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Truly, the most tragic stories always start innocently.
And when you’re an artist raised in a temple, surrounded by people who don’t value art at all, you end up starving for connection in any form you can find.
For Orin, it began simply. One afternoon in the main market, she slipped away from her mother. She didn’t care what consequences would come later. She only cared about the thing she’d heard whispers of and couldn’t stop imagining.
A theater.
The play itself was plain, something about a king betrayed by his own blood, something about hubris. But the plot didn’t matter. The experience did. Orin was too small to see over the crowd, so she dragged a crate into place, climbed, and balanced there on unsteady feet, eyes wide, drinking in every gesture and every voice.
And then she saw him.
A boy, so close to her age, watched the whole play with the very same rapt, hungry attention. Orin hardly ever spoke to anyone from outside the temple, and she never spoke with someone close to her own age, and now she felt it like an itch under her skin: the urge to run to him and simply say it, as if a name could be a bridge.
She slipped off the crate, wove through elbows and hems and baskets, and stopped just close enough to be brave.
"I’m Orin," she blurted.
He turned like he’d been waiting for a voice to break the spell. For a second he only stared, and then – he smiled. Nobody was ever smiling at her.
"Norris."
Later, that name disappeared. She called him Dribbles, partly as a joke, partly because she was bad at showing people that she cared about them.
And truly, time has a fascinating way of working.
A few days after their first meeting, the Temple of Bhaal rang with hymns of gratitude, prayers, and a kind of joy so alien to Bhaalists it sounded almost wrong coming from their mouths.
Their true Chosen, a white dragonborn, had arrived to lead the cult toward triumph, glory, and success. And for Orin, it meant one simple thing: everyone’s attention was finally far away from her. It drifted off like smoke, like blood washed down a drain. No eyes counting her steps. No voices calling her back.
So she started slipping out of the temple.
And she started meeting Norris more often.
At first, they talked about colors. About paintings. About shapes and light and the strange ache certain scenes left behind. About things they shouldn’t have known how to name, because no one had ever bothered to tell them what art was, only what it was forbidden to be. There was no place for art for a Bhaalspawn and even less place for the only son of a farmer.
"I don't want to work with my dad. I want to be an actor," he said one day, as if he’d been carrying the sentence in his mouth for hours and was finally brave enough to let it exist. "The kind people choose to watch. The kind whose work speaks to everyone."
Orin should laugh at him, she should tell him how ridiculous it was to even dream about those kinds of things. But instead she looked at him with a crazy amount of seriousness, too serious for someone who could barely hold a weapon.
"You will, I am very sure of it."
Not long after, she broke one of the first rules Helena had beaten into her, violently, meticulously, until it lived in her bones.
Never show anyone who you truly are.
But when Norris saw her real face, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t recoil. He didn’t look at her like a creature that needed to be put down or put away. He simply reached up, caught a loose strand of hair that had slipped free from her braid, and put it back behind her ear.
"You are beautiful, Orin."
They played together in the theater, but they treated it with deadly seriousness. They staged plays for no one but themselves - just two children in an empty space whispering lines, bowing to rows of imagined faces, and turning scraps of cloth into crowns and capes.
Sometimes they rewrote stories they overheard: saints who lied, lovers who were separated by a knife, and a present who was hunted by the past. Sometimes they invented new ones, based on feelings they couldn't really explain yet – envy, longing, devotion.
Dribbles would bow like he'd seen the actors do, hand to his chest, chin lifted as if he truly belonged on a stage. And Orin would watch him with a critic's intensity and then interrupt without mercy.
"No. Again. You didn't truly mean it."
He pretended he was offended and, with another dramatic gesture, did this again, louder, clearer, as if the air itself had to be convinced.
And when the world outside grew to sharp – when Temple felt too close and blood was too loud, when prayers turned into orders and orders into punishments – this was where they went.
Not to escape.
To be real, in the only way they knew how.
When they were teenagers, something changed. They no longer had play – Norris started to write his own plays, and they tried them.
That evening they were rehearsing something new, nothing grand – two Chosen, two instruments in the hands of two gods who hated each other. In his story, "The Enemy" wore a ruthless face and "Betrayal" sounded like a prayer. And underneath it, he wrote:
If the gods wouldn’t allow them to love, they would do it anyway. Despite them. As an act of war.
"This is stupid, Dribbles" she said at last.
He didn't argue. He only smiled, he already knew she was brutally honest.
"I know, it's a reason why it works."
"Where are my lines?" she crossed her arms, white eyes were focused on him.
"Well, in this scene, you don't speak much. Because, in this scene," he said lightly, too lightly, like he was hiding something sharp in the tone. "You don't win with words. You win by staying."
Norris stepped closer, not in a boyish rush.
"My lady, if I do not speak now, I will rot from the inside with it."
Norris' smile faltered, only for a second. He stepped closer anyway, because that was what the scene demanded. Because he trusted the script. Because he trusted her.
"I tried to name it in prayer," that word, prayer, came out wrong in his mouth, like a borrowed coat that didn’t fit. "I tried to cut it out. I tried to bury it under every sensible thing I could think of."
Orin lifted her haze, she felt dust in the air, her skin caught the last tiny sparks of daylight, and for a moment it felt like the world was holding its breath for them.
"And it’s still there," he finished, quieter now. "So I think… I think it’s not going away."
She was supposed to say the next line. Something dramatic, something about scars of fate.
But instead she just stared, looked into his eyes, as if she'd forgotten how words even worked.
He hesitated, he wasn't fearless, he was brave only in the particular way artists can be brave – willing to step into something unknown if it might become beautiful.
"Orin?" it was not in script, it was her name, and much more. Because no one said her name like it meant person.
She moved first, sudden and awkward, as if she didn’t trust herself to think, and grabbed the front of his shirt with one hand, not hard, just enough to anchor herself. And Norris didn't pull away, he didn't laugh or make it into a joke.
"You talk too much," Orin muttered, close enough now that her breath warmed his lips.
"Because you’re about to run," he answered. "And you always run before you let something matter."
Orin stared at his mouth like it was a door she didn’t know how to open. She had killed things. She had hurt things. She had learned how to survive. No one had taught her how to be gentle.
Norris lifted a hand slowly, asking for permission with the motion alone, and brushed his knuckles against her cheek – not mask, not weapon, but her. And she didn't flinch.
So he leaned it carefully. It was the kind of kiss you could only have once: too shy, too slow, and yet somehow – it changed the air around them.
Orin pulled back an inch, furious at herself for shaking.
"That was stupid," she breathed.
"Was it?"
"Don't look at me like that," her eyes flashed.
"Like what?"
This time – Orin leaned in more deliberately, more in control. Then she whispered against his lips:
"Like you think you can keep me."
His voice came out rougher than he intended, "I'm not trying to keep you."
She smiled, and her smile was razor-thin. "Liar."
"I'm just trying to be worth the moment you finally choose to stay."
Orin froze. For a heartbeat, she looked as if she'd been struck, not with a fear but with something way much worse, way more dangerous.
Hope.
She shoved him lightly, as if offended by the tenderness of that sentence, as if it was a sin to even want something else.
"Back to the scene"
Norris swallowed, eyes still on her mouth. "Right. The scene."Orin turned away too quickly, stalking back to her mark like she could outrun what they’d just done. Then, without looking back, she said:
"Again."
There was a pause. One heartbeat. Two. He could have made a joke, he could have asked if she meant the line or the kiss. Instead he stepped into position, and when Orin turned to face him, her expression was the same mask as always. Only her hands betrayed her.
She was impatient, she closed the distance herself.
This time the kiss wasn’t shy. It wasn’t an accident. It was chosen, measured, almost punishing in its control, like she was proving a point to the world, to him, to the god that owned her.
I decide.
And Dribbles kissed her back like he understood the vow underneath it.
And first he noticed the silences. He saw bloodstains on her clothes. Then, in a market, he could've sworn he saw her at dawn, when the city was still sleeping. It wasn't her face, but he knew her moves.
And then people started disappearing.
Someone didn’t come back from behind the tavern. Someone never returned from a late shift. Someone was found at first light, too clean, too quiet, too ritual for it to be random. People blamed bandits. Monsters. Bad luck.
Dribbles listened to the rumors, but he listened even harder to the gaps between them.
And every time someone said the word "cult" or spoke about "blood freaks" and "temple scum", Orin did the same thing: the smallest tightening of her jaw, like a tic. Like someone who knew the subject far too well. He started watching her differently.
Not with suspicion, more like fear of what it might mean and stubborn refusal to accept it anyway. Because the thought that kept hammering at him was stupid and simple in its dangerously tender way:
I know her. She is not a monster. She can't be.
And if she was, then someone had put her there, had broken her into that shape.
That evening, after the usual rehearsal, there was no place for jokes, no clowning. Just a boy whose hands shook a little as he forced himself to speak like it was normal.
"Orin, honey," he started. "I'm not here to… Well… I'm not accusing you. Because I know you."
Her lips parted, almost a laugh. "You don't. You only know one version of me."
"I know the part of you that looks at color like it’s salvation, I know the part of you that argues about light as if it matters more than blood. I know the part of you that–" His throat tightened. "–that doesn’t flinch when someone touches you gently. You can’t hide in the dark from someone who’s watched you try to become someone else."
Orin stepped closer, slow as a knife being drawn.
"You’re going to get yourself killed," she said softly, almost kindly. "You’re walking into the wrong play."
"Maybe. But I’m tired of watching you die in rehearsal."
For a moment, her expression went blank, so blank it was terrifying. Like a mask dropping into place.
"Go home," she said.
"No."
The word came out before he could soften it. His heart was pounding like he’d just stepped onto the stage for the first time.
"I’m leaving," Dribbles said. "Tonight. I’ve got coin saved. I can get us out."
Orin stared at him like he’d spoken another language.
"Us," she repeated, flatly.
"Yes." He took a breath, and in it was the worst kind of bravery – hope. "You and me. We can disappear. We can be nobody. You can be an artist, you can be –" he swallowed hard, searching for a version of her that didn’t taste like blood " – you can be whatever you want, Orin. Not what they made you."
Orin stepped closer. Too close. Her voice dropped, intimate as a confession and twice as dangerous.
"You don’t know what I am," she said.
Dribbles didn’t move back. His hands were shaking, but he held his ground like it mattered.
"Then tell me," he said. "And let me stay anyway."
Orin looked at him for a long moment, as if weighing his soul in her hands.
And then she did something that felt like mercy, and felt like a blade all at once: she smiled.
"Why?"
He hesitates, because this is the line that changes everything.
"Because I love you."
The city keeps breathing around them. Somewhere, bells ring. Somewhere, someone screams, someone laughs, and someone prays. And Orin looks at him like love is the most dangerous word he could have chosen.
Orin wanted to leave with him. She wanted to run from Baldur's Gate even if it meant living the rest of her life in hiding. She would have done it.
If she hadn’t woken that night with Helena’s blade resting against her throat.
And suddenly she started to matter again.
Dribbles waited for her.
He waited one day. Two. He waited with that stubborn, foolish faith of someone who believed people could be saved if you just loved them hard enough.
After a week, the hope in him began to curdle into something quieter and colder: grief with teeth.
On the seventh night he stood in their little theater corner alone, touching the frayed edge of the curtain as if it might answer him. When Orin still didn’t come, he finally did what dreamers do when the world refuses to make space for them.
He chose his dream anyway.
The Circus of the Last Days arrived in Baldur’s Gate.
A Chosen of Bhaal shouldn’t have had time for something like that - shouldn’t have wanted time for it. But when the Chosen could change her face, when she could walk the streets as anyone, nobody could truly stop her.
Orin was different now. Crueler. More devoted. As if she had decided to replace everything Dribbles ever made her feel with Bhaal. Some part of her knew she was going to see him there, even if she would rather not say it out loud.
He looked older than he should – probably tired after traveling for almost a decade. Yet he still had something: that kind of charisma that always used to make her laugh. She stayed hidden in the crowd, watching him, watching the chance for a normal life she had wasted.
And beneath that, another thought pulsed, ugly and inevitable.
Her disgraced bloodkin was on his way to Baldur's Gate. Orin wasn’t stupid. Bhaal always chose what was pure. What was his. The son carved from his own blood, the "true" heir, the pathetic little creature destined to replace her no matter how faithfully she bled.
For one breath, one stolen moment, Orin let herself imagine it anyway:
What if she ran?
What if she had run with Dribbles?
What if she could still be that girl on a crate, eyes wide, heart soft in ways she pretended she didn’t remember?
Dribbles launched into his speech, bright theatrical, playing to the crowd the way he always had. The ring lights caught his face. The laughter rose, obedient. He was in control of them all. And then his eyes found hers.
She didn’t move. She didn’t blink. She didn’t even breathe properly. She held his gaze from behind a stolen face and told herself it meant nothing.
It meant everything.
Because even with her different face, red hair, green poison eyes, he knew.
The shape of her silence. The way she held herself like a threat. The way the air around her went still.
In the middle of his speech, he just stared at her, mouth still forming words for the crowd while something else fought behind his teeth, something raw and terrible and almost tender.
He tried not to scream her name.
Orin ran because he was right, she always ran before she let anything matter. But halfway through the crowd, her vision swam. The noise of the circus dulled, as if someone had stuffed cloth into her ears. Her breath snagged.
It didn’t arrive like a thought. It arrived like a hand closing around the back of her neck and turning, yanking her out of herself. For a moment she still had eyes, still had a body, but no longer had permission to steer it.
The Urge took over.
And then, nothing. The foundation of their love decayed in an instant.
She lay in a pool of it, hair stuck to her cheek, her ribs rising and falling as if she’d run for miles. It had happened before. Blackouts. Waking with red under her nails. Waking with the taste of iron in her mouth and a calm.
Nothing she should worry about.
She pushed herself upright.
That was when she saw the head.
It had been cut with surgical precision, deliberate, almost reverent. The kind of cut that didn’t just kill. The kind that composed. A blade guided by someone who understood anatomy, artistry, and cruelty in equal measure.
Of course she recognized her own work.
Then her eyes focused.
A familiar curl of hair, dark with blood. A line of the jaw she had once touched without a knife between them. The shape of the mouth she had kissed behind a ragged curtain, young enough then to believe softness could be kept secret.
Her breath stopped.
No.
No, no –
For a few seconds her mind tried to reject it. Tried to make it someone else. Anyone else. A stranger. A punishment meant for her. A coincidence.
But the truth didn’t bend, it was him.
And when the horror finally reached her face, it wasn’t a scream that escaped her.
It was a laugh, small, broken, disbelieving.
Because of course.
Of course Bhaal didn’t just take what she loved.
He made her do it with her own hands.