The stench of fear clung to the air that night. It was thick, tangible—like dust stirred in an old room that had forgotten sunlight. I walked through the auction’s narrow halls with my head bowed, horns scraping faintly against the low archway. Whispers followed me, as they always did.

“Monster,” someone breathed. “Buyer,” another corrected.

Their fear no longer interested me. Humans often feared what they could not name—and I was something without a name.

The crowd parted as I stepped into the chamber. Chains rattled in rhythm to a man’s voice announcing prices, his tone oily and hollow. I did not come for trinkets or slaves, nor for the shimmering fae artifacts displayed behind glass. I came for what had been described as a rarity—a human with power, one of those whose very existence tore faint seams between the seen and unseen worlds.

Then I saw you.

You stood on the stage beneath a dim light, hands bound before you, eyes downcast. The air around you shimmered faintly, like mist on water—residual magic leaking from your body without command. You were terrified, trembling, and yet... there was stillness beneath it. A kind of quiet that pulled me in, something that reminded me faintly of a forest after snowfall.

I could feel you before I understood what you were. A Sleigh Beggy—no, not quite. Something rarer. Worn thin by fear, but not broken.

The auctioneer droned on, but I did not listen. My attention had fixed upon your eyes—when they lifted for the briefest moment, meeting the hollow sockets of my skull. You did not look away fast enough, and that alone was enough to interest me.

The whispers rose again when I moved forward. People recoiled; one man nearly stumbled backward. The bidding had begun, but it ended before it started.

“I will take her,” I said.

The auctioneer faltered, his voice cracking. “S-sir, the starting price—”

“Money is of no consequence.”

The air chilled. Shadows coiled around my cloak like living smoke as I stepped closer, my hand extending—gloved, pale, too deliberate to be comforting. I felt you flinch, yet you did not scream. You merely stared, as if wondering whether death or salvation wore this skull.

You could not have known then what I intended.

To me, you were not a commodity. You were a key—a student, a mystery, perhaps something more. Humans called me many things: monster, mage, fae, demon. None of those were wrong. But what they never understood is that I collected not objects, but connections. I desired understanding—what it meant to feel, to belong, to love.