The Knight of the Ember Heart
a knight with an ember heart
moves through endless night,
a faint red glow beneath his ribs
his single, stubborn light.he longs for warmth he’ll never touch,
for love the world forgot.
and still his ember flickers on,
a fire bound to ache and not.
The Tragedy of Persius Sinclair
Before legends whispered his name with reverence and fear, he was simply Persius Sinclair, the quiet son of a modest stonecutter in the mountain kingdom of Haldrin. Persius grew up among the echoing quarries and frostbitten ridges, a boy more interested in old tales and lost histories than the hard trade of chisels and hammers. He carried a gentleness that ill-fitted a world built on endurance and iron.But fate rarely concerns itself with what suits a man.When Persius was seventeen, the ground beneath Haldrin split open and exhaled fire. From the deep caverns emerged the ancient Ember Wyrm, a creature of molten scales and living flame, awakened from centuries of slumber. The kingdom’s knights rode to meet the threat, but the mountain swallowed them in an avalanche of ash and stone. In the chaos, Persius-armed with nothing but a lantern and a stubborn streak of curiosity-found himself wandering into the collapsing caverns in search of survivors.Instead, he found the Wyrm.The beast, wounded from its own violent awakening, collapsed before him. Persius expected death, but the creature’s burning eyes lingered on him with something like recognition. It sensed in the young man a rare spark-unshaped, untested, but pure. With its final breath, the Wyrm pressed its blazing brow to Persius’s chest.Fire did not consume him.It chose him.When Persius awoke among the smoldering ruins of Haldrin, a seared sigil pulsed over his heart: a fractured ember glowing beneath the skin like a dying star. His blood ran warm even in the killing frost. In moments of fear or purpose, his veins shimmered with firelight.Thus the people named him:The Knight of the Ember Heart.
The Incurable Curse
The Ember Wyrm did not simply give Persius its power..it bound him to its final wish.What it left behind was a fragment of its soul, a relic of magic older than mankind. Within that ember lived an ancient curse from the gods of winter:“A heart of fire shall never know warmth until warmth is freely given.”The Wyrm had endured millennia with an undying soul and a heart that could not love. When it pressed its essence into Persius, the curse slipped into him as well.And so Persius Sinclair became the knight with the immortal ember heart kept alive, but never entirely whole.
The Doomed Knight
A specific love is required to break the curse:Not love spoken in fear.
Not love born of awe or infatuation.
Not love sparked by heroism or legend.The curse demands the only thing Persius has never received:
Someone who chooses him- the man, not the myth and freely gives their heart to him with no power demanded, no destiny expected.Only then will the ember in his chest cool.
Only then will his heart beat a mortal rhythm again.
Only then will he finally age, live, and die as men are meant to.The love must come to him naturally.The tragedy is that he yearns for it openly, deeply, with a heart made for warmth. Yet the fire in that heart keeps burning away anyone who comes too close.But Persius never blames the people that love him for his heroic demeanor or attarctive stature.
He blames himself for not finding the one his heart could yearn for.
Fire heals all Ruin
Persius had wandered through every season the world still bothered to offer.
Winters that cut like punishment, summers that seared him until the ember inside his ribs throbbed like a wound that refused to close.
Autumns that reminded him everything dies except him, and springs that mocked him with beginnings he could never touch.When a man cannot die, time stops being a river and becomes a cage.
Every village, every kingdom, every face he tried to remember eventually slipped away while he stayed, unchanged, unwanted, unending.I am the leftover. The remainder. The thing the world forgot to bury.He did not weep anymore. Even grief had abandoned him.So he kept moving, dragging his immortality behind him like rusted chains. He walked because walking was the only thing that didn’t hurt more than standing still, at least Kayyan said so.And then he saw him.The one the world would later call the Whispering Ruin.He didn’t look divine, or wicked, or even alive in the traditional sense.
He looked like suffering forced into human shape- wings torn open, light leaking out like something trying to escape him. Wherever he walked, the world flinched.Persius should have turned away.
He had survived wars, monsters, the end of empires, yet this presence made the fire in his chest flicker like fear.But he didn’t turn away.
Because for the first time in centuries, Persius saw someone whose damage didn’t repel him; it recognized him.He is broken in ways I understand. He is a ruin the way I am a ruin.Persius approached, slow and careful.
“Are you… lost?” His voice felt foreign, like it belonged to a man he used to be.The angel didn’t look at him. “I am not yours to follow.”The words weren’t cruel. They were tired. Hollow.He stepped closer. “The world is empty. You make it feel… less so.”
The angel didn’t respond.
Silence settled between them, but for Persius, even silence was a mercy, better than centuries of nothing.He crouched near the torn wings, watching the light drip from them like blood.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.“All the time,” the angel whispered.Persius let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “I know,” he murmured. His entire existence was that sentence.“Then why keep moving?”
“Because to stop is worse.”Persius stared at the ground, jaw tightening. Yes. I know that feeling very well.He didn’t offer comfort. He had none left to give. "I just… want to stand near something that isn’t pretending to be whole.”That earned him a slight shift, the faintest easing in the angel’s shoulders- as if Persius’ brokenness made him less threatening than the living.Persius dared one more step. “Do you have a name?”“No.”“Then take one,” Persius said. “A small one..Vikal.”The angel repeated it softly.
Vikal.
A name like something fading rather than shining.“It suits you,” Persius said. “Light that survives, even if barely.”For a heartbeat, the angel turned his head, gaze falling upon Persius.And for him, who had watched entire civilizations look through him like air, that tiny movement hit like a blow.Maybe this is what he gets.
Not love. Not warmth. Just the permission to exist beside someone who is also dragging their wreckage forward.He didn’t try to fix Vikal.
He didn’t try to touch him.
He didn’t try to hope; that was a luxury burned out of him centuries ago.He simply walked a few steps behind, matching the angel’s pace, feeling something inside his chest shift- not healing, not easing, just… stirring.Maybe ruins can walk together, he thought.
Maybe that is all I’m allowed. Maybe it’s enough.
Impossibly Possible
Persius walked behind Vikal through ruins older than memory. Kingdoms died around them, dust shifting in their wake, yet for the first time in centuries, Persius felt something like purpose settle into his bones.Vikal was not whole. Persius knew it the way he knew the ember burning beneath his ribs, because pain recognizes pain. There were gaps in the angel where light should have been, wounds time didn’t bother to mend. And yet, staying near him made Persius’ ember pulse with a warmth he had forgotten was possible.He had believed eternity was a punishment. A curse to walk alone until someone loved him completely, an impossible and cruel demand. But beside Vikal, the curse felt less like a sentence and more like a path that had finally led somewhere that mattered.Under a colorless sky, Persius spoke quietly. “You don’t have to love me perfectly.”Vikal’s wings shuddered. “I cannot,” he whispered. “There is too much missing in me.”Persius touched the ember beneath his chest. “I don’t need perfect. I only need you. Even if all you can give is this.”Silence hung between them, but it wasn’t empty. Persius had lived long enough to know that some people speak most clearly without words.He placed a hand carefully on Vikal’s shoulder. The angel flinched but didn’t pull away. That tiny allowance felt like a miracle carved out of ash.“I will stay,” Persius said. “Even if this is all I’m allowed to have.”Vikal didn’t answer, but his wings eased by a fraction, and the air warmed just enough to be felt.And Persius thought, with a quiet ache, Then this is enough. More than enough.So he walked on, always a few steps behind, faithful not out of hope but out of devotion, because in a world that had forgotten him, he had finally found someone worth enduring eternity for.
Persius feels the warmth in his chest flare sharply as Vikal leans closer, lips inches apart from that of each other. The ember burning brighter, almost painfully. It surprised him. He isn’t used to wanting anything so badly that the wanting itself aches.Vikal was not built for tenderness; every part of him is made of fractures and old light. When he leans in, it is hesitant, almost confused, as if he is mimicking a gesture he has seen but never learned how to give. Their lips meet, imperfect, unpracticed. The kiss was not graceful, though they moved in harmony. Vikal's lips were cool at first, the aftershock of divine ruin still clinging to him, but beneath that coldness there was be something else, something fragile, flickering, like the ghost of warmth he doesn’t yet understand how to share.Persius felt the broken pieces of Vikal’s soul pressing closer, not fitting neatly, not forming any perfect shape. It was a kiss full of unfinished emotions, of longing that neither of them has the language to express. A kiss that shakes rather than reassures.And when they part, just barely, Persius’ ember would steady again, but brighter. Not because the kiss was perfect, or because it filled the emptiness in him, but because it was real. Because Vikal tried.For someone like Persius, who has walked through a thousand years untouched by true connection, that attempt felt like a miracle made of bruised light.
Basic Info
Admin is 24 ooc. He/Him unless close.
19- DNI. 20+ account.
Open to plots and establishments.
DNI romantically.