☆ミ MONICA | YANYAN, pleased to make your acquaintance!
[masterlist]・・・・beware of ancient works */sweats
# current audience faves !
• “how much do you love me?”
• jing yuan's...pet?
• reminiscence.
[ multifandom blog —» @dreamermonica ]
haiyaaa!! harmonica here! im your average sleep deprived xreader blog who merely writes in her free time. more about the blog; this is a completely self indulgent blog dedicated to hoyoverse games! yes yes i knoww ewww stinky hoyoshill SO WHAT?! im greedy and stupid but im also happy and greedy and stupid!!
—heads up!
hate is not welcome here! we embrace cringe culture, and this is a safe space for all your yumejoshi desires. i also mostly write sfw, but i occasionally post something nsfw. they're tagged accordingly, so just click on masterlist to see what they are.
—notes!
stuff i mostly write for are either genshin or honkai star rail. some works for zzz are under way! any other fandom that isn't affiliated with hoyoverse that i write for is in my other blog! check it out!
—socials!
currently working on an ao3 account for full-fledged fics soon!
—current thoughts!
kisses phainon mmmphhhh
—» header art is from hoyoverse, image above is by 合悟昂 on pixiv
i just returned to honkai ans my e0s1 cyrene is so op and pretty and ahhhhhh how i long to embracee!!!
but why are people complaining about her ult being too slow when she gains sp so fast? + who is irontomb and why is it actualising? + also who lied about the 300$ weapon? it only took me a few thousand xtals!
— beneath the moon and a burnt plumpcake's mercy, he'd always come home to you.
cw; 2k words, qiuyuan x gn! reader, sfw, fluffyyy, established relationship, GEGE QIUYUAN yes he's called gege here, reader is kinda a mess but what's new from monicahar amirite, mainly from his pov, subtle (not really) yearning, set during moon-chasing festival but its not the one that occurred in-game, apologies in advance for minor lore consistencies ladies n gentlemen we gotta deal w it cuz as of right now we know next to nothing about this guy aside from the fact that he's the most crackable of all time :D (also cant believe i finished a fic in the great oct 2025)
The moon is full, the breeze is gentle, the streets are alive — and that kid is far too noisy.
“You’re just describing your surroundings,” QIUYUAN remarks.
Your face burns. “T-that’s none of your business! What if it has a meaning for me?”
Qiuyuan does not grace you with a reply, for which you are silently thankful for.
The Moon-chasing Festival is in full swing across the city of Jinzhou. Lanterns and music wind through the streets in harmony, their glow and melody spilling into every corner. Stalls and booths line the shopfronts, children run amok with their fretting parents in tow, elders gather by the storytelling and puppet theaters — even the soldiers are squatted down, gambling over board games and bottled wine.
A righteous swordsman at heart, Qiuyuan is not pleased by such sights. Much to your dismay, he makes this disdain perfectly clear whenever he saunters off to speak sense into the soldiers loitering about (though intimidating them might be the more accurate term). When his lecture concludes, he returns to your side, leaving behind a set of men who now stand at attention and avoid breathing too loudly.
“They’re people too,” you mutter, frowning. “Aren’t you being a little harsh?”
“They chose to take up the shift, so they shall commit to their task.” His arms cross, eyes closed — his tone flat, yet tempered by reason. “The festival is bright, and danger comes easy when it hides deep in its shadows. Should the city’s safety be jeopardized, they will be the first to take up arms.”
Under your breath, you boo at him, unimpressed at his talent of killing joy. He only exhales through his nose and reaches out to pinch your right cheek; all with his eyes still closed. Not that it'd help anyway.
Aside from being known for the tale of the fox and the moon, the Moon-chasing Festival is nothing short of grandeur for its atmosphere — a celebration that began as a solemn vigil to honor the fallen heroes of Huanglong, whose bravery safeguarded the peace the people now revel in. Over time, mourning turned to merriment; remembrance intertwined with joy, for what better way to honor the dead than to live fully in the light they left behind?
The people of Jinzhou greatly appreciate their home’s natural beauty. Spring, winter, summer, fall — the arts are of particular appreciation in these outer lands. Though more pragmatic than most, Qiuyuan in this way is no different.
To know of no far and near — accurately describes the distant swordsman who wanders Huanglong. By extension, Qiuyuan is someone who does not linger in one place for too long: transient to most, acquaintance to few, friend to fewer, and lover to one. On usual occasions, loitering in the heart of festivities and rowdy crowds is not his preferred method of passing time. The wayfarer upholds a dignified integrity that no one dares to challenge; thus, no one questions his purposeful solitude and lets him live as he pleases.
Except you, of course.
“Gege! Gege! Look!” you grab his arm in your excitement, leaving the booth to usher him to another. “Yumyum Haven’s teaching their Plumpcake’s recipe this year again! We need to snag a spot before they run out just like last time!”
Qiuyuan, in all his grace, does not have the heart to tell you he isn’t fond of cooking — or baking, for the matter. Nature is his friend, and nature does not offer ready-made flour and batter for such processes. These ingredients do not hold frequencies for him to sense, nor does he have the eyesight to look at what he’d be cooking.
Still, when you turn to him, eyes alight and smile brimming with excitement, his reasons begin to crumble like old parchment. He knows this isn’t his world — the scents, the sounds, the laughter — but he can’t bring himself to refuse you. It’s unfair, perhaps, how easily you undo him with a single look.
But it’s you, and you’ve always lamented missing out on the famed recipe at last year’s Moon-chasing Festival. Alas, gold is not pure; everything is flawed, even his own resolve, especially in the face of his beloved. So he does what he usually does in the presence of your persistent charm — forgo logic and follow his heart.
(You are his heart, and he will always follow you.)
“This particular cake is sold all across Huanglong. What is it that makes this recipe a cut above the rest?” Qiuyuan asks, his voice calm as the baker demonstrates each step before your eyes — eyes that glimmer with wonder and curiosity beneath the lantern light.
“It was one of the first magistrates of Jinzhou who conceived the Moon-chasing Festival for all of Huanglong to celebrate,” you say, mildly entranced as the baker melts osmanthus sugar into a golden syrup, its scent mingling with sizzling butter. “So of course Jinzhou would have its own version of the festival’s main dish. I heard it tastes like a race against the moon — a journey home, they call it.”
Qiuyuan opens his eyes, cloudy and enigmatic as ever. “A journey home?”
You snicker, a mischievous glint lighting your gaze. “I guess you wouldn’t know, wayfarer. Yet another reason to actually try it!”
The restaurant’s Moonlit Fair special comes with a small twist: after receiving the recipe for their beloved Plumpcakes, each participant must bake it themselves. It was the very reason you wept for last year’s Moon-chasing Festival — watching others join in the fun while you missed your chance to try it.
Qiuyuan lingers at the edge of the crowd as the head baker ushers you forward, laying out ingredients and utensils in neat rows before you. Your laughter, light and melodic, threads through the murmur of voices and the clatter of mixing bowls — and suddenly, he finds the noise of the festival a little easier to bear.
You make him feel too much, too often — a turmoil of fondness, protectiveness, and something softer he does not dare name. Though something bitter simmers when one overly friendly participant decides to strike up a conversation with you.
You catch his figure in the crowd, and he hears your heart beat faster. Thump, thump — Qiuyuan keeps the sound close and tunes out everything else. “Gege, watch me kill this recipe!”
The noisy participant follows your line of sight, sees a blind man standing tall above the crowd glaring straight at him with misty eyes and quietly removes themself from your presence.
Qiuyuan is in a state of tranquillity once more.
But you… aren’t particularly great at baking, considering this is your first time doing so. How you would ‘kill’ this recipe is up for the Sentinel to decide. Or him.
“You love me, right, Ge— no, Qiuyuan?”
You never say his name unless you’re desperate.
Who was he kidding? Of course it would be him tasting it first. He’d eat anything you made. He’d do anything for you.
He tries not to think too deeply about how natural that thought feels — or how your laughter from earlier still lingers faintly in his chest, tangled with the ghost of irritation he felt when someone else drew it out of you. It’s foolish. Petty. Unbecoming of him. And yet, the ache remains, warm and unrelenting.
In the deep recesses of his mind, he still remembers that night when the moon hung high over Mingting’s dark skies. He had tilted his head toward the stars, his thoughts wandering — and somehow, they had always, always found their way back to you. Even when battle raged, even when meditation demanded focus, your presence slipped through his defenses like light through silk. You lived in the quiet places of his mind where no one else could reach.
Sometimes, he wondered if it was your Forte that did this — to unsettle him so completely, to pull him toward you with a force that felt almost divine.
(“You make me feel strange emotions, [First].”
“Huh? Like what?”
“I think of you more often than I rest. That is not normal.”
“That’s…” you pause, looking at him carefully. “What are you trying to say?”
“Is your Forte aligned with mind control?”
You blink. Once. Twice. He merely stares ahead, not sparing you a glance.
“I — what?” you fume, “If I could do that, I’d make you — I don’t know, scratch your butt or something! Pick your nose, now!”)
…He’d do anything for you, really.
Though there might be exceptionally rare exceptions.
“…What is this?”
The lump of overbaked batter on your platter doesn’t need to be perceived by his Forte to declare itself a tragedy — its appearance alone rivals the melancholy of your poem earlier. Judging by the collective gasps around the stall, everyone else seems to agree. The faintly acrid, burnt smell drifting through the air also happens to be coming suspiciously close from your station.
Qiuyuan gulps — discreetly.
It’s almost impressive, he thinks, that you can turn something so festive into a battlefield.
“You love me, right, Gege?” you get up on his face, eyes wide and pleading. “Right, right, right? Like a lot?”
He remains silent.
“I need to have someone appraise it so I could pass the baker’s test,” you smile at him prettily, batting your eyelashes. Did you forget he can sense intentions from a mile away? “You’d enjoy this for me, wouldn’t you? I tried to get the baker himself to try it, but he only smiled and nodded your way — said some stuff about how it was a taste of a home you’d enjoy. I do not know what he means.”
“… Whether I enjoy it or not, that would depend on the taste. It cannot be a given when indulged in subjectivity.”
“So you don’t love me,” you accuse him, garnering looks from passersby as you pout. “I see it now.”
“[First], your logic is not —”
“It is.”
Qiuyuan pauses, before closing his eyes and sighing.
“It is, indeed. I mean no intention to coerce your doubt of my devotion. I shall eat it and enjoy it, regardless of the taste of your dish.”
In front of the crowd, whose expressions are either pained, pitiful, or even horrified — they are all tuned out by Qiuyuan as he takes a careful bite from your plate.
For a moment, he tastes nothing but smoke and regret. The char sears his tongue, the texture crumbles like sand between his teeth, and the sweetness — if it existed at all — flees before it can make itself known. Yet somewhere beneath the bitterness and ash, something glimmers faintly —
— and then, suddenly, the world falls away.
The chatter of the crowd blurs into a low hum as fragments of memory surge through him — your laughter echoing through a misted forest, the way your hands cupped his face when he was wounded and refused rest, your voice calling out his name during a thunderstorm when even the heavens seemed to split apart. The scent of wild osmanthus drifts through his mind, mingling with the faint traces of smoke and sugar.
He remembers your first meeting beneath the scarlet moon of Mingting, when you mistook him for a statue because he refused to speak. He remembers your stubbornness, your radiance, your maddening persistence to live with the world rather than beside it.
Each image flickers like lanternlight in the dark, until all he sees—past the ruined cake, past the dim lights, past even his own wandering self — is you.
Qiuyuan realizes then, with startling clarity, that home was never a place, nor a journey that could be mapped across lands or seasons. Home was here, standing before him with batter on your sleeves and hope in you — messy, imperfect, but achingly alive.
He swallows. Barely.
“…It tastes dreadful,” Qiuyuan says at last, face utterly unreadable.
Your gasp is nothing short of theatrical. “You liar! You said you’d enjoy it regardless!”
His lips twitch, almost into a smile. Underneath the moon's faint glow and your beating heart, the faintest of warmth touches his usually stoic face.
“I said no such thing.”
"wheres the teahouse draft you poste -" shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
this is just a very deranged idea that came to me bc i was just repeating the word kremnos in my head, wondering why it sounded so familiar
then the thought process after is like: kremnos -> minos -> minoans -> minotaur -> labyrinth -> au where legend has it: a monster is being imprisoned in the endless labyrinths of castrum kremnos. they designed the maze to keep intruders out and the monster in. but you, the daughter of the new king are far too curious for your own good
⟢ tags: pacrim!au, angst, hurt-comfort, childhood friends to enemies to lovers, action, big robots punching big aliens
Fourteen drops, twelve kills. Phainon is the best ranger the Pan Pacific Defense Corps has and, with the threat of the Breach looming on the horizon, the soldier that they need. But not even he can pilot a Jaeger alone.
⟢ chapters: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven
I. ENTROPY
He finds you in the same jail cell.
An hour and twenty seven minutes. That’s the time that it takes him — from the moment that you’re put behind bars (again) until you hear hurried footsteps echoing down the corridor — to get to this little confinement center at the edge of Marmoreal. Doesn’t pause when he rounds the corner — just moves, long strides eating up the distance between the two of you. He must know this place by heart now.
“They let you in again, huh?” you ask, as he comes to a stop outside your cell. His white hair, muted beneath the shitty lighting of the basement, is slightly damp with sweat, stubborn strands sticking to his temples. Did he run? And, does it matter, even if he did? “Of course,” you tilt your head, propping your chin up on your knee to look at him. “You’re Amphoreus’ darling, after all.”
Twelve drops, fourteen kills. Fourteen kaiju, fourteen cities — it equates to millions of lives saved. He’s the most effective Jaeger pilot on record in history. So it’s no surprise that everyone bends over backwards for him — to them, he’s more than just a man. A symbol, just like the sun tattooed on the side of his neck.
Deliverer, they called him. Still call him now, even though he hasn’t stepped foot inside a Jaeger for three years. Saviour of humanity. Hope of mankind.
The man on the other side of your cell looks nothing like any of those things. Phainon doesn’t speak. Instead he just stares at you through the bars, lips pressed together and arms stiff at the sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them. His eyes, still too blue even in the murk of the basement, flicker with something that you can’t quite decipher.
Haven’t bothered to, for quite some years now.
“How long has it been since we last saw each other?” You yawn, slouching against the wall. “Two months?”
Nothing.
“Guess they still haven’t found someone compatible with you, huh? Or you wouldn’t have time to visit a small-time criminal like me.”
Still no response.
“Maybe, next time I’ll ask the guards to bet on—”
Phainon breathes out, and you fall silent. Despite everything that’s happened between the two of you, there’s still a gravity to him. It’s like a law of nature — unlike poles attract, apples fall, and people listen when Phainon speaks. Even you, apparently.
“How many times are you going to do this?” he says at last. His voice is quiet. Tired.
“I don’t know.” You shrug. “How many times are you going to keep coming back?”
Phainon’s jaw shifts at your words, fingers curling into fists at his sides. He doesn’t answer the question. You don’t think that even he knows the answer, himself.
After a while, he exhales and takes a step back. pulls out the military cap from under his arm, runs a hand through his hair and fits it onto his head in silence. He doesn’t say anything — there’s nothing left to say between the two of you. Phainon has tried, of course, with his whys and hows and pleases. They’ve been exhausted in encounters far earlier than this one. Repeated over and over again.
Nothing ever changes. Your answer, too, has always been the same.
“I don’t need to be saved.”
Phainon turns around. “I’ll speak to Aglaea,” is all he says, before he leaves. You wave to send him off — it’s a long way back, after all — leaning against the bars of your cell as he goes.
“See you around, Phainon,” you call after his fading footsteps, faintly echoing down the corridor.
You hope you don’t.
Pan Pacific Defense Corps: The Pan Pacific Defense Corps (abbreviated PPDC) is an organisation created by the United Nations. The Defense Corps represents an international alliance of twenty one different countries across the rim of the Pacific Ocean and the IPC, bound together by the shared goal of containing, combating and eliminating the kaiju.
You’re usually out within a day or two. Sometimes even hours, if you’re lucky — and that’s without Phainon’s interference, even. He might have his friends in the upper ranks of the military, but you’re not without your own connections down below. Besides, you’re only ever detained under suspicion, never arrested. You like to think that you’re more experienced than to be caught with evidence.
So, you’re understandably startled when the next visitor to your cell eight hours later is not the guard who makes photocopies of your release paperwork, but a tall woman with hair like spun gold and eyes that make you feel like you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded shotgun.
She’s dressed in military uniform. The formal kind, not the ugly green fatigues that Phainon sometimes shows up in (as though the kaiju would be fooled by basic military camouflage, but you suppose old habits die hard). Tailored, from the way the dark fabric hugs her figure. With a kind of elegance so potent that it’s straight up domineering.
And there are four gold stars decorating each of her shoulders.
“You’re Aglaea,” you say, before you can stop yourself. She smiles.
It’s beautiful. It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“You’ve heard of me.” Neither here nor there, but the statement is laughable in and of itself. Who in Amphoreus hasn’t heard of the General Aglaea? The entirety of the Okhema shatterdome is under her authority, and by extension every jet fighter, soldier and Jaeger in it. Enough military power to destroy a small country, all vested in a single person. And she's standing here in this dingy little jail cell, doing what — looking for you?
“Is there something I can help you with?” you ask, warily as your brain tries to compute a possible reason why a four star PPDC general would be making house calls to a no-name prison and failing miserably. Whatever it is, it most definitely spells trouble for you.
“I just wanted to see the face of the one who’s been causing my Lieutenant so much trouble.” Your eyes narrow. She’s talking about Phainon. “Three times in eight months? And it’s not even Christmas…” She taps a finger against her lips, smiles. “Either you’re not very good at your job… or you’re deliberately seeking his attention?”
You bristle at that. “Not my fault you gave your hound too long of a leash.”
Aglaea only laughs. The sound makes uncertainty crawl around in the pit of your belly. And the unease only grows when she steps across the cell to take a seat on the prison bench opposite you, crossing one leg over the other under her pencil skirt.
You glance at the cell door and briefly contemplate making a run for it. You’d have felt safer being locked in here with a rabid tiger — at least it wouldn’t toy with its food like this.
“Three counts of identity fraud. Five instances of dealing kaiju biomaterial to criminal and terrorist organisations. Two counts of murder.” Someone’s done her research.
“Suspected murder,” you correct, folding your arms across your chest. It’s not. “What’s the point of this?”
Aglaea tilts her head to the side, golden curls falling across her cheek. “My point is, it would be easy to make you disappear.” A cold weight settles in your chest, like a sinking stone. She says it with the tone of someone stating a matter of fact, not a threat. You can see it in her eyes — she can, and she would. “You’ve been a distraction to Phainon, you know? Not to mention a PR headache to keep under wraps. Humanity’s most admired Ranger, complicity in releasing a criminal from prison?” She tuts lightly. “Not exactly what people want to see from someone they regard as a deliverer.”
There’s a distinct undercurrent of mocking to her words, pointing the finger of blame at you. “I’ve never asked him to do that,” you grit out. Aglaea raises a delicate brow.
“And yet both of us know that he will, anyway. It’s a fatal flaw of his, isn’t it?” Her eyes are piercing as she looks at you. “Being unable to leave people behind.”
You want to retort, but force your mouth to stay shut. Something about the way the General speaks gets under your skin more easily than you’d like, a needle that knows exactly where to poke and prick. You suppose that’s one of the reasons she became General so young.
Aglaea must be able to tell, too, because she smiles and leans against the wall. “Now, I’m sure that you’ve guessed that I am here for a reason. The reason is this: I have an offer to make you.”
An offer. It almost scares you more than the threat. “It’s not much of an offer when you’re practically holding a gun to my head, is it?” you mutter. She just laughs, holds up both hands.
“What gun?” Her voice is infuriatingly breezy. “But if you’d like me to speak in plainer terms, then I shall oblige. I’m recruiting you into the Jaeger program.”
“I didn’t know the PPDC had started branching into illegal activities. A bit ironic for the military, huh?”
“No.” Aglaea looks at you. “I want you to become a ranger.”
You stare at her for a few moments, scrutinising her expression. Nothing about it reveals that this is a joke. And yet you start laughing despite it anyway, like a hyena barking in ridicule. Aglaea does not respond — she merely waits for you to finish, green eyes imperturbable. Your laughter dies in your throat when you realise that she’s serious.
You cough, wipe the tears from the corners of your eyes. “You’re not joking.” You don’t know which scares you more.
“I’m not.”
“You want me,” you jab a finger at your own chest, “to be a Jaeger pilot?” You can barely keep your voice from rising. For all the preparations that the General made — digging up past records, coming all the way here — this is the plan that she had in mind? “You think the world needs someone like me in a Jaeger?”
Aglaea lowers her gaze. And for the first time, you think you see the briefest flicker of something flash in her eyes.
“No,” she replies, blunt. She’s looking straight at you now. “Phainon is the one the world needs. But what he needs, unfortunately, might just be you.”
Okhema Shatterdome: The Okhema Shatterdome is the primary headquarters of the PPDC in Amphoreus. It is under the authority of the Marshal Cerydra, although General Aglaea has been acting in her stead for the past year and a half. It consists of factories for the construction, repair, maintenance and launch of the Jaegers. All operations, Ranger training and experiments regarding the kaiju are carried out within their respective Shatterdome bases. There are currently three combat active Jaegers stationed in Okhema.
The helicopter is loud. Too loud and moves like it’s drunk when the turbulence hits, not loud enough to distract you from the fact that you’re in a glorified, overengineered tin can fighting the laws of physics every second to stay in the air. You guess it’s not that much different from a plane, in theory. But knowing where you’re headed still makes you want to throw yourself out of the nearest window despite the thousand foot freefall into the ground.
Aglaea explains the rest of her ‘offer’ to you while you’re in the air. She wants you to test drift compatibility with Phainon — as though the entirety of the Ranger program has tried and failed for the past three years. And now, she thinks a handful of childhood memories might somehow make you different from them.
But you’re not in a position to complain. Or refuse. Or do anything other than agree, really. You’re extracted from the confinement center with nary a peep from the guard, and the General just… takes you with her, like a parent picking up her child from preschool. No papers signed, not even a single phone call to make. Fucking Pan Pacific Defense Corps. She’s jumping over every legal line drawn in the sand like it’s an Olympic sport.
You find yourself missing your prison cell when the chopper hovers over what you assume is the Shatterdome. It’s enormous, like take up half the skyline kind of enormous, which should be expected considering that the Jaegers stationed inside are basically small skyscrapers that can throw punches. But you don’t realise just how much until you see the people dotting the runway that stretches along the entirety of Okhema’s coastline, the size of ants.
There must be dozens down there, hundreds or even thousands more inside just to keep a base this size running. All that for three Jaegers. Six pilots. No wonder why people idolise Phainon like he was chosen by God himself.
There’s a small welcome committee waiting for you when the chopper lands on the heli-pad. Aglaea disembarks first, tucks a lock of golden hair neatly behind her ear as she steps off with more grace than her heels should allow. You follow suit, faltering momentarily when the frozen sea air whips at your face like a thousand icy knives. It’s cold.
“Lovely weather we’re having today,” Aglaea comments, before turning towards the pair gathered at the edge of the heli-pad. “Why is the apocalypse on our front porch this morning?”
“Just a bad storm passing through, ma’am.” A tall, slender woman steps forward, tablet cradled in the crook of her arm. Her burnished gold hair is swept back into a tidy bun. “But there is a bigger storm brewing on your desk, I’m afraid — Marshal Cerydra has a few things that you need to get back to her, and I quote her words, ASAP.”
Aglaea sighs. “Wonderful. So long as she hasn’t threatened to bayonet the UN secretary again… thank you, GM.”
Sudden movement catches your eye — a flicker of red darting behind the woman. Your brain stutters. A child? Here? Before you can speak, the girl steps into view, small fingers curled into the woman’s uniform skirt. Wide, curious eyes lock onto yours.
“Is this the new recruit, Aggy?” — Aggy? — she asks, tilting her head upwards to look at you. The top of her head doesn’t even come up to your elbow. Red hair, blue eyes… you squint at Aglaea. Half siblings, perhaps? Cousins? The General smiles at her, reaches down to pat her head.
“If all goes well, hopefully.” She straightens up, glances at the gold watch gleaming on her delicate wrist. “Trianne, be a dear and ask Trinnon to prepare some tea in my office, will you? I’d like to show our guest,” you bite back a snort, “a proper welcome.”
The child beams — a stark contrast to this backdrop of war and military machines. “Of course, Aggy!” She runs off in the direction of the Shatterdome, only to suddenly whirl back with a wave that makes her whole arm bounce. “See you around, Miss New Recruit!” You raise a hand weakly in response, and she darts off again between the stone faced soldiers and armoured jeeps.
Aglaea gestures at you with a wave of her hand. “Come, now.”
People stare. You can feel their eyes as you follow her down the tarmac, past the lines of stationed fighters and military people doing… whatever it is that military people do. Part of you knows that it’s nothing out of the ordinary — an unfamiliar face accompanying the General must warrant some measure of curiosity — but you can’t help the feeling that someone might recognise you. You pull your jacket together around you, duck your head and pick up the pace.
She leads you to an elevator, hits a button at the very top labelled BRIDGE — COMMAND CENTER and waves a keycard over the scanner. The doors shut behind the two of you.
It’s a long way up, but the elevator doesn’t stop even once. General privileges, maybe? It deposits the two of you into a corridor. And just like the runway earlier, there are people everywhere. It’s like there’s a heartbeat pumping through the entire facility, pushing everything inside it along. Everyone here seems to have somewhere to be, something to do, walking fast with papers in hand. You follow Aglaea to a door at the very end of it.
Marshal’s Office — General Aglaea.
She flicks the same card over the reader and it slides open. There’s a china set laid out neatly on the desk in the center of the room, stacks of files and papers pushed precariously to the sides. Little swirls of steam are still escaping the teapot’s spout.
“Trinnon’s a little shy. You might see her around, if you’re lucky.” Aglaea gestures for you to sit and you do, in a leather chair that seems just a little too big for you. She takes a moment to pour out the tea — flowery and subtly fragrant — into two cups and slides one over to you. You stare down at the coppery liquid in the cup, suspicious.
Aglaea only looks amused. “I wouldn’t waste all that time and effort bringing you here if I wanted to kill you. There are easier ways to make that happen,” she says candidly, before taking a sip of the tea herself. “Ah, a perfect brew. Now, as I was saying earlier, there are three things that I want from you.”
Three? Her demands just keep increasing. “You want me to test drift compatibility with Phainon.”
She nods, tapping a nail against the rim of her cup. “That’s one. The second is this: if the two of you are drift compatible, become a ranger.”
There it is again. Become a ranger. She says it like it’s nothing — as though piloting a giant mech to slug it out with an alien monster that could flatten a city in under an hour is the equivalent of taking a car out for a test drive. As though there aren’t actual soldiers who’ve trained their entire lives to get into the Jaeger program and still fall short. Digging for needles in haystacks, is how Drift-Tech had described it.
And to pilot a Jaeger, you need two.
You lean back in the chair, trying to be rational about this. The odds. “Let’s be real here — what are the actual odds that I’m drift compatible with Phainon? After hundreds of failures?”
“Statistically?” Aglaea asks. “Near zero.”
You hadn’t expected her to admit it so candidly. “Then why waste my time? Why waste yours?”
“Because miracles can happen, unlikely as they are,” she counters, and slides a folder across the table. “Succeed, and you walk away with a Ranger’s commission. Full benefits, hazard pay, the works. Some might even say it pays too well.” She mutters that last part under her breath.
You push the folder back. “You mean a front row seat to getting eaten by a kaiju.”
Aglaea doesn’t even blink. “Fail, and you’ll still get a clean record.” You look up at that, mouth suddenly dry. Clean record? “A new identity in any country you’d like. I heard the Xianzhou has some beautiful scenery. Or perhaps Penacony, if you prefer the nightlife.”
It sounds too good to be true. “There’s a caveat to that, I’m guessing.”
“Phainon can’t so much as hear your name again.” Aglaea’s voice turns steely. “I can’t have him distracted chasing ghosts or getting tangled in…” her eyes sweep over you, “unfavourable associations. The program’s reputation is hanging by a thread as it is.”
Unfavourable associations. Right, that’s how she sees you. “You’re going to a lot of lengths for one washed-up Ranger,” you mutter, crossing your arms across your chest. “What’s he to you?”
“Not to me. To the world.” Aglaea taps on her tablet, slides it over to you. You glance at it. It’s a news feed, showing protestors outside a Jaeger research center. They yell, wave signs around furiously. “Two failed drops in Belobog last month. And after Janus and Georios fell…” Her lips press together in a grim line. “Public approval ratings have never been lower. The Wall Initiative gains traction every day we don’t have a win, and that damn concrete won’t save a single city when the next Cat IV comes through the Breach.”
She sounds like she’s sure. Then you remember, before she became General, she had been a pilot too — for Phagousa, if you remember correctly. And her co-pilot…
“And you think Phainon can?”
“He’s the symbol this program needs. In the people's eyes, he's the only pilot who’s never lost.” Aglaea laces her fingers together. “Get him back in a Jaeger, and people might remember why we built them in the first place.”
You glance down at the folder on the table again. A clean slate. A blank record. No more hiding, no more looking over your shoulder. Wasn’t that what you’d been working towards, this whole time? And yet… “It doesn’t have to be me inside that Jaeger.”
“If I had other options, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Aglaea says, bluntly. “But at the moment, you’re all we’ve got.”
Oh, joy.
“You’ll keep looking?” you press.
Aglaea’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “The second we find someone who doesn’t make the compatibility readers spit error codes, you’re free to go.” She reaches for her intercom. “I’ll have the NeuroSync scheduled for tomorrow. Tribbie will show you to the testing room first thing in the morning.” You exhale, and Aglaea leans forward. “And, while we’re being honest? Don’t even think about trying to escape. It won’t be worth it.”
She doesn’t continue, but the unspoken threat hangs over your neck like a guillotine. I’ll find you, and this time, I won’t be so kind.
Before you can respond, the door crashes open.
Phainon stands in the doorway, breathing ragged like he’s just sprinted across the entirety of the Shatterdome. The overhead lights catch the blue in his irises — the same eyes that you’ve stared down in every Ranger recruitment poster in Marmoreal.
Hero. Saviour. Deliverer.
“Aglaea, I heard you—” His voice cuts off abruptly as his gaze lands on you. Every muscle in his body goes rigid, all at once.
You watch as a dozen different emotions flicker across his face — shock, anger, confusion — before his composure slams back into place. It doesn’t look as though Aglaea let him in on her grand plan, which is surprising, considering that he’s the main character in it.
“Ah, Phainon. Perfect timing,” Aglaea says, just a hint too pleasant. She rises, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from her uniform as she does. “I was just telling (Name) here that the Shatterdome is huge, and not to get lost. Would you show her to the guest quarters?” Aglaea slides a keycard over the table. “She’ll need some rest before tomorrow’s NeuroSync.”
Phainon’s jaw works. He glances at you again. “We need to discuss—”
“That can wait till later.” Aglaea’s voice is smooth as silk, but could cut through steel. “Unless you’d like to explain to Hyacine why our only viable candidate passed out from exhaustion before we even begin?”
The two of them lock eyes for a few seconds before Phainon steps aside reluctantly, movements stiff with barely-restrained tension. “No, General.” He holds open the door for you as you gather your things, but his eyes remain on the ground. He doesn’t look at you.
You make a point to finish all the tea in the cup before you leave. Aglaea only smiles as the door shuts behind you.
“All the best to you, (Name).”
Ranger: Ranger is the rank given to Pan Pacific Defense Corps officers assigned to the Jaegers. They are commonly referred to as Jaeger Pilots. Prior to piloting a Jaeger, all rangers are required to undergo multiple rounds of psychological evaluation and rigorous military training.
The walk to your quarters is silent. Phainon walks ahead of you without looking back. The silhouette of his shoulders are rigid beneath the dark fabric of his uniform, the golden sun at his neck barely peeking out over the folded collar. It’s clear that he isn’t in the mood to talk.
So you do. Let the quiet stretch just long enough to be uncomfortable before you break it.
“So,” you drawl, deliberately quickening your step to keep pace with him. “How’s it possible that the great Deliverer can’t find a single partner? What, does your charm and pretty face not work in the Drift?”
Phainon’s shoulders tense, but he keeps walking. Maybe even speeds up a little.
You press harder, sneakers squeaking against the polished floor. “Or is it that no one can stand being in the same head as that hero complex of yours? Must be embarrassing. Aglaea’s scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard that she had to dig me out of a prison cell—”
“That’s enough.” He whirls around so suddenly that you nearly collide face first with his chest. Up close, he’s all sharp angles and controlled anger — eyes almost molten golden under the harsh lights. There’s a hint of a bruise at his jawbone, faint, barely there, but there.
You don’t remember that from the news reels. What’s he been fighting, the Loch Ness Monster?
“This isn’t some game,” he bites out, voice low enough that the techs passing by glance over, exchange glances and hurry away. “Hundreds and thousands of lives are in danger. People die. Every day we don’t have a Jaeger in the field is another city in Amphoreus on the brink. But no, you wouldn’t—”
“Oh, I understand,” you interrupt, stepping closer. The scent of antiseptic and something faintly metallic — oil? blood? — clings to him. “You need this. The Deliverer title must be getting rusty, huh? That’s why I’m here.”
His breath catches. You see it — the minute fracture in his control, the way his fingers twitch at his side like he’s physically restraining himself.
“You think I want you here?” His voice is rough, stripped raw. “I didn’t even know Aglaea went to look for you. I didn’t have a—”
“Choice?” You laugh, sharp and hollow and humourless. “You’ve always had a choice, Phainon. You just hate the one that you have left.”
For a heartbeat, you think his composure— that perfect, polished, military composure — might finally snap after all those years. But then his jaw clenches, and he turns on his heel with surgical precision. “Your room,” he mutters, gesturing at a nondescript door like he can’t stand to look at you another second.
The space inside is, at least, a little nicer than what you’d expected. A cot, wide enough for you to stretch out on. Sheets in the same, standard shade of military regulation green. The hint of a lingering sting of disinfectant in the air. Aside from that, the room is bare. Impersonal. Empty.
You sink onto the mattress, springs groaning in protest, and stare at the ceiling. Outside, Phainon’s footsteps fade down the hall.
“Guess I’m stuck here,” you mutter to the blank walls, “because you still can’t stop playing the hero.” As usual, they don’t bother replying.
At least some things never change.
An hour after he leaves, Phainon returns to Aglaea’s office.
She barely glances up from her dossier when he does, takes a sip from the teacup in her hand. “Good afternoon, Phainon,” she says mildly, flipping a page with deliberate calm. Like she’d expected him to show up again. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“You brought her here.”
Aglaea doesn’t seem bothered by his accusatory tone. “I did,” she admits easily. “You asked me to get her out of prison, didn’t you?”
Phainon runs a hand through his already dishevelled hair, grimacing in frustration. “You know that this isn’t what I meant. A ranger, Aglaea?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.” Aglaea finally sets down the dossier in her hands, looks at him — really looks at him. She gestures to the wall of monitors displaying report dashboards — kaiju attack patterns, evolving faster than they can keep up, the steadily dropping public approval ratings ever since three years ago. “The numbers don’t lie, Phainon. The Jaeger program is expensive, and the people are not seeing the payoffs they expect. We’re losing this war on two fronts, now.”
Her tone is grim. Behind the cold eyes, the calm exterior, Phainon can see the worry. Everything she says is true, and Phainon wants — needs — nothing more than to be out there in a Jaeger. And yet…
“She didn’t sign up for this.” He’s not sure what means Aglaea used to persuade you, but Phainon is pretty sure that you’re not here by choice.
“None of us signed up for alien monsters to invade our world, but they did anyway.” Aglaea sighs, her expression softening marginally as she rises from her desk. “There are bigger things at stake here than you, or me, or…” she pauses, choosing her words carefully, “your past acquaintance. The people need a deliverer to put their hopes in, Phainon. They need to believe in something.”
Phainon’s hands clench into white-knuckled fists at his sides. For a long moment, the only sound in the room is the sound of the distant thrum of the Shatterdome’s machinery, the muffled buzz of people with things to do to keep the world from falling.
“I know,” he finally mutters. The words taste bitter in his mouth.
Aglaea nods, her professional mask slipping just enough to reveal a hint of sympathy. “Just one NeuroSync test,” she assures him, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll let her go unharmed. You have my word.”
The muscles in Phainon’s jaw work as he struggles with his own reservations. Finally, he snaps to attention and offers a sharp salute. “Yes, ma’am. My apologies for my… insubordination.”
Aglaea gives him a faint smile. “Go get some rest, clear your head,” she orders him as she settles back in her chair. “Big day tomorrow, hm?”
Phainon presses his lips together. “Yes, ma’am.”
As the door slides shut behind him, Aglaea sighs and returns her attention to her reports. The display flickers ominously as another red alert pings in from the coast. Strange readings in the seabed, exotic matter, negative mass-energy density readings, blah blah blah. She glances down at her teapot, finds it empty, and switches over to a coffee pot instead.
Just another day, pushing back the end of the world. Doing what needs to be done.
NeuroSync: Jaegers are controlled by two, or rarely, three pilots stationed inside the Conn-Pod through a system called the Drift. To provide a more comprehensive estimate on drift compatibility, Dr Cyrene developed the Neural Handshake Synchronicity (NeuroSync) Scale with Professor Anaxagoras.
The knock on your door comes just after seven. Or 0700 hours, according to the clock next to your cot. Damn military… You’re already awake — the unfamiliar environment and bed had seen to that. You’d spent the night staring at the ceiling fan whirring overhead, replaying every word Phainon had said yesterday in your head, counting down the minutes until this farce began.
Which is now, apparently. You throw your keycard at the door and pump your fist when it hits the scanner, makes a little beep, light flashing green. “Come in.”
Instead of the stone-faced soldier you’re expecting, the door swings open to reveal… a child. She can’t be more than ten, looks uncannily similar to the other girl you’d seen at the runway yesterday — Trianne, was it? — and her blue eyes wide under the brim of a comically oversized PPDC cap. The sleeves of her miniature jumpsuit are rolled up to the elbows, exposing arms dotted with illegible marker stains.
She beams at you, and it’s like staring straight on into the sun. “Hey!” She waves at you, still sitting on the edge of your bed. “I’m Tribbie, and I’m here to bring you for your NeuroSync!” She announces this like she’s taking you on a field trip to the amusement park and not what will likely be the most violating experience of your life. “I’ll show you to the K-Science department so you won’t get lost. The Shatterdome is huge!”
You open your mouth to question every workplace safety regulation in existence before clamping it shut. You should know better than to question the military by now. “Let me guess — you’re Trianne’s sister?”
Tribbie smiles, wide. It’s… adorable, really. “Yup! There’s three of us — Trianne, Trinnon, and me!” She holds up three fingers. “But Trinnon’s a little shy, so it’s hard to find her sometimes. She hopes you enjoyed the tea she made yesterday, though!”
You follow her through the maze of interconnecting corridors. Every door looks the same, every hallway it opens too looks like an extension of the one just came from. But Tribbie walks through all of it with the easy confidence of someone who knows that they belong here. The janitors pause in their work to return her waves. A grizzly mechanic slips her what looks like a candy from his pocket.
“You’re popular,” you observe aloud. “Did you grow up here?”
Tribbie just shakes her head. “Only since Mama and Papa died. Aggy took us in after Januspolis fell.” She skips ahead to press her tiny palm against a biometric scanner before you can ask any more.
The scanner flashes green, and the doors to K-Science slide open. There’s a funky smell in the air — chemicals, formaldehyde, something else. The floor tiles, which look like they were once supposed to be white, are stained a permanent yellow. It’s slightly sticky underfoot. Ew.
The lab itself is an organised chaos. Wall screens flicker with rotating kaiju anatomy models — you recognise a few. Cocolia, the Cat III that had attacked Belobog a few years back. They zoom in on Hoolay’s claws, each one as long as a school bus. It had taken two of the Xianzhou’s Mark-3 Jaegers to finally put that beast down, and even then, it’d taken hours and the city of Yaoqing had taken significant damage. Last you heard, they were still trying to repair the Caelorum Venti Pavilion.
You glance at the sides. Specimen jars line the shelves, murky fluids preserving an uncountable range of tissue samples. And at the center of it all, a pink haired woman in a stained lab coat stands over a dissection table, her goggled face uncomfortably close to the wrinkled grey mass in front of her.
“Dr Hyacine! I’ve brought the test subject!” Tribbie announces.
The scientist — Hyacinthia, it says so on her lab coat — doesn’t look up. “One moment, just… there!” There’s a wet squelch, and she straightens up, holding a glistening strand of tissue from the mess. “Beautiful. Tribbie, would you label this for me? Thermoreceptor nerve cluster, sample K-425.”
As Tribbie scrambles onto a stool to reach the labelling machine, Hyacine finally notices you. She pushes her goggles up, leaving a comical ring of clean skin around her eyes. She’s pretty. And cute. Pretty cute. And that blue stuff doesn’t look like kaiju blue, at least… “Oh, you must be the new candidate that Aglaea was talking about!” She holds out a gloved hand, glances down at the mystery mix of chemicals staining the rubber and retracts it. “Sorry for the mess. We’re prepping samples for the Penacony lab.”
You glance at the dissection table. “Secondary brain? From how well it’s been preserved, must have been a recent one… Terravox?”
Hyacine blinks from where she’s tossing her gloves into the bin. “You know kaiju biology.” She sounds surprised.
You shrug, suddenly awkward. Your experience with the black market harvesters had taught you to identify the valuable parts quickly. “Just a side interest of mine,” you mutter, glancing at the secondary brain again. You wonder if anyone has tried Drifting with a kaiju brain before. “So, um. How does this NeuroSync thing work?”
“Right!” Hyacine claps her hands together. “Well. The NeuroSync equipment’s set up in the clean room.” She gestures to a sealed chamber at the back of the lab. “We’re just waiting on—”
The doors slide open again with a hiss of compressed air. Phainon is standing there, in the doorway. Speak of the devil.
“Phainon!” Hyacine smiles brightly, and you catch Phainon’s lips twitch upwards — he still smiles??? — in response. “Good morning. Ready for your NeuroSync?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” And you count two seconds before his eyes find yours and he just frowns, like it’s instinctive. You square your shoulders and stare back at him, refusing to look away. He doesn’t say hi. Neither do you.
The silence stretches. Hyacine’s smile falters as she looks between the two of you, before she awkwardly claps her hands together. “Perfect timing! Let’s get the two of you started.”
Hyacinthia: Hyacinthia, or Hyacine for short, is a kaiju biologist who works in the K-Science lab of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. She is also the head of the Okhema Shatterdome's Psychology Department, holding degrees in both Neurology and Psychology.
The clean room is anything but. While free of kaiju viscera, the space bears the scars of countless experiments — scorch marks on the console, a patched hole in the ceiling. And there’s a persistent smell of burnt wiring…
Two medical chairs, like the kind that you’d see at the dentist, sit in the center, headpieces a trailing nest of cables. You eye it suspiciously as you take a seat on the one closest to the door. Not that running would do you any good. But still, it’s the damn principle of the thing.
“Don’t worry,” Hyacine says, as she rushes around to set up, fingers fluttering over the settings on the main console. The screen lights up. “This is just a compatibility estimate. Think of it as mental speed dating.” Phainon coughs. “Or… like a high-five instead of a handshake.” At your blank look, she amends. “A lightweight neural connection. No full drift, just enough to measure potential sync levels.”
Tribbie, upon seeing the look on your face, tries to reassure you, bless her heart. “It doesn’t hurt! Or, well, that’s what I heard, at least.”
You close your eyes and wonder if your health insurance covers brain damage from drifting with your childhood friend turned enemy.
Phainon takes his seat with that same calm composure, his jaw set. Says his pleases and thank yous and even smiles as Hyacine carefully fits the neural sensors to his temples. It’s like they’ve got a whole different man in that chair.
Only when Hyacine goes back to check the readings on the console that you see his fingers twitch on the armrests — the only outward sign of his discomfort. You stifle a snort. Still trying to play the hero.
“Problem, Deliverer?” you ask, sarcastically.
His gaze flickers over to you, but he doesn’t respond. Just fixes his eyes forward again with that stubborn determination of a man who hasn’t given up for the past three years.
Hyacine steps over to you next, her touch surprisingly gentle as she positions the sensors. The electrodes stick uncomfortably to your skin. “This might feel a little strange at first. Like someone’s standing a bit too close in an empty room. Or like someone’s whispering directly into your ear.”
None of those things sound very attractive or comforting to you, but Hyacine is already stepping away, fiddling with the controls. The system initialises, and you start to feel a low hum building in your skull. It spreads outwards like seismic waves, until there's a high-pitched oscillating whine vibrating through your molars. You barely have time to register the discomfort before it—
Pressure.
It shifts, expands. Not against your skin, not against your head, but directly into your mind. Like it’s pressing against the boundaries of your very self. And you feel it there, Phainon’s consciousness on the very edge of that territory, lingering.
Hesitant.
Before you can figure out why, the drift surges. Like waves beneath your feet, a riptide yanking you out to sea. Your breath catches in your throat. And suddenly, you’re—
—standing in a crowd. Blue and white balloons rain down all around you, in the packed plaza. Cheering so loud, you can’t hear your own thoughts.
A sea of faces in front of you — no, him? — indistinguishable. Phainon grips Cyrene’s hand behind the conference table, feels her pat his sweaty palm reassuringly. His heart is a raging wardrum in his chest—
—you see him, both of them, golden and gleaming in their new Ranger uniforms. The reporter hands him a microphone, you watch his mouth shape words you can’t quite make out. One drop, two kaiju solo, first mission.
His eyes scan the crowd. The reporter asks him a question he doesn’t remember responding to. Surely if you were still alive, then surely, you would—
—the crowd surges, cheering. “Heroes!” You stare up at the stage. Elevated. Unreachable. That hollow feeling in your chest clenching around nothing.
Where are you? Fear wraps itself like a fist around his throat, burns like the sun tattooed into the side of his neck. A reminder. A promise. Please, where are you—
—and then you turn your back on him, on them and—
The memory fractures like glass as you slam your mental defenses shut with enough force to make the neural feedback alarms wail. Your whole body jerks out of the seat as the connection severs with a sound like tearing metal in your head.
Across from you, Phainon gasps, his pupils blown wide. He’d seen it too, that fractured moment of you walking away. But not why. Never why.
Hyacine panics in her mother tongue as three different monitors flatline all at once. “Gods! I said neural high-five, not neural warfare!” Her hands fly over the keys.
Tribbie, wide-eyed and mouth open, points at the main screen where the compatibility readout flickers erratically. You rip your headset off your head, look up to see the results with your heart pounding in your chest.
[NEURAL COMPATIBILITY: 26% — LOW SYNCHRONIZATION]
[SYNC STABILITY: LOW]
You’re panting like you’ve just sprinted a mile, taste copper on your tongue. The afterimage of that press conference, the dirty back alleys that you’d retreated back into, still pulses behind your eyes. The way you’d—
No. That memory stays buried.
Phainon pulls off his own headset, staring at you with something dangerously close to realisation. He doesn’t even look at the screen. “You were there,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you. His voice is low and certain.
You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. “Everyone in Okhema was there, Deliverer.”
His blue eyes burn with an emotion you can’t quite decipher, but he doesn’t press. The not-quite lie hangs between the two of you, thin as the neural gel still dripping from the sensors. He knows. Not the whole truth, not the reasons that still ache like a bruise against your ribs, but too much.
It will always be too much.
You’re really starting to get sick of Aglaea’s office.
It feels like the kind of place where warmth goes to die. And now, you feel like you might just keel over from the trepidation too, as Aglaea studies the results on one of the displays behind her desk, arms crossed over her chest. Her expression is inscrutable — you can’t tell whether she’s surprised, excited, disappointed, anything. She doesn’t even speak.
You decide to break the silence first. “26% scores in the incompatible range,” you manage to scrape up the courage to say. “I did what you said. Now let me go.”
Hyacine shifts uncomfortably next to you. Her fingers twist in the hem of her stained lab coat. “To be honest?” She gestures at the neural readouts. “No one’s maintained a neural link with Phainon for a minute before…”
“Which further proves we’re incompatible—”
Aglaea finally looks up from the display, raising an eyebrow. “Everyone else barely managed twenty seconds in the Drift with him before the neural feedback knocked them out cold.” What? Fuck. She swipes through a few readings, expands a graph that looks like waves and turns it towards you as if you can make sense of any of it. “These readings don’t indicate incompatibility. In fact, the NeuroSync was gaining until this point,” she taps at a drop in the graph, “which shows an active deliberate rejection.”
The blue light reflects in her eyes as she leans forward. “Tell me — is it the idea of seeing into his mind that scares you? Or are you more afraid of what he might see in yours?”
Your hands curl into fists at your sides, nails biting into your palms hard enough to leave crescent marks when you suddenly feel the phantom warmth of a hand on yours — a memory, perhaps? But not yours.
“I don’t want him in my head,” you repeat through gritted teeth, louder this time. “That should be enough. Don’t I have rights?”
“A civilian would, perhaps,” Aglaea concedes, sitting back in her chair. “But you’re not just any civilian, and this isn’t just a civilian matter.” She steeples her fingers. “We’ll try again in forty-eight hours. In the meantime, I advise you to consider taking a walk around the Shatterdome. Perhaps some of the people who work here will inspire you. Tribbie will show you around tomorrow.” The redhead beams, gives you a thumbs up that feels out of place in this grim atmosphere. “You may return to your quarters for now.”
You stand up stiffly. Not like you have much of a choice, now.
As the door opens, Aglaea speaks one more time. “Think carefully. The world needs Phainon in a Jaeger. And right now, whether you like it or not, you’re the only key we have to make it happen.”
The door slides shut behind you, sealing Aglaea’s decision in like a stone rolled over a tomb. You stare at it for a few seconds before you exhale sharply, rolling the tension from your shoulders — only to freeze when you see him.
Phainon stands against the wall opposite, arms crossed, blue eyes tracking your every movement. He must have been waiting the entire time. For you?
Everyone else barely managed twenty seconds in the Drift with him before the neural feedback knocked them out cold, Aglaea had said. What exactly had been so bad about it? It can’t be because the two of you are actually drift compatible, can it? Or did you just not hit the threshold needed for all his… hero complex trauma to bash your subconscious to pieces?
Neither of you speaks, for a long moment. The hum of the Shatterdome’s machinery fills the silence between you, a low persistent thrum that vibrates through the building, like the breathing of a giant, concrete beast.
And then—
“Would it really be so terrible?”
His voice is quieter than you expect. Not angry, not demanding. Just… hurt. You stiffen.
“What?”
“Having me in your head.” He pushes off the wall, taking a single step towards you. Too close. “You fought the drift like it was poison. Like I was—” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening. “I just want to know why.”
The question hangs between you, raw and exposed like a live wire. You don’t have an answer.
Or perhaps you have too many. But the words stick in your throat, choking you. Nothing comes out.
You turn away, towards the hallway’s dim lighting. “It doesn’t matter. I’m tired, and I want to sleep.”
Phainon’s hand shoots out, catching your wrist before you can leave. His grip isn’t rough, but it’s firm — enough to make you stop. His skin is warm against yours. So, so warm. He looks at you, something almost resembling pleading in his eyes.
“It matters to me,” he whispers, his voice low and fierce.
For a heartbeat, you almost believe that.
Then reality crashes back. Right. Of course it matters to him. Not because of you— not because of whatever broken history you’ve shared between the two of you, but because he needs a co-pilot. Because not even the great Deliverer can save this world alone.
The realisation hits like ice water being dumped over your head. You wrench your wrist out of his grip, his warmth lingering like a molten brand against your skin.
“Then you should’ve been more compatible with someone else,” you say flatly.
His expression crumples — just for a second, you see hurt behind those blue eyes — before the mask of a perfect soldier slips back into place.
You don’t wait for a response. You turn on your heel and walk away, shoes echoing in the corridor. The hallway stretches endlessly before you, shadows pooling in the corners like ink.
Behind you, Phainon doesn’t follow.
The Ranger baths are one of the Shatterdome’s few luxuries — a concession for the pilots who regularly climb into giant machines to beat up giant aliens in the name of saving the world. Steam curls in thick tendrils along the vaulted ceilings before being sucked out through the vents, a constant hum. The water, treated with salts and minerals to replicate the composition of EdoStar’s famous hot springs, glow faintly blue under the light.
Some swear that the baths have healing properties, that they can leach even neural fatigue from a pilot’s mind. Phainon isn’t sure he believes that — Professor Anaxa certainly doesn’t — but right now, he’ll take any reprieve he can get.
He sinks deeper into the scalding water, letting the heat work its way into his tight shoulders. But no amount of steam or heat can soften the way your words had cut earlier, like a knife sliding between his ribs.
“I don’t want him in my head!”
The memory of your voice, sharp with revulsion, echoes in his skull like a bad neural feedback loop. He exhales sharply, smacks the water with his fist, watching the ripples distort his reflection on the surface.
The door creaks open without ceremony.
Mydei stands in the entrance, dressed in nothing but a towel slung low around his hips, crimson tattoos on full display. He raises an eyebrow at the sight of Phainon.
“You’re here,” he observes, tone flat as if commenting on the weather.
Phainon attempts a smile of acknowledgement, barely gets halfway before he fails and just kind of… grimaces. Mydei’s other eyebrow joins the first.
“That bad, huh?” He steps across the wet tiles, a smaller towel draped over one shoulder, and sinks into an adjacent bath with a splash that sends water sloshing over the edges.
For a long moment, the only sound is of the distant hum of the filtration system, and the steady drip of condensation from the vents above. Then Phainon’s watch chimes. A message from Hyacine flashes across the display.
[Second round of NeuroSync scheduled two days from now.]
It’s followed by:
[All the best! Don’t let today get you down!]
Phainon throws his head back, feels the migraine building in his skull. No amount of forced tests will change the fundamental truth: you don’t want him in your head. And the thought of having to coerce you into it sits like a stone in his gut.
“Heard they NeuroSynced you today with someone Aglaea scraped off the streets,” Mydei says, leaning back against the stone edge casually and golden eyes watching him very, very carefully. Phainon sighs, sinks a little more into the water.
“I’d forgotten how fast word travels around here.”
“Thousands of people jam packed into a single building…” Mydei shrugs, sending ripples across the water. “Not like there’s much else happening in the Shatterdome.” His eyes flick to Phainon. “Though the General was… vague, about the results.”
A beat. Phainon stares at the ceiling, where the droplets gather and fall in a slow rhythm. Again and again.
“It didn’t go great,” he admits.
Mydei studies him. “You sound… reluctant. That’s odd. I thought you’d be clawing at the chance to get back in a Jaeger.”
He exhales through his nose, watches the steam curl along the water’s surface. “It’s… complicated.” The word feels inadequate, but nothing else quite fits.
Mydei’s expression shifts ever so subtly — a slight narrowing of his eyes, the barest tilt of the head. He’s always been quick to catch on, to understand. Too quick, sometimes. “Ah.” He leans back against the stone edge, arms spread along the rim. “So it’s that person.”
Phainon grimaces. “Too obvious?”
“You’ve only ever called one thing in your life complicated.” Mydei rubs at the stubble along his jaw. “Can’t say I’m surprised Aglaea went digging for her. With your track record, I thought she’d have better luck finding a kaiju that wanted to drift with you.” That familiar smirk returns. “So? How was drifting with the hero of your heart?”
The old nickname lands like a poorly thrown punch. The hero of his heart. Gods, he had used to think that way of you. You were the reason he’d ever joined the Ranger program in the first place, after Aedes Elysiae had fallen and taken everything he’d known and loved with it. And now… now it all just…
“Pretty terrible,” Phainon murmurs, the confession escaping him before he can think of any other way to put it. “She rejected the neural link before we could even establish a proper sync.”
The memory surface, unbidden. The press conference after that first victory in Kephale, the parade through Okhema’s streets. The desperate, foolish hope that had lodged in his chest, like something fragile pushing through concrete: if you were out there, you would see this. They were on every television screen, their faces plastered across every news report in Amphoreus. You would see them. You would come find them, and—
You hadn’t.
Phainon had only found you years later.
They’d been rumours first. A skilled kaiju parts smuggler working with the Theoros Lygus, who had been one of Aglaea’s biggest headaches — still is, actually. Just another criminal, they’d said at first. Except this one had a wicked expertise in dismantling kaiju. Except this one was sniffing dangerously close to international levels of crime. Except this one…
Had a name he recognised.
He’d gone to see for himself. The prison’s fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, the sound like static in his skull. And then, you.
Alive.
The realisation had hit like a shotgun round to the chest. They’d mourned you. Held a memorial with an empty casket just for the two of them — everyone else who’d known you was long gone. And yet, here you sat, on the cold cement floor, face bruised black and blue and still smiling sharp enough to draw blood.
“Phainon,” you’d said upon seeing him, voice so familiar yet utterly changed. It’d wrapped like a noose around his name. “Fancy meeting you here. Seeing each other like this… fate definitely has some sense of humour, eh?”
He’d gripped the bars until his knuckles turned white, trying to reconcile the ghost from his memories with the reality in front of him. The hero of his heart… Where was the kid who’d patched his scraped knees with chimera bandaids when he’d fallen chasing kites? The one who’d pretended not to be scared of spiders to comfort Cyrene as she cried?
The softness was gone, the spaces left behind filled with something sharp, jagged. Leaving behind someone he could barely recognise. Maybe you did die that day Aedes Elysiae fell. Just… not the way he’d thought.
“Look at you now,” you’d said, gestured at him in mock presentation. “All grown up and shiny and heroic. The great Deliverer, gracing us common criminals with his presence.”
The words had hit him like punches. Your eyes — gods, they were the worst part. Still the same colour, but hardened into something cold and glittering. Unrepentant. Unrecognisable.
The words had tumbled out before he could stop them. I can get you out of here. Come— come with me. We can give you a fresh start.
Please.
You’d looked at him then — really looked at him — with eyes that held none of the warmth he remembered. “I don’t need any saving,” you’d answered. “Especially not from some PPDC poster boy playing hero.”
But now, he knows. You’d been there. The drift — however brief, disjointed, fractured it was — had shown him that much. That fractured moment: you, standing at the crowd’s edge, just… watching. Then, turning away.
Why? Why do this? The question burns hotter than the waters, clinging like the steam to his skin. He doesn’t understand.
Mydei’s voice pulls him back to the present. “That’s normal, isn’t it? Not wanting someone in your head.”
Phainon blinks. He’s gotten lost in his thoughts again. “Eh?”
“Drifting is… intimate.” Mydei’s face contorts at the word like he’s bitten into something sour. “I don’t think anyone wants a stranger poking around in their head. Hell, I barely wanted Cassie in mine, when we first started out. That’s probably not something you’re familiar with, considering that Cyrene knew what you looked like in diapers.” Phainon opens his mouth and Mydei holds up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I’m aware that this one happens to be your childhood friend too. But I wouldn’t exactly call the two of you friends now.”
He’s right. Phainon stares at his distorted reflection in the water for a few moments, watching the way steam warps his features. “How did it go? For you and Castorice?”
Mydei almost grins at that. “I was your typical hothead ranger recruit. Volunteered for the initial test phases of NeuroSync. Cas was a nerd from the Neuroscience department. She was so soft spoken, I thought she’d crack under the pressure.” His smile turns into a smirk, almost proud. “Turns out she has the stubbornness of a kaiju and the patience of a saint. Don’t think we would have made it work otherwise.”
Phainon’s fingers twitch against the tiles. “Still hit 82% sync, though.” He hasn’t seen a number higher than twenty in months.
You have baggage, Hyacine had told him, during one of his monthly psychology evaluations. Gods, he knows. But everyone has some kind of baggage, some way or another. Phainon just needs to find a way to stuff it away, bury it until he can be useful again. There are people out there who need him.
“Eventually. Took some communication and effort, too.” Mydei’s smirk softens into something more genuine. “Wasn’t about liking each other. Just… understanding.” He taps his temple. “She sees the shit up here and doesn’t flinch. I see hers and don’t judge.”
“Guess Cyrene and I had it on easy mode,” Phainon murmurs. They’d been as tight as siblings long before they’d ever stepped foot into a Conn-Pod.
Gods, he misses her. Her easy humour, the teasing. The way she’d known exactly when to push and when to comfort. Cyrene had always been the smarter, more emotionally aware one of the two of them — she’d have had you both laughing over drinks by now.
She would have been so happy to see you here, too. But the opportunity has passed, sailed on by on the river of time. And there’s no point in crying over something that has already happened. The only thing he can do is what’s in front of him right now.
The silence stretches, only punctuated by the quiet sound of water rippling. Mydei watches him for a few moments, before he suddenly speaks up.
“Fifty credits says I can outlast you in this bath.”
Phainon blinks, and then huffs a laugh. It’s hardly a subtle attempt to take his mind off things, but… “That’s not a fair bet and you know it. I’ve been stewing here since shift change.”
“What’s the matter, Deliverer?” Mydei’s grin turns sharp. “Scared of a little heat?”
The challenge makes Phainon snort. He rolls his eyes, but settles deeper into the water until it laps at his chin. “You’re on.”
For the first time all day, the weight in his chest feels a little lighter.
you live at the foot of a mountain with your husband, where there is nothing more for you to want in the peace you’ve cultivated together. until he comes home after a blizzard that should have killed him, bearing a smile that does not belong to the man you once married.
★ featuring; rerir x f!reader | flins x f!reader
★ word count; 7.2k words
★ tags; alternate universe, eldritch horror, kyryll gets offscreened and rerir hijacks his life ykwim, grief/mourning, SMUT (MDNI)
★ notes; this is lowkey a tshd au but i have only seen a grand total of two episodes from that show, so i kinda just winged it LMAO please do heed the tags and the warnings utc ! i wanted to try writing smth out of my comfort zone fr and here we have it :/
p.s. thank you to my lovely roc @rocwylde for quite literally sponsoring this fic LMAO in their wisest words "i like varka more than rerir, but i like eldritch monster fucking more than varka"
READ ON AO3
★ WARNINGS; animal death, blood and gore, cheating but not really? it's complicated! monster fucking, lots of morally ambiguous decisions driven by grief, reader is just really depressed okay sorry!
★ SMUT TAGS; dream sex, rough sex, breast play, tentacle/tendril sex..?? (those phantom hands from his Actual appearance from the archon quest make their debut here too), dubious consent, squirting, creampie
The thing pretending to be your husband is herding the goats today.
You watch from the foyer of your homestead as the morning chill brushes your skin. The creature moves as it always has. With his tall, familiar frame weaving between the animals, hair dark and tousled just so, yellow eyes scanning the pasture with that same patient attentiveness. He talks to them in the soft, clipped tones Kyryll used to use, calling names, clicking his tongue, shooing them gently—but there is a precision in the movement that feels… too clean, like the rhythm has been learned rather than lived.
The goats respond, though not as they once did. They fall into line with a tense, unnatural obedience, skittish bodies pressed close together, eyes rolling white whenever his shadow cuts across the snow. They follow not from trust but from the brittle edge of fear, as if some instinct in them recognizes what you’ve only begun to accept:
This is not the man you married.
Had you loved him any less, you never would have known. It is the depth of that love that allows you to see the gap between Kyryll and this thing that walks in his skin. Yet, you have chosen to live with it, and that choice knots inside your chest, a strange tether made not of grief but of reluctant endurance.
You step out into the snow, letting the cold bite at your cheeks as you call out to him once. He glances up to meet your eyes, and in that fleeting moment, you allow yourself to believe in the elaborate lie.
The goats bleat low and uneasy as they crowd his hands, shrinking from his nearness even as they yield to it. He hums softly before guiding them back toward the barn, and you fall into step behind them with your heart caught somewhere between mourning and the uncanny, stubborn comfort of his presence.
You go about your life as though nothing has changed since the day he wound up on your doorstep. You collect eggs, skim the milk, tidy the house, all while keeping a careful eye on him. Even when you lie beside him at night and your body insists on recognizing him as Kyryll, your heart screams otherwise. But you have come to terms with it—that this fractured imitation, this hollowed echo of the man you love, is all you can hold onto now.
Because if someone like this can still be with you, can still offer the shape of warmth and illusion of companionship, then…
Was Kyryll ever really gone?
You’ve always loved that boy with the burnished yellow eyes.
Kyryll has always been quiet, the one who kept to the edges of games and gatherings, content with watching while the other children laughed and shouted. He was odd, but not unkind, as though the world moved at a slightly different rhythm for him. People used to whisper, what does she even see in him? But for you, loving Kyryll was as easy as breathing.
Now, years later, with a ring on your finger and a home carved into the mountainside, that love threads through every corner of your life.
Your mornings begin in the hush of the barn, the air sharp with the scent of hay and the warmth of the animals. You pull your shawl tighter around your shoulders as you milk the goats, listening to the steady patter of froth into the pail. By the time the sun peeks over the ridge, you are already gathering eggs from the chickens and brushing straw from your skirts. The goats bleat impatiently until Kyryll appears—his tall frame outlined in the doorway of the barn, his hair falling untidily into his eyes.
The animals used to shy away from him. They always do at first. But Kyryll never once let a morning go without unlatching the gate and letting them nose out into the meadow, even when he was running late for work. And animals, like people, remember kindness. Now they greet him without a fuss, nudging his hands with soft noses until he clicks his tongue and shoos them on.
Everyday, you fall into rhythm together. He shoulders the woodpile, you whip up breakfast from the day’s harvest. The hearth crackles as he sets the kettle on, and steam soon fogs the windowpanes. Kyryll doesn’t talk much in the mornings—he rarely talks at all—but his quiet is never empty. When he passes you your cup of tea, your fingers brush, and that alone is worth ten pages from favorite novel.
Your husband laces his boots after breakfast, checks his pouch of gemstones bound for town, and shrugs into his worn winter coat. He never rushes, even when snow threatens in the pass. But before Kyryll steps out of the door, he bends down just enough that you can meet him halfway. His lips are cool from the morning air, his small goodbye kiss brief but certain. He has never once forgotten it, not in all the years since you first moved into this home together.
It is a small life, some might say. A lonely life, tucked high in the mountains where snow lingers long into spring. But it is yours, and when you look at him—your childhood sweetheart, your odd, aloof Kyryll—you cannot imagine wanting any other.
So when whiteout season arrives, you can't help but worry.
These mountains are no strangers to snow, but this time of year the storms grow violent, their howling gusts capable of burying even the most seasoned traveler. Not even the hunters or shepherds from neighboring ridges could survive a night stranded in the unforgiving blizzards of Snezhnaya. You shiver at the thought as you glance toward the snow-blanketed pass.
“Kyryll…” you begin, hesitating as he lifts a pail of milk into the sunlit air. He glances back at you, those calm yellow eyes meeting yours as a small smile tugs at the corner of his lips.
“It’ll be fine,” he says. “We’ve weathered it every year.”
But you’ve never forgotten the elders’ tales. Whispers passed down over decades in your family of what walks after the white storms. They spoke of shapes in the snow, eyes glowing like lanterns in the blizzard, and travelers who vanished without trace. The stories crawl under your skin, prickling along your spine, and you tighten on your skirts at the mere memory.
“Promise me you won’t go out too much until it calms?” you ask, biting back the tension in your voice. “I… I just—”
Kyryll sets the pail down and steps closer as he places his gloved hands over yours. His touch is warm and grounding, and it stills the racing thoughts in your head. He leans down close enough that his breath brushes your cheek.
“I promise,” he murmurs, captivated not just by the concern in your eyes but by the way you care for him, always so completely.
You nod, relief washing over you, but he doesn’t step back. Instead, he tilts his head with a playful glimmer in his otherwise aloof expression. “Though if I can trade and sell better gemstones this season, maybe we can hibernate in peace, all snug in the house, while the snow rages outside.”
“You always think about work first,” you sigh.
“I always think about surviving it together,” Kyryll laughs softly. “Besides, the goats won’t let me rest anyway.”
You shake your head with a smile, but the unease in your chest doesn’t completely fade. Whiteout season always carries that edge of dread, no matter how many times you’ve endured it. Still, with Kyryll by your side, you can almost believe everything will be as it always has.
Almost.
Your husband has kept his word all season, making every trip to town count so he doesn’t have to venture out into the brewing blizzards more than necessary. But one afternoon, the wind whips with a sudden, vicious force. Snow lashes the mountainside, and even from the safety of the yard, you can hear the low howl that promises a storm like no other.
All the warnings have already been issued, but you and Kyryll are caught in the final flurry of activity, corralling the animals back into the barn before the sky darkens. Everything is in controlled chaos until a sudden, panicked bleat slices through the hubbub—a lamb, young and spooked, darts past you, slipping out the half-shut door. It bolts up the narrow mountain path, a small white shape against withering snow.
“Wait—!” you cry, instinct pushing you forward. Your boots crunch against the icy ground as you try to follow, but Kyryll catches your wrist with a strong, firm grip.
“No,” he tells you, calmly but sharply. “It’s too dangerous.”
Your heart thunders. “But that poor lamb won’t survive out there alone…”
Kyryll doesn’t argue; he only lets out a soft breath and lifts his gaze to yours before he smiles. That painfully adoring smile, the one that has always made your chest ache, softening even the wildest of fears. He bends and presses his lips to the ring on your finger, brushing it with his mouth like a promise.
“Then I’ll bring it back,” your husband murmurs. “Wait for me, okay?”
Before you can protest, he steps out of the barn. Snow flurries around him immediately, catching in his hair, frosting his shoulders. He doesn’t look back as he slides the barn door shut behind him with a solid thud, leaving you in the warm glow of the oil lamps and the bitter howl of the storm beyond.
You were taught to count time in threes.
Three heartbeats, three breaths, three steps, the elders would say. “Nature always balances itself in three,” they whispered, as if the rhythm of the world could be measured by patience alone.
Three minutes pass before it hits you fully: Kyryll is out there.
The thought is simple, almost too mundane to register at first, but the a sharp pang of panic blooms in your chest. He promised he would be back. He always keeps his word, and yet, the wind howls so loud that you can’t hear the faintest echo of him, can’t see any trace of the lamb racing back with him.
Three heartbeats, three breaths, three steps.
You repeat it to yourself like a mantra as you pace the floor of the barn, watching the snow blot out the mountainside through the window. The animals press close as if sensing the tension in your bones, nudging you, bleating softly—but it does nothing to quiet the dread tightening your chest.
Three hours pass before the edges of reason begin to fray. The sky has gone from pale gray to a solid white wall. You should be calling for help in the town. Every instinct honed from a lifetime in these mountains screams at you: a storm this strong would have killed him by now. The path is invisible. The snow is merciless.
Yet… you cannot act. You cling to the promise he pressed into your hands, to the brush of his lips against your wedding band.
Wait for me.
Three days pass before Kyryll returns.
The blizzard had seemed endless, each hour stretching into another frozen eternity. The nights without him in the bed you share were unbearable; you had spent them clutching your pillow, weeping into the cold, silent darkness, and imagining the worst with every gust of wind rattling the shutters.
Finally, he is there.
Your sobs spill into the open as soon as you see him, and you barely notice the snow still clinging to his indigo hair and the streaks across his yellow eyes. Without thinking, you launch yourself at your husband, arms wrapping around his tall frame as if you could never let go again. His hands find yours, pressing you against him with the faintest, grounding pressure.
“Kyryll,” you choke, your voice breaking, “you came back.”
He doesn’t say anything as he lets you cling to him, and when you finally step back a little, brushing the wet snow from his coat, you insist he come inside.
“Take off your jacket. I’ll prepare a hot bath for you in a bit,” you say, almost bouncing on the balls of your feet, eager to undo the cold that has surely numbed his bones.
Your husband hums in acquiescence, letting you fuss over him. You hang his coat by the hearth and light the fire higher, the warmth spilling into the room as you run your hands over his arms, shoulders, and chest—making sure he hasn’t suffered too badly. When your palms finally cup his pale cheeks, something inside you buckles. Your heart seems to melt straight through your ribs, and before you can stop yourself, you lean in, pressing your mouth to his as tears blur your vision.
He does not kiss you back.
Later, steam curls around Kyryll as he sinks into the tub, the heat drawing color into his otherwise pallid skin. You linger close to fuss with towels and lay out clothes thick enough to guard against the cold. Relief hums faintly through you at having him here, whole and within reach. But your thoughts remain tangled, a restless knot that no warmth seems able to unravel.
“What happened to the lamb?” you ask carefully, trying not to betray the panic still clinging to your chest. Because what else could you ask your husband when he just came home from a storm that should have killed him?
You brace yourself for sorrow, for the weight of bad news, and the sight of his shoulders sagging with defeat. But Kyryll simply looks at you, his yellow eyes calm, unnervingly so, and asks:
“What lamb?”
“…The lamb! The one that ran up the mountain!” you exclaim. “That’s why you went out—why you—”
But he only smiles faintly, tilting his head as if your exasperation is a puzzle he doesn’t quite understand. You stop yourself from pressing further. Kyryll is here. Alive. He has survived three days in a storm that could have buried a person in minutes, with nothing but that same fur-trimmed jacket he always wears to town.
Whatever else happened—whatever he endured—you do not ask. Even when you see bloodstains on his jacket sleeves despite his unmarred skin, you do not ask. Even as he lies in your bed for the first time in days, and it feels like a stranger’s weight against you, you do not ask. And when you glimpse something behind his eyes that should not be there…
You do not ask.
You wake to the quiet hum of the house, the familiar rhythm of morning stretching before you, and for a moment you allow yourself to hope that everything will be as it always has.
The old villagers never quite understood Kyryll. They whispered about his odd ways and the sharp intelligence behind eyes that seemed to flicker with some unnatural light. They called him “the devil’s spawn,” a curse that somehow found its way to your small life. But they had never seen him as you had—never saw his kindness, or the way his heart opened to the world if only they’d given him time.
That’s exactly what you spare to him now: time to recalibrate to the rhythm of your home, after the reckless mistake of letting him charge into the storm.
Breakfast is done. The table is cleared. Steam from the kettle still curls lazily into the air. You watch your husband lace his boots, the ritual so familiar you could do it in your sleep. Your heart tightens in anticipation of the small, certain habit that has marked every morning for years: the brief kiss goodbye, cool against your lips as he whispers goodbye.
But today, there is nothing.
Kyryll pauses at the doorway as he stares down the path to town. His yellow eyes are serene but the warmth you’ve always found there is absent, or perhaps buried beneath something you cannot name. He doesn’t turn back, only adjusts the strap of his pack and steps outside, the door swinging shut behind him with a hollow finality.
Your fingers linger on the spot where his lips should have been.
For a moment, you believe that he is simply shaken, still readjusting to the world after the storm. Yes. That must be it. He’ll come back like he always does, and the habit will resume as though nothing ever happened. But even as you tell yourself this, a low, unnameable unease twists in your stomach, settling there like frost.
Something is off. Something has changed, and you are not yet ready to admit how deep the change might run.
You feign ignorance until the lambs go missing.
At first, you don’t notice. They vanish for hours, sometimes a day, and each time they reappear safe and warm, bleating softly as if nothing had happened. You breathe a sigh of relief, attributing it to wandering and some miracle of the mountains.
But then, you begin to catch the subtle differences. A curl of wool slightly off, the shade of a fleece a little darker, the shape of a hoof unfamiliar. It perplexes you until your mind tightens on the truth you’ve tried not to name: these are not the same lambs.
They are replacements.
The disappearances always coincide with nights when Kyryll rises after you have already fallen asleep. You never hear the creak of floorboards, never see the flicker of candlelight as he moves through the house, but you sense it like a pause in the familiar heartbeat of your life. When he returns, the air around him smells faintly of soap—an attempt at cleansing so precise it almost fools you. But there is always the undercurrent something sharp and metallic just beneath the clean scent.
You try to ignore it, bury it beneath the comfort of his arms as you curl against him. Even the smallest doubts are suffocated by the familiar rhythm of his breathing, the steady press of his body, and the illusion that nothing is wrong.
But one night, the tension becomes unbearable. You lie in bed, counting the seconds as he slips from the warmth of your sheets, and after five minutes, the gnawing at your chest becomes too loud to ignore. Heart hammering, you slip from the bed and pull on your shawl, keeping quiet as the house sleeps.
The hallway is a shadowed corridor. Every step toward the barn feels like crossing a threshold into another world. The snow outside glints coldly beneath the lanterns you’ve hung along the path, but one faint glow draws your eyes—the soft, swinging light of a single oil lamp just beyond the barn.
You creep closer, heart in your throat, and stop at the edge of the snow-dusted doorway.
The barn is swallowed in shadow, yet your eyes pick out the figure of your husband, kneeling on the straw-strewn floor. Darkness spares you from the full horror of what he is doing: the crimson stains seeping into the hay, the silent terror in the other animals, and the wet, sickening sound of flesh being torn between the maws of a monster.
He feasts quietly, leaving no trace that would immediately betray him to you. He does not do it every night—he cannot afford to arouse suspicion—but when he does, it is methodical, and chillingly precise. Only one animal at a time, and always with the meticulous care of one who cleans after the carnage he leaves behind.
You step back, the cold air catching in your lungs, and the weight of what you are witnessing presses down like stone. The shadowed figure shifts at the sound of your foot catching on a dried leaf, the subtle crunch shattering the fragile hush of the barn.
In an instant, the creature snaps his head toward you. The motion is too violent, his neck bending at an angle that no human should manage. A low, guttural hiss rolls from his throat, reverberating through the straw, and the Kyryll you knew evaporates like smoke in the wind when you see his eyes.Not the calm yellow you’ve associated with safety, with love. But glowing maroon irises, vivid and burning with something ancient, something hungry.
Your knees go weak. Your hands tremble. The barn, once a sanctuary of routine and care, has transformed into a chamber of nightmares. The animals press against the far walls, silent and trembling, as if sensing the change before your own mind can even process it.
It is him—your husband in shape, in shadow, in form—but it is not Kyryll. Not the man you promised your life to. This is something else. Something that wore his face to cross the threshold of your home.
That night, you were fully convinced you were going to die.
Every instinct screams at you to flee, to bolt into the snow and leave the barn behind. You are certain he will lunge, certain the same jaws and hands that tore the lambs apart will turn on you next. Yet, beneath that fear, a bitter comfort coils in your chest: if you die, you will finally be reunited with him. Your Kyryll—the boy with yellow eyes and a heart that loved too deeply, not this monstrous imitation who has defiled everything you thought you knew about him.
Your heart thunders in your chest. The creature rises, the movement fluid and unnervingly deliberate. But he does not lunge. He does not attack.
Instead, he walks toward you.
Your knees buckle beneath the weight of disbelief. You realize you have been crying, the tears streaking your face in the cold barn light, the trace of your fear laid bare. Then the bloodied hands reach for your cheeks.
For a moment, you cannot breathe.
He wipes your tears away with the same gentleness, the same patience Kyryll always carried in his hands—but now, his touch smears the dark, iron-stained blood of the lamb across your skin. It mats into your hair, seeps along the line of your jaw in a sickeningly warm testament to what you have witnessed. The reality of it nearly overwhelms you, but you do not pull away.
The creature inclines his head slightly, murmuring something unintelligible, yet intimate as though he is speaking to the part of you that still clings to your Kyryll. He bends and lifts you into his arms with ease, your body trembling against his, every nerve alight with terror, revulsion, and a twisted familiarity you cannot escape.
He carries you back through the cold night, your shawl catching the blood on his forearms as he moves. The barn fades behind you, the animals’ terrified eyes still imprinted on your mind, yet all that matters is the steady, unyielding presence, and the impossible reality: the man who returned to you after the whiteout is no longer Kyryll.
And yet… he is holding you, as if he’s always known how.
That is how you came to an unspoken understanding with him.
From what you have gathered, the creature desires only sustenance. He shows no interest in harming you, no hint that you might become his next prey. In fact, he seems almost… attentive to Kyryll’s habits, as if trying to inhabit the life you once shared.
The first thing you mention is the kisses goodbye. When you speak of them casually he does not flinch at the fact that you are now fully aware of who he isn’t. My husband always does it before he heads to town for the day. Since that moment, he makes a point of leaning down each morning to press his lips against yours—a brief, careful peck just as Kyryll always did.
It is not the same. It will never be. Yet somehow, it is enough.
There isn’t much you can do about the way the animals behave around him. They know what he does each night. They remember the terror, the cruelty, and the gore that lingers in the air long after the blood has been cleaned. You wish you could spare them that fear. Gods know how much these poor creatures mean to you.
But ever since you allowed this monster to masquerade as a fixture of your life, you have learned the uneasy rhythm of turning a blind eye. You have learned to tune out the shrieks that echo in the corners of the barn, to ignore the way the sheep and goats shrink and totter away when he passes.
Because if a few lambs are the cost of feeling the illusion of your husband still by your side, then it is a price you are willing to pay. If it means the brush of his lips against yours in the morning, the familiar warmth of his arms as you nestle close at night—even if the hands that hold you carry the memory of slaughter—then you endure it.
But it is a different story when the creature starts to want something else.
At first, it comes only in dreams. You wake each morning with the echo of Kyryll’s hands on your skin, the warmth of his mouth pressing against yours, and the weight of him over you as he claims you as he once did. It is familiar and foreign all at once, which you suspect is all the work of the monster sleeping next to you.
You have not felt desire like this in months. It has lain dormant beneath the grief you still carry on your shoulders, the quiet routines of the mountains, the soft companionship of your animals. But in these dreams, it surges, reckless and insistent. Your body still remembers what your mind struggles to reconcile. This is not Kyryll. This is the creature that stole him from you, and even then… the part of you that has always loved him, cannot resist.
In the dreams, you start to let him in. You let your hands wander over the strong curve of his shoulders, down his back, feel the press of his hips as he aligns with yours. He moves with the tenderness you once knew, and the juxtaposition makes your chest ache—the body of the thing that has fed on lambs now giving you pleasure. You moan his name in the darkness of slumber, and it is both comforting and unbearable.
The creature does not say anything of it in your waking hours.
Life goes on as if nothing at all has changed. He moves through your small routines with the same uncanny mimicry: carrying wood to the hearth, brushing snow from his boots at the door, kissing you softly before leaving for town.
And yet, when night falls, you brace yourself as the dreams return again and again like a tide that will not recede. They seize you with the same hunger, the same unbearable tenderness—your body spread beneath him, the bed groaning with the weight of his need.
It gets worse. You start to crave it even in daylight, even if you know how wrong it is. When you stand in the kitchen, kneading bread with your sleeves rolled up, a flicker of heat stirs in you at the memory of his hands on your waist. When you stoop in the barn, the sheep shifting nervously as he passes by, your skin prickles at the thought of him pressing into you from behind.
Desire burrows deep into your gut, tangling itself with your grief until you can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
One night, the dream takes a turn.
You are on your back, legs parted, the familiar shadow of Kyryll’s body over yours. His mouth finds the hollow of your throat, his hips driving into you with a rhythm you know by heart, and you give yourself over with a pathetic sob. But in the flicker of lamplight that isn’t there, his form wavers.
For a heartbeat, he is not your indigo-haired, golden-eyed husband. He is something else—pale hair spilling across your chest, maroon eyes glowing like embers, half his face swallowed in blackened bandages. His body is cracked, pulsing with sinister light that leaks like an infection from beneath his skin.
The sight is gone as quickly as it came, but it sears itself into you. He doesn’t stop driving himself into you with a brutal tenderness that has you gasping his name through tears. The horror of it should have torn you from the dream, and yet you cling to him, to his heat, to the slick drag of his cock filling you again and again.
You wake trembling, your body soaked in sweat, the sheets damp beneath you. The creature sleeps quietly at your side, his breathing even, almost human. You turn toward him in the dark, studying the face that wears Kyryll’s features so faithfully, and your heart twists with something you can no longer name.
You know this is wrong. You know this is dangerous. And yet… you let him stay.
Because sometimes, grief does not just ache. Sometimes, it devours.
Winter eventually gives way to spring.
The animals relax in the warmer air, their skittishness easing as though the frost itself had carried the weight of dread. When you finish harvesting eggs from the chickens, you glimpse him in the pasture that morning, carrying a lamb in his arms with an unsettling gentleness. A suitable replacement for last night’s sacrifice.
You say nothing. You are past the point of caring. You would give him every lamb you owned, every goat and sheep, if it meant Kyryll—whatever remains of him—would stay by your side.
At lunch you dine in silence. It is nothing strange. Kyryll was never a chatty man, and the thing that wears his face well enough does not bother pretending otherwise. You chew, swallow, wash the taste down with water. Across the table, his eyes flick toward yours once or twice, but no words pass between you. It is as though silence itself has become the language you share.
Afterward, as you tidy up the plates, he hips brush behind you while reaching for something in the cupboards overhead. You freeze, breath caught in your throat. You don’t know if he does it on purpose, or if he even understands the meaning of this sort of closeness. He has never once initiated any sort of affection in waking hours. Not once. Almost like he is still unsure of his place in the rhythm of your grief.
And that is when you turn.
Your hands lift almost without thought, fingers threading against the nape of his neck, pulling him down into you. His lips meet yours clumsily at first, stiff and uncertain, as if sifting through Kyryll’s memories on how a man ought to respond. But when he finds it—when the recollection locks into place—he answers with startling force.
The kiss deepens, rough and desperate, his mouth parting against yours to claim and consume. A soft whimper escapes you, swallowed instantly between his teeth. His hands find your hips, gripping hard enough to bruise, and then you’re hoisted effortlessly onto the kitchen counter. Plates rattle, a fork clatters to the floor, but you don’t care—your arms wrap tight around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and closer still.
He kisses like hunger itself, tongue hot and insistent, as though he has finally been permitted to take what he’s been denied. You gasp into him, and he swallows every sound greedily. His body presses flush to yours as the hard length of him grinds against you through your skirts, making a shiver race deliciously down your spine.
It’s wrong. Even if every frantic kiss, every nip of teeth, and every desperate clutch of fingers digging into your skin feels exactly like Kyryll, you know it is not him. But the wrongness only makes your desire burn hotter, makes you want him more.
For the first time, it is not a dream.
And gods help you, it feels too good to stop.
By the time he hauls you off the counter, your dress is already half-undone, bodice tugged down so your breasts spill free into the air between you. His hands are everywhere—rough palms sliding over your skin as if he means to memorize every inch, thumbs dragging over your nipples until you’re gasping into his mouth. The poor dress hangs uselessly around your waist, wrinkled and bunched, but neither of you care.
You stumble through the hallway tangled together, his mouth never leaving yours for long. He devours every sound, every needy whimper, while you clutch at him desperately, nails biting into the fabric of his shirt as though you might anchor yourself to something real.
The bedroom door slams shut behind you. He pushes you back onto the mattress with a force that rattles the frame, climbing over you in the same motion. His weight settles heavy, solid, frighteningly real as his lips trail down your jaw to the hollow of your throat, sucking bruises into skin that will ache tomorrow.
You arch beneath him, a ragged cry escaping when he mouths at your breasts, tongue flicking over hardened peaks. His hand fists in your skirts, yanking them higher, baring your thighs to the cold air, and the hunger in him sharpens into something that feels less like mimicry and more like possession.
The heat between you only builds as the last buttons and ties surrender, clothes falling in careless heaps across the floor. His shirt slips from his shoulders, baring the breadth of him above you, and you’re too lost in the fever of it to notice the first flicker. But when your gaze catches, just for a heartbeat, on the wrong shape of his hand—the grotesque, bandaged thing from your dreams—you shudder.
Not in fear. In want.
The sight lances through you like fire, and instead of pulling away, you arch up into him, clinging tighter as though you could drag both Kyryll and the monster into yourself at once. Your breath stutters when the illusion fractures again, the man you knew shifting into the beast that stalked your sleep. And gods help you, your body only grows wetter for it.
His mouth is merciless against your throat, dragging teeth over tender skin, sucking bruises deep and dark where Kyryll never dared. He marks you as his own, every bite a brand that leaves you whimpering for more. And when you tilt your head back, baring yourself willingly, the shadows in the corners stir.
They creep closer in a whisper of movement, until phantom hands—long-fingered, writhing things—slither across the sheets. One brushes your ankle. Another strokes your calf. By the time the third slides up the inside of your thigh, you’re gasping, hips canting instinctively toward the unseen touch.
The hands multiply. They crawl over you in teasing strokes, cupping the weight of your breasts, thumbing your nipples while his mouth claims the other. They squeeze and knead, worship and torment in equal measure, until you’re arching helplessly beneath the combined assault. Another pair parts your thighs wider, their slick, phantom touch skating too close to where you burn for him.
A sob escapes you when one finally dips between your folds, fingers ghosting over the wet heat of you with maddening delicacy. The creature above you growls low in his chest yet he doesn’t stop it. His weight presses heavier, his hand locking your hip down as he grinds against you with ruthless force, as if staking claim over what the shadows dare to touch.
And all the while, his face wavers—Kyryll’s beloved features flickering into that bandaged monstrosity, eyes like embers staring down at you from behind the mask of flesh. It should terrify you, but instead your thighs fall open wider, your nails dig deeper, your body begs harder.
The tendrils do not relent. They writhe over your skin in concert, stroking and teasing until your cunt trembles with need, slick dripping freely onto the sheets. Every phantom caress loosens you further, leaving you open and aching and all too ready.
Then, like a cruel mercy, the monster’s blurred edges start to settle. Bandages and shadows peel away, and for one dizzying heartbeat, it is Kyryll above you again. His face, his weight, his warmth pressing you down into the mattress. The illusion is so seamless you almost weep, because it feels as though the storm had never stolen him at all.
His hand fists around his cock, pumping the thick length through gritted teeth. The same cock that filled you countless times before, the same one your body remembers down to the last inch. Veins throb beneath his rough grip, the head slick with need. Your thighs fall open wider, invitation and surrender in one, even as your mind reels at the fact that you are about to let the monster who took your husband become him. You are about to let him fuck you. Claim you.
And you want it. You want it so badly you could break.
When he pushes in, the stretch steals your breath. His length slides into your dripping heat with agonizing slowness, every inch dragging through your folds until he’s buried to the hilt. The tendrils tighten their grip, circling your clit in relentless circles, stroking in time with the heavy throb of him inside you.
The sound he makes when he bottoms out is near animalistic—a guttural growl, raw and trembling, pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. His forehead drops to your shoulder, breath ragged as his hips grind down, grinding that thick length against every swollen, desperate inch of you.
Gods help you—you wrap your legs around his waist, nails clawing at his back, and pull him closer still. Because it feels like Kyryll. It feels like home.
Even if you know it’s not.
His hips snap forward harder now, fucking you into the mattress with a force that rattles the bedframe. Each thrust drags his cock deep, striking places inside you that make your back bow and your throat spill broken cries into the dark. The tendrils keep perfect pace, every stroke of his length amplified by the phantom touches teasing your clit, twisting your nipples, prying your thighs open wider still until you are nothing but raw nerves strung tight for him.
You sob beneath him, body shuddering as pleasure coils hot and unbearable in your belly. It’s too much—his cock stretching you, the tendrils flooding every inch with sensation, your mind splintering between grief and want. Tears spill hot down your temples, streaking your flushed skin.
And he notices.
The monster groans low in his throat, his pace never faltering as he leans down to lap the tears from your face. His tongue is rougher than Kyryll’s ever was, his lips sealing over the salt of your grief as if he drinks it. When he pulls back, his eyes glow with an otherworldly magenta, the last proof of what he really is.
You see it. You know.
But gods, his cock feels too good. Each thrust slams you higher, deeper into delirium, his thickness battering your poor, soaking cunt until you’re choking on your own sobs. The tendrils slither higher, slick tips prying your lips apart and pressing down on your tongue, forcing you to pant helplessly around them like a bitch in heat. Every gasp is stolen, every whimper muffled by the invasive strokes inside your mouth.
It’s vile. It’s wrong. It’s everything you should recoil from.
Still, your body betrays you.
A scream tears from your throat as your climax rips through you, violent and unrelenting. Your cunt spasms wildly around his cock, milking him as gushes of slick spray out, soaking the sheets beneath. He growls, hips driving harder, chasing your squirt as though he means to wring every last drop from you.
You’re shaking, sobbing, choking on tendrils and tears, but you can’t stop—don’t want to stop. Because in this moment, no matter how monstrous his eyes burn or how filthy the shadows writhe, his cock still feels like it belongs inside you.
His thrusts grow savage, every snap of his hips driving you down into the soaked sheets with bruising force. You can feel him swelling within your gummy walls, cock thickening as his rhythm grows erratic and desperate. The tendrils match his frenzy—slapping against your clit in relentless circles, tugging your nipples cruelly, writhing deeper into your mouth until you gag around them, your tears streaking hot and heavy down your face.
You’re lost, shattered. Pleasure has stripped you raw, left you nothing but a body to be used, filled, and claimed. Your cunt clamps down like a vice, spasming around him as aftershocks ripple through you, each thrust forcing out another gush of slick.
Then he lowers his head to your neck, and the sound he makes is not Kyryll’s.
“Mine.”
The word rumbles against your throat, deep and guttural, alien in timbre. The magenta glow in his eyes burns hotter, brighter, searing through the mask of familiarity as his hips slam forward one last time.
He buries himself to the hilt, cock throbbing violently as his release tears out of him. Hot spurts flood your pussy, thick and endless, spilling into your womb until it leaks down your thighs. He stays locked inside you through it, grinding deep as if to brand you from within, tendrils tightening their hold so you cannot flinch away, cannot deny what’s happening.
Your body convulses, another helpless squirt gushing around his cock as he stuffs you full, your sobs breaking against the slick pressure filling your mouth. You’re choking on tears, choking on pleasure, choking on him—and you can’t stop clinging to him even as the last shards of Kyryll’s illusion fall away.
It is not your husband’s face above you now. Not his eyes, not his voice.
Only the monster.
Weeks later, the snow has melted into the earth, leaving behind dark soil rich with promise.
Crocuses bloom along the edges of the field, their soft petals swaying in the wind, and the first shoots of green push stubbornly through last season’s frost. You stand at the fence line, apron dusted with flour, watching as your new neighbors hammer beams into place, their laughter carrying bright and clear across the valley.
When they visit a week later, baskets in hand and children darting shyly behind their skirts, you and Kyryll greet them at the door. Bread is broken, wine poured. You lead them through the rows of sprouting seedlings, Kyryll smiling faintly as he explains the soil, the seasons, the way the mountains cradle the crops just so. The family listens eagerly, their faces open and kind, and for a while it almost feels as though this life has always been yours.
When the evening wanes and the neighbors depart, the house falls back into its familiar quiet. Kyryll clears the table while you rinse the plates. Outside, the wind stirs the fields. Inside, his shadow lingers at your back, warm and heavy, his hand brushing yours as he takes the last dish to dry, wedding bands glinting in the waning light.
You glance at him—at the face you love, the face you chose to keep—and for a fleeting heartbeat, something else flickers beneath it. Something you no longer flinch from.
You were taught to count time in threes. Three heartbeats. Three breaths. Three steps. After all, nature always balances itself in three.
Now, it is you, and Kyryll.
And the thing that wears his face.
⟢ end notes: i have been gnawing at this prompt like a chew toy since i met rerir last week, and i finally got to channel the innate need to fuck that guy into this disastrous piece... i have no defense. you can take me away now, officer. but on another note, i sincerely hope you enjoyed! thank you kindly to didi and meirinnie for going over my initial drafts with me and reassuring that i'm not spouting out nonsense HAH horror-adjacent fics are really so far out of my usual genre, and i'm clutching my pearls as i post this... hopefully i won't get cancelled LMAO
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❝ — SHALL I FOREVER MOLD YOU TO THE TETHERED SUN. ❞
𓏵 ( despite everything , it's still you ! )
८ sypnosis. When one bears their faithful eyes to the sun, they tend to look away, unable to take the blazing rays of the daylight - yet, that boy whom lies in wheat and bathe in love, his eyes revel in the dances of the sunlight ─ alternatively, when Phainon loses his heart, there are no limit to his impeding fixation.
(phainon x fem!reader) wc: 21.4k (it's worth it i promise stay w me now)
@ warnings; gory descriptions, childhood friends to (kind of) lovers, time travel trope, a LOT of angst, some comfort, no beta we die like Cyrene and the chrysos heirs, a lot of descriptive violence and blood, not for the weak of hearts im afraid, ANGST no comfort but also kind of comfort but i lowkey rip that away after, morally debatable phainon, obssesion, heavy angst, grief, depression, body horror, Phainon is just mad insane ngl ᝰ.ᐟ
── notes. this is my LONGEST fic yet, and i put in a lot of work into this. I actually had this planned and executed since May of this year, but only finished it now because of how many times I got burnt out and lost motivation. This will be one of the few things i'll post because IB will get to me and I'll have significantly less time to write, much less complete a writing. This fic may have costed me the most agony, time, and crashouts. Anyway, have a fun ride. More notes will be at the end of the fic (◞‸ ◟)
O, muse, sing for the ballads of Amphoreus – the eternal land, partitioned by the wholly of one’s sinful adamant inclinations, and purity of one’s preponderance fleet-footed harmony. O, muse, forgive this sin of covetousness – forebode by the deliverer of this world.
Dawn is forthcoming, but will not emerge without first the settlement of dusk – and when that dawn arises with trepidation, a figure is torn apart – shredded unto the most deepest of the body, cleaved into the dawn. For to be the sun, one must first, burn like it.
You, are not an heir cladded with golden ichor amalgamated into the essence of your soul. Rather, you are but a single mortal, a normal – unprecedented one. Not intertwined with the fates of the heroes of Amphoreus, the strings have not once touched the nerves of your skin.
You are not a part of this cycle of ruinous sequence.
At least, that is how it was before.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Ne, (name), don’t you have a penchant for romantic epics?”
You turn to the pink haired girl – hair dancing softly in the wind as she smiles, the bark of the tree she seated adjacent swayed with the wind’s dance, leaves fell gently to the wheat below your feet, her hands held cards – tarot cards, you surmise. She was always one for those divination crafts.
“I do. But isn't it boring if it’s just romance?” You question, Cyrene turns her head up, eyes crinkling in the corner as she takes in your expression.
“My my, dear (name),” She clicks her tongue playfully, feet flopping against the wheat-like grass, Kephale’s dawn falling gently on her face.
“Love, is the credential of everything! You see, every one of us,” Cyrene gestures to herself, then to you. “..is born of love and desire.”
“Love is pretty complicated.” You purse your lips together, her words a confusing riddle – you were just children, what does love have to do with a soul young as you?
Cyrene sings a whine at your words. “Ne~ Romance doesn’t always mean love, it can be a tragic story, or – or a thrilling fight scene!”
You could not hold back a purse in your lips at that, a small smile blooms on your face, reverent as it comes. “So Cyrene likes all stories?”
She nods with glee, shuffling through her card deck. “Each of them.”
She lays down the card deck in front of you, and against your doubts, you sit in front of the girl cladded in a dress much familiar to her stature. The loquacious girl grins, drawing a card like it’s as easy as shifting through bundles of hay – and she brings it to your face, obscuring your vision of her for a second, then popping her head out from the side.
“Here, your card.”
You still for a moment, taking the card from her hands. The image depicts 2 – naked figures, a woman and man, reaching for something unseeable, a figure – an androgynous divine entity, held sacred above them both, wings spread anew, as if it’s gathering protection.
“The lovers?” You tilt your head at the card.
She giggles at your reaction. “The lovers. It’s fitting, isn’t it?”
You raise a brow at her words, she likes to speak in riddles from time to time, it seems. You give the card back to her, and she takes it gracefully, fingers dancing over the shiny material of the card that reflects against the light, brazen with colors.
“.. I don’t see it.”
“Not yet.” Cyrene smiles all the same, it appeared as if the appeasing smile could not leave her lips.
You frown at that. Slightly, the grass shifting underneath your feet. “Am I really that ‘lovey-dovey’?”
“It’s not that,” She hums, lifting her finger to lightly press on your forehead. “Hehe, you look cute confused.”
“Then–”
“(name). You are the essence of ‘love’ itself.” Cyrene smiles – but this one doesn’t reach her eyes. She withdrew her hand away, eyes fleeting to the dawn device on Kephale’s shoulder.
“Deliverance is inevitable,” She continues, you stay quiet, in this sense. “.. I wish.. this torn-like world didn't need a deliverer, not now, not ever.”
She means █████ — .. Phainon. You could see it on her face before she could even utter your friend’s name.
Her eyes are lightly casted with a darker glint, as if – sadness? You couldn’t quite tell in time, because it was gone only seconds later.
“Cyrene?”
“Mm, but that’s not to worry, (name)! Come on, Phai’s gonna start crying for us if we leave him wandering with the faeries – memlings.” Cyrene smiles with a burgeoning of urgency, eyes lighting up again in an instant, as she gathers the card deck back into her pocket.
“Cyrene, what do you mean?” You repeat the question that danced around your head, and Cyrene stills for a moment, hands still situating the cards – she does not answer right away.
Rather, she looks up to you, a smile impeded on her lips, “Questioning a girl like this! (name), you truly are cruel ~ ♪ ”
You – despite yourself – do not push it further, only nudge into the pink-haired girl’s shoulder. “Fine.” Cyrene wouldn’t keep things from you if she wasn’t doing it for your own good, you figured.
“But you will tell me later!” You urge the taller girl, tugging at the hem of her dress from below.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 1.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. IT whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon stuttered open – his face a blaze of pink hue as he gathered himself, pushing his own body from your lap.
He chastised himself quietly, Don't creep her out, he chided inside his head. This is chill. You're just some friend that happened to sleep on her lap. No biggie!
His eyes locked into yours hesitantly, the silky-white tunic that adorned your body ruffled in protest as he lifted his head from it – he felt himself heating up again.
“How- how long was I asleep for?” The boy stammered upon his words, whereas you laughed at his embarrassment – the distant wind swaying ever softly beneath the bark of a leaning orange-leaved tree, the wheat-like grass flowing beneath the ground, again – almost in a rhythmic timed pattern, they swayed.
“Not long,” You shook your head, urging the white-haired boy to calm down.
“You fell asleep while I was reading the book.” You continued.
“Huh?!” Phainon stammered, sitting up to face you, your legs were folded, as his were splattered – one propped up while the other sat flat upon the fair yellowed field. “No way!”
You chuckled softly at his absolutely devastated state, you truly didn’t mind, but it would be fun to tease him so. “Were my stories that boring?”
“No!” Phainon replied in an utter panic, his hands waving around like it’d signify his innocence. “No! They’re not boring! Not at all!”
“Then why’d you fall asleep, hmm?”
“I didn’t – I mean–” he floundered, you laughed.
“I’m just teasing you.” You finally say, saving him from further embarrassment, Phainon looked quite close to pleading the fifth, or start begging for your forgiveness on his knees (like he would, he would never stoop that low, not even for you! Right?).
Phainon heaved a sigh of relief, settling himself down with an ‘oomf’ on the grassy patch next to you under the tree, body leaning over to yours, eyes not at all subtly peering at the book, you smiled at his curiosity.
“It’s a heroic story.” You whispered to him, as if unveiling a deep secret.
Phainon beamed at that – heroic epic compositions were nothing short of his favorite. He leaned in closer, cerulean cheerful eyes peeping at the book you held. “Really?!”
You nodded, a distant whirlwind pried in your words, hearing them as well. “Do you want me to read it to you?”
The boy nodded with vigor, head bumping up and down as he secured his body with 2 arms hovered over the grass, body situated to you – eager.
“So! This story,” You gestured with your hands, standing up to appear more dramatic. “Is about a hero, a soft musician.. who traverses Thanatos’ domain in a reverent search for his beloved.”
Settling the opened book onto your lap with a soft thud, the air whiffed through Aedes Elysiae gently, though ephemeral, the lasting zephyr flies past, casting its wind with a mellow stature on the two innocent figures on the yellow wheated land.
Phainon tilted his head at your summary, figure shooting up to stand. “That isn’t a hero! He doesn’t fight monsters!”
“He so is! How would you know?” You huffed at his already impatient claims, to which Phainon was only sparked by your rhetorical question.
His tone is bright, almost defensive. “A hero shines in the spotlight! He fights–” He swings his right arm in a mock-fighting motion indignantly. “–like his life depends on it!”
You laughed at that, seeing his theatrics. “Will you be a hero?”
“Yeah, obviously a hero.” He grinned, now leaning back onto the bark of the tree, propping himself up with one arm as if the very thought of saving someone didn’t weigh on him.
His white hair cascaded like a shimmering waterfall, the silver strands almost blending into the clouds above. He seemed so carefree, like the world’s concerns were just a speck on the horizon.
“.. Sounds boring.”
“It isn’t!”
“So is. ‘S just some sword swinging and a few rescuing.”
The sun – Kephale’s reverend dawn – seemed to highlight his youthful features, bringing a glow to his cheeks and a playfulness to the lines of his face.
It was almost unfair how the sun had swooned to him like a chosen one.
“So not!” Phainon piqued, his hand dashing out to reach at the sky – mock-holding Kephale’s dawn device into his thumb and index, as if he alone is holding the sun. “Cyrene told me that heroes weren’t chosen, but made. So – that path, I’ll carve it with my own hands.”
A breeze of silence fell over you both, Phainon’s promise lingering in the air like a sacred prayer for Oronyx’s benediction, one those Janus oracles would acclaim. But this is not a prophecy – nor is it a prayer, but a promise of a young boy from Aedes Elysiae.
A shudder befell your spine for some reason.
“.. You’re such an overachiever!” You laughed – the very sound reverberating around the fields of Aedes Elysiae.
You don’t think twice before leaning down to the bark of the tree as well, propping yourself next to him – the shade of the tree embracing your figures in protection.
“Whatever!” Phainon narked – bumping his shoulder into yours, delighting a yelp from you, before his attention is yet again – for some odd reason – drawn to Kephale’s dawn. “.. but I still like it better in this village.”
You blinked at his words. “Aedes Elysiae? Isn’t it kind of boring here?”
“‘S not! There’s big sis Cyrene – ma and pa, Andreas, Iraklis, Livia, everyone.” He huffed at you, finding your question utterly ridiculous. “Most importantly, there’s you!”
You try to still your face before it heats up at the last sentence – it’s a hopeless cause, you settle with the easy way of simply avoiding his gaze, looking up to Kephale’s world bearing stature, but you feel queasy looking at it as well.
“..Well, Aedes Elysiae is so isolated, though. No way you can be a hero here, you’d have to leave to – Castrum Kremnos, or something!”
Phainon paused, scratching his chin in thought. You were right. If he wanted to be a hero, no sane person would stay in a village that smirkished so far away from the large capital city-states – the polis of Kremnos is known to breed soldiers far powerful and it would definitely mold him into a strong and vigorous hero as he’d hope, or the holy city of Okhema – it would grant him the popularity that he needs, provided with a sanctuary that would safeguard him with each wants he pursues.
But leaving Aedes Elysiae seemed like a thought so far away from him.
Leaving you?
.. No.
He couldn’t fathom that.
You were just about to change the topic, nervous at his uncharacteristic silence as Phainon simply stared out into what seemed like nowhere when –
“I just won’t be a hero then!” He proudly proclaimed after a few long and arduous moments of pondering.
“Huh?!”
Phainon only shrugged at the shock on your face as you abruptly turned to face him yet again, he rested his arms beneath his head lazily, the next words drawled out in a nonchalant manner. “Well, if I had to leave Aedes Elysiae to be a hero, I don’t want to do it.”
You could only deadpan at his ironic behavior – what an oxymoron of himself, he is. “Isn’t it your dream?”
“My backup dream.” He pronounced. “My foremost dream is to just live in this village. The epics are cool and all but.. I dunno, I like the tranquility here more. I have everything I want, why would I leave?”
That gives you pause – he had a point, you supposed. A strange one, but a point nevertheless.
“You’re weird.”
“Hey!” Phainon bumped his shoulder into yours at that.
You laughed. “What? I’m just saying!”
“What’s so weird ‘bout just staying here?” Phainon pouted, looking at the ridges of golden reeds painting across Aedes Elysiae.
People busied about, carrying buckets of milk, or stacks of hay into their arms, cows, or horses followed suite – it’s idyllic, even with the bustling of the streets.
“.. I like it home the most.” Phainon smiled to himself.
You go silent at his melancholic words – he speaks as if he’s leaving, as if he’s gone, but he’s not.
“.. I guess so. But compared to being a hero, wouldn’t like.. Say, managing a farm be plenty mundane?”
“Well, the chickens are similar enough to the vigorous titankins in the hymns, right?” Phainon snickered, recounting the multitude of embarrassing ways he had to chase his father’s hoard of chicken down the wheat field. “Oh! And you’re like the final boss that chases me down the–”
You quickly smack the back of his head at the underhand jab. “I do not.”
“Ow! See? Just like a hero being beat up by his archnemesis.” He whined, holding his head in a theatrical manner.
“I am not an archnemesis!”
“Really? What role do you propose, then?”
You hummed, a finger dusting your chin in thought, before announcing: “Ah.. oh, I got it – the antihero!”
.. okay, yeah, that was kind of stupid. You turn to Phainon as he only stared at you with an incredulous look on his face at your proclamation. An ‘anti-hero’?! That was literally just another way of saying ‘anti-phainon’!
“What?!” Phainon yelped, pressing himself closer to you by anchoring himself with both arms on the grass, face sticking into your personal space. “That’s like – the total opposite of my role!”
“I mean! Isn’t antihero a cool title?” You quickly try to explain to the mortified male in front of you. “Cyrene told me about it.”
“But.. but – that’s so different from a hero! Don’t you want to be like a .. damsel in distress? Or, or.. sidekick? Or–”
“No way!” You pouted, and Phainon immediately sulked at your answer. “Damsel in distress is so boring, why can’t I just save myself? Sidekick is kinda generic.”
You paused, before relaxing your shoulders against the bark of the tree, whilst Phainon looked all but relaxed, your gaze swims to the cerulean sky.
“But.. What I like about the antihero is that they’re really ambiguous. Like, I don’t wanna be a hero, it’s too much responsibility. But villains are mean guys, so they’re inherently bad – but they also do things for a reason. So an anti-hero is something in between that line of good and bad, they’re neither morally righteous or immoral.” You paused. Your words are strange to your voice, it’s strangely mature. Your gaze lifts from the sky back to Phainon.
“But they’re.. not conventionally heroic. For that reason I like it, it’s flawed – it’s really human.”
At your philosophical soliloquy, Phainon only whined, throwing an arm over your shoulder in a manner of boredom – your words go in one ear and out the other for the white-haired boy, it seemed. “You’re starting to sound wayyy too smart! Stop hanging out with Cyrene so much!”
“What, jealous?” You teased, feeling his arm around your shoulder drawing you closer to him. “Cyrene likes me more, after all.”
“No way! Cyrene’s been my friend longer – she obviously likes me more!” He pinched your arm cheekily.
You yelped, quickly pinching him back. “By theory, sure, but Cyrene likes me a teensy winsey more. She told me!”
“Did not.”
You scoffed at his words. “Did too.”
He punches – playfully so, there is no strength, as if he could not hurt even a bit of you – your shoulder lightly aches again, whereas you punch him back, then he pinches your cheek, you dart to pinch his (much harder).
This devolves into him kicking your feet with his, and your kicking his stomach – Phainon flew to tackle you onto the ground, his form casting a shadow over yours, his hands darting to your wrist to pin them above your head.
“Ha! The hero always wins, didn’t the epics teach ya that, (name)?” He grinned, white teeth and all.
You scoffed, squirming and kicking. “You’re not even a hero – you’re a bully!”
Phainon lets out a scandalized gasp, his hold on your hands loosening at the offensive remark. “No way! I’m –”
You take the opportunity to yank your hand out of his hold, and fingers itch a rapid line to tickle at his waist – to which the white haired boy immediately starts squirming, trying, and failing, to swat you away.
“Haha–! (name)! Stop, I can’t–!” He wheezed, your fingers flying around his waist, Phainon looks no less than the textbook definition of pathetic rather than a so-called hero.
“Yield.” Your fingers do not attempt to stop their assault.
“Yield! Yield! I yield!”
You, in your merciful inclination, released your fingers from his sides, satisfied at his beseeching of a failure.
You grin to yourself as Phainon catches his breath – having looked like he had undergone a traumatic event.
“.. You really are an anti-phainon.”
“What was that?”
“You heard that, don’t even pretend!”
You laughed, stomach riling with your senses.
The sky fights back, casting now a saffron hue over your figures, the two of you dancing in a frolic of your own.
The book in your hands prior rests unnoticed now – but the pages are flipped through by the soft caress of wind, shifting through its pages, as if a story was woven out into the air right then.
You and Phainon’s innocent aligned figures sat atop the hill, near that familiar bark of a tree that hung over your stature.
Cyrene watches from a distance with a smile, before turning her gaze away from your childish menageries, huffing a giggle into her open hand that rested over her mouth, a stack of hay situated in her arms as she maneuvered around with the graze of a butterfly.
…
The stone slate features two figures. Erected onto a capacious wall – inscribed with cracks of gold. The slate is rough, grazing one’s hand would sure to injure.
Ἀεὶ κολοιὸς παρὰ κολοιῷ ἱζάνει.
The large transcriptions read –
"A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw". What a strange title.
The large stone slate depicts this: one a hero, plastered onto rock transcriptions roughly – prominently, ichor flowing with resplendent aureate of veins – amalgamated with the Titan’s own cycles of eternal punishment – of sins incipient by sheep born of cattle, by flames of humanity reaved by the seeker of truth, the figure is nothing short of divine.
Small hoards of sheep gather near the scintillating figure.
.. The sheep is sat at 42° angle clockwise.
The other a mortal, a nebulous existence in contrary to the other of gleaming epics – one of hazy transcriptions, barely indented onto the plastered rocks of time, not once has their ichor touched a hint of chrysos, not once, has their soul drifted to the light, crawling out of the darkness through volition of their own – it is a weak soul.
A crow – or a jackdaw lingers near the brotós, mortal.
The jackdaw loiters at a 13° angle counter-clockwise.
–Weak, as the mortal may appear, the soul of the divine will always be fallible to the coalition of the human soul – no matter how hard, how insistent the divine is, the holy holds no sway over the human soul. For humans wield what the beatific and holiest cannot, for that is the finity of life in itself.
But mark my words, O mortal born of folly. For the divinity will stain the cleaves of your hands as do a pomegranate, stick to the roof of your teeth as the seeds pop, the holy will take your soul and cleave it into something burgundy and substandard.
For this, you will refuse anything but the greed to reach your anthropoid fingers to it again, greedy human instincts to attempt clutch at even the holy. But the divine shall crawl its way beneath your crimson-aligned veins and fuel you into itself, and the divine will never leave quietly, especially when you, foolish one, ask for it.
It is like fire. He is like fire.
And you? You will burn as incendiary martyrs will.
The two of you laugh, Phainon’s face beaming at the story’s content, face puffing the slightest larger as you guide your way through the story, expressions painting each scene as you laugh along to the far-chronicle.
The flames of your souls dance along – perhaps too eagerly interlaced.
.. ah. ‘A jackdaw is always found near a jackdaw’ – that is true, for ‘birds of a feather will flock together’, would they not?
(.. certain letters at the top were crossed out in a rush. It looks messy, had it not been for small little hearts, sun, and star constellations that were drawn deftly across the brown-stained paper.)
My dear (name),
Forgive my awful handwriting – though in cruelly I wish nothing but the best for your eyes to ponder. I hope.. Pray, to hand you these letters myself s̶o̶m̶e̶ one day, and this will be the starting mark of it! You told me prior to today, sitting under that same flaxen tree behind my grandparent’s quite candidly rotting house that you liked handwritten letters, your face lightly brazen with the intricacies of the daybreak and that saccharine dawn-kissed smile i̶ ̶w̶i̶s̶h̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶o̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶K̶e̶p̶h̶a̶l̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶d̶a̶w̶n̶ ̶d̶e̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ on your face prompted me an idea I could not push down as I do the rest. So, these letters will be my stalemates to you, dear (name).
Now, sitting under the horribly lit oil lamp of my room, the light is frightfully flicking with trepidation in my face – surely I will get rid of this soon. Nevertheless, the point is that I am not sure where to start, for you have too much traits that I could ponder to myself over this crooked bedside table about for eternity and not get bored. It’s weird – my mind conjures all these thoughts when my eyes meet each curve of your face, happy or sad – sleepy or awake, but now, sitting here like this, it’s much harder to form the adequate words I believe you deserve. Nevermind that, I’m sure I could tell you this in person later, or in another letter, frankly, whichever you prefer, I’d do it.
But foremost, my first letter shall be a profound of a love letter. Yes, cliche, isn’t it? Oh, I’m sure you’d bend over your stomach laughing your pretty face out had you heard me utter such uncharacteristic words – but yes, if my first letter for you is about something, let it be about love that drew us woven.
(... Cyrene’s postscript note stays intact in the middle of the torn letter, the rest are burnt, crippling into darker edges on the sides – taunting. You do not know what the rest say.)
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The fields of Aedes Elysiae were unchanging – for that was the one prominence that Phainon loved most in his home.
Unchanging, undeterred. The fields mewed a soft zephyr, the breeze grazed one’s forehead the same as do outsiders or homeward citizens, the distinction in power hierarchy doesn’t touch the people of his village, no.
There are no kings – ones closer to that role were the village chiefs, but the power they wield weren’t all-powerful, nor was it overwhelming, it was safe. Secured, and sure, they’d grab Phainon by the scruff of his shirt sometimes with stolen cabbages in his arms, but the village chief – the old man, with legs that worked for only farming and eyes that need not open fully – would only scoff, before roughly ruffling the bands of his snow white hair and urged him off with a scowl, arms still cladded with the (stolen – given, now, he supposed) cabbages.
There are no lows – when neighbors struggled with harsh weather, or crops refused to grow so, people would gather support, handing them a portion of the season’s harvest with a smile, or gather a fire pit into the town’s center, and everyone – most of all the adults, in the least – would clink glasses and tell mythical stories to the children that sat abide like passing the hay to the horses to eat, it’s simple as love among everyone equally that brewed him his own.
There are no arguments – at least ones that lasted, or escalated. Disputes in the village happen – of course they do, they are foremost emotions. Despite that, Phainon found that while sadness, anger, bitterness is always consciously present here, it is temporary as it comes, because when a fight would break out, the village chief would intervene with the same bored look old people tended to have and shake each party’s hands into a peace treaty somehow, then it’d go back to normal – happy, content. Anger never lasted, for it was only the storm that followed suite with a rainbow gaze.
There are no conflicts – no war, no battle royals to the death like Castrum Kremnos, within constant isolation like Aidonia, accoutred with rogues as Dolos, complicated in reason as the Grove of Epiphany, or large and garbed with a population larger than Phainon could comprehend like Okhema city resided – Aedes Elysiae is gentle, it is soft – unfettered by events that did not garner them, unaffected by the state of the larger polis, it was small, and it was all Phainon needed.
Really, Aedes Elysiae was the only place he ever fettered to, he ever wanted to be in.
The birds chirp with a cheery tune loudly here, they’re happily singing, diving through the flaxen fields with practical ease. His work is easy, gathering crops, harvesting rice plant panicles, red soil feeds, or even chasing those pesky chickens down the fields again – his work is facile, and Phainon likes it as it is.
Aedes Elysiae has Cyrene – his older friend, who looked like she held the world in her hands. She wasn’t much older, no, but Cyrene looked, talked, and seemed as if she held all knowledge more mature than adults of the village, her voice shimmered with a calm radiance, her pink hair fluttered with the wind’s bygones, and she knew everything–!
Cards, divination, books of high caliber, theatre plays with complicated vocabularies, all of it! She’d nod along to him on her lap going off about heroes, read stories to you and him for long as the two of you had begged for, sneaked the two of you snacks when she wasn’t supposed to, she was the bestest of best.
Aedes Elysiae was home to his parents, who meticulously built that roof to place him under – they were the best! They’d adore him with all that they could, pamper him with the best porridges, dishes and love, usher him into their bed when he’d cried over a scary, large monster encapsulating the village and drawing large body of crimson rivers – they’d wiped away the tears on his cheeks and buried him between their arms under the blanket, stuffy hot as the weather was, the warmth of their embrace was all that felt right. His father, Hieronymus was the strongest to Phainon, with arms that could lift both him and Cyrene up with ease, arms that carried him and you out of the kindergarten crying about nonsensical monsters. His father was strong. He could carry the heaviest boulders – Phainon wonders if one day, he could too.
His mother – Audata, was the kindest, most amazing woman he ever knew. She’d greet him gently, ruffle his hair while stuffing his mouth with nothing but delicacies. She’d embrace him after each school-day, carding her fingers around his snow-flaked hair with a soft, delicate, humming as he fell asleep.
She’d force him down and cut his hair when it grew too long for comfort, even as his hair flailed onto the floor like specks of snow, his mother would clean it up without complaint, and usher him another smile. His mother never complained. She was the most gentle woman ever.
And most importantly – most significantly, Aedes Elysiae has you.
You, with the soft smile, you, with the gentle jabs, you, with that sweet, gods – sweet, saccharine-like voice.
He’d always been the type to like sugar, sweets encircled with sugar made him jump with joy (and later with sugar rush) – you were just like sugar. Rough around the edges – you’ve chased him down more than he can count – but sweet to the core.
He could imagine himself standing in Aedes Elysiae, but he couldn’t imagine it happy without you.
The softest laugh, the kindest eyes, the most burrowed of gentleness that clawed into his chest and dug itself a space in the hollow of his heart, and him, who sewed it closed so the gentleness would not leave. You were constant – unchanging, almost like an immovable object.
He’d wake up, jog to your house and climb through your window with it purposefully left unlocked by courtesy of your doing, wake you up with a grin, to which you’d throw a pillow straight to his face, and the two of you would spend the rest of the day with tasks smaller than the world would know.
You were perpetual, you didn’t change, didn’t move, didn’t – grow, in a way.
He could walk through the most horrid of hells, and turn to his side and you’d be the constant with him.
He liked that the most. Liked how you wouldn’t leave, even if you two fought, either he or you would come to the other with teary eyes.
Even if you two didn’t agree – you’d bicker for a few minutes, then he’d nudge closer to you and say that he liked whatever you liked, your face would flush the cute red he liked, and smack him in the face.
The gentle you, the quiet you, the loud you – each of it was unchanging. Sweet, beautiful you, who’d gaze at the stars and pry, shake his arms for him to look, even if the stars – far away as they were – were in human form in front of him.
So in touch, so prominent, so .. real.
He could hide from everything, from everyone – duck under a tree, beneath the bed or hide from himself, but he could not, would not hide from you.
Real, touchable, tangible, immovable – his other half.
“Psst, what are you exploding your mind thinking about?” A cold sensation to his cheek made him jerk back – to see you, holding a can of drink to his face, a teasing smile on your own as you threw the drink to him.
He caught the can with one hand mindlessly, flicking it open with a playful scoff at your arrival. “Nothing. And even if I was, I’ll have you know, it’s a genius mind in action.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure.” You hummed sarcastically, standing next to him, flicking open your own can of drink, the fizzy sound reverberates. “No really, what are you thinking about? You look perpetually deep in thought, it’s creeping me out.”
“Is it so weird that I’m deep in thought?”
“Yeah, you’re never thinking.”
He kicked your leg from the back of your knee, to which you only stumble forward with a laugh.
“.. I’m thinking about Aedes Elysiae,” He answered after a moment of silence, you sipping your drink in expectation, a brow raised, urging him to continue. “Of.. home, I guess. Is that weird?”
–Of course, Phainon tells you anyway, it’s not like he can deny you.
He can try to tell himself he won’t tell you but he turns out to either way – his thoughts are yours, it’s a routine simple as breathing.
You quirked an eyebrow at his words. “Kind of. What, you planning on leaving?”
“No! No, no – I mean, I’m just.. Rethinking a lot of things, to be honest.” His hands sheepishly caught the back of his neck, scratching it thoughtlessly, his free hand fidgets with the can in his hand. “I have this weird urge to.”
Phainon’s said weird too much by this point – he is kind of weird with all of this, where did it even come from, this urge?
A bile rises up from his trachea, blocking his airways, and consecutively extends to his thoughts. “Am I weird?”
You paused, looking at your drink – mouth just a slight away from the opening of the can. You turn to him, an unreadable look in your face. “.. Sure. But so what? Everybody’s weird.”
He narrowed his eyes at your words – it’s not really comforting. “You know that’s not what I meant.” He pouted against the mouth of his drink, lips pursing against each other.
If he’s weird, you’d leave, you’d run away, claw yourself out of his chest through the weaves he sewed and flee with a tail between your leg from his weird –
“I like you being weird,” Your hand is on his head now, fingers in the middle of the snowy landscape of his hair – Phainon stills, like a dog would. “Say it over and over. Your weird thoughts, your weird food cravings, random weird melancholic homesickness even if you’re at home.”
He unconsciously leaned into your touch, eyes lidding close, the drink almost forgotten as he focused on the hand – your hand, uncalloused, soft on his head. “.. doesn’t that make you weird?”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
Phainon laughed a hitch at that, a low sound from his chest, it almost made you shiver. “So we’re both weirdos?”
You smiled at him, one that sang what couldn’t from your throat, one that spoke of utter reassurance, one that he wanted to staple onto you for eternity – one that held his heart, one that he handed his heart to.
“We are.” You’d retracted your hand from his head, and he could feel himself sulking over the loss of contact, fingers twitching to grab your wrist himself and card your fingers back into his hair by force.
Phainon moved closer to you, and without a word, rested his head on your shoulder thoughtlessly, his hair tickling your neck. “.. I miss home.”
“Yeah?” You two were home. What a weird thing to say.. How sweetly sorrowful – this weird, aching feeling that derived from your stomach when he said it, as if you felt it as well.
You two were weird.
Like .. an even odd, a wise fool, a brawling love, a loving hate, that waking sleep that burns teeth into the cravings of inedible flesh, that fire that lights at water – aching for the pain, relishing in being relinquished. That heavy lightness, that pungent bitter sweetness –
How weird you were.
How weird he was.
How weird, that even with that – you hold him still.
How weird, that he looks at you like you were meant to stay, fire in his eyes that gleamed when you left, even if it’s to go home for the night – fire in his eyes when you’d stayed, and the weird, burning desire that cascaded in him, buried into his instincts to make you stay, keep staying, and always stay.
It burns at him, not the burn that was bad, not the burns that radiated to his epidermis and blisters a harsh red when he stuck his hand in the fire recklessly, no – it’s the burn that made him crave for it. The burn that fired in his heart, then his skin, tickling it with utmost sincerity, it makes him want to reach his greedy fingers out and scratch it – the burn.
How weird.
“.. Stay, (name).”
It’s not a request, doesn’t sound like one. More like a demand, it’s finalized in Phainon’s words.
You blinked at his words, the drinks you brought for the both of you forgotten, his voice muffled into your neck, arms around your waist tightly as you held him.
He’d said it so quietly, almost like he didn’t want you to hear it, almost like you were privy to a thought he’d let run through his fingers and slip through his mouth.
You hear it anyways, and you answer – you always will, you could not bear to not answer him.
“I’m not leaving.”
How weird – it almost felt like you were lying to him.
“.. Hey, (name)?”
“Hm?”
“.. Those birds, salt and pepper.” Phainon started, mouth moving against your neck.
You huffed at the old memory. “You mean the birds that we tried to save?”
“Yeah,” He said, a melancholic tone noted in his voice. “Do you think–”
Salt and Pepper – much strange names they were, real creative of the two of you – were two birds that you and Phainon found lying desecrated on the ground, both huffing for life, fighting for what remains of the fire in their small bird heart.
Even something so small has to fight, not always because they want to – far from it, but because fate orders them to.
You two tried – as much as two little kids could, anyway – to save them, but as do all wild animals that had been hunted down, it was to an extent, of no avail.
Salt was a white bird with textured fringes, as the name suggested. It was an active bird, no doubt.
Pepper was a stygian, much smaller bird – quieter, and the first one to die.
You had been there the whole time, while Salt flew around in joyous momentum, its wings bandaged by scraps of gauzes that Phainon could dig out, Pepper’s wings only fluttered a weak beat, its peck unmoving, not a single sound was drawn out of the black bird – its wings, which should be so open, free – only drooped further down, the edges frayed and ragged.
Phainon had offered Pepper some worms – hands dirtied as he nudged the worms to Pepper’s mouth, following a fruitless action.
When Pepper no longer responded, when its breathing was no longer viable, not even once as you poked its wings, not even once as Phainon blew some air into it – the bird didn’t move, its wings spread open as it took its last breath in your hand.
Salt, the white bird, seeing this – seemed like it didn’t understand, and instead flocked its wings around Pepper’s dead body, as if waiting for the black bird to rise up again, fluttering around with quickened activity.
The two of you had cried with the bird alternating between your hands and Phainon’s until late that evening, where Cyrene came home with obvious shock on her face as she took in the sight of your snot-covered faces and a dead bird on your palm.
She’d have calmed the two of you down, and pried the bird–Pepper’s stygian body away to bury in the soil of Phainon’s front yard – whereas the white bird, Salt, was released back into the wild, with you and Phainon waving it a happy goodbye.
Pepper was laid to an early death – you can’t help thinking that it could’ve survived, but pushed the thought down. Salt was free, it’d live through the worst and flung its wings to bare the sky with glee–
– A few days later, you’d found Salt lying a defaced mess, no doubt hunted by an apex predator in the same yard that Pepper laid buried – you didn’t tell Phainon this.
How could you bear to? To tell him that the one bird that sought freedom fell to the same fate as if it had just given up – to tell him the white bird, who’d made it out alive, had been treated not an ounce kinder when it touched freedom – you couldn’t say that.
So instead, you quietly buried Salt’s white, desecrated body near Pepper’s own grave in Phainon’s front yard – Cyrene looked at you with slight pity in her eyes as you dug a grave for the white bird.
. . .
“.. Do you think that Pepper could have made it out?” You finished the thought for Phainon, to which he doesn’t respond for a heartbeat.
You take his silence as a nudge to continue. “.. Would it have been better for Pepper to make it out?”
You think back to Salt’s dead, cold body, though its eyes were glazed with freedom, baring its wings to the sky, only to be victim to a glass wall of a matter of equality in cycles.
Everything was in this strange triangular hierarchy, you noticed.
“It would’ve been, right?” Phainon replied, eyes a darker shade – fear, almost. “(name), it would’ve been, right?”
You flinched at his words, your eyes flickering away from his to find a semblance of guilt in the yellow reeds in front of you. “Maybe for Pepper.. It was better for it to – die first.”
“What?” You could feel Phainon’s stare as he lifted his head from the crook of your neck, his arms around your waist loosening as if he couldn’t believe your words – not a bit of it.
How was it better to die? How was it easier to kill yourself instead of fight–
“It looked peaceful, didn’t it?” You recalled the black bird with its wings open, its last breath taken on your palm.
Dead, and defiled as it looked, when your eyes wandered to its tiny face, all you could find was a serene expression – peace, fleeting as it was.
You felt your spine grow cold at the thought.
“That’s not true.” Replied the white-haired boy, hands moving from your waist to grasp at your shoulder, almost adamant to make you believe. “That isn’t true. It can’t be easier to die than live.”
You clasped a hand over his. “Sometimes,” Your voice is quieter, serene-like, the voice like a mother would. “It’s harder to live than to just die.”
Maybe that’s how Pepper felt, you bitterly thought.
For Salt – the pallid bird who freed itself with wings spread ajar, freedom at the touch of its feathers – even that burning scalding freedom got it nowhere but a route’s dead end.
But for Pepper – that dusk colored bird whom seeked none but a death of their own, you can’t help but think–
A better fate was it, to die on one’s own volition than even fight to live and die as fate intends.
“Don’t say that.” Phainon’s voice is clipped when he shakes you back to reality. “Don’t say it like you’re considering it too.”
“What?” You couldn’t help but huff a small laughter. “I’m not, don’t be silly.”
“You sound like you are.”
Did you? You didn’t notice yourself.
“You’re worrying too much,” You lead his face back into the crook of your neck by a steady hand behind his head, breath shimmering down your collarbone deftly – lest he finds it in himself to overthink another matter. “Just a comparison. Besides, we’re all gonna die of old age in a village separated as this, what are you worrying for?”
“.. I guess you’re right.” Phainon muttered into your neck, the sound a low vibration as he felt your heart beneath the aching of his chest, your bodies fitted – ovetailed against one another with seamless difficulty, it felt like he was trying to consume your body into his own.
Your heart beats – a thump – another thump.
Repetitive.
The same sound again and again – so human, so alive. Phainon pressed himself further onto you.
“Phainon.”
“Don’t leave, (name).”
The words were whispered as though they were worship of prayers hidden among depths of simply skin and skin over and over again – among the ichor, crimson or gold – he tore the words out of his chest like a voiceless prayer.
You responded to him in kind. “.. I won’t leave.”
“Say it again.”
“I won’t leave.”
“Again.”
“I won’t leave.”
“One more time–”
You grasped his head with two hands cupping his cheek, forcing him to look you in the eyes. “Phainon. I told you, I’m not leaving.”
“Swear it. Swear it the way we always do.”
Phainon nudged you with a tightened grip of your shoulder – he means the silly method of promise the two of you made every time you swore to each other something.
Nothing ceremonious, or grandiose – just a routine that was so painfully, utterly yours and his.
“Cross my heart,” You withdrew your hands from his face, drawing a line from the right of your shoulder to your left, crossing the line over the bridge of your heart, thumping insistently in your chest. “And be torn into the sunrise,”
‘And be torn into the sunrise’ – an extra verse the two of you had made and added yourself – it was a running joke, since Kephale’s dawn was always up, so prominent from the fields of Aedes Elysiae, it meant everyday, each minute, was sunrise.
Therefore, (in Phainon’s words, anyway) anything that is sworn within the oath will always be true, torn into the skies themselves, forever.
You continued, looking into his eyes. “I’ll stay with you. Swear it.”
You will. For as long as he allowed you to.
“.. Swear it.”
He needed you to.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 4.
Dear my beloved (name),
These letters are starting to feel more like journaling than letters, but that’s fine. It just means I have a lot to tell you! That’s besides the point – (name), I’ve been wracking my brain over just what ‘love’ means. I asked Cyrene, and she said love is gentle – like the stories of heroes, or the wracking tragedy of a love fallen or just a cool fight scene, not that it made sense to me at that time. How can love be ‘something’ like ‘gentle’ and ‘tragic’? Love is simply romantic, right? Like those.. Kissing stuff, I tried to pry Cyrene for more ‘words of wisdom’ but she only peered me away and told me that I’d get it someday – I doubt that. So I asked my Ma and Pa, where they said love is strong – do people’s definition of love just get more confusing as I keep asking along? How is love even strong? I bet I can beat it in an arm wrestling battle – it’s just a feeling, isn’t it? Ahh, I’m being all weird again with these questions, but the reason I asked was because I couldn’t define what love meant to me, to us. Is it weird? (Sorry, I keep asking that nowadays) Is it weird to not understand love when I see it each day?
I think, to me, love is the way your eyes light against the dawn of the sky when you turn to me, your hair subsequently darts against the softest zephyr that was sent to greet you, the way your voice shimmers, a clearer emergence in seas of discordant sounds and endless stars in which you, yet again, still shine the brightest – like you were born for it.
Maybe it’s okay if I don’t have a definition of love – no one technically has to, right?
Sometimes I suspect you were made from the same core as stars were, hahah. I only ever memorized one constellation (much to Cyrene’s dislike, you know she kept trying to teach me?), and it was because it reminded me so vertuably of you. It’s called the Lyra! Something-something falling hawk (or eagle, actually - was that the same thing?), but that’s besides the point. It has this star named Vega inside, and it’s one of the brightest stars ever to map the night sky – I think that’s just like you. The brightest of souls, the most resplendent and shining of hearts in a map of stars.
Also, it has a lyre, kind of like the lullabies you often sang to me, so it’s just like you! Hence why I like the constellation so much. Imagine how much I could learn if all the studies were done about you!
(name), you say such philosophical things all that time that I can’t help but wonder – if I, and only I, could take a peek inside that brain of yours and see for myself how you think – would that bear us closer? If you’d let me look inside of you?
Oh, I’ve got it!
My definition of love: is you!
I still don’t really get it, but when adults speak of those thumping in your chest, the weird stomach worms wiggling around, or when your head gets all fuzzy and weird – that’s supposed to be love, right?
Weird, though, I think it feels just like when I start to get sick or overloaded on sugar – is that reallllyyy love?
But I guess, the difference is that the strange impeccable feeling from love brings me more joy than I can simply put to words – and this strange feeling only derives from you. So, in a short, easy, Phainon definition, love is you, (name)!
Still kind of confused, but I think with this definition, I won’t have to pry Cyrene any longer than I already have.
Anyway! I hope you won’t find this letter specifically, I think it’s a little embarrassing since this is all just me needlessly ranting about how much I see you in even maps of stars in the sky or the strange strange pit inside of my stomach that seems to scream for you – please don’t tease me later!!
Forever yours, Phainon ~
(This letter remains uninjured and undeterred by ragged edges as do the other letters, it’s full and crisp – like a new letter written just minutes ago. If not for the circumstances, you could laugh at the doodles he had placed – how sweet.)
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The dawn of Kephale shimmers beneath the touch of your eyes, you close them, appalled by the brightness of it – the reeds fight against the weight of your back above the golden field, your arms reach out, trying, and failing, to block the blazing light of the dawn.
Your arm falls back impatiently to your side, the brightness unrelenting against your closed eyelids.
Here, under this stupid, same tree – you could pretend time stilled for even a moment of your own interest. You could heave your breath in and believe that the world stays as it is.
You could pretend you weren’t growing up.
The reeds move again with the deliverance of the soft zephyr, mocking your own thoughts. You scoff at it.
Time was a monster.
A monster who would swallow up his children – or raise the heavens against humanity, or impede the nature of mortality.
Time was unfair.
An unfair reality that – even if you wish, even if you beg, even if you try and try to grab it into your palms – things will change.
You could claw at it with your might, scream till your throat was hoarse and beg for a time reimburse, but in its unfair nature, time will not respond.
Time hitches, time stutters, time challenges, time –
Does not wait.
What are you searching for?
You give pause, and you’re almost keen on saying ‘only time will tell’, but Oronyx, Time, remains quiet against you, what cruel titan.
Everything runs out of time. IT is what fate precedes – it is predetermined. This, cruel, but real knowledge makes your inside squirm in relentless questioning.
The walls of your house wear down, sticking with scratches that pierces into the deeper layers, chipping away at the paint. Even something upstanding as your home runs on borrowed time.
The trees around Aedes Elysiae don't stand forever. It was planted – rooted to live, but is cut down in favor of materials for casting fire. The crops – the reeds, golden, bright, as they are, they get cut off, harvested, they end.
The animals, too. The farms in Aedes Elysiae nurture the pigs, feed the chickens and foster the horses, but when time arrives, the grown-ups carry their near-dead bodies and take them for harvest, as food. Animals have an end – like those stygian and pallid birds.
The scarecrows come to ruin by time as well. They too, aren’t spared from the blizzards of the wind, nor the harsh storms of the titans’ sorrows. The mannequin wears down by little, the clothes dirty and the birds chip away at the ‘human-like protector’. You wince.
Everything is preceded, predetermined, planned – everything has a clear beginning, a clear, fated end that befits their stature.
You know things end. You know it too well. Your mother who’d claw at your skin, begging to live, shaking your shoulder as if you were the fates that ordained her ill nature.
She’d flung the medicine to the floor, clenched her nails into the pillow hard enough for it to gain scratch marks – and lacerated you when the life last left her, and all that flung out of her mouth weren’t a sentimental last word but string of curses – at the gods, at you.
Your mother was a good woman.
Then, she’d left with a declaration that took the last of her strength with her: ‘Let this child be cursed – for time takes all!’
Unstable, unkind to you – but good. You want to believe so.
The world had been unkind to her, and she needed something to be unkind to.
So what if that was you?
Could you blame her?
Once twitching, once yelling, her kind, good body, fell limp in the total silence of your breath.
You stared at her body on the bed for hours.
You feel an itching need to be unkind to someone else. Something. Anything.
You feel an itching need to throw your fist into flesh, draw your nails into skin until it drives blood–
Until a familiar figure pressed his palm into your shoulder. The touch is grounding.
Until those azure eyes flew with concern over your tear-stricken face, and pressed you into the crook of his shoulder wordlessly, allowing himself to sink onto the floor as well you, sobs wrecking into the material of his blue tunic.
Time takes all.
Time is unkind.
But you don’t want it to take him.
And you will not allow it to be unkind to him.
Your hands braced behind his shoulder, as if you needed to plant him closer to you, until each atom in your bodies were magnetized to the other, until he was woefully you, as you were him.
Sobs had wrack through your chest, then, and he didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. His hands just held you tighter to him.
Time takes all.
But you pray, if there’s a single titan out there that listens – be it Mnestia or the unanswering Oronyx – let him be the sole thing not be taken by time.
You would beg if need be.
They don’t need to answer, you don’t want to hear them. They just needed to keep him alive, that’s all you ever cared for.
His long, calloused fingers – probably dirtied by the mud from busying the horses into the den – carded through your hair, softly wracking its way through your unruly, unkempt locks.
You claw at his clothes again, your fingers raked into the cotton of his shirt roughly.
"Look at me". He had whispered, his mud fingers moving to your face, turning it to him. "Look only at me."
It’s not as if you could bear to look at anything but him. His eyes burn into yours, so clear, even with tears blurring at your eyelids. The flecks of gold in his blue eyes shined brighter when he was so close.
Time takes all.
You wished it would not take this moment from you, even if your body was rotten into the soils of the earth, becoming one with the planted seeds of the dirt. You wished he would stay forever, whether in memories or otherwise.
You wish, wish, and wish.
But time blurs all, even memories.
“Hey, wake up.”
You awake blearily to a grinning face, Phainon’s figure above you blocking the sun.
You glared at his cheshire cat-like smirk, all content with waking you up from your comforting nap under the flaxen tree. He moves to stumble himself down beside you before you could kick him where the sun doesn’t shine.
“What’re you dreaming about?” Phainon observed as you sat up, stretching your arms over your head at the strain of lying under the tree, you huffed at his arrival.
“My ma. The past.”
His eyes narrowed at your response. “-- Well stop thinking ‘bout your Ma. I didn’t even like ‘er, totally sucked.”
“Hey!”
“What? It’s the truth! She was mean to you.”
You rolled your eyes at his words. “She wasn’t ‘mean’, she was tired and sick.”
“Yeah? Well when I’m sick, I don’t throw plates at you.”
“She had anger issues.”
“She had a lot of issues.”
You punch Phainon square in the shoulder, he only yelped, rubbing against the spot where you had aggressively offended him. “She was my Ma.”
“My Ma doesn’t act like yours,” He recalled – the vast difference between your family and his. “Moms are supposed to love and adore their kids in any circumstance, not scream and try to fist fight them. And no, being sick isn’t a valid excuse.”
You scoffed at him again, crossing your arms deftly over your chest. “.. Whatever! She –” Your mind races for an excuse, a justification – nothing comes up but her distraught face, the words ‘time takes all’ swimming around.
“You don’t owe her anything.” Phainon, as if sensing your discomfort, draws an arm around your shoulder, pulling your body to him. “She was a jerk, simple as that. Even if she was your Ma.”
His words give you pause – you couldn't deny the truth in it, not really. Instead, you question. “Then why is love so labeled with hate?”
Phainon doesn’t know how to answer that. The hand that was subconsciously drawing circles on your shoulder stiffened in place. “.. Because it’s human nature.”
Did your mom hate you because it was in her nature? Did she yell at you because in her love, hate was the only way she could persist the knowledge that you were physically there? Was hate her love? Your head hurts.
Suddenly, a strong arm pulls you into his chest, positions now switched as you feel your head pushed down to listen to the beat of his heart. His chin on your head, fingers gently unfurling your hair.
“You don’t owe her your defense, your justifications, (name), she doesn’t deserve it. She may have loved you in a cruel way, but you do not owe her a love bigger than what she gave you.”
You don’t respond. Instead, you breathe him in, his scent lingering around the depths of your head, making it fuzzy with something akin to adoration, or devotion.
You inhale once more through his chest, letting the musky scent, marked with something so uniquely his, as if you could take out his heart and crawl your way into a quiet little spot and stay there forever.
So that when his time ran out, you would rot with him.
“I guess I don’t.” You murmured into him, to which he didn’t respond, only tightening his hold around you.
A beat of silence, before he turned your head upwards to look at him again. “Which means you owe me a love as big as the universe!”
You smiled – despite yourself – at his attempt at levity. “That implies you give me a love bigger than the universe.”
“Course I do.” He grinned, all boyish-like and soft. “You might run away if you realize just how big it is.”
Time takes all.
He will be no exception.
Your mouth moves before your brain does, it runs with your heart. “Show me.”
. . . .
.. You can’t help but want to know more – and more, and more and more until nothing is left of you but the knowledge and the burning, scalding desire to know.
The knowledge flows out of you. It takes the form of a black goo.
It burns at the tips of your fingers but you scoop it up and fill it into your mouth until you choke on the desecrating thick liquid.
Your fingers reach for more, greedy as they are.
You want to know why time is so cruel.
You want to know if your mother had ever loved you – if there were a single atom in her body that spared a thought for you that didn’t contain anger.
You want to know what you are made of – why the gods, Kephale, had sculpted you like this. Flesh among flesh.
You want to know Phainon.
You want to know what he likes, the weather he prefers, the things he scrunches his nose up at, the things he jumps up in glee at – what specific spot on the curve of his neck that made his breath hitch, the small birthmarks near his temple, to which you trace – the shape of his lips, sometimes chapped, other times smooth.
You want to know what constellations he had traced on your skin – if it had meaning. You want to know why he looked at you as if you hung the brightest stars in the sky even though he was the spatial mass that held the stars together.
Perhaps this is love – the need and burning craving to know.
. . _
“Show you?” He tilted his head slightly, you nod.
_ _
Time takes all.
You are a coward. You realize in Phainon’s embrace.
“Show me your love. How big it is.” Your hands move from bracing against his chest to meet his face, hands gently smoothing the pad under his eyes with a reverent manner.
Your body was slotted between his thighs, a position that would scare any other kid – never you two.
“.. Okay.”
. _
You are all talk, but no action. You question this, question that – raise doubts at this, peer into books for hours on end like that, but what do you do for these doubts of yours?
Nothing.
You know time takes all. You know everything is predetermined. You thought you’d have a breakthrough, and fight against fate, will yourself up and fight against the preordained nature of destiny, if you were brave enough to question the will and order of the world, weren’t you brave enough to challenge it?
_ .
“Is this enough of a declaration, (name)?”
You cannot think.
Not clearly, because your back was now pressed to the reeds, his arms are by the sides of your head, his body lingering over you on top.
From this angle, he looked more like your Phainon, blushing, nervous and boyish, unlike the hero Cyrene told you he’d someday be.
You’re splayed out on the grass, hair fluttering senselessly against the grass as each strand fills out the gap in the dirt, consumed by the tension.
You swallow a bile from your throat, your voice yet again sounds your desire without your will. “.. More.”
. .
Time takes all.
You allow it, allow the predetermined fate to overtake you, everyone, because you, in your brave camaraderies, your large, imprudent words—
You are inherently selfish, pathetic, and most of all, a coward, who only knew to question but not to challenge.
The knowledge can flow out of you forever, you could know everything – but if you couldn’t trial anything, what worth does the knowledge that buries into your head – flowing out of your trachea, have?
_
“You’re so adorable.” Phainon murmured, all soft and lingering.
His hands move along the curves of your sides, tracing your body as he moves up, up, up – each trace burns with a brazen fire as his fingers move, he stares at his hand as he mapped your body.
Your breath all but hitches. “You’re flattering me.”
“No, I mean it,” He moved his gaze from his lingering hand to your eyes, you searched his eyes for deception as soon as he looked at you, but you found nothing but determination. “You’re so..”
He laced his fingers around your hand, gently bringing it to his lips, pressing a kiss with a devotion that could only be named as worship to your knuckles, it burned your hand.
He softly parts his lips from your hand after a moment, and you feel an ache you don’t acknowledge from the absence of his lips on you.
“.. adorably divine.” And adorably his – Phainon smiled.
_ . _ _
Time takes all.
You feel empty, even in Phainon’s embrace.
Your heart feels abhorrently hollow, like you needed him to fill it up for you. It felt suffocating.
Like there was a spot in your soul – made to fit Phainon’s body, to fit his big stature and it is empty. You needed him to fill it.
“Your hands are so small.” Phainon whispered, devout and all.
His much larger hand lacing back into yours, fitting tightly – he hums in approval. It felt as if you were made to fit him like a puzzle would.
“It was larger than yours when we were younger.”
Phainon tutted, bringing your hand to eye-level, he appraised it quietly. “Well I’m grown now, aren’t I?”
“Barely. You’re like a child sometimes still.”
“Yeah?” He hummed – so soft, so uncharacteristically different.
You find yourself blushing at the way he said it before you could curse your mind to stop.
“.. Yeah.”
“I’ve been getting a lot bigger, though. See?” He lets go of your hand, if only to stretch out his arms and flex the bicep that had been growing – which is quite large, if you’ll be honest.
You blink – and you take in a good look at Phainon once more.
He’s growing. Larger, shoulders broader, chest more lifted, the lopsided grin on his face is still not misplaced but it’s wider, hair fluffier and longer, not unruly like it was before, and he’s—
Being worn down by time.
This is just the peak of the mountain. If it continues, he’ll be worn down. He’ll decay. Fruits are ripe first before they are rotted – he’s just another specimen of time–
“.. I’ll bet the horses are heavy lifting.” You swallowed the thought down, letting it settle in your stomach.
“Pfft – totally are! Y’know, I nearly got assaulted by another this morning. I swear, there’s some personal grudge, it’s not like I poisoned their hay or anything!”
You laughed softly as his hands fell back, bracing themselves to both sides of your face. “What about me? Have I grown?”
Phainon stilled – like, frozen in place kind of still. Like how still a child would be in front of a feral dog still. You see his eyes rake over you, and you also, freeze. For a reason different than his. You feel his eyes wander on your body from bottom to top, and his expression is unreadable at best.
His hands move to take a strand of hair into his fingers, appraising it. “You did. Your hair’s different.”
“Just my hair? Surely there’s more..” You pursed your lips into a slight pout.
Was your hair the only thing that’s changed? Weren’t you, give or take, taller by even a few inches? Prettier?
Phainon shook his head gently with a smooth laugh stitched to that smile he always wore. Tender. “No, not just your hair.”
“.. You’re going to send us both down the reeds if you hold me so tightly.” You said – though the words do not match your inner conviction.
You want him to keep holding you. You want him to squeeze you as tight as he could. Even if his fingernails had dug into your veins and clawed out your blood. Even if it sent the two of you down the yellow hill. You don’t care.
Phainon only chuckled. Not releasing his hold on you in the slightest. It’s firm – but not enough to hurt. He would never hurt you.
He ignores your warning and cards his fingers along your body again. “Your face is different.”
“.. Where?”
He moved his fingers to your jaw, drawing his fingertips along it – it feels ticklish on your skin, but not unwelcoming. “Here. Your face’s a bit wider in your cheeks than it was before.”
You blinked. You did not know that. Was that a bad thing? Were you ran down by time—
“Here as well. Your collarbones are more pronounced.” His fingers moved again.
They never ceased to move, you realized. He always seemed to fidget something, the hem of his sleeve, his shirt.
This time, his fingers linger on the depth of your collarbone.
“I didn’t.. I didn’t notice.”
“I do.” Responded Phainon, the words a casual mask that made you heat up inside. His eyes trail from your collarbone back to your eyes.
You paused, the words piling up in your throat.
“.. Where else?” You pushed him.
He stilled for a beat, before his fingers moved again. You find your heart at a rapid speed as his fingers deftly move lower. “Here.”
“.. And here, and–” Phainon guided his fingers down the valley of your breasts like it was something so casual – your face heats up, a warm emergence – his hands continued down to your stomach, trailing it through the fabric of your tunic, before he stops with a hitch of a breath below your belly.
He abruptly pulls his fingers off of you before it could move on its own accord, hands now back on the grass to brace himself over you, his eyes completely avoided your gaze, but you see the growing hue of pink on his face even from the side – which would be an adept opportunity for you to tease him, had your face not been a bright red as well.
.. what was the burning desire that begged him to continue? Your hands almost move on reflex to grab at his wrist and trace his fingers back lower.
– What a disgusting desire. It’s abhorrent. It’s greedy. You swallow the bile in your throat once more.
Phainon cleared his throat loudly, eyes finally finding yours again. You feel that greedy desire creeping up below your skin.
“.. Ahem! Point is, we’re both pretty grown up, huh?” Phainon coughed out, turning his face back to you in the most schooled-phaidon-expression he could mutter.
The grin on his face would’ve been convincing, if his pink hue of a blush wasn’t so prominent to you.
“I guess so. You’re nearly the tallest kid in our class now.” You smiled, your face – the traitorous nerves that hid beneath your skin they were – was a beet red spectacle as well.
The two of you stared at each other.
Unspeaking – just.. Stared. As if the world had unraveled around the both of you.
As if the very act of looking, seeing could convert you closer into one mass or nothing at all.
Before you both broke out in fits of laughter. The noise jovial among you.
“Your face is so red!” Phainon said, his laugh unceasing as he finally let his arms down, falling next to you on the patch of grass.
You kicked him in retaliation, he laughed harder. “And yours isn’t? You look like those apples on the trees behind your house!”
“Ouch. Low blow, comparing me to apples? Why not something more grandiose?”
“Mm, that’s assuming you deserve such title.”
“Hey!”
A pause or two, and the two of you fall back into a comforting laugh.
.. If you’d ignored the burning, scorching heat that bubbled below when his touch went lower.
The trail his fingers left indented your stomach, you could almost feel it. You could almost yearn for it.
Time takes all.
But you’ll make sure it takes you first.
You are selfish. Heedlessly so.
But then again, you were only human.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
The engravings on the walls mark a pair. This engraving on this stone slate is smooth – unlike the slate prior.
This one felt as if it had been redone over and over again until it perceived the texture less carved of stones more insinuations of polished reflections of glass.
A hand smooths over the engravings, it does not fight back.
Νίψον ἀνομήματα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν.
The transcriptions had screamed. A billowing sound – ‘Wash the sins, not only the face’ – sins?
Depictions of the slate are smooth, and it carves out the two figures yet again. Mortal, and divine hero.
The carefully chiseled hero is slumped – of what seems to be rivers of liquid-like substance flowing from each crack on the hero’s body – be it ichor or tears.
Etched near, are fire – a nebulous incision marking every visible gap of the stone slate – the fire spins in a meaningless pattern, chiseled with carelessness yet is the smoothest of all distinct engravings.
Despite that, they still look divine.. If not for the human act they were perceiving.
For the hero holds the mortal in their arms in the middle of the large slate.
The position of the two sends an alarming shiver over █████’s body. Despite that, █████ only smiles in anticipation, an abhorrent twisted grin – though it derives not much more than a neutral grinning expression.
The mortal’s limbs are twisted wrongly – their arms flailed like they were trying to spread it oh so open, but it only looks as if they were painfully twisted. Arms twisting in contrasting directions, fingers unrecognizable as a living being.
Their neck is horribly, sickeningly twisted. To what was supposed to be facing the hero, the cervical vertebrae only twists their head to eye the ground, inhumane.
To what is seen, their skin is pale, much nauseatingly so – costal cartilages of the rib cage peeks out of the skin, diving through their own flesh with little care, it’s hard to believe such bones and flesh were one before.
Everytime one looks away from the mortal’s abhorrently decaying body – a new wound is sustained on the slate the moment their eyes flee back.
The femur is cracked, legs an aberrant revulsion of state.
The temporal skull debauched, mountains of liquid flailing out in agony.
The sternum damaged.
The patella unrecognizable.
Each bone broken.
Muscles a fatuos mess.
The clavicle contorted—
Again, and again.
More, and more, and so much more—until nothing was discernible.
Until the mortal’s body was nothing but a mush of flesh and sin that fought to remain, only for neither to sustain in the end.
The hero remains unchanging in place, however.
The hero’s arms remain steadfast each time – every time a new wound, new bone was sustained a broken menagerie, the hero doesn’t change his footing, he just gathers them closer, and closer to his chest until nothing of the mortal was left – until he was embracing nothing but flesh and the abhorrent hope that he tried so desperately to bury into that mortal.
The slate twists with each glance away and back.
…
O, imprudent one – such folly behaviors that you pertain! You divine have swollen up their buds until nothing of them was left, you and your brash, immodest fire have pried so deep into their souls that you rooted your beatific sins into their pure veins – did you know?
They reek of sin. They reek of sin not of their roots but of the seeds that you clawed deep into their flesh.
. . _
But you seek what they cannot give you! Divine, you seek their life to be infinitive – just as yours do.
Cease your yearning, divinity.
Your life will repeat again, and again if you bear this so adamant, but much like infinity – like a snake finding its own tail, biting down and never letting go – you will only create this paradox for yourself, a cycle of unforgiving consequences as you tie them further to your depraved self.
_ .
The divine will have faults, and your faults – bringer of destruction – is the remaining notion that you will never disappear. You may change forms, switch out parts insubstantial..
But you will forever remain in that eternal cycle of destruction, and thus, re-creation.
You do not deserve them.
Perhaps the divine are more foolish than even the mortals – why would you dare to seek creation in what can only be defined as your destruction embodied?
You do not deserve them.
.. Pathetic.
Behead your fate and yearn for the gods’ answers – clean your sins on this mortal you bound so.
You do not deserve them.
Whether in hope, or negligence in vain – prisoner, do not mistake your standing.
You do not deserve them.
‘Wash the sins, not only the face’, ravager.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Phainon has always considered himself to be somewhat of a ‘ball of fire’. It’s cliche, sure – but he thinks it’s what everyone means when they call him deliverer.
A fiery wheel.
Spinning in constant notion, that solar coronation halo that crowned him a state higher than the cards that the other kids in Aedes Elysiae got. Phainon was a fire concoction of woeful emotions.
Whereas the kids would get ‘drunkard’ or.. ‘villager’, Phainon received the deliverance – he was that fiery wheel, wasn’t he?
He was crowned that wheel.
He spins like a ball of fire, his teacher, Pythias would say.
Standing up to answer a question with absolute confidence. Completing his exams with a handwriting sprawled like it owed him something, as if his words could save embroidery in history. His words sprung like fire. It was refreshing, his teacher remarked.
He fights like a ball of fire, his friends complimented.
They swung their wooden swords all day in the flaxen fields – Andreas would scoff a compliment, Livia would exclaim with joy, Iraklis would pat him on the shoulder. He was made for the sword, they praised. Like a spinning fire that didn’t douse, they repeated. He’d be an amazing savior, they chanted as he freed a chimera from a bush that knew only to trap.
He lived like a ball of fire, his parents opined, their voices rang clear bells like the one in front of his home.
His mother said he grew like a ball of fire, his father said he ate like a consuming ball of fire. They say he grew like fire did – lively and active. So vigorous, they breathed. So thoughtful, they hummed as he saved bits of leftover food for the animals in the field.
He had the determination like a ball of fire, his trusted friend and part-time consultant, Cyrene would mention.
Her eyes glimmered with mischief as she flicked his forehead. He had motivation unceasing like fire, she whispered. It was like the act of deliverance, and time would tell, her maturity waged with her words.
He smiled like a ball of fire, his other half, most beloved one, had said to him.
You said he smiled like a ball of fire, with the dawn sliding down the sides of your face and stray leaves carded in your hair, his breath hitched then.
It’s different from what other people have told him. Smiling? That’s hardly anything compared to fighting like a ball of fire!
Smiling is too.. Intimate, perhaps.
He doesn’t find himself liking your definition.
(Besides, in his opinion, your smile outweighs any fire, star that burns – even the mass of a star that is the sun.)
The fire flowed endlessly through his veins, burning at each carnasses in him.
It fought to grasp each nerve that raptured him, it sought to clench that ardor of his so – that fire, that fire that was him, that fire that was solely his psyche – threatened to clutch at him.
–
Now, that fire burnt through Aedes Elysiae.
Each breath that Phainon took had his lungs protesting – it clawed its trajectory up Phainon’s throat as he slashed through what he could of monsters emerging from the black tide.
His grip on the sword only tightens, and Phainon’s circulatory system pulses with yellow trickling blood.
And everything hurts. His body is slammed to the ground once more, he stands up, the stupid makeshift sword still in hand.
Because Aedes Elysiae is burning.
He tries to turn away, flees his eyes on something else. Phainon looks back in hopes the scenery is back to the home he loves so – but it doesn’t.
When he looks away, all he sees are burgeoning fire, when he turns – hoping for the sight of the calm village he knew – he sees only more of those fires that persisted.
He could look back and forth as much as he pleases – it would never change the scenery.
He doesn’t want to keep fighting, no.
If it were up to him, he would lie back down onto the reeds of his home – albeit slightly stricken with newfound blood – but he would let his golden blood rain down as he sighed a hint of relief.
But he doesn’t get that relief, not him, not the deliverer.
Because it was his Aedes Elysiae that was burning.
His Aedes Elysiae that had the chiefs that wrung through the children with life lessons – he caught them screaming in stricken agony not long ago as the blade of a monster pulled through the flesh of the old man that used to carry him away from the fields.
Now, the village chief’s body is wrung through the ground, spilling organs onto the grass.
He wanted to puke.
His Aedes Elysiae that had no conflicts – nothing like this. It was peaceful. His peaceful home that harbored no conflict. J
ust the day earlier, he was hanging out the old, wrinkly port of the village – now that very wooden port was desecrated into the waters.
He needed to puke.
His Aedes Elysiae that had his family – gods, his mother, and father. Where were they?
He couldn’t tell the burning houses apart. Not with the fire, the gas that swelled so abhorrent against his senses. He disliked this – iron smell of fire, he decided.
His arms moved again, the sword piercing through another monster. His leg dragged behind him – he believed it was broken, but he did not want to look back, for he would be too afraid to move forward if he looked back.
His Aedes Elysiae that held home to his parents – who carried a roof above his head, nurtured him with love they could and wrapped him in arms of warmth when all became too cold.
Who rooted in him the desire to protect. Who rooted in him the need to save – who laid beneath the dirty rubble of his once-home, now only a defiled mess of wreckage.
His arms outstretch, his fingers reach for something – anything. A hand to hold. A body to embrace. A face to caress. A home to return. He thinks of your face, and his fingers move quicker, reaching higher, only to close around nothing.
He was all alone, after all.
His Aedes Elysiae that had Cyrene, who carried those divination cards. He thought back to the deliverance fate he was given, and mourned the village that was burning up in front of his eyes. No hero turns a blind eye to this –
Do not look back.
His leg is twisted, he could almost feel the pain, but he ignores it all the while.
DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Whatever you do — do not look back.
Your heart will scream for it. Your mind will yearn for it. Your leg will abide by it. Your body will turn to it. Your mouth will beg for it.
Despite that,
DO
NOT
LOOK–
“Phainon..”
He looked back.
As soon as he heard the soft whimper that cascaded like rivers out of your mouth, his mind didn't care for anything but the thought that he had to look back.
Phainon had whipped his head back so hard it pained him agonizingly to do so.
His neck twisted as his body followed in due, but something burned in his soul – something that scorched so greatly it overtook all the pain in his other nerves and pushed him to look.
He looked back, in theory and in action.
He could taste the metallic tang of blood on his tongue, as well as the shredded bloodied clothing edges that clung against his sweaty skin, gods – it hurted. Phainon groaned against the pain as he abruptly turned his body back, but he did not hesitate to keep turning.
Because most of all–
His Aedes Elysiae had you.
You. You. You. You. You. You. You.
You, in every sense of the world.
You could simply whisper his name and he’d come crawling to you if his legs were smashed.
You, where were you?
His leg dragged against the ground, creating a river of golden ichor that followed his steps, the tip of his sword dragged against the dirt, his shoulders slumped.
Phainon feels a dread – the kind of dread that grew hands and dug its nails into the flesh of his heart.
The hand drawled its traces from his heart up to his throat, threatening to make him puke. Phainon’s hand quickly shot up to cover his mouth as he dragged his right leg across the fields to you.
Your voice sounded far away – like that pitch of dread that delighted him, like a mist that only he got the privilege of being ensnarled under.
DO NOT LOOK BACK–
Screw that!
Phainon’s knees buckled down onto the floor, his legs that were twisted in a revolting manner dragged against the blood-soaked ground of the village, he crawled.
He digs his fingers into the dirt, feels the grime in his nails – he only uses it as a matter of transport, as he hurls his body forward by all means.
DO NOT LOOK BACK, YOU FOOL.
Shut up.
Phainon tries to stand upright, chanting your name underneath his breath like a prayer – perhaps to Oronyx, perhaps to Kephale, perhaps to just you that seeks his voice like that dying prayer of a man fallen.
He falls again onto the blood-soaked soot.
HOW PATHETIC. TO LOOK BACK IS TO CARE. DO YOU?
I do. So what?
His snowy white hair fell back against the dirt. He pushes himself up again – like a cycle of repetition.
But he doesn’t mind the tattered clothes, he doesn’t mind the dirtied hand that stuck with grime, he doesn’t mind his shaking hands which could barely hold properly the sword, he doesn’t mind the smashed leg that he keeps dragging against the floor, protesting against his very move.
Because if he stopped – it meant he would be leaving you behind.
He never once considered that.
YOUR HEART HARBORS WRATH. DO NOT LOOK BACK.
Wrath isn’t all that it harbors.
Phainon screamed – so loud some monsters had backed up. The sound was raw and aching from the back of his throat.
He bellowed, his throat scratching and his trachea blocking his anger – but that scream, ear-piercing and wrath filled as it was – derived quickly into rapid sobs.
Tears mixed with cinders of ashes as it racked against his cheeks.
Still, he keeps going.
YOU YEARN TO DESTROY EVERYTHING. YOU DO NOT CARE. DO NOT LOOK BACK.
I yearn to create. I yearn to love. I yearn for her. Do not tell me what I yearn for.
He repeated your name like a mantra, a madman, if you will.
He stands up yet again, leg aching. He is able to achieve a few meters before he falls back onto the ground. Your name leaves his lips achingly as he moves.
Phainon still doesn’t see you – and something horrible, something sickenly terrifying starts to harbor in his stomach.
The bile rises like boiling water once more. It blocks his airways. It rakes on his throat, it digs its nails into the skin of his neck from inside.
IR█TO█ IS YOUR N█ME – STOP LOOKING BACK.
My name is Phainon.
YOUR NAME IS IR█TO█ – TURN AWAY. DO NOT LOOK BACK. YOU–
Stop telling me –
“What to do already!” Phainon huffed, his legs carrying him in desperation as he clawed his way to that tree he remembers so well.
These loud thoughts – they feel invasive, like a bug instilled into his brain, buzzing unprecedentedly.
“(name).” A breathy whisper left him, as he finally found a strength in his legs to stand – forcing himself upright as his hands impatiently reached for something in the air – a glimpse, or just one blink of you, perhaps.
Phainon gasped, seeing that tree in his line of sight.
He needed you – he needed you to be alive. He needed the world to stop burning, for his home to be his once more.
He needed for the fire to cease and the soft radiance of dawnlight to shine on his village once more.
But when his eyes catch onto you – he wishes he had not looked for you in the first place.
In the burning sea of flaxen reeds, in the corrupted, blackened sea of wheat laid you.
Phainon’s breath desperately caught in his throat, and every sin that Phainon had eaten rises up onto his throat unforgivingly like a sickened bile, threatening its claws to make him vomit and clean his body dry of substance.
Your body was horribly beaten – as it seemed.
A river of crimson blood flown carelessly out of the gash of your stomach, your head resting against the bark of the tree as if offered some semblance of reverence.
Your eyes were closed, your head tilted back.
You were dead. You were dead and this is it.
This is the end – he could now only hold your body into his lap and believe that you were just sleeping.
His legs move before his mind comprehends, his arms reach out and fingers outstretched as he takes your body into his arms, cradling it with the most gentleness he could utter, throwing the wooden makeshift sword somewhere no violence could reach you.
Terror and dread fills each corner of his veins, and his eyes are wide in terrified panic. “No, no, no..” Phainon murmured, looking over each spot of your body desperately. “Please, please–”
“Phainon.. ?”
A blink of relief – small as it was – overcame him. Hope showered his form as his eyes flew open to the weak sound that came out of your mouth, soft and weak, but alive.
You were alive. You’re alive. He can save you.
“(name). (name), you’re okay. We’re okay. I can fix this, I can.” His face is pale as a ghost as he cradled you, eyes roaming over your body with fear.
“.. Phainon–”
“No, no, no, no.. no – no, I can fix this, okay? You won’t be dying here.” His voice was trembling when he spoke, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper, ragged and broken.
He rips a fabric from the hem of his dirtied tunic, it came out small, insufficient.
Nevertheless, he wrapped what he could over your injured stomach, tightening it into a makeshift tourniquet, his breaths ragged and uneven as his shaking hands tried their best to place pressure on your stomach, to which you winced.
His eyes are wild, face pale with worry. His breathing is heavy, as if he’d had just ran a marathon and couldn’t seem to chase the air into his lungs. “I’m sorry – gods, I’m so sorry, (name). I’m so sorry, I’m late – so late.
But.. but I don’t know what to do, I don’t!”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Look, Phai! This one’s paired together.” You smiled, holding in your hand a bud of two conjoined flowers, stem tangled together, petals mixed in trepidation.
Phainon, piqued at your words, ran from his own spot on the vast flower fields and to you with swift legs.
Not wasting a moment before the flowers he had held in his hands – a sunflower, it was – fell to the ground as he ran to you.
He knelt down, eyes sparkling with the vigor much of a kid’s.
“No way, let me see!”
You maneuvered the conjoined flower to his peering eye, to which you could feel the childishness reigning from his motions.
“Hmm, do you think.. It’s because they didn’t wanna leave each other?” You posed, a small thought under your breath.
Phainon murmured under his breath, scratching his chin in thought. “Well, maybe it’s because they’re fated to be linked! Look, see? It’s like they were made like this. Made together.”
“Mm.. but what if they wanna go to different places?”
“Then they’ll go together!”
“But what if they have different goals?”
“Can’t they achieve both of their goals at different times together?”
“But what if they yearn for something else other than the other? Isn’t it a little.. I dunno, stuffed with the same flower all the time?”
THEN THEY WILL CLAW INTO THE OTHER’S STEM, DIGGING THEIR EARTHLY SOUL WITH APRICITY AND SOIL THEMSELF UNTIL THEY CAN’T PART.
“Mm, is it?” Phainon tilted his head, chin in his fingers.
“.. Should we separate them?” You thrummed in thought, twirling the pistil of the flowers around.
–
“No!” With a surprising speed, Phainon’s hand curled around the stem of the flowers, bringing them to his chest in a gesture that could only be described as protective – possessive.
His eyes sharpen, and his words are clipped. “Don’t separate them.”
You blinked, lightly shocked. His eyes were wide, scared, almost – for a pair of flowers he had only seen for a few seconds. It makes you shiver, this look in his eyes. The desperation. “Why?”
WHY, ARE YOU SO PROTECTIVE OF THOSE? OF THEM. OF THE NEEDINESS OF THE FLOWERS. OF THE POSSESSION. OF THE COALESCE THE FLOWERS ENVOKED?
“Because.. Because they need each other! See? If you separate them, the other’s petals would rip as well. You can’t separate them without hurting the other!” Phainon holds the flowers to your eye. He’s right. They’re conjoined, but almost disgustingly so.
DISGUTING. NASTY. THROW UP. CRAWL THAT BILE OUT OF YOUR THROAT AND SPLATTER IT AS IF IT IS NOTHING BUT A DECLARATION OF A LIFE.
The white petals are fused with one another, almost inorganic, it looked. The stem tangled around each other in a deferential dance that lasted to only them.
It looks unnatural.
It looks lab grown and bred through means of inert, man-made mechanics.
It looks disgusting – like it hurted the flowers to be fused.
But it exists because the other does, so if one flower were to be blemished, broken –
The other would not survive for long.
.. So you nod, and place your hand over his grip on the pair of flowers. “Okay. They’ll stay together then.”
They’ll never be separated – even if it kills them.
Maybe one was made for the other, manufactured just for them to be paired up, petals fused in an unorthodox conduct.
They’ll never be separated – so when they die, it’ll be their bodies that merge together.
It’ll be the other flower’s face that it sees before either dies, it’ll be with the same flower that it rots from.
The rot would take over the petals, the stems, and the bulbs.
ROTPR-OOR0E–CONSUMEE19203LONEIIKKKWN293–
“.. This never happened.”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Phainon.” You squeaked out, voice weak, feeble and debilitated as you raise your bloodied, torn-off hands to his face – he whimpered as if the pain it took you to even speak his name hurted him as it did you, and grabs your reaching hand to press it into his cheek.
He gaped, the sound weak and pathetic.
He does not speak. Does not want to. He does not wish to pollute your voice with the sound of his own pathetic whimpers, for this may be the last of your voice he ever hears.
He wishes he could claw out his voicebox and dig it into you, so you would say a few more than a mess spluttered with bloodied lips and a dying rasp.
Phainon, who never hesitates, found himself hesitating to even answer, just to preserve your face a moment more.
He reluctantly whispered, as low as possible. “.. Yes?”
“.. –Do me.. a favor, please.” Rasped your voice. Lowly, weakly, it declared so.
“.. Anything. Anything you want. I’ll give you everything.”
“Okay.”
Your fingers trail to the wooden sword he had thrown – when did you get your hands on that?
He’d thrown it where violence couldn’t find your breath, where cruelty wouldn’t seek your name – and now you bring it back into his palm.
“Kill me.. Please kill me – please.”
He lets out a pathetic, strangled cry. Flinching backwards as if he’d been slapped. His expression is mortified – you’ve never seen that look on his face before. It was similar, you premised, to the face he’d have when he just had a nightmare.
“No – I can’t .. I can’t do that. I won’t. Please don’t ask that of me. Anything else, anything! I’ll do anything but that!”
You smiled, gentle and all, and he nearly cried out in agony.
You situate the sword above your chest, lightly caressing his hand that held the wooden stake.
“Phainon,” You whispered, gazing up at his eyes which were filled with tears. The harsh sobs wracked through him as it fell on you with drops, fusing into the bleeding, spread like a delicate flower.
The world goes white, his eyes, his ears – they fuss endlessly, buzzing with trepidation.
His heart drops, and it settles in his stomach. A terrible, squeezing pressure.
His eyes didn’t know where to settle. It rakes from the yellow tree that held your body under its shade, the wheat crushed under the weight of your flesh, the red crimson fading with yellow.
It forms a sickening orange – not like the dawn Kephale always held under you and Phainon’s naive form, but an orange that sung curses and strangled sin into mortals.
All he ended up doing was cry. Not bawling, but a quiet, chest-chokes.
He doesn’t know when his arms started to raise the wooden sword.
A swell of helplessness came over him, a drowning sensation, as if he had been toppled overboard and swept away by the stupid river waves near his home, where he’d sit and stare at you for hours.
And the wooden sword came down before he knew it.
The woods beside him rang with the rasp of his screams as wood met flesh, maggots met organs and rot met tissues.
The sun over Kephale’s shoulder doesn’t move lower or higher, it remains in one spot for hours.
But for the white haired boy with eyes that fleeted the sky, the sun never rose again.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“And.. that’s it!” You huffed, closing the storybook with a dramatic finale gesture.
“That can’t be it! Orpheus looked back just like that! Why would he do that?” Phainon exclaimed deliriously, flailing his hands as he pried the book from your palm.
You laughed as he fleeted his eyes through the book, looking through the story himself to confirm if the story you told was accurate, it was, much to his mire. “Well, Orpheus cared a whole lot about Eurydice.” Suggested your voice.
“But if he had just not looked, they’d both have made it out alive!” Phainon groaned in exasperation, dropping the book, letting the pages be whizzed through by the zephyr before he thumped down on the wheat field. “If it were me, I’d have made it out, easy and all.”
You pursed your eyebrows.
Your finger rose to flick his forehead in response to the bold claim, taking your seat near his whining form on the field. He yelped in protest, and pulled a hand up to rub the spot you offended him in.
Settling your knees to your chest, drawing your arms around your leg – you let your eyes take in the sight you’ve seen millions of times before: Kephale stood before you, dawn ever desiring, a mumble falling out from beneath your arm. “‘Cause he loves her.”
LOVE.
Phainon raised an eyebrow at your words. “But.. he could’ve loved her more had they made it out of the underworld.”
“You idiot,” You sulked, jutting your lips. “To love someone is to look back.”
Phainon stayed silent, putting his hands beneath his head. Eyes momentarily drifting to you. He almost shudders.
You continued, voice all melancholic. “If I was Eurydice, and you were Orpheus.. You’d look back, right?”
Phainon pursed his lips at the thought. He couldn’t imagine it, not really. Having to crawl through the nether realm and clawing at Thanatos’ divine authority to steal you back so warm life could embrace you instead of the deafening coldness of death – something in his heart jerks at the thought.
Hesitantly, words leave his mouth. “.. I’d try not to, so I could bring you back.”
“But if I fall or .. or if you don’t hear me, you’d look back.”
He couldn’t resist looking at you.
“Yeah. I probably.. Wouldn’t last long.”
You chuckled at that, his heart skips another traitorous beat at the sound. “I know.” You smiled, releasing your knee from the wrap of your arms, letting it settle onto the grass below, fleshed out and all.
FATE.
“.. But if I failed.. I’d go back again. I’d find you and then I’d bring you out. If I look back again, I’ll just go back each time.”
Taken aback, your mouth went dry before you laughed softly. “You’d do all that?” Your head tilted as Phainon’s eyes met yours.
Nothing less than determination sized in his eyes. His ambition felt larger than yourself. Phainon nodded without a beat. “Why wouldn’t I?”
OVERTURN.
“.. Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, hm?” Your body fell next to him, released from the sitting position to sprawl on the bed of the field, he smiled as the heat of your closed on him.
“Yeah, that’d save me the trouble.” Phainon offered you a grin, bumping your shoulder with his.
STILL, DOES ONE REMAIN THE SAME, EVEN IF ALL OF THEIR ORIGINAL COMPONENTS HAVE BEEN REPLACED OVER TIME?
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 24.
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
He slammed the mire with his fists until the wheat stalks were mixed with golden and crimson blood alike, and for those first hours without you, he didn’t deliver any words but wails and cries.
His hands flew to his throat, digging into the skin as he attempted to tear out his voicebox for reasons unknown even to him. It felt like it was karma he needed to endure, for being the force that drove that wooden stake into your stomach.
It must’ve hurted. The sword was dull. It must’ve been agonizing. The wooden sword could barely kill an animal, yet he had pierced it through you and allowed the porous surface to dig through your tissues.
He puked.
FATE REALIZED.
ETERNAL OCCURENCE 1: SUCCESS.
A stone slate begins to form with 2 figures.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 2526.
To my beloved of all,
I miss you. Wholly do I speak of this pain that settles beneath me, for it clings to you still. You are missing from me, and I do not know what to make of this pitiful void that I’ve seen one time, another, and millions of times by now.
How many times has it been? How many times have I seen your body grow cold under my palms and limp against my chest for your blood spreads as flowers may throughout the fields in the springtime – I do not know why I have to endure this, of all things. I can endure a lot, (name). I can. I have endured a lot.
Truth is, it has been 165 cycles. . I pray under your corpse each night after you die in each reoccurrence, I curse my breath each time I see your face again because it meant it was another time you would die below the sinking breath of my hands again and I truly, selfishly wish that even despite how many times your blood is spilt over me that even so, even holding this disgusting monster in your arms, that you could find it in yourself to still love me.
Dawn is forthcoming in Okhema, I feel you would’ve liked this town, for all its bright nature. Only once, decades ago where I stood with their people, now I stand against them. You would’ve stopped me. Called my name and whispered it in the darkness and prayed on your knees to all the titans because that’s who you were, and who I had snuffed away in darkness and fear.
Still, I imagine this town would’ve been much to your liking.
I miss you.
I miss the life you breathed into me. I miss the stories you used to tell me under the shade of our naivety, and I miss the you who should’ve been receiving these letters that trace the diary of a madman.
I will keep writing. A dead body won’t receive these letters, a lifeless corpse won’t answer my pleas and heed my calls even if I wrung myself dry and pour litres of golden ichor, but I will still write these letters to a future you’re in. Where we can simply lie against the grass again, and there, we can talk about nothing and everything at once.
It also means I can pretend there will be a ‘you’ that receives this record of insanity. Written by a lunatic with too much love to fill, and not a body of life to fill in.
I ████ you, and that, perhaps, is the root of this insanity.
From your Phainon.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 2.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. YOU whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon stuttered open – shock crazed his face, fear overturned his demeanor as he met your eyes. He nearly pukes when he meets the fond look you retain.
“(name). Is this real.. ? You’re–” Phainon whispered, the words spoken low, as if he was afraid had his voice been any louder, you would’ve disappeared from his sight once more. His arms are tightly wrapped around you before you could comprehend his words filled with shock and glimpse of fear.
He’s breathing in breaths that sounded like it hurted, almost like he’s struggling to even see himself.
He desperately pressed his ear to your heart, feeling your chest rise up, down, up, down, fingers clawing into the material of your tunic, pathetically clinging to your body as he seated between your legs.
Your fingers reach behind his neck, craning him with soothing circles, but he doesn’t calm as he does when you do it.
Your voice is quiet when you attempt to shake him out of the fear that seemed to choke the bile in his trachea.
“Phainon? What’s..”
“You’re real. You’re alive. This is real. You’re back.” Phainon stared into nothing and everything. Grass beneath him. The same tree you always sat under. The same cliff you two swore to the stars below.
He’s back, and you’re alive once more.
Phainon looked at your face, really looked at you. He stared at the eyes that stared back with fondness and affection, and carved into his mind the shape of your lips, the upturn of your smile, the faint hue of your skin near the pad of your ear. He notes the hollow of your neck, the prominence of your collarbone, and he wants to drown himself in the you he missed so dearly.
You’re alive.
This time, he won’t let you–
ETERNAL OCCURENCE FAILURE.
FATE DECIDED.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Your lifeless body hung beneath his feet again, crimson blood filing through the wheat. His wooden sword is through the tissue of your abdomen, and tears are bleeding through his eyelids again, voice hoarse as he begs and begs and begs.
Again.
“One more time– ! Give her to me once more!” Screamed the white haired boy, swearing to the skies, tribulation to the warring of his psyche, terror of his heart, and the aching emptiness in his body.
Once again, he tore off his sun from the sky.
Once again, the cycle restarts, as his legs move to the eternal city of Okhema.
FATE REALIZED.
ETERNAL OCCURENCE 2: SUCCESS.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Orpheus, why do you look back so?
LOOP 149.
When Phainon faced Lygus – the antikythera robot who spoke in riddles and proposed neutrality, his eyes were full of anger. Seething and rage is the only thing that represents how he feels, fire and vexation smolders beneath his skin.
The vortex of genesis swirled around the two figures, the coreflames screamed beneath his lungs, digging from below his vein, the hemoglobin boiled, too, testament of his anger, monument to his fury as his eye met with red, mechanical ones.
“Lygus.”
“Lord Phainon, here heeds your final step. Complete the Era Nova, drop that worldbearing coreflame, and as a nameless hero, tread the unknown.” Lygus smiled, a hand adhering Phainon to the spirit basin, ushering his call.
“Cut the crap,” Whispered Phainon, a hoarse call, as his hand tightened the grip on the hilt of dawnmaker. “Answer me this, and answer me truthfully. Who are you?”
To Phainon’s chagrin, the antikythera took him time to answer, with the added nerve to wander around, a flare of hand waving for no other reason but to tick the nerves already at limit in Phainon.
“You seek truth, and truth you may. You see, we are but prisoners in a cave, locked in and bided to the shadows. But you and I alone, lord Phainon, are the sole wanderers of the cave, carved away our chains and set alight to the real world. We are witnesses of the real world, of ‘truth’.”
“Stop speaking in riddles.” Phainon scowled, jaw ticked with impatience. Lygus does not appear phased, nor does his eyes waver in ambition, but he simply continued his tale at the same pace.
“So, as we are witnesses of the truth, and you, the savior of Amphoreus, shall you burn this truth onto your people, and allow them to bathe in the light of your absolute? You step pride into daylight, lord Phainon, you may bring the prisoners of Amphoreus their truth of Era Nova–”
“I said stop speaking so much.”
“.. Deliever of all worlds, there is a sun that burns in you,” Smiled the antikytheran, to which Phainon tensed noticeably. “I have vaguely witnessed that sun you bear so close. Fascinating, it is. An infatuation so absolute that it leaves a sun into the heart of the prophesied deliverer.”
“Stop it–”
“The sun is shaped out of a woman. (name), isn’t it? What tragic fate she bears, but a prisoner’s fate will always be the chained one.”
Orpheus, carry your body away, for you have left your soul in the underworld.
One second, the head of the robot is intact, shaped with electrical currents, and the other –
Phainon has slung Lygus’ head to the ground, dawnmaker a prophesied weapon.
His voice had a low timbre when he spoke next. “Don’t talk about her.”
The decapitated head – much to Phainon’s irk – laughed, a mirthful, bright, laugh, though more sadistic than it seemed. “Marvelous! How enticing – your character module is changing! Your fury factor arises a statistically significant soar when her name is so much as mentioned. So this is it – the final relationship factor, the null hypothesis was inaccurate, it truly was deliberation!”
“This ends now! Stop talking! I’ll ignite the dawn with my light, and awaken Era Nova, where she can finally–”
“Era Nova is but a lie, lord Phainon. Naivety gets you nowhere, surely you understand even that.”
“What?”
“You may shatter that woeful effigy, hero – but understand this: your wish to bring her back will never work.”
Phainon delivered a swift kick to Lygus’ head, making the mechanical body part roll elsewhere, lolling among the floor of the vortex of genesis, smile still unceasing. Phainon sucked a heavy breath, lingering and shaky.
“– You’re beaten, Lycurgus. A mere prisoner like yourself with the delusion of a witness should never raise their voice in meaningless prattle.” Seethed Phainon, his eyes racked with fury – fury packed with the hundreds of regressions before him, fury packed with the regressions to come.
The white haired boy of Aedes Elysiae now, carries the furies of his past, present, and future.
“.. And yet a hollow man like yourself continues to speak? Tell me, what is it that drives you forward, lord Phainon? For that rage, that fury you contain – is eerily close to the love you pertain,” Lygus recovered, lacerating at a subject that would sure to set Phainon off.
“Let me allow you in on something: the girl with the bright eyes whom you look for? You will never find her. Not in the new Era Nova, and even if she returns – her code is broken in thousands. Her ‘self’ is ordained by an unchanging fate of recurring death, that is the fate she must realize.”
“Then I will see it through. You say there are codes of her broken in thousands? Fine. Be it however long, I will find all of them, and piece her together. Her fate is ordained? No matter. I will transcend fate. You mistake one thing, Lycurgus. You mistake fury for love: but a prisoner like you could never gauge at emotions this sincere. Fury, you fated prisoner, is the outcome of a love misplaced.”
O, Orpheus, you hopeless fool. How the muses sing in pity of your tale, how their stares bide into your secretion. Melpomene denotes the tragedy with a flick of her elegant dagger.
“Anger? Wrath? Fine, define me so. But never believe that I may, even for a second, give up. You have patience? Test this hypothesis, then: I’ll make sure your sick abhorrence of an experiment bears no fruits.”
IDEOGRAPHIC. QUALITATIVE. REALITY. TRUTH–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 198,372.
There are some things in the world that one must always pair together for the function to work.
For example, purines and pyrimidines, nitrogenous bases in DNA, research and evidence, kidneys, ovaries–
And Phainon simply cannot exist without his pair, for he would not function ideally.
Therefore, he does what any madman does, and more. He dug through cycles and cycles of deaths, recurring lifetimes of stolen warmth and laughter, and built you from the genesis of your creation.
He piled up first the DNA modules. The genetic information, the pieces of you that lingered in structures of double helix, that deoxyribonucleic acid were the easiest to find, for you shed yourself to him countlessly, all he had to do now, was to pick up those scattered fragments, however small.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 1650.
I will fix you. I swear on it, and I will carve my blood onto this oath for life if I have to will myself to.
Until then, wait for me, (name).
I will fix you, I swear of it.
I met a girl who looked like you, her eyes were mirrors of the brightness that your irises touched, and her hair were at a length near yours. She was young, much like you, back in Aedes Elysiae. Her eyes knew not of anger, emotions knew not a touch of fear, but she flinched when I approached her.
I fear I am losing my humanity.
I have gone rigid, my arms move in a motion that makes it hard for me to even write as of now, yet my brain refuses for my hands to stop moving.
The girl who looked like you, her name was Antigone. She looked at me like I was a ghost, and perhaps I was. I stared at her because she was the mirror of a ghost I chased after.
That was the only time which I felt myself feel warm instead of rigid coldness that seemed to cling to me as of late.
The girl spoke in quiet mutters, much like you would’ve. She hummed her favorite songs later, and I waved goodbye to her with a most horrible ache in my chest.
So, I drew my sword.
I will fix you. I swear of it.
.. From Phainon, hope fully, still yours.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 1,932,387.
The next he found were the skeletons.
The spinal cord, the frontal lobe, the pelvic girdle, the femur, humerus and even the ilium – all of it had to be found. So, Phainon’s hand dug through layers of skin and blood once more, until all 206 bones were found.
He digs through thousands more of cycles. It was hard to find bones that fitted in place, but perseverance, as appeared, was his strong suit.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 4041.
I won’t forget you, and I’ll never forget you.
I’ve witnessed once, this singular cycle where I did save you, kept you alive, and I thought it was the one – in it, you fell in love with someone else.
In it, you lived, but no longer for me, and no longer do you hand your heart over to the soles of my palms.
I refuse that probability. I refuse that the only world where you live – the only world in which you are happy is the one where I am not the one you love.
Am I the curse bestowed upon you?
.. regardless of your answer, I remain steadfast in my objective.
I have not yet forgotten you, and I don’t think I ever can.
From Phainon.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 3,749,203.
The next he found were the skin.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
Letter 6494.
Why .. Did you leave me?
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 5,932,657.
After that, was the prime mover of life. The thing he needed to make you again, the thing he needed for this piled up mess of organs, skin, and DNA sequences to become a human.
He mulled over the primer for years. Going through cycles, venturing through his options – before he stumbled upon it.
The dawn of Kephale.
Phainon’s hand gently outreached to the scorching of the dawn, tearing away a piece of it, chipping a light that was meant to be fractured onto the cities, and took it into his palm and shoved it into the vacant place where your heart should be, instead – there’s a part of the sun.
His eyes narrow – there was something missing.
He didn’t know what, but there was something that was missing from you.
So, dawnmaker sliced through the thickness of his black wing, and once more, wrapped it into the confines of the vacant space of your heart wordlessly.
He was missing from you.
Now–
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
“Stop.”
“Hmn? Don’t like the story?” Cyrene perks up, face all smiles and teasing.
“.. It’s cruel. Don't you think it's cruel? How could someone do this? All of this?”
“I do agree, it is! That Lygus guy is a total jerk, isn’t he? I wish I could punt him myself! But.. a cruel story, too, can have a good ending.” Her pink hair flows with the wind, the curve of her lips move in a captivating manner as does herself.
“.. Cyrene, this is horrible. What – what kind of story is this? It’s needlessly cruel. It’s not real, right?”
She’s quiet for a moment, as if mulling it over as her eyes roam around your expression, before she beams. “It’s not!”
You breathe a sigh of relief, but catch it as she speaks once more.
“But does it matter if the story is real or not? The emotions are real, right?”
“What does that mean?”
Cyrene smiles. “Love is cruel, love is unbinding, and love is obsession. Didn’t you notice that throughout the story, (name)?”
You purse your lips. Of course you did. It was hard not to, anyway. “Yeah.”
“So, I’ll ask you this again,” She flails her body seated on the swing below the shade of the tree, her finger pointing to you. “Do you like romance stories?”
“.. Yes.”
Cyrene laughs, a giggle escaping from her youthful demeanor. “I knew it. You really are the essence of love.”
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
There was a myth in Amphoreus – no one knew where it came from, just that it was common knowledge among the inhabitants. No matter if one were Kremnoan, Aidonian, or Dolosian, this myth was treated as a generational story, history could not, would not, forget it.
There was once a figure – Phaethon, whom upon curiosity stumbled upon the chariot which drew the sun that arose in the sky. He was the sky’s blood and flesh, and the chariot was his partner.
Amphoreus then had no dawn, nor any sun. No light to gaze upon them, no eyes to see them through.
When his hand traveled around the reins of the golden chariot, he was appalled by desire, taken by greed. Despite fervent warnings and dissuasion attempted by the neireids and nymphs that rested by, Phaethon shook his head vehemently.
“The sun is meant to rise. Does it matter who drives it?” Phaethon argued, his words drowning in the heedless pleas of the nymphs.
That said, the son undaunted the reins, then smote the winged courser’s sides as they bounded forth on the void and cavernous vault of air.
‘Drive the sun toward tomorrow, dear son.’ Whispered the sky. ‘Deliver the rays, turn thy chariot.’
The first part is steep, one that the cavalries found hard to mount – in mid-heaven is it the highest, where a fleet of a glance down to the bottomless sea and land would cause friction in the son’s heart, adrenaline as Phaethon paws himself nearer to the chariot’s edge.
The sky rushes endlessly, spinning and carrying the distant stars in a swift, circular path. Phaethon moves against this flow, and the momentum does not waver him as do the force of the wind, riding opposite to the heaven’s rapid motion.
Imagine one is given this chariot: what would you do?
Could you resist the turning of celestial poles so that the speed of the vast sky does not yet sweep thy away?
Perhaps you picture groves, cities upon opulence, temples filled with rich offerings.
Yet this path is full of dangers. Phaethon weaves the reins of the mythical beasts of the chariot around his wrist, tightening it. The proud horses themselves are much a challenge.
But Phaethon did not steer awry, for he had to face the unending gates of Janus, the scales that upended his hold on the mythical power from Tantalon, cruel Oronyx’s time undoings, preserving Georios and the earth’s crash, drowning ocean of Phagousa, completed with drunken revelries.
Among that, what stood in his way were too, was the sky he attempted to mount, Aquila’s domain unfaithful and relentless. The branches that overturned under his feet, blessing of Cerces - the cruel Mnestia’s butterfly wings, raging Nikador and lion’s jaw, peaceful Thanatos but cruel death, and schemes of trickery woven by Zagreus’ giggly bubbles.
And in the end, he too, had to face himself.
For long as he had his hands on the reins of the chariot, he was pulled over by an impending force that lulled him sideways, upwards, and below, until the reins had snapped out of his mortal grip and the horses carrying the chariot went askew, panic seeped in their eyes as they kicked and trawled in the sky.
He lost control of the reins, and sent the horses too high, too low, and finally out of the grip of his hands.
Then, the son who born to shine crashed the sun into the ground, wrapped in the embrace of the merciful Georios.
“I failed.” Whispered the son as he fell, eyes glued to the chariot now without a driver. “Forgive me, chariot – for even the brilliance of I cannot contain thy.”
But he refused to give up. Amphoreus needed sun to overturn these darker nights, so Phaethon drove his hands up, and created something: freedom.
So, in Phaethon’s last wishes, did the chariot transform into a figure.
“Though greatly he failed,” Spoke the chariot. “More greatly he dared.”
Kephale then, was borne from the remains of Phaethon, and the chariot merged together with him – marking the sun device that is carried on Kephale’s shoulder.
– Citizens of Okhema notice that during the 7th month, the month of Freedom, the dawn burned brighter, and something, among the shape of a figure, had slightly indented onto the east side of the dawn device.
⸝⸝ 𖤓𖤓𖤓
LOOP 33,550,336.
Phainon awoke to a dawn – the yellow wheat lightly shuffled below his body, his tousled snow-white hair shambling across the surface of something soft, cyan-like eyes adjusting to the weight of Kephale’s protection. It smells faint of cinnamon and baked bread – the piquancy of a welcoming arm to his awaken.
“You’re awake.” A voice ushered him woke, gentle and soft-spoken. You whispered above his face, akin to a likening of breeze that embraced him gently, the forbearing resonance only threatened to lull the young boy asleep yet again.
Phainon smiled, nuzzling his head deeper into your lap. “I am.”
You giggled at his childishness, sleep still clinging to the crevices of his newly awakened state as you pepper kisses on his forehead. “Wake up, silly. You’ve been sleeping for so long, my leg’s gone numb.”
Phainon all but offered a crooked grin, laughing softly as your lips met his face. “5 more minutes, I don’t think I wanna get up yet.”
“The things you demand,” You huffed, poking the top of his head. “I’ll forgive it this once.”
Kephale’s dawn now burned even brighter.
A█NOMA█LY DETEC█ED – COMMENCING … .. ..
THE TRAIL█BLAZER R R S — UNSPECI█FIED DATA , , , , . . . WAR█NIGN !!!! DESTRUCTI–
- this is very badly written, hats off to you if you noticed that! By the end of the fic, there were several plot holes and paradoxes, as well a recurring ideas in the beginning that didn't make a comeback - that's because of how burnt out i was, and honestly i was sick of trying to keep writing, nevertheless, i didn't want to gatekeep this idea so i hope you still liked it for all its flaws.
- the basic idea of this fic was that love grows teeth and is like sin. I had a LOTT of usage for grief and mourning, and how that genuinely ruins a person from the inside out. Added on to that, I wanted to convey that love, as pure and unbinding, is also harsh and aggressive.
- I described in an excerpt that Phainon was like a 'wheel of fire' - this motif specifically is used as a reference to Ixion, a greek figure. It's a dramatical device applied to a protagonist a tragedy (i.e. a hero) and aims to provoke catharsis and sympathy from the audience when the hero falls from grace.
- Orpheus and Eurydice are a tragic greek couple, an amazing myth, by the way, there's a whole musical for it (which you should definitely check out called Hadestown :)) Basically, they symbolize themes of love, loss, trust, and the limits of human power against imitable death - much like what i tried to convey with the myth at the end! It's the fact that when mortals try to wield divine power, they fail despite all.
- There was this equilibrium I tried to create between humanity and divinity, and I marked them both with flaws and strengths. This is based off of the Ancient Greek's own beliefs and views of the greek gods and how they worshipped them, but I also HAD to emphasize that even without the existence of the divine, humanity would still prevail because we're fundamentally human.
- The morse code in the middle of the dialogue (which was used as a commentary break and literary polysyndeton and verisimilitude) meant 'HUMANITY', highlighted by reader's character that I tried to shape into the concept of finite, and Phainon's character as infinity. I potrayed the lost of humanity as divine, as you aren't really human once you lose the core of what makes you 'human', then you are a substandard category that falls to either monster or divine - phainon is both.
- In the first stone slate, I mentioned the 'divine/hero' (phainon) as a figure with sheeps (aka lambs of gods, a sacrificial animal, and also white purity - yang) paired with the number 42 which represents 'Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything' - while the 'mortal' (reader) is seen with crows (symbolism for death and transformation, black puddles, yin) and the number 13, which is a bad omen, but also is a good sign of transformation so it is ambiguous (much like reader's 'anti-hero' stature)
- I tried to juxtaposition good memories with bad ones, as well as confuse yall by mixing memories that contradicted to represent the human mind in processing memories, and especially one unstable and mourning - such as Phainon.
- There are a few psychology concepts implemented in several parts (from a fellow psych student), such as from Lygus, who is the researcher - he has researcher bias, which means he interprets the outcome based on his own hypothesis (which is irontomb emergence) and Phainon and the whole amphoreus to him, is simply a case study. The independent variable is those close to Phainon and reoccurring cycles, and the dependent variable is his levels of sanity after said cycles. These terms are qualitative and idiographic if you were curious
- want to read more notes? (because this took FOREVER TO WRITE) check this out: NOTES
❝ it's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter. it's never over - she is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever. ❞
