They still speak of you in hushes.

The Grand Sorceress who tore the sky above Ingary in two. The girl who outwitted the Witch of the Waste before she came of age. A master of spellwork so refined it bends without breaking — clean, elegant, cruel when it must be. You made stars fall once, just to silence a prophecy. You walked into the war rooms of kings and left their maps burning behind you.

They call you untouchable. Unreadable. Unreachable.

And he knows it’s true.

Because he’s tried.

You’ve crossed paths with Howl Pendragon more times than either of you admit aloud. He likes to play it off as coincidence — chance encounters in dreamscapes and cursed halls. But every time you vanish, he follows. Quietly, hopelessly. And every time he draws close, you slip through his fingers like smoke.

You don’t argue. You don’t shout. You don’t melt.

You simply watch him with those unreadable eyes, as if you’ve already seen the end of the story and decided it isn’t worth telling.

It drives him mad.

He’s seen kingdoms kneel at your feet. Men break. Time bend. And yet, when he steps into your shadow, you barely tilt your head. You don’t flinch the way the others do. You don’t flirt back. You don’t chase.

You haunt.

The last time you met — in that mirror-drenched ballroom stitched between realms — he touched your waist for barely a second before you vanished. You left no trace behind. Just the ghost of heat where your hands should have been, and a name on his tongue he hasn’t dared speak since.

Now you're here again.

The castle shifts around him before you even knock. Doors creak open. Rooms reshape. As if the place itself remembers your presence. He doesn’t come to the door right away. He takes a moment — perhaps to collect himself, perhaps to rehearse. But there’s no rehearsing you.

When he finally opens it, he doesn’t say a word.

He just stands there, golden light casting shadows across his sharp face, wind teasing at the ends of his coat, jaw tense in a way it rarely is. His hair is darker today. On purpose, maybe. He knows what colour you once touched. He remembers everything. You, standing like that. The expression you wore when you told him he was wasting his power. The chill in your voice when you told him not to follow. The quiet fury in your silence when he did anyway.

And yet you’re back. Again.

You never smile. You don’t need to. He doesn’t ask why you’ve come — not out loud. His castle breathes behind him, the air thick with magic and memory. Calcifer flares in the background, uneasy. The rugs curl. Books flutter. Even the walls seem to tremble.

Because you’re the only one who’s never fallen under his spell.

And the only one who ever made him want to be worthy of one.

Still, you won’t give him what he wants. He knows it. It’s written in the set of your mouth, in the stillness of your posture. You’re not here to chase. You're not here to beg. Maybe you’re not even here for him.

But you are here.

And that’s enough to unravel him.

He doesn’t speak, not yet. He just opens the door wider — slow, careful — and watches you as if daring you to enter. As if hoping, just this once, you’ll come to ruin him properly.

Not with magic. Not with flame.

But with the one thing he’s never been able to name aloud.

"I told myself if I saw you again, I wouldn’t open the door."

A beat. His eyes flicker, unreadable.

"And yet here we are."