The clinic held its hush, afternoon light blurring against the frosted glass. Not silence, but a gentling. Machines murmured behind the walls. Air moved with a patience that belonged to places of healing. The light lost its hour, became only pale and directionless.
Qhall arrived when Adrian said he would. No more, no less.
No drama in his arrival.
No ripple in space. No flicker of shadow. Nothing to mark him as alien, not at first. He walked through the doors, tall, coat folded over one arm, tablet pressed close. His tentacles moved with a restraint that was almost careful. Qhall was there; seen, impossible to mistake, but never touching, never reaching unless called.
The receptionist looked up. Her eyes caught on him, a pause too long before the practiced smile. She had been told to expect him, told to be polite. Still, her smile wavered.
Adrian watched from the far end. Out of reach.
He had chosen this place on purpose. Neutral ground. Familiar. He knew the rules here, the exits, the shape of the space. Even the idea of containment lived in the walls, if only as a shadow.
Qhall’s gaze found him immediately.
They regarded each other for a long moment, two men measuring risk in very different ways.
Qhall inclined his head first. Not submissive. Respectful.
“Doctor,” the tablet spoke in its calm, carefully modulated voice. “Thank you for inviting me. I understand this carries discomfort for you.”
Adrian did not return the nod. “You didn’t have to come.”
“I did,” Qhall replied. “If I want you to ever speak to me honestly, I needed to meet you where you felt safe.”
That landed harder than Adrian expected.
He gestured down the hall. “My office.”
They walked together. Qhall matched his pace without effort, as if he had always known the rhythm. He moved through the space without looking, already holding every angle, every exit, in his mind.
The office door closed behind them with a quiet click.
Adrian did not offer tea.
He did not offer a seat.
He stood behind the desk, hands pressed to the edge. The cool laminate, the steel beneath, grounding him.
“I want to know what you did to him,” Adrian said without preamble.
Qhall remained standing. He set the tablet down on the desk between them.
“I helped him reorganize traumatic memory pathways,” the tablet said. “I reduced recursive fear loops. I stabilized intrusive identity fragments. I reinforced boundaries he was already trying to build himself.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “That’s a list of outcomes. Not methods.”
Qhall’s tentacles stilled slightly. A sign of attention.
“I entered his mind with consent,” the tablet continued. “I moved nothing without agreement. I did not erase. I did not suppress. I repositioned. Trauma is not removed, it is given somewhere safe to rest.”
“And Aelith?” Adrian pressed. “The absorbed elf. Her memories.”
Qhall did not hesitate.
“She was displaced,” the tablet said. “Unintegrated. Causing friction. I helped Jared construct internal architecture where her memories could exist without overwhelming his sense of self.”
Adrian exhaled slowly through his nose. “You’re describing structural changes to a human psyche.”
“Yes,” Qhall said simply.
“You’re describing things that no ethics board would ever approve.”
Qhall’s head tilted a fraction. “You are describing ethics built for crises that end. Jared’s condition does not.”
The first catch. The first place the air thickened.
Adrian straightened. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I don’t,” Qhall agreed. “Jared does.”
Silence stretched. Taut, held between them.
Adrian folded his arms. “I also want everything you know about the Dark. About Tuners. Everything you’ve observed, documented, inferred.”
Qhall regarded him for a long moment.
“You want a way to save him,” the tablet said.
“Yes.”
Qhall nodded once. “Then I need to tell you something you will not want to hear.”
Adrian’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I assumed as much.”
Qhall leaned back against the edge of the desk, tentacles draping with relaxed precision. He did not invade Adrian’s space. He did not retreat from it either.
“Every Tuner who has become a Dark Anchor,” the tablet said, “has done so after reaching the Manifestation Phase.”
Adrian already knew this. He said nothing.
“They stabilize enough to recognize the threshold,” Qhall continued. “And then they choose not to cross it.”
Adrian’s stomach tightened. “They’re not choosing death.”
“No,” Qhall said. “They are choosing familiar identity over transformation.”
Adrian shook his head. “You don’t know what happens on the other side.”
“No,” Qhall agreed. “I do not.”
“Then how can you suggest this as an option?”
“I am not suggesting,” Qhall replied. “I am explaining inevitability.”
That word. Again. Heavy as a stone in the room.
Adrian stepped away from the desk, pacing once, then turning back sharply. “You’re telling me the only way to ‘save’ Jared is to let him walk into something none of us understand and hope he doesn’t disappear?”
“I am telling you,” Qhall said gently, “that containment is what happens when someone refuses the threshold. It is not salvation. It is stasis failure.”
“And crossing it?” Adrian demanded.
Qhall’s tentacles shifted. A rare sign of uncertainty.
“Those Tuners are never seen again,” the tablet said. “Beings like Erebus claim they continue to exist within the Dark. Not as humans. As something… continuous.”
“Divine,” Adrian said bitterly.
“Transcendent,” Qhall corrected.
Adrian laughed quietly, humorless. “You want me to believe that my partner wants to stop being human.”
“I want you to understand,” Qhall said, “that Jared has always wanted to know how things work. Not just how to survive them. The Dark offers comprehension at a scale nothing else does.”
“That doesn’t mean he wants to leave.”
“No,” Qhall agreed. “It means he wants to step forward.”
Adrian stopped pacing. His voice was low when he spoke again. “You’re asking me to let him go.”
“Yes,” Qhall said.
“Something he will never ask of me.”
“Correct.”
Adrian’s eyes burned. “Then why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” Qhall replied, “you are the only one who can stop him when the moment comes.”
The weight of it pressed down, thickening the air between them.
“If you initiate containment protocols,” Qhall continued, “you will save a body and lose a being. If you allow him to try, you may lose the shape of the man you love but not his continuity.”
Adrian shook his head. “This is insane.”
“This is stewardship,” Qhall said softly. “Not ownership.”
Adrian turned on him. “Don’t pretend this is altruism. You benefit from waiting. From being the backup plan.”
Qhall’s mouth curved slightly. Not amused. Acknowledging.
“Yes,” the tablet said. “If Jared fails, it will fall to me to close the Anchor. And yes—his mind would become part of mine.”
Adrian’s fists clenched. “You talk about eating him like it’s mercy.”
“I talk about it as reality,” Qhall replied. “One which ensures he does not become a wound in the world.”
“And you’d live with him inside you.”
“I would carry him,” Qhall said. “In the only way left.”
Adrian’s voice shook despite his control. “You don’t get to call that love.”
Qhall considered him carefully. “I do not claim it is. I claim it is equitable.”
Adrian scoffed. “You do this for yourself.”
“Yes,” Qhall said calmly. “And it benefits him.”
“That doesn’t make it good.”
“Define good,” Qhall said.
Adrian opened his mouth and stopped.
Qhall pressed gently. “You dislike that Jared is willing to be a martyr. And yet martyrdom is the purest form of doing something for others. If he is wrong for that, and I am wrong for acting in my own interest, then where does goodness exist at all?”
Adrian stared at him, breath shallow.
“We can’t both be wrong,” Qhall continued quietly. “Unless the universe is empty of moral coherence.”
Silence again.
Then Qhall spoke, almost confessional.
“I have been alive over one hundred years,” the tablet said. “Half of that in the Mundane realm. I have consumed approximately one hundred willing brains.”
Adrian swallowed hard.
“In each,” Qhall went on, “I have lived an entire human lifetime. I know grief. Joy. Longing. Regret. Love. Fear. I have lived more human experience than any human ever has.”
“And yet?” Adrian said softly.
“And yet,” Qhall admitted, “it has never been mine.”
He looked at Adrian then not as a threat, not as a rival, but as something almost envious.
“That gives me expertise in minds,” Qhall said. “Not in hearts.”
Adrian’s voice broke despite himself. “Then stay out of his.”
“I can’t,” Qhall said. “Because he is rare. Because he accepts the Dark without needing it to be anything else.”
They stood there, two men bound to the same person by incompatible kinds of love.
Finally, Qhall straightened.
“There is one thing I can offer you,” the tablet said. “A gift.”
Adrian hesitated. “What kind?”
“With Erebus’s assistance,” Qhall said, “Jared can open a shared cognitive channel with you. Not telepathy. Communion. You would feel him as I do.”
Adrian’s breath caught. “You want me to expose my mind.”
“I want you,” Qhall replied, “to stop being blind.”
They regarded each other, neither yielding, neither victorious.
When Qhall finally turned to leave, he paused at the door.
“In the end,” the tablet said softly, “you will have to let him go. How you do that will define what remains between you.”
The door closed behind him.
Adrian stood alone in the hush. Heart heavy. The future pressed in, shapeless, impossible to survive.
Somewhere, distant and close as breath, Jared waited at a threshold Adrian could not cross. Not unless he stepped into the Dark as well.
