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✧ Excerpt from Chapter III: Silent Promise ✧

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✧ Full chapter is here! ✧

✧ Full fic is here! ✧

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“So you’re saying…”

“We’re stuck out here for now.”

Varian nodded wearily in response and slumped back against the wall of the gnarled prison, careful so as not to worsen his injuries.

For the time being, his agony had dulled down to a pulsating numbness, and his eyelids began to flutter in an instinctive response to provide some sort of escape for his fatigued body.

Eugene took notice of the boy’s involuntary attempt to rest, yet a sinking feeling in his gut made him question the action.

“Kid, have you managed to get any sleep since you’ve been here?”

Varian looked back at him with glassy eyes. “Y-yeah, like…”

His expression twisted in thought as he racked his brain for an answer.

He’d been knocked out in the Demanitus chamber. He’d passed out after Cassandra had injured him inside the stronghold, then again a few minutes after he’d woken up in the suspended cage. 

He also knew that he must have fallen unconscious shortly upon discovering the incantation — seeing as how Eugene had woken him up — yet he couldn’t remember ever closing his eyes.

“...like, four times, I think?”

Eugene was taken aback. Four times?

He looked over the young alchemist in concern, taking note of the severity of his state for the first time since finding him. Varian’s eyes were glazed over, his blue-grey orbs unfocused and lined with suppressed pain. 

Despite the fact that he’d supposedly “fallen asleep” numerous times in the past day, dark circles stood out against the newly-acquired paleness of his skin.

And then, a splotch of crimson caught Eugene’s eye.

He hadn’t noticed it, at first. The colour on the end of Varian’s beige collar had blended in with the burgundy of his vest, but Eugene’s inspection had uncovered the horrific stain and now he could only stare at it, mesmerized.

Slowly, he placed one arm through a gap in the cage and pulled the boy’s collar away slightly so as to get a closer look. 

The sight that greeted him as the fabric shifted was somehow even more sickening than the blood itself.

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HELL YEAH, Chapter Three of Cracked is up! (~˘▾˘)~

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✧ Excerpt from Chapter IV: Portrait ✧

✧ Prompt: Lanterns ✧

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✧ Full chapter is here! ✧

✧ Full fic is here! ✧

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Halfway through the dinner, Quirin’s monotonous droning was interrupted by the flickering of candlelight coming from the center of the table. Four seconds later, the sudden darkness indicated that the candle’s flame had been snuffed out entirely.

Even though the natural light from the windows had now ceased to exist, seeing as how the sun had finally set, the lantern from the kitchen still provided a sliver of light for the table’s occupants.  

Varian stood up almost immediately. “I’ll get another one,” he said. The amount of melted wax — which had now started to slowly leak onto the table’s surface — proved that the candle had clearly reached the end of its lifespan.

He had only taken a mere two steps before he was stopped in his tracks by the sound of his father’s voice.

“Wait,” he started. “Not the cellar.”

Varian paused. What? But that’s the only place we keep them besides...

“My bedroom’s closer.”

Varian gaped soundlessly as his muddled mind slowly comprehended the significance of those words. 

He was allowing him inside of his room. The room that had previously been off-limits to him, the one he never dared get caught rummaging around in. The room that held the pieces of his father’s life he had only recently become privy to.

“I-I-uh, okay!” Varian stammered, nearly tripping over his own feet as he staggered towards the hallway.

“Wait, son!” Quirin called after him.

Varian skidded to a halt and nearly crashed into the nearest wall amidst his panic. Did he change his mind after all?

Quirin smiled, shaking his head at his son’s routine clumsiness. “I should have some in a drawer somewhere, check beside the bed.”

Varian could only nod mutely as he stumbled away in the direction of his father’s bedroom, all the while still in shock.

When he made it to the doorway, he had to hold his breath as he prepared to cross the threshold.

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