Chapter 4: The Weight of Change
The phantom soreness lasted for days. A deep, tender ache that made sitting on the cold stone benches in the library an exercise in shifting discomfort. The silence inside him was worse than the hum had ever been. It was an absence so profound it felt like a hole had been drilled through his center, leaving him cold and hollow. The tower’s ambient magic skittered around the edges of that void, refusing to enter.
Khadgar moved through his duties like a ghost. He transcribed, he fetched herbs, he listened to Medivh’s lectures on planar theory with a face of blank plaster. But his mind was elsewhere, trapped in the library of the dream, bent over the desk, feeling the brutal, glorious invasion. He’d catch himself staring at Medivh’s gnarled, shaking hands as they traced a rune in the air, and he’d imagine them black-haired and strong, pinning him down. Shame would flash, hot and immediate, followed by a colder, more persistent pull. A craving.
He began to seek out reminders. He found himself in the gallery of portraits more often, lingering before the one of the stern elven woman. The iron frame he’d harmonized. He’d place his palm on it and feel nothing but cold metal. The connection was dead. He’d tried, secretly, to reignite the green flame in his hand. He’d focused on the memory of the ash, the desire to consume. Nothing. His magic responded with the boring, reliable blue of Dalaran. It felt like using a child’s dull spoon to perform surgery.
The dream-Medivh’s words echoed. This is just the beginning. This will grow.
He wanted it to grow. The realization curdled in his gut, but he didn’t push it away anymore. He examined it. The desire was a knot of ugly, vibrant threads: power, yes, but also a specific, twisted possession. He wanted to be the one who made things resonate. He wanted to see that vibrant, green-eyed version of Medivh again. Not this crumbling shell. The real one was a tragedy. The dream one was a god.
It was in this state of hollow, hungry obsession that the tower’s silence was broken by the distant, real-world clang of the main gate.
Khadgar, dusting jars in the alchemy closet, froze. No one ever came to Karazhan. Medivh had made that abundantly clear. He heard the old man’s shuffling gait accelerate down the main hallway, a pace far quicker than he’d managed in weeks.
By the time Khadgar reached the grand foyer, the visitor was already inside, shaking snow from a heavy, travel-stained cloak. The man was a fortress of worn armor and thick furs, broad-shouldered with a squared jaw and a short, greying beard. He had the weathered, competent face of a man who solved problems with a sword. His eyes, however, were warm as he clasped Medivh’s frail forearm.
“Medivh. You look like hell.”
“Anduin.” Medivh’s smile was strained, but it touched his eyes in a way Khadgar had never seen. “You look like you’ve been wrestling bears. Again.”
Anduin Lothar let out a booming laugh that seemed to vibrate the dust from the chandeliers. “Only the bureaucratic kind in Stormwind’s court. A far more dangerous breed.” His gaze then landed on Khadgar, who lingered in the archway. The warmth didn’t vanish, but it was tempered by a sharp, appraising quality. “So. This is the young apprentice.”
“Khadgar,” Medivh said, waving a frail hand. “Of the Kirin Tor. Young Trust, this is Anduin Lothar, the Lion of Azeroth and a terrible nuisance.”
“A pleasure, sir,” Khadgar said, bowing his head. He felt transparent under that gaze, as if Lothar could see the ghost of the green flame, the memory of the dream-soreness.
“The Kirin Tor,” Lothar mused, striding forward. His handshake was engulfing, his grip calloused and firm enough to grind bones. “Hope you’re bringing some order to this dusty old chaos factory.” He released Khadgar and turned back to Medivh, his expression softening. “I was passing through the mountains, checking on the outpost at Newstead. Thought I’d bring you these. Found them clearing out an old storage room in the keep.”
He shrugged off a large satchel and pulled out a small, polished oak box. It was unadorned, the wood darkened with age and handling. He offered it to Medivh.
Medivh stared at it as if it were a sleeping viper. His hands remained at his sides, trembling slightly. “What is it?”
“Letters,” Lothar said, his voice dropping to a quieter, more intimate rumble. “Some of yours to me and Llane. Old patrol reports. And… well, a few sketches. From better days.” He glanced at Khadgar, then back at Medivh. “Thought you might want them.”
Medivh finally took the box. His fingers looked skeletal on the lid. “Better days,” he echoed, the words toneless. “Yes.” He didn’t open it. He just held it.
The silence stretched, becoming awkward. Lothar cleared his throat, filling it. “So, Khadgar. Medivh treating you well? Not working you too hard with his… cryptic nonsense?”
“I am learning a great deal, Champion,” Khadgar replied automatically.
“He’s a good lad,” Medivh murmured, still staring at the box. “Sharp. Very sharp.”
Lothar nodded, then an idea seemed to strike him. He reached over and gently lifted the lid of the box from Medivh’s unresisting hands. “Here. Let me show you one. So you can see the old ghost wasn’t always a ghost.”
He rummaged past folded parchments and, with surprising delicacy, drew out a small, rectangular image. It wasn’t a painting; it was a captured moment on some alchemical paper, the colors slightly faded to sepia and slate. He held it out to Khadgar.
“See? Proof the world wasn’t always so grim.”
Khadgar took it. The image was a casual shot, three men in a sun-dappled courtyard. On the left, a younger, beardless Lothar, his hair thick and brown, laughing with his head thrown back, an arm slung around the shoulders of a man in royal regalia—King Llane, his face kind and strong. And on the right…
Khadgar’s breath hitched.
It was Medivh. Not the ancient, withered man before him. This was the Medivh from his dream. The prime of his life. Black hair swept back from a proud forehead, sharp, intelligent eyes crinkled with genuine mirth, a confident, easy smile on his lips. He stood straight, a powerful presence even in the still image. He was radiant. He was perfect. The sun seemed to love him specifically. This was no demonic vision. This was real. This had existed.
A wave of longing, so violent it was nausea, crashed over Khadgar. It wasn’t just desire. It was a crippling sense of loss for something he’d never even known. This was what had been stolen. This was the man rotting in the shell before him.
Look at him.
The voice wasn’t a hum. It was a whisper, clear as ice cracking in the silence of his mind. It came from the hollow place, filling it with a presence so vast and ancient it made his bones feel thin.
Look at what time and that frail prison have done. A masterpiece, ruined.
Khadgar couldn’t look away from the photo. His thumb traced the edge of the young Medivh’s figure.
You felt a ghost of his strength. In your dream. You know the potential that festers, trapped in that decaying flesh.
Lothar was talking, saying something about the picture being taken after a tournament, about Llane cheating at cards. Medivh was making a low, non-committal sound. The world faded to a murmur.
The power you tasted is but a sip from an ocean, the dark voice slithered on, intimate and seductive. It is not just for breaking frames and burning parchment. It is the power of creation. Of restoration.
The image of the young, vibrant Medivh burned into Khadgar’s retina.
Accept it. Fully. Let me in. And you could undo the ruin. You could reach into that broken vessel and scour the decay from his cells. You could remake him. Not as he was… but as he could be. Perfect. Strong. Forever. And he would know it was you who saved him. He would look upon you not as a student, but as a savior. As a god.
The whisper held the image then, not of the laughing man in the courtyard, but of the green-eyed Medivh from the dream. Those devastating eyes, looking up at Khadgar from his knees. Not in fear. In worship.
He would be yours. In every way you have already imagined.
Khadgar’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drum. The hollow space inside him wasn’t empty anymore. It was a throne room, awaiting its king. The craving crystallized into a single, shining purpose.
He could have that. Not a dream. Not a memory. A living, breathing reality. He could fix the broken thing. He could own the perfect one.
He slowly, carefully, handed the photo back to Lothar. His hand was steady.
“He looked… remarkable,” Khadgar said, and his voice sounded normal. Pleasant, even.
Lothar took the picture, a shadow of old grief passing over his face. “That he did.” He placed it back in the box and closed the lid with a soft click. The sound was a full stop on the past.
The visit wound down quickly after that. Medivh was visibly retreating, the box of memories clutched to his chest like a shield. He gave terse answers to Lothar’s questions about his health, about the tower. Lothar, for his part, seemed satisfied just to have laid eyes on his friend, to have delivered his gift. He clasped Medivh’s shoulder again before he left.
“Stay strong, old friend. The world still needs its Guardian.”
Medivh just nodded, his eyes already distant, looking through the walls at some private horror.
Lothar turned to Khadgar at the door. “Look after him, son. He’s… he’s all the history we have left.”
“I will, Champion,” Khadgar said, meeting the warrior’s earnest gaze without flinching. “I promise.”
He watched from a high window as Lothar mounted his steed and rode out across the snow-blanketed pass, a solitary figure shrinking into the twilight. A good man. A loyal friend. Delivering a box of ghosts to a man who was already one.
Back in the foyer, Medivh was gone, vanished into the tower’s deeper shadows with his box.
Khadgar stood alone in the gathering dark. The silence was back, but it was different now. It was a pregnant, waiting silence. The whisper had receded, but its offer hung in the air of his mind, solid and real as the stones around him.
He looked down at his own hands. Ordinary. Young.
He thought of the power to heal, to restore, to create. To make something perfect and have it be yours forever.
Something inside him had shifted. It wasn’t a crack. It was a decision. The fossil of his old self, that buried layer of sediment, was finally, completely crushed under the weight of what he now wanted.
He didn’t go to his quarters. He turned and walked instead toward the library. Toward the desk where he’d had the dream. He had work to do. He needed to learn how to listen, not to the world’s whispers, but to the new, dark voice that had just shown him a future he would burn everything to possess.
He needed to learn how to listen, not to the world’s whispers, but to the new, dark voice that had just shown him a future he would burn everything to possess.
The voice, however, remained silent.
For three frustrating days, it offered nothing. No whisper, no hum, not even that sense of vast presence. The hollow space inside him was just a hollow space again, a quiet chamber where his own thoughts echoed too loudly. He tried to summon the green flame. He stared at the iron portrait frame until his eyes ached, trying to force that connection. Nothing happened. His magic remained a bland, obedient blue. The aching soreness from the first dream had faded entirely, leaving only a maddening itch under his skin. The photo of the young Medivh was a ghost haunting his pockets; he’d stolen it from the box when Medivh wasn’t looking, and its sepia corners were fraying from how often he unfolded it to stare.
Medivh himself was worse. The visit from Lothar had broken something loose. He was more absent, more brittle. He’d snap at Khadgar for mis-shelving a book, then an hour later would forget the boy’s name, staring at him with cloudy, confused eyes. “You,” he’d mutter. “The young one. From Dalaran. The one with the… eyes.” He never finished the thought.
“Young Trust,” Khadgar would remind him, the name now tasting like a bitter joke.
“Yes,” Medivh would sigh, retreating into his robes. “Trust.”
On the fourth night, frustration boiling over, Khadgar did something reckless. He went to the observatory. The scene of the first corruption was unchanged, the shattered crystal swept away, the runic circle scrubbed clean. But the air still held a charge, a ozone-sharp memory of pain and power. He stood in the center of the room, the cold seeping through his boots, and closed his eyes. He didn’t try to cast. He didn’t try to listen.
He remembered. He reconstructed the sensation of the green energy flooding his veins, the exquisite rightness of it. He relived the dream in the library, the feel of the chitinous cock splitting him open, the warmth that followed. He focused on the craving, the pure, raw want to see that vibrant Medivh on his knees. He offered that memory, that desire, up into the tower’s silence like a prayer.
A response flickered. Not a voice, but a sensation. A low, sympathetic throb in his groin. A faint, verdant heat behind his navel. It was distant, but it was there. A thread. He’d hooked something.
Exhaustion hit him then, a tidal wave of it. He stumbled back to his study, his limbs leaden. The phantom itch under his skin had settled, soothed. He barely managed to shuck his robes before collapsing into the chair at his cluttered desk. A half-finished translation of a dwarven tectonic chant lay open before him. The words blurred. His head nodded. The pull of sleep was a physical gravity.
When the dream took him, it was instantaneous. No fade. One moment he was fighting to read a rune, the next he was already in the study, the parchment crisp under his elbows, the candlelight a warm, steady gold.
And he was not alone.
A presence moved under the desk. A shift of shadow, a warmth against his thigh. Khadgar looked down.
Medivh was there, young and perfect, nestled between his knees. Those luminous green eyes stared up, unblinking, a question in them. His black hair was loose, brushing against Khadgar’s bare thighs. Khadgar realized he was naked from the waist down. He felt no surprise. Only a deep, settling calm.
He looked back at his parchment, the dwarven chant. “This passage is interesting,” he heard himself say, his voice conversational, bored almost. “It suggests the dwarves believed the mountains’ roots were sung into place. Not built. Sung.”
He felt a mouth, hot and wet, encircle the head of his cock. A soft, sucking pressure. He let out a slow breath, his fingers tracing the runes on the page. His cock, already hard, was different. Thicker.Heavier. A pleasant, claiming weight.
“Of course, it’s primitive ontology,” Khadgar continued, as the mouth began to move, taking him deeper. He glanced down. Medivh’s lips were stretched around a girth that was indisputably, imposingly larger than Khadgar had ever possessed. Veins, thin tracings of emerald light, pulsed under the skin. “But there’s a symbolic logic to it. Creation through resonant command. Not so different from what we do, is it?”
Medivh made a low, agreeable sound in his throat, the vibration traveling straight up Khadgar’s spine. He was taking him deeper now, his head bobbing with a slow, practiced rhythm. Those green eyes never wavered, watching Khadgar’s face for reaction.
Khadgar reached down, his movement casual. His fingers threaded into that thick, raven-black hair. It was soft. He tightened his grip, not enough to hurt, just to own. He pulled Medivh forward, thrusting his hips up at the same time, sheathing himself fully in that hot, willing throat.
Medivh’s eyes watered slightly, but he didn’t pull back. He held.
“See,” Khadgar murmured, looking back at his text, though he wasn’t reading a word. “The third rune here. It’s a modifier. It turns a command into an… inevitability.”
He pulled back slightly, letting Medivh gasp a wet breath. The sight was mesmerizing. His cock, glistening and thick, those green veins glowing faintly against the flushed skin. It was a thing of power. It was his.
He pushed it back between those waiting lips, a little harder this time. “Become what you are meant to be,” he said, and he didn’t know if he was talking about the rune, or Medivh, or himself.
He woke with a sharp gasp, his back arching in the chair.
Dawn’s grey light filtered through the high window. The dwarven chant was still open, dry and meaningless. He was still in his robes, stiff from sleeping upright.
And he was painfully, achingly hard. A solid, insistent pressure against his trousers that felt… different. Fuller.
He stood up, his movements hesitant. He walked to the small, tarnished mirror hanging by his washbasin. His reflection looked back, pale and tired. Young.