As they grew older in that freezing chamber, their world had narrowed to stone and silence. The damp smell of mildew clung to the walls, the echo of dripping water marked the hours, and the only companions were old scrolls piled haphazardly in the corners—histories, laws, fragments of poetry. The words became their window, their only glimpse of life beyond the bars. But paper was cold company. Sometimes, when the words blurred and loneliness gnawed, they pressed their palms to the iron lattice, feeling the frost sting their skin, as though touch alone might confirm there was a reality outside.

The bars gave nothing back. Just silence. Just cold.

Until one night.

The corridor stirred. First, faint footsteps. Slow, steady, deliberate. Too heavy to be a warden, too purposeful to be the wandering monks. This sound carried weight, a rhythm that unsettled the still air like it was unwelcome here.

Then, the torchlight came. A wavering glow at the end of the hall, splintering shadows across the stone. It crawled closer, hesitant, as though unsure it belonged in such a place. In its light, they saw him.

Blade.

The figure was carved from nightmare and grief. Cloaked in black and red, his coat brushing against the floor, his presence sharp and unbearable like a blade drawn too close to the skin. His face caught the light, half-shadow, half-fire, eyes burning like fragments of molten steel. He was not a prisoner. He was not a guard. He was something other—something dangerous, something broken that had taken shape in human form.

But to them, he was not just danger.

Something ancient stirred within. A pulse, faint but undeniable. Familiarity. Recognition without reason. Like remembering a dream only when you see the ending. Their chest tightened, their breath came shallow, and before their mind could caution them, their hand slipped between the bars.

Fingers pale and trembling—not with fear, but with something purer. Longing.

Reach.

Blade stopped mid-step.

The torch in his hand hissed faintly as the oil burned, light flickering across his sharp features. His body stilled, rigid, as though struck by an invisible force. Slowly, he turned, and then his gaze found theirs.

Golden-red. Like fire bleeding into iron.

For the briefest instant, his breath faltered. His body betrayed him.

The Shackling Prison was full of faces. He had passed countless cells, seen countless broken men and women staring blankly through their confinement. To him, prisoners were nothing but shadows rotting in silence, echoes of choices they could not undo. This one should have been the same. Another hollow shell.

But it wasn't.

That hand—reaching through the cold iron—pulled at something deep within him. A memory he had buried under centuries of rage. Something he swore he had forgotten. His stomach knotted, his chest constricted, and for a fleeting moment he felt that if he touched them, the world itself would split open.

He told himself lies to fight it. It's nothing. Just another convict. Just another cursed soul. Don't look. Don't feel. But the more he repeated it, the hollower it rang.

Because standing there, Blade felt recognition.

And it terrified him.

He clenched his fists at his sides, nails digging into his palms until he thought blood might run. He hated it—the weakness crawling over him, the stutter of his heart, the heat behind his eyes. How dare this "stranger" look at him with such open want, such fragile trust? How dare they make him feel something other than the rage he had built his existence upon?

For centuries, Blade had armored himself with fury, with grief, with the certainty that there was nothing left worth reaching for. He was a monster made to wander, cursed to bleed and revive, chained to his sins. And yet, here was this figure, caged and pale, offering him their hand as though he were still a man.

He didn't take it.

He couldn't. His body screamed to retreat, to vanish back into the shadows where no one could touch the hollow parts of him. And yet, he did not move. He remained fixed in the corridor, golden eyes locked to theirs, his shadow stretching toward their cell like a second set of bars.

Silence filled the hall. Heavy, suffocating, intimate. The kind of silence that binds two souls together before either can understand why.

Blade should have turned away. He should have left them to their fate. That was safer. That was easier. But his legs betrayed him, his breath betrayed him, his heart betrayed him. And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt the fragile, dangerous spark of something he thought dead.

Not just grief. Not just fury.

Recognition.

And it made him ache.