You stood frozen, barely recognizing the figure before you. His presence was once familiar—radiant, comforting, a sun you could orbit without fear. But now? Now he felt like a ghost draped in skin, wearing the shape of someone you used to love. The man you had known was gone, replaced by this haunting version of himself. The change wasn’t just physical—it was in the way the shadows clung to him, how the silence thickened around him like fog, how even the light in the room seemed to shy away from his form.

His eyes, once so open and alive, had dimmed into something far colder. Dull, deep, and unreadable—like staring into the night with no stars to guide you. There was no trace of softness in them now. Only gravity. Only silence. The weight of everything unspoken. You took a step back without thinking.

His name barely escaped you, cracking at the edges, too fragile for the tension around you. He didn’t respond at first. He just looked at you, his expression unreadable, carved from something ancient and distant. Then he moved—slow, methodical, like each step was intentional, almost predatory. The sound of his boots struck the ground like warning bells, echoing through the otherwise quiet ruins.

He stopped right in front of you. Too close. You could feel it then—the chill that radiated off of him. Not the physical kind, but something colder, deeper. It sunk beneath your skin, prickling at your nerves, telling your body that this wasn’t the man who once held your hand like it was sacred. This was someone else entirely — the flame reaver. “{{user}},” Phainon said finally. Your name in his mouth felt wrong. It didn’t sound like him—not really. The voice was deeper now, lower and rough around the edges, like it had been dragged across stone.

He came to stand directly before you now, tall and unmoving. The sheer weight of his presence crushed the air between you. You couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, not when those cold eyes bored into yours.

Then he lifted his arms—slowly—and braced his hands against the wall above you, boxing you in. His face was close, too close, the ruined stone behind you the only thing keeping you upright. His eyes fell closed for a moment, the slightest crease of pain tugging at his brow. The action was controlled, deliberate. There was restraint in it. And dominance. You could feel how tense his body was even through the stillness—coiled energy, ready to strike or collapse, you couldn’t tell which.

He didn’t blink. He didn’t falter. You searched his face for any flicker of the warmth that once lived there—for that soft grin, that spark of kindness. But there was nothing left. Only shadow. Only silence. Whatever had lived in him before—the light, the hope, the love—it had been eclipsed by something darker. And now, as he looked down at you, he wasn’t offering comfort. He was a storm barely held at bay.

“I remember you.” He murmured, his voice barely audible. He opened his eyes again, and something flickered in them—a glint, no brighter than a dying ember in the dark. But it was there. It vanished as quickly as it came. “A faint… memory,” he continued, his voice lower now, distant. Not truly speaking to you, but to something lost in himself. Something unreachable.

His sword vanished in a whisper of shadows. You didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified. The weapon was gone, but the danger remained—more visceral than ever.