Trauma is a master sculptor, shaping the soul with hands both patient and merciless. Its lessons are delivered at the boundary of sleep, where reason dissolves and memory reigns. For Mordecai, the fragile sanctuary of waking hours offered only a brief ceasefire; nightfall was an inevitable summons back to the haunted gallery of his own mind.
His nightmares were unerringly faithful, each a clockwork pageant rendered in excruciating fidelity. The script never changed, and he was never granted the mercy of distance—only the bitter intimacy of reliving his undoing, a looping aria of ruin.
He would feel the first grinding vibration through the soles of his feet. He would smell the baking pastry an instant before it was overwritten by the stench of ozone and blood. He would be back in the press of the crowd, the cacophony of screams a physical pressure against his eardrums. He would feel the unbearable heat of the device in his palm, and he would feel Cassandra's small, trusting hand in his.
And then, the laugh.
Ra'Zul's laugh was the heart of his terror. It wasn't just a sound—Mordecai felt it as a real and cutting presence. The laugh broke his connection to his sister's hand. It marked the moment when everything he loved was lost. In the dream, Mordecai always turned and saw his mother's face: frozen with grief, yet defiant, her eyes bright with hope. The laugh grew louder until nothing else remained, leaving Mordecai engulfed in cold, mocking joy.
He would wake not with a gasp, but with a silent, strangled choke, as if the laugh were still lodged in his throat. His body would be sheened in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. The sheets were tangled around his legs, a mockery of the clutching shadows from his dream. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird trying to beat its way out of his chest.
In the immediate, breathless aftermath, the world of Samantha's apartment felt fragile and unreal. The hum of the refrigerator was a pathetic whisper against the echoing memory of a city's death cry. The darkness of his bedroom was not comforting; it was a canvas upon which the nightmare could easily repaint itself.
He learnt that to simply lie there was to invite the terror back in. Sanity, he discovered, required anchors. It needed rituals.
He would slide out of bed, his movements automatic. Kaiphus, ever attuned to his distress, would flow from the bed with him, a pool of darkness at his feet before rising to settle around his shoulders, a familiar, weighted comfort.
The kitchen at 3 a.m. was a sacred, silent space. He didn't turn on the overhead light; he lit a single candle stub Samantha had left in a saucer. The flickering flame was a small, defiant response to the immense darkness within and around him.
Then, the tea.
It was never just about tea. It was a spell. A ward against the lingering taste of fear. He would move by feel and memory, the motions drilled into him by his mother's hands. Measure the leaves—not Twilight Blossom, but a common Earth variety, Earl Grey. Its citrussy bergamot scent was a poor substitute, but the ritual was what mattered. Heat the water. Watch the steam rise.
Here, in the quiet dark, he would try to guide it. No whirlpools formed in the kettle. His power on Earth was too faint, too stifled by this world's concrete reality for such delicate displays. But he would trace the circle in the air with his finger anyway, his lips moving in a silent recitation of the old words. The suggestion. The gentle persuasion.
Pouring the water into a cup required concentration. Focusing on the stream, the sound, the rising aroma—it forced the nightmare's sensory overload to recede. It made the immense, unconquerable terror small enough to be watched from a distance, contained within the circle of candlelight.
His collection began by accident. On a weekend trip to a flea market with Samantha, his eye was caught by a discarded saucer. It was chipped, its gilding faded, but its pattern—a faint, hand-painted blue constellation against a white background—sent a jolt through him. It was wrong, of course. Earth constellations. But the idea was there. He bought it for a quarter.
It became a secret archaeology of a lost world. A cracked porcelain cup with a silver rim that reminded him of the Spire-Cities' pinnacles. A delicate, almost translucent piece with a hairline fracture that held the light like a captured moonbeam. Each one was a fragment, a promise. A vow whispered over chipped edges and faded patterns: I remember. I will not forget.
They were lined up on the shelf in his room, a silent, broken council. They were not for use. They were relics. They were the scattered pieces of Aethelas, and in gathering them, he was performing a slow, ongoing act of memorial.
His other secret was the books. Paperback romances with garish covers, scrounged from library sales and thrift store bins. The Star-Crossed Captain. A Heart Forged in Starlight. Dark and Light Love and War. They were ridiculous. The prose was often purple, the conflicts melodramatic, and the solutions neat and emotionally satisfying.
And they were a lifeline.
In these pages, love was a power that could conquer empires. Loss was always temporary, redeemed by a grand reunion. Goodness was recognised and rewarded. The language was soft, emotional, and utterly alien to the harsh, brutal calculus of his own existence. His anger, a cold, hard stone in his gut, would momentarily uncurl as he read about hands brushing, vows whispered under alien suns, and sacrifices made for love.
It was a conscious rebellion. Ra'Zul's world was one of absolute power, cold logic, and annihilation. These books were their own kind of domain expansion, defined by sentiment, heated emotion, and connection. They were his escape into a reality where the greatest power wasn't the ability to unmake a world, but the courage to open a heart.
He would read by candlelight, the steam from his ritual tea curling around his face, Kaiphus a warm weight around him. The brutal echo of Ra'Zul's laugh would slowly be replaced by the whispered dialogue of fictional lovers. The image of his mother's stone-set face would soften, overlaid by a book's description of a heroine's determined hope.
The nightmares would come again. He knew this. His tutor was relentless. But he was learning its rhythms. He was building his defences not from stone and spell but from steam, porcelain, and soft, foolish words. Each ritual was a brick in a wall around the hollows within him, a way to turn the unbearable science of his fear into something he could manage, something he could almost, if he squinted in the candlelight, watch without breaking.