Leopold left without another word, leaving Silas to churn his thoughts in silence. He laid down on the warm floor, his bones finding it more familiar than the soft linens. 

Silas had always been pitifully ignorant about the ways of Nimit, let alone Raia. Ever since his first conscious thought, he had found himself working in the barn with Elder Chowksi. He was a simple and conservative man who enforced values like self reliance, simplicity, hard work and equality. He did not care for spells and magic. He believed that their world would have been a paradise, had the Gods not intervened and cursed them with such powers that they did not deserve. He vehemently opposed the existence of magic in any space that he shared.

So it went, unlike the other kids of his age, Silas never went to a school where he could learn spells or incantations. And once the boys he played with started attending the village school, they did not hang out with him so often. The rift between them only widened with time, until he had fully resigned to the life of a peasant. 

He was to inherit the cattles and barns from the Elder and live out a peaceful life like him. His days were full of toil and his nights, dreamless but content. And he was happy, or as happy as one could be, within the bounds of wooden fences. He never longed for more—until that one night.

The night that Erie came like a gust of wind that blew the dust off everything.

He was a few years older, strikingly beautiful in a way that didn’t seem real to Silas. His clothes were worn, and his boots barely held together, but he walked like he owned the stars. His eyes were of an innocent doe but tongue sharp as a sword and he had a penchant for spinning tales so magical, that it broke Silas’s heart. 

Silas had never met anyone who made him feel so... awake.

Erie had laughed at his awkwardness, called him "barn boy" and then shared half his coarse bread without complaints. For the first time in years, laying in the barn beside him, he started dreaming. 

From that night on, Silas found himself looking for glimpses of him in every crowd. Erie had that effect. A flame tempting the moth to its own beautiful end. He sneaked him Spell books, accompanied him to taverns and taught Silas some of his most precious spells. 

And though years passed, and words grew fewer between them, Silas never quite stopped waiting for him to turn around and say, “Come on, barn boy. Let’s run.”

A tear rolled down his cheek.

Because one morning, when Erie did finally turn around and call for him—he ran.

He ran without thinking, heart leaping like it had waited a lifetime for that moment. But instead of freedom, he ran straight into the arms of raging flames, a man with eyes like dying stars and a voice like thunder wrapped in velvet - whom Erie so cruelly condemned to death.

Slumber soon came to claim him in its kind arms and as Silas slowly drifted away, he felt the soft slide of a sheet drawn over him. Fingers brushed his shoulder—brief, careful. He clutched the cover tighter and sank into sleep.