At the start of winter arrived the Day of Velizos. Coming cold kept lovers indoors, and keeping indoors kept lovers close. In Katharos it was custom for the newly wed to work together on a piece of art, a mural or carving, as a sign of their unity; older couples might add on to these creations with the passing of each year, or, as older couples do, do nothing at all, but pretend that the date possessed some great significance when they were younger. In Pyrthos, the magicians, liberated from the need for family, often enchanted tokens to give to their lovers as an idle distraction from their work and studies. These tokens could carry within them memories, emotions, or messages, but also gags or minor curses—a magician’s idea of a practical joke.

Unsurprisingly, things often went wrong. More than one minor demon had been conjured over the centuries of the practice. Several Initiates had miscast their spells of love and turned their lovers’ hearts to literal mush, rather than only figurative. At least one Magister had all her clothes rendered permanently invisible, no matter what she put on. Ultimately token-giving was banned by the Gray Council after the elf Magister Kalia gave a memory of her lust to most men and every woman in the tower in 1802; the resultant loss of life and damage to the Tower’s lower tiers took decades to buff out. Yet there was no stopping token-giving in the long run. The ban was rescinded soon after following popular outcry.

The party of Trito, Dorian, Corvo, Aletheia, and Eris had no lovers with whom to share affection or enchanted tokens as the Day of Velizos came. But it was a time for recollection of relationships past and lost while on the road, as they considered what might have been and never was. Such thoughts became intrusive. They couldn’t be put out of mind. And so while none of them said a thing of the date, they all quietly saw the past behind their eyelids.

Trito still saw her. It was the curse of an elf to never forget. His memory was not imagination like that of a human’s; when he closed his eyes, he returned to the past. He saw it, smelled it, felt it, and lived it again. He could stir himself to return to the present, but never for good. Soon enough he would begin to think, and with his thought, he traveled backward through time. History was a place an elf could visit, as real as any courtroom or outhouse.

He never remembered their kisses. He never saw the smile on her lips, or affection in her eyes. There was no nostalgia over the wedding he’d once had, or the birth of a child, or the passion of their lust.

No. Those things had to be retrieved consciously, sought after like treasure buried somewhere on an island. They could be found, but only if he worked for them. But the memory that came to him, the one he did not need to seek out, was the day he killed her.

She had been growing weaker for decades. At the Regizar’s palace, beneath a curtain of blinding mana that reached up to the heavens, she would stand on a balcony overlooking the ever-dark city and gorge herself on magic. But it was a temporary power. She was addicted to magic, and she would waste it all again on her spells at the first chance. Conjuring new clothes. Vanquishing oncoming adversaries with the toss of her hair. Teleporting herself and Trito to wherever they pleased to go. Summoning banquets whenever hungry.

Unnecessary magic. Wasteful magic. And with each spell, she grew weaker, sicklier, and closer to the end.

She collapsed on the streets of the city. A demon had their scent, a flickering lesser creature that homed in on her magic, keen to take it for itself; its ethereal, purple shape phased through a crumbling black ruin, and then it was upon them.

She tore it apart with a spell. Without any thought. Like it meant nothing to her. She ripped it in half and threw aside its pieces, and all its mana returned to the Aether overhead.

Then she crumpled to the ground, and she could not get up again.

Trito carried her back to the palace. He set her down upon her bed, and he whispered into her ear, “You’re killing yourself. You must stop using mana. Soon there will be nothing left of your Essence.”

Yet she only smiled. She placed her hand along his cheek.

“There is power enough here, my love,” she said. “Do not fret for no cause. I only need to rest.”

So he helped her to the balcony, and she again recharged her soul with mana from the heavens. Then she was back to normal. Beautiful. Powerful. Irresistible.

Until it happened again. And again. And again. She could draw mana from the air of Ewsos, but she could not stop herself from going too far—from overindulging in her appetite for spells, and thus exhausting that which could not be recharged. The core of her being. The Essence that kept her alive for eternity. When they kissed, when they embraced each other, and when they made love, he slowly felt her presence against his fading away, like the warmth of her skin was freezing. Soon it would be ice.

He saw this glacier approaching. But he could do nothing to change their course.

On her final night, she collapsed in a palace corridor. A guard brought her to her room. Trito found her in the bed some hours later, asleep and unrousable.

He waited by her bedside for days. He gazed down at her, waiting for her to wake up, like she always did, and realize her mistake, as she never had before.

But it was too late. She had gone too far.

He watched her wither before his eyes. Her hair, once the shade of the night sky, paled to white. Her skin lost its pink hue and faded to cloudy gray. Her fingers twisted, becoming like gnarled branches off an ancient and diseased tree. Her teeth misaligned and sprouted fangs. Her Essence disappeared. To Trito, her skin became cold. He could no longer feel her when he touched her. She breathed, yet she seemed dead, lifeless, mundane—no different from a human.

No. Worse. For this creature before him was not simply dead to the arcane. She was a void for it. A thing that needed mana to live, yet had none of its own.

When she at last awoke, her eyes were no longer white, but solid black.

She gazed up at him. A perverse mockery of the woman he loved. A horrific monstrosity. She disgusted him.

“Trito?” she gasped. Her voice was like a serpent with pneumonia.

“Why didn’t you listen?” he said. His forehead fell to hers. “Did it have to be this way?”

“Trito. I’m so cold.” She trailed a claw across his forearm. “Your skin is so warm.”

“I know,” he whispered.

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“Can’t I have a taste? Let me have your Essence. I’ll be better soon, with just a taste.”

He shook his head. Tears clung to his cheeks.

“No,” he said. “You won’t.”

He drew his dagger from his belt. He sat upright.

Her black eyes stared up at him in horror and fear and surprise. She reached for him.

“Trito? What are you doing?”

He could not watch her. He could not stand to see her any longer. So he looked away, as he placed the blade upon her neck—and dragged it all the way across.

“Trito,” she hissed, “Trito. What are you doing? Trito. I love you.”

She coughed and sputtered as he withdrew the blade. She battered his arms weakly with her claws. Trito collapsed atop her, now sobbing, and he looked at her one final time:

“I love you, Serega,” he said.

She shook her head. Her brows were high and her eyes wide. But then her fear faded, and her breath stopped, and she was gone.

She disappeared from under him. He fell suddenly, for nothing remained of her body then but dust.

An orc could not be spared. An orc was the sickest monstrosity of Esenia, worse even than the human magicians. Yet he wished he had let her go anyway. He wouldn’t have done it to spare her, for she was dead the moment she transformed. No, he wished he had let her go, giving her a taste of his Essence and casting her out of the palace, for then his memories would have been spared—even if his love was not.

He spent a thousand years at her side. Thirty mortal generations. Enough time for whole nations to rise and fall. Yet when he thought of her, and when he thought of love, he only saw the end. Relentlessly repeated in his memory. He relived it every night of the Day of Velizos.

Dorian had too many lovers to choose from, and as a mortal man, his memory faded with age. He could no longer see their faces. Some had names now forgotten. His tryst with Eris lingered foremost in his mind, but it was brief and affectionless, an indulging in nothing but lustful urges. Like two tigers meeting to mate in the jungle and never again thereafter, yet even more vapid. There was nothing to show for all that now.

He thought briefly on his wives. He supposed he was still a handsome man, ancient though he felt—nothing else explained Eris’ interest in him. But he had been different as a young man. Women, and some men, had thrown themselves at him like insects at a racing rider. The rich ones were so easily taken advantage of. Widows, women with land, their children already grown. He had lived for years off fortunes plundered from them. He remembered a Day of Velizos where his third wife, Chloe, had made him sew a decorated textile with her commemorating their marriage.

“It’s a sign of our love,” she told him. “This truly will be eternal, like our affection.”

He smiled, nodded, and kissed her. The next day, he took half of her treasury in his saddlebags, and he never saw her again.

As with Eris, such schemes had involved sex, but never love. Love was reserved for the women he met as an adventurer. His peers, rogues like him. Nothing lasted, but it could have, in places, if things had gone differently. Corvo made him wish they had. He could have had his own son, his own Corvo, and maybe life would have been that much richer. The imagined the same was true of a wife. A real wife, whom he loved.

Sylvana was the closest he’d ever come. She would have married him. He would have had a family with her.

But the money was too good. He became stupid. He couldn’t resist. The dwarf told him she would only be taken as a hostage, but his mercenaries killed her, like they killed the others. And it was his fault.

He told himself the money compensated for any guilt. But it didn’t, for he was still guilty, but the money was long wasted.

That was a very long time ago. He was a completely different man. A much more honest man. But he would never stop missing her, and he would never be able to forget it. So every night on the Day of Velizos, after the sun had set, he said a poem of mourning for her, and a prayer to the Lioness that her soul would be spared any more suffering.

He never asked for forgiveness, because he knew he didn’t deserve it. And while he didn’t really believe that there was an afterlife guarded by ancient gods, he was sometimes paralyzed by the thought that he might someday see Sylvana again.

Corvo had no lovers, though he would someday. For now he was just a boy. For the Day of Velizos Mother gave him a single dry piece of candy that she had brought with them from the Boyar’s castle, and that was all he knew of it. But he did spend the day with his glass rider and wooden figurine very close, and the ring on his finger glowed purple the whole night through.

Aletheia was wary of romance. The Boyar had been an indulging in her most primal desires, but she had run from him, like the others, at the moment her fantasies had threatened coming true.

The Boyar would have slept with her. She had wanted to sleep with him. Eris had taught her a charm to make it safe for the both of them. Normal women couldn’t afford to risk such casual intimacy, but things were different for magicians. Sex was very casual at Pyrthos. There wouldn’t have been anything strange about it.

She had stayed away from him anyway.

She wondered why on the night of the Day of Velizos. She was very lonely then, as she sat by herself in her blankets beside Eris’ tent. But she didn’t need long to remember. She was afraid of choosing the wrong man. She was afraid of becoming like Eris, the mother of a child without a father, even if she didn’t need to be. She was afraid of disappointing him if she felt she had to leave. And she did not know who she wanted, or if that person would ever want her anyway.

She had also been afraid of what he might think of her scars. That was always a convenient excuse.

And if she did have a family, and fell in love, what would happen if something happened to her? What if she did something to herself?

Better to stay alone. Better to stick to Corvo. Better not to find out. But it was on nights like these, cold and alone and depressed and lost, that she realized she would have been happy as nothing more than a normal woman. Had she not been a magician, had her mother not been a Magister—she would have been content with a husband, and her own children, and her own property to look after, and nothing more than that. That was a life that meant something. Not like hers now.

As a girl, she had imagined a future of books, old age, boys, and the Tower of Pyrthos. It had all been inevitable. But after eight years of adventuring, after growing up, she now imagined nothing at all. She saw nothing of her life in another five years. Her future was opaque. She would never have those things, nor anything else. How could she? She was just a corpse.

Eris rarely lost herself in nostalgia. When she thought back on Rook, she felt only a warm buzzing in her belly. For a time she had hated him, for getting her pregnant, for dying like a fool, and then for not being there for his son. But those times were over. Now she simply missed him, and she savored each and every glimpse of him she still found in her mind. She did not fantasize or daydream. That was a waste of time.

But on the Day of Velizos, as she held Corvo tight, she gave in to the temptation. Her mind wandered, and the fantasy formed.

They were in detritus-strewn woods along the river behind Castle Korakos. Through the treetops the fortress was just barely visible. They were not far from their domain, and a village could be found hardly a mile away, yet they were alone together here.

Rook played tirelessly with his son. Their son. They rode Sinir and played swords and jumped into mud, disgustingly, in a way that only boys could, and then washed themselves in the river. They played catch with a small ball and tore about the trees like maniacs.

Eris did nothing. She only watched from a distance. Their voices were distant and distorted; she could not understand them. But it didn’t matter. Corvo had a father, to teach him how to do all the countless things Eris herself could not. How to lead, how to be a friend, how to fight and ride, how to play. How to be a man—and how to live without magic.

When they were done, they all went together to the keep. Guards with helmets in the shape of crows stood at attention. Courtiers bowed. Servants saw Corvo and curtsied. Women of the court groveled as Eris passed them by, for they were nobility. When they retired for the night, it was into warm beds, safe and secure, and there was no Shadow Man to fear. She slept beside Rook, away from Corvo, and she did so fearlessly. Without any concerns.

She nearly had that life. It had not been so impossible, once upon a time.

Now it was. Now it was gone forever. Yet it was amusing, in a cosmic sense, that she had not wanted it when it was briefly hers, and now she wanted nothing more.

But fantasies would not keep her son safe. And while she would never be a duchess again, Corvo, one day, would have the life his father lost: he would be the Duke of Korakos, and he would never need to sleep a night in a tent again.

That was her fantasy. And while she would have scolded Corvo for such pointless daydreaming, she decided to close her eyes and enjoy it for a little while longer yet.