The cold Aezolan summer air burned Caelan's lungs as he followed a few paces behind the king. He wondered privately if the king felt it too - the sharp bite of the wind against delicate tissues already struggling to function. Did it hurt when he breathed? Was each inhale becoming a conscious effort now? Caelan pushed such thoughts from his head, focusing instead on the way the king's cloak fluttered in the breeze, the slight unsteadiness in his step that no one else would notice.

Despite his worsening condition, the king insisted on ending each day in the courtyard. The garden had become his sanctuary - resilient rosebushes and flowering plants defying Aezola's perpetual winter to bloom in vibrant defiance. Caelan cherished these evenings too, though for different reasons. He knew each moment was sacred, each sunset potentially their last together. He needed to savor these simple, peaceful intervals - the king seated on his favorite stone bench, birds fluttering down to pick fallen berries from the snow-dusted bushes, the fading light painting everything in shades of orange and gold.

They both knew how this would end. The unspoken truth loomed over them like the castle's shadow - a terminal illness could not be fought with swords or shields. Caelan would be alone again. The king, in his very essence, would haunt him. The knight feared that emptiness more than he feared death itself. It felt like he was already haunted by ghosts of what could've been - a normal life, perhaps, married and working in the mines like he was born to do.

But that life had never been meant for him. Johnathan Velryis had seen something in him seven years ago, and everything had changed. The king was all he had left now. Caelan would not let someone take that from him, though he knew deep down that this was the one battle he could never win. Rotting from the inside out was a cruel enemy, silent and relentless.

Birds scattered as the king settled onto his stone bench, watching with faint amusement as a few braver sparrows continued their foraging beneath a particularly lush rosebush. The sunlight waned, casting the courtyard in golden hues that softened the king's pale features and made his tired eyes glow. Caelan stood at attention nearby, his gaze never straying far from his charge.

"You're thinking so loud I can hear it," Caelan observed, his voice softening the bluntness of his words. His eyes raked over the king's slightly hunched form, noting the way his fingers tightened momentarily around the armrest. He tilted his head away slightly as the king shifted his attention toward him, suddenly self-conscious of his observation. "I mean, you don't have to tell me - I just.. it was an observation."