When Cael retreated to the Atrium of Silence later that night, the space itself seemed to mourn his changing nature. The familiar silver mist that had always welcomed him felt cold, distant, as if recognizing that he was no longer entirely what he had been.
The echo-child's bell—silent for so long—suddenly tolled once, a sound of such profound sadness that it sent ripples through the cosmic realm. The note hung in the air like a question, like a goodbye, like the acknowledgment of something ending.
Mia appeared beside him, her translucent form flickering in the strange light of the Atrium. “You're becoming something new,” she said with ancient wisdom. “Are you afraid?”
The question forced Cael to confront what he'd been avoiding: the longer he lingered in the mortal realm, the more he risked forgetting his cosmic purpose entirely. Each conversation with Damian pulled him further from the Threads, made him more real, more present, more human in his desires and fears.
“I should be,” he said finally. “Everything I was created to be is changing. Everything I thought I understood about existence is being rewritten.”
“But?”
“But the thought of going back to what I was feels impossible now. Empty in ways I never recognized before.” He pressed his hands to his chest, searching for the familiar emptiness that had always defined him, but found only the steady ache of longing. “He's changing me, and I don't know how to stop it.”
“Do you want to stop it?”
The question hung in the air between them, weighted with implications Cael wasn't ready to examine. Did he want to return to the sterile certainty of his original purpose? To the endless cycle of reaping without connection, of serving cosmic function without understanding its meaning?
“I don't know,” he said finally. “I don't know what I want anymore. I only know that when I'm with him, existence feels... significant. Like it has meaning beyond simple duty.”
When the next cosmic summons came—a soul ready to pass in the northern districts—Cael attempted to respond as he always had. But the Threads themselves rebelled, dragging him inexorably back toward Damian's clinic. The golden binding had grown too strong to ignore, and he began to understand that the tether was no longer optional.
It had become the defining force of his existence.
Standing in the cosmic space between realms, feeling the pull of duty warring with the pull of connection, Cael spoke aloud the question that terrified him most: “What have you done to me, Damian Vale?”
His voice echoed strangely in the Atrium, carrying new harmonics that sounded almost human. In the mortal world, he could sense Damian stirring in his sleep, a faint smile crossing his features as if hearing distant music.
“Love isn't something that happens to you,” Mia said softly, appearing beside him with the sudden materialization of childhood dreams. “It's something you choose, again and again. The question is: are you brave enough to keep choosing?”
Cael had no answer for her, but her words planted a seed that would grow into the courage he'd need for what was coming. Because as he stood there in the silver mist of the Threads, feeling the golden binding pulse with each of Damian's heartbeats, he realized that choice was no longer theoretical.
He was already choosing.
The only question now was whether he was brave enough to choose openly, to stop hiding behind the safety of shadows and cosmic duty.
As the Atrium’s silence pressed in, Cael made a choice—unsteady, terrifying, utterly his own. Tomorrow night, he would step from the shadows, not as myth but as himself. The fear was sharp, but hope flickered beside it: the hope of being seen, known, chosen. And for the first time, he found himself eager for the risk.
After all, to be loved by someone who needed no eyes to see his heart—that was a miracle worth becoming mortal for.
Chapter 9
The Shape of Want
Damian
Damian’s morning had barely begun when a fist hammered against his clinic door—a wild, frantic pounding that didn’t pause for breath. For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming, caught between sleep and waking, until Oris’s unmistakable shuffle-step crossed the threshold. The Hollow moved quickly this time, urgency in the very angle of his stooped shoulders, and Damian’s senses prickled even before his hands reached the bundle Oris carried. Some deep instinct told him: this was no ordinary emergency.
Oris’s presence always came with a certain chill—an emptiness left by the fragments of soul he’d lost—but today, something else clung to him, an aura of panic that thickened the air. He cradled something in his arms, bundled in a worn gray blanket, and as Damian reached out, his fingertips brushed the cool, delicate cheek of a child. The weight in Oris’s arms was almost nothing—barely more than air wrapped in fabric.
Damian’s healer’s hands moved automatically, searching for a pulse at the child’s throat and wrist. The heartbeat was thread-thin, barely there, skin cold as frost, breathing so shallow he had to lean close to be sure she was alive at all. Beneath the all-too-familiar signature of time-debt—the brittle bones, the papery skin—there was something far worse, something that made his magical senses crawl.
“Put her on the table,” Damian said, guiding Oris with gentle pressure. “Gently. She's barely holding together.”
As his hands mapped the girl’s body through touch and magic, a chill ran through him. This wasn't just time-starvation. Someone had been experimenting with soul-extraction—magical wounds that felt jagged and raw, pieces of her very essence sliced away with surgical precision. He recognized the scent of burned soul, the strange, too-sweet tang of forbidden magic, and bile rose in his throat.
“Fuck,” he breathed, voice trembling as he reached for the strongest stabilizers in his kit. “Who did this to her?”
Oris made a sound like grinding stone, his scarred throat struggling to shape words. “Bad magic,” he managed, each syllable an effort. “Someone… stealing years. Making them last longer.”
