Years ago, before the visions hollowed him out, Kael had been almost normal. Not perfectly, but normal enough. He was normal enough to laugh sometimes. He was normal enough to ask questions because he was curious. Back then, he sounded like a scared child instead of a ghost haunting his own body.
As he grew older, he developed the mental fortitude to endure the horrors clawing through his mind. What had once been unbearable slowly became manageable. But growing used to pain did not mean it stopped hurting. There were still nights when Kael suddenly screamed in empty hallways.
There were still nights when servants awoke to the sound of frantic footsteps racing across marble floors while guards chased the young master through snowstorms.
And nights when he would bolt through the marble halls, being chased by things that left no footprints.
He always claimed something was following him, and at first, the servants treated it as a childish fear. But after months of sleepless nights, screaming fits, and tearful insistence that things crawled beneath his bed, sympathy slowly turned into unease. Before long, whispers of possession spread through the manor, with even the priests muttering about curses and demons whenever the young master passed by.
Yet despite hearing every cruel whisper spoken about him, Kael never became angry.
Only terrified.
As though the world itself had become unbearable to witness, yet his eyes had been forced wide open. Truly, some horrors were never meant for human minds to endure.
Kael tried to believe the things he saw existed only in his own mind. The ghosts, the whispers, the figures standing in dark corners. He told himself they were only symptoms of the burden he carried for his brother. But then the servants started speaking about them too.
They talked about cold hallways and shadows near his room. They heard voices telling them to come closer. These rumors scared him more than the visions. It meant the horrors in his head might be real.
So, Kael ran away.
At age seven, when he was barely old enough to count, he walked into the frozen dark. He was barefoot under a heavy fur cloak. His breath came out in fast puffs in the night air. And the ghosts followed him.
Pale figures stood still in the snow. They pointed toward the frozen lake. Above him, the stars looked bent and wrong. Skeletal things dragged chains across the sky. Kael stumbled through the storm. He begged them to stop following him, but the ghosts just kept pointing.
The ghosts were getting closer. Tall, pale figures stood in the snowdrifts. Some were burned black. Some had no faces. One was pierced in his gut.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Dozens of them. Slowly inching closer. Kael stumbled backward through the snow while trying desperately not to look at them.
“Stop it…” he pleaded. “Please stop following me…” But the ghosts only continued screaming and pointing.
Then, beside the frozen shoreline half-buried beneath snow and dead reeds, Kael found a little girl. A small blue-lipped child curled beneath torn, charred cloth.
For a long moment, Kael simply stared.
“Is she still… alive?” he asked himself quietly, too frightened to find out.
But the instant he looked towards the ghosts to ask the same question, they vanished.
Every single one.
Gone as though their purpose had finally been fulfilled.
Kael stared at the child in stunned silence. For the first time in weeks, something felt real. It was the soft and warm touch of a real person.
More real than the horrors haunting him each night.
More real than the hallucinations whispering meaningless phrases into his ears.
The girl blinked weakly up at him with exhausted hope in her eyes, as though silently proving she truly existed.
Kael immediately removed his heavy fur-lined cloak and wrapped it around her trembling body.
“Just rest. You’re safe,” he whispered.
His hands shook so violently that he nearly failed to secure the cloak around her.
“You’re real… thank God,” he said quietly, almost desperately.
Relief trembled through his voice like someone standing at the edge of madness. For so long, Kael had feared he could no longer tell the difference between reality and the horrors inside his head, but the warmth of the trembling girl in his arms felt undeniably real.
The little girl stared at him for several silent seconds before weakly clutching the front of his shirt with frozen fingers.
Such a tiny gesture, yet it nearly made Kael cry. Something had acknowledged him, not as a cursed heir, but as someone real enough to hold onto. Then Kael carefully lifted her into his arms and carried her against his chest to shield her from the storm.
The storm worsened by the time the estate came into view.
Servants rushed through the courtyard with lanterns while knights searched desperately through the blizzard.
“THE YOUNG MASTER!”
Several guards nearly collapsed in relief upon spotting him stumbling through the gates, only to notice the unconscious child in his arms.
The courtyard fell silent.
Kael looked half-dead himself. Snow clung to his hair and eyelashes and his bare feet were bleeding from the ice, yet he held the little girl with desperate care, shielding her from the wind beneath his cloak.
A maid gasped.
“Young Master… she’s burned…”
Another servant crossed himself in fear.
“You! Where did he find her?!”
Kael opened his mouth to explain, then hesitated.
“The voices…” he whispered weakly before stopping himself.
Several servants immediately paled.
Kael lowered his gaze, clutching the unconscious girl closer against his chest as if realizing too late how horrifying that sounded.
“…They led me to her.”