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Chapter Text

Castorice, the Maiden of Death, had lived a thousand years. A breathless, aching span of time where she had walked through the world like a ghost draped in skin. No one could touch her. No one could hold her. The brush of her presence alone, if you lacked golden blood, was enough to make your heart stutter—a whisper of death curling beneath your ribs. And if she ever touched another with her bare hands, they would die.

She had not touched anyone since she was thirteen.

Even kindness could not pass through skin.

Lady Aglaea, warm and radiant as love itself, had found her first—curled up in the ruins of Aidonia, that ancient land so devoured by silence that even its gods had stopped speaking. She had knelt beside Castorice with tears in her eyes and had not reached out. She knew better. The demigod of romance was wise like that. 

She smiled through the ache.

Later came Tribbie, one of the three remaining fragments of the ancient demigod Tribios. Once, there had been a thousand of them—children shaped like stars, laughter and farewell given form. Now, only three fragments remained: Tribbie, Trianne, and Trinnon. And of them, it was Tribbie who had chosen her.

“Death is a kind of passage,” the little god had said, looking up at Castorice with eyes that never blinked. “So you belong with us.”

They had taken her into Okhema, the City of Echoes, where no one spoke without meaning. They built her a room where no one could enter, and a garden of memory that only bloomed under her footsteps. And even though they could not touch her—could not brush a knuckle against her cheek, or twine fingers with hers—still, they stayed.

Still, they loved her.

But there were days, long and quiet, where Castorice would press her gloved hand against the glass of her window and wonder what warmth felt like. Wonder if kindness, if love, was supposed to burn or cradle.

They could not touch her.

But they tried, every day, in the ways that did not kill.

Castorice had learned, long ago, to stay away. From people. From cities. From children whose laughter might make her forget herself. From lovers whose warmth could end her life. She lived like a myth folded into the architecture of Okhema—seen, pitied, but untouched.

She liked it that way. Or so she told herself.

For centuries, she haunted only the quiet corners of the city, speaking to no one unless she had to. She watched generations rise and fall like tides. Her name appeared in ballads, in footnotes, and sometimes on warning signs. Never on letters. Never in anyone’s mouth with fondness.

Until Phainon arrived.

Phainon, the prophesied Deliverer. A snow-haired catastrophe with the eyes of the open sky and the subtlety of a parade. He crashed into Okhema like a sunrise that didn’t know how to end. His voice was too loud, his laughter too bright, and he had no formal education to speak of—only the stubborn conviction that he could learn anything if he had a friend to sit beside him.

She had tried to ignore him.

She had tried very hard.

But Phainon did not believe in being ignored. He brought her lunch and conversation and riddles. He nicknamed her “Lady Winterbones” until she snapped and corrected him, and then he only smiled wider and said her real name like it was something precious. He never tried to touch her. But he stayed.

Aglaea, ever wise and ever scheming, watched the strange friendship unfold and saw the glimmer of something she could not name. So when she made arrangements to send Phainon to the Grove of Epiphany—Okhema’s twin city, a place of formal learning and towering thought—she sent Castorice with him.

“She needs to be among people,” Aglaea told Tribbie, who shrugged and threw a tiny pebble at her forehead.

“She’ll hate it,” Tribbie said.

“She’ll survive it,” Aglaea replied.

Perhaps, in her divine heart, Aglaea hoped they would be assigned to the School of Venerationisms—an old, orderly branch of thought devoted to the worship of higher concepts. It was stable. Reverent. Predictable.

Instead, by some cosmic joke—or miracle—Phainon was assigned to the School of Nousporism.

Castorice, who had researched thoroughly to find the least social, most unapproachable, most isolated intellectual program in the entire Grove, had already enrolled herself there.

She didn’t know, then, that Nousporism was not what it claimed to be. That its halls were quiet not because of reverence but because of rebellion. That its founder was a man Aglaea cursed by name at least once a week—a mortal scholar, a blasphemor, and Okhema’s greatest headache.

His name was Anaxagoras.

And he would change everything.

Castorice thought it was funny , at first.

Phainon, ever the embodiment of sunshine and stubborn optimism, had turned to the quiet, delicate man at the front of the classroom with a friendly grin and a casual, “Hey, are you new here too?”

Lord Anaxa—tiny, immaculately dressed in linen and loose silks that shimmered faintly with enchantment—had blinked once, tucked a pencil behind his ear, and introduced himself with perfect

politeness: “Anaxagoras. Your professor.”

Phainon’s mouth had opened and then failed to close for a solid minute. Castorice, watching him flounder like a fish on dry land, had laughed. Really laughed. Not the breathless amusement she sometimes faked to seem normal, but a sound from deep within her chest, unused for centuries.

It wasn’t the last time she laughed, either.

Phainon’s hapless, hopeless crush bloomed almost instantly. He brought Anaxa extra notebooks (“in case you need to, you know, note more things ”), complimented his handwriting (“how is it so neat ?”), and once offered to carry his books—only to trip and knock over three chairs and one visiting sage in the process. Castorice observed all this from her corner of the classroom, deadpan and increasingly entertained.

Professor Anaxa never scolded. He merely tilted his head and said, “Try not to fracture the laws of motion in my classroom again, please.”

And then there was his reputation. Everyone in the Grove whispered about him.

A madman. A blasphemor. A scholar who scoffed at Titans and dared to say that the divine could err.

Castorice wouldn’t say they were wrong. After all, on their first day of Soul Physics , Anaxa had paused mid-lecture, stared blankly into space, muttered “Wait—what if time and perception are both emergent phenomena?” and proceeded to fill three entire boards with equations before walking out, laughing like a man who had just remembered the punchline of a decades-old joke.

But he came back the next day. With pastries. And handmade syllabi.

Beneath the madness, Castorice saw something else.

He believed in people more than he believed in Titans. He believed in effort . In questions with no answers. In the souls of his students, their heartbreaks, their strange magics, their unspoken fears. And more than anything, he was kind.

Always kind.

He never pushed her to speak aloud, but he always invited her to. He gave her assignments that let her build and tinker, rather than present. He left small gifts on her desk—alchemical baubles that shimmered with starlight, rare stones etched with forgotten prayers, flasks of iridescent liquid that whispered when shaken.

Once, she found a plush creature stitched from velvet and lace, its eyes mismatched buttons, its body shaped like a six-legged fox with wings. There was no note, only a smile from Anaxa when she glanced his way. (And if she left him a sachet of bandaids after seeing the wounds on his finger, well, that was between the two of them)

She hadn’t meant to keep any of it.

But her shelf, by semester’s end, was full.

And though she never dared get close, never forgot what she was, she sometimes found herself listening more closely to his footsteps. To the sound of his chalk against the board. To the way his eyes lit up when someone interrupted him with a question.

Maybe, Castorice thought, watching him from her corner seat with gloved hands folded carefully in her lap—

Maybe he didn’t believe in Titans because he wasn’t afraid of them.

Maybe he believed in something real.

It was raining, softly. Mist threaded through the marble arches of the Grove of Epiphany, clinging to the stone like breath that never quite left. Most students had fled to the dormitories, the lecture halls, the observatory’s warmth.

But Castorice stood alone in the covered walkway outside the Nousporism wing, unmoving. Rain speckled the edges of her hood, and her gloves—woven of silk treated with four layers of protective sigils—felt too heavy on her fingers.

She’d left the symposium before it ended.

She hadn’t spoken a word all day.

There were centuries like this, tucked between brighter hours. Moments when the knowledge of her own skin pressed against her like chains. Castorice, Maiden of Death. Castorice, the girl who could end a life with a brush of her fingers.

No one had ever touched her and lived.

And because of that, she had forgotten what it was to be held .

She might have stayed there until dusk—motionless, waiting for the ache to dull—if not for the familiar voice that drifted through the fog.

“Miss Castorice.”

She stiffened. She turned.

Professor Anaxagoras stood a few paces away, umbrella in hand, robes slightly damp at the hem. His expression was neutral—so carefully neutral it almost felt like kindness, restrained.

“I noticed you didn’t return after the break,” he said. “Was my ramble on soul-states that tedious?”

She blinked. “…No. I just needed—air.”

He nodded once. “Air is good. As long as you’re breathing it.”

She turned away. “You shouldn’t come closer.”

“Because you might kill me?” he asked softly.

She flinched.

“I wouldn’t,” she said, voice brittle. “I don’t— want to.”

“I know,” Anaxa replied. “Which is exactly why you won’t.”

She stared at him.

“You’re not dangerous because you want to harm people,” he said. “You’re dangerous because the world doesn’t know what to do with you. And it’s made you believe you don’t deserve to be here. To be seen. To be real.”

He stepped forward—not into her space, never that—but closer than anyone else had dared in years. There was only rain and air between them now.

“I’m not afraid of you, Castorice,” he said. “And I won’t pity you either.”

Her voice cracked. “Then what do you want from me?”

He paused. And then, very gently, he said:

“I want you to live.”

She made a strangled noise, half-laugh, half-sob. “I am alive.”

“No. You exist. You endure. That’s not the same thing.”

He reached into his satchel and withdrew a wrapped bundle—linen soft with age, tied with silver thread. He laid it carefully on the stone ledge between them.

“This is for you. No magic. No trickery. Just… something I made.”

A journal. Midnight blue, hand-stitched, the leather etched with silver filigree. A constellation she’d once referenced in passing—Aidonia’s Ashfall—was burned faintly into the cover.

“I heard from Lady Tribbie that you’ve been writing again,” Anaxa said, almost casually. “Something about a ghost who falls in love with a sunbeam and has to wear three pairs of gloves just to brush his cheek.”

She froze.

“I bound this myself,” he continued. “There’s space in it for a hundred more love stories. Some of them should be yours.”

“…I can’t share those,” she said. “They’re just for me.”

“For now,” he said, with a sly smile. “But we both know you didn’t come to the Grove just to haunt corridors like a cursed relic. You’re clever. Your arguments in class cut sharper than most professors I know. You see the world sideways. You should exist, Castorice. Not like a secret. Like a person. ”

She stared at the journal, afraid to touch it.

Anaxa stepped back then, giving her space, but his voice was low and deliberate when he added, “There’s a debate the day after tomorrow. The final one for this term.”

She looked up, alarmed. “I’m not ready to—”

“If you don’t participate,” he interrupted, buttoning his coat, “I will fail you.”

She blinked. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” he said. “Gloriously. Dramatically. I’ll write your name on the board under ‘Promising Spirits Crushed by Cowardice’ in gold chalk. I’ll dedicate an entire lecture to your wasted brilliance.”

Her jaw dropped.

He winked. “You’ve got two days. Use that journal, or don’t. But show up, Castorice. Let them see you.”

He turned on his heel, leaving her standing beneath the archways with mist clinging to her sleeves and something new pounding in her chest.

She looked down at the journal.

Then she opened it.

On the first page, written in Anaxa’s sharp, looping hand:

“This is not a relic. This is a story still being written. —A.”

Chapter Text

Phainon was a ball of sunlight with too much gravity.

People said he lit up every room. That he laughed too loudly, smiled too easily, made friends like he breathed them into being. And he did . He was warm, golden, always reaching. But warmth, after all, comes from pressure.

He had no home.

He had been a child of Aedes Elysia, a little sunlit village that no longer existed. The Black Tide had swallowed it whole—ravaged it with monsters, with teeth that fed on memory and left silence in their wake. He was the only one who’d made it out. The only one who’d dug graves for his family with shaking hands and no proper prayers.

Lady Aglaea, her heart a well of divine compassion, had found him not in ruins, but in a field of them. He was a small, silent thing covered in the dark, nutrient-rich soil of Aedes Elysia, digging a hole with his bare hands. He wasn't crying. He was working. The task was too large for tears.

He had buried his father; who taught him how to earn the trust of the animals in the field. He had buried his mother, who sang to the wheat to make it grow tall. He had buried his sister, who he saw die in front of his own eyes. He had buried Livia, whose blood still stained his palms. He had buried neighbours, friends, the old grandma who gave him honey candies. One by one, he had given them back to the earth, the only rite he had ever known. How he wished now that he had listened more to Mrs. Pythias so he could give everyone a better send-off.

When Aglaea and the triplets found him, he was empty. A vessel scoured clean by horror. Aglaea saw this not as a trauma, but as a divine preparation.

“A blank slate,” she had murmured, her voice thick with a hope he did not understand. She cupped his dirty cheek, and her touch was the first kind thing he had felt in weeks. “Flawless. Unburdened by the past. You are capable of carrying the world’s wishes as your own, little one. You are the Deliverer.”

She said he was blank, capable of becoming anything. That he was the Deliverer—destined to carry the wishes of others, to be the vessel of their hope. A perfect container. A clean slate.

He wanted to scream. I am burdened! I am full of them! They are in the ground! But her words were so warm, and her smile was so sure. So he let the title settle onto his small shoulders. He became what they needed him to be: bright, uncomplicated, hopeful. He polished the emptiness until it shone like a mirror, reflecting back the hope everyone needed to see.

But Phainon never felt clean.

He never forgot the smell of charred wood, the sight of wheat stained black, the weight of his sister’s locket in his hand.

He played happy because that’s what they needed him to be. Because if he stopped—if he cracked, even for a moment—he was afraid there’d be nothing left underneath.

On the bad days, when the weight in his chest pressed too hard against his ribs, he hated Okhema.

He hated its always-day, powered endlessly by the Dawn Device, its skies locked in a perpetual golden hour that never cooled. There was no dusk, no soft, forgiving shadows to hide in. No cool, blue hour to soothe the eyes. It was an endless, cheerfully tyrannical noon that refused to acknowledge that some things needed to rest, needed to end, needed the quiet cover of darkness. It was a lie painted in light. It felt too polished. Too hollow. There were no shadows to hide in. No rest.

He hated the marble pillars, so cold and perfect and unmoving. He hated the shimmering silks that felt alien against his skin, which still remembered the rough, honest texture of homespun wool and sun-warmed linen. Okhema was a beautiful, silent song played in a single, piercing note. It had no harmony. It had no depth.

He didn’t belong here.

He missed the soft hush of dusk. The gold that dimmed, that faded into quiet blue. He missed the wind combing through wheat, the flicker of oil lanterns in windowpanes. The smell of bread rising in clay ovens. He longed for the wheat fields of his village. Not the mythic, golden paradise of memory, but the real one: the way the stalks whispered secrets in the wind, the smell of dry earth and coming rain, the imperfect, rolling hills that hid you from the world. He missed the texture of a life that was allowed to be messy, to grow, to die, and to be quiet.

But in the Grove of Epiphany, there was peace.

There, it was always night.

Lanterns floated through the air like lazy stars, casting gentle light over paths made of moss and cobbled stone. Vines hung from windows, ivy spilled down from rooftops, and every building was grown, not built. The air smelled of earth and ink, of blooming things and books left open too long.

Here, Phainon didn’t have to pretend so hard.

Here, people muttered to themselves in libraries and studied strange forgotten magics and fell asleep in greenhouses. No one called him flawless. No one looked at him like a prophecy.

They just looked at him.

He liked that.

He liked sitting beneath the roots of the great midnight tree in the courtyard, writing little notes for Castorice’s stories or sketching lecture diagrams for Hyacine when she forgot again. He liked that no one stared when he stared too long at Professor Anaxa and forgot how to speak.

He liked the quiet.

He didn’t just follow Castorice to the Grove to be near her. He followed her because she, too, was a creature of quiet and shadow, and he felt less alone in his performance of sunshine when he was with her.

Here, he was still the Deliverer. But sometimes, when no one was watching, Phainon let himself be a boy who once had a sister and a sunlit field and dreams that weren’t written by someone else.

And in the dark, with the lanterns lit and the stars overhead, he didn’t have to shine.

And for a few precious hours, he could just be a boy, homesick for a home that only existed in the soil beneath his fingernails and the endless night of a borrowed city.

Everyone in Okhema knew of Lady Aglaea’s annoyance— no, unholy frustration —with Professor Anaxagoras.

They called him irreverent. A blasphemor. A madman with chalk-dusted sleeves and no respect for the divine. He didn’t genuflect, didn’t quote the Titans, didn’t kneel. Aglaea, who breathed reverence like air, once reportedly declared, “If I ever catch him in a temple I will personally strike him down with my blade.”

And it was true, what they said of him. Anaxagoras was a mortal who poked divine laws with a stick to see if they’d squeak. He was irreverent, scattered, and had a laugh that could startle birds from the sacred groves a mile away. (and yet those birds would return to his hands when he called, Mnestia’s golden butterflies would settle in his hair and their soft glow reflecting in his blue eyes would steal the very breath from Phainon’s lungs)

And still, he remained.

And despite everything they said, despite the mutters and the sighs and the rolled eyes, Phainon liked Anaxa.

Yes, he was beautiful—ridiculously so. Even without his left eye, which he covered with an intricate patch, he had the quiet symmetry of old glass mosaics Cyrene had loved so much.

His features were fine, sharp in thought and soft in rest. There was something mythic about him—not divine, not in the way Mnestia the Titan of Beauty was, but real. Human, and therefore a little more radiant for it.

And he was smart as hell. He spoke in riddles of physics and soul-theory that made Phainon’s head spin in the best way possible.

But Phainon liked Anaxa for none of those things.

But it wasn’t his beauty that held Phainon’s attention. Not for long.

It was the way he looked at him.

Not the Deliverer.

Not the Flawless Vessel of Woven Will.

Just… Phainon. Of Aedes Elysia.

In Okhema, people bowed when he entered rooms. They pressed prophecies into his hands and called him by titles he didn’t ask for. Even Aglaea, for all her care, sometimes looked at him like she was staring at a weapon she hadn’t quite finished forging.

But Anaxa?

He liked Anaxa because the professor challenged him. In Okhema, he was the Deliverer, a precious artifact to be protected and polished. His mistakes were gently corrected, his outbursts patiently soothed. He was Aglaea’s flawless vessel.

Anaxa had no patience for vessels.

When Phainon acted out in class, distracted or overly loud, Anaxa didn’t sigh and offer a patient smile. He would fix his single, piercing eye on him and say, “Phainon. Outside. Now.” And Phainon would have to stand in the hall for ten minutes, or write lines about the importance of focused discourse, or—on one memorable occasion—clean every slate board in the wing as punishment.

Anaxa told him to sit down and focus. Told him to shut up and try again. Made him redo equations when he got lazy and had him stand on the line—yes, literally stand, stone slates balanced on his head—for every dramatic interruption he caused in class.

When Phainon flared with too much light, too much laughter, too much noise, Anaxa didn’t try to suppress him.

He contained him.

Firmly. Patiently. As if to say: You don’t have to perform to be noticed. I see you anyway.

He once gave Phainon a note that simply read:

“Wit is not wisdom. Stop interrupting my lectures or I’ll assign you a partner project with a rock.”

Phainon had kept it. It was pinned inside the back of his journal.

For the first time since the Black Tide, someone was treating him like a person, not a prophecy. Anaxa’s punishments were not about shaming the Deliverer; they were about curbing the impulsivity of a boy who had never been allowed to have any. In the Grove, under Anaxa’s watch, he was allowed to be free, to be messy, to be wrong.

And on the days when he faltered, when the Dawn Device’s artificial light felt like a spotlight and not a sun—he remembered Anaxa’s voice during his very first class.

Phainon had stumbled through a half-baked explanation of soul refracting through memory. Others laughed.

Anaxa had not.

He had said, “You have a mind like a wildfire. Fast, erratic, and prone to grand statements. Contain it, and you’ll burn through walls.”

And then, after a pause, softer:

“Contain it, Phainon. Not extinguish it.”

Phainon had never forgotten that.

Anaxa saw more than anyone else ever did.

He saw the boy who got flour on his nose trying to shape bread dough like his father. He saw the boy who knew the best paths through the wheat fields. He saw the boy who was clumsy, and loud, and whose grief sometimes came out as anger. He saw the boy who was desperately, terribly homesick for a place of simple things that was now just a field of graves.

When Anaxa handed him a punishment or challenged a half-formed idea in class, it was that boy he was addressing. He was demanding that boy to be better, to be smarter, to be stronger. Not for the sake of a destiny he never asked for, but for his own sake.

To Anaxa, the title "Deliverer" was just a word. But "Phainon" was a person. And in a world that had turned him into a symbol, that was the greatest kindness Phainon had ever known. It was a quiet rebellion, and in the perpetual night of the Grove, it felt like a truth more solid than any marble pillar in Okhema.

The Ever-Present Day of Okhema felt different after the Grove. Where it had once been a marvel of divine engineering, it now felt like a gilded cage, its unwavering light a constant, accusatory glare. Phainon had graduated. He had the scrolls, the accolades, the proud, tearful smile from Lady Aglaea. He was the Deliverer, returned to his city, ready to fulfill his purpose.

And he had never felt more like a fraud.

The duties were a relentless tide. Audiences with dignitaries who stared at him as if waiting for a divine light to switch on inside him. Strategy sessions about the encroaching Black Tide where his opinion was sought as a holy relic, not a tactical mind. Every smile he forced felt like a crack in his façade, every confident nod a betrayal of the terrified boy hiding within.

He missed the perpetual twilight of the Grove. He missed the smell of old books and night-blooming jasmine. He missed the intellectual chaos where a question was more valued than a predetermined answer. He missed a place where he was allowed to be wrong.

The thought was a selfish, traitorous worm in his heart. You miss a school? You, the Deliverer? When your people need you? The weight of it, the sheer impossibility of the hope placed upon him, began to press down, a physical force on his chest.

He wasn’t sure when the light began to feel too loud again.

Maybe it had been creeping in for days—weeks—since the ceremonies ended, since the Grove of Epiphany bade its final farewells and Phainon, the golden boy, the Deliverer, was sent back into the wide marbled world like a blessing bottled for public use.

Okhema was too bright. Too polished. Too full of people who looked at him with expectation, or awe, or worse—belief.

Everywhere he turned, someone wanted something. Guidance. Wisdom. A prophecy he didn’t have. They looked at him like he was already finished. Flawless, Aglaea had called him, long ago.

But Phainon didn’t feel flawless.

He felt empty.

And tired. Gods, so tired.

So he slipped out. Left the scrollwork palace and the Temple-High of Okhema and wandered into the streets like a memory. Somewhere familiar but forgotten, down side paths and cracked steps that no longer smelled of roses and gold. Somewhere quieter.

The alleyway he stumbled into was dark and narrow. Ivy cracked the walls. The air was damp, and cool, and kind.

And then—it hit him.

The weight. The collapse.

All at once.

His legs folded under him before he noticed, and his hands were shaking so hard he nearly scraped his palms trying to stop his fall. His breathing was sharp and shallow, too fast, too fast, and something inside him screamed—

You’re not ready. You’re not enough. They made a mistake. You were never meant to save anything. You couldn’t even save them—

His chest was tightening, a vice with no handle, and his mouth couldn’t form words.

He curled into himself on the cold stone ground and thought—This is it. I’m breaking. I can’t—

The thoughts came faster, a torrent of fear and self-loathing. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape a cage.

He was drowning on dry land.

He didn't hear the footsteps, soft on the stone.

And then—

Arms.

Firm and steady, pulling him close, not tightly, not forcefully—but anchoring.

A hand cupped the back of his head and he felt fingers thread gently through his hair. Another pressed to his back, firm and rhythmic.

A voice—low, sure, familiar—broke through the noise.

“Phainon. Breathe.”

He gasped. Or tried to. His chest shuddered.

“Good. Again. With me. In…”

The voice counted him through it, slow, paced, grounded. The fingers didn’t stop moving, brushing through his hair in soothing strokes like a lullaby. He was held like something sacred and shivering.

“You’re here. You’re not alone. You’re safe.”

The words were a lifeline. Phainon clutched at the robes of the person holding him, focusing on the sound, on the feeling of those fingers in his hair, on the rise and fall of the chest beneath his cheek. Slowly, agonizingly, the world began to come back into focus. The screaming in his mind quieted to a whisper, then to a numb silence.

His gasps turned to shaky breaths, then to hiccupping sobs he didn't have the strength to suppress. He cried for his family, for his village, for the weight he never wanted, for the boy he used to be.

The person held him through it all, never ceasing that steady, soothing motion, offering a silent, unwavering solidarity.

When the tears finally subsided, leaving him hollow and exhausted, Phainon slowly lifted his head.

He blinked hard.

And looked up. His breath caught again, for a completely different reason.

"P-Professor?"

Professor Anaxa knelt beside him, not a single trace of irritation on his face. No mockery. No cool detachment.

Just soft concern in the lines around his mouth, and that steady hand still resting on his shoulder.

Phainon opened his mouth, and his voice cracked as he said, “You’re not… supposed to be here.”

Anaxa tilted his head. “I was on my way to yell at that woman again. But you outrank that.”

“I’m not…” Phainon shook his head. “I’m not the Deliverer. Not really. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to do this without you. Without the Grove.”

A pause. Then, very gently:

“Then don’t do it without me.”

Phainon blinked, startled.

Anaxa gave a crooked, tired smile. “I’m not your professor anymore. But I’m not going anywhere. You hear me?”

Phainon’s lip wobbled. His voice came out like a whisper.

“You came.”

“I always come when you need me,” Anaxa murmured. “You’re not flawless, Phainon. You’re real. And that’s a thousand times better.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny wooden bird—a carving of the midnight tree from the Grove courtyard.

“Here,” he said, pressing it into Phainon’s hand. “To remind you of where you were brave.”

Phainon stared at it, speechless.

Then, softly, almost inaudibly:

“Stay a little longer?”

Anaxa sat beside him on the alley stones, legs crossed, shoulder brushing his just so.

“As long as you need.”

And they sat there, quietly breathing in the dark.

They sat in silence for a long time. The kind of silence that made space instead of filling it. The kind that healed.

Anaxa hadn’t moved his hand from Phainon’s shoulder, and Phainon hadn’t leaned away. He stared at the little token in his palm and something in him ached.

Not like pain. Something gentler. Sadder.

He glanced at Anaxa from the corner of his eye.

His face was turned away slightly, watching the alley walls with that unfocused look he often had when his thoughts wandered too far ahead of his body. The lamplight from the street caught on the edge of his pale cheek, his lashes casting shadows. His coat was fraying slightly at the edges, his hair messy, and his eye patch askew like he’d put it on in a hurry.

Beautiful, Phainon thought, and then cursed himself.

Not just because of Anaxa’s face or the way he sat so solid beside him, but because this was what beauty meant, wasn’t it? Someone who could drag you back from the edge without expecting worship. Who saw you—not for what you were meant to be, not as a Deliverer, not as a myth—but as you, broken and stammering and selfish and kind.

Anaxa had looked at him like that since the very first week. Before anyone else had.

And now he was here. In a dirty alley, holding Phainon like he mattered.

I think I love you, Phainon thought, dizzy with the weight of it. Gods. I think I’ve been loving you for a long time.

He exhaled, shakily, and let his head fall lightly to Anaxa’s shoulder.

Anaxa didn’t flinch. Just hummed, very softly, in acknowledgment.

There was a kind of peace in that moment Phainon hadn’t known he needed.

So he made a vow. Quietly. Silently. Deep in the marrow of his chest.

I want to be someone you can rely on too.

Not a myth. Not a vessel. Not the Deliverer.

Just me. And that’ll be enough. I’ll make it enough.

Anaxa leaned his head gently against Phainon’s.

“You alright now?” he murmured.

Phainon nodded.

And for once, the words didn’t need saying.

He was still scared. Still uncertain.

But he had someone to walk beside.

And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

If Phainon was the sun and Castorice was the moon, then Hyacinthia was the stubborn, cheerful flower that pushed its way through the cracks in the cobblestones between them.

Hyacine—Hyacinthia of the Skyfolk, descendant of Seliose the First Flamebearer—was not what anyone expected from a hero’s bloodline.

She was short. Barely reached Professor Anaxa’s shoulder. Her voice was high and lilting, her laugh like windchimes in summer. Her hair, bubblegum pink streaked with teal at the tips, was always tied up in bouncing pigtails with glittering pins shaped like stars and moons. And she never went anywhere without Little Ica, her small, fat-winged pegasus, who squeaked indignantly when denied snacks or shoulder rides.

But she was a Chrysos Heir, just the same.

Seliose had fought Aquila, the corrupted sky-titan, with flame and fury in her bones. She had bled starlight. Hyacine, though, fought differently. She healed. She soothed. Her lineage was a song of valor and storm, a history written in lightning and spilled blood.

Hyacine, however, could not bring herself to harm a fly.

This was not an exaggeration. Once, in the middle of a critical alchemy exam, a wasp had buzzed insistently near her station. While other students swatted or panicked, Hyacine had carefully uncorked a vial of sugared nectar, laid a drop on the corner of her parchment, and spent the next ten minutes patiently coaxing the confused insect onto a leaf so she could carry it outside. She’d failed the exam, but she’d beamed as if she’d won a great victory. “He was just lost,” she’d explained to a baffled Professor Anaxa, who had simply marked her grade with a thoughtful hum.

When the Grove of Epiphany opened its arms to the displaced and the broken, it was Hyacine who had set her soul down like cobblestone and helped lay the foundation of the Twilight Courtyard. A place for rest. For grief. For hope to bloom again in shadow.

For while her ancestors were warriors, Hyacine was a healer. Her magic was one of mending, not breaking. She could knit flesh with a whisper, soothe a fevered brow with a touch, and make the most brittle of plants bloom with a soft-spoken song. It was a gentle magic, often dismissed by the more martially inclined of her kin as “soft” or “unworthy” of the Chrysos line.

Their dismissal was her quiet sorrow, a shadow she kept tucked away behind her bright smile.

She had come to the Grove of Epiphany not to learn war, but to learn peace. To understand the anatomy of souls as well as she understood the anatomy of bodies, hoping to find a way to heal wounds that weren’t just physical. It was why she had gravitated toward the School of Nousporism, and why Professor Anaxagoras—the blasphemor who valued questions over answers—had taken her on as his teaching assistant.

She had been his student first. Then his assistant. And maybe—though neither would ever admit it—his friend. He taught her how to trace muscle fibre in wounded beings. She taught him how to make pink tea that calmed the nerves and stained your lips like blossoms. He told her she was too kind to survive the world. She told him she would help remake the world, then.

And he hadn’t laughed at that.

Not once.

She was brilliant in her own right, organizing his chaotic brilliance into lesson plans, deciphering his chalkboard ramblings into coherent notes, and gently reminding him to eat. She was the calm, cheerful center around which the storm of Anaxa’s intellect and Phainon’s energy could safely spin.

Her greatest pride and joy was the Twilight Courtyard. It had been a neglected, overgrown ruin between the library and the lecture halls. Hyacine, with her innate connection to life, had seen its potential. She’d spent months on her hands and knees, pulling weeds, planting night-blooming flowers whose petals shimmered with soft light, and stringing up lanterns that glowed like captured fireflies. It was her sanctuary, a place of quiet healing and beauty, and it had become the unofficial heart of the Nousporism wing.

To Phainon, Hyacine was a lifeline. She was the one who noticed when his smile didn’t reach his eyes, who would casually slide a cup of sweet tea his way or ask him to help her repot a particularly stubborn fern, giving him a task to focus on when his thoughts were spiraling. She never pressed, never pried. She just was—a constant, warm presence.

To Castorice, Hyacine was a fascinating paradox. A being of such powerful lineage who wielded no power. A creature of the sky who preferred the comfort of the earth. Hyacine was the only one who could approach Castorice without a trace of fear or pity, chatting away about the healing properties of moss or the dream she had about talking starfish, all while carefully respecting the space around her. She’d leave little pots of glowing flowers at the threshold of Castorice’s room—flowers that thrived on starlight and didn’t need touch to be appreciated.

But her kindness was not weakness. It was a choice, fiercely made every day.

Hyacine was more likely to smile than breathe. It was her first and best tool, a shield and a comfort all at once. In the face of pain, fear, or sadness—whether in a patient’s grimace or a friend’s downcast eyes—her response was a brilliantly crafted, bubbly friendliness. She’d chirp an encouraging word, offer a cup of sweet tea, or launch into a silly story about Ica’s latest attempt to fit into a decidedly tiny basket.

It was a healer’s instinct, honed to perfection: to make the space around her feel safer, brighter, better. She absorbed the anxiety in a room and transmuted it, through sheer force of will, into calm.

But at the end of the day, when the last patient was bandaged and the last anxious student soothed, the silence would settle. And in that silence, the weight of her own inheritance pressed down. She was a healer born into a line of heroes. Her ancestors had dueled Titans. Her cousins chased legends across the sky. Their names were etched in constellations.

Her name was etched on herb jars and patient charts.

The whispers followed her, even to the Grove. They were rarely loud, but they were persistent, a bitter undercurrent to the melody of her life.

“A Chrysos Heir who can’t bear the weight of a spear.”

“Selios’s blood, watered down to a trickle.”

“She hides in the dirt because she’s afraid of the sky.”

She heard them in the murmured conversations that stopped when she entered a room. She saw them in the pitying looks from visiting Skyfolk dignitaries. She felt them in the letters from home, always asking when she would put aside her “little hobbies” and take up her “true mantle.”

She carried it all, and she hid it behind a smile. Her patients needed her to be strong. Her friends needed her to be light. So she was.

But she knew, with a certainty that ached in her bones, that it was only because of Professor Anaxa that the truly nasty things never reached a crescendo. He was her unexpected, irascible shield.

Anaxa, who respected nothing and feared no one, had taken one look at her application—at her scores in restorative magics and her stated desire to “understand the physics of healing”—and had seen not a disappointing warrior, but a brilliant mind. He’d made her his TA not out of pity, but because she was the only one who could keep up with him.

And he tolerated no nonsense in his domain.

He had a preternatural sense for when the whispers were getting too close. He would appear, seemingly out of nowhere, his single eye sharp behind his askew eyepatch, to engage the offender in a brutally complex debate about esoteric soul-theory or the grammatical inconsistencies in ancient Titan texts. He would talk at them, and over them, and around them, until they fled in intellectual confusion, their malicious gossip utterly forgotten in the face of his relentless, chaotic intellect.

He never mentioned it to her. He never said, “I protected you.” He would simply turn to her after, blink as if surprised to see her, and say, “Hyacine, remind me to never use Professor Lysias’s text on aetheric resonance again. His understanding of harmonic decay is fundamentally flawed,” before wandering off, leaving her in a bubble of suddenly peaceful silence.

He created a space around her where her work was valued for what it was, not scorned for what it wasn’t. In the halls of Nousporism, her ability to mend a soul was considered as rigorous and vital as another’s ability to theorize about one. Because he said it was.

So, she smiled for her patients, and she smiled for her friends, and she smiled through the quiet ache of not being enough for her own lineage. But in the quiet of the Twilight Courtyard, with only Ica for company, she sometimes let the smile fade. She would look up at the sliver of false night sky the Grove offered and allow herself to feel the weight of it all—the disappointment, the expectation, the love for her craft that felt like a rebellion.

The accident was stupid, really. A moment of distraction. A heavy crate of alchemical components, improperly balanced, slipping from a high shelf in the supply closet. Hyacine had moved on instinct, throwing out a hand not to catch it—that would have been impossible—but to deflect its fall away from a first-year student who had frozen in place.

She’d succeeded. The student was fine, wide-eyed but unscathed. The crate had crashed to the stone floor, vials shattering within.

And Hyacine’s arm had taken the full, wrenching impact. A sharp, sickening crack echoed in the small space, followed by a wave of nauseating white-hot pain.

“Oh, it’s alright! Don’t you worry! Just a little spill!” Hyacine had chirped, her voice a full octave higher than usual. She’d cradled her arm against her chest, already feeling the warm, alarming throb of the injury. The student stammered apologies, but Hyacine shooed them away with a wave of her good hand, the picture of bubbly reassurance. “Really, go on! I’ve got this! Tell Professor Anaxa I’ll be just a moment!”

The moment the door shut, her smile vanished. She slumped against a shelf, swallowing back a whimper. It was bad. A fracture, almost certainly. She could feel the misaligned bones, the inflammation already beginning to bloom.

And she hid it.

She was a healer. It was what she did. She used a roll of bandages and a splint from a supply cupboard, her movements clinical and efficient despite the tears of pain welling in her eyes. She fashioned a sling from a spare bit of linen, hiding it all under the oversized sleeve of her academic robe. A few deep, steadying breaths, a forceful mental shove against the pain, and she plastered the smile back on her face.

She emerged from the closet as if nothing had happened.

The rest of the day was a special kind of agony. Phainon was having one of his restless days, his energy a frantic, scattered thing that needed gentle grounding. Castorice had a question about a particularly dense text on spectral anatomy, her gloved finger tracing the words with quiet intensity. A steady stream of students came by with minor cuts from practical work, headaches from stress, and bruised egos from failed experiments.

And Hyacine tended to them all. She offered Phainon a calming draught with her good hand, her smile never wavering. She guided Castorice through the text, her voice steady. She applied salves and spoke soft words of encouragement, all while her broken arm screamed in its makeshift sling.

Little Ica knew. The small pegasus followed at her heels, emitting soft, piteous whines, nudging her good hand with a wet nose, her large eyes full of concern. Hyacine would just shake her head, whispering, “Shhh, sweet girl. I’m fine. It’s nothing. They need me.”

This was all she could do. This was her purpose. To be the one who was always okay, so everyone else could be okay too. She couldn’t be a warrior, but she could be this. She would not let a little pain stop her.

She made it through the day. She made it through the last consultation. She was tidying the Twilight Courtyard, her movements stiff and careful, when a calm, familiar voice cut through the evening air.

“The structural integrity of the human radius is notably less than that of a reinforced alchemical crate, Hyacinthia.”

She froze, her good hand clutching a watering can. Professor Anaxa was leaning against the archway leading into the courtyard, arms crossed. He wasn’t looking at her face; he was looking directly at the hidden sling beneath her robe sleeve, his gaze as precise and unerring as a surgeon’s scalpel.

Her smile instantly felt brittle and false. “Professor! I was just finishing up. I don’t know what you—”

“You’ve been favoring your left side since third bell,” he stated, matter-of-factly. “Your color is three shades paler than your baseline. And you’ve been avoiding using that arm to gesture, which is statistically anomalous for you. Also, Ica has been making their ‘something is terribly wrong’ noise all afternoon.”

Hyacine’s carefully constructed composure shattered. The smile finally crumpled, and the pain she had been holding back all day surged forward, bringing fresh tears to her eyes. She looked away, ashamed. “I… I can handle it. Everyone needed…”

“Sit,” he said, his voice losing its analytical edge and becoming impossibly gentle. He didn’t wait for her to obey, simply strode forward and guided her to a stone bench. Ica immediately shoved their head into Hyacine’s lap, whining softly.

Anaxa knelt in front of her. “Let me see.”

Trembling, Hyacine allowed him to carefully push back her robe sleeve, revealing the amateurish bandaging job. He didn’t scold her. His fingers, usually stained with ink or chalk, were surprisingly gentle as he began to unwind the soiled linen.

“You cannot heal others if you are broken yourself,” he murmured, his focus entirely on her injury. “It is a thermodynamic impossibility. Energy cannot be created from nothing. Not even yours.”

“But they need me,” she whispered, her voice small.

“We do,” he agreed softly. He examined the ugly, swollen break with a critical eye. “But we need you whole. We do not need a martyr. Martyrdom is, academically speaking, a spectacularly inefficient and messy business.”

He reached into the seemingly bottomless pockets of his own coat and pulled out a small healer’s kit—one she had assembled for him months ago. He began to work, his movements sure and confident as he applied a proper poultice to reduce the swelling and reset the bone with a firm, precise motion that made her gasp.

“There will be talk,” she said miserably, as he started to wrap a clean bandage. “That I’m weak. That a true Chrysos Heir would have—”

“A true Chrysos Heir would have had the sense to get help instead of attempting a structural fusion on herself with substandard materials,” Anaxa interrupted, without looking up. “The opinions of fools are data points to be logged and ignored, Hyacinthia. Not truths to be lived by.”

He finished tying the bandage and finally looked up at her, his single dark eye holding hers. “Your value is not in your pain tolerance. It is in your mind. In your hands. In your heart. And all of those are significantly less useful when you are leaking vitality all over my courtyard.”

He stood, offering her his hand—not to her injured arm, but to her good one. “Come. I’ll have Phainon fetch your dinner. And you will rest. That is not a suggestion. It is a medical directive from your academic superior.”

For the first time that day, Hyacine felt the iron tension in her shoulders ease. The weight of her secret, of the performance, was gone. She had been seen. Not as a disappointment or a symbol, but as a hurt person. And she had been tended to.

She took his hand, her smile returning, but this time it was small, real, and full of weary gratitude. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good,” he said, and a faint, approving smile touched his own lips. “Now, let’s go. And try not to break any more of my teaching assistant. You are remarkably difficult to replace.”

That night, after Anaxa sent her off with a warning to rest or face his personal wrath in the morning lecture, Hyacine curled on her side in her narrow bed, Little Ica pressed warm against her stomach.

She stared up at the leafy shadows dancing on the Grove’s ceiling and whispered into the dark, as if confessing to the night itself: “I don’t have to be Seliose.”

The words trembled in her mouth. She repeated them anyway, a little firmer, like testing the strength of a bridge. She had spent her whole life believing she had to blaze as brightly as the flamechase that began with her ancestor, but tonight, with Anaxa’s sharp kindness still echoing in her chest, she realised she didn’t need to be a torch that consumed itself.

She could heal. She could smile, even when it cost her. She could hold the courtyard together with laughter, and that was still a kind of courage. Maybe—just maybe—that was enough.

Ica let out a tiny purr, as if in agreement. Hyacine tucked her face into their fluff, and for once, instead of imagining herself carrying a torch she could never lift, she let herself imagine being carried—wings beating steadily through the dark, bearing her somewhere new.

And with that thought, she finally slept.

Chapter Text

Anaxa had always known that his students never truly wanted to leave his side. They clung to him in the lecture halls of the Grove, in the lantern-lit paths of the courtyard, in the quiet study corners where he corrected their papers with too much red ink and too much fondness. But as a mother bird must one day push her chicks from the nest, so too did he.

It was never abandonment—never. He could not bear the thought. Even when they graduated, even when they were called Deliverer or Maiden or Healer, Anaxa kept watch. He followed every whisper of them through Okhema, every passing mention in the Agora. He made it his business to know when Castorice skipped meals for the sake of study, when Phainon laughed too loudly to cover exhaustion, when Hyacine stayed too long at the bedside of a patient.

He did not believe in the blasted prophecy, nor in the omnipotence of the titans. He did not trust the shape of fate that others so readily bent knee to. What he did believe in was his students—their crooked smiles, their foolish resilience, their ability to keep stumbling forward even when the ground shifted beneath them. That was why he let them go. That was why he hovered just behind, never seen, but always near.

What Anaxa did not expect—what he could never quite make sense of—was the day they returned the gesture.

But Anaxa had his own skeletons, carefully folded away beneath the layers of ink and parchment he wore like armor. His homeland no longer existed, its name eaten whole by the Black Tide when it descended without mercy. He had lost the only family he ever had—his sister.

She had been an animal trainer, rough-handed and gentle-voiced, the kind who could coax even a snarling beast into quiet obedience. She was the one who gave her quiet, stoic little brother every coin she could scrape together, pressing books into his hands even when she herself went hungry. She did everything to send him to the Grove of Epiphany.

It was on that journey that the Tide struck. By the time word reached them, he was already too far, already seated in the merchant’s cart. The friend tried to rush him back, but by the time the black waters receded there was nothing left to return to. Anaxa had screamed himself raw, sobbing against the merchant’s arms, fighting to fling himself back into the corruption. He had not been allowed to hear his sister’s last words. He had not even been allowed to die with her.

That day, he prayed until his throat bled. But the Titans gave no answer. And when he was finally delivered to the safety of the Grove, a weak, trembling boy dragged from ruin, Anaxa decided something in him: if the Titans were so omniscient, so merciful, then why had they abandoned her? Why had they abandoned him?

It would only be years later, under the cold clarity of study, that he learned the truth—that these “gods” were nothing but former Chrysos Heirs of a prior cycle, dressed up in omnipotence. He did not bow to them. He bowed only to the living—his students, his charges, the children he refused to let the world steal from him as it once stole her.

Today was the anniversary. He never marked it aloud, never told a soul—not even Phainon, not even Hyacine who could always read him too well—but Anaxa carried the date like a stone in his chest. On this day each year, the weight pressed heavier, as if time itself remembered for him. He went about his work as always, his voice steady in lectures, his hand sharp in notes and corrections. But beneath that polished surface, something trembled.

He had grown used to carrying grief alone. Years had taught him how to hold it close without letting it spill, how to turn pain into precision, loss into logic. But anniversaries have a way of making the old wounds bleed anew.

Usually, the world’s barbs could not pierce him. A man of reason had no time for the petty venom of others. He had long since grown numb to careless slander, the whispers of colleagues, the dismissive snorts of so-called believers when he spoke plainly about the falseness of the Titans’ omnipotence. Normally, such things bounced off him like arrows striking stone.

But today… today, the insults did sink a little deeper, like knives finding cracks in old armor. He found himself recoiling where he would usually hold firm. Even Aglaea’s sarcasm—which on other days he could parry with wit, or ignore with cool silence—cut a little closer to the bone. Her bitter words about his “faithlessness,” her clear contempt for his refusal to worship the Titans as gods, all of it scraped raw places inside him. And he hadn’t the strength to fight her barbs with his usual fire.

Because today he wanted only one thing. To sit again beside his sister. To hear her laugh as she teased his solemn face, to see her sun-browned hands stroke the feathers of a half-wild hawk she’d coaxed into gentleness. To hear her voice call him little brother as if she could shield him from the world.

But he could not. That place, that life, had been burned away when the Black Tide came, devouring his home in its endless hunger. He had been spared only by chance and by the desperate hands of a merchant friend who dragged him away. He had not been fast enough to return to her, not strong enough to fight the corruption, not lucky enough to hear her last words. The memory was a scar carved deep: her voice lost to him forever, and the sound of his own screams as he was pulled away, still echoing inside his head.

So he prayed that day, a boy still small enough to believe. He prayed with all his might to the Titans. But no god answered. No hand reached down. No miracle came. And in time, he would learn why—because the so-called gods were nothing more than heirs like himself, repeating a cycle no prayer could undo.

Now, on this anniversary, Anaxa carried not only his grief but the bitter taste of that revelation. Today he was tired. Today he longed, with a weariness older than his years, to be anywhere but here. To be with her. To be done.

Today was the day he usually lingered the longest by his grave.

He had prepared it long ago, in a quiet, practical act that he told no one about. Not out of morbidity, but because he wished his passing—when it came—to be as gentle and untroubling as possible for those he loved. No scrambling, no arguments over rites or where he should rest. Everything already in place, so their hands would not be burdened when their hearts already would be.

So once a year, he came here. He would polish the stone until it gleamed, tracing each line of the dromas patterns carved into its surface, ensuring none of the sacred designs had faded with time or weather. His hands, those scholarly hands that once only turned pages and held chalk, were always stained from ink and dust. Today, he stared at them too long, as if they might answer for all the things they could not do—could not save, could not hold, could not cling to.

Usually, no one saw this part of him. He made certain of it. The professor was stern, steady, the one who endured so that his students might have something to lean on. This quiet tending to his own grave was a ritual, private and necessary, a way to keep himself steady.

But today was different.

He wasn’t alone.

They thought themselves hidden, keeping an eye on him in secret. He almost smiled at the thought, though his chest ached too much for it to reach his lips. To them, perhaps he would always be the unshakable professor. But they were learning—slowly, painfully—that even the strongest shoulders had their cracks.

He let them think he had not noticed. He kept his eyes on the stone, his fingers smoothing the engraved swirls one last time, and let them stand there watching. A part of him—the part that still wished, on days like this, for his sister’s presence—was quietly grateful that someone still cared enough to watch.

When his hands could no longer busy themselves with the polishing, Anaxa reached into the folds of his satchel and drew out a worn little storybook. Its spine was cracked, its corners bent and softened with age. It was the one his sister used to read to him by firelight, her voice weaving warmth into every word when the night outside their small home had seemed far too large and hungry.

He set the book across his lap, pressing his palm against its cover. His lips moved in a hushed prayer, one he rarely gave voice to—addressed not to the cold, distant heavens, nor the omniscient titans who had never once answered him, but to Thanatos, the Titan of Death.

“May she have peace where I could not follow,” he whispered, voice thick. “May her rest be gentler than the world she left behind.”

He opened the book and began to read. Slowly, quietly, as though she might still be there listening. His voice wavered now and then, but he did not stop. The words spilled into the air, wrapping around the grave, around himself, until the lines blurred, and he leaned back against the stone. His eyes slipped shut, lashes damp. At last, exhaustion took him, the book slipping in his grip as he fell into a fragile sleep.

From around the corner, the three ducklings finally stirred.

Hyacine was the first to step forward, her usual brightness muted into silence. She knelt by his side and brushed at the tears that had dried on his cheeks, her touch unbearably gentle. For once she did not chatter, did not try to fill the silence—only wiped his face with reverence, as though protecting a secret.

Phainon moved next, kneeling to slide his arms beneath their professor’s frail frame. He lifted Anaxa carefully, as though afraid the man might shatter in his arms, holding him close against his chest.

Castorice lingered behind for only a moment, bowing her head. She murmured a soft rite, words of death and remembrance, her hand hovering over the grave so that the dromas patterns glowed faintly in renewed strength. Then, with careful precision, she gathered the book, the cloth, and the scattered belongings Anaxa had brought, tucking them neatly into his satchel.

Together, the three of them walked away from the grave, carrying their professor between them—not as students trailing behind their teacher, but as children guiding home the man who had once guided them.

They carried him quietly through the grove’s winding paths, the late sun dipping gold through the leaves. By the time they reached Anaxa’s modest home, Little Ica had already fluttered inside, the tiny pegasus’ wings beating anxiously in the air as if to herald their arrival.

The door creaked open to a space that felt entirely like him. Framed photographs lined the walls, each one capturing milestones that weren’t his own but theirs—their exams passed, their first victories, the little celebrations he had been so proud to mark with more pomp than they ever thought necessary. Trinkets and tokens they had given him over the years cluttered the shelves: Hyacine’s lopsided clay charm, Phainon’s carefully folded flight scarf, Castorice’s solemn silver bead. All of it displayed without shame, like treasures.

Castorice’s gaze softened as she crossed the room. With her usual practicality, she began gathering blankets and cushions, arranging them on the floor in a wide, padded nest. The ritual of it felt almost sacred.

Phainon lowered their professor onto the makeshift bed, tucking the edges around him with careful hands. Anaxa did not stir, his breath steady, the tension in his brow at last eased by sleep.

Hyacine slipped down beside him first, pressing close in silence, as though her warmth alone might shield him from dreams. Phainon followed, lying on his other side, his hand resting lightly near Anaxa’s arm—a guard more than a companion, though his eyes softened every time he glanced at the man’s face.

Castorice, when her work was done, settled on the chaise nearby. From there she could watch over all three of them, her usual solemn mask bent into something gentler. She allowed herself to lie back, though she did not quite close her eyes, her gaze lingering on the quiet tableau before her.

The little house was hushed, filled with nothing but the soft rhythm of their breathing. For once, they were not students and he was not their professor. They were simply four souls keeping each other company, giving back to him the presence and care he had given them so many times before.

Somewhere in the quiet, Anaxa stirred. His lashes fluttered, and his gaze, bleary and unfocused, caught sight of the three nestled close around him. Hyacine curled at his side, Phainon a steady sentinel, Castorice stretched on the chaise but still watching over them all.

For a moment, he blinked as though he could not quite believe what he saw. Then the corners of his mouth lifted, a faint, weary but genuine smile. His eyes softened, and he let out the smallest breath—content, as if reassured that he was not alone.

Without a word, he closed his eyes again, and the smile lingered as sleep pulled him back under.