The coughing fit left Elayas hollow.
Not tired — not even weak in the way sickness had taught him to expect — but scraped clean from the inside, as if something essential had been carefully removed and set aside. His fingers clenched in the embroidered sheets as the last spasm tore its way free, his lungs burning, his ribs aching as though they had been pried apart and poorly put back together.
For a moment, the world reduced itself to breath.
When it returned, it did so quietly.
The maid stood at the foot of the bed.
She had been there the whole time.
Elayas registered her presence distantly — the stiff line of her posture, the way her eyes skimmed over him without landing, as though looking directly would invite responsibility. She placed the porcelain cup on the bedside table with a faint clink, the liquid inside trembling.
"Waste of silk," she muttered, already turning away.
The words landed harder than the coughing.
They stayed.
They hung in the air long after her steps retreated down the corridor, heavier than the bitter medicinal scent, heavier than the velvet curtains meant to keep out drafts — and pity.
Elayas lay still.
The canopy above him arched high and graceful, its carved wood darkened by age and polish. Silk drapes framed the bed, pristine and untouched, as if they belonged to someone else entirely. Someone worth the expense.
A waste, she had said.
Once, they had called him a miracle.
His gaze drifted upward, as it did every evening, to the chandelier.
It hung directly above the center of the bed — a sprawling lattice of crystal teardrops and gilded arms, ancient and flawless. As the last light of dusk filtered through the tall windows, it fractured into a thousand shimmering fragments, scattering gold and red across the ceiling.
A crown of frozen fire.
It had been imported at obscene cost, so the tutors had said. A gift to mark the birth of a prodigy. Elayas remembered lying beneath it as a child, counting reflections, noticing how no two refracted colors behaved the same.
He had been five when he first realized it wasn't merely decorative.
The memories surfaced unbidden now.
A high-ceilinged hall filled with murmuring voices. Robes brushing marble. The rustle of parchment and restrained excitement. Elayas stood at the center, too small for the space, too sharp for the expectations placed upon him.
"Again," one of the scholars urged, unable to mask his eagerness.
Elayas closed his eyes.
He described the sigil sequence from memory — not merely the shape, but the intent behind it, the way mana wanted to move when constrained correctly. He corrected a minor flaw in a master's diagram without hesitation.
The silence that followed had been reverent.
"A once-in-a-millennium mind," someone whispered.
They did not realize he heard.
Silas had smiled then.
Warm hands, steady on his shoulders. A reassuring presence behind him as nobles leaned forward, their interest sharpened to hunger.
"You'll change everything," Silas had said quietly, pride threaded through his voice. "Remember this moment."
Elayas had believed him.
The chandelier caught the last edge of sunlight, and the memory shifted.
Applause. Praise. The way people spoke his name as if tasting it. Tutors bowed too deeply. Lords laughed too loudly at his observations, pretending understanding.
He had loved it — not the attention, but the rightness of it. The feeling that the world made sense when approached correctly. That problems could be solved.
Then came the fevers.
At first, they were brushed aside. Overwork, they said. Growth pains. A prodigy burned brightly, after all.
Silas stayed close.
"You push yourself too hard," he'd chided gently, pressing a cool cloth to Elayas's forehead. "Even geniuses need rest."
The sickness settled in layers.
Weakness followed. Tremors. A voice that rasped after lectures. Days lost to exhaustion. Nights filled with heat and delirium.
Silas remained.
Always calm. Always patient.
"You'll recover," he promised. "You're too important to lose."
The present pressed back in.
The room was quiet now — too quiet. No scholars. No visitors. No murmured debates spilling through open doors.
Only the chandelier, watching.
"You were here," Elayas whispered, his voice thin, frayed by years of use and misuse. "You saw them. The lords. The scholars. The worried aunts."
His fingers curled weakly against the sheets.
"Silas."
The name no longer felt safe in his mouth.
"He said I'd recover," Elayas murmured. "Said I mattered."
A breath slipped free of him, shaky and sharp.
"Was that a lie too?"
He did not expect an answer.
But something inside him — something long buried beneath resignation and forced patience — reached out.
Five years of decay. Five years of polite silence. Five years of being managed toward an ending he had never agreed to.
"Show me," he whispered.
The chandelier did not speak.
It remembered.
The air tightened.
Not with sound — with pressure. As though the room itself had leaned inward, attentive. Candle flames bent subtly, their tips drawn toward the chandelier's heart. Light fractured, scattering across crystal and brass in unfamiliar patterns.
Elayas was no longer looking at it.
He was looking through it.
The room darkened.
He was smaller.
The bed loomed higher. His body lay tangled in sheets, thin and fever-warm, breath shallow but steady. Moonlight painted pale lines across the floor.
The door opened.
Not hurried. Not cautious.
Certain.
Silas entered, healer's robes immaculate, hood lowered. His expression was not the gentle concern Elayas remembered. It was neutral. Clinical.
Evaluating.
He did not check a pulse.
He placed his palm flat against Elayas's chest.
A sickly green glow seeped from his hand — not the clean blue-white of restoration magic, but something thin and probing. It slid inward, threading through bone and breath, measuring, cataloguing.
Silas watched without emotion.
Time passed.
Then he nodded.
A small, satisfied sigh escaped him.
Not relief.
Confirmation.
The sound of a gardener seeing rot take hold exactly as planned.
As Silas turned to leave, firelight caught the heavy signet ring on his finger — metal etched with authority and secrecy.
A serpent coiled around a caduceus.
The seal of the Master Healers' Guild.
The vision snapped.
Elayas gasped, dragging air into his lungs as pain flared sharp and immediate. His heart hammered wildly, a frantic bird trapped against bone.
Betrayal flooded his mouth — copper-bright, undeniable.
Silas had not failed him.
Silas had monitored him.
Measured his decline.
Approved it.
Something new unfurled in Elayas's gut.
Cold. Precise. Crystalline.
He turned his head slowly, eyes tracing the room — the chandelier, the worn floorboards smoothed by generations of passing feet, the carved bedpost polished by countless hands.
They had all been watching.
They always had.
Silent witnesses.
His witnesses.
"Good," Elayas whispered, voice barely more than breath.
"Now tell me everything else."