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The air was suffocating in Wriothesley's dimly lit chamber, where the smell of damp stone clung to the walls like an unwanted memory. The boy in the cage, Lyney, sat hunched in the corner, his slender frame trembling as he clutched the bars, rattling them with an almost animalistic fury. His long, golden hair was tangled, framing his tear-streaked face as those lilac eyes burned with a hatred that seemed out of place on someone so young.
“You’re wasting your strength,” Wriothesley muttered, his voice gravelly but disinterested. He leaned against the edge of a sturdy desk cluttered with maps, ledgers, and a half-empty glass of whiskey. His icy blue eyes didn’t glance at the boy; instead, they remained fixed on the papers before him, though his grip on the glass tightened at every echo of metal.
Lyney’s voice cracked as he screamed, “You think this is over? You think you can keep me here?!” His words faltered, choking on his own despair. He hated how his voice shook. He hated how small he felt under Wriothesley's cold, unrelenting presence.
Wriothesley finally turned, his towering frame casting an imposing shadow over the cage. “You’re here because of your Father,” he said, his words slow, deliberate, as though explaining something to a child who wouldn’t understand. “Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t about you.”
Lyney’s fingers curled tighter around the bars. “I don’t even know you!” he spat, his lilac eyes glinting with defiance even as his knees trembled beneath him. “Whatever your grudge is, it has nothing to do with me! So why are you doing this?”
The question lingered in the air, unanswered, as Wriothesley turned away again. For a moment, it seemed he wouldn’t dignify Lyney with a response, but then his low voice broke the silence. “Because sometimes you have to hurt the things people love to get what you want.”
Lyney flinched as if struck. His grip faltered, his delicate hands trembling against the cold metal bars. “You’re wrong,” he said, his voice quieter now, shaking with barely contained fury. “If you think this will break her, you don’t know her at all.”
Wriothesley’s lips curved into something resembling a smile—cold and humorless. “I don’t need to break her,” he said, his voice dropping lower, almost a growl. “Just distract her long enough.”
The weight of his words crushed the air between them. Lyney’s mind raced, panic clawing at the edges of his thoughts. Who was this man, this stranger with ice in his veins and a predator’s gaze? What did he want?
Hours dragged by, punctuated only by the occasional scrape of Wriothesley’s chair or the clink of his glass against the desk. Lyney’s exhaustion began to creep in, dulling his anger, but his tears refused to stop. They fell silent now, tracing hot paths down his pale cheeks.
Wriothesley watched him out of the corner of his eye, his expression unreadable. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d brought the boy here. It was reckless, impulsive—a move that could very well jeopardize everything. But as he looked at Lyney, so fragile and furious in his gilded cage, something gnawed at the edges of his mind.
He turned his back on the boy and strode to the window, staring out into the black expanse beyond. The glass reflected Lyney’s huddled form behind him, a ghostly reminder of his own mistakes.
For the first time in years, Wriothesley wasn’t sure if he was the hunter or the hunted.
Weeks passed, and the air between them grew heavier with unspoken words and tension that neither could diffuse. Wriothesley had done his best to ignore the boy’s eyes, those fragile, defiant stares that always managed to pierce through his defenses. He tried to rationalize his hesitation, telling himself that killing Lyney wasn’t necessary. Yet deep down, he knew the truth—it wasn’t about necessity.
It was about weakness.
The chainsaw rested on the table, its blade glinting under the dim, flickering light. Wriothesley’s hand hovered over it, his fingers curling as though they were grasping something intangible, something slipping through his grasp. Behind him, Lyney sat against the bars of his cage, his delicate frame thinner now, his once-bright eyes dulled by weeks of confinement. Yet even in his exhaustion, his voice carried venom.
“Which one of your parents am I replacing?”
Wriothesley froze.
The words sliced through the room, sharper than any blade. Lyney’s lilac gaze locked onto him, unwavering, even as his lips trembled with a mixture of challenge and fear.
“What did you just say?” Wriothesley’s voice was low, dangerous, the kind of tone that
silenced lesser men.
Lyney’s fingers curled around the bars, his fragile hands trembling but his voice steady. “Is that what this is? Did one of them die before you could hurt them? And now you’re—”
Wriothesley was on him before the sentence could finish.
The cage door swung open with a metallic groan, and Wriothesley’s massive hand wrapped around Lyney’s slender arm, dragging him to his feet with a force that made him cry out.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wriothesley snarled, his cold blue eyes blazing with fury.
Lyney gasped, struggling against the iron grip that pinned him to the bars. “I hit a nerve, didn’t I?” he hissed, his voice shaking but unrelenting. “What’s wrong? Can’t handle a boy figuring you out?”
Wriothesley’s other hand moved before he could stop himself, backhanding Lyney hard enough to send him crumpling to the floor. The sound of the slap echoed in the room, louder than it had any right to be. Lyney’s head snapped to the side, his hair falling in a golden curtain over his face.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Wriothesley stared down at him, his chest heaving, his hand still tingling from the impact. Lyney lay motionless for a moment, his delicate frame curled into itself as though shielding against further blows.
Then, slowly, he pushed himself up onto his elbows. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, staining his pale skin, but his lilac eyes burned brighter than ever as they met Wriothesley’s.
“There he is,” Lyney whispered, his voice hoarse but laced with bitter triumph. “The real you.”
Wriothesley’s fists clenched, his nails digging into his palms as he took a step back, as if retreating from his own actions. His gaze flickered to the chainsaw on the table, then back to the boy he’d just struck.
Lyney’s words had cut deeper than he wanted to admit.
He turned away, his footsteps heavy as he walked toward the door. “Stay in the cage,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.
Lyney’s laughter followed him, hollow and broken. “Where else would I go?”
Wriothesley poured himself a generous measure of whiskey, the amber liquid catching the faint light in his dim quarters. The glass trembled slightly in his grip as his thoughts dragged him unwillingly into the dark recesses of his past.
Lyney couldn’t know. The boy was just a pawn in a larger game, a means to an end. And yet, when Lyney had said those words—Which one of your parents am I replacing?—it was as though someone had carved open his chest and exposed every festering wound he thought he had buried.
The image rose unbidden in his mind, sharp and vivid: the spreading pool of crimson on the floorboards, the metallic tang of blood hanging in the air. He had been fifteen. Too young to understand the full gravity of what he’d done, yet too old to be ignorant of its consequences.
His foster father’s body had slumped forward first, the man’s eyes still wide with shock. His foster mother had tried to scream, but he’d silenced her quickly. He couldn’t remember how many times he’d swung the blade, only that it had been enough. Enough to end their reign of terror. Enough to ensure they’d never sell another child like livestock again.
Wriothesley took a long drink, letting the whiskey burn his throat as he tried to drown out the memory. It didn’t work. It never did.
He remembered the way the blood had mingled on the floor, his and theirs, as though they were the same. He had thought it poetic at the time—Revolting, he corrected himself bitterly.
His hatred for them should have made their blood incompatible with his own, but nature didn’t care about such things.
When they found him, barely alive, he couldn’t even flinch. The blade had fallen from his hands, and he had collapsed into the mess he had created, utterly empty.
And then he had woken in the hospital, the cold bite of metal cuffs around his wrists the first sensation to return to him. A woman had sat in the corner, her gaze flickering nervously between him and the clipboard in her lap. He could still see the way her pen had trembled as she wrote his name—his new name.
“Wriothesley,” he had said, pausing to roll the unfamiliar syllables on his tongue. He didn’t know where it came from, only that it was not the name his foster parents had given him. That name was dead now, just like them.
His trial had been a farce. He had laid out every detail of the killings, giving the judges everything they needed to convict him. Yet, somehow, the courtroom had erupted into debates over his culpability, over the villainy of his foster parents, over whether his actions were justified.
He hadn’t cared for their arguments. He wanted a sentence, not salvation. And that was exactly what he got.
“Today,” he had told the Gestionnaire when asked for his birthday. It wasn’t true, but he hadn’t known the real date, and it felt fitting. Wriothesley had been born in blood that day.
He stared at the whiskey in his glass, his icy blue eyes reflecting the amber liquid. Lyney’s voice echoed in his mind, taunting him, “Which one of your parents am I replacing?”
Wriothesley slammed the glass down on the table, shattering it. The shards dug into his palm, and blood began to pool in his hand, bright and vivid against the wood.
The past wasn’t done with him. It never would be.
Lyney sat curled in the corner of his cage, his wide eyes watching every deliberate movement Wriothesley made. For days, the man had been working tirelessly, dragging in pieces of wood, measuring, cutting, and hammering them together. The rhythmic thud of nails being driven into the planks was a constant backdrop, an unsettling metronome to Lyney’s thoughts.
“What are you making?” Lyney had asked the first time he noticed the project.
Wriothesley didn’t answer. He never did. He worked in silence, his icy blue eyes focused on the task at hand, as though Lyney’s voice didn’t even register.
At first, Lyney had tried to convince himself it was something mundane. Maybe furniture. A table. A chest. Anything but what his gut told him. But as the days passed and the shape began to take form, Lyney’s heart sank.
It was a coffin.
His breath hitched as he stared at it, the realization tightening around his chest like a vice. The rough-hewn wood, the meticulous way Wriothesley sanded down the edges—it was unmistakable.
“For me?” Lyney finally asked, his voice cracking despite his attempt to sound indifferent.
This time, Wriothesley paused. He didn’t look up, his hands still resting on the plank he was nailing into place. “Who else?” he muttered, his tone devoid of emotion.
Lyney felt his stomach churn. He had spent weeks trying to get into Wriothesley’s head, to understand why the man had taken him, why he couldn’t just end it already. But now, with the answer staring him in the face, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know.
“Do you... expect me to watch you finish it?” Lyney asked, his voice trembling despite his best efforts to keep it steady.
Wriothesley finally looked at him, his icy blue gaze piercing through the bars. “Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer sent a shiver down Lyney’s spine. There was no malice in Wriothesley’s tone, no pleasure, no remorse. Just cold, brutal honesty.
Lyney’s hands clenched around the bars of his cage. “You’re sick,” he spat, his lilac eyes blazing with defiance.
Wriothesley smirked faintly, but it was humorless, almost resigned. “Maybe,” he said, turning back to his work. The hammering resumed, each strike reverberating through Lyney’s cage, through his chest, through his very bones.
Days later, the coffin was complete. Wriothesley stood over it, wiping his hands on a rag as he admired his work. It was simple, unadorned, but sturdy.
Lyney’s throat tightened as he watched Wriothesley lift the lid, inspecting the interior. “Do you even care about the body count you’ll leave behind when you do this?” he demanded, his voice sharp and desperate.
Wriothesley closed the lid slowly, his movements deliberate. “This isn’t about a body count,” he said quietly, not looking at Lyney.
Lyney’s breath came in shallow gasps, his hands trembling as they gripped the bars. “Then what is it about?” he whispered.
Wriothesley finally turned to face him, his expression unreadable. “It’s about endings,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “And beginnings.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. Lyney pressed his forehead against the bars, his lilac eyes wide and glassy.
In the silence that followed, he realized something terrifying: the coffin wasn’t just for him. It was for both of them.
Lyney’s body felt like it was sinking, the hazy fog of half-consciousness pulling him under. He tried to fight it, but his limbs felt too heavy, his mind too clouded to form coherent thoughts. Everything blurred at the edges—light, sound, even the cold air around him.
He vaguely registered the soft click of the cage unlocking, but it barely pierced the thick fog in his mind. Then, strong arms lifted him, cradling him as if he weighed nothing.
Wriothesley’s touch was surprisingly gentle, even reverent, but the thought of it made Lyney’s stomach churn. He wanted to resist, to kick and scream, but his body refused to cooperate.
Something soft enveloped him—a blanket, perhaps, though it was hard to tell. The warmth should have been comforting, but instead, it felt suffocating, like the final nail sealing his fate.
He realized too late where he was being lowered.
The scent of freshly sanded wood filled his nostrils, mingling with the faint metallic tang of nails and varnish. The coffin. The one Wriothesley had spent days building, its shape haunting Lyney in every waking moment.
His breath hitched, a shallow gasp escaping his lips as he tried to protest. His vision swam, and his lips parted, but no sound came.
Wriothesley leaned closer, his breath ghosting over Lyney’s ear as he spoke softly, almost tenderly. “It’ll snow over Fontaine tonight,” he murmured, his voice low and steady. “And you
will be found when the snowstorm stops.”
The words wrapped around Lyney like the blanket, suffocating and final. Found. What did he mean by that? Found dead? Found alive? He wanted to ask, to demand an explanation, but the lull of unconsciousness was too strong.
As his eyelids fluttered shut, the last thing he saw was Wriothesley’s face, pale and shadowed under the dim light. There was no malice there, only something deeply unsettling—regret, maybe, or a grim sense of purpose.
The sound of the coffin lid closing was distant, almost like an echo, and then there was nothing.
Outside, the snow began to fall, blanketing Fontaine in a thick, white silence. The storm grew, howling winds erasing any trace of footprints, any sign of what had transpired.
Wriothesley stood over the freshly buried coffin, his icy blue eyes scanning the storm as it consumed the landscape. The snow would hide everything, just as he intended. By the time it cleared, Lyney would be found.
And Wriothesley would be long gone.
Wriothesley lingered in the snowstorm, his boots crunching against the frostbitten ground as he stared down at the wooden coffin. Inside, Lyney lay motionless, wrapped snugly in the thick blanket Wriothesley had painstakingly chosen to shield him from the bitter cold. His lilac eyes were closed, his face eerily serene as if he were merely sleeping.
He had told himself this was the only way. That leaving Lyney in the storm was mercy, a chance to return to where he truly belonged. Yet, the ache in his chest gnawed at him, an unbearable weight he couldn’t shake.
Wriothesley crouched, brushing the snow away from the coffin’s lid. “You’ll be fine,” he murmured, though he wasn’t sure if the words were meant for Lyney or himself. “They’ll find you before the storm takes you.”
He had left the coffin just outside the House of the Hearth, its polished wood a stark contrast against the swirling white storm. The House was a fortress, a sanctuary for orphans like Lyney, and Wriothesley knew its inhabitants wouldn’t ignore such an oddity at their doorstep. Even if they didn’t recognize the coffin immediately, they would open it before the frost claimed him.
But still, he hesitated.
The boy didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of it. His slim, fragile frame, those piercing lilac eyes—he had been a victim of Wriothesley’s desperation, an innocent caught in the crossfire of a storm far crueler than the one raging now.
“I couldn’t do it,” Wriothesley whispered, his voice barely audible over the howl of the wind. His fingers traced the edge of the coffin, the rough wood biting into his calloused skin. “I couldn’t kill you. You’ll survive this. You have to.”
His breath came out in heavy puffs, visible in the icy air. For a moment, he wondered if Lyney would ever know the truth. Would he understand why Wriothesley had taken him, why he had built the coffin, why he had ultimately let him go? Would he hate him more for letting him live?
With one last glance at the coffin, Wriothesley stood and stepped back. Snowflakes clung to his hair and clothes, but he didn’t brush them away. The storm was already erasing his footprints, swallowing him as he turned and walked away, leaving nothing but the coffin and the promise of survival.
Lyney would be found. He would live. And Wriothesley would disappear, taking his sins and his regrets with him into the cold void of Fontaine’s endless winter.