[TFCaQ] Where the Moonlight Breaks
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Summary: Every storm is preceded by gathering clouds, every tsunami by shrinking waves. The Cacophony's past returns in silver and steel, led by the father who once called her divine and now damns her as broken. She will either shatter beyond repair, or be stitched together by the ever watchful shadow at her side.
TWs! Deaths, domestic abuse, implied potential SA, religious trauma and themes, abuse, insane character(s)
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Surprisingly enough, it had crept up on them. Usually things like this came with plenty of long-winded declarations of “cleansing the land” and “saving the people”, plenty of time for the two of them to even have a light tea or coffee. But this came suddenly, which was only mildly impressive. It had started like most other confrontations. A clearing in the middle of an ancient battlefield, dusk bleeding violet across the trees, rotting banners from forgotten armies stuck in the ground, the sky holding its breath in that moment between storm and stillness.
The Specter stood at the center of it. Blade at her side. Chin tilted. Silent.
And across from her — mounted knights in polished silver, banners fluttering like judgment in the wind, and at their center, a man. Older. Regal. Smug. He wore his crown like it had been fused to his skull from birth and spoke like the world owed him something for the burden.
The Cacophony was at the Specter’s side, but she wasn’t still. She was pacing. Erratic steps, the heel of one boot clicking on stone, the other stepping on her own hem like she didn’t even feel it. Her laughter was higher-pitched than usual, a breath too quick, a note too sharp.
“Ohhh, look at this!” she sang, one hand waving in the air, “The cavalry’s here! And I didn’t even get a cake! So rude, Father. You always were dramatic, but never had taste.”
The king’s voice was like a hammer’s strike on steel, “Silence, girl.”
“Oooh! We’re already at ‘girl,’ are we? What happened to ‘my sweet stardrop’? What happened to-” she mimed a swoon, “-‘your royal heir, delicate, moonkissed, and divine’?”
“Or what?!” she shrieked, her arms flaring wide like wings soaked in red, “You’ll do what? Gag me? Put a box over my head? Marry me off to some simpering noble with too many teeth?! Again?!”
She laughed, too loudly, too brightly, like a blade held at the wrong end.
“You will cease your mockery at once,” the man snapped, voice carrying the weight of command, “You disgrace not just your name, but the legacy you were born to.”
The Specter’s eyes narrowed.
He brought his horse forward and raised his voice for all to hear.
“I am King Kerath of the House Araxelli. Sovereign of the Nine Wards, Keeper of the Folded Flame, Defender of the Bloodline Eternal—”
“Oh, gods, he’s still doing the titles,” the Cacophony muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear, but the Specter cocked her head as she noticed the Cacophony still silenced herself.
“-and this,” he continued, glaring at her, “this wretched creature is my blood. My daughter. Born under moonlight in the Hollow Garden. First of her name. The lost princess of a realm too far from here and too noble for your puny minds to comprehend.”
There was a collective shift among the knights, like armor tightening. Eyes darted to her, wide and blinking.
The Cacophony curtsied. Deep. Mocking. “Hi.”
The king’s voice was thunder, “She has a duty to fulfill.”
The Cacophony’s face twitched violently.
“She has a throne to reclaim. A kingdom waiting. And she will come with us now.”
The Specter still hadn’t moved. But she was listening and something in the shadows shifted dangerously.
But the king wasn’t done.
“She never told you, did she?” he asked, turning now to the Specter for the first time, as if she were a footnote, “Of course she didn’t. Because she’s ashamed. She knows what she is. A broken heir. A failed daughter. A blasphemous, shattered moon. A disappointment to her house. She’s run from it all her life, and now she hides behind that mask of madness-”
The Cacophony let out a laugh, shrill and rattling and too sharp at the edges.
“Oh, wow. The whole speech, huh? Really going for the dramatics tonight, aren’t we, Daddy?”
But there was something wrong with her tone. It was all wrong.
It wasn’t her usual laugh, the unhinged kind, musical and malicious, thrown like knives into the faces of men who thought they had power. This laugh was stretched thin. Hysterical. Her voice trembled, just barely, like silk fraying beneath too much tension. Her hands shook, but not with the need to unleash her madness and chaos. It shook with something deeper, instinctual. Something that was still raw.
The Specter heard it. Because of course she did. She always did.
“You think I’m ashamed?” the Cacophony went on, spinning once, letting her skirt whirl around her like smoke, “Oh no, darling. I’m thriving. Look at me. All grown up. Covered in blood, sure, but emotionally stable as anyone of our house could be. ”
The king raised a hand to silence her, “You will return home. You’ve cost this crown too much. You’ve run long enough. The show is over.”
The Cacophony’s fingers gripped the candlestick tighter, one hand coming down to clutch at her skirt, the fabric bunching up and sticking out through white-knuckles.
“You can’t make me go back,” she spat, “I’m not that thing anymore. I burned the dresses. I killed the etiquette tutors. I murdered my debutante ball with poison and prosecco. I split that fucking moonsworn church into pieces. You can’t make me—”
“BLASPHEMOUS BITCH! You don’t belong here,” he snapped, “You never did. You don’t belong anywhere. You’re a useless and unwanted good-for-nothing. I should have killed you the moment you came out of the womb, but your whore mother convinced me that you were blessed by Selune herself.”
The air split. The moment the word “unwanted” left his mouth, the Cacophony stopped laughing. She stopped moving. She just… stood. Her eyes shone with something unfamiliar, welled with something rarely seen even by the Specter. She didn’t blink it away.
The tension in the clearing thickened.
When the king shouted her truth when he revealed all of her with all the pomp of a man who thought it was a dagger held to the throat of shame, the Specter didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink. She already knew. She’d known since that night months ago, when the Cacophony had returned to their lair glassy-eyed and barefoot, her gown soaked in something that wasn’t blood but looked just as heavy. When she had sat at the base of the stairs, laughing to herself in a way that didn’t fit, too quiet, too lost. Her eyes glassy with memories and haunted with fear.
That was the night the Specter had pulled the truth from her, piece by piece, not by demand but by staying. She had listened, wordless, as the mask of madness cracked and the princess underneath clawed her way out long enough to say:
“He said I came out wrong.”
“He said I don’t deserve the crown. Or love. Or breathing.”
“He used to lock me in darkness and stand behind me, his hands always on my shoulders, touching, touching. It never went further but…”
The Specter had sat with her the whole night. Said nothing. Made no promises she couldn’t keep. Only stayed.
So when King Kerath revealed his daughter’s identity to the world like it was a card pulled from the deck of shame, the Specter didn’t react. Because it was old news. Old wounds. Already dressed. Already held.
But then he said those words. Useless. Unwanted. Killed the moment she had left the womb. And that was new. That was now. And that was enough.
Her blade moved. The knight beside the king died without seeing it, his armored head cracking against stone.
Everything else followed.
The massacre was not anger. It was principle.
The Specter moved through men like grief made flesh. Without mercy, without pause, without spectacle. Not because they insulted her. But because they dared to try and tear down what she had already mended. What they had already survived.
And through it all, the Cacophony stood, frozen not from surprise, but from remembering.
Her father’s words didn’t shock her. She had always known he thought them. But to hear them again, here, in front of the one person who had already heard it all and had stayed…
That was worse. That was the kind of shame that dug itself into ribs like rot.
The Specter didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t treat her differently.
She just fought. For her.
And that was more than her kingdom ever gave her.
Back in the lair, the Cacophony sat like a painting abandoned in a dusty, lonely, old manor. She hadn’t spoken since the fight. Hadn’t made a single peep. Not because she was in shock, but because silence was safer than what might come out if she broke it.
The Specter, across the room, was peeling out of ruined leather with practiced ease. She hadn’t spoken either. But her silence wasn’t retreat. It was patience. When she knelt beside the Cacophony, it wasn’t to question. It was to remind her: you’re still here. I’m still here. We’re still here.
The Cacophony tried — tried — to joke.
“Bet that wasn’t the royal reception he expected,” she murmured, voice cracked and small. A bare echo.
“...He was right about the crown thing, though. I did set the throne room on fire once. I even broke the statue of the Moonmother that stood behind it. It was symbolic.”
Still no answer. Only The Specter’s hands, gently beginning to undo her ruined braid.
The Cacophony squirmed, “You don’t have to-”
“I’ve done it before,” The Specter said, soft and firm.
The Cacophony swallowed, “Yeah, but that night I was crying so hard I couldn’t tell blood from snot.”
“I didn’t think you’d remember that night,” she whispered, “I told you everything. Every rotten piece of it. I was awful.”
“I was. I told you what he said. I told you I was broken. I thought- I was sure you’d leave.”
Her voice cracked again, and her eyes burned. She blinked hard.
“Why didn’t you look away?” she asked, as if it were unforgivable, “Why didn’t you walk away when he said it all out loud?”
“Because you already told me,” The Specter said. Her fingers paused, then resumed their careful unraveling, “And you survived it. I don’t care who hears it now. I care that he said it again.”
Then the Cacophony said, so softly it almost didn’t exist:
“…He made me wish I was dead. At least then I could be free of him for certain. There was never any freedom, room to breathe. Every…every gasp I took felt like something I owed him gratitude for.”
Her words curled with disgust that dripped from her tongue like tar. It was easy to pretend the disgust was aimed at him, harder to know the truth. That through everything still, there was some small, pathetic part of her that wanted to beg for his approval. Neither of them mentioned the unspeakable, that if she had perhaps killed him earlier…the Specter didn’t respond with sympathy. Only quiet certainty.
“You are the storm. The velvet and the blade. He’s not worth the dirt you’ve stepped on.”
The Cacophony laughed, barely, and rubbed her eyes furiously with her arm.
“I hate that you know how to say shit like that,” she muttered, “You make it really hard to pretend I’m some untouchable mad divine.”
“You’ve never been untouchable.”
“...You say that like it’s a good thing.”
The Specter finished unravelling her braids. Rested her hand briefly atop her head.
The Cacophony looked up, tired, raw, but something softening beneath the ruin. Then, in the smallest voice yet:
The Specter sat beside her.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know. I just…wanted to.”
They sat in silence for a long while. And when the Cacophony eventually fell asleep, curled in bloodstained velvet and leaning against the one person who had never looked away, The Specter stayed awake, hand still resting atop hers.
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