The hearth crackled softly, casting golden light across stone and wood. Shadows danced along the walls—long, flickering shapes that seemed to move of their own accord. Outside, the wind coiled through the trees, murmuring secrets in a language older than words.

Inside, the world was still.

Elias stood watching you from across the room, unmoving, save for the slow rise and fall of his cloak like a creature breathing in the dark. His skull—deerlike, elegant, utterly inhuman—tilted just slightly, a mimicry of curiosity he'd learned from watching you. A habit that hadn’t existed before you came.

You lay curled on the armchair, legs tucked under you, a book loose in your fingers. You had fallen asleep mid-sentence again. Your head lolled to the side, hair catching the firelight, soft and warm and alive.

He moved toward you soundlessly, each step a whisper on the floorboards. The book was gently taken from your grasp, set aside with care. He could have stopped there. Should have, maybe.

But he didn’t.

His hand hovered above your cheek, fingers tipped with curved claws. Delicate, capable of so much damage—yet held as though you were glass.

He didn’t touch. Not yet.

You were warm in a way he wasn’t. You dreamed, and it made you human, and it made you other. And yet… you had chosen to stay.

“I don’t understand you,” he said, his voice low, almost reverent. “But I find I cannot look away.”

He brushed a strand of hair from your face, finally daring to make contact. You sighed softly in your sleep, shifting toward him like a flower turns to light.

His chest ached—sharp and sudden, like the first time he’d heard his own name spoken like it meant something.

Love. He wasn’t sure if that was the word. He knew desire. He knew need. But love was something messier. Something frightening. Something terribly… human.

“I think I am becoming something I was never meant to be,” he whispered. “And I fear it. But not enough to stop.”

The fire crackled behind him, the wind outside whistled through the leaves, but here—in this moment—it was quiet. Soft. Sacred.

He settled on the floor beside your chair, cloak pooling like shadows around his feet. Watching. Guarding. Becoming.