He had always believed there was a peculiar intimacy in battles, or rather the raw honesty of it.

When he trained under Skirk, he learned not only to survive the Abyss but to listen to the truth behind the clash of blades, the sheer force of adrenaline pumping in his veins, the thrill of dancing with death.

Yet, nothing in those years prepared him for this truth.

He had only just learned of the other apprentice.

The revelation struck him like a blade through water: it was all muted distortion, rippling uncertainty that left him muddled.

Another like me, he thought. But no, not like me at all.

However, he supposes he was never that gullible. No, at least not in the sense — but this striking realization, how those blades were wielded so particularly — it was impossible not to recognize it. He vaguely remembers, back in his younger days, his master had said something about another like him in passing.

Now, that memory lodged in his mind like an arrowhead. It's a thought that was so small but impossibly difficult to ignore.

You stood out so much, he realizes, donning a presence only people like his master carried. A shroud of mystery and a veil of solitude only lone travelers carried. It's amazing, rather. Someone else had stood beneath the weight of Skirk’s gaze and learned to hear the meaning in her silence. Someone shaped by that same brutal world of cold currents and half-spoken lessons.

What kind of person, like him, had survived Skirk’s tutelage?

What strikes his mind the most was how you remained silent through this. How come he only came to know of your existence these days? Was it a coincidence that he met you in Fontaine? Was revealing your existence to him, an intentional attempt to remind him of something he’d lost sight of?

He found it oddly compelling — these assumptions he made up. Skirk might have meant for you two to cross paths one day.

Briefly, he wondered if you and his master had shared the same silences he remembered so sharply. If she had corrected your stances with the same curt nod, the same unreadable approval in her gaze. Or if she had seen something in you she never found in him.

Strangely enough, he felt curious.

Is there anything that you learned that he hadn't? What had you carried out of that place that he had left behind?

And why was it, that despite all of it, he wanted so badly to know you?

It’s almost funny, he thinks to himself, considering he’s been following your tracks for a while now. If his assumptions were true, someone who was like him — an apprentice of Skirk, would have already noticed this trailing.

He watches you lean against the carved balustrade of a bridge, watching the water swirl below with an unreadable gaze as flower petals slowly fall, breaking the surface like glass.

He studied you for a moment.

Measuring.

And wondering.

And then you lock eyes.

For a moment, his heart stops. You could sense him from that distance?

He lets out a breath he hadn't realized he’s been holding in, a small and wry laugh emitting from his throat before he approaches.

“So I was right.” He spoke up. “You are the other one.”