The Telling of Qiveth, the Unwoven

A fictional character Telling. Meet Qiveth.

"Listen, then, if you must—but do not mistake my words for lamentation. A strategist does not weep; he calculates."

I lean back against the cold stone of the Lodge's halls, fingers tracing the grooves where others have carved their sorrows into the walls. The Dark Masons understand exile better than most. They build with what is broken.

"You ask why I left The Hollow Court? No—you ask why they cast me out." A dry laugh escapes me. "A subtle distinction, but an important one. The Court does not release its prey willingly."

I was Glamourbound once—Fifth Rank, a weaver of stolen faces. Do you know how it is done? You find a life ripe for taking: a merchant drunk on his own greed, a general drowning in bloodlust, some fool who has forgotten his own shape beneath ambition or fear. Then... you slip inside. Not like possession—no crude displacement. You become. Their memories become your memories; their voice becomes your voice. And when the last flicker of their will gutters out? Only you remain, wearing them as seamlessly as skin.

The Hollow Court called it art. I called it... efficient.

But efficiency requires truth—the unflinching assessment of weakness, strength, opportunity. And that was my sin: I chose truth over deception when it mattered most.

"There was a prince," I murmur, "a Parthian fool who thought himself clever because he could count his coins and name his ancestors ten generations back." My lips twist at the memory—his oiled beard and silver rings clinking as he gestured wildly about Rome's inevitable fall while lounging in cushions stuffed with stolen silk from Chang'an.

The Court wanted him hollowed out and replaced—one of ours whispering poison into Persia's ear until their empire cracked under its own weight.

And so I studied him: learned which wines made him sentimental (Falernian), which slaves he trusted (none), which gods he feared (Mithra's judgment). But then... then came the moment all strategists dread: too many variables.

His daughter knelt before him one evening—barely twelve summers old—and begged him to recall her exiled tutor from Susa.

Do you know what he did? He struck her across the face so hard her lip split like overripe fruit.

And there it was: the flaw in The Hollow Court's design.

They would have had me take him anyway—reshape this cruel child-beater into our perfect puppet and let history unfold as planned.

But strategy without morality is just arithmetic for butchers.

So instead... I whispered to his daughter where to hide when Rome's spies came for her father three nights later.

When The Hollow Court discovered my interference? Ohhhh… that was a spectacle worthy of Nero himself! Silk-clad lords hissing like spurned cats while my rank burned away like parchment in flame!

Exile isn't merely banishment among fae-kind; it is unraveling — every thread connecting you to power snipped clean through until even your name feels borrowed from someone else's tongue...

Yet here among The Dark Masons?
Here they value what others discard:
Broken things reforged stronger at fractured seams...
Truth wielded like chisel against pretense...
And oh how sweetly irony sings—
That now these hands carve new identities not by theft but by choice!

So tell me again little moth drawn too close to candleflame—
Does my story frighten or fascinate?
Or perhaps both?
Good.

Visual

Lean Persian noble with shimmering fingertips that shift between skin tones, silk robes half-unwoven into loose threads, sharp amber eyes with too-narrow pupils, faint afterimages of stolen faces flickering beneath his own.

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery