Chapter Text
The tower was a cathedral of stillness.
It stood alone on a hill covered in a thick mist, its walls veined with ivy that glowed faintly under moonlight. Inside, time passed like drifting dust—slow, weightless, and without witness. Mel, the tower’s only inhabitant, sat cross-legged on the polished marble floor, surrounded by books that looked older than he was.
He had arranged them in perfect circles—encyclopedias, alchemical journals, grimoires, and mythic fragments. To anyone else, the chaos of open pages and scattered notes would have been overwhelming. But Mel liked it that way. It gave the illusion of company.
His soft burgundy hair spilled forward as he leaned closer to the candlelight, eyes glowing mauve-gold as they skimmed through a passage for the third time.
“A summoning ritual requires equilibrium between world and soul. The summoner’s intent shapes the summoned.”
He mouthed the line, as if saying it enough might make it feel less forbidden.
A soft chime echoed from the corner of the room as one of his flowers bloomed. A glass lily, crystal-petaled and utterly cared for, grew toward him like it was trying to listen. Mel smiled faintly and whispered to it, “Do you think it’s wrong?”
The flower didn’t answer. It only released a slow shimmer of golden dust.
“Yeah,” Mel sighed. “You’re right. It’s lonely, isn’t it?”
He tried not to remember the last time someone had visited the tower—his eldest brother, cold and polite, delivering scrolls and food before retreating down the spiral stairs without looking back. His parents communicated by enchanted mirrors. His tutors came and went like passing ghosts, always careful not to touch him, always bowing a little too low.
Because Mel was not meant to touch the world.
He was born from stolen divinity—a miracle wrapped in a curse. His magic bloomed from emotion, uncontrolled, unstoppable. Joy could bring fields to life; grief could make gardens rot.
So they kept him safe.
Safe, and utterly alone.
The first time he read about summoning, he was seven and half-asleep in the library. The book had fallen open to a page with swirling gold letters: “To summon a spirit, you must first long for one.”
He’d laughed back then, a soft, disbelieving sound. “That’s easy,” he’d whispered to no one.
But over the years, that line grew roots in his heart. It came to him during breakfasts eaten in silence, during lessons that ended with the tutor’s nervous goodbyes, during nights when he fell asleep to the sound of his own heartbeat echoing through an empty tower.
By the time he turned seven and a half, he wasn’t laughing anymore.
He spent days preparing, disguising it as “studying ritual alchemy.” The servants who left food by the door never questioned why he asked for chalk, rare herbs, or rare purified water. Mel was careful—meticulous. He’d been told all his life to control, to balance, to never let his magic wander.
But this time, he was going to let it reach out.
He drew the first circle on the sixth night—too small. He erased it and tried again. By the eighth, he had filled half the tower floor with diagrams—some crooked, some precise, all glowing faintly with gold dust. He tried whispering to them, shaping intent like his father once taught him in meditation.
“Magic listens to longing. So speak kindly, Mel.”
He could almost hear that voice now, distant but fond. It made him want to cry.
Day blended into night, and night into morning. Mel rarely slept, fueled instead by excitement and the ache of something just out of reach. He practiced the invocation until his voice turned hoarse.
When he wasn’t reciting, he paced the tower, imagining what his new companion would be like.
Someone utterly adorable.
Someone who wouldn’t flinch when his flowers bloomed too fast.
Someone who would laugh when he said something strange, not stare in silence.
He even practiced greetings before a cracked mirror. “Hello!—no, too loud. H-Hello, I’m Mel—no, too shy. Maybe… ‘Would you like tea?’ Yes. Everyone likes tea.”
His tail flicked nervously at the thought.
By the eleventh night, his ritual circle was flawless: a garden of living ivy intertwined with chalk sigils, dotted with pale anemones. The moon hung high above the tower’s glass dome, silver light draping over the room like silk.
He stood in the center, barefoot, his white night-robe brushing the floor, gold vines faintly glowing beneath his skin. His hands trembled as he held the grimoire open to the page that started it all.
“Okay,” he whispered, “no more changing your mind, Mel.”
He began to chant.
The air rippled.
The candles bowed, their flames bending inward.
The flowers surrounding the circle began to bloom and wither, bloom and wither again in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Mel’s voice quivered as he reached the final line. “By the seed of creation, by the kindness of life—grant me a friend who can understand.”
He pricked his finger, letting a drop of gold blood fall into the water at the circle’s heart.
For a moment—nothing.
Then the ivy recoiled. Then the light fractured like glass. The air thinned until Mel could barely breathe. A vibration, deep and low, rolled through the floor and climbed up his legs.
He gasped, clutching his chest as the tower shuddered. “Wait—! That’s not—!”
A sound like distant thunder filled the room, and light burst from the circle, pale blue and alive. The flowers froze mid-bloom; every leaf turned translucent. The summoning circle cracked apart, releasing a rush of wind so cold it burned.
The air split.
From within the light came a voice—a small, confused voice that didn’t belong to anything Mel knew.
“…Where… am I?”
The glow dimmed. A figure stood in the center of the chaos: a boy about Mel’s age, his hair the color of blue fire, his form faintly transparent like mist. His eyes shone like circuits of light, blinking curiously as he took in his surroundings.
Mel stared, breath caught in his throat, heart hammering so hard it hurt.
He’d done it.
He’d actually done it.
And the boy was staring back.
The silence between them stretched, fragile as glass, until the boy tilted his head and whispered again, softer this time:
“…Who called me here?”
Mel could barely find his voice. His lips parted, trembling with disbelief and awe.
“I… did,” he whispered. “My name is Mel.”
The boy’s glowing eyes blinked, curious and unsure. “…I’m Ortho.”
The circle’s light faded, leaving only the moon to witness the impossible—two lonely children meeting for the first time, one born from a divine curse, the other from the underworld’s edge.
And though neither understood it yet, that single act of defiance, the summoning born of loneliness, had just changed both their worlds forever.