"I'm sorry".
The words just left him before he could stop them — raw, quiet hanging in the velvet-dark like frost that refused to melt.
The corridor did not answer.
Cold clung to the stone like something alive. It breathed through the cracked stained glass above, its wind threading between gold-trimmed archways and velvet-draped silence. Long halls stretched on like cathedrals, lined with old portraits whose eyes never looked away. The smell of rose oil and ash.
He had not meant to hit back. Not really. It just happened — a flicker, a snap, a boy who had learned too well how to stay silent… finally letting something slip.
The crying didn't come from him.
Then came footsteps. Slow, heavy, echoing down the stone. He knew them. He knew them well.
A figure appeared in the doorway — tall, rigid, trembling not with cold, but something sharper. No words. Just a hand, sudden and hard, in his hair like iron.
The floor moved beneath him, dragged backward through polished stone and wine-red soaked carpet, candles flickering as they passes like half-remembered stars. The warmth of the flames did nothing against the cold that was settling inside him — a cold that no fire could thaw.
It hurts, it hurts so bad. He cried silently, but tears pricked the corners of his eyes. And he made someone cry as well.
But…was it wrong? Was it his fault?
Didn't he have every right to make someone cry?
Dragged down the dark, long hallway — its shadows flickering like accusations in time with the candlelight — he turned, blinking through tears.
There she was.
She sat, comforting the crying boy. Her hands soft, her voice low. A mother's voice.
"Do not cry. It's going to be okay."
Words meant for the hurt. Words that healed.
Words that were never meant for him.
She looked up — looked at him — as he was dragged through the cold hall.
And her gaze held nothing.
Not even hatred.
Just… absence.
Like she saw through him. Like he was already gone.
Like he had never been there at all.
The way she looked at the crying boy — she had never looked at him like that. When he was hurt, she turned away. But when they were hurt, she rushed towards them, just like a mother would do.
Just like a mother would do.
But she was his mother too.
Wasn't she?
He remembered her hands once, vaguely — soft, maybe. Or was that imagined? A moment when he was smaller, too young to know silence could hurt. Before words grew teeth. Before the air in the house turned thin around him.
She used to braid his sister's hair in the mornings. He watched from the corner, quiet. Waiting for the day she might call him over too — just once. But she never did. Her fingers were gentle, soft and full of care.
She had simply decided, long ago, that these hands — that this boy does not need that kind of warmth.
He was not soft like the other boy. Not tearful. Not easily breakable.
He learned not to be.
She loved the ones who cried prettier. Who knew when to look small and sweet and bruised. But he — he had grown around silence the way trees grew around iron fences. Crooked. Quiet. Trying to reach sunlight that just did not come.
He remembered once, maybe three winters ago, scraping his knee open on the stone steps. The blood had frozen almost instantly. He came to her, lip trembling, trying not to cry. She had looked down, seen the mess — and turned away. Said only, "Don't bleed on the carpet."
No bandage. No warmth. Just that.
And yet here she was now. Arms around the boy who had cried.
Her voice a hush. Her hands like light.
He stared at them through the dark — through the swaying corridor of candles and portraits and velvet silence — as he was dragged farther away. And all he could think was:
What did I do wrong?
What did I do to be the one she does not seek to hold?
He was not bad. He was not cruel. He tried. Every day he tried — to be still, to be good, to be quiet when the house demanded quiet.
But the world only saw what came after. The snap. The raised voice. The wrong time. No one every asked what came before.
His tears were always inconvenient. Too loud. Too late.
Her love was always conditional — handed out in glances, rationed like something fragile that might run dry if given to the wrong child.
But he was hers too. Wasn't he? Isn't he?
The corridor seemed to swallow the question.
His feet scraped the stone as he was pulled along, the sting in his scalp dulling into something colder. The velvet curtains wept in the wind. The portraits on the walls — ancestors with dead eyes and gold-threaded collars — watched without blinking. Silent judges.
Somewhere far behind him, the crying had quieted. Maybe she had started humming. She used to do that when his sister was sick — quiet lullabies from a homeland no one spoke of anymore. Melodies he had once tried to hum to himself at night. But they sounded wrong in his mouth. As if the notes refused to belong to him.
Maybe he should've cried prettier.
Maybe then she would've stayed.
The hand in his hair let go, and he stumbled forward — into the small, stone room with no windows. The walls were lined with frost. There was no fire here. No light. Just the sound of the door locking behind him.
He did not scream. He never did. Screaming made it last longer.
He sat, knees pulled close, and stared at his palms. There were small cuts on them from when he had fallen. From when he had hit back. From when he had stopped holding it in.
He wondered what the other boy was doing now. Maybe eating something sweet, still sniffling into her sleeves. Being told he was brave. That he mattered. That he was good.
He blinked once. Twice. But the tears didn't fall.
The room said nothing. The stone gave no warmth.
And somewhere inside him, a thought like ash whispered the silence:
Maybe she never wanted me at all.
Not really. Not as I am.
Not as something with heat and weight and hurt.
Maybe she loved the idea of a son, but not the boy who actually arrived.
The one who didn't smile quite right.
The one with too much quiet and too much shadow.
The one who made the house colder just by standing in it.
He lowered his head to his arms and tried not to shiver.
She was his mother.
But she had chosen not to see him as her son.
And that — more than the bruises, more than the silence, more than the cold — was what hurt the most.
✰✰✰
The door creaked open.
Light spilled in like cold breath — thin, silver, merciless. It clung to the stone floor in long streaks and made the dust shimmer like memory. The boy flinched from it. His eyes, unused to the light, stung.
Then the hand came.
Rough. Calloused. Familiar in the worst way.
It seized his arm like one would a sack of grain. Not even a glance. No pause to see if he could stand. No thought for the bruises that bloomed like wilted violets beneath his sleeve. His shoulder burned.
"Up," the voice barked — sharp, unfeeling, worn thin with authority.
He rose not because he was strong, but because there was no other option.
No tenderness. No explanation.
Just motion. Just force.
Others followed.
The corridor filled — footsteps echoing like judgment. His brothers entered first, laughing already, as if they've had been waiting for this moment all evening. Their boots scraped loudly on the stone, louder than necessary, like they wanted the house to remember this sound.
One of them nudged the other, nodding towards his pale, blinking face.
"Did u see his face?"
"Like a kicked dog."
They snorted. That kind of laughter — not joy, not cruelty even — just emptiness wearing a mask.
Laughter like teeth.
Laughter like mockery wrapped in skin.
The boy did not speak. He didn't even look at them.
He was afraid his voice might crack, and they'd laugh louder.
His mother walked just behind them — slower, more composed, hands folded neatly before her like she was attending a funeral. Her hair was pinned too tightly. Her eyes didn't quite meet his. They hovered just above, as if he were already fading from her sight.
She said nothing. She had always… said nothing.
Even now, even here.
There were so many words she could have spoken.
"He is just a child."
"There must be another way."
"Not like this."
But she said none of them.
She was here.
And somehow, that made it worse.
His sister came last — younger, quieter, trailing behind like a thought someone had forgotten. She didn't laugh. She didn't sneer. Her lips were slightly parted, as if mid-question — but the words never came. Her gaze flicked between their parents, her brothers, and him. Back and forth. Looking for something solid to hold onto.
Her hands trembled at her sides.
He wanted to tell her it was okay.
That she didn't have to be brave for him.
But his throat was a tight, frozen thing. No sound escaped it.
The cold pressed closer with every step.
Down the corridor they walked — not a procession, not quite a punishment, something in between. The velvet curtains swayed slightly with draft, whispering secrets he would never be old enough to know. Portraits of dead men in armor stared down at him, unmoved. Their eyes painted too precisely to blink, too proud to look away.
He felt small beneath them — smaller than his name, smaller than the bruises, smaller than the silence itself.
His breath fogged faintly in the hall. The castle air was thinner here, as if it knew what was coming and did not want to carry it.
He tried not to feel.
But it was impossible.
Each step was louder than the last. Each heartbeat echoed too high in his chest. His mouth was dry. His legs felt heavy. His wrists felt bare, like something had already been taken from him.
And above it all — that dull ache behind his ribs.
Not sadness. Not fear.
The knowledge.
That this was not some misunderstanding.
That this was not a mistake they would undo.
They were really going to do it.
No outburst would come. No motherly hand would lift. No sudden change of heart. The silence was too complete for that — too practiced, too cold.
They moved as one — a tide of motion that had already decided to drown him.
The corridor narrowed. The stone darkened. Cold wind crept through the thin slats of the high windows. He knew where they were headed. Past the inner hall. Past the ancestral doors.
Toward the wooden gate.
It stood at the far end of the old servants wing, where the lanterns no longer burned and the light turned blue with frost. It hadn't been used in years. He knew that because he used to sit near it, as a child, wondering what lay beyond.
Now he would know. One way or another.
The gate loomed ahead — tall, iron latched, warped by weather and time. The snow on the other side shimmered faintly beneath the low gray sky.
And still no one spoke.
They stopped just short of the threshold. The old timber groaned faintly in the wind.
His father turned.
The hand that had dragged him all this way now let go — only to…
…rise again.
A slap. Sharp. Sudden. Across the cheek.
His head jerked sideways from the force. A dry crack filled the air.
No one moved.
Then a second. This time to the other cheek.
Harder. Slower. As if to savor it.
"For the shame," the man muttered. "For the lies."
The boy blinked. His vision blurred at the edges. His skin stung where the cold met the heat of skin broken by palm. Something warm trickled near his ear. He didn't lift his hand to check it.
He did not ask why. He did not dear to ask.
The third strike came not as punishment — but as punctuation.
Then the father grasped him again, not by the arm, but by the collar — dragging him the final steps to the gate.
"No more," he said. Not to the boy, but to the others. "He is no longer one of us."
"He never truly was anyways."
The latch creaked. The gate opened outward with a hiss of snow.
And then —
He was thrown.
He stumbled, landed hard in the snow. His hands sank into it — sharp, wet, burning. His knees gave out. He remained there, on all fours, breath ragged, heartbeat rushing in his ears like water.
The gate closes behind him.
"I prayed for the frost to take you the night you were born. Let it finish what it began."
A click. Final. Small. But louder than thunder.
He looked up.
There were shadows — tall against the white.
Five of them.
His brothers. His mother. His sister. The father.
But then — a sixth?
Smaller. Unmoving. Slightly apart from the rest.
It stood just behind the others, half-shrouded by the falling snow.
It didn't step forward. It didn't speak.
It just watched.
The boy stared. His breath hitched.
He did not know its name. But it felt familiar — like a word he'd forgotten but used to whisper in sleep. Like a wound that hadn't happened yet.
Six shadows. One exile. And snow, endless, falling in silence.
And slowly, it thickened, the wind rose, and the storm laid its claim.
✰✰✰
The storm had arrived.
It did not descend.
It awoke — as if the mountain itself had drawn breath, and exhaled white oblivion.
Snow poured sideways, flung in veils and claws, until even the peak above were swallowed — vanishing into the same blind white that now pressed against his skin.
He could no longer see the path.
He could barely see the gate.
His hands, raw and shaking, slammed against the iron.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Again.
Again, again and again.
The cold bit into his palms, but he did not stop.
He struck the metal until his knuckles bled.
"Please," he sobbed. "Please—open—I didn't mean—!"
His voice cracked against the wind.
"Mother!"
His fists hit the gate again.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"
"I did not mean to burn the book, I did not mean to talk back—"
"I will be good. I will be quiet. Just…please! Please let me in!"
There was no answer.
Only the howl of wind, rising like a scream from something vast and uncaring.
"Leofric! Lorian!" His brothers names tore from his throat. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to fight back. I just… I just panicked. I'm so sorry. Please don't leave me here."
He pressed his face against the gate, cheek stinging against the frozen metal.
"I'm scared," he whispered. "I don't know where to go," he whined.
The storm gave no comfort.
"Please…" he mourned.
"Lysandra…" he bawls.
His last hope, his sister that never laid a finger onto him, with which he sometimes played, talked with, felt happy with.
It tore the heat from his words before they could reach even his own ears. It devoured his breath, turned his cries to fog and then to nothing. Snow clung to his lashes. His tears froze before they could fall.
He waited.
For footsteps.
For someone to pull the gate open.
He waited.
For a warm hand to catch his wrist and scold him, gently, and lead him inside.
But nothing came.
The iron beneath his fingertips felt ancient. Unmoving. More like a wall than a door.
And the castle — that towering silhouette of stone and silence — had already begun to dissolve behind him, its sharp edges softening into snow, as though it had never truly existed.
He was alone.
All alone.
He always was— all alone to begin with.
The storm was not cruel.
It was indifferent.
He stood for a while longer. Shivering. Listening.
Then—
He turned.
And stepped forward.
Into white.
No trail behind him.
No path ahead.
Only wind. And cold.
And the quiet ache of a body beginning to forget itself.
His footsteps sank and vanished. His hair stiffened with frost.
He blinked, and his eyelashes stuck together.
He whispered apologies to no one.
To his mother.
To the memory of her hands, that never brushed snow from his shoulders before she left the room.
To the brothers who have bullied him all the time for no reason at all.
To Lorian, for making him cry. For hitting him. For fighting back.
"I didn't mean to be that way," he said, voice a cracked thread. "I tried to be normal, I promise. I tried."
But the wind carried his words backward, and they did not return.
Still — he walked.
A child in a storm.
Trying not to die.
Trying not to be forgotten.
And then—
A shape emerged faintly through the storm's furious breath.
Half-swallowed by swirling snow, half-carved from shadow itself.
A black mirror, vast as a great door, stood before him, Gothic-arched and looming like a wound against the white.
Its surface was impossible—no reflection stirred within it.
Not the swirling snowflakes. Not the angry gray sky above.
It reflects nothing. Not even him.
The glass was a void.
A silence.
A secret swallowed whole.
One crack split it, a jagged scar running from arch to base, long and deep, as if the mirror itself were broken open to some dark pulse inside.
From the crack, wisps of black mist curled like snow smoke, twisting upward, mocking the storm's chaotic dance.
He froze, breath hitching. His heart hammered beneath frozen ribs, trembling with a sudden, raw terror that reached past numbness.
He stepped back — the cold biting sharper as panic claimed his limbs.
The mirror did not move. It did not breathe.
It only watched.
His foot caught a hidden stone beneath the snow —
He stumbled, arms flailing in the blind storm,
Then crashed down hard, a harsh gasp torn from his chest and stolen by the wind.
He lay flat on the ice, the biting cold seeping through his clothes and skin, sinking into his bones. Above him, the mirror loomed — a monolith of impossible darkness.
His wide eyes searched the storm's chaos — and there, the faint but unmistakable, a pulse:
Crimson.
A single, slow beat.
Then again
The crimson star.
A hollow silence bloomed inside the tempest, swallowing even the howling wind.
Time slowed.
His heartbeat — once frantic and sharp — now echoed hollowly, a fragile drum in the vastness.
He tried to scream, to call out—
But his mouth opened to an empty, frozen void.
No sound came.
The storm grew still around him — not fading, but falling away, as if the world itself had paused to listen.
Cold clawed inside him, spreading like ink through ice.
His fingers twitched once, twice.
Then stilled, numbed beyond feeling.
His heart faltered — slowing, skipping.
The silence stretched — vast and unbearable.
And then—
A voice, soft as snow settling on stone, threaded through the silence.
A whisper carried on the wind, not near, yet already inside him.
"Let the silence between your heartbeats guide you"
His eyes fluttered, heavy with frost and fear.
His body sagged, mind dissolving into the quiet cold.
So, the world dimmed.
Then, nothing.
Only white.