Chapter 290: He’s at the old well.

Maya ran toward him, but stopped just short of touching his pristine silks, as if suddenly remembering the ’noble’ he appeared to be.

"You... you haven’t changed at all." She said, her eyes fixed on his face. She had been young back then, but she could never forget the man who had appeared like a ghost in their lives.

And right now, there was not a single thing about him that seemed different from her memory.

"Even after ten years, you haven’t changed at all. As if you never aged one bit," she said and Alias froze.

Ten years? It was no longer she was this big.

"I thought you were dead. But Theo said... Theo said you were coming back. That you would definitely come back since you promised." She added softly.

The weight of the words hit Alias harder than the gravity of the world. He had promised to be back in a year or two, but he took longer.

Ten years. To him, it had been a few minutes of careful painting, but to Theo, it had been an entire decade of waiting in the dirt.

"Ten years," Alias repeated, his heart sinking. "Where is he, Maya? Where is your brother?"

Maya wiped her eyes, a bittersweet smile crossing her face.

"He’s at the old well. He goes there every evening after work. He says the sunset looks best from there, but I know... I know he’s just waiting to see if a silver-haired ghost comes walking out of the dust."

Alias didn’t wait for another word. He began to run. He didn’t care about the silks, the glow, or the people staring at the ’shining noble’ sprinting through the slums.

He had to find him. He had to see if the blue-eyed boy who had taught him how to eat bread was still there. He had to apologize.

Ten years.

To a god, a decade was a flicker of a candle. But to a human, it was a lifetime, especially when they were waiting for someone. It was the difference between a boy and a man. It was enough time for hope to turn into a scar.

It was long enough to hurt.

He hoped he had not hurt the boy. He hoped he had not failed his friend.

Alias finally reached the old well just as the sun began to sink deeper into the horizon, bleeding a heavy, bruised crimson across the horizon.

The air was still and thick, but he didn’t feel the heat. His focus was entirely on the figure sitting on the edge of the stone well, looking far into the horizon as the sun made its descent.

Alias slowed his pace as he approached, his breath heavy as he tried to catch his breath, his boots treading softly on the dry earth.

The silhouette against the setting sun was familiar, yet fundamentally altered.

"Theo?"

The name left his lips like a fragile plea.

The man on the well flinched. It wasn’t a small movement, as if a bolt of lightning had struck the stone beside him. He didn’t turn immediately. He sat frozen, his broad shoulders tensed, his head bowed. It was as if he were bracing himself for the cruelty of another hallucination.

Slowly, agonizingly so, he turned his head.

When Theo’s gaze finally landed on Alias, his eyes widened until the brilliant blue was rimmed with shock. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

He stayed pinned to the spot, his mouth opening as if to gasp, but no sound came out. He stared at the shimmering white silks that didn’t have a speck of dust on them, and the face—that impossibly beautiful, pale face—that had not aged even a single second.

Alias was a vision of the past, preserved in amber, while the world around him had weathered and cracked.

Theo stood up, and Alias felt his breath hitch in his throat, a sudden lump forming that made it hard to swallow. When he had left, he had been the taller one, the one who could reach down to comfort the boy. Now, he found himself looking up as Theo came closer. 1

He took a small, involuntary gulp. It was like staring at a mountain.

Theo walked toward him. Every step was heavy, deliberate. As he came to a stop just inches away, Alias had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. The boy was gone. In his place stood a man whose presence felt like a mountain, casting a shadow that completely enveloped Alias and everything behind him.

Theo bit the inside of his cheek, his jaw working as he fought to keep his expression from shattering. His hands, rough and scarred from a decade of toil, twitched at his sides.

"Alias," he finally spoke. His voice was no longer a youth’s crackle; it was a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to pull at Alias’s very soul. "I waited."

The simplicity of the words was devastating. It wasn’t an accusation, but the sheer weight of ten years of silence was packed into those three syllables.

"Theo, I..." Alias started, but the words died in his throat.

He looked at the man’s face—the sharpened bridge of his nose, the maturity in his brow, the strength in a neck that had grown thick from carrying water. He realized then that he had broken a silent law of the universe. He had asked a mortal to wait, and mortals were not meant to wait for eternity.

Theo...

"I waited," Theo repeated, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. "Every night. At this well. I watched the stars you liked so much, and I told myself... I told myself you were just lost and you would find your way back soon."

Alias couldn’t take the distance anymore. The guilt, one he had never felt before, was like a cold blade in his chest, and the only remedy was the warmth he had remembered for so long.

He stepped forward, closing the final gap, and buried his face against Theo’s broad chest.

Then, he reached up, his pale fingers clutching the rough, sweat-stained fabric of the man’s tunic. He squeezed his eyes shut, the scent of Theo—salt, sun, and earth—flooding his senses.

He didn’t know why, but this felt like the right thing to do. Reaching out, feeling his warmth, apologizing...

"I am so sorry," Alias choked out, his voice muffled against the solid wall of Theo’s chest. "But all that matters... All that matters now is that I am back. I am back, Theo. Please, just let me be back."

He felt the man’s heart skip a beat beneath his ear, a frantic thumping that mirrored his own. For a long, terrifying moment, Theo didn’t move. Then, Alias felt the air leave Theo’s lungs in a long, shaky exhale.

The massive, calloused arms came up, wrapping around Alias with a strength that was almost painful.

Theo pulled him in, his large hands spread across Alias’s back, anchoring the silver-haired ghost to his body.

Theo leaned down, burying his face in the crook of Alias’s neck, his shoulders beginning to shake with a silent tremor. He didn’t care about the silks or the strange glow. He only cared that the weight in his arms was real.

"I thought you wouldn’t come back, Moon boy. I thought..." Theo whispered, the words a rough prayer against Alias’s skin. "But you’re finally back."

Theo wasn’t very tall for a 17-year-old, mind you