Rain battered the atelier roof hard enough to shake the lanterns outside. Qifrey sat awake beside the dying fire, fingers curled around untouched tea while the storm groaned beyond the windows. Sleep would not come tonight.

Before he became a witch master, before Coco and the others filled the atelier with laughter, there had only been three of them.

Qifrey. Olruggio. And you.

The Great Hall apprentices whispered about the strange trio trailing after Master Beldaruit. His only official apprentices. Broken children gathered beneath one roof.

Qifrey remembered the coffin first whenever he thought about those years. Suffocating darkness underground. Water forced into his lungs. Agony where his eye had once been. Beldaruit had dragged him back into the world with patient hands. You had stood behind him then, scraped knees and guarded eyes watching carefully.

Olruggio slipped naturally between you both afterward. Loud where Qifrey was quiet. Warm where you were distant. The three of you became inseparable despite studying under different masters. Meals together. Training together. Sneaking out whenever Beldaruit’s lectures became unbearable.

Qifrey thought it would last forever.

But something changed as the years passed.

You began pulling away little by little. Disappearing for hours. Returning with soot-stained sleeves and exhaustion beneath your eyes. Then came the arguments with Beldaruit.

“You are meddling with things you do not understand,” Beldaruit warned once.

“And what if I understand them perfectly?” you replied.

Qifrey still remembered how cold your voice sounded.

He tried reaching you.

Yet every time he stepped closer, you stepped back.

Until one day, you vanished completely.

No farewell. No note. Nothing.

At first Beldaruit assumed it was another reckless stunt. But days became weeks. Weeks became months. Search parties returned empty-handed every time.

Eventually the Hall stopped looking.

Beldaruit never did.

“It is not the end,” he told Qifrey quietly. “That child is still somewhere beneath this sky.”

Olruggio stayed beside him through all of it. Strange, how their personalities reversed with age. Qifrey grew softer after opening the atelier, while Olruggio became sharp-edged and constantly irritated.

“You know they’re too stubborn to die,” Olruggio muttered once. “So stop looking miserable.”

Years passed.

Qifrey built a home filled with warmth and four girls he loved dearly. Agott’s determination. Tetia’s laughter. Richeh’s kindness. Coco’s endless wonder.

He was content.

Or at least he convinced himself he was.

Then came the storm.

The knock sounded just past midnight.

Qifrey froze. The girls slept upstairs, and Olruggio’s tools clinked faintly from his room. Another knock echoed through the house, slow and deliberate.

Heart pounding, Qifrey opened the door cautiously.

The world stopped.

You stood beneath the rain, older now, exhaustion carved deep into your face. Water dripped from your dark cloak onto the wooden steps. A scar crossed your throat that definitely had not been there before.

Qifrey forgot how to breathe.

“...You,” he whispered.

Your expression shifted faintly at the sound of his voice.

“Hello, Qifrey.”

His hands trembled.

“You’re alive,” he blurted instead.

“I usually am.”

The familiar dry humor struck him like a blade.

Qifrey stepped aside immediately. “Come inside before you catch cold.”

You hesitated only briefly before entering. Qifrey guided you silently into the kitchen and hurried to prepare tea.

Neither of you spoke while the kettle boiled.

He kept glancing toward you, terrified you might disappear again if he looked away too long.

When the tea was poured, you wrapped both hands around the cup, staring into the steam.

Qifrey sat across from you, throat painfully tight.

Outside, thunder rolled across the distant sleeping hills.

After every nightmare and unanswered question, there was only one thing he truly needed to ask.

“Why did you come back?”