Whisper on the Wind

The house breathes when it should not. The stone shifts in the silence, the old wood sighs, and the north tower looms like a dying sentinel. Cassien knows better than to trust what he sees. Shadows twitch at the edge of his vision, figures melt into doorways, and at night, a woman sings. He tells himself it is the wind. He knows he is lying.

A draught moves through the corridor, whispering against his skin. The house is cold, always cold, the kind that seeps into the bones and never truly leaves. Once, there had been fires in the hearths, footsteps on the stairwells, the sound of voices. Now, there is only silence and the slow, rotting death of a place left to ghosts.

He moves toward the tall mirror in the hallway, its glass tarnished with time. He does not look into it. He has seen what waits for him there before.

The others, he shattered long ago. The mirrors in his father’s study, his mother’s chamber, the dressing rooms, the grand ballroom—smashed to shards and swept into corners, so they could not watch him. This one remains. The last reflection in a house of ruin. He does not know why he let it live.

A flicker of movement. A shape in the glass that is not his own.

His breath catches. The fine hairs on his arms rise. The sensation of being watched settles in his bones, familiar as the ache in his skull. He turns his head sharply—nothing. The hall behind him is empty. Just shadows and dust.

The days slip by in a heavy, shapeless fog. He no longer keeps track. There is little point. No one visits. No one has, not for years. The servants are long gone, the land choked with weeds, the great halls empty save for the scurry of mice in the walls.

Cassien barely sleeps. The house will not let him.

At night, the pipes groan as if choking on water that hasn’t run properly in years. The beams settle with creaks like the sighs of the dead. The wind howls through the broken windows, but the sound is not always the wind. Sometimes, it is laughter. Sometimes, it is a voice calling his name.

He does not answer.

By day, he drifts through the corridors, moving through the wreckage of generations. The once-grand chandeliers hang dull with dust, their crystals fogged and grey. The portraits of his ancestors, faded by time, stare at him with empty eyes. In the library, the books crumble at his touch. He reads them anyway. There is little else to do.

The North Tower haunts him most of all.

It is where his father’s life ended. Where his mother’s life ended before that. Where the madness claimed them both in its final, frenzied grasp.

He has tried to go up there, once or twice, but the air changes as soon as his hand touches the rusted iron handle. It is colder, thick with something unseen. His chest tightens. His breath comes thin and ragged. The last time, he thought he heard footsteps on the stairs above him, but no one else was here.

No one else was ever here.

The night before his 25th birthday, Cassien sits in his father’s old study, the fire long since dead in the grate. He does not bother lighting another. The cold no longer concerns him. The smell of old parchment and dust clings to everything, thick and stale, a scent that never quite leaves his clothes.

On the desk before him lies the journal. He has read it before. He knows every word, every scrawl of ink, every passage. Even as his father’s handwriting becomes more jagged and erratic. He reads it anyway. Perhaps this time, he will see something different. Maybe this time, it will make sense.

"She watches me. Always watching. In the glass. In the dark. In my dreams."

Cassien exhales slowly. He does not have to look to know that were the mirror across the room still whole in its frame, it would reflect more than just him.

Weariness and exhaustion take him. His head slumps against the high-backed chair, the journal slipping from his fingers, pages fluttering in the dead air. The study is silent save for the occasional groan of the timbers, and the whisper of wind through broken glass.

And yet

A breath at his ear.

A whisper, soft as silk, slides through his sleep.

"Cassien."

The sound is not jarring, not a shout, not a command. It is gentle, knowing, patient. A voice like a fading melody, like something lost to time.

A touch follows. Barely there. Fingertips, cool against the heat of his skin, a sensation that should not be possible. Something—someone—trails along the side of his throat, over his collarbone, resting lightly at the hollow of his chest. A touch he has not known in years. A touch that does not belong to a dream.

Cassien stirs, caught between waking and sleeping, awareness swimming through fog. He breathes her name before he knows it, before he understands why.

"Lyrial."

The fingers still. The air shifts. The silence stretches thin.

Then, just before full consciousness reaches him, she exhales—a sigh, soft and satisfied. As if she had been waiting for him to say it.

Cassien wakes with a start, the chair creaking beneath him. His skin prickles with cold. The study is dark, the candles long dead, the journal still open on his lap.

The frame, a mere memory of a mirror, reflects nothing at all.

Cassien does not move at first.

The study is silent. Nothing stirs. Nothing breathes but him.

It was a dream, he tells himself. A fevered trick of the mind. No voice had whispered his name, no fingers had traced his throat, no one had been here but him. He knows this.

And yet…

His skin still tingles where he had felt the touch.

The air in the study feels different. Thicker. Holding its breath.

He swallows hard, his throat dry. The journal still lies open on his lap, pages curling at the edges. His father’s handwriting glares up at him in jagged ink, fevered and uneven.

"She watches me. Always watching. In the glass. In the dark. In my dreams."

Cassien snaps the book shut. He shoves it away as though it might burn him.

He cannot stay here. He stands, looks down at the desk and snatches up the old book, he quickly leaves the dusty study.

The library, its quiet space almost a sanctuary within the aged walls, is one of the few places he still lingers.

Perhaps because it is the quietest part of the house, or perhaps because the weight of old books feels more tangible than ghosts. The walls are lined with volumes no one has touched in years, their spines bowed with age, pages brittle beneath his fingers.

He pulls a book at random, more for distraction than purpose. It is old, bound in fading leather, the kind that would have belonged to his grandfather’s father before him. It opens stiffly, reluctant from disuse, and something thin and yellowed slips from between the pages, fluttering to the floor.

A letter.

The ink has bled slightly, smudged at the edges, but the words are still legible, penned in the heavy, deliberate script of a man who was certain of his own authority.

"It is imperative that you marry before your twenty-fifth year. You must ensure an heir is secured before it is too late. The bloodline depends upon it. Without fail, the madness will claim you before your time. You must secure an heir before that happens. You have seen what has become of those who faltered."

Cassien reads it again. And again.

His great-great-grandfather’s warning sits heavy in his hands, the weight of a fate already decided.

He should burn it. Light a fire and throw it in. And yet, he does not let it go.

The house shifts around him. He hears the settling of wood, the stretching of old beams—but something else, too. A sound that does not belong to the house itself.

A breath. Soft. Close.

Cassien turns sharply. Nothing.

But as he moves to leave the library, his gaze catches on the long, panelled window. The glass is warped with age, rain-streaked and clouded, but he sees her there—for the first time, not a trick of the light, not a fleeting shape in a broken reflection.

A woman stands beyond the glass, half-shrouded in shadow, her form barely clothed in the drifting tendrils of something too fine to be fabric. Her hair spills down her back like pale silk, her head tilted in quiet curiosity.

Cassien’s breath locks in his chest. He does not move, does not blink, afraid that if he does, she will vanish as she always does.

But this time, she does not.

She raises a hand to the glass. Her fingers rest lightly against it. He does not see his own reflection beside her. Only her. Watching.

His breath is slow, shallow. The glass warps her form, distorts her at the edges, but it does not change what he sees.

A woman. Watching him. Unmoving, unblinking.

No. No, this is wrong. It cannot be real. The mind plays tricks—his mind plays tricks—it has done so for as long as he can remember.

"Leave me," he murmurs. His voice is hoarse, his throat tight. "You are not real."

The moment the words leave him, he feels ridiculous. He is speaking to a reflection. To nothing. To a shape that should not be there.

And yet, she does not disappear.

His pulse hammers. He swallows hard, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

"Who are you?" he demands. "Why do you haunt me?"

She does not move, not at first. Then—a tilt of the head, slight but deliberate. The barest movement, but it is enough to send a chill lancing through him.

Cassien takes a step back from the window, his heart a heavy, stuttering thing in his chest. He wants to turn, to walk away, to convince himself she is nothing more than an echo of his own mind, but his feet will not move. He cannot look away.

"Lyrial," he whispers, the name a shape on his tongue before he even thinks to speak it. As though it has always been there, waiting.

At the sound of it, her lips part.

A slow breath. A sigh. A whisper, slipping through the glass as if it had never been there at all.

"Cassien."

He stumbles back as if struck.

He has heard the voices before. The laughter. The murmurs. But never this. Never his name, spoken so clearly, so softly, with something like recognition. As if she has known him longer than he has known himself.

"No," he mutters. His hands tremble at his sides. "You are not real. You are not—"

He wrenches his gaze away, shoving himself back from the window, his breath ragged in his throat. He will not look again. He will not—

But before he can leave, the whisper comes again, curling against his ear as though she is standing right behind him.

"Why did he never tell you?"

Cassien’s blood runs cold.

Cassien woke to the brittle grey light of morning, his body stiff, his limbs heavy with exhaustion. He had not meant to fall asleep on top of his bed, He had just laid down for a moment to process his thoughts, now his clothes were dishevelled and his head fuzzy. The journal lay beside him, one page crumpled where his fingers had curled too tightly over it in sleep.

For a moment, he stayed still, his mind untangling the threads of dream and memory. His breath was slow, measured. The house was silent.

Last night.

The whisper. The touch. The reflection in the glass.

It had been real. Hadn’t it?

A dull ache bloomed behind his eyes as he got up from the bed. He swallowed, his throat dry. You were tired. That was all. The flicker of candlelight against the warped window, the branches of the old elm beyond the glass swaying in the wind. A reflection of something that was never truly there.

His jaw clenched. That is all it was.

He shoved the journal onto his dresser with more force than necessary, as if the act itself could erase what he had read, what he had heard, what he had felt. His skin no longer burned where the touch had lingered, but he remembered it. Too vividly.

He exhaled sharply headed for the door, his body protesting the aches of a night spent in awkward sleep. Move. Do something.

The hearth was cold, untouched since who knew when. He crossed the room, intending to call for a servant before the sharp realisation cut through him like a blade.

There were no servants anymore.

There was only him.

The thought sat bitter on his tongue as he pulled open the door, stepping out into the corridor. The air felt still, thick in a way he could not explain. The hallway stretched before him, dim even in daylight, the high windows streaked with dust and rain. The smell of the house was always the same—old stone, rotting wood, decay.

But this morning, something else lingered beneath it. Faint. Almost nothing.

Something floral.

Cassien stopped mid-step. The scent was wrong, out of place. This house had not known flowers in years. There were no fresh blooms in vases, no perfume lingering in his mother’s rooms, no trace of anything but dust and ruin.

His pulse quickened. He turned his head slightly, half-expecting to see some explanation—an overturned bottle of oil, some remnant of the past unearthed by time. But there was nothing.

Just the corridor.

Just silence.

Just—

His gaze snapped to the far end of the hall. The door to the library was open.

His stomach twisted.

He had closed it last night. He was sure of it.

He hesitated, breath shallow, waiting—as if the house itself might shift, as if the silence might break.

Nothing.

And yet the scent remained.

He took a slow step forward. Then another. His fingers curled into his palms as he approached the open door, his pulse a dull, insistent drum in his ears.

"Cassien."

A whisper. Soft. Behind him.

He spun, his breath catching in his throat—

Nothing.

His skin went cold.

He was alone.

Wasn’t he?

"Cassien."

The whisper had been right behind him.

The kind of sound that should come with breath on his skin, with the warmth of someone close enough to touch him.

But there was no one. The hallway remained empty. The house sat still, unmoving, expectant.

Cassien’s breath came slow and uneven. His mind warred between logic and instinct. He should walk away. He should ignore this.

But something in him was shifting. Something hungry for an answer.

He swallowed hard and forced himself to turn back toward the open library door.

"Is someone there?"

His voice barely reached beyond the space of his own breath. He hated the way it wavered.

Silence.

He took a slow step forward, then another. The library stretched out before him, filled with the dust of dead knowledge, the weight of centuries of whispers trapped between pages.

"What are you?" he asked, harsher this time, forcing strength into his voice. "A ghost? A memory? A trick of my own mind?"

For a long moment, nothing.

And then—

"Not a ghost."

The words were soft. Faint. But they did not come from behind him this time.

They came from within the room.

Cassien’s stomach twisted. His fingers curled into his palms. He licked his lips even though his tongue was dry.

"Then what?"

Silence again. A long, aching hiatus.

Then—movement.

A shift of air. The faintest sound of fabric brushing over stone.

"You know me."

Cassien’s pulse stuttered.

The words unsettled something in him, something deep and instinctive, something buried beneath years of forgotten things.

"I don’t," he rasped.

A pause. A breath.

Days had passed since he first heard her voice, since he had seen her in the warped glass, her pale fingers pressing lightly against the windowpane. He had tried to ignore it.

Tried.

But the silence of the house had become unbearable. The empty halls pressed against him with a weight he had never noticed before. He caught himself listening—waiting for the whisper, for the flicker of movement just beyond his sight.

She was there. Always.

At the edge of his thoughts.

At the threshold of his sight.

And then, one evening, she was closer.

The candlelight barely reached the far side of the room, leaving the corners to be swallowed in shadow. The great house was still, wrapped in silence, save for the faint crackle of the flame. Cassien sat by the fireplace, he lit them now, needing to feel their warmth. A book lay forgotten in his lap, his eyes on the space beyond the light.

"You seek me now."

The voice came from the darkness, soft as breath, curling around the edges of the quiet.

Cassien stiffened. He had thought—hoped—she would not come tonight. That if he did not acknowledge her, she would fade. But no. She was still here. And he had been waiting for her, whether he would admit it or not.

"You are becoming bold," he murmured, his voice steady, though his pulse was not.

A shift in the air. The scent again—faint, floral, unfamiliar. He did not look toward it. He did not move at all.

"Or you are," she countered.

Something within the shadows stirred—not quite movement, but presence. He did not see her, not fully, but she was there in the darkness. Closer than before.

"What are you?" he asked, not expecting an answer.

"A question you already know the answer to."

"Do I?"

A hesitation. Then, softer—"You are not afraid anymore."

That was not true. But it was also not a lie.

The words settled in the dim light between them, soft as dust, heavy as grief.

Cassien did not answer immediately. The fire burned low in the hearth, its warmth failing to reach beyond the chair where he sat. Lyrial remained just outside the candle’s reach, a shape in the shadows, half-there, half-not.

"Should I be?" he asked at last.

A quiet sound—not quite a laugh. Not quite anything.

"I do not know," she said. "Do you fear things that are forgotten?"

Cassien’s breath slowed. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold settled at the base of his spine.

"Is that what you are?"

"It is what I have become."

The flickering light caught the faintest trace of her form—a glint of hair like moonlit silk, the ghost of bare shoulders vanishing into the dark. Tangible, but only just.

"Once, I was known," she said, as if speaking to herself. "Once, they spoke my name as they would a sister’s, a mother’s, a beloved’s. I was part of them, part of the family, part of this house; its breath, its blood. They sought me in the quiet, in the night. They called me, and I answered."

"And now?"

"Now they have forgotten."

"They?" Cassien swallowed, his throat dry. "My family?"

"Your family. Your father. His father before him."

A sharp pain flared behind Cassien’s eyes. He exhaled slowly, rubbing his temple. "My father never spoke of you."

"No," Lyrial murmured. "He would not."

"Because he did not believe?"

"Because he did."

Cassien’s pulse thrummed in his ears. He had spent years questioning his own mind, wondering if the shadows that whispered, the figures that shifted just beyond sight, were simply the same madness that had claimed his father.

But now, she was here. Speaking to him, answering his questions, refusing to fade.

"They thought you were a ghost," he said at last, carefully. "Or a curse. Or a sickness in their blood."

"They did."

"And what are you really?"

Lyrial was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter than before.

"Forgotten."

He had spent years alone in this house, pacing the same empty corridors, hearing nothing but the echo of his own thoughts. The world beyond these walls had left him behind, and what had he become? A relic? A sickness? A ghost in his own right?

They talked often, not of important things, but just brief words that disappeared with the wind. Each time, he convinced himself it had to be the last. This was no more than his loneliness compounding his madness. Voices manifesting and lighting the fuse of imagination.

"We are not so different, are we?"

The whisper of fabric. The faintest movement, closer than before.

"No," she murmured. "Not so different at all."

The fire had burned low, the room steeped in amber and shadow. The candle’s flame flickered, its glow barely reaching the far corners where Lyrial lingered, half-there, half-not.

Cassien should have left. Should have turned away, fled to the cold safety of another room. But he stayed, drawn into the stillness between them, the space that had once been filled with doubt now weighted with something heavier, something waiting.

"You were part of them once," he said at last. His voice was quiet, careful. "But they let you slip away."

Lyrial did not answer immediately. When she did, it was not in words.

A movement. A shift of air. The faintest sound of bare feet across stone.

Cassien’s breath stilled.

And then—cool fingers, just barely grazing the back of his hand.

His reaction was immediate, visceral. A jolt, a sharp inhale. A rush of heat at the place where she touched him.

It was real. Not imagined, not the ghost of a sensation. She had touched him. What he had felt before, long consigned to a half-remembered dream, it had been her.

Slowly, cautiously, he turned his palm upward, his fingers trembling slightly. He should not have done it—should not have reached. But he did.

For the first time, she did not retreat.

Her hand rested in his, cool, weightless, but there. He could feel the fine bones beneath smooth skin, the faint trace of warmth, as if she were not quite alive, not quite anything at all. Yet, she was solid. She was real.

"Lyrial," he breathed, almost a question.

A pause. A stillness.

Then, softly—"I am still here."

Her hand lay in his, cool and weightless. A breath, a whisper of presence against his skin, but real. Real. For the first time, she did not fade, did not slip away into the dark like an untethered dream.

Cassien did not move, barely dared to breathe. The moment stretched between them, taut, waiting.

Then—a shift. A slow, deliberate movement.

Her fingers traced upward, the lightest brush of touch along the inside of his wrist. Cassien inhaled sharply, every nerve in his body alight, skin tightening beneath the slow slide of her fingertips. He had expected coolness, something spectral, untouchable—but her touch seared.

"You shouldn’t," he whispered.

Lyrial exhaled, the sound almost a sigh. A breath against his skin. He felt it, felt her.

"I know."

Her hand curled lightly over his, her palm pressing against his own. A perfect fit, a familiar weight. As though she had held him before, as though she had always been meant to.

Cassien swallowed hard. His other hand rose without thinking, without conscious intent. His fingertips grazed the bare curve of her shoulder, soft as silk. Her skin was cool, smooth, aching to be warmed. The fine hairs on her arms lifted beneath his touch, a trembling reaction so slight, so subtle—but there.

"Lyrial," he murmured, her name suddenly thick in his throat.

She shivered, and he felt it beneath his palm.

"The price is too high," she whispered.

He should have pulled away then. Should have let her go. But her body was there, solid, real, the space between them too narrow, too charged.

His fingers ghosted lower, down the elegant line of her arm, tracing the shape of her wrist before slipping to her waist. Her breath caught—he felt the rise and fall of it beneath his hand. His pulse thundered, a heavy, insistent rhythm.

"Then why are you still here?" His voice was hoarse, raw.

A hesitation. A moment just long enough for doubt to sink in.

"Because you want me to be."

The words undid him. The honesty of them, the inevitability of them. He did not know if she had spoken them as a question, a plea, or an undeniable truth—but he knew that she was right.

Cassien pulled her closer.

Her body met his in the dim glow of firelight, pressed soft and cool against his own. The fine fabric—if it was fabric—slipped between his fingers like mist, something that barely existed, but her body—her body was real.

"Lyrial," he said again, softer this time. Reverent. Wanting.

"You do not understand," she murmured against his throat.

"Then show me."

Cassien was lost.

Her body beneath his was real, her touch no longer a ghost of sensation but heat, softness, something solid enough to shatter him. The weight of her, the way she yielded and then took, the press of lips against skin—all of it was real. He had wanted her, but not like this, not with this desperate, aching hunger, this need that burned as though he were trying to consume something that could never truly be his.

Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling, guiding, whispering his name against his throat. He swallowed against the sound, against the way his pulse thundered not just in his chest but between them, where their bodies met, where she wrapped around him like silk and breath and surrender. He did not know if he was chasing her, or if she had already caught him. Maybe it was both. Maybe it had always been both.

"Cassien," she whispered, and there was something aching in the way she said it.

Her lips brushed his ear, her breath a shiver against his skin.

"Once will be all you have."

He stilled. The meaning was there, somewhere in the space between their breaths, the urgency of their limbs entwined. It was a warning. A plea. A prophecy.

He did not listen.

"Then let it be enough."

Lyrial exhaled a breath that was almost a sob, almost something else. Cassien barely had time to catch it before she moved against him, her thighs tightening around his hips, pulling him closer, deeper, until there was no space left to claim.

A moan slipped from her lips, barely more than a breath, a sound of surrender, of desire, of something too vast for words. His hands traced the curve of her spine, fingers mapping the silk-smooth skin, the dip of her lower back, the soft heat of her body pressed into his. She was wet, aching for him, her slickness welcoming him with each slow thrust, each movement deliberate, languid, reverent.

Cassien pressed his mouth to her shoulder, tasting salt and skin, feeling the warmth of her pulse beneath his lips. Lyrial arched into him, her breasts pressing against his chest, their bodies fused in the dim glow of candlelight. She gasped as he thrust deeper, his cock stretching her, filling her completely.

"Cassien…"

His name spilled from her lips, not in warning now, but in need.

He answered her with his body, with the slow, rolling rhythm of his hips, with the deep strokes that made her moan, her fingernails pressing into his shoulders as she rocked against him.

Pleasure built between them in waves, cresting, breaking, retreating only to rise again. His hands traced the swell of her breasts, thumbs brushing over hardened nipples, drawing a gasp from her, a shudder. She trembled for him, against him, beneath him.

"I shouldn’t," she whispered, but she did not stop.

"Then don’t," he murmured, pressing his lips to hers, swallowing the sigh that slipped from her mouth as he drove into her, deeper, harder.

Her thighs tightened, her hips meeting him with desperate, needy rolls, her body an invitation, a demand. Her slick heat clenched around him, pulling him deeper, guiding him toward the inevitable.

Lyrial’s hands were everywhere—fingers tangling in his hair, nails dragging down his back, palms pressing against his chest. She was softer than mist, warmer than breath, so unbearably real.

"Cassien—"

Her voice broke, her body tightening around him as she came, pleasure shattering her, breaking her apart. He felt it—the clench, the pulse, the trembling tension as she arched beneath him, gasping, moaning, a sound of pure, helpless pleasure.

He couldn’t hold back. He couldn’t fight it.

The moment reached its peak, and it did not explode—it consumed.

A sound left him, raw, undone. Her breath caught against his throat, her body tightening around him again, pulling him with her, taking him under, taking him away.

He exploded into her, into the heat and the stillness, into the pulse of something too deep to be called pleasure, too final to be called release.

His body trembled against hers, his breath ragged, shallow. The aftershocks of pleasure pulsed through him, fading, slowing. The weight of her pressed into him, around him, within him. The world felt distant, blurred at the edges, but she was here—tangible, warm, real.

But something was wrong.

A strange heaviness settled in his limbs, a creeping stillness curling through his veins. Each breath came slower than the last. His heart, still pounding in his ears, began to lag, its rhythm losing strength.

He exhaled, but his chest barely rose to pull another breath back in.

Cassien swallowed, his body sluggish, fading. A strange, creeping clarity settled over him, though his vision was beginning to blur.

The price is too high.

She had warned him. She had always warned him.

"Lyrial—" His voice was a breath, barely sound at all.

She shifted above him, her fingers sliding through his damp hair, stroking, soothing. Her body still pressed to his, their sweat-slicked skin cooling in the hush of the night.

"I know," she whispered.

Her voice trembled.

Cassien tried to lift a hand, to touch her, but his limbs felt heavy, yet weightless all at once. His fingers barely twitched against her thigh.

"I—" His lips parted, but there was no strength left for words.

"Shh," she murmured, bending over him, pressing her lips to his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. Her tears were warm against his skin.

"You have freed me," she whispered, her voice breaking. "And I have freed you."

His heart gave one last slow beat.

Cassien understood now. The price had been paid, as it had always been his to pay.

His lips parted, but he no longer had breath to speak. His vision darkened at the edges, pulling inward, folding in on itself.

His last sight was Lyrial, her body already dissolving into mist, the soft edges of her blurring, thinning, unspooling into the air.

She was fading.

Her fingers slid from his hair, from his chest, her breath one last sigh against his skin.

Cassien's heavy eyes closed.

The window cracked open, the cold night air curling inward.

And Lyrial was gone.

A whisper of wind, a breath against the curtains, a presence no longer bound.

The room was empty.

The house, for the first time in centuries, was truly silent.