Series Content Advisory
Scriptures of Nokternum is a dark fantasy story involving grief, trauma, violence, death, coercive control, forced experimentation, and bodily alteration. Some chapters address past suicide, abuse, blood, severe injury, and psychological manipulation. Additional chapter-specific warnings are provided when necessary.
Chapter 4: “Home He Refused”
Event Date: April 16th, 2010 - 8:43 PM, Earth CST
Harrow said the old name before he saw. “Darkshyne?” Harrow’s voice softened around the old name. Too gently.
Kaostar stood just inside the entrance. Too large for the threshold. Too stained for the room. Too alive for the name. Smoke clung to his black fur. Blue-flame residue from Fiera still flickered in thin, dying threads along one shoulder caught where regeneration had rebuilt skin faster than ash could fall away. Rust-red markings crossed his chest and lower jaw beneath streaks of blood that were not all his.
The Sergex Formation had left no open wounds. Not anymore. His body had remembered how to repair itself. Muscle had regrown.
Bone had knitted. Fur had crawled back over damage like night reclaiming a ruined field. Only the scar across his palm remained unchanged. Black. Mapped. Refusing to heal. Violet light pulsed once beneath it and went dark. Harrow stood near the old sleeping place.
He had not taken the food away. The folded paper bag still rested on the low shelf near the entrance. The blankets remained arranged where a body could use them. The dead
flashlight and cracked purple crown waited beneath their clear covering, untouched by the violence Kaostar had carried back with him.
For several seconds, Harrow did not move. He tipped his face up to study Kaostar carefully. Not like prey measuring a predator. Not like a judge counting evidence.
Like someone trying to find the person beneath the ruin without pretending the ruin was not there. Kaostar hated him for succeeding even a little. Harrow’s gaze lowered to the blood on Kaostar’s muzzle. Then to the ash.
Then to the torn remains of the fishnet shirt. Then to the scarred palm hanging half-open at Kaostar’s side. His voice changed. Not louder.
Heavier.
“What happened?”
Kaostar’s ears tilted back. The cave entrance remained behind him. Clear. Open.
Reachable. He had already checked it three times. He had checked the rear passage too, and the narrow shelf gap, and the cracked wall near the old ritual circle, and the fold of darkness beyond Harrow’s shoulder. He did not want to know whose habit had moved his eyes.
“Nothing you can fix,” Kaostar said.
“That was not what I asked.”
Kaostar stepped farther inside. Stone dust shifted beneath his feet. Inside, Kaostar’s height made the cave feel tighter than memory. The ceiling that had once loomed above
Darkshyne now skimmed too close to Kaostar’s ears. His heavy tail dragged a line through the dirt near the entrance.
Harrow did not retreat. That had always been one of his more irritating talents.
“Someone else’s world,” Kaostar said.
Harrow’s face hardened by a fraction. Kaostar smiled before he could stop himself. It was easier to wear cruelty than whatever had driven him back here.
“Still want me to eat?”
Harrow looked at the paper bag.
“Yes.”
The answer landed wrong. Kaostar’s smile faltered.
“You don’t know what I did.”
“No.”
“You should ask.”
“I did.”
“You should ask better.”
Harrow studied him.
“Would that make it easier for you?”
Kaostar’s claws flexed. The rust-red bands around his forearms brightened faintly.
“For me?”
“Yes.”
Harrow’s voice remained quiet.
“If I demand the details, you can give them like weapons. If I refuse to listen, you can call me a coward. If I tell you to leave, you can say there was never anything here. I am trying not to hand you the shape you want.”
The cave became very still. Kaostar felt the words strike beneath armor no blade had reached. The unreadable region around the creek stone tightened.
“Don’t analyze me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m remembering you.”
Kaostar looked away first. His gaze caught on the wall questions.
CAN THE DEAD RETURN?
WHERE DOES POWER COME FROM?
WHAT MUST I BECOME?
The crack still cut through BECOME. Fiera had answered the last question badly.
A peaceful world had opened its gates, and he had taught it how quickly welcome could become wound. A young dragon had tried to help. A brother had watched him die. A king had been forced to carry grief that did not belong to him.
Kaostar had left Darkskarr alive. Not from mercy. From recognition. From cruelty wearing
prophecy.
From wanting someone else’s grief to grow teeth and prove something. He heard the promise again. 'I will find you.' His fingers curled.
Good, he had said.
Good.
Harrow took one slow breath.
“Darkshyne.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Kaostar, then.”
The name did not strike like Metatronas’s voice. The name carried no command beneath it. It was not a title shouted by frightened strangers. It sounded like Harrow had simply moved to another door in the same house.
Kaostar’s jaw tightened.
“That doesn’t help.”
“I know.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because both names are yours.”
“No.”
The answer came too fast. Harrow’s eyes stayed on him. Kaostar stepped toward the center of the cave, away from the entrance. Then immediately hated the loss of distance. His ears turned back toward the outside.
Harrow noticed. He said nothing. The restraint scraped worse than accusation.
“You were right,” Kaostar said.
Harrow did not soften.
“About what?”
Kaostar laughed once. Low and fractured.
“About me leaving.”
“I did not want to be.”
“I went to a peaceful world.”
The words should have sounded triumphant. They did not.
“Zarasoxas. Fiera. Clean sky. Gates open. Guards polite. Children in the square. King with laws older than most armies.”
Harrow’s expression tightened slowly. Kaostar watched comprehension arrive. Not all at once. Piece by piece.
“That blood,” Harrow said.
Kaostar looked down at himself as though noticing it for the first time.
“Some of it was mine.”
“Some.”
“Most bodies make blood when opened.”
Harrow closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the grief in them was controlled. That made it harder to hate.
“How many?”
Kaostar’s smile returned by reflex. There it was. The question with edges. The one he could use.
“Does the number matter?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they mattered before you counted them.”
The smile vanished. Kaostar’s claws sank into his palms. The scar did not bleed. It only burned.
“You want me to confess?”
“No.”
“You want me to apologize?”
“Yes.”
The honesty landed like a stone. Kaostar stared at him. Harrow continued. “But I know wanting it is not the same as receiving it.”
Kaostar’s ears flattened.
“I don’t owe you that.”
“No.”
“I don’t owe Earth that.”
“No.”
“I don’t owe them anything.”
Harrow’s face changed. Not anger yet. A kind of sorrow refusing to step aside.
“You owe them more than nothing.”
Dimensional pressure gathered around Kaostar’s hands. The air near his claws bent. The cave lights flickered. Harrow looked at the distortion, then back at Kaostar.
“Careful.”
There it was again. The same calm warning. Not fear. Not submission.
A boundary. Kaostar hated boundaries that did not become cages. He stepped closer.
“You don’t understand what I am.”
“No.”
“I can tear this cave open.”
“Yes.”
“I can close the stone around you before you finish breathing.”
“Yes.”
“I can make this place forget it was ever here.”
Harrow’s voice did not rise.
“You can.”
The agreement left Kaostar with nowhere to strike. Harrow looked toward the wall questions.
“But you came back before doing it.”
Kaostar’s body went rigid. The pressure around his claws collapsed. For a moment, the only sound in the cave was water somewhere deep in the stone, moving through cracks old enough to ignore them both. Harrow reached for the paper bag.
Kaostar snarled. Harrow stopped. Not because of the sound. Because stopping was another kind of respect.
“You said I could take it,” Kaostar said.
“I did.”
“Then don’t hand it to me.”
Harrow removed his hand. The bag remained where it was. Available. Not forced.
Kaostar stared at it. Warmth had gone out of the paper now, but the smell remained. Bread. Dried meat. Something sweet wrapped separately. Darkshyne had once hated how often hunger made him less dramatic. Kaostar hated remembering that. He looked away.
“There was a young dragon,” he said.
The sentence surprised them both. Harrow did not move. Kaostar’s voice became colder to survive the telling.
“Not a child. Young adult. Newly sworn, maybe. Trusted with some polished clan pieces like they mattered.”
His eyes went to the cracked crown near the dead flashlight.
“They probably did.”
Harrow stood there in silence.
“He found me in the forest. Smiled. Offered help.”
The last word twisted.
“He sounded like you.”
Harrow’s expression flickered. Kaostar looked at him sharply.
“Not his voice. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I wasn’t.”
“He said his brother told him you can tell a lot about someone by whether they accept help before they need it.”
Harrow’s face tightened. Kaostar smiled without humor.
“So I taught him something else.”
Silence.
“He died later,” Kaostar said. “Not in my hands. In theirs. His brother watched.”
Harrow’s shoulders lowered as if weight had settled across them.
“You wounded him and left him alive.”
“I left him with a message.”
“For whom?”
“Everyone.”
“What message?”
Kaostar’s voice dropped.
“Peace didn’t save you.”
The cave seemed to reject the sentence. Not with sound. With memory. The dead flashlight sat beneath clear covering.
The cracked crown leaned beside it. The old wall questions taunted with their words. Harrow looked at those objects, then at Kaostar.
“And did it save you?”
The words entered quietly. Kaostar did not answer. Harrow took one step sideways, giving him more room rather than less.
“Why did you come back?”
Kaostar’s laugh was immediate. Defensive. Ugly.
“You told me to.”
“No.”
The denial was firm.
“I told you to come back before you decided there was nothing left to come back to.”
“I came back.”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You brought a slaughter with you.”
Kaostar’s eyes brightened.
“I didn’t bring it here.”
“You brought it into yourself.”
For one second, Kaostar saw the square again. The fountain. The blue flame. Darkskarr on one elbow, promising revenge through blood.
Xevonon asking if he had done good. Siris staggering beneath stolen memory. The child near the fountain, spared only because Kaostar’s hand had hesitated. He wanted the images gone.
He wanted a battlefield where images became targets. He wanted the cave not to know. But the cave had always known too much. He looked at Harrow.
“You should tell me there’s no home left.”
Harrow’s brow furrowed.
“What?”
Kaostar stepped closer. The words came faster now. Angrier.
“Say it. Say I ruined it. Say I proved what I am. Say this place was for someone else and he’s gone. Say Darkshyne died in this cave and Kaostar doesn’t belong here.”
Harrow stared at him. Kaostar’s breathing roughened.
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Say it!”
“No.”
The rust-red bands around Kaostar’s forearms flared. Stone dust lifted from the ground.
“Say there’s no home left!”
Harrow’s voice cut through the pressure.
“I will not help you make that true.”
The cave rang with it. Kaostar froze. Harrow’s expression had hardened fully now. Not cruel.
Not afraid. Done yielding ground.
“You want me to exile you so leaving becomes clean. You want this cave to reject you so every world after this can be proof that nothing else was possible.”
Kaostar’s pale eyes burned.
“You don’t know—”
“I know you came back.”
The words stopped him again. Harrow’s voice shook once, but did not break.
“I know you are standing here covered in blood from another world, asking me to say there is no home left, because if I say it, then you do not have to admit you are the one refusing it.”
Kaostar’s mouth opened. No answer came. The silence hurt more than pain. Harrow turned and picked up a cloth from the shelf.
Not the food. A plain cloth. He held it out. Kaostar stared at it as if it were a blade.
“What is that?”
“For the blood on your face.”
“I can clean myself.”
“Yes.”
Kaostar did not take it. Harrow did not withdraw it. Seconds stretched. The old cave light burned faintly between them.
The threshold behind Kaostar remained available. He could leave. He could burn the cloth. He could laugh.
He could say something sharp enough to make Harrow flinch. He could open a route to Darkskarr and finish what he had started. Instead, his unscarred hand lifted.
Stopped.
Lifted again. He took the cloth. Their fingers did not touch. Harrow allowed the gap.
Kaostar pressed the cloth against his muzzle. The first wipe came away dark. He looked at the blood on the fabric. His voice lowered.
“He promised to find me.”
“Who?”
“The brother.”
“Darkskarr?”
Kaostar’s eyes sharpened.
“You heard the name.”
“You said it earlier.”
Had he? He could not remember. The day had begun at Lightstorm’s creek. Now it contained Fiera.
Xevonon. Darkskarr. Siris. The cave.
Too many names. Too many doors.
“He’ll come,” Kaostar said.
“Maybe.”
“I left him alive so he would.”
Harrow took that in. No visible shock. No theatrical disgust. Just pain, entering and staying.
“That was cruel.”
Kaostar laughed softly.
“Yes.”
“Was it satisfying?”
The cloth stopped against Kaostar’s jaw. He did not answer quickly enough. Harrow heard the answer anyway.
“No,” Harrow said.
Kaostar’s eyes flashed.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Find the wound under the blood.”
Harrow’s face softened despite himself.
“I have had practice.”
Kaostar looked toward the wall questions again.
WHERE DOES POWER COME FROM?
He knew the old answer now. From violation. From grief. From engineered survival.
From choices no one could clean after making. But Fiera had given him another answer. Power also came from others believing they had time. Time to greet.
Time to judge. Time to heal. Time to promise revenge. Kaostar had stolen time all day and called it intent.
His hand tightened around the cloth. The fabric tore. Harrow’s eyes dropped to it. Kaostar opened his hand.
The torn cloth hung in pieces.
“Sorry,” he said.
The word barely existed. Both of them heard it anyway. Harrow’s breath caught. Kaostar immediately hated himself for giving him that.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
“Don’t make it important.”
“I won’t.”
“You are.”
Harrow said nothing. Harrow’s silence left him with nowhere to strike. Two taps touched the silence around the creek stone. Kaostar looked toward the cave entrance.
Harrow noticed.
“The signal?”
Kaostar’s head snapped back. His eyes narrowed. Harrow did not retreat.
“You reacted the same way at the sanctuary once,” Harrow said.
“I didn’t tell you about that.”
“No.”
“Then don’t name it.”
“All right.”
Kaostar’s chest rose and fell. The creek stone remained unreadable beneath fur and regenerated armor, but the silence around it had pressure now. Presence. Not command.
Not proof. Only the old rhythm.
Two taps.
Then nothing. Kaostar pressed his scarred palm over the center of his chest.
“It followed me there.”
“To Zarasoxas?”
“Yes.”
“What did it do?”
“Nothing.”
Harrow waited. Kaostar looked away.
“It was present.”
“That is not nothing.”
“It’s not proof either.”
“No.”
The answer was too careful. Kaostar studied him.
“You believe it might be him.”
“I believe you don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one.”
Kaostar’s claws flexed over his chest.
“If it is him, then he saw.”
Harrow did not rush to comfort him. The restraint in Harrow’s response was almost unbearable.
“If it is him,” Harrow said, “then he saw you return too.”
The words broke something small. Not enough to save him. Enough to hurt. Kaostar turned away from Harrow and faced the wall questions.
The cave blurred. He refused to wipe his eyes. He refused to kneel. He refused the old sleeping place.
He refused the food. But he did not leave. Harrow moved slowly to the low shelf and picked up the paper bag. This time, Kaostar did not snarl.
Harrow carried it halfway across the cave and set it on a flat stone between them. Then he stepped back.
“It’s there,” Harrow said.
Kaostar stared at the bag.
“I killed people today.”
“I know.”
“I hurt someone who tried to help me.”
“I know.”
“I made his brother into something.”
“Yes.”
“I violated a king’s mind.”
Harrow’s jaw tightened.
“That one you should never make sound smaller.”
Kaostar looked at him. Harrow held his gaze. Kaostar nodded once. A tiny motion.
Not agreement, maybe. Not apology. But he did not argue. Neither of them spoke after that.
Kaostar sat. Not on the blankets. Not near the old sleeping place. On the bare stone near the wall questions, with his back close enough to the cave wall that no one could stand behind him.
Harrow noticed. Kaostar noticed him noticing. Neither spoke of exits. The paper bag sat between them.
After a long time, Kaostar reached for it. His scarred hand stopped above the folded top. The black line across his palm trembled. He switched hands. Opened the bag. Bread. Dried meat. Something sweet wrapped separately.
He took the bread first. It had gone cold. He ate anyway. The act felt obscene after Fiera.
It also felt necessary. Harrow lowered himself into a sitting position several feet away, careful with his knees, careful with distance. The cave light flickered. Outside, Earth night moved across the outskirts without knowing what had entered it.
Kaostar swallowed.
“I’m not staying.”
Harrow looked toward him.
“You’re sitting.”
“That isn’t staying.”
“No.”
Kaostar tore another piece of bread.
“I’ll leave before morning.”
“Maybe.”
“I will.”
“All right.”
“You should sleep somewhere else.”
“No.”
Kaostar’s ears tilted back.
“I’m dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“You’re very bad at survival.”
Harrow almost smiled.
Almost.
“No. I’m stubborn.”
Kaostar looked at him. For a moment, the cave held a memory of younger years. Darkshyne furious. Harrow patient.
Food placed nearby. No demand. No one closed a hand around him and called it rescue. Kaostar’s voice dropped.
“There’s no home left.”
Harrow leaned back against the stone. His answer came softly.
“Then why are you whispering?”
Kaostar closed his eyes. No reply came. The dead flashlight remained dark. The cracked crown remained broken.
The wall questions remained unanswered. The food remained between them. The cave remained standing. And outside the cave, across impossible distance, a young dragon’s brother began turning grief into a blade.
Kaostar ate in silence. Harrow stayed awake. Neither called it forgiveness. Neither called it home.
Kaostar did not decide to sleep. His body betrayed him into it. One moment, the cave light flickered against the wall questions. The next, creek water moved in the dark.
White hands held red that would not become rain. A dead flashlight rolled against stone. Someone whispered, Weather? No answer came.
The cave wall changed.
CAN THE DEAD RETURN?
WHERE DOES POWER COME FROM?
WHAT MUST I BECOME?
A knock sounded once from outside. Harrow’s voice, younger and farther away, asked for proof he was still alive. Darkshyne did not answer. Then another hand waited in the dark.
Metal. Patient. Offered like rescue. A voice without mercy said nothing born was obligated to remain what birth decided.
Darkshyne heard himself say, “Do it.” The cave learned how to scream. Kaostar’s scarred palm clenched against his chest. In sleep, his voice broke around a name that no longer fit his mouth.
“Stormy?”
Harrow looked up from across the cave. Kaostar did not wake. The dead flashlight remained dark. The creek kept moving somewhere memory could still reach.
~ To be continued ~
