ᴀᴍᴘʜᴏʀᴇᴜꜱ ᴄᴀꜱᴛ: ʜᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʀᴇᴀᴄᴛ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ
⋆✴︎˚｡⋆notes | PLEASE DONT FLOP I WROTE MY HEART OUT ON THIS!!!!!—SFW— wc:9.1k—tw: death...duh—not all heirs were written for!
dan heng bit inspired by X and X - @dxnheng & @ohhiimweird
ty @prncessrindou & @harmonysanreads for help <3
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ᴀɴᴀxᴀɢᴏʀᴀꜱ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ʀᴇᴀꜱᴏɴ
Anaxagoras x Priestess!Reader
The Worshiper’s Footpath stretched like a marble artery from the temple gates to the Sanctum’s outer courts. Pilgrims moved along it in slow procession, whispering prayers to the stone effigies of long-dead Titans. That afternoon, the crowd gathered around a man in academic robes—a tall figure with ink on his hands and impatience in his eyes.
Anaxagoras. The Chrysos Heir of Reason.
The philosopher from The Grove If you even dared to call him that, to you he was another blasphemer. He is infamous for his lectures that reduced divinity, stripped the divine of its mystique and dressed it in logic, turning miracles into mechanisms and faith into faulty reasoning.
You stepped forward, voice cutting through the murmurs.
“You speak of gods like they are hypotheses to be disproved,” you said.
He turned toward you, gaze sharp as cut obsidian. “And you speak of them like footnotes no one’s read but you,” he said smoothly, the faintest curl of amusement tugging at his lips. “Tell me, priestess—does repeating the same prayer make it truer, or merely louder?”
Laughter rippled through the crowd, but you didn’t yield. You debated him until the sun dipped behind the spires of the Sanctum of Prophecy—you quoting hymns, him dismantling them line by line. When the bells rang for dusk, he simply inclined his head and said, “You argue better than most priests I’ve met. If you tire of blind faith, find me in the lecture halls.”
You hadn’t meant to see him again.
Yet his words followed you—like a splinter under the skin, impossible to ignore. You tried to drown them in prayer, in the rhythm of tending to the sick and chanting in the Sanctum’s echoing halls. But every hymn you recited now sounded like an argument waiting to happen.
When the elders sent you to The Grove with relics and scripture, you told yourself it was coincidence. The gods had their designs, after all. And if their path happened to cross his—Well. Even the devout are allowed their curiosities.
The Grove was quieter than you expected. Columns wrapped in ivy stood between lecture halls where the air smelled faintly of ink, parchment, and arrogance.
But as you passed one open doorway, you heard him.
“…and if divinity truly exists,” Anaxagoras said, his tone a blade drawn across silence, “it does not dwell in idols, nor in the fragile faith of mortals. It lives in the architecture of thought—in the symmetry of truth and the fire of inquiry..."
He wrote as he spoke, chalk carving symbols across the blackboard with ruthless precision. “Faith offers no refuge to the ignorant,” he went on, voice rising. “For ignorance is the sin that shackles humankind to false gods. For when we understand, when we know, we become their equals… and that is what they call blasphemy.”
The half-circle of young scholars watched him as if caught between awe and fear. His presence demanded silence, not devotion—an act of thought, not faith.
From the doorway, you lingered—caught between outrage and fascination. He was exactly as you heard and remembered him from Janusopolis—arrogant, brilliant, unyielding—a man who dared to look the divine in the eye and find it wanting.
Anaxagoras noticed the shift in the room’s attention and turned. The irritation in his eye softened, curling into that sharp, knowing smile that always preceded trouble.
“Class dismissed,” he murmured, setting the chalk aside. “It seems even the gods have grown curious… or perhaps,” his gaze slid to you, bright with mockery, “they’ve sent another fool to test my faith in reason.”
The students scrambled to gather their notes, whispering nervously as they slipped out. The door shut with a hollow click, leaving only the soft rustle of parchment in your hands and the lingering hum of his words hanging in the air.
“I didn’t come for you,” you said, steadying your voice. “I’m here on temple business.”
Anaxagoras leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms as though to mark his territory. “And yet here you stand—in my sanctuary of reason...”
You rolled your eyes. “This is only the second time we’ve met, philosopher. You make it sound like obsession.”
He tilted his head, that razor-edged smile forming—equal parts amusement and challenge. “Once may be chance. Twice implies curiosity. Don’t flatter yourself; I merely find patterns interesting.”
“You’re insufferable,” you muttered.
He gestured loosely toward the empty seats, chalk-stained fingers moving like a conductor dismissing an invisible choir. “And yet you linger in my lecture hall, risking divine disfavor to listen to a heretic. Tell me, priestess—did the gods send you to correct me, or to hear the truth they fear?”
You stepped closer, caught somewhere between anger and fascination. “Truth? You call blasphemy truth?”
His eye flashed. “Blasphemy is the name given to thought before it’s proven right. The gods’ silence is proof enough of their fragility. Reason endures; faith breaks under the weight of its own lies.”
You slammed the scrolls down on his desk. “Perhaps faith isn’t weakness, Anaxagoras. Perhaps you’ve just mistaken your own arrogance for clarity.”
He studied you, expression unreadable, the faintest flicker of intrigue passing through his gaze. “Arrogance?” he said softly. “No. Certainty. But if you believe I’ve erred—then by all means… educate me.”
And so it began. Every few days, you found yourself drawn back to The Grove—sometimes on errands, sometimes under the pretense of duty, and sometimes with no excuse at all.
He was always there, waiting—chalk in hand, smile sharpened to a weapon.
“Priestess,” he’d greet, voice smooth as sin. “Careful. If the temple learns you’ve been frequenting a blasphemer, they might accuse you of heresy—or worse…” His grin deepened. “…of enlightenment.”
And every time, you told yourself it was duty that brought you back.
But duty had never made your pulse race quite like this.
Time, as it always does, worked its quiet alchemy. The sharp edges of your debates dulled into something softer, though neither of you would ever admit it. You still met under the pretense of argument—half the delight in seeing Anaxagoras lay in needling him with scripture, watching that perfect composure fracture into a scowl. He’d call the gods cowards; you’d call him one.
He accused you of stalking him once, laughter low and alive beneath his words. You only shrugged, hiding your smile.
“Maybe the gods want you humbled.”
His lips curved, the fire in his eyes dimming to something dangerously close to affection. “For their sake,” he murmured, “I hope not.”
After that, your meetings became their own liturgy—rituals born of curiosity and denial. Lessons disguised as errands, visits disguised as lectures. You spoke beneath the marble arches of Okhema long after sunset, your voices echoing between columns silvered by moonlight. Sometimes your hands brushed as you passed scrolls between you, and both of you pretended not to notice.
The nights stretched, your arguments slowing, your silences growing bolder. Even reason could not explain the way he looked at you then.
And then—on a day like any other—the sky broke.
It began with stillness. A silence so complete it strangled the Sanctum’s hymns mid-note. The bells cracked like brittle bones. Then, from the northern horizon, came the roar—a wall of black radiance surging like a living eclipse. The Black Tide. It moved as if with purpose, devouring marble, song, and light all at once. Pilgrims on the Worshiper’s Footpath scattered in blind terror; prayers dissolved into screams.
You ran—not from it, but into it. Toward the temple. Toward the children clutching relics, the acolytes frozen by fear. The air stank of ozone and despair. And amid the chaos, you saw him.
He shouted your name. You heard him across the shriek of collapsing stone and the roar of the approaching Black Tide.
From the north horizon, the Black Tide rose—a creeping, living eclipse swallowing marble, chanting hymns, light, faith. Pilgrims stumbled, prayers turned to screams. The bells of the Sanctum of Prophecy cracked in mid-ring.
Anaxagoras vaulted past fallen columns and panic-stricken worshipers, his single good eye blazing, his left eye burning with memory of his older sister. He drew his pistol—a strange, elegant thing of brass and light, humming with runes only he could read. It wasn’t divine, nor truly mortal; a tool of logic masquerading as a weapon. He’d built it himself, years ago, for “academic demonstrations.”
Now it spat fire into the dark, each shot slicing through the Black Tide’s writhing forms. His one good eye gleamed like molten gold as he fought toward you—reason against ruin.
He was still fighting his way through the tide when he saw you—far ahead, framed by the burning arch of the temple doors. You were herding the children and the elderly toward the last standing passage, your robes torn, your hands slick with blood that wasn’t all your own.
The next blast hit before he could reach you. The ceiling came down in a roar of dust and fire, sealing the entrance. For a heartbeat, he thought you’d escaped—then he heard your voice, faint but steady, calling the others to move, to live.
He forced his way through the rubble, his pistol blazing, each shot a curse against the heavens. When he finally broke through the smoke, you were kneeling amidst the ruin, one hand pressed to your side, your light already dimming. The last of the survivors were gone. Only the two of you remained.
He dropped beside you. The fire in his chest surged; his Coreflame flared so bright it seared the air. “No,” he rasped. “Not you. Not again.”
You smiled through the pain. “You came back.”
“I always do,” he said, voice shaking. “You think I ever argued with you just for doctrine? Every word was an excuse to stay.”
You laughed, soft and broken. “You’re terrible at confessions.”
He brushed your hair from your face, his one good eye burning gold. “Then let me say it right—just once. You were the only thing that ever made me doubt myself.”
Your fingers found his, weak but sure. “Then don’t stop doubting.”
The fire around him flickered, the temple trembling as the Black Tide roared outside. “Don’t leave,” he whispered.
“Maybe we’ll meet again....” you breathed.
And then your hand went still.
He held you until the fire dimmed, until the ruin fell quiet. Then, slowly, he laid you down and rose. Something inside him—something tender—burned away with you.
His sister. His city. Now you. All taken in the name of gods that never answered.
When he stepped out of the temple, his pistol at his side and his Coreflame burning cold. All that remained was purpose—and the promise that reason would do what divinity never could: remember you.
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ᴅᴀɴ ʜᴇɴɢ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ᴇᴀʀᴛʜ
Dan Heng x Astral Express!Reader
The Astral Express hums in the silent void beyond Amphoreus. Light stirs around you as the station dwindles into the distant black. Beside you, Dan Heng leans against the viewport, his expression still, but the Coreflame of Earth within him burns quietly—steady, unyielding.
“You’re nervous,” he says. His voice low. You catch the glint of determination in his eyes.
“I should be,” you whisper. “We're about to witness something no one has seen in all of cycles: the true dawn of Amphoreus..."
You both disembark onto the surface of Amphoreus. The air tastes of promise and earth. The Black Tide’s mark is faint in the distance, a shadow crawling across ruined plains.
Welt, Sunday, Himeko, Black Swan, they all walk ahead, heads turned toward the horizon. But you stay close to Dan Heng; his presence is the anchor in the shifting world. He places his hand lightly on your cheeck. “Whatever happens,” he says, “you don’t face it alone.”
You smile. The light of his smile makes you feels warm. For a moment you believe it and he will protect you.
When the Titan’s birth begins, the ground cracks, light floods the sky. The world-bearing Titan rises, light splitting the horizon. You hear a tired Stelle/Caelus and then cheers of Amphoreus locals.
The light of dawn spilled across Amphoreus and it was beautiful. The earth breathed. The sky shimmered with gold so pure it seemed to wash the sins of the world clean. Around you, the surviving people of Okhema fell to their knees, crying out in praise and disbelief. Children laughed through their tears; the Elders bowed toward the horizon. The Titan had risen — Stelle/ Caelus, embodiment of rebirth, their voices distant but radiant, echoing like a hymn through the veins of the world.
The Astral Express crew stood amid the revelry — Himeko smiling faintly through exhaustion, Welt lowering his cane, Sunday whispering on about how Dan Heng, March and Caelus/Stelle has grown so much on the journey. Dan Heng remained still beside you, eyes fixed on the newborn light. His Coreflame pulsed steady beneath his skin, tethering him to the moment, to you.
“You see?” you said softly. “It’s real! They really—”
But you never finished the sentence.
The tremor hit first — a deep, sickening pulse from beneath the soil. The cheers faltered. The light dimmed. In the distance, a dark shimmer rippled across the golden plains, devouring the color, the warmth. A low, hungry roar followed — unmistakable, eternal.
“Get them out!” Welt barked. Himeko grabbed a child; Sunday’s praise turned into calls for evacuation. Black Swan raised her hands, cards spinning into shields of shimmering protection. The crowd scattered like birds under stormlight.
Dan Heng turned to you — just as the ground split between you.
He lunged forward, shouting your name. You stumbled, boots sliding against fractured marble as black liquid boiled from the cracks. The Tide surged upward, tendrils reaching, screaming.
“Run!” he shouted, voice breaking.
You did. Or tried. The crowd surged around you, terrified, trampling, separating you further. The air filled with cries and the stench of corrosion. You reached for him through the chaos — fingertips grazing his outstretched hand.
It hit like a wall, cold and suffocating. It tore you backward, dragging you into the dark as you fought, clawed, gasped. Dan Heng roared your name, the sound a raw, fractured thing that shook the earth itself.
You saw his face one last time — eyes wide, blazing, desperate — before the darkness closed over you. Your body went weightless, soundless. Time unraveled. The light faded to nothing.
Dan Heng fell to his knees where you’d stood, earth shattering under his palms. He couldn’t protect you — not from this, not from the same curse that had devoured the world he swore to rebuild.
Around him, the people fled. The dawn turned to darkness again. Welt shouted orders; Himeko’s voice cut through static.
But Dan Heng didn’t move.
He remained where you vanished, head bowed, trembling, the Coreflame burning so fiercely the stones beneath him turned molten. His whisper was carried by the fading wind — a prayer, a promise, or both.
“I was supposed to be the ground beneath your feet,” he said. “And I let the world swallow you instead.”
The earth answered him with silence...
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ᴘʜᴀɪɴᴏɴ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅʙᴇᴀʀɪɴɢ
The city of Okhema—the “Eternal Holy City” on Amphoreus—still clings to dawn in a world swallowed by the corruptive plague known as the Black Tide.
War cries echo through the city, the defense cracking, the Black Tide surges.
Your partner, Phainon, arrives back—heart heavy, boots echoing in the halls. He left you behind to fetch the Coreflame; he promised victory. Instead he finds chaos. He moves through the corridors of the Hero’s Bath, designed for champions. You were there, awaiting him. You had followed him from childhood—his childhood friend, his lover now. You weren’t an heir, you didn’t bear a title of power. You simply supported him, loved him.
And that love became your doom.
As he rised the elevator to the Hero’s Bath, stream swirls and created a foggy mist. When he finally arrives, the light is waining, the air sickly. He shouts your name but to no response. He finds you reclined in the warm golden waters, porcelain-tile shining under flickering light, your body half submerged, the Black Tide’s corruption knotting in your veins like a parasite. Eyes dark and flickering. Mind unraveling. He kneels beside you, heart heavier than any blade. He sees the tremor in your lips. He hears the hiss of the tide winding through your thoughts.
He remembers the first time you two skipped stones at the calm waters of Aedes Elysia or how you whispered dreams of marriage...
Now you are gone. Or going.
You reach for him with faded strength.
“Phainon…” you whisper, voice cracked and mutating. He reaches for your hand. But the corruption twists. Your fingers slip through his.
He pulls a blade—not the grand heroic one, but the one meant for mercy. He presses his forehead gently to yours. “I promised you I’d come back,” he says. “I failed to bring home the coreflame...I failed you too...But I cannot let you drown in this dark tide.”
Your tear stained eyes lock on him. You know the death sentence you were cursed with. You know what he has to do. No words left between you. The bath’s steam rises, the world outside crumbling. He lifts the blade. A single clean motion. The black mist recoils. The water ripples. Your body relaxes, and you breathe no more.
He holds you as the Dawn Device shatters, the Marmoreal Palace echos with distant screams—Okhema under siege. He lays you gently on the marble ledge. The bathwater still glows faintly. He steps away, the blade in his hand, silence roaring around him. He turns to the chaos outside, the city burning, his promised dawn flickering, his heart broken in two.
You loved him. He loved you. And in this cycle, he did what had to be done.
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ᴀɢʟᴀᴇᴀ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴄᴇ
Aglaea x Ex!Cleaner!Reader
The Eternal Holy City of Okhema gleamed beneath a sky of molten gold, its domes shimmering like the last breath of dawn. Beneath that sanctified light, the Council of Elders schemed. And in their shadows, you walked.
Caenis, Okhema’s Representative and secret master of the Cleaner Order, had given you your orders:
Bearer of the Coreflame of Romance, the Goldweaver, the saint who preached of The Flame-Chase journey as if it was real…
You obeyed orders all your life.
Aglaea was not the manipulator they painted her as. She was calm, radiant, dangerous in her sincerity.
When you first entered her presence in the Garden of Life, blade hidden beneath your cloak, she turned — and the golden threads moved with her, glimmering like sunlight spun through water.
They danced from her fingertips, delicate filaments of divine energy, alive and listening. You felt them brush your skin — not binding, but knowing.
“I was beginning to wonder when the Order would grow tired of waiting,” she murmured, voice warm and steady. “The threads whispered your arrival to me days ago.”
“You’re not cruel,” Aglaea said, studying you like someone reading a story already half-written. “Simply… misled. But the Council spares no one for second-guessing.”
You couldn’t do it. Couldn’t raise your blade.
So you told her everything — the plot, the order, the inevitability of her death. You said Caenis would kill you both. You begged her to flee.
“I will not flee,” Aglaea replied, her voice held steady in the stillness of the mirrored halls. “My fate was woven long before this morning’s light. The threads foretold it: my final stitch in the tapestry of the Flame-Chase Journey — where sacrifice is woven into every weft.”
Her golden filaments shimmered as she reached out, not in fear, but in acceptance. “This is how we reach Era Nova,” she whispered, as though speaking to the very strands of destiny. “Dawn comes through the sacrifice of what is most dear. If I am unmade, it will not be in vain. If I fall, I fall so the world may rise again.”
Her fingers brushed your wrist, a single thread looping between you — fragile, warm, irrevocable. She reached out, golden threads curling from her fingers and entwining with your wrist. “Then let our destinies be woven together,” she said softly, “until the moment the loom demands its final cut.”
From that moment, you stayed. Guarded her. Slept in the golden halls, listening to the faint hum of her threads whispering in the dark. Somewhere between guilt and devotion, you fell in love.
But Caenis always finds her debts.
The Cleaner Order came at dusk. Cleaners in mirrored masks, moving like shadows through incense smoke. The golden light of Okhema’s spires burned against the burning “night.” You fought — you, the traitor. Steel flashed. The air filled with steel and blood.
Aglaea’s threads sang, spinning through the air like living ribbons, cutting, shielding, wrapping. Each strike you made was mirrored by hers — divine and human weaving together in a last desperate defense. But there were too many.
A blade found you. Deep, final.
You fell at her feet. The golden threads trembled, curling around your body like they could hold you in place — as if Romance itself refused to let you go. She knelt, hands trembling, threads coiling from her palms. “They’ll only use it against you.” You choked out.
She whispered words that failed to reach your ears as you passed. Your blood stained her robes, turning white to scarlet. She closed your eyes.
Days later, she stood in the warm, golden waters of the Hero’s Bath, the steam curling around marble pillars like soft mourning. A few other Chrysos Heirs had come to hear the news — the story of your passing. She told them quietly: your betrayal and your love, your choice to warn her, your fate. They departed afterward, each stepping back into light and duty, leaving her alone in that sacred chamber of half-rest and half-ritual.
The golden threads traced around her, faintly humming. They were her signature: delicate filaments of divine power that danced at her fingertips. Threads that had once bound destinies, wove comfort, tied hearts. Now they fluttered like wings beside her, shimmering and unsettled.
Then the elevator rised. Caenis entered. So did the Cleaners. They moved in the hush of marble and mist, shadows among light. You would have recognized them—silent footsteps, mirrored masks, blades made for assassins. Caenis, quiet, eyes steady. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft. Too soft.
“Aglaea,” she whispered. “The cloth of "revolution" is heavier than you imagine.” Aglaea’s eyes lifted. “Yet you drape yourself in it with such ease.”
A faint smile ghosted across Caenis’ lips.
“I wear what the world needs. Your little Cleaner—” she tilted her head slightly, that cruel gleam of reminiscence in her tone “—they were always a tricky one. Too clever to obey, too foolish to survive.”
Aglaea’s expression didn’t falter. Her threads brightened, gold gathering like pooled sunlight. “They were more human than any of us who call ourselves divine. You’ll never understand what that means.” she replied, voice steady as a drawn blade. “You mistake obedience for strength.”
Aglaea stood in the warm, golden water. The golden threads hovered, humming with a quiet, inevitable sorrow. She raised her hands; the threads bowed outward, not to bind, but to release.
“I made peace with my end long before this,” she said. “The loom wastes no thread. Not even mine.” Cleaners circled her. Daggers raised. The weapon was crafted for this: the blade that can kill a Chrysos Heir.
The blade sank straight into the heart of the one who bore the Coreflame of Romance.
Golden ribbons exploded outward — light, sorrow, Romance made fatal. They etched themselves across the water’s surface, across the marble floor, across the silent witness of the bathhouse.
Her body sank. The attendants found her later at the bottom of the bath. The pool drained. The dawn faltered.
The city of Okhema trembled.
Caenis looked away. The Cleaners turned and walked back into the shadows they had always inhabited. The Hero’s Bath returned to hush, except that the marble remembered — and the threads left their trace.
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ʜʏꜱɪʟᴇɴꜱ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ᴏᴄᴇᴀɴ
Hysilens x Princess!Reader
(a/n: i rewatched violet evergarden for this omgggggg I LOVE YURI)
Styxia did not welcome you — it tolerated you.
Your kingdom had been the first on land to feel the bite of the Black Tide. Waves swallowed your borderlands. Shadows crawled in from beyond the reef. Your people were forced to flee, and the Council sent you to Styxia, not just as an ambassador, but as someone who might survive where others couldn’t.
You arrive under salt-sweet air and strange architecture — towers carved with sea motifs, stone walls that look as if they’ve been shaped by crashing waves. Guards in deep-sea armor flank you, but the moment you enter the great hall, all of them fade behind a single presence.
She steps out of shadow, tall and silent.
Her eyes shine indigo and lilac, faintly glowing. Her hair, dark as midnight, falls in waves, tinged with plum and sea-blue. The moonlight catches only the edge of her armor — the rest of her body seems carved from the deep ocean’s shadow, like something that learned the shape of a woman only recently...
She doesn’t carry a simple sword; instead, there’s something shell-like at her hip, something dangerous and musical.
Her eyes glow faintly, a violet-blue luminescence that does not blink.
“Princess,” she says, voice low and resonant, like currents beating against a drowned cathedral. “Welcome to Styxia.”
You try to greet her formally, but her presence is like being pulled under a wave.
“I … come from a broken land,” you say quietly.
Her lips curve — not quite a smile, but something like acceptance.
“Styxia is not safe,” she says, “but it is all that remains. Do not think we are only drowned souls here.”
She moves closer, close enough that the glow of her eyes paints the edges of your face. “I am Hysilens,” she adds, tone still level. “Knight of Styxia, Bearer of the Ocean’s Coreflame. Your escort while you reside here.”
You learn quickly that Styxia is beautiful in a sharp, unwelcoming way — an ocean rose, all petals and thorns. The people stare at you openly. Some whisper when you pass. Others don’t bother to hide their disdain.
Royalty from the surface. A reminder of a world that abandoned them.
One afternoon, a man in a fisherman’s cloak steps into your path, sour with drink and anger.
“Surface princess,” he spits, “did you come to admire how we drown?”
Hysilens is beside you before you can gather your breath.
Her shell-blade hums against her hip, a faint resonance forming like a warning chord.
“Mind your tongue,” she murmurs, soft but lethal. “Or I will still it.”
The man stiffens. He backs away, muttering apologies.
She does not look at him again — only at you.
“Pay them no mind,” she says. “Styxia is unkind, but it is not beyond redemption.”
Her voice shifts, gentler. “I will keep you from its teeth.”
And she does. Soldiers step aside for her. Merchants lower their eyes. Even the currents around her seem to part.
But when you’re alone with her, the fearsome façade slips just slightly. Sometimes, she brushes sand from your sleeve. Sometimes, she tucks your hair behind your ear with fingers cold from the sea.
The shell-violin glitters as she lifts it. She never uses a bow — instead, the strings resonate to her touch, the water in the air shaping the melody. The song envelops you. Heavy, slow, full of tides and grief. Her gaze stays on you throughout the performance, as if making sure you haven’t drifted away.
Styxia holds a festival once every spring tide — not a celebration, really, but a defiance. Light in the drowned dark.
You attend only because Hysilens insists.
“It will reassure them that Styxia and the surface still hold ties,” she says, though her eyes betray a different motive. Something personal. Something fragile.
People part when Hysilens approaches you. She extends a hand, but only barely — you’re the one who must reach.
When your palm touches hers, her expression shifts in a way you’ve never seen. Soft. Human.
Dancing with her feels like stepping into the ocean at dusk — cold, overwhelming, strangely comforting. Her movements are precise, knightly, yet there’s something instinctive beneath it, like her body remembers a rhythm from a past life.
Her hand settles against your back, firm but careful.
“You dance as if you’re afraid,” she murmurs near your ear.
“Perhaps I am,” you whisper.
She leans closer. “Then lean on me.”
And somewhere in the slow turn of the dance, her cheek brushes yours.
Her grip tightens just slightly.
When the song ends, her forehead lingers against yours for a breath too long.
“Princess…” she begins, but whatever she means to say is cut short by a tremor running through the hall — a deep vibration, as if something massive has shifted beneath the ocean floor.
Her eyes narrow. “The tide is restless.”
You smell it before you see it — brine gone sour, a wrongness in the air. Styxia erupts into screams as creatures of shadow and deepwater corruption force their way into the city.
Hysilens grabs your arm. “Stay with me.”
The night becomes chaos — crashing waves, shattered stone, claws of black water swiping through the streets. Her shell-blade comes alive, shimmering with violent resonance as she cuts through the tideborn beasts.
Every strike is a crashing wave.
But the Black Tide is stronger this time. Too strong.
One creature slips past her guard and lunges for you.
You feel a sharp sting in your ribs — cold, wet, burning.
Hysilens turns instantly.
Her scream rips through the air, not loud but devastating.
She cuts the beast down in a single sweep, tearing it apart with a snarl that would terrify Titans.
Then she’s beside you, catching your fall.
“No…” Her voice fractures. “No, no, no.”
The world narrows to salt and shadow.
Hysilens drags you into her arms, and the moment your body hits hers she freezes — as if the sea itself has stopped in horror. The Black Tide still rages around you, waves slamming into collapsed walls, corrupted water slithering like living ink across the stone… but she hears none of it.
Her entire being focuses on one thing.
The blood at your ribs leaks warm, spreading across her gloves like blooming red coral. Her breath catches — a sharp, broken inhale — as if the sight has gutted her more deeply than any blade.
“Princess,” she says, but the word sounds strangled. Your title dissolves on her tongue, sinking like a drowned ship. “Little… little bubble of the surface… stay with me.”
Your vision blurs. You taste brine. You can’t tell if it’s the sea or her tears.
She pulls you closer, holding you as if she could trap the last of your warmth between your bodies. The luminescence in her eyes spikes violently — twin tides breaking against jagged stone.
“You were supposed to drift beside me,” she breathes, voice catching, “not scatter… not burst like foam.”
Her hand cups your cheek, thumb trembling as it traces the corner of your mouth. Water gathers in her lashes — not quite tears, not quite seawater, something caught between mortality and something older.
She presses her forehead to yours, and her voice drops into a low, shaking murmur, the way waves mutter against hulls before a storm:
“I was given a charge. Protect the princess. Guard the envoy. Bear the Coreflame with steadiness. I… I did not fail.”
“I did not fail — until now.”
Your blood curls through the tide around you, dispersing like red smoke through water.
Hysilens watches it with a shaking jaw — and something like dread.
“It’s taking you,” she whispers. “The sea is pulling… it’s pulling you away from me.”
Her shell-blade lies abandoned beside her — still humming faintly, but powerless now. She wraps both arms around you, as if she could tether you against the current with force alone. Her grip tightens — too tight, almost desperate — trying to hold your spirit in place.
“Please,” she mutters against your hair, voice thick and breaking. “I have stood through countless storms… I have endured centuries of tide and silence… but do not leave me to this.”
“No—” Her voice goes ragged, almost unrecognizable. “Fight it. Fight the current. Stay above the surface. Stay with me.”
Her Coreflame flares — bright, white-blue — the ocean itself roaring through it, as though she’s trying to share it with you, trying to shove her very life into your body.
The pulses illuminate her features — and she looks devastated.
“Do not sink,” she whispers, pleading, forehead pressed to yours so hard it hurts. “Do not go where I cannot follow.”
But the Black Tide has already taken too much from you.
Your fingers twitch at her cheek — one last stroke, faint as a ripple.
“No. Don’t… don’t let that be goodbye.” Her voice collapses into raw panic. “Don’t fade. Don’t dissolve. Please.”
You feel it — the rush, the pull, the tide stealing you away.
Your body sags in her arms.
A sound tears from her throat — not a scream, not a sob, something more ancient, like a whale-song cracking under unbearable weight and she clutches you tighter even as the warmth leaves you, as if her body could shield you from death itself.
Water gathers around the two of you — not rain, not the tide, but a small pool formed from her grief. It swirls up her arms, ribboning like tendrils of living sorrow.
She rocks you gently, as though trying to coax breath back into you.
“I would have crossed every depth,” she murmurs, voice ruined. “I would have broken the ocean’s spine for you.”
Her tears fall — quiet, unending — disappearing instantly into the tide beneath.
“But I could not save you.”
She bows over you, hair falling like a curtain of dark water around your face, hiding you from the world as if shielding your body is the last duty she can still perform.
“You were the warmest current I ever touched,” she whispers. “And now all that remains is the cold.”
Your last thought dissolves into the darkness.
Hysilens stays still for a long moment.
She lifts her head toward the Black Tide still raging around her.
Her eyes no longer glow softly.
Indigo and lilac, furious and tidal, bright enough to drown the world.
“Then let it take everything,” she says, her voice no longer trembling but hollow and resonant as the deep sea. “If the ocean demands a offering…”
She lays your body gently on the stone.
The tide roars back at her.
And Hysilens rises, Coreflame igniting like a star swallowed underwater.
The sea has taken something from her.
Now she intends to take everything back.
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ᴄᴀꜱᴛᴏʀɪᴄᴇ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ
Castorice x Hanahaki Diseased!Reader
No one in Ohkema could explain your illness.
The priests called it cursed.
The scholars whispered heart-rot.
The old women muttered and pitied you.
But you knew better than all of them.
It wasn’t a curse. It wasn’t rot. It wasn’t spite.
It was love — absurd, delicate, catastrophic — and your body simply wasn’t built to survive it.
Your homeland had fallen to the Black Tide months ago. You’d dragged yourself through ruined forests and dead songfields until the last of your strength guttered out on the Path of Parting, that quiet stone walkway lined with river-chimes and lanterns.
Something fluttered in your gut.
Is this what butterflies in your stomach feels like...?
Right before you fainted.
You saw someone kneel beside you before the light dimmed.
A pale, gentle face. Eyes like quiet twilight.
Her voice, soft as silk threads:
“Life is not as fragile as butterfly wings. Stay with me."
And then the dark took you.
You wake in the Hero’s Bath.
Warm mist curled around you, carrying the faint herbal scent of ember-grass and polished stone. The walls were carved marble, etched with stories of ancient warriors. Water trickled from a lion-shaped fountain, steady and soothing.
A quarantine ward for the wounded, the lost, and the cursed.
Your ribs hurt. Something in your chest felt lodged, tangled, growing.
The door slid softly open.
Castorice stepped inside with a basin of cool water, her silver sleeves shimmering like moonlit feathers.
Her voice carried that calm distance you’d heard in a dream — careful, cautious, like she wasn’t sure if she should step closer.
“It is my habit to keep away from others. But… you collapsed on the Path of Parting. I couldn’t leave you there.”
Her eyes flicked to your hands. You realized you were still clutching the crushed remains of a morning glory bloom. Its petals stained your palm blue-violet.
She noticed, of course she did.
Castorice noticed everything.
“Your illness…” she murmured, studying your face with quiet sorrow. “It carries the scent of grief. Yet also… longing.”
You coughed, sharp and sudden.
A wet petal fell into your lap.
When she spoke again, her voice trembled just enough for you to hear it. “I see. Morning glories. The flower of unrequited love”
Then she knelt beside you and dipped a cloth into the cool water.
The water was gentle, cold in a comforting way — like rain always falls on grass.
Days passed in the Hero’s Bath.
Castorice stayed longer than her duty required. She always said she needed to “monitor your condition,” but her gaze lingered whenever you laughed at her soft jokes, or whenever you grew too tired to speak and simply leaned against the cushions she brought.
She brought you stories first — little books, journals sealed with ribbon. Legends, fables, fragments of her own thoughts she dared not say aloud.
You read them aloud while she stitched small plush creatures at your bedside. One evening, you teased, “You wrote this one, didn’t you?”
Her hand stilled mid-stitch.
Light pink crept up her ears. “…I like to self-insert,” she confessed, looking away. “When I read stories. It helps me imagine a life outside my duties.”
You laughed — and coughed hard.
A handful of morning glory petals scattered across your lap.
Castorice’s breath caught.
She gathered the petals in trembling hands and held them like fragile memories. Her voice was low, almost breaking: “Please… cherish the time before your soul withers.”
You began making quilts together.
Castorice brought wool, milk-cotton thread, and soft felts in every pastel color.
She taught you how to patch little star motifs.
You taught her how to embroider tiny chimeras and lion cubs.
She made plushies shaped like you, and you pretended not to notice how often she hugged them when she thought you were asleep.
You weren’t asleep most of those times.
Your lungs ached more each day.
Petals came up easier and thicker now, sometimes with streaks of red.
One night, you woke to find her sitting at your bedside, watching you breathe.
Her fingers hovered near yours, but she didn’t dare touch.
“Farewells arrive too quickly,” she whispered into the quiet steam.
“I… hope neither of us stops moving forward.”
She looked like she wanted to say more.
She didn’t. And you mistook her silence for indifference.
The day she brought you outside — your first step beyond the quarantine chamber — she led you to a quiet courtyard behind the Hero’s Bath. A small patch of earth rested there, rich and dark.
She knelt and pressed a tiny seed into the soil.
“This is baby’s breath,” she murmured.
“The flower of everlasting devotion. Of gentle remembrance.”
Her hands folded the earth over the seed.
“It blooms for those we… cannot bear to forget.”
Your chest tightened painfully.
She planted another little seed.
Her fingers shook with each motion.
“I wanted you to… see them grow,” she said quietly.
Another petal rose up your throat.
You clenched your jaw and forced the cough back.
Or maybe she did — and didn’t say anything.
Petals spilled from your mouth — dozens, then hundreds — morning glories in full bloom, blue-violet and trembling with dew.
Castorice burst into the room, eyes wide, voice fracturing.
“Please— please breathe—!"
You tried. Truly, you did. But each inhale dragged barbs across your ribcage, each exhale was a wilted blossom unfolding in your throat. The petals covered your lap, then the floor, a soft sea of impossible color.
Castorice rushed forward—then stopped three steps short, frozen mid-reach. Her gloved hand hovered inches from your back, trembling violently. A single bare touch would unmake you. You could see the war in her face: instinct screaming to catch you, devotion chaining her still.
You collapsed before she could decide.
Then your cheek, cold against the polished floor.
Just the unyielding earth beneath Ohekma, the same stone that had watched a thousand warriors fall before you.
Castorice dropped to her knees beside you, the fabric of her robes whispering in panic. She wanted to touch you—wanted to shake the petals from your throat, cradle your head, breathe life back into your lungs. But she couldn’t. She didn’t dare.
Her hands hovered over you like broken wings.
“Stay— stay with me,” she whispered, voice cracking wide open. “Please. Don’t close your eyes yet.”
More flowers spilled out.
A whole bouquet of everything you never said.
Castorice choked back a sound—something raw, something she hadn’t meant to let anyone hear. Her fists clenched helplessly.
“I should have told you sooner,” she whispered, leaning close but never touching. “I thought silence would keep you safe. I thought… if I stayed distant… you would stop loving me.”
Your fingers twitched against the floor.
She leaned closer, desperate, but still hovering a hair’s breadth away. A universe existed between your skin and hers.
“I love you," she said, the words shuddering out like a confession torn from her ribs. “I loved you when you first walked into Ohekma. I loved you when you read to me. When you stitched stars into fabric. When you—”
“When you looked at me like I wasn’t a weapon.”
The room pulsed. Your heart wavered.
The petals around you quivered with your breathing—your very last scraps of it.
Castorice’s voice fell to a whisper. “Please don’t make me guide you alone. Say something. Anything. Let me stay with you in this moment.”
You tried to lift your hand.
It rose—just an inch—then fell back against the cold stone with a soft, defeated sound.
Castorice flinched as if you’d struck her.
Her hands hovered again, helpless, trembling above yours. “I can’t hold you,” she whispered, agonized. “If I touch you, I’ll take the last of your life. I would rather break my own bones than rush you to your end.”
Your breath escaped in a thin, fading thread.
The edges of the room darkened.
Morning glories tumbled from your lips like a final, blooming exhale.
Castorice lowered her forehead to the floor beside your hand, close enough that her breath brushed your knuckles but never touched your skin. Her voice was a soft, shattered prayer.
“Walk ahead,” she whispered. “I will follow. I will guide you past the veil. You will not wander alone.”
Your pulse fluttered once.
Castorice stayed kneeling in that silence, her shadow lying over your still form like the embrace she was never allowed to give.
When she finally stood, it was with the grief of a demigod sworn never to touch the living… but permitted to carry the dead.
There was no pain at first.
Just a weightless moment, a suspension, like hovering between one breath and the next. The world around you was neither dark nor bright—something gentler, like twilight deciding it could be dawn if it really wanted to.
The stone floor of the Hero’s Bath dissolved beneath you. The air thickened into a slow-moving mist that shone faintly blue, like the glow of deep ocean water.
A path unfurled at your feet.
Something where footsteps didn’t echo—they bloomed.
Morning glories grew between your toes with every step you took, curling around your ankles with familiar, tender weight. You glanced down at yourself—lighter, unburdened, no petals clawing at your lungs. No ache in your ribs. No sorrow festering where love lived.
You’d forgotten the feeling.
At first, she was just a silhouette in the fog.
Then the fog bowed to her.
Silver sleeves. Twilight eyes. That soft, solemn expression that held whole galaxies of emotion she never dared show. Castorice walked toward you with steps slow enough to be reverent. Her hair floated in the blue glow around you, as if underwater.
Skin like pale dawnlight.
She stopped a few feet away, out of habit. Out of fear. Out of long-ingrained self-denial.
You could be touched now.
Her breath shuddered with realization. Her fingers began to rise—hesitant, trembling, unbelieving. The way a child reaches for a firefly they’re afraid will vanish the moment they try.
You stepped closer first.
Permission, after everything.
Her hand touched your cheek.
Not the end of a life, but the beginning of something she had never once been allowed to feel.
Her other hand came up, cupping your face, tracing the line of your jaw as if confirming you were real. Her touch had no sting, no magic, no death. Her fingers trembled only with grief.
She sagged forward, forehead resting against yours. Her breath hitched, breaking apart.
“I held your soul,” she whispered. “When I could not hold your body.”
Her thumb brushed your cheekbone.
“I loved you in silence. I guided you here so I could love you without fear.”
You leaned into her, and she let out a small, broken sound—half relief, half devastation. She wrapped her arms around you, pulling you into an embrace she’d starved for, an embrace she’d memorized only in her imagination.
She buried her face in your shoulder.
“I’m so sorry I waited,” she murmured against your skin. “I’m sorry you suffered for love that I should have spoken sooner.”
The mist swirled around your feet.
The morning glories at your ankles opened wide.
Baby’s Breath sprouted in delicate clouds around the two of you—her devotion, eternal and bright. Their petals caught the glowing mist, turning it gentle and warm.
Her arms tightened around you.
“Stay with me,” Castorice whispered. “Walk with me through the last gate. I will not let you wander—not in this world, not beyond.”
For the first time, you held her back.
And the universe did not punish either of you for it.
The veil brightened ahead, opening into a soft, endless horizon.
She took your hand—fingers intertwining naturally, as if they’d been meant to do it in life.
“Let’s go,” she said quietly. “There is peace waiting. And I will walk beside you until the stars themselves forget how to shine.”
You stepped forward together.
Just the two of you, finally touching, finally whole… guided by the woman who had loved you too carefully to keep you alive, and now loved you freely enough to lead you home.
₊˚❀༉‧₊˚.ᴍʏᴅᴇɪ: ᴄʜʀʏꜱᴏꜱ ʜᴇɪʀ ᴏꜰ ꜱᴛʀɪꜰᴇ
The first time he sees you, the sky is the color of rusted iron.
Ohkema’s walls tremble with the Black Tide grinding against them. Smoke sleeps in the air like a great exiled spirit. Everyone is screaming, bleeding, running — except you.
You, with your homeland already taken.
You, with your heart carved hollow by loss.
You stand your ground like the last tree in a dying forest, spear braced, breath ragged, refusing to move even as the battlefield tries to devour you whole.
Mydei notices you the way a storm notices a mountain — not because you’re loud, but because you refuse to yield.
He cuts down a corrupted beast in one brutal strike and watches you slip between claws and shadows with stubborn defiance. Not elegance — grit. Not grace — intention.
He calls to you in that deep, ringing voice that sounds forged, not born.
“You fight like someone who has already lost everything,” he says. “Or someone who refuses to lose anything more.”
“You’re not wrong,” you grunt, stabbing a creature clean through. “Which one do you think it is?”
He studies you, eyes bright with some ancient recognition.
You end up fighting at his side. Not because you choose him — but because he moves like someone who creates space for others to live.
He’s brutal on the battlefield, but never careless. You learn the rhythm of him, the way he shields allies without ever saying the words.
During one lull between skirmishes, you sit with him by a shattered wall. He’s cleaning his armor. You’re taping your ribs, which are definitely cracked.
You should rest,” he says.
“You should stop being immortal,” you shoot back.
He stares at you… and laughs. Actually laughs. It’s rough, unused, like he’s surprised it still works.
When he offers you food from his pack — a thick slice of cheese, a piece of flatbread — you realize it’s not casual generosity.
For him, sharing food is sharing trust.
“Eat,” he says. “A warrior’s mind falters when their body starves.”
You arch a brow. “Is that a proverb?”
“It’s Kremnoan common sense.”
You bump your shoulder into him without thinking. His breath hitches— almost imperceptibly — like no one’s touched him lightly in years.
That’s when he starts looking at you differently.
Not like another soldier.
But like a fire he didn’t expect to burn this close.
At camp, you’re sitting close to the embers. Mydei joins you silently, lowering himself beside you in a way that says he trusts you not to strike while he’s unarmored.
“Thanatos refuses me,” he says abruptly. “Death has turned its face from me.”
You blink at him. “You telling me you hate that you can’t die?”
His gaze slides to you — a slow, steady, terrible vulnerability hidden beneath a king’s pride. “I can fall. I can bleed. I can be broken. But I cannot die.”
“What does that feel like?”
The fire crackles, taking his confession and making it flicker across his features. You place your hand over his — an instinct, a reaching out. His fingers curl around yours gently, like he’s afraid he’ll crush you if he holds too tightly. In that moment, the quiet between you is warmer than the flames.
Over time, you have his back, he has yours.
Once again, you’re fighting side by side..
...when the line breaks. Something massive carves through the ranks — you barely see the claws before they slice across your side. You stagger, fall to your knees, vision bleeding black.
Mydei roars your name, a sound too raw to belong to a prince.
He cuts through the enemy with a fury that shakes the ground — but he’s too far to reach you before another blow lands.
You force yourself up, back straight, refusing to die curled in the dirt. You strike one last time, protecting the wounded behind you.
Then your body surrenders.
He reaches you just as you collapse.
His hands are warm — too warm — as he lifts you into his arms.
“Stay awake,” he commands, voice shaking. “You will not fall here.”
You smile, barely. “Looks like… I’m more mortal than you.”
“Do not speak as if you’ve already left me.”
“I haven’t,” you whisper. “But I will.”
His breath rips out of him like a man being stabbed.
“Don’t mourn,” you say softly. “Just… stay with me… until it’s time.”
He does. Kneeling in the dirt with you cradled against him, his forehead pressed to yours. His voice shakes when he speaks.
“You burned brighter than war. Brighter than prophecy. You made me remember I am still human.”
Your fingers slip from his.
He feels it — that moment the soul loosens from the body.
And something in him goes silent.
He carries you beyond the battlefield, past the ruins of Ohkema, to the ancient place where souls drift into the Sea of Flowers.
The threshold glows like dawn.
He sets your body down gently and lifts your spirit with both hands — the same way he might lift a newborn child.
“This is where I leave you,” he murmurs. “The winds will take you the rest of the way.”
You look back at him once — the faint echo of your mortal shape shimmering.
He simply holds your gaze as the light pulls you forward.
“If there is a world where the Dawn truely exists…
Then your light dissolves into the horizon.
Mydei remains alone on the shore, the undying man who cannot follow, the warrior cursed to keep walking.
And somewhere far beyond the Black Tide, a single petal drifts on the wind, as if the Sea of Flowers has answered him.
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