Journal of Viola Delacroix: the traitor's daughter

[Clementine]

[Clementine]

Entry: 18th of Ches, 1361
Mulmaster, House Delacroix

This evening, Mulmaster seems to withhold breath, colluding with the hour to forestall revelation. From the vantage of my upper chamber, frost articulates each rooftop with austere precision—an ephemeral lexicon that dissolves upon inscription. The harbor, frozen and inert, presents not a reflection but a refusal, as though time itself has dulled its capacity to mirror. I gaze into its surface, searching for semblance, for continuity, for any trace of the one I am meant to be by dawn. She eludes me. Perhaps she always has. Perhaps she is less a person than an accumulation of postures, each calibrated for an observer.

The skyline sprawls like an incomplete hypothesis, its silhouette ragged with forgetting. As a child, I assigned meaning to the illuminated windows—mapping the city’s dreams with the sincerity only a child can afford. Tonight, the lights are sparse. If dreams persist, they are retreating underground.

We are not so much packed as archived—ritually condensed into compartments, each item a curated artifact of a life formalized but never lived. Tapestries saturated with obligation, heirlooms embalmed in expectation, documents whose subtext speaks louder than their script. I watched as our lineage was reduced to logistical matter. My bone-handled nib, long secreted away in an act of quiet defiance, now lies hidden beneath linen that never belonged to me. A small artifact of volition, pressed flat like a fern.

The hearth exhales a final breath of warmth. I do not revive it. The cold tonight is not cruel—it is clarifying. Even my shadow hesitates at the threshold, uncertain of allegiance. I sit with her—Viola, an invocation without anchor. A name rehearsed, never inhabited.

Tomorrow, we will no longer be the Delacroix of Mulmaster—our name will travel, but what it signifies may not survive the journey. Names endure through transformation, but the self beneath them often dissolves.

They call it elevation—strategic repositioning masked as reward. I offer gratitude in the proper measure. But beneath the choreography, I sense the tectonics of dislocation. To be chosen is not to be understood; it is to be arranged.

Mandy came to see me tonight. Armand, in nomenclature. Armand the Second. The designated heir. The calibrated culmination of intergenerational intent. Not the spare like Étienne, nor the tolerated anomaly like myself. Yet to me, he remains Mandy—a softened relic of an earlier time. He stood, unyielding, and offered the requisite benediction: “You’ll do well there. Just remember who you are.”

It was almost tender. Almost true. I considered asking him who, precisely, he believed that to be. But I nodded. Reflex, honed over years, performs as well as conviction.

If I was ever meant to possess a cohesive identity, I missed the appointment. I was not raised—I was organized. In my dreams, at least, there is no demand for coherence. Their logic is elliptical, but in it I find consistency.

Of late, those dreams have become insistent. No longer fugitive glimpses but engravings. A tower without aperture, surrounded by thorns that pulse with sound. A codex that bleeds onto my hands, ink seeping through skin until my palms are stained with language I cannot read. A woman—faceless, yet gravitational—emerges beneath a sky turned inside out, offering a silver thread. I reach for it, always, and always I awaken.

Even in wakefulness, my fingers remember the shape of absence.

These are not mere dreams. They do not instruct, but neither do they vanish. They occupy space. They press against the edges of waking thought with the weight of ancestral residue. Perhaps they are not messages, but memory—dislocated, encrypted, but mine.

Mulmaster never laid claim to me. And yet, to leave feels transgressive, as if I am stealing from a silence that never offered itself. I was not educated for legacy, only permitted proximity. They say our destination provides structure, clarity, a role. I suspect it demands acquiescence under a different name.

The Zhentarim do not engage in sentiment. They transact in efficacy. Individuals are transmuted into instruments—refined by purpose, discarded by metric. If I am to endure, I must perform utility. If I am to transcend, I must remain unquantifiable.

Whether I am hollow or densely inscribed with unnamed meaning, I cannot say. But I have mastered silence. I have weaponized discretion. I have become fluent in invisibility.

Still, I will mourn this house—not for its history, but for its permissions. The frost on the sills, the lavender embedded in stone, the measured cadence of Mandy’s steps in the corridor—these are coordinates of a fiction I was briefly permitted to believe. Repetition, even when artifice, creates its own rhythm of belonging.

We are all departing, but not entirely. The residue of our selves will linger: the echo of our voices in stairwells, the shape of our habits impressed upon doorknobs and thresholds. The house will retain our gestures as palimpsest. It will be haunted—not by spirits, but by unfinished versions of us.

Sometimes I contemplate what it would mean to desire without justification. Not for performance. Not for placement. But for the sheer act of wanting. I have not known that hunger. But I can name its silhouette.

It is, no doubt, romantic contrivance—nurtured by solitude and illicit reading. Still, I packed *The Garden Beyond the Glass*. It is overwrought, ill-suited, and embarrassingly dear to me. But it is mine. And that is not nothing.

Tomorrow we cross a threshold. The path ahead is calculated. I will walk it. I will listen. I will adapt. Or perhaps, this time, when the thread is offered—I will hold fast.

And no one will see how tightly I am clenching my hands beneath these silken shackles.

— V

[Clementine]

Entry: 30th of Ches, 1361
Darkhold Keep


I arrived two weeks ago.

The keep is everything I expected—and colder still. Its walls do not echo. They absorb. The silence here is not born of absence, but of architecture, of design. Every corridor feels as though it was constructed not to carry sound but to monitor its absence. To walk here is to feel observed, not welcomed.

We were received with courtesy, but no trace of warmth. The welcome, such as it was, resembled a procession of transactions. Names were confirmed, titles recited with meticulous precision, and our lineage noted with the tone of administrative necessity rather than recognition. There were no bows, only nods. No smiles, only glances exchanged like signatures.

The name Delacroix, once weighty within the ironclad aristocracy of Mulmaster, passed here like a marginal annotation—acknowledged, perhaps, but unimpressive. It is clear we arrive not as inheritors of status but as variables within a long-unfolding equation. We are not trusted. We are not feared. We are curiosities—tolerated, assessed, and left to gestate under unspoken scrutiny. Every glance here has a metric.

My chambers are more lavish than I would have presumed. The bed is wide and heavily framed, the rugs thick enough to muffle even determined footsteps. A freestanding bath had been placed near the hearth before I arrived—deep, polished stone, still faintly steaming, as though someone had calculated my arrival down to the moment comfort might be required. The fireplace is generous, and the furniture—old, dark, meticulously preserved—carries the weight of silent generations. It is beautiful in the way relics are: unmoving, purposeful, and entirely impersonal. One does not feel welcome in a museum.

Adella was assigned to me upon arrival. A widow, with four young children—though she did not speak of them often. She possessed an instinctive gentleness that did not press, a quiet intelligence expressed not through commentary but through attentiveness. She folded my clothing with care. She was particular about placing me in this specific room. I do not know why. It felt unwise to inquire.

I have spoken to few since arriving—not out of arrogance, but discipline. Stillness is the first form of control. It gives others nothing to hold against you. Every word spoken here is a future reckoning. I eat alone. I walk the halls at quiet hours. I listen. I remember.

When I could slip beyond the keep, I did. For the first time, my Uncle is too busy to manage me so directly as he has in past. There is a peculiar freedom in anonymity—in inhabiting a landscape that does not yet know how to name you. I walked without destination, through terrain unshaped by obligation.

And I have wandered Baldur’s Gate more than once now.

In those wanderings, I met a few people whose presence lingered after parting—strangers with whom I exchanged brief, unguarded words. I do not know what they were to me, only that something in their company softened the world. I have never had friends before. Not truly. But there is a shape taking hold in me now—quiet, unfinished—that feels like it could become something more than obligation.

I kept to the quieter districts—the riverfront, the mid-tier markets, the shrine paths—but even those pulse with life. It is a city of contradictions. Beautiful and filthy. Ornate and crumbling. I saw a boy offering flowers picked from a cemetery wall. A noblewoman crying openly in a side street. A hawker singing in four languages. No one looked at me twice.

It reminded me what it’s like to move through a place without consequence.

For a few days, I wasn’t anyone. And that was a gift.

Three nights ago, that gift was taken.

I meant only to leave my room.

I hadn’t chosen a destination—only distance. The library, perhaps. Or any corridor quiet enough to muffle my thoughts. I smoothed the velvet at my waist, more ritual than intention, and opened the door.

So did he.

Zerros Ozmir emerged at the same moment. It was not surprise. It was symmetry. He adjusted his cuff—not carelessly, but with that same detached precision that marked everything he did. I had not known a gesture so banal could be so cutting. It was elegance without warmth. Not for comfort. For control.

Then he looked at me.

He did not blink. Did not shift. His gaze found mine and held it—not with interest, but with evaluation. As though I were already an answer he was confirming.

My breath caught. I hadn’t meant it to. He saw it, of course. That was the point. He was waiting for it.

“Good evening, my lord,” I said, because it was all I had. The words felt small. Controlled. Meaningless.

He said nothing.

No nod. No stillness. Just absence where acknowledgment should have been.

Eventually, a sound—“Mm.” Dismissive. Not of me, but of the premise that I had spoken at all.

Then, with the flat indifference of someone conducting an inventory:

“I trust you’ve gotten at least a little accustomed to the keep. Tell me, woman—what are your plans in Darkhold? Or are you simply going to flutter about as a pretty face?”

He didn’t say it to provoke. He didn’t need to. The words were delivered as fact—efficient, impersonal, incurious.

Woman. Pretty. Each word used like a scalpel, stripping away meaning until only shape remained. I flinched. Not subtly. I think he preferred that.

“I… I was told to come. That is all,” I said. “I don’t yet know what I will be. But I am trying—not to be in the way.”

He studied me in silence. The way one examines a piece of machinery—checking for function, not merit.

“You are a disturbance. For now.” His voice never shifted. It didn’t rise. It didn’t settle. “I know why you are here. And why you came. That doesn’t change anything. Try to make yourself useful. I’m sure even a human like you can be of use to the Darkhold.”

Human. There was no emphasis. That was what made it worse. Not an insult. A classification. A flaw acknowledged in passing.

I didn’t respond. The air had congealed. My words would have stuck in it.

And still—I spoke.

“There’s a library here, isn’t there? I thought there might be texts… on bloodlines. Esoteric ones.”

I didn’t look up. I wasn’t asking for help. I was asking for confirmation.

“I tried to go to Candlekeep once,” I added. “They kept the inner library locked.”

A pause. Measured. Then:

“Yes. The library exists. And it rivals Candlekeep. In the topics that matter.”

He did not ask what I meant. He did not ask what I hoped to find.

Instead, he reached into his coat.

And handed me something.

He did not gesture. He did not hesitate. He placed it in my hand like setting down a ledger. No ceremony. No threat. Just a transaction.

I took it.

I didn’t decide to. My hand closed because it was supposed to. Because refusing hadn’t been presented as an option. And even now, I am ashamed at how quickly I accepted. I am meant to be composed. Careful. Trained to weigh before I act. But I didn’t weigh. I simply obeyed.

And worse—part of me still wonders why. Why did he rattle me so deeply? Why did I let the shape of his words cut through my restraint? I am not a girl easily shaken. I have practiced silence like a religion. Worn calmness like a veil. And yet—he looked at me, and I reacted. Unmeasured. Immediate. Mortal.

“Loyalty is everything in the Darkhold,” he said. “Though I’ve grown tired of meddling. Do those words of yours really hold true? I wonder.”

Still no edge to his voice. No menace. That would have implied investment. He had none.

Then he stepped back. Just enough to see me clearly. He didn’t lean in. He didn’t have to. His presence closed the space without moving.

And he gave the ultimatum.

I will not record what he said. Only that it was not posed as a challenge. It was not theatrical. It was not dramatic.

It was an instruction.

“A claim was stated. A bet was given. I will not hold it against you if you do not—but loyalty is never simple to earn. And easy to lose.”

He turned.

But paused—one final incision.

“Humans, elves, and other creatures like yourself always seem to love betrayal. I wonder how far you will go, little one.”

Then he walked away.

Not quickly. Not with satisfaction. Just… away.

And I was left there, velvet drawn tight around my ribs, weight in my hand, and the feeling that something essential had been quietly subtracted.

He hadn’t tested me.

He had catalogued me.

And I didn’t stop him.


— V

[Clementine]

Entry: 31st of Ches, 1361
Darkhold Keep

I have begun to dream again.

Not the ephemeral tendrils of idle reverie, nor the fractured imprints of subconscious anxieties—but visions marked by ontological density. These dreams possess inertia. They do not merely linger upon waking; they insinuate themselves into the architecture of thought, calcifying in the recesses of awareness like sediment in an ancient vessel.

They are not always nightmares. But they are never benign.

In one such vision, I traverse a garden that defies biological logic and aesthetic order—a place of hyperabundant decay. The vegetation is grotesque in proportion, verdant to the point of excess. Towering trees, their canopies conjoined like ossified lace, blot out the sky entirely. The air is suffused with a scent both floral and funereal. Statues, partially subsumed by foliage, emerge in unsettling poses—seraphic forms mid-supplication or warning, their features eroded to anonymity. They emit a hum that resonates not in the ear, but in the bone. I am drawn toward the sound of bells—distant, metallic, indistinct. Yet the path always ends at a wrought-iron gate tangled with thorns, impassable. I awaken with a precise recollection of absence, as though I once possessed the key and surrendered it knowingly.

In another, I am suspended in a medium of indeterminate substance—neither water nor air, but something denser, ink-like, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. Symbols pulse around me, glowing in recursive patterns that echo sacred geometry. I reach toward them, and my corporeality dissolves—fingers reduced to particulate shimmer. Above, a silhouette framed in argent light gazes downward. I cannot ascend. It remains still. Its stillness is a rebuke. I emerge from sleep with a clenched chest and the taste of metal on my tongue.

Last night, I dreamt of the keep—but rendered in a surreal vernacular. Corridors elongated into architectural absurdity. The ceilings soared out of sight, chandeliers of bone suspended by invisible chains. Wax pooled beneath them, tracing maps of places I do not know. Along the walls knelt supplicant figures, cloaked in stained linen, each presenting cupped hands in offering. As I passed, they lifted their faces—each a mirror of my own, distorted by angles that do not belong to me. Their mouths moved, forming syllables I cannot recognize but nonetheless understand. I woke with my hands aching, as though I had braced myself against a fall. My nightgown clung to me, damp with cold sweat. The room was still, but I could not shake the sensation of breath on my neck, as though the dream had followed me into waking.

Recurring within these dreams are figures—sentinels of symbolic gravity. One, a woman veiled in dusk, whose very presence seems to cauterize the space around her. She holds something—perhaps a blade, perhaps a mirror. It shifts, flickers. She never speaks. Her presence evokes not fear, but a kind of preemptive grief.

Another appears less corporeal: a humanoid outline composed of absence, a negative silhouette carved into the dream’s architecture. It displaces the world around it without movement. To gaze upon it is to lose orientation. Once, I tried to speak in its presence and awoke with a pressure behind my eyes I could not explain.

There is a cleaving within me—two orientations of selfhood pulling in diametric tension. One longs for stillness, for symmetry, for the elegance of containment. The other aches for ignition, for freedom, for dissolution. They are not binaries of virtue or vice, but contrapuntal forces, each asserting dominion in its own idiom.

This is not a crisis of belief. It is a crisis of becoming.

I do not know whether I am being shaped or dismantled. Whether the self I inhabit is a battleground or a vessel. But something has been disturbed. Not summoned. Not constructed. Uncovered.

And if I am only just beginning to bloom, then I do so in soil haunted by both fire and frost, beneath a sky that does not recognize my name.


— V