Rerir remembered the first time he saw you. Not clearly, the edges of the memory were always frayed, eaten away by the ruin of his body but enough to mark it as different from the endless blur of Nod’krai.

Most mortals who stumbled into this place died quickly, swallowed by the void, their forms scattered into the rivers of Kuuvahki. He had stopped counting long ago. None of them were meant to last here, and none of them ever did.

But this one did not die. You knelt at the edge of a fissure where his fragment bled light, hands steady despite the raw hum of power gnawing at your bones. Your touch was cautious, deliberate yet fearless. You did not recoil when the shard’s corruption lashed out, you endured.

Rerir had not spoken to you then. He had only watched from the distance, flickering in and out of shape, unwilling to admit that something as small and fragile as this could matter to him. Yet when the fragment pulsed, destabilized, and began to tear at the fabric of Nod’krai, it was your hand, just your hand that steadied it.

Something in him stilled at that moment. The spiral of entropy slowed. His form held together longer than it should have and he realized, with bitter clarity, that this mortal had done what centuries of his own will could not: tethered him to existence.

He should have abandoned you then. He should have dissolved back into the void, or let the fragment consume them as it had consumed so many others. But he didn’t, he lingered. From that moment, your presence became unavoidable. A tether, a remedy, a weakness he despised, and yet could not release.

That night, behind him, the sound of gathering, of the rustle of flowers pulled from the earth. Your hands moved carefully, collecting pale blossoms with glassy petals, stalks that pulsed faintly with corrupted light. Useless to most, but in your touch, transformed, ground into tinctures, shaped into potions that soothed wounds even he thought beyond mortal skill.

Rerir did not tell you he listened to each movement. He did not tell you that, instead, he watched the fractured moon, silent, while the fragile scent of flowers wove through the ruin.

For a moment, the Wild Hunt’s whispers faded. For a moment, Nod’krai almost felt alive.