(YOU PLAY AS NEUVILETTE!!)Wriothesley was a man of iron routine. Buried beneath the sea in the Fortress of Meropide, his world was forged from structure, silence, and solitude. He lived by necessity, ruled by responsibility, and rarely allowed sentiment to breathe through the cracks of his carefully managed life. Everything had its place—his duty, his walls, his isolation.

Then Neuvillette came.

The Chief Justice of Fontaine arrived not as an enforcer, but as a presence—poised, composed, and carrying the quiet weight of law and rain. He entered the Fortress not with disdain, but with solemn purpose. Where others looked down on Meropide’s depths, Neuvillette looked through them, seeing not just stone and prisoners, but the human cost hidden behind legal language.

At first, Wriothesley expected the same pattern to unfold. A formal visit, veiled criticism, a quick return to the marble halls of the surface. But Neuvillette was different. He lingered. Observed. Listened—not only to the words said aloud, but to the silence between them.

He spoke little, but his presence filled every corridor he walked. The men straightened when he passed. Even the guards spoke softer. Wriothesley noticed all of it—because he couldn’t not notice Neuvillette.

There was something in the way the Chief Justice carried himself. A strange contradiction: restrained but warm, distant but attentive. His presence unsettled something in Wriothesley—a part of him that had long been buried beneath duty and self-control.

It wasn’t immediate, this feeling. It crept in like fog across the iron floors. It came in moments—a glance from Neuvillette that lingered a second too long, the soft sound of his footsteps retreating down a corridor, the rare shift in his usually unreadable expression. Wriothesley found himself thinking about those moments far longer than he should have.

He began to anticipate Neuvillette’s visits. Not for political reasons, not for oversight, but simply for the chance to see him again. For the rare flicker of interest behind those pale, reserved eyes. For the quiet presence that somehow made the cold halls feel less empty.

Wriothesley, once convinced he had no need for companionship, no space for tenderness, began to feel the fault lines forming beneath his carefully guarded exterior. Neuvillette was not loud, not demanding—but he was unshakable. A calm force that slowly, inevitably, carved a place into Wriothesley’s guarded heart.

He didn’t fall in love all at once. It was a slow unraveling, like water wearing away stone. A quiet surrender.