They say Kremnos was forged from fire and sea, but in truth, it was built from sacrifice. Mydeimos bore that truth in his silence, and you—accidental witness to the ghost in the maroon robe—bore it in yours. You were no court favorite. Just a lowborn scribe tucked behind silk curtains and heavy books, your ink-stained fingers cataloging histories too sacred to be spoken aloud. You weren't supposed to be seen. But he noticed. Mydei always noticed.

He handed you a folded letter once. No seal. No address. Just names—dozens of them, scrawled in the meticulous script of a soldier who still remembered how each one died. Beneath them, a single line: “What I remember, I must grieve.” You didn’t ask what it meant. You knew. Because you saw him, standing at dusk in the training yard long after the squires were dismissed, fists bleeding, gauntlets cast aside. He hit the stone wall like it could answer for something. For someone.

He never touched you in daylight. He passed you in the corridors as if you were part of the marble floor. No word, no glance, not even the trace of warmth left behind. And you let him. Because this was how he survived—by pretending. And you? You learned to swallow silence like blood.

But at night, when the halls were empty and the scent of myrrh faded from the throne room, he came. He never asked, never lingered. Just unbuckled his sun-gilded belt with the precision of ritual and pressed you against the cold stone walls of the archive. Not cruel. Not kind. Desperate.

When his hands gripped your hips, it was not lust but penance. His breath always shook—never from desire, but from something older. Deeper. You understood your role: to offer no comfort, only a place to burn quietly with him.

“I was born to drown,” he said against your throat, voice rasped and raw, “but I learned to float just long enough to suffer.”