The rain returned like vengeance.
Not soft. Not forgiving.
It fell against the manor like a judgment, each droplet a knock on the bones of the past—loud, insistent, unrelenting. Thunder cracked overhead, not once but again and again, as if the sky itself were remembering something it had tried too long to forget.
August woke with a jolt.
No cry. No gasp. Just a sharp intake of breath, as though his heart had been struck by an invisible blade.
He sat up slowly, limbs aching beneath the weight of sleep, of fever, of memory. The linen clung to his skin, damp with something colder than sweat.
He was still in his clothes.
Still not fine.
But he had slept long enough to feel the world again.
And the world… was angry.
A flash of lightning turned the window white. The glass pulsed with the light before collapsing again into night.
August turned his head—slowly, like a man facing a crime scene he'd already memorized—and stared out into the twisting dark.
The rain blurred everything.
But the storm held shape.
Held intention.
As if someone, somewhere, had committed a sin so great the sky could not help but scream.
He pressed his palm to his chest. The place where his heart lived felt wrong—tight, sore, alive with something it could not name.
Another lightning strike.
August flinched.
It wasn't from fear. Not exactly.
More like recognition.
Like the storm was not outside him—but within, answering something buried too deep for words.
He exhaled once. Then closed his eyes.
No more.
He stood.
His balance was fragile, legs still heavy with sleep's hangover, but he moved anyway—silent, precise, instinct guiding him like a string pulled through shadows.
With trembling fingers, he reached for the curtains. The fabric was cold. Unwelcoming. He pulled them shut with a quietness that did not match the violence of the night.
His reflection caught in the window's glass before it vanished.
White hair tangled.
Eyes grey as thunderclouds.
A face too young to be that haunted—and yet too old to look like that by accident.
He turned on his heel,on polished floor, and began to walk.
Not rushed. Not loud.
But driven.
Somewhere down the corridor, behind a closed door, Elias slept. Or should be.
But August needed to know.
Not because he feared Elias might be in danger.
But because—if Elias wasn't there—if Elias was gone—if the bed was cold—
He didn't know what he'd do with that silence.
And so he walked, fever humming low beneath his skin, the storm echoing louder in his ribs than it did outside.
Lightning lit the hallway through high, arched windows, casting shadows that walked beside him like ghosts unsure of their place.
And somewhere far above the manor, the thunder spoke again—
Not with words.
But with warning.
Blackwood Manor held its breath.
Outside, the storm roared like a punishment. Rain battered the old stone walls in sheets of silver fury. Thunder cracked again and again—each blast louder, angrier, as though the heavens were breaking glass with their bare hands.
And above it all, light danced like knives across the sky.
Inside—quiet.
Or nearly.
August moved through the darkened corridor like a candle's shadow, silent, bones aching with exhaustion and memory. The long nightcloaks of velvet draped along the walls fluttered from the drafts, brushing against him like silk-wrapped ghosts.
He reached the chamber door.
Elias's chamber.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Then, with trembling fingers, he turned the handle and crossed the threshold.
The door creaked, but the storm swallowed the sound.
He stepped into the dimness.
At first—nothing.
The room was vast, as most rooms in Blackwood Manor were. Luxurious. Rich. Dripping in the kind of inherited beauty that never truly felt alive.
A four-post bed stood at the center, its silken sheets untouched.
August's grey eyes roamed—past the unlit candelabra, past the fireplace lying dormant, past the velvet chair still holding the shape of someone recently seated.
And then—
There.
Near the window.
A tall figure, carved from silence and moonlight, stood with his back turned. Broad shoulders framed in shadow, arms crossed lightly, head tilted just so.
Elias.
His gaze was fixed outside—on the war-torn sky. The thundering had become more than noise. It was a ritual now, relentless and cruel. It painted him in light and fury, as if the storm itself had paused to sculpt him.
August stepped closer.
"Elias…" he said softly.
No answer.
He tried again, a little firmer this time,
"Elias"
But the sky exploded once more—this time louder, deeper, as if God had struck bone.
August flinched.
Hard.
A sharp, instinctive recoil. His eyes flew wide as if lightning had entered the room and found him wanting. Before he could stop himself—before shame or pride could intervene—he moved.
Fast.
Slender limbs folding into motion, August rushed forward and buried himself against Elias's chest.
He didn't think.
He didn't ask.
He simply just hid.
Wrapped in the scent of warmth and rain-drenched linen, arms curling inward as though his own ribs had betrayed him. His face pressed against the soft fabric of Elias's tunic, white fingers clutching the sides of it as if to tether himself to something—anything—real.
And Elias—
He froze.
Not from fear.
But from something else.
Something older.
Something nameless.
For a breathless second, he couldn't move.
He hadn't even heard August enter. The thunder had consumed the world. But now, with this sudden warmth in his arms, with august this fragile body curled against his chest, his hands felt as though they belonged to someone else.
He looked down.
White hair tangled and damp. Shoulders trembling.
August.
"August"
And though the name had no anchor in memory—though Elias could not recall the shape of the boy's voice in laughter or the cadence of his name in sunlight—his heart knew.
It beat too fast.
Too loud.
As if something sacred and ancient had stirred behind the bones.
He didn't push him away.
He couldn't.
Because somewhere deep beneath the silence—beneath the lost days and broken thoughts—he felt it.
Not recognition.
But resonance.
August, buried against him, exhaled shakily. His breath hitched against Elias's chest like a broken bird. And as his trembling fingers curled tighter into the fabric, he whispered—not loud enough for the storm to hear:
"You're safe…"
As if he needed to say it to believe it.
As if some part of him had feared that Elias might vanish with the thunder.
But he hadn't.
He was still here.
Solid.
Warm.
Alive.
And in the black cathedral of the night, where rain clawed at the windows and lightning ripped the heavens into pieces—
Two hearts remembered how to hold one another.
Even if the mind had forgotten.
The thunder did not stop.
It moved like something alive now—something with teeth. A beast crawling across the sky, growling into the bones of the manor, shaking windows like they were made of paper instead of glass.
Still, Elias did not move.
He let August remain against him—this fragile, slender thing trembling in silence. It wasn't comfort he gave, not exactly. It was permission—to lean, to shake, to exist without explanation.
But when the next thunderclap cracked open the heavens with violent indifference—
August flinched again.
It was subtle. A soft jerk. A breath caught. But Elias felt it—all of it.
Because it didn't come from fear of the storm.
It came from something else.
Something deeper.
Something that felt like grief remembering itself.
Elias's green eyes flicked to the window, where lightning sketched cruel patterns in the dark. Then slowly, deliberately, he looked down at the boy folded against his chest.
He exhaled.
A long breath. Not heavy—but aware.
Then he raised both hands.
And gently placed them on August's trembling shoulders.
The gesture was firm, not forceful. Anchoring. Not possessive.
August looked up, eyes wide—exhausted and shimmering, as if they had not closed in years, as if sleep had been a borrowed thing and fear a constant tenant.
Elias's voice was low. Even.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Not cold.
Not cruel.
Just… asking.
August didn't answer.
He turned his head instead—toward the window. Toward the storm. The thunder cracked again, and he raised one hand—thin, shaking—and pulled the curtain shut.
Soft fabric fell like silence.
The night disappeared behind it.
Only then did August speak—barely more than breath.
"Nothing."
A pause.
"I just wanted to make sure everything is fine."
Elias tilted his head slightly, studying him.
"By doing that?"
August turned away again.
This time not from fear, but from something worse.
Embarrassment.
His pale skin flushed at the cheekbones, like soft petals bruising under touch. For a moment, he looked like a boy caught stealing warmth from someone else's fire.
Elias watched him.
Then, softly:
"I want to ask something."
August stilled.
Then, slowly, turned his face—back to where it had been a moment before.
"What is it?"
Elias hesitated.
His hand reached up—absently scratching the back of his neck, as if trying to undo a knot of thought.
He began slowly.
"In your chamber… there's a family portrait."
August's brows knit.
"And?"
Elias's voice dropped, uncertain.
"There's a woman in it."
August's eyes sharpened slightly, the storm in them turning inward.
"Go on."
Elias exhaled again, this time shakier.
"I… I saw her. In my dreams."
Now August looked up—not just with his face, but with his whole gaze. Into Elias's eyes. Into those green depths that held no lies, only the echo of truths yet spoken.
He didn't interrupt.
He waited.
Elias pressed forward, voice gentler now. Searching.
"But not only one. There were two of them. Twins. I… I think they were twins."
The world stopped breathing.
Elias continued.
"the one was with you, and the other one's was with me"
August stared.
Silent.
His lips parted slightly, but no sound came.
Then Elias, swallowing once, finished:
"Because the same one—"
"She called me child."
Silence followed.
Not the silence of nothingness.
But the silence that waits on the edge of a revelation.
August's expression shifted—not disbelief, not denial, but something quieter. Something shattered and slow and aching.
He looked at Elias.
Really looked.
As if seeing him anew under the lightning's judgment.
"Is it true," Elias asked again, "that the other one… is my mother?"
The question fell into the air like a sword dropped point-first into stone.
August did not answer.
Because he couldn't.
Because how could this be?
Two women.
The same face.
One in a portrait.
One in a dream.
One calling him her child.
The storm outside continued.
But the true thunder was within.
Elias's voice was quieter now—tempered, low, like something too fragile to say loudly, lest it break under its own weight.
"Since… just like you said… I lost my memories…"
He paused.
His gaze dropped to the floor between them, as though the answers he sought might be hiding there, curled like secrets beneath dust and shadow.
"I didn't remember anything."
The words sounded simple.
But they carried centuries.
August's breath hitched, a tremor threading through his slender frame. He stood still, his back to the window, the curtain behind him drawn like a veil between past and present.
Elias looked up again—into him, not just at him. His green eyes were no longer confused. They were searching. Not desperate, but deliberate.
As if, at last, the pieces had begun to gather.
"Was she really my mother?"
The question landed like a bell toll across a chapel of memories.
August opened his mouth, but no sound came.
A hush settled.
He had been holding too much for too long—letters unwritten, truths unspoken, ghosts unnamed.
He blinked, slowly, as though trying to wake from a dream that had never fully ended.
And then—softly:
"Is there anything else… she said?"
Elias's hands curled slightly at his sides, then relaxed.
"Yes."
He nodded once, barely.
"The one who told me…" he said slowly, as though dredging each word from the bottom of some sunken place, "…she said your mother is her twin."
The air collapsed.
Not outside—not in the storm—but inside August.
His world tilted.
He did not speak.
He did not breathe.
His lashes trembled.
And then, suddenly, the room felt too small. The silence too loud. The past too near. He saw it—the portrait, the matching faces, the way one smiled in memory and the other in sorrow. He heard it—the lullabies with missing verses. He felt it—the dreams, the glimpses, the blurred boy, the woman who vanished before naming herself.
It was true.
It had always been true.
Maralise.
She wasn't just a shadow in someone else's memory.
She wasn't just the stranger with familiar eyes.
She was Elias's mother.
She had told him herself.
And August—August, who had clung to fractured pieces for so long, who had bled on every memory trying to bind it back together—he had never seen it. Not until now. Not until Elias spoke it into being.
His breath left him all at once.
And then—
Without hesitation—
He moved.
Arms reaching. Steps silent.
He embraced Elias again, tighter than before—not trembling this time, but desperate.
Desperate in that quiet, thunderous way one clings to the last piece of the puzzle, the final thread in the labyrinth, the one truth that makes the rest of it bearable.
He held Elias as if the storm might steal him.
As if the world might try again to take what it had almost succeeded in breaking.
His voice, when it came, was scarcely audible—buried against Elias's chest, woven into the folds of linen and heartbeat and disbelief:
"I didn't know…"
And perhaps he hadn't.
But now—he did.
And the weight of that knowing was both grief and grace.
Outside, the rain did not relent.
It drummed like the hands of fate upon the roof.
But within the chamber, beneath candle shadows and stormlight—
Two boys stood at the edge of something vast and ancient.
And for the first time, they faced it together.