𓍢ִ໋ ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐂂ִֶָ་༘࿐ 𝒴𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒩𝒶𝓂𝑒 𝐼𝓃 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒢𝒶𝓇𝒹𝑒𝓃
ominis gaunt x reader (~2,050 wc) ⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆𖢻
And a girl who falls in love with both.
The palace had been rotting long before anyone dared call it cursed.
Vines strangled its marble ribs, creeping through shattered windows and curling like possessive fingers around the bones of balconies. The gardens—once sprawling, deliberate, adored—had collapsed into wild disarray. Roses grew thorn-heavy and bitter, their blooms small and stubborn, as though offended by neglect. Statues wept moss. Fountains stood dry, their basins filled with leaves and silence.
No one came near it anymore.
Not since the prince became something whispered about only behind closed doors—the beast of the palace.
But hunger does not care for rumors.
And neither, as it turned out, did you.
You hadn’t meant to find the palace.
You had been walking too far beyond the village—farther than was wise—chasing the vague promise of berries that hadn’t yet been picked clean. The forest thinned, and then—
And something about it—something quiet, something waiting—felt less like a warning and more like a held breath.
The first days, you did not go far.
You stayed near the gardens, because they were the least frightening part of it all. There were no dark corridors there, no looming ceilings or echoing halls. Just earth. Just things that could still grow.
You told yourself you would leave.
Just one day, you thought. Just enough to gather something worth bringing home.
But the roses—those stubborn, starved roses—refused to be ignored.
You cleared away dead leaves. You pruned with careful, uncertain hands. You whispered apologies to roots that had been choked by neglect.
The first bloom that opened properly felt like a miracle.
You didn’t notice how long you stayed.
Inside the palace, far from where sunlight reached, the prince did not notice you either.
Ominis Gaunt had learned to live within the confines of absence.
He moved through his wing by memory alone, counting steps, tracing familiar paths along cold stone walls. The world beyond those corridors had ceased to exist for him long ago—burned away with the rest of it.
He did not need to see the ruin to know it was there.
The emptiness had a sound.
A hollow vastness that swallowed even his own footsteps, returning them quieter, smaller. As though the palace itself had grown tired of remembering him.
He stayed where it was manageable.
Where grief did not stretch endlessly in every direction.
But something did change.
At first, it was only a scent.
Ominis paused one morning in the corridor just beyond his chambers, head tilting slightly as he inhaled.
Not the stale nothingness he had grown used to.
Memory, perhaps. Or imagination—his mind conjuring ghosts of a place that no longer existed.
But the scent returned the next day.
You had begun to venture further.
A single hallway, cleared of debris enough to pass through. You worked slowly, carefully—never trying to conquer the palace all at once, only choosing small pieces of it to care for.
A doorway cleared just enough to pass through.
A cracked window unlatched so air could move again.
A cloth draped over a table to keep dust from settling so quickly.
You didn’t think of it as restoration.
You thought of it as kindness.
The palace had been abandoned.
So you refused to abandon it further.
It was in the hallway that he finally found you.
Though “found” was not quite the right word.
Soft, careful footsteps. The quiet scrape of something being moved. The hush of fabric brushing stone.
It was faint, off-key in places, the kind of tune someone makes without thinking—more habit than performance.
He stayed there longer than he meant to.
The next day, he found the cloth.
Folded—imperfectly—over a broken table.
He ran his fingers over it slowly.
He did not know why that unsettled him more than the sound of your voice.
Ominis did not see you kneeling among the roses, your hands dirt-stained and careful as you worked. He did not see the way the sunlight caught in your hair, or how the wind tugged gently at your sleeves.
The soft scrape of soil being turned.
The faint rustle of leaves disturbed by deliberate movement.
For a long moment, neither of you moved.
He stood at the edge of the garden path, posture rigid, every sense sharpened to a knife’s edge.
His voice, when it came, was low and cold and edged with something far more dangerous than anger.
“…You should not be here.”
You startled, breath catching, hands stilling in the soil.
You stayed where you were, dirt beneath your nails, shoulders squared as if bracing for something you had already accepted.
“I’ll go,” you added after a moment.
He should have told you to go.
But there was something in the air—something unfamiliar and fragile—that stayed his hand.
“You’ve been here,” he said slowly. “For some time.”
You picked up your trowel again.
As if continuing your work was the most natural thing in the world.
He could hear it—the soft press of ceramic into earth, the shift of roots, the gentle movements of hands that knew how to be kind.
“…What are you doing?” he asked.
“Saving them,” you said simply.
You brushed soil from a leaf.
“Because no one else did.”
At first, he avoided you.
But the changes you brought with you refused to be ignored.
The scent of flowers spread.
The air felt different—lighter, somehow.
And then there were the sounds.
Soft footsteps where there had once been none.
The careful movements of someone who treated the palace not as a ruin, but as something worth saving.
He found you again in the east corridor.
You were dusting a windowsill.
As though such a small act could matter.
You turned, startled—but less so this time.
You considered the question.
Then smiled, small and gentle.
“Because no one else is.”
After that, he began to appear more often.
Never announcing himself.
You would simply feel it—that subtle shift in the air, the sense of being watched by someone who could not see.
You pretended not to notice.
You began to speak anyway.
“I think these ones will bloom soon,” you murmured one afternoon, fingers brushing a cluster of tight buds. “They’re stubborn.”
He stood at the edge of the path.
“They remind me of someone,” you added, softer.
The next morning, there was a watering can waiting for you.
You hadn’t left one there.
It was placed neatly beside the garden wall.
You stared at it for a long moment.
“Thank you,” you said, to no one in particular.
It was in the gardens, again, that something shifted between you.
You were kneeling by a cluster of roses—real roses now, full and vibrant—when you felt him there.
You didn’t startle this time.
“You’ve done all this,” he said quietly.
You brushed dirt from your hands.
“No,” he murmured. “Not all at once.”
There was something in his voice.
You began to notice the ways he moved around you.
How he avoided stepping where you had planted new growth, as though he had mapped it in his mind.
How doors you struggled with were left slightly ajar the next day.
How the path to the well had been cleared—just enough to make your trips easier.
One evening, you found him standing in the corridor you had cleaned.
Not just passing through.
“Does it feel strange?” you asked gently.
He didn’t answer right away.
The first time you touched him, it was an accident.
Your hands brushed as you both reached for the same fallen branch in the garden.
Like a memory had startled him.
You pulled back immediately.
The next time, it wasn’t an accident.
You guided his hand to a rose.
Giving him time to pull away.
Your fingers wrapped gently around his wrist, placing his hand beneath the bloom.
“Careful,” you murmured. “The thorns are still there.”
He exhaled, soft and unsteady.
But he let you keep his hand there.
Let you adjust his fingers until they brushed the petals instead.
After that, he began to seek you out.
But his steps grew less confined.
He followed the sound of your voice.
The quiet rhythm of your work.
The way the palace no longer echoed quite so emptily when you were in it.
You found him in the garden one morning before you arrived.
Standing where the roses bloomed fullest.
You didn’t announce yourself.
You just walked up beside him and placed a flower gently into his hand.
He didn’t startle this time.
“…These are different,” he said.
Light lingered longer in spaces that had once rejected it.
He began to sit with you.
Sometimes you leaned back against the stone wall, eyes closed, letting the quiet settle around you.
You leaned just a little closer to him.
The first time your shoulder brushed his, he went still.
One evening, the wind turned colder than you expected.
You hadn’t noticed until your hands began to tremble.
A moment later, something heavy was draped over your shoulders.
“That’s not how that works.”
You just pulled it closer.
Love did not arrive in declarations.
It lived in these moments.
In the way he began to wait for your footsteps.
In the way you began to leave doors open for him without thinking.
In the quiet understanding that grew between you—unspoken, but certain.
One evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the garden gold, you reached for his hand.
Just… because you wanted to.
Then turned his hand, fingers threading carefully with yours.
Like he was learning the shape of something new.
“They’re blooming faster now,” you said softly.
“No,” he murmured. “But I can feel them.”
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dededos
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
2087
romaincrisis
