> đľ Recommended Listening:
"Experience" â Ludovico Einaudi
(for haunting revelations and slow, creeping memory)
---
Kyrell stood very still.
Damien's words echoed like a bell in a silent cathedral: You're changing, aren't you?
His body felt wrongâtoo light and too heavy at once. The ache in his chest wasn't just longing now. It was need. Something dark and old coiling beneath his skin.
"You knew this would happen," Kyrell said quietly, eyes fixed on Damien.
"I suspected," Damien admitted. "But I wanted to see when you would."
"See what?"
"That Lucian didn't just find you," Damien said. "He made you forget."
Kyrell's throat went dry.
"Why would heâ?"
"Because some truths are poison," Damien murmured. "Especially the ones you shared under moonlight. And fire."
---
Lucian descended the stone stairs like a phantom, his robes whispering behind him.
Something was wrong.
Damien had entered the castle without permission.
No one had sounded the alarm.
WorseâLucian could feel the boy slipping away from him. Not physically. Emotionally. That fragile thread of trust was unraveling.
And the name Damien had begun to taste like rust on his tongue.
---
Damien walked past the library door and beckoned Kyrell to follow. "Come," he said. "Let's see what he buried."
The corridor narrowed, lined with mirrors long since veiled in cloth. One had been torn openâaccidentally or by force.
Kyrell saw his reflection.
But not his current self.
In that mirror: blood at the corners of his mouth. Firelight flickering across pale, sweat-soaked skin. Lucian's voice whispering somethingâsomething desperateâand a flash of teeth, too sharp for any human.
He stumbled backward.
"Whatâwhat is this?"
Damien didn't answer. Instead, he held out a silver chain.
A pendant.
Burnt. Cracked.
Kyrell reached out instinctively. The moment his fingers closed around it, the room around him changed.
---
A memory.
He stood in a burning village.
Not a boy. A hunter.
In his hands: ash-covered blades.
At his feet: Lucian, kneeling.
Bleeding.
No. Not Lucian.
A man who looked like himâsame face, but feral. Wild. Cornered.
And Kyrell had hesitated.
Not because of fear.
Because of recognition.
They had fought once before.
They had kissed once before.
And the memory ended with fire consuming them both.
---
He gasped, falling against the wall.
Damien caught him.
"Now you understand," Damien whispered.
"I⌠I killed him."
"No," Damien said gently. "You chose him. And that choice nearly ended you both."
Kyrell's fingers trembled on the chain. "Lucian wiped it. All of it. He didn't want me to remember."
"Because if you did," Damien said, "you might not forgive him for what came next."
---
Elsewhere, Lucian fell to one knee, clutching his chest.
The bond was breaking.
He had tried to delay it.
But now that Kyrell was rememberingâŚ
The truth could no longer sleep.
Not in either of them.
---