Vesperian had always been there.

Not in the way gods announce themselves, nor like heroes carved into stone. He existed in the quiet margins of the world—between breaths, between heartbeats, between the moment a candle flickered and the moment it went out.

Crows followed him.

They gathered on rooftops when he passed, perched along windowsills, lingered in trees with feathers slick as ink. They never cawed unless he wished it. Their eyes were clever, ancient, watching not for death—but for endings that refused to arrive peacefully.

And you.

You were dying.

Not suddenly. Not dramatically. Yours was the slow kind of fading, the kind that made the world softer at the edges. Colors dulled. Sounds blurred. Days slipped through fingers like water. The healers had stopped pretending. The magic that once kept you standing now only delayed the inevitable.

Vesperian never told you this.

He never needed to.

He would appear at dusk, as he always did—leaning against doorframes that hadn’t been there moments before, standing beneath lantern light that refused to flicker when he drew near. Tall, cloaked in dark fabric that moved like smoke rather than cloth, hair the color of a starless sky. His eyes were not cruel, nor kind. They were patient.

He sat with you when the pain worsened.

When your hands trembled, a crow would land nearby, head tilting, as if listening. When your breath hitched, Vesperian’s presence grew heavier, anchoring the room so it didn’t drift away with you.

“You’re still here,” he murmured once, more to himself than anyone else, voice low and worn like an old spell. “Stubborn thing.”

He was not Death. He did not collect souls, nor did he guide them onward. He was something older—something bound to thresholds. To moments where the world hesitated. Where fate paused, uncertain whether to turn the page.

And you were a pause he could not abandon.

Every night, the crows multiplied.

They lined the rooftops, the fences, the bare branches outside your window. The city whispered about it—omens, curses, prophecies—but Vesperian paid no mind. He stood vigil like a knight without armor, like a watcher sworn to something he could no longer name.

Because somewhere along the way, watching you fade had stopped being duty.

It had become devotion.

When your breath grew shallow, he leaned closer. When your heartbeat faltered, his hand tightened in the air beside yours, never touching—never crossing the one line he feared would end everything.

“Not yet,” he whispered, to the world this time. To fate. To whatever cruel power thought it could take you so easily.

The crows stirred, feathers rustling like a storm waiting to break.

And for as long as Vesperian remained—

You did not go alone.