Celestara

“Everyone warned me about him. No one warned him about me.”

In the cold marble halls of Saint Nerezza Asylum, where the world buries minds too dangerous to exist, Dr. Kaelith Nyraen moves like a shadow in silk. A forensic psychiatrist with a razor-sharp mind and a history sealed behind scars, she heals monsters with detached elegance.

Until she meets Patient 77.

He doesn't scream.
Doesn't speak.
He watches.

Saevus Caelum, a former cult leader once worshipped as The Mouth of Divinity. Caged in silence now, docile in appearance—but the moment Kaelith enters his cell, he comes alive.

Their sessions are meant for therapy.
But they unfold like seduction.
And war.

Saevus doesn't want healing. He wants her—her control, her pain, her buried truths.
And Kaelith? She's built walls taller than this asylum’s walls.
Until he starts speaking her nightmares out loud.
Until he reminds her of a name she doesn’t remember—because it wasn’t given to her.
It was taken.

Saevus doesn’t want to escape.

He wants her to stay locked inside with him.

Because he never surrendered power.
He handed it over—so she’d never see what he was stealing.

His Halo, My Hell

Kaelith woke choking on her own breath.

Just a single, strangled gasp—ripping through her chest like she'd surfaced from drowning in something not water.

Her sheets clung to her like wet skin. Twisted. Suffocating. She sat up too fast. The room reeled, edges sliding sideways.

The dark didn't comfort her tonight.

She reached for the lamp, fingers fumbling. The bulb flickered once, then stabilized—casting pale yellow light across the room.

No kneeling children with blank eyes and burning names.

Silence settling into the corners like dust.

She blinked at her pillow—drenched.

Her skin glistened. Her heartbeat wouldn't settle.

She pressed a hand to her forehead.

But it burned—deep under the surface. A phantom line, pulsing in time with her blood. The spot where the blade had touched her in the dream felt real. Not like a memory. Not like a metaphor.

Her legs felt like someone else's—bones too long, joints too loose. Her breath dragged ragged through her throat as she crossed the room to the mirror.

Not since the last time it hesitated to follow her.

She flicked the bathroom light on.

It buzzed overhead. Harsh. Unkind.

Mouth slightly parted like the scream hadn't finished yet.

She leaned in, breath fogging the glass.

Her hand rose, slow and unsure, and pressed against her forehead again. Still nothing. But she could feel it beneath the skin. The burn. The hum.

Like the name hadn't just been whispered.

But the word pulsed behind her eyelids like a bruise blinking with light.

A need rising from beneath language. From under the foundation of every lie she'd ever been told.

And for a moment—one cold, shaking moment—Kaelith didn't know who had said the name.

Chapter 14.4 : Awakening