-Ruik-
The cathedral refused to sleep.
Wind threaded through its spires, carrying the low groan of ancient stone and the cold bite of midnight. I stepped onto the balcony, hoping the night air might still the thoughts clawing at me. Dawn felt too close—another line waiting to be crossed, another reckoning poised on the other side.
I braced my hands on the railing. Below, the city sprawled in a dim patchwork of lamps and drifting fog. Above, the moon hung pale and patient, as if watching me struggle and content to wait for the outcome.
“You’re awake too.”
The voice drifted down like a whisper wrapped in silver.
I stiffened before I looked up.
Rivulet sat perched on the arch above me, moonlight laying itself across her face. It caught in her hair, haloing her in a way I didn’t want to feel drawn toward. I tore my gaze away and closed my hand around Thorn’s medallion, its familiar edges biting into my palm—an anchor, a reminder.
She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the sky.
“The moon only shows one side,” she murmured. “It reveals what it wants us to see. But the dawn—” She exhaled, almost a laugh. “The sun blinds us. Burns anyone who dares stare back.”
I followed her gaze despite myself. The night above us stretched cold and endless, stars flickering like distant warnings.
“And the stars?” I asked.
“They flicker because they’re honest.” Her voice sharpened. “Beacons telling us not to always reach for the light.”
A breath left me, short and humorless. “So the moon deceives and the sun devours?”
She dropped down without a sound, landing beside me. The air shifted with her—cool, soft, impossible to ignore. She leaned against the balcony’s edge, half-turned toward me, a quiet smile ghosting at her mouth.
“Yes,” she said. “And the stars… they reveal intention. If you’re willing to look.”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t see anything. Just light surrounded by darkness.”
“I see truth,” she replied, tilting her head toward me. “Muddied by pride.”
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My jaw tightened. “So now you speak in riddles to convince me to flee?”
Her smile didn’t vanish—just folded inward, fragile, carefully guarded.
“If I wanted you gone,” she said softly, “you wouldn’t be standing here.”
The night pressed close around us, vast and breathless. I stared out over the city, but I felt her beside me more than I saw anything—the subtle shift of her weight, the way her presence seemed to pull the cold back from the air.
“I don’t know what waits at dawn,” I admitted. The words scraped out low and rough. “Only that something is coming. And I don’t know if I’m ready.”
Her fingers brushed the stone railing, barely touching it.
“No one is ready for the dawn, Ruik. Not mortals. Not Dawnsworn.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, steady and unflinching.
“Not even me.”
I swallowed. “Then why does it feel like I’m the only one walking toward it?”
“Because you are.”
She didn’t say it with cruelty or pity. Just truth—clean, sharp, unavoidable.
I looked down at the medallion clenched in my hand. Thorn’s symbol caught the moonlight, suddenly too heavy, too cold, as if it remembered something I didn’t.
“The light will demand something of you,” Rivulet said gently. “The question is whether you give it freely… or let it take.”
I lifted my gaze to her. “And you?”
My voice was quieter than I meant it to be.
“Did the night take… or give?”
She didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
But her eyes—gods, her eyes—held something ancient and aching.
“It broke.”
The word landed heavier than I expected.
“Broke?” I echoed.
Her gaze drifted past me, toward the city drowned in shadow. “Night doesn’t give or take,” she said. “It shatters. It leaves pieces behind and expects you to pretend they were never whole.”
Her fingers traced the stone unconsciously, as if following scars only she could see.
I stepped closer before I realized I was moving, the instinct as old as our first meeting. “And you’ve been picking up those pieces ever since?”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips—tired, painful, almost fond.
“No,” she whispered. “I learned to stop trying.”
Silence unfurled between us, soft but edged with something sharp. Moonlight carved her profile into something half-real, half-memory—something I couldn’t quite reach, even standing an arm’s length away.
I swallowed, the medallion cold against my skin.
“You speak like someone who’s already lost everything.”
She finally looked at me. Truly looked. Her eyes were dark, depthless, holding a truth she rarely allowed to surface.
“I haven’t,” she murmured.
“Not yet.”
The words pressed into me, heavier than the night itself.
My hand tightened around the medallion, grounding myself before I asked the question burning in my chest.
“Why are you helping me?”
Her breath caught—just a flicker. Almost nothing.
Then she stepped back, retreating into shadow as if it were a second skin, like mist before dawn.
“Because you’re blinded by your guilt,” she said quietly. “And it will tear you apart.”
I stepped toward her, caught between anger, confusion, and the need to understand her—need to pull her back into the light.
“Rivulet—”
She paused at the threshold of darkness, her silhouette etched in silver against the night.
“The dawn always devours what the night tries to protect.”
Then she was gone.
The wind rushed in to fill the silence she left behind—cold, unkind.
I remained on the balcony long after, Thorn’s medallion clenched tight enough to hurt, the weight of her warning pressing into me like a bruise already forming.
