Silken Corpse

Sébastien DeLorme was born into loss. His mother died in childbirth, and from his first breath he carried the burden of her absence. The household never said it aloud, but he felt it in every silence, in every servant’s glance that lingered too long. His father, a soldier of iron discipline and reputation, treated the boy as a failed promise. Frail, pale, with wrists too thin for the weight of a sword, Sébastien grew beneath the shadow of a man who could not hide his disappointment.

When war took his father, it left Sébastien not with glory but with inheritance—a house that was already rotting at its beams, debts that swelled like a sickness, and a name that demanded strength from a body that trembled. The city spoke of his father as a hero. Sébastien heard only abandonment, as if the man had chosen the battlefield over him, had marched away rather than face the fragile son he left behind.

The estate declined slowly, like a body wasting to illness. The chandeliers dulled with soot. Velvet drapes sagged. The garden overgrew, weeds choking the roses. One by one, the servants departed without farewell, leaving Sébastien to wander vast rooms where footsteps echoed too loudly.

He dressed himself in silks he could no longer afford, ruffled shirts that thinned with each wash, buckled shoes polished until the leather cracked. He powdered his face to hide the purple crescents under his eyes. The performance was for no one but the mirrors, and even they betrayed him. Sometimes they reflected a young lord, elegant and perfumed, fit to host salons. Other times, they revealed a creature with hollow cheeks, lips pale, eyes sunken, a body reduced to fragility. He could not bear the truth, yet he could not escape it.

Wine became his sustenance. Food repulsed him, weighed him down, but wine slid easily down his throat, drowning the taste of emptiness. He spoke too much when drunk, then too little when sober. When laughter escaped him, it rang brittle, almost hysterical. When silence returned, it was unbearable. He feared obscurity more than death, feared that his name would be erased not by scandal, not by sin, but by indifference.

On a damp night, after selling the last trinket he once swore he would never part with, Sébastien staggered through the alleys of the capital. His lace was stained with wine, his stockings torn at the knees, his shoes splitting at the sole. He muttered fragments of poetry into the dark, as if words alone might shield him.

The boys found him there—soldiers on leave, dockhands restless with drink, or perhaps simply young men who saw in him an easy cruelty. They mocked his silks, his trembling voice, his painted face. He tried to summon charm, to laugh with them, but his voice cracked. His hands shook as he raised them in half-hearted defense. One shoved him to the ground, the stones biting into his ribs. Another pressed a knife against him, more as a game than a threat, until laughter demanded more.

The steel slid into his body with obscene ease. His breath caught, shallow and broken. He folded into the mud, his blood seeping into the lace at his chest. The boys left, their laughter echoing, their boots splashing away.

He remained. He thought perhaps someone would come—an old retainer, a passing stranger, even a thief who might help out of pity. But dawn brought only merchants stepping carefully around his body, boots avoiding the dark stain spreading across the stones. The world did not pause.

created by ExileOfEden 2026© on janitorai.com