Invisible String - Cregan Stark

Twenty two~ Talion

The cold did not vanish. But it hesitated.

It thinned, retreating just enough for me to draw a full breath. The warning had been given. Whether it was meant for me, for Merrax, or for the world beyond Dragonstone, I could not yet say.

And yet my body stayed taut, every sense drawn tight as wire, my heart keeping time with the slow, watchful pulse of my dragon far below. Merrax was awake. So was I.

My chamber door burst inward with a crack of wood against stone—violent, sudden enough to make the candles gutter and bow.

Ser Erryk stood half within the threshold, breath shallow, shoulders drawn tight. His helm was gone. His hair clung damply to his brow. Moonlight caught his face—

—and my heart stuttered.

There were tears in his eyes.

Not falling. Held back. Contained by sheer force of will. His jaw was clenched so hard I saw the muscle jump beneath his skin. Dread clung to him like smoke, thick and suffocating.

Something inside me went very still.

I took one uncertain step forward. "Ser Erryk?"

He entered fully and shut the door behind him. The sound echoed too loudly, and the world tilted.

It was not his face that betrayed him.

It was the current beneath him—the quiet pull all living things carry, the rhythm that tells you who belongs and who does not. Ser Erryk always brought steadiness with him. A calm that settled into a room like a breath finally released.

This man carried nothing but tension, coiled and aching, as though his skin did not quite fit him.

He stepped closer.

Memory rose behind my eyes—not summoned, not searched for. It unfurled like smoke touched by moonlight. I saw Ser Arryk in the training yard a month before. Sunlight catching the edge of his face. The sharper angle of his jaw when he listened. The faint scar near his ear—one Erryk did not bear.

Twins to the world.

Not to me.

A thousand small observations I had never meant to keep now aligned with awful precision. The image of Erryk—true Erryk—laid itself over the man before me, and the dissonance rang like a struck bell.

This is not the man who guards my mother. Not Erryk.

It is Arryk.

My heart did not race. It dropped—heavy and absolute—into a place of perfect clarity.

"I am sorry," he said hoarsely, as though the words had been cutting him from the inside. His hand went to his sword. He hesitated—fingers tightening, trembling—then drew it free. The sound was far too loud in my chamber. He squared his stance. Set his shoulders.

The cold gathered at my ankles again, whispering, circling. No longer curious.

It had delivered its warning. This was what it had come for.

I stood frozen, breath locked in my chest.

The door burst open once more behind him.

"Brother!" Erryk's voice cracked the air like thunder. He came in with his sword already drawn, eyes wide and wild with terror. "Do not do this. I beg of you."

Arryk turned sharply.

He lifted his blade and pointed it at Erryk instead, placing his body squarely between me and the door. The dread on his face curdled, hardening into something sharp and furious.