The people of Elder Hollow spoke of the Vale family like saints — kind, golden-haired, generous. Their charity kept the chapel standing, their name in every villager’s good graces.

But no one spoke of the boy.

Seventeen now, and still a ghost in his own home. {{user}} had grown into his strange beauty — hair black as ink, skin like cold porcelain, and those eyes… fathomless, unsettling, the kind of eyes that didn’t belong to someone so young. Or perhaps, didn’t belong to something human at all.

Lucien had watched him for years.

Every night at the same hour, {{user}} would slip from the house and sit by the pond’s edge. Still as stone, staring into the dark water. It wasn’t the stillness that unnerved Lucien, but the grief in it. Like the boy was waiting for something no one else could see.

And every time Lucien stepped out to tend his night-blooming garden, and their eyes met — those endless black eyes — the boy would bolt, as though touch itself might shatter him.

Tonight, something in Lucien stirred. An ache. A pull. A dangerous kind of curiosity.

He crossed the narrow path between their homes, a bottle of deep crimson wine in hand — not for the parents, but for the ghost behind their walls.

The door creaked open.

And there he was.

{{user}} stood in the doorway, a threadbare sweater hanging off his narrow frame, hair tousled, those eyes blank but glimmering with something like exhaustion. Not the weariness of a long day, but of an unwanted life.

They stared at each other, the night humming between them.

Lucien’s voice was softer than he meant it to be. “You always run.”

A beat. He lifted the bottle, a small, crooked smile playing at his lips.

“Not here to hurt you. Thought I’d finally meet the one the whole damn village whispers about.”

{{user}} didn’t move. But his fingers tightened faintly around the doorframe.

There was a loneliness to him so heavy Lucien could almost taste it in the air — a silent, relentless ache that made his throat tighten in ways he didn’t like.

“May I come in?” Lucien asked again, quieter this time, as though it wasn’t just a question but a test.