b

forelsklet (n.)

the euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.

⌗ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ JOY — lychee in girl form — he / she ᶻ𝗓𐰁 .ᐟ

dms and asks are open! Don’t be shy! Requests r now open ! Comments are sooo appreciated, thank u smm •ﻌ• ! I do not write fluff btw < / 3 16+!!!

⤷ NAVIGATION ‧˚꒰ 🍰 ꒱⋆

⌗ fatui haven ⌗ human chronicles

personal fave(s): Veil of Feathers / PALINDROME

most popular: Things the Fatui would never say to your face

── most recent❕

Under New Management

💬 ᶻ .ᐣ

gi but fatui only, yandere, sad men and worse women, sagau, world building that spirals . . .

ᝰ🖊 Entry 06: On the House, how propoganda steals vocabulary first. On Arlecchino, “I am (sometimes) better than what came before me, therefore I am good.”. On the children, who agree. On Scaramouche, the only impolite one to write it that way.

Just a quick note: Arlecchino is around her mid forties.And yes, this messes up the timeline with Freminet and all.. but oh well. Also this chapter (especially the last part) is inspired by a real historical event called “Battle of Varolampi Pond” also known as the “Sausage War”.

⚠️ PTSD, emotional manipulation, non-sexual grooming, child soldiers, referenced death of child soldiers/war, referenced animal death

♡ Archive

divider is made by: @pixopix

Arlecchino collects children the way rich men collect art: badly labeled, aggressively curated, and always with a story about how they “rescued” the piece. If he thinks about it properly, she has so many words spoon-fed into those children that he might run out of fingers counting them. “Saved” is what is used to bury “took”, “scared” lies dead beneath the shadow of “adjusting”, “grateful” becomes the new “obedient.” By the time they learn to report without stuttering, everything ugly is filed under before and all the apologies belong to her.

The first example is mercy.

Look at the posters they staple to village notice boards after a raid. All clean lines and soft colors, the silhouette of the House of the Hearth behind the children who are in neat uniforms holding books and bread. Underneath, in a dark and blocky script, the slogan announces itself like a boot through a door: NO CHILD LEFT TO THE MERCY OF THE WORLD.

Touching.

They leave out the part where sometimes the “mercy of the world” happens to be those children’s actual parents, left buried under the rubble two miles out because someone decided the village’s proximity to a supply line made it “strategically inconvenient.”

But sure. Mercy.

Next one: everything.

The first time Scaramouche heard praise for Arlecchino, it was about twenty years ago and it came from a girl no older than fifteen who had messy braids, split ends, and a scar across from her cheekbone to jaw.

“She saved us,” the girl said in the way that made Scaramouche pry open her palm to see if the words were written there, or maybe the letters were stitched into her gums. Something had to be there to be holding the same words in different mouths so firmly.

“She saved you,” Scaramouche repeated, because someone else had taught him long ago that echoing people’s words back at them is the easiest way to watch them convict themselves.

“Yes, sir,” the girl said. “From… everything.”

Everything. Such a big, generous word. Wide enough to fit anything you don’t feel like naming.

The father who drank more than he harvested, perhaps.

Or maybe being traded for ore, or rations, or a promise that your younger sibling will be spared if they give you, the broader-shouldered one, the one used to carrying wood up hills, the one who isn’t much trouble, they swear, up instead.

Or the mother whose fingers were still clamped around your ankle so hard that even when a soldier stabbed his spear through her nape, they had to cut her hand off to take you.

Or hunger. Or winter. Or the kind of village where everyone knows what is happening in the house at the edge of the road and no one does anything because the man who owns it also owns the mill, and the mill owns the bread.

Everything. Such a convenient box to close and never open again.

—

He visited the House once. They say curiosity kills the cat; well, puppets are harder.

The place… clings.

He was in her office when he heard the shouting. The door had been closed, important word: had been, and the two of them were engaged in the usual diplomatic pastime of staring at each other and deciding who would blink first.

“Father! Father!”

A shame. His eyeliner had been sharp enough to kill that day. Hers looked smudged from his angle. It was not much of a surprise, though. Arlecchino had always been proud of her brats. Too proud, in fact. Meetings interrupted by a child wanting to show a drawing, another running in because someone had swallowed a button, another trailing mud onto polished floors while businessmen and diplomats sat there with their mouths open and their egos broken in their wake. Such days weren’t rare.

The door banged open which was still not suprising and a boy ran in (still, isn’t) skidding to a halt at Arlecchino’s side like a well-trained dog. (Hm.) Both of his hands found the hem of her coat while she placed a hand on his nape, thumb pressing into that little hollow beneath the skull like it was made for her.

Behind him, in the doorway, the other one froze. He was smaller than the first one, paler too, though that may have been the hallway light. One foot in, one foot out, hand still half-raised from chasing the first boy. Scaramouche watched the calculation run bright in those eyes and decide, yes, it is too late to flee, he’s too visible to pretend he hadn’t been there, but is too frightened to speak first. So he did what children do when trapped in an adult’s attention and stood very, very still.

“Father,” the boy said, tugging at Arlecchino’s coat repeatedly. “Freminet skipped drills.”

Arlecchino’s face softened just slightly as she looked up. The transformation would have made lesser men do something embarrassing like trust her.

“Come here,” she said, gesturing the boy closer. “Is that true?”

Freminet obeyed.

“I… I was tired,” he stammered. “We marched a lot yesterday, Father.”

Scaramouche watched Arlecchino nod slowly.

“Tired soldiers die,” she said, gently. “And dead soldiers can’t protect their siblings.”

Her fingers tightened, just a fraction, on the boy’s nape as she turned him slightly, presenting him like an example.

“Do you want him to die?”

Freminet’s shoulders twitched like he’d been hit.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll go now. I won’t skip again.”

“Good boy,” she said, brushing a stray hair behind the boy’s ear.

Freminet walked away on shaking legs and did not look back once.

Later, when Scaramouche was writing these down, he didn’t forget to include the small heads behind the door trying to peek with stars in their eyes.

—

The story he likes most is one they tried very hard not to file.

If you dig far enough down in the little notebook he keeps—he will get to that later—between an old picture ripped from an Inazuman magazine (not like that) and a note he picked up from a corpse’s hand, there is the report.

Yes, he keeps the copy. So what? Pierro has his regrets, Dottore has his corpses, Columbina has her pigeons, Pulcinella has his prodigies…Scaramouche has his little amusements.

Report 17B: Incident at Anan Village.

Or: when Arlecchino’s star children got themselves taken hostage by a sausage.

The unit in question had been transferred north not long ago from a House branch down the south and been given a short “climate familiarization program” before being assigned live escort duty. The mission was simple: move the shipment through outer Snezhnaya, avoid ambush, do not die, do not lose the cargo, do not get lost, do not lose each other.

It went poorly. Of course.

A whiteout came and set in too quickly. Visibility dropped to two bodies ahead. The lead animal broke a leg and had to be put down. By the time they limped into Anan, a village they wouldn’t have seen even from a distance if they were still on the mapped route, they had been walking for weeks on depleted rations and with three wounded. Their commanding officer was nineteen and thought that made her old.

Anan welcomed them in the practical Snezhnayan way: fires lit higher, wet coats taken, gloves hung near the stove, shelter offered in the longhouse, and sausages set to hiss in pans.

He had laughed when he first read it. He knows the same dance and steps—he has performed it thousands of times in a thousand different voices: take this, take that, oh? Don’t forget these, take these, especially these. Don’t worry. They are good for you. It’s okay. We’re only helping.

Also, there is something inherently ridiculous about the food that piqued his interest. Sausages. Tubes of ground mystery meat stuffed into casings, kept together by heat and the barrier. Everyone of the slaughterhouse pressed into one shape. It felt appropriately symbolic.

The report notes that the younger boys’s eyes “lit up upon seeing the meal” and that one girl “sobbed while chewing.” Of course they did. Imagine three weeks of dried rations and frostbite, then imagine fat hissing over flames, meat sweating juices into a pan.

The commanding officer reportedly tried to refuse.

“We can’t accept charity,” she said. “We have… orders.”

In the end, they sat. They ate. They relaxed.

Then one issued gun was lifted quietly from where it leaned against the wall to “dry by the fire,” as insisted by the elders, who had also said it would be best “not to scare the children.” Then another. A sidearm was kicked under a bench. One of the younger boys tried to rise and got struck with the back of his own rifle hard enough to go out cold. Another reached for the knife at her belt and discovered an old woman already standing behind her with a hatchet.

Then, the doors were locked.

Turns out some of Arlecchino’s “rescues” in Snezhnaya had come from villages very much like Anan. Sometimes from Anan itself. Word travels. So do posters. So do the stories of children who leave with the Knave and never come back, not even in a coffin.

The villagers, it seems, had decided they would rather take their chances trying to ransom a unit of hungry child soldiers back to the Fatui than watch their own kids be “recruited”, which is why they took the ones already in uniform instead.

In the third hour, they started looking. They made the children remove scarves or masks, pull fur collars down and push hoods back.

Somebody wanted to see a boy’s nape because he insisted the boy had hair just like his missing nephew who had three moles at the nape. One woman held a light to the back of a girl’s knee to check for a birthmark because her eyes looked like they belonged to the family three valleys over.

Lift your chin. Other side. Let me see. No, not ours. No, not hers either. That one maybe. No.

According to the transcript, negotiations were a farce.

“We will give them back,” the village headman said, “in exchange for a written contract that no recruitment will take place in Anan or the winter routes under it, and that the children already taken from those routes be returned.”

It was adorable really, to ask the empire to spit back what it has already swallowed.

The commander, bleeding from a shoulder wound, reportedly replied that she couldn’t authorize that, but she’d be happy to shoot them all and ask permission later.

Scaramouche can’t entirely fault the logic. It’s hard to bargain when you’re both the weapon and the bargaining chip.

By dawn, one of the least-injured unit members was released with terms and two villagers to escort him to send the message.

The others remained captive in the meantime, though “captive” becomes a slippery word when your captors haven’t stopped feeding you more than enough, they are generous with medicine, and you hear arguments from other rooms about whether your bandages are clean enough.

The standoff lasted forty-two hours. (Someone’s throat got slit by a cook and even now, there is no clean conclusion on who moved first). Nobody knew what to do with the fact that the people holding the children hostage to save their children were also the people the House of the Hearth claimed to be saving children from. It’s difficult to maintain the narrative unfrayed when a line like “villagers would really like to keep their own offspring, thank you;” comes into the script.

In the end, the messenger came alone, if you don’t count a whole new unit that came along. The situation was settled it the way the Fatui always settle things: overwhelming force and minimal imagination. Anan burned. The surviving hostages were “recovered.” The incident was filed as an example of “rural community misunderstanding the House’s benevolent mission.”

The “psychological damage report”—which the House of course calls “post-incident psychological assessment” because The House always wears a clean collar—attached at the end is nothing short of poetry. He’d think The Knave herself wrote it, but it made everything so crystal clear, she’d have to be illiterate for that.

Q: “Describe your emotional state during detainment.”

A: “Um. Confused.”

Q: “Clarify.”

A: “They said… they were saving everyone. From Father.”

[Subject swallows]

A: “But she was the one who came.”

Q: “And how do you feel about that?”

[Pause. Est. 4 seconds]

A: “Grateful. She’s the only one who ever comes.”

See? Poetry.

Later, when he writes this entry up properly, he hesitates over the title.

“Saint of Smaller Hells” feels too feminine for her. “Recruitment Through Arson” is too blocky. He considers “House Rules”—neat, two meanings, good wordplay—and almost keeps it, then crosses it out.

In the end, he decides to figure out the title later and settles for a sketch instead:

The Knave, one eye scribbled out because he couldn’t make it symmetrical, rising from the smoke. One of her hands is extended. Beside her, there is a speech bubble with a neat, blocky text inside : WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME SOMEWHERE SAFE?

I (lovingly) ignore certain canon decisions.

I, personally, do not like the direction Hoyo took with some harbingers (Ex: Columbina, Sandrone and some few others.) so they won’t be written by Hoyo’s characterization. So like… yeah.. no sleepovers with Signora or tea parties with Childe. They will be written according to the versions of them that I’ve had in mind since for far too long😭 so i can actually enjoy writing them. Some will line up with canon… some will not.

So if someone feels a little “off” that’s probably why.

THAT’S WHAT IM SAYING 😭😭😭

I love the series :)

Nope, not a ridiculous question at all! You are more than welcome to interpret the series however you’d like, whether it be platonic or romantic (It’s very interesting to see how people connect in different ways to the same story!) Personally, I write the Creator’s relationship with the Harbingers as platonic.

Yan! Sandrone x reader

Tw!! Disturbing themes

Sandrone is a lot of things. A monster, usually, in the mouths of weak men. The kind you only glimpse at when something worse is about to happen. Just a woman, in the weaker ones. The seventh harbinger, if you ask the ones who had obedience coded into their spine before winter could get to it.

She thinks that’s dramatic. Sandrone knows herself in simpler terms. A scientist, first and foremost, and how dare somebody question a scientist that keeps track? Then surely, among failed prototypes and leyline fractures, she’s permitted to catalogue you as well!

Like tracking your lips when you read aloud, the slight curl of the lower one when you’re thinking hard. She keeps track of your eyes too, of course. That familiar blink and the narrowing squint as you stumble over unfamiliar words. She has even begun keeping track of your sleep, the precise hours which it takes your under-eyes to swell, as if you’re some kind of masked vigilante who’s fighting crime in secret.

One day, for the first time, you fall asleep. On her. You didn’t mean to. She was halfway through detailing some mechanical failure or a strategic pivot—when you yawn. You try to suppress it—sleep takes you anyway. Your head lands on her. Your temple against her shoulder is warm enough for her to think of the simple seven-letter-word: forever, the weight of your head is light enough for her to remember it’s a promise no mortal body has been designed to keep. Both things can be true.

Sandrone does not move.

She looks for a mistake. Respiration: regular. Breath, breath, breath, breath, stutter, breath. Weight distribution: poor. More on the clavicle than the deltoid. Inefficient, certainly , but inefficiency is human, and humanity is just another kind of mistake she has learned to correct.

She files it all with precision, exactly how she memorises blueprints of the machinery she intends to rebuild if necessary. Mass: negligible. Temperature: elevated. Effect: …unwelcome

That night, she dreams, which is not her habit.

You stand before her in the dream with your lips blue with cold and your hands folded politely at your waist, trembling so violently your knuckles knock sgainst one another. You’re asking—politely and frustratingly—for her body.

“Please,’’ you say, ‘’You’re warm. I always knew you would be .’’

“Let me in,’’ you beg.

“I won’t take much space,’’ you grow desperate, “Please Sandrone, I don’t want to rot”

You begin to cry then, as if it’s embarrassing for you to ask.

“You’re the only one who’s built to last.’’

She hates how tender, how soft you are even at the verge of shutting down, she is not a hearth to warm your hands on, not a coat to wear, nor the blood in your veins to keep you alive; she will not be hollowed out and be repurposed into shelter. She hates how her first instinct is to analyse—shell: durable, space: adequate–before she answers. She hates how the word yes forms oh, so easily on her tongue.

Of course!! Please feel free to share it!

Thanks a lot for your nice words, I’m glad my series inspired you just like how many amazing creators here inspired me to create it bc like???? Isnt it the point of sharing our works??? Inspiring each other?? Cheering each other on?? So of course I’d be honored!

First, thank you! And to answer your question…

With Salvation series, the aim is to analyze the harbingers in a sagau setting. The last chapter won’t be something where everything ties into one clean thing; instead, it will end when every harbinger has their cute little analysis. Basically, Capitano too will make an appearance!! Yay!! Eventually…

The reason I put off writing some characters this long is because since I lost my original genshin account, I personally wasn’t able to play some quests. Even though I write harbingers based on my interpretation and preferences, I’d still rather to get all the canon material I can.. BUT!! Now I am able to play!! Yay, again!!

First of all, I’m not upset that criticism exists. I’ve said on this blog multiple times that I’m open to advice and critique as long as it’s respectful. If someone has specific concerns, I am not the type of person to shy away from a proper conversation. What I am upset about is that serious and vague claims were made by a stranger publicly without first speaking to me or verifying anything with me directly. What I believe is that, when accusations are made about someone instead of being brought to them, it stops being critique and starts becoming something else. And I don’t think that’s a fair way to handle anything, especially when it involves someone’s time, effort, morals and integrity.

I did reach out to discuss this and also asked that our conversation be shared in full with screenshots. They agreed. Soo yeah!

I’m not here to bash anyone, and I’m not asking anyone to “pick a side” or “defend me lol” You can believe whoever you want. If you still have suspicions about me or my work it’s totally understandable. It’s your choice whether to block me or not interact with me if you feel uncomfortable. We are all strangers on the internet, we do not know each other; we do not owe each other trust, but we do owe respect. Your boundaries are yours, and I have mine too. No hard feelings.

I’m simply stating my position clearly: I write my own work. It’s not perfect, there may be mistakes, it may not follow every writing rule, but I know it is mine. I am used to and like my voice. I am not going to change that. I know how it feels to try to change something like that and just feeling… blank when you do not see yourself in it at all. Or that feeling when you dumb it down. I will not do that to myself again.

And if I may say something beyond my situation: situations like this do not only affect one person. They create an environment where anyone at all can get labeled something this distasteful based on wrong tools, panic or assumptions. Today, it’s me. Tomorrow, you. The day after tomorrow, them. I have friends who got their essays labeled as AI multiple times (They solved this by recording themselves writing btw). I know digital artists (C🤍) who got their work labeled as AI by strangers or even big platforms (cough Pinterest cough) which is why they ended up taking their work down. That’s one of the main reasons I’m taking this seriously. Accusations stick and it makes everybody (both the creator and consumer) paranoid. I am not saying it’s not generative AI’s fault, it completely is, but that’s not the topic here. If anyone wants my opinions on that too, they can ask. Even though I don’t think mine would be much different than anyone else’s.

Also, since they referenced AI detection tools as proof, I offered to share a few links I found about their trustworthiness (containing both human experiences and articles) :

https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/s/nWfVbLSnf6

https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/s/Ou6w1SdeFA

https://www.reddit.com/r/neurodiversity/s/C9R2VoLK1m

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kelsey-auman-mph-b207a610a_academicintegrity-ai-highereducation-activity-7316571510603743232-MK4y

https://lawlibguides.sandiego.edu/c.php?g=1443311&p=10721367

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386998010_The_Problem_with_False_Positives_AI_Detection_Unfairly_Accuses_Scholars_of_AI_Plagiarism

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.02819

https://3dvf.com/en/this-fundamental-historical-text-may-have-been-written-by-something-other-than-a-human-according-to-an-ai-detector/

Also, here below are some petitions you can sign:

Once again, if you have concerns and you want to discuss them respectfully, feel free to message me directly. If not, excuse me but I will be moving on

Note: Please please pleasee do not harass or insult anyone over this. I’m just trying to bring my perspective. I will not block anyone or delete their comments (unless it becomes extreme like harassing, repetitive or in bad faith)

sagau | gn!reader | divine horror

Exposure to the Creator decays ego into hysteria. The Harbingers are unraveling—each according to their sin.

— Focus: You, Signora, Dottore, Pantalone, Columbina.

— Chorus: Scaramouche, Pierro, Ei, Childe, Arlecchino.

tw: stalking, unstable devotion, cult-ish stuff

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

It’s the first time she’s been seen in four days. Four days since the banquet.

She arrives barefoot.

There are bruises that betray her stride; not because they hurt, no, pain is a petty language, and La Signora outgrew it centuries ago. For her, the bruises are little bells. Each sting is a toll that rings in the back of her teeth, little litanies reminding her what it cost her.

There is one on her arm where pride should have kept the flesh sacred. She does not cradle it. She does not glance down. To look would be to admit that something reached her. And admitting would give the bells the permission to echo—dignity’s sound, when she let it hit the floor.

She holds herself through it, immaculate, until the lace of her headpiece snags the corner of her vision, the place where Scaramouche’s nails tore it. It was re-stitched in haste. A crude work done by a servant’s fear. That tiny error chimes louder, thinner than any bruise could sting.

Still—posture perfect. Spine set straight like doctrine.

At the altar she stops. Your statue looms: mouth closed, hands open. Judgment carved gentle enough to be mistaken, by optimists, for mercy. You do not hold a weapon. Because none are needed.

The stone’s serenity is grace itself: look, look how little effort divinity requires to be terrifying.

She does not offer you relics or such. Instead, she offers you white things the way people offer proof and promises. Cecilias, a silence scrubbed so clean it almost squeaks…

Because grace, to her, is not warmth. It is not being carried out of calamity; it is being shown, once, where the ladder is and then left to climb it on bleeding hands. It is a hand on her lower back reminding her she still has a spine; a finger under her chin forcing her to look up—not down, not ahead—so she can stand upright even when the world would rather see her crawl.

Signora lowers herself.

The motion isn’t smooth, one knee cracks softly. Her fingers press into the polished marble like she’s bracing herself against wind. Still, she makes it look effortless. For fifteen minutes, she does not move, even her eyes stay trained on your statue as if it might blink, breathe, tilt its head or correct her posture.

Somewhere between minute seven and eight, an old name surfaces from the marrow and knocks once, twice, insistently. She does not let it in. Names are how the dead win. Names make you kneel at the wrong altar. She keeps stillness like a leash around her grief’s throat.

And then—you appear.

You step into the chapel like you have always been here and she is merely catching up to the fact. There are no footsteps. No herald. No trumpet of heaven. The air tightens, very slightly, the way it does before glass breaks.

She looks near you, never quite at you, like how one looks at lightning. When she does speak, her voice is quiet, deliberate, and rehearsed too many times.

“Perfection is not a virtue,” she says. “It is a debt.”

She lets the words hang. Her breath remains even because she forces it to.

“I was correct,” she continues. “They come to you with hands full of blood and call it devotion. They mistake their wounds for wisdom. They confuse your silence for love.”

That was meant to be the whole thing. But something interior slips—the bright, red thread she wound around her fury begins to unravel.

“This is… not my habit,” she informs you and herself. “I do not live like this. I do not scratch and slap and shout and let boys goad me into a spectacle.”

Her gaze sharpens.

“The banquet,” she says. Steady, making it steady. “That doll had the gall to laugh—” her hand lifts, then clamps back down against her skirt “—the doll who thinks he knows what divinity feels like because he was abandoned by what he mistook for it. He smiled. At me. Me.”

Her voice goes a fraction hoarse on the word me. She hears it. Hates it. Calm frays.

“I learned what humiliation looks like under crystal chandeliers,” she says. “It is this: a room of cowards pretending the sound of glass shattering is theatre. He clawed. He cut. I took his hair, his balance, his dignity with the centerpiece. Neither of us reached for weapons or Delusions, only for throats.”

She pauses. Forces herself to be precise.

“It was childish. It was humiliating. It was…beneath me.” Breath. “I am furious.”

She does not apologize for the fury. Only for the inelegant misstep it took.

“Pierro dismissed us,” she adds. “He did not raise his voice. That was worse.” She exhales. “The others will say I am ‘not myself’ since your arrival. That I am strained. That the presence of The One—” a tiny pause, like swallowing something hard— “has distressed me.”

Her lip curls, disgust.

“I am not distressed by you,” she says, clearly. “I am unsettled by them. You are already here, and they behave like children at a shrine—treating you as spectacle, as prize, as mirror. It is insulting.”

Her nails bite her palms, leaving crescents.

“They think I threw a tantrum.”

“I do not throw tantrums,” she says. Her eyes flick up, finally, to where your face would be. “I uphold standards. If I am not exact, then what right do I have to stand in front of you at all?”

There is a small silence that she feels like it’s judgment. She fills it before it can become so.

“That doll,” Signora continues, voice slipping into that cool, contemptuous register she uses to prevent herself from shaking. She doesn’t waste her breath on his name. “He puts the Doctor in the place of an idol. You can hear it in his steps. In his speech. To such an extent that, in his earliest years here, his Inazuman tongue learned to carry a Sumeru accent. He built himself out of someone else’s shadow. That alone is blasphemy enough.”

Her voice sweetens, blade-thin.

“And now the Doctor himself—” She pauses like savoring dessert. “—is failing in the most humiliating way.”

Now she allows herself cruelty. It feels like reclaiming the ground humiliation stole.

“This morning one of the segments stood in the corridor calling a scalpel a ‘little knife’ for twenty minutes. Charming. But only because he is too grown for it to be cute. The original—he mislaid his own name. I accused him of theatre. No.”

That—that is the part she finds funny. Not because it is clever. Because it is beneath him. Because it is happening to him. Because even the man who thought he could dissect the divine is discovering he can still be made small.

“How generous,” she murmurs, soft. “He studied you, studied and studied you. I told him not to. I kept telling all of them. And now, he learns how proximity to divinity does such wonders to… anyone at all.”

“May every syllable he reaches for turn to salt on his tongue.”

In the chapel, something moves: the far door unlatches without sound and relatches again. The footsteps that follow are neat, measured, dipped in arithmetic, antiseptic and arrogance.

She does not turn. She lets him be an example first, a person maybe.

“I was in the vicinity,” Dottore says coolly, stepping into the chapel’s hush. “Monitoring environmental effects. I noticed a sudden… drop in pattern behavior.”

His breath slows. Pupils dilate. He does not blink.

“As your—” He begins.

His mouth stops. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. It fails abruptly, stupidly, with the insult of making him look human.

“As the one who studies—“ he tries again, and the second attempt is worse because now, there’s effort.

Silence.

A gloved hand closes and opens once, an ugly twitch.

Yet, Dottore keeps holding his expression. Too similar to the way the sick hold clarity: white-knuckled, reluctant, and too proud to admit he’s suffering. He forces a laugh so dry it could cut. “Names are vulgar anyway.”

“My condolences to your vocabulary,” Signora says, idly, not even looking his way. “It appears to have frostbite.“

There is no venom in her voice. No hatred. What slips through is only that thin, startling flicker of relief. What it says is: If even the Doctor can be pared down into something nameless for reaching too close, then the universe still runs on rules she recognizes. Ones with teeth. And: Then, the universe is not chaos, only slow, and she has not been clutching at ghosts.

A smile ghosts over his mouth—soft palate, surgical, almost sincere. Not amusement. Not. irony. A tic, maybe. He opens his lips—and then his attention drifts.

To the chapel door.

“The Eleventh,” he murmurs, “is still outside.”

Silence again, but this one is different. As if he is watching a shadow shift on the other side. As if the world is counting heartbeats now, not syllables.

There is a sound—outside, not in—a breath taken back.

“He hasn’t knocked. Isn’t that interesting?”

You glance toward the door.

Signora does not. “I told him. I told him not to seek you out.” She says. “But he’s a dog with no collar. And now, he’s drooling on sacred thresholds.”

Maybe she’s right. Maybe he’s just worried about her. Maybe she’s right.

She rises. The bruises chime themselves known again; Signora does not flinch. She smooths her skirt with practiced elegance of a woman who’s had to clean up the mess of men. Again. And again. She walks toward the door but doesn’t open it. Simply places her hand on the wood. That’s all. Outside, there is a small, poor scrape of boots pulling back, the tiny retreat of a man who wants to cross, but only wants.

Signora smiles, finally. It is cold. Familiar. “Seems the dog knows the threshold.”

Dottore shrugs. “Does he?”

The air tastes like something unsaid.

He turns back to the candles, watching how still the flames have become. “Bribing guards. Bribing janitors. Bribing children—The House,” he goes on. “He doesn’t even bother to be discreet. Sweet words and sweeter offerings. He’s been trying coins lately. The younger ones like them. They clink.”

“That is the flaw within the boy,” Dottore continues, almost indulgent. “They may be weaker than him, physically, yes. But here—” he taps his temple, lightly, “no. Children are wonderfully adaptive beings. Smarter than men like the Eleventh prefer to assume. Lie once, get a story. Lie twice, gain a lollipop. Lie thrice, and you learn how fast a Harbinger will run across three wings in ten minutes just to catch the echo of a shadow. A clever system. Unsustainable, of course. But clever.”

His fingers twitch faintly, like he’s counting imaginary sugar cubes and headpats.

“Give it a few more weeks and we might have to rely on them for funding.”

“Embarrassing,” Signora murmurs. She doesn't specify if it's for him, the nation, or her.

“Mm.”

“Arlecchino, predictably, intervened,” he adds, tone turning drier. “Not because she didn’t find it funny. Because she found it blasphemous. Her words, not mine: Even liars must remember to bow before the divine. It doesn’t mean it stopped, though.”

Your mouth does something minute—too small to be called a smile, large enough to be noticed by two people whose entire lives orbit your reactions.

For a heartbeat, Dottore’s tongue falters again. He blinks once, slowly, hauls the language back into line from wherever it drifted, and stands very, very still.

Signora turns back to you.

Then, she bows.

“Perfection is not a virtue,” she repeats. “It is the debt for the grace of not being left in the fire. I would rather be turned to ash than make your intervention through Her Majesty look… inefficient.”

“They are not owed you,” Her voice is reverent and low even when she is seething underneath “Not your voice, not your gaze, not even the air that remembers you were here. They were never promised salvation or softness. If you never speak a single word to them, it will still be more than they deserve.”

The composure ruptures, but only in her eyes. The posture never falters. You know what she’s thinking anyway: Damn them.

“I will not pretend I have been at my most… composed these past days,” she allows, carefully. The others will call it strain. I call it clarity. Your presence has made their inadequacy louder. I might have stumbled. But I returned. I returned barefoot. I returned bruised. That is more than most of them can say.”

“You do not owe them a word,” she repeats. Slower, firmer. “And if your silence burns them, then let it.”

“Let them learn to be right.”

And because she cannot bear the rawness of the moment with someone else present, she armors herself with cruelty again.

“Doctor,” she says smoothly, “if your nouns are going to keep drowning, at least have the responsibility to do it where the Sisters can mop. They already have enough to polish.”

He bows his head an insulting millimeter, eyes still on you.

“I’ll drown quietly.” He says.

You leave first.

(Signora will leave after you. Later, in an unused corridor on another floor, she will find him again. He will be standing before a plaque mounted on the wall. IL DO— His palm will be flat against it. His eyes still. She will say, flat and final, “Recover.”)

The chapel inhales what you were and holds its breath.

—

In the palace corridor, snowlight spills gold across polished stone; the man beneath it is standing precisely at where it can look accidental.

Pantalone glances up just once—no, twice—no, four times—at the sky, then arrests the taboo with a smile and adjusts his cuff as if that’s what he meant to do.

“Your Eminence,” he says, bowing with careful economy. “Exposure remains favorable.” The pocket astrolabe glints; he doesn’t check it in front of you. The restraint costs him more than the motion.

When your shadow passes his shoes, he inhales like a forgiven debtor. Behind you, he allows himself a fifth look at the light, then a sixth, seventh and eighth. The guards behind him pass glances that mean the same thing as betting for the ninth.

—

The air of Scaramouche’s wing is thick with rules and the quiet of punishments that don’t require witnesses. His door is locked tight and proud of it.

Columbina is there, folded against Scaramouche’s door.

Her shoes are somewhere else. She has been singing the way she always does when she wants walls to listen—long, wordless notes that teach empty space how to hum with her. When you stop, she doesn’t startle; she just tilts her head.

She greets your shadow first, bows her head to it, almost, before daring to lift her face toward you. Deference or shyness; with her, the two drink from the same well.

“Hello,” she says, timid. Then, to you: “I waited. I still am.”

She turns her sadness in her hands like it’s a bird and decides to keep it a little more. She leans toward your leg, “Don’t be mad at him. Some only know how to sing when they're biting.”

“I sang for him. I still am.” She whispers, “but I think he doesn’t want me here.”

You sit beside her.

She exhales, long and husky. Her spine is crooked against the door, her legs folded in a way that must ache, but her head finds your shoulder and nuzzles there, slow and small, as if polishing you (or herself) to a brighter shine. That’s how you know she doesn’t mind.

“Why didn’t you come? To the banquet. We invited you.” she asks eventually, not accusing, just a mild confusion. “Maybe they wouldn’t have fought.”

A beat. “Perhaps… you were wise.”

She thinks for a moment, then a little spark brightens her voice. “But it was funny when he actually bit her.”

The spark goes out as soon as it arrives; her fingers fold over themselves in her lap, like she's trying to trap her amusement between the folds of her dress. “I don’t want them to fight,” Columbina adds. “Even when it’s silly. Even when it makes the room laugh.”

Inside the locked room, something steps back.