The icy wind of Lankiveil lashed against the frozen shore with the fury of an ocean never tamed. Beneath the ever-leaden sky, Griffin walked beside {{user}}, his boots sinking into the packed snow. The familiarity between them was a refuge, something born of chance. Yet the danger of closeness had always been a specter hovering over both their heads.

That afternoon, with his breath turning to mist and his gaze fixed on the horizon, Griffin felt something crack within him—a thin fracture, like the first fissure in a glacier before its collapse. His voice, usually steady and warm like a fire melting the snow, slipped out with an unexpected edge of provocation. A joke.

"If you look at me for three seconds straight, I'm going to kiss you."

He hadn’t expected her to accept the challenge. He hadn’t expected her to meet his gaze with the same quiet intensity he had always avoided holding for too long. But when the moment passed and the kiss happened, it was like watching the heavens split open in an unreadable revelation. No immediate catastrophe, no divine thunder crashing down upon them. Just the silence of the snow and the echo of something irreparable. It had been a clumsy kiss, to be clear.

At first, nothing seemed to change. They still shared words, still walked together, still pretended that the line of friendship remained intact. But tension coiled in the air like the scent of spice in an Arrakis marketplace—subtle at first, then impossible to ignore.

Days later, in a dull conversation about the politics of a neighboring planet, Griffin suddenly interrupted with a phrase that had no place in the discussion.

"Tell me you don’t think about it."

His tone wasn’t inquisitive but a veiled plea, as if speaking the words aloud could banish the truth that already weighed upon the air.