[ ROOTED ] // Sebastian Sallow & GN!Reader & Ominis Gaunt
pt.2 of 2 ↓ 3,2k words. Pt.1 Here it was supposed to be one shot
tags and warnings (same as pt.1): no smut, no obvious romance, established relationship, unreliable narrator, haunting, mystery, dark magic, death and resurrection, identity loss, obsession, blood/mild gore, symbolism. No Y/N. Necromancer Seb lol.
Also posted on AO3
A/N: lol this part wasn't ever meant to be, but I watched the 'Dark' series and heard Hozier's song there. So here is the thing.
Summary: You died. Here is what happens after a short while.
“What else has to happen before you admit you’re lying to yourself?”
The Moonlight man's voice is as cold as your favourite soft light, the one already gone. It merged with the thick dark of night and dissolved it into this lifeless grey. Your plan quickly collapsed: no leading them into the forest, no quenching your burning thirst, no basking in the approval of your achievements. There are only the ropes holding your body tight, almost pressing you down, making you feel weaker.
The Firelight man has stopped begging his companion, and now he’s begging you. His words are endless and insistent, sometimes desperate and so heavy, as if they hurt him to speak. As if he were dying and clinging to whatever life’s left with all the words he can try. But you know better. He isn’t dying. There is not a single fresh wound on him, not even the faintest shine of blood. Even the runes on his forearms, the ones carved just like yours, are now wrapped in many clean and thick bandages soaked in something herbal. You can hardly smell his blood at all.
Oh, you remember that scent. So sharp, so real it sings in your bones. You’ll never forget it. Nor the hunger it stirs. You swallow, ignoring the voice beside you, trying to pretend the thick saliva clinging to your mouth is warm metallic blood instead.
A glint of light hits your eye, making you flinch. He’s holding something small and metal in front of you.
“Please, just look. Can you recognise it?”
You study the object, something new in this painfully narrow, suffocating world at last. It's a fine chain with a coin, covered in little dots. Your mind has finally been helping instead of hindering, and it tells you there is something else. Something familiar. It’s an amulet.
You think you probably had a dream of something like it once. You even lower your heavy head to check. But there’s nothing there. Just your dirt-smudged shirt, with a few buttons missing. And the ropes binding you.
“Yes! Oh, Merlin…” He moves closer, the floorboards groaning right beside you. “Yes, it's yours. That's right.”
“What?” The Moonlight man steps slightly closer, then stops. He never even looked at you once, and he hasn’t come near in a long time. You don’t bother looking at him as well anymore.
“I think it's working. You remember, don’t you?”
A hand holds the amulet closer to you. Your vision is hazy again, blurred by exhaustion and this grey morning light. You don’t look at the coin, distracted by little freckles on a hand where bandages end, wishing you knew why they catch your attention so much.
The metal catches the light again. It glints, flashing into your eyes. You shift away as much as you can.
The thing irritates you. It angers you.
He's mocking you. Of course he is. Offering something you physically can’t even reach. He was the one who made these ropes appear, wrapping you so tightly you can’t even move properly, let alone get away to the deep, steady calm of the forest.
You kick your legs toward him with all the force you can muster, trying to land a blow. It's not nearly enough, and you miss. He retreats quickly, stopping when he's well out of your reach. With every move he makes, you hate him even more.
“And this?”
“It’s alright, it's nothing," the Firelight man insists. He raises an empty hand in front of the glowing wand’s tip aimed at you. “A little more time, that’s all I ask. It must be like when a bludger hits your head. The memories come back. They’re there. I know they are.”
The Moonlight man rarely speaks at all. You already despise him for it. For this silence. You hate how unpredictable it makes him.
Eventually, he puts the wand away. Reaches out a hand, helping the other one up from the floor.
The warmth in the room rises slowly, then consumes. The house shrinks around you. You breathe, but it’s not air anymore, rather something dry and stifling, like heat turned to finest dust. It clings to your lungs, making you cough. Your body, still so new to feeling alive, fades again. The clarity slips.
The always-talking man drinks water and offers it to you. Just the mere thought of it in your mouth makes you cough again, and you turn away.
You regret instantly. The light from the window is blinding. Too close, too white. Makes this air so bright and impossible to breathe. You notice how your exposed skin begins to dry out from it, turning grey.
You need to get out.
You need shade.
Just a little further into the dark.
Whatever your body can manage.
There’s a patch of shade beneath an armchair. Everything you need now. You inch toward it, trembling. The ropes tighten around you, the floorboards claw at your clothes, but none of it matters. You don't even realise the noise you're making. Or that the chair isn’t empty.
“Just a moment, alright? Don’t move… Hey—sunlight bothering you?” The always-talking man glances between you and the window. He moves his hand and the curtains draw closed with a soft whoosh. “The days’ve been sweltering here lately. That’s better, yeah?”
You flinch away from his hands as he moves you to the other wall. The floor is still warm from the sun, but at least there’s no direct light.
He sits against the other wall, not far from you. Sometimes you meet each other’s eyes. You’re alright with him looking at you, his brown eyes remind you of a tree bark in the night forest, and this memory soothes you. It brings you hope.
The books and piles of paper are all over the floor. The two men read. Write. One of them looks your way sometimes. Rubs his face a lot. He and the other, even quieter man, both speak in low voices. They ask you question after question. Their words make less and less sense to you. Again and again, they show you some metal coin. Every time your jaw clenches, but you don't know anymore if the light it once reflected was ever real.
You can barely see though the haze as the quiet man murmurs to the floating quill at the kitchen table. When he finishes, he folds the parchment, picks up some of the pages near you, and walks away. Near the door, he briefly halts.
At that same moment, the man with four books in his lap asks about the metal coin in his palm. You don’t have the strength to think. You can’t even look anymore. Light spills from the open door onto the floor and walls. Even from there, it weighs on you. It's impossible to keep your heavy eyelids open.
When you wake, the presence of something passing close by startles you.
“Did you fall asleep?”
“No, just… No.”
There are two strange men in the strange oppressive room. One sits on the floor with the back of his head against the wall. He covers his face with his bandaged hands. The standing man is a bit closer.
You struggle to tell if this thought is real, but you realise the room feels so strange for a reason. You’re no longer in the spot you think you were. Did you crawl to this place? Did someone move you? Most importantly, you're away from that terrible daylight.
Your limbs tremble under the weight of the heat around you. It’s hard to breathe here. You stretch slightly, trying to wake your limbs. The closer man shifts while talking and his close presence coils tight in your chest. You can't make sense of his words, but they definitely unsettle you.
“They said memories might exist, but they don’t return. They fade. And something else takes their place.”
His voice is low, he's holding a wand angled toward the floor. You avoid looking at the faint red glow at its tip. Instead, your eyes stay fixed on the man's other hand, where his fingernail drags over the same patch of skin again and again.
“And in the end… None of their subjects retained any resemblance to who they were. You’re the one who decided not to hear it when they warned us.”
“Maybe that’s what happens when you call someone a subject,” the bandaged man says, getting up and stepping over the papers on the floor. “Do you want to rest?”
“You’ve been treating them like that since the beginning. Well... we both have now. And it only gets worse. It’s cruel, Sebastian. I can’t—I don’t want to.”
The quiet voice changes. It reminds you of some comfort that makes you almost stand this man. You notice he’s so tall and so pale, he makes you think of the moonlight—the only thing you know and miss so much.
But it isn’t real, anyway. The real moonlight would never have scared or hurt you. And you are scared and hurt near this man.
The skin on the finger he's been scratching finally splits. Just the tiny trace of the fresh blood, but the smell already fills your lungs. It doesn’t give you any power, but it clears the fog in your mind. Not all of it, however enough to show you a clear line between you and the man.
While voices ring, the disturbing red glow on the wand's tip fades. You move closer. Neither of them notices; they’re busy being loud. Looking at the injured finger, you swallow nothing. Your mouth has been so dry for so long.
Risk doesn’t matter, it doesn't even exist anymore. You’re sitting well enough. That’s all you need. The bandaged man turns away, running a hand through his dark hair.
You move fast. You kick the closer man in the legs. He stumbles. You kick again. His wand skids across the floor as he drops, trying to reach it, or just falling.
You’re immediately losing all the little strength you gathered. But the thoughts unravel. The man's so close now, and only one thing stays.
You bite. Hard. Deep.
You tear.
You’re furious.
...You almost cry in despair.
You wanted something so small. But there’s nothing. No metallic taste. No warmth. No blood.
The frustration eats the last of your strength. You can’t move anymore, just breathe in this thick, choking air.
“No, it is me. Let me see… It’s fine... Just the sleeve.”
“And if it wasn't?”
“But it was. Just the sleeve.”
“That not what I asked!”
“I—I don't know.”
“Pretend better.”
The voices fade, swallowed by endless silence. You don’t know how long you lay in it, or whether it’s real or just your exhaustion playing tricks on you. You don't care.
He’s there. The man you slightly recognise as the one always being loud, he's looming above you.
“Why did you do that?”
You just stare at the heavy tear gathering on his lower lashes just few inches from you. You’re too afraid to move, terrified that any such effort might push you back into the fog and silence where thought stops existing. You didn't like it there.
“Why?” The man says again, even louder now. His voice shakes with it, his whole body does. You flinch when the tear finally falls, landing on your shirt. “He’s your friend. And so am I. Don't you remember anything? Anything at all? You recognised the amulet, didn't you? Can you just say it at least?”
The word friend brings one thing to mind: that metal amulet. It's lying on the floor not far away from you. The image crawls back into your mind, of this man holding the amulet out like a trick before your eyes. The useless questions he’s been asking.
You say nothing. You don’t want the loud man’s voice, nor his presence. Whatever little space your body allows, you use to lean away from him.
From somewhere else in the room, a softer voice cuts through: “You’re torturing everyone in this room right now. Stop.”
The man rises, careful to not touch you. “Maybe I only imagined the thing with the amulet… You’re right. This… has to stop.”
He takes a few steps away. Points his wand at you. Then lowers it. Lifts it again, but there’s even less resolve in the motion this time. His breath stutters. Deep, unsteady. You can hear it well. Just as the pulse beneath this flushed freckled skin. Wild and out of rhythm.
As the air around and inside you grows nicely colder, something begins to settle in your mind. Urgency.
A wicked and fulfilling combo of clarity, fear, and rage.
This one's been speaking all the words in the world to you, begging you to answer. The other man behind him brought you to this place from your peaceful home, and just let you be held captive here.
And now they're going to kill you.
You thrash like a cornered, injured animal, throwing yourself against the ropes binding your body—sideways, forward, back. They tear at your skin, and you let them. You just want out, whatever this out might be. You’ll keep trying and fighting, even if this is how it all ends.
Desperation even gives you this surge, and your head hits the floor hard. A white flash. Maybe you meant to. Maybe not. Either way, the world around you vanishes for a few solid seconds.
The first thing that comes back is sound: a high-pitched ringing. Then, the shape of the Firelight man sitting on the floor. Hand on his head.
The ropes are gone.
You realise it only a second too late, just as they pull tight again.
“Wait!”
He reaches toward you. You don’t let him. You throw your weight forward, reckless and full. The fabric tears beneath you, your skin dragging with it against the floorboards. The muscles seize. You make it worse.
Something cracks. Heat explodes in your left shoulder—sharp, deep, blinding.
Perfect.
The man’s bandaged hand flies to his shoulder. The same place. The same pain?
Better than perfect.
You turn your body and press your burning shoulder into the floor. Push harder. The cry that escapes you is half agony, half victory.
But you can't hold it.
Your breath snags. Your body folds. Still clinging to survival. Still trying to keep your bones intact.
The pain pulses through your bones. The ringing in your ears doesn’t stop. You don't move.
You’re sick of the same unchanging scene here. These walls, this airless room. Just beyond these choking walls, the forest waits. Full of breath, of movement, of everything this place is not. The forest doesn’t fear you. Doesn’t resist you. It waits and wants you back.
And still, these two sit. Still, they talk, write, and read. What a waste.
The floor is no longer warm with the sunlight, and it excites you to finally feel the night arriving and your mind clearing. The chill is sneaking in already, threading through cracks, brushing your skin. Soon it will be everywhere.
You’re ready and you want it to hurry.
The pain in your shoulder fades to a dull, steady ache. You feel calm. You can breathe as good as this tiny room allows.
The Moonlight man has drifted off more than once in the armchair. But the Firelight man hasn’t slept at all. He keeps sipping from small vials, and whatever’s in them makes his heartbeat unbearably loud to you. Now he just sits there, staring at his countless pages. Turns his wand over and over in his hands. Even that object, hated as much as the two of these people, reminds you of something gentler. Home. The forest, where every tree waits patiently, knowing you’ll return.
And when you think about it, it’s more than a reminder. It’s the truth: every wand was once part of the forest. Something of the forest still lives inside it, reshaped but never gone.
You focus on the wand. Really focus. The grain of the wood. The shallow grooves. You don’t have to imagine them. You can see them. Your vision sharpens again. The flickering light of the fireplace dances over the surface, but nothing blurs anymore. A single silver beam slips past the curtain, almost like it’s calling for you. Closer than you expected. It takes only a few minutes to edge toward it, dragging your back along the pleasantly cool wall.
You flinch when the light touches you, so weightless and so soft at once. You even close your eyes. Nothing’s happening in the room anyway.
The light settles into you. Steady, gentle. Clear. If a single thread of moonlight can bring this much comfort, then the truth is simple: you have to leave this house. Even if you go alone. You’ll bring them later, once you’re strong enough again.
Watching the Firelight man’s wand stops being a mere distraction; it becomes a game. You enjoy seeing the slow creep of soft green across the wood. Lichen works into every groove, every grain. And with every growing patch, the ropes around you loosen.
Bit. By. Bit.
The Moonlight man had stepped away to return with the mug that the Firelight man takes from him. For the first time in hours, he looks at you. He says nothing. Doesn’t linger. You haven’t moved, not really, and he doesn’t see that the tension in your limbs is gone. That the bindings have thinned to shimmer, nothing more than tricks of light.
The crackling fire masks the subtle, splintering sound coming from his wand’s wood.
You can’t afford to wait for the same to happen to the second one. Your body hums with readiness. If you don’t act now, the moment will vanish again, just like it did last night. You glance toward the door. It’s so far. Heavy. You’re strong again, but you’ll need every second.
The window is closer. The glass is thin. Just reaching past the curtain will feel good. And once you’re outside, they’ll be too slow and distracted to follow.
It’s time.
The Firelight man yawns, refusing to rest—and in that split second, you leap to your feet. Swing the curtain open. Behind it, a small stone pot sits on the windowsill. You hurl it through the glass. Then you follow, crashing through after it, barely noticing pieces of your reflection in the broken glass.
The cuts don’t matter. You’ll survive them. What you couldn’t survive was staying.
Behind you, something shatters. Flares. The voices rise, sharp and unbearable.
But the forest has been waiting. And now it receives you.
You run.
You breathe.
Finally.
Every rotted leaf and every fresh green bud, every whisper of wind and call of night bird on it—everything greets you like an old friend. They lend you speed. They give you strength. They bring you joy. All the ground belongs to you again, even the pieces of it you’ve never seen or touched before.
Beneath endless trees veiled in shadow, under canopies bathed in silver light, you stop to look and listen.
You are alone.
You are free.
A strange sound breaks the stillness, but it’s not coming from the woods. It’s you. You’re laughing. It feels good.
You know now that even without them, your return will be accepted. It’s only temporary anyway. You’ll fix it and bring them. You can fix anything now.
Your thoughts are crisp and certain. You press a hand to your chest, feeling how deeply the breath sinks in—cold, damp, glorious.
And you remember the amulet, the one that lived here once. Metal, weighty, resting on a chain so old it had snapped twice. Once, you repaired it. The second time, it was the Firelight man who fixed it. For you. You suddenly wonder why you call him that.
And you look down at your chest.
Without thinking, you tear another button from your shirt. You scratch at the skin beneath. But no. There’s nothing.
And there never was.
There were never Ominis’ hand, tracing the dots on that amulet, pointing out the astronomical mistake, though he still called it finely made.
Sebastian’s hair was never tangled in the chain while he slept on your chest. That warm weight, that closeness—of course, it was never real.
Just a trick of mind after all the suffering they put you through. But now, you are strong. You are ready. You are near. You promise to stop being so confused about what’s real.
There was only ever the forest. And you, woven into it as deeply as its roots, as bound to it as your breath to this wind.
You raise your face toward the moon. Still far. Still watching. Still silent.
The moon has to help you.
And you promise to listen, after all this is your one true…
friend?
