While rain fell on Brustain, silence hung in the Ether.
Volsei stood in a gallery of obsidian, unseen.
The air here was not air as humans knew it. It was a thick, languid syrup of potential. It tasted of ozone and old blood.
Before him, a demon court was at play.
A lesser imp was chained to a pillar. Its skin was like cracked leather.
A demon lord named Xix'rul lazily traced a claw along its trembling flank.
"The texture is inferior," Xix'rul mused. His voice was a vibration felt in the teeth. "But the fear… note the pitch of its psychic whimper. A vintage year."
The court chuckled. A dozen demons in various forms of elegant degradation.
One leaned forward, eyes glowing. Its form shifted fluidly between male and female.
"Peel it. Let's see if the resonance improves when it's… simplified."
Volsei watched, his light brown eyes flat.
He felt nothing. No rage. No pity.
Just a profound, yawning boredom.
This was the nature of the Ether. Beauty masking infinite tedium. Strength used for ever more elaborate variations on a theme of pain.
He had seen it a thousand times.
Forty years ago, these beings had tried to conquer the human world. They had failed.
Humiliated by a whispered prayer that attacked the very core of them.
Now, they ruled their own diminished realm with even more paranoid viciousness. They were dinosaurs in a gilded cage, picking at each other's scales.
A whisper of movement.
Volsei was no longer there.
He didn't walk. He unfolded.
The obsidian gallery blurred. The cruel laughter stretched into streaks of meaningless color.
Everything snapped into a different configuration.
Cold, damp stone beneath his boots. The smell of wet wool and woodsmoke. The muted clatter of human activity.
He stood in the upper gallery of Castle Eden's great hall. He was hidden in the deep shadow of a stone arch.
The transition was instant. A step between two pages of a book.
Realm-walking.
It was the only interesting thing about him.
Below, the human court was at its evening meal. It was pathetic in its own way.
The frayed finery. The forced jollity. The underlying desperation.
His eyes, sharper than any human's, picked out details. The king's tired smile. The calculating gleam in the visiting lord's eye.
And her.
The princess with the mismatched eyes. He'd noticed her earlier.
Not for her body. His shadow-heritage gave him an objective appreciation of form.
He noticed the stillness.
While others fidgeted, laughed too loudly, or preened, she was an island of calm analysis.
When the lord—Florian—had insulted her, Volsei had seen the flash in her odd eyes.
Not hurt. Not even anger, really.
It was the cold, bright spark of assessment. As if the man had just become a specimen under one of those human magnifying glasses.
Fascinating.
Most humans crumbled or raged. They followed their animal scripts.
This one… she computed. She recalibrated.
He watched her push food around her plate. Her gaze was distant, no doubt solving some abstract problem while the inane chatter flowed around her.
A servant bumped the lord's chair, sloshing wine.
Florian erupted, his face purpling.
"Clumsy oaf! This is imported from Tombsrose! Worth more than your wretched life!"
The servant cowered. King Alistair began a placating murmur.
The princess's eyes flicked to the scene. Her lips tightened, a minuscule movement.
Not in sympathy for the servant, Volsei thought.
In disgust at the inefficiency of the outburst. At the waste of energy.
Volsei felt the faintest stir of something long dormant.
Not empathy.
Recognition.
Here was another creature living between worlds. Not physically, like him. But psychologically.
She didn't belong to the simpering court. Nor to the brute struggle for survival outside.
She was in a third place. A place of logic and silent observation.
A place of profound loneliness.
He leaned against the cold stone. His hand rested on the plain, worn hilt of the long knife at his belt.
It wasn't a sword, not yet. He'd taken it from the man who killed his mother.
It was a focus. A reminder.
For years, he'd moved through both realms like a ghost. Learning. Stealing knowledge. Practicing his art—the art of cutting.
He'd reached a point where the mountains and the demons and the scheming lords all seemed made of the same insubstantial paper.
One whisper from him, and they would part.
He was so terribly, impossibly bored.
But this… this princess of a dying kingdom… She was an equation he hadn't seen before.
An unknown variable.
He decided to watch a little longer.