Luca, please don't die.
I need you.
I need you more than ever.
What am I supposed to do?
If you feel me inside you...
Please.
Please.
Don't give up.
"LUCA!"
"You hear me, Luca!"
I slammed my fists against the door.
I could still see him through the crack—barely. His body trembled, hanging on by threads.
If only I could do something.
Anything.
All I could hear now was the soft patter of my tears hitting the cold, wet floor.
And then...
Something stirred.
Not from the room—
From inside me.
A whisper. Quiet and hollow. Not a voice, not a thought—
Just a feeling.
And then: Nothing.
I couldn't feel Luca anymore.
I stared through the crack.
He wasn't moving.
"Luca!" I screamed again, too terrified to know the truth.
"That's enough," Qassi commanded. "The tether is gone—and so is this traitor."
No.
No, no, no.
Luca isn't dead.
He can't be.
He wouldn't leave me.
"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, QASSI! IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!"
He didn't flinch. Just let out a sigh—bored, unimpressed.
"What will you do?" he asked as he spoke to a stray animal. "You're nothing but a powerless stillkin. You're lucky we let you witness the death of your only friend."
I sat there in silence.
Nothing I could do could bring him back.
He was gone. Everyone—and everything—I had ever known was gone.
I don't remember how long I sat there.
Just that when the door opened again, I didn't look up.
Hands lifted me. I didn't fight.
A voice said something about respect.
Another murmured something about obedience.
And then—
I was thrown through another door
The world twisted. My breath vanished.
And when I landed, it was face-first in mud.
In front of a manor.
I lay there for what felt like days.
The voices in my head wouldn't stop.
Whispers. Screams. Echoes.
Luca's name, over and over, like my brain was chewing on itself.
Then a voice cut through.
Not from inside.
From someone else.
The language was foreign.
Not just unfamiliar—but wrong, like it didn't belong in my ears.
I couldn't trace it. Couldn't guess at it.
Couldn't escape it.
More voices followed.
They swarmed around me like flies.
Some were filled with anger.
Some with curiosity.
Some with something worse: disgust.
And before I could process it, they lifted me by the shoulders—
Carried me like garbage. Like I weighed nothing.
They dumped me in more mud beside a stable, then doused me with cold water.
It startled me. Woke something up.
For the first time, I blinked like I was alive.
I looked around.
The world didn't match the pain in my chest.
It was… peaceful.
Stables. Workers. Maids.
Stone roads that wove through well-kept gardens and unfamiliar towers.
A small city, self-contained. Functioning. Like none of us were prisoners.
They lifted me again.
They were speaking to me—I knew that much.
But I didn't understand the words.
And I didn't want to.
Part of me wished they'd throw me in a well and forget I existed.
Let time starve me, or madness take me.
It would've been easier than whatever this was.
Instead, they dragged me forward toward the most prominent building—
A towering manor set at the city's heart.
This was the home of the ones I now belonged to.
They dragged me into a room and threw me down—
Hard.
The polished wooden floor hit my ribs like stone.
I looked up.
There was a desk—
Old. Heavy. The kind you'd find in a history book.
It didn't belong to this century.
Behind it, a man sat in silence.
At first, I couldn't make out his face—only the glint off his bald head, framed by bright sunlight behind him.
Then he spoke.
Not in words I understood,
but the tone was clear.
Harsh.
Commanding.
Like steel wrapped in spit.
I tried to stand—
But my legs buckled beneath me.
The floor greeted me again.
As I struggled to rise,
The man stood slowly.
He didn't rush.
He didn't raise his voice.
He just watched me.
His eyes were cold.
Not angry—just empty.
The kind of emptiness that comes from seeing too much death
and not enough reason to care anymore.
He started speaking again.
The words meant nothing to me, but his gestures made it clear—he expected obedience.
He ordered me like I should understand.
Like I belonged here.
Then he said a word I recognized.
"Stillkin."
The sound of it pulled something sharp from my chest.
Dragged me right back to that house. To that chair. To Luca.
They'd called me that before.
Not him. Not Luca. Just me.
Like it didn't mean "boy."
It didn't mean "servant."
It didn't mean anything but wrong.
It was the kind of word that didn't need to be translated.
It could have meant outsider.
Maybe less-than-human.
But I knew what it felt like.
It felt like branding.
Then they grabbed me again—
Pulled me from the room like I was weightless.
My feet scraped every stair on the way down.
Each one a reminder: you don't belong here.
It felt like forever before we stopped.
They threw me into a cellar.
Cold. Damp.
The only light came from the stairwell above, fading fast.
It was huge.
And crowded.
Clothes were strung up like rags on a drying line.
Bedrolls stuffed with hay and feathers were scattered across the floor like trash nests.
No names. No privacy. No dignity.
This was where the garbage slept.
And now—I was part of it.
They dumped me on a pile of hay and left without a word.
Just a grunt. Maybe a curse.
I didn't care.
I lay there, staring at nothing, until everything crashed into me.
Luca. The chair. The mask. The pain.
All of it.
Tears came. Quiet. Uninvited.
I didn't stop them.
I couldn't.
I whimpered into the straw until sleep took me—
And for a while, the pain slipped away.
The sky was blue.
Not the bruised gray from before, not the suffocating dark of the cellar—
But bright.
Open.
I was standing on the hill again.
The one behind the Altair house.
The wind was soft. The grass swayed.
Everything was still.
And Luca was there.