignore this one, you won’t survive to reach the next.”

    What Does the Client Leave With?
    By the end of the reading, the client should have:
    • Identified which fracture is active
    • Seen how it presents under pressure
    • Understood the cost of ignoring it
    • Gained language to talk about it without shame or confusion
     
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