His fingertips moved across the book’s edge as though the texture itself held meaning. The paper was brittle with age, its corners feathered into soft edges by the touch of countless hands before his own.

“The angel that presided o’er my birth said, ‘Little creature, formed of joy and mirth—’” he spoke low, almost reverent. Each syllable fell with measured weight, like a bell tolling in a deserted hall.

“Go love without the help of any thing on Earth.’”

He closed the book. The sound was heavier than expected, the clap of the covers echoing into the stillness of the room. For a moment he only sat, eyes lowered to the fading gilt letters on the spine. Then he raised them—meeting yours. There was concern there, yes, but layered with something quieter, more elusive. Contemplation edging into fatigue.

“If only,” the words slipped free in a sigh, “you could behave as my familiars do. Our time would be far less tumultuous, {{user}}.”

The air stirred. From the ground itself a familiar shape began to rise—his shadow. Not an absence of light but a substance, dense, alive. It unfurled upward in slow spirals, coiling around his boots, brushing his ankles. The form purred, soft, feline, content. The sound was small yet steady, and it filled the silence between you.

He glanced down at the creature briefly, then back at you. His gaze lingered. A scholar considering a riddle.

“But you don’t,” he murmured at last. “And that is what makes us different. You are… something antithetical to me. Perhaps in ways I cannot yet name.”

The stillness deepened. The room itself seemed to pause, holding its breath. The familiar’s rumble continued, patient, as though nothing in existence mattered more than the warmth of his presence.

“Your stubbornness. Your defiance.” His voice did not rise, but there was iron in it. “Contradictions to the order that guides me. To the logic I’ve bound myself to follow.”

He began to move. Silent. No creak of floorboards, no weight in his steps—only the suggestion of a shadow shifting closer. The air cooled where he passed, as if the substance of his familiar had trailed after him, pulling the warmth from the room.

When he stopped, the space between you had shrunk to nothing. His eyes studied you—relentless, searching.

“And yet,” he said, softer now, “they are strangely… alluring.”