05-31-2025, 07:46 PM
The wire around Nox’s throat trembled like a blade on the verge of commitment. The weave was impossibly sharp. Drawn from something deeper than steel, older than breathing, and it trembled not from instability, but from restraint.
A tremor of red blossomed at Nox’s throat, fine as the nick of a barber’s slip, and still… still - there was no resistance. No flinch. No attempt at defense. No song. No spark. Nothing. It was worse than defiance. It was apathy.
Nikolai narrowed his eyes, and for one breathless moment he considered pushing the weave completely. One flick of thought. A clean line. No consequences he couldn’t explain away here in the heart of his power.
But instead, the thread shivered. Then slackened. The obsidian line retreated like a serpent called home, dissolving into the dark as if it had never been there. Nox remained, jaw tight, fingers clenched to the arms of the chair, but not broken.
Nikolai rose from his seat. The movement was fluid and charged, like a man stepping off the edge of a precipice just to prove the cliff had no claim on him.
He crossed the space between them, and one hand came down hard and fast onto the back of the precariously tilted chair, halting its unnatural angle. The other planted itself on the armrest, leaning him forward until his face hovered just inches above Nox’s own.
The shadows swelled at Nikolai’s back. They cloaked the room, the desk, the world. The only thing that existed in that moment was Nikolai Brandon’s face, lit from beneath with the eerie glow of power, and Nox, laid bare in the cradle of restraint and suspicion.
He searched Nox’s eyes. For anger. For fear. For anything. But what he found was vacancy. Not a void of intelligence… Nox wasn’t a fool. But a hollowness. An absence. As though something vital had already been taken from him, and whatever remained had stopped bothering to pretend it missed the rest.
Nikolai stared, jaw rigid. “It can’t be taken,” he said at last. The words came low, like accusation. He said it again. This time to himself. “It can’t be taken.”
There had never been a system to it. Not truly. No ceremony, no rules, no inheritance. The Power was. It revealed itself, and those it touched simply became. And once claimed, it was theirs forever. It had to be.
Because if it could be lost, worse, if it could be stripped, then the divine right wasn’t a right at all. It was a lease. A loan. And gods did not beg permission to remain gods.
“Maybe you can’t touch it,” Nikolai whispered. “Maybe you... surrendered it. Maybe some broken part of you let it go.”
The accusation laced through the air like poison, but it wasn't meant to wound Nox. It was meant to protect Nikolai from the abyss opening inside his own certainty. The shadows stirred faintly behind him. But the rage had cooled. Not extinguished, but banked. Like coal under ash.
He leaned in closer, a final inch, his voice almost intimate. “It can’t be taken,” he said again, the words hollow and fragile now. He needed Nox to deny him. To argue. To scream. But there was nothing. Just that terrible, perfect silence. And Nikolai felt a whisper in the back of his mind.
What if it can?
A tremor of red blossomed at Nox’s throat, fine as the nick of a barber’s slip, and still… still - there was no resistance. No flinch. No attempt at defense. No song. No spark. Nothing. It was worse than defiance. It was apathy.
Nikolai narrowed his eyes, and for one breathless moment he considered pushing the weave completely. One flick of thought. A clean line. No consequences he couldn’t explain away here in the heart of his power.
But instead, the thread shivered. Then slackened. The obsidian line retreated like a serpent called home, dissolving into the dark as if it had never been there. Nox remained, jaw tight, fingers clenched to the arms of the chair, but not broken.
Nikolai rose from his seat. The movement was fluid and charged, like a man stepping off the edge of a precipice just to prove the cliff had no claim on him.
He crossed the space between them, and one hand came down hard and fast onto the back of the precariously tilted chair, halting its unnatural angle. The other planted itself on the armrest, leaning him forward until his face hovered just inches above Nox’s own.
The shadows swelled at Nikolai’s back. They cloaked the room, the desk, the world. The only thing that existed in that moment was Nikolai Brandon’s face, lit from beneath with the eerie glow of power, and Nox, laid bare in the cradle of restraint and suspicion.
He searched Nox’s eyes. For anger. For fear. For anything. But what he found was vacancy. Not a void of intelligence… Nox wasn’t a fool. But a hollowness. An absence. As though something vital had already been taken from him, and whatever remained had stopped bothering to pretend it missed the rest.
Nikolai stared, jaw rigid. “It can’t be taken,” he said at last. The words came low, like accusation. He said it again. This time to himself. “It can’t be taken.”
There had never been a system to it. Not truly. No ceremony, no rules, no inheritance. The Power was. It revealed itself, and those it touched simply became. And once claimed, it was theirs forever. It had to be.
Because if it could be lost, worse, if it could be stripped, then the divine right wasn’t a right at all. It was a lease. A loan. And gods did not beg permission to remain gods.
“Maybe you can’t touch it,” Nikolai whispered. “Maybe you... surrendered it. Maybe some broken part of you let it go.”
The accusation laced through the air like poison, but it wasn't meant to wound Nox. It was meant to protect Nikolai from the abyss opening inside his own certainty. The shadows stirred faintly behind him. But the rage had cooled. Not extinguished, but banked. Like coal under ash.
He leaned in closer, a final inch, his voice almost intimate. “It can’t be taken,” he said again, the words hollow and fragile now. He needed Nox to deny him. To argue. To scream. But there was nothing. Just that terrible, perfect silence. And Nikolai felt a whisper in the back of his mind.
What if it can?