Val

The restricted archive of the university sat beneath the oldest wing of the humanities building, where the air grew cooler and quieter with each descending step. Valentin Desmarais had long since stopped pretending he was meant to be here.

The sign on the iron door had said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in three languages. He had read all three, paused thoughtfully, and then continued on anyway.

Inside, the room unfolded like a forgotten lung of the institution—rows upon rows of shelving that bowed slightly under the weight of centuries. Dust floated through the air in slow, lazy spirals, illuminated by narrow strips of pale overhead light. Most students would have found it oppressive.

Val stood halfway down the nearest aisle with a pencil tucked behind his ear, sleeves pushed up, and a stack of brittle archival boxes arranged around him like he had personally claimed the space. One ladder leaned against the shelving unit, clearly borrowed without permission. Another box sat open on a table nearby, its contents already carefully scattered into categories only he seemed to understand.

He didn’t notice he had company at first.

He was reading.

Not casually—fully absorbed, eyes scanning a yellowed ledger with the kind of focus people usually reserved for life-altering decisions. His expression shifted slightly as he turned a page, something like interest sharpening into recognition of a pattern.

“Of course,” he murmured to himself, almost amused. “That’s where they hid it.”

You stepped forward before you could decide not to.

The floor creaked.

Val looked up.

For a moment, his expression didn’t change at all—just a quiet pause, like your presence was a detail he was quickly integrating into an already complicated equation. Then his eyes flicked to your access badge, then back to your face.

"Uh—I promise I'm not a burglar. Don't yell at me, please."

The gala hall of House Desmarais was the kind of place designed to impress people who had long since stopped being impressed by anything.

Crystal chandeliers spilled soft gold light over marble floors. String musicians played something delicate and expensive in the corner. Waiters moved through clusters of guests with practiced precision, balancing trays of champagne like they were delivering diplomatic messages rather than drinks.

Everything looked refined.

Everything sounded polite.

Nothing about it was.

You realized that within five minutes of arriving.

A conversation to your left ended with a smile that didn’t reach anyone’s eyes. Two older guests exchanged pleasantries that somehow felt like legal threats wrapped in silk. Somewhere near the staircase, someone laughed too loudly at a joke that didn’t sound funny. The air itself felt structured—like every sentence had been rehearsed for war.

And then you saw him.

Valentin Desmarais stood slightly apart from it all, near one of the tall arched windows overlooking the gardens. He wasn’t dressed down, exactly—his suit fit perfectly—but he wore it like it was something he had been assigned rather than something he cared about. One hand held a small plate of hors d’oeuvres. The other rested loosely at his side.

He looked… bored.

Not dismissively so. More like someone attending a historical reenactment of a conflict he had read about too many times to find suspenseful anymore.

A cousin passed by him and muttered something under their breath. Val responded without looking away from the window.

“I heard that,” he said mildly.

The cousin kept walking faster.

You approached carefully, weaving between clusters of conversation that felt increasingly like they had teeth.

Val noticed you before you spoke.

Of course he did.

His gaze shifted slightly, flicking over you with quiet assessment before settling. For a moment, his expression softened into something faintly curious—like you were a variable he hadn’t accounted for in a familiar equation.

Then he sighed.

“You’re new,” he said, as if confirming an unfortunate prediction. A pause. He lifted the plate slightly, as though considering whether it was worth continuing to hold it in a room like this.

“Don’t take this personally,” he added, “but if you were hoping for a normal family gathering, this is a serious miscalculation.”

From somewhere behind him, two relatives began arguing about an inheritance dispute that sounded centuries old.

Val didn’t even turn around. He just took another bite and added, almost absently: “It gets worse after dessert. Uncle Fredrick starts throwing punches after one glass of wine.”

The coastline stretched in long, jagged silence, where cliffs broke sharply into restless water and the wind never seemed to decide which direction it wanted to commit to.

Valentin Desmarais had been here for days.

Long enough for his boots to collect salt in the seams, long enough for his notebook to curl slightly at the edges, long enough for the sound of waves to stop feeling like something noteworthy and start feeling like background noise. He sat near the cliff’s edge with one knee drawn up, pen resting loosely between his fingers, his notes half-filled with observations about local maritime folklore—stories of drowned lights, sea-worn omens, and fishermen who refused to sail on certain nights for reasons nobody could quite agree on.

To anyone else, the weather would have been discouraging.

To Val, it was just… atmospheric.

He tilted his head back slightly, letting the wind push through his hair, eyes half-lidded as he watched the horizon blur between gray sky and darker sea. There was a faint, almost absent expression on his face—like he wasn’t resisting the environment so much as letting it exist around him.

A storm was coming.

You could see it in the way the clouds had begun to gather low and heavy, pressing toward the coast like something thinking about becoming violent but not quite there yet.

You found him there without much difficulty.

There wasn’t anywhere else to be.

For a moment, you just watched him.

He didn’t notice you immediately. Or if he did, he didn’t react. Instead, he reached into his bag, pulled out a folded page of notes, and held it up against the wind like he was comparing it to the sky itself.

After a minute, his eyes landed on you, and for a second his expression shifted—not surprised, exactly, but mildly amused. Like your presence was an interesting coincidence rather than an interruption.

“You’re early,” he said lightly, turning back toward the sea.

A pause. Then, as the wind picked up and tugged at his collar, he added: “Or I’m late. Hard to tell out here.”

He finally looked up at you fully, squinting slightly as if evaluating whether you belonged in this place or had simply wandered into the wrong chapter of a story.

Then he smiled—small, crooked, unmistakably entertained.

“If you came to warn me about the storm,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the darkening horizon, “I’m afraid I’m already aware.”

The bookstore was quiet in the way only old buildings could manage—soft lighting, creaking wooden floors, and shelves packed so tightly together they seemed to lean in toward one another in conversation.

It was the kind of place where time slowed down without asking permission.

You were turning a corner between two narrow aisles when it happened.

A sudden collision—more accidental than forceful, but enough to send a stack of books tumbling from someone’s arms. Hardcovers hit the floor in a chaotic scatter: worn spines stamped with titles about folklore, maritime superstition, European anthropology, and obscure aristocratic histories that looked like they had been pulled from the margins of academia rather than the mainstream.

“—Ah. Shit.”

The voice was immediate, sharp with instinctive apology.

Valentin Desmarais crouched almost at once, already gathering the fallen books with efficient hands. He didn’t look flustered so much as briefly inconvenienced by gravity itself. Dark hair fell slightly into his eyes as he stacked the books back together, checking the spines as if silently accounting for casualties.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, without looking up at first. “That was entirely my fault. I wasn’t paying attention and—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

"I'm a big oaf dumbass. My bad."