#keltariel

[the-grave-keeper]

Get in the water...

[lukelxiv]

A Broken King

[the-grave-keeper]

Keltariel | The Siren

Art by Megacuteviper

[the-grave-keeper]

Keltariel Fossoyeur | The Grave Keeper

(art by Hetti )

[the-grave-keeper]

August DWC 2025

Day 4: Direction/Languish

(Trigger warnings: Mentions of Sexual/Physical Abuse, Torture, Trauma. All under the read more cut.)

[Five hundred years ago]

He had been trapped in this manor, inside this city, his whole life. He hadn't known anything other than this existence of demands and punishment and pain. There had been no rescue, no comfort, no solace in anything other than himself and that quiet place that the chains and the fists and the sharp edges couldn't reach. His body could be used and bruised and cut open but they couldn't ever break him. 

It was his daily defiance, to refuse to let anything shatter him entirely. Even as he was commanded to stand and listen to the Lord's that argued over how best to weed out the rebellion, how best to show their loyalty to a tyrant. How to crush the only hope his people had. And after a while…he stopped listening. Stopped caring. Because even if, somehow, the rebellion broke through the lines, even if his people were saved…he never would be. He'd be forgotten here, in this den of lions, and someday he would be eaten alive. 

He almost wished for it, if only so that he could finally be free from this hell he languished in.

He found it especially difficult to care what happened when he was sent to another bedroom, to listen to another drunken Lord or Baron or Viscount boast and talk about his plans to defy the Lord that Keltariel served - that owned him - to take from him and leave him destitute or dead. He tried to detach from himself when they would push Keltariel onto the bed or wrap hands around his throat or shove him into a wall. Because he could be treated in any manner that pleased them so long as they didn't kill him, so long as the bruises they left, the bite marks, could be covered with clothing or makeup. To allow these men to be what they were, to treat him however they pleased made their lips loose, made them feel powerful and that was exactly what was supposed to happen. 

Keltariel would wait until he had the information required, however long that took. Part of him listened for the evidence that would be their undoing and part of him…drifted away. Went elsewhere. Found a place that was quiet inside of himself and hid there where nothing could touch him. Where nothing could hurt him.

But once the words were said, that evidence was spoken, Keltariel would wrap a hand around their wrist or throat or arm in return and command them into stillness. When he would slide out from under them or push them off him and tell them to march to his Lord, to tell him everything that had just been said and to await their punishment. 

He would follow them at a distance as they looked back over their shoulder at him with that false love in their eyes, listen as they would profess their devotion to him, to do anything he asked of them. 

He knew they would. He hated that they would. 

He hated that once his Lord's ‘mercy’ had been decided upon, that he would be the one to have to carry it out. That he would tell them to drown themselves, light themselves on fire, jump from the tallest building they could find. That they would first sign over their wealth, their holdings, their servants - everything. That with each death he helped to facilitate, the man who owned him only became more powerful, more hungry, more unbearable.

He hated him. He hated himself. He hated every bedroom he stepped foot in and every person who touched him like they had a right to. He hated the chains he slept in, he hated that he could not use his hands to, just once, wrap around the throat of the man who had made him this horrific tool - to tell him to slit his own throat while Keltariel watched. He hated that more and more, every day, he was losing the will to hold that small space inside of him that no one else got to touch. 

Perhaps he'd try, just once more, to run. To find someone in this gods damned city who would care. Who might help him. And failing that…he would become unhinged in such a way that he would have to be put down. This would be his last defiance. He would be free from this path or he would be dead. There were no other options left. 

No more bedrooms. No more commands. No more.

@daily-writing-challenge

[the-grave-keeper]

August DWC 2025

Day 3: Twitterpated/Primal

I'd seen people in love - truly in love. The joy that moved with them, the way things around them softened as if their companionship, their laughter was enough to transform any space into one of warmth. The way their eyes always sought their partners not for approval but to communicate something no one else could hear. That silent language that came with comfort and affection and devotion.  

I'd never had that kind of connection, I had never asked for it. With all that I had done, with all that I had endured, I was content to just have the silence. The peace that came with the quiet of a solitary life, yet one where I could still be gentle. Where my hands could help to carry the burdens that were too heavy for others - where I did not need to hurt or command anyone. I could just be a silent witness to their grief as I knew it well, I knew how to navigate all the roads though it. I could help others stumble down that path with compassion until they were strong enough to walk on their own. And then I would return to the beginning, to assist the next person who looked at me like their world had been shattered - who was lost on how to move forward. 

Maybe this was my self imposed penance, to witness the aftermath of death, to become its companion and to learn how to help those who had been left behind. 

But when I saw those wintry eyes, the distance they held, the brokenness…I found I couldn't look away. I could not simply set him down the path and let him carry it. I didn't know why it hit me so hard, but that pain on his face was just one I couldn't tolerate. Not after everything he'd once done for me. I owed him my life, the peace I had managed to find, and I knew I wanted to do everything I could to help ease that suffering. Even if it was just ensuring that he ate. Or offering him a quiet place to sit and listen to the breeze over the lake. Or a warm cup of coffee. I would share what I had if it meant he would not…look at the world like that anymore. 

I do not know when him looking at me started to make me feel like he was seeing me and not simply looking for a lifeline. When looking back at him became something I did with a fondness that surpassed simple compassion. When I started wanting to make him smile or when I had to start hiding my own because being with him was starting to make me feel things I had no name for, had no experience with.

It was only after many weeks, after he had come for me when I thought no one would, after I had been run through with that unforgiving steel and was bleeding out on a sandy stretch of beach that I realized…maybe what I felt went beyond friendship. Maybe it was the way those cool eyes had no longer been broken when they looked at me, but fierce, how he had touched my face and told me to stay with him that solidified that feeling. Even if I still certainly wanted to be his friend, maybe I cared more for him than friends did. 

It was how his eyes had found mine, how they stripped all the weight of the world away, how the very act of looking at me touched something deep inside my heart that had been born restless - incomplete and bitter for it, perhaps. They brought something to life that I may never have known was missing but had always expected was not present…until he looked at me like that. 

Until I realized that I might love him more than the silence.

@daily-writing-challenge mentions of @ramiaell

[the-grave-keeper]

August DWC 2025

Day 1: Ethereal/Calculate

[Several Years Ago]

It was a quiet morning in the mountains of Redridge, the sun having yet to crest the peaks in the east. The light was thin, muted, and the birds were still quiet in the trees. The only sound was the gentle brush of the wind through the summer grass around the small cabin, the occasional hum of a cricket or the croak of a frog down by the lake. 

It was mornings like this that he liked best, having settled here a couple years prior after some dedicated discussions with the land owner. It was rare for a Shal’dorei to be this far away from his home, let alone settle in the Eastern Kingdoms, but Keltariel was small, he bore no tattoos, and to some eyes looked to be just another flavor of elf. Perhaps a Ren’dorei with his faintly blue ashen skin and bright sapphire eyes - Light knew there were enough of them now. Perhaps a stunted, small Kal’dorei who hadn't eaten all his vegetables as a child. Maybe some had even known what he was and had been wary of him at first. But he had come alone, had been well mannered, soft spoken and the community had ruled him - after several months of sleeping in his tent near the lake - as a non threat. 

He'd helped to bury an elder in the community, and had done so with the professionalism and compassion that someone in his line of work should have, and from that day forward, he'd been considered one of them. He'd learned to fish to help with winter stores, had volunteered to help with repairs around town and had, ultimately, tried to be as good a neighbor as he could be. And this had ingratiated him to the people of Lakeshire. And he them. He'd never had…neighbors before. Let alone those he could somewhat trust - even perhaps enjoy.

But quiet mornings at his cabin had been worth every day of sweat and blood he'd given to proving his worth to them. To showing them that all he wanted was peace and that he would work to keep it. Yet there was something about the lake before the sun hit it, the gentle fog that clung to the surface that stirred something in him. Not joy - he didn't really have that - but contentment. Calm. And while the people of Lakeshire slept down the hillside, he crept to the edge of the cliff overlooking the water…and sang.

It was, perhaps, the one thing he truly did for himself. He didn't need an audience - he did not want an audience. He wanted to sing because it was a part of him, one that had never been broken by his handlers, by the Lord who had owned his body. It was the thing that had been with him from the beginning and deserved to be expressed, even if it was just for the crickets and the toads and the summer breeze.

And all of these things stilled in the wake of the words that came forth, the ethereal, aching voice that brought them to life. The pitch and roll of the words that were sung perfectly into existence held a power to them, one he still barely understood. But he knew they came from the place in his heart that he hadn't let anyone enter, the place where he'd always kept that sliver of himself that would always, and only, be himself. 

It would be years until he let anyone else hear him, listen to that particular pain made real. Until he could let someone else in to that space that had been reserved for only him and the song.

@daily-writing-challenge

[the-grave-keeper]

August DWC 2025

Day 2: Layer/Wither

When he had touched it before it had been out of pure and unadulterated desperation. The artery in the Captain's neck had been flayed open, Ramiaell had been bleeding on the wooden decks, the Quartermaster had pulled out the explosive that would have sent them all to hell. He hadn't even known what he was doing, only that fear and rage had cut through the layers of him, down to the core where that song lived and had come out in such a way that he had stilled everyone in hearing distance. 

“STOP”. And they had. Everyone. Except him. And Ramiaell. 

He'd told them the night before, as they all stood around that war table, making plans for the next day that he could not do what his mother had been able to. He was not her, he'd very likely never be her and that touch alone was his only conduit to control. He could tell that it had come as somewhat of a surprise to several of them, but they'd hidden it well. It hadn't affected him because…he'd never known her, had never seen her in action like a few of them had. He did not understand the entirety of the shoes that he'd never be able to fill. 

Until it came out. Until he saw with his own eyes why so many had respected her and reserved a healthy dose of fear for Velluria D’Astra. Why Alphonse L’Mare had come for him, what he thought he'd gain with him under his thumb. And maybe he would have found a way to break Keltariel like no one else had before, to shatter him completely. He'd never know, because L’Mare was dead and he was no closer to understanding how to command his gift than he had been before. 

So he started to try, by himself, in the quiet hours in his shop with the spiders and the occasional moth. Simple commands, to be still or to move - nothing to hurt them, nothing impossible or outside the normalities of their existence. Occasionally it would work, but more often than not he would turn in frustration after an hour of staring at a spider and telling it to move, and return to his clay and paints and silence. Things that just were, that did not need command to be. 

He didn't know how he was going to learn to master this because he had no teacher, no understanding of where it came from - nothing. He just knew that it was there, that it was possible, and that he was his mother's son in one sure way: stubbornness.

@daily-writing-challenge