The floor around Lyria cracked open.
Thin lines spread out from where she stood, making sounds like ice breaking on a frozen lake. Gray water seeped through these cracks while the air grew thick and hard to breathe.
Something was coming, something awful.
Lyria faced it alone, her whole body shaking as she fought to keep it contained. Her knuckles turned white around the handle of her sword as she locked eyes with him, her face tight with pain.
"Please… Leave…I don't want to hurt you..." She begged, the words a torn whisper.
Aether eyes shone at how she was trying to protect him, and to bear this unimaginable burden alone so he could escape. Such a sight left a warm feeling in him, far better than those bastards.
He stood up before stepping forward, even as the pressure pressed over him as he stepped closer.
"Lyria." Aether said softly as he reached out, ignoring the chilling aura that made his skin prickle and gently cradled her face. She flinched, and her eyes went wide. "What will happen if this continues? Tell me."
Lyria trembled violently under his touch. "N-nothing… I'll recover… just go…" She stammered, trying to twist her face away, to hide the spreading darkness in her eyes, to downplay the cataclysm unfolding at her feet.
His expression softened, a look of awe appearing on his face as he saw it clearly. She wasn't just holding back her madness, but she was fighting to keep him from seeing her break and worrying him.
I am curious… I am really curious, why!? Did the people she found told them about my power? Hahahaha, who cares, you're willing to go so far for me, well what's more to say?
Aether saw her bearing the pain, and then he recalled the words of the golden orbs. They told him through the shackles he would be able to suppress the madness in the witches and take away their pain.
But in exchange, they would fall under his control and be his prisoners, similar to him being the warden and them being the inmates.
The plan was to make them pay for their sins, to force them to work, and throw them away like the tools they were.
I really do hope you bastards are watching from where you are. Because I am about to start the journey of accepting all of them in my embrace.
Aether gently brushed across her skin as his gaze softened, and he felt something tremble deep within him. The trembling instantly created a bridge, and across it, through the connection of the Shackle he felt it.
The aching chill of her isolation, a stillness that reached into eternity. And beneath that, fainter than a heartbeat, the buried spark of something else, a wish, a hope, a self that waited to be helped.
"Then I will guide you until one day you can tell me your wish." Aether words swept through the cracking space between them, louder than the groan of the buckling floor. "And until then…"
He moved forward.
Lyria's eyes went wide and she stood frozen, unable to react.
"I will be there with you every step of the way." Aether eyes stared in hers. "After all, I am very interested in you, Lyria."
He closed the distance between them and his lips pressed against hers.
Aether was kiss was gentle and soft as he pulls Lyria closer, one hand gripping the back of her neck. While the other cups her jawline, holding you in place as the world stopped and Lyria froze.
Then the symbols appeared before spreading across her skin like fire.
Intricate patterns, ancient and complex, blazed to life along her arms, her neck, her face. Deep ocean blue intertwined, weaving together in designs that Aether saw before.
The same symbols flared on Aether's skin but in the color of gold.
They mirrored hers, answering her patterns with his own. Where gold met blue, the light intensified and then crimson-black chains of the Shackle began to form.
They rushed out from the hands holding Lyria's face, moving around her neck, arms, waist, and legs. Before they seeped into her body, becoming a pathway between two souls that had been forcibly opened.
And through it, everything she had held back came flooding into him.
The terrible deep came crashing into him, he saw gray waves swirling around him before descending over him. It would have destroyed a lesser person, torn their mind apart and left nothing but screaming emptiness behind.
But Aether welcomed it even as his knees buckled.
For a second, his body threatened to give out under the sheer magnitude of what poured into him. But his arms tightened around her instead as he pulled her closer and kissed her deeper. He felt pleasure rushing through his body mixed with a hunger for more.
Then he felt it all.
Every razor-sharp piece of pain she had carried alone. He tasted the bitterness of guilt that had no source, only endless repetition. He understood the shape of her isolation, how it had shaped her until she was hollow.
Aether felt the cold of the abyss, the way it pulled at everything warm and living, trying to drag it down into stillness. And as he accepted it, as he took a portion of that burden into himself.
Lyria's stiff body began to relax.
Her tight shoulders fell, her grip on the sword loosened until it clattered to the floor.
The vault around them changed too.
The gray water that had flooded the floor started pulling back. It flowed away through the cracks in the stone like a tide going out. All that darkness that had poured from inside her sank back, as if something was drawing it in.
The heavy feeling in the air lifted.
The room grew warmer again while the blackness in her eyes washed away, fading like dark ink in clear water.
The dead silence that had filled the room broke apart as the glowing marks on their skin flashed one last time. Then the light softened, the symbols settling under Lyria skin were still visible but faint now.
Aether pulled back slowly while feeling a surge of energy rushing through him and his lips left hers, but his hands remained on her shoulders. He ignored the rush of energy through him and the trembling of his body before it settled down.
His gaze was on Lyria's face, his golden eyes searched her face, taking in every detail.
The confusion and wonder warring in her expression, the flush on her face and the faint tremble in her body that she couldn't quite control.
He smiled. "You seemed better. That's good."
Lyria stared at him, her lips parted, but no sound came out as she stared at him in a daze.