No customers left, and everyone had gone to sleep. The only sound was the occasional bump of wind against windows
Except Towan. He had fallen sleep easily, but woke up constantly due to nightmares
The tavern lay silent beneath him, its usual clamor swallowed by the night. No drunken laughter, no clatter of mugs—just the occasional creak of old wood settling into itself. The rooftop shingles bit cold through Towan’s shirt, but he barely felt it. The stars sprawled overhead, indifferent and bright, as if they’d never witnessed the things that haunted his sleep.
"What’s wrong with me?" The words slipped out, barely louder than the wind. He hadn’t meant to voice them. But the nightmares left him raw, scraped hollow—like his bones were full of echoes he couldn’t name.
Then—
A presence. Deliberate. Unhurried.
Rellie stepped into his periphery, her silhouette edged in moonlight. She moved like she’d always known where he’d be.
"You were loud," she said.
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Towan blinked. He hadn’t made a sound since muttering ‘Goodnight’ hours ago. Hadn’t even thrashed this time—just woke with his lungs clenched tight, sweat cooling on his skin.
"I didn’t scream," he said, flexing his hand. The ring lay dormant, but his veins still thrummed with the afterimage of whatever horror his mind had conjured.
Rellie sat beside him, folding herself into a tight knot of limbs. "Didn’t need to." Her breath fogged in the air between them. "Your Essentia thrashes. Like something’s trying to claw its way out."
A beat. Towan studied her—really studied her. Cassia was all sharp edges and easy laughter, but Rellie? She carried silence like armor. No Essentia humming under her skin, no telltale glow in her veins. Just… stillness. And yet—
"Who are you?" The question left him before he could stop it.
She didn’t flinch. "Someone who knows what screaming sounds like when no one hears it."
The admission hung there, fragile as frost.
Somewhere below, a shutter rattled in the wind. Towan exhaled, long and slow, watching his breath dissipate into the dark.
"You should drink something," Rellie said at last. "Herb leaves that bitter tea on the hearth for you. Says it’s for ‘aches.’" A ghost of a smirk. "We all know what kind."
Towan huffed—almost a laugh. "Yeah. The ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ kind."
Rellie nodded. For a while, they just sat there, two fractured things under an endless sky, listening to the night breathe around them.