When Simon returned to his palace, clouds loomed overhead like dead beasts suspended in the sky. He approached the guard crouched before the iron gate and whispered into his ear with a voice not entirely human:
"Tell Mogan to be in my study within five minutes—or his head will adorn my door."
The guard did not argue. The metallic clank of his armor shifted swiftly as he rushed to obey.
In the hallway, a maid brushed past Simon, broom in hand, her face as pale as a shadow. She didn't notice him, lost in the whirl of labor like someone scrubbing away bloodstains that never fade. Simon snapped his fingers—and she spun as if yanked by an invisible string.
Time froze between them. Her legs buckled, and she collapsed to her knees, eyes glinting with terror:
"M-my apologies, milord... I didn't know you... had returned..."
He looked down at her with the disdain of one flicking dirt from his boot.
Simon entered his study. Its walls were lined with maps of distant lands across three continents, and swords hung like severed tongues. He settled behind his desk, drew a dagger of black bone, and began passing it between his fingers with the grace of a magician and the cruelty of a child.
A knock.
"Enter."
The door creaked open, and in stepped a figure draped in a cloak woven from the fabric of nightmares—its threads steeped in the scent of ash and ancient slaughter. Half his face drowned in shadows that did not belong to the room; the other half was veiled by a thick, black beard, dark as the entrails of night. In his hand, a wooden staff exhaled crimson smoke, as if silently suffocating.
"You summoned me, my lord?"
"Indeed. A matter that requires your... unraveling."
"I have been yours since the day my will was inked in blood."
Simon smiled—the kind of smile that blooms only on the edge of meaninglessness, where collapse masquerades as solace.
"Loyalty like yours, Mogan, is the raw material of fate."
Mogan's lips curled like an old wound reopening.
"What is the nature of this summons?"
"I need you to track the *Clonmachnois*—the ship that cradled my grandfather's first breath, before time itself was invented."
Mogan's face spasmed, as if his very flesh had burned and frozen mid-scream.
*"My lord... You once called it a mere myth."*
"That was before I posed the question to the cursed mirror in the old palace. It answered with the clarity of prophecy."
A pause. The air between them turned jagged. Then Mogan spoke:
"But... could your question have been ambiguous? Or the mirror's interpretation flawed?"
Simon laughed, a sound like postponed ruin:
"Pitiable... that I entrusted the magicians to a mind doubting magic's certainty. Mogan, magic does not err—it is a system immune to chance."
"Yes. An unforgivable lapse," Mogan replied, his voice a bow of submission.
"The ship is present on this continent. That makes the possibility tangible—not just embers in tales." Simon's gaze fixed on an invisible point in the wall.
"Yet, my lord... to what end? I've never known you drawn to the glitter of adventure."
"Such naivety," Simon said, icy and imperious. "This is no adventure—it is a calling. Some things are desired for their own sake, without justification. The ship, Mogan, is an unopened wound. And I intend to bleed it."
The room fell silent.
Mogan did not speak. Did not move. He merely closed his eyes.
Then—without light or sound—his form fractured in space, collapsing into an infinitesimal point. He vanished as if never there, leaving only a swirl of black ash that dissolved into nothing.
In another corner of the world—or perhaps of dreams, or some neglected layer of spacetime—the air parted soundlessly. Mogan emerged from its fold into a garden where trees grew as memories do in a weary chest. Here, flowers did not bloom; they *thought*. Every leaf trembled as if recalling an invisible past.
A small, ancient house exhaled the scent of nostalgia and old books. Its walls were clad in aged incantations—not for protection, but surveillance.
In the front garden, bathed in hush, his daughter ran in halting circles, laughter trailing her like light filtered through magic. His wife sat on a stone bench, watching with eyes weary of sorrow but not yet surrendered to it.
Suddenly, the child halted, as if her heart had caught a signal ears could not hear.
"Mama!" she shrieked, eyes wide with unfiltered joy. "Papa's back!"
She sprinted toward him, laughter spilling ahead. She clung to him fiercely, as if proving he wasn't a dream this time.
Mogan said nothing. Only bent to hold her, an anchor in a world crumbling slowly—but never fully—so long as these arms encircled him.
From afar, his wife watched... a gaze needing no words, for all true dialogues had long been spoken in silence.
Mogan lifted his daughter as if cradling a fragment of his soul rather than mere flesh and bone. He settled her onto his shoulders, and she wrapped her tiny arms around his neck like a wreath of life untouched by evil, whispering words meant only for him—nonsense to adult ears, but perfectly decipherable to his.
They walked slowly toward the stone bench where his wife waited, her face flickering between guarded joy and quiet suspicion, as if time itself had learned caution from her.
With a voice laced with a smile, she said:
"I'd thought you'd return before sunset… But as usual, you let the sun fret on your behalf."
Mogan reached out to stroke her hair, a gesture half-apology:
"Sunset isn't an appointment, Aleria—it's a transformation. I was late for myself, not for it."
She laughed softly, then glanced at the child clinging to her father's neck as if she'd never let go:
"Tell me, Lona… Was your father slaying dragons or losing himself in conversations with ghosts again?"
The girl shook her head violently, defending him like a saint:
"No! Papa was saving something big! I don't know what, but it was big!"
The three laughed—a fleeting moment unbroken by questions.
Mogan sat beside his wife, the child still enthroned on his shoulders like an unyielding crown:
"And how was your day? Did the flowers finally surrender to Lona's pleas?"
Aleria's gaze drifted to the edge of the garden, where a violet blossom had unfurled since morning:
"Only one. It said the child had 'pleaded enough.'"
Then she rose with quiet grace, nodding toward the house, where golden light spilled from the windows like an unbroken promise:
"Come… Dinner waits. Assuming you still recall its taste."
Mogan stood, still carrying Lona:
"True flavors are unforgettable… Like home. Like you."
They moved inside, swallowed by a warmth that came not from the hearth alone, but from possibilities not yet extinguished.
Dinner was hushed, filled with a silence that nourished rather than strained. The clink of spoons echoed like whispers from another time; the table was set as if for sacrament, not mere supper. Lona's laughter filled the gaps, softening the night's weight.
Afterward, Mogan carried his sleeping daughter to her small bed, tucking the covers around her as if swaddling the world itself.
Without a word, he withdrew to his study.
The room was narrow, its walls papered with ancient maps and faded texts. In the corner, a single candle fought the darkness, its flickering light exposing a face etched with unspoken grief.
Mogan sat at his desk, staring at nothing—as if his mind sifted through layers of time for a single error, or absolution.
Aleria entered. She did not speak at first, only stood behind him, the light tracing the contours of a face that had changed, yet never lost its warmth.
"You're too harsh with yourself, Mogan," she said, her voice frayed—an accusation and a plea entwined.
"What happened… wasn't your fault. If you feed the past more than it deserves, it will devour you. Devour all of this. Devour Lona."
He didn't turn. Only lifted his eyes to the candle as if it held answers, then spoke with the gravity of an abyss:
"Everything, Aleria… Everything is my fault."
A pause. Then, quieter:
"A mistake isn't a moment. It's a lens—and once you peer through it, the world warps. I see nothing else now."
She stepped closer, resting a hand on his shoulder—not to comfort, but to say: I am still here.
Yet he remained motionless, his face half-shadow, half-light: a truth unresolved.
Mogan sat in silence. Nothing moved in the room except the trembling shadow of the candle.
When he finally spoke, the words came as if each weighed more than he could bear:
"I still see her face, Aleria... Just a child. Innocent. Guiltless. Unprotected... Then, in a moment, all that remained was her small head rolling between my feet."
He drew breath like a man being strangled by the air itself:
"I remember the boy's scream... It wasn't fear. Wasn't despair... It was courage. Courage I never had."
His head sank slowly, collapsing inward:
"And he... followed her. While I? I remained. I was there that day, and I've never left. That entire day—their final moments—carved into everything I am. My skin. My ears. My eyes. I haven't lived since that day... Only relived it, endlessly, in images that never fade."
"What remains of me now isn't a man, Aleria. Just the shadow that survived—not the one who should have mourned."
The silence lingered, but he wasn't finished. From some deeper abyss, he whispered:
"They haunt me. In dreams. In waking. In every corner of my mind... Eating me alive, without mercy, without end."
"I don't deserve a second chance... I don't deserve Lona."
Aleria moved silently behind him. She wrapped her arms around his broken form as if trying to contain all his shattered pieces.
Her eyes glistened—not just with grief, but with a desperate will to survive together.
Her whisper trembled yet held steel:
"No, my love... It's not them consuming you—it's you. You're the one tearing yourself apart because you didn't die with them."
"But you've forgotten..."
A pause. Then:
"Try to remember their laughter, Mogan... Remember them in their brightest moments, when life was still possible. I've lived all these years not because I forgot... but because those memories—not their end—are what kept me alive."
"If you deem yourself unworthy of Lona, then ask yourself—who is worthy to stand by her? To let her live as any child should? To one day walk her down the aisle?"
The silence that followed outlasted all speech, yet wasn't empty... but thick with something resembling the beginnings of redemption.
Two days later, Simon sat in his study, toying with the same bone dagger.
A knock.
The guard entered:
"My lord, a beggar at the gates... Calls himself Billy. Claims to know you. Shall I kill him?"
Simon arched an eyebrow:
"Bring him in."
Billy entered—something that should have stopped breathing long ago. He stank of death left to rot. He threw himself at a fruit platter, devouring it like a starved wolf.
Simon regarded him with disgust:
"Billy... You resemble cheese left to curdle in hell."
Billy scrambled to kiss his boots. Simon kicked him away like a dog.
"Speak."
Billy panted:
"The gold you gave me... I tried to double it... Lost everything. The earthquake took the rest. I've come for what's owed." His words tumbled incoherently.
Simon laughed:
"You lost the money? Are you an imbecile? In one decade... I took you for a shrewd merchant. How disappointing—though, to be honest, entirely predictable. Men unaccustomed to wealth always meet your fate."
"But to come claiming that I Owe you debts? You must be rabid."
Billy leaned closer, eyes slit with madness:
"I know about the girl... The Holy Magicians and the emperor would pay dearly for such knowledge. I've a friend who—if anything befalls me—will inform them. I want 33 billion gold pieces."
A pause. Then Simon:
"I'll give you double. On one condition."
"Name it, my lord! Anything! I'll sell you my wife, my daughters—"
Simon's face twisted in revulsion:
"Just bring me this friend. I just want to remove the idea of the girl's existence from your minds ....forget about the girl."
"But my lord, how can I trust you won't make us forget our agreement?"
Simon smiled thinly:
"Have I ever broken a promise, Billy?"
Billy drooled like a dog scenting meat.
"Agreed."
Days later, Billy returned with his bound companion—Shal.
The moment they crossed the palace threshold, guards seized them. A muting spell choked their voices. Slave collars snapped around their necks.
Shal screamed through the enchantment:
"I told you this was madness! The girl isn't human... Lord Simon, I beg you—destroy her before she destroys us all!"
Billy wept:
"My lord, this isn't what we agreed! You've betrayed—"
Simon turned away, uninterested—or unwilling—to hear more.
A gesture to the executioner.
A new life began for them—in the depths.