#itpot

Instead, the moment the door closed behind all four of you, your anxiety surged.

It climbed fast and cold, crawling under your ribs, making your hands feel too clumsy and your breathing too shallow. The book was still where you had left it, tucked away with all the caution of a secret that had long since become too large to hide.

You went to the shelf.

Drew the tomes aside.

“Found it.”

The cover looked no different than before. But when you lifted it into your arms, it felt heavier than any book had a right to feel.

Chai saw your face first.

“Oh, no,” she said softly, and crossed the room at once.

She took hold of your wrist only to ground you and smiled up at you with such gentleness; Guilt found its way into your heart.

“Hey,” she murmured. “No making that face now.”

You laughed weakly. “What face?”

“The one that says you’re about to throw up from terror.”

Hazelnut huffed from where he’d dropped against the side of your desk. “It’s a bad look, for the record.”

You looked at him.

He looked back like he always did, careless at first glance, shoulders easy, tone dry enough to pass for calm.

But his fingers were worrying the edge of his sleeve so hard the fabric had started to wrinkle.

“You’re not making the wrong choice,” he said.

The words came out like something rehearsed in the three steps between the corridor and your door.

You stared at him, and the bravado in his mouth did not match the fear in his eyes at all.

Hazelnut eyes widened when he noticed that you noticed.

So, naturally, he leaned further into the act.

“Seriously,” he said, waving one hand vaguely. “What’s the worst that happens? Shadow Milk gets angry? He’s already angry at, like, half the world, for misunderstanding his teachings.”

You made a small noise that might have been a laugh.

Hazelnut pressed on, because once he started joking his way around fear he almost never stopped until the fear lost patience and left him alone.

“He’ll be furious for a bit,” he said. “Sure. Maybe he’ll do that horrible quiet thing. Maybe he’ll narrow his eyes and make everyone within ten feet feel intellectually inadequate.” A shrug. “But once you wake up all victorious and immortal and unbearably smug about it, he’ll get over it.”

Chai nodded too quickly. “Exactly.”

She smiled as she said it.

Her voice was warm, playful, but there was something else.

“It’ll be like nothing happened,” she said. “Just… a long nap. A very moonlit, annoyingly poetic nap.”

Her hand slithered  from your wrist to your cheek, cupping it gently.

Her face, up close, betrayed her completely.

She looked like she was trying very hard not to cry.

Earl stood near the door, as composed as ever, though even he was not untouched tonight. His posture was elegant, measured, almost severe in its neatness; But his gaze kept drifting to the book in your hands, and every time it did, something in his expression tightened just slightly before smoothing over again.

“You asked us more than once,” he said quietly. “You gave us every opportunity to turn away.”

You swallowed. “And you should have.”

“No,” Earl said at once.

The certainty of it pinned you still.

He crossed the room with the calm inevitability of someone arriving at a conclusion he had already accepted. He stopped in front of you, looking first at the book, then at you, and for a moment his refinement almost slipped. 

“You are not dragging us anywhere,” he said. “We are walking with you.”

Your throat tightened.

Hazelnut nodded, though his mouth had gone a little pale around the edges. “Yeah. What’s life supposed to be without you around to ruin it?”

Chai gave him an offended look through the shimmer in her eyes. “That was almost sweet.”

“It was sweet.”

“It was grim.”

“It was honest.”

What could life be without you?

They were afraid. Terrified, maybe. But they meant to follow you anyway.

Chai leaned into your side, keeping her hand at your face as if she could hold you there by tenderness alone. “I’m scared,” she admitted with a soft little laugh that broke halfway through. “I’m really scared. But I’d rather be scared with you than safe without you.”

Hazelnut looked away for a second, jaw jumping. “Yeah. That.”

You closed your eyes briefly.

The book sat cold and silent in your arms.

The moon, somewhere outside, was rising whether any of you were ready or not.

“You don’t have to keep pretending for me,” you whispered.

Three faces looked back at you.

And for a moment, none of them spoke.

Then Hazelnut blew out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “We know.”

Chai’s thumb stroked lightly over your cheekbone. “We’re not pretending,” she said, and that was true in its own complicated way. “We’re just… trying very hard to be brave in a cute way.”

“That is not a strategy,” Earl said.

“It absolutely is.”

“No,” he replied

Chai huffed a weak laugh.

And then Earl, because he could not leave well enough alone when truth was required, added quietly, “We are all afraid. That much is obvious. But fear does not invalidate our commitment.”

His gaze held yours steadily.

“If anything,” he said, “it makes it more honest, we’ll be living out our truth.”

That settled over the room like something holy.

You looked down at the book, then back up at them.

At Chai’s smile that trembled when she thought you wouldn’t notice.

At Hazelnut’s deliberate slouch, performing ease while his hands gave him away.

At Earl, so beautifully put together and yet one wrong breath away from letting the depth of his fear show in full.

And your heart broke a little for all of you.

“I don’t want this to ruin you,” you said softly.

Hazelnut gave you a lopsided grin that looked almost convincing. “Too late. I met you years ago.”

Chai made a tiny scandalized sound. “You’re awful.”

“You all keep saying that and yet-”

“And yet,” Earl interrupted, voice smooth but gentler now, “We’re where we’re meant to be.”

You laughed you had to.

Otherwise you might have started crying and not stopped.

Chai saw the danger in your face and did what she always did when emotion threatened to become unbearable..

She took the book from your arms with great ceremony and set it on the desk.

Then she took both your hands in hers.

“Listen to me,” she said.

You did.

“We’re doing this because we love you,” she said simply. “Not because we’re brave enough. Not because we’ve made peace with every terrible part of it. And definitely not because any of us think this is a good idea in the normal, healthy sense.” She sniffed once, then smiled crookedly. “But because if you’re going somewhere that frightening, we’d rather be frightened with you than left behind wondering what became of our heart.”

Hazelnut’s face changed at that.

Only for a second.

He looked at the floor and muttered, “That was disgusting.”

“It was beautiful,” you whispered.

“It was disgusting and beautiful, besides we don’t get sentimental often.” Chai corrected.

Earl reached past her and touched your shoulder.

“As for the Fount,” he said, and for once even his title for Shadow Milk sounded chosen with care rather than formality, “If he is angry, then he is angry. Anger is not permanent. Nor, I suspect, is his capacity to forgive you.”

You looked up at that. “You really think so?”

Earl’s expression shifted, not into a smile, but something close to one. “I think he has already forgiven you for more than you know.”

That did not help your chest at all.

Hazelnut, determined not to let things get too soft for too long, clapped his hands once and said, “Right. Great. Wonderful. We’re all emotionally compromised. Can we go become immortal now before I lose the nerve to act cool about it?”

“You have never acted cool about anything,” Chai said.

“That is slander.”

“It is recorded history, please you’ll embarrass yourself if you keep flapping your lips open.”

There it was again that tiny bit of normalcy. That awful, beautiful refusal to let the thought of immortality drag you down.

The book waited on the desk.

The moon waited beyond your window.

Your fear had not gone.

Neither had theirs.

But they had made themselves gentler around it for you.

That was love too.

Hazelnut stepped back first and picked the book up like it personally offended him. “Alright,” he said, far too casually. “Let’s get this over with before I start making responsible decisions.”

Chai wiped quickly under one eye and brightened her voice by force. “Blueberry Yogurt River, yes?”

You managed a shaky smile. “Yes.”

Earl opened the door for the three of you with perfect composure, as though you were only heading out to an unusually solemn evening walk. “Then let us not keep the moon waiting.”

And when you moved to follow them, your legs still trembling a little, they all looked back at you at once and smiled.

As if their mouths had taken on the job their faces could no longer manage.

As if, for your sake, they were trying to make the end of one life look like the beginning of another.

“Wait.”

Your voice stopped all three of them just before the doorway.

Hazelnut turned with the book already tucked under one arm like he distrusted it too much to let it travel alone. Chai still had one hand on the frame. Earl, nearest the threshold, paused mid-step and looked back at you with immediate attention.

You swallowed and stepped toward the desk again, your mind snagging belatedly on the practical shape of what came next.

“The circles,” you said. “We’re supposed to each make our own.”

Hazelnut frowned. “Right.”

“But how?” you pressed. “We’ll be by the river. There’s dirt and grass and stones, not classroom floors. No chalkboards, no proper spellwork surfaces” You gestured helplessly. “No concrete.”

Chai blinked. “Oh.”

Earl’s expression turned contemplative.“That is… a useful question to remember now rather than later.”

Hazelnut huffed. “Great. Love that we nearly went to become immortal without figuring out how to draw the actual circle.”

“Ask it,” Earl said quietly.

Hazelnut looked offended. “Why do I have to hold it while you say that like it’s normal?”

“Because you grabbed it.”

“That was a mistake.”

You stepped closer and opened it.

The pages were blank for only a breath before ink began to spread, elegant and dark and far too pleased with itself.

“Ah. At last, logistics. Nothing ruins transcendence like poor preparation.”

You rolled your eyes. “How do we make the circles?”

The writing flowed on with infuriating grace:

“Oh, by all means summon a mason. Lay marble by the riverbank. Commission silver inlay. Perhaps a little pavilion, if the moon is to be courted properly.”

Chai muttered, “A pavilion would be pretty.”

“Chai.”

“What? I’m just saying.”

You leaned over the page. “Be serious.”

“I have been nothing else.”

crickets.

“If you must be rustic, dig the circle into the earth. A stick will do..”

You exhaled, relieved and annoyed all at once. “That’s it?”

Fresh ink appeared, smoother now, less indulgent.

“For the marking, yes. The circle need only be made. Closed.”

Earl stepped closer, reading over your shoulder. “No chalk. No salt. No silver?”

The answer came quickly.

“Not for this. The earth is witness enough.”

You thought briefly of moonlight on the Blueberry Yogurt River, of wet banks and silver reflecting like a blade laid flat across the dark, and your stomach turned.

Hazelnut shifted his weight. “So we just… draw them.”

“You etch them,” the book corrected, “unless you wish eternity to mistake you for lazy.”

Hazelnut scowled. “See? That tone is why I want to throw it.”

Chai patted his arm. “But now we know.”

You looked back to the page. “Anything else?”

The ink paused.

Then, with more weight than before:

“Do not forget the circle. Do not leave it incomplete. And bring me with you.”

Your fingers tightened on the edge of the page. “You have to come?”

“Would you walk blind into moonlight after all this?”

You did not answer.

The script continued, silk-smooth and cold:

“Bring me. Forget me, and the night grows clumsy.”

Hazelnut looked deeply offended by the implication. “The night grows- what does that even mean?”

Earl’s gaze did not leave the page. “It means we’re bringing it.”

Chai, quieter now, nodded once. “Then we bring it.”

You shut the book carefully this time and took it back into your own hands.

“Alright,” you said softly. “We make our own circles. We use sticks. We bring the book.”

Hazelnut rubbed a hand over his face. “Wonderful. Outdoor ritual architecture by moonlight. Exactly how I wanted to spend tonight.”

Chai gave him a weak smile. “You say that like you had better plans.”

“I did. They involved not dying.”

Earl opened the door again, his calm restored only by effort. “Then perhaps we should go before any of us discover a fresh reason to hesitate.”

The walk to the Blueberry Yogurt River felt longer than it ever had before.

The Spire fell away behind you in warm-lit windows and distant silhouettes, its height dimming as the night deepened. Ahead, the river stretched pale and strange beneath the rising moon, blue-white light beginning to gather over the water until the whole bank looked brushed with silver. Grass bowed in the wind. Reeds whispered. The current moved slow and dark, carrying moonlight in broken ribbons along its surface.

You found the place easily.

Of course you did.

The same bend you had chosen before, half-hidden from the academy by a stand of low willow trees, close enough to the river that you could hear it clearly, far enough that the earth held underfoot without slipping into mud. For a little while, none of you spoke.

Then Hazelnut cleared his throat and looked down at the ground like he was preparing to argue with it on principle. “Right,” he muttered. “Circles.”

You crouched first.

The stick you’d found was thinner than you wanted, but it bit well enough into the earth. Dirt gave beneath the point with a soft scrape, the line curving outward in a slow rough arc. Around you, the others did the same. Chai knelt in the grass several feet away, carefully carving hers as if the act itself might break if she breathed too hard. Earl’s circle was, unsurprisingly, the most precise. Hazelnut’s had a wobble in it he pretended not to notice.

You all worked in silence at first.

Until Chai, halfway through carving the second crescent mark around the outer edge of her circle, sat back on her heels and let out a dramatic sigh.

“You know,” she said, staring down at her robes with visible offense, “if I was going to potentially die in something, I should have worn something nicer than my academy robes.”

Hazelnut looked over at once. “You’re worried about fashion?”

“Yes,” Chai said. “If the moon’s going to take me, I’d like to look memorable.”

Hazelnut barked a laugh. “That is the most you thing you’ve said all night.”

She frowned at him. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t regret dying in that wrinkled mess you insist on calling a coat.”

“It has character, and just for the record I brought it cause it was chilly today.”

“It has damage.”

Before Hazelnut could retort, he scooped up a pinch of loose dirt from beside his half-finished circle and flicked it at her.

Chai gasped, because of the audacity.

“Hazelnut Biscotti!”

He was already grinning. “Now you look earth-toned. More ritual appropriate.”

She threw dirt back at him immediately.

It struck his shoulder.

“Oh, now it’s war.”

“Stop!” you began, half-laughing despite yourself.

But Earl was faster.

“Enough,” he snapped, sharp enough to cut through both of them at once. “We are supposed to be hidden.”

Chai froze mid-reach for another handful of dirt. Hazelnut slowly lowered his hand.

The river went on whispering beside you.

Earl exhaled, then softened just slightly. “Quietly,” he said. “If we are going to do this, then at least let us manage not to announce it to the entire world.”

Hazelnut looked vaguely chastened. “Right.”

Chai brushed off her skirt and muttered, “Still should’ve worn something nicer.”

Even Earl nearly smiled at that.

The circles were finished soon after.

Four rough shapes carved into the dirt by moonlit hands. Four separate spaces, each marked and closed, shallow grooves catching silver light along their edges. Yours nearest the water. Earl’s the neatest. Chai’s the prettiest even in its imperfection. Hazelnut’s stubbornly there.

Then there was nothing left to do but wait.

The book sat closed at your feet in the grass.

The moon climbed.

The night grew colder. Perhaps you should have brought a coat too.

You all stood near your circles without stepping into them yet.

Hazelnut had run out of things to say for a while. Chai kept folding and unfolding her hands in her sleeves. Earl’s gaze remained fixed on the sky as if he could reason with time if he looked disciplined enough.

Your own fear came in waves.

The moon reached higher.

Silver pooled across the bank. The dirt circles seemed to catch it strangely now, their edges no longer dull but faintly luminous, as if the earth itself had begun remembering what you’d carved into it.

The book moved.

All four of you saw it at once.

The cover shuddered beneath no visible hand, then sprang open with a crack of pages. Blue light spilled out, not like fire, but like something bright and cold forced through a wound in the air. It rose in a twisting ribbon, lifting free of the book in one fluid motion until it hovered above the grass as a living flare of cerulean light.

Chai stepped back.

Earl’s hand lifted instinctively toward you.

And the light laughed.

“Oh,” it purred, voice spilling from the glow in a dozen shimmering tones at once.

The blue flame spun lazily in the air, delighting in its own reveal.

“Four hearts at the river’s edge,” it said. “Four circles. Four perfectly earnest fools beneath a very hungry moon.”

Your mouth had gone dry.

The light dipped lower, almost as if bowing to the scene before it.

“And committed too,” it went on, laughing softly again. “How lovely. How willful. I do so admire that in mortals.”

Hazelnut took another step back. “I really hate it.”

“Oh, you’re meant to,” the light replied brightly.

Then it turned its attention toward you.

“Especially you, little starlight.”

The blue glow sharpened around the edges, becoming momentarily more intense.

“You did come very close to thinking, at the end,” it mused.

 “I was almost worried. Questions about after. About waking. About memory. Such ugly little practicalities.” A pause, full of mock sympathy. “Though not practical enough, I fear.”

Your heart stumbled.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

The light swayed as if in laughter again.

“What do I mean?” it echoed. “Only that you have spent so much effort asking how to go under that you scarcely bothered to ask what sort of thing might rise in your place if enough is taken.” Its tone brightened. “No matter. We are past all that now.”

Chai’s face had gone pale.

Earl’s voice came measured, controlled, dangerous in its refinement. “You are not the moon, what are you?”

The light flared with amusement.

“No,” it said. “That would be dreadfully provincial. But I have known it’s appetites a very long time.”

Hazelnut glanced at you, then back to it. “This was in the book the whole time.”

“Of course I was,” the blue light said. “You don’t think paper answers prayers by itself, do you?”

You felt suddenly, horribly cold.

The circles beneath your feet began to glow more clearly now, lines of silver-blue sinking into the dirt and pulsing faintly under the moon’s highest gaze.

The light’s voice softened into something almost tender.

“I am very grateful, you know.”

None of you answered.

It continued anyway.

“That you chose this. That you decided to come willingly. I do admire a story that ripens properly. A frightened scholar. Devoted friends. A moonlit river. Love braided neatly through dread.” It laughed again, lower this time. “What fun you have been.”

The light shifted, brightening, gathering itself like a curtain about to rise.

“And since the moon is at it’s peak,” it said, almost singing now, “and since the circles are ready, and since all of you have been so very obliging…”

Its glow sharpened like a grin.

“I have decided what it should take.”

Your breath caught.

The thing in the blue light sounded pleased. 

“Oh, yes,” it murmured. “I think I shall have all the memories of the Sage of Truth.”

Silence.

The light laughed in delight at your faces.

“That lovely look. Fear, outrage, heartbreak, all at once.” It drifted in a slow circle above the open book, bright with malicious joy. “How could I resist? He has threaded himself through this story so beautifully. The tutoring, the longing, the carefully hidden ache, the little kisses stolen before the moonrise.” Its voice turned almost dreamy. “It would be such a waste not to pluck him from the roots.”

“No,” you whispered.

The light ignored you.

“Imagine it,” it cooed. “Four immortals waking one day with a hole in the shape of him. A legend with no face. Tenderness without origin. Desire without name. Oh, that is art.”

“You said it would take something deep,” you said, voice shaking now. “You said, I thought you would take anything else, why him?!”

“I said many things,” it interrupted lightly.

The glow turned toward you fully.

“You wished to know what the moon might claim. I have chosen something rooted. Something binding. Something that will make your forever ache in all the right places.”

Hazelnut found his voice first, though it sounded rough and frightened. “Can we stop this? I mean I’m no fan of the guy but that means…it’ll be like he never existed?”

The light gave a small, pitying hum.

“Can you?” it asked.

Its laughter returned, delighted and theatrical and utterly without mercy.

“Come now. Don’t look so wounded. You wanted eternity. I merely improved the cost.”

“No,” you said at once, voice breaking on the word. “No, if I forget him, then this whole journey was for nothing.”

The Light of Deceit only brightened, pleased by the desperation in you. Around you, the grass bowed in the cold wind, the river whispered, the circles glowed like open mouths waiting to be fed.

You turned toward your friends.

Chai’s face had gone white in the moonlight. Hazelnut looked sick. Earl had gone so still he seemed carved from the night itself.

“If I forget him,” you said again, more frantically now, “then what was any of this for? The tutoring, the Spire, the way he” Your voice faltered. “I can’t do that. I can’t.”

Chai looked at you with shining eyes, and something in her expression shifted; Something terrible and soft and selfish all at once.

“Maybe…” she began, then swallowed. “Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad.”

You stared at her.

She took one step closer to her circle, voice trembling despite the smile she forced onto it. “If you forgot him, then maybe this wouldn’t hurt so much. Maybe you’d be with us again. Really with us. Like before all this.”

Hazelnut let out a rough breath. He looked guilty the moment the words left her mouth, because he had thought it too.

Before the tutoring. Before the Spire. Before the Sage of Truth had become the axis your world tilted around.

And because he had thought it too, he said, “It doesn’t mean it was for nothing. It just means… maybe the ending changes.”

The Light of Deceit gave a delighted little hum above them. It said nothing. It did not need to. It only listened while your friends did its work for it.

Earl’s jaw tightened.

For a heartbeat you thought, hoped, he would stop all of it.

Instead, his voice came low and refined and terribly calm.

“If the cost is memory,” he said, “then perhaps it is survivable.”

You turned to him, wounded.

He met your gaze, and there, beneath all his restraint, was grief so sharp it almost looked like anger.

“This began because you wanted forever,” he said quietly. “If we leave now, we are left with nothing. No answers. No immortality. No assurance this path will open again.” His hand flexed once at his side, betraying what his tone would not. “And if this is the price… then perhaps it is better to lose one ache than everything.”

The words were beautiful.

Reasonable.

Hazelnut stepped into his own circle first.

Not bravely, just with his frightened resolve that only ever came to him when he was already too far committed to back down. “Come on,” he said, trying for lightness and failing. 

“If we wake up and don’t remember him, then… fine. We’ll still remember each other.” He glanced at you, and his smile shook at the edges. “And you’ll be ours again. All the way.”

Chai stepped into hers next.

Moonlight caught in her lashes. “I love him for you,” she whispered. “But I miss when it was just us. I miss when you were happier without having to ache for someone so far above you.” Her hands curled into the folds of her robe. “If forgetting him is what brings you back… then maybe I can live with that.”

Your jam ran cold.

Earl stepped into his circle last.

The silver lines beneath his feet brightened.

He did not smile. He only looked at you and said, in that polished voice fraying around the edges, “Do not make us follow you into this only to leave yourself standing outside it.”

They had already chosen you, because they had already given you everything, and because you could not bear the thought of being the one left behind when this had always been your fault, your idea, your hunger…you felt guilt rise in you like floodwater.

If they were going to go under moonlight and wake into forever with that hole torn clean through them; Then what right had you to stay back and keep your memories whole?

What right had you to survive their sacrifice intact?

Your feet moved before your heart was ready.

You stepped into your circle.

The glowing line closed around you with a faint hiss, as if the moon had exhaled in satisfaction.

The Light of Deceit purred. “How devoted. How guilty. How easy.”

You barely heard it.

The river had gone too loud.

Moonlight spilled fully over you now, over all four of you, and the circles beneath your feet began to burn brighter, lines of cold silver sinking deep into the dirt and then rising again through the soles of your shoes, through your ankles, through your bones.

The pain came all at once.

It was extraction.

It was your life being reached for from inside.

Your breath tore out of you in a ragged gasp as something impossible seized your center and began pulling. Every vein of magic in you opened at once, like the moon had hooked silver fingers beneath your ribs and was drawing your soul thread by thread into it’s mouth.

You screamed.

Your scream ripped through the riverbank raw, helpless, and endless.

To your left, Chai cried out too, her voice shattering into sobs between breaths. Hazelnut cursed, then screamed harder than either of you, as if rage might make pain less holy. Earl’s face blanched white, mouth opening on a sound he tried and failed to swallow.

It hurt.

Stars, it hurt.

Your heart pounded once, twice, then staggered.

The world flickered.

Moonlight poured through your veins where warmth should have been.

You could feel yourself leaving.

Your hands went numb first, then your lips, then everything beneath the agony became cold enough to seem absent. You dropped to your knees inside the circle, fingers clawing at the dirt as if you could root yourself back into your own life by force.

The Light of Deceit laughed overhead, drunk on it.

Your vision blurred.

The river and the sky and your friends’ twisted faces smeared into silver and black.

You screamed again.

And somewhere far off a door opened.

Shadow Milk Cookie had felt wrongness before he heard it.

A disturbance, sharp and lunar, it cut through the Spire’s quiet in a way no ordinary magic could. It struck him half a second before the screams were ripping through the night with such naked agony that it stopped his breath.

Papers struck the floor behind him. The hall outside his quarters blurred. Blue and silver magic tore around him in bright, furious arcs as he descended the path toward the river with a speed that shattered any illusion of composure.

By the time he reached the bank, the moon was high, the circles were lit, and all four of you were inside them.

On your knees.

Screaming.

The Light hovered above the open book like an obscene little star, radiant with delight.

Shadow Milk stopped only long enough to understand.

Then fury hit him so hard the air itself seemed to recoil.

“You,” he said.

The Light of Deceit flared, laughing. “Ahh. There you are.”

Shadow Milk’s eyes had never been filled with more rage.

“I should not have assumed,” he said, each word precise enough to cut, “that silence from you meant obedience.”

The Light spun lazily in place. “And yet you did. Such faith.”

He moved toward the circles.

“If this ritual is interrupted now,” the Light said, almost conversationally, “Your scholar dies.”

The words struck him like a physical blow.

You were on the ground, trembling so hard your body barely seemed to belong to you. Your mouth opened on another scream, but it had gone ragged now, your voice shredding under the force of whatever the moon was taking.

Shadow Milk’s face changed.

“Oh, don’t look like that,” it murmured. “It ruins the scene if the leading man suffers too early.”

His gaze snapped to it, murderous.

“What have you done?”

The Light laughed harder.

“What have they done, you mean. I merely offered terms. They were so eager to say yes.” It drifted lower over the circles, bathing your contorted faces in cold blue. “And your little scholar was especially obliging once the others started talking about getting them back.”

“No…” Chai gasped through clenched teeth.

Hazelnut doubled over, face wet with tears and pain and terror.

Earl, somehow still upright on one knee, looked at Shadow Milk with helpless fury.

Shadow Milk’s hands curled into fists so tight the magic around them sparked.

“You touched them,” he said softly, and in his voice was the promise of ruin.

The Light only brightened.

“We are one and the same, you know.”

That made him still in a different way..

The Light of Deceit laughed at the look on his face. “Oh, don’t be offended. You wear knowledge; I wear appetite. You call yourself truth; I call myself the shape truth takes when it wants something. We are not so different, you and I.”

Shadow Milk’s jaw tightened.

“You are nothing like me.”

“No?” 

His silence was answer enough.

The Light softened into a purr.

“Do not feel too upset. Deep down, you wanted it too.”

Moonlight rippled across the river.

Your scream broke again into something weaker, thinner, and Shadow Milk moved a half-step before forcing himself still.

The Light saw that and smiled through brightness.

“Yes,” it whispered. “You wanted forever with them. You wanted what all tragic fools want, an ending where love outruns mortality.” It laughed, viciously pleased. “And now look. What a marvelous playwright I am.”

Shadow Milk’s eyes never left you.

You were slumped in your circle now, one hand scraping uselessly at the dirt, your pulse a visible flutter in your throat. Your jam had gone cold beneath your skin. Chai sobbed openly. Hazelnut had bitten into his own lip trying to hold back another scream and failed. Earl had gone deathly pale, but still his gaze flicked between you and the Sage as if searching for some impossible way to hold both together.

The Light rose above all of you like a conductor over a final act.

“What a great tragedy this has become,” it said softly, rapturous with itself. “The scholar, the beloved, the devoted little chorus of friends and moonlight asking for memory in payment.”

Shadow Milk did not look at it when he answered.

“Stop this.”

The words came torn raw from somewhere he had spent lifetimes keeping closed.

“Oh, now you beg? How unbecoming of you.”

Another scream ripped from you.

Shadow Milk took one involuntary step toward your circle and stopped again only because the Light’s warning still hung like a blade over your life.

The fury in him had nowhere to go.

So it turned inward.

His face, so often composed into elegant disdain or measured amusement, was wrecked now, eyes bright with helplessness, mouth hard with pain he could neither hide nor solve. He looked at you like every instinct in him was trying to tear the ritual apart with his bare hands and only love was stopping him from killing you by saving you.

And the Light of deceit, laughed and laughed and laughed while the moon fed.

You could hear him still, faintly, through the tearing in your body, your name, perhaps.

The pain did not end. It only became too large for your body to hold.

One moment, you were on your knees in the circle, fingers dug into the dirt, throat torn raw from screaming, moonlight pouring through you like a blade.

The next everything gave out at once.

Your heart lurched.

Your vision shattered into white.

And you fell, as if whatever tether still held you inside yourself had finally snapped loose.

The last thing you felt was the cold of the ground rising fast to meet you.

The last thing you heard was someone shouting your name.

Then nothing.

Darkness.

Not the darkness of sleep or the comfort of closed eyes beneath blankets, and certainly not the hush of exhaustion after a long day.

A darkness with no floor.

You became, aware of yourself slowly, the way one becomes aware of a wound after the first shock has worn off.

You were there. And yet you had no body.

No hands. No feet. No pulse thundering in your throat. No air moving in and out of your lungs. Only your awareness, small and frightened and terribly alone, suspended in a black void so complete it felt almost liquid.

For one impossible moment, you did not remember why you were there.

Then fear came back all at once.

The river. The circles. The moon. The screaming.

Him.

The fear sharpened immediately into panic.

You tried to move and had nothing to move with. Tried to call out and had no mouth. Tried to reach for anything at all and found only the dark stretching endlessly around you, vast and empty and listening.

“No!”

The word did not sound.

But you felt it tear through you anyway.

And then you saw them.

Your memories.

At first they were only lights.

Small ones. Pale and blue-white and gold, suspended in the void around you like lanterns caught beneath deep water. They drifted slowly, each one glowing with its own soft shape, and as you watched, one brightened.

A room.

A desk.

A lecture hall gone too quiet.

You, smaller somehow, more frightened, parchment clenched in nervous hands.

And him.

The first tutoring session.

The terror of sitting across from someone so renowned for knowledge that even breathing felt like presumption. The humiliation of not knowing. The awful certainty that he would see through you, dismiss you, tire of you in a single measured glance.

Then the memory shifted.

His voice.

Smooth. Patient. amused in that maddening way of his.

“Then prove me wrong.”

You reached for it instinctively.

For the sound of him. For the look in his eyes. For the way your fear had curled inward and then, somehow, slowly begun to soften in his presence.

The light quivered.

And drifted away.

“No.”

Another memory rose before you could stop it.

The corridor after that lesson, cold lanternlight on old stone. Your footsteps echoing beside his. Your heart beating too fast because he was walking with you, because he had laughed quietly when you put him on a pedestal and told you truth was not an illusion of your own making.

Then another…

You, ducking behind Hazelnut in the courtyard because you had skipped class and Shadow Milk Cookie was walking toward you with other scholars at his side. Chai whispering that you liked him. Hazelnut wheezing with laughter. Earl looking wholly unimpressed by your panic.

That one hurt differently.

Because your friends were in it too.

Because he was already stitched into the fabric of all of you by then, and you hadn’t even known how deep it went.

The memory flickered.

The edges blurred.

His face clear one second, luminous with that impossible calm began to soften, as if seen through rain.

You lunged for it again.

Please.

Please.

The void gave you nothing.

The memory slid further back into the dark.

Then more came.

Slowly.

Cruelly.

Like someone sorting through your heart and deciding what to keep.

His office again, later this time. You half-asleep against his shoulder, asking in dream-heavy nonsense whether he would become a woman just once because you thought it would be cool and elegant and terrifying. The warmth of him beside you. The way he let you rest. The dream that followed, where you stood at his side in the Spire and found a way to stay forever with him.

You tried to hold onto the dream.

It unraveled in your grasp.

Another, dining hall light, your friends gossiping breathlessly about the high scholars and the rumors of what the Sage had said when he defended you. Chai’s wide eyes. Hazelnut’s certainty they must have deserved it. Earl quietly quoting words that made your heart ache.

Another his hand kissing your knuckles in front of Earl, that devastating little gesture so composed and so pointed it made your whole body light with embarrassment and something far worse.

Another his office in evening light, his hand in yours, the warmth of his lips when you asked him to kiss you because you wanted to remember.

That one hit like grief before it even began to fade.

You saw it clearly.

Too clearly.

The dusk, rose and violet outside the windows. His face when you asked. The way he had gone still. The surprise in him. The tenderness.

You reached with everything you were.

The memory shuddered.

For a moment you thought you had it.

Then the sound went first.

His voice saying “You need never ask me twice…” blurred, stretched, became only the echo of being wanted.

Then his mouth, warm and careful against yours, dimmed into sensation without source.

Then his face

No.

No no no

His face began to go.

The shape of him loosened. Features softening into light. Eyes losing their color. Mouth becoming only curve. His hand at your cheek becoming only touch, stripped of person, stripped of name.

Panic tore through the void. You threw yourself after it with no body to move, no voice to cry with, and still the memory kept slipping, receding into the black like something being lowered down through dark water.

Memory by memory. Thread by thread. The moon not ripping him from you in one merciful act, but letting you watch as it loosened every root he had in you and pulled.

You felt fear become something colder.

What if this never stopped? What if the dark swallowed him whole? What if one day you woke with the shape of longing still in you but no reason for it, no face to attach it to, no memory of who had taught you how to think, how to look up, how to ask, how to love?

Another memory surfaced.

The first time you had made him laugh for real.

Another His voice in public hours, answering foolish questions and profound ones alike with impossible patience while you watched from afar and thought he looked dreamy and refined.

Another The way he had touched your cheek that last evening and said he had wanted one unhurried hour in your company.

Another His private smile when no one else was looking.

Another The name in your chest.

And as they came, they dimmed.

One by one. One by one.

You tried to clutch at them.

Sometimes it worked for a breath.

A detail stayed.

The sleeve of his robe under your fingers. The scent of old parchment and starlit citrus. The sound of his laughter low against your mouth.

But then even those began to loosen, drifting upward and away like scraps of gold ash.

The void around you grew fuller with absence.

You became aware, distantly, that other memories remained untouched.

Chai’s hand on your cheek. Hazelnut’s terrible jokes. Earl’s careful voice saying he had enjoyed arranging your portfolio because it felt like arranging starlight into a language others could read. The four of you running through corridors toward waffles and pineapples. The dining hall warm with honey and laughter. The academy before everything had tilted.

Those stayed.

They glowed steady, pained but whole.

It was only him the dark kept wanting.

Only him.

And because of that, terror twisted into something almost feral.

You could not lose him. Not like this. The void answered with silence.

Then, somewhere very far away a sound.

Muffled. Distant. Like thunder heard from underwater.

A voice.

You froze.

It came again, faint, frayed, reaching through black.

Not words at first. Only urgency.

Then clearer, if only by a little.

Your name.

Someone was calling your name.

You turned toward it instinctively, though turn was not the right word in a place with no shape. The dark shifted. One of the receding memories flickered in response, the one with his hand at your cheek, his mouth warm against yours, his voice low as he told you to remember this.

The light of that memory faltered.

Then held.

Just barely.

You gathered around it like someone sheltering a flame from wind.

Please, you thought, not to the moon, not to whatever cruel thing had engineered this tragedy. To the memory itself. To him. To the shape of him still burning weakly in you.

Please.

Don’t go.

A/N Sorry for the super late update I was so busy all day and could not get this out sooner, it's also shorter bc I was working on the april fool's fic sooooo!!!! anyways please enjoy!!!

anyways...

I love when sage acknowledges improvement

Growing up, I had a lot of issues with procrastination and stealing things. ADHD really becomes a bitch when it comes to impulse control. But as I got older, I realized a flaw in my parents raising. They only ever acknowledged when I did something bad, and over time I became desperate for approval. Just to hear them go “you’re doing good, I’m proud of you.”

rambling:

Okay so, originally I was supposed to only send this one without any shading but I got so into it that I freakin' locked in, in my mind at the time I was not feeling up with this result it felt empty so I added some shadows and stuff but little to more, it ended up being the one on top LMAO (never again, probably)

I made this like about two months ago lmao kwsybsishmd

Anyways hope y'all like it <3