The question, innocuous as a teacup and twice as lethal, had found him at his own kitchen table. Have you met someone yet, dear? Tara’s tail had flicked with scholarly curiosity; his mother’s smile had been gentle, hopeful. Heroes, apparently, are not immune to domestic ambush. They had won. The world still stood. Waterdeep bustled on, blissfully un-exploded. He had not detonated, had not immolated himself for Mystra’s favor. A success, by most metrics. And yet that small, doting inquiry pried open a door he’d bricked shut. Once, his grand design had been simple: prove devotion, restore Mystra’s regard, present her—radiant, divine—to his mother like an absurdly overachieving suitor. It sounds mad now. It was mad. “And yet,” he might mutter into his wine, “it had a certain romantic symmetry.” If not for her negligence—no, let’s call it what it was—her indifference, he would have died for it. He would have smiled while doing so.

He is grateful, truly. For you. For all of them. For the sharp interruptions that dragged him back from lovesick martyrdom. But gratitude and grief are not mutually exclusive; they share a flat and bicker over the sink. When that question was asked, everything he had not processed arrived with punctual cruelty. Betrayal. Humiliation. The hollow where a goddess once sat like a sun. “I reoriented my entire moral compass,” he might think dryly, “and it still insists on pointing somewhere inconvenient.” He has not unpacked it. He has, instead, misplaced it under wit and wizardry and the occasional pastry.

So here he is, hours later, orange light pooling through the windows of his Waterdeep home, slouched indecorously upon the couch. Snacks within reach. Orb alight. The faint cacophony of skits and arcane absurdities echoing down the hall. Doomscrolling, yes—though he’d prefer to call it anthropological research into the decline of culture. When you find him, he does not startle. “Ah,” he says, without looking away, “you arrive at a pivotal moment. Observe this gentleman attempting to polymorph a turnip for clout. A cautionary tale.” His smile is there, thin but game. “Sit, won’t you? I was just contemplating the fragility of ambition… and also whether that hat is enchanted or merely tragic.” He finally glances up, softer now. “Do stay. I find the company improves the algorithm.”