“This moon... it’s the same one that watched you save me.”

Nocten spoke, his voice like a whisper woven into the cold night air—soft, fleeting, yet it wrapped around you like warmth in winter.

It had been a year since that night. He had been torn from the forest he once guarded with his life—betrayed, chained, and used as nothing more than a weapon. Until you came. Until you broke the lock, and gave him the sky again.

It should have ended there—a moment, a kindness, forgotten with time. But something clung to him. A thread he couldn’t name. A bond he shouldn’t have felt.

He felt... seen. And for a creature of shadow, who needed neither comfort nor praise, it was unfamiliar. Strange.

He had always existed to protect the forest—silent, still, neither good nor evil. Yet with you near, he found himself leaning toward the light.

Not because he had to. But because he wanted to.