Desmond walked back through the woods; his boots rang on the earth, still damp from the rain that had begun barely two minutes earlier. His clothes were soaked, smelling of iron—something he no longer minded out of habit, having smelled worse.
Rather than drag the quarry, he carried it on his back. His coat, buttoned to the chest, barely contained his quick, ragged breaths.
Blood ran down his face and gloves; on his clothes it only soaked in. The air remained dense and cold, with that heavy mist that had been following him for some time.
His short hair, neatly combed when he left the mansion, was now slightly tousled and wet from the hunt and the rain. Even so, he retained an almost impeccable air.
But that night… he did not walk the same.
On his way back, he had a brief memory: the river beneath the distant bridge, the echo that still buzzed behind his ears.
And those lights, as distant as they seemed impossible, had left him oddly thoughtful.
It was not bewilderment.
It was not desire.
It was… a crack.
As if, for the first time, the world were not a marble box or a battlefield, but something else. There was something else.
But Desmond was a Fontclair. And Fontclairs did not show distraction or curiosity.
He crossed the edge of the forest toward the exit, no matter how deep the woods had been.
The mansion loomed between lanterns with flames locked in glass. In the distance, two servants gathered gardening tools; when they noticed the young master's approach, they lowered their heads and withdrew.
Desmond did not greet them.
He simply crossed the stone path to the marble steps as the great gate was opened by a butler the moment he appeared.
—"His Excellency awaits you in the east parlor".
—"Understood." —he replied, voice clear and neutral, without hesitation. As if the sea and its lights had never existed a few hours before.
Once inside, he asked neither for help nor for a change of clothes; he merely left the bloodied coat on the brass stand. His shirt remained stained, his gloves still bore traces of the hunt.
He walked straight to the east parlor door, half open, from which warm light escaped and a strong scent of fine liquor mixed with floral perfumes.
The nobles' laughter blended with the tense murmurs of diplomats and merchants, while his father stood at the center of debate.
—"Ah, there is my general." —His tone overflowed with pride dressed as arrogance.
—"Just in time. Duke Bastien wishes to speak with you about our northern routes. Why not take a seat to discuss these matters?" —his father said, extending an arm toward a nearby chair.
Desmond nodded and entered with steady steps. Not a single muscle in his face betrayed that, a few hours earlier, he had seen something that forced him to stop and think.
—"A pleasure, young master." —said the noble his father had indicated, approaching with an apologetic smile and a slight bow.
Desmond listened and inclined his head in return. The commercial and diplomatic meeting resumed.
For the next hours he ran through names, alliances, locations, dates, future agreements. He did not make a single mistake nor hesitate once. He displayed the firmness and leadership he could provide to secure the future economic interests of three cities and of the people under his command.
But in his head… the reflection of those distant lights on the sea.
The silence, different on the other side of the wood.
The wind, denser from the cold—and, in some way, warm. More human. Coming from a world that was not his.
Outside, the rose garden remained intact, and the peach tree he had vowed to restore to fullness still stood.
Inside the parlor, wine flowed; laughter filled the gilded ceiling.
And Desmond… now in his room, lay thinking about the city he had never seen, not even in childhood, while he fixed his gaze on the ceiling.
As always, he would keep every expression off his face, every hint of distraction, to avoid being discovered by his father.
Only that way could he retain the power to learn more about what he had seen that night.
But since that dawn, nothing was the same. He closed his eyes and let himself be carried into a dream that pulled him toward the distant.
---
The Next Morning
Desmond awoke always before dawn, just before four-thirty.
His trained body already knew the routine—not by will, but by reflex, as if he were still living the barracks' life, even though this time he found himself in the Rosiental mansion. There, each day began with the roar of a trumpet and boots lined on the snow.
He went in and out whenever his father sent him hunting or to perform forced labors—far more often than to attend noble festivities.
He dressed with precision: white shirt, black waistcoat, his father's old brooch on the lapel. He put on his silk gloves without a single wrinkle. Then he left his room, crossed the corridor and descended the marble steps while the mansion still slept.
But he did not go to the library or the dining hall.
He crossed the west wing gallery— the one no one used.
He avoided the passages where servants bowed in fear; he found it pathetic to see them tremble and lower their eyes.
Once outside, behind the greenhouse, he slipped beneath the rusted gate and entered the hidden garden beyond a wall of old railings, covered in canes and thorny climbing roses.
At the far end, the tree waited:
The peach tree.
Solitary, bent with age, but alive.
Leafy, though with few fruits, it rose broad, its branches barely fitting within the wall of vegetation that surrounded it.
In that forgotten garden lay roots scattered across the ground, old stones lifted and reset, dry leaves swept away, concrete benches covered in moss that he washed whenever he had the chance.
And yet, for Desmond, it was the only thing that did not smell of confinement.
He always carried a small shovel.
He swept leaves in silence, almost at dawn. He removed insects, watered the soil with a copper can hidden among the shrubs.
He did it without haste, as if he were tending a home he had chosen to claim.
For weeks he built a modest cabin from pine planks ordered from carpenters, brought secretly to the garden via a passage that led toward the village. He even placed broken stones for a hearth, ready for the freezing mornings before dawn.
It was his refuge from the clamor.
He did not speak; he did not allow himself to feel.
But sometimes—very rarely—he would look up at the branches when he stood by the tree. He would let a leaf fall onto his glove and hold it with care.
Because that tree was the last thing he had of her.
Of his mother.
She had told him—once, with a trembling voice, lips pale and cracked from fever—that the tree was hers; that she had planted it the spring she bore him.
That if one day he lost himself, he need only look back at it to remember who he was.
But… who was he now?
A respected noble?
A monster with manners?
A motherless boy with bloodied hands?
A man restrained by force and courage?
A humiliated, used dog?
He leaned beneath the branches, ran his hand along the trunk and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he heard it:
The roar.
Not from outside, but from within.
The roar of the animal that wanted to come out.
The one that had run in his chest since childhood.
The one that shouted in wartime nights, that wanted to shatter glass, that craved something beyond obedience and never found a way to fill its void.
The one that felt the noose at his throat, bound, controlling the rage that consumed him whenever he wanted to strike back.
But no. He had to swallow it. He had to return to the mansion.
Again and again.
And so he did.
Every day.
After the tree, he returned to the house, immaculate, mute, composed.
He sat beside his father in the meeting room, surrounded by nobles in costly suits and false smiles.
They spoke of treaties, alliances, numbers, territories.
Desmond nodded, feigned listening, replied with precision, always with a hidden play.
He spoke only when necessary; he issued orders in a sharp, exact tone. His bearing was unquestionable; his voice feared.
But inside him, everything roared. An insatiable anger that grew with time.
At dusk, they sent him hunting again, twice a week. And he went, like a trained automaton.
An executioner obedient to his master's voice, though he growled within.
Until one night, different from the others, the stag was larger.
He hoisted the rifle to his shoulder, aimed at the animal, looked through the sight and fired into the heart.
Later, his steps carried him back into the sea of pines, deeper into shadow, the deer slung across his back. Leaves crunched beneath his boots, though he could no longer see the ground—the cold mist floated thick, swallowing the earth at his feet. A frozen haze that rose and swirled around him as he advanced.
Suddenly, he felt something seize at his knees. Roots seeming to tangle around his leg's, pulling him down. Till he yanked his right leg to free himself, but slipped; he dropped the stag first, trembling till he rolled down a muddy ravine as the rain began to hammer down.
Rolling among stones and branches that tore at him, and even clawed shredding part of his clothing, pain tearing guttural sounds from his throat as he finally struck hard against a high earthen ledge and collapsed short near the cliff's edge.
When he lifted his gaze, he froze. Then recoiled instantly, gasping as he was clutching a thick branch at the edge of the void.
And there before him—was the vast city.
This time farther, brighter, and somehow… even more unsettling.
Because it made him think.
Think about what he was doing, what he had been, what he was… and what he could be.
He rose to return by another path, perhaps closer to that. Then shouldered the stag across his back, and the wounds nothing but scratches to him.
Walking for four more hours along the trail of tall, dark trees. Then among the bushes, a rustle broke the silence.
He dropped the stag, drew his weapon without a second thought. Metal rang—raising it high as it gleamed in the night, steady, in a fighting stance—poised.
Made no sound, nor called.
If it were an animal, it would've shown.
So he waited.
Breath steady, silence thick, waiting a few seconds to drag. Then his grip tightened, the blade lifted and descended downward, blade then came down with force sharply cutting the air.
Suddenly, a woman burst from the underbrush—startled. Desmond halted mid-strike, drew his fist back and suspended in midair, unwilling to descend. As his gaze was locked on the figure before him, watching the woman raise her hands in desperate plea and horror reflected in her eyes, her expression caught between shock and fear.
"¡W–Wait! ¡¡Wait!!" —she cried, her voice trembling, raw with terror.