Chapter 19 The Other Side of the Door

Chapter 19 The Other Side of the Door
Elysa moved first. She left the hoe where it fell, her skirt flicking mud as she crossed the narrow path between the beds and nearly collided with me before stopping half a step away, as if she’d suddenly remembered who stood in front of her.
Her brown eyes gleamed. Dust streaked her cheeks. A thin white line marked where yesterday’s tears had dried.
“Your Highness,” she said.
The air around us tightened. A few farmers in the next plot lifted their heads. Just for a moment. Then they bent again. People under Thaldrun had learned well: if you wanted a long life, pretending to be deaf helped.
I raised a finger to my lips. “Today I’m just Castella,” I said. “If you shout ‘princess’ any louder, the High Priest will drop out of the sky.”
A smile tugged at Elysa’s mouth. “The High Priest wouldn’t dare step in the mud here,”
A short laugh slipped out of me. Some of the tension in my shoulders loosened.
Jerome followed her. His steps weren’t as steady as the others in the field, but solid enough that he didn’t look like someone who’d been hauled back from death’s mouth. He stopped at a respectful distance, holding a seedling in one hand, soil clinging to his fingers.
“You’re up,” I said. “That’s good.”
“I should bow,” he answered.
“Go ahead,” I cut in. “But if you fall, I’ll blame you for the rest of your life.”
The corner of his mouth shifted. Only then did I realize how colorless he had been yesterday. Now warmth touched his cheeks. His eyes were clear. His breath steady. The side of his body that had blackened showed beneath his rolled sleeve.
The skin hadn’t fully healed. A faint greenish tint lingered beneath the brown, and the veins that had bulged like rotten roots now lay flat, leaving behind thin patterns like someone had sketched tiny river paths with fading gold ink.
I stepped closer before my mind could object. My fingers lifted, hovering in the air, almost touching.
Jerome stiffened. “It’s… almost gone,”
“Almost?” I snorted. “For something that supposedly couldn’t be saved, it looks very… alive.”
The Priest’s voice flickered in my head. Her words from days ago when we’d discussed certain illnesses and poisons: dragon breath… venom… no return.
I saw the opposite beneath the sun, in a field smelling of earth and water.
Jerome held his breath as I leaned a little closer to study the faint green traces on his skin. No heat pulsed in my palm this time, no gold rising under my ribs. My body stayed quiet. Terrifying and relieving in equal measure.
“They used to say,” Jerome murmured, as if speaking to the soil, “that if dragon breath touched a body, that was the end. You joined the Silent Legion, unless they burned you first.”
“They used to say plenty of things,” I replied. “Most of them repeated by people who never looked the creature in the eyes.”
Elysa edged forward, unable to hold something in. “He couldn’t breathe,” she blurted. “Yesterday, his whole left side was cold. I thought… I thought Hannan had already…”
She choked. Swallowed air.
“And you came,” she went on. “You touched him. That light… it came out of your hands.”
“Elysa,” I cut in. “We already talked about this.”
“You said not to tell the priests, healers, neighbors, not even cats,” she recited. “I didn’t tell them. But I didn’t promise to stay quiet in front of him.”
Jerome lowered his gaze. “I don’t remember much,” he said. “Just… pieces. I suppose I owe something. At least thanks.”
“I don’t take debt payments in the form of thanks,” I tried to joke. “Worst currency.”
“You’ll take it,” Elysa shot back. “Because otherwise I’ll bake something truly awful and force you to eat all of it as repayment.”
A cold shiver scraped my stomach. “Fine. Thanks accepted.”
Jerome lifted his head. “You saved my life,” he said, his voice straightforward. “I… don’t know how to explain it without sounding drunk, but I have to say it.”
My shoulders tightened. The word “life” always landed too heavy when aimed at me. People liked calling me “Caeloria’s hope” at banquets. That was different. This was one person, one life, one pair of lungs working again. My feet felt steadier in the dirt than they had a moment ago.
“You can explain one thing,” I said. “That will be enough.”
Jerome frowned. “If I can.”
“What you felt,” I asked, “when I… touched you.”
The sentence made me want to scrub my own face with my hands, but I held still. I lifted my palm to the sunlight, remembering the gold threads that had spilled from my skin like dense smoke.
“I mean,” I corrected, “not on your skin. Inside. Do you remember anything? A dream, a sound. Anything..?”
Silence took him. Elysa looked at him, then at me. Wind stirred the hem of her skirt, carrying the smell of trench water and something like dry ozone.
“I remember darkness,” he said at last.
“Dark like normal night?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. Nights here still have sound. Wind. Dogs barking. In… that place, there was nothing. No sound. No cold, no warmth. Just the sense that… no one would care if I disappeared.”
“And then?” My voice came out softer than I meant. “Was that all?”
Jerome let out a breath. “The darkness cracked a little,” he said. “Like… a wall scraped by a nail. First a thin line. Then it opened.”
He lifted his hand and drew a line in the air.
“Light came out,” he went on. “I thought it was Hannan’s light. Like at the altar. A light that descends from above and forces everything to bow. But this didn’t come from above, or from the side. It came… from the center of my chest.”
I didn’t blink. Every word dropped straight into bone. “Warm?”
He nodded. “Not blinding,” he added. “Warm like someone’s hand holding your chest from the inside. Instead of pulling anything out, the light seemed to patch the cracks in my body one by one. The cold parts started to burn, but not painfully. More like… when you sit too long in the snow, then dip your hands into warm water. Your body protests, but you know it’s the only way to keep your fingers.”
The ghost of that feeling crawled over my upper arm. I had felt it from the other side once: the pull at my fingertips when something inside me forced its way out, those golden strands searching for a path into his body.
“I thought I was alone,” he said again. “Until… I saw them.”
“Them?” I echoed.
“Two figures.” His eyes fixed on something far behind me. “Silhouettes. Like shadows standing behind a thin sheet. One of them… I knew it was you.”
My breath snagged halfway. “How did you know?”
“Your hair.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Your silhouette in the palace, the city. I’ve seen you pass from far away. Someone like me notices things while others keep their heads down. The knot of your hair, a few strands that shine brighter. The way your left shoulder dips when you stand too long, like one side of you is always ready to run.”
“And the other?” My voice barely left my throat.
Jerome blinked. “I didn’t see his face,” he admitted. “The light was too bright. Not altar light. Light… like fire refusing to pick a color. Sometimes gold, sometimes green, sometimes blue. His silhouette was tall. Broad shoulders. His hair… dark and short. Hard to see. As if the world didn’t want me to remember too clearly.”
Dark hair. Broad shoulders. The world refusing his face.
Cold prickled the back of my neck.
“He stood opposite you,” Jerome continued. “You on the left. Him on the right. Between you two…” His hand moved again, fingers sketching something in the air between us. “…there was a weaving,” he said. “Like… threads of gold. Not one. Hundreds. Coming out of your chest. Out of his. Upward. Downward. Backward. All intertwined. Like roots from two trees growing too close.”
My stomach hollowed for a moment. Roots. Gold. Two trees.
“That thread touched me too,” he added. “Just one. Thin. From your chest to mine. From his chest to mine as well. But the threads between you two…” He shook his head, as if the memory was too large. “They felt like rivers. Thick. Moving. Sometimes tightening, sometimes loosening. As if you were pulling on each other without knowing it.”
I remembered last night’s dream. The black iron bed. The window full of stars. A mouth demanding. A voice whispering you will come here. A face too blurred to grasp…
“He… saw me,” Jerome said softly. “The man.” Jerome swallowed. “For a moment. Eyes without a certain color. Blue. Green. With gold in them too. He looked… surprised because of the thin thread connecting us.”
I wanted to sit. My knees suddenly felt less reliable.
Elysa whispered, “You didn’t say this yesterday.”
“Yesterday I wasn’t even sure I was alive,” Jerome replied.
“And then?” I asked. “What did he do?”
Jerome closed his eyes briefly, reassembling the pieces. “He lifted his hand.” A small gesture in the air copied it. “Like someone about to touch glass. But he didn’t touch. Just came close. The thread in his chest… trembled. The one toward you did too. There was a sound behind him. Heavy. Like something enormous drawing breath behind a wall. And then—”
He stopped.
“And then?” My voice struck the air.
“The light between you shattered,” he said. “Like dropped glass. Tiny pieces flying everywhere. They fell onto me. Went into my skin.” His hand touched the side of his body that had blackened yesterday. “There. In the part that didn’t feel like mine anymore.”
Golden strands.
“What did it feel like?” I asked.
He blinked quickly, deciding whether to give the whole truth. Then he exhaled.
“It felt like two hands pulling me in opposite directions,” he said. “One—yours. Warm, soft, like you were pulling me toward the side of the world where fields still exist, where my little sister still yells at me for skipping meals. The other… his. Not cold. Not cruel. Heavy. Deep. Like the bottom of the sea asking you to come down.”
My left hand curled, nails pressing into my palm.
“In the end,” he continued, “you’re the one who won. Your thread pulled tight, he let go. I was thrown back into my body. I woke up with Elysa screaming in my ear.”
Elysa lifted her chin. “My screaming saved your hearing too.”
Jerome gave her a thin smile, then looked back at me. “I don’t know what any of it means,” he said. “Maybe it was just a brain starving for air too long. But I know one thing: the dragon breath didn’t just leave me. Something replaced it.”
“Are you afraid?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Before I woke up, yes. In that darkness, I was afraid no one would remember my name. After seeing… those threads, after feeling light in my bones… I’m more afraid of something else.”
“Of what?”
“Of the day someone cuts those threads,” he said. “I think the world would shake a little.”
“Don’t tell anyone about this dream,” I said, the words spilling faster than my breath. “Not your neighbor. Not the priests. Not the gate guards. Keep it between the two of you. And me.”
Jerome nodded. Elysa nodded harder.
“If someone asks how you survived,” I went on, “tell them the dragon breath missed. Or that you were too stubborn to die. People love stories that blame stubbornness.”
Jerome glanced at my hand, like he could see something beneath the skin. “I won’t mention the light to anyone,” he said. “But if one day… you need a witness to say what came out of your hands wasn’t darkness… I’ll speak.”
One day the priests would decide what left my hands was sin, not blessing. One day people would run with rope and wood. One day Hannan and Zaharel would clash again above the altar.
“I’ll remember that,” I told him.
Wind brushed my face. In the distance, on top of Thaldrun, small figures moved, maybe Solarian. Light on their armor caught the sun, flickering like a brief reply.
I rolled my shoulders, pushing away a cold that tried to settle into bone. “Now stop testing dragon breath,” I said to Jerome. “If you die out of stubbornness after I dragged you out of the dark, I’ll be deeply offended.”
“That a threat?” he asked.
“A promise.”
Elysa laughed, her voice like a pebble dropping into water, breaking into ripples. “You sound like our neighbor. This morning she said she’d hit Jerome with bread if he fainted in the field again.”
“In that case,” I said, “you have a sister, a neighbor, and a princess ready to smack you. Hannan would be jealous.”
Jerome sighed theatrically. “With all that protection, I have no excuse to die.”
“There are other things that could kill you,” I added. “Falling asleep in the field, for example. Or the girls at the market falling in love too fast with your new scars.”
Jerome’s cheeks warmed. Elysa elbowed him, laughing louder.
“Go on,” Elysa said. “If you stay here, Jerome won’t get any work done. He’ll trip over a seedling.”
“In that case,” I said, stepping back once, “I leave you to the soil and the water.”
I turned, but something tugged me back after two steps.
“Jerome.” I glanced over my shoulder. “In that dream. The threads. You said one of them connected you to that man as well.”
He nodded.
“Do you remember… the feeling?” I asked. “When the thread from… him… touched you..?”
Jerome closed his eyes for a moment. “It felt,” he searched for the words, “like standing between two doors. One door opened to a small house under Thaldrun. The other door opened to… somewhere not on any map. Behind that second door, I heard the sea. Wind, and the sound of something enormous scraping stone.”
“Terrifying,” Elysa whispered.
“Not only terrifying,” he continued. “There was a feeling of… being called. As a witness. As if he didn’t know why the thread pointed toward me, but he didn’t like a stranger caught in the middle.”
A tight coil formed in my chest. Painful, but not slicing. More like a muscle waking after long sleep.
“He let you go,” I said.
Jerome opened his eyes. “Yes.”
“You’re sure he isn’t calling you again?”
“I didn’t hear the sea when I woke,” he said. “Only my sister’s voice. And my stomach growling.”
I drew in one long breath. Field air filled my lungs, carrying earth and water and a faint trace of iron from Thaldrun.
“Good,” I said. “If one day you hear the sea somewhere it shouldn’t be, go to the West Gate. Find me. Don’t go to the priests. Don’t go to the healers. Don’t go to anyone wearing a robe.”
Jerome nodded. Elysa nodded harder, as if she wanted the entire universe to hear it.
I left them there, in the narrow field under the shadow of the wall. The sound of the hoe struck the earth again behind me. Water ran through the trench. Thaldrun loomed, silent, watching the world with its stone face.
With each step back toward the city, toward the tight streets and timber houses and crowds that knew nothing, I felt something beneath my skin.
And beneath all of it, deeper, there was something far thicker, older, heavier, pulling from a direction my eyes still refused to face.
Toward the black iron bed among the stars.
Toward the colorless eyes that had already seen me through the dark before I ever opened my eyes in a world like this.