"Silence!" Azariah snapped, his voice sharp and resolute, cutting through the silence of the room—only for that silence to thicken even further after the whisper. It felt like trying to swat away a mosquito buzzing inside his own skull.
The voice merely let out a soft chuckle, a faint vibration spreading through his cranium.
[Do you truly want me to be silent, my dear?] the voice whispered, its melodious tone now laced with an infuriating playfulness.
[Besides me, who else would bother talking to you in this tower? Who would willingly keep company with a Princess exiled within her own private prison?]
Azariah closed his eyes, suppressing a sigh that nearly escaped his lips.
"Medeia," he said, softer this time, though still firm. "Let me think."
Medeia. That was the name the entity in his head had given him when he asked about it. Whether it was her real name or not hardly mattered.
In truth, Azariah did not even know whether the voice truly belonged to a woman, or was merely an illusion conjured by his mind to stave off loneliness, or perhaps a demon. He was not certain what Medeia truly was.
The voice had first appeared about three years ago, immediately after he opened a strange book that had been found among his weekly deliveries of reading material. It was thin, bound in black animal hide, its pages written in ink that smelled of ash and salt.
After he finished reading it, the book suddenly ignited and burned into black dust in his hands. Stranger still, the contents of the book vanished entirely from his memory. All that remained was a lingering dizziness, a vague fear, and a new voice in his head.
At the time, Azariah was certain he had gone mad. Years of solitary confinement in this lightless room, with only books for company, must have eroded his mind. Perhaps Medeia was nothing more than a manifestation of his acute loneliness.
But then Azariah began to realize that Medeia knew things he did not.
She could speak of histories unrecorded in the royal library, of myths belonging to tribes long extinct, of matters that seemed to exist only in the distant past. That was what made him hesitate—was this truly madness, or something else?
In an effort to test his own sanity, Azariah slipped those questions into his weekly reading requests, and what Medeia told him often proved to exist within rare references delivered later.
He had once read that in mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, voices usually only repeat or distort things the sufferer already knows. The voice in his head did not do that. It provided new information.
Still, Azariah could never be one hundred percent certain. After all, did the insane ever realize they were insane? Yet in the end, there was one thing he could admit: thanks to Medeia's presence, the loneliness that had nearly killed him had eased.
The anxiety and dark thoughts lurking in the corners of this room found an outlet. By talking, arguing, even quarrelling with Medeia, Azariah felt that his sanity—or the illusion of it—was preserved.
Medeia was a saving snare. The only companion in this prison called a tower.
Azariah turned his gaze away from the mirror, surveying the cramped space of his room.
The dim glow of an oil lamp danced across the stone walls, animating the shadows of the overstuffed bookshelves. Books were everywhere. Not only did they fill the shelves lining the walls, they were piled across the floor like paper stalagmites, forming narrow corridors amid a sea of knowledge.
Some stacks nearly reached his waist. Almost every week, a servant delivered a new book for his amusement. Over nine years, those weekly offerings had transformed into this rather pitiful private library.
Occasionally, when his longing for the outside world or his curiosity became unbearable, he would slip a question to the servant. Days later, alongside the weekly book, there would be a letter containing brief reports of worldly events or gossip among the nobility. That was how he remained connected to the outside world.
In this dark, cold tower, his only entertainment and his only windows were books, letters, and conversations with Medeia.
Medeia spoke again, her voice now like someone patiently tapping their fingers on a table.
[How long are you going to keep thinking, my dear? How much longer? A year? Five years? Another nine?]
Her whisper was gentle, yet piercing.
[My poor darling, you know your family no longer cares about you. I'm the only one who does.]
The words struck Azariah like icy needles driven between his ribs.
It was true. For nine years he had been confined to this tower, and not once had his family visited him—not his father, not his mother, not his brothers or sisters. It was as though they had forgotten he existed.
Azariah closed his eyes for a moment, restraining the turmoil in his chest.
"One more week," he finally said. "In one week, I'll prepare my heart… and decide."
[Oh!] Medeia's voice brightened, filled with genuine—or expertly feigned—delight.
[Wonderful. At last! I thought you might wait for a handsome prince on a white horse, or a gallant knight, to come rescue our beautiful Princess from her cursed tower.]
Being called "Princess" made Azariah's pale cheeks flush with a mix of embarrassment and irritation.
"If you had a body," he growled sincerely, "I would have punched you already."
Medeia seemed to ignore his empty threat. Her voice turned contemplative, laced with mockery.
[Hmm… princes and knights are a bit cliché, aren't they? Maybe… a thief would suit better? A clever thief who climbs walls, slips in through the window, and… steals your heart?]
"Medeia! Enough!" Azariah shouted, his voice this time brimming with unbearable embarrassment. It echoed among the piles of books, making the shadows on the walls seem to shudder.
From within his mind came a soft laugh, like the distant chime of tiny bells.
A short while later, a knock sounded from the thick wooden door on the side of the room.