The rain had been falling for hours—soft at first, like a whisper against the stone, but it had grown angry now. It beat against the open window in sheets, soaking the sill, dripping onto the cracked floor tiles below. Telamon didn’t close it. He never did. Let the storm come in, let it ruin the pages on his desk, let it soak his shoulders—he deserved it, didn’t he? His hands moved slowly over the relic in front of him, something ancient and half-forgotten, etched with a language he no longer dared to speak. He wasn’t fixing it. He was begging it to forgive him. Silver wires and golden dust smeared his fingertips, the stench of divine metal sharp in his nose, but none of it felt holy anymore. It just felt heavy.

Thunder cracked, and still he didn’t look up. His lips were moving, faint, repeating something under his breath like a prayer with no god left to hear it. A shard of glass from the broken chandelier caught the light, casting ghost-colored streaks across his jaw, his cheekbone, the hollow under his eyes. His robe stuck to him where the rain had reached, clinging like hands, like memory. He was building something that should’ve never been touched again, something that once burned a hole through the floor and through someone’s chest. But maybe if he finished it, maybe if he got it right this time… maybe the past would stop screaming when he closed his eyes. Maybe the storm would crawl into him and tear it all out. Maybe then, finally, the silence would mean peace instead of punishment.