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Calian woke to silence that felt wrong.
Not the ordinary morning quiet of the palace—the layered sounds of servants hurrying through corridors, distant birds, the soft hum of magic under stone—but a silence with edges. He lay there for a moment, eyes open, watching the ceiling. The light creeping in through the curtains was the same pale gold as always. His room looked unchanged. Nothing broken, nothing moved.
Yet something had already gone missing.
He sat up slowly. There was an ache in his chest he couldn’t name, as if he had run a long distance in his sleep. He pressed a hand against it, frowning, and tried to chase the strange heaviness away with logic.
Nothing had happened.
He slid out of bed, dressed almost automatically, and opened the balcony doors to let the cold in, the way he always did. The wind brushed past him with a familiar chill. Below, the morning grounds unfurled—gardens, stone paths, the glittering edge of a fountain.
It should have felt like every other morning.
It didn’t.
A thought formed quietly in his head, so ordinary it startled him by how much it hurt.
…Where is he?
He blinked.
Who?
The question collapsed before it fully shaped. For one, dizzy second, Calian felt as if he had lost hold of a name he had been repeating all his life. Then, like a thread snapped back into place, it returned with sharp clarity.
Brother...?
.
.
.
.
.
Plantz.
He exhaled and almost laughed at himself. Of course. His older brother. It was ridiculous—how could he forget, even for a breath?
He stepped back into the room.
But the feeling didn’t pass.
It deepened.
By the time Ian came in to deliver his schedule, Calian had already gone through the desk once, the bookshelves twice, opening drawers he didn’t need to open, searching for something he couldn’t admit he was searching for.
Ian bowed lightly.
“Good morning, Your Highness.”
Calian turned, too quickly.
“Ian,” he said, voice steady only because he forced it to be. “Where is my older brother?”
Ian blinked, confusion plain on his face in a way that made Calian’s stomach twist.
“Prince Randel is already awake,” the attendant said carefully. “If you are looking for him—”
“I asked for Plantz,” Calian said. “Where is he?”
There was a short, beat-long pause in which Calian waited for something ordinary—exasperation, or a report, or maybe an eye-roll hidden behind courtesy.
What he got was confusion, deep and honest.
“…Your Highness,” Ian said carefully, “you have one elder brother. Prince Randel.”
Calian stared at him.
The world didn’t tilt. It didn’t spin. It simply narrowed until Ian’s face was the only thing in it.
“What?”
Ian swallowed.
“There are two princes,” he said slowly, as if reciting something obvious. “Prince Randel and Prince Calian. That is all.”
Calian’s lips parted, but no sound came out.
He questioned Kyrie next. Then Hina. Then Rmain. Then Allan. Each time, the same calm answer returned to him like a cold echo.
Two princes.
Randel and Calian.
No Plantz.
Even Plantz’s own attendant tilted his head politely at the name.
“Whose attendant, Your Highness?”
By noon, the palace felt like a beautifully crafted stage set, every face familiar, every detail precise—except the single person missing, erased so cleanly the world itself swore he had never been there.
Calian clenched his hands until his knuckles whitened.
A spell. It had to be.
Something that altered memory on a scale so vast that not even Valcanum’s mages felt the gap. Or perhaps reality itself had shifted by a god’s indifferent hand, trimming one life away as if editing an error.
To send him into a world where Plantz didn’t exist… He laughed under his breath, a sound without humor.
How cruel.
He went to Allan because if anyone could cut through illusions, it would be him. He explained only the necessary parts, because even saying the name aloud hurt.
Allan listened in uncharacteristic silence.
“I believe you,” he said at last. “But there is nothing for me to grasp. No magical residue. No distortion. If this is an illusion, it is… comprehensive.”
“Can you break it?”
“Given enough time,” Allan said. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you are the one who has been taken elsewhere instead—where what you remember was never true.”
Calian left the room with those words pressed into his mind like a brand.
He tried to go about the day as if nothing were wrong.
He attended morning obligations. He spoke when spoken to. He smiled in the manner expected of a prince who did not cause unnecessary concern. But between each action lay a hollow space where something should have been.
At breakfast he ate without thinking, spoon moving from plate to mouth, mouth to plate.
Then, very naturally, he said aloud, “I know, I know—don’t look at me like that. I’m still growing.”
The words slipped out so easily it took him a heartbeat to realize the silence that followed was absolute.
He looked up to the seat beside him.
Empty.
He stared at it, waiting for the familiar dry remark, the faint frown, the steady gaze that could scold him without a word.
Nothing.
Calian’s fingers tightened around his spoon.
He set it down.
“Right,” he murmured. “No one’s here.”
He continued eating anyway, stubbornly, suddenly furious at the ache climbing up his throat. At least pretend, he told himself. Pretend nothing is wrong. Pretend the world is as everyone else says it is.
But the pretense fractured quickly.
In the afternoon, a familiar sound came from the balcony—light footsteps, the whisper of cloth against stone.
Calian turned so fast his chair scraped loudly across the floor. He crossed the room in long strides and pushed open the balcony doors, half-expecting to see a familiar figure leaning against the railing, cardigan loose, expression faintly disapproving.
There was no one there.
The curtains stirred in the wind, that was all.
He let out a breath that shook more than he meant it to. Later, walking down a corridor, he saw a tall silhouette moving past the end of the hall, shoulders unmistakably familiar. He stepped forward, heart in his throat—
—and the figure resolved into a servant carrying linens.
In quiet rooms and long hallways and open balconies, he began to hear things. Not voices exactly, but the memory of them, curling through the still air.
A low, dry tone: Stop barking.
A faint sigh: Eat slowly.
A muttered complaint, sarcastic and fond at once: You’re loud even when you’re not talking.
Calian stopped more than once to answer before he remembered he was alone.
By evening, the palace itself seemed to conspire against him. Every corner reminded him of a presence that the world insisted had never existed. His chest felt too tight to fill properly.
He finally found the cat near the garden—the small, shameless thing that always wandered where it shouldn’t and had chosen, inexplicably, to like Plantz best. It lifted its head when Calian approached, tail flicking.
He crouched down slowly.
“You,” he said softly. “You always followed him around.”
The cat blinked its mismatched eyes at him.
Calian swallowed.
“Do you… remember him? My older brother...”
The wind rustled through leaves. Somewhere water dripped. The cat tilted its head, opened its mouth, and meowed, unbothered, unconcerned, as if the world had never lost anything at all.
Calian laughed.
It was a small, broken sound.
He lowered his head, shoulders shaking without his permission. Something in him finally tore free, all the restraint and logic and princely composure unraveling at once.
“Give him back!” he shouted hoarsely—to the sky, to the palace, to gods he did not believe in. “Take me instead. I don’t care. Take everything else. Just give him back!!!”
His throat burned. His voice cracked. He didn’t care.
He sank to his knees, breath coming in harsh gasps, rage bleeding into despair until he couldn’t tell them apart. He felt small. Powerless. Trapped in a world that had erased the one person he had fought gods and timelines for.
“How do you erase someone like that? How do you pretend he was never—” His breath hitched. “He’s my older brother. Give him back!!!”
The garden did not answer. The cat only rubbed against his sleeve as if nothing in the world was wrong.
He kept shouting until the sound dissolved into harsh, uneven breaths—until the world blurred—and then—
He opened his eyes.
His ceiling.
His room.
His breath came fast, chest rising and falling as if he had run. Sweat clung coldly to his skin.
It took him a second to understand that he was awake.
Ian’s worried face hovered above him.
“Your Highness? You called out in your sleep. What’s wrong?”
Calian stared at him, then turned sharply.
“Where is my older brother?” His voice trembled despite him.
Ian blinked, taken aback by the urgency but answered without hesitation, “Prince Plantz is probably still in his room. It’s quite early.”
That was all Calian needed.
He threw off the blankets, ignored Ian’s startled call, and ran. He didn’t take the door. He didn’t think at all. He dashed straight for the balcony and leapt, air rushing around him as he dropped and caught the ledges he had memorized long ago.
“Your Highness!” Ian’s voice chased him, useless against the wind.
Calian landed lightly on the fourth-floor balcony he had climbed too many times to count. His heart thundered. He pushed the door open without knocking.
The room beyond was dim, curtains drawn against the early light.
And on the bed, half-buried in blankets, lay the familiar shape of someone breathing slow, even breaths.
Calian stood there for a moment, every frantic thought in his head falling silent.
“…Brother,” he said, barely louder than a breath.
Plantz stirred. His eyelashes fluttered. He opened his eyes and lifted himself up on one elbow, squinting through sleep at the intruder who had barged in over his balcony at dawn.
It wasn’t surprising. Calian did that often enough that none found it weird anymore.
What surprised Plantz was Calian’s expression.
“What,” he said flatly. His voice was rough with sleep. “Why are you making that face?”
The third prince crossed the room in three quick steps and wrapped his arms around him before he could sit up fully.
Plantz went still.
Calian buried his face against his shoulder and drew in a shaky breath, the familiar scent settling around him—soft citrus, soothing tea leaves, the cool trace of night air through an open window. His hands tightened in the fabric of Plantz’s clothes as if confirming he was solid.
“You’re here,” Calian murmured. Again, softer. “You’re here… You’re here…”
Plantz did not move.
He didn’t pry him off. He didn’t make a dry comment. He simply sat there, feeling the slight tremor running through Calian’s body, eyes narrowing just a fraction.
“…Did something happen?” he asked at last, quieter than usual.
Calian didn’t answer right away. He just breathed, slowly, until the shaking eased. Finally, he let his arms loosen and leaned back enough to look at his brother’s face.
He opened his mouth.
His stomach growled loudly.
Silence fell.
Plantz stared at him.
Calian closed his eyes for a brief mortified second.
Plantz exhaled, the faintest sigh—the kind he reserved for occasions when the universe proved, yet again, that his little brother was impossible.
“Let’s eat first,” he said.
Calian laughed, the sound breaking and then smoothing out, warm and alive. He nodded.
For the first time since he woke, the world felt right again.