Fantasy Dirge of the Fallmarked

[Darkbloom]

The mountain wind carried the scent of burning prayer-scrolls. Thin, bitter threads of ash coiled through the fractured stone of the monastery courtyard, trailing past rusted bells and crumbling statues. He stood in the center, motionless, like something carved from the rock itself. His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep. He hadn’t slept in two days--hadn’t dared to. The dreams had turned sharp. His own death had begun to scream.


Above him, the clouds twisted like old cloth, thick with snow that never quite fell. The sky had looked the same in his vision: gray, rotting around the edges. He counted the seconds between lightning flickers, though there was no storm. Just memory. Or prophecy. His fingers curled slightly at his side, brushing the faint pulse beneath his wrist. The mark was warm again. Someone was coming. And this time, it wasn’t another frightened monk or desperate pilgrim. This one walked with intention.


He turned his head just slightly, listening. The boots weren’t loud--measured, deliberate, professional. But the stones betrayed her anyway. The way she moved told him everything: she wasn’t uncertain, wasn’t curious, wasn’t kind. He recognized the cadence from the vision. Not the sound exactly--but the feeling it pulled up in his chest. A weight, slow and dense, like the moment right before the knife. He didn’t look back. Not yet. He wanted to let her choose when this began.


“I’m still here,” he said softly, voice carrying farther than it should’ve. It didn’t echo, but it sank into the wind like a secret too old to rot. “You’re later than I thought you’d be.” His tone wasn’t sarcastic--just resigned. He didn’t move to defend himself or flee. He didn’t ask who she was. He knew. Not her name. But the shape she would leave behind in the world when she walked out of it. He had seen it in the dream. It had been beautiful. And terrible.


The prayer bells shifted once, gently, though no wind touched them. He glanced toward them as if remembering something lost. “They said I could try to run,” he murmured, mostly to himself now. “Or hide in the lower sanctum. But I told them the truth. That it wouldn’t matter.” Then finally, slowly, he turned to face her. Not afraid. Not brave. Just waiting. Eyes the color of old silver met hers--and somewhere, deep in them, was the quiet ache of someone already grieving something he hadn’t lost yet.

PumpkinKats

 

[PumpkinKats]

She walked with intention. Her pace even and precise. It had been beaten into her that her movements were the most important part of her job. Every action had to be deliberate and decisive. Yet this job was making her question what she had been trained to do.

The sky was overcast, her hood pulled up. Her mask too. She was told to meet him here. And so she did, walking up to him slowly and quietly. Her steps barely making a sound despite the fact that she didn’t need to remain hidden.

He had heard her but she didn’t mind. He spoke and she stopped walking, standing about 10 feet from him. He turned and she noticed his eyes, a deep set emotion stuck in them. Like he cared for her but she hadn’t ever met him. She didn’t like that look, like they had some form of connection. She didn’t form connections. With anyone.

“It wouldn’t matter. I would have found you before you got to the lower sanctum.” Her dark eyes met his. The almost black hue of her iris stared into his. She seemed unfazed, a dagger held tightly in her hand, ready to strike if she needed.

The wind knocked her hood loose, draping it over her shoulders softly and revealing her brown curls. They swayed in the wind as they fell in waves down her back. She didn’t make a move to fix her hood, anyone who got close enough to see her features usually died. “It wasn’t hard to find you. Yet they told me you would hide. Run. Yet you didn’t.”

 

[Darkbloom]

The corners of his mouth lifted--barely. It wasn’t a smile. Not truly. More like a quiet acknowledgment of something too old to be surprise. He lowered his gaze slightly, letting the silence settle between them like dust. “That’s what they always say,” he replied gently, voice thin and colorless. “But I’ve never believed in running. It’s rude to make your killer work too hard.” His words weren’t mocking. They weren’t brave either. Just tired. Honest, in a way that sounded almost devotional.


He took a step forward. Not enough to threaten, just enough to close the space from reverent distance to something closer to real. The dagger in her hand didn’t move, but he saw the way she gripped it--tight, deliberate. The way her eyes didn’t shift, didn’t blink. She was a storm waiting to happen. And he, foolishly, wanted to walk into it. “You’re not what I expected,” he said quietly, eyes lingering on the curve of her jaw, the strands of hair stirred by the wind. “I thought you’d be… colder. Or crueler.”


Then he tilted his head, studying her with a faint trace of curiosity. “But you don’t want to be here either, do you?” His voice wasn’t accusatory--it was laced with understanding, almost sympathy. “You follow orders. That much is clear. But someone like you doesn’t hesitate unless there’s something wrong with the mission.” He tapped his chest once, just above the heart. “It’s me, isn’t it? You’ve seen it already. You just don’t understand why it matters.”


Another gust pulled at his cloak, revealing the worn silver threads woven into the lining--symbols of starfall, of omen. He let it happen. “They told you to guard me. But what they meant was to watch me until the time came.” His gaze dropped to the blade in her hand, then rose again. “You don’t have to lie about it. I’ve seen that blade before, too.” This time, he did smile--sad, knowing. “It’s the last thing I see before everything goes dark.”


He turned away then, walking a slow, measured pace toward the broken edge of the courtyard. His back was exposed. “We should leave soon. They’ll come for you next, once they know you hesitated. And if I’m going to die, I’d rather it be somewhere quieter.” A pause. “Somewhere you can at least pretend it was your idea.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

She hesitated as he got closer, wanting to step back but not taking that step. She didn’t want him to get close but she didn’t stop him. “Many people have said the same thing. They expect me to be malicious.” She agreed and held her ground, the weight of her weapon steadying her.

She hated that he could read her, that her mask was slipping. She had spent ages learning how to mask every emotion and every feeling that she had towards anyone, especially who she worked for. She hated killing people but she had no other choice. They’d kill her if she didn’t do her job.

“They told me to watch you, make sure no one killed you before I had the chance.” She corrected him. She glanced down at her blade when he did, the blood in it gone but never forgotten. She had a way of killing people, quick and without looking back. She had stabbed and slit throats, but she never watched. Her bosses called her a weak assassin and she didn’t disagree.

She watched him walk, knew she had an opportunity but she couldn’t. She couldn’t when she didn’t think he had done anything wrong. “Fine.” She agreed, stepping forward. She glanced back for a single second before turning back to him. “It was never my idea.” She corrected, making it clear that she wasn’t sure about killing him.

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn paused mid-step as her voice cut through the cold. Not in defiance--there was no heat in it--but in something quieter. Something fractured. He turned his head slightly, just enough to glimpse her out of the corner of his eye. Her stance had changed. Not the surface of it, but the weight beneath. The kind of shift that only meant one thing: she had told the truth. And she hated herself for it.


“I know,” he murmured, his breath ghosting in the frozen air. “It’s never our idea. That’s what makes it worse.” He let the wind speak for a moment, whistling through the broken beams of the monastery ruins. The sound echoed in the space between them--not quite silence, not quite music. “The world breaks people like us differently. You were taught to act. I was taught to endure. Neither of us were taught how to choose.”


He turned fully to face her again, hands still empty, still loose. The expression on his face wasn’t pity, or even gratitude. It was understanding. A strange sort of kinship--like two blades left rusting in the same field, side by side. “I don’t blame you,” he said simply. “For not doing it. Or for planning to. Or for still considering it.” He took one slow step toward her, gaze unblinking. “You’re afraid of losing what little control they let you keep. But you already lost it, didn’t you? The moment they gave you me.”


His eyes searched hers again, not for answers--just for the thread that connected them, fragile and unwelcome. “You don’t kill because you want to. And I don’t die because I deserve it. So what are we supposed to do now?” There was no edge in his voice, no accusation. Just the question, open-ended and aching, as if the future itself were asking.


He glanced at the long road stretching from the mountain’s edge, winding toward the lowlands like a bleeding vein. “If we’re going to walk it,” he said after a beat, “you should know my name.” He looked back to her, calm and tired and so very human. “Ezryn Vale. Just Ezryn’s fine.” A pause. “If you tell me yours, I won’t use it. I’ll just keep it. In case I never get the chance again.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

She paused and looked at him, her eyes searching for some sort of lie in his demeanor. She found none. Only honesty and some sort of connection through sympathy. Though the sympathy seemed to be more one of recollection than anything.

“I lost control the day I agreed. The day I agreed to kill people for a living.” She practically snapped. She knew the control she had was limited, if it wasn’t gone already. She had no say in her life anymore and he seemed to know that, to understand.

Osiris slipped her knife into its sheath, hidden under her cloak and kept close by her side. Her hand rested on it for a second before letting her hand drop to her side. Her eyes met his again as he told her his name. The honesty surprised her. Surprised her that he was willing to make his identity known.

She went by any name but her own. Was anyone else except Osiris Claire. She searched his eyes again for a lie, for anything but the truth. Again, she only received the truth. It was only right to return it. “Osiris. Osiris Claire.” She hesitated before saying it, looking away even though she wasn’t lying. “You can use it. You’d be the only one who would.”

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn exhaled slowly through his nose--not relief, not triumph, but something quieter. Something like recognition. The kind that didn’t come from words, but from the way someone said them. He didn’t flinch when she snapped. Didn’t retreat. Her anger wasn’t something he feared; it was something he understood. “Then we both agreed to something we shouldn’t have,” he said softly. “You to end lives. Me to speak the truths no one wanted to hear. Seems neither of us were prepared for the weight that came after.”

His eyes followed the subtle motion of her hand as it hovered, then dropped from the knife. That moment--fleeting, human--meant more to him than a hundred promises. She had spared him, yes, but more than that: she had chosen to spare him. Not out of mercy. Not even out of kindness. But because something in her refused to follow through without cause. And that was what he trusted.

When she finally said her name, he nodded slowly. Osiris Claire. He turned the sound over in his mind, like it was a song he’d heard in a dream but never quite remembered until now. “Thank you,” he said. Just that. No embellishment. Her name deserved to stand on its own, not wrapped in apology or praise. “And if I’m the only one who uses it--then I’ll make sure I never say it lightly.”

Ezryn stepped forward again, closing the space between them not with urgency, but with gravity--drawn by shared understanding. “I don’t know how long they’ll give us,” he murmured. “Before they send others. Before they decide you're compromised and I’ve seen too much. But if you're still here when the sun sets, I’ll tell you what I saw.” His voice lowered, something secret threading through it. “The real reason they marked me. The one no one was supposed to know.”

He turned slightly, gesturing toward the crumbled archway that once led into the inner sanctum. “There’s a place to rest just beyond that threshold. Cold, but hidden. I know it’s not what you signed up for, Osiris.” He said her name again, this time with purpose. “But neither was I. And yet--here we are.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris nodded, knowing that they would send others soon. She had plenty of enemies because of her job but also just because she had a bad attitude; as other put it.

She was intrigued by his proposal to offer up his story and all she did was nod. Nod because she knew that once he told her this, there was no going back. She felt the same when she had said her name. There was no going back for her now, she was lost the moment she said her name.

“Let’s move then. The more distance we have the better. They’re not expecting me till tomorrow morning so we have until then at least.”

She explained this and cringed when he mentioned not signing up for this. She didn’t sign up for this encounter but this job was her life. Without it she wouldn’t be alive and her bosses held that above her; she owed them her life.

“Let’s just go.” She resigned and her tone was cold. Not one of malice or hatred, but one of hesitation and cover up. She didn’t want to talk about what she had signed up for.

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn didn’t press her. He could feel the edge in her voice--the kind that didn’t ask for sympathy, just silence. A silence that understood. So he gave it to her. No questions, no further remarks. Just a nod that matched hers in quiet agreement. The kind of exchange two people gave when words only risked reopening wounds that had only just stopped bleeding.

He turned without flourish, guiding them past the jagged ruins of the monastery gate. Stones shifted beneath his boots, softened by years of moss and decay, but he moved as one familiar with the dead weight of history. The wind curled around them, but didn’t bite. Not yet. Not tonight.

“I won’t ask what they’re holding over you,” Ezryn said after a few moments, his tone level. “But I’ll tell you what they held over me. Just not here. Not yet.” His voice was low, nearly lost to the breeze. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her--he did, oddly--but some truths didn’t survive in the open. Some things needed the dark to be spoken at all.

The archway loomed ahead, fractured stone and weather-worn ivy disguising what had once been a holy threshold. He stepped through it, half-expecting the pressure of old rites to resist his passing. Nothing happened. Just the echo of his boots against ancient tile. “We can stay here,” he said, gesturing to a small alcove tucked behind a collapsed altar. “No fire. No sound. Just time. And the weight of it.”

He sat first, settling with the posture of someone who’d long ago accepted discomfort as normal. He glanced up at her--not as a challenge, but as an invitation. “I know the look of someone who’s counting the hours,” he said. “If they come tomorrow, we’ll both be hunted. So maybe, just for tonight... we stop being who they made us.” His eyes lingered on her mask, then back to her eyes. “And be who we were before.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris followed him and kept one hand on her knife, her other hand free to move any foliage or branches that got in her way. She looked around as they passed under the arch, her eyes widening.

She loved the architecture and would have loved to explore more, despite the circumstances. She looked at Ezryn as he talked and nodded softly, “if you’re telling me then I’ll tell you mine. It’s only fair.” She replied.

Osiris sat across from him and settled in, resting her elbows on her knees and leaning forward a little. She noticed him glance at her mask and she pulled it down, showing off her face to a stranger for the first time in a while.

Her freckled face was scarred across her nose and across her left eye. People were surprised that she hadn’t gone blind from that incident. Her eyes were a dark brown, almost black and her nose was rounded. Her freckles spread across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

“I suppose. I barely remember who I was before. Maybe 8 at the time.” She sighed and responded with vague details. Osiris hadn’t been this honest in a long time and she was preparing to spill her story, tell him how she got here.

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn watched her with quiet reverence--not for what she looked like, but for what it meant. The unmasking. The surrender of anonymity. He didn’t flinch at the scars or the hollow edge in her voice. He had seen worse in temples and prisons and mirror shards. But what caught him wasn’t her wounds--it was her willingness. The way she let him see her, even if only for a night. Even if only because the world might not let them see another.


“You were eight,” he echoed softly, resting his back against the cold stone. “Too young to forget. Too young to have to.” His gaze dropped to his hands, fingers absently brushing against the frayed edge of his coat sleeve. “I was nine when the mark bloomed.” He didn’t gesture to it--no need. She’d seen the faint silver trace at his wrist earlier, the sigil that identified him as one of the Fallmarked. He could still feel its heat some nights, like it had only appeared yesterday.


“They told me it was divine. That I was chosen. But it didn’t take long to realize what that really meant.” He glanced up, voice steady but low. “No bed. No name. Just visions. They locked me away until the seizures passed—until I could speak of what I saw without screaming. Then they started writing it all down. Every word. Every prophecy.” His lips curled faintly--not a smile. A bitter echo of one. “They called me a gift. A tool. An investment. Never a person.”


Ezryn shifted slightly, leaning forward to match her posture, mirroring her stance without realizing it. “There’s a difference between surviving and living. I survived, Osiris. But I didn’t start living until I left. Until I stopped letting them write my words for me.” He paused, meeting her eyes again. “That’s why they want me dead now. I know too much. I said too much. And worst of all… I remembered who I was before.”


He tilted his head, softening. “You don’t have to remember all of her. That girl from when you were eight. Just enough to know she existed. That she didn’t deserve what came after.” His voice was almost a whisper now. “You can hate what you became. You should, if it helps. But don’t forget--someone else carved it into you. You didn’t come out of the dark. You were dragged there.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris listened with quiet reservation. She had seen the mark, had known what he was even before she had seen it. They had told her of him, that he knew too much and that he was a Fallmarked. She didn’t believe them until she saw the mark.

She nodded as he talked, remembering how she survived instead of lived. She hadn’t lived for a long time. And she missed living. This was the first real living she had done in a while. “I’m sorry they did those things to you.”

There was no pity in her voice, none at all. Just connection, understanding. “She was a bright girl, me when I was 8. She looked at the world through a lens that reflected rainbows instead of thunder.” Osiris explained, her mind traveling far back.

“Her family is what dragged her down. They had no money and no jobs. 6 mouths to feed. So she joined my bosses, became an assassin. A damn good one too… my survival has depended on how many people I can kill… how quickly I can do so..”

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn closed his eyes for a moment--not in grief, but in respect. As if offering a silent moment to that bright girl who once saw rainbows. He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t rush to offer comfort or meaning. Some stories needed to be told aloud, if only to pull them out of the shadows where they'd festered too long.

“You were the oldest?” he asked softly, already sensing the answer in her tone. He didn’t ask for details--names, faces, the weight of those six mouths. He already knew what it meant. Responsibility like a collar. Survival like a curse. “That’s what they do, isn’t it? Find the desperate. The capable. Turn love into debt. Turn survival into a ledger.”

He leaned forward again, his elbows resting on his knees. “But you’re wrong about one thing, Osiris.” His voice remained steady, unwavering. “Your survival doesn’t depend on how many you’ve killed. It depends on how many more times you let them decide who dies. There’s a difference.” His gaze rose to meet hers, not accusatory--but unflinching.

“That girl who saw rainbows?” He gave the faintest of nods. “She’s still in there. Not untouched, not naïve anymore. But she chose not to kill me today. That wasn’t them. That was her. That was you.” He spoke with certainty, like it was fact rather than hope.

The wind stirred faintly between them, brushing fallen leaves into soft spirals near the edge of the ruin. “You’re not just a blade, Osiris,” Ezryn said, quieter now. “You’re what comes after the blade. The part they don’t prepare you for. The part you have to fight to keep.” He looked at her one last time in that moment--not as a threat or a ghost of prophecy.

But as a woman.

And with a voice no longer clouded by duty or vision, he asked, “What would she want now--if she had one night free of them?”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris nodded in response, she was the oldest and that fact had been held over her since she was born. 3 younger siblings and 2 parents to take care of. She often went unfed after feeding the rest of them. The youngest was only 3 when she went away. She had no idea where they were now.

She listened to him, nodding a little but then stopping when he mentioned her not being a blade. She was a blade. Osiris killed other people for the benefit of her own life and this paying her. “I am a blade. That’s all I’ve ever been good for.”

Osiris growled this at him, staring daggers into his own eyes with hers. She was nothing more than a blade. “I didn’t kill you because you’re different. I don’t know why but it wasn’t me. It’s not your time.” She reasoned, shaking her head even as she said it.

She wanted to believe what she was saying but she didn’t. She didn’t even slightly believe what she was saying. Osiris believed that she didn’t kill his because she didn’t want to. Something told her not to and it probably was some other force.

Osiris looked back at him and looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes. She didn’t know what she would be doing if she was still a child, if the child in her was still untouched, naive.

“She’d want to go swimming. To pick flowers, run, climb, steal, anything. She’d still think her parents loved her, that her siblings would be fine. That maybe a cat would come out of the woods and she would name him something stupid..”

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn didn’t flinch when she growled--didn’t pull back or temper his gaze. Her anger wasn’t a weapon to him; it was a wound. And wounds bled truth more often than blades ever could.

He let the silence settle for a moment after she spoke, the wind threading through the broken archway above like a sigh from the gods. Then, finally, he shook his head--not in disagreement, but in sorrow. “No,” he said gently, “you were taught to be a blade. Forged by circumstance. Tempered by fear. But no one’s born to kill, Osiris.”

His eyes never left her, even when she looked away. “You didn’t kill me because something in you refused to turn this into just another job. Not fate. Not mercy. Not hesitation.” He leaned forward slightly. “It was you. Even if you don’t believe that yet.”

He let her words linger--about flowers, and swimming, and stupid cat names. And when she finished, he smiled, not mockingly, but like someone remembering something distant and golden. “She sounds like someone worth saving,” he said quietly. “Someone I would’ve liked to meet.”

Ezryn stood slowly, brushing dust from his cloak. He didn’t speak like a prophet now, or a fugitive. Just a man offering space where none had ever been given. “Tomorrow might come for both of us with teeth and iron. But tonight--” he reached out a hand, not demanding, simply there if she wanted it, “--maybe we give her that one night. No blades. No marks. Just us.”

And then, after a beat, he added with the smallest, hopeful grin, “And maybe we name that cat something truly ridiculous.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris just looked at his hand. She wanted to take it but taking it meant so much more than just taking his hand. It meant that she was trust him and that she would follow him.

That she wanted to stay and that she would give him a chance. Osiris wanted to give him that chance, to let the dust settle before her death showed up the next day break. She knew this was her last day. Her last hours.

Might as well do something good with it. Osiris took his hand, using it to help herself up and standing next to him. She let her hand linger in his for a second longer before pulling her hand back to herself.

“You’re supposed to be just another job. Another tick mark. Another paycheck. Don’t make me regret not killing you.”

She said this quietly, not entirely a threat but not entirely a joke either. When she said tick mark, her hand instinctively went to her shoulder. Where hundred of small marks had been tattooed into her skin. A memorial for everyone she killed.

Osiris kept this part of herself hidden, more hidden than the rest. She looked up at him, glanced at his cloak and his hands. “No blades, no marks. Just us.” She agreed finally, letting her eyes fall from his and settle on the land before them. “You lead. I’ll follow.”

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn didn’t speak as she took his hand--he simply felt it. The tremble under the surface. The weight of what it meant. It wasn’t a gesture of alliance or convenience. It was a vow, quiet and temporary, but no less powerful for it.

When her hand lingered in his, he didn’t close his fingers tighter. He let her go on her own terms. Freedom was the only honest thing he could offer her.

Her words cut--but he didn’t flinch. She was giving him truth, the kind of truth most people never heard from the mouths of their executioners. And yet here she stood, hand twitching over inked ghosts, threatening to regret something she had already chosen not to undo.

“You won’t regret it,” he said at last, voice quiet but sure. “I don’t know if I’ll make it past tomorrow either. But if this is your last night… I swear it won’t be wasted.” He caught her glance toward his cloak, and briefly pulled it tighter--not from shame, but from recognition. Her eyes saw everything. Every choice, every burden. It was only fair that she’d carry more than most.

He turned toward the horizon, the dying twilight gilding the ruined stone with fading gold. The hills beyond were soft with mist, wildflowers brushing at their edges like whispers.

“No blades,” he repeated, like a prayer. “No marks.”

Then he started forward, not too quickly. Enough for her to walk beside him if she wanted, or a step behind if she didn’t. “We’ll find a stream,” he said with a faint smile. “Pick some flowers. Name a cat ‘Mudwhisker’ or ‘Prince Slobberfang.’ Whatever that girl inside you would’ve done.”

And after a pause, with just a thread of solemnity, he added, “Then we’ll watch the stars. Just in case tomorrow forgets we were ever here.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris nodded, noticing how he seemed tense and she mentally hit herself for thinking that. Of course he was tense, she was too. She had been sent to kill him and now both of them were to die.

“I vote for Sir Reginald Slobberfang.” She said softly, a small smile forming on her lips as she giggled to herself. As a child she had seen many stray cats but hadn’t been allowed to take one in for fear of disease and another mouth to feed.

She walked a step behind him, on the edge of being beside him. She was scared to walk beside him, she wasn’t used to walking beside people. Osiris hadn’t had anyone to walk beside in a long time.

“I think tomorrow forgot I was here a long time ago.” She sighed, looking at everything else but him.

Osiris didn’t feel like she mattered in the grand scheme of the world because she had spent so long getting herself disappear. So much so that it was like she had never existed. Ezryn was the only person who knew her real name now, besides her family and her boss.

 

[Darkbloom]

Ezryn’s smile deepened at her choice of name. Not laughter exactly, but something warmer--a flicker of brightness in a place that had been dim far too long. “Sir Reginald Slobberfang,” he repeated with quiet approval. “A knight among vermin. Protector of mice. Terror of laundry lines and unattended stew pots.” His voice carried the cadence of a bedtime tale he might’ve once been told, if anyone had been around to tell it.

He noticed how she hovered just behind him, half a step, neither beside nor far. And he didn’t close that space--he left it open, not to distance her, but to honor what it cost her just to walk. With him. Without orders. Without a target. That half-step was sacred in its own way.

Her next words, though soft, struck deeper than he expected. “I think tomorrow forgot I was here a long time ago.” He slowed slightly, enough to make sure she could hear him, but not enough to make her stop. “Then we remind tomorrow that you existed. That you matter.” His tone wasn’t forceful--it was factual. As if that truth had always existed, and just needed to be uncovered.

The stream came into view, snaking like a ribbon of silver through tall grass and moss-laced stones. Fireflies had begun to gather near the edges, flickering without rhythm, like little starlights confused about which sky they belonged to. He stopped near a patch of soft ground, kneeling beside the bank and dipping his fingers into the cold water.

“You’re not invisible, Osiris,” he said quietly, still not looking at her. “They tried to make you forget. To make everyone forget. But tonight, you are here. And I see you.”

Only then did he glance up, eyes catching the glow of a single firefly that had landed between them.

“And if I’m the only one who remembers your name after this… it’ll be enough.”

 

[PumpkinKats]

Osiris followed him, listening to him as he told her what her believed about her. But she had to disagree. She watched him kneel down and touch the water, the grace in his movements caught her eyes.

She said nothing and stood at his side, listening and meeting his eyes when he looked up at her. Any response she would have normally given was gone, replaced by her heart instead of her head.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Osiris mumbled, looking away from him and towards the flocks of fireflies thy had descended upon them like little sparks in the air.

When she was younger she used to catch them. Keep them in a jar with holes and save them for a night before letting them go, releasing them when she was alone. Wishing she could fly away with them.

Osiris sighed, her shoulders dropping slightly as she felt her sadness consume her even more than it had before.

“I never existed. They made sure of that. My birth records are gone, my family gone, my name… gone. You are the only person who knows I exist…”

Everything about her belonged to them. Them. The people who molded and hammered her into the machine she was today. They owned every part of her and Osiris had come to accept it. But Ezryn, despite everything, was slowly changing her mind.