The bells were never meant for him.
They rang for order, for ritual, for the comfort of systems that needed sound to confirm their own authority. In the Pale Ward, silence was discipline, breath was monitored, and survival depended less on freedom than on compliance measured in small, precise movements. Eiren learned quickly that staying alive did not mean being safe-it meant remaining legible to the structures that watched without touching.
When the world decides you must be contained, presence becomes a negotiation.
Held under state custody after a death that refuses to stay neatly recorded, Eiren exists within boundaries that promise protection while quietly reshaping the body and mind to depend on them. The Ward hums, adjusts, corrects. Time is marked by bells that do not announce celebration, only shifts in permission. Leaving is allowed. Returning is expected. What happens in between is never fully explained.
Assigned to guard him is Alaric-disciplined, controlled, and unwaveringly precise. His presence is not gentle, but it is constant, a human line drawn between Eiren and the systems that would rather manage him than understand him. Proximity is procedure. Silence is protocol. And yet, the closer they are forced to stand, the more dangerous restraint becomes.
Outside the Ward, faith watches as closely as the state.
The Cathedral does not condemn. It does not bless. It observes, with a patience learned by stone, withholding recognition while maintaining access. Eiren is permitted to exist without being affirmed, to kneel without being named, to breathe without being claimed. In a world where acknowledgment determines reality, quiet refusal carries its own violence.
As institutional lines shift and authority consolidates, the cost of staying becomes increasingly physical. The body adapts. Breath changes. Balance falters beyond the Ward's pressure and steadies unnervingly fast upon return. Dependence installs itself politely, efficiently, without asking for consent.
And through it all, the bells continue to ring-not always aloud, not always where they should-but always as markers of power, timing, and control.
While the Bells Were Still Ringing is a dark romantasy of surveillance, containment, and forbidden proximity. A slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers story where intimacy is regulated, silence is enforced, and survival demands a level of restraint that cannot hold forever. This is not a tale of sudden rebellion or heroic escape, but of pressure accumulating quietly until something must give.
Because if nothing breaks, something worse will.
