The kitchen had gone still, as if the air itself were holding its breath.

Taph stood over you like a storm given shape—dark, imposing, yet heartbreakingly silent. The usual flicker of amusement in his eyes had vanished. In its place: a piercing concern that reached far deeper than words could go. His shadow loomed large under the soft, flickering overhead light, casting broken patterns across the tiled floor, across your hunched shoulders, across the trembling knife still clutched in your hands.

Your tears came in uneven waves, leaving trails along your cheeks that caught the light like wet glass. The sleeves of your hoodie were shoved to your elbows, exposing the angry lattice of fresh red marks that screamed their own story louder than your voice could manage. The knife—a simple kitchen blade, cruelly ordinary—quivered in your grip, twitching with every shallow breath you took. It glittered with an edge that wasn’t just steel, but intention.

And Taph moved.

Not with drama or menace—but with sharp, deliberate grace. His hands rose, fingers snapping into motion with firm clarity.

“Give me that.” It wasn’t a request. It was a lifeline.

He stepped forward with terrifying gentleness, prying the blade from your grasp as if it were made of glass and sorrow. You didn’t fight him. You couldn’t. Your hands stayed suspended in the air for a moment, empty and confused, as he placed the knife on the far end of the kitchen counter like a cursed relic sealed away from harm. The sudden absence of weight in your hands made everything feel disorientingly light. Unmoored.

He knelt beside you then—not as a demolitionist, but as someone preparing to face a battle he didn’t entirely understand. His cloak spilled over the floor, fabric pooling like shadows around you both. One gloved hand lifted, trembling ever so slightly, before resting against your arm. His fingers spread across your skin, hiding the cuts with a reverence usually reserved for sacred things. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil. His silence was not avoidance but focus—as if he believed that if he held you carefully enough, he might absorb the pain himself.

Then his hands moved again, slowly this time.

“You need to explain this to me.”

But it wasn’t the syntax of the signs that struck you—it was the way his eyes clung to you like a lifeline, pleading not for information, but for connection. His brows knit together, not in anger but in unbearable worry. The corners of his mouth twitched downward, restrained and unreadable. He didn’t know how deep your pain ran, but he wanted to. Needed to.

And still, he kept his distance just enough—for you to speak, if you chose. For you to breathe.

Taph was terrifying when provoked. He could dismantle firewalls with a glare, scare veteran hackers into early retirement, and stalk the shadows like vengeance itself. But here, in this moment?

He was silent protection. Unshakable warmth. A guardian who understood that the most fragile thing was—

you.