Projo's hands moved mechanically, scrubbing the rough-spun shirt and tunic in the frigid, salt-dark water of the cove. The black-and-green stains of goblin blood swirled with the deeper red of his own, and he worked them into submission with the same grim rhythm he had used at the forge for years. Cold bit at his skin, sharp and relentless, but he hardly noticed.
Every movement carried the weight of the day—the kills, the fear, their argument. He had found a tangible, solid source of information to teach him about the curse that had plagued him for half of his life, and she was a conundrum. The key to understanding himself was human connection, something she seemed willfully intent on keeping herself away from.
The town hummed faintly behind him. Lanterns flickered across Shattercoast, voices drifting from taverns and the docks, a shanty choir singing over the waves. Projo ignored it all. There was only the water, the blood, the cold, and the stubborn ache that had settled into his bones.
He scrubbed until his knuckles were raw and the fabric surrendered its stains to the tide. Wringing the wet cloth with a twist that made his forearms tremble, he pulled the damp shirt back over his head. It clung to him like a cold, miserable shroud.
The tower on the cliff loomed in his mind—there was nowhere else to go. She held not only the answers to the strange magic inside him, but also a free place to sleep, even if it was uncomfortable. Every copper saved was one step closer to being out of Bram's debt.
He was tied to the tower on the cliff, to the wounded, stubborn researcher and the monstrous secret they now shared. With a heavy sigh that turned to steam in the cold air, Projo turned and began the long walk back.
----
The heavy door creaked open and thudded shut behind him.
Falira sat right where he had left her, stiff in the high-backed chair. A fresh bandage covered her side and a thick, open book rested in her lap, though her eyes weren't on the page. They snapped up to meet his as he entered, her expression a mask of cold neutrality.
Projo ignored her gaze, walking past the table and the remnants of their meal to his corner by the wall.
He unbuckled his sword belt, pulled off his damp tunic, and laid them flat on the stone. The chill raised goosebumps on his bare skin. Stripped to his trousers, he settled on the musty bedroll, back to her, staring at the curved stone wall. Every soft bubble from the cauldron, every distant crash of waves, felt unnaturally loud. He could feel her eyes on him, studying, analyzing.
Fine. Let her study.
He closed his eyes, the anger a cold, hard knot in his stomach. He had said his piece. The next move was hers. If she chose to let the silence fester, then they would sleep in it, and wake to it, and he would let the anger carry him until she finally acknowledged he was more than just a subject in her twisted experiment.
The silence in the tower stretched for what felt like an hour, thick and cold. Projo remained with his back to her, the dampness from his clothes seeping into the bedroll beneath him. He was committed to the bitter quiet.
A soft rustle of pages turning was the first sound. Then her voice, low and clinical, said, "The cold is an inefficient way to dry clothing. Especially worn clothing. It invites sickness."
Projo didn't move. The observation was so purely her that it almost made him laugh. Of course that's what she would say.
Another long silence passed. He heard her shift in the chair, a soft groan of wood under her weight.
"You mentioned a desire to read," she said hesitantly. "The general collection is open to you—the books on alchemy, history, basic elemental theory. They may provide context. Master Eldrin's personal codices and the restricted texts on the upper shelves are not to be touched."
She paused, and he could almost feel her choosing her next words with the care of an alchemist measuring poison.
"My solitude is not... an emotional choice. It is a methodological one. My work requires precision. Focus. Uncontaminated data." She took a shaky breath. "Your outburst... it was an uncontrolled variable. But it provided a new data point."
Projo slowly turned his head, just enough to see her silhouette.
"The 'human connection' you spoke of," she said quietly. "It seems to be the primary catalyst for all your anomalous abilities. Therefore, logically, it must be the primary focus of my research."
Projo looked at her with a distant gaze, holding it for a while, then finally let his eyes drift to the ceiling. "Do you ever regret your… methodological choice?"
He knew how that felt. Intentionally isolating, taking the pain of being lonely for the 'greater good.'
It didn't make the pain go away.
Her hands clenched the book in her lap, and her eyes dropped to a safe harbor on the shelf.
When she finally spoke, her voice was different. The sharp, clinical edge was gone, replaced by a low, brittle tone, as if she were reciting a passage she had memorized to convince herself. "Regret is an emotional response to a suboptimal outcome. It implies a miscalculation."
She took a slow, shaky breath. "The pursuit of knowledge... requires certain sacrifices. Emotional connections are a significant expenditure of energy and time better allocated to research."
Her shoulders seemed to slump by a fraction.
"My current situation is not a miscalculation. It is necessary. Optimal."
She didn't look back at him. The fortress was still standing, but for the first time, Projo could hear the lonely echo from within its walls.
Projo's voice was quiet but firm. "And what is your objective, Falira?"
When her eyes returned to his, the analytical mask cracked, then dissolved, revealing the exhausted, lonely woman inside the tower.
"When I was a girl," she began, voice low, almost lost to the bubbling cauldron, "I found one of Master Eldrin's old primers. It described magic not as a force to be wielded, but as a language. The grammar of reality."
She leaned forward, wincing. "Most mages, they learn a few words, casting spells for 'Fire'. 'Shield'. 'Light'. They shout them and the world obeys, but they don't understand why. They're like children babbling. My objective... is to learn to read it. To understand the principles that bind a star together and hold a soul in a body. To see the world not as it is, but as the raw, beautiful, terrifying equation it was written to be."
She collapsed back into her chair, spent. The life's work of her existence laid bare among piles of chicken bones and the ghost of a dead mercenary.
Projo eyed her carefully, fully taking in the weight of her admission. He stood finally and walked over to her, bare-chested, corded with muscle from years at the forge.
He looked down at her over the bridge of his nose, but his expression was kind. "Do you wish to understand the principles of what I am?"
Her head snapped up.
Fear flickered briefly in her eyes, but it was overtaken by the hunger of a scholar faced with a living miracle. Her gaze dropped for a fraction of a second, taking in his bare torso, the lean muscle, and the smooth, unblemished skin where a fatal dagger wound had been only days ago.
She swallowed. The book lay forgotten in her lap.
"To understand the principles..." she whispered, voice trembling, awe-struck. "Yes. It would be the most important research of my life."
Projo smiled at her.
He crouched down, elbows on his knees, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. "It took a lot for you to admit that," he said calmly, voice deep and smooth.
He saw the turmoil in her eyes, the war between the terrified woman and the insatiable scholar. He refused to let her retreat behind her walls. "There is more to human connection than what might happen if our skin touches, Falira."
He held a hand out, palm up, as if asking her to place her own hand in it. But instead, he said, "Tell me what your favorite book is. I will read that one first."
Projo watched as the terror drained from Falira's face, and a single, shaky breath escaped her lips, a sound of a pressure valve being released.
She stared at his outstretched hand, then to his face, seeing him not as a monster but as a man offering to learn her language. She swallowed again, her gaze drifting to a high shelf, to a single, unassuming volume bound in dark blue leather, its spine worn smooth from countless readings.
"The Poetics of Dust and Starlight," she said, her eyes still on the book. "It's... it's about the underlying patterns. The connections between things that are not supposed to be connected."
She finally looked back at him, and in her eyes, Projo saw the first, tentative flicker of something new. It wasn't trust, not yet. But it was a start.
"Good," Projo stood with a genuine smile. He looked to the tome and grabbed the bookshelf ladder, repositioning it so he could retrieve the book. As he was climbing back down, book in hand, he said, "There's something you should know about me. A 'data point,' if you will, in regards to the obvious fear you have about us touching."
He reached the floor and moved to sit in the chair across from her. "I went ten years without touching anybody. All through adolescence." He looked sternly at her for a moment. "I can control myself."
He cracked the tome open and let his eyes fall to the first page. "If we ever touch, Falira. It will be because you chose to touch me. Not the other way around."
Projo's final words fell into the quiet of the tower, as solid and definite as a hammer striking an anvil. The promise was an anchor in a sea of terrifying variables, and the weight of it settled over the room, changing the very air they breathed.
Falira sat perfectly still in her chair.
Slowly, wincing from the pain in her side, she leaned back. The rigid, defensive posture she had held for hours seemed to soften, her shoulders slumping with a profound, bone-deep weariness.
She said nothing.
The silence that followed was not angry or awkward. It was the quiet of a treaty being signed, of new terms being accepted.
The researcher had her subject.
But more than that: the woman, who had been hiding in her fortress of knowledge, was no longer entirely alone.
----
Early Morning
Thorn's Day
20th of Avril, Year 824 of the Silent Age
----
PROJO'S QUEST LOG:
+ [ONGOING] Understanding the Curse: Work with Falira to uncover the nature of your powers.
+ Repay Bram (Owe 24 Gold)
+ Return to Mira
PROJO'S INVENTORY:
+ Money: 15 Gold, 16 Silver, 52 Copper
- (Previous: 15G 20S 52C - 4S for Chicken)
+ Weapons: Iron Longsword, Gideon's Iron Dagger
+ Armor: Crude Leather Cuirass
+ Supplies:
- 1 Day's Worth of Trail Rations
- Flint & Steel
----
The 20th of Avril began with the quiet scratching of a quill on parchment. Projo stirred on his bedroll and found Falira already awake, a thick leather-bound journal open in her lap. She watched him as he blinked himself into the day, and the instant their eyes met, her quill moved—recording, dissecting, observing.
The sharp anger from last night had burned out. What lingered was a weary awkwardness. Projo said nothing, just reached for The Poetics of Dust and Starlight and settled against the wall.
The hours stretched into a strange rhythm. He lost himself in the dense, fascinating text: a universe described not as objects, but as patterns—the tide mirroring the moon's pull, the spiral of a shell echoing the arm of a storm. Every so often he glanced up to find Falira watching him, her quill hovering. She moved through the tower in stiff, limping circles, her hand always near her bandaged ribs. When she stretched for a book or bent to stoke the fire, a hiss of pain escaped despite her best effort to smother it.
By afternoon, the silence weighed heavy enough to break.
"The author argues starlight is just ancient dust remembering it used to be a sun," Projo said, frowning at the page. "What does that mean?"
Falira's head snapped up, eyes brightening with real excitement. "It's a metaphor for potentiality and memory," she explained, the words tumbling out of her. "It posits that matter isn't inert, but that it retains a kind of memory of its previous states. The potential for a star exists within every speck of dust..."
They talked for hours. Projo, with his blacksmith's mind, saw the patterns in the physical world—in the way steel remembered the hammer, in the way wood grain told the story of a tree's life. Falira reached higher, seeing equations in the cosmos itself. For the first time, they weren't a subject and a researcher; they were just two people sharing an idea. But Projo never missed the way her quill would occasionally dip to her journal, capturing a turn of phrase or a reaction.
As daylight dimmed, Falira tried to stand and faltered with a grimace. Projo suddenly noticed the ache in his stomach had returned, sharp and insistent.
"I'm going to town," he said, pushing himself to his feet.
In town, Projo found Silas Blackwood overseeing the loading of new cargo into his cart—barrels of salted fish and crates of sea-worn salvage.
"Smith!" the merchant called out. "Good to see you're still in one piece. We'll be heading back to Greatbridge in two days' time, if you're looking for work."
Projo gave a curt nod. "I'll think on it."
From there, he made for the cookhouse. This time he bought two steaming fish pies, their flaky crusts oozing savory warmth. He paid the vendor three silver pieces, the transaction feeling less monumental than the day before, almost routine.
When he returned, the tower felt different. The oppressive tension had eased, replaced by a quiet, scholarly clutter. They ate at the table in silence, but it was a companionable quiet. Projo found himself watching the way her eyes lit up when she explained a difficult concept, the way her hands moved as she described the shape of a constellation.
The anger was gone. The fear still lingered, but only faintly, like a shadow in the corners of the room. Later, stretched out on his bedroll, he watched her at her desk, scribbling furiously by the glow of a crystal. She was still studying him, always studying. But for the first time, it didn't feel like he was a monster in a cage.
It felt like they were starting to read the same book.