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The cloth had always been too tight.
Nikāu wound it tight around his chest with shaking fingers, each pass tighter than the last. He bit down on the inside of his cheek as the edge dug into already-bruised skin, pulling and tugging until his breath came short and sharp. One last knot. He leaned back against the wall and waited, waited for the nausea to pass, waited for the illusion to settle.
When he pulled on his tunic, it sat flatter. Not flat. Not really. But enough.
He had cut his hair with a dull blade stolen from the market. The strokes were uneven, ragged. Clumps had fallen into the basin. His hand slipped once, leaving a thin red line across his temple. He’d smeared it away and kept cutting. When it was done, the face in the reflection looked harsher, smaller. Almost different.
He hadn’t smiled.
At the Necropolis, he stood behind a pillar and watched the boys practice sword drills in the open yard. Their wooden blades thudded against one another, feet stomping through dust. They shouted and laughed, their bodies loose and sure. Nikāu mimicked them in silence, stance wide, knees bent, arms slicing the air with invisible strikes. Every motion was deliberate. Every shift, measured.
He tried to imagine someone watching him and just thinking he was one of the boys. Just that. Nothing more, nothing less.
Later, when he peeled the cloth from his chest, it came away damp with sweat and streaked red. The skin underneath was raw, purple at the ribs, lined with small abrasions. It always ended up like that.
He pressed his hand flat against the bruises and stared at the ceiling. The weight in his throat grew heavier. But the want was heavier still. He would’ve done it all again the next day.
Sometimes, when the silence of the Necropolis became too much, he wandered beyond its caved corridors, past the safe edges of his known world. Dirt trails. Open grass. A small creek that ran through hills. He found strangers there now and then, traders, pilgrims. He lowered his voice when he greeted them, nodded sharply, and walked like the soldiers he’d studied from a distance.
They never said anything. But they always looked.
He could tell by the way their eyes shifted. That slight pause. That flicker of uncertainty, followed by quiet dismissal.
It hadn’t been enough. He’d known it the way he’d known his own heartbeat.
Once, he’d found a quiet slope beyond the water and lay back in the grass. Pulled his coat over his chest and pressed his arms tight against his sides. He’d imagined being taller. Broader. Flat.
He’d imagined being someone else entirely.
The clouds had moved slowly overhead. The grass had whispered against his ears. His eyes stayed open until they burned.
He hadn’t cried.
But the wanting hadn’t left.
It never did.
If anything, it sharpened.
By his late teens, Nikāu had fully grown into a body he didn’t understand. Taller, yes. Stronger, maybe. But not enough, not in the ways that mattered. His voice stayed high. His hips grew out. His thighs thickened. His shoulders refused to broaden.
In a cramped apothecary off a half-forgotten trade path, he found a vial tucked behind a row of dust-coated jars. The liquid inside was dark and swirling, the label handwritten in old ink, strange phrasing, unfamiliar terms. He turned it in his fingers, brow furrowed. It didn’t make sense.
The old woman behind the counter caught his eye. She paused in her work, studying him for a moment. When she stepped forward, she didn’t reach for the vial. She just offered a quiet gesture, an explanation, gentle and brief. Her eyes didn’t leave his.
He froze.
Understanding hit harder than shame. She’d seen right through him and offered him something that would help.
He placed the bottle back carefully and left without a word.
When night fell, he returned. Slipped through an unlatched window with practiced ease, feet soundless on the floorboards. He didn’t touch anything else. Just the vial. Just that one thing he didn’t have the courage to ask for out loud.
He set a stack of gold on the counter, more than enough. Enough to express his gratitude.
He drank it the next morning. It tasted like metal and mould. He nearly threw it up. But he swallowed anyway.
Eventually, he went back for more.
He drank it every fortnight, as instructed, grimacing through the bitterness, head tipped back like he was downing ritual poison. It settled in his stomach like a promise.
Over time, it made a world of difference. His voice deepened, a gravelly, sensual voice that he could have only ever dreamed of. His face became angular, the softness of his cheeks slowly lessening.
He could train harder than ever, daggers, short-swords, sprinting, climbing stone walls until his arms burned. He grew lean and defined, arms growing with muscle, hiding the daintiness that used to surround them.
Euphoria, for a moment.
Then his eyes would flick down, catch the swell of his thighs in fitted pants, or the roundness of his hips beneath layers of fabric, and that feeling would splinter. He learned to wear loose shirts, to keep his coats unbuttoned, to hang gear from his belt that broke up the lines of his figure.
He painted his face with care. Dark kohl around his eyes swept low and angled sharp to draw attention up. A line across his upper lip. A stripe down the centre of the bottom one. Not for vanity, for geometry. He couldn’t change the shape of his jaw, but he could reshape how it was seen. With enough effort, enough control, he could carve himself anew.
Eventually, he found a healer willing to operate. When the bandages came off and his chest was flat, he stared at himself in a still basin of water until the light changed around him.
His hand trembled when he touched the scar tissue. Raised, red, tender. A line across a landscape that now looked survivable. The first deep breath he took with no pressure across his chest nearly brought him to his knees.
But even then, scars faded, muscles shaped, voice settled, he still found himself checking angles in every reflection. Still caught the wrong profile in the metal of his dagger or the warped edge of a window. Still found his hands ghosting over his ribs, his hips, his thighs, searching for something he couldn’t name.
He had built something closer to the man he saw in his head. Sculpted it from pain and ritual, from blood and ink and stubbornness.
And still, it wasn’t enough.
The scars, now paler, still reminded him. Not just of what was there, but of what was never supposed to be.
He touched them often. Reverent. Resentful.
He’d never felt more like himself.
He’d never hated himself more.
Then, as he grew older, Nikāu met new companions. A team sworn to support each other to fight the great Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain.
And his party had never questioned him once.
First introduction, they called him he without hesitation. Every mission, every fight, every shared joke, they saw a man. Not something constructed, not something revealed.
And it had meant everything.
They passed him gear without pause, tugged him into formation without ever once looking at him like something other. He was the same as the rest of the guys. Treated no differently. Their trust was natural, unexamined.
It should have made him proud. Should have made him feel whole.
But it made him ache worse.
None of them knew.
No one had seen the skin beneath his shirt. No one had caught a glimpse of what had changed. The truth of what his body once held, and what it still didn’t.
He clung to it.
He walked like them, sat like them, let himself be shoved playfully, let himself be slapped on the back, called reliable, called quick, and strong. And he played his part flawlessly, shoulders squared, jaw set, never hesitating. He laughed when they did. Grinned when someone teased him. Returned it just as fast.
But inside, every moment felt like it could collapse.
Because the more they believed he was just a man, the more terrified he became that they’d find out what he wasn’t.
It wasn’t fear of judgement. Not really. He didn’t fear not being accepted.
It was about losing the one thing he’d never had and couldn’t make real: the ease. The simplicity. The comfort of appearing to exist in a body that never had to be earned.
They thought he was cis.
Thought he’d always been like this.
It was great.
It tore him open.
He never removed his shirt around them. Never let his guard drop. Never left room for curiosity. The idea of being seen through, the idea of one person realising what it had taken to become this, was unbearable.
He wanted it too much.
To be just like them. The kind of man that didn’t have to suffer for it. Who hadn’t needed to reshape every part of himself just to be allowed the name.
And they treated him like he was.
That kindness felt crueller than anything else. The daily reminder that they thought he was something that he wasn’t.
He liked it.
Loved it.
But he could never let himself believe it.
None of it had ever been given freely.
He had stolen this version of himself.
And gods, he never wanted to give it back.
Then, a development that had begun to thwart Nikāu’s plans entirely. An obstacle in the shape of a Professor of Necromancy. Emmrich Volkarin.
Something had started building between them.
It hadn’t been intentional. Not at first. But it grew in the quiet ways: shared glances that lingered too long, a hand brushed a little too close, a familiar presence always just within reach. Nikāu hadn’t meant for it to happen. And Emmrich hadn’t pushed. But still, it had grown.
There was a softness to Emmrich that Nikāu didn’t know how to hold. A steadiness, a calm in the way he moved through the world. He was sharp, yes, there was no mistaking the precision behind his words, his hands, but there was warmth, too. And that was what undid Nikāu the most.
It would have been easier if Emmrich had been cruel.
But he wasn’t.
He was gentle.
And Nikāu had no idea what to do with that.
They walked back from the Arlathan Forest together, the trees above them dripping with mist from a fresh rain. The mission had been successful. The thrill of the fight still sang in Nikāu’s limbs. He walked close behind Emmrich, close enough that their arms almost touched. Sometimes, they did.
The silence between them was easy. But Nikāu could feel something pressing at the edges, something inevitable.
He wanted to reach out.
Wanted to say something.
But wanting meant risk. And the risk was this: that to love Emmrich, to truly, honestly love him, meant letting the illusion go.
Because Emmrich would have to know.
Emmrich would need to know that Nikāu hadn’t always been like this. That the body he wore now hadn’t been given, it had been forged, reshaped, carved into place. That nothing about it had come easy. Nothing about it would ever feel easy.
And knowing that, that seeing, would change everything.
Because Emmrich was everything Nikāu wasn’t. And that difference cut deeper than anything else.
Nikāu had spent years crafting a face that passed, a walk that blended, a voice that held firm. But Emmrich? Emmrich never had to learn those things. He simply was. Slender like Nikāu, yes, but without the wider hips. Without the thicker thighs. Without that inherent softness Nikāu could never quite erase, no matter how many times he trained or how tightly he layered his clothes.
It wasn’t resentment. It was envy. It was longing.
They crossed a low-hanging branch stretched across a shallow stream. Emmrich moved first, sure-footed, graceful. Nikāu followed, boots light on the bark, and happened to glance down.
Their reflections rippled beneath them.
Emmrich stood tall, his body straight and loose-limbed, all clean angles and quiet strength. The kind of man who didn’t need to try to look like one.
Beside him, Nikāu’s form looked smaller. Narrow-shouldered. Too soft at the jaw. The cloth of his coat clung too tightly to the curve of his hips. His legs looked too short. Wide.
He looked like a child pretending to be something older.
The breath left him slowly.
The moment between them shattered. Whatever had built up between them over the course of the day, the flirtation, adrenaline, warmth, curled in on itself like a leaf touched by fire.
Nikāu stepped back slightly. Just enough to break the closeness. Enough to keep Emmrich from brushing against him again. The silence grew heavier.
He didn’t look at him again the rest of the way back.
By the time they reached the lighthouse, the distance between them had stretched just far enough to be safe.
Because Nikāu knew what it would cost him to have this.
To have him.
It would mean being known.
And once that happened, he would never be able to go back to the illusion, the beautiful, fragile illusion, that someone like him could ever be seen as whole.
Back at the lighthouse, Nikāu shut the door behind him and exhaled like he’d been holding his breath the whole walk home.
His chambers were still, quiet in a way the forest had never been. No footfalls. No glances.
He stripped with practiced motions, boots, coat, layers peeled off one by one, until there was nothing left but skin, and ink, and scar tissue. He didn’t hesitate, learned how to undress, and hold back the flinch.
But he still hesitated before the mirror.
The tall one stood near his bed, its frame carved and dark, the glass catching dim light from the hearth behind him. His reflection waited. He stepped forward anyway.
There he was.
His chest was flat. The scars beneath each pectoral were pale now, healed. The ink on his arms curled like vines, like runes, winding over muscle built through years of training. He looked strong. Sharpened. Masculine in shape.
But that wasn’t what he saw.
His eyes dropped lower. His hips, still slightly too wide. His thighs, still too thick, too soft. His waist tapered wrong. Not in the way he wanted. Not in the way Emmrich’s did.
He stared at his face.
The kohl was smeared now, rubbed down at the corners of his eyes. His top lip was bare, the centre stripe faded. Without the paint, the angles of his cheekbones weren’t as sharp. His jaw wasn’t strong enough. His eyes looked too wide. Too tired. Too soft.
To the others, he passed. To them, he was just Nikāu. A man.
But he saw every line out of place. Every curve that should have been straight. Every softness that should have been hard. He saw what had been changed. And worse, what hadn’t.
They didn’t know what he was.
But he did.
He reached up, touching the edge of a scar, then let his hand drop.
He didn’t look away.
He just stood there, bare under the cold air of the lighthouse, with ever failing laid out beneath him. This body he had carved, trained, painted, reshaped– it still wasn’t right. It still wasn’t real. Not the way he wanted it to be. Not the way he needed it to be.
He wanted to be like the others.
Like Emmrich. Like Lucanis. Like Davrin.
He wanted that more than anything. The body he’d never have. The ease he was never given. The shape that came to others without cost. The uncomplicated truth of manhood that had been kept from him like a locked door.
He couldn’t unlock it.
He could only try to cut a version of it and pray no one looked close enough to see the cracks.
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
His chest rose sharply.
And then, he broke.
He dropped to the floor, knees to stone, one arm braced against the bedframe, the other clutched tight around his own waist like he could hold himself together by force. His shoulders shook. His breath hitched. Silent. Viscous. Shattering.
There was no one to hear him.
He didn’t cry often. He hated the sound. But now, in the dark, alone in the skin he couldn’t escape, the tears came fast. Ugly. Unforgiving.
He cried for what he was.
He cried for what he wasn’t.
For what he could never be.
And even through all of it, through the sobs, through the anger, through the grief that wrapped itself around him like his old bindings, he still wanted.
Desperately. Quietly. Unstoppably.
He still wanted.