@afshinxeldar location: the brig (sad) notes: kiss kiss, can transition to eldar or wtv just sad lovey vibes
Torsten waited until the ship had groaned into a lull, its moaning steel coming like the breath of a creature dying the slowest, most painful of deaths. like the breath of something dying slowly. Torsten should have been resting - Yhane had said as much, with the sickly sweetness of silk-wrapped daggers. But rest had become a cruelty of its own. The bunks were little more than cages lined with rot-soft dreams, and Torsten hadn’t slept since the last relic cracked like thunder in his palm.
The scent of burnt flesh still clung to his skin. Smoke that didn’t rise. Pain that didn’t scream. It was familiar, suffering, it seemed, was the most familiar. They had parted in Eterna, reunited in Aventia, but any celebration was short-lived.
But that wasn’t true. Hadn’t been for days.
He found Afshin by the porthole slit, lying still but not asleep. The prince’s breath was too measured, too deliberate. Torsten stood there too long before speaking. Silence had become a second skin under Yhane's hand, and the habit of not saying things was hard to break. The door groaned behind him as Torsten let the metal close against metal, then crept forward and moved to wrap himself around Afshin, to sink his face into him - to forget the things he could never leave behind.
They renamed him. Both of them - Zor’kaat the Kossith kept saying and already it was too familiar.
Into the quiet groan of the boat, the darkness, and the misery of the dank room. Torsten whispered and a tear ran down his cheek,
“I’m sorry.”