The orphanage at Wools was a place where the walls seemed to sigh with the weight of secrets. The air was heavy, thick with the lingering scent of old wood and the faint, unsettling hum of things that had been buried long ago—things no one dared to name. The children who lived there were a quiet, strange bunch. But among them, none were as peculiar, none were as unsettling as Tom Riddle and Ernesh Balcom.
By the time they were nine, the other children had learned to avoid them, to stay out of their way. They whispered about them, of course—wondered what it was that kept them together in a way no one else understood. But no one dared ask, because deep down, they all knew. It was wrong.
Tom and Ernesh, though Tom was a year older, were not like the other children. Their bond was something beyond friendship, something more twisted, something that no one else could comprehend. They didn't just look out for each other. They didn't simply care for each other. They were entwined, a dark, suffocating thing, too close, too obsessive, to be considered healthy in any sense of the word.
The other children noticed the way Tom looked at Ernesh—his sharp eyes tracking every movement, every blink, every breath. It was possessive, that gaze. It was as though Tom saw himself reflected in Ernesh's every action, his every stillness. And Ernesh—Ernesh never looked anywhere else. He never turned his gaze from Tom. His dark eyes, always so quiet, so unblinking, never once strayed. It was as if the world outside Tom didn't even exist.
They were always together—hand in hand, eyes locked, speaking in whispers only the other could hear. Tom would speak for Ernesh when the boy's lips would fail him. It was a strange, unspoken language between them, one that no one else could decipher.
On a gray, overcast afternoon, the orphanage allowed the children a rare moment of freedom outside. The courtyard, cracked and littered with dead leaves, stretched out before them, a dull, colorless world. Tom and Ernesh walked together, side by side, as they always did. Their hands were clasped together in a way that made it seem as though their fingers were meant to intertwine, to never separate.
The other children were scattered around, shouting, playing games, their voices full of life and energy. But Tom and Ernesh moved with a certain calm that made the air grow still when they passed. It was as if the space around them had become a void, sucked dry of all vibrancy. The other children never approached them. They couldn't. The intensity of Tom and Ernesh's connection was a thing that made the air too thick to breathe, too heavy to bear.
Tom's eyes glinted with something dark as he led Ernesh away from the others, past the rusted swing sets, past the garden where the grass was long and wild, toward the old stone wall that separated the orphanage grounds from the street beyond. They had learned, by now, that they were not welcome in the world beyond the gates. The other children saw them as strange. Other.
"Let's go over here," Tom murmured, his voice low, like a secret only Ernesh was meant to hear. The words were no more than a whisper, but to Ernesh, they held all the weight of a command.
Without a word, Ernesh followed, the silence between them thickening, stretching out like a taut rope between two anchors. His feet moved in time with Tom's, as though they were bound by some invisible tether.
They reached the corner of the wall, where the grass grew thick and tangled. Tom stopped, pulling Ernesh to stand next to him. The other children continued to laugh and play in the distance, but it was as if they were no longer a part of Tom and Ernesh's world. Their laughter, their voices, were distant echoes, nothing more than noise.
"Stay close," Tom whispered, his eyes narrowing as he watched Ernesh. The command was soft, but it was undeniable. Ernesh nodded—slowly, deliberately—as if he were affirming something deep inside himself. His dark eyes never left Tom's. He didn't need to speak. He never needed to.
