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Chapter Text

October 14, 2018

The air in the alley smelled of wet garbage and despair, a grim scent Peter Parker knew all too well.

Above him, a broken fire escape hung like a mangled skeleton, mirroring the grating protest of splintered bone
he felt with every shallow, ragged breath. The fight had been brutal, a senseless ambush by a C-list villain with
more power than sense and one very lucky shot. Now, a forge fire burned in his abdomen, the stab wound stealing
his strength and flooding his veins with a chilling weakness. He was too far from help, too weak to call.

As he collapsed against the grimy brick, his Spider-Sense faded to a faint tingle, drowned out by the all-consuming
cold of impending death. Too young, his mind screamed. He thought of May’s smile, of MJ’s knowing eyes, of Ned’s
infectious laugh.

He wasn’t ready to let go. He couldn’t leave them. That desperate will to live was a final, defiant roar in his soul.

From the deepest shadows of the alley, a figure emerged, impossibly still. Tall and gaunt, it moved without a sound,
its presence a chill far deeper than the concrete he lay on.

The figure knelt beside him, its pale face a mask of serene, ancient sadness. Peter’s vision was a swim
of colors, but he was captured by the stranger's eyes—a pair of ancient, melancholy pools that seemed
to reflect his own terror back at him.

When it spoke, its voice was a soft, dry whisper, devoid of all emotion, like the rustle of dead leaves on
a forgotten tombstone. It was a voice that sounded as if it had not been used in centuries.

“You are afraid,” it said. “Too afraid to live, and yet... too afraid to die.”

Peter's vision blurred. He couldn't speak, but his desperate will to live for May, MJ, and Ned was a silent roar
in his soul.

The Nightwalker’s ancient, melancholy eyes seemed to look past Peter’s broken body and into his very spirit.
It sensed the unique quality of his desperation.

"But your fear... it is not for yourself, the being observed, its expression shifting with a flicker of something —
a profound, ancient curiosity. "You do not cling to this life out of a terror of the void. You cling to it for others.
Your spirit... it is not of our kind. It is too full of... light. Of purpose."

The ancient being, Cassian, considered the dying boy before him. A standard, permanent turning on such a spirit
would be an exceptional cruelty, a cage that could not possibly hold.

"The Night Path does not usually take a soul such as yours, he stated. "The sorrow would break you,
or you would break it. But you are dying. I will offer you our gift, a way to hold onto your life.
But the offer will be a temporary one."

He leaned closer, his voice the only thing in Peter's fading world.

“Walk our Path for one year of your mortal world's time. Endure its quiet and its sorrow.
If, at the end of that year, your spirit still wishes to return to the sun, the process can be undone.
For you, and you alone. You will be restored. But you must survive the year as one of us. That is the price.”

It was not a choice. It was the only choice. In the last flicker of his consciousness, Peter Parker accepted
the impossible terms.

The Nightwalker's expression of serene sadness did not change. “Fear not the Night Path,” he whispered,
the words a strange, cold comfort. “For we shall walk it with you.”

With the offer made, it placed a hand on Peter’s forehead. The touch was absolute cold, a void that seeped
past skin nd bone and into his very soul. A low, mystic hum resonated in the air, and the white-hot agony
in his gut vanished, replaced by a strange, hollow ache.

The Nightwalker then produced a small, obsidian knife. A prick to its own finger produced three drops of blood,
a fluid as dark as ink. “By blood it is done.” The blood fell onto Peter's wounds. A blinding flash of mystic energy,
a wave of cold that was both paralyzing and invigorating, washed over Peter. He felt his wounds, moments before
life-threatening, knitting themselves together. The crushing pain receded, replaced by a strange, hollow ache
deep in his soul. He tried to speak, to ask what was happening, but his words were caught in a throat that
no longer needed to breathe. His heart fell silent.

The Nightwalker held out a hand. He now spoke not with his lips, but directly into Peter’s mind, a thought
without a voice, now that Peter could hear their true language. Rise, Brother. And walk with us.

Chapter Text

The world Peter Parker had known was gone, replaced by a silent, sharp-edged reality of shadow and sorrow.
He stood in the alley, the cold hand of his sire, Cassian, a final, tangible link to the moment of his un-making.

This world is no longer yours in the same way, Cassian’s thought resonated in the new, vast silence of Peter’s mind.
It is time you met your family.

The world dissolved into a sensation of a silent, cold plunge through the seams of reality. When his senses reasserted themselves,
Peter was no longer in the grimy New York alley. He was standing in the roofless nave of a ruined, ancient abbey in the Scottish Highlands,
the stars like a cold, diamond dust above them.

They are coming, Cassian’s thought explained. It is the way. They come to welcome every new soul to the Path.

Peter looked around at the empty arches and deep shadows, confused. Then, he saw it. A shadow in a far corner deepened,
and from it stepped a figure, as silent and as pale as the moonlight. Then another, from the darkness of a collapsed archway.
He heard a faint, soundless whisper of movement above him and looked up. Against the full moon, dark silhouettes were descending,
landing with the impossible grace and silence of falling feathers on the high, crumbling walls of the abbey. Some arrived by flying,
their forms gliding on the currents of the night, while others simply coalesced from the darkest corners of the ruins.
One by one, or in small, silent groups, they arrived.

Within an hour, the ruins were filled with the silent, still forms of the brotherhood. There were over a thousand of them,
faces of every nationality from all history, a silent, sorrowful host gathered to greet their newest member. All of them dressed
in clothes from different ages, but all of them wore dark hooded travelers cloaks.

The welcoming was not a celebration. It was a shared, formal acknowledgment of a shared, terrible burden.
One by one, they approached him to introduce themselves not just with names, but with the stories of their pain.

A young girl who looked no older than sixteen stepped before him. Brother, she resonated. And with the thought,
Peter felt a flash of a bloody clearing in the Ohio wilderness and the prolonged, terrible sound of screams he felt in his very soul.

A young kind-faced African American woman with a gentle, anxious spirit was next. Brother, she offered and Peter
felt a wave of quiet, lifelong fear and the final, sharp, surprising sting of a knife in a dark alley.

An ancient woman, her sorrow as vast and as patient as the dust of the Gobi desert, acknowledged him. Brother.
He felt the biting wind on the Great Wall of China and the profound, two-thousand-year-old ache of a love buried beneath stone.

The procession continued for what felt like an eternity. With each silent greeting, another soul’s defining tragedy was imprinted
upon his own.

He felt the pure, innocent faith of a boy from the Children’s Crusade, curdle into faith-shattering despair.

He felt the guilt of a Crusader knight who had followed his hero-king into damnation.

He felt the apocalyptic sorrow of a Taino boy who had watched his entire world be erased.

He met them all.

A Roman soldier.

An Alexandrian scholar.

A mother from Hiroshima.

An Aztec priest.

And finally, two Elves of mythic age approached. One, a woman of majestic, queenly sorrow, greeted him. Brother.
And he felt the grief for a lost, primordial light, and the pain of a great love that had burned down a golden age.

The other, a dark and handsome elf, stepped forward. Brother. And Peter felt… nothing. A profound, hollow emptiness.
The cold, dead ashes of a soul that had been completely consumed by its own hate long ago.

When the last of them had greeted him and receded back into the assembly, Peter was trembling. He was no longer just Peter Parker,
a boy with his own single tragedy. His soul was now a library, its shelves groaning under the weight of the collected sorrows
of his entire, ancient, and heartbreaking family.

Cassian had produced a dark travel cloak and draped it over Peter. His final thought was a quiet confirmation of his new state.
Now you know us, Brother. Now you understand the weight we all carry. The Night Path is yours to walk.

But through the storm of inherited grief, one memory, his own, kept fighting its way to the surface: the image of a warm,
brightly lit apartment in Queens. The face of his Aunt May.

Cassian felt the pull of this memory. The first lesson had to be given. It was the cruelest, and the most necessary.

Your mind is still bound to the living, Brother, Cassian’s thought resonated, ancient and uncompromising.
That is first chain you must break. You are dead to the mortal world. And because you are dead, you must sever all ties.

Forget them? Peter sent back. I can’t. They’re the reason I wanted to live.

And that is precisely why the memory is a poison to you now, Cassian replied. To remember the warmth is to feel
the eternal cold all the more keenly. The kindest act, the only true act of love left for you to give her, is your absence.
Your silence. You must sever the tie. I will show you.

The world dissolved and reformed. They were hovering in the cold, upper air of New York City. They stopped,
unseen ghosts, across the street from a familiar apartment building in Queens. A single window was warmly lit.
His window. He could see her inside, a silhouette of worry.

The longing he felt was not a hot, desperate yearning. It was a cold, hollow ache. He was a ghost at her window.

With an act of will that was the most painful thing he had ever done, he turned his back on the window,
and on the life he had left behind. The first, and cruelest, cut had been made.

His first, long night was over. His true exile had begun.

Chapter Text

The first phone call came at 3:17 AM. Tony Stark was already awake, as he usually was, sketching out
a new thruster design in his holographic lab. When his personal line, the one reserved only for the most urgent
calls, rang, his gut clenched. It was May.

He answered, his voice trying for casual confidence, but a flicker of dread already taking root. “May? Everything alright?
You usually call before dawn if you need a ride to a bake sale.”

There was no witty retort from May. Only a raw, choked sound, a strangled sob that tore through
Tony’s attempted calm like a rusty nail.

“Tony… he’s not here.” Her voice was thin, ragged, barely a whisper of sound. “He’s not here. I waited up.
He always comes home. He always texts. He’s not here. His bed hasn’t been slept in. I called his phone,
it just went straight to voicemail.”

Tony’s holographic schematics vanished. The dread solidified into a cold, hard knot in his stomach.
“Okay, May, okay. Deep breaths. Where is he supposed to be? Patrol? Ned’s? MJ’s? Did he just crash
somewhere after a big fight?” He was already typing, bringing up Peter’s last known GPS ping from
the Spider-Man suit.

“No!” May’s voice cracked, rising in a thin wail that was pure, visceral panic. “He was supposed to be
home hours ago. I called Ned, I called MJ. No one’s seen him since yesterday afternoon at school.
His phone… it’s been off since then. I went to the precinct, Tony, they just… they just said they’d
put out an APB. They said it’s too early.”

“It’s never too early,” Tony growled, his voice losing all pretense of calm. The GPS ping from the suit was old,
from earlier yesterday. Nothing recent. His hands flew across the holographic keyboard, bringing up traffic cams,
public security feeds, anything that might have caught a glimpse of red and blue.

“I checked the usual patrol routes, May. Nothing. No alerts, no calls for Spider-Man assistance,”
he lied, trying to keep her from spiraling. He was already sending a coded alert to FRIDAY to deploy
all available drones, to start a grid search of Queens. His own suit was already powering up in the background.

“I went to the alley, Tony,” May confessed, her voice thick with unshed tears. “The one… the one
near that warehouse, where he got hurt last year. There was nothing. Just… wet garbage.”

Tony closed his eyes for a split second, a single, horrifying image flashing through his mind: Peter,
lying broken in an alley. He pushed it down. No. Not again. Not this time.

“May, listen to me,” Tony said, his voice firm, projecting a confidence he absolutely did not feel.
“I’m on it. I’m putting everything I have on it. Every satellite, every drone, every pair of eyes.
I’ll find him. He’s probably just being a dumb kid, got stuck somewhere, lost his phone, whatever.”

He knew it was a lie. Peter was never just “stuck somewhere” for this long without contact.

“Go to sleep, May,” he ordered, already pulling on the first pieces of his Iron Man suit.
“Try to. I’ll call you the second I have anything. I promise.”

He ended the call, the sound of May’s ragged sobs echoing in the sudden silence of his lab.
He slammed his fist onto the console, a silent, furious roar tearing from his throat.

“FRIDAY!” he barked, his voice sharp and cold with dread. “Global sweep. Prioritize urban environments.
Bring up every recorded instance of anything that looks like a web-line in the last twenty-four hours.
Call Rhodey. Call Banner. Call Cap. Get the jet ready. Peter Parker is missing.”

The search had begun.

Chapter Text

The first long night of Peter’s new existence was ending. After the Welcoming, after the agonizing, silent farewell
to his old life from across the street in Queens, his sire Cassian had led him away. Not across the continent,
but up, to a high high point in the city that was no longer his home. They stood on the roof of a silent skyscraper
in the financial district.

The eastern sky was beginning to bleed from black into a soft, bruised purple.

To the boy Peter had been, this was a familiar sight, a sign that his long night of patrol was over,
that it was time to go home. But he had no home now, and the coming of the light was no longer a promise of rest.

The sun is not for us, Brother, Cassian’s thought resonated, as calm and as patient as an ancient stone.
It is a memory of a life we no longer lead. It is your second lesson.

Peter, still grappling with the first, looked at the horizon. His scientific mind, a stubborn relic, was full of questions.
What does it do? Burn us?

No, Cassian replied, a note of ancient sadness in his thought. It is worse. It will remind you of what you are not.
It is a great, warm, and living thing, and we are cold and un-living. Its light is a weight. An anchor. You must
find a deep shadow, and soon.

But Peter, transfixed by the majestic sight of dawn breaking over the East River, did not move. He watched as the first,
brilliant sliver of the sun crested the horizon, its light glinting off the glass and steel of a thousand windows.

The first ray of true sunlight touched his pale skin.

It was not a searing pain. It was a profound, crushing heaviness. The light, effortless body he had only just inherited
was suddenly a prison of lead. It felt as if gravity had tripled its hold on him, dragging him down, rooting him
to the rooftop. His limbs became sluggish, his thoughts syrupy.

The warmth on his skin was a bizarre and alien sensation against his internal cold. The light was a physical assault
on his night-attuned eyes, reducing the magnificent skyline to a painful, blinding glare. The vibrant, life-giving energy
of the sun was a direct and hostile contradiction to his new, sorrowful nature, and it felt like the light itself was trying
to push him down, to suffocate the cold, quiet echo that he now was.

He cried out, but his vocal cords only produced a dry, rasping sound. He stumbled and fell to his hands and knees
on the rooftop, weak, clumsy, and utterly vulnerable under the vast, open sky. He finally understood.

A cold, strong hand grasped his arm, easily pulling him to his feet and guiding him into the absolute, deep shadow
cast by a massive water tower. The moment the darkness enveloped him, the crushing weight vanished. He was light
and effortless again. The contrast was stark and terrifying.

He now understood the boundaries of his new existence. The day, with all its warmth and vibrant life,
was a hostile territory.

Do not despair, Cassian’s thought came, a quiet comfort in the gloom. The day is fleeting.
It is always dark in some part of the world. And it is always dark, deep beneath this city. Come, Brother.
I will show you one of our sanctuaries. Tonight, when the sun is gone, your lesson in flight will begin.

Chapter Text

Cassian led him from the rooftop and down, into the city’s hidden depths. They entered through a heavy, steel maintenance
hatch that groaned with the protest of a century of disuse. The world above, now bright and filled with the growing roar
of morning traffic, faded away, replaced by a cool, subterranean darkness and the scent of damp earth and old iron.

They descended a series of rickety ladders and walked through forgotten maintenance tunnels, their silent footfalls
the only sound in the deep, profound quiet. For Peter, who had only ever known the city as a vibrant, noisy, and living thing,
this journey into its silent, secret underbelly was a revelation.

After a long walk through the blackness, they emerged from a narrow tunnel onto a wide, open platform.
Peter stopped, his night-attuned eyes taking in the impossible sight before him.

They were in a massive, vaulted cavern of tile and iron. It was a subway station, but one from a bygone era,
a grand and forgotten cathedral to a younger city. The ornate, tiled walls were covered in a fine layer of dust,
the intricate iron railings coated with a century of grime.

Two sets of tracks stretched out from the long, curved platform, disappearing into absolute blackness at either end.
There were no rats, no graffiti, no signs of the modern world. It was a perfect, preserved pocket of the past.
The only light was a faint, silvery phosphorescence that seemed to emanate from the damp walls themselves,
casting everything in a soft, ghostly glow.

And it was utterly, completely silent. The roar of the city above was a distant, almost imperceptible memory,
a tremor felt more in the bones than heard with the ears.

But they were not alone.

Scattered throughout the vast, silent station were other Nightwalkers. One was perched on a silent, rusted
signal light, a dark, bird-like silhouette. Another leaned against a thick, tiled pillar, their face turned towards
the blackness of the tunnels. A small group of three stood on the tracks themselves, as still as statues.
They were all awake, yet none of them moved. They were perfect, silent figures in a vast, subterranean mausoleum.

Peter realized he was looking at his new brethren in their natural state of rest.

They are not sleeping, Brother, Cassian’s thought explained, answering the unasked question in Peter’s mind.
They are remembering. Each is walking the quiet, internal paths of their own long histories. This is our peace.

Peter looked around at the beautiful, sorrowful, and profoundly lonely scene. He was standing in a forgotten
piece of New York’s history, surrounded by the living ghosts of the world’s history. This was not a home.
It was a tomb for those who could not die.

Cassian gestured with his head toward an empty, arched alcove across the platform.

Here, the sun cannot find us, his thought resonated, a quiet, simple statement of fact.
Here, we can wait for the night. Rest now, Brother. Your lessons will continue when the darkness returns.

Chapter Text

The quiet of the great, abandoned station was absolute, a silence so deep it felt like a physical presence.
Following Cassian’s gesture, Peter found a dark, empty archway far from the others and sat down,
leaning his back against the cold, dusty tiles. He closed his eyes

There was no rebellion.

The frantic, restless energy of Peter Parker had been extinguished in the alley, its ashes washed away
by the Welcoming. There was only a vast, deep, and sorrowful quiet. The memories he had just inherited
were a deep and powerful river of grief, and his mind, now muted and attuned to a new, melancholic
frequency, did not fight it. It simply… rested on the bank, a passive observer of the tragic currents.

It was a natural state, a sad and easy acclimation.

You find the stillness easily, brother, Cassian’s thought resonated. It is a sign that the Path
has taken you completely. This is our rest. Not sleep, but memory. You are no longer a frantic actor
in the world’s story. You are now a part of its silent, sorrowful library.

Peter settled into the shadows, accepting this profound, quiet truth. His first attempts were overwhelming.
The memories flooded him. It was a storm of a thousand different sorrows, and at first, he felt himself
drowning in it.

But then, he remembered Cassian’s guidance. Be the riverbank. He did not try to push the images away.
He simply observed them, sad stories from a book. He felt the echo of the pain, acknowledged it, and then
let it flow past. He learned to be the librarian, walking the quiet aisles of his own vast, sad collection.
He could pick up a book, feel the weight of its story, and then place it back on the shelf.

The long, quiet hours of the day passed in a timeless, meditative trance. Peter rested in the deep, silent dark,
the chaotic memories of the Welcoming slowly settling into an ordered, understood library of sorrow.
He had learned the art of stillness.

He was no longer trying to be the boy he had been. He was simply learning to be the quiet, sad,
and eternal thing he now was.

Chapter Text

While Peter Parker was learning the art of stillness in a forgotten, subterranean tomb, the city he had left behind
was a storm of frantic, desperate noise.

May Parker had not slept. She had spent the pre-dawn hours in a state of escalating panic, calling Peter’s phone
over and over, the immediate switch to voicemail a sound that grew more terrifying each time. She had called Ned,
then MJ, their sleepy, confused voices confirming her worst fears. He hadn’t come home. He wasn’t with them.
He was gone. As the sun, the same hostile sun that was now driving her nephew into the shadows, rose over Queens,
she made the frantic, tearful call to Tony Stark.

In his lab, Tony went from zero to a hundred in a heartbeat. The moment he heard the raw panic in May’s voice,
his world narrowed to a single, terrible problem. He was a man of science, and this was a data-less nightmare.
“FRIDAY!” he barked, his lab coming to life around him in a swirl of holographic maps and data streams.
“Full satellite sweep of the five boroughs. Scan for the unique energy signature of his suit’s power cell.
Last known location. Now! Triangulate all emergency services chatter mentioning Spider-Man in the last
twelve hours. I want every security camera in a twenty-block radius of that last ping pulled and analyzed.”
He was a general, launching a full-scale war against an enemy he couldn’t see: absence.

Ned and MJ, their own hearts a cold knot of dread after May’s call, did the only thing they could think to do.
They went to the last place they had seen him on their mental map of his patrols. They went to the alley.
And there, amidst the wet garbage and the despair, they found it. A discarded web-shooter, half-crushed.
And a few feet away, a piece of the red mask, tattered and stained with a dark, dried patch of what could
only be blood. Ned’s trembling, terrified call to Tony confirmed it: this was not a case of a teenager
forgetting to check in. This was something terrible.

In the Tower, Steve and Natasha went into professional mode. Steve became the calm, steady anchor,
coordinating with a stony-faced NYPD commissioner, his voice a quiet authority that cut through the panic.
Natasha vanished into the shadows of her own world, a ghost hunting for whispers. She put the word
out on her every network: A new, enhanced individual has been taken off the board in New York.
Find out who. Find out why. Find out where. Her grief was a cold, silent rage, and she was now on the hunt.

The first long, terrible day ended as the sun set. The team gathered in the main briefing room at the Tower.
May was there, wrapped in a blanket, her face pale and hollow. Tony hadn't stopped moving all day,
but his frantic energy had collapsed into a grim, exhausted defeat.

In the center of the great holographic table, under a single, stark spotlight, lay the only two pieces
of evidence they had. The crushed web-shooter, and the tattered, blood-stained piece of the mask.

They had thrown the full, combined might of the Avengers, of Stark Industries, of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s remnants,
and of the NYPD at the problem. And they had found nothing. Not a clue. Not a lead. Not a whisper.

The first day of silence was over. Hope was already dying. And deep beneath their feet, in a forgotten station,
Peter Parker, the boy they were all so desperately searching for, stirred from his  quiet, and sorrowful rest.

Chapter Text

October 16, 2018 (New York)

A faint, deep rumble from far above signaled the coming of the evening. The city was waking for its nightly rush,
and in the silent station below, the time of rest was over. One by one, the still, statue-like figures began to stir,
a silent and sorrowful assembly preparing to ascend into the world of the living.

Peter rose to his feet. Physically, he felt no more rested than before, for his new body did not tire. But his mind,
his soul, felt… calmer. More ordered. He had survived his first day as a ghost. He had learned the first and most
crucial survival skill of the Nightwalkers: how to endure the long, quiet hours by becoming a silent keeper of his
own sorrow.

Cassian’s thought found him in his alcove, a quiet resonance in the deep stillness. The sun is gone, Brother.
The night is ours. It is time you learned to walk its paths properly.

He led Peter from the sanctuary, back up through the forgotten tunnels, to a maintenance hatch that opened
onto the roof of a soaring, gothic-style skyscraper in lower Manhattan. The city glittered below them,
a breathtaking sea of electric jewels.

To be a Nightwalker is to be a creature of the air and shadows, Cassian resonated, his thought gesturing
out at the vast, empty space between the buildings. The living world is bound by gravity, by the earth.
We are not. Our flight is not an act of power; it is an act of release. You have learned to be still.
Now, you must learn to let go of the ground itself.

Peter walked to the edge of the high parapet. He remembered the feeling from his long day of rest—
the quiet surrender, the release of his physical self. He looked down at the dizzying drop, but his new
nature felt no fear. He closed his eyes and willed it: he let go of the memory of weight, the memory
of the ground, the very idea of falling.

He felt a quiet, strange un-tethering. The solid feeling of the stone beneath his feet was simply… gone.

He opened his eyes. He was hovering a foot off the ledge, the high-altitude wind swirling around him
but not touching him. He pushed forward with a thought, and he moved, gliding out over the abyss,
the city spread beneath him like a living, breathing circuit board. He was flying.

A memory, flawless and painfully sharp, rose in his mind: the memory of swinging through these
very same canyons. He remembered the thrilling, violent pull in his shoulder as a web-line caught,
the stomach-lurching G-force of a perfect arc, the deafening roar of the wind in his ears, and the
blur of a million city lights. He remembered the feeling of his muscles straining, the split-second
calculations, the pure, vibrant, and utterly exhausting joy of it.

This was nothing like that.

This was silent. This was effortless. This was perfect. He was a ghost on the wind, a disembodied
observer drifting through the night sky. He felt no rush of adrenaline, no stomach-lurching drop,
no sense of motion at all. He was simply in one place, and then the next. The world below was
a beautiful, silent diorama, and he was a camera gliding over it.

The human boy he had been would have been whooping with delight. The Nightwalker he now
was could only feel the familiar, hollow ache of muted sorrow. He had been given a power
that was absolute, a freedom that was total, and it was the most profoundly lonely experience of his life.

Cassian glided to a stop beside him, a silent specter in the night sky, his own sorrow a deep
and steady presence.

This is our freedom, Brother, his sire’s thought came, a final, sorrowful benediction on the lesson.
The freedom of the dust on the wind. We can go anywhere. But we are no longer a part of the world
we travel through.

Chapter Text

October 16, 2018 (Vermont)

The lesson of his new, hollow freedom was a heavy one. After Peter had mastered the initial,
strange sensation of flight, Cassian’s thought came to him, a simple, quiet command.
Come, Brother. The night is our kingdom. Let us travel it.

They rose from the skyscraper, two silent figures ascending into the cold, upper air.
They left the glittering jewel of Manhattan behind, flying north. For Peter, it was the strangest
journey of his life. He was used to the frantic, energetic rush of web-swinging, a series of short,
thrilling bursts of travel. This was different. This was a slow, steady, and silent glide that consumed
miles with an effortless ease.

He watched the world scroll by beneath him like a silent, sleeping map. He saw the lights of Boston,
a distant, beautiful cluster of stars. He saw the dark, sprawling forests of New England, the moonlight
painting the tops of the trees in silver. He was seeing the world as he never had before, from
a god-like vantage, and yet he felt no awe, only a profound, hollow ache. He was not a part of it.
He was just a ghost, passing over.

Where are we going? he finally resonated to his sire. Back to the sanctuary?

A feeling of ancient, patient wisdom flowed from Cassian. No, brother. We do not often return to
the same sanctuary. The world is vast, and our watch is long. We are dust on the wind, belonging
to no single place. He gave Peter the simple, profound creed of their kind. “Everywhere it is night
is where we walk, and everywhere it is dark is where we rest.”

As the eastern sky began to bleed from black into the first, pale blush of dawn, they were flying
over the vast, dark, and unbroken forests of northern Vermont. The sun comes, Cassian’s thought
was a quiet urgency. We must find a place of darkness.

He led them down, toward a deep, wooded valley where the shadows were still long and absolute.
They landed without a sound at the entrance to an old, abandoned iron mine, a dark, gaping
wound in the side of a hill. The air that flowed from it was cold and smelled of damp earth and rust.
As the first rays of the hostile sun touched the tops of the trees, they stepped together into the absolute,
welcoming blackness of the mine shaft. Another new, strange, and temporary home. Another long, quiet
day of remembering. The journey was endless.

Chapter Text

October 16, 2018 (Vermont)

The absolute darkness of the abandoned iron mine was a stark and unsettling change from the grand,
if decaying, subway station beneath New York. Peter settled into the cold silence, the feeling of being
a thousand miles from anything he had ever known a new and profound form of loneliness.

How did you know this place was here? he resonated to Cassian, who stood like a statue in the gloom.
Will we come back?

A feeling of ancient, patient knowledge flowed from his sire. I have not rested in this particular shadow
for a century of your years, Brother. But I remember it. Just as you, now, will remember it forever.

He explained the nature of their endless, wandering lives. Our memories do not fade, Cassian’s thought
came, a simple, absolute statement of fact. Every path we walk, every forgotten ruin we pass, every deep
and sunless cave we rest in… it becomes a part of our own internal map of the world. You will be able
to remember every hiding place we go to, with perfect clarity, for as long as you walk the Path.

He let the staggering implication of that sink in. A perfect, indelible memory of every dark corner
of the world, accumulated over millennia. We have a thousand silent homes across this world and others,
Cassian’s thought concluded, a final, sorrowful truth. And we are a stranger in every single one of them.
That is the nature of our journey.

Chapter Text

October 16, 2018 (Vermont)

The darkness of the old iron mine was absolute, a perfect sanctuary from the hostile sun.

Peter settled into the now-familiar state of quiet, meditative rest, his mind a silent library.
But this place, unlike the manufactured quiet of the ghost station, was not truly silent.

He felt an echo.

It was a cold, sharp feeling, like the ghost of a scream trapped in the rock itself. It was a feeling
of sudden, crushing terror and a slow, suffocating despair. It was old, faded, but it was undeniably there.

Brother Cassian, he resonated, his thought cutting through the deep quiet. This place. It is not at peace.
I feel… something. Something bad happened here.

Cassian’s thought returned, calm and confirming. Your senses grow sharp, Brother.
You are learning to read the scars on the world. He explained the history of their temporary home.
Over a century ago, this was a working mine. There was a collapse in this very tunnel.
A dozen men were trapped. They did not die quickly.

Peter focused, and the faint, cold echo of pain in the rock seemed to grow a little stronger in his perception.
Cassian delivered the next, crucial lesson of their kind. You sense the fear, pain, and despair of their final moments,"
his thought explained, a simple, profound truth. We are drawn to places of tragedy. The sorrow of those miners makes
the very stones of this place quiet and welcoming to us. It is a home, made from the memory of other men’s endings.

Peter sat in the darkness, now consciously listening to the faint, hundred-year-old echoes of the dying miners.
The world was no longer just a collection of places to him. It was a landscape of remembered pain, a library
of quiet, sorrowful ghosts that he was just now, finally learning how to read. The grim revelation that their
sanctuary was a tomb, a place stained by the echoes of a century-old tragedy, was a difficult lesson for Peter.

He sat in the profound darkness of the Maine iron mine, the quiet now feeling heavy and full of ghosts.
Brother Cassian, he resonated, a new question forming in his mind. Are they all like this? All the places
where we rest? Do they all have to be places where bad things have happened?

Cassian’s thought returned, patient and clarifying. No, Brother. Any place that is deep and dark enough
to shield us from the hostile sun will suffice. A natural cave with no history, a forgotten cellar, the deep
and silent ocean floor. We only require darkness and quiet. He paused, adding the crucial, sorrowful distinction.
But the ones with tragedies enable us to rest the most.

Peter was confused. Why?

In a place with no memory, Cassian explained, our own sorrow is a single, loud, and lonely note in the silence.
It echoes back at us, a constant reminder of what we are. But in a place like this mine… a place already stained
with the memory of fear and pain… its old sorrow sings a quiet harmony with our own. The place… understands us.
It does not judge our grief. It shares it.