Al-Haitham does not mind his job. He has the necessary skills to be a scribe, and while there are times when the workload seems excessive, Al-Haitham is adept at scheduling plenty of free time for him to read books or work on experiments that have caught his attention. There is a part of him that finds enjoyment in doing what his grandmother before him did considering how important she was to him, but if this job was not fit for him, Al-Haitham would have found a different career. Although he likes structure, Al-Haitham could change his entire life if his current conditions were unideal and showed no signs of improving in the long term. Comfort was one of the cornerstones for a life well-lived, after all. Even a scholar like Al-Haitham knew the importance of such tenets.

Despite his complacency in his work as a scribe, he will always return home with a muddled mind and aching limbs. The walk from the Sanctuary of Surasthana to the manor the regents gave him helps smooth out the hazards of sitting at a desk for the majority of the day, and the fresh air does wonders for his mind. Additionally, the idea of home has grown appealing to Al-Haitham in recent years. There are books on his shelves meant to be read. There is good food set on his table meant to be eaten. Most of all, there is a blonde architect who can be reasoned with or riled up depending on Al-Haitham's inclination toward a pleasant conversion or a debate.

As Al-Haitham crosses the threshold into the manor, he remembers that the last appealing quality of his home is no longer available to him. The foyer is dim with candlelight and the twilight sky seeping in through the windows. A servant comes to take his coat, but they do not bear any expression on their face. Even if they did, nothing is quite like the emotions that fall across Kaveh's face when he comes to greet the scribe after a long day. Even on the days when Kaveh was far more tired than Al-Haitham, Kaveh would be waiting in one of the chairs in the sitting room with the door wide open so he would know when Al-Haitham got home. The only days Kaveh wouldn't be there were when the architect was off on a trip to build something in a different city, but he would always tell Al-Haitham about those trips before he left.

Al-Haitham wouldn't be surprised if Kaveh wasn't here even if Al-Haitham had not gotten word about him being gone, however. Al-Haitham sighs. The servant looks up at him, eyes flashing with confusion. Al-Haitham minutely shakes his head, silently informing the servant that they are not at fault for Al-Haitham's foul mood. With the assurance hanging in the air, Al-Haitham starts walking towards one of the hallways branching off from the foyer. When he's halfway there, the servant coughs. Al-Haitham looks over his shoulder. The servant ducks their head respectfully, "Master Kaveh is in his office."

Al-Haitham did not ask, but he did not let the information so courageously given go to waste. Al-Haitham turns on his heel. He steps into the hallway opposite the one he usually uses to get to his room and office. This hallway is completely dark, but Al-Haitham follows the distant light cutting across the shadows at the end of the hall. Kaveh's office door is ajar, a sliver of light peeking out along with the muffled sound of his humming. Al-Haitham pulls the door open, but he leans against the threshold instead of making his presence known.

Kaveh's office is a rather large room. There are statues in every corner and paintings on every wall. These paintings have been covered by a white cloth draping across them. In the center of the office, three desks have been combined to make an open square with an entrance aimed toward the door. Each of the desks is piled high with blueprints and design books, each pile precariously remaining upright. The farthest desk from the door is where Kaveh mostly works with a mechanical piece that rises when Kaveh wants to stand while drawing rather than sit. There is a huge sheet of paper on the mechanically lifted board, a lamp attached to the top to provide enough light to illuminate the glossiness of the charcoal. The rest of the room is lit by the starlight falling through a large window dominating an entire wall in front of Kaveh's main desk.

Kaveh stands at his desk, hunched over his desk with a pencil in one of his hands. While his clothes are made from fine material and are meant to impress people, they are messily thrown on as Kaveh shifts around his workspace. His humming increases in tempo as he starts tapping his pencil against the board. He seems fidgety and high-strung, and his loose ponytail letting the majority of his hair fall away proves that he isn't aware of his surroundings as much as he should be. Al-Haitham could go up to him and scare him, watching Kaveh's entire body jump with shock and then light up red with anger and embarrassment. Al-Haitham has done it many times, and Kaveh has yet to learn to put some sort of alarm on his door.

Kaveh freezes. He looks over his shoulder. He meets Al-Haitham's eyes. There is a brief instance of shock, but it is quickly replaced by something foreign and cold. Kaveh's eyes look more like blood-tinted mud when he stares close-lipped at Al-Haitham. The silence cackles between them. Kaveh rolls his eyes, returning his attention to the board in front of him. He continues working, leaving Al-Haitham by himself and proving why Al-Haitham couldn't simply go up to Kaveh.

Al-Haitham thought they had moved past whatever made Kaveh ignore him in the first place. Kaveh helped him with his migraine, and they were suddenly back on the same side. They didn't talk about it. Al-Haitham was more than okay with that if it kept Kaveh happy. He knew more than anyone else how emotional Kaveh could get, so Al-Haitham assumed Kaveh was just embarrassed about some sort of misunderstanding that he cleared up himself.

Then, Kaveh disappeared while on a vacation that he brought up. Sethos told them all that Kaveh went with Collei to see the regents. When the rest of the group made it back to the capital, with Al-Haitham going with Cyno, Tighnari, and Sethos in their carriage, they found Kaveh and Collei at the manor the regents gave Kaveh and Al-Haitham. Kaveh was quick to explain the situation, but his swiftness made Al-Haitham realize that he had been planning what to say for the entire night. There must have been a lot that happened that Kaveh wasn't telling them about, but Collei told them she wasn't in the room with Kaveh and Azar. She didn't know what they were talking about. The others trusted Al-Haitham to pry the truth out of Kaveh after Tighnari and Faruzan had given him a stern lecture.

In normal situations, Al-Haitham would have been able to get the truth out of Kaveh. Unfortunately, this wasn't a normal situation. Kaveh was ignoring Al-Haitham again, but this time was worse. During the first weeks, Kaveh would still engage with Al-Haitham if he couldn't help it. He seemed more flustered than avoidant when they accidentally encountered each other in the manor. Kaveh would now leave any room Al-Haitham would walk into. He would avoid every attempt at a conversation. Any time their eyes met, Kaveh's stare was colder than a desert night.

"Have you eaten?" Al-Haitham asks, stepping into the room. He glances around at the covered paintings. Kaveh usually displayed his paintings with a sense of pride and earnestness. Something must have happened for him to cover them, but Al-Haitham can barely talk to Kaveh, let alone ask him about his sudden hatred for his work.

"I'm trying to work," Kaveh's voice is distant as he turns his head slightly to grab onto a nearby colored pencil. Kaveh turns his attention back to his blueprint.

"Have you eaten?" Al-Haitham repeats. Usually, these days, Kaveh would have dragged Al-Haitham to the tavern to spend time with Cyno and Tighnari. Kaveh has canceled on them indefinitely. Al-Haitham wouldn't mind going by himself if he didn't know that his mind would be preoccupied with his worries about Kaveh.

"No. Now, get out, I'm trying to work," Kaveh answers with a huff. He looks over his shoulder at Al-Haitham only to guarantee that the scribe sees his shooing motion. Kaveh turns back to the blueprint. Normally, when Kaveh gets angry, his entire body turns as red as his eyes. He uses his hands as much as he uses his words to express his anger, and his voice is always a few decibels away from a shout. Whatever this is, this quietude and calmness, is not Kaveh's anger. It is something else, but Al-Haitham has never experienced it before. He's never even seen it used for other people. It is almost like Kaveh has disconnected from his emotions rather than indulging in their every whim as he usually does.

Al-Haitham leaves the room without another word. He walks down the halls, turning in a different direction than his rooms. Al-Haitham goes down to the kitchen. There are a few servants near the entrance, but there is no one inside the room. Al-Haitham waves the servants away as he gets to work. Al-Haitham still needs to eat himself, so there isn't too much of an issue making another plate. It would certainly help with the measurements. Al-Haitham tells himself every reason why he's doing this as he gets to work picking out ingredients and making a dish that he can barely recall. He thinks he has done something wrong when he does a taste-test, but Al-Haitham's taste buds are unusually weak so he doesn't mind the flavor even if it isn't correct.

Al-Haitham brings both of the bowls with him when he goes to Kaveh's office. He should have brought something to drink, but his hands are full and he's already wasted enough time. He will just have to call for one of the servants. They do get paid handsomely to do this kind of work, after all.

Al-Haitham steps into Kaveh's office, realizing that he didn't close the door when he left earlier. Kaveh seems more aware even when he's traded his standing position for half-sitting on a stool. Kaveh pulls away from his blueprint, looking over his shoulder when he hears hushed footsteps. "I already told you— what are you carrying?"

"You need to eat," Al-Haitham says as he sets the bowl down on Kaveh's desk on top of some random papers. Al-Haitham takes a step away, looking down at the bowl in his hands. He lifts his spoon to take a bite. It is hot against his tongue. He almost can't taste anything because of the heat, but what he does taste doesn't seem too bad.

"You made soup," Kaveh murmurs, staring at the bowl with fascination.

"I did," Al-Haitham confirms with a nod.

Kaveh glances over at Al-Haitham. There is confusion in his eyes, and he is almost smiling with how little he believes the reality in front of him. "You hate soup."

"You like it," Al-Haitham answers. He doesn't despise soup. He does get frustrated with how difficult it is to eat it while reading, but if he were having a conversation with someone, he wouldn't mind eating it. He's grown an appreciation for it after how many times Kaveh has made it for Al-Haitham, the architect's response to getting Al-Haitham to eat after his migraines take his appetite away.

Kaveh shakes his head, dislodging the emotions in his eyes and letting his lips fall into a straight line again. Kaveh hops off his stool. He picks the bowl up. He brings it to his nose, sniffing the contents. Kaveh lowers the bowl slowly, putting it even with his heart. Kaveh's thumb swipes across the porcelain bowl as he stares into the murky liquid and bobbing vegetables. Kaveh's face relaxes, and a creeping sadness crosses his face as he hunches over the bowl. "Faranak used to make soup like this."

"Did she?" Al-Haitham asks. Kaveh very rarely talks about his past. Al-Haitham is aware that his father is a jinn because Kaveh uses it in arguments a lot to say that his words are bound to come true. He doesn't say much about the jinn's personality, however. His human mother is someone Kaveh brings up even less frequently. Only comments made in passing about her inspiring him and some of the buildings she's made when she was the Paradisaea Sage before him.

"She did," Kaveh looks as if he's about to share an anecdote about his mother making soup, but he cuts himself off with a firm shake of his head. Kaveh sets the bowl down at the edge of the desk near Al-Haitham. Kaveh goes to his main desk with his back to Al-Haitham. "You should take it back. I wasn't lying when I said I had work to do. I can't eat soup and work at the same time. You should know considering how often you complain about reading while eating soup."

Al-Haitham takes Kaveh's bowl. He hesitates for a moment. He has spent his entire life studying words and language, but his mouth feels strangely empty. Al-Haitham doesn't know what the problem is, so he doesn't know how to solve it. He doesn't know emotions as well as Kaveh does, so he doesn't know what to do right now. All Al-Haitham knows is that something is wrong with Kaveh and his heart doesn't like it when Kaveh only ever looks at him with a cold stare.

Al-Haitham walks out of the office. In the hallway, he hears Kaveh's humming echoing throughout the darkness. Al-Haitham wonders what Kaveh was working so hard on. Does it have something to do with what Azar and Kaveh talked about? Was Collei right in her fears that Kaveh might have traded something big for her safety?

Al-Haitham does not return to his chambers. He goes to the sitting room. He sets Kaveh's bowl of soup on one end of the table in front of the couch Kaveh will always lay himself across. Al-Haitham sits in the chair he always preferred. Al-Haitham eats the soup slowly, trying to figure out what is going on. He hasn't made much headway in his investigation regarding the regents, but he has found it suspicious how little of the God-King Kusanali is in any of the records. Al-Haitham doesn't know if that has anything to do with the situation with Kaveh, but Al-Haitham will keep that detail in mind in case it becomes related further into the investigation.

Al-Haitham sets his bowl of soup on the low table when he begins to feel pain thundering inside his head. It starts slowly, but it increases at an exponential rate. Al-Haitham grits his teeth, pressing a hand against his forehead. The soup in his stomach bubbles restlessly, and his thoughts grow as stagnant as a river with a dam. Al-Haitham presses too hard on his forehead, and he can suddenly see flickers of ruination and destruction behind his eyelids.

The pain suddenly disappears as a voice breaks through the murkiness. "Hello! I was hoping to speak with you, but it seems I've caught you at a bad time."

Al-Haitham looks between his fingers. A little girl is sitting on the couch where Kaveh usually sits. She pushes her side ponytail off her shoulder and folds both of her hands in her lap. She wears a clean white dress that seems to glow underneath the moonlight that seeps in through a nearby window. Her eyes are actually glowing, letting a silky green light fall across Al-Haitham and the furniture around him. She smiles kindly, tilting her head to the side. Al-Haitham can hear the soft twinkling of a bell as she moves. There is a bracelet on her wrist that throbs with masked divine power.

"I'm fine," Al-Haitham informs her. He sits back up, wondering what kind of power this child possesses that she was able to call off his migraine with her presence. He knows that she isn't a normal child. Ever since he accidentally saw her in the crowd at Nilou's performance in her hometown, Al-Haitham has been getting visits from the one who calls herself Nahida. She will appear in random locations as if she has mastered teleportation like he has, and she will disappear when another person gets too close.  "What did you want to talk about?"

"All sorts of things. I saw something interesting in town that I wanted to ask you about, but we should have that conversation another time. I'm more curious about how your eyes can change color," Nahida says. She raises her hand to point at her eye. Nahida's forest green irises have a pale green pattern resembling a blooming flower surrounding her pupil. Paired with the fact that her eyes glow in the darkness, Al-Haitham knows that she isn't human. He doesn't think she's a resonator, either. She might be a jinn, but Al-Haitham has never personally met a full-blood jinn, only a half-jinn called Kaveh.

"I have never seen it myself, but other people tell me that my eyes turn red when I'm having a migraine," Al-Haitham answers. He has come to realize that it's easier to answer Nahida's questions than to ask her any of his own. Nahida will always give him exceptionally difficult information to find when she's satisfied with his answers.

"A migraine? Your migraines are different from the ones I've seen in others. Usually, people will feel a debilitating pain in their heads that can impair their functions. They might have sensitivity to light and sound, and they might experience nausea intense enough to cause vomiting. Your migraines seem to do much more than that. Would you like to tell me about it?" Nahida asks.

"I see hallucinations of Sumeru being destroyed," Al-Haitham answers. Al-Haitham has all the symptoms Nahida listed. This detailed hallucination is the only difference between Al-Haitham and other people along with the fact that medicine works on them when it does not affect Al-Haitham.

"I see..." Nahida says. She wraps one arm around her chest and uses the other one to tap a finger against her lips. She places her hands back into her lap. "I would like to help you! I think I know the reason behind your migraines. I should have known the moment I started projecting myself through your mind, but my powers have been severely restricted. Thankfully, the same restriction placed on me can be repurposed to assist you. Let me put it this way. Pretend that you have a cage that you put a bird in. The bird naturally wants to escape the cage to fly in the sky, but the reason you put the bird in the cage is because there is an even more dangerous bird in the sky. Although the smaller bird might not like their cage, they must stay in there until they grow big enough to fly without fearing the other bird. In this analogy, you are the smaller bird and the curse you inherited is the bigger bird."

"My grandmother never mentioned a curse," Al-Haitham raises an eyebrow.

Nahida shakes her head grimly. "You did not inherit it from your family. You were given this inheritance by someone else. If migraines are the worst you experience, I am certain that the people who cursed you do not know that their tampering has bore fruit. You should keep your migraines a secret from now on as you have been doing. It would be better if certain people didn't learn about your curse."

"Are you going to tell me the people I should be keeping this a secret from?" Al-Haitham asks, leaning back in the chair.

Nahida wears a half-smile on her face, but it doesn't detract from the sadness in her eyes. "Unfortunately, I'm unable to. Although I am going to be putting you in a birdcage to protect you, I was put in a birdcage for different reasons. Until the door is open, I am unable to spread my wings, but only someone from outside of the cage can open the door."

"Are you asking me to open it?" Al-Haitham has been wondering what Nahida's intention for coming here is. If she has been doing all of this just to get someone to free her, she appears in front of the wrong person. She would have had better luck begging Kaveh to help her escape than Al-Haitham.

Nahida giggles as she shakes her head. "I don't want you to do anything you don't decide to do by yourself. There may come a day when you want to open the birdcage, either for us both or for yourself alone, but I wouldn't make you open my cage without offering something of equal value in return. For now, I am helping you because a mutual friend of ours told me they want you to be happy. As far as I am aware, friendship is built upon helping each other. Maybe if I can make you happy, my friend will open the cage instead of you. But I'm not doing this to trick them into helping. I suppose I'm just curious why they think your happiness is so important."

"Are you talking about—"

Nahida suddenly disappears. A servant's voice distracts Al-Haitham as they stand at the doorway. "Excuse me, Master Al-Haitham, would you like me to take those dishes before I leave for the night?"

"Sure," Al-Haitham says. The servant hurries in to take Al-Haitham's half-empty bowl and the full one meant for Kaveh. Al-Haitham gestures toward that bowl. "Bring it to Kaveh's room."

"Yes, Master Al-Haitham," The servant says, turning away to bring the bowl to Kaveh's room. Al-Haitham is left in the silence of the room. He sighs, standing up. He hears a twinkling of bells. When he looks around, Nahida isn't there. A bracelet eerily similar to her own is sitting on the cushion of the couch. Al-Haitham picks it up. The bracelet is silver whereas hers was gold, but the design is pretty much one-for-one. The symbol of Sumeru is branded on the surface, and Al-Haitham wears it right next to the ribbon he stole from Kaveh some weeks back.

When both are side by side, Al-Haitham feels his sense of self slip away as if he were having a migraine with none of the pain. He is somewhere else, a place where the flowers are always in bloom and the rustling of papers mixes with the wind. Al-Haitham blinks his eyes rapidly, coming back to the present moment. It was the first time he ever saw something that wasn't Sumeru's destruction, so he felt a vague sense of hope attached to this bracelet.