Noyd took him home—his home, their home. It was their home now, rebuilt and breathing warmth that Noyd managed to create among the scattered memories—which should appease his hurting heart.
But it didn’t.
When Noyd took him, passionately, lovingly, the first night after his return—he almost believed it, that it’s possible to live without a soul. That all that happened during the last months can be unmade and one day, perhaps he will be able to reconcile with his path. It was dark—but he was still alive. He still breathed. His heart still pumped blood, red and human.
He hoped he could start anew. With Noyd by his side, as a proof that not all in his life was always cruel and these sparks of good one day will remind him how to breathe. Fully. Not choking on dry blood.
He loved Noyd that night. When his back bent with ecstasy, he almost cried. A touch not intrusive. A craving not hungry.
Yet… the fae were still there, deep in his mind. Lorian’s memory grinding it with iron thorns. His shadows, his power, his cruel seduction…
And he realized he can’t live without it.
Noyd was loving and pure. His past left a stain on him though. Her gentle strokes, her soft passion would be healing. Would be enough.
If he wasn’t destroyed.
His dreams were circling around violation and pain, he summoned Lorian’s imagery and power, to bathe in all of this. And wake up, painfully stiff—with sleeping Noyd but his side, who didn’t deserve it.
His mind still belonged to the fae realm. His body too. He couldn’t offer Noyd anything. Even if he wanted to.
He would fall on his knees before her and beg her to leave him. He somehow sensed he would harm her one day—not physically, but with his emptiness. He was going deeper and deeper into a broken well, eaten by moss and shadows. Parasitic night, that crawled into him and rooted deeply, tasting his nerves and sanity.
First weeks.
First months.
To villagers’ surprise, winter became softer. The freezing wind stopped stinging so much. Mushrooms poked from under the white—the ones that were born early spring.
One day, Noyd said that she saw a bird. Colorful, not raven or a crow. Not a scavenger. It was a spring bird.
Then, the frost and cold hit once again.
The world didn’t know what season to keep.
The winter king died—and with him the darkness. His spells were too powerful to just dispel.
The weather shifted and tossed in a cage. The bars rusted and soon, it will fly from its prison, bathing in sun the human realm needed and deserved.
Tiyan bathed in dreams of blood and pain.
*
He chopped the wood with one blow of the hatchet. His muscles amassed, now he was looking more like his father than his past self. He grew a short beard—not because he wanted to look older. It just grew, and he accepted it. Noyd liked it.
Seven months went from his return.
The villagers were seeing spring birds all the time. Tiyan heard their joyful yet still unsure song when he was going on the hunt. His hunting skills grew. He could only look in the animals’ eyes.
He was seeing himself in them.
The wood scattered over the stump.
The day was warmer. The sun still was dim and misty, but it brought relief to Inamora.
The villages started to thaw, not only his. They heard of shadows that took Arelt into possession—the whole city drowned in dark tentacles of night. They were spreading sometimes to nearby villages, eating what they met—some said that if you come closer to Arelt, you can hear heartbeats and moans of humans trapped there. Even now, more than half a year ago—the passerby people still heard silent screams and torment from those who lived there.
Tiyan knew it was Lorian.
And he was both craving the news and abhorred even thought of them.
Some nights, he was dreaming he lives in Arelt—surrounded by shadows, chained by thorns, moaning into the hand made of night that choked his throat.
He lifted a small chunk of chopped wood.
And he started to sculpt.
Meticulous moves, like in a dream. He carved and he didn’t even realize that with each carved shape, tears appeared in his eyes. The process took his whole attention, his flawed and incomplete being.
One of the tears fell on the almost ready sculpture, baptizing it. Tiyan touched with his thumb. The light wood darkened and took the water in when he smeared it over.
It was a fae. Not a little fae which still inhabited his—and Noyd’s now—bedroom.
It was an almost perfect depiction of Lorian Ain’Dal.
Tiyan looked at the sculpture with open mouth and tears falling down his chin. His body tensed, his veins pulsed under his skin like eager worms.
Then, he tossed it on the ground, among the wood chips.
It was the first Lorian sculpture out of many.
*
Spring moved through the Avras like a breath of hope.
Some saw an animal losing the fungi colonies and clawing the rotten flesh fro, itself. Which fell off him in a fountain of blood. That animal died. But hunters reported more of such incidents. Until one of them didn’t perish. Those who observed this phenomenon didn’t see that animal anymore. But one day, a hunter from Inamora spotted a healthy animal with cubs.
The magic retreated.
The fae were leaving Avras—busy with their own affairs.
Tiyan sculpted Lorian one by one. In a shadow form and in his royal robes. Each figurine more alive and each shadow more looming. He could feel the power radiating from them; even if it was only in his mind.
In his dreams, he begged Lorian to return. To wound him, and use him.
To give him a purpose again, even if it would be a purpose of a slave.
Lorian’s subtle violence haunted him and filled him with desires so different from what he truly preferred.
He always felt shame after it, not being able to look Noyd in the eyes.
“Tiyan… Tell me. Tell me all. Maybe it can heal you, if you open your heart to me. I am here.”
How could he tell her of all the atrocities he experienced in Ain’asel?
How could she tell her that he ate Mina?
Sometimes he remembered how he killed Noyda. In such moments, he felt void so deep that it was endless.
His well was shattered but was filling itself with rot. Slowly… yet inevitably. Its sweet, cloying scent was the only scent he wanted to feel.
Lorian sculptures polluted their house. He cut and drilled, like he wanted both to cut Lorian from his mind as well as bound his memory to himself even stronger. Noyd didn’t ask. Villagers—at the beginning happy from his arrival—often asked Noyd is she doesn’t want to come back to her family home. Her father and mother urged her too; for her own safety.
“He is fae touched” he heard once Noyd’s father. “Who knows when his mind fails him? Wasn’t it uncommon for those who returned from Faerie?”
Tiyan didn’t feel pain then.
Maybe it would be safer for Noyd to leave him.
*
Tiyan worked again.
Noyd was sleeping in the common room. She said those sculpts scare her.
He understood her.
They scared him too.
He painted them black—aside from eyes—these were white, like those of Lorian’s shadow form. They looked like particles of night; always watching, always observing. The more of them guarded him, the more intense and terrifying were his dreams.
Take me.
Ravish me.
Take my body.
As you took my soul.
Lorian and the whole Ain’asel called him.
Tiyan finished the last figurine. It had shadows spread in all directions, so finely made that they looked real.
He could see his own reflection in the sculpting knife he was adding finishes to the whole opus.
He lifted it, looking into it.
His face was not as famished since animals slowly started to return. Strong body. Firm jaw. He was not a boy anymore. What price did he pay to grow up? Would he not prefer to stay in childlike naivety? Perhaps Noyd would stay in their bedroom, if not his obsessions and his lack of…
… soul?
He moved the knife over his wrist—with a dull side. His missing fingers—a reminder of much colder days—haunted with nothingness.
His veins were more prominent and his hands more worn.
And next to him, a wooden shadowed creature. Beautiful. Tempting. Cruel.
Slowly sipping his sanity alive.