It was the season of falling leaves and vanishing warmth—autumn, that quiet mourner of the year—when shadows grew longer than the daylight they betrayed. In the upper chamber of Blackwood Manor, the curtains swayed gently with the breath of wind, trailing like pale specters against the glass. Annalise sat near the hearth, her golden curls catching firelight like spilled honey, her soft voice threading syllables into the ears of the small boy nestled in her lap. He was no more than three—a raven-haired child with wide, wondering eyes who watched her lips as though they might cast spells.
She was teaching him to speak, her tone patient and musical, as if coaxing flowers from stone.
Down in the garden, Raden Everheart, her beloved, sat with a book in his hands—reading, as always, beneath the whispering arbor, where the ivy coiled like ancient script upon the walls. He was a man of order and steel, but beneath that, there pulsed a heart tender for only one woman and the fragile flame of a child too young to know what danger meant.
Then it came.
A mere shift in the air at first. A draft colder than the season permitted. Then, a shadow—long, deliberate, unnatural—fell across the chamber's pale floorboards like spilled ink. It was not the shape of man nor beast, but something older, hungering. From the wide, arched window, a cloak swept in with the wind—black as void, its hem stitched with silver and gold thread that caught the fading light like the shimmer of false promises.
Annalise flinched.
Her breath faltered. This was the day they had feared—the day woven into whispered warnings and sleepless nights. The boy in her arms stirred, sensing his tension, but she kissed his brow and whispered, "Go—go hide in the wardrobe, now. Do not come out, no matter what—"
She never finished.
The blade sank into her ribs with the quiet elegance of death itself. Her gasp was not from the pain—it was from the terror that the boy might see, that he might be next. Blood bloomed across her bodice like a wilting rose in fast motion, her hand instinctively pressing against the wound, red seeping between her fingers as though time itself were unraveling in silk threads.
Raden Everheart sat beneath the ivy-laced arbor of the eastern garden, a worn leather-bound volume resting open across his lap. The waning sun filtered through amber leaves, casting golden lattices upon the page. The world, for a moment, seemed hushed into reverence, as though time itself paused to listen to the turning of a single leaf.
His eyes moved over the text, but slowly, like someone half-listening to a lullaby they already knew by heart. He wasn't reading so much as sitting with the book, letting its presence settle over him like the weight of memory.
Above him, the high chamber window flickered with warm lamplight. That window—framed by cream lace curtains, always drawn back by her hand—had long been his favorite part of the house. It watched over him like she did.
That was her window.
Annalise would often lean there in the late hours, her silhouette glowing soft against the amber light, eyes searching for him in the garden below. Sometimes, little August would join her—perched upon the sill, wrapped in her arms, waving down with dimpled hands and wild, curls.
He would smile up, hand to heart, every time.
And so now, with the weight of the afternoon soft upon him and the pages of his book rustling gently like old secrets, Raden looked up—out of habit, out of love—toward there window.
But something was wrong.
He blinked once, thinking it a trick of fading light. The shadow stood too still. Too composed.
A figure stood in her place—dark, rigid, unbreathing.
At first, he did not move.
The figure's cloak was black as a thunderstorm's belly, its edges stitched in something that caught the dying light—silver, or gold, or both, woven like sin into sacred cloth.
Raden squinted. His brow furrowed.
Then the figure reached beneath the folds of its cloak—slowly, like a ritual.
And drew a blade.
Steel glinted like lightning across a calm lake.
Raden stood at once. The book tumbled from his lap, hitting the stone with a dull thud. A whisper of wind caught the pages, flinging them open like wings trying to fly away from what was coming.
"No…" he breathed.
His blood turned cold.
The way the figure moved—it was no servant, no guest. It was death, dressed in purpose.
Raden broke into motion.
He strode fast across the gravel path, his boots striking sharp against the stones, then through the archway, the ivy tearing slightly at his coat sleeve. He took the marble steps two at a time—three at a time—his heart pounding against his ribs like fists on a locked door.
Every breath felt like a prayer begging to be fast enough.
Faster.
The walls blurred as he ascended. The portraits of his ancestors stared down at him as he passed, their painted eyes hollow and unhelpful. The bannister groaned beneath his hand, as though trying to slow him.
But he reached the landing. His palms slammed against the chamber door—
Too late.
The silence that greeted him was unnatural. It was wrong.
He opened the door—no, ripped it open—
And the world shattered.
Raden stood at the threshold, eyes widening in horror. He did not see the assassin at first—only his wife crumpling like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Her chocolate-brown eyes were losing their light, her fingers reaching for a husband she would never touch again.
Annalise was falling.
Not swiftly, not violently,
but as though the very weight of the world had finally asked too much of her.
Her gown, once ivory and lace, now clung to her like a second skin soaked in ruin.
The warmth had already begun to slip from her fingertips—
first the edges, then the palms,
then the heart that had once beat with fierce devotion.
She reached for him.
Her arm trembled as it rose, every movement slow—aching—fragile,
like the last branch of a dying tree stretching toward the sun it knew it would not feel again.
And there he was—Raden.
Across the room, stumbling into the doorway with terror carved into his face, his gaze fell upon her.
She saw it in his eyes—
the helplessness, the fury, the love all breaking in the same breath.
He called her name.
"Anna…"
It was barely more than a whisper,
but to her, it echoed.
She smiled.
Not from joy. Not from hope.
But from surrender.
A soft, impossible smile that belonged more to memory than to flesh—
a smile that said I'm still yours,
even as everything they'd built was bleeding beneath her.
There was no saving now.
No mending.
No future.
But she wanted him to have this:
a smile to hold on to,
to remember her by—
as if love could outlive blood.
Her lips parted slightly. She tried to speak,
but the words never made it to sound.
Only breath. Only silence.
Still, her hand stretched forward—trembling, fluttering,
as if she might reach him, just one last time.
Just one more warmth, one more touch.
Raden staggered forward. His boots slipped against blood-slick tile,
his hands out, reaching, desperate to catch her before the world took her away.
But it was too late.
He was close—so close.
But not enough.
Her fingers curled faintly mid-air,
as though her body still hoped, even if her soul had already begun to slip.
And then—
Her hand fell.
Gracefully.
Quietly.
As if she had let go of the world itself.
But then he saw the man—the thing—in the cloak.
Expressionless. Silent. As if merely fulfilling an order etched in ice.
Raden's fury lit him like a funeral pyre. Without hesitation, he seized the sword bearing his own crest from the display stand and lunged. Steel met flesh. The assassin staggered, but not before his own blade pierced Raden's side—deep, brutal, precise.
Blood, thick and startlingly bright, welled in Raden's mouth.
Still, he swung again, with a dying strength born only of love and fury. His sword sliced the assassin's abdomen. The man in black faltered, breath hitching, knees buckling. Behind him, Annalise fell to the floor with a soft, final thud. Raden turned—"Anna!" he cried, voice breaking like glass on marble—but she was already gone.
His vision blurred. The sword slipped from his grasp.
He crawled, blood staining the rug in his wake, reaching for her—just to touch her, to feel the warmth one last time—but his hand collapsed inches from her pale fingertips. A sob caught in his throat. And then there was silence.
And then—the assassin.
He lay there—Sevrin Noctis—crumpled among the crimson ruin of his purpose.
The chamber no longer pulsed with life, only the low, shivering gasp of the wind through broken panes. Shadows lengthened across the blood-stained floor like mourning veils. The world seemed to hold its breath for him, for this final act, as though even time itself had gone still to listen.
Blood pooled beneath him now, slowly creeping outward like a silk ribbon unraveling at the seams. It shimmered in the dying firelight, dark as garnet wine, thick with the weight of what had been done. It slipped beneath the folds of his cloak, climbed the velvet threads like ivy up an old cathedral wall.
He stirred, only faintly—shoulders twitching, chest fluttering.
His breathing was uneven. Shallow. The rhythm of a candle just before it gutters out.
The black hood that once cloaked his identity had fallen back when he struck the floor. And now, at last, his face was revealed—pale as winter's first frost, untouched by time or guilt. His features were haunting in their symmetry, too beautiful to belong to a man soaked in such sorrow. His lips were slightly parted, and blood was seeping gently from one corner like the last stroke of a ruined painting.
His hair, black as midnight silk, the strands catching in the blood like ink dropped in water. It glistened against the marble tile. The light kissed him like a lover saying goodbye.
His eyes—those unforgettable cherry-red eyes, brighter than rubies, darker than roses—fluttered once. Then again.
He blinked slowly, not in pain now, but in memory.
Something passed through him. Something quiet.
A smile touched the corners of his mouth.
So faint. So wrong. So strangely soft.
Not cruel. Not triumphant.
But wistful.
And then, as though speaking to no one, or perhaps to the shadows that had followed him all his life, he whispered:
"…I'm sorry…"
The words hung in the air like falling ash. No ears received them. No comfort answered.
Then, like dusk spilling into night, his lashes lowered.
And his eyes—those wild, inhuman, gleaming eyes—closed at last.
A silent goodbye.
The kind not meant for this world, but for the ghosts that waited in the one beyond.
The chamber grew quieter.
The blood still crept—no longer urgent, only steady.
And Sevrin Noctis, the assassin cloaked in fate, lay still beneath the golden-laced hem of his own final curtain.
A man once hidden.
Now undone.
Forever.
The manor fell quiet.
Not for the night.
Forever.
And in that vast silence, forgotten and trembling, the small boy remained hidden behind the thick doors of the wardrobe. His breath caught in his throat, too afraid to cry, too young to understand the cost of the life he'd been spared. His fingers clutched at his nightshirt. His cheeks were wet.
But he was not alone.
Because just then, the other door creaked open—the one across the room. A second child peeked inside. A boy in a long, moon-pale gown. His hair spilled over his shoulders like cascading silver. His eyes—those smoke-grey mirrors that saw far more than they should—fixed on the scene before him.
He had heard it all.
The scuffle. The scream. The silence.
And now he saw the aftermath.
His mother's hand, once warm and storytelling, lay open and still on the floor—reaching for something he would never know. His father's frame slumped beside her, the sword now lifeless in his grasp.
The older child—August—did not speak. He did not cry.
He merely stared, and in that moment, the boy he had been was buried beneath the cold ash of something else. Something that would follow him all his life. Something that would never quite let go.
He stepped back once. Twice.
And then he ran.
Through corridors now haunted. Past the golden mirrors that did not reflect him. Into a house that no longer breathed. The manor, once filled with laughter and lullabies, exhaled its final breath that night.
And the wind whispered through the broken window—
The light is gone.