He heard the knock and went to the door out of habit more than awareness, his mind still circling the morning like a moth around a flame.
When he opened it, a man in armour stood on the step, posture formal, gaze guarded in that way knights always looked at him, like they were seeing the Arden name first and the person second.
"Mr Soren Arden," the knight said.
Soren's skin went cold at the sound of his family name in someone else's mouth.
"Yes," he answered, and the word scraped out of him.
The knight took a breath, as if preparing for something unpleasant.
"I have been tasked with delivering news," he said, voice steady, rehearsed. "Lady Freya Arden fell victim to a demon's trap and perished honourably in battle."
He stared.
The sentence didn't fit in his mind properly.
It slid off, refused to settle, as if his thoughts had turned to glass and the words couldn't grip.
"…No," he said, without meaning to.
The knight's jaw tightened.
"I'm sorry."
Soren's mouth opened again, but nothing came out.
He shut the door slowly, because he didn't know what else to do, because his hands still followed rules even when the world didn't.
He stood with his back against the wood, staring at nothing.
He waited for the feeling to arrive, for grief to crash into him the way it should, for his chest to split open.
For a heartbeat, there was only silence.
Then something tore loose.
Soren spun toward the dining room as if the room had insulted him, as if the walls had lied.
He grabbed the edge of the table, then slammed his fist down so hard the coasters jumped.
"Screw this! Honourably?" he hissed, voice breaking.
He hit it again.
The jolt ran up his arm into his shoulder, pain blooming across his knuckles, but it felt distant, like it belonged to someone else.
"What's so honourable about dying?!"
He struck again, and again, and the wood groaned under the force, cracking where it had already been worn by years of use.
"Why didn't she tell me?" he demanded, and the words came out chopped by breaths he couldn't control. "Why didn't she tell me?"
He swung until the table gave way.
The leg snapped with a harsh crack, the top tilting, coasters sliding, and Soren barely noticed as the pieces crashed to the floor.
His hands throbbed, skin split, blood smearing the wood, and still it wasn't enough.
He stood over the wreckage, chest heaving, eyes wide, as if he could stare the truth into changing.
Then the strength left him all at once.
Soren's knees buckled.
He dropped to the floor among splinters and ceramic shards, the air suddenly too big around him.
A sound clawed its way out of his throat, not quite a sob, not quite a scream.
"I don't get it," he whispered, and the words were tiny compared to the ruin he had made.
His gaze snagged on the axe.
Freya's axe.
It leaned against the wall where she always left it, angled neatly beside the hooks, as if waiting for her hand, as if she might walk in any second and scold him for making a mess, and the sight of it sent a slow, sick chill through him.
Freya treated that weapon like an extension of herself, something that lived at her side, something she checked twice before stepping over the threshold, even on the smallest errands, and on missions she never let it out of reach, not for sleep, not for meals, not for a careless moment of trust.
Soren had watched her come home bloodied and exhausted with it still strapped to her back, watched her drag it inside even when her hands were shaking, watched her set it down only after the latch clicked and she had made sure he was safe.
But that morning she had walked out without it.
She had left it here, in the house, like she already knew she wouldn't be the one to carry it back.
Soren's breath caught.
His fingers twitched uselessly at his sides, like his body wanted to reject the implication, and then the fear he had been swallowing for days rose up, thick and bitter, flooding his throat.
Soren crawled to the axe without thinking, arms trembling, and pulled it into his lap.
The metal was still stained, darkened by what he didn't want to imagine.
He pressed his forehead to the haft.
"I told you," he choked, voice thick with tears that finally spilt, hot against his skin, "I told you all I needed was you…"
His fingers tightened until they ached.
He wanted to scream at her, to beg, to demand she come back, but his voice collapsed into wet, broken sounds.
'Am I really that useless?'
The thought didn't come with drama, only bleak certainty, a familiar weight that settled into him as if it belonged there.
He cried until exhaustion dragged him under, until the world dulled into something distant and thick, and even then the axe stayed clutched against his chest like a lifeline.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Two weeks blurred by.
Soren couldn't have said what day it was if someone held a blade to his throat, and maybe that was the point, maybe time had become something he let wash over him because counting it would make Freya's absence sharper.
Everywhere he looked, she was there.
The kitchen where she cooked and hummed as if nothing could touch her, the dining room where she bullied him into eating, the hallway where she used to lean in the doorway just to stare at him until he snapped and asked what she wanted.
He heard her laughter in the empty rooms, not as a ghost, not as magic, just as memory refusing to let go.
Eventually, his body reminded him it still needed fuel.
"I… should eat," he muttered, voice raw from disuse.
He pushed dirty covers off himself and sat up.
He was in Freya's bed.
He didn't remember choosing it, only that at some point he had stopped being able to sleep anywhere else, as if her sheets were the last place in the house that still felt warm.
The axe lay beside the bed.
He grabbed it automatically.
His hands shook with the weight, the metal cold against his palms, but he dragged it with him anyway, stumbling into the kitchen like he needed proof it was real.
Freya had kept the cupboards full, always full, even going so far as to hire someone to use preservation magic so food wouldn't spoil.
— Make sure you eat a lot, okay! You're still a growing boy!
The memory hit him so hard his throat tightened.
Soren shoved bread into his mouth, chewing without tasting, swallowing too fast, the food scraping down like punishment.
If he kept eating, he couldn't cry.
He leaned against the counter, breathing through his nose, and stared at the table that wasn't there anymore, only broken pieces piled in the corner where he had shoved them days ago, too tired to clean, too numb to care.
A knock sounded at the front door.
Soren flinched so hard he nearly dropped the bread.
For a second, stupidly, impossibly, his heart leapt as if it might be her.
He forced himself to walk.
His steps were unsteady, his legs weak from too many days spent lying down, and the axe bumped against the floor behind him with each movement, a dull scrape that followed him like a shadow.
When he opened the door, a man in a courier's uniform stood there, eyes widening at the sight of Soren's hollow face, greasy tangled hair, and clothes that clung to him in rumpled layers.
"…Mr Soren Arden?" the courier asked, hesitant.
Soren swallowed.
"Yes."
The courier held out a letter as if he wanted the exchange to be over quickly.
"Here."
Soren snatched it, then shut the door without another word.
He stared down at the envelope.
The wax seal pressed into it made his stomach twist.
The Arden seal.
His fingers went stiff.
For a heartbeat, he was younger again, standing in corridors too wide for a child, hearing his name spoken with disappointment, feeling eyes on him like he was an inconvenience that refused to disappear.
His breath went shallow.
His perfect memory, the curse he never asked for, offered him every detail at once, every tone, every expression, every moment he had wanted to forget.
Soren slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor.
His hand trembled as he tore the letter open, paper ripping unevenly because he didn't have the patience for care.
The first lines were formal, polished, and almost affectionate.
— To Soren, I have heard the news about my beloved daughter Freya…
Soren's eyes skimmed faster.
He didn't want condolences.
He didn't want empty words.
He found the part that mattered, the part his mother had written not to comfort him, but to arrange the household like pieces on a board.
— Since the previous heir of the household has passed away, we have selected a new heir, that being Alice Arden, your younger sister. I hope this choice doesn't hurt you and that you continue to enjoy playing around as you have been…
Soren's vision sharpened.
His jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
Playing around.
As if he hadn't spent his life being pressed into shapes he didn't fit, as if his failures were entertainment, as if his existence could be dismissed with a careless line.
He didn't finish reading.
He tore the letter in half.
Then in half again.
Then again, shredding it until his fingers ached and scraps fluttered to the floor like dead leaves.
It wasn't enough.
Nothing was enough.
The anger surged through him hot and wild, then drained away so quickly it left him dizzy, empty, hollowed out.
His mother hadn't even written his name properly at the top, not in the way she wrote Alice's, not with pride.
She hadn't even given him the courtesy of the family name in the greeting.
A small, deliberate cut.
A quiet statement of abandonment.
Soren stared at the mess around him, paper scraps, broken wood, dust in the corners where it had gathered for days.
The floor was dirty.
There were crusted plates in the sink.
The house smelled stale, like grief soaked into the walls.
Soren looked down at himself.
The same clothes, two weeks unwashed, sweat dried into the fabric.
His hair oily and knotted.
His nails bitten down unevenly, fingers raw where he had chewed them without noticing.
He swallowed, throat sore.
He was pathetic.
Always so pathetic.
"What do I do now…" he whispered, and the question didn't feel dramatic; it felt genuinely blank, as if his mind had run out of paths.
He couldn't live like this forever.
He didn't know how to live any other way.
Then, uninvited, a memory surfaced, clear and sharp.
Freya at the breakfast table, eyes too shiny, voice too careful.
— What do you think about going to Stellaris Academy?
And then, softer, planning for him even as she was breaking.
— I think it would be a good place for you to go, you could make some friends, see the world…
Soren's breath shuddered.
"Stellaris Academy," he murmured.
He hadn't wanted it.
He had barely listened when she had said it, too focused on the thought of being separated from her again, too focused on keeping her close.
Now she was gone anyway.
His family had abandoned him.
The money Freya left would last, but not long, and he knew the Arden household would not lift a finger for him beyond what appearances demanded.
Soren stared at the shredded letter.
His fingers tightened on the scraps until they crumpled.
"I guess I'll be following your last request then, Sister…" he said, and his voice cracked, betraying him.
He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to let himself fall apart again, because falling apart didn't bring her back.
"But you should've told me," he added, and the words were sharp with something that wasn't quite anger, not anymore. "I could've…"
He stopped.
He couldn't lie to himself.
If she had told him, he might have begged, he might have clung harder, he might have asked her to stay, but would he have been brave enough to understand, to accept it, to act like someone worth saving?
He pictured himself at the door that morning, frozen, letting her leave because fear held him in place.
Coward.
Soren let out a bitter laugh that sounded wrong in the empty house.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, not sure if he meant Freya, or himself, or the person he had never managed to become.
His voice was hoarse.
This time, the tears didn't fall.
————「❤︎」————