Muhan dreamt of a forest.
A real one, not the artificial gardens built inside noble territories where every tree was trimmed into perfection and every pathway was designed for beauty instead of survival. This place felt ancient in a way that made his skin crawl the moment he stepped into it, the kind of ancient that didn't welcome visitors so much as tolerate them briefly before swallowing them whole.
The trees towered endlessly overhead, their trunks so massive they resembled pillars supporting the heavens themselves. Dark leaves swallowed the branches from top to bottom, creating a ceiling thick enough to devour most of the moonlight above, and grey fog drifted slowly through the forest floor in long, unhurried waves.
At first it looked harmless.
Then Muhan realized he couldn't hear anything — no insects, no wind, no distant animals moving through the undergrowth. The silence pressed against his ears hard enough to become painful, and his own breathing sounded far too loud against it. Even his heartbeat felt intrusive, like something that didn't belong here and knew it.
He stood beneath one of the enormous trees and looked deeper into the fog, and something about the forest felt wrong in a way that went beyond instinct or fear. It felt older than both, like a wrongness that had existed long before either of those things had names.
The fog rolled forward through the trees in slow waves, then shifted backward again, and the branches above swayed with it, creaking softly as though responding to some unseen tide. Muhan narrowed his eyes — and then the movement stopped completely. Every branch froze in place. The fog remained suspended in the air yet somehow still moved at the same time, tiny currents drifting through it like reality itself had forgotten whether time was supposed to continue.
Then a dry leaf crumpled somewhere inside the mist.
Muhan turned sharply toward the sound.
Another followed. A single slow step, measured and deliberate, coming closer through the fog. Then another. The fog deepened between the trees as the footsteps continued their steady approach, and Muhan tried to move — and nothing happened. His body refused to respond. A cold pressure pinned him in place against the tree behind him, something he couldn't identify as coming from the forest or from whatever was hidden inside it. His fingers twitched slightly, and that was all he could manage.
The footsteps stopped.
The fog shifted.
A young woman emerged slowly through the grey haze, her long black hair falling over her shoulders in loose waves, crimson eyes glowing faintly beneath the darkness surrounding her face. Muhan immediately smelled blood — old blood, metallic and heavy enough to coat the back of his throat. Her hand hung at her side, stained dark red down to the fingertips, some of it already dried across her pale skin.
She looked directly at him and then smiled, and it was a gentle smile, warm enough that it should have been comforting. Instead every instinct inside him screamed.
And then, without knowing why, he felt something else entirely — not fear, not recognition exactly, but something older than either. The particular ache of something almost remembered, like a name sitting directly behind his tongue that his mind refused to release. He knew her. He was certain of it. He simply couldn't remember from where, and the not-knowing felt worse than the fear did.
"…Found ya."
The words reached him softly, almost affectionately.
Muhan woke violently.
---
Air rushed into his lungs as he sat upright in bed, and for a few seconds he couldn't separate the dream from reality. His chest rose and fell unevenly while faint sweat clung to the side of his face, and the morning light filtering through the tall windows near his bed spread gold across the dark sheets with an indifference that felt almost insulting.
The silence of his room felt painfully ordinary after the dream.
Muhan pressed a hand against his face and exhaled slowly, waiting for the lingering tension in his chest to loosen its grip.
In his previous life he had never dreamt like this. Dreams had been ordinary things — fragments of the day rearranged badly, gone by morning, leaving nothing behind. Nothing like this. Nothing that left a smell behind. He could still taste the blood at the back of his throat, faint but unmistakable, and he pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth as though that might help him decide whether it was real.
It didn't help.
That was when he noticed the paper beside him, folded neatly on the bedside table. Mi-cha's paper — the one she had dropped outside the academy, the one he had somehow kept carrying with him every day afterward. At first he had told himself he kept it only because throwing it away felt strange, and then days passed and it simply became habit, and now he wasn't entirely sure he could explain it even to himself.
He stared at the handwriting for several quiet seconds before unfolding it again.
"He didn't look tired. He looked lonely."
His fingers paused against the page. The paper still felt warm, and that strange feeling returned immediately — a pulse, deep inside his chest, familiar in a way he hadn't yet found words for. Muhan frowned slightly and pressed his palm against his sternum.
"…Found ya."
The voice from the dream echoed clearly in his mind, and his eyes widened faintly before he caught himself. He folded the paper carefully and set it back down.
Then two knocks cut through the room sharply enough to break his thoughts apart.
Muhan looked toward the door without answering immediately, and a second knock followed before a woman's voice reached him — soft and warm, familiar enough to ease some of the tension still sitting in his shoulders.
"…Come in," he said, standing slowly from the bed and reaching for the loose shirt hanging beside the chair near the window.
The door opened quietly and warm light spilled in first, and then Julian stepped inside carrying a silver tray. Her chestnut-brown hair rested neatly over her shoulders, soft waves catching the sunlight behind her, and her brown eyes lifted toward him almost immediately, carrying the same calm warmth they always held whenever she entered his room. The maid uniform fit her elegantly without feeling excessive, and every movement she made looked natural and practiced from years of experience moving through the Lockhart estate.
"I brought your tea," she said with a small smile.
Muhan looked at her, and then his eyes lowered toward her hand — the scar, a thin pale line running across her skin — and the dream flashed across his mind again. Crimson eyes. Blood-stained fingers. The ache of almost remembering.
"…Muhan?"
He realized he had been staring.
"…Sorry."
"You look exhausted," she said gently, setting the tray down on the table beside him. "Did you sleep at all?"
"…I slept."
"Mm. You also look like you fought a war in your dreams."
Closer than she knew. A faint smile almost appeared on his face — almost — and Julian noticed anyway.
"There it is," she said proudly. "That's a much better expression."
"…You always say weird things this early in the morning."
"And you always look grumpy in the morning."
"I'm not grumpy."
"You absolutely are."
Muhan quietly picked up the tea cup while Julian laughed softly under her breath, and the warmth helped slightly, at least enough to settle his breathing.
Julian leaned lightly against the table near him before speaking again.
"…The Patriarch asked for you."
The cup paused halfway toward Muhan's lips and the atmosphere changed instantly. Julian noticed the shift in his expression without comment.
"…You don't sound excited."
"…Should I be?"
"That depends," she replied carefully. "Did you destroy another training hall recently?"
"That only happened once."
"Twice."
"…The second one barely counts."
Julian covered her mouth to hide a laugh while Muhan sighed quietly and set the cup back down.
"…Did he say why?"
She shook her head. "No. But I heard your cousins arrived this morning."
Muhan's eyes drifted toward the window. "…Great."
"You say that like it's terrible news."
"It probably is." He didn't elaborate and he didn't need to. His cousins had a specific talent for turning family gatherings into competitions nobody had asked to enter, and in his previous life he had learned that lesson expensively. This time around he simply had no patience for the performance.
Julian smiled again and watched him stand from the chair, and for a moment her expression softened in a way she probably didn't intend him to notice.
Every year he changed more, and it wasn't height alone or appearance. There was something unsettling about the way he carried himself sometimes — too composed for someone his age, too aware, like he had already lived through the conversation he was currently having and found it only mildly interesting the second time. Even now, adjusting the collar of his shirt, he looked more like someone preparing for negotiations than a child about to meet family.
Her fingers tightened slightly against the tray.
"…Muhan."
He glanced toward her.
"…Take care of yourself, okay?"
The words came out quieter than she intended, and Muhan blinked once before a faint smile finally appeared.
"…I always do."
The answer somehow worried her more.
Before leaving the room Muhan paused near the doorway, his eyes lowering briefly toward the folded paper still sitting on the bedside table.
Not yet.
The thought arrived privately, directed at nothing and everything at once, and he hadn't realized he'd spoken it aloud until Julian's voice reached him from behind.
"…What was that?"
"Nothing," he said, and stepped into the hallway.
---
The estate remained quiet this early in the morning, sunlight pouring through the enormous glass windows lining the corridors and illuminating polished floors and silver-trimmed walls carrying the Lockhart family crest. Muhan walked calmly through the hall until a familiar voice interrupted him.
"Oh? There's my adorable little brother."
Ae-cha leaned against the wall nearby with her arms folded loosely across her chest. She had changed a lot over the years — the last traces of childhood had already started disappearing from her features, replaced by the effortless beauty that naturally drew attention whenever she entered a room. But her eyes remained the same, bright blue and clear enough to feel dangerous sometimes.
Muhan stared at her for a second longer than intended. In a different life those same eyes had looked at him across a sparring floor seconds before she hit harder than she should have, and he still wasn't entirely sure whether that had been an accident. He suspected not.
Ae-cha immediately grinned. "…Why are you looking at me like that?"
"…No reason."
"Did you finally realize your older sister is beautiful?"
"…Your ego is getting worse."
"It's hard staying humble when I'm obviously right."
She pushed herself off the wall and walked toward him before reaching up to fix his hair, and Muhan frowned immediately.
"…You always do this."
"And you always complain while standing perfectly still."
"…Because you don't stop."
Ae-cha laughed softly while brushing several loose strands away from his eyes, and then her fingers slowed slightly and for one brief moment her expression changed — a strange tension crossing her face before disappearing behind another playful smile.
"There," she said softly. "Now you look presentable."
"I looked fine before."
"You looked half-dead before."
"Close enough."
Ae-cha stared at him quietly after that answer, and the joke felt too casual, too easy, and Muhan noticed her expression and looked away first.
"…I don't know why Father called me."
"He barely calls anyone personally," Ae-cha replied, falling into step beside him down the hallway. "Maybe it really is because the cousins arrived."
"…I forgot they were coming today."
"You forgot because you ignore most family events."
"They're exhausting."
"That sounds exactly like something an old man would say."
Muhan shoved his hands into his pockets. "…Maybe I am an old man."
Ae-cha laughed immediately. "You're twelve."
"You say that like it disproves anything."
They continued through the massive corridor together while servants moved quietly through the estate in the distance, and for a while neither of them spoke. Then Ae-cha glanced toward him again with an expression he recognized as her serious one, the one she used when she had been carrying something for a while and had finally decided to say it.
"…You've been acting stranger lately."
"That's impressive considering you already thought I was strange."
"I'm serious." Her voice softened. "You disappear for hours. You barely sleep. Sometimes you look at people like you already know what they're about to say."
Muhan stayed quiet, and there were three things he almost said in that moment. He chose none of them.
Ae-cha slowed her steps. "…And sometimes," she continued carefully, "you look lonely even when everyone's around you."
That made him look at her, and for the first time since the conversation started the teasing had disappeared from her face completely. Muhan felt something tighten painfully in his chest and Mi-cha's paper flashed through his mind again — he looked tired, he looked lonely — and he almost said: I know. She had told him something like that once, years from now, in a version of this hallway that no longer existed, and he had dismissed it then and regretted it later.
He stopped himself.
"…You're overthinking," he said quietly.
"…Maybe." But she didn't sound convinced.
Eventually they reached the enormous doors leading toward the Patriarch's chamber, and the atmosphere near the entrance felt noticeably heavier than the rest of the estate. Ae-cha stopped walking and Muhan stared at the doors in silence, and the last time he had stood here he was ten years old and bleeding. Ae-cha had hit harder than she should have during sparring, and he had walked these same corridors with blood on his chin and something bruised deeper than his face. The Patriarch hadn't said a word about the blood — he had simply looked at him, then looked back at his console, and told him to stand up straight. Muhan had thought then that it was the coldest thing a person could do, and he understood it differently now, though understanding something didn't always make it easier to stand in front of it again.
"…Muhan."
"…Hm?"
"…Try not to upset Father today." There was real hesitation in her voice now, the kind that didn't come from teasing.
Muhan looked at her for a long moment before smiling faintly. "…I'll try my best."
"That answer makes me nervous."
"It should."
"You're impossible," Ae-cha groaned, and a small laugh escaped him before he finally turned toward the chamber doors and closed his hand around the handle.
And for some reason he couldn't name — the kind of reason that lived below thought, below instinct, in whatever place the dream had come from — the memory of crimson eyes returned, along with the smell of old blood, along with the particular ache of something almost remembered.
Almost.