A hollow silence filled the room now. Once it shimmered under golden light, where footsteps tapped across smooth wood like raindrops on glass. Music used to climb the walls here, carried by voices full of wine and warmth. Mirrors watched real people spin through joy, their eyes bright, their hands linked. Chandeliers burned like small suns above them. All gone - only dust remains, drifting slow beneath cracked ceilings.
Maybe he once moved across the floor, light on his feet. The music would have filled corners now silent. Guests arrived, drawn by lantern light through winter trees. A younger version of him stood near the fireplace, saying little, watching everything. Laughter traveled up stairwells where only echoes remain. That voice - steady, low - might have offered greetings instead of orders. Those eyes held people then, not just reflections. Rooms breathed differently when occupied by warmth. People left traces: perfume on scarves, wine stains, half-finished stories. Dust settles slower when life keeps interrupting it.
A quiet shift moved inside her ribs - this crack in armor she'd worked hard to hold shut, though lately it kept splitting wider.
A coldness crept in while she stood still among broken tiles, fingers brushing a cracked column. The air stilled. Marble held traces of old music beneath her palm.
A chill touched her skin first, arriving ahead of sight or sound - the kind of sudden drop in temperature she now knew too well, one that matched the rhythm of her pulse. Out of nowhere, the candles flickered hard, their flames tilting like something invisible had passed through. Shadows pooled where walls met floor, then slid into new shapes, slower than smoke but just as quiet.
There he stood, sudden as a shadow at noon.
There he stood, framed by the entrance she'd just come through, one shoulder propped on the wood like it belonged to him. A lock of black hair slipped forward over his brow, slight but noticeable. Across the wide stretch of floor between them, his gaze caught hers - not sharp at first, then suddenly fixed. It stayed, steady, as if pulled there by something deeper than choice. The way he looked made movement feel pointless. Like blinking might break whatever quiet rule was holding everything still.
Stillness filled his voice. Not a word came out, only quiet observation as she stood there - the touch of her fingers against cold stone caught his eye first, then how light broke into colors through old glass webs above, spilling soft hues over her skin. Her posture gave hints he could not ignore, the rise and fall of her chest growing faster without permission.
This room," Historia began, since she'd found out lately that talking worked better than letting quiet grow. When stillness lingered, it turned into something belonging to him - where his gaze took hold, where meaning built without words, where the pull of who he was bent everything near. To speak at all was to take back even just a corner. "It must have looked lovely."
That's right," he told her. Always, his voice came out soft yet deep, a sound that hummed through rock, space, even deep inside her body. Words stopped there.
"What happened?"
A silence fell. Just long enough to feel intentional, yet brief enough not to seem like hiding something. Time passed, he explained. Not because anything pushed it, but simply because nothing held it back
Away from the doorway he moved, stepping inside - never straight at her, instead skimming the edge of the open space where dancers might have been, one hand brushing chair backs as if testing weight, fabric worn thin under fingertips. Around her he went, slow and measured, like something night-born circling a flame too bright to touch.
The final ball in this space was mine back in eighteen forty-seven," he remarked. That year - sharp, tossed out like crumbs - dropped into Historia's thoughts, heavy as shattered windowpanes. Eighteen forty-seven. Close to two hundred years past. To him, it sounded no different than mentioning a meal from earlier that week.
"One hundred and twelve guests," he continued, his circuit of the room bringing him closer to her by imperceptible degrees - not directly, not obviously, but in a slow, tightening spiral that reduced the distance between them with each pass. "The finest families in Scotland. They danced until dawn and told me it was the most extraordinary evening of their lives." A pause. "They were the last humans, other than Anya, to set foot in this castle. Until you."
A weight settled without words. 177 winters passing like slow shadows across stone floors. Cold emptiness filling every corner, season after season. Until your footsteps changed everything.
Silence came easier. Her voice felt unreliable. What he said sat heavy - the ache in his tone, the years spent apart, how deep the quiet went - and it pulled at something inside her. He carried empathy like a hidden edge, tucked beneath sadness, not meant to harm yet sharp all the same. Letting it near would cost too much.
---
West of the castle stood the conservatory - stretched out like a brittle arm made of glass and old metal. Its roof sagged between frames eaten by rust, gaps where panes used to be now just holes into the clouds above. Long ago it sparkled - Historia guessed Victorian, judging by twisted iron curls near the floor and broken pipes that once carried heat through the walls. Those tubes lie silent today, choked with white crusts, empty as bones.
Vines crept across cracked tiles where silence hung thick, broken only by the occasional drip of moisture falling through shattered panes above. Stone containers stood like forgotten sentinels, each one cradling life too stubborn to vanish yet too weak to thrive. Not warmth but decay shaped the air here, heavy with the scent of damp soil and rotting greenery clinging to skeletal branches. Plants from distant heat stretched upward anyway, misshapen limbs straining past sun-starved glass that let in more cold than light. Towering ferns drooped under their own weight, edges curled tight like fists refusing release. Those orchids hang on, petals thin now, pale like old paper, refusing to fall even though color has long drained away. Twisting upward, a thick vine broke free from its pot and claimed every inch of one wall, reaching - always reaching - with fingerlike roots along cold rock and between rusted metal bars toward the ceiling above. Its foliage pulses an eerie green, dark yet glowing somehow, impossibly rich given how starved this place is for light.
Warmth hung heavy under the glass ceiling, holding in heat long after daylight faded. Green scents rose from sprouting leaves, mixed with damp earth, tangled with rot's thick sweetness. Life moved here in slow churn - roots stretching, plants splitting open, things falling apart quietly. This place breathed differently compared to the stone halls where iron and old blood lingered in every breath. She stayed, though she meant only to pass through. Air pooled around her, moist and full, filling her chest each time she exhaled slowly.
A sudden chill cut through the air just as her fingers followed the vine's twist past cracked soil. Its roots had broken free from the pot long before she arrived. Curious, she paused to study how far it had crept across the wall. The way it clung surprised her. Cold settled in fast, stopping her mid-thought.
Still facing forward. That sudden spin, the one her body begged to make, only fed him. Maybe it was triumph he craved. The sight of her jolt, proof he could rattle her, catching panic flicker like distant stormlight. Now she stayed put. Practice made it possible. Movements smooth, breath slow, presence noted without alarm she truly held inside.
A tendril curled through the soil - Aristolochia gigantea, Jin Yeager murmured from just past her shoulder. His breath stirred the skin at her nape, thin currents slipping beneath fabric. Sound traveled too fast, too near. Each syllable dragged a chill down her spine. Muscle answered before thought did, fingers locking tight without permission.
"Commonly known as the giant pelican flower," he continued, as if he were a docent leading a tour rather than a predator who had materialized behind her with no warning. "Native to Brazil. It was brought here by a botanical collector in seventeen ninety-three. It was supposed to die within a year. The climate, you understand. Too cold, too dark, too far from its natural habitat."
A silence fell. Then - fabric brushed somewhere, just barely. Not steps, but something softer: air shifting near her, thick with dampness.
"It refused."
Another pause. Then, with a note in his voice that she couldn't quite classify - admiration, perhaps, or recognition: "Some things, when placed in hostile environments, do not die. They adapt. They endure. They grow in ways their creators never intended."
It wasn't the plant on his mind. That much they understood without saying it.
Holding the sturdy green stem tight, Historia watched it without blinking. What occurs, she wondered out loud, her tone calm despite trembling inside, if harsh conditions are the only life those beings have ever seen? Suppose they've changed so much that other places would kill them instead?
Stillness filled the room. Not just quiet - something heavier settled behind her shoulders, slow and certain as fingers resting there.
After a pause, Jin Yeager spoke again, his tone shifting - sinking into something quiet, close, so deep it seemed to move through her veins rather than just reach her ears. Home, he said they've finally reached it
Into darkness went her eyelids. Not once did she face him. Gone he was - not by sound, but by sensation: the air grew lighter, warmth returned to its usual level, space reopened where his nearness had weighed like silence before a storm.
Her gaze met nothing but stillness as the room came into view. A quiet shift of light through glass showed no one there.
---