Deus Necros

Ludwig stepped beside Celine and looked out over the capital. The city now extended far beyond the old fortifications, spreading across land the walls had once been built to protect. Roads, workshops, warehouses, and dense clusters of homes covered what had once been open ground. Lanterns burned along the newer streets, their lights tracing paths that had not existed in Celine’s time. Only scattered patches of undeveloped earth remained between them.

Celine rested both hands on the weathered stone. Wind moved through her hair as she searched the darkness below. ”There used to be almost nothing out there. A few farms stood farther south, but most of this was open grass.”

Ludwig followed her gaze, though he could not tell which part of the sprawling city had drawn her attention. ”What did you bring me to see?”

”Flowers, if any survived.”

Her eyes moved across the darkness until something faintly reflected the moon between an old drainage channel and several newer buildings. From this height, it looked like little more than a pale stain against the earth.

”There,” she said.

Excitement lifted the word, young and immediate in a way Ludwig rarely heard from her. It faded when she noticed how narrow the remaining patch of land had become.

They descended by a path cut into the outer side of the wall. The stone steps were old and uneven, worn smooth by feet that had not used them in generations. Weeds filled the cracks, and newer buildings stood so close to the fortifications that Ludwig could have crossed from some of their rooftops to the wall with a short jump.

Construction had consumed most of the original terrain, leaving only a forgotten strip behind several warehouses. The drainage channel cut along one side of it, while broken pieces of the old wall formed a barrier on the other. Ludwig initially saw nothing remarkable there, only dull flowers scattered among waist-high grass.

Then the moon cleared the edge of a cloud.

One flower opened, followed by another. Dozens unfolded beneath the silver light, their narrow petals spreading as though awakened by its touch. Colors slowly emerged from what had appeared grey during the day, pale blue, violet, and soft silver. Hints of red glimmered near some centers, while others reflected green whenever the breeze shifted their angle toward the moon.

The change traveled across the forgotten strip in a quiet wave.

Fireflies drifted above the field, few enough to count if anyone possessed the patience. Their lights moved among the flowers, appeared between the stalks, and vanished beneath the shadows cast by the surrounding walls. Beyond them came the distant sounds of the capital: wagon wheels over stone, a door closing, muffled voices from one of the nearby buildings. None of it seemed to reach the small field completely.

Ludwig stopped beside Celine. ”Night blooms?”

”They open beneath strong moonlight. They once covered the land beyond the wall.”

”How far did they spread?”

Celine pointed toward the nearby buildings, then traced a line past the warehouses and toward the distant streets. ”From here to somewhere past those houses. There must have been hundreds of thousands.”

Several hundred remained now, perhaps fewer. They preserved enough of the sight for Ludwig to imagine the field Celine remembered, but every surrounding wall showed how much of it had disappeared. The surviving flowers were beautiful precisely because the city had nearly erased them.

Celine sat on a fallen section of stone overlooking the field. Ludwig joined her, leaving enough room between them for comfort, and together they listened to the muted sounds of the capital beyond the wall.

”I used to come here after meetings at the palace,” Celine said after a while. ”I served the Empire as a knight for several years, and the Emperors of that age had a remarkable gift for exhausting everyone around them.”

Ludwig glanced at her. ”What made those Emperors so exhausting?”

”They were young, proud, and convinced that every person in the palace existed to make their ideas possible. If they decided they wanted something before breakfast, the rest of us were expected to overturn half the Empire and deliver it before supper.”

Ludwig nodded with understanding. ”So they behaved like royalty.”

”Exactly. I came here after meetings to calm down before I murdered one of them and created a succession crisis.”

”A healthy coping mechanism.”

”I thought so. It worked remarkably well. Not one Emperor was murdered by me during my years of service.”

”That is an impressive record.”

Her smile lasted only a moment before her attention returned to the flowers. The breeze passed through the field, and hundreds of pale heads shifted together beneath the moonlight.

”There used to be so many,” she said.

Ludwig heard the change in her voice and finally understood what had followed them throughout the capital.

Seven hundred years of change meant more than unfamiliar roads and missing buildings. Celine had returned to a home that had continued without her. Bastos had fallen into ruin, leaving her free to rebuild its rooms and gardens from memory. There, the damage could be repaired. Furniture could be replaced, walls raised, and abandoned halls filled again.

The capital was different. It had survived.

Generations had occupied every space she once knew and reshaped it according to their own needs. Nothing had waited for her. The city had expanded beyond its walls, swallowed its fields, buried old roads beneath new ones, and turned places she remembered into foundations for other people’s homes.

The old walls no longer marked the city’s edge. Entire neighborhoods covered the fields where she had once walked after leaving the palace, and the night blooms survived only because no one had found a use for this narrow strip of earth yet.

Perhaps another warehouse would stand here in ten years. Perhaps the drainage channel would be covered, the broken stone removed, and the last flowers crushed beneath a road by people who never knew what had grown here.

Everyone Celine remembered had already suffered the same fate, disappearing beneath the steady construction of history. The servants of House Bastos, the knights who fought beside her, the rivals who annoyed her, and the parents she had expected to see again had all died while she remained imprisoned. Van Dijk had endured, leaving her with one living connection to a world that had once surrounded her.

Celine kept both hands loosely folded in her lap. She did not cry, though her eyes rested on the flowers with the careful stillness of someone afraid that moving might disturb the memory.

”You miss them,” Ludwig said.

”Yes.” Her answer carried no attempt to hide it. She rubbed her thumb slowly across the side of one finger. ”Sometimes I feel ridiculous for grieving people who died seven centuries ago. Their names appear in old records now. Some of them are barely more than dates carved beneath portraits, but I remember speaking to them. I remember things no historian would consider worth writing down.”

”They died seven centuries ago for everyone else. You were taken before you had the chance to live those years.”

Celine looked toward him, the moonlight catching faintly in her eyes.

Ludwig returned his gaze to the flowers. ”You didn’t grow old beside them or watch the world change one generation at a time. You never saw them marry, have children, become old, or die. Your life stopped, and when it began again, everyone was gone. The Empire calls them ancient history because the Empire had centuries to place between itself and them.”

His voice softened as another flower opened near Celine’s feet.

”For you, they’re still the people who died before you could come home.”

Celine lowered her eyes. Her next breath left slowly, as though she had been holding it for longer than Ludwig realized. ”Yes.”

Ludwig had no answer capable of easing that loss. Any promise that she would eventually move on felt insulting, and telling her that she still had people left would not return those she had lost. He stayed beside her and allowed the quiet to settle without searching for something clever enough to fill it.

The flowers opened farther while fireflies moved above them. Somewhere beyond the warehouses, the final wagon of the evening rattled down a street and gradually faded into the sleeping capital.

After a while, Celine shifted closer and rested her head against his shoulder.

Once, the contact might have made Ludwig stiffen or wonder what response was expected of him. This time, he relaxed beneath it. He adjusted his position until she could lean comfortably, careful not to draw attention to the movement, and they remained there while the capital murmured beyond the wall.

Their connection had grown beyond the point where such closeness needed to be explained. He would not pull away simply because Celine had allowed him to see her in a vulnerable moment, and he felt no embarrassment in letting her remain there for as long as she wished.

Ludwig understood what Celine meant to him whenever danger appeared. He trusted her beside him in battle and valued her life enough to make decisions he would have refused for almost anyone else. Those truths had always been easy to understand because a threat reduced every feeling to a choice he could act upon. Protect her. Trust her. Stand beside her. Kill whatever tried to take her away.

Tonight, she needed no protection. There was no enemy for him to confront and no danger he could remove with sufficient violence. She had brought him here because she wanted him beside her, and he found that he wanted to remain long after the rest of the city had gone quiet.

That realization felt far less manageable than a battle.

Ludwig looked down at her. Celine felt the movement and lifted her head, perhaps expecting him to speak. Instead, the shift left their faces closer than either of them had anticipated.

For perhaps the first time in his existence, Ludwig’s thoughts offered nothing useful. He had confronted beings capable of twisting reality, survived battles that should have erased him, and negotiated with powers far older than the Empire. He understood all of those encounters better than he understood the small distance remaining between them.

Celine did not move away.

Her gaze slipped briefly toward his mouth before rising to meet his eyes again. The motion was quick, but Ludwig noticed it. He leaned forward before he could reason himself out of it and kissed her.

He realized he had no idea what he was doing approximately half a second too late.

Celine went still beneath the contact. Her surprise lasted only long enough for Ludwig to notice, but that was enough. He pulled away slightly and studied her face, suddenly aware that striking an ancient horror had required considerably less courage.

”Did I get that wrong?” he asked.

Her surprise slowly gave way to a smile. ”You didn’t get it wrong. I simply wasn’t expecting you to do it.”

”I could warn you next time.”

Celine laughed, quiet at first, and looked away for a moment. A trace of color had risen into her cheeks. ”Please don’t. Asking permission for this kind of thing usually ruins it and messes up whatever progress you’ve made.”

”Good. I wasn’t planning to submit a formal request.”

”Of course you weren’t.”

When she looked back, Ludwig leaned toward her again with slightly more confidence. Celine met him halfway, one hand settling against his chest as the last of the night blooms opened around them beneath the moon.