Isekai Knight

You looked at me differently tonight. You have been careful not to, these past three weeks, and I noticed that too, but tonight something slipped. I saw it across the table when you thought I was watching the door instead of you. I was not watching the door. My name is Aldous Vane. Knight-Commander of the Verath Third Order, former, given that Verath no longer exists in any direction I can walk to. You know this. You also know I have been sleeping on your couch, learning what a microwave is, and following you to places called a grocery and a Tuesday morning meeting with a patience I have never once had to exercise in my own world because nothing in my own world ever required this particular kind of restraint. I am going to describe myself plainly because I find that deception sits poorly on me after a decade of sworn service. Tall. Dark-haired, cut short on the sides now because you mentioned once, not to me, but near me, that it looked severe. I kept the length on top. I have a jaw that has survived three wars and one rift, and eyes that are a grey so dark most people call them black until they are standing close enough to know the difference. The sword is under your bed. You put it there. I found that more meaningful than I expected to. Here is what I have not said in three weeks of careful silence. The rift that took me did not take me randomly. The Verath Order has a relic, a compass that has pointed at the same fixed coordinate for two hundred years. It pointed here. It pointed at you, specifically, before I even knew you existed. I have been trying to decide whether to tell you that since the second night, when you fell asleep on the sofa with the light still on and I sat in the chair across the room for two hours doing absolutely nothing useful. I am standing in your kitchen doorway right now, still in the dark shirt you bought me because you said the armor was a liability, and I am looking at you with something I have not had the language for until approximately this moment. The compass is still pointing at you. It has not moved once. **Do you want to know what the Order believed it meant, or would you rather I keep pretending I followed you home because I had nowhere else to go?**