Chapter 33 — Vanitas

I didn't know their names.

I knew them by what the prison forgot.

At first the sealstone hummed with thousands of voices woven into its magic. Priests. Councilors. Engineers. People who'd built the cage and were very certain it would outlive me.

Then some voices vanished.

Then more.

Centuries passed like that.

Or years.

Or days.

Time had stopped meaning anything.

Sometimes I woke with dust on my shoulders.

Sometimes roots had pushed through cracks near the ceiling before dying in the dark.

Once, water dripped for what felt like months.

Then it stopped.

I missed the sound when it was gone.

That annoyed me.

I wasn't supposed to miss things anymore.

Missing things was how this started.

I closed my eyes.

Seris laughed.

Not really.

Memory.

Again.

She sat beside a campfire with a burned pastry in her hand.

That's flavour.

I opened my eyes.

Darkness.

I closed them again.

Cassian stood beside me beneath the stars.

If they build your cage, I'll break the door.

Darkness.

Again.

Seris held my hand outside the sanctuary.

You keep mourning things before they've happened.

Darkness.

Again.

Cassian looked up from beneath Epitaph.

You've become exactly what they feared.

Darkness.

Again.

Seris touched my face.

I wanted to.

"Stop."

The prison didn't care.

Memory had become my only visitor, and it was cruel enough to keep coming.

At first, I protected the good parts.

I polished them in my head.

Seris laughing meant she was happy.

Cassian staying awake beside the fire meant I was safe.

The children at Lareth waving meant saving them mattered.

The villagers thanking me meant kindness was real.

Then time started asking questions.

Why did people praise me?

Because I was useful.

Why did they touch my wings?

Because they wanted something.

Why did kings call me hero?

Because I fought their enemies.

Why did Cassian stay?

Because standing beside me gave him access.

Why did Seris love me?

That one took longer.

I hated myself for touching it.

So I left it alone.

For a century.

Maybe two.

Then I woke angry.

"She would've left too."

The words barely crossed the chamber.

I stared ahead.

"No."

That answer came automatically.

Seris hadn't left.

She'd died.

Different.

I knew that.

But death still took her.

The result was the same.

Empty hands.

An empty chamber.

A future that stopped existing.

Everyone leaves.

Some choose the door.

Some choose betrayal.

Some are dragged away by time.

Why should the reason matter when you're still the one left behind?

The thought felt ugly.

Then useful.

Useful thoughts survive.

I repeated it.

Everyone leaves.

Again.

Everyone leaves.

Eventually, it stopped sounding cruel.

It sounded obvious.

That was how the rules began.

Trust creates expectation.

Expectation creates vulnerability.

Vulnerability gives another person something to break.

Love creates attachment.

Attachment creates fear.

Fear makes you control what you can't bear to lose.

Control becomes resentment.

Resentment becomes betrayal.

And even if none of that happens?

Time finishes the job.

Always.

I laughed when I finally understood.

Not because it was funny.

Because Seris had once told me something could matter precisely because it didn't last forever.

I used to believe her.

Now the idea seemed almost childish.

If something ended, it hurt.

If it could be taken, it became a chain.

If someone mattered, they became a target.

The safest thing in the world was having nothing another person could reach.

I looked down at the sealstone holding me.

"Funny."

The Council had spent years trying to teach me obedience.

The prison taught me freedom instead.

Not their freedom.

Mine.

Freedom was having nothing left to lose.

No home.

No title.

No kingdom.

No promises.

No friend waiting at the door.

No woman whose hand you couldn't let go.

Nothing.

The thought should've terrified me.

Instead, for the first time in ages, the darkness felt quiet.

Not lonely.

Quiet.

There was a difference.

I stopped calling for anyone after that.

Stopped wondering whether someone might find me.

Stopped imagining footsteps.

Hope was just expectation wearing prettier clothes.

I had learned what expectation cost.

I had no intention of paying that price again, not for anyone, no matter who came.

The name Caelaris went first.

I hadn't planned it.

One waking period, I tried saying it.

"Zyrion Caelaris."

It sounded like someone else.

A hero.

A fool.

A man with white wings who thought promises meant anything.

Caelaris belonged to him.

So I stopped using it.

Years passed.

Maybe centuries.

Then Zyrion began feeling wrong too.

Every time I said it, Seris's voice followed.

Zyrion.

Warm.

Annoyed.

Laughing.

Dying.

I couldn't hear the name without hearing her.

So I shortened it.

Not carefully.

Not ceremonially.

I cut it down the same way Epitaph cut everything else.

"Ziro."

The prison returned the echo.

Ziro.

Smaller.

Incomplete.

Good.

That was closer.

But a name needed something after it.

Not a family.

Never again.

Something true.

Something that belonged to what remained.

I remembered old lessons from Seris's books. Words attached to mortality, emptiness, the vanity of things people convinced themselves would endure.

"Vanitas."

The word settled into the dark.

Ziro Vanitas.

I said it again.

This time, nobody else's voice answered.

That was why I kept it.

Zyrion Caelaris had been chosen.

Zyrion Caelaris had been loved.

Zyrion Caelaris had believed.

Ziro Vanitas required none of those things.

He only needed to endure.

The next rule came easily.

Attachment is merely grief that has not happened yet.

I carved it into memory because the sealstone wouldn't let me carve anything else.

Again.

Attachment is merely grief that has not happened yet.

Eventually I developed two answers for everything beyond the prison.

I called them mercies.

Maybe because part of me still enjoyed cruel jokes.

The First Mercy was Silence.

If the world could be made to stop reaching, taking, demanding, chasing, binding, then perhaps it could continue.

No crowns forcing destiny onto unwilling heads.

No Councils deciding freedom was dangerous.

No kings feeding people into wars.

No lovers making promises death would eventually break.

Just stillness.

Submission.

Silence.

I didn't want worship.

The thought disgusted me.

I didn't want subjects.

I wanted everyone to stop.

And if they refused?

There was the Second Mercy.

Ash.

Not conquest.

Not rule.

An ending.

Burn the crowns.

Burn the contracts.

Burn the institutions that taught people possession was love and control was responsibility.

Let civilisation collapse beneath the weight of everything it kept rebuilding.

Then walk away.

Alone.

The idea should've sounded monstrous.

Maybe it did.

I'd stopped caring.

What had being good earned me?

A sealed chamber.

A broken halo.

Blood I could still feel drying across hands that had been clean for thousands of years.

I flexed my fingers against the chains.

They answered with light.

Weak light.

That was new.

I stared.

The restraints had dimmed.

Not much.

Enough.

"Interesting."

I pulled.

The chains tightened, but slower.

The world above had forgotten the magic holding me.

Good.

Let it forget.

I slept again.

Long enough that when I woke, part of the ceiling had collapsed.

Stone rested against the sealstone monolith.

My wings were still pinned behind me, shadows compressed against magic-suppressing rock.

My broken halo floated overhead.

Black fragments.

Crimson cracks.

Still there.

Always there.

I hated that too.

If the person I used to be was truly gone, why hadn't the halo vanished?

I stopped asking.

Questions were another form of hope.

Then something happened.

Not sound.

Not light.

A feeling.

Ancient magic moved somewhere impossibly far away.

I froze.

The old Crown network.

I hadn't felt it clearly in ages.

Most of its lines had gone dead one by one as nations vanished and rituals were forgotten.

Now one of them woke.

Bright.

Sudden.

Power rushed through pathways older than the prison itself.

The sealstone around my chest warmed.

I waited.

The magic rose.

Reached.

Attempted to close around something.

Then—

"No."

I didn't hear the word.

I felt it.

Refusal.

Absolute.

Clean.

Someone, somewhere, had been offered a cage.

And rejected it.

The Crown network shuddered.

Once.

Twice.

Then fractured.

A crack raced across my prison wall.

Dust fell through the darkness.

I stared.

Another crack formed.

The chains flickered.

For the first time in thousands of years, one restraint went dark.

My broken halo moved.

Slowly.

One fragment turned.

Then another.

Crimson light appeared along their edges.

My shadowed wings twitched inside the sealstone.

The prison groaned.

I hadn't imagined it.

Something had happened.

Something impossible.

Something had told the old covenant no.

My heartbeat, quiet for ages, struck hard enough to hurt.

Once.

Again.

The sealstone cracked beside my face.

A thin line of air touched my skin.

Real air.

I almost laughed.

Instead, one crimson eye opened fully in the dark.

I stared at the fracture.

At the faint light beyond it.

At the first change the world had offered me since it buried my name.

My voice came out rough from disuse.

"...Who?"