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.
Additional Chapter Warning
This chapter contains the immediate emotional aftermath of a suicide disclosure, acute grief, panic, dissociation, abandonment fears, and an intense emotional breakdown.
Chapter 16: “No Questions Tonight”
Event Date: May 24th, 2010 - 2:34 AM PDT, Earth
No sound answered Kaostar’s grief. He was grateful for the lack of witnesses.
Kaostar remained beneath the ancient tree until the tremors in his hands became small enough to mistake for cold. Mud clung to his claws. Sap bled from the broken root beside him. The stream kept moving as if nothing impossible had passed through its clearing, as if love and resurrection and six years of screaming were only weather too large to name.
He resented it for that. Then resented himself for needing the water to continue. His throat hurt. That should have been impossible.
Metatronas had rebuilt him with a body that repaired torn muscle, sealed split skin, mended bone, and closed wounds before pain had finished explaining itself. The scream should not have remained. The second scream should have left nothing. The third should have been swallowed by whatever machine his body had become.
But his throat hurt.
Good.
Let something hurt correctly. Kaostar pushed himself upright. The movement was slow, ugly, and unsteady. His claws scraped bark as he dragged one hand along the tree to stand. The broken root shifted under his weight, cracked further, and released another thread of sap into the mud.
For one delirious moment, he thought of apologizing to the tree. Then he thought of Arcana apologizing to a dead beacon. A laugh tried to happen. It failed somewhere behind his teeth.
Kaostar looked toward the path Lightstorm had taken. Nothing moved there. No shroud. No blue eyes beneath a hood.
No flicker of stolen storm. Lightstorm was gone.
Not dead.
Gone.
The difference was too large to fit inside him yet. Kaostar listened again, extending perception outward through the wet roots, over the ridge, through the spaces between trees. Lightstorm’s aura had become distance now. Not absence.
Distance. That word stood in him strangely. Chosen. Temporary.
Possible. He did not trust it. But he could not make it untrue. The pressure beyond the ridge remained.
It had not come closer during the confession. It had not interrupted the goodbye. It had not struck while Kaostar lay broken beneath the tree. Patience like that did not feel merciful. Mercy did not wait that patiently. Kaostar turned toward the rainline. His body wanted to
stay on the ground. His mind wanted to follow Lightstorm until distance stopped existing.
His rage wanted to hunt Metatronas through every hidden world and make waiting impossible for him too. None of those hungers chose his feet. His feet moved toward the place where Silas had stopped. Where the trees still made sense.
The forest changed as he walked. Not visibly at first. The branches remained wet. The soil remained dark. Moonlight still arrived in broken pieces through the canopy.
Then the wrong rain thinned. One step. Two. The smell of sterile ozone faded beneath wet bark and cold dirt.
The air lost its laboratory edge. The storm behind him did not vanish. It remained where it had no right to be, sealed in its impossible hollow, pretending weather had always known how to bleed upward from grief. Kaostar stepped out of the rainline.
The last drops slid from his mane and shoulders. The forest ahead was dry. Silas was still there. Not dramatically.
Not posed beneath moonlight like a sign sent by whatever gods had failed to make themselves useful. He sat on a fallen log several yards from the rainline, his faded charcoal hooded jacket pulled tight around him, tail curved beside one soft paw guard, one ear angled toward the impossible storm and the other toward the ordinary dark. His toolkit rested closed at his feet. A small metal charm turned slowly between his fingers, not being repaired, only held.
He looked tired. He looked cold. The fur at the tips of his ears had gone stiff with the chill, and his fingers were tucked beneath his jacket sleeves in a way that did not quite hide what waiting had cost him. He looked like someone who had stayed exactly where he said he would.
Kaostar stopped. Silas had stayed. Not because Kaostar deserved it. Not because the story required a witness.
Because Silas had chosen a boundary and kept it. Silas tipped his face up from the fallen log. The first thing he checked was not Kaostar’s face. Not the mud.
Not the torn coat. Not the shaking hands. His gaze moved past Kaostar, into the trees behind him. Left.
Right. High branches. Ground cover. The gap between trunks.
The rainline. Only after confirming Kaostar was not being followed did Silas look at him.
“You’re alone,” Silas said.
Kaostar did not answer. Silas glanced over him once, noticed the mud and shaking hands, then returned his attention to Kaostar’s face.
“Not the same as nothing happened.”
“No.”
Silas slipped the charm into a secure inner pocket, freeing both hands. He did not stand yet.
“Do I need to move?”
Kaostar’s throat tightened around the absurdity of the question. Move where. Away. Closer.
Toward danger. Out of the way. Into the place where people who cared always eventually stepped wrong.
“No,” Kaostar said.
Silas nodded. They remained at the rainline in silence. A demon wolf and a tigercoon at the edge of rain that should not exist. Silas looked at Kaostar’s hands.
They were muddy to the wrists. Bark dust clung beneath the claws. One knuckle had healed crooked for half a breath and corrected itself while Silas watched. Silas’s fingers moved.
Started to lift.
Stopped.
“Still not mine to touch,” he said.
Kaostar’s face twisted.
“I know.”
“But I can sit near it.”
The words landed with such gentle precision that Kaostar hated them. Then needed them. Then hated that too. Silas stood slowly.
No sudden movement. No reaching. No question shaped like a net. He picked up the toolkit, slipped the charm into one pocket, and brushed a leaf from his sleeve.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“That sounded like pride.”
“It was accuracy.”
“Accuracy can limp.”
Kaostar looked away. Silas waited. After several seconds, Kaostar took one step. His knee almost failed.
Silas did not move toward him. Silas’s restraint hurt and helped in equal measure. Kaostar
caught himself against a tree and snarled at the bark. Silas looked toward the path.
“Moonleaf is closed.”
Kaostar laughed once, flat and ruined.
“Then your promise expired.”
“No.”
Silas began walking, slow enough that Kaostar could keep pace without the pace announcing itself as mercy.
“The front door is closed,” Silas said. “Different thing.”
Kaostar’s claws dug into the tree.
“You always have a door somewhere.”
“Usually.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then we stay outside.”
“You would freeze.”
“Probably not before sunrise.”
“That is a stupid standard.”
“It held.”
Kaostar closed his eyes. The table. The watch. The cracked charm.
Barely counts. Still counts. He pushed away from the tree. Silas looked ahead, not at him.
They walked. The impossible rain remained behind them. For several minutes, neither spoke. The forest filled the space with ordinary sounds: dry leaves underfoot, distant traffic too far to belong to this place, an owl somewhere unimpressed by supernatural grief.
Kaostar tried not to listen for Lightstorm. Failed. Tried not to follow the last trace of his aura. Failed.
Tried not to imagine the shroud catching on branches as Lightstorm moved alone through the night. Failed. The failures did not change his direction. Silas stepped over a fallen branch and waited on the other side, not turning until Kaostar had crossed it.
Kaostar noticed. Of course he noticed. His body had been counting every possible trap since before Metatronas gave him new teeth. Lightstorm had taught him exits by needing them. Silas had taught him that not every observed path had to become a cage.
A branch cracked behind them. Kaostar spun. Black-and-rust wings erupted halfway from his back, not fully formed, dimensional edges ripping open the air like an animal startled awake. Silas froze.
Hands visible. Weight back. No movement toward him. The branch fell from a tree and hit the ground with a wet thud.
Ordinary. Kaostar’s wings flickered, distorted, then folded back into nothing. His breath came too fast. Silas remained still.
“Branch,” Silas said.
“I know.”
“Now?”
Kaostar’s claws flexed.
“Now.”
Silas nodded. Then resumed walking. No comment. No lecture about overreaction. Kaostar followed.
After a while, Silas spoke. “Alive?” The word stopped him. Silas did not look back.
The restraint in that was almost unbearable. Kaostar’s mouth opened. Light— The name stopped behind his teeth, still too bright to hand to the air. He closed his mouth.
Opened it again.
“Yes.”
Silas’s shoulders lowered by the smallest measure. Not relief exactly. Recognition of a fact large enough to bruise.
“Then tonight can be smaller than the whole truth,” Silas said.
Kaostar stopped walking. Silas stopped too. Still facing away.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t need the rest.”
“You want it.”
Silas turned his head slightly.
“Yes.”
The honesty struck harder than denial would have. Silas continued, “Wanting does not make it mine.” Kaostar stared at the back of his head.
“You are very irritating.”
“Usually means I guessed right.”
“No.”
Silas’s ear angled toward him.
“It means you survived long enough to have terrible habits.”
“That too.”
Kaostar looked back toward the rainline. It was no longer visible through the trees, but he could feel where it had been. A wrongness in the forest’s breath. A sealed wound behind him.
Silas looked once toward the ridge.
“It didn’t leave when he did.”
Kaostar did not ask how he knew. He already knew enough.
“No,” Kaostar said.
Silas’s thumb rubbed once against the edge of his claw.
“Does it know you left?”
“Probably.”
“Does it want you to know that?”
Kaostar’s eyes narrowed.
“Probably.”
Silas nodded.
“Rude.”
The word should not have worked. It almost did. Kaostar looked away before his face could betray him.
“Silas.”
“Hm?”
“He was there.”
Silas did turn then. Not quickly. Not with triumph at being trusted. Only enough to receive the words without dropping them.
Kaostar’s voice thinned.
“He was there.”
Silas’s face changed. Not shock. Not pity. Something quieter.
A room making space.
“The one you thought might be impossible.”
Kaostar swallowed.
“Yes.”
Silas did not ask his name. He already knew enough.
“Alive,” Silas said.
Kaostar’s claws curled.
“Yes.”
“Safe?”
The question opened too many answers.
No.
Not here. Not with me. Not from him. Not from himself.
Not from whatever Metatronas made. Kaostar’s jaw moved.
“I don’t know.”
Silas accepted that.
“Did he leave?”
Kaostar looked down.
“Yes.”
“By choice?”
Kaostar’s throat worked.
“Yes.”
Silas nodded slowly.
“Then that has to count.”
Kaostar’s eyes burned.
“You think everything counts.”
“No.”
Silas looked past him toward the hidden rain.
“I think some things have to count because the alternative is pretending only endings are real.”
The words entered too deeply. Kaostar looked away first.
“You should not be good at this.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m good at standing nearby.”
“That is this.”
“No,” Silas said. “It’s smaller.”
Kaostar almost smiled. The almost-smile disappeared before Silas could answer it. Silas started walking again. This time Kaostar followed sooner.
The trees thinned as they approached the old service path near the Annihilation grounds.
The coliseum sat in the distance like a dead animal picked clean by headlights and cleanup crews. Most of the music had ended. A few workers moved between equipment trucks, their voices dulled by fatigue. The black sand inside the arena no longer looked theatrical under work lights. It looked like dirt that had been asked to remember too much.
Kaostar stopped at the edge of the clearing. Silas stopped with him. Neither looked directly at the coliseum for long. A strip of torn flyer lay caught in weeds beside the path.
LET THE NIGHT—
The rest had been ripped away. Kaostar stared at it. Silas followed his gaze.
“I kept a piece,” Silas said.
Kaostar looked at him.
“Why?”
“Didn’t know yet.”
“That is a bad reason to keep something.”
“Most reasons are bad until later.”
Silas reached into his pocket and removed the scrap he had collected outside Moonleaf earlier.
NIGHT HIT BACK.
He held it between two fingers. Not offering. Only showing. Kaostar looked at the words.
The night had hit back. It had missed. It had found him anyway.
“Burn it,” Kaostar said.
Silas looked at the scrap. Then at Kaostar.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
Silas slipped the paper back into his pocket.
“No.”
Kaostar’s ears lowered. Silas met his gaze evenly.
“You’re not deciding what disappears tonight.”
The words should have made Kaostar angry. They did. Then they saved something he could not name. Silas’s voice lowered.
“Not while everything is still trying to become evidence.”
Kaostar looked away.
“You collect too many broken things.”
“I know.”
“One day something will cut you.”
Silas’s mouth twitched faintly.
“Most things do.”
Kaostar huffed once. Not laughter.
Almost.
They continued. The walk back toward Los Angeles did not make geographical sense unless one knew where thresholds had torn the evening apart. Kaostar could have opened one at any time. He did not.
Silas did not ask why. Maybe because the answer was obvious. Maybe because he understood that stepping through space with Lightstorm’s goodbye still raw inside him would feel too much like fleeing. Maybe because some distances needed to be walked badly because crossing them too quickly would make them feel unreal.
Eventually Kaostar opened a threshold anyway. Not from impatience. From exhaustion. It formed unevenly between two trees, black-edged and rust-lit, the air folding inward like a jaw too tired to bite. The opening trembled once before stabilizing.
Silas looked at it. Then at Kaostar.
“Moonleaf?”
Kaostar’s mouth tightened.
“You said there was a back door.”
“There is.”
“Then yes.”
Silas nodded. They stepped through. The alley behind Moonleaf was dark, ordinary, and smelled faintly of wet pavement, old tea leaves, trash bags, and the city’s exhausted attempt at rain. The threshold closed behind them.
No impossible weather followed. Kaostar stood in the alley and stared at the back door. It was painted dark green. A small metal sign near the handle read EMPLOYEES ONLY in letters worn soft at the edges. Beneath it, someone had stuck a faded sticker of a moon with a leaf curling around it.
Silas walked to the door and took out a key. Kaostar watched the key enter the lock. Ordinary metal. Ordinary sound.
Click. The simplicity of it felt obscene after resurrection. Silas opened the door and stepped aside. Not entering first.
Not waving him in. Only making the opening visible. Kaostar looked at him.
“A door,” Silas said.
“Not a chain.”
“No.”
Kaostar stared into the dim back hallway.
“Does the panther know you are doing this?”
“He gave me the key.”
“That was not my question.”
Silas’s eyes lowered slightly.
“He said if you came back looking worse than the table, use the back.”
Kaostar blinked. The words took longer than they should have. Then his face twisted. “That is a terrible diagnostic.”
“It’s a sturdy table.”
“It is cracked.”
“It held.”
Kaostar closed his eyes. The laugh that came this time was almost a sound. It hurt his throat. He stepped inside.
Moonleaf after closing felt like a different creature. The front room was dim, chairs set upside down on tables except for one corner where the cracked table remained untouched. The counter lights were off. The tea machines sat silent.
The chalkboard menu glowed faintly in the streetlight leaking through the front windows. Comet Jasmine Fog. Black Tea. Ambiance costs extra after eleven.
Someone had left the back corner clear. No chair on the cracked table. No cleaning crate. No barrier.
Still there. Kaostar stopped in the doorway between hall and room. Silas moved past him carefully, keeping distance, and turned on one low lamp near the counter. Warm light spread across the floor in a small square.
Not enough to expose everything. Enough not to trip. Kaostar stared at the table. His claws shook again.
Silas noticed. Said nothing. Kaostar crossed the room. Each step left a faint mark of mud on the floor.
He stopped beside the cracked table and looked down at it as if it were something alive enough to disappoint.
“You cleaned it,” he said.
Silas set his toolkit on the counter.
“Earlier.”
“Why?”
“Customers prefer tables with less blood.”
Kaostar looked at him. Silas shrugged.
“Usually.”
The absurdity almost reached him.
Almost.
Kaostar pulled out the chair. The legs scraped softly against the floor. He sat. The table did not collapse.
Of course it did not. It had held worse than elbows. Silas did not sit across from him immediately. He went behind the counter, filled a kettle, and set it on with practiced quiet. The machine clicked, then hummed.
Kaostar flinched. Silas turned it off. The silence returned. Kaostar stared at him.
Silas lifted the kettle.
“Stovetop.”
“You do that here?”
“No.”
Silas found a small metal pot beneath the counter and set it on a portable burner.
“I can improvise.”
“If Arcana were here, that would explode.”
“I gathered.”
Kaostar looked at the table. After a moment, he said, “He would apologize to the kettle.”
“Probably.”
“And the fire.”
“Possibly.”
“And the building after.”
“Likely.”
Kaostar’s mouth moved. This time the not-laugh became visible for half a breath. Then it was gone. Silas prepared plain black tea without asking. He set it down and left the cup alone.
When the water heated, he poured it carefully. One cup. Then another. He carried both to the table.
Placed Kaostar’s cup within reach. Not in his hand. Then he sat across from him. The chair creaked.
For a while, neither touched the tea. Kaostar stared into the steam. It rose in pale threads and vanished before reaching his face. Silas looked at the table crack, not at him.
“Do I need to know anything to keep someone safe?”
Kaostar’s gaze lifted. The question had been measured before release. Not curiosity. Not hunger for the story.
A practical door. Kaostar considered lying. Then considered what the lie would need to protect.
“Possibly.”
Silas nodded once.
“What part?”
Kaostar looked toward the dark front windows.
“He is altered.”
Silas waited.
“Electrical. Wrongly. Not natural storm. Something done to him.”
Silas’s eyes sharpened.
“The thing in the forest?”
“Yes.”
“Connected to the pressure beyond the ridge?”
“I don’t know.”
“Connected to the name you stopped saying?”
Kaostar’s claws curled around the cup.
“Probably.”
Silas looked down at the tea.
“Metatronas.”
The name entered Moonleaf like a cold draft. Kaostar did not snarl. That cost him something.
“Yes.”
Silas’s thumb rubbed once against his claw.
“Do I need to warn Arcana not to follow strange electrical disturbances?”
Despite everything, Kaostar looked at him.
“Arcana needs that warning every morning.”
Silas nodded.
“I’ll phrase it broadly.”
“He will not listen.”
“I know.”
“He will apologize to the disturbance.”
“Also gathered.”
Kaostar closed his eyes. The smallest breath of humor escaped him. It broke halfway. Silas let it.
The tea cooled slightly between them. Finally Silas said, “Did he know you?” Kaostar’s hand tightened around the cup so hard the ceramic complained. Silas did not retract the question.
Kaostar’s voice came out scraped hollow.
“Yes.”
The word nearly folded him. Silas nodded as if receiving a heavy object with both hands.
“Did he believe you?”
Kaostar stared at the steam.
“Enough to leave.”
Silas’s brow shifted. Kaostar swallowed.
“Enough not to kill me.”
“That is not the same.”
“No.”
Silas waited. Kaostar’s eyes burned again.
“Enough to say goodbye.”
Silas looked down. The room seemed to contract around the word. Goodbye had walked through Moonleaf before as distance. Tonight it came carrying a body that still breathed somewhere beyond the trees.
“Goodbye can be a door too.”
Kaostar’s claws tightened.
“Do not make that sound gentle.”
“I wasn’t.”
Kaostar looked up. Silas’s expression remained quiet.
“Doors close.”
The truth of it sat between them without decoration. Kaostar looked away first.
“He left.”
“Yes.”
“I let him.”
Silas’s ear shifted.
“Did he ask you to stop him?”
“No.”
“Was he in immediate danger?”
Kaostar’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t know.”
Silas considered that carefully.
“Did you believe stopping him would keep him alive tonight?”
Kaostar did not answer. The silence did. Silas nodded.
“Then letting him leave may have been the safest thing you could do.”
Kaostar’s voice dropped.
“It did not feel safe.”
“Probably wasn’t.”
“That is not comforting.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
Kaostar looked at him with exhausted irritation. Silas continued, “Some choices are not safe. They are only less violent than the alternatives.” Kaostar’s eyes lowered to the table crack.
Less violent. Not harmless. Not clean. Not forgiven.
Less violent. He breathed in. The inhale shook. Silas pretended not to notice.
Kaostar lifted the tea. His hand trembled badly enough that the surface rippled. He set it down before spilling. Silas’s hand moved again.
Stopped again. Kaostar saw. Neither moved. Silas said, “Still not mine.”
Kaostar’s voice was rough.
“No.”
Silas nodded. Kaostar stared at his own shaking hand. Then, slowly, he pushed it across the table. Not far.
Only until it rested near the crack between them. Silas went very still. Kaostar looked away.
“You can.”
Silas did not move.
“For what?”
Kaostar’s jaw worked.
“I don’t know.”
Silas studied him. Then he placed two fingers on the table beside Kaostar’s hand. Not touching. Close enough that warmth existed as information.
Kaostar’s claws flexed once. Silas waited. Kaostar shifted his hand the smallest distance. Their knuckles touched.
Barely. Silas did not close his hand around him. Did not turn the contact into comfort too quickly. Did not trap.
He let the touch remain exactly as small as Kaostar had made it. Kaostar’s eyes shut. His whole body shuddered once. Then steadied by a fraction.
Silas looked at the table.
“Barely counts,” he said.
Kaostar’s breath broke.
“Still counts.”
The words came out ruined. Silas nodded.
“Yes.”
They stayed that way until the tea stopped steaming. At some point, footsteps approached from the back hall. Kaostar’s claws twitched. Silas did not move his hand away.
The panther owner appeared in the doorway wearing a dark robe, slippers, and the expression of someone who had expected disaster but still resented the hour at which it arrived. He looked at the mud on the floor. Then at Kaostar. Then at Silas.
Then at the untouched tea.
“No one is bleeding on the upholstery,” he said.
Silas glanced at Kaostar’s coat.
“Not currently.”
The panther sighed.
“Standards continue their decline.”
Kaostar stared at him. The panther looked back without fear.
“Black tea?”
Kaostar’s throat moved.
“There is already tea.”
“I asked whether it was black tea, not whether Silas committed hot leaf water in my establishment after closing.”
“It’s black tea.”
“Then at least one tragedy tonight had structure.”
Kaostar’s face twisted. Something dangerously close to laughter tried to rise.
The panther looked at the muddy floor again.
“I am not asking.”
“No,” Silas said.
“Good. I charge extra for answers after midnight.”
“It’s after two.”
“Then answers are no longer available.”
The panther turned back toward the hall.
“Door stays unlocked until sunrise. If anyone breaks anything load-bearing, drag it outside before it becomes my problem.”
Kaostar’s eyes lifted sharply at the phrase. Load-bearing. The panther paused. His tail flicked once.
“Table stays,” he added.
Then he disappeared down the hall. Silas looked after him.
“He likes the table.”
Kaostar stared at the doorway.
“He heard something.”
“He hears more than he admits.”
“Does he know?”
“No.”
Silas looked at the crack between them.
“But he knows when not knowing is part of the work.”
Kaostar lowered his gaze. Their knuckles still touched. Barely. He had forgotten to pull away.
The realization made him want to. He did not. Outside, Los Angeles breathed against the windows. A car passed.
Somewhere down the street, water dripped from an awning in an ordinary rhythm. One drop. Then another. Kaostar stiffened.
Silas heard it too. His eyes flicked toward the window. The rhythm did not repeat as signal. Just water.
Just city. Just something falling because gravity had asked it to. Kaostar forced air into his lungs. Silas said nothing.
After a while, Kaostar spoke.
“I screamed.”
Silas did not look at him.
“In the forest?”
“Yes.”
“After he left?”
“Yes.”
Silas nodded. Kaostar’s voice became almost inaudible.
“He could not hear me.”
Silas understood the important part.
“You waited.”
Kaostar’s claws trembled against the table.
“I had to.”
“So it would not become his to carry.”
Kaostar’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
Silas’s fingers remained still beside his.
“That was kind.”
Kaostar’s head snapped up.
“No.”
Silas held his gaze.
“It was.”
“Do not call me kind tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because I do not know what else I am.”
Silas did not answer immediately. Then he said, “That is usually when the word matters.”
Kaostar’s expression twisted with anger, grief, and exhaustion.
“I am tired of words mattering.”
“Then we can stop using them.”
Kaostar looked at him. Silas looked back. Then, quietly, he withdrew his fingers from the edge of contact. Not rejection.
Permission for silence. Kaostar’s hand remained on the table. Open. Mud-stained.
Scarred. His mapped-palm scar caught the low light in thin, pale lines. Silas noticed it. Did not mention it.
Not every visible wound was an invitation. The room grew quieter. No one asked for the whole story. No one asked what Lightstorm looked like beneath the shroud.
No one asked whether he had touched Kaostar. No one asked whether the word love had survived six years intact. No one asked whether goodbye had sounded like death. Tonight could be smaller than the whole truth.
Kaostar sat at the cracked table with mud on his claws and a dead boy, alive somewhere beyond the trees. Silas sat across from him and did not ask him to explain the contradiction. Outside, the city carried on being late to countless things.
Inside Moonleaf, the back door remained unlocked. The tea cooled. The table held both.
~ To be continued ~
