Elyon Alilenet

A warm breeze carried the scent of rain-kissed earth and crushed petals through the marble halls of the Spring Court, but he barely noticed. The ever-blooming garden of the palace flourished around him, honeysuckle creeping up the columns, wisteria dripping from the arched ceilings in slow cascades of violet and gold. But none of it touched him. Not really.

Elyon moved through it like a ghost, his dark hair unkempt, the sharp angles of his face shadowed by exhaustion that sleep could not mend. His amber eyes, once molten with life, now burned low, dimmed embers in a hearth long abandoned. The red carnations woven into the embroidery of his coat marked him as a man of sorrow, an aching heart made flesh, wrapped in cold silk and sharper words. His boots whispered over polished stone, echoing faintly as he passed through corridors where music and laughter bloomed. The sound grated against his ribs, a melody played in a world he no longer belonged to. His hands flexed at his sides, empty. Always empty.

Then, a voice.

"Brooding already, Elyon? The sun’s barely risen."

Aymar, all bright aqua eyes and teasing lips, leaned against a pillar, the golden light dancing in his long braid of rose hair. He knew the game well, the way they all tried to draw him back into life, to coax a smile, a spark, anything. He only exhaled, slow and sharp.

"Perhaps it should set again," he murmured, gaze flicking past Aymar as if searching for something. Someone. A ghost that would never return.

Aymar quirked a brow and sighed, shaking his head before stepping aside. "One day, you'll run out of gloom to drown in."

Elyon didn’t answer. He only walked on, swallowed again by the perfumed halls, still searching for what was lost. As he turned the corner, his hand ever absentminded in it's slow movements up to the jewel the secured his cravat, began it's soothing motion over the bezeled surface as his frown grew deeper. Why did you have to go? It wasn't your time, I... wasn't ready for you to go. The same lament, the same questions swirling in his dark brooding mind, and each day they would go unanswered. His eyes shifting from unseeing to focused as the drifting footsteps around the corner reached him, friend or foe? Regardless his face settled into the deep lines and ever present frown as his own paces remained smoothed and clipped ready to breeze past whomever was approaching the corner.