Kyle yawned as he laid back on the thick silken sheets of his bed, arms stretching above his head as the early rays of dawn filtered through the half-opened windows. A faint breeze from the mountain carried in the scent of dew-soaked pine and distant waterfall mist. It was peaceful—serene, even. He blinked slowly at the wooden ceiling above, the soft creak of wind-touched beams grounding him in the reality he had known for the past decade.
Ten years.
It had been that long since Egeria found him in the mountains—bloodstained, orphaned, clutching a rusted dagger and carrying nothing but a newborn Vision and an unspoken instinct to survive.
So much had changed.
Unlike what the world whispered about their Hydro Archon, she didn't reside in the grandeur of the Palais Mermonia, nor did she enjoy the lavish marble halls and political pomp Fontaine's nobility expected of a god. That was a role she wore like a borrowed cloak—only when necessary. In truth, Egeria made her home on a secluded mountain peak, hidden among the clouds, overlooking the vast beauty of Fontaine from above.
It was a place untouched by the world below.
There were no guards, no councilors, no reverent followers making offerings. Only stillness, the endless sky, and the quiet rumble of waterfalls echoing through the cliffs.
Kyle had grown up there—on sacred stone and wind-carved terraces, in a house built from ancient wood and adorned with only what was necessary. Egeria didn't believe in excess. She taught simplicity, precision, and thoughtfulness in all things. Everything in the mountaintop abode served a purpose.
Even him.
Kyle turned onto his side, his hand brushing against the edge of the bed as he stared out the open window. The view was breathtaking. A sea of clouds spread across the horizon, glowing golden in the morning light. The highest spires of Fontaine could barely be seen far below, like distant toothpicks reaching up to a sky they'd never quite touch.
He sat up slowly, the loose white shirt he slept in rustling as he moved. His hair was longer now, tied into a low tail behind his neck. He had grown tall and lean, shoulders broadening into the frame of someone who trained daily under a goddess with an impossibly high standard.
Egeria had raised him with equal parts gentleness and ruthlessness. She did not coddle him. She rarely praised him. But her actions—the way she healed him without a word, how she stood silently watching his sparring matches until dusk, or how she left scrolls by his bedside with notes written in delicate ink—said more than her cold mask ever did.
Kyle thought his master was adorable. She hides her emotions behind a mask of aloofness but after spending years hugging her thighs, he can confidently says nobody knows Egeria better than him. In truth she feels emotions in a far greater magnitude and intensity and so she decides to avoid facing them and burying them instead.
He chuckled softly to himself, the sound low and private, a wisp of warmth in the cold morning air.
Yes, she was adorable—though he'd never dare say that out loud. Not unless he wanted to spend the next three hours drenched and dodging water blades for "sloppy posture" or "insufficient respect." But Kyle had long since learned to see through her rigid poise, the way her gaze would linger on him a moment too long when she thought he wasn't looking. The way her voice softened ever so slightly when he came back from a long training journey bruised and victorious. The way she always brewed his tea just the way he liked it—even when she pretended it was coincidence.
To anyone else, Egeria was unknowable. Distant. Divine. The original Hydro Archon whose wisdom carved out Fontaine and whose hand once sculpted justice into law.
But to Kyle… she was the woman who made porridge with too much salt on cold days because she'd misremembered a mortal recipe. The woman who sometimes stood outside his room for minutes before knocking, as if unsure of what to say, then awkwardly handed him a book she "just happened to find." The woman who never cried in front of him, but once stood silent in the rain for hours after he fell unconscious in battle and didn't wake for three days.
No, Kyle thought, tugging on his coat as he walked out into the brisk air, no one knew Egeria better than he did. Not her council. Not the Fontainean clergy. Not even the familiars who had once danced in the primordial seas alongside her.
He had grown up at her side—walking beside a god and slowly learning that even divinity could feel lonely.
She never admitted it, but Kyle understood. She kept herself distant not because she didn't feel, but because she felt too much. Emotions to a being like her weren't gentle waves; they were crushing floods. It was easier for her to bury them beneath layers of detachment and cold logic than to risk being overwhelmed.
He remembered one night, years ago, when he was barely twelve, curled up in the main study with a book he couldn't quite understand. He had fallen asleep there, face half-buried in the parchment, and woken hours later under a thick woven blanket. Egeria had been sitting nearby, legs folded gracefully, a candle burning beside her as she read in silence. She didn't speak when he woke. She simply placed a hand on his head and went on reading.
That moment stayed with him.
Because despite her mask, her silence, and her distance—Egeria cared. In her own strange, quiet, hidden way, she had let him into a space no one else could reach.
And he was grateful.
Grateful to her for raising him. For training him. For giving him purpose.
But also… for trusting him enough to let him see her.
Even if only glimpses.
As Kyle stepped onto the stone courtyard, his boots brushing against the dew-slicked ground, he stretched once more, exhaling a sharp breath.
He walks to the kitchen, preparing breakfast for today. Egeria didn't need to eat and never did before he entered the mountain. Now having breakfast together was a silent everyday ritual. She didn't eat full servings apart from special occasions but she made sure she was there everyday to taste his cooking. On days he was sick or too battered up, she would even cook for him.
The kitchen was nestled at the far end of the mountaintop residence, a modest space by mortal standards, but one Kyle had long since imbued with warmth and rhythm. Polished stone counters reflected the pale morning light, and shelves carved from mountain pine held an assortment of ingredients—dried herbs, freshly ground spices, Fontainean grains, and the rarer delicacies Egeria had conjured during one of her infrequent whims.
Kyle rolled up his sleeves and got to work, his movements fluid and precise. The pan warmed over the flame, and he whisked together a batter for soft rice crepes infused with dried hydro-lotus petals and sweetroot. The scent began to fill the room, floral and inviting. He chopped a handful of sun-kissed tomatoes, sliced riverfruit, and boiled a bit of seagrass broth on the side—simple, elegant, nourishing.
He'd learned to cook by trial and error. Egeria hadn't taught him—at least not directly—but she had watched. And commented. And corrected. And occasionally conjured illusions of recipe books from half a millennium ago and handed them to him without explanation. Over time, Kyle had pieced things together. The crepes were her favorite, though she never said it aloud. She always finished them. Always left the plate meticulously clean.
And though she didn't require food, she never missed breakfast.
It was their unspoken ritual, as sacred in its own way as any prayer or lesson. A moment in the day where divinity gave way to simplicity. Two people, seated across from each other, sharing warmth over steaming bowls and porcelain cups.
Kyle poured the tea—snowmelt and elder petals today—and began setting the table by the wide balcony that overlooked the valley. The breeze had grown gentler, and rays of sunlight now stretched across the peaks in golden slants.
Right on cue, he heard the soft tread of bare feet.
Egeria stepped into view from the eastern corridor, draped in a flowing robe the color of storm-touched seafoam. Her silvery hair cascaded like mist down her back, and her gaze—cool, unreadable—drifted immediately to the table.
She didn't speak.
She never did first.
Kyle smiled faintly, motioning to the chair he'd set out for her.
"Good morning, Master. I made the petal crepes again. You'll complain less today, I hope."
Egeria didn't sit immediately. She walked past him instead, briefly pausing by his shoulder. He could feel her presence—cool and weightless like moonlight—and the faintest shift in the air told him she'd looked at him. Really looked.
"You've cut the tomatoes thinner," she murmured, voice neutral, though a hint of approval lingered just beneath.
"You noticed." Kyle's smirk widened.
"I always notice," she said quietly, and finally sat down.
He took the seat across from her, and for a few long moments, they simply ate in silence.
The world could have ended, and neither would have cared.
This was their time—untouched, undisturbed.
Between bites, Egeria set down her fork and regarded him, fingers curled around the delicate porcelain of her teacup. Her expression remained as composed as ever—goddesslike, unreadable—but Kyle had long since learned how to catch the faintest microshifts beneath that calm.
So he pushed the line. Just a little.
"You know," he said, voice low and playful, "if you keep looking at me like that, Master, I might start getting ideas."
Egeria blinked once. Slowly. Her gaze settled on him with practiced serenity, but the stillness that followed was too crisp—too immediate.
"'Ideas'?" she repeated, setting her cup down with precision. "Do elaborate."
Kyle grinned, all teeth and confidence. "Dangerous ones. About you and me, alone in a secluded mountaintop, sharing breakfast every day like an old married couple."
There it was.
A flicker—just a flicker—of something in her eyes. Embarrassment? Flustered surprise? Delight?
She rose to her feet in a single, elegant motion, her robe trailing like water down stone. "Kyle," she said with a voice cool as glacial melt, "you are becoming insolent."
"I'm becoming honest," he said, his smirk unfading. "Not my fault you're cute when you're pretending not to feel anything."
For a heartbeat, the mountain was silent.
Then she raised her hand.
Water shimmered in the air, coalescing around her palm in a whispering curl of energy. From the moisture in the breeze, from the distant falls below, from the very air—it responded to her call, obedient and swift. A long, fluid ribbon of Hydro formed in her grasp, snapping into a familiar, whip-like shape with a hiss.
Kyle's smirk twitched—half anticipation, half amused dread.
"Outside," Egeria said, turning on her heel. "Now."
"I take it that's a 'no' to dessert?" he quipped, rising anyway.
She didn't look back. "If you insist on teasing a goddess, you will receive a divine response."
They stepped into the courtyard, the morning sun warm on the stone tiles, the wind tugging gently at their clothes. Birds scattered from the trees at the edge of the clearing as the ambient hum of Hydro energy gathered around her like a tide held at bay.
Kyle stood under the tall pine at the courtyard's edge, hands behind his back, expression faux-somber like a misbehaving schoolboy.
Egeria lifted her whip, expression smooth as ever, but Kyle saw it—the tiniest twitch at the corner of her mouth, a breath held just half a second too long.
She was flustered.
And delighted.
The first lash snapped through the air and landed gently across his chest. It didn't hurt—it barely tingled—but it whistled with a theatrical flourish.
The second followed, brushing his shoulder with all the severity of a silk ribbon.
"Disrespectful," Egeria said flatly.
"Affectionate," Kyle corrected.
Snap.
"Arrogant."
"Charming."
Snap.
"Presumptuous."
"You let me get away with it."
The whip vanished with a final shimmer, dissolving into droplets that drifted harmlessly to the stone. Egeria turned from him, her hands folding behind her back, robe fluttering like mist.
"You should meditate after breakfast," she said, voice cool and composed again. "Clearly your judgment is compromised."
Kyle straightened, rolling his shoulder theatrically. "Your punishments are getting softer, Master. I think you're going easy on me."
She paused at the edge of the courtyard, her back still to him.
"If I ever decided to go hard on you," she said, "you wouldn't be able to walk straight for a week."
Kyle choked on air, mouth half open, face caught between laughter and stunned silence.
Egeria kept walking, not a single hint of emotion on her face.
But he could swear—swear—that the tips of her ears had flushed the faintest hint of blue.