Chapter 17 — The Day the Child Vanished from Time
1468 Words
POV: Damieon
I remember the exact moment the world stopped knowing my name.
It wasn’t dramatic.
There was no thunder. No fire. No gods descending from the sky.
Just a door closing.
Softly.
Permanently.
They woke me before dawn.
Not with alarms or guards or urgency—but with hands. Gentle ones. Familiar ones. My mother’s fingers brushing my hair back the way she always did when she thought I was still asleep.
“Starling,” Alex whispered.
I opened my eyes.
The room was dark except for the faint silver glow bleeding through the curtains. Moonlight. Always watching. Always listening.
I knew.
I didn’t ask why she was crying.
I didn’t ask where we were going.
I just sat up and let her help me into the clothes already laid out at the foot of the bed. Simple. Unmarked. No sigils. No crown-thread woven into the seams.
A child’s clothes.
Not a prince’s.
Riley stood near the door, arms crossed tight around herself like she was holding her ribs together. Mason was behind her, silent, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the floor.
Seraphine waited in the corner, shadows curling around her ankles like living things.
No guards.
No witnesses.
That was the first rule.
“You don’t have to be brave,” my mother said softly as she tied the laces on my boots. Her hands were shaking.
I looked at her and nodded anyway.
“I know.”
That made her break.
She pressed her forehead to mine, breath hitching. “I wanted more time.”
“I know,” I said again.
The truth was—I didn’t feel afraid.
Not yet.
I felt… stretched. Like something inside me was being pulled thin across a space I couldn’t see.
Like standing on the edge of a dream before you fall asleep.
Riley knelt in front of me next. She didn’t cry. She never cried when it mattered most. Her eyes were bright, fierce.
“This isn’t an ending,” she said. “It’s a bend.”
I smiled faintly. “Like a story trick.”
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly like that.”
She slipped a cord over my head. Warm. Pulsing faintly.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“A tether,” she said. “To us. To who you are. It’ll hide you from anyone who looks too closely—but you’ll still feel us.”
I touched it. The warmth steadied something in my chest.
Mason cleared his throat. “You listen to Riley,” he said gruffly. “And you don’t try to be a hero.”
I almost laughed.
“I’m ten,” I said. “I don’t even get to be reckless yet.”
He huffed out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t sound like pain. “Exactly.”
Seraphine finally stepped forward.
“It’s time,” she said.
The word landed heavy.
Time.
They led us through passages I’d never seen before. Not secret corridors—older than that. Spaces carved before the palace had names. Before the throne had a shape.
The walls hummed as we passed, responding to something under my skin. I felt the stars stir. Felt them notice.
Seraphine’s hand lifted sharply.
“Hush,” she murmured.
The hum quieted.
“That’s why we can’t wait,” she said softly, not looking at me. “They’re already adjusting.”
We reached the chamber at the end of the path.
No doors.
Just light folding inward on itself, like the world holding its breath.
“This is the seam,” Seraphine said. “Between when you are seen… and when you are not.”
My mother’s fingers tightened around mine.
“If I step through,” I asked, “will I still exist?”
Alex swallowed. “Always.”
Riley answered more carefully. “To the people who matter.”
I nodded.
That was enough.
I stepped forward.
And the world… slid.
Not vanished.
Slid.
Like someone turning the page without letting you finish the sentence.
When sensation returned, it wasn’t pain.
It was quiet.
Not silence—quiet.
Like snow falling in a forest.
I stood in a place with no sky. No ground. Just shifting light and shadow moving like breath.
Seraphine was there.
Riley was there.
But Alex wasn’t.
The absence hit harder than anything else.
I sucked in a sharp breath. “She didn’t come.”
“No,” Seraphine said gently. “She can’t.”
I clenched my fists. “You said Riley would—”
“I am here,” Riley said firmly, stepping closer. “I didn’t leave.”
I looked at her. Really looked.
She wasn’t wearing her crown.
She wasn’t glowing with queen-light.
She looked… ordinary.
And invisible.
“That’s the point,” she said when she saw my expression. “I stepped out too.”
My chest loosened a little.
Seraphine turned in a slow circle. “This space is not meant to hold you long. It’s only a crossing.”
“To where?” I asked.
“To a place the gods don’t map,” she replied. “A life that isn’t written yet.”
She paused.
“And one they won’t bother erasing.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because it won’t look important,” she said.
Riley’s mouth tightened.
Seraphine raised her hand, and the light folded again.
This time, when the world snapped back into shape—
I stumbled.
Real ground.
Real air.
Cold.
I gasped, lungs burning.
We stood in the middle of a forest that felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain. The trees were tall but thin. The stars above looked… quieter.
Less curious.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Between packs,” Riley said. “Between stories.”
Seraphine knelt in front of me. “Listen carefully. From this moment on, you do not use your name.”
I stiffened. “But—”
“Names carry gravity,” she said. “And yours carries stars.”
She pressed two fingers to my forehead.
A ripple passed through me.
Not pain. Just… distance.
“Your memories will remain,” she said. “But your presence will dull. You will be overlooked. Forgotten when you leave a room.”
I swallowed. “That sounds lonely.”
Riley knelt beside me. “It can be.”
Then she smiled. “But I’m very hard to forget.”
Seraphine stood. “You have one chance to choose what you are next.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“A shadow,” she said. “A ghost. A nobody.”
She paused.
“Or a boy.”
I thought about my mother’s hands shaking as she tied my boots.
About the crown that used to feel too heavy.
About the stars that whispered when I slept.
“I choose boy,” I said.
Seraphine inclined her head. “Wise.”
She stepped back.
The forest shifted.
And suddenly—she was gone.
Just like that.
No farewell.
No promise.
Only the echo of magic settling into the soil.
I looked at Riley. “She just… left.”
“Yes,” Riley said quietly. “She had to.”
I took a breath. “What happens now?”
She held out her hand.
“Now,” she said, “you learn how to disappear.”
By nightfall, the world no longer reacted to me the same way.
People passed us on the road without glancing twice.
A merchant handed Riley bread and never once asked who I was.
A guard nodded politely and looked away.
It was unsettling.
And strangely freeing.
Riley rented us a small room above a stable in a town whose name I forgot almost immediately.
That night, I lay awake on a straw mattress staring at the ceiling.
The tether around my neck pulsed faintly.
I could feel my mother.
Like warmth at the edge of winter.
“She’s still there,” Riley said from the other bed, not opening her eyes.
“I know,” I whispered.
“She always will be.”
I hesitated. “Am I still… important?”
Riley rolled onto her side, eyes soft in the dim.
“Yes,” she said. “But not because of a throne.”
I nodded slowly.
Outside, the stars felt farther away.
Muted.
As if someone had dimmed them on purpose.
I didn’t know then that the gods had already noticed something missing.
Not the heir.
Not the prince.
But the gap.
And gaps, I would learn, make even immortals uneasy.
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time since I was born—
The stars did not answer back.
Which meant the plan was working.
And I had vanished from time.
- Writer
