soft is an understatement when it comes to silver, you think.
that’s not to say he’s incapable of the opposite—the training really shows in any crisis—but it’s easy to forget that fact once disaster has dwindled down to the drowsy daze of moonlight. under the night’s watch, wonderland quiets at last, and sleep returns without the threat of eternity. night raven college rests.
as with most things in this world, that doesn’t apply to you.
before, you could call the problem some garden-variety insomnia—a dizzying, perpetual pulsing in your head and eyes that refused to shut—probably a product of getting tossed into a different dimension with different rules. like jet lag, or something. unfortunate, sure, but not something to worry about.
in light of revelations about the effect of long-term magic on inconsistent rem cycles or the entire lack thereof, it’s become yet another thing that keeps you up at night. you suspect the only thing that’s going to put you down now is sedation, magical or otherwise.
silver is heartachingly kind as he tries to lull you to sleep, a lullaby in his throat and a hand combing through your hair. beneath your ear and past cloud-soft cotton, his heartbeat marches on as steadily as a knight. it’s so calm; your ears are beginning to ring in the din. you blindly toy with a stray thread on his sweater and peek, over his shoulder, at the clock hanging like a second moon from the clinic’s shadowed walls. 12:29, it reads.
“you should rest too, silver.” your voice emerges through the dark as quiet as an oath. there’s a drifting, faded quality to it, coating the words as they spill out. “and don’t talk about earlier, that doesn’t count.”
“i am. i promise.” a warm sigh fans across your forehead. “besides,” he pivots, voice low and soothing, “you did all the caretaking during our journey—i’m only returning the favor how i can.”
you hum, pressing further into the warm space between him and the cot’s ridiculously plush mattress, as though the external pressure could relieve the one inside your skull. “you don't need to. i’m used to this by now.”
“but i want to,” he insists.
the laugh that falls from your lips is worn thin, a feeble, flimsy thing that would break in the midnight breeze. “then is there a way for us to share your sleep?”
and silver—sweet, endlessly kind—pulls you in closer, as though his comfort could dispel the restlessness plaguing you. you lean into it anyway. (because even if you can’t rest, at least you know you’ll be safe.) something warm is pressed against your temple. a kiss, you realize. it must be the softest act you’ve experienced recently.
“mm? what’s that for?”
“you, of course,” silver says, so simply it seems like a fact. the word curls around your heart and warms you from the inside out.
“is that some kind of…briar valley superstition i’m not aware of?”
“close.” you’ll have to make note of that. it’s difficult to imagine any of the diasomnia students being so free in their affection, but maybe that was just a night raven trait. “there’s a famous story in the valley, about two lovers who had been separated by a curse. even though it took a century, eventually, the curse was broken by a kiss. there’s some debate as to whether it was the kiss that broke the curse, or if the curse ran out of time, but…” and here, silver pauses. his heartbeat quickens just a slight. “father used to say that it could cure anything.”
“mm, just a regular kiss?” you prod.
gazing through the dark, soft, drooping eyes meet yours. the tips of his ears glow warm in the moon’s shine. “a kiss of true love,” silver answers finally.
beautiful boy, made of dreams and light and enough devotion to defy destiny and then some. you adore him.
that last thought settles in your chest. it’s the clearest one you’ve had all night, healed of any waking ache. and finally, as your eyes begin to grow heavy, you wonder if silver’s story may just hold some truth after all.
“thank you,” you mumble. “i think that finally did the trick.”
gently, the blanket is pulled over your shoulder, and a thumb smooths down your brow. “i wanted to thank you too.”
“hm?” (your hazy eyes are luminous in the moonlight. beautiful, silver thinks. beautiful in a way that invites those to look closer, to reach out for an existence that haunts wonderland phantomwise.)
“i’m grateful,” he clarifies, “that i had you with me throughout that journey, and that you were there every time i faltered. i really…i can’t thank you enough.”
“you don’t have to thank me for that, silver.” and as you surrender to the night, you whisper, “not at all.”
However, the line of what was acceptable and ladylike had been a lot harder to find since they’d tumbled into each other’s lives; and Hiyori found herself caring less and less for it. Yato was Yato; weird, and loud, and exhilarating and irritating and clingy and loving and everything missing from her life and Hiyori wanted this with everything she had.
a commission from @paperypiper! she let me do whatever I wanted so naturally I did merm shenanigans. sue me
❝ HEADMAGE, I DON'T WANT THIS ROMANCE MANHWA SLOP ! ︵﹒02.
💭: what's worse than being transmigrated into another world? being transmigrated into another world for a second time. you unceremoniously trip into crowley's painting that leads you to play the role of a "holy saint" and—what the hell is that silver as the "knight commander"?
you try to get out of this world by focusing your romance on the knight commander instead of the crown prince. now at this point, some might argue that you’re doing it for the love of the game, and not just treating it as a plan to get out, and—well, they're right.
pairing. silver vanrogue x gn! reader
wc. 12.9k
warnings. heavy slow burn, mutual pining, a substantial amount of profanity, mostly comedy, inaccurate or fictional depiction of religion, hopefully not ooc silver (havent reached b7), not proofread, reader is prefect
a/n. yes i speedrun this so i could post it by me and silver's birthday...
parts. 01. | 02. (here)
Ever since that morning, your daily routine has gone through a rather predictable route.
Wake up at an hour that hollows your soul, argue with yourself about it for approximately five minutes, lose the argument, and get up anyway.
Then, you’ll have to face whatever the system has in store for you once you’ve collected your bearing, and brace yourself for whatever daily quests and/or upcoming major quests are ahead.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “We should discuss new plans for your quests with the Prince~♡ The management isn’t too happy with the deviation.~♡”
“Well, good morning to you, too,” you mutter to the ceiling, shoving the notification panel aside with a flick of your wrist, as if you could physically swat it away.
You roll out of bed, your feet hitting the cold stone floor, and begin the ritual of donning the layers of white and gold silk that go along with your title, all the while ignoring the irritating ding! of the system talking about some daily quests of praying and talking to the Prince, or something.
Ding!
A panel materializes itself in front of you.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — NEW QUEST UPDATED !
With the Harvest Festival around the corner, regional instability along the Southern Border has increased due to residual Miasma activity. The Saint is required to assist in containment and purification.
OBJECTIVE: Clear the appointed dungeon, and strengthen diplomatic rapport with the Crown Prince through “informal engagement activities”.
EXPECTED TIME BEFORE QUEST COMMENCEMENT: 42:00:00
You stare at the last line for a full second.
“Informal engagement activities?”
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “informal engagement activities translate to social outing / character bonding event / leisure interaction.”
You groan into your hands.
After that whole fiasco, your routine takes you to the barracks with Silver in tow. Most mornings are spent tending to knights returning from their morning patrol—and at times, those who have returned from dungeon dispatches—your mana easing away lingering traces of residual Miasma and the deep exhaustion left behind in its wake. The work becomes almost rhythmic after a while, with the golden light, tired soldiers, and the gradual thinning of whatever wears them down.
Somewhere along the way, the atmosphere has shifted into something more cordial and familiar. The knights no longer stiffen quite as much in your presence, conversations flowing more easily between treatments while briefings and patrol reports blur into casual exchanges.
You come to learn that Theo has a habit of making conversation mid-treatment until another knight pops in to physically shut him up. The captain, a woman whose stern expression could sharpen a dull blade, likes to maintain a stoic front—usually by burying her face in a set of patrol logs while her shoulders shake with the silent effort of not laughing at her subordinates’ antics.
Such changes also extend to Silver himself—despite insisting he is merely there to supervise, he has become such a constant fixture at your side that his presence has started to mold a place of his own that slots naturally in your routine.
Somewhere between reviewing patrol logs beside you, small talks that end with conversations that stretch longer than necessary, and the grounding familiarity of him appearing beside you before you even realize you were looking for him, the distance between you two begins to erode into something far closer than you anticipated.
Following the barracks is the morning assembly.
The Saint’s duties are, lamentably, much harder to escape.
White and gold silk drapes over your form, hands folded just right, expression softened into a textbook definition of something serene and untouchable—the image of holiness polished to perfection beneath the hall’s stained-glass light. It’s nothing short of prayers, blessings, and ceremonial appearances. The High Priest, as usual, watches through it all the while with the measured patience of a man who grasps divinity less as a faith and more as a chalice of control.
You’ve long since learned that the easiest way to deal with him is to give him exactly what he wants to see—a compliant, useful saint, and nothing more.
Thus, you smile when expected, speak when required, and never linger by his side too long enough for his probing observations to turn into something surgically sharper. It placates him, for the most part, keeping his attention from narrowing too deeply onto all the way you’ve already begun slipping outside the shape of your character.
Then, the Crown Prince—as pushed by the system—who you usually bump into sometimes, oftentimes after morning assembly. The system has taken advantage of the fact that the Prince will be staying quite some time within the walls of the Sanctuary for a complete rehabilitation.
Now, the system enthusiastically labels your visits as “relationship-building activities”, which is really just a deeply embarrassing way of saying the Prince keeps inviting you out—tea in the garden, engaging in strategy board games that he procured from somewhere, helping you taste-test sweets during the harvest festival preparation (that made you nearly want to walk directly into a fountain after the system practically screamed itself hoarse in your peripheral vision).
The worst part is that he is actually someone easy to get along with. It would be so much easier for you if he were insufferable and rottenly spoiled, but unfortunately, he is instead painfully decent, which makes the guilt sit differently than you would like.
You don’t forget to pepper every conversation with a very pointed “my friend” at every possible opportunity. You wield that word like a shield, relishing the way the system’s notification vibrates with indignation every time you friend-zone the literal heir to the throne.
It’s petty, perhaps, but it’s the only way to get some modicum of payback for the constant meddling.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
The Saint’s deviation from the designated narrative track has created situations the character was not written to encounter. In response to unscripted stimuli, love interest [CROWN PRINCE] has begun operating outside his original characterization.
Love interest [CROWN PRINCE] has expressed feelings inconsistent with designated Male Lead parameters.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 68%
Oh, this is so fun.
“He’s a great friend, isn’t he?” you mutter to the system, amusingly watching the box flicker into a frustrated, static-filled red. It’s even more rewarding seeing the narrative integrity continuously drop as you establish the great wall of friend-zone.
It all then inevitably leads back to Silver.
Sometimes you find him overseeing training in the courtyard below and end up lingering far longer than necessary under the excuse of “observing the knights’ progress”, only to spend most of the time watching how the slightly tussled hair of their Commander’s is quite an adorable addition on him as he spars. Other times it’s brief crossings in the Sanctuary halls, shared walk between duties, or you appearing beside him uninvited while he sharpens his blade because you were bored and decided that his patience looks particularly testable that day.
At some point, spending time around him stops feeling deliberate and starts becoming almost instinctive. You start seeking him without entirely meaning to, and Silver—despite the occasional look suggesting you are responsible for every trial the gods have inflicted upon his being—always makes room for your presence beside him.
Without either of you acknowledging it aloud, Silver steadily becomes the person you spend the most time with throughout the day.
Your days settle into that strange groove before you realize it has happened—at least, it does until the long-awaited Harvest Festival quest finally commences.
ʚ﹕CURRENT OBJECTIVE — MAIN QUEST UPDATED !
[MAIN QUEST: MAY CERCES BE WITH YOU !]
With the Harvest Festival around the corner, regional instability along the Southern Border has increased due to residual Miasma activity. The Saint is required to assist in containment and purification.
OBJECTIVE: Clear the appointed dungeon, and strengthen diplomatic rapport with the Crown Prince through “informal engagement activities”. ~♡
You blink at the notification panel. “Well, that’s kind of anti-climactic, system. I thought there’s gonna be some additional notes or something, but it’s the same exact notification you sent me.”
What the hell is even the point of setting that countdown for?
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Your critique is much appreciated, Holy Saint. ~♡ This system merely wants to build up excitement. Well, think of it as a preparation period before the official start of the event arc! Anticipation is an important component of user engagement, after all. ~♡”
“How… thoughtful.” You suppose, you guess. There’s nothing much to say to the system at this point—you’ve rapped out all your barreling, creative insults enough as they are at it.
The notification panel flickers in a somewhat smugly note at the edge of your vision, as though it is deeply and thoroughly pleased with itself for inventing the concept of suspense.
You rub at your temple—an action that you discover you’ve been doing increasingly more often these past few weeks. “You know, every time you talk like that, I understand a little more why people are afraid of Artificial Intelligence.”
The system hums blithely in response, entirely immune to shame and its friends.
“What?! What about my annual candy apple ritual?!” The voice, distinctly Theo’s and loud enough to startle the nearby pigeons off, echoes across the courtyard. You drop your hand from your temple, looking up just in time to see the young knight dramatically flailing his arms with a tragic intensity near the center of the training grounds.
Someone immediately shoves a report into his chest in response, which he accepts only long enough to continue arguing over it.
“We’re leaving during the festival opening?!” Theo screeches, his voice cracking with the sheer injustice of it all.
“If it helps you feel better, the festival is a week long!” One of the nearby knights calls back without looking from their paperwork.
“You don’t get it… the opening is the prime candy apple’s time! That’s the only time the stall near the East Gate uses the extra cinnamon!”
The Captain, who is standing nearby reviewing a tactical map spread across a stone bench, doesn’t even look up, merely adjusting her grip on a charcoal pencil. “If you put half as much effort into your footwork as you do in your sugar intake, Theo, you might actually survive the first floor of an S-rank dungeon without losing your boots.”
“But Captain! This is for luck!”
Silver, who had been standing a few paces away discussing supply logistics with a quartermaster, instantly detaches himself from the conversation. He doesn’t even have to think about it; he simply pivots and stands beside you.
“Theo has certainly been looking forward to the festival.” Silver mutters, his voice low and for your ears only. “Though I suppose he isn’t entirely wrong, the timing of the dispatch is… inconvenient.”
You glance at him, a teasing tilt to your head. “Inconvenient for the candy apples, or inconvenient because we are to clear a dungeon while everyone else is celebrating?”
“Both,” he admits after a brief pause. “Logistically speaking, festival periods complicate movement, supply routes, and crowd control. Not to mention, civilian presence increases risk during containment operations.”
“And…” his eyes flick back to you for a fraction of a second before looking away again just as quickly. “...the knights are less focused as usual.”
He lightly clears his throat, his hand moving to adjust his leather gloves. “Some of the knights are fairly young, too. For many, the Harvest Festival is the only time they can properly unwind.”
You nod at his words, that makes sense—knights need to destress too. Imagine having to look at dead monster carcasses when you can have the time of your life eating seventeen variations of sweet bread.
The Slumbering Depth of Solemnity—a B-rank dungeon nestled deep down a gorge within the Southern Border. According to the reports you read over Silver’s shoulder, it houses a Hollow Heart—though it lies dormant, it is still effectively a ticking bomb.
Theo whistles low, the candy apple grief finally replaced by grim focus. “A Hollow Heart? Even when they’re sleeping, those things are still nasty. Give it two weeks, and it might corrupt that entire gorge and the forest nearby.”
“Exactly,” the Captain nods. “It’s a B-rank for now, but if it wakes up, it’s not going to be a pretty sight—it will likely jump to an A-rank localized disaster.”
How wonderful this world’s mother nature is.
“The gorge is approximately three days’ ride south. If we leave by tomorrow dawn, we’ll reach the dungeon by nightfall of the second day.” Silver adds in, his shoulder brushing against yours as he leans slightly to point at a location on the map.
He casts a sidelong glance at you, a ghost of a challenge in his eyes. “Don’t wake up late, Your Holiness.”
“Ha!” you huff, crossing your arms and meeting his gaze with a defiant spark in your narrowed eyes. “What am I, if not an early bird?”
Not to mention, you have a cheat code in the form of the (helpful, kind of) system! If you squint, it’s adequate enough to be utilized as an alarm clock.
Theo snorts somewhere near you two. “Your Holiness, with all due respect, you nearly fell asleep during the morning strategy briefing.”
“I was doing my daily meditation.”
“You were snoring.”
You whirl on him. “Don’t you have candy apples to mourn?”
Okay, so your personal alarm clock is giving you the silent treatment.
It is almost humiliating that you arrive five minutes before the designated departure, but barely early is early! You don’t dwell too much on it, however, given how your system has yet to answer at your beck and call—it’s weird enough that it doesn’t spam the living daylights of your sight the first thing you wake up.
System? You’ve tried calling it for what seems to be the nth time—hell, even calling it physically doesn’t elicit any response.
You feel like a desperate ex recounting the days before—combing through your memories, and scrutinizing every single word and behavioural pattern like there had to be some hidden sign that your floating parasite was planning to ghost you.
“You seem out of it, Your Holiness.”
The voice snaps you right out of your thoughts, nearly making you lose your grip on the reins. You blink, the world coming back into focus—the clop-clop of your horse’s hooves on the dirt road, the smell of pine and damp earth, and the cool morning air rush back into your senses.
You turn your head to see Theo riding alongside you, his expression housing a lingering of confusion and concern.
“Just thinking, don’t worry about it.” You reply, adjusting your seat.
Theo doesn’t look convinced—but to his credit, he doesn’t press further. For a moment, the only sounds are the steadfast rhythm of hooves against dirt and the distant call of birds somewhere in the treeline.
“...You know,” he says slowly. “I thought you and the Commander would be sharing one horse, with what the rumors are saying.”
Your eyes narrow. “What rumors?”
Theo chokes on air.
“...Uh,” Theo says weakly. “Nothing? Forget I said anything? Haha, there are no rumors.”
His face is pale, his eyes darting everywhere but your face—toward the road ahead, toward the pine trees lining the trail, toward Silver riding several lengths like he’s contemplating whether out of sight, out of mind is applicable in this type of scenario and save him from this conversation.
Still feeling your eyes on him, he abruptly straightens in his seat and points at a random spot ahead with startling urgency. “Oh shoot! Would you look at that, looks like Captain is calling to me! See ya later, Your Holiness!
“The Captain is on the opposite end—”
“See ya!”
He flees before you can finish your sentence, spurring his horse into a frantic gallop forward, leaving you with absolutely no answers. You’re left sitting there, reins slack in your hands, watching him disappear into a cloud of dust like a cartoon skit.
Man, what the hell, you can’t even ask these days.
The journey continues with normalcy (thank god) after that. For the next two days, the trail winds deeper into the southern stretch, carving through dense, ancient pine forests that progressively thin out as the elevation drops into the jagged rocky throat of the gorge. Without the system’s constant chime in your ear, the passage of time feels strangely elastic—it is right at this moment you realize that time has never flowed so slowly before.
Aside from the occasional stops, you spend most of the trip in a comfortable silence. Sometimes, you rein in your horse and catch up to Silver, brewing up small talks in hushed whispers; other times, you bask in the distant snippets of conversation between the knights, hearing Theo loudly munching on his snack, followed by another fellow knight telling him to close his mouth because they can hear him from three horses back.
The knights are spent in well-organized camps where the knights speak in low tones, the atmosphere easy in that quiet, road-worn way shared exhaustion tends to create. At night, the stars are brighter here, unfiltered by the city lights, and you find yourself staring up at them longer than necessary—it makes you miss home a little more desperately.
You wonder if you’ll ever feel that again—the feel of home.
The days blur together in fragments of hoofbeats, crackling campfires, and the cold morning air that bites at your cheeks before sunrise. It is only when the air grows dense, and the horse in front of you halts in its tracks, that you realize you’ve arrived at the site.
The gorge stretches before you like a massive scar etched directly into the earth, uneven cliffs plunging deep into layers of drifting mist below. Sparse trees cling desperately to the rocky terrain surrounding it, their bark darkened by residual corruption creeping through the land in vein-like fractures, and there, suspended above the ravine floor, is the dungeon gate.
“We’ll make camp here tonight,” Silver says calmly, his pale eyes remaining fixated on the spatial tear ahead. “Let’s rest first, we’ll go in tomorrow morning.”
The knights move quickly after that, years of routine settling over the camp with practiced ease. They divide the work among one another—tents are erected, perimeter wards established, supplies unmounted and unloaded, and watch rotations are assigned before the last traces of sunlight fully disappear behind the cliffs.
You help where you can—mostly by healing minor strain and residual fatigue from the long ride—though most of the knights insist you conserve strength for tomorrow. Theo still manages to somehow burn his hand trying to cook something over the campfire despite being explicitly told not to touch the pan.
Lord, this boy would fit in with the rest of the NRC students.
“Should I just ban you entirely from being near a campfire?” the Captain, in her unadulterated exasperation, asks him flatly while shoving a healing salve to his face.
“It’s just one accident!” He tries to defend himself.
“It’s been three, you brat.”
Night settles heavily over the gorge after that, the last ribbons of sunset bleeding deep into deep indigo before the sky is plunged into true darkness. The rift pulses brighter now in contrast, a beacon of violet light that casts eerie shadows across the terrain—it’s almost beautiful and enticing, in the same way poisonous things are.
The knights retreat to their tents one by one, drowsiness pulling them under despite the tension humming in the air.
Soon, it’s just you and Silver left by the fire.
“Not going to sleep, Commander?” You break the silence, your voice barely above a whisper.
Silver’s gaze remains fixed on the distant rift for a moment longer before shifting toward the fire between you both. The flames paint shifting amber across the sharp planes of his face, softening otherwise the strained lines of his expression.
“And you’re not, Your Holiness?” Damn, he’s really turning the question around.
“Hm, I don’t feel that tired, yet.” You pull your knees a little closer to your chest, staring into the crackling firewood. Beyond the camp, the gorge is eerily still—even the birds and insects seem reluctant to make a noise.
For a few beats of a second, neither of you spoke. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, per se, it’s the kind of silence that veils over people who have spent enough time together that words aren’t always necessary.
The temperature in the gorge had plummeted the moment the sun vanished over yonder, replaced by a biting chill that seeps into your very sinews. You suppress a small shiver—a small and quick involuntary reaction that is barely a tremor, but Silver notices it, regardless.
“You’re cold.” It isn’t even phrased as a question.
He moves before you realize he has stood up.
Before you can deny it out of sheer principle, he reaches for the dark cloak folded beside him and drapes it over your shoulders with careful ease. The weight of it settles over you like an embrace—it’s warm (his warmth), you realize (the cloak smells like him, the familiar scent of pine and leather, something that you’ve come to associate with his presence).
Silver, bless whoever raised you to be a gentleman—this one feels like they could cry from this action alone (a bit dramatic, but there’s the sentiment).
Your fingers curl into the fabric, pulling it tighter around yourself. “Thank you.”
Silver seems to realize what he’s done approximately one second afterward, his hand pausing briefly near your shoulder before he withdraws.
“...My apologies,” he says, quiet against the night. “I should have asked first.”
A gentleman, again, you stress.
You blink at him, genuinely baffled, before that trademark mischief ebbs in your countenance. “Mn, what if I don’t forgive you?”
“Say, what if I keep this cloak for compensation? For your transgression. Seems fair, don’t you think?”
Silver merely blinks back at you, the firelight flickering across his face, throwing shifting shadows beneath pale lashes as he looks at you.
“...Then I suppose it would already belong to you.” He murmurs, a faint, dusty rose colour creeping up the back of his neck, visible even in the dim light.
Oh!
That—
Honestly, you had expected flustered denial, maybe a resigned sigh, or perhaps another long-suffering “Your Holiness”.
You certainly did not expect him to actually let you keep it. “Oh… wow. Commander, if you keep saying things like that, I would think you have a cr—”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — [MAINTENANCE UPDATE !]
The system is currently unavailable due to scheduled maintenance to optimize performance. During this period, certain features—including quest notifications, narrative integrity monitoring, and user assistance—will be temporarily inaccessible.
We apologize for any inconvenience. ~♡
ESTIMATED MAINTENANCE DURATION: 48 hours.
Well, turns out, it wasn’t sulking, after all!
“...Wait, so it won’t be supervising me for the next 48 hours?” Your eyes slowly widen; a horrifying number of possibilities instantly surge within your brain.
Holy fuck, holy fuck.
No incessant notifications? No aggressive matchmaking agenda? No corrective corrections? No system breathing down your neck every five seconds like a Victorian ghost cursed to you?
You smooth out your experience, but the bubbling feeling within you is a molten mix between disbelief and dangerously delighted hysteria.
Silver is still watching you, his expression shifting to genuine concern as your face undergoes a rapid-fire series of twitches. To him, you probably look like you’re contemplating a truly terrible decision.
“Your Holiness?” he asks, leaning in slightly. “Are you alright?—”
“I’m fine,” you blurt out. “I just… I just realized that the stars are particularly aligned tonight, an excellent, very good omen.”
Silver looks up to the sky, his brows furrowed in confusion to what exactly do you see in it. He clearly doesn’t see the “omen”, but he doesn’t push it—he’s used to your eccentricities by now, even if he doesn’t always understand them.
“...I see,” he says at last, though his tone suggests he absolutely does not see.
You cough once, decisively, and shift your expression into something much controlled—carefully neutral, or at least what passes for it in your case.
“Actually,” you say. “I noticed something about, um, your shoulder.”
“You were tensing it earlier while we were riding. I didn’t get to come to you before, and it would be better if we could get it over with before heading to the dungeon tomorrow.”
Silver stiffens. “No need, you’ve already done enough for the knights. It’s better to conserve your strength for tomorrow—”
“Nonsense,” you cut him off, your hand already reaching out. “Now let me help you, please.”
He lets out a slow breath and turns his back to you slightly, allowing you to access. You place your hands on the cold metal of his spaulder, pressing your palm against the base of his neck, and channel a tiny, controlled pulse of mana.
Now, where’s that pesky little crack you found last time?
“Silver,” you murmur, your thumbs tracing the line of his tendons. “Tell me if anything feels strange, I’m going to check things out deeper than usual.”
“Deeper?”
“To make sure nothing’s lodged where it shouldn’t be.” The lies come out smoothly—to be fair, it is partly true. “The journey was long, and you’ve been running yourself ragged for weeks.”
Silver doesn’t respond—or maybe he did, but it doesn’t really matter when you’re too focused on finding that sharp, elusive thing again—the faint “something” below the surface.
You let your mana sink deeper and push into the psychic weight, a frostlike resistance that pricks at the tip of your fingertips. Finding that no notifications pop up after a few seconds, you exhale slowly through your nose and graze at it more firmly.
The crack is fainter now—or maybe you’re just getting better at finding it. A thin, almost imperceptible structure, like invisible glass laid over reality itself. You have enough fundamental understanding of your power that this… something is neither a part of his body nor his mana system. If you have to illustrate it, it’s something more of a patchwork layered on top.
You push gently against the crack, and to your fascination, it subtly shifts the moment you touch it. Though hearing Silver inhale sharply in return makes you halt in your tracks.
“Sorry—”
“No, it’s fine.” He sighs through his nose, the sound controlled, but tighter than usual. “Just… unexpected.”
Strange, perhaps, is the word he wishes to convey.
His shoulders are still, but not relaxed—like he’s holding himself in place rather than naturally resting. You can feel it through your hands too, the faint resistance in the framework beneath your mana, as though your presence there is being acknowledged in real time.
Silver’s voice lowers slightly. “Continue, if it helps determine the issue.”
You nod, not trusting your voice, and press your palms more firmly against his neck and shoulder. The metal of his armour is chilling beneath your fingers, a stark contrast to the warmth of his skin where your thumbs brush against the juncture between his shoulder blade and his neck.
The crack resists at first—that gnawing prickle of prodding against something that does not want to be seen, like pushing against the edge of a thought that isn’t fully formed yet.
Your mana flows against the fault line like water finding its way through stone, wearing down the edges without breaking them. It is only until you are satisfied, that you send a concentrated spike of mana directly into what you believe to be the center of the crack.
By the moment this “something” gives out, warmth floods through the opening like a dam breaking—an amorphous sensation that is a ubiquitous and almost overwhelming sense of everything—a wholeness that rests beneath your fingertips.
You are pulled right out of that feeling when, for a split second, a high-pitched, silent ring echoes in your mind—like a glass vase breaking in another room. Silver’s entire body jolts beneath your hands, a violent tremor racking his frame from his neck down to his boots.
“What the—”
Then, he simply stops.
It happens so fast, you don’t have time to catch him. One moment he’s sitting beside you, shoulders tense but upright; the next, his body slackens all at once, like something inside him has been switched off. His weight drags forward, and he starts to collapse out of your hands.
“Silver?”
Panic, cold and sharp, slams against your ribcage as you scramble around to his side. Your arms hook around his shoulders on instinct, trying to keep him upright, but his head merely lolls helplessly against your chest.
For one terrifying second, your mind goes completely blank.
“Holy—Silver? Hey! Silver, wake up! Shit!” You’re practically shrieking in a whisper, your mind racing through every worst-case scenario. Holy shit, oh my god, Did I—God forbid—just kill the Commander?
What the fuck, what the fuck. Shit, if you had known this was what’s going to happen, you wouldn’t have even bothered to think about it. Your grip tightens around his shoulders like sheer force alone can undo whatever you just did.
It’s honestly a miracle no one has come out of the tent to check.
“Oh my god, what did I do? What did I do?” You fumble for his neck, your fingers frantically searching for the carotid artery through the gaps of his armour.
Your heart is hammering against your ribs like a drum, sweat beads forming on your brow despite the chill of the gorge. You’re ready for the headlines, ready for the firing squad—
You find it.
His pulse—it’s a steady and infuriatingly normal beat beneath your fingertips, as though he has only fallen into a sudden slumber out of sheer exhaustion. You freeze so hard it feels like your soul briefly leaves your body and ascends to greet the heavenly officials.
“Oh, thank fuck,” you breath, your forehead dropping against his shoulder. The cool surface of the metal presses against your skin, grounding you, reminding you that this is all real, that he’s real and alive.
You look down at his face—he looks so peaceful (looks just like the Silver who would sleep in every conspicuous space, whether it be out in the courtyard, the stairs, or Crowley’s beloved library). His expression has softened in that familiar way, brows no longer held in that careful line of discipline, lips slightly parted—he looks like a very annoying, very handsome painting.
“...You’re going to give me an actual heart attack one day.” You mutter, half-laughing, half still recovering from spiritual damage.
You shift, adjusting his weight against you, and his head lolls further into the crook of your neck. His breath is warm against your skin, slow and even, and you can feel his heartbeat against your palm.
As much as you want to stay in this position until tomorrow morning, you know it’s better to move him than let him rest on you like a sack of vegetables.
With a grunt of effort, you manage to sling one of his arms over your shoulders, your other arm wrapped around his waist, and you’re pretty sure you’re doing more dragging than carrying.
As long as no one is watching, you grimace.
By some miracle (or perhaps sheer stubbornness), you make it to his tent, lowering him gently on his simple bedroll, which is to say you more or less drop him the last few inches.
Hell, he doesn’t even wake up, not even a stir.
“You’re lucky you’re pretty.” You inform his unconscious form, to which he does not respond. Rude.
After gingerly removing his armour and setting it aside, you make your way back by the fireplace and watch as the fiery crackles warm your body up, clutching the cloak around your form tighter.
You’re not sure you could sleep even if you wanted to, so you opt to just lie back on a stone and play I spy with my little eyes with no one but yourself and the gorge—well, you much prefer calling such an activity “keeping watch over the camp”.
You wonder what the system will say when it comes back.
The first thing you notice when you wake up is that you’re not where you fell asleep.
You blink groggily at the canvas before you, not the open sky you’d been staring at when drowsiness finally pulled you under. The second thing you notice is that someone has covered you with a blanket, tucked it around your shoulders with careful hands.
You sit up slowly, your body protesting every movement. The tent is dim, lit only by the pale light of early dawn filtering through the gaps in the tent. Your cloak—his cloak—is folded neatly beside your bedroll, and someone has placed a waterskin just within your reach.
How did I get here?
You push aside the blanket and crawl toward the tent flap, your heart pounding. The camp is quiet, and the sky is streaked with pale pink and gold as the sun begins to rise over the gorge.
Knights stand in loose formation near the edge of the camp, checking equipment in silence rather than chatter. Turning your head to the right, you can see Theo failing to sharpen a dagger correctly, and the smell of stew is beginning to waft through the air, kindling your hunger.
You stop in your tracks, however, when your eyes land on Silver’s back.
You step out of the tent, your boots crunching softly on the rocky ground, and his head snaps toward you. His eyes widen slightly before softening into something warmer.
“You’re awake,” he says, his voice softer and more grounded than you remember. You stare a bit warily at him—hell, even Theo curiously flicked his eyes up to where you both stand (nosy kid, just focus on your weapon.)
Uh, did you accidentally set off some kind of hidden trigger to his character or something?
“Yeah… how’s your shoulder?” you ask carefully, testing the waters as you watch for any signs that might indicate something had somehow gone wrong after what happened last night.
To your bewilderment, Silver unexpectedly lets out the faintest huff of laughter underneath his breath.
“I feel considerably better now,” he replies, lifting a hand to roll his shoulder once as if testing the movement himself. “I suspect the treatment may have been… more effective than anticipated.”
Oh, thank god there are no repercussions.
“That’s a relief.” Relief is an understatement, honestly. The knot lodged somewhere between your lungs and stomach finally loosens for the first time since last night, tension draining out of your body so abruptly you nearly sway where you stand.
You had half expected Silver to wake up with brain damage, memory loss, or worse, some horrifying personality rewrite that would be entirely your fault.
Instead, he’s standing here perfectly fine, looking mildly amused, which frankly feels like divine mercy.
Your shoulders sag lightly as you admit, “You collapsed on me out of nowhere. I thought I accidentally killed the Commander of the Order and was about to get publicly executed before breakfast.”
From somewhere near you, Theo makes a strangled noise that sounds suspiciously like someone trying to not choke on air.
You ignore him, barely.
“There is…” He pauses, like he’s weighing the words before speaking them out loud. “Something I would like to tell you when we have privacy, possibly after this dispatch.”
The moment the sentence leaves his mouth, the atmosphere around the camp shifts in the most infinitesimal yet obvious way possible. It’s as if every single knight in earshot suddenly developed superhuman hearing—one knight suddenly becomes deeply invested in fastening a strap that has already been secured three times, another nearly fumbles an entire pot of stew while pretending not to listen, and Theo looks like he’s about to fall off his seat from how far he’s blatantly leaning in your direction, not even bothered to appear inconspicuous.
Your eyes narrow slightly. “That sounds… ominous.”
“It is not meant to be,” Silver replies immediately. “It’s better if we speak when there are no distractions.”
Uh. Talk about being even more ominous than before.
From the corner of your eye, you can see that Theo has practically folded himself in half, torso craned at an angle that can’t possibly be comfortable, his dagger forgotten in his lap. He looks like a meerkat who has spotted a predator on the horizon—except the predator is gossip, and he has absolutely no survival instincts.
Unfortunately for your rapidly deteriorating sanity, Silver refuses to elaborate further after that. You stare back at Silver and think, Oh wow, I definitely sure like being edged like this!
So, with your curiosity left to slowly rot in real time, the expedition finally descends into the dungeon—and it surely lives up to its name in the worst possible way.
The moment your group crosses through the spatial tear, the air changes into something stale and heavy with a pressure that settles against your skin like a damp cloth. The cavern stretches endlessly downward in layers of jagged stone and black crystalline growths, veins of Miasma pulsing faintly through the walls like a heartbeat beneath flesh. Here, every sound reverberates strangely—footsteps bounce back delayed, distant drips sound almost like crazed whispers, and the deeper you venture, the more the dungeon itself feels aware of your presence.
You shiver, it’s not as though it’s your first time going inside a dungeon, but it never fails to make your skin crawl in unease.
Thankfully, the operation itself proceeds smoothly.
Silver cuts through corrupted beasts with terrifying efficiency and accuracy, his blade flashing silver-white in the darkness. The knights maintain formation behind him, while your divine power keeps the Miasma from encroaching too closely, and heal when it’s needed—it’s a nice work division that makes the whole thing work.
Still, throughout the entire descent, your attention keeps drifting to Silver.
Something is different about him—it’s subtle enough that no one else seems to notice, but impossible for you to ignore now that you’re looking for it.
You notice how his gaze lingers on you a second longer than before, more thoughtful than it is attentive. You notice how he occasionally looks like he’s about to say something, only to stop himself at the last second whenever another knight approaches. You notice how his composure now feels less like rigid duty and more like someone actively holding too many words behind his teeth, torn in between the seams of his own thoughts.
You notice, and notice, and notice, because for the first time since you’ve met him, this Commander doesn’t feel like a fixed point you can neatly categorize in your head—he feels… layered.
Even as you purify another patch of Miasma, as you watch Silver’s sword curve through the darkness like it personally offended him, you can’t quite stop your thoughts from circling back to him.
By the time your group reaches the lower level of the dungeon, your brain has already constructed twelve increasingly catastrophic theories.
Is it a confession? Some sort of selective memory loss? An existential crisis (you can’t really blame him, since he lives inside a literal painting)? A secret terminal illness that he has kept a secret for the course of his life, and now he wishes to tell you about it? Tax fraud?
At one point, you become so distracted trying to psychoanalyze Silver’s entire existence that you nearly walk directly into a wall full of booby traps.
A hand catches your wrist instantly before you can stupidly do so. “Careful.”
You glance up, only to find Silver’s face inches from yours, his silver eyes sharp with concern.
“You’ve been distracted since we came here,” He says quietly, his voice low and close—too close, you realize.
Oh, you think, I wonder why.
“I’m not distracted,” you lie, you know, like a liar. It’s not like you can just plain out say, I’m thinking about you, Commander. “I’m just thinking about… this whole dungeon.”
He eyes your slightly grumbled expression, noting the furrow of your eyebrows. Then, unexpectedly, the corner of his eyes crinkles. A soft, airy sound escapes him—a faint, genuine laugh that sounds entirely too light for a man currently standing in the literal heart of a dark abyss.
You blink, momentarily stunned.
“...What?” you ask immediately, because nothing about someone laughing in a dungeon is remotely normal. “What’s so funny, Commander?”
Silver’s gaze softens into something impossibly nostalgic. He doesn’t let go of your wrist—instead, he leans in, his voice dropping to a whisper that barely skims the shell of your ear.
“No,” he murmurs, his eyes locking onto yours with a clarity that makes your breath hitch. “It’s just… I’m relieved I found you here, Prefect.”
…What.
“What.”
What the fuck. You swear your heart dropped right to your ass when you heard it.
The word echoes in your skull, bouncing off the walls of your suddenly very empty brain. The air in the dungeon, previously thick with the stench of rot and ancient stone, suddenly feels like it’s been vacuumed out of the room. You freeze, your jaw going slack as the realization slowly seeps in your brain cells.
What the hell did he just say?
“Wait—Silver, what did you just—”
You open your mouth to demand answers when a guttural snarl rips through the corridor ahead. The sound echoes off the stone walls, and every thought in your head scatters like disturbed birds.
Theo swears from somewhere behind you. “Yeah, okay, that’s new.”
Cracks split open along the stone like veins being torn apart, black light peeking through in uneven pulses. Something scrapes on the other side—too many limbs, too hungry—and then the first wave of Voidborne pushes through, shrieking in overlapping distortions that make your teeth ache.
You drag your hands down your face. Apparently, the universe has decided you don’t get to have a single moment of clarity before everything goes to hell. “Oh, for fucks’ sake.”
The wave lasts for what feels like hours. In reality, it’s probably much less than an hour—the Captain says something about “standard void surge” and “dormant Heart response”—but time has lost all meaning in the depths of this place.
When the last creature falls, dissolving into a pool of shadow that slowly fades, the cavern falls silent. The only sounds pounding against your eardrums are the heavy breathing of exhausted knights and the distant, pulsing heartbeat of a Hollow Heart.
Theo slumps against the wall, clutching a gash on his arms. “I hate dungeons.”
A fellow knight nearby raises one of her eyebrows as she cleans her blade. “You love dungeons.”
“I love easy dungeons. There’s a difference.”
The Hollow Heart sits deeper than the rest of the dungeon, as if the entire structure has been built around the refusal to let it be reached. The closer you get, the more the air itself feels compressed, pressing against your lungs like an invisible hand.
When you surge Divine Aegis through it, the Heart resists at first, pulsing harder as if trying to anchor itself into the world through sheer refusal to die. The pressure in the chamber spikes so violently that your vision blurs at the edge, and it feels like it’s trying to reject your touch.
You push deeper, tightening the divine light before the organ fractures without sound, cracks of pale brilliance spiderwebbing across its impossible surface before it collapses in on itself entirely. There’s no explosion following it; rather, it leaves a quiet, final absence that has been erased from the world and forgotten mid-thought.
The walk back to the surface is a blur of exhaustion and relief. The dungeon, now cleansed of its corruption, feels different—lighter, somehow, considering how the walls no longer pulse with that sickly violet glow, and the air tastes clean instead of stagnant.
You stand at the entrance, taking in the boundless sky that is dyed in a pale, peaceful blue, before dragging Silver by his hand away to a more secluded corner near the gorge, away from the “ohh” and “ahh” of the knights.
The moment you’re far enough from the knights that their voices dissolve into background noise, you release Silver’s hand—but only just enough to point at him like you’re about to cross-examine a criminal.
“Okay,” you say. “Explain, uh, preferably as quick as you can. I’ve got less than an hour before the Divine Fever kicks me in the ass and I start hallucinating again, so I need the short version.”
Silver nods, “I was accompanying Fa—Lilia in the library at that time. He was researching some cookbooks, I believe, and I… must have fallen asleep somewhere along the way.”
“When I woke up, I was already here.”
So, Crowley, in fact, put that painting for anyone to fall in.
Upon waking in the painting, he was immediately bombarded by the system’s internal logic, which forcibly grafted the Commander’s identity into his own. He describes how the more he performed these “objectives”—leading the knights, reciting the oaths of the Order, upholding his virtues—the more his actual consciousness began to ebb away. He remembers resisting at first, holding onto the awareness that he was not originally meant for this world, but each moment spent fulfilling the Commander’s duties made that resistance harder to access, like trying to recall a dream while still being inside it.
It was a slow, terrifying erosion of self; he found himself slipping into a deep slumber where his true personality was being buried under the layers of the system’s influence.
The moment he finishes explaining, you feel a sudden, sharp spike in your body temperature—the first warning shot of the Divine Fever. Your vision slightly swims, the edge of the gorge blurring into a watercolour smear.
“Silver,” you croak with urgency. “Listen here, my fever is acting up already, but I have a plan that might get us the hell out of here.”
He steps closer without hesitation, and you’re grateful for the support he has on your arms. You barely manage to keep your thoughts straight as the Divine Fever creeps in—heat blooming under your skin in uneven waves, your vision threatening to smear at the edges again.
You force yourself to continue, anyway. The plan flows out of your mouth in messy but urgent words.
“Thing is, the system assigning us with these roles is also a matter of holding the entire world together with it through narrative consistency.”
You point vaguely at the air between you both, like the concept itself is floating there. “Commander Silver, Holy Saint, dungeon runs, all of it—they all count as story logic, aside from being some kind of structure. If things—if this story logic stays predictable, the system stays stable, in return.”
Silver seems to be following your logic. “And if they do not?”
“Then the story loses its integrity,” you continue. “And when the narrative integrity drops low enough, the painting can’t maintain cohesion. It starts rejecting these inconsistencies, all while it tries to maintain the script.”
Your finger curls slightly. “So we become an inconsistency—we’ll create a narrative correction.”
You gesture between you two. “Whatever this is—this dynamic, these interactions, we can create a new narrative thread that is strong enough to overwrite the existing structure’s expectations.”
“I’m suggesting we become such a problem that the story can’t continue without rewriting itself around us.”
“...And yeah,” you add, rubbing your temples as the fever spikes again. “In most systems like this, that usually means escalating intimacy bonds, emotional deviations, shared arcs—whatever you want to call it.”
Silver exhales slowly, like he’s absorbing something far too large to respond to immediately. “...That is not a guaranteed method, is it?”
You snort. “No shit, but it’s the only one I can think of.”
Silver is quiet for a moment longer, eyes fixed on you like he’s trying to map the logic of your plan. “Then, how do we do it?”
A grin tugs at your mouth. “Oh, listen closely.”
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — [MAINTENANCE COMPLETE !]
All core system functions have been fully restored. All previously suspended notifications and guidance protocols are now active—you may resume normal saintly duties, dungeon coordinations, and designated social interaction scheduling.
We apologize for any inconvenience. ~♡
The harvest is in full swing.
Lanterns hang overhead in warm strands of gold and paper-red, swaying gently as crowds move through the decorated stalls. The air smells of roasted sweets, spiced cider, and something faintly floral that clings to everything like an etched memory, as lively music drifts between stalls.
Knights from the Order are scattered through the crowd, clearly trying very hard to look like this is all normal duty assignment and not a thinly veiled excuse for indulgement.
Somewhere nearby, you can hear Theo loudly insisting he is “absolutely not here for leisure, that is below me as a knight!” while buying three skewers of candied meat.
“...So this is happening,” you murmur.
Ding!
Another notification pops in your line of sight.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Congratulations for completing the first half of [MAY CERCES BE WITH YOU], Holy Saint! Please continue to be diligent from here on out! ~♡”
The second notification lingers longer than the first, as if it’s waiting for you to respond with enthusiasm you absolutely do not possess.
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “...Holy Saint, did something happen while I was away?”
“Mm? Nothing happened,” you reply smoothly, offering the empty air a smile so saccharine it could cause cavities. You’re currently standing in the heart of the festival square, the smell of woodsmoke and sugar thick in the air, but your eyes are already scanning the crowd for a flash of silver hair.
“What happened?” The voice comes right beside you, and you nearly forgot that the Crown Prince has been accompanying you. Per the system’s original mission requirements, you’re supposed to be “hanging out” with him today to strengthen the Royal-Religion alliance or something.
“You seem distracted, Your Holiness.” He continues, brow arching.
“Oh—no, I’m not, I just… my lover is joining us.” you reply, though you’re already mid-scan of the crowd, still looking for that familiar form of the Commander.
“Oh?” The Crown Prince’s tone lifts slightly, interest sharpening just enough to be noticeable. “A lover?”
You nod immediately, committing before your brain can intervene. “Yeah, someone from the Order.”
The Crown Prince’s smile lingers just a fraction longer, like he’s already decided this is going to be an entertaining evening.
“I see,” he says. “The more, the merrier, I suppose. I look forward to meeting them.”
You’re about to respond when you finally spot him.
Silver is standing near a stall of painted masks, his snowy hair unmistakable even in the golden glow of the lanterns. He’s not in his full armor—just a simple blouse, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his sword still at his hips. A smile graces his lips at the sight of you, until his gaze shifts to the man beside you.
Something flickers across his expression—too fast to name—before it fades just as quickly, and he begins walking toward you.
“Ah,” the Crown Prince says, following your gaze. “Is that him? The Commander, isn’t he?”
“That’s him.” You confirm.
Silver reaches you in a few long strides, his posture formal as he inclines his head slightly in polite acknowledgement, expression calm and practiced.
“Your Highness,” he greets. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Not at all,” The Crown Prince’s smile widens. “The Saint was just telling me about you.”
“I was?” you ask—I mean, sure, yeah, but also not really? You just mentioned him. To your confusion, The Crown Prince merely hums, entirely at ease.
“Oh?” He tilts his head slightly. “I assumed you were being modest.”
…?
What is he playing at? You immediately decide you hate diplomacy.
“...I see,” Silver’s gaze returns to the Prince, but there’s a subtle tightening at the edge of his expression now—something near-adjacent to restrain carefully kept under control. “I hope it is… accurate.”
You laugh nervously.
“Hm,” The Crown Prince turns to you, his smile dancing in barely concealed delight. “He’s very protective of you, Your Holiness. How admirable.”
“Anyway!” You cut in, stepping slightly between them like that will physically stop narrative escalation. “We should get some food first before doing anything—”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Your Holiness! Would you like to use [SCENE PROMPTER] to accelerate the mission?~♡”
The what?
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “[SCENE PROMPTER] used ~♡”
You stupid system, I never said anything about using it! You hissed under your breath, muttering out curse words to that useless system. Why go through with the maintenance in the first place?!
Before you can start spitting another verse of curses, a sudden burst of music erupts nearby as a festival announcer’s voice booms across the square.
“And now… beginning our traditional couples game!”
You feel like ten years of your life has been shaved off in this very second.
“...I’m sorry,” you say out loud to no one in particular.
Contrary to your misery-ridden face, the Crown Prince looks delighted.
“Oh?” he says lightly, turning toward the center of the square where festival staff are already dragging bewildered civilians toward a decorated platform. “What fortunate timing.”
The announcer’s voice booms through the square with enthusiasm. “Couples participating in this year’s game may proceed to the stage! Winners will receive the Blessed Garland and premium festival prizes!”
Your ears instantly perk up at that—premium festival prizes? Boy, oh boy, why didn’t you mention that first?
A dangerously amused smile tugs at the corner of his lips as he watches your expression morph from existential despair into sudden, laser-focused interest.
“I believe,” The Prince starts smoothly, “this year’s rewards also include imported wines, festival vouchers, a buffet in Golden Apple Inn, enchanted artifacts, and—”
You don’t even let him finish, your hands already shooting out to grab Silver by the sleeve, eyes suddenly sparkling with a kind of unholy motivation.
“Silver,” you say with deadly seriousness, already tugging him toward the platform. “We’re winning this. We’ll show the rest what a real couple looks like.”
You mentally cringe at that, but at least Silver doesn’t offer any commentary. The Crown Prince, however, outright laughs.
Oh, the Prince thinks in delight, it seems the rumors are true!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 63%
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Guh…”
That is how you both end up on stage, fingers entwined, and awkwardly feigning ignorance to the indignant squawks of “the Commander and the Holy Saint?!” below (it’s all the more awkward when all the hooting and hollering belongs mostly to the Order’s knights).
“...Well, at least this aligns pretty well with our intentions.” Silver whispers from beside you, trying very hard to avoid eye contact with the knights present amidst the crowd.
“...Can’t say it’s not ideal.” You reply, though your voice comes out slightly strained as the sheer volume of cheering from below crashes against your ears.
Silver lets out a faint laugh—the lanternlight paints warm gold along the edges of his profile, softening the sharpness of his usual composure. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see that subtle pink beginning to crawl at the tips of his ears.
You can’t exactly tell if it’s embarrassment or something else, but it certainly prompts a warmth of your own that stirs within your chest.
It’s ridiculous—you’ve faced down Hollow Hearts, Voidborne creatures, and even the system’s nonsensical yaps. You shouldn’t be flustered by something as simple as holding Silver’s hand in public, by the soft curve of his smile, by the way his fingers clench against yours.
“We’re going to win this.” He says.
“Obviously.” You whisper back.
“Welcome lovely couples!” the announcer beams at the line of participants assembled on stage. “The first event shall test the trust and harmony between partners!”
You immediately don’t like where this is going.
The Crown Prince, seated far too comfortably among the judges, catches your eyes from across the square with his smile that is nothing short of complicit.
You really don’t like where this is going.
“Now then!” the announcer declares, gesturing grandly toward a lacquered box filled with folded slips of paper that is wheeled out by a festival staff, before dipping his hand in. “Let’s see which challenge our honourable couples are fortunate enough to get!”
#01. RIBBON BINDING RELAY
Partners must navigate through the course while connected by a single red ribbon tied around their dominant wrist. The ribbon may not be removed or broken.
Festival attendants waste absolutely no time. A long scarlet ribbon is promptly produced and tied around your wrist before you can even flee the country. The other end is secured around Silver’s wrist with ceremonial enthusiasm that feels deeply malicious.
“Participants must complete three cooperative tasks!” the announcer beams. “Lighting the painted lantern, carrying the ceremonial cups, and traversing the obstacle course without separating from your partner!”
This is going to be a disaster.
The first task is, predictably, the easiest on paper and the most humiliating in practice.
A pair of unlit lanterns hang at opposite ends of a narrow archway, suspended just high enough that neither of you can comfortably reach them without coordination. A single ember charm sits on a pedestal between you, clearly meant to be shared.
Silver glances up at the same time. “So, we need to light both of them at the same time?”
“With the same source, too,” you confirm, already regretting everything.
The ribbon between your wrists tightens slightly as you move in opposite directions, forcing an awkward correction as you instinctively resync your steps.
“...Left hand or right?” he asks.
“Does it matter?”
“It will if you burn yourself.”
Between the two of you, the ember charm ignites under shared divine energy, flaring briefly before splitting into twin streams of light that leap into both lanterns at once. As the archway flickers alive in warm gold, a cheer rises somewhere in the crowd.
The second task is worse.
A long table has been set with identical ceremonial cups, each filled with a shimmering liquid that smells faintly floral and suspiciously magical, probably. The rules are simple—both partners must carry their cups across a moving platform course without spilling a single drop—and without letting the ribbon slacken enough to lose synchronicity.
The moment you and Silver each take a cup, the platform beneath you shifts.
“Of course it moves,” you mutter—Coach Vargas would be so happy to see you exercise this much.
Silver steps slightly closer without hesitation, aligning his pace with yours before the ribbon can pull taut.
It isn’t dramatic in a romantic sense—at least, you tell yourself that—but there’s something disarmingly steady about the way he adjusts every step to match yours without needing to be told.
By the time you reach the end, neither cup has spilled.
The final course is—well, someshit you’d see straight from the UA festival or something.
A shifting obstacle field stretches ahead—moving platforms, narrowing bridges, and illusory walls that flicker in and out of existence.
When the first platform drops away, and you instinctively stumble, it’s his arms that steady you through the ribbon’s pull, and when he steps forward, you move with him before thinking, because anything else would send both of you tumbling off the course entirely.
By the time you both reach the end, you are placed in third out of the nine couples.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 58%
“Well, third place is third place,” you sigh as the festival staff directs you and Silver off the platform. The ribbon has been removed—finally—and your wrist feels strangely bare without it. “At least we’re not last.”
“Mm.” Silver agrees from beside you, his voice is measured, but you can hear the faintest hint of disappointment beneath.
The festival continues around you in warm waves of lantern lights and cheery noise. Couples wander between stalls hand-in-hand, children run through the crowd with bobbing wreath crowns atop their heads, and the scent of spiced cider accompanied by roasted chestnuts drift through the air like a sweet promise.
For a little while, you and Silver simply walk, basking in the festive atmosphere as you visit from stall to stall—sampling honey-glazed pastries from elderly vendors who insist on giving the “lovely couple” extra portions (after you blatantly coo at a very flustered Silver about your made-up meet-cute story), getting ambushed by enthusiastic merchants trying to sell matching charms “for relationship prosperity” (you proceed to vent onto the merchant how your “forbidden” love prevails, despite how there are those in the Sanctuary who disapproves of your relationship to get an extra discount), and narrowly escaping a flower girl determined to weave both of you in the same ceremonial wreath (Silver drags you away in a flushed hurry when you offer the kid to be a flowergirl in their wedding instead).
“Wow, you’re so sweet toward children, Commander. How fortunate this Holy Saint is to claim you as mine.” You tease slightly as Silver kneels to return a dropped wreath crown to a little girl who immediately runs away in fits of giggles when she sees him.
Silver’s ears go pink—just faintly, barely noticeable beneath the lantern glow, but noticeable enough that you immediately feel spiritually vindicated. “Please stop, prefect.”
“Stop?” you repeat, your voice dropping into a playful register. “But I’m just being honest, Silver. Isn’t honesty a Saintly virtue?”
Silver lets out another one of those half-strangled sounds.
At some point, Silver wins you a tiny carved fox from a throwing game with terrifying accuracy on his very first try. In return, you drag him toward a painted mask stall and hold increasingly ridiculous masks up until the poor vendor nearly cries laughing.
The tension so far is strangely easy… which is probably why you don’t notice the next disaster until it’s already too late.
“Oh!” A festival worker lights up the moment they spot you both appreciating a decorated stall lined with ribbons and silk blindfolds. “Another couple! Perfect timing!”
Behind the attendant hangs a painted sign:
#02. TRUST BLINDFOLD GAME
One person must navigate the obstacle path while blindfolded, the other may only guide them verbally.
“Aha, actually, we were just leaving—”
“You’ll get double reward tokens if you clear it flawlessly!” The attendant chirps.
Five minutes later, you’re blindfolded.
“You’re quite predictable, aren’t you, prefect?” Silver asks, more amused than anything else.
This is the worst day of your life.
The silk tied over your eyes blocks out your sight completely, leaving you suspended in darkness while distant crowd noise blurs somewhere around you. You can vaguely hear the attendant explaining obstacle rules, but most of your focus is currently occupied by the fact that Silver is standing directly behind you.
Very directly behind you.
One of his hands lightly steadies your shoulder as the attendant positions you at the start of the course.
“Just a heads up, there are low obstacles ahead,” Silver says quietly near your ears.
His voice sounds different when you can’t see him—lower somehow, closer, every word brushing warm against the shell of your ear in a way that immediately short-circuits several critical functions in your brain.
“Take two small steps forward,” he continues calmly.
“There’s a narrow beam ahead, slightly to the left.” You nearly walk directly off the course anyway—not because of the obstacle, but because his breath brushes the side of your neck for half a second.
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—
“You’re distracted again.” he murmurs.
??? you wonder why.
You take a careful step forward, guided by his voice as the obstacle course shifts beneath you—wooden platforms adjusting, ropes swaying overhead, distant bells chiming to signal progress. Every instruction he gives is precise and incredibly calm, like he’s done this a hundred times.
Left, stop, half-step forward, wait.
“You’re doing well,” he says, and the words brush against your ear like a secret. His voice is low, almost intimate, as if the crowd around you has faded into nothingness and there’s only the two of you in this small pocket of darkness.
You swallow hard, your fingers clenching at the edge of the blindfold. “How much longer?”
“Almost there, there are three more steps straight ahead.”
You take them—one, two, three.
“Stop.” You stop in command. “There’s a rope at about chest height, duck under it.”
You duck—or you try to—considering how the rope catches on your shoulder instead, and you stumble backward straight into Silver.
His arms come around you instantly, catching you before you can fall. The blindfold slips, just enough for you to see the flash of his concerned face, his hands wrapped around your arms like he’s afraid you’d disappear.
Is this another one of those shitty scene prompter? You think distantly.
“Careful,” Silver says, his hand briefly catching your wrist before you can misstep off the final platform.
“You said chest height,” You argue.
“I said about chest height.”
“You and your abouts.”
You reach the final stretch without realizing it, the crowd noise swelling faintly as the exit bell chimes somewhere ahead. The blindfold comes off the moment you step past the final marker, the sudden return of color and noise almost disorienting after being guided through darkness and voice alone.
Applause rises from the crowd, but you can’t focus much on it when you can feel how Silver is still so close.
Fuck, you try to believe that the warmth that rushes to your cheekbones is only from pure adrenaline, and nothing more
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 50%
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Holy Saint, the Commander is not the designated as a romantic interest, please return to the intended narrative parameters.”
The notification suddenly flickers, as though the system itself is stuttering.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
Crown Prince has been flagged as OOC, and romantic protocols for I Became the Crown Prince’s Saviour have failed to engage. No romantic data found in the Prince’s current neural path—he is officially removed from the ‘Romantic Interest’ registry.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 47%
The blindfold game rewards are generous—a small pouch of silver coins, a pair of matching enamel pins shaped like crescent moons, and a voucher for a free desert at any festival stall.
You and Silver retreat to a quiet stone bench, slightly away from the main crowd, where the lantern lights spill more across the cobblestones. The noise of the festival becomes something distant and gentle here—laughter, music, the occasional burst of applause—it is as if the world has finally decided to stop demanding you anything for a moment.
After trading your voucher for a skewer of honey-roast apples, you settle back onto the bench with a quiet exhale, the warmth of the food grounding you in a way that the day hasn’t managed to. Silver sits beside you, seemingly content to simply watch the way your eyes light up with every bite of the honeyed fruit, a look of quiet, genuine peace settling over his features.
“It’s funny seeing the system losing its mind,” you mutter, gesturing with an apple slice at the empty air. “It literally just kicked the Crown Prince out of the story. I’ve never seen a narrative engine give up that fast.”
Silver lets out a faint, genuine huff of laughter. “I believe the Prince did help us, he looks far too amused every time he looks at us.”
You snort softly at that, tilting your head back against the stone bench as the warmth of the food lingers on your tongue. “Oh, he’s absolutely enjoying this too much; that man is not normal.”
Silver hums in agreement, though there’s a faint softness in his expression as he watches the festival lights. He reaches into the small pouch of rewards, pulling out one of the crescent moon pins and turns it over his palm. Without any warning, he leans in, carefully pinning the small moon to the lapel of your silks, leaving you to be startled by the sudden proximity.
“It suits you,” he says, “it would be a shame if we can’t bring it out of this painting.”
You look down at the little moon, then at the matching one still in the pouch. You take it out, and pin it to the dark fabric of his clothes. “For real, it would be nice if we could bring them out—you know, as a souvenir for this entire shitshow.”
Silver huffs another laugh. “A souvenir from a shitshow is certainly one way to commemorate a festival.”
“You’re welcome.” you say, entirely too pleased with yourself, before leaning back again as the last of the apple skewer disappears between you and your rapidly diminishing sense of emotional restraint.
For a couple of minutes, neither of you speak again.
The festival around you slowly shifts tone as the sun dips lower, painting the sky in deep amber and violet. Lantern sellers begin moving through the crowd, offering folded paper lights and ink brushes for wishes. The noise of the celebration softens into something much quieter and wistful.
“The lantern ceremony is starting soon,” he says after a while.
“I know.”
“Do you want to participate?”
You glance toward the riverbank, where the first lanterns are already beginning to lift into the sky. “Yeah, we might as well. It feels like the kind of thing the system would mark as a mandatory closure event.”
A lantern seller passes by and presses two folded paper lanterns into your hands again without waiting for consent, offering a brush dipped in ink that smells faintly of soot and flowers. Silver takes one without hesitation, turning it slightly in his hands as if inspecting it.
You sit down on the edge of the riverbank together.
“What are you going to wish for?” you ask, fiddling the folded paper in your hands.
“If I tell you my wish, wouldn't it mean it won’t come true?” He replies, eyes still on the lantern.
“...Not wrong.”
He laughs, a soft and genuine sound that makes your chest ache in something dangerously close to fondness. Around you, lanterns continue rising in slow waves, turning the river into a mirror of drifting luminescence.
“Fine,” you reply, turning your attention back to your own lantern. “I’ll keep my wish a secret too.”
The silence between you is comfortable and mundane, filled only by the rhythmic lapping of the river and the choral hum of the festival’s closing hymn in the distance. You dip your brush in ink, the tip trembling just slightly against the paper.
Beside you, Silver’s brush moves more elegantly, the ink flowing in smooth strokes as if he’s not writing a wish so much as committing something already decided to permanence. When you finally finish your own, you both stand up to light the wick.
The warmth of the lantern expands, and you watch in awe as the paper blooms with a lick of golden that illuminates Silver’s face.
“Ready?” He asks.
“Ready.”
As you hold the bottom of your lantern and prepare to lift it into the darkened sky, Silver’s hand shifts from his lantern and slides his fingers down until they cover yours, his palm warm and calloused against your skin.
“...Silver?”
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
Narrative integrity is currently below the safe operational threshold. Current romantic/branching variables are exceeding assigned route limits, and emotional coherence markers are no longer aligned with predesignated script structure. Please disengage unapproved relational escalation and return to approved interaction parameters immediately.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 39%
“...I changed my mind,” he murmurs, his voice barely audible over the faint crackles of flame. “I don’t care much if the wish doesn’t come true because I said it. I want you to know it anyway.”
He leans in, his forehead coming to rest against yours. The lantern between your hands stutters once, casting golden light and shadow across both of your faces. His breath is close enough that you can feel it more than you can hear it, close enough that you can count each individual lash, close enough that the world outside this small bubble has ceased to exist.
“I wish,” he breathes out, “that I can stay by your side, just like this, for as long as I can—for as long as you let me.”
“Please forgive my boldness,” with a slow, almost reverent grace laced in his touch, he lifts your joined hands to his lips. His lips brush against your knuckles—a gesture so delicate and tender that the kiss feels like an unspoken oath.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
Narrative integrity is currently below the safe operational threshold. Current romantic/branching variables are exceeding assigned route limits, and emotional coherence markers are no longer aligned with predesignated script structure. Please disengage unapproved relational escalation and return to approved interaction parameters immediately.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 28%
The air between you is thick (in tension? In warmth? In everything you’ve both been too afraid to name? You’re not sure anymore, not when his lips are damningly soft against the skin of your knuckles), charged with a gravity that makes you conscious of every movement within the space that you both called your own.
Silver doesn’t pull away after that—he keeps his lips brushed against your skin for a heartbeat too long, his eyes searching yours with raw intensity.
“You…” Your voice hitches, the single word barely more than a breath that gets lost in the narrow space between you. You try to find the rest of the sentence, but your brain is currently a frantic mess of static and heat.
There’s too much to say—too many threads pulling in different directions at once, too many meanings colliding behind the grit of your teeth before they can become languages without branding themselves onto your lexicon as something that would change the shape of everything after it.
You can’t just say that, you think, it’s not good for my heart!
Perhaps he’ll never know, or maybe he will—maybe one day, he will come to know the devastating impact he leaves in his wake, one that effortlessly leaves you tracing the cords of the stars and likening them to the lines of his palms that have gently cradled the heart of yours.
Though that is a thought for another time, a confession in another lifetime, maybe.
Your free hand comes to cup his jaw—tentative at first, then firmer when he doesn’t withdraw from your touch. If anything, he leans into it, like he’s been waiting for this exact kind of certainty from you, even if neither of you said it out loud.
You lean in, your breath ghosting over his lips, the mingling scent of leftover honey apples with a note of something earthy making your head spin.
Silver’s eyes flutter shut, his hands shifting from your knuckles to the small of your back, pulling you closer until the gap between you isn’t quite distance anymore; rather a brief space of warmth that leaves just the frantic rhythm of two hearts thrumming in tandem.
Your lips are a hair’s breadth apart, so close and fragile—
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
Due to unsanctioned convergence exceeding predefined script parameters, narrative stability can no longer be maintained within current scene constraints. Initiating emergency world clean-up protocol.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 10%
Your grip tightens for a second—did you just get cockblocked by this hack-ass system?
You stare at the shimmering blue warning box hovering right where Silver’s lips were supposed to be—the sheer petty audacity of the timing hitting you like a bucket of cold water.
“Are you fucking kidding m—”
You don’t even get the chance to finish your words when you’re promptly swallowed by waves of white noise.
The smell of lilies and sweet incense is gone, replaced instantly by the nostalgic air of old parchment.
You gasp, your lungs burning as you pull in a breath of stale, library air. Your cheek is pressed against the cold, hard mahogany of a study table—yikes, you hope you don’t grant yourself a concussion.
“Ugh…”
A soft, pained groan echoes from the seat beside you.
You bolt upright, blinking back the dark spots in your vision. The library is silent and dark, bathed only by the several small, golden lamps. Beside you, Silver is slowly pushing himself up, his silver hair a tangled mess and his eyes wide with lingering alarm.
He freezes when his gaze meets yours, and for a long, breathless beat of silence, neither of you speaks—stil clearly in a daze from… what could have happened.
“...I’m going to burn that fucking painting in front of Crowley.”
Silver lets out a soft laugh, the sound shaky but amused, nonetheless. “I’ll help you light the torch, I suppose.”
His fingers graze yours, and slides his hand over yours, pinning it gently against the mahogany. The fresh memory by the riverbank, the amber light, and the breath fanning against your lips rushes back with such force it makes your head swim.
Violet eyes drop to your lips, and you find yourself unconsciously leaning forward with your heart doing that frenetic dance against the contours of your ribcage. You shut your eyes when the distance closes to a hair’s breadth for the second time tonight, finally ready to see if the real thing tastes as much like honey and promise as the painting did—
The library doors slam against the wall with a deafening crack. “Henchuman! Sniffs, I knew you’d be back!—”
“Oh, for fucks’ sake, I’m going to fucking burn this fucking school down—”
❝ HEADMAGE, I DON'T WANT THIS ROMANCE MANHWA SLOP ! ︵﹒01.
💭: what's worse than being transmigrated into another world? being transmigrated into another world for a second time. you unceremoniously trip into crowley's painting that leads you to play the role of a "holy saint" and—what the hell is that silver as the "knight commander"?
you try to get out of this world by focusing your romance on the knight commander instead of the crown prince. now at this point, some might argue that you’re doing it for the love of the game, and not just treating it as a plan to get out, and—well, they're right.
pairing. silver vanrogue x gn! reader
wc. 16.3k (stay with me now...)
warnings. heavy slow burn, mutual pining, a substantial amount of profanity, mostly comedy, inaccurate or fictional depiction of religion, hopefully not ooc silver (havent reached b7), not proofread, reader is prefect
a/n. in honour of my and my birthday twin (silver)'s birthday, i present to u a silver fic that has been rotting in my drafts for ages. "why is it so long???" i lowk got carried away and nearly made this into a whole ass au lol sorry... i plan to have three diff characters for this series but im still debating on it
parts. 01. (here) | 02.
There is a painting in the library that no one talks about, tucked into an alcove at the end of a forgotten isle where it perpetually collects dust.
It’s not as though it is unremarkable—no, it is quite the contrary. The painting is ridiculously grandiose, gratuitously ornate, and encased in tarnished gold that someone clearly stopped polishing decades ago—which, in retrospect, is strange if you think about it, considering how Crowley is the sort of man who would sooner genuinely tweak than let a crack go unrepaired on one of his school’s precious walls, let alone a triptych that carries itself with the weight of an ancient heirloom.
Despite how time should have eroded most of its vivacity, the painting remains impossibly and immaculately alive, as if the brilliant vibrancy of its colours is merely borrowed from the warm ephemerality of breathing memories, before varnishing it with the promise of eternity basked in golden splendour.
It is as if the triptych refused to simply fade away—the deep crimsons laced around the darker areas have yet to brown, the resplendent hue of gold is still as lustrous, and the shadows rendered in the background have not, at the very least, ashen beneath the grapples of decay.
Your stomach churns in deep unease the more you stare at the painting—it doesn’t evoke the same sense of befuddlement that those moving paintings sprawled across campus do. This time, it leaves a shiver of primal instinct to look away at the same time your enraptured eyes are begging you to come closer, and touch.
In response, however, you merely huff and turn your back towards it.
“Freaky ass painting in a freaky ass school.” You mutter, tone laced with a conviction of someone who has stopped being surprised by anything in this damn institution, approximately less than three weeks in.
You have taken exactly four steps—four steps, before you hear the distant bells of impending doom tolling blaringly in your head, heralding a particular danger that takes the form of a certain grey blur barreling straight toward you. It’s a collision course so precise and calculated that it feels as though Grim has a personal, lifelong vendetta against the very concept of you having a split moment of peace.
Hell, he doesn’t even give you a second before you are roughly shoved backwards with enough force that the yelp that tears out of you is deeply, profoundly undignified, and you don’t even have the breath left to be mortified about it.
“Henchhuman! You hafta hide me—”
As if triggering a sequence of horrifying indignities, your heel spectacularly catches on nothing, causing your arms to begin to flail pathetically in an attempt to grasp a semblance of balance before you ineptly crash on the (undoubtedly expensive) triptych. Some rational part of you is already bracing for the humiliating impact against the gilded frame and the inevitable, crushing bill that Crowley is going to send you for damaging his “precious school asset”—
Except the impact never comes.
Curioser and curioser, a hysterical part of your brain whispers, why the hell are you still falling?
Distantly, perhaps if you strain your ears enough, you can hear tweedle dee, tweedle dum (read: Deuce and Ace), and Grim, calling your name out in a cacophony of sheer, utter frenzy.
As the darkness begins to encroach upon your consciousness, you think very clearly, with the last coherent synapse and brain cell you have available in you—
I’m going to snuff out Crowley for this.
Crowley and his stupid, unpolished—
The thought dissolves before you can finish it.
i. SILVER VANROGUE — Your Highness! This S-Rank Protagonist does not want the Crown! (Holy Saint x Paladin Commander)
Ꮺ﹕ SYSTEM INDEX — SYNOPSIS: I Became the Crown Prince’s Saviour
Capturing a prince’s heart is every reader’s dream come true! Oh, to be promised passionate love by such a charming man, all the while showered with jewels that shine brighter than any dawn—such is the fate for the Holy Saint [Name] of the Sanctuary of Virtue. Not only do they possess immense divine power, but the moment they prevent a dungeon break from swallowing the Crown Prince, his eyes are set on them, too!
Let us see what entails their heart-pounding romance!~
You’re about to gouge your eyes out at this rate.
The ridiculous text of a synopsis—if you can even call it that, given how it resonates more deeply as an isekai self-insert some lovesick fourteen-year-old who had just discovered adjectives for the first time and scrawled it into the margins of their notebook—floats innocently before you in a luminescent blue panel, suspended in the air with the sort of dramatic flair that makes your right eye twitch.
Unfortunately for you, the first thing you wake up to after being sucked in by some freaky wormhole of a painting is a glorified floating system panel, as though you were ready to yell out “arise” by the next second.
Though instead of doing that, which you much prefer personally speaking, is the dawning, catastrophic realization that you have somehow become a protagonist—sorry, you mean, the Holy Saint of the Sanctuary of Virtue, who is also coincidentally blessed with immense divine power, destined to be the trophy spouse of a Crown Prince, and a heart-pounding romance—
You had to read it twice.
—With an equally nonsensical system that will probably lead you to a death penalty should you evade its missions or something.
You read it for a third time, just in case your eyes accidentally skimmed past the part where there is a written portion of “Aha! Caught you lacking, Prefect!”
There isn’t.
“Okay.” No, nothing really is okay—this is the most outrageous situation you have found yourself in, and you’ve been in Twisted Wonderland for months now.
You have half the mind to question why your greatly courteous headmage even has this collecting dust somewhere in the library, but then you remember that it’s Crowley, and somehow that explains practically everything—of course the man who wouldn’t pay for a roof leak would keep a cursed, isekai-trap painting as a decor for anyone to fall into.
Looking around your surroundings, you find that you are deposited onto a stone bench in the middle of a garden that looks as though Claude Monet had personally breathed life into each of his brushstrokes. The flowers that peppered the neatly trimmed grass are groomed to perfection with their radiant vivacity, their colours so saturated that they are almost borderline fictional—which, you suppose, they technically are.
By the edges of the garden, the hedges are impeccably cut with what one might qualify as architectural precision, and the fountain nearby burbles in such an oddly serene sound that it nearly lulls you to sleep—what the hell, even the garden is so committed to the aesthetic of whatever historical manhwa this is that you are inclined to take your role seriously.
You groan into your hands, trying to recount all your reasoning before you start doing something insanely stupid from sheer frustration. Right, okay—you’ve handled worse than this, you’ve survived a whole ass haunted dorm, multiple Overblots, and even Crowley’s administrative negligence—this is below your usual level of management.
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — SUBJECT: CONGRATULATIONS !
Congratulations On your Sainthood!~♡
You’ve been picked by the Divine Will of the Heavens above to serve as the Holy Saint! This is a great honour bequeathed upon very few, and you should feel incredibly blessed~♡
Greetings, Holy Saint! I am your most dedicated system, guide, companion, and foremost supporter on this wondrous journey of divinity and romance! Worry not, I will be with you every step of the way ~♡
Remember, my dear saint—the key to success is one’s sincerity~♡
Important Note: The Management assumes no responsibility for any emotional, physical, metaphysical, or existential damages incurred during the course of your sainthood. Best of luck~♡
The long silence that follows the notification is heavy, fragmented only by the insultingly easy trickle of the garden’s fountain.
You sit there for a solid minute, staring at the translucent blue panel hovering before you with a look of a monk who has attained zenith—Heavens forbid you find yourself transmigrated into another world for a second time, because the first order of business is apparently the profound, staggering insult of a liability waiver.
Never mind that in any functioning economy, this would constitute a litigable breach of customer protection laws—but a liability waiver in a magical system notification?
Now, that’s a new low.
Slowly, with a waning composure, you take the longest fucking breath of your entire life that you think you have, for a brief moment, smell every single atom that was inhaled. Biology has always stated that human anatomy decays and decomposes over time, but holy shit, you single-handedly feel ten years of your life shaved off your life span.
What makes you more pissed, your irritation dripping in copper and spite, is the fact that the words are so quintessentially Crowley that you can practically hear his voice echoing through the pixels, making excuses about how he’s too kind to interfere with your sudden ascension to sainthood.
“That damn bird man.” You rasp, your voice jagged and out of place against the soft aria birthed by the gentle breeze.
You move to pinch the bridge of your nose—a habit born from months of dealing with NRC’s nonsense—before your hand is abruptly snagged.
Instead of the familiar, crisp texture of your school blazer, your fingers are met with a cascade of fabric so impossibly smooth and wispy it feels like silken mist against your skin. The sudden tactile shift is what finally makes you tear your gaze away from the floating text and down toward your own lap.
Whatever you’re wearing, it is no longer the school’s standardized uniform
Bedecked with a pearlescent opulence that feels entirely misplaced, layers of white silk—so pure that it feels as though they were sewn with stardust and the quiet, reverent hush of moonlight on the cusp of being swallowed by dawn—swathe your form in a delicate grandeur that is impractical more than anything. The fabric itself is heavy yet graceful, pooling around your feet on the grass like the sprawling, draped petals of a massive magnolia.
As you shift, the silk lets out a soft, expensive-sounding breath against the stone bench—the fine weave catching the light to reveal a subtle, protruding embroidery of lilies and leaves. The ends of the ivory-kissed robes flow as if they meant to mimic the fettered surface of a tranquil pond, swaying along with an invisible ebb and flow, while the sleeves hang past your fingertips like morning dews parallel to a falling tide.
It’s beautiful, that you can’t deny—it is also, however, the most impractical thing that you’ve ever worn in your entire life. One trip on those floor-length hem and you’re going to be the first Saint in history to die from a staircase fall, which would be, without a doubt, the most interesting entry in the annals of the Sanctuary.
You reach up to rub your temples, only to realize your hair has been adorned with something that feels suspiciously like golden filigree.
Oh, okay, you think distantly, so this also comes with a complimentary haute couture wardrobe.
“Well, at least it’s soft.” You mutter, fingertips dancing across the smooth fabric. It’s not often that you get to wear garments as sumptuous and regal as these—usually, your wardrobe consists of the school uniform, the school uniform, and on special occasions, the school uniform.
Ding!
The blue panel flickers, and in its place materializes what can only be described as a quest menu, laid out before you with a clear resemblance to an MMORPG interface.
ʚ﹕CURRENT OBJECTIVE — MAIN QUEST UPDATED !
[MAIN QUEST: WHEREFORE ART THOU, MY SAVIOR ?!]
The Abyssal Miasma has reached a critical boiling point! Seeking to quell a Hollow Heart before it could trigger a kingdom-wide eruption, the Crown Prince ventured into the Sunken Crater of Ruin (A-Rank) to eradicate the source. Alas! The darkness was too strong and vast, causing the Prince to be cornered by a surge of Voidborne monstrosities!
OBJECTIVE: Descend into the dungeon, utilize your “Divine Aegis” to neutralize the Hollow Heart, and save the Prince before the corruption reaches his soul!
“The Abyssal Miasma? A Hollow Heart?” You repeat the words slowly, the syllables feeling heavy and ridiculous on your tongue, rolling out in a bewildered cadence of someone reading a language entirely foreign to them.
What the hell do any of these mean.
“System, explain them to me like I’m five.”
A secondary window pops up, complete with a helpful, meticulously curated index of definitions—God bless the person who decided to install a built-in Wikipedia within the system’s operational setting.
Ꮺ﹕ SYSTEM INDEX — BEGINNER’S GLOSSARY !
1. ABYSSAL MIASMA
The God of Ruin was defeated eons ago, but the remnants of his horror still remain. Abyssal Miasma is a dense, malignant concentration of corrupted mana that similarly acts like toxic gas, eroding the sanity and soul of any mortal who lingers for too long.
2. HOLLOW HEART
A pulsing organ or core of the fallen God of Ruin that emerged from his corpse—it serves as a ‘dungeon anchor’ for those of B to S-Rank dungeons, progressively drawing in corrupted mana to fuel its rhythmic, discordant beat. Once a heart ‘awakens’ into a Tainted Heart after absorbing enough Miasma, it tears a hole in reality, causing a massive dungeon break. Only a Saint’s immense divine power can neutralize such a concentrated surge of malice.
Now, you wouldn’t exactly offer these descriptions to a five-year-old, but you digress—at least it provides ample context to realize the severity of the situation.
“Severity of the situation, my feet.” You mutter to yourself, the silk of your sleeves swaying restlessly as you massage your temple. The absurdity of it all feels like a physical strain upon your shoulders, feeding off your disbelief and incredulity.
“The Crown Prince just decided to walk into an A-Rank dungeon to solo a Hollow Heart, and didn’t even think to bring in a team?”
Your voice slightly rises with the sharp edge of someone who has spent way too much time dealing with all the “eccentricities” of powerful idiots—is hubris just a common trait in royalties? As a matter of fact, you’re more concerned about the way the Crown Prince, the one to inherit the throne, is so easily allowed to walk down the path of a martyr.
According to that index, unless you possess divine power on par with a Saint’s to counter it completely, you’re essentially better off planning your next life—and despite knowing that, the prince still charged in regardless?
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Indeed, Holy Saint! His Royal Highness acted with great courage and conviction for the sake of his kingdom! A true testament to his character as your destined one, no?~♡.”
It’s a classic setup—you can practically see the narrative gears grinding behind that floating blue screen. The Prince, driven by some misguided sense of noblesse oblige, throws himself into the unhinged jaws of death, only to be plucked at the last second by the only person capable of handling this mess.
Which so happens to be you.
Wow, that’s one cliche, forced meet-cute wrapped in a ribbon of doom and despair, if you say so yourself. It’s certainly the kind of narrative railroad that would make fantasy romance devotees swoon, yet here it is, blinking at you for you to personally play the role of the clean-up crew in real-time.
If he dies, that will be a diplomatic nightmare—
“Wait a minute.” You pause, your foot mid-step as a realization clicks into place—a cold, calculated spark of logic that cuts through contempt. If the Crown Prince is the male lead, and the male lead dies… doesn’t the story just end?
You look at the shimmering sight of the garden, drinking in the painted perfections of the flowers—this isn’t merely a world; it’s a painting first and foremost. It’s a risky hypothesis, but if the central pillar of the narrative is removed, the painting should, theoretically, deteriorate.
If the story falls apart, there’s a chance you will be spat out. It feels grim, even horrible, to weigh a person’s life against your escape, but you have to remind yourself that even the very soil you are on is made of prose and splatters of paint.
The “Prince” is no more than a collection of tropes and programmed bravado—if letting his character perish is the key to getting you out of here, and back into the real world, isn’t that a risk worth taking?
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “I wouldn’t recommend that line of thinking, Holy Saint! If the male lead dies, the narrative integrity collapses. To prevent total deletion, the system will simply enforce a temporal regression.”
Another panel pops out.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Time will reset to the moment the Prince entered the dungeon, and it will continue to loop over and over again until you move forward and comply with the main quest. You can watch him die a thousand times, but you’ll never escape the loop until he’s safe~♡.”
The realization sizzles over you like a prick of a thousand needles, a cold dread settling in your gut.
Your jaw tightens, molars grinding together in visible, bubbling hot frustration. The audacity of this system is staggering—it isn’t enough that you’re being held hostage by a plot loop, now you’re wearing the role of a perpetual witness to a tragedy that won’t let you leave unless you play your part as a doting saint.
“Fine, if I clear your… objectives and finish the story, can I get out of this painting?” You frown.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “...”
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “I’m afraid I can’t promise on that one~♡.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you hiss underneath your breath, eyes narrowing at the translucent blue screen with a level of vitriol that should have scorched the very air.
The heat of genuine, unfiltered rage seethes in your chest, your fingers curling into fists within the deep recesses of the fabric. Just as you are about to open your mouth and start spouting words that would have been very unbecoming of a Holy Saint, a gravelly shout shatters the garden’s stillness.
“Your Holiness!”
The frantic, metallic clatter of armour cuts through your inner turmoil like a blade. You snap your head toward the sound, the aureate embellishments of your garb chiming with a discordant chime at the abrupt movement.
A knight rounds the corner of a towering hedge, his silver plate reflecting the sun with a gleam that prematurely announces an incoming headache. The condition he’s in—gasping for air, face panic-stricken and sweaty—alerts you in a way that tickles your instincts, whispering that you are on the precipice of being shoved into the frontlines.
“Thank the Heavens I found you!” He bellows, stumbling toward you with a desperation that would be moving if it weren’t so incredibly inconvenient. “The Sunken Crater… the Hollow Heart is transitioning, Your Holiness! His Highness went in alone to shatter it, but it awakened too soon, and—and, the Miasma has thickened considerably! None of the Royal Knights could follow after him—only Your Holiness can enter!”
“Please, Holy Saint, I beg of you—if you do not go now, His Highness will not make it out alive!”
The knight’s voice cracks on the last word, raw and unvarnished as he practically collapses onto the grass, his gauntlets clawing at the soil. He looks up at you with watery, pleading eyes of a man who believes in miracles, and you are made aware that you are currently dressed as one.
You look at him—you look at the unconcealed terror written across his face, at the way his hands are trembling where they are braced against the dented soil—fingers painfully digging into the dirt from his helplessness, the streak of something dark and stained across his pauldron that would probably classify as evidence of Miasma exposure.
“...How long has he been in there?” You kneel before the knight, your pristine robe rippling into a cascade of ivory waves against the ground.
Up close, you note, the stench of Miasma clinging to him is unmistakable—it smells densely foul, like ozone and a cloying, metallic rot that makes the back of your throat itch.
“Nearly an hour, Your Holiness. We’ve dispatched a rescue team, but we lost contact when the Miasma thickened—our communications won’t penetrate it, and any knight who attempts entry is—”
He rasps, his voice barely more than a choked whisper. “Overcome within minutes.”
The dark, oily stain on his armour pulses slightly with a dim, sickly violet light—an unsightly smear that makes your skin crawl with a deep-seated unease.
“An hour.” You repeat, your hand hovering just inches away from the inky smear on his shoulder before remembering you don’t actually know how to use this “Divine Aegis” yet; you settle on resting a hand on the cold, hard steel of his bracer.
Your eyes flicker to the imploring panel that floats above you, staring at the bolded text of the quest objective, then right back at the kneeling knight. Taking in a slow breath, you rise from the ground with a fluid, heavy grace.
So much for having recently transmigrated into this third-rate, sub5 story.
“Get up,” you command in a tone stripped of the commentary, offering a hand to haul him up from his position. “And walk me through everything you know.”
The knight scrambles to his feet, stunned at the sudden shift from a serene, silent Saint to a pragmatist who sounds like someone who’s about to conduct a tactical debrief.
“E—Everything I know, Your Holiness?” He stammers, wiping a streak of grime from his forehead.
“Yes, everything—if we’re going to have to venture into a dangerous dungeon, we are not going to do it blindly.” You retort, already beginning to pace out the garden, because unfortunately, you did not get transmigrated into some romance novel that you have the foreknowledge of or any popular shitty stallion web novel that is overglorified on the internet.
The knight jogs up to keep up with your strides, his heavy armour clanking in a rhythm that grates against your frayed nerves.
“Right! Of course, Your Holiness—but, it’s—it’s imperative that we receive the Sanctuary’s formal approval. The protocol for a Saint’s departure is—”
You exhale deeply. If it is so imperative, why didn’t you seek the Sanctuary itself first?
“Never mind that, this is the Crown Prince.” You interrupt, stopping so abruptly that the knight nearly trips over his own greaves. “If they have a problem with my unauthorized departure, then they may bring up the subject after the future king is no longer on the brink of death.”
Before the knight can utter a single syllable, he is silenced by a voice that makes you stop dead in your tracks.
“The Saint is correct, Sir Callum. The Crown Prince’s life takes priority over all else.”
The voice is steady, low, and so hauntingly familiar that your heart skips a beat. You whip your head so fast, you thought you heard a crack, and for one disorienting second, you genuinely think you are hearing things—except that no, he really is there.
Every half-formed sentence in your mind that is begging to be sputtered out in utter relief dies on the tip of your tongue the moment your eyes land on him, particularly at the sight of Silver clad in armour.
Soft pale hair that catches the light in strands of moonlight, drifting like falling snow over the cold silver of his uniform. Refulgent auroral eyes that remain fixed on you with an unwavering intensity—eyes that once looked upon the world with a hazy, half-lidded sleepiness are now observing you with a weight that makes your lungs feel as though they have collapsed.
In this light, Silver looks ethereal, divinely bewitching, almost ghost-like—a fleeting fracture of stillness in the midst of a storm, as if his very presence stilled the world of its breath.
You want to ask him if he was also pulled into that damn painting, too—if he remembers you at all, but the words are swept away by the cold-licked air. Instead, you find yourself mindlessly following the pull of his gaze, your heart beating to its own frantic content.
Ohhh shit, you think distantly.
What the hell.
“Your Holiness,” he bows, a swift, practiced motion. “I did not intend to startle you, but Sir Callum is correct about the urgency—we do not have time to deliberate further.”
“Commander Silver?!” Callum, whom you finally have a name for his face instead of addressing him as the knight, at last finds his voice, the name coming out in a strangled, nearly high-pitched squeak that betrays his sheer disbelief.
“I—I was told that you were still at the border! We… didn’t think a Paladin of your caliber would—”
Silver straightens from his bow, “Rest assured, the border has held for now, Sir Callum. Your concern is understood, but it is not a front I can remain at while this unfolds.”
“I have already prepared the Order for a perimeter sweep.”
He turns his gaze back to you, and you try your best to look as unaffected as possible. “I will accompany you to the dungeon, Your Holiness.”
You blink. “Accompany me?”
“Yes.” His response is immediate. “My divine power is sufficient to carve a path through the Miasma and reach the Hollow Heart, but I cannot neutralize it, only the Holy Saint can.”
You blink again, the shock of seeing him finally subdued, and giving way to a flicker of relief. Has the Lord come to bring you salvation? God bless your Saintess status, and God bless Silver.
Something in his expression softens just slightly, but enough for you to notice. “If you are willing, Your Holiness.”
You look at him, and come face-to-face with the absolute, unwavering certainty that rests with unapologetic paramountcy in his eyes—it is unlike arrogance, lacking the whetted corners of pride and vanity; instead, it is a quiet devotion, as if your survival is something that he is not willing to leave to chance.
“...I can endure the weight of a failed mission, but I could never forgive myself—nor would my soul find rest—if you were hurt when I had the power to prevent it.”
It would be easier if it were arrogance.
“Of course, I will be willing, Commander.” You nod earnestly at his words. “Knowing that we’re going headfirst into a whole ass shitshow that’s already feeding off the Royal Knights, we need all the stability we need.”
Sir Callum lets out a strangled gasp as he clutches his chest, looking back and forth between you and Silver’s bewildered face. In the high-strung world of the Sanctuary, a follower’s lips—especially the Saint’s—are meant for hymns and blessings, so hearing such… improper words coming out of a Saint’s mouth is, to him, equivalent to watching a divine pillar crumbling live.
“Y—Your Holiness!” Callum wheezes, his eyes darting toward any possible witnesses that could hear the blasphemy. “Such language… the Ministry… the decorum of couth…!”
You don’t even spare a glance at him—you know you’re not exactly rocking off the saintly mantle assigned to you, but frankly, everything dissipates into the void when the weight of something long-suppressed presses against the inside of your skill.
It is the familiar, suffocating burn of helplessness that you carry in you as the magicless prefect thrown directly onto the axis of something that arbitrarily deigns you useless—utterly powerless to protect the people you care about while they fling themselves into the eye of the storm. You have stood on the sidelines of too many catastrophes with nothing but your hands and wits, marinating in the particular helplessness of someone who cares enormously and can do nothing about it.
Not this time, however.
For the first time you have arrived in this world—or in any world, for that matter—you have something. This time, your hands do not curl to dig crescents into your palms out of stifling guilt; they are steady and capable—for once, you have something to offer beyond your presence. A power that is yours—no matter how borrowed it feels and no matter how uncertain you are of it.
It is tangible—and that alone, in the inconvenient, manhwa-logic circumstance that has otherwise offered you very little say, is enough,
You refuse to be the person who sets it down and walks away.
“Very well,” he breathes, “No darkness shall touch you, no Miasma shall breathe upon you, and no horror of the void shall so much as glimpse your shadow while I still draw my breath. This, I swear—not to the Sanctuary, but to you.”
Sir Callum, behind you, has gone completely still.
Beyond the loud thrums of your heart that seem to pulse in your very throat, you understand why.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING !
The Holy Saint is reminded that Commander Silver of the Paladin’s Order is not the destined one~♡ I strongly advise you to redirect your attention toward the Crown Prince, Your Holiness.~♡ Or there may be unintended narrative consequences.”
The coolness of the stone floor of the lower cloisters seeps through your robes, but it is not unwelcome, considering how it is the only thing grounding you.
You’re tucked into the narrow space behind a row of large, ornamental amphorae in the Sanctuary’s empty western corridors. It’s a place of shadows and stagnant air, far from the frantic shuffling of priests down the hall where the Prince is recuperating.
Slumping dazedly on the wall, your skin is clammy, and your head is throbbing with a rhythmic, pulsing heat that distantly wants to make you bang your head on the wall.
Unfortunately, the narrative’s reward for your heroics was a swift, nasty “Divine Fever”—supposedly a sickness that occurs every time your divine power exceeds your body’s capacity.
Holy nerf.
Not to mention, the system just has to rub it in your face with a new updated quest.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Holy Saint! Your condition is truly distressing… but fate waits for no one! ~♡”
ʚ﹕CURRENT OBJECTIVE — MAIN QUEST UPDATED !
[MAIN QUEST: I AM HERE, ROMEO !]
The Crown Prince is currently in the Sanctuary’s Infirmary, located in the East Wing! Use your divine powers to heal the remnants of the Miasma after the High Priest and the healers have stabilized his condition!
OBJECTIVE: Navigate to the East Wing infirmary, utilize your healing powers to cleanse the remaining Abyssal Miasma that has clung to the Crown Prince’s heart, and wake up your prince charming. ~♡
Oh, this system is gonna burn in the depths of hell.
As if having this dumb and restricting fever because of that goddamn Divine Aegis isn't enough, you have to deal with this, too.
Now, using the Divine Aegis for the first time hadn’t felt like any sort of spiritual awakening, or a cool moment of a main character’s power up—it had felt like being hollowed out, a parasitic chill that settles over your sinews, as though using your marrow as some sort of vessel to pour the entirety of the purification power.
You realize belatedly (and you concur that it’s mostly the system’s neglect to inform you as much) that it turns out to be a violent, radiant force that treats the human body as nothing more than a disposable flint to spark its fire. It was a bit of a difficult procedure to cast the technique in the first place, granted how you have never once wielded magic, powers, energies, or anything of that sort—it is made worse by the fact that it requires a fundamentally powerful and skilled caster.
The memories of the run are stored in jagged and nauseating snippets. You remember the cold that raked up your nerves, the sound of your own heartbeat echoing in the dungeon—loud and frantic. You remember the way the dark seemed to hiss when you touched it, and the heavy thud of silver-plated boots ahead of you, and in the midst of it, the dull, burning sensation that unfurled through your veins.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Breathe in and breathe out! Look! Do you feel the divine powers rising in you? ~♡”
“The only thing rising is my blood pressure!—”
Yeah, there was that too.
It took you four internal breakdowns of agonizing trial and error, where the Miasma had been clawing dangerously close to the barrier cast by Silver, before you managed to stop thinking logically like a student and start acting through pure, instinctive desperation.
By the time a flicker of white light actually sparked at your fingertips, and your vision was tunneling, you were convinced your internal organs had been replaced by dry ice. It felt like the power tore through you—a white-hot, crystalline pressure that expanded from your chest until you felt your ribs might splinter like twigs, turning your very blood into scorching plasma.
To those watching, as described by the system, it must have looked ethereal—veins of pale fire that stitched themselves across the air, weaving a celestial loom of holy sigils that purified the Heart with a resonant hum.
You remember reaching the Crown Prince afterward—a pale, limp figure bathing in his own pool of blood. He looked like a tragic painting, his mahogany-brown hair matted with traces of crimson and sticking to his forehead in damp clumps. Even in that state, he possessed a sharp handsomeness befitting of a male lead—though, seeing him only makes your stomach stir uncomfortably, suddenly all too aware of the weight you must carry.
Still, you reached to heal him as best as your remaining energy allows you to, even as the system practically purred in your face. In hindsight, you probably should’ve pushed yourself further—if only to avoid dealing with this all too soon—but at least you didn’t have to face him fully conscious the first time.
As your mind drifts back to the sound of a voice—muffled and frantic—calling your name before darkness consumed your fading senses, it is then do you realize that you finally have the time to process the question that has been nagging at the back of your mind—
What the hell is Silver doing here?
As you have already deduced, this isn’t your Silver—this isn’t the Silver that you have come to know in Night Raven College. Back in the dungeon, as the air grew thicker by the second, you had tried to throw out phrases here and there that might possibly ignite a flicker of recognition behind that familiar face—you know, to test out your deduction.
“You know,” you had whispered, watching as Silver’s blade cleaved through the husk of a Voidborne creature. “Do you think Professor Trein will let me off the hook for submitting my essay late? I mean, I think this mess is a reasonable excuse, right?”
You paused, searching for a twitch of his brow. “And Grimmy, I bet that greedy cat would’ve tried to set everything on fire by now… I miss that little guy.”
You distinctly remember Silver looking at you with such pure, utter trouble written all over his face that you promptly shut your mouth. “...Is this a side effect of corruption, Your Holiness? Are these… figures from your celestial visions?”
Yeah, he probably thinks you’re crazy now.
Regardless, it gives you the confirmation you needed—here, he is merely a character, one that is constructed out of those Commander of the Holy Knights trope—a puppet that wears his face, yet one that you cannot help but be drawn to.
Why does it have to be Silver? The thought pushes through the heat of your fever, a repetitive and dull one that keeps snagging at the back of your mind.
You try to grasp something logical, something that may somehow mete out explanations of the world’s mechanics—was the system just lazy and picked out a random person that you know? Your brain tries to connect the dots, but the lines keep blurring into static behind your eyes.
Fuck this stupid system and this stupid fever—and fuck Crowley and his dumb ass, eldritchlevel painting.
“You’re shivering.”
The low, drowsy rumble of his voice makes you flinch. You look up to see Silver leaning against a marble pillar just a few feet away, having ditched his armour for a simple white blouse. Even without the splendour of his armoury, he looks exhausted—his eyelids drooping with that characteristic lethargy.
He moves towards you silently, his boots making no sound on the polished stone of the cloister. There is no intimidation in his movements; instead, he sinks onto one knee, folding his tall frame until he is eye-level with you—it’s almost embarrassing how you nearly lean into his presence that feels like a radiant heat source in the drafty corridor, a stark contrast to the coldness that has yet to leave your skin.
“If you’re waiting for the High Priest to leave, he just entered the infirmary to assess His Highness’ condition,” Silver murmurs, his tone a soothing thing that eases your spinning head like a healing balm. “You have perhaps approximately ten minutes before he tries finding you again, Your Holiness.”
It is safe to say that the High Priest was not happy with the stunt you and Silver pulled; you grimace.
He reaches out, his fingers hovering just inches from your forehead—the proximity is close enough for you to feel the warmth of his hand, but far enough to maintain the invisible, respectable line between a Commander and a Saint.
He tracks the way your breath hitches, the way your pupils dilate from the sheer overwhelming feeling of his closeness.
“Though, I do believe it might be better for you to visit the healer—”
“No!”
The word stumbles frenzily out of your mouth before you can mull over the thought, reverberating a little too loudly throughout the corridor.
Silver’s hand flinches back a fraction, his brows knitting together in a look of concern.
Hell no. If you go to the healer, you go to the infirmary; if you go to the infirmary, you are within a five-foot radius of the Crown Prince. You can practically see the system forcing you to sit by his bedside, the High Priest introducing you to him as his savior, as he speaks about divine providence or something of that sort.
Hearing that, the Prince would look over to you with an intensity that glimmers with flourishing interest, while you try not to vomit from the cloying scent of incense.
Fuck no, you’d rather let the Divine Fever bake your brain into a coal.
“No,” you repeat, softer this time, your fingers subtly digging into the silky fabric of your robe. “No healers and priests—if I see one more person dressed in a white robe, I think I’ll genuinely lose my mind.”
Silver doesn’t argue, but you register the deliberate way he shifts his position until his frame eclipses yours enough from the view of the hallway. It is as if he is carving out a quiet corner where the rest of the world isn’t invited to see—a small, breathable space that simply exists between his presence and the stone wall behind you.
The heat radiating from him is addictive—in your chilled, feverish state, he feels like a hearth fire in the middle of an unfettered blizzard.
God, you must be delirious from the fever, because you lean toward him by the next second.
It is an impulsive and dangerous movement, you are aware, yet it does not stop your heavy head from drifting forward until your forehead is barely an inch from the collar of his blouse. You don’t make contact, no, but you bask in the sheer comfort of his presence, breathing in the lingering scent of cedarwood and worn leather.
Silver’s breath hitches; his entire body goes perfectly still and tense, yet he doesn’t pull away.
“...Your Holiness?”
“Just ten minutes,” you mumble, your voice thick and slightly slurred from the heat of the fever. “Just… stay until then.”
The words dissolve into the quietude of the corner as soon as you say them, a fleeting breath that bears the small and unguarded vulnerability that must have been so unlike anything a Holy Saint should be in his eyes.
For a moment, you think that he might step back—reassert the distance, remember the measured pace of a knight and a Saint—and you are already bracing for it, already bracing for the tinge of disappointment that will inevitably follow—
Yet it never comes.
Instead, he seems to let out a breath he had been holding, his presence softening into something remarkably steady.
“Ten minutes,” he agrees, gaze dropping to the way your lids are beginning to grow heavy. “I will keep watch until then, but afterward… I cannot let you stay on this cold floor—the fever will only worsen. Once you’ve caught your breath, I will escort you to your quarters, so you can rest properly. You have my word.”
You hum—or at least you think you did, considering how increasingly difficult it is to keep yourself awake. At this point, you're not sure where intention ends, and your body begins.
The world around you begins to blur in the corners, hazing into a heavy, velvet shroud that tantalizes you more than anything. You feel your consciousness fraying at the edges, your thoughts spinning away from their jumbled mess and into the exhaustion bottled up in your bones.
Before you know it, your breathing slows, synching with his, as you finally let the fatigue pull you under.
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
The Saint has yet to initiate contact with the Crown Prince. Continued deviation from the designated story path will accelerate structural deterioration. The Management strongly advices returning to the scheduled narrative!~♡
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 87%
“Devotion, adherence, fidelity—of saintly gospels we uphold,”
The morning prayer is objectively the most elaborate thing you have been asked to perform since arriving in this world—a choreographed display of piety that feels more like a stage play than a religious rite. Your voice carries across the vaulted ceiling, threading through the incense-thick air.
It’s been a few days since the dungeon incident and subsequently, that fateful corridor moment. Since then, the atmosphere in the Sanctuary has shifted from reverence to a stifling, paranoid surveillance.
“In light unbroken, our voices rise to the Divine.”
Every time you move, you can feel the High Priest’s eyes boring into the back of your head, nailing you down with sharp suspicion. He bows his head as if reciting the prayer in tow, his lips moving through the responses on cue, but his eyes cut sideways toward you with a particular sharpness as though looking for a crack in the porcelain.
You reckon the sudden wariness might be a punishment for your “defiance”—regardless, the weight of his scrutiny feels like a shackle more than anything, pining you to the gilded seat you’ve been forced into.
“May your breath be steady, your steps unshaken, and may the light guide you, wherever you wander.”
As the last verse fades, you take a measured step back, your robe sweeping against marble as you lower your gaze—a silent handover of attention to the High Priest.
The High Priest, a man whose smile never quite reaches his cold, calculating eyes, glides forward to take your place at the lectern. He places a hand on your shoulder as you pass—a gesture that looks like a fatherly blessing to the crowd, but feels like a heavy clamp to you.
“We shall now begin the morning assembly.”
You retreat to your designated seat, flanked by junior priestesses who sit so close you can feel the graze of their veils.
As the High Priest’s indoctrination drone out in the background, you take the opportunity to wave your fingers beneath the cover of your sleeves subtly. It’s a small, restless motion—enough for the eyes preying on you not to notice.
The panel flickers to life before your stoic face.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
The Saint has yet to initiate contact with the Crown Prince. Continued deviation from the designated story path will accelerate structural deterioration. The Management strongly advices returning to the scheduled narrative!~♡
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 87%
It’s the same notification from the corridor—the same garish, blue panel that had burned into your retinas before your sleep claimed you.
When you finally woke up yesterday, your vision was immediately crowded by it again. Still, there had been no time to truly digest the words, granted how you had spent the better part of twenty-four hours swamped by the suffocating rotation of healers and high-ranking priests, each one probing your condition for a seemingly endless check-up.
Between the bitter tonics and the prying eyes of the medical staff monitoring your every breath, the warning had remained nothing more than a persistent glowing blur in your peripherals.
It is only now that you finally have the chance to look at it—to really dissect it.
World-Logic instability; narrative integrity that is at 90%.
Those are the words that snare your attention first—it’s not difficult to surmise that the decrease in integrity is a direct consequence of your refusal to play a part in the romance with the Crown Prince. In the rigid logic of this painting, the plot is the gravity that holds the colors of the canvas—if the plot fails, the world literally starts to unravel.
Following the thread thereafter isn’t a difficult task once you’ve grasped the underlying mechanics.
If you are the protagonist and you refuse to move, the narrative has no choice but to tear itself apart to find a way back to the script. Your defiance causes the World-Logic to glitch, and as the Narrative Integrity drops, the reality you inhabit begins to lose its coherence—desperately trying to force a story that no longer fits its lead character.
That also extends to the one overseeing the story’s development—the system.
For as long as you have played this role, the System has been an invasive presence, a parasite that hummed in the base of your skull. It used to mock your hesitation and police your very intent, but now, you find only a vast and hollow silence.
As if it has lost its high-level functions ever since the narrative integrity dropped.
Ohhh, if only that bum ass system had a face, I’d be laughing right at it. You’re pretty sure your lips have curled up into a delighted smile—thank the lords that you’re currently seated in the ceremony; had it been anywhere else, everyone might’ve thought you’ve finally lost it.
You steeled your face again—well, you can’t simply hide from the Crown Prince and the plot forever; it’s a possibility that the system will eventually get desperate enough to force a “fated encounter” by quite literally dragging you there.
With that being said, you need a more sustainable way to stay off the Prince’s path—you need a new strategy, preferably one that can lower the integrity more.
Hm, you ponder thoughtfully, what should little old you do?
Your eyes sweep past the panel, scanning the entirety of the Grand Hall that is packed with devotees and silent witnesses, until they catch a familiar sight of silvery hair and the gentle flutter of snowy eyelashes against his cheeks.
Silver.
You haven’t spoken to him since you woke up from your forty-eight-hour nap. Yesterday had been a blur of prying eyes, but through the hushed, scandalized gossip of the junior priestesses, you learn that it was he who had alerted them—that he had carried you and stayed until the healers arrived to take over your care.
Ah, you realize, I never got to thank him.
He stands by the dark oak doors near the rear pillars—while every other paladin has their chin tucked in a display of rigid, ceremonial discipline, Silver’s head is slightly tilted.
…Did he fall asleep?
You catch yourself before you let out an intentional snicker, the sound dying in your throat and morphing into a sharp, stifled cough. It is so quintessentially Silver that you can’t help but feel something along the lines of endearment and amusement blossoming in your chest.
…?
Wait.
A slow, treacherous grin rises from the back of your mind—
Why don't you romance Silver instead?
If you create a story so fundamentally “wrong” and non-canon that the World-Logic can’t reconcile the data, there’s a high chance the painting will collapse, and if the canvas shatters, the only thing it can’t destroy is the person who was never part of the painting to be with.
If the system needs a romance to stabilize integrity, you will give it a romance so incorrect that the entire simulation will throw a fatal error. You’ll force this “Management” to render a love story they never intended, draining the integrity until the whole world has no choice but to spit you back out.
Is it a risky plan? Definitely, one with quite a few wormholes—there’s still the probability that you might vanish into the static as well, but you’ll take any chance to get out of here.
The High Priest concludes the proceedings with a final sweeping gesture of his sleeves, signaling the end of the assembly. The heavy doors groan open, and the endless sea of white-gold robes begins to shift, moving toward the exit in unhurried strides. While they drift ahead of you, you remain rooted in your spot, playing the role of a Saint that cannot yet bear to leave the lingering devotion.
As the hall empties, you glide toward the oak doors where the Commander remains stationed. Up close, the formidable image that he carries himself with begins to crumble into something familiar.
His head has tilted to the side just slightly, a lock of silver hair falling across his face and draping itself over the bridge of his nose with the careless elegance of something that doesn’t even have to try—it catches the remnants of the morning light that flitters through the hall’s high windows and turning briefly into something luminous.
His breathing is a steady, peaceful lilt—it is slow and even, just like the one you listened to as you drifted off to sleep. The rigid composure he wears like a second skin has evidently softened at the edges, the stern line of his brow easing into something quieter and more vulnerable.
…What a lethal face card.
“Commander.” You murmur, your voice laced with a pointed edge that carries through the silence of the empty hall.
Just as you figure, no reaction whatsoever.
You lean in just a hair closer, watching the way his chest rises and falls with commendable peaceful stability.
“Silver.”
This time, you say his name without the title, the syllable rolling out sharp enough to snag his consciousness.
His eyes snap open with a slow and drowsy blink of someone returning from a very far-off place. It takes exactly three seconds for the fog in his gaze to clear and for the realization of who is standing in his personal space to register.
“Your Holiness.” He immediately straightens, the last vestiges of drowsiness fading cleanly out of him. He moves to bow, but you catch his gauntlet before he can proceed with the greeting.
“Don’t,” you say with a genuine smile tugging at your lips. “I’m the one who should be bowing to you—I heard what happened in the corridor.”
“Thank you, Commander Silver,” you continue, leaning in just a fraction as you watch the way his eyelashes flutter in surprise at the sudden proximity. “For not letting me wake up on a cold floor and for watching over me.”
“There is no need for the thanks, I simply… I could not leave you in such a state.” He murmurs, a faint, almost imperceptible flush creeps up the back of his neck, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Regardless,” you hold his gaze with your smile—and here is where your master plan begins, here is where you deploy the carefully stored romance manhwa knowledge you have accumulated over years of reading in your world like a nerd, here is where you begin the deliberate and calculated dismantling of a story from the inside out like the historical fantasy protagonist you are supposed to be.
“I was hoping I might repay you, in some way. Would you like to take a walk with me?”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “...Holy Saint, what are you doing?~♡”
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Holy Saint~♡ please cease this interaction and proceed to meet His Royal Highness, who is currently waiting for you in the East Wing— ”
You ignore the influx of notifications with unperturbed serenity.
Silver considers it for the moment—his eyes blinking at you, as if regarding your expression—before inclining his head.
“Of course, Your Holiness.”
The corridor outside the hall is hushed, the tail end of the retreating congregation dispersing around the corner in a murmur of robes and distant footsteps until all that remains is the metallic chime of Silver’s armour with every step he takes beside you.
The air feels much more breathable here—thinner and less saturated with the coiling sweetness of lilies and more alive with the cool draft from the gardens. You fall into step beside Silver, not too far and close enough to blur the line between escort and something far less formal.
You can hear the buzz of the system, a high-pitch frequency of panic that you blissfully tune out.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “Holy Saint! Please turn back! This is not a part of the current objective!”
You hum a little tune, the sound bright and jarring against the solemn atmosphere of the monastery. Silver walks just behind you at your side, maintaining a respectful distance, but you can feel his gaze darting toward the side of your face every few seconds.
“You seem… in high spirits, Your Holiness.”
“Am I?” You question, knowing damn well why you’re in a particularly good mood. “Oh, right.”
“I wanted to ask how the border situation was resolved. You mentioned it held, and I realized I never properly followed up.”
Silver glances at you sideways, his hand resting habitually on the pommel of his sword. “A rift had begun to weep Miasma into the forest by the border, causing the corruption to prey on the nearby village. It was nothing my unit couldn’t handle, but the rift itself was… volatile.”
He pauses, a slight furrow appearing between his brows. “It took several hours to hold the Voidborne shadows, but once the shards shattered, the rift collapsed. The village is safe now, though the forest will take some time to recover.”
“Rest assured, Your Holiness. My second-in-command has the remaining cleanup in hand. The perimeter is stable, and the villagers have been migrated to the upper meadows.”
You nod thoughtfully—it’s the kind of background lore that stories usually skip over in favor of grander battles, but hearing Silver talk about the gritty and unglamorous work of actually protecting people fills your chest with a steady and satisfying weight.
“Well, that’s a relief. No wonder you were catching some sleep by the pillars—on top of the long journey, you also went to the Sunken Crater afterward. That’s much more exhausting than sitting through a ceremony.”
Silver coughs in his hand, red dusting his cheeks. “I… I did not realize it was that obvious.”
You blatantly stare at him with no concerns left in your head about some “he’s going to think you’re a creep for ogling at him like that”—oh wow, red looks good on him, or maybe you’re just blind when it comes to pretty men.
“It was very obvious,” you tease, leaning in just enough to catch a whiff of the familiar scent of cedarwood. “But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me, Commander. Though I might have to charge a fee for my silence.”
Silver opens his mouth to respond—likely to ask what kind of “fee” that a Saint can possibly ask from a knight—when the air in the corridor is suddenly choked out by the faint smell of medicinal herbs and incense.
“Your Holiness!”
Talk about bad timing.
You turn to see one of the Sanctuary’s aides hurrying toward you, his face pale and his robe fluttering messily. He doesn’t even stop to bow properly before he’s practically shuffling with urgency in front of you.
“The Crown Prince’s condition has fully stabilized,” the attendant continues, his eyes wide and pleading. “The healers have done all they can, but there are still remnants of the corruption clinging to his soul.”
“They have sent me to bring you, Your Holiness.”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “[MAIN QUEST: I AM HERE, ROMEO !] is on going!~♡”
Your right eye twitches.
"Of course,” you say, your voice smooth and deceptively calm despite how you want to roll your eyes. “Please tell the High Priest I will be there shortly.”
The aide sags with visible relief. “Thank you, Your Holi—”
“Give me a moment.”
He blinks. “I—pardon?”
“A moment,” you repeat pleasantly, but it is laced with a finality that effectively ends the conversation. “I’ll follow right behind you.”
The aide looks like he wants to protest, but one pointed look from you sends him scurrying a few paces back to wait at a more respectful distance.
“Anyway,” you turn back to Silver. “About that fee I mentioned, Commander.”
Silver lets out a breath he seemed to be holding, his shoulders sagging just a fraction. “Your Holiness, surely, given the Crown Prince’s state, we should—”
“The Prince can survive for another 2 minutes, no worries.“ You interrupt, a small, knowing smile gracing your lips. “Hear me out, as a token of my gratitude for you saving me twice now—once from the dungeon and that cold floor—I’ve decided on my price.”
“It’s quite simple,” you continue, slightly cocking your head to the side. “The recent incidents—the rift, the crater, the border clean-up… your knights must be exhausted.”
Silver’s brows draw together slightly, the familiar line of silent disapproval settling between them as his posture straightens. “Faituge is expected, Your Holiness. It does not impede our ability to serve.”
“It does,” you cut in lightly, closing the distance between you by a daring inch. Your eyes lift to stare at him with a steady and unyielding focus. “You just don’t acknowledge it.”
Your gaze traces the faint exhaustion lining his eyes, noting the subtle weight in his shoulders that even his silver-plated armour cannot fully mask—a heavy fatigue that speaks of a man who hasn’t truly rested since the moment you fell into this painting, a man who consistently places his own needs at the bottom of a very long list of duties.
“And you shouldn’t have to.” You murmur, the words landing softly as though a whisper of secrets between the two of you.
A flash of profound confusion flickers across his countenance.
“...Your Holiness?” He says quieter this time, as though the title itself might steady the moment back into something familiar.
“I’ll assist with recovery,” you simply state with a stubborn tilt to your chin. “My affinity is better suited for stabilization than combat anyway—if I circulate through the barracks once a day, I can ease the residual effects of Miasma exposure, fatigue, even minor injuries before they worsen.”
“It’s efficient, isn’t it?” you add, almost idly, the words falling into place with deliberate ease. “Your unit remains in peak condition, the Sanctuary saves on resources, and I get to fulfill my duties as the Saint in a way that’s actually helpful.”
Silence stretches between the two of you, dense and thick, with everything you’ve just laid out. You watch him in it—you watch the way he stills, the minute recalibration behind his eyes, and the subtle tension along his jaws as he weighs your words.
“You are proposing,” he slowly says, “to enter the Paladin quarters… on a daily basis.”
“Mhm.”
“...Alone?”
You smile—a sharp curve of your lips that holds more mischief and danger than any Saint should possess.
“Of course not, the High Priest would have my head if he ever finds out.”
“Which is why,” you continue smoothly, “you’ll be accompanying me.”
Hook, line, and sinker—this is the real price, you’ve just signed him up for a daily, private escort mission where the only objective is spending time with you. For a moment, Silver says nothing, opting to stare at you, his mouth slightly agape as his brain attempts to reconcile his rigid military code with the sheer delightful audacity of the request you’ve posed on him.
“...and in return?” he asks.
You hum, tapping a finger against your chin as if deeply considering his words. “In return, I get a competent escort, a change of scenery, and the reassurance that the most reliable person I know isn’t about to collapse from overwork—seems fair, doesn’t it?”
“Anyway,” you shrug lightly, “you don’t have to answer right now, take your time to figure things out. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
At least, not so soon.
With a playful lilt of your head, you reach out and give his armoured upper arm a firm and reassuring pat—the metal is cold, but you can feel the rigid tension of the muscle underneath. It’s a gesture that is far too familiar, that it leaves him visibly stunned.
“Let’s go,” you signal to the attendant, who straightens immediately when you approach, relief flashing across his face as he moves to guide you down the corridor.
You’ve only taken two steps when you feel a sudden, firm pressure circle your wrist. It isn’t a rough grip—he’s far too disciplined for that—but it is a grounding touch that pulls you back to his orbit. The leather of his glove is cool against your skin—an anchoring feeling that your heart betrays you with a single traitorous skip that you feel all the way to your fingertips.
You stop, turning your head to find Silver rooted to the spot—he looks down at where his gloved hand meets your skin, realizing the impropriety a second later, and his grip slackens in return, but he doesn’t let go.
“Wait,” he breathes out, his voice dropping into a register that is purely urgent and stripped of its formal polish. He looks at you, and the stream of morning light that spills through the open corridor catches his eyes and fractures dazzlingly within them—turning them into something luminous and unbearably earnest, the auroral veil of his eyes lit through with pale gold at the edges like the first hesitant stretch of dawn.
“If I agree—If we agree to do this,” he continues, “you must promise me that you will not trade your well-being for our comfort, no matter what.”
The intensity of his stare is staggering, his thumb brushing against the pulse of your wrist—a ghost of a movement, perhaps unintentional, but enough to send a jolt of static through the air, enough to send a subtle flare of warmth across your cheeks.
You mindlessly nod your head, and it is only then that his fingers finally unravel from your skin, though they linger in the air for a split second, as though he is reluctant to let the warmth dissipate.
“Then we are in agreement.” His hand drops fully to his side, the professional composure sliding back into place with practiced ease. “I will meet you at the barracks after our morning patrol.”
That seems to snap you out of your dazed stupor, “Right, yeah, after morning patrol.”
You clear your throat, straightening your robes. “Anyway, I should get going. Don’t be late tomorrow, Commander.”
You turn back to the pale aide, who looks like he’s aged a decade and is wearing the patience of a man who has decided today is simply not a day he is willing to process.
As you fall into step with the attendant, you can feel the warmth of where his fingers were, still present at your wrist like a kept promise, and you think, with the resigned clarity of someone who realizes their plan is developing a catastrophic flaw in real time—
Fuck.
You’re in big trouble.
Maybe you’re in bigger trouble when you realize you’re surrounded by crazy NPCs.
“They say the lotus blooms most brilliantly in the murkiest waters, and thus, the weight of the mud is but a testament to the strength of the stem!”
“Type shit.”
You thought that after a grand total of five days—honestly, barely a hundred and twenty hours of being shuttled around in this high-fantasy fever dream—you had at least figured out the basic mechanics. You had even adjusted to the glowing system panels that popped out like annoying web ads.
What you did not account for was the healers.
You did not account for the fact that every single person in this wing apparently graduated from the School of Genshin Impact bard dialogue and speaks in proverbs as though they helped Confucius write his philosophy.
“Type… shit!” the healer to your right gasps, clutching her medical satchel to her chest as if you’ve just handed her the Ten Commandments. “The type… the archetype? The foundational essence of the soul? The ‘type’ of our soul, the ‘shift’ of our destiny…!”
If your hand wasn’t occupied resting on the Prince’s chest, purifying what little corruption is left lingering within it, you might’ve dragged a hand down your face so hard you’d rearrange your facial features.
The golden light of your mana hums between your palm and the Prince’s tunic, a steady pulse that has the corruption yielding in slow, dissolving threads, dark light unravelling like ink dispersing in water.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “PROGRESS BAR: 74%”
You stare at the shimmering bar floating in your line of sight, barely moving despite how you’ve been standing there for the past ten minutes, and it's evident in the way your arm is starting to go numb from the static pose.
“Seriously?” you whisper, voice barely a breath. “It’s been what? Ten minutes? Why the hell is the progress still stuck at 74%?”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “PROGRESS BAR: 75%”
“Oh, so now it moves?” you mutter.
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “PROGRESS BAR: 77%”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “PROGRESS BAR: 80%”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “PROGRESS BAR: 84%”
“Okay—okay! I get it!” you hiss, at a volume that exists exclusively for the space between your teeth. “Stop flickering already, it gives me a headache! God forbid I ask a simple question.”
Ding!
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — “CAUTION: ATTITUDE DETECTED~♡”
“...You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re talking about attitude to me?”
Behind you, a gasp rings out, sharp enough to slice through your spiralling irritation. Your head snaps up instantly, heart palpating widely against your ribcage—
Shit. Did they hear that?
For one horrifying second, your mind jumps straight into the worst-case scenario—that someone caught the exchange, that the illusion of this painting has cracked, that someone else can see it too—
Your gaze darts over your shoulder and to Sir Callum, who stares at you with eyes that hold… religious revelation.
“The Holy Saint’s divine grace is truly unparalleled,” Callum whispers (which isn’t what he’s really doing, considering how the entire room is focused on him now) to the person beside him, who happens to be the attendant who escorted you. “To think that they would rebuke the Divine itself for the sake of His Highness’ recovery…”
Next to him, the attendant blinks slowly.
“To command even the unseen forces with such authority… to chastise the Heavens themselves without hesitation…” His voice lowers, taking on a reverent tone. “Such unyielding devotion… it is my utmost pleasure to witness their grace firsthand in the Sunken Crater—the Divine Aegis that neutralized the Hollow Heart in a single—”
You blink slowly.
Around him, the healers and the acolytes standing by begin to murmur.
“How reverent…!”
“The Saint’s authority truly transcends—”
“To think they would scold the Divine…”
Oh my god.
“...Yeah,” you say slowly, turning your attention back to the Prince, the sheer, baffling weight of their words settling over you like a thick fog; at this point, you’re starting to think you could trip down a flight of stairs, and they’d call it divine descent or something.
You tune them out, letting the thrum of your mana finish the heavy lifting. Surprisingly, the system doesn’t milk the moment despite all the fuss and tantrum it threw to have you where you are right now; instead, the progress bar hits 100% with a polite ding, and the Prince’s eyes simply flutter open with none of the dramatic flair you expected—he merely blinks dazedly at the ceiling.
“He’s stable,” you announce, peeling your hand away from his body. “My job here is done, but see it through that His Highness gets enough rest for the time being before doing rounds of intensive checkup.”
After offering a courteous bow, you don’t even wait for a thank you, opting to bolt for the exit and get the hell out of here before the system finally takes it upon itself to trigger some sort of weird ten-minute cutscene.
You swing the doors open, ready to taste the fresh air of the hallway, only to find the High Priest standing there like a gargoyle.
“What the hell—” you shriek, the words slipping out as you nearly collide with his chest.
“—Heavens. What the heavens,” you correct yourself, approximately half a second later, when the High Priest sported a displeased look at your words.
You laugh nervously, the sound echoing hollowly in the corridor. “Oh! High Priest, The Prince has… he has been fully stabilized now, thankfully. All he needs right now is plenty of rest, and His Highness is as good as new! I was just heading back to my quarters to… meditate on it.”
The High Priest hums, a sound that vibrates with a subtle, condescending power. He steps closer, leaning in just enough to invade your personal space without actually touching you.
“It is a relief to hear,” he says, his gaze drifting toward the infirmary doors you just bolted through. “The stability of the crown equates to the stability of the Sanctuary. We wouldn’t want any… unnecessary disruptions, would we? Your role is to be the sun of the Sanctuary, my child. It would be displeasing should something happen to the people’s beloved Holy Saint… again.”
You had to hold yourself from deadpanning at him. Man, this guy reeks of those typical corrupt religious figurehead tropes.
“Rest now,” he continues; though his voice is low and steady, you can still discern the sharpness underlying his tone. “You've done enough, Holy Saint.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, his gaze lingering on you for a second longer than necessary. With a faint and stiff nod, he sweeps past you, his heavy, embroidered robes whispering against the stone like the scales of a serpent.
You stand there for a moment, the air finally rushing back into your lungs now that his stifling presence has moved on. You watch him enter the infirmary, the heavy doors closing with a thud that echoes like a gavel.
“Unpleasant,” you mutter, mimicking his tone with a grimace. “Right, unpleasant for your little system of control, you mean.”
You huff quietly, scrubbing your face as the last of his presence seems to peel off your skin.
“God,” you mutter underneath your breath, already turning away from the infirmary and back to the quiet embrace of your awaiting bed, “and here I thought the dungeon was the stressful part.”
At the very least, you’ll get to see Silver again tomorrow.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
The Saint’s prior deviation from the designated narrative track has created situations the character was not written to encounter. In response to unscripted stimuli, secondary character [HIGH PRIEST] has begun operating outside his original characterization.
Secondary character [HIGH PRIEST] has expressed wariness over your person.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 80%
You are not a morning person, and it definitely shows in your half-lidded eyes squinting against the tender kiss of the morning light, still reluctant to be awake.
It is right at this moment that you internally berate yourself for agreeing to meet with the Commander right after their morning patrol, which just so happens to finish at six in the asscrack of morning.
The air in the barracks is thick—sharply different from the sugary wafts of lilies throughout the Sanctuary. Here, it smells of damp stone, the metallic tang of wheatstone on steel, and the pervasive, earthy note of leather. It’s not exactly an unpleasant change, you muse, you can get used to this.
“Your Holiness,” Silver murmurs, leaning slightly toward you. For someone who has gone rounds on morning patrol and escorts you to the barracks, it’s no surprise that he looks disgustingly awake—his silver armour polished to a mirror finish, and his posture as straight as the blade by his hip. You can feel his gaze darting to your face, tracking the sleepy, disgruntled slant of your mouth with a look of suppressed amusement. “I hope the morning has not proven too unkind to you.”
You groan into your hands, rubbing your eyes a couple of times for good measure. “Don’t even start. Never mind, I’m here and awake, let’s get this over with before my soul leaves my body.”
“Besides, a Saint should be diligent, or whatever,” you mutter, your voice a low, sleep-deprived rasp that lacks even a shred of saintly grace.
Silver’s lips twitch, “I see, your dedication is commendable, truly.”
He leads you further into the heart of the barracks, where the scent of ozone and the subtle weight of Miasma that lingers in the air becomes palpable. You feel it before you see it—the particular pressure of residual corruption, sitting in the air like a held breath, the same wrongness you remember from the Crater except much milder here.
Your hands tingle in response, a reflexive thing that stirs the mana within you in steady pulses that ripple beneath your skin, eager to unravel it.
The knights assembled in the east wing—men and women alike—are in various states of post-patrol dishevelment, sitting or standing with the contained, professional stillness of someone tired but will not say so, looking at you with expressions that range from cautious curiosity to carefully neutral to—in the case of one extremely young knight in the back—barely concealed awe.
Silver comes to stop beside you, his presence a grounding thing in a way that feels deliberate. “Most of the knights have been cleared for duty by the Sanctuary’s healers, but those who were closest to the rift’s collapse still have remaining traces of the corruption.”
He gestures toward a group near the front, and you can feel the faint pull beneath your skin like a thread caught on something just out of sight.
You nod, the sleepiness finally burned away by the tingling sensation on your palm. You stop in front of a young soldier in the group whose hand trembles slightly as he unbuckles the gauntlet. The skin underneath is spider-webbed with dark, thready veins—the classic symptom of Miasma exposure. Before he can move to greet you, your hand moves with a practiced efficiency to press against his wrist.
“Don’t move,” you command, “don’t worry, it won’t be painful.”
The golden light of your power flares—warm and bright like the gentle morning sun—threading through your veins before blooming outward at your fingertips in stable streams. The moment it brushes against his skin, you can feel the residue clinging just beneath the surface, thin but stubborn, like soot seeped too deep into fabric.
Under your touch, the corruptive threads dissolve, turning from an oily black to a faint, dissipating mist. The soldier’s hands stop trembling instantly, letting out a breath that sounds like it’s been trapped in his lungs for days, his eyes wide as he looks at his now-clean skin.
“Next,” You immediately move on to the next knight, sparing no time.
The next knight steps forward—older, broader, jaw set in the familiar line of endurance—but you catch the slight furrow of her eyebrows when the pain burns too much.
“Your Holiness,” she grunts as your fingers hover near the faint, inky black thread that has crept up past her forearm. “You don’t have to—there are others who need your attention more, I can endure this much as the captain.”
“Absolutely not,” you snap back at her, though there’s no real heat in it. You lean in, gaze narrowing at the dark thread etched on her skin. “Captain or not, do you see the state you’re in right now?”
“I’d be a fool if I dared leave you alone unattended for a moment longer,” you huff, “It’s already climbed this far—what, were you planning to just ignore it until it reached your shoulder?”
Her lips press into a thin line, “...it is within tolerable range.”
“Yeah? And what if it stops being tolerable when I’m not around?” you counter, lifting your hands again, the faint glow already gathering at your fingertips. “You don’t get to gamble with something like this.”
The knight blinks, her tough exterior momentarily shattered by your bluntness.
“Hold still,” you instruct, the firmness in your voice softening as your hand hovers closer to her arm.
Just like it had been with the previous knight, your mana answers the moment you make contact with her forearm, rising in a steady current as it gathers at your fingertips. You can feel the corruption unravelling at the edges first, and then gradually dispersing toward the center, dark threads dissolving the way frost does when spring announces itself.
The inky black thread under her skin recoils before shivering and breaking apart into a dispersing haze, leaving nothing behind but clean skin and the faint echo of where it once clung.
The warm light bleeds into her skin, and you watch as the tension in her neck finally snaps. Her breath hitches in relief as the cumbersome, poisonous ache that had been dulling her senses for days simply evaporates.
“...There,” you breathe, pulling your hand back before glancing up at her. “You good?”
She blinks, as if trying to orient herself in the sudden absence of the pain that has been plaguing her, before straightening instinctively.
“...Yes,” the captain replies, steadier now than before. “Thank you, Your Holiness.”
You merely offer a nod before your attention shifts to the next knight who’s sitting on a block of hay—he looks roughly seventeen in age.
He has the particular posture of someone trying to appear older—chin up, shoulders back, jaw set with the fierce and unmoving certainty of someone who refuses to be seen as anything less than capable. His gaze locks onto yours the moment you step in front of him, bright and unwavering, though you catch the way his fingers curl ever so slightly at his sides.
You look down at his leg, where the Miasma has pooled around his calf like a thick, tar-like shadow. Despite how the healers of the Sanctuary have dispensed all their measures, it still remains as a concentrated mass, pulsing with a low, rhythmic sickness that makes your mana itch in protest.
“Theo was assigned to the rearguard at the sector gate,” Silver says from over your shoulder. “When the line collapsed, he remained to cover the withdrawal of the wounded.”
“By the time he was retrieved, he had been standing in residual overflow for nearly ten minutes.”
Well, that explains it.
“I only did what was required, commander,” Theo says, the words firm but just a touch too rehearsed. “There was no other choice.”
“...Yeah,” you murmur, already lowering yourself into a crouch in front of him. “You all say that.”
Facing the effects of the corruption face-to-face, you’d be lying to yourself if you say that you’ve grown accustomed to its manifestation. Despite everything, it’s only been less than a week—a chaotic few days that feel as though it has been weeks to months on end.
You cringe lightly as you make contact with his ankle. The tar-like mass under your palm feels cold—a deep, soul-sucking chill that tries to numb your fingers. It almost feels aggressive, the kind of concentrated rot that feels as though it requires a full ritual circle.
“It’s deep,” Silver says, his voice lowering as he steps closer, his gaze fixated on the corruption coiled around Theo’s leg. “Deeper than the others.”
“Yeah,” you agree. “It might take a larger amount of mana to clear it completely.”
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — TIPS !
The Holy Saint has found themselves in a bit of a predicament! Don’t worry, when facing these types of manifestations, maintain steady contact and regulate your mana in a continuous flow.
Then, focus on locating the core concentration point, think of it as the “heart” of it all—the outer layers will collapse once the “heart” is neutralized, just like a Hollow Heart! Apply pressure on the “heart” and gradually increase output to disassemble the structure.
Treat it as a structure to be undone, not something to be erased!~♡
You blink at the screen—wow, for once, the system is actually useful.
Carefully going through the tutorial, it turns out to be an… interesting experience. At first, it feels like nothing more than the usual—your mana spreading in slow pulses that brush past the outer layers of the cold corruption that clings the same way it has with others. Yet as you let your mana extend deeper, you find a dense knot coiled tight around his ankle, stubborn as though it has decided to make a home for itself there.
It’s a bit of an odd experience to say the least, like sinking your fingers into something thick and resistant as you search for something that is unfathomable to you.
It definitely takes more time and effort, you distantly note, your mana pooling heavier at your fingertips as you maintain pressure, unwilling to let it slip.
By the time you pull your hands back, the almost slimy pressure is gone, leaving Theo staring at his clean skin in stunned silence. You, however, feel a bit like a squeezed-out sponge—feeling a little drained and thinned at the edges, like you just ran a sprint.
“Next,” you say, the words feeling a bit heavier than before.
As you begin to push yourself up from the floor, dusting the grit from your robes, you are about to reach for another knight’s shoulder when Silver adjusts his stance, stepping just enough into your line of sight to face you directly.
“I hope you remember my preposition to your offer, Holy Saint,” he begins with a subtle frown on his face. “That you will not risk your own well-being for us.”
Your pause, your hand hovering almost awkwardly in the air before letting it drop to the side. “Don’t worry, I remember.”
You offer him a smile, “Relax, I’m not about to pass out in the middle of the barracks; that would be embarrassing for everyone involved.”
Silver does not look even remotely amused.
“Your Holiness.”
You sigh.
“Okay, okay,” you relent, glancing up at him properly this time. “I’ll keep it controlled and under wraps. No overexertion and no dramatic self-sacrifice, I know my limits, Commander—I’m quite fond of being conscious, really.”
Silver searches your face for a long beat before finally nodding. He doesn’t move away—in fact, if anything, he hovers closer—but the rigid set of his shoulders loosens just slightly.
The rest of the morning passes in a golden-hued blur. One knight after another steps forward before your orders, your hands flicking almost automatically and mechanically throughout the process—locate the corruption, maintain the flow, unravel it from the inside. With every relieved exhale of gratitude, the oily weight in the air thins, and your own energy follows suit.
By the time you are finished with the infected group, it feels second nature to beckon the remaining knights lingering nearby. It’s mindless work, it all starts to blend together againa after that brief pause—the faint glow gathering at your fingertips, the warmth of your mana leaving your body in steady increments, tired soldiers stepping forward only to leave looking lighter and rejuvenated than before.
“This is the last of them,” Silver’s voice cuts through the fog settling over your thoughts. A wave of dizziness rolls over you the moment you straighten fully, subtle but it’s enough to make your vision swim for half a second. You steady yourself before anyone can comment on it, exhaling quietly through your nose.
“Already?” You murmur, rubbing your face.
“Already,” Silver confirms. He makes a small gesture to the few squires left, dismissing them with a silent command that leaves the two of you alone.
You let out a long breath, rolling your wrist once. No doubt, your body is still adjusting to the sudden presence of “magic” within you—your limbs feel heavy in that unpleasant, floaty sort of way, in a sense that it hasn’t quite decided whether it is exhausted yet.
You blink slowly, your gaze drifting across the now-empty corner of the East Wing before something occurs to you.
“...Not quite.”
Silver’s brows knit faintly. “What?”
“You,” you say, shifting your weight to face him. “You haven’t had your turn yet.”
He opens his mouth to speak, likely to offer a practiced deflection, but you beat him to it. “Don’t even try to pull that it’s manageable card like the other knights,”
You narrow your eyes at him. “I’ve spent the entire morning patching up knights who insisted they were fine while actively being affected by Miasma and/or running on straight fumes. I’m not letting their Commander of all people do the same thing.”
Silver’s expression flickers almost imperceptibly at your words before settling back into its usual composed stillness. “You should be prioritizing your own recovery first, your Holiness—your hands are shaking.”
“And you’re hardly in the position to lecture me now,” you snipe back, “but since we’re both being stubborn, why don’t you make it easier on my shaking hands and just give me your hand?”
The silence stretches out stubbornly between the two of you, neither side showing the slightest intention of backing down. You hold his gaze just as firmly as he holds yours, the atmosphere settling into that particular sort of standstill where the outcome is purely decided from who gives in first.
For a moment, Silver simply watches you before, with a breath that sounds like a defeated sigh, he relents.
“You are remarkably persistent for someone who looks seconds away from fainting,” he comments, the words carrying the faintest trace of resignation beneath his usual composure.
You beam victoriously. “Wow. You say the sweetest thing to me.”
“...That was not my intention.”
His hand is warm.
Warmer than you expected, really—it is calloused beneath your touch from years of swordwork, the tendons in his wrist taut even at rest. There’s strength there, tightly bound and familiar in the particular way someone endlessly disciplined can be. Even now, you can feel the faint rigidity beneath his skin, as though he hasn’t fully allowed himself to truly relax.
For a fleeting moment, Silver stills at the contact—it’s not enough to pull away, but enough for you to notice.
You do not comment or dwell too much on it. Instead, you let your mana gather and flow like honey—thick, golden, and radiating a deep yet comforting heat. Unlike the corruption from before, there is nothing aggressive to unravel—only exhaustion sitting mulishly underneath the surface, woven into him so thoroughly that it almost feels natural.
Which is arguably much worse. Holy shit, his endurance is crazy.
“You’re awfully tense,” you quip, letting your mana smooth through the strain of his muscles. “Do you ever actually relax?”
Silver’s gaze flickers toward you. “Not often.”
“Mm.” Yeah, you figure.
You both don’t really offer much to converse, mainly since you’re primarily focused on getting the treatment done, while Silver merely stands there in his usual stillness, allowing you to work without interruption. Even so, you can feel his attentive gaze drift toward you ever so often, and it’s difficult to ignore in this proximity.
“You know,” you begin, without looking up. “For someone who keeps telling me not to overexert myself, you have an alarming amount of accumulated exhaustion here.”
Silver’s gaze lowers briefly to where your hand rests against his wrist before returning to your face. “I am accustomed to it. Though I do not make a habit of pushing myself to the point of collapse."
“Not exactly a reassuring answer, isn’t it?”
“You are one to speak of reassurance, Your Holiness.”
You click your tongue softly at that, though there’s no real bite to it. “Hey, at least I’m aware when I’m making questionable decisions.”
Silver, for his part, looks distinctly unimpressed. “...And that knowledge stops you from making them?”
“Well, no.”
Honestly, seeing him slowly realize you are impossible to reason with is becoming increasingly entertaining.
Your newfound amusement is broken, however, when your fingers twitch faintly against his wrist as your mana brushes against something strange burrowed beneath the steady warmth of his own. For the briefest moment, it feels almost… jagged—as though your mana has scraped against a crack hidden below layers and layers of a carefully maintained persona.
It’s unlike the corruption you’ve dealt with before, unstable mana channels, or the fluctuating feel of pathos—it feels so utterly wrong in every sense of the word.
You still instinctively, and Silver, of course, notices it immediately.
“...What is it?” He probes, though you offer no response in return—not when your eyes are glued to the notification that appeared just beside him.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING !
Unauthorized probing of character framework detected. Further interference may result in forced narrative correction.
Character framework?
“...Nothing,” you answer after a beat too long.
You force yourself to look away from the blue text—you’ll mull it through once you are in a clearer state of mind, and not while you’re also actively in the presence of said subject. You pull your mana back closer to the surface and focus on your initial task.
In response, Silver’s gaze sharpens slightly, clearly unconvinced by your answer. “Your expression says otherwise.”
You curse lightly in your head. Fuck, why does he have to be so observant? What are you even going to say? You’re not someone who can spontaneously pull a lie straight from their ass—you need time to think through every loophole, and meticulously concoct the answers for every possible follow-up question—it’s all about preparation and then fake it till you make it!
Shit, the Eastern Wing got some bad Feng Shui.
So, what exactly do you do? You blabber the first logical thing that comes to mind, because apparently you fold under zero pressure.
“Your face is distracting me,” you blurt out before your brain can catch up to your mouth, to your utter horror and chagrin.
…Ohh, that sounds worse when you’ve said it out loud.
The words hang in the air for seven horrifying seconds too long, and you’ve never felt the desperate want to genuinely nuke him and yourself, and then everybody else (it doesn't necessarily have to be in that order, you guess).
Silver stills underneath your touch—as if he has short-circuited—and it’s a painful moment when you feel his sharp and unreadable gaze settling fully on your form in a way that makes your soul begin writing its will and testament.
“...My face?”
Fuck. Oh my fucking god just shoot me right now.
You mentally wince at the repetition. “Well—I’m not saying like, you know, your face specifically—not that there’s anything wrong with your face, of course, because that would be objectively false, but—”
You need to shut your mouth, but you do stand by your words, though. His face is for sure a national treasure.
He’s beautiful—he always has been. You’ve always known this, acknowledging it with the same sentiment as acknowledging that the sky is blue, grass is green, Silver is the most heavenly man you’ve ever had the pleasure of laying your eyes on.
“I meant,” you continue in a rush, “that you keep looking at me so I—you know what, never mind. Forget I said anything—matter of fact, erase the last thirty seconds from your mind entirely.”
Another painful silence follows, and you nearly convince yourself that the embarrassing fumble was merely a product of your tired mind.
Silver remains unmoving from where he stands before you, though the wide eyes of his are proof that you, in fact, truly admitted whatever the hell you said out loud. You can discern enough through your peripherals that he looks at you with something along the lines of helplessness, like he’s the one who’s been caught off guard right now—as though your fumbling confession has lodged itself somewhere inside his chest and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
His gaze flickers away from you for the briefest second before returning, jaw tightening faintly. Though you do not look at him directly, you are absolutely clocking in something from your peripheral vision—a subtle, incremental thing, a colour has appeared at the tips of his ears and is showing no signs of retreating. It’s a pretty pink, you realize, that has spread from his cheekbones up to the tip of his ears.
…Oh.
Oh, wait.
Silver clears his throat quietly.
“You are,” he begins, sounding markedly more measured than before, “speaking rather strangely today, Your Holiness.”
You blink.
You’ve always known he’s beautiful, but knowing that and seeing it are different things, and right now, through the wispy fall of his silver hair that frames the pink dusted across his cheeks and the slight parting of his lips, you find it almost impossible to refrain from teasing him any further.
“Are you flustered right now?”
That was probably an unforeseen question, considering how the colour lingering over his countenance seems to deepen—a sight that you have never thought you would ever see.
“...No,” he finally lets out, two full seconds late.
“Your… statements were just unexpected.”
Maybe you’re having a little too much fun tormenting him like this. Silver exhales through his nose, an action that might be an attempt to steel his composure, you reckon—too bad you’re not going to comply, though.
Can you really blame yourself? You can’t help it when a smile tugs at your lips. “Never thought the Commander would be cute when he’s this flustered.”
He makes a sound, perhaps a breath that is half-strangled if you were to describe it—a protest caught in his throat, perhaps. It’s certainly a sound that you’ve never heard coming out of a composed man like Silver, and it certainly does something to you.
He looks away entirely, his free hand coming to press up against his lower face, as if that might hide his expression despite the fact that the faint flush has already betrayed him entirely.
“Your Holiness,” he says, his voice muffled and vaguely strained behind his fingers, “please stop.”
Your grin merely widens, but you suppose you should grace him some mercy.
“Alright, alright, I’ll stop,” you murmur, your voice finally dropping its teasing lilt in favor of something softer.
Carefully, you draw your mana back from where it lingers on his skin, the golden warmth unwinding slowly until only a faint residual glow remains on your fingertips. You let your mana give one final hum before you finally pull your hands away.
The absence of the contact is sudden and jarring—your palm feels cold the moment the exuding warmth of his skin leaves your touch.
“Is the treatment done?” he says, his voice still a bit rough around the edges. He finally dares to look at you, and while the flush hasn’t entirely retracted from his face, his eyes have regained a sliver of their usual sharp clarity—though there’s a new, unreadable depth swirling in their now.
“For now,” you answer, flexing your fingers. “Just try to get some rest before doing anything too strenuous.”
Silver offers a stiff, normal nod. “...I appreciate your efforts, Your Holiness.”
You wave him off lightly. “Try appreciating my efforts by actually putting on some good rest.”
“I will consider it.”
“That means no, Commander.”
“It means I will consider it.”
You snort softly underneath your breath, though the sound fades quickly as your attention drifts unwillingly toward the translucent blue warning still hovering at the corner of your vision.
The words still sit heavily in your mind, unsettling in a way you can’t quite articulate.
You mentally sigh, guess you’ll have to bear with the deplorable thought of having to wake up early everyday from now on.
It is a heavy price to pay—your precious, glorious sleep traded for a front-row seat to the slow-motion car crash of a digital world, but it is precisely the instability that you need. To investigate the character framework, you have to keep prodding at the cracks until they’re wide enough to peek through.
✦ : SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — WARNING ! [NARRATIVE DIVERGENCE DETECTED]
The Saint’s deviation from the designated narrative track has created situations the character was not written to encounter. In response to unscripted stimuli, secondary character [PALADIN’S ORDER COMMANDER] has begun operating outside his original characterization.
Secondary character [PALADIN’S ORDER COMMANDER] has exhibited emotional responses beyond defined parameters.
[!] URGENT ERROR: World-Logic instability is rising… current narrative integrity: 76%
You exhale, shaky, then press your thumb to the pulse under his jaw. It beats frantically under your touch.
"You love me?" you croak.
Dainsleif wraps his fingers around your wrist. "I love you with everything that I am," he tells you, earnest. His eyes are soft and wide and full of love. "With everything I'd once been, and everything I will soon become. I love you."
Your lips tremble with a quiet breath. "Please. Say it again."
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you."
Your hands dig into his shirt, resting your forehead against him.
"I love you.” Again. “I love you, I love you, I love you. I have loved you and I will go on loving you, from now until my last breath. I love you."
Warmth, all around, steady and fulfilling and reaching around your back; you'd sunken into his embrace and hadn't even realized it. He tucks your face into the crook of his neck and rests his lips on your head.
"I love you," he tells you one more time, for good measure. This would have been the last of them. But then (and you don’t see this, with your face pressed to his skin) he feels your hands, twisting and fiddling along his sleeves, and your breath, a shudder of warmth on his skin, and says it again. “I love you.”
And suddenly they seem to go on forever.
(I love you. I love you. I love you. His love is as infinite as the stretch of darkness above your heads. You hear it, feel it, pass it through your fingers and breathe it in. I love you, I love you, I love you. The phrase repeats, murmured into your hair and your neck and that space right above your ear.)
Dainsleif loves you. He loves you, he loves you, he loves you.
You swallow, like it will help with taking it all in. (It doesn't.)
So you sigh it against his neck. Compared to his own declarations, yours feels like a most pathetic thing, so quiet it might be overcome by a gentle breeze. But he hears it. Somehow, he hears it.
The quietest I love you in the world.
He melts into your embrace, just as you'd done in his. His arms curve tighter around your back.
(And you love him, you love him, you love him. And he loves you, he loves you, he loves you. And this is enough. For the both of you, this love is enough.)
i think it’s very funny that we realise zuko is Handsome(™️) the moment his hair starts growing out again at the same time that other characters notice this, and zuko literally gives zero fucks. song was like man this boy’s got a scar i can emotionally connect with AND he’s cute, jet has an instant obsession because that lee guy is playing hard to get, jin frequents the teashop just to stare at the pretty refugee and snags an awkward adorable date with him to stare some more. and zuko just. does Not notice. or care.
he’s so obsessed with going home that romance or attraction simply isn’t even an option in his mind. he is leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him. he is a serial dater in that way that the dating is basically one-sided and he is entirely unaware there was any dating happening in the first place, because he’s too busy to even look at someone twice. jet stalks him bc of this. katara briefly seems to treat zuko picking azula’s side as a betrayal in the sense of Cheating On Her. this is all one-sided.
zuko is entirely unable to compute this Whirlwind Romance thing. he has no idea what these ppl are talking about. he has things to do. love is In The Way and he is slashing through it with his dual swords like sokka sliced through the vines in the swamp. in s3 we suddenly have ma|ko without any lead-up, and it ends the moment zuko has a New Goal to work towards. he breaks up with his gf through a letter. he forgets about her the moment she’s out of sight. the fact that she’s in prison completely slips his mind until he’s literally about to be crowned fire lord, and that’s only because she decides to step back into his life.
there’s no time for romance when zuko has decided to have a Purpose to work on. is he attractive? zuko wouldn’t know and he doesn’t care. zuko has a job to do and whether it’s catching the avatar or teaching the avatar firebending or breaking ppl out of prison or helping the angry watertribe girl who always entertains the idea of freezing him to a tree get closure for her mother’s murder, it’s all still a job. no time for kissing or blushing or dates when you’ve got a fatherlord to dethrone and a world to save. none of his dreamy hairflips and handsome brooding are intentionally attractive but it’s perceived as such anyway and that is HILARIOUS to me
I just know they'd get along in childhood. Voices in my head told me that.
Oasis Maker V.S. The King's Roar.
I am impressed how Leona and Kalim are polar opposites in everything, even in signature spells. Like life and death. As Oasis Maker brings life with its water to the lifeless sands, so King's Roar takes the life away from any being it touches by turning it into the sand.
Anyway - besties. Though I believe Jamil would still try to avoid Leona because of his noble birth.
Poor Scara man took his eyes off the Traveler for a minute and now Lyneys out here makin moves and puttin on the charm
wanderer out here publishing academic papers like his life depends on it as the love of his life is being rizzed up by some french magician his love life is a joke
