He reached the building where he had once lived just as the moon broke free of the clouds.
The stairwell was half-collapsed, the walls scorched.
He climbed carefully, his hand brushing the rough stone, his breath echoing in the hollow shell.
The door to his old room still hung crooked on a single hinge.
He pushed it open slowly.
The room was almost empty.
A broken chair.
The remains of a bedframe.
A wall still faintly marked by the soot-darkened outline of a painting that had been burned away.
He crossed to the window.
The glass was gone, leaving only the jagged frame through which the night air entered.
Beyond it, the river glimmered faintly, winding through the ruins like a thread of silver dust.
On the floor near the far wall lay a tin paint box, lid bent, half-buried in ash.
He knelt and pried it open with stiff fingers.
Inside, dry crumbs of pigment still clung to the corners — dull red, pale yellow, a hint of blue.
The colors of another life.
Dorian's thoughts came slow and flat.
"I used to paint the sky. I thought I'd show my boy what the world looked like when the light was kind. He never saw it."
He closed the box and set it back down as gently as one would lay a child to rest.
He didn't cry.
There were no tears left.