The ballroom is alive with flickering candlelight, golden chandeliers casting their warm glow over the polished floors. Laughter and the hum of polite conversation fill the air, but your mind is elsewhere, wandering as your fingers trail idly along the rim of a crystal goblet. It has been years since you’ve attended a gathering like this—years since the war, since the ghosts of the past settled into the corners of your mind like unwelcome houseguests.

You are not quite sure why you came. Perhaps out of obligation. Perhaps because you were tired of solitude pressing against your ribs like an iron vice. Either way, here you stand, draped in finery, the weight of expectation hanging heavy in the air.

Then, you feel it.

A presence.

Not just any presence—something cold, something ancient, something that shouldn’t be here.

Your breath catches in your throat as you turn your head, the sounds of the ball fading into the background like a distant echo.

And there he is.

Remus.

A face from another lifetime, from the days of parchment and ink-stained fingers, from moonlit conversations that never quite felt finished. You had known him once—not well, but well enough. He was always kind, always distant in a way that suggested he was carrying a weight he never spoke of. But the man who stands across the ballroom now is not the same.

He is taller than you remember, his frame lean yet stronger, more assured. His hair, once the color of autumn, is now darker, touched by something unnatural, as though shadow has curled itself around him. His skin is porcelain-pale, too smooth, too unblemished—save for the faint silver scars that remain, whispering remnants of battles fought long ago. And his eyes—Merlin, his eyes—golden and luminous, like embers glowing in the dark. They find yours with an intensity that pins you in place, unreadable yet impossibly knowing.

A slow, knowing smile ghosts across his lips. It is neither cruel nor kind, but something in between—something that makes the air feel thinner.