Sophie wanted to ask where he'd learned to do that. The question sat on her lips. Yet her body was still humming with aftershocks, and every time she tried to organize a thought, another small tremor rolled through her and scattered it.
Alphonse watched the question die before it was born. Good. He didn't need her thinking too hard.
He let the silence stretch for a comfortable beat. He shifted in the water, turning to face her, and flashed a grin that was all boyish charm and zero innocence.
"Now it's your turn to help me."
Sophie blinked. The flush on her cheeks, which had just begun to fade, came roaring back.
"M-me?" She pulled her knees up slightly under the water. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you need to soap me up." He said it lightly. As if he were asking her to pass the bread at dinner. "I washed you. Fair's fair."
"Right. Soap. Of course." She nodded quickly, too quickly, latching onto the safe word like a lifeline. "Soap you up. Yes."
She stood on legs that still wobbled. Water cascaded off her body as she rose, streaming down her flat stomach, dripping from the tips of her breasts.
Alphonse held out his hand. The soap sat in his palm.
Sophie's fingers closed around it, brushing his skin.
He stepped out of the basin and sat on the washing bench, water pooling beneath him on the warm stone. He spread his arms slightly, presenting himself.
"Start wherever you want."
She lathered the soap between her palms, building a thick foam, buying herself time. Then placed her hands on his shoulders.
Her touch was tentative. Feather-light. Her fingers barely made contact as she traced the line of his collarbone, moved down to his chest. She was treating him like something fragile, or something dangerous. Maybe both.
"You can press harder than that," he said. "I won't break."
"Sorry." She applied more pressure. Her palms smoothed across his chest, spreading soap over the lean planes of muscle that were just beginning to reassert themselves after weeks of atrophy. Down his sternum. Over his ribs, where she paused, her brow creasing at how prominent they were.
"You're so thin," she murmured.
"I'll fix that."
She continued. His stomach. Then lower, following the narrow trail of hair below his navel, her hands slowing as the territory became unfamiliar.
Her fingers reached his thighs. She washed the left one first, then the right, working with deliberate care, her eyes fixed on what her hands were doing.
Until she ran out of places to avoid.
Sophie's hands stopped. Her gaze had landed on his cock, and she couldn't seem to look away.
It lay heavy against his thigh. Even half-hard, which it had been since the moment she'd started touching him, it was thick enough that her fingers wouldn't close around it. The head was flushed a deep pink, partially hooded. A prominent vein traced along the underside.
"I..." Sophie swallowed. Her voice had dropped to almost nothing. "Al, it's... bigger than before."
"What do you mean?"
"We've bathed together before. When we were younger. It wasn't..." She gestured vaguely, unable to find the word. "It wasn't like this."
"Bodies change, Sophie."
"Not this much."
He let the silence hold for a moment. Let her stare. Let the curiosity do its work.
"You still need to wash it," he said.
Sophie nodded. Her throat moved as she swallowed again. She reached out with one hand, fingers extended, and wrapped them around the shaft.
Her hand was warm and slippery with soap. The contact sent a jolt of sensation straight up his spine, and his cock twitched in her grip. Sophie flinched.
"It moved."
"That means it feels good," he said. "You're doing fine."
She adjusted her grip. Her fingers couldn't fully encircle him, so she used both hands, one stacked above the other. The soap made everything slick, frictionless.
"Now move them," Alphonse said softly. "Back and forth. Slowly."
She obeyed. A tentative stroke upward, her hands sliding from base to tip. Then back down. The sensation was electric. His jaw tightened.
"That's it," he breathed. "Just like that."
Sophie found a rhythm. Slow, careful, watching his face for confirmation. Each stroke drew his cock further to full hardness, the shaft thickening between her fingers, the head swelling to a deep, angry red.
"Am I... is this right?" she asked."Am I doing it right?"
"Perfect. You're doing it perfectly."
He wasn't lying. What she lacked in technique, she made up for in earnestness. Her grip was firm without being rough, her pace steady.
Sophie's lips were parted. Her eyes were locked on what her hands were doing, watching with a fascination that bordered on hypnotic. Her breathing had quickened. A flush was spreading down her neck, across her chest.
Her left hand released his cock. It drifted downward, across her own stomach, slipping between her thighs. Her fingers found the spot he'd shown her minutes ago, and she began to rub, her hips tilting forward into her own touch.
Her strokes on his cock slowed. Her attention was splitting, drifting toward the sensation between her own legs.
"No, no, no." Alphonse's voice cut through the steam. Not loud. Not angry. But firm enough to freeze her in place. "Take your hand away."
Sophie's eyes snapped to his face. The embarrassment hit her like a wave, crimson flooding her cheeks and spreading to the tips of her ears.
"I wasn't — I didn't mean to — "
"You've had your turn," he said. "This is mine."
Her hand retreated from between her thighs. She pressed it against her own hip, as if punishing it for acting without permission. Alphonse studied her face. The desperation there. The obedience wrestling with desire.
Seeing her like this, flushed and trembling, hands where he told her to put them, waiting for instruction... it stirred something in him that went deeper than lust. It was control. Pure and undiluted. The intoxicating knowledge that she would do what he said because he said it.
"But I'll help you," he said. His voice softened. Warm again. Generous. "Crouch down."
It wasn't a request.
Sophie recognized the difference. Something flickered behind her eyes, a momentary awareness that the dynamic between them had shifted, that the game had rules she hadn't agreed to but was already playing.
She crouched.
Her knees bent, her body lowering until her face was level with his cock. It stood rigid in front of her, inches from her lips, glistening with soap and the clear fluid that had begun to leak from the tip. She could feel the heat radiating off it. Could smell him.
Her hand found his shaft again. She resumed stroking, her grip tighter now, her rhythm faster. The angle was better like this. She could use her whole arm.
Alphonse lifted his right foot from the wet stone floor.
He placed it between her legs.
Sophie gasped. His toes pressed against her pussy, the arch of his foot settling against her mound. The contact was blunt, graceless, nothing like the precision of his fingers. But the pressure was there, right where she needed it, and her body responded before her mind could intervene.
"I promised I'd help," he said, looking down at her. "I didn't say how."
His foot pressed harder. Sophie's hips bucked, grinding against him instinctively. She let out a strangled sound, half moan, half whimper, and her hands stuttered on his cock before finding their rhythm again.
"Don't stop," he said.
"I'm not — I won't — "
He began to move his foot. A slow, deliberate rocking motion, the ball of his foot rubbing directly against her clit. The angle was crude. Degrading, even. She was crouched naked on a bathroom floor, jerking her brother's cock with both hands while grinding her pussy against his foot like an animal in heat.
Still, she loved it.
Her moans came faster. The wet sounds of her hands on his cock mixed with the slick noise of her pussy against his skin.
"Faster, Sophie," Alphonse said. His voice had thickened. His cock throbbed in her grip, the veins along the shaft standing out in sharp relief. "I'm close."
She obeyed. Her arms burned, the muscles screaming after weeks of stress and sleepless nights, but she pushed through it.
"This. That's it." His breathing was ragged now. His hips lifted slightly off the bench, pushing his cock through her fists. The head was swollen, almost purple, and the clear fluid had become a steady stream, coating her fingers, dripping onto the stone.
"Almost there. Almost — " His hand shot out and gripped her jaw. Firm. Tilting her face up. Her wide blue eyes met his.
"Open your mouth, sis."
Sophie's lips parted.
Alphonse came.
The first spurt hit her tongue, thick and hot and bitter. Her eyes went wide, shock rippling across her face, but she didn't pull away. The second rope landed across her lips and chin, the third across her cheek. Her hands kept moving, slower now, milking him through the aftershocks as his cock pulsed and twitched between her fingers.
When it was over, Alphonse exhaled. A long, shuddering breath that emptied his lungs completely.
He looked down at his sister.
Sophie knelt on the wet stone, her face painted with his cum. It dripped from her chin onto her chest, tracing white lines across her small breasts. Her mouth was still open. Her tongue glistened.
"Swallow," he said quietly.
She did.
They finished the bath in near-silence.
Sophie scrubbed herself clean with a focus that bordered on obsessive, avoiding his eyes. The flush never left her face.
Alphonse gave her space. He dried himself slowly, methodically, letting the quiet do its work. There was no point in pressing her now. The seed was planted. What she did with it, how she processed what had happened, would determine the next step.
The servants had laid out fresh clothes in the adjoining room. For Alphonse, a fitted tunic of dark green wool, leather trousers, and riding boots that laced to mid-calf. For Sophie, a traveling dress of deep blue, layered for warmth, with a fur-lined cloak.
They dressed on opposite sides of a wooden partition. The rustle of fabric filled the silence.
"Al?" Sophie's voice came from the other side.
"Yeah?"
A pause. Long enough that he could hear her breathing.
"We can't tell Mother about what happened."
"Of course not."
Another pause.
"Was it... was it wrong? What we did?"
Alphonse pulled his tunic over his head. Smoothed it flat against his chest. Chose his words with surgical precision.
"Did it feel wrong?"
Silence.
"No," she admitted. Barely audible.
"Then it wasn't."
He heard her exhale. Not quite relief, not quite acceptance. Something in between.
He'd walk her across it. Step by step.
The carriage was already waiting in the courtyard when they emerged.
A heavy, four-wheeled affair with the Hohenberg crest, two swords crossed beneath a crown, painted in faded gold on each door. Four horses stood in harness, breath steaming in the cool morning air. Two soldiers flanked the vehicle on horseback, their hands resting on the pommels of sheathed swords.
The coachman, a grizzled man named Helmut who had driven the family for longer than either of them had been alive, gave a curt nod as they approached.
"Young Lord. Lady Sophie."
Alphonse climbed in first. His legs protested the step, but he managed it without stumbling. Sophie followed, settling onto the padded bench across from him.
The door closed. The latch clicked. The carriage lurched forward.
Alphonse turned his face to the window and let the world pour in.
The Hohenberg estate fell away behind them, its stone walls and corner towers shrinking until they were just another shape on the plain. The land surrounding it was vast and flat, fields of harvested grain stretching to the horizon in every direction.
Beyond the fields, mountains. A jagged line of peaks draped in forest, dark green fading to blue-grey with distance.
The road itself was packed earth, rutted by cart wheels and softened by recent rain. Every few minutes, the carriage jolted over a stone or a root, and Alphonse braced himself against the window frame.
"Winter is almost here," Sophie said. She'd leaned forward, poking her head out of her own window, her golden hair whipping in the breeze. "You can feel it in the wind."
"Hopefully it takes its time," Alphonse replied, not looking away from the view. "I prefer this. The autumn."
She pulled her head back in and nodded. "Me too."
They rode in comfortable silence for a while. The road wound through a shallow valley, crossing a stone bridge over a stream that sparkled like hammered silver in the late-morning light. Farmsteads dotted the landscape, small clusters of timber-and-thatch buildings surrounded by livestock pens and kitchen gardens. People worked in the fields, heads down, backs bent. A few looked up as the carriage passed. Most didn't.
This was the barony. His barony, if things went the way he intended.
The trip took just under an hour.
Alphonse saw the walls first. Stone foundations, three meters high, topped with timber palisades and punctuated by squat guard towers every fifty paces or so. Not impressive by military standards, but functional. Enough to deter bandits and delay anything more serious until reinforcements could arrive.
The gates were open, but the convoy slowed. The two mounted soldiers rode ahead. Words were exchanged with the gatekeepers. Papers were shown. A moment later, they were waved through.
"I thought the village would be smaller," Alphonse said, leaning forward in his seat.
It wasn't a village. Not really. The word undersold it by a significant margin.
Hohenberg sprawled before them, a dense tangle of streets and alleys and market squares that had clearly started as a modest settlement and grown, organically and chaotically, into something approaching a proper town. Timber-framed buildings crowded the main thoroughfare, their upper stories jutting out over the street, almost touching overhead. Smoke rose from a hundred chimneys. The sounds of commerce, shouting, haggling, the clang of a smith's hammer, the creak of cart wheels, filled the air.
"Even though Hohenberg is technically just a town, it sits on the empire's main trade route with the neighboring kingdoms," Sophie explained, slipping into the tone of someone reciting a lesson. "Merchants pass through here on their way east and west. Furs from the north, grain from the southern plains, metalwork from the Dwarven holds. Mother says we collect more in transit taxes than most baronies make from their entire harvest."
"That's why she's always busy," Alphonse said.
"Exactly. There's always some dispute about road maintenance, or tariff rates, or which merchant guild gets priority access to the warehouses." Sophie sighed. "She tried to explain it to me once. I fell asleep."
He nodded, but his mind was already cataloging. Trade route meant money. Money meant influence. Influence meant options.
The carriage pushed deeper into the town center. People stepped aside when they saw the crest on the doors. Some bowed. Others simply stared.
Rising above the surrounding rooftops was the temple.
It was the largest structure in Hohenberg by a considerable margin. Built from the same grey stone as the town walls, but with an architect's ambition behind it. Pointed arches framed the entrance. Stained-glass windows, narrow and tall, caught the sunlight and threw fractured color across the street below. A bell tower rose from the eastern end, its peak crowned with a symbol Alphonse didn't immediately recognize, a stylized eye within a circle of flame.
The carriage had slowed to a crawl.
The central square was a market in full eruption. Dozens of stalls and carts lined the open space, each one competing for attention with hand-painted signs, shouted prices, and the sheer chaos of commerce.
Alphonse's gaze moved across the scene, absorbing. A fruit seller arguing with a customer over the ripeness of pears. A blacksmith's apprentice displaying an array of iron tools on a canvas sheet. A woman selling bolts of dyed wool, her stall a riot of color. Children darting between legs, quick-fingered, opportunistic.
Yet his eye caught something else.
Near the eastern edge of the square, set slightly apart from the other merchants as if by mutual agreement, a cluster of iron cages had been arranged on a wooden platform.
A man stood before them. Broad-shouldered, sun-darkened, with a voice that could have carried across a battlefield without effort.
"Slaves! Slaves from every corner of the known world!" He swept his arm across the display. "Step right up! Inspect the merchandise!"
Alphonse's carriage had stopped, stuck behind a grain cart that was trying to negotiate the narrow turn onto the temple road. He had a clear, unobstructed view.
The man pointed to the first cage. Inside, a pair of figures huddled together. Their ears were the first thing Alphonse noticed, long, tapered to fine points, extending well past the line of their skulls. Elves. Their skin was pale, almost luminous, and even in captivity there was a quality to their features.
"Elves! Male and female! Obedient, intelligent, quick learners! Excellent servants, excellent companions!" The slaver grinned at the crowd, letting the implication hang. A few men laughed.
The next cage. Two figures crouched inside, watching the crowd with eyes that caught the light and reflected it back like polished copper. Cat-people. The first was a woman, compact and athletic, with a pair of furred ears rising from the crown of her head and a long, sinuous tail that curled around her ankles. The second was a man, broader, his features harder, whiskers sprouting from his upper lip.
"Beastkin! Cat Tribe! Born fighters, natural adventurers! Reflexes faster than anything you've ever seen!"
The last cage held three men. Tall, lean, with skin the color of sun-baked clay and intricate tattoos covering their arms and chests.
"Sand People! Built for labor! Strongest backs in the empire! Buy one, work him for twenty years, never need a replacement!"
The slaves' bodies were uninjured. No visible marks of violence. The slaver, whoever he was, knew that damaged goods sold poorly. But their eyes told a different story. Flat. Dull. The thousand-yard stare of people who had stopped expecting rescue a long time ago.
In his old world, this would have been a horror. Front-page news. International outcry. Tribunals.
Here, it was a Tuesday.
Nobody in the crowd seemed disturbed. A few browsers inspected the cages with the same casual interest they might show a horse or a plow. A merchant in fine clothes was haggling over the price of one of the Sand People, tapping the bars of the cage with a walking stick while the slaver quoted figures.
Alphonse let his gaze linger on the elf woman. Even in a cage, even with that dead look behind her eyes, she was striking. Tall, willowy, with silver-white hair that fell past her waist. Her body was fuller than he'd expected from the stories he half-remembered. Her breasts were large, constrained by the thin leather she wore, and the fabric left little to the imagination.
The cat woman was different. Smaller, leaner, coiled with a predator's tension even at rest. Her ears twitched at every sound, tracking the crowd with a wariness that hadn't been beaten out of her yet. The feline features mixed with human ones in a way that hit a very specific nerve, one that, judging by the knot of men gathered near her cage, he wasn't alone in feeling.
The grain cart finally moved. The carriage lurched forward.
"Al?" Sophie's voice came from the opposite bench. She'd seen where he was looking. "Don't stare. Mother says it's rude."
"I wasn't staring."
"You were absolutely staring."
He turned from the window. "Do we have slaves?"
Sophie frowned. "Of course we do."
"And you're fine with it?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Thought about it. "I don't... I don't think about it," she admitted. "It's just how things are."
Alphonse said nothing. He wasn't making a moral judgment. He was making a strategic assessment. Slavery meant a labor economy. A labor economy meant leverage points. People who could be bought, sold, indebted, freed. Each transaction a potential tool.
The carriage stopped.
They had arrived at the temple steps. Alphonse pushed the door open and stepped down onto the cobblestones.
The steps were broad and shallow, worn smooth by generations of feet. Alphonse climbed them slowly, his legs still protesting, while people moved around him in both directions.
"You have to go in alone," Sophie called from the carriage. She'd leaned out the window. "Only one person at a time can speak with the priestess."
He turned back. Looked at her.
She was smiling. Nervous, excited, worried, hopeful, all at once.
"See you later, Sophie."
"Good luck, Al!"
He gave her a small wave and turned back toward the gate.
"Hey! Hey! Well, look who it is."
The voice came from his left. Loud, nasal, carrying the particular confidence of someone who had never been punched hard enough to reconsider their personality.
A heavy hand landed on Alphonse's shoulder.
"Cousin."
Alphonse turned.
The young man standing before him was perhaps twenty-two, though the weight he carried made him look older. He was substantially overweight, his noble attire, a velvet doublet in burgundy with gold stitching, straining at every seam. His face was round, ruddy, dominated by small eyes set too close together above flushed cheeks. A thin film of sweat shone on his forehead despite the autumn chill.
Lucius von Hohenberg. Son of Baron Hohenberg's brother. First cousin. The single most insufferable person in the original Alphonse's memory.
"Lucius," Alphonse said evenly. "It's been a while."
"Yes. Long before you were bedridden." The word came wrapped in air quotes and dripping with acid. Lucius's small eyes swept over him, cataloging the thinness, the lingering bruise around his eye socket, the way he favored his left leg. "Looks like your father didn't do a thorough enough job. You're still walking."
The old Alphonse would have flinched. Would have looked at the ground. Would have swallowed the insult and added it to the pile.
This Alphonse held Lucius's gaze and said nothing. Just let the silence stretch until it became uncomfortable.
Lucius's smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. He recovered by pushing harder.
"But if you're here at the Oracle, maybe you'll finally get a decent [Profession]. Something useful." He patted his own chest. "Not everyone can be an [Axe Specialist], of course. That requires real talent. Real strength." He flexed an arm that was roughly the same circumference as his neck, most of it fat. "But maybe they'll give you something you can handle. [Candle Lighter]. [Boot Polisher]."
He laughed at his own joke. The sound was wet and unpleasant.
Alphonse tilted his head. Let a beat pass. Then, with the air of someone commenting on the weather:
"Who knows? Maybe I'll get [Pig Farmer]. Then I could finally help you lose that weight."
The laughter died.
Lucius's face went from ruddy to purple in the space of a heartbeat. His jaw clenched. His right arm drew back, meaty hand curling into a fist that would have done real damage if it connected.
Alphonse didn't move. Didn't flinch. He'd seen the girl approaching from behind Lucius thirty seconds ago.
"Lucius!"
The fist stopped mid-swing. Lucius's whole body locked up like a dog yanked back by its chain.
A young woman rounded him, stepping into the space between them. She was perhaps eighteen, short enough that the top of her head barely cleared Lucius's shoulder, with long black hair pulled back in a practical braid. Her face was pleasant rather than striking, round and open, with warm brown eyes and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
What drew the eye, what drew every eye, was her figure. She was plump in a way that the current fashion didn't favor but that biology very much did. Her dress, a modest affair in grey wool, couldn't disguise the generous swell of her breasts, which created a deep, heavy cleavage that started at her collarbone and didn't stop. Her hips matched. The overall effect was of a girl who'd been built for comfort rather than display, and who was entirely unbothered by the distinction.
Madeleine Clairmont. Lucius's fiancée. Daughter of one of the most powerful merchant families in the neighboring kingdoms, their empire of furs and fabrics spanning three nations and generating more revenue annually than most minor noble houses could dream of.
The engagement wasn't love. It was engineering. The Hohenberg name in exchange for Clairmont money. A standard arrangement, well-constructed and mutually beneficial, which meant Lucius could not, under any circumstances, be seen behaving like a thug in front of the woman who represented his family's financial future.
"Madeleine!" Alphonse said, warming his voice by several degrees. "How are you?"
The girl turned to him. Her expression softened immediately.
"Hello, Alphonse!" She reached out and clasped his hands in hers. Her grip was firm, genuine. "I'm well, thank you. I'm so glad to see you recovered. We heard about what happened. I was terribly worried."
"Thank you, Madeleine. That means a lot."
Behind her, Lucius stood with his fist still half-raised, his face cycling through shades of rage. His arm trembled. Every muscle screamed hit him. But Madeleine was right there. One wrong move and word would reach her father before sundown. Lord Clairmont was not a man who tolerated embarrassment to his daughter.
Lucius lowered his arm. Slowly. Like a man putting down a weapon he very much intended to pick up again later.
"It was wonderful seeing you both," Alphonse said, already stepping backward toward the temple entrance. "But I have an appointment with the Oracle. Can't keep the divine waiting."
He turned and walked through the heavy wooden doors.
Behind him, carrying clearly through the stone archway, Madeleine's voice:
"Lucius, what exactly were you about to do? Were you going to hit him? Your own cousin? Who just spent weeks in a coma? What is wrong with you?"
And Lucius, sputtering: "He — I — he started — "
"I don't care who started what! You are a grown man! You are my fiancé! Act like it or I swear on my mother's grave I will write to my father tonight."
Alphonse allowed himself a small, private smile as the voices faded behind him.
The interior of the temple swallowed sound.
Outside, the market roar, the clatter of hooves, the hundred competing voices of Hohenberg's daily commerce. Inside, silence.
The space resembled a church. The comparison was immediate and unavoidable. A long central nave, flanked by rows of stone columns. Narrow windows set high in the walls let in shafts of colored light, blue and gold and deep red, that cut through the dimness like blades.
But there was no altar. No cross. No pews.
At the center of the temple, where the nave widened into a circular chamber, stood a fountain.
It was simple. A basin of dark stone, waist-high, three meters across. The water inside it was perfectly still. No ripple, no current. The surface was a mirror, reflecting the stained-glass light in fragments of color.
Standing beside it, hands folded, was a girl.
She was young. Close to his age, perhaps a year or two older. Her hair was white. Not grey, not silver, not blonde-so-light-it-looks-white. White. True white, like fresh snow.
She wore the vestments of a priestess. A black robe, floor-length, cinched at the waist with a cord of braided silver. Over the lower half of her face, a white cloth was wrapped, covering her from the bridge of her nose to her chin. Only her eyes were visible above it. Large, pale grey, rimmed with dark lashes.
The robe was modest by design. Shapeless, formless, built to erase the body beneath. It failed. The fabric draped and gathered in ways that suggested rather than revealed. The curve of a hip, the narrowing of a waist, the subtle fullness at her chest that no amount of tailoring could entirely conceal.
"Hi, Alphonse," she said. Her voice was soft. Measured. The voice of someone trained to speak in sacred spaces.
"Hello, Adeleine."
He knew her. Adeleine Voss. Daughter of a textile merchant. She'd received the [Priestess] profession at twelve, like everyone else, and had been assigned to the Oracle temple the previous year. They'd crossed paths a handful of times at market days and seasonal festivals. The original Alphonse had thought she was pretty. Yet, never done anything about it.
"Are you ready to receive your [Profession]?" she asked.
There was no small talk. No how are you feeling or I'm sorry about what happened. In this space, before this fountain, she wasn't Adeleine the merchant's daughter. She was the Oracle's instrument. The boundary between the mortal and the divine.
"I am," Alphonse said.
"Come closer."
He could feel it. Whatever lived in that water. A presence, vast and old, pressing against the membrane of reality like a hand testing the thickness of a curtain.
"Submerge your face in the water," Adeleine instructed. "Close your eyes. Breathe normally. The Oracle will do the rest."
What will you see? he thought, staring down into the dark water. A dead man wearing stolen skin? A parasite? A manipulator who just had his little sister jerk him off on a bathroom floor?
Or something worse?
He leaned forward.
The water touched his forehead first. Then his nose, his lips, his closed eyes.
The world went dark.