Page 24 of Death’s Gentle Hand

Friction in the Flame

Damian

H e lay awake in his narrow bed, listening to the city beyond his windows sound fundamentally wrong.

The time-bells that had marked Varos's hours for centuries now rang off-rhythm, their bronze voices cracked and uncertain.

Shadows moved independently of their sources, creating footsteps where no one walked and whispers where no one spoke.

Even the air tasted metallic and sharp, flavored with temporal distortion that made his enhanced senses recoil.

His clinic sat half-empty because patients were too afraid to venture out after dark.

The streets belonged to the Hollowed now, those caught between life and death by whatever experiments had torn holes in reality itself.

Damian was left alone with thoughts that circled like hungry birds, picking at the wounds Oris's death had opened in his carefully constructed world.

Sleep had become impossible. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back in that moment with Cael—the cosmic anguish radiating from him, the sound of his voice breaking on an apology that changed nothing and everything.

Damian could still feel the tremor in Cael’s hands, the impossible warmth of tears that shouldn’t have existed, and the echo of his own slap, palm stinging with the memory of trust shattering in a single, irrevocable second.

Unable to bear the restless energy thrumming through his body, Damian rose and lit a candle by touching wick to the banked coals in his brazier. The flame cast warm light he couldn't see but could feel against his skin, creating the illusion of comfort in a world that had grown cold and uncertain.

He retrieved his writing materials—good paper saved for important correspondence, ink that flowed smooth and dark, a pen that fit his hand like it had been crafted for his grip. Usually he wrote letters to abstract concepts, to the dead, to ideas that couldn't write back. Tonight felt different.

Tonight he wrote to Cael.

The words poured out of him like blood from a wound, raw and desperate and more honest than he'd intended to be. His hand moved quickly across the paper as if speed could outpace his better judgment.

I want you to fight for something. For us, for the possibility that what we have might be stronger than cosmic law. I want you to choose me not because magic binds us, but because you can't imagine existing without me.

The confession felt dangerous even written in private, an admission of need that made him vulnerable in ways he'd spent years learning to avoid. But grief had stripped away his careful defenses, and Oris's death had taught him that time was too precious to waste on politeness and restraint.

Stop haunting my edges. Stop treating what we have like it's borrowed time when you could make it real. I know you feel this too. I know you want to stay. So why don't you?

As if summoned by the intensity of his emotions, the temperature in the room shifted.

The candle flame bent away from a wind that didn't exist, and shadows gathered in the corner where light should have banished them entirely.

Cael's presence settled around the clinic like a familiar coat, but tonight it felt guarded. Distant.

“You're here,” Damian said without looking up from his letter. “Good. I was hoping you'd show up.”

“You were writing.” Cael’s voice was carefully neutral, as if distance could somehow shield them both from the truth. “I don’t wish to interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting. You’re exactly who I’m writing to.” Damian set the pen down with deliberate care, turning toward the sound of Cael’s voice, jaw clenched. He was tired of pretending this half-life was enough. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

The careful distance in Cael’s tone made Damian’s patience snap. “About Oris. About what’s happening to the city. About the fact that you keep showing up here and then disappearing the moment things get real between us.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Bullshit.” The word came out sharper than he intended, but he didn’t care. “Every time we get close to something that matters, you vanish. Every time I think we’re building toward something real, you retreat behind cosmic duty and universal law.”

Silence filled the room, heavy and brittle. Damian’s hands curled around the edge of the desk, knuckles white, fighting back the hurt he refused to show.

Finally, Cael’s voice broke the tension, soft and cold and old as the wind off the northern sea. “Because I am what comes after everything ends. I cannot become your beginning.”

The words struck like a physical blow. Damian pushed back from the desk, standing so abruptly that the chair scraped loudly against the floor. His chest burned with anger, frustration, and something painfully close to grief.

“Then why do you keep coming back?” he demanded, his voice rough with longing and wounded hope.

“Why haunt the edges of my life if you won’t let yourself truly be part of it?

You can’t just keep stepping in and out whenever it suits you, Cael.

I’m not a safe place for you to visit when you’re tired of being alone. ”

Cael’s presence wavered, flickering at the edge of perception. “You don’t understand the forces involved?—”

“No.” Damian moved toward where he sensed Cael in the room, fists trembling at his sides.

“I understand that you’re afraid. I understand that choosing me means choosing change, and that terrifies you.

You’ve been the same thing for so long, you don’t know how to be anything else.

But I can’t keep living on scraps of connection. Not for you, not for anyone.”

He pressed a shaking hand to his chest, voice raw. “I want more than a ghost, Cael. I want someone who stays. Someone who fights for this, even when it hurts. I can’t keep giving my heart to someone who disappears every time things get difficult. I deserve more than shadows.”

Damian waited in the aching, frozen silence, his hope and heartbreak tangled together, not sure if he wanted Cael to answer—or simply to stay.

The air between them crackled with energy that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with two beings finally speaking truths they'd been avoiding. Damian could feel Cael's agitation, could sense the way his careful control was beginning to fray.

“You want to know what I understand?” Damian continued, his voice dropping to something low and dangerous.

“I understand that Oris is dead because someone is experimenting with forces they don't comprehend. I understand that the city is tearing itself apart while we stand here arguing about feelings. And I understand that you feel guilty for wanting something more than cosmic duty.”

“Damian—”

“No. You don't get to 'Damian' me and then disappear again. If you're going to be here, be here. If you're going to care about me, then care about me. Stop treating this like some cosmic accident you can walk away from when it gets inconvenient.”

The argument escalated until both men were breathing hard, standing close enough to touch but separated by a chasm of fear and responsibility and laws older than human civilization.

Damian could feel the heat radiating from Cael's increasingly solid form, could sense the way tension coiled through his borrowed muscles.

“What do you want from me?” Cael asked, his voice rough with strain.

“I want you to choose. Not because magic compels you, not because cosmic law demands it, but because you want to. I want you to fight for this instead of just letting it happen to you.”

When Cael vanished without another word, leaving only the scent of winter air and the echo of painful truths, Damian felt something break inside his chest. Not his heart—that was still intact, still beating with stubborn hope—but his patience.

His fists clenched as he grabbed the letter from his desk and threw it into the brazier, watching his written hopes curl and blacken in the flames.

The paper caught quickly, edges glowing orange before dissolving into ash.

The words disappeared into smoke, but the feelings that had created them remained, burning in his chest like banked coals waiting for the right moment to ignite.

Unable to bear the clinic's haunted quiet any longer, Damian pulled on his coat and stepped into the night air.

The city felt wrong against his skin—too cold in some places, too warm in others, with currents of temporal distortion that made his enhanced senses reel.

He needed information, needed to understand what forces were tearing Varos apart from the inside.

Three blocks from his clinic, the ambush came.

Damian's enhanced hearing caught the subtle shift first—five sets of breathing that had been matching his pace for too long, footsteps that tried too hard to be casual.

The scent profile was wrong too: desperation-sweat mixed with fermented grain spirits and the metallic tang of blades poorly maintained but recently honed.

“Healer,” a voice called from the mouth of Beggar's Throat Alley, rough with the particular rasp that came from inhaling too much time-smoke. “Got a proposition for you.”

Damian's grip shifted on his cane, thumb finding the hidden release that would extend the walking stick into a proper staff. “I'm closed for the evening. Come to the clinic at dawn.”

“Nah, see, that won't serve.” Heavy boots scraped against cobblestone as two more figures moved to flank him from behind. “Mistress needs you tonight. And what the mistress needs, the mistress gets.”

The alley reeked of piss and rotting offal, but underneath those familiar urban stenches, Damian caught something else—the cloying sweetness of temporal extraction apparatus. These weren't random cutthroats. They served someone with access to forbidden time-magic.