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sheslikealionimagines · 19 days ago

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Ash and Aether ~ Part 1

Pairings: Gale Dekarios x Fem!OC

Rating: G

Genre: Slow burn romance

Words: 3.2k

Status: Complete (14 parts + Epilogue)

Summary: Aryn, a self-taught mage with wild, instinctive magic, crosses paths with Gale, a brilliant but burdened wizard whose life is tethered to a volatile arcane secret. What begins as an uneasy alliance deepens into a partnership of intellect, trust, and unspoken yearning as they challenge each other’s beliefs—and slowly unravel the walls around their hearts. Together, they discover that the most powerful magic isn’t found in tomes or incantations, but in the quiet understanding between two souls brave enough to truly see one another.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The hour before nightfall in Baldur’s Gate was Gale’s favorite time — or at least, it once had been.

The market square breathed softly under the gathering dusk, its stone streets warm from the sun, its lanterns just beginning to flicker alight. People passed by in a soft, weaving dance: merchants closing their stalls, children laughing and darting between carts, nobles riding homeward under banners of muted color. The air smelled of river mist, burning wood, fresh bread, and the faintest hum of magic beneath the surface of everything.

Gale walked slowly, his staff tapping lightly on the cobblestones, his dark cloak trailing behind him. He had no particular destination tonight. No impending catastrophe, no dark bargain to fulfill, no Weave-consuming orb weighing on his mind. Just a rare, unclaimed moment — and in that moment, he let himself listen.

It was an old habit, almost forgotten: opening his senses wide, feeling the current of the Weave as it moved through the city, slipping between bricks, sliding through whispers, curling around unseen corners. Magic was not an element; it was a presence, living and breathing alongside the world. And when Gale was still — truly still — he could hear it singing.

But tonight, something sang back.

At first, it was a flicker. A thin, erratic pull on the edge of his awareness, like the tickle of a string drawn tight. Not a polished spell or an intentional summoning — raw, hungry magic, leaking into the world without guidance.

Gale’s brow furrowed slightly, his pulse sharpening. He tilted his head, turning toward the western side of the square.

There, near the old bookstalls.

He moved quietly, weaving through the crowd without thinking, drawn by instinct and a low, rising curiosity that thrummed in his chest.

And then he saw her.

Aryn.

She stood half-hidden behind a precarious tower of secondhand books, one arm braced against the edge of the stall, the other stretched toward a thick, rune-carved volume near the top. Her cloak — dark, a little dusty from travel — was tugged haphazardly around her shoulders, the hood slipping halfway down her back. Strands of white-blonde hair glinted under the lantern light, messy and unbothered.

She was murmuring softly under her breath, eyes narrowed, lips moving as she read the faint etchings on the book’s spine. Her hand hovered just above the leather, fingers trembling slightly — not from fear, Gale realized, but from the sheer, barely-contained force that pooled under her skin, pressing outward.

Magic licked at her fingertips, pale violet, wild and untrained.

The Weave around her quivered like a struck harp string.

Gale stopped. For a long, suspended moment, he simply watched.

And the realization washed over him slowly, inexorably: she doesn’t know.

She had no idea what she was stirring. No idea the glyph she was a breath away from tripping, no idea the power in her blood, no idea the way the Weave was listening to her, leaning toward her, already half in love with her existence.

Gale’s heart gave a sharp, unexpected tug. He stepped forward.

“Careful,” he murmured, voice smooth but low, pitched just enough to carry across the hum of the market. “That glyph’s waiting for a careless touch. Another heartbeat, and it’ll snap.”

The woman startled, her head jerking up — and her eyes met his.

For a second, Gale forgot the rest of the world existed.

Her eyes were brown eyes, flecked with amber, sharp and alive, flickering with the kind of restless hunger he recognized too well: the hunger to know, to master, to become. She stared at him, momentarily frozen, her hand still hovering over the book, the faint violet shimmer pulsing just below her skin.

Then she blinked, cheeks coloring faintly. “I— I didn’t realize.”

“I know,” Gale said softly, stepping closer, his smile gentle, his pulse inexplicably quickened. “But the Weave does. It already knows you.”

She pulled her hand back, tucking it into the folds of her cloak, casting a quick glance at the book as though it might bite her. “Who… are you?”

“Gale,” he said, offering a slight tilt of his head. “Of Waterdeep.”

Her eyes widened faintly. “You’re that Gale.”

He let out a soft chuckle. “Depends on which stories you’ve heard. Hopefully not all terrible ones.”

The corners of her mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile brushing across her face. “Not all.”

Gale watched her closely, feeling the faint crackle of her untamed magic even from this distance. She was raw, yes — dangerously raw — but underneath the wildness was potential. The kind that couldn’t be faked or learned in a tower or stolen from a scroll. The kind the Weave chose.

His curiosity deepened, folding inward.

“Are you self-taught?” he asked quietly.

She hesitated, then nodded. “There was no one to… to show me. I’ve been trying to figure it out myself.”

His chest ached unexpectedly. He remembered. He remembered exactly what that felt like.

“You’re brave,” Gale murmured, his voice softening. “Or reckless. Maybe both.”

Aryn’s eyes flashed slightly, her chin lifting. “I’ve come this far.”

He smiled, something warm and unfamiliar stirring in his chest. “Yes. You have.”

The market square moved gently around them — the quiet bustle of evening, the lanterns glowing brighter as the sun slipped below the rooftops. But here, in this narrow space between two strangers, it felt oddly still. Gale felt the Weave trembling softly between them, waiting, watching, holding its breath.

For the first time in many years, he let himself feel it too.

He stepped back slightly, motioning with his hand. “Would you like to see something?”

Aryn’s brow furrowed slightly, cautious. “What sort of something?”

Gale’s smile deepened faintly. “Nothing harmful. Nothing binding. Just… something true.”

She hesitated — then, slowly, she nodded.

He led her away from the crowded square, weaving through narrow streets until they reached a small, quiet park near the city’s edge. Trees arched overhead, their branches touched by faint enchantments, their leaves shimmering gently with caught starlight.

Here, the Weave was thinner, more pliant.

Gale lifted his hand, spreading his fingers lightly. Magic drifted from his palm — not a spell, not a command, just pure, shimmering weavework. Threads of light, delicate and soft, wove through the air like drifting silk, looping and braiding around them.

Aryn’s breath caught softly. She reached out once, almost without thinking, and the Weave leapt eagerly to her fingertips, wrapping around her as though recognizing its own.

She turned to him, wide-eyed. “It… it listens to me.”

Gale’s smile softened. “It always has.”

Their gazes held — and in that gaze, something unspoken passed between them.

Not a promise. Not yet. Not even a confession.

But a recognition. A flicker of knowing.

Gale, who had wrapped himself in guilt and duty and the heavy weight of survival for so long, felt something inside him shift — delicate, tentative, but undeniable.

He hadn’t expected her. Hadn’t expected this.

But here she was: Aryn. A novice wizard, untrained and brilliant, hungry and wild, with a connection to the Weave that pulsed like a second heartbeat.

And Gale, for the first time in what felt like centuries, dared to wonder if the Weave had brought her to him not as a challenge, not as a trial, but as a gift.

The park was quiet, tucked between ivy-wrapped walls and the soft silver of night.

Above them, the stars had begun to pierce through the velvet dark, their light faint but determined. Gale moved slowly across the grass, his boots pressing faint prints into the dew-damp earth. He lifted a hand, fingers curling, and the Weave responded — eager, familiar, wrapping him in its quiet breath.

Across from him, Aryn stood still, eyes wide, watching the threads of magic ripple through the air like drifting silk. She reached out instinctively, her fingers brushing the edge of a faint glowing line — and it leapt to her, coiling around her skin like a delighted cat twining around a leg.

Gale’s heart clenched sharply.

So raw. So unshaped. So much potential.

He hadn’t expected this tonight — hadn’t expected her. And yet, now that he stood here, watching her, something inside him stirred that had lain still for too long.

He had once been her, after all.

The brilliant young prodigy. The ambitious one. The man who believed he could change the world if he just reached a little further, dared a little more.

He remembered the way it felt: the Weave crackling under his skin like fire and light, the hunger for knowledge clawing at his chest, the certainty — so fierce, so blinding — that power was meant for him.

And then, of course, came the fall.

His throat tightened. He shifted his shoulders slightly, feeling the old familiar ache of the Netherese scar deep beneath his skin — a wound, a punishment, a curse he had dragged behind him for years. He could still see the moment in his memory: the orb burning in his hands, the rush of triumph curdling into horror, the explosion of magic too vast, too starved, too old to be caged.

I thought I was clever enough to hold it.

He wasn’t.

And in the aftermath — in the long years of clawing his way back from disaster, learning to live again with the constant whisper of that living bomb embedded in his chest — Gale had learned a bitter truth.

Power was never just power. Magic was never just magic.

It came with cost. With sacrifice. With ruin.

He had trusted himself once. He had trusted his own brilliance, his own mastery of the Weave, his own certainty that he could outthink the dangers others had feared. And he had been wrong.

Utterly, devastatingly wrong.

Now, as he stood quietly in the moonlit park, watching Aryn’s fingers tremble slightly as she touched the Weave, Gale felt that old ache stirring again — but not as sharp regret.

No, this was something softer. Something… wistful.

She reminded him not just of who he had been, but of who he might have been, had someone stopped him. Had someone seen him, early on, before the damage was done.

Had someone said: Slow down. You’re not alone in this. You don’t have to carry all of it yourself.

Aryn didn’t know yet what dangers she carried. She didn’t know what paths she might stumble onto, what traps awaited the gifted and the hungry, what ruin lay just beyond the next desperate grasp at power.

But Gale knew.

And that knowledge — that ache, that history — wrapped itself around his heart now as he watched her, protective and wary and painfully tender all at once.

Aryn turned toward him slowly, her eyes wide and faintly shining under the starlight. “This… it’s beautiful.”

Her voice was soft, almost reverent.

Gale smiled faintly, a twist of sorrow and warmth tightening in his chest. “Yes,” he murmured. “It is.”

He stepped closer, letting the Weave drift between them in slow, delicate threads. “But beauty can be dangerous too.”

Her brow furrowed slightly. “Dangerous?”

He met her gaze, steady and quiet. “The Weave is alive, Aryn. It wants to be shaped, to be used. But it remembers every hand that touches it. It keeps score.”

She swallowed, something flickering in her expression — doubt, maybe, or hesitation. “You speak like someone who’s… lost something.”

Gale let out a soft breath, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly. “I have. More than once.”

He could have left it there. Should have, maybe.

But something about her — something about the way she stood, raw and uncertain and brilliant — pulled the words loose from the places he usually kept buried.

“I was like you once,” Gale murmured. “Hungry for power. Certain that knowledge was its own kind of safety. That if I just studied hard enough, reached far enough, I could master the Weave itself.”

Aryn’s eyes softened, watching him carefully.

“I tried to harness something I wasn’t ready for,” Gale continued quietly. “An artifact of the Netherese — a fragment of magic so old and vast it was barely comprehensible. I thought I was clever enough to contain it.”

He lifted his hand briefly, touching his chest — feeling the faint, constant pulse of the orb buried beneath his skin. “I was wrong.”

Aryn’s breath hitched softly. “What happened?”

Gale let out a faint, rueful laugh. “It’s still here. Still burning. Every day, every hour, I carry it with me — a shard of ancient destruction, waiting for a misstep.”

He met her gaze again, and this time, he let her see the truth: the weight, the scars, the quiet exhaustion that had followed him through every battle, every triumph, every mistake since that day.

“I’m telling you this,” Gale murmured, “because you stand at the edge of the same path. And if no one warns you — if no one walks beside you — you might stumble where I fell.”

For a long, silent moment, Aryn didn’t move. She stood there, the moonlight caught in her hair, the faint shimmer of the Weave still dancing along her skin, her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that sent a shiver down his spine.

Then, softly, she said, “I don’t want to walk it alone.”

Gale felt something crack open inside him — a thin, painful seam of longing he hadn’t dared touch in years.

Not just longing for companionship. Not just for understanding. But for redemption.

For a chance to stand beside someone not as a master or a savior, but as a partner. As someone who could guide, yes — but who could also heal.

Slowly, deliberately, Gale extended his hand. “Then let me walk with you.”

Aryn stared at his hand for a moment, her breath catching faintly in her throat.

Then, carefully, she placed her fingers in his.

As their hands met, the Weave surged softly around them — not a storm, not a crackling blaze, but a quiet pulse, a shared heartbeat, a beginning.

Gale closed his eyes briefly, feeling the weight of his past pressing against the fragile hope blooming in this moment.

He couldn’t undo his mistakes. He couldn’t erase the scars he carried, or the grief, or the years he’d spent clawing his way back from the edge.

But maybe — just maybe — he could make something new.

Maybe this was where healing began.

Not in grand gestures or world-shaking magic.

But here, in the quiet, with one novice wizard, under the stars, hand in hand.

And for the first time in what felt like centuries, Gale allowed himself to hope.

The two of them walked side by side under the canopy of the quiet night, their footsteps soft against the uneven stone streets.

The city had settled into its late rhythm: tavern songs drifting faintly from narrow windows, the occasional clatter of a cart, the cool hush of lamplight brushing across shuttered doors. But Gale barely noticed any of it.

His senses were full of her.

Aryn moved with a restless, unshaped energy — glancing around at the lamplight as if still seeing magic threaded through everything, her hands occasionally flicking open as if itching to test another thread, another current. She walked with her head slightly tilted, her brow faintly creased, deep in thought even as she stayed close to his side.

It was a closeness Gale hadn’t expected. Not physical, exactly, but… something in the air between them.

Something tentative and bright.

He found himself smiling, faintly, as they crossed the little bridge over the narrow canal. She caught him once or twice, shooting him a sidelong look — half curious, half wary.

Finally, she spoke. “You don’t have to walk me back, you know.”

Gale lifted an eyebrow, his smile softening. “No, I suppose I don’t. But I wanted to.”

Aryn huffed a quiet laugh. “Protective wizard, hm?”

He gave a quiet, amused sound. “Something like that.”

They turned down the final alley, the one lined with aging stone walls and overgrown vines, and emerged into the small square where the secondhand bookstall still stood. The old vendor had long since packed up, but a few crates remained stacked along the side, covered with cloth to keep off the dew.

Aryn paused there, turning slightly to face him. She drew her cloak tighter, brushing a few stray strands of hair from her face. In the lamplight, her eyes caught the gold like polished amber glass.

“Thank you,” she said, voice softer now. “For tonight.”

Gale felt the words stir something deep in his chest.

He had not expected to meet anyone tonight. He had not expected to be moved. But standing here, watching this novice wizard — bright, eager, hungry for knowledge but still unshaped, still free — he felt a pull he couldn’t explain away as mere curiosity.

It was something more.

A spark. A thread beginning to weave.

“I don’t usually do this,” Gale found himself saying, his voice low, careful.

Aryn tilted her head, intrigued. “Do what?”

“Offer myself as… a guide.” He folded his arms loosely, searching her face. “But you have something, Aryn. Something rare. The Weave listens to you. And if you don’t learn to listen back, it will pull you under sooner or later.”

She drew a slow, steady breath. “So you’re offering to teach me.”

He smiled faintly. “I’m offering you the chance to study — alongside me. Not as a formal pupil, not as a contract or a binding. As a… companion in magic, if you’re willing.”

Aryn was silent for a moment, her brow furrowed, her gaze flicking down as if weighing the words.

Then she looked up, her eyes meeting his directly — and Gale saw it there, shining clear: the decision.

“I want that,” she said quietly. “I want to learn.”

The words settled between them like a spell being cast — delicate, irreversible.

Gale let out a slow, careful breath, feeling his chest lighten slightly, unexpectedly. “Then come find me tomorrow,” he said softly. “We’ll begin.”

Aryn’s mouth quirked into the smallest, fiercest of smiles. “I will.”

For a moment, neither of them moved.

The night stretched quiet and watchful around them, the lamplight glinting faintly across their joined shadow.

Then, with a small nod, Gale turned, his cloak brushing softly behind him, and began to walk away.

He didn’t look back. But gods, he felt her presence still — a pull at the edge of his senses, a promise newly woven into his path.

And as he disappeared into the night, Gale realized with a strange, fragile hope that this — this — might be the first step not just toward shaping her future, but toward healing his own.

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