Chapter Text
Markus of Veythall carried himself as though the very stones of the city owed him passage. Wherever he walked, servants scattered, apprentices pressed themselves into doorways, and merchants ducked their heads until his shadow passed. He enjoyed the sight– enjoyed their fear. To Markus, respect and fear were two sides of the same coin, and he spent it freely.
He was a man of stature in every sense. Broad shouldered, richly clothed, heavy with rings that caught the torchlight of the streets. Even his stride was calculated– measured to suggest authority, but quick enough to show impatience. Those beneath him learned early that Markus’s time was too precious to be wasted, and his temper too costly to test.
That night, returning from a feast where he had boasted of his wealth until the host pretended fatigue just to send him away, Markus found the cool winter street nearly empty. His boots echoed sharply, announcing his approach.
Then he saw the cloaked figure.
A ragged thing, wrapped in a weather-stained mantle, stood rooted in the center of the cobblestone path. The figure did not shuffle aside, did not bow its head, did not so much as twitch at Markus’s presence.
“Out of the way. This is a road, not a sleeping place.” Markus barked, lifting his chin.
The figure didn’t move.
Markus’s lip curled. “I said, move.” He waved a jeweled hand as though shooing a stray hound. “Do you know who I am?”
A pause. Then a voice– low, rasping, oddly calm:
“Yes. You are Markus of Veythall. Loud as thunder, heavy as stone.”
The answer made his jaw tighten. It wasn’t deference, wasn’t apology. Just statement.
“I think,” the figure continued, tilting its hidden head, “it is time the mountain learned what it feels like to be a pebble.”
Markus scoffed. “Beggar’s riddles. Move, or I’ll—”
The figure raised one hand, pale in the torchlight, and traced a shape in the air. Markus’s skin prickled as though invisible ants crawled over him. The cloaked figure whispered a few words that stung his ears like nettles.
Then it was gone. One moment before him, the next bleeding into shadows.
Markus laughed, too loud, the sound bouncing against the walls. “Street sorcery. Tricks and nonsense.” He shook his head, ranting about filthy hedge-witches and their mutterings, and walked on.
The next morning, he noticed it. His tunic fit loose about the shoulders. His belt had slipped a notch. At first he blamed the tailor. “Sloppy work,” he growled, tugging at the cloth. “I’ll have him pay for this.” Yet when he tried another garment from his wardrobe, it too sagged strangely. He scowled, then dismissed it. No matter. The tailor will answer for it.
By evening, his boots no longer hugged his calves. His servants exchanged quick, nervous glances while helping him dress. Markus caught them, snarled, and they lowered their eyes at once. Still, he caught whispers as they moved about the hall. He told himself they were gossiping about someone else.
The second day stripped away that comfort. Markus awoke to find his boots sliding off when he walked. He tripped twice before noon, cursing loudly enough to send servants scrambling. The belt he had tightened was now cinched awkwardly, bunching his tunic like a sack. Every mirror reminded him of something he could not name– some creeping wrongness in the proportions of his own body.
When a servant stared too long, Markus struck him. But striking didn’t silence the truth: he was shrinking.
The third day destroyed him.
By morning, the bed seemed too large. The door handle, too high. He sat at his desk and found the chair uncomfortably vast, his legs dangling like a child’s. Fear, sharp and sour, gnawed through the arrogance he wrapped around himself like armour. He could not show his face to the townspeople. Not like this.
By dusk, he no longer stood tall enough to reach the latch of his own door. His clothes were useless piles of cloth that dragged behind him. He spent the hours pacing the long wooden grain of the floorboards pondering what to do, fearing just how small he might get, his heart pounding with every creak.
And by nightfall, the once great Markus of Veythall was no larger than six inches tall.
With tremendous effort he climbed his unmade bedsheets and leapt onto his bedside table, staggering beneath the height of objects that had once been trivial. A single candle rose like a blazing tower. A loaf of bread sprawled across the table like a boulder. His rings, once badges of wealth, had long since slipped from his fingers and rolled away, now useless as children’s toys.
His voice, once booming and commanding, emerged as a thin squeak barely louder than the crackle of the fire. No one answered him.
The lord, who treated others as dust beneath his feet, was reduced to dust himself.
Markus now spent an hour wrestling with fabric. His fine silk shirt– embroidered in gold and once tailored perfectly to his chest– was a suffocating blanket. He picked at the thread until he was able to tear it with shaking hands, shredding long strips until they resembled crude wrappings. What he fashioned of his robes and furs barely clung to his shrunken frame, sagging like rags, but the effort left him gasping, sweat beading on his tiny brow.
Even lifting a needle, once so insignificant a thing, proved laughable. The polished steel rod was hefty in his hand, and the thread spooled beside it looked like rope. Every object in his chamber had become monstrous. The very world, which had always bent to him, now loomed in defiance.
The little man sat on the edge of his bedside table, chest heaving, glaring at the darkened door. He could not be seen like this. To have a servant– a boy he had struck for dropping a cup, a maid he had scorned for bowing too slowly– lay eyes on him now? The thought hollowed his stomach.
They would laugh. They would whisper. They would know that Markus, the lord who treated them like ants, had himself become an insect. He would not give them the satisfaction.
When the knock came, light and dutiful, his entire body jolted. The servants entered, as they did every night, to tidy the chambers and clear the dishes. Candlelight spilled in behind them, flooding the room.
Markus scrambled. His heart hammered as loud as a drum in his chest. He dove behind the shining pewter goblet that now rose like a silver tower, pressing himself flat against the cool metal. Shadows engulfed him.
He watched from the darkness as they moved about the chamber, impossibly large. Their footsteps shook the table beneath him when they got close to his bed; their hands, large as boulders, collected his plates of unwanted food and swept away crumbs with casual grace. Crumbs– he realized– that were meals to him now.
“Strange,” one muttered, inspecting the torn tunic Markus had left on the bed. “The master hasn’t called for us once today.”
“Best not to ask why,” the other answered quickly, eyes darting from the cloth to the door.
They worked in silence. Markus stayed hidden, biting down on the inside of his cheek to quiet his ragged breath. His pride had once demanded their attention on him at all times. Now he prayed they wouldn’t look his way.
When they left, the room seemed colder, emptier. Markus slumped against the goblet, trembling with exhaustion. With a grim thrust into a new reality, he had discovered a truth he had never considered: survival was work. Every waking moment at this size was difficult. To clothe himself. To hide. To eat. Every act was laborious, humiliating, and beneath the Markus who once dined on venison and wine.
The world had never been so heavy.
And Markus had never felt so small.
Hunger gnawed at him first. He thought back to the crumbs left on his bedside table, the ones he used to sneer at as his own sloppiness. They would have become a feast for him now, one he would devour grain by grain, had the servants not done their job so well. “The one time they are thorough," He muttered bitterly under his breath, staring at the empty, polished table surface.
By the time the moon rose high in the sky, his hunger and humiliation had curdled into anger. There was nothing more he could scrounge from his immaculate room, and his patience wore thin. He could no longer pretend this wretched curse would fade on its own. He was a man of dignity, and he would not be left to rot like some forgotten insect.
He knew nothing of curses, magic trickery, or alchemy, but he knew one man in the city who might understand the affliction, who had studied oddities of the flesh and spirit– the reputable physician down the street.
The decision set his heart blazing with purpose. He dragged his shredded scraps of clothing tighter around himself, bundling what warmth he could, and turned to the looming crack beneath his chamber door.
He hesitated. To crawl under that door meant leaving the safety of his manor, venturing into a world now built to kill him. But the thought of remaining– trapped in fear, waiting for servants to discover him, starving slowly– was worse.
On hands and knees he pushed forward, the gap beneath the doorframe a cavernous tunnel. Cold air hissed against him as he squeezed through, popping out onto the wide wooden expanse of the hall. Shadows towered, every candle a distant sun. The house creaked and groaned like he was in the belly of a slumbering beast.
Then he reached the great front door. The small gap at the bottom spilled icy air across the floor. He shoved his way beneath and tumbled onto the stone steps outside.
The cold expanse of the tiled front steps greeted him, dusted with snow.
The snow had grown heavier since dusk. Flakes the size of his head drifted lazily from the sky, but to Markus they fell like sheets of white fire. Each strike melted cold across his face and hands, soaking him instantly. The cobblestone road outside his manor was buried under a thickening layer of powder, waist-deep to him.
He cursed, forcing one leg in front of the other. “I will make it,” he growled, his voice no louder than the whisper of the wind. It was cold, extremely, painfully so, but he pushed on. What choice did he have but to seek some sort of professional help? He’d no friends nor family to call his own, never having needed any until now, and couldn’t think of anybody he could call upon who wouldn’t belittle him in this state. His reputation would be ruined if one of his servants found him like this, and the Gods only knew what they would do to him for revenge.
He would not risk his pride, his status.
The cold night was merciless, seeping into his skin with every step forward. The wind picked up, as did the snow, which at some points sank him to his chest. He clawed and scrambled, slipping back as the storm picked up, a faint howling in the distance. His body, once full of power, was becoming a frail toy in winter’s grip.
The physician’s home was not far– barely half a dozen houses away. But with each staggering footfall, it seemed to grow farther. The distance was much farther than he had anticipated, in this state. The storm pressed him down, buried him deeper. The flakes clung to his face and hair, freezing his breath into ice.
Markus wondered humourlessly if he might die on the very street he once strutted down without a thought– trampled not by men, but by weather. A lord, undone by snow.
But with surprising resilience, he pressed on, teeth chattering uncontrollably, each step like climbing a mountain. He tugged his makeshift fur wrappings closer- He was so close– he could picture the doctor’s lanterns glowing warm, could imagine the fireplace that would banish this deathly cold. He had never been this frozen in his life; even the frigid winter hunts had always ended with him drinking mulled wine by roaring flames while servants stripped him of his furs.
Now there was no warmth, no fire, no helping hand. Only the storm.
His arms burned, his legs grew heavy. The snow crept higher with each step until it swallowed his chest, then his neck. He clawed upward, dragging himself up another step of cobblestone by sheer force of will, but the strength bled from his limbs. His breath came ragged, shallow, every exhale frosting into the drifts.
“I will make it,” he muttered to himself through numb lips.
But even his unending pride could not fight the icy cold.
Barely a few houses away from his goal, his body failed. His tiny limbs gave out, and he collapsed face-first into the snow. He tried to lift himself once, twice, but could not rise. He lay shivering, fading, staring at the blurred lights in the distance that would never be reached.
Darkness pulled at him. He thought of his fireplace, the crackle of logs, the glow that had always been waiting for him. He wanted nothing more than to be there again, basking in a warmth he had once taken for granted.
Then the world went black.
~
He was found, by some strange luck, by a woman returning from work later than she should have. The growing storm had driven most indoors, but she trudged carefully, basket under her cloak, when her lantern swept across the ground.
Tracks. Strange, small tracks, weaving through the snow, nearly erased by the wind. The patterns were too odd to belong to any animal she knew. She followed them, curious, until they ended abruptly in a heap no larger than her hand.
She crouched, lantern low. At first she thought it a doll, discarded and half-frozen. But when she brushed away the ice, her breath caught in her throat.
She knew that face, even distorted and pale with cold. Everyone in town knew the lord of Veythall, if not from his title, then from his voice that carried through the markets and his punishments that carried through rumour.
“Gods above,” she whispered. “What’s been done to you?”
She lifted him carefully, cradling the tiny, frozen figure in her hands. His lips were blue, his body limp. She spoke his name, tried to rouse him, but Markus gave no reply.
Felice hesitated. Of all the people in the city, Markus was the last she would have chosen to save. He had never shown her kindness, nor anyone she knew. In truth, he had left scars on her community, ones that would not soon heal.
But leaving him to die in the snow? That was not something she could carry on her soul.
“You don’t deserve this,” she murmured, tucking his tiny body beneath her cloak. “But you don’t deserve to die like this either.”
With the storm raging around her, she pressed him to her core for warmth and started toward her home.
Felice reached her small cottage nearer the city’s outskirts, shaking snow from her cloak as she shut the door behind her. The fire inside had dwindled to embers, but it was enough to thaw the numb from her fingers. She lowered her lantern, set her basket aside, and unsheathed her burden.
There, sprawled across her hand like a broken figurine, was Markus. His tiny chest rose and fell shallowly, but he lived. Silk and fur scraps clung to him in frozen tatters, his once-imposing face twisted by the cold into something fragile, almost pitiful.
Felice stood over him, eyes narrow.
She remembered him well enough: the man who had fined her brother for missing a tithe when the harvest failed. The man who had paraded his wealth in the square while peasants went hungry. The man whose name alone could sour a room.
And now, here he lay on her table– diminished to the size of a child’s toy, helpless as a baby bird fallen from its nest.
She paced. Leaving him had not been an option on the road. But here, in the privacy of her home, she felt the weight of the choice press harder. Nursing him back to health meant keeping him alive… but for what? To return to cruelty once restored?
“Maybe this is justice,” she muttered, studying him. “Maybe it would be better if I threw you back into the cold. No one would blame me.”
Yet when she reached to restock the fire, she caught herself glancing back. He stirred faintly, a weak sound slipping from his lips. The arrogance was gone, the venom gone– only a frail, gasping figure remained.
Felice sighed. Her conscience, cursed thing that it was, refused to let her walk away.
“You’ll live, Markus,” she said at last, feeding the fire and pulling a piece of wool to cover his body. “But whether you deserve to… that’s another question.”