The mansion felt different at night.
During the day, there was movement. Servants passing by, doors opening, footsteps echoing through the wide corridors. At night, when everything grew quiet, the silence gained weight. It was not emptiness. It was too much presence of space.
I was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor lit only by the faint light coming from the window. The others were sleeping. At least I thought they were. By that point, I had already learned that silence did not always mean rest.
I stood up without making noise and walked into the hallway. My footsteps sounded strange on that overly clean floor. Every sound seemed amplified, as if the house were watching me.
I went down the stairs and into the main room. The torches were out. Only the moonlight entered through the tall windows, drawing long shadows across the walls.
I sat on the sofa.
That was where the mind started running without control.
Until recently, my nights were filled with simple worries. Whether I would have food the next day. Whether a creditor would show up. Whether the next mission would go wrong. Now, those worries had been replaced by much larger ones.
Rank S. Nobility. A name that was beginning to circulate.
And three women who had chosen to stay by my side not out of necessity, but out of will.
"You're going to end up with wrinkles," a calm voice said.
I raised my eyes. Liriel was standing near the stairs, wearing only light clothes. Her pale hair reflected the moonlight.
"I couldn't sleep," I replied.
She approached and sat beside me. "I figured."
We stayed in silence for a few seconds.
"This house bothers you," she said.
"It reminds me all the time that this was not the plan."
"You never had a plan," she replied gently.
I smiled slightly. "Fair."
She placed her hand over mine. "You feel like you don't deserve this."
It wasn't a question.
"Maybe," I admitted. "Maybe I'm just waiting for the moment when all of this will be taken away."
Liriel looked ahead, into the emptiness of the room. "Nothing worth having comes without risk."
Light footsteps announced Elara's arrival. She stopped near the door, observing the scene.
"I knew I would find you here," she said. "You always disappear when you start thinking too much."
"I'm trying to learn how to stop," I replied.
She sat on the arm of the sofa. "Then why aren't you in bed?"
Before I could answer, Vespera appeared in the hallway. She said nothing. She simply leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watchful.
"You're all awake," I murmured.
"Hard to sleep in a place like this," Vespera replied. "Too open."
I sighed. "I don't know if I can sustain this. The house. The title. What they expect from me."
Elara tilted her head. "No one here is with you because of that."
"But the world is."
Liriel squeezed my hand lightly. "The world always charges. The difference now is that you can choose what you pay."
We stayed there for a while, without hurry. Without the need to fill the silence with useless words.
"When I arrived in this world," I began, "I just wanted to survive. Now it feels like surviving became the easy part."
Vespera nodded. "Now comes the complicated part."
"And what is that?" I asked.
"Living with what you have achieved," she replied.
We returned to the bedroom some time later. No final conversation. No clear conclusion.
I lay down again, now with the three of them around me. The silence of the mansion felt less heavy like that. More contained.
As sleep finally came, I thought about how that enormous place, full of empty spaces, only seemed livable when we were together.
Maybe the mansion was not what mattered.
Maybe it was who filled the silence.
And with that thought, I let the night carry me, knowing that, despite everything, I was no longer alone in that world.