Night had settled over Vanhart estate like a second, heavier roof.
The outer walls slept under a pale band of moonlight, but the inner corridors held to shadow. Only the faint orange breath of distant sconces broke the gloom, and even those were half-snuffed to conserve oil.
Kel's bedroom was no exception.
Heavy curtains, thick and dark as mourning cloth, were partly drawn over the high, narrow windows, allowing only a thin blade of moonlight to cut across the stone floor. It sliced the room in two—one half drowned in shadow, the other washed in cold silver.
Kel lay on his back atop the bed, hands folded loosely over his chest, eyes open and unblinking as if he were listening to a song only he could hear.
His boots still rested on the floor.
He hadn't bothered to undress fully.
The long black coat he'd worn all day lay draped over a nearby chair, the fabric heavy, the hem faintly dusted with dried earth from the fields. He wore a simple dark shirt now, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. Even relaxed, the shift of muscle beneath pale skin spoke of a body honed by recent freedom—a body finally allowed to grow.
The room smelled of old paper, oiled leather, and faintly—
water.
Sairen's presence.
Kel shifted his gaze toward the ceiling, lids half-lowered.
"Zephryn," he said softly, voice barely more than air. "Come forth."
The room did not stir.
The wind did not shift.
But the shadows did.
The darkness pooled near the corner where wall met wardrobe shivered once, then unfolded like spilled ink climbing back into its bottle. A tall, lean figure stepped out from that impossible seam—cloak flowing, hood low, movements so smooth they barely disturbed the air.
Zephryn Elmrowth knelt on one knee just inside the glow of the moon's narrow strip.
"Young master Kel," he answered, head bowed, voice quiet but clear. "As summoned."
Kel turned his head slightly on the pillow, dark hair scattering across the linen.
His eyes, half-lidded a moment ago, sharpened.
"Did you bring the letters I asked for?" he asked.
Zephryn's gloved hand moved inside his cloak.
"Yes," he replied. "Letters taken from the late Lady Elira's room in House Malloren—exactly as you specified. Hidden compartments, wardrobe seams, the underside of an old chest. All undisturbed by others until now."
He drew out a small, wrapped bundle—no larger than both his hands together—tied in faded ribbon.
"Here," Zephryn said, rising smoothly and stepping nearer.
Kel sat up.
The bed creaked faintly as he swung his legs over the edge, boots meeting stone. The moonlight caught his profile—sharp lines, slender jaw, eyes too calm for his age. He accepted the bundle with both hands, fingers brushing briefly against Zephryn's gloved knuckles.
Up close, the letters smelled of old ink and lavender that had long since turned into a ghost of fragrance.
Kel's gaze lowered to the small weight in his palms.
"Good," he murmured. "Now leave."
He lifted his head, eyes briefly meeting Zephryn's shadowed face.
"And monitor the surroundings. I expect… guests within the week."
Zephryn bowed his head again.
"As you command."
He stepped backward once.
And then—
He was gone.
Not by turning.
Not by walking out the door.
It was as if the shadow behind him reached forward, folded around his silhouette, and drank him whole. The room settled again into its quiet.
Only Kel and the letters remained.
He sat still for a moment, the bundle resting across his lap.
His thumb traced the ribbon lazily.
"Letters from the dead," he murmured.
He let out a breath that might have been a laugh in another lifetime.
In this one, it was just air.
He stood.
The fabric of his shirt shifted around his shoulders as he walked to the simple wooden table beneath the window—one of the few things in the room that looked lived-in. Scratches from quill tips. Small scorch mark from a candle he'd let burn too low. Neatly stacked ink bottles. A few alchemy notes.
Kel set the bundle down.
The moonlight fell directly across the table, turning parchment edges pale as bone.
He untied the ribbon slowly, fingers deliberate, as if undoing a knot on something older than the ribbon itself.
The letters fanned slightly as the knot came loose.
He could see, even before opening them, that all were written in the same hand—elegant, measured, with a subtle curve to the strokes. Ink faded at the edges, but the script still held the confidence of the one who'd written it.
Kel's eyes narrowed.
"Elira Malloren," he whispered.
In his previous life as a player, she'd been little more than a sad footnote in a side-lore entry. Now—
She was a blade in his hand.
These letters will be a turning point against Rodrik, he thought.
Not with cruelty.
With clarity.
He picked up the first one.
The parchment was creased, edges softened by time and repeated handling.
Not mailed.
Read.
Hidden.
He unfolded it.
His gaze slid across the lines.
As he read, his expression did not visibly change—but his grip tightened, ever so slightly.
"Rodrik,
I know I do not have the right to write this, not after what I've done. Still, I cannot bear keeping it only in my thoughts.
If fate had been kinder, I would have walked beside you, not as a guest at distant banquets, but as your wife. There were moments I almost said it—when you spoke of wanting a home instead of war. I saw it. I wanted that, too.
I love you.
I never said it. I told myself it was unnecessary. That duty would decide for us.
But it was my father who decided, not duty. He forbade me. He said Vanhart was too unstable, that attaching my life to yours would be like tying my future to a blade already cracking.
I was weak. I obeyed.
Please… if there is a next life, forgive me there."_
Kel's eyes moved steadily to the end of the page.
There was no name signed.
Just a small, hesitant curve where the pen had paused,
—as if even writing Elira had been too much.
He folded the letter again.
Placed it aside.
Picked up the next.
Another confession.
Another apology.
Another iteration of the same truth written in different hesitations.
She wrote of the day she received Rodrik's proposal:
Of how her hands shook as she read it.
Of how she cried in silence before answering.
"I lied to you.
I said I did not see a future for us.
The truth is, I saw only that—and nothing else.
I saw us in a quiet northern house, waking to snow and stubborn crops, sharing tea after long days, you mending your armor by the fire while I mend our children's coats.
I saw you returning from war and, for once, not standing before a hall of strangers, but before me.
I saw… peace.
That was why I refused.
I loved that vision too much. I could not bear to have it shattered by the reality my father painted: of watching you collapse under mounting debt, political neglect, and a land no one came to save.
I was a coward.
I chose the safety of a future that held no you."_
Kel's jaw flexed.
He set that one aside too.
He read the next.
And the next.
The candles on his table remained unlit; he read by the moon and the faint, muted phosphorescence of Sairen's presence, which lingered at the edge of his awareness like distant water.
By the fifth letter, a clearer pattern emerged.
Elira wrote of her marriage.
Of the man she'd been given to.
"They say he is kind," she wrote. "And perhaps he is. But he is not you, Rodrik. And so every kindness feels like an accusation."
"I have not lain with him. I cannot. This is my selfishness now, my only rebellion. I cannot give him what I already gave you in my heart, even if I never spoke it aloud."
"I am a wife in name only. They do not know that at court. They likely never will. But my body is empty of what a wife should be. My heart is still where I left it—in that conservatory, smelling frost and roses, listening to a man afraid to ask anything for himself."
Kel's fingers slowly tightened around the parchment.
His eyes remained steady.
His throat, however, felt unexpectedly tight.
He pressed the base of his thumb against the fold, smoothing it.
So that's how it was, he thought.
No melodrama.
No affair.
No noble romance survived through secret meetings and tragic ends.
Just—
Cowardice.
Pressure.
And a love that never made it past the confines of ink and hidden wood grain.
A slow, quiet tragedy buried under politics.
Sairen's voice touched his mind then.
Cool.
Soft as a ripple against stone.
You are quiet.
Kel didn't answer at first.
He set aside the letter and picked up another.
"Did you know," he murmured aloud, eyes scanning the next confession, "that in the original timeline, none of this surfaced?"
In your other world's version of events?
"Yes."
He inhaled.
"Rodrik was… just a villain. A bitter man who crippled a child for wounded pride."
He flipped to the next page.
Ink blotted near the edge, as if Elira's hand had trembled there.
"Do you hate me now?
You have every right.
But the thought that you may someday stop hating me… frightens me more than the thought that you never forgive me.
If you stop hating me, it might mean you have forgotten me completely."_
Kel's eyes lingered on the line.
He exhaled.
"Now, I see him differently."
With pity? Sairen asked.
Kel's lips curved faintly.
It wasn't quite a smile.
"Understanding," he said. "Pity is cheap. Understanding is… more expensive."
He gathered the read letters into a neat pile.
His fingers moved with ritual precision, as if arranging a spell component, not human confession.
"These," he said softly, "will be the spear."
You mean to use the woman's unsent words as a weapon.
"Against Rodrik?" Kel asked. "They already are. He just doesn't know it yet."
He turned another letter over.
This one was shorter.
"I heard of Sera. The niece you train.
I hope… terribly and selfishly… that you are kinder to her than fate was to you.
If you ever have a daughter of your own, please, Rodrik, teach her that her choices are hers.
I was not strong enough to claim mine."_
Kel's fingers went still.
The room felt colder.
He could almost see it now—
Rodrik, alone in some distant tower, curse gnawing at him, convinced that he had been denied love, stability, and future.
When in truth—
There had been love.
He'd simply never been allowed to see it.
Kel's gaze sharpened.
"Rodrik Vanhart," he whispered.
"You never even knew the script you were trapped inside."
He stacked all the letters now, palms pressing down lightly on the pile. The moonlight turned the parchment edges white.
"These won't fix anything," he murmured.
Sairen was silent.
"They won't bring back Lysenne's unbroken bones. They won't erase the potion. They won't lift his curse. They won't revive Elira."
He tapped the top sheet with a finger.
"But they will do something else."
What? Sairen asked.
Kel's eyes grew distant.
"They will expose him," he said. "Not as a monster born from nothing…"
His gaze lowered, lashes casting shadows on his cheeks.
"…but as a man who chose darkness with incomplete truth."
He straightened.
"If I confront him with these at the right moment—before the Empire's eyes, or before those who still might stand on his side—his narrative cracks."
He could see it now:
Rodrik, confronted not with accusations, but with Elira's hidden words.
The weight of what might have been.
The knowledge that his revenge had always been aimed at the wrong target.
"I won't let him die thinking the world gave him no choice," Kel said quietly.
His voice held no kindness.
Only iron.
"I want him to see every choice he did have. Every door he never knocked on. Every letter never sent."
He stacked the letters carefully, then reached for the small leather pouch by the side of the table. One by one, he slid them inside.
Not to destroy.
To carry.
To wield.
Cruel, Sairen murmured.
Kel tilted his head.
"No," he replied. "Clean."
He tied the pouch, fingers precise.
"The world forgave too much in my last life. It allowed men like Rodrik to wear only the mask of their worst deed. This time…"
He looked up.
Eyes dark, resolute, reflecting a narrow strip of moon.
"…I'll tear away every mask. Good and bad."
He picked up the pouch and held it for a moment, feeling the faint weight of ink and regret.
"All of him will stand in that final moment," Kel whispered.
"Not just the villain."
He set the pouch aside, near his travel satchel.
Then he finally let out a long breath.
The room's tension eased slightly.
Kel's shoulders, always held so carefully, dropped a fraction.
He turned away from the table, moving back toward the bed. As he sat down, the mattress dipped under his weight. The moonlight now rested on the empty space beside him.
Elira's words echoed faintly in his thoughts.
"If you stop hating me, it might mean you have forgotten me completely."
Kel lay back, staring at the ceiling again.
"Don't worry," he murmured to the air.
His eyes closed slowly.
"I won't let him forget you."
He turned his head toward the faint line of light across the floor, lashes shadowing his cheeks.
"Especially not when it hurts most."
The estate slept.
The snow fell.
Somewhere beyond those walls, Rodrik still believed he had been denied all gentle things.
Kel von Rosenfeld—
who had once been merely a player watching numbers on a screen—
now held the proof that this world had been cruel in a quieter, sharper way.
And he intended to use it.
When the curtain finally rose on Rodrik's end…
the dead would speak.
Not in vengeance.
In truth.