(Caelis Hall – Twilight after the Storm)
The storm outside had passed,
but in the hollowed veins of Caelis Hall,
something heavier remained.
Not rain.
Not wind.
Something born of silence.
Of memories that refused to stay buried.
Alberta walked ahead,
her boots brushing broken stone and faded vines,drawn by a pull she couldn't explain.
She didn't glance back.
Didn't need to.
She could feel him behind her —
Dantes.
A living shadow, heavy and sharp as a blade at her back.
Watching.
Following.
Silent.
They crossed the skeletal ruins,
ghosts of banners fluttering against the cracked pillars,
and she found herself pulled —
inevitably —
toward the shattered eastern balcony.
Toward the edge of the world.
The moment she stepped onto the broken mosaic,
the world tilted.
The cracks healed.
The gold and blue of fallen banners shivered back into color.
The stones hummed with breath.
And there —
against the molten kiss of the dying sun —
stood a boy.
Prince Edmund Crieur De Lion.
He leaned over the marble rail,
fingers curling tight against the stone as if trying to hold the kingdom together with nothing but willpower.
His eyes —sharp, aching —
gazed into a future only he seemed to fear.
For a heartbeat too long —
he turned.
Toward her.
His gaze brushed across Alberta —
not truly seeing,
but reaching.
Reaching toward a future he would never know.
(The Whispered Echo)
"If no one remembers my name...
let them at least remember that I loved this world once."
(Back to Reality)
The vision cracked.
The golden light collapsed into gray rain mist.
The laughter of the court died into dust.
The boy on the balcony was gone.
And Alberta —
stood there,fingers trembling against the cold marble,feeling a sadness that wasn't hers knotting itself inside her ribs.
A few steps behind, half-swallowed by the ruins,
Dantes watched her.
Watched the way she reached out —
delicate, reverent, aching —toward a memory he could not see.
Toward someone else.
He didn't know what ghost she touched.
He didn't need to.
The look on her face —soft, lost, full of longing —was enough.
And it
shredded him.
She wasn't looking at him.
She was looking for him.
The boy painted in myths.
The dead prince trapped in broken songs.
Edmund.
A ghost.
A lie.
Not the man standing behind her,
flesh and blood,ruined and real.
Not Dantes.
A jagged, ugly jealousy twisted deep inside his chest,sharp enough to make him shift his stance.
He hated it.
Hated the way it made his fingers itch to grab her hand,to drag her away from the balcony,
to demand
— Look at me.
Not him.
Not the boy you dreamed of.
Me.
There was a time...
when I thought I could be someone worth remembering.
A boy who laughed too loud.
Dreamed too high.
Loved too easily.
But that boy died.
Not in a grave.
Not with blood.
But in the silence after the betrayal —
the silence when no one called his name anymore.
Now all that's left is the shadow.
The wreckage.
The storm no one waits for.
And her —
She stands in the ruins, reaching for him.
Not me.
She smiles for a memory that forgot how to smile back.
She aches for a ghost too far gone to come home.
And me?
I walk behind her.
A name she will never truly know.
A man I will never be again.
And Gods help me —
I still wish she would turn around anyway.
Dantes tightened his fists at his sides,
nails digging into his palms until the pain blurred the jealousy.
But when Alberta turned — startled from her reverie —
he forced his hands to loosen.
He forced his face to stay cold.
He forced his voice to sound like iron scraping stone:
"We should move."
Alberta blinked at him,confused and half-lost,still clutching the sadness she couldn't name.
She said nothing.
Only nodded once —
quiet, aching.
They walked through the ruins without speaking.
The broken mosaics crunched under their boots.
The rain whispered along the bones of Caelis Hall,but neither of them looked back.
Somewhere behind them,the stones still remembered.
The whispers still lingered.
The ghosts still waited.
But Alberta didn't dare turn.
And Dantes —
he didn't dare hope.
Some names are forgotten by history.
Some names are buried by betrayal.
And some...
some survive only in the hearts that never knew they carried them.
End of Chapter 36: The Balcony of Forgotten Names