Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Tower hummed, a low, resonant vibration that rippled through the crystalline walls of the Ocular. The chamber glistened softly and Hypshay stood rigidly, her cyan eyes narrowed in irritation and suspicion toward the pedestal at the chamber's center. 

Atop it, the infamous hourglass pulsed faintly against the crystal platform.

"Keep it close if you still want it, Exarch," Hypshay muttered, tail flicking irritably behind her. “I may not be as terrifying as Y’shtola when roused from sleep, but this makes the third time now. And if it caused yet another shenanigan, I’ll destroy it on the spot.”

“Though I share your sentiment, Warrior of Light,” G’raha Tia replied with a rueful grin, “I must caution you—it remains a valuable Allagan relic. One we’ve yet to fully comprehend.”

She rolled her eyes and grumbled, tightening her grip on her bow as she kept a vigilant watch, even through her exasperation.

Still holding a grudge over the previous…incidents. Raha mused silently. 

But wisely, he let it go. He knew better than to test her patience when destruction was well within her means—and more importantly, her will.

With a sigh, he offered a small, conciliatory smile before kneeling beside the pedestal, gently extending his hand toward the artifact. As he reached out with his aether, resonating carefully to test for irregularities or hidden magical structures, the hourglass pulsed faintly—resistant, inert.

“Same as before,” he murmured. “No distortions. No anomalies. And yet, something keeps waking the Tower. If nothing else, we might attempt to see whether it responds to Allagan blood.”

“That was reckless, Exarch. Again .”

“Not reckless if the Tower responds to me.” he replied calmly, “Fear not—if it is indeed an Allagan relic, then my blood should allow me to command it, as it has countless others before.”

She raised a skeptical brow but relented with a sigh.

“‘Twould be a reasonable approach—if you’re certain,” she said. “Under better circumstances, I would advise we summon Urianger and Y’shtola first. But our dear Astrologian is off gallivanting with that damned Gunbreaker, and the last time they answered my call was a moon ago.”

She shuddered then, visibly shaking off the memory. 

“And I have no wish to wake Y’shtola at this hour. Absolutely not .”

“Nor would I , my star,” Raha said with a grimace. His ears flattened at the recollection of Y’shtola’s reaction the last time they dared disturb her mid-sleep. “Let’s test it ourselves first.”

He was used to this now. His blood had become a tool—convenient, functional, necessary. With a flick of his wrist and a soft incantation, he summoned a magical dagger, the blade hovering just above the inside of his left arm. He was ready to draw it across his skin with practiced ease, like he had countless times before—until Hypshay’s hand intercepted him.

Her fingers curled around his arm, impossibly warm, firm but gentle.

“Careful now, Raha,” she murmured, her voice soft. “You only need a little. Allow me.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but before he could protest, she deftly plucked the dagger from his hand and dispelled it with a flicker of her own magic. Her training as a White Mage had refined her arcane prowess far beyond most, and while she’d never claim it, Raha knew without doubt she was among the most gifted healers in any Shard, a much better one than himself.

He watched, quietly mesmerized, as she reached into her quiver and retrieved a single arrow. Then, with a delicacy he rarely witnessed from this fierce, indomitable woman, she carefully pressed the sharpened point against his fingertip—just enough to draw a few shining drops of blood.

And somehow—despite all the wounds he’d endured, all the pain he’d long since learned to accept— this one hurt.

His breath caught unexpectedly in his throat, a gasp escaping him as he winced—not from pain, but something deeper. 

Hypshay’s eyes widened at once. 

“Ah—I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?” she asked in a rushed whisper, already discarding the arrow and reaching for him, leaning in close. “I must’ve been careless—”

“No, no,” Raha murmured, and before she could say another word, he reached out and pulled her into a kiss.

His blood still shimmered faintly on his fingertips—a stinging, crystalline reminder that this moment was real , no longer a construct of the sleepless nights he had once spent chasing shadows of dreams in solitude.

So this was what it felt like— to be cared for .

And, gods, it hurt .

Lyna’s face flickered through his thoughts, along with the countless others who had stood by him through those long, desperate years. He remembered their concern when he pushed himself too far, how they had worried when he stumbled, how they had seen him—even when he hid beneath that crystalline hood.

He had told himself the distance was necessary. That detachment was duty.

But they had cared anyway. And that —that had wounded him more deeply than the crystal ever could.

“‘Tis quite alright, Shay. Truly. No need to worry—you didn’t hurt me,” he said at last, a faint, coquettish smile curling at his lips. “But it was painful. Mayhap later, you’ll heal it for me, my hero.”

She huffed a laugh at that, soft and fond, her cyan eyes glowing with relief.

“Alright, I will. Now go on with your experiment, my lord.”

He nodded, returning his focus to the hourglass. His expression turned solemn as he stepped forward, extending his bloodstained fingertips toward the relic. Channeling his aether with practiced precision, he initiated the attunement—reaching, probing for resonance.

At first, the hourglass gave off a faint, flickering glow—dim, almost reluctant. Then, as his aether began to align with its inner mechanisms, the resonance deepened. The crystalline artifact began to pulse, its vibrations intensifying with each breath.

Raha narrowed his eyes, honing the thread of connection through his blood. But every attempt to penetrate its defenses was met with resistance. His aether was deflected—bounced back like waves crashing against an immovable barrier.

Until suddenly—

A blinding, searing surge of white-blue aether erupted from the hourglass in a burst of volatile power.

Hypshay felt it before it happened. Her instincts screamed a warning, and in a heartbeat, she lunged forward, trying to shove him away from the pedestal.

But it was too late—the bond of blood held him fast, locking him in place.

“ Stay back! ” Raha shouted, his voice strained as aether surged violently through the chamber, crackling across the air like lightning.

Yet, Hypshay paid no heed to his desperate warnings. In a heartbeat, her staff was already firmly gripped, her outstretched hand reaching towards him. Her aether flared powerfully to life, aggressively surging forth, attempting to forcibly sever the unyielding bond connecting Raha and the artifact.

And—as fate would have it—she succeeded, as always.

The impossibly resilient bond tethering Raha to the artifact was violently severed as her nearly overwhelming surge of aether crashed brutally into their link. It provided him the precious opportunity to wrench himself free, breaking away and leaping back from the artifact.

Hypshay exhaled softly, feeling slightly dizzy from the sudden, explosive expenditure of her aether. But just as she was about to instruct him to retreat from the chamber and seek counsel before any further recklessness, the artifact abruptly rose from its pedestal, floating ominously into the air. Without warning, another blinding, white-hot burst of aether erupted from its core—this time swifter, more precise, and somehow aimed directly toward her .

"Hypshay!" 

Instinctively, he lunged forward, colliding forcefully with her and thrusting her aside. She struck the crystalline floor hard but rolled swiftly back onto her feet, instantly drawing her bow, aiming defensively towards the now-empty pedestal.

The artifact had now— predictably —vanished, leaving only faint, lingering wisps of residual magic drifting in its wake.

Her gaze snapped back to Raha, heart hammering frantically as she rushed toward his fallen form. Raha lay still upon the ground, his breathing shallow and uneven, eyes tightly shut in unconsciousness.

Hypshay inhaled a deep, steadying breath, carefully setting her bow aside as she reclaimed her staff and gently lifted his head into her lap. With the remaining strength in her body, she summoned forth healing magic, the spells soothing and swift. Quickly, the bruises and superficial injuries upon his body faded under her ministrations.

She forced her racing heart to steady, fingers trembling slightly as she pressed them gently against his throat, relief washing over her as she felt the steady, rhythmic pulse beneath her touch.

Alive. But still, something was terribly amiss.

Her light-blessed healing magicks enabled her to discern his aetherial fluctuations more clearly than ever, and immediately she recognized that his aether was muted, distant—almost as if his very soul had been ensnared in a place her healing could not reach.

Without hesitation, she activated her linkpearl.

It rang longer than it should have before an irritated voice snapped through the connection.

"Asakura Hypshay. Do you have any idea—"

"Y’shtola," Hypshay swiftly cut the Miqo'te off, "there's been an incident at the Tower involving an Allagan artifact. Raha has fallen unconscious, and his aether is severely muted. Pray, fetch Krile swiftly—I lack the expertise you two possess in matters such as these."

"Keep vigilant watch," Y’shtola's irritation instantly shifted into urgency as she replied tersely. "We shall be there shortly."

She ended the call and gently cradled Raha into her arms. 

Though unconscious, he felt heavier in her embrace, but with a quick incantation—a levitation spell he had once taught her—she managed to lift and guide him to the crystal bed in his chamber. Her hands pressed firmly to his wrist as she continued to channel healing magicks, her voice low and unwavering with every incantation.

He looked almost peaceful. Yet his complexion had paled, and his limbs remained disturbingly limp. She swallowed the rising dread in her throat and leaned over him, her aether flowing steadily, a constant surge of white-gold light pulsing through her fingers.

It was in moments like these that she regretted not dedicating herself to the study of healing magic sooner.

Shaking her head to banish such thoughts, she straightened, closing her eyes as she summoned another wave of aether, delicately probing around his dulled, distant essence. No matter how carefully she reached, she could not find a true connection—only that lingering, unreachable hum that echoed like a soul lost in fog.

The silence of the Ocular broke at last with the soft tread of approaching footsteps.

Hypshay turned, her shoulders relaxing only slightly at the sight of Y’shtola and Krile hurrying into the chamber. Krile gave a curt nod before rushing to Raha’s side, her expression softening only marginally upon confirming his steady breath. Y’shtola, meanwhile, wasted no time and immediately focused on the aetheric disturbance surrounding him.

As the two women set to work, Hypshay explained everything she could recall about the artifact—clear, concise, though notably omitting certain more intimate details. When she finished, Krile let out a breath and muttered,

“Reckless. Truly reckless. One would expect better judgment from someone who’s lived a century.”

“‘Twas my fault,” Hypshay said quietly. “I should never have agreed. I should’ve waited for you both. Now we’ve lost track of it again.”

“You did what you could,” Y’shtola replied gently. Her tone remained calm, but her eyes were fixed in concentration. “From what I can see, the bond he formed with the artifact is still intact. His soul is caught within some kind of repeating loop. Whatever that relic triggered—it didn’t just trap him. It trapped itself .”

“A loop?” Krile echoed, casting Hypshay a quick glance. “Is there a way to sever it?”

Y’shtola didn’t answer at once. Her lips pressed into a thin line as she raised her staff and began tracing the flow of Raha’s aether with expert precision. Hypshay and Krile held their breath in silence as the Miqo’te’s aether began to gather—dense, glowing, unmistakably potent. It crackled with the same raw force Hypshay herself had summoned earlier. Perhaps that was why they got along so well.

And then, a portal shimmered into being—pale violet, ethereal, threads of aether spiraling around its edges as it slowly stabilized.

“Here,” Y’shtola said quietly. “This will lead directly into the loop entrapping G’raha Tia’s soul. But be warned—it is not a reflection, nor a true memory. It is a twisted echo of his mind and aether. No physical form can pass through it.”

“I’ll go,” Hypshay said without hesitation.

“As I knew you would,” Y’shtola replied with a wry, knowing smile. “But tread carefully. I must remain here to keep the portal open.”

She turned to Krile. “And someone must guard both of your bodies.”

Krile nodded, though worry still clouded her features. “I’ll watch over you closely, Hypshay. But know this—on the way here, Y’shtola had already contacted Urianger and Thancred. They said they’d come with all haste.”

“We can’t afford to wait,” Hypshay said quietly but firmly, then offered both women a warm, grateful smile. “It won’t be nearly as bad as traversing the Rift. And I will bring him back. You can scold him then, Krile.”

Krile exhaled and reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly before reluctantly letting go.

“Then be careful. Come back safely—both of you.”

Y’shtola nodded, her voice solemn. 

“Go swiftly. I’ll sustain the portal until Urianger arrives. He may be able to anchor it more fully—he and your Exarch always had a way of understanding the arcane intricacies of time and memory.”

Hypshay nodded back, drawing a slow, steady breath as she approached the portal. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears—but she never hesitated.

“I’ll return shortly,” she promised.

And with that, she stepped forward.

The sensation was immediate—her consciousness peeling away from her body, weightlessness overtaking her limbs as her physical form collapsed softly to the floor. Krile caught her instantly, arms steady.

“Lay her beside him,” Y’shtola instructed gently as she came to assist.

Together, they placed Hypshay’s body carefully beside Raha’s, their hands just barely brushing, fingers aligned in unconscious solidarity.

Krile gazed down at them, her voice barely more than a whisper as she touched their joined hands.

“May your journey be swift and safe, my friend.”

—---

Hypshay was violently torn from familiar ground, her soul hurled into a torrent of relentless, spiraling energy. A soundless gasp escaped her as her consciousness tumbled through the maelstrom—akin to the way she’d once been summoned to the First, thrust helplessly through the suffocating chaos of the Rift.

But this was different.

The fragments whirling around her were not echoes of her own memory—they were his .

His past surged around her, vivid and unfiltered, flashing through her mind in a series of disorienting, heartbreakingly intimate glimpses. Quiet moments of laughter shared in solitude; the gleam of his scarlet eyes reflecting starlight; the tender brush of his fingers across a bed of delicate, wind-kissed flowers. Each vision was saturated with emotion, private and intimate. 

She felt as though she were trespassing in sacred ground, stepping through the carefully guarded sanctum of his heart, guilt twisted low in her chest.

Before she could anchor herself, the current seized her again. One shard—radiating brighter than the others—drew her in like a gravitational pull. She hurtled toward it, crashing through the veil of memory with a force that shattered all sense of self.

Darkness engulfed her.

When her eyes fluttered open again, the first thing she registered was the steady, sorrowful rhythm of rain.

Cold droplets fell in relentless sheets from a sky heavy with stormclouds, soaking her skin and garments as she struggled to orient herself. The air was thick with damp earth and silence. And then, she saw him.

Kneeling before an elegantly carved headstone, alone amid a sea of rain-slick grass, was G’raha Tia.

His hair—usually vibrant and wild—was plastered to his forehead, sodden from the downpour. Water streamed down his cheeks, mingling with something that might have been tears, though he made no sound. His shoulders trembled faintly, burdened beneath a grief so vast and consuming it seemed to hollow out the space around him. He clutched something in his lap—flowers, maybe—but his hands shook too much to hold them steady.

Hypshay’s breath caught in her throat as she followed his gaze to the name etched into the worn stone before him.

This was a gravesite.

Her gravesite.

Chapter Text

Under the bleak, churning skies, water streamed in rivulets down the shattered stone paths of what was once called Yanxia—now reclaimed by ash, moss, and silence. Rain fell in relentless sheets, soaking through his robes, down to the skin, but G'raha Tia did not move.

A gravestone stood before him.

Asakura Hypshay — Warrior of Light. A Treasured Granddaughter. An Honorable Friend. A Venerable Disciple. Beloved of the Peoples of Doma and Eorzea.

He had begged Biggs the Third to take him here, and after a long, contemplative silence, the man had agreed. The Ironworks crew left him at the base camp at the foot of the mountain, telling him only that he would find her at the summit.

And he had.

Her grave stood untouched by rot, surprisingly clean amidst the ruin—lovingly tended, despite the desolation. Someone—perhaps many—still remembered her. White autumn lilies lay at its base, bound with a red silk ribbon. Vegetables were rare these days. Flowers rarer still. And yet it was clear that many had come, many had wiped the stone, many had wept here.

He did not know who had left these offerings.

But it should have been him.

His hands trembled, the knuckles raw and bloodied from the climb, slowly, he reached out and touched the stone, tracing her name letter by letter. His breath caught; a bitter laugh escaped him—a single, hollow sound swallowed by the rain.

It made no sense—none of this did.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, barely audible over the deluge. “I am so sorry. I should have told you long before.”

He hadn’t. Not when he should have. Not all those years ago, before he locked himself away. He had played the noble martyr, dressing cowardice as sacrifice. But the truth was far simpler: he had been afraid. Afraid of his own heart. Afraid to speak.

Words from that damned history book echoed through his mind, carved into him like an epitaph. How she had died facing Zenos. How the Black Rose had taken them both. How, after the Empire found her corpse, they dragged it back like a trophy. 

Then it stopped there. The historian who had penned that chronicle had spared the details out of reverence. But the fact that both Hien and Aymeric had fallen to their knees weeping when they recovered her remains, had already said too much.

She had slain her fair share of imperial soldiers—even in her youth. Her skill and defiance had made her famous enough to earn Hien’s trust and be sent to Eorzea. 

Yet she was kind. Merciful. Principled. And would never disrespect her opponent. And Zenos—as twisted as he was—if there was one thing G’raha Tia would admit, it was that Zenos would have respected her.

But Zenos was gone. The Empire was shattered. And what was left was a retreating, crumbling army—leaderless, furious, the wrath of a fallen nation with nothing left to lose.

G’raha Tia was a historian. 

He knew exactly what an army, bloodied and broken, might do to the body of a woman who had killed their prince, humiliated their nation, and turned the tide of war.

The wind howled across the ruined mountain as if mourning with him. His crimson eyes burned, stinging from more than just the rain. And then—without thinking, without reason, driven only by grief and the unbearable ache in his chest—

G’raha Tia started to dig.

He clawed at the wet soil, fingers slipping, nails caked with mud, breath hitching in his throat. He didn’t feel the sharp stones, the shards that cut into his palms. He didn’t care. His whole body shook, the rain soaking his hair, mixing with blood and tears.

The earth gave way, slowly, reluctantly. His arms ached, but he kept digging. And at last, wood. The edge of the coffin, worn smooth by time but still sealed. 

G'raha Tia stared at it.

Tears streamed freely now, indistinguishable from the rain that soaked his cheeks. He reached out with shaking hands, fingers brushing the lid. 

And he opened it.

Bones.

Shattered bones.

That was all that remained of the woman who once held his soul in her hands. The woman whose laughter had lingered in his mind longer than reason should allow. The woman who he had kissed beneath starlight, who had mocked his archery with fire in her eyes and tenderness in her touch.

Now she was only silence and ivory. 

And even that—mangled.

Her left hand was missing from the wrist, the joint crudely severed. Her shin bones had clearly been broken—shattered, likely by Zenos himself—and later reassembled by those who had tried, futilely, to grant her peace. The fractures were misaligned. Even now, he could see it: the way her body had been desecrated, then pieced back together as carefully as they could manage—by those who had retrieved what remained and had done their best to honor her. But the damage had been too great. In many cases, the bones simply weren’t there anymore .

His throat closed.

And then the sound came. A terrible, primal noise—raw grief tearing up from the hollow of his chest, something between a sob and a howl. G’raha collapsed into the coffin, falling atop her bones, wrapping his arms around them with a shudder that rippled through his entire frame.

He buried his face against what was left of her chest, as though pressing himself into the hollow where her heart had once beat might somehow steady his own. His jaw clenched, teeth bared. Then, with shaking hands, he reached for her skull—so gently, as if even in death she might flinch from roughness—and lifted it from the rest.

The jaw had cracked slightly. Her horns were chipped.

He cradled her to him tenderly, locking his eyes onto the hollow sockets of her once brilliant gaze.

And then he leaned down, pressing a trembling kiss to her forehead. The contact was cold—so impossibly cold—but he lingered there, lips on bone, whispering words that had never been said aloud.

“I love you,” he breathed. “Not the legend. Not the hero. You. Asakura Hypshay. I love you .”

His hands shook as he held her close again, curling around the remains as though to shield them from the cruel world, as if his body could undo the indignity of death and defilement.

“Worry not, my star,” he promised in a broken whisper, smiling tenderly to the skull. “I’ll see you again soon. I’ll bring you home.”

—---

Hypshay watched, as the wind howled over his soaked hair and they remained unremovable against his forehead as Raha kissed that skull over and over again.

She knew that he had a painful past in the Eighth Calamity. 

But she hadn’t expected it to be this brutal .

Never had he mentioned such a thing to her ever before. 

She had never asked—not out of indifference, but fear . Fear that prodding the past would unravel some fragile thread inside him. He had already borne too much: her death, living through it, trying to rewrite it with his own life. He had only succeeded because fate, or perhaps blind fortune, had tilted once in their favor. And still, he had watched her die again—at Ultima Thule.

Yet knowing her own death would be one thing, but seeing what was left of herself—knowing he had unearthed it with his own hands—was another.

Almost involuntarily she approached him, though she possessed no tangible physical form in his memory, and tried to hold his back to offer what little comfort she could—but it was futile. Not even wind followed her movement as she whispered his name,

“Please—Raha, ‘twas already too much, you are torturing yourself,” Her hands pressed against his back, only to meet no resistance—cloak, skin, bone all insubstantial beneath her. “This is a memory loop caused by that bloody artifact. I’m here with you now.”

He didn’t hear her, his mouth found the faint ridge above the right eye socket, and he kissed it. Rain soaked through his hair, dripping from the ends onto the cloak now spread across his back.

“Raha,” she demanded louder. “Look at me. Look at me .”

Nothing. 

The world held its breath. Only rain moved.

His actions turned frantic—like a man starving, trying to feed himself on ashes. He shifted, cradling the skull with trembling reverence, and let out a sharp, unhinged laugh.

“It won’t give you what you want.” she said brokenly, “Wake up.”

But the loop had him by the throat. No matter how she called or touched or begged, she couldn’t reach him. At last, exhausted, she slid down the face of her own gravestone until her back rested against the cold stone of the carved epitaph. She sat there, knees drawn up, watching the man drown in his grief.

Is this what Ardbert once felt? She wondered.

To walk unseen through the world, a soul disjointed from it. A ghost in every way that mattered.

Minutes stretched into something longer—something unbearable. The sky above darkened further, bruising to near black. Rain pounded around them.

At last, Raha drew one final breath that sounded like it physically hurt him. He leaned back. His thumbs brushed over the bone above where her eyebrows once were, as if smoothing back hair from a fevered brow.

“Forgive me,” he whispered to the skull.

He set it down with impossible care, easing it gently into the cradle of ribs, aligning each fragment precisely, reconstructing the remains as faithfully as the moment he had found them. He lingered there, arms braced on the edge of the coffin, gaze locked on what little was left. Then he swallowed, straightened his shoulders, and closed the lid.

Raha lifted both hands, blood and mud black in the rain, and dry heat rolled off his palms; the water climbed free of wood and silk and bone, coalescing into beads that drifted upward and vanished as steam. He exhaled—one more spell—and the grave pit firmed, edges packing tight.

Then he did the rest with his hands .

He hauled sodden earth back into the hole the way he had torn it out—fingers scooping, wrists shaking, breath hissing with each motion. Blood smeared the dirt, bright as fallen maple leaves. He pressed the last handful into place, patted it down smooth, and lowered his head.

A kiss to the wet soil.

A kiss to stone.

She was still leaning against her own grave when he finally looked up—and locked eyes with her.

“I love you, Hypshay,” he said, voice soft and aching.

“And I love you too,” she whispered, half-praying he could somehow hear her. “Now wake the hell up.”

Yet it was futile, she stood, raised her hand to him one last time but he had already turned, the memory had run its course and her world cut to black like a candle pinched between damp fingers.

Blackness engulfed her again.

—---

The sea had been mean since dawn, a churning skin of whitecaps that slapped the hull hard enough to rattle teeth. The smell of salt and tar soaked everything; rope creaked, gulls wheeled low and hungry. It took them the better part of a week to reach Old Sharlayan, or what was left of it. 

After the Eighth Calamity, distances felt longer.

They’d waited three suns at a ruined port for a berth, the Ironworks crew stacked between crates of grain and barrels of lamp oil while a queue of battered merchantmen took on water, one at a time. When their turn finally came, the dockmaster counted their fingers twice before waving them through.

“Try not to sink,” he said, tapping his ledger with a splintered quill. “Pirates’re thick past the third buoy. They smell cargo.”

“They can smell my boot if they like,” Biggs the Third muttered, hitching up his toolbelt.

“Aye, and they’ll take your boots—and your head,” the captain barked, already bellowing orders. “Cast off! Hands to braces! Keep her nose into it!”

Raha spent the first day on deck, cloak drawn tight, eyes fixed on the horizon, helping keep watch. The crew moved around him with practiced exhaustion—hauling, knotting, cursing, laughing when they could. By nightfall, he vanished belowdecks with the same old book he'd carried since they set sail and drowned himself in its pages.

He’d read it at least five times—honestly, he'd lost count after the third, but it didn’t matter. Count Fortemps had written about her in a way no one else had.

Heavensward.

Of all the records, journals, and war accounts, this was the one he loved most.

The Count had captured something others hadn’t: not just her battles, her victories, her valor. But how she had fought. How she had wept .

People liked to say Asakura Hypshay was capable of everything. But Fortemps had seen her as she truly was—maybe even as he needed her to be. He wrote her like someone who’d stood close enough to feel her warmth. Someone who never lost sight of her—not when she was exhausted, not when she laughed with her mouth full, not when she bore more than anyone should.

He wrote her like a daughter. ‘Twas the truest mirror he’d found.

He hadn’t made it five pages in when shouting erupted overhead.

“Bloody tits—bastards!”

Raha snapped the book shut and grabbed his staff—the same one he'd taken up after awakening. His command of magic wasn’t yet near expert, but it would suffice. He shoved the book into the innermost layer of his tunic, wedging it tight between belt and shirt, and ran for the deck. He burst topside just in time to see a narrow-skinned cutter knife out from behind a shoal, its black sail patched with the colors of a dozen plundered ships. Hooks clanged against the rail. Men with scarf-masks shouted as they leapt aboard.

In one clean motion he charged towards the mast, and planted a hand on it, vaulted over a coil of line, and landed between two boarders with his staff already humming. The first came in hard with a cutlass; Raha caught the blade on a conjured ward that sang like glass struck by a knife. The second swung low—he stepped into the strike, shoulder-checking the man into the capstan.

“Down!” Biggs shouted, firing the deck ballista. The bolt slammed into the pirate mast, and the sail collapsed like a slain beast.

Another raider lunged at Raha from behind, but a shot rang out—clean and sharp—and the pirate crumpled. Raha turned and saw a Lalafell from the Ironworks nod toward him once before spinning away, already lining up another shot.

The skirmish didn’t last long. The pirates broke—oars flashing, scrambling to cut their own fouled lines. The air stilled, heavy with steam and blood.

“Cowards!” a deckhand spat, still shaking. “Picked the wrong boat.”

“Picked the wrong Ironworks,” Biggs said, clapping Raha’s shoulder. “You good?”

Raha’s breath came in soft white threads. He nodded. “More than fine. I'm just glad everyone's safe. Anyone hurt?”

“Just scrapes and bruises,” Biggs muttered. “Nothing we haven’t dealt with before. These days… not unusual. Ever since the Eighth Calamity. But this your first real encounter, eh? Can’t blame you if it hit hard—men turning on each other like beasts, just for cargo.”

“On the contrary,” Raha said quietly. “True, I saw little of this in better times, but the world before the Calamity wasn’t paradise either. Corvos—what it used to be—was long colonized by the Empire, made into a vessel and left to rot. History’s just repeating itself.”

Biggs was silent a moment, then clapped his shoulder again—heavier this time.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll keep the wolves from the door. Get some rest, G’raha Tia.”

Raha wanted to insist, to offer more help, but the man gave him a firm shake of the head and gestured toward the cabin. He exhaled and relented.

“I’ll sleep, then,” he lied.

He did not.

In the cabin, the world narrowed to lamp-light, wood, and the faint, endless hush of waves sliding along the hull. Raha dried his hands, leaned his staff against the wall, and lit the small side lantern. He crouched on the still-damp boards, the floor reeking of brine and pitch, and carefully retrieved the book from beneath his shirt.

He read.

He read until the lantern burned low. Until the sea grew quiet in the way that means morning was preparing to arrive.

Chapter Text

Hypshay was walking inside him.

The world slid sideways, softened. The air smelled of chalk dust and tide—that particular, bookish salt of Old Sharlayan that she’d come to know with. Raha often smelled like that: parchment and ink, the cool hush of the Nounmen where he’d fallen asleep waiting for her, his day’s work complete. She learned that smell through their shared time together, and that comforted her strangely, as she woke up again inside his.

The same strange dislocation she’d grown accustomed to through the Echo. Even with Hydaelyn—no, with Venus—gone, the blessing still lingered. Whether this vision came from the artifact or from that divine fragment she still carried, she could not tell.

“Come, lad,” rumbled a voice, a hand like a warm wall settling on the body’s shoulder. “No shame in being afraid. Only in letting it tie your boots together.”

She followed the body's movement as he lifted his head and saw the face of Galuf Baldesion.

“I don’t like boats,” she heard the small hesitant voice grunted, and felt his hand squeezed onto the big hand of Galuf, who chuckled and squeezed his own in return. 

“Boats don’t care,” another voice said cheerfully, and Hypshay saw Krile popping into the scene like sunlight under a door. She grabbed one of his ear easily with one hand and laughed when Raha protested weakly. “Lucky for you, I do. This way. Try not to stare at those long robes of the old scholars, they hate it.”

Raha released the hand of Galuf then as he moved after Krile, he was no taller than her, trailing her in a near-jog.

“Wait, Krile! Stop flicking my ears so often!”

“But they were adorable. Come on, be quick,” Krile chuckled, frog-marched him past colonnades and winking fountains; the city, in his memory, was new enough to gleam. “Rule one,” she said, shoulder-checking a tall door open. Cold library air spilled out. “The tome you need will always be on a different floor than your legs think they can climb.”

Hypshay felt his face flush, his hands rub together awkwardly.

He had had that habit since he was little. She realized, fond and bittersweet.

Galuf chuckled behind them. “Now, now, Krile. Pray be patient with Raha. He’ll learn. He’s got that look.”

“What look?” Raha asked, glancing up. Hypshay watched Galuf’s face shift into something soft and paternal, his large hand descend to ruffle the boy’s ears. Raha leaned into it like a kitten.

“Like the question is already chewing you,” Galuf said fondly.

Through his eyes, she could see both Krile and Galuf’s faces with startling clarity—vivid as firelight, etched with a care so deliberate it burned. He had held this memory close, preserved it like scripture, and somehow, that brought her peace too. Knowing he had such moments to live by during his long solitude as the Exarch—that comforted her.

Then his memories flickered quick cuts, like pages turned by wind. 

The boy perched in a tree, scowling at a star chart, ink smudged across his cheek. The boy curled on a rooftop, knees drawn up, naming constellations one by one, until the night felt mapped, and thus less vast. The boy sprinting across a sunlit courtyard with a book overhead like a shield, laughing as if chased by thunder.

“Stop climbing the west wall,” Krile scolded in another memory, shoving a burger into his hands. “‘Tis not a ladder.”

“‘Tis taller than the east wall,” he replied around a mouthful. 

She could almost taste it through the memory—the savory richness of a Last Stand burger, its juices spilling warmth down the throat. He was much taller than Krile now, though still short for a Miqo’te. From the awkwardness, deep and throaty sound of his voice, it must have been around his puberty voice change, when he’d first started his thesis. Never had she seen him in this stage, Hypshay thought almost fondly as she followed his gaze in his body. 

“That’s not a reason,” Krile said flatly in the memory. 

“No, ‘tis a measurement.”

“You just like to show off,” Krile snorted. “Leaping off rooftops ever since you met that arcane prodigy this semester.”

“I—I—!”

Raha fumbled, nearly choking on his food.

T’was neither the time nor place, and yet, at the mention of that prodigy, Hypshay felt something sour stir in her gut—rootless, yes, irrational perhaps, but no less potent for it.

She decided, quite reasonably, that after he woke, she would get all the details about this prodigy. From Raha, if he proved forthcoming. More likely, from Krile. Not because she cared, no. Certainly not about what this prodigy looked like. Of course not. She was simply…curious. Professionally, that was all.

As if summoned by her thoughts, Krile perked up suddenly.

“Oh, speak of the devil,” she grinned. “Guess I’ll be off then. Good luck to you, dear brother.”

Hypshay tried to turn—wanted to turn—to see the face of the girl behind them, but she was still trapped within his body. And for all his heroism, this damned cat-boy refused to look. Raha stood stiff as a post, still facing Krile as she vanished with a wink, his back to the approaching footsteps. Yet the flick of his tail betrayed him and she knew those ears had perked up.

He’d better turn his damn head. She thought impatiently. 

Then came the girl’s voice, light and musical.

“‘Tis nice, having a sibling growing up,” she said. “Especially if that sibling is Krile Baldesion. I cannot say I don’t envy you, G’raha Tia.”

His body tensed. He drew a breath, and Hypshay drew it with him.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t call her merciful.”

Raha finally lifted his gaze—and Hypshay held hers.

And then—

She saw only a silhouette.

The uniform was familiar—standard Sharlayan student garb, the same kind worn by so many in his lectures. But the girl’s face blurred at the edges, bleached away by light. Unrecognizable.

He had forgotten that prodigy’s face. 

A wave of pain washed over her thoughts, stronger than any jealousy could ever reach her. He had been back with her for so long now, flesh and blood and unbearably youthful. So much so that in quiet moments, when the world held still, she almost believed he was still that bright-eyed Miqo’te kit she’d met at the foot of the Syrcus Tower.

But more than a century had passed for him. 

And sometimes, when she looked close enough, she could see it—the years carved into his bones, the years he spent searching a way to save her, to save two worlds, to cast aside his own name and his own life, to seek only salvation for others. 

And though he laughed easily, though his smile still felt like sunrise—there were signs. She remembered it in flashes—the way he complained of the cold when it rained. The ritual need for tea before bed. The way he slipped into those soft, rambling “old man” lectures like he couldn’t help himself.

The memory shattered then.

—---

Old Sharlayan rose out of fog like a broken constellation. The harbor was a mouthful of teeth—piers split and fallen, half-drowned pylons in ranks like petrified oaks. Beyond, domes and columns slouched under their own weight, ivy suturing cracks as if the island were sewing itself shut.

“Gods,” someone whispered, not quite reverent. “She used to be a queen.”

G’raha Tia stood at the bow of their ship, and an unspeakable taste curled on his tongue.

He had known centuries had passed. He’d sealed himself with full knowledge that the world would move on without him, prepared to awaken into a brand new world. Yet never had he expected that this world would be a broken, savaged, ruined version of his past. Of Old Sharlayan.

The ship creaked into harbor, the hull brushing against forgotten pylons as they came to rest before what was once a city of learning and light. He remembered how the Custom had once stood firm here, a gatekeeper of minds and dogma. Now, they passed unchallenged. Crows loitered like sentries above the ruins. When his boots touched the marble ground which used to shine with the light of knowledge, he realized Galuf nor Krile would be here for him this time.

He had little time to reminisce as it was, when Biggs the Third clapped a firm hand on his shoulder and shoved a folded map into his palm.

“Plan,” Biggs grunted. “We sweep the outer rings—see what’s still standing. We want books, schematics, anything that says ‘don’t touch’ in a dead language.”

“Considering the Forum’s preferences,” he found himself smiling wryly despite everything, “I doubt they marked anything clearly. A sign saying ‘Danger’ would offend their sense of subtlety. I expect we’ll find magical wards that summon golems before we find a warning label.”

“As per the records.” Biggs shrugged. “Where do we begin? Your call, Archon.”

“Noumenon remains our highest priority,” he wasted no time stepping over shattered debris toward the aetheryte that once pulsed with arcane life. It no longer functioned—just another relic, dust-choked and silent. He had used this very aetheryte countless times. Now it couldn’t even spark. “Yet ere we head there...I’d like to make one brief stop.”

Biggs tilted his head. “And that would be?”

Raha parted his lips, but the words failed him. He could not summon the courage to say that word. Instead, his gaze drifted upward, to the city that had once been his home. The domes and pillars now lay fractured—irreparably so. A part of him, almost wryly, reflected on the price he had paid for a future he never lived to see. The long sleep he had once believed would usher in an era of peace and prosperity for mankind now felt like a hollow wager.

And now his home had crumbled before his very eyes.

“Baldesion Annex.”

The name escaped him at last, foreign on his tongue, though he had once spent countless nights there—writing, researching, poring over tomes until dawn. He raised his eyes to meet those of Biggs the Third, who regarded him with a curious, though restrained, interest at the mention of the place.

“To my home,” Raha said simply.

Biggs the Third—bless the man—did not pry. He offered only a steady nod, then turned to signal the rest of the Ironworks crew, who voiced no protest but fell in behind them, weaving through what remained of the city. Moss had overtaken the once-pristine white marble floors and columns, but fragments of the old grandeur endured—as though some last vestiges of knowledge still clung stubbornly to this forgotten place.

Raha led the way himself. Strangely enough—even to him—his familiarity with the city had not faded. The old paths he once dismissed as youthful indulgence, the climbs and leaps he once boasted about, were now necessary to reach the half-toppled mansion where the Students had once dwelled.

As he crossed the remnants of that fallen bridge he’d walked countless times before and vaulted onto the worn stone stairs, a quiet dread coiled within him. For a moment, he almost believed Ojika might burst through the door, demanding to know whether Raha had poured out the Lalafell’s coffee instead of brewing his own. Or perhaps Krile would be shouting at him for slipping into the forbidden archives once again—uncaught, of course.

He bit down hard on his lower lip, drew in a breath, and pushed open the door.

What met him was ruin—rubble and silence. And yet, it was astonishingly clean. The records at the front desk were long decayed, just as expected, so they moved deeper down the corridor. Sections of the ceiling had caved in, making many rooms inaccessible. Still, the study had somehow remained untouched. He found his way to his old desk without pause. It was strange that it was still there after all these times. Perhaps he could praise the quality of the stones, for they had not perished with the rest of this building.

There was little left, naturally. Even so, by force of habit, he opened the second drawer—empty, as expected. 

No notes remained. Of course.

What had he hoped for?

He exhaled bitterly and shut the drawer. Then, almost absently, he reached for the top one. Perhaps some remnant had survived—something the Students had tucked away before the Eighth Calamity. Anything that might aid them now.

And later, when he recalled that moment, he would never quite understand how it had come to be. 

G’raha Tia was not a man who placed trust—or even hope—in fate. Yet he could admit this much: in that moment, fate had played a generous hand.

For there, inside, was an envelope.

With trembling fingers, he lifted it. He blew gently across the cover, careful not to disturb it with too much breath, as though even a sigh might destroy it.

His entire body trembled as he recognized the handwriting.

‘Twas his sister’s—the familiar loop and lean of Krile’s letters struck him like a physical blow. He drew a sharp breath, overwhelmed.

“I’ll walk a perimeter,” Biggs said softly, glancing between his face and the envelope. “Shout if the books start throwing punches.”

He gave a faint nod, his eyes still locked on the letter.

“…Thank you.”

—--

28th of Byregot, Year I, After the Eighth Calamity

I have decided today to put some of my thoughts to paper—or rather, to record what details I can of our research, for whatever span of time I am granted. How long that may be, I cannot say, but try I must.

The Black Rose has condemned us to a meagre harvest this year. That much alone could be stated—but we continue to search for a remedy to this catastrophe. In times like these, I cannot help but miss Y’shtola. She would have known precisely where to look, with eyes that saw far beyond the rest of us, and she would have given us new direction to a cure of this damned disease. 

The remainder of the page chronicles, in painstaking detail, several experiments performed upon patients—and the failures recorded thereafter.

2nd of Nald’thal, Year II, After the Eighth Calamity

We lost Urianger today.

The page is stained with liquid, the ink warped and blotted.

12th, Althyk, Year III, After the Eighth Calamity.

We are fewer today than yesterday. I am weary of writing that sentence. Still, I commit it to the page, that no one may imagine we simply forgot how to count. We did not. We counted everything—grain, candles, graves. We have precious little of any left, and I fear the days yet to come.

So I record this now—

The following pages are blurred by age, the words dissolved beyond recognition.

17, Llymlaen, Year VII, After the Eighth Calamity.

I cannot recall the last time I picked up this note. We sail tomorrow. This may be the final moment I have to write, and so write I shall.

Y’shtola Rhul held the Alliance line with every ounce of her might. She was, without doubt, one of the greatest mages ever to walk this star. None could hope to match her. She lit the heavens with fire and death, buying us time to flee from the land the Black Rose devoured. The sky rained flame that day, and I still remember the brightness of her eyes—though she could not see. How I wish she could have witnessed her own brilliance.

Thancred Waters died beside her. He carried children through smoke until his body surrendered. He pressed a knife into my hand and said, “You can stab me with this later if I’m wrong.” Gods help me, he was wrong about many things. I never did stab him. One of my few regrets. I wish he could have lived to see those children grow—to see how dearly they missed him.

Urianger Augurelt lit beacons in a night that rejected light. He scribbled equations for me on the backs of ration slips because we had burned every scrap of paper that was not vital. He was thinner than pride itself. On the final night, when the lamps guttered and would not bless us again, he murmured, “Would that I had time to be less elegant.” I told him, “You’re unbearable.” He smiled, and then he died without ceremony. His beacon burned three suns longer.

Tataru Taru wrought more miracles than the Twelve. I say that plainly. She fed us. She opened passage to a ship that had no right to float and ordered us aboard. The twins and I lived solely because of her. She told me to stop writing and help her lift crates, so I will end this entry soon—but not before penning what should have been written long ago.

They asked me today if the Warrior of Light would hate us for surviving when she did not. I told them she would have scolded us for wasting breath on guilt when there were roofs to mend. The room choked with grief. They sang of her—of hope, as though hope still dwelt among us. I could not shake the belief that hope had died with her, sealed away the day she fell.

Yet endure we must. History will remember Asakura Hypshay. They will praise her deeds, carve her name into every stone, and sing her to the heavens. And yet… one of our earliest conversations remains clear to me. She handed me a photograph from her expedition to Syrcus Tower and said, “You need it more than me.” It held Raha’s face. Only later, when Y’shtola told me what he meant to her, did I understand.

I cannot visit her grave as often as I wish. Teleportation and travel are luxuries now—like fresh vegetables. Pickled goods are all we can manage. I pity Raha for what awaits him when he wakes; he always hated sour food. Truth be told, I still harbour a small bitterness… that he sealed himself away without sparing a thought for us—for me. Yet I am grateful too, that he did not witness this. Mayhap, when he rises at last, he shall wake to a gentler world.

A new stock of vegetable seeds has reached us from Ilsabard. We know not what awaits us there, but we shall plant them, and hope they take root.

There was a photograph inside the envelope. Faded, barely holding its ink. On the back, a single word: NOAH.

The image showed a dark‑skinned Roegadyn, a taller Roegadyn beside a Lalafell in blue uniform, a silver‑haired Hyur and a blond Hyur scowling at one another, and beside them a red‑haired Miqo’te and an Au Ra girl.

Chapter Text

‘Twas hard to describe the taste in his mouth, if there’s any.

Two bells had passed since they landed on Sharlyan. G’raha Tia knew that they had little time to waste as it was, yet all he had done so far was staring at the pieces of papers he found in that envelope.

For countless excuses had passed his mind when he read about his sister's accusation—or rather, pleading in that envelope. Yet none could justify what he owed to Krile. The woman who’d treated him like a brother, took care of him more often than he could have counted, and yet didn’t even get a linkpearl call from him when he sealed himself away.

Yet she had thought fondly of him. 

How strange. 

Had Old Galuf wondered about him, he contemplated. Ere he had departed to Mor Dorhna, Galuf was preparing for his tour with Krile back ot the Isle of Val. ‘Twas because of that he had halted his connection to them, for he’d promised both Galuf and Krile that they would exchange tales after he’s back from his expendition—never had he expected that was their last conversation. 

His trembled fingers brushed against the letters she’d written done on the paper, which was miraculously kept, though they looked as if they’d be broken into pieces any time, and he dared not even cried over them, too afraid that any movement could break it.

A small part of him was making that decision in a rather rushed manner, he realized only then, that he was too afraid to admit at the moment he sealed himself away that he was rushing himself to make that decision on the spot. In the face of his destiny, something that he had whole-heartedly believed in, the life that he’d choose because fate had decided that this would be his path, that his destiny lied where the future was. He had trusted in fate. He had believed that he was embracing his destiny. 

And now he despised fate more than anything.

Had his stupidity faith in the guiding hand of fate had led them to this point of history? Would the path of their fate had changed course if he had not so willingly, oh so nobly committed his concealment of the Tower? With the Syrcus Tower untouched, and the tomes inside, mayhap they could yet come over this together. Mayhap then, there would really be a way to deal with the Black Rose. 

He knew full well what had come for Krile—for all four of the Scions that were still alive. The seventh year after the Eighth Calamity, Krile Baldison, together with Tataru Taru, and the Leveilleur twins would have went to Ilsbard, because that basket of seed never arrived. They would have travelled through the sea and gotten those seed, and successfully cultivated them—which were now the only stable vegetation that could afford to grow on contaminated soil by the Black Rose. They would have tried to save those in Illsbard from the plague of the land, and they would have died there. 

Every single one of them. 

None of the details had remained as to why that event had happened. Yet from what he had gathered so far, the lack of food resources—and likely the belief that once they had left the land, the land would return to a plain, lifeless region, had led to the cause. History would remember them, as those who had helped to feed so many after, but their body and bones were forgotten, just like the rest of the Scions.

Just like the Warrior of Light.

He choked on his own breath, breathing ragged as he once again ran his eyes across the photograph in the envelope—the only one that Cid had managed to save, using the crystals. 

The raven hair, the cyan eye, the one person that he’d hope would have a bright future. The star that he’d charted his course against. Indeed she’d secured her name in history, as they sang her song still yet after centuries, yet when he vowed about the star, he vowed about the eternity of that light, of the brightness, of beauty so profound in haven, and of a long and happy life.

She was indeed a star.

Yet a meteor.

So ephemeral, a mere five years when those cyan eyes would close forever.

He ran his finger closer to the edge of the photograph, not quite touching it, and stopped just as his fingertips was above her eyes. Knowing that she had kept their record of the NOAH already meant everything to him, and Krile’s words about what it had meant to her…

Tears came unbidden, gathering in his eyes, and he tried futilely to blink them back.The smile she wore in that photo was almost comforting, as if saying that he shall live his life fully, none of the sadness that shadowed their future in those cyan eyes.

How could he live a life, when there’s none left for her?

—---

“You were ready?” 

“As I will ever be”. Raha answered as he pulled the hood over his head, shielding himself briefly from the rain that came down upon them. He patted the pocket that now was tied to his innermost layer of cloth once again that contained the letter and photograph and nodded to Biggs the Third, “Apologies for keeping you waiting.”

“No need,” piped Fezonzon Fezon, ever chipper despite the damp. The Lalafell’s cheeks were flushed from exertion, her oil-stained gloves still smudged with copper dust. “We’ve kept ourselves plenty busy. The flora here’s untouched—must’ve been sealed off from the Black Rose fallout. The boys already found three species we thought gone for good. Even some sprouts of lapistal moss.”

“Heartening indeed,” he managed a smile, “Shall we then? To the Noumenon.”

Biggs the Third nodded, already falling into step beside him.

The path through the ruins was eerily silent, only the low whisper of rainfall over collapsed masonry, and the distant calls of seabirds circling what was once the Forum. The marble steps that once gleamed under sun and moonlight were now cracked and pitted, moss pushing through every seam. Raha walked ahead with his staff in hand, and tried to keep his watch despite the fatigue. They turned a crumbling corner, and his foot struck something hard. He stumbled forward—

Thudd

An arrow whistled past, just grazing the tip of his hood and embedding with a heavy thunk into the shattered frame of a fallen tree trunk.

“Ambush!” Biggs roared, ducking low and drawing his gun in a flash. “We’ve got company!”

Raha barely had time to scramble behind a fallen column, the chill of wet stone seeping through his clothes. Another arrow followed, burying itself in the ground inches from his knee.

“Sniper across the courtyard!” Biggs called out from behind a broken shelf. “Looks like they’ve barricaded the old Study Wing!”

The former library's facade loomed before them—its grand windows now shattered, the arches dark and covered in old banners that fluttered like flayed skin. Someone had made camp here: he saw shapes in the corners—makeshift barricades, torn tents, broken crates repurposed as cover.

“Scavengers,” he muttered, “Or survivors turned desperate.”

He extended his palm, summoning a barrier of shimmering aether around himself and Fezonzon. It flickered—unstable, already dimming under the pressure of his exhaustion.

“Fezonzon, status?”

“I’ve got an overcharged lantern—give me ten seconds and I can blind the bastards!”

“Make it five!” Raha barked, raising a warding spell over his chest, a pale shimmer flaring into shape.

Yet the next arrow didn’t come from ahead—it struck from the flank. Whoever had loosed it had already shifted positions, and swiftly at that. Whimsical as a ghost, unnervingly fast.

A creeping dread clawed at the edge of his mind. The last time he’d encountered an archer this skilled…

Was before his slumber.

But he had no time to dwell on the thought. He shook it off with a low curse, summoning what aether he could muster into his palm and hastily casting another barrier as the spectral archer shifted again.

Behind him, Biggs snarled a curse as one of the Ironworks crew charged, blades drawn, to meet the bandits pressing in from the rear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Raha registered it: the bandits weren’t charging headlong like typical ambushers.

No—they were circling. Waiting.

Like wolves waiting for a break in the line.

“On your seven—your seven! Behind you!!” 

A scream tore through the air as an arrow lodged itself deep into a crewman’s flank. He collapsed, gasping, while another crewmate scrambled to drag him to cover.

“Shit—stay with me, stay with me!” the second man shouted, already fumbling for a potion.

Raha howled his next incantation, all the while his mind was calculating non-stop. He’d seen this movement before, somewhere, it was so familiar, the way this archer emerged, the way those arrows shoot out.

“This damned thing was working an hour ago—why now?! WHY?!” Fezonzon Fezon cursed viciously, smacking the side of her glowing prism-lantern against a marble column as if brute force would repair magic circuits.

Before his mind could catch up, his body moved on its own accord, he all but used his shoulder to shovel Fezonzon out of the way, narrowly missing the arrows now was somehow shifting from seven to their twelve, coming in directly from before.

“Gods damn it all!” bellowed Biggs the Third. “Where in the hells are these fucking arrows coming from?!”

Raha rolled from the momentum of his shove, then seized Fezonzon by the waist—ignoring the startled yelp that escaped her—and sprinted for the nearest cover. Another round of arrows followed close behind, their deadly whine splitting the air.

“Ah—shit! You could’ve warned me!”

“Sorry,” Raha snapped, bracing on one knee and raising another barrier over them, “for bloody saving your life!”

The moment his boots struck the stone, a shiver crawled down his spine. Without hesitation, he incanted sharply, transmuting his staff into a sword in a single breath. His left arm flung out, intercepting the glint of steel inches from Fezonzon’s throat, catching it with his bare hand.

A dagger.

It was now hovered mere inches from her throat. He ignored the searing pain ripping through his left hand as he caught the blade—stopping the blow that had so clearly meant to kill the Lalafell—and the battle instinct he’d honed since awakening into this world surged to the fore as he almost involuntarily drove his right hand toward the attacker.

“...”

A stunned silence followed as G’raha Tia lifted his gaze. The hooded figure was petite, almost extremely so, the long cowl veiling their face as they lowered their head to look at the summoned sword now buried deep in their lower abdomen. Blood seeped steadily from the wound as the attacker staggered.

A chill crawled down his spine at the sight of the blade sunk in flesh. Before he could wrench the sword free—before he could even think—the attacker lunged forward instead of retreating, discarding the first dagger entirely to snatch another. They advanced again, heedless of the agony that must have been tearing through their abdomen, moving as though their body were nothing but a construct, a weapon fashioned to obey orders—to kill them. The sword drove deeper and deeper into their body, yet they moved as if numb to it, though their steps had clearly slowed under the steady drain of blood.

Time was no longer a luxury Raha could afford. His body moved on pure instinct, on the urge to protect. With his left hand—split nearly through—he caught the second dagger, twisted it in his grasp, shoved the attacker back, then clamped his left hand around the blade itself and used what remained of its edge to drive it up toward the attacker’s throat.

Blood.

It splashed across his face, streaked through his crimson hair, and ran down into his crimson eyes as the attacker finally went still.

At the exact same moment, the shouts of the Ironworks crew and the bandits continued to erupt around him, the chaos unbroken. Beside him, Fezonzon let out a sharp, victorious “Finally!” and darted forward to pull the trigger on the small device she’d been clutching.

“Cover your eyes!!”

Every Ironworks crew member ducked their head, and Raha’s eyes shut on instinct.

A violent burst of radiance exploded from the device, flooding the cloudy, rain-soaked sky of Old Sharlayan with blinding brilliance as the entire area vanished into pure white. The bandits, farther out and utterly unprepared for the duration of the flash, cried out in panic. Groans and curses rose around them as silhouettes crumpled, bodies dropping to the ground while they screamed themselves hoarse, clawing at their eyes.

Five. Four.

The attacker still clung to his sword, and with the pull of gravity and the reckless final rush, their body now slumped against him. The warm blood he had spilled seconds before was soaking into his cloak and tunic. They were so close it felt almost intimate, grotesquely so, in the middle of a battlefield.

Three. Two.

His eyes stayed shut as he focused on counting down the remaining seconds of the aether lantern’s flare. His nose twitched at the sudden nearness of another presence, a smell so close to his heart that he’d never forget—then he felt a hand brush against his ear.

And flick it. Once.

One.

G’raha Tia opened his eyes—to a pair of cyan blue ones.

—---

Hypshay’d just withdrawn her Echo from his body and found herself drifting in the air once more. The scene around her was hollow and familiar—unmistakably Old Sharlayan, still their home in its bones—but she no longer inhabited Raha’s body.

Drawing a steadying breath, she realized she was not far from him. The urge to reach him, to comfort him after watching him read that letter, gnawed at her. She turned, searching—expecting to find him nearby.

Instead, she found herself.

Or rather, a more pitiful version of herself—doll-like, porcelain skin stretched over something that resembled an artificial weapon, propped against a broken wall. The armor covering that body was thick, a long cloak draped over its head. Yet Hypshay knew, instinctively, that the musculature and posture were unmistakable—Peperoto had drilled that stance into her for years. She tilted her head, studying it in curiosity and amusement.

Of all the strange things she had witnessed, this was the second time she’d seen her own body through another pair of eyes—though she strongly doubted this was truly her. Before she could think too deeply on it, another voice cut through the air.

“Hey, they’re gettin’ close, Boss,” said a man as he stepped past. From long years of dealing with unsavory types, she could tell—this one reeked of it. “They’ve brought good stuff with ‘em too.”

“Hah,” a woman’s voice followed, cutting sharp and dry. Another figure entered behind the first. “Put her to use then. Be patient. This group’s big.”

“Aye, aye.”

Hypshay narrowed her eyes and watched the first bandit approach the body—if indeed it was hers—then slap its cheek lightly.

“Time to work, little warrior.”

“.....”

The doll—she decided she would call it that, because calling it her body felt wrong—remained utterly still. The bandit spat a curse under his breath, then sighed, cleared his throat, and adopted a sanctimonious, mocking tone more hypocritical than most she’d heard.

“Pray protect us, Warrior of Light,” he drawled. “There are horrible persons coming for us.”

The doll was silent for a heartbeat longer. Then, almost imperceptibly, its eyes shifted. It pushed itself away from the wall and, in a smooth motion, vaulted down from its perch.

Hypshay’s mind was still scrambling to catch up when the bandit boss laughed.

“It never ceases to amaze me that this thing still works after all these years. And with words as well!” She clapped the first man on the shoulder. “Round up the boys. We’ll show them a hospital, Sharlayan style.”

Hypshay realized she had no time to linger—not if she wanted to rouse Raha. Her instincts were screaming at her in unison. Though this was a memory, it felt like something more—as if she were actually walking within history rather than merely observing it.

In her spectral form she moved swiftly, following the path she knew her own body would surely take, phasing through brick and tree trunks until she reached the high ground where no one could have caught her, yet where she had a clear vantage over the entire battlefield. And there, unsurprisingly, she saw the doll.

Drifting toward the doll, now crouched neatly behind a wall, she reached out as though to touch it. Yet before her fingers could rise to its face, the figure shifted.

She knew that movement far too well.

With a curse, she followed as the doll vaulted away, and she unmistakably heard Raha’s voice rising from below, mingled with the shouts of several other crew members.

“Seven hells—” she hissed, knowing full well no one could hear her now. She lunged for the bow in the doll’s hands, trying—and failing—to wrest it away. “Wouldn’t you stop there?”

Yelling and screaming swelled up from the battlefield as she threw herself toward the doll again, desperate to help the Ironworks crew even as nothing more than a ghost—even though, technically, all of this had already taken place long ago. But every attempt was useless. Arrow after arrow shot from nowhere as the doll shifted positions, moving exactly as she would have in the midst of a battlefield.

And while the Ironworks were far from incompetent, they were no match for her in combat. She had been doing this all her life, ever since Peperoto had found her and forged her into a weapon.

“You really are hard to keep up with, aren’t you, Asakura Hypshay?”

She cursed again and sprang onto the next pillar after the doll, knowing almost exactly which vantage it would take after loosing its next volley. She also knew that if this continued, Raha would stand no chance against it.

Another shift in position, another sharp cry from below. From the crew’s shouts, they were already down three. Raha did not look well either—the aether he could muster now was a pale shadow of what he once commanded as the Exarch, and even less than what he’d wielded after returning to the Source. In this state, he was practically a novice.

They would all be dead in the next three minutes, she realized.

The doll came to a halt directly in front of her as it circled toward the crew’s three o’clock, having struck from their seven. Before it could move again, Hypshay suddenly remembered how Ardbert had merged with her—and with a gambler’s reckless bet, she hurled herself forward and slammed into the doll’s body.

A searing pain tore through her the instant her hand met that form, as if history itself were trying to reject her intrusion, to set the timeline right. She forced herself through it, teeth clenched, fighting to seize control of the body—but it was almost futile. The movement was already there, pre-written, and the hold she had on it was threadbare.

So instead of struggling against it outright in a doomed attempt to protect the crew, she chose another path. She drove the doll forward—not in the circling pattern meant to keep distance, but straight ahead, closing the gap toward the Ironworks.

This thought seemed far less at odds with whatever remnant of instinct controlled the doll, because the body obeyed.

The doll—and Hypshay within it—charged toward the nearest pair in sight: the Lalafell and Raha, now huddled behind the ruins. And instead of nocking another arrow, with no small effort and her jaw clenched hard enough to ache, Hypshay groaned through the doll’s lips and drew a dagger instead.

Only if she came into close reach—only if he had the chance to lay hands on her—would he have any hope of winning.

Something she had learned through all their sparring.

The doll moved again before she could intervene further, intent on slitting the Lalafell’s throat, no doubt. Hypshay hissed out a breath as she fought to halt the motion, and exhaled shakily when Raha caught the blade with his bare hand.

He barely made a sound through the pain. In the same instant, he lifted his right hand and summoned the sword, and it took everything Hypshay had to keep the doll from jerking back—or from slashing his throat with the arrow braided into its hair—and instead force it to remain still.

‘Twas not pain she felt first when Raha’s blade drove through the doll’s chest.

‘Twas relief.

She let out a ragged breath. The agony of being split open across the lower abdomen momentarily loosened her grip on the body. She struggled to steady herself, fighting through the searing ache lancing through her mind and the doll seized the opportunity to grab a second dagger out, aiming for Raha’s heart. Before she could reassert control, Raha’s hand snapped forward; he reversed his grip on the dagger and, with one clean motion, cut her throat.

And though her hold on the body was weakened—she could still feel everything inside it.

The pain in her abdomen was nothing compared to the burning in her throat. Yet even then, pain was not the first sensation that struck her—but a strange, almost cloying sweetness. It seeped through her as she hacked and choked along with the body, slumping forward until she leaned against Raha’s chest.

Not bad. She thought. ‘Twas almost a hug.

She wanted to open her mouth—use the doll’s voice to tell him to wake the hell up from this nightmare—but the blood pouring from her throat denied her any sound. So instead, she simply used the moment to look at him.

He was older than when she’d first met him, yet still younger than the Exarch she had known. And as he stared back at her, she realized he probably had not killed many people yet—unlike her. ‘Twas no surprise, given that he had spent most of his life safely in Sharlayan, while she had grown up in the ruins of Doma.

Slowly, she lifted the doll’s hand. She saw fear in those crimson eyes—and a sharp, raw guilt—and her heart screamed with the ache she felt for him, for everything he had forced himself to do in order to save her. The hood covering the doll’s head slipped back as her arm rose. A shout from the Lalafell rang out, and she watched Raha’s eyes squeeze shut on instinct.

Then she leaned closer still. The doll’s instinct—gone now, most likely—no longer fought her as she raised her hand, sight already eaten away by the blinding light.

And she flicked his ear once.

Chapter Text

G’raha Tia’s entire body trembled. 

“Hey, good lad,” Fezonzon’s voice called from beside him as Biggs’s victory howl echoed in the distance—yet he heard none of it.

Almost at once he dispelled the sword. The body sagged into his arms; so slender, so fragile. With shaking hands he pulled back the cloak from the corpse.

And everything in his world—everything—burnt.

He dropped to his knees and let out a raw, guttural sound, a howl torn from the bottom of his lungs, so animal-like that the Ironworks crew still busy fastening cuffs on the bandits all turned toward him.

If this was some kind of strange, cruel joke, or dream—then he’d had enough. 

He lowered his head slowly and looked down at the body whose throat he had just slit, and he laughed loudly. 

“No, no,” he shook his head as he slapped his own face and laughed again, “Wake the hell up, G’raha Tia. Fuck the Eigth Calamity. Fuck the death of the Warrior of Light. ‘Twas just a dream.”

Frantically he pressed his hand to her neck and forced a tender smile onto his face.

“Hypshay, can you hear me?”

The body did not respond.

“Please, please,” he begged, “this must be a dream. You cannot possibly be—how is this even possible? Please wake up, please, please. I am sorry, I am so, so sorry. I can make this right, I can—”

Her blood seeped into everything as he laughed again, not even knowing what he was laughing at—or for. Tears ran down his cheeks as he felt a hand settle on his shoulder, but he could not hear a word anyone said.

“Please, Shay,” he whispered, pressing his lips to the cold hand he now held, “I didn’t know—I didn’t, how could I—this is not true, this can’t be true—”

He clutched her body tightly to his chest, begging, laughing and crying all at once, pleading with her to wake. Because how could she be dead? How could he have managed to kill her—? It was absurd, impossible—and if it was impossible, then it was good, because that meant everything was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream—

“You are alive, you must be—you—”

A blow crashed into his face, so hard that his whole body reeled backward. His head throbbed like hell, but still he clung to her, refusing to release his hold, until two pairs of hands seized him and began to drag him away from the corpse.

“What—” he shouted, “why are you taking her away—”

“G’raha Tia!!” a voice snarled. “Open your eyes! That’s not her!”

He blinked, trying to comprehend the impossible, and before he could react another slap struck his face, sharp enough to dizzy him. He blinked again, vision swimming, then slowly turned his head. His senses began, bit by bit, to crawl back to him.

Biggs the Third stood in front of him, while two other Ironworks crew members pinned his arms. The attacker’s body was being hauled a short distance away by another crewmember.

“...That thing,” Biggs said, swallowing as he met Raha’s eyes, then briefly looking aside as if the words themselves hurt, “is not the Warrior of Light. No matter what you might believe otherwise.”

“...What do you mean?” Raha laughed again, the sound more like a growl as he struggled against the crew’s grip. “That’s her. We found her. Now we just need to wake her up—I didn’t mean to—”

“That is not Asakura Hypshay!” Biggs barked, gripping Raha’s shoulders with both hands. “I didn’t tell you before because—” He faltered, cursed under his breath. “Godsdammit, I didn’t want to break you. You’d only just woken up, and the way you reacted to the news of her death…”

He looked away, jaw clenched.

“I thought I’d wait. Let you stabilize. Let you grieve in your own time. Those… those replicants—they were long gone. Or so we believed. I didn’t expect we’d run into one here.”

“...Replicants?”

“Yes,” said Biggs the Third. “As you well know from the records we recovered from NOAH—the Allagan Empire had long mastered the art of replicant creation through blood and memory. Not unlike Doga and Unei, whom you’ve met…And Garlemald—well, they came into possession of her body after the war. For nearly a moon they held it, before the Alliance—or what remained of it—managed to reclaim her. And…”

He faltered, throat tightening too much to continue.

“And they used her body for experimentation,” Fezonzon finished for him, her voice tinged with quiet sorrow. “The Empire’s hounds rooted out what secrets they could from the Allagan legacy—though never the whole truth. The replicants they engineered bore her likeness, but none of her memory. None of her spirit. No soul. They were desperate weapons—crafted to shatter the hope of the Alliance ranks. But the Twelve bless Hien Rijin and Aymeric de Borel… They succeeded in destroying most of them before they could be loosed upon the world. And they buried the truth so deep that no one would ever remember her like that.”

“Cid Garlond was there,” Biggs the Third added quietly. “He saw it all, and committed it to his private journal. That’s the only reason we know any of this. The few that were made… were believed to have been destroyed long ago. We’ve no idea why one would surface in Sharlayan—across two centuries, no less.”

“We didn’t know it was her,” murmured one of the Ironcrew still gripping his arms. “But when you shouted her name… we saw the look—and…”

His resistance ebbed. His limbs slowly slackened as his gaze turned to the body now being lifted with uncommon gentleness by the Ironcrew—cradled with care he’d rarely seen from such hardened hands.

She looked so...serene.

He didn’t know how to feel. At all. 

Because if this was truly just a doll—then what did that make of Doga and Unei? What were they, when they had chosen to become something more than any one man or woman should ever be asked to bear?

And yet…this wasn’t her.

Nothing could ever replace her. No imitation, no borrowed face or form could matter. What mattered was the essence—the soul. He would have accepted her in any shape, any body—but when that thing had charged and tried to kill an innocent woman, it proved the truth. It lacked her soul, her memory. It had been repurposed by Garlemald. Made into a weapon.

They had used her even in death. Defiled her. Experimented on her body, and if he had the chance, he would have wrung the neck of every last wretch responsible—dragging their lifeless forms to the abyss a hundred times over.

This wasn’t just grotesque.

It was desecration.

The very existence of this imitation spat in the face of everything Asakura Hypshay had been—everything she had fought for.

And yet.

Why did he feel so wrong to kill…it?

Why had…she flicked his ear?

“...Hey,” came a quiet voice, breaking into his spiraling thoughts. A hand settled gently on his shoulder—Biggs. “How about you take a little time to rest and let us handle the search for now?”

He hesitated.

Biggs gave him a soft nod. “We can manage. Any relics or tomes, we’ll gather and make a first pass. Then bring them to you. Meanwhile, maybe you could help set up camp?”

Tears still tracked his cheeks. It was more than just the rain. Something fierce burned inside him—a belief that would not yield.

“No—no,” he heard himself say. His voice was frayed, ragged from the scream. “That… would take too much time. Time we cannot afford. Not after I’ve wasted so much of it already. I—I’ll be fine. Allow me to…”

He stopped, eyes drawn again to the body now limp in an Ironcrew’s arms.

“...Allow me to bury her first.”

Biggs looked at the body of the doll—of the mimicery of Asakura Hypshay, and turned to face him fully. He knew not what Biggs had seen on his face, whatever it was, clearly gave the man a long pause. At last, he nodded solemnly.

“Very well. Let’s give her a proper burial.”

—---

Hypshay had to sit with it.

Not physically—she had no body here, not really—but she still sank down on some half-remembered stone, folded phantom arms over phantom knees, and just… breathed. Or pretended to.

It took her a good five minutes before the spinning stopped.

Technically, this was the second time she’d died.

Raha would absolutely hate hearing her put it that way. If he ever found out she joked about her own deaths like some punchline to a grim fairytale, he’d fuss for hours.

The first death was a bit different than this one. 

When she’d finally died beneath Zenos’s hand, the blood loss had already numbed her, chilled her; the end had felt less like dying and more like sinking into sleep—straight into her Nemesis. He had thrown everything he possessed into that last clash, and in respect to him—and in obedience to the destiny that Hydaelyn had laid before her—she had poured in everything she had as well. The scars he carved into her still marked her skin to this day, defiantly resisting even the finest magicks, as though he were taunting her from beyond the veil, inviting her into death’s sweet, shared slumber—though she, of course, had her own plans. 

Adrenaline had devoured every other sensation then. The only thought in her skull had been how she’d kill Zenos first. Nothing else. Something she realized only later he had sought from the beginning—something she could only offer him once she had accepted her own destined death. Pain, exhaustion, terror—none of it mattered compared to the raw exhilaration of the fight, the bone-deep yearning for rest, the two of them baring their teeth like the last beasts alive at the edge of existence.

And dying by Raha’s hand was…far more merciful.

Raha had aimed for a swift and gentle end, even as she—the doll—attacked them without restraint. His cut had gone straight to the aorta, precise and deliberate, meant to spare her even a breath of struggle. He’d struck deep, hoping blood loss might sweep her into unconsciousness before pain could take hold.

Yet…’twas much more painful, too.

She had always prided herself on withstanding what no one else could—on being wielded by Doma, by the Scions, by the Exarch, by Hydaelyn herself. She endured what others could not, and in doing so, saved those she longed to protect.

To her, it had always been a fair trade.

So nothing could explain the ache that ripped through her—when Raha’s blade kissed her throat, when his eyes looked upon her as a stranger, when they stood on opposite sides of the battlefield.

Rationally, she knew that ‘twas only his memory, small changes here and there would change nothing about how he’d remember about the event, yet somehow, she couldn’t help the retaliation, the gesture that she’d grown to like of toying his ear when they’d play fight. A tiny, stupid gesture.

Her vision slowly cleared as she drew a deep breath, trying to reorient herself, trying to find the Ironworks crew. She still wanted to wake him—or at least, to witness what had followed the doll’s death.

Something he’d never spoken of. She realized that now.

Raha had barely spoken to her about the Eighth Calamity at all.Not that he was hiding it, exactly. When asked directly, he answered. He never lied. But he always, always circumvented the worst of it—sidestepped it. Skimmed over certain moments like a stone across water. Enough truth to satisfy both honesty and her curiosity, but never enough to carve him open with the telling.

And she hadn’t pressed. She’d seen the way his eyes went distant and red when the subject surfaced. The way his hands knotted in his sleeves. Some wounds weren’t meant to be picked apart.

She found them on a low rise overlooking what had once been a stately Sharlayan square—now a slope of broken stone and overgrown grass. Beyond, the sea hung in a dull grey smear, and the shattered towers stood like ribs against the sky.

The Ironworks crew were digging.

They had chosen a modest hill that offered a quiet view of the ruins. Two worked the earth with spades. A third knelt beside the corpse—her corpse, this imitation—adjusting the cloak so it fell more neatly over the arms.

Ha, she thought. So that’s what it feels like to attend one’s own funeral.

It would have been morbidly funny, if not for the look on Raha’s face.

He was among the first at the grave. Coat soaked, hair plastered to his cheeks, crimson eyes rimmed raw. Dirt already clung under his nails as he helped hollow out the earth with his own hands instead of a shovel. Hypshay moved closer, until she stood right beside him.

The grave was shallow but lovingly made. The crew laid the body down as if it were something precious, not a Garlean experiment monstrosity. Someone produced a folded scrap of cloth from their own pack, hesitated, then laid it gently over the doll’s face. 

“May she rest in peace now,” one of the Hyur murmured. “No more bastards to disturb a hero’s sleep. No more disgrace.”

Raha’s head turned toward the man. For a brief second, gratitude flickered over his features, then his gaze dropped back to the body at his feet. He stepped forward, the world constricting around him. Hypshay felt herself pulled with him, as if his focus was dragging her closer. He knelt at the edge of the grave. Mud soaked into his trousers but he didn’t seem to notice, and she mirrored him without thinking.

“My apologies,” he whispered, reaching out with one shaking hand. His fingers came to rest lightly atop the cloth-covered hand of the doll. “That our meeting was under such a circumstance. And for…the fight we had.”

His voice cracked on the last words.

He stopped, swallowing hard. She could see tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, clinging stubbornly to his lashes. He blinked them away. 

“I hope that you can rest well now,” he went on, softer. “Wherever your… pattern unwinds. I hope you will never again be taken up as a weapon. Not by those bandits. Not by Garlemald. Not by any who would use your face for their own ends.”

His hand shifted almost imperceptibly, thumb brushing a line over the linen as if it were skin.

“And I hope,” he said, voice rough as a torn page, “that the history which led us here will be unwritten. That this path—the one that made you—never happens.”

Hypshay turned to look at him fully. 

“So I pray we shall never meet again,” he finished, drawing in a shuddering breath. “In any other history. That the chain of events that birthed you will be voided. And you…”

He closed his eyes.

“I pray that you never come to exist in the first place.”

Hypshay stared at him for two long heartbeats.

He meant every word.

And suddenly she recalled the term Emet‑Selch had once used for the Exarch—obsession.

Had the Ascian been here, he would have understood this better than anyone. He’d likely sneer first, mock Raha for being a fool, then turn to her and say, There. See? I told you he was obsessed.

Raha pulled his hood a little lower over his brow, shadowing his sanguine eyes. With both hands he scooped dirt from the wet ground and began to cover the doll’s face with careful, trembling motions. The soil fell in soft, muted thuds, mixing with the rain that drummed steadily around them. Mud streaked his gloves, dark against pale fabric.

The sky wept with him, a quiet, grey sonata that marked every handful of earth.

More crew joined in, adding their own scoops of soil until the shrouded form beneath was only a rising mound. Hypshay watched as the curve of the linen vanished, as hands and chest and the faint outline of horns disappeared under the weight of the land, until at last there was just an even, damp swell in the grass.

They stood in silence once the makeshift ceremony was done, heads bowed, hands folded. The only sound the patter of rain and the distant crash of waves against the far-off cliffs.

Then Raha straightened. He drew one last, steadying breath—as though tucking his grief into some hidden chamber—and lifted his gaze to the others.

Biggs the Third said nothing, only clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder before the group filed down the slope one by one, boots skidding through wet grass and fractured stone. They made their way toward the broken silhouette of what had once been Sharlayan’s proudest hall of knowledge, while Hypshay followed in Raha’s wake.

Outwardly, he behaved as though nothing were amiss. He slipped seamlessly back into practicality—pointing out where scavengers might have overlooked caches, where the inner stacks could still be intact beneath collapsed floors. He guided the crew toward promising wings, identified tomes that could be related to time travel half-buried in rubble, marked anything salvageable. By dusk, they had assembled a small but invaluable trove—tomes on aetheric amplification, schematics for resonance arrays, and a treatise that made three engineers inhale a collective, awed “Oh, hells yes,” detailing methods for cultivating vegetation in low‑aether or aether‑starved environments.

“Imagine if we’d had this fifty years ago,” one murmured, reverent fingers brushing the dampened page. “We could’ve done so much.”

“We have it now,” Raha replied gently. “That must suffice. Please keep it dry. And get some rest. I’ll take the first watch.”

“No, you won’t,” Biggs grunted. “Sit down before you tip over.”

“I’m not tired. I’d rather take the first round while my mind is still on the day’s work.”

“That’s not how sleep works—”

Fezonzon appeared at his elbow and tugged on his sleeve sharply. When Biggs looked down, she shook her head once.

“Let him,” she murmured under her breath. “Let him burn off whatever he’s got going on.”

Biggs grunted, still clearly unhappy, but finally threw up his hands. 

“Fine. Fine. But you eat something.”

He shoved a small loaf into Raha’s hand—dense, travel-worn, but still intact—and pointed two fingers at his eyes, then at Raha, in a I’m watching you gesture before turning away to help the others with the tents.

Raha gave a ghost of a smile at his back. Then, as soon as the Roegadyn was out of sight, he turned away from the fire, settled himself against a half-collapsed bookshelf at the edge of their little encampment, and pulled a small pouch from his side.

Not a single bite crossed his lips. He broke the loaf in half and stuffed it into the pouch.

Hypshay sat down beside him, cross-legged.

How predictable. She thought with a familiar feeling of exasperation. Should’ve told Lyna about his eating behavior next time passing Crystarium.

He held his staff across his lap, gaze scanning the shadows with outward focus, but she could see the distance in his eyes. Every creak of broken stone, every whisper of wind through shelves, seemed to pull him further inward instead. By the time the night had deepened and the moons were pale smears behind heavy cloud, the second watch woke and shuffled over.

“G’raha?” the young Elezen murmured, rubbing his eyes. “My turn to take over. You should rest.”

Raha blinked as if dragged back from far away. For a heartbeat, his expression was naked, exhausted, hollow. Then he smoothed it away with a practiced, weary smile.

“Of course,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll just take a final patrol around the perimeter before I retire.”

And though he likely believed the mask convincing—Hypshay had seen that particular strain of smile too many times to mistake it for anything but—she rose without hesitation and followed him. She walked beside him as he slipped out of the crumbling library wing, their steps echoing faintly against marble tiles and scattered pebbles, until at last they reached a broken column—and he stopped, frozen.

Then Raha vomited.

Nothing solid came up. There was nothing to bring up. He hadn’t eaten. Only thin, bitter fluid splashed to the ground, spattered by rain. He made a strangled, half-choked sound, clapping one hand over his mouth as if he could hold the reaction in by force.

His body disagreed.

Another heave wracked him, harsh and dry. His tail lashed once, then dropped, limp.

Hypshay flinched instinctively, moving closer. “Raha—”

He couldn’t hear her.

His throat worked again, muscles clenching. The acid burned his mouth, nose, eyes. His breathing went ragged. He tried to straighten, failed, one hand tightening on the pillar until his knuckles went white.

“…’Twas just the artifact,” she said, the words tumbling out in a rush, as much for her as for him. “Just a loop, a trick of the artifact. Please—just wake up, and this will all disappear.”

He gagged again, body folding nearly in half as another empty wave hit. His stomach seemed determined to empty what nothing he had left until the only thing coming up was bile and old fear. Fluid pooled at his feet, diluted by rain into pale, sickly streaks that ran between the cracks of the stone. He swayed, both hands now clutching his abdomen, fingers digging in as if he could hold himself together. His legs trembled violently.

Then they gave out.

“Raha!” 

Hypshay cried, surging forward as his knees hit the ground with a hard crack. The impact jolted his entire frame. He dragged in a sharp breath through his teeth and snapped his mouth shut again, as if terrified of the sound that might escape.

“Please, please wake up,” she begged, dropping down beside him, reaching through his shoulder as if she could steady him. “This isn’t real. None of this is real. I’m here, I—”

He doubled over further, almost curling around his own middle. His back shook. His tail lay flattened against the wet stone, soaked and limp. His breathing came too fast now, shallow and uneven. He stayed like that—kneeling, hunched, one hand on the ground, the other gripping his coat over his stomach—struggling for breath. Every inhale sounded like it scraped his throat raw. His ears were plastered back against his skull, flattened in some instinctive attempt to shut the world out. He forced his jaw shut. Muscles in his face stood out, tight as a bowstring. His eyes screwed closed.

And then…nothing.

No more heaving. No more gasping. Just shaking. The tremors ran down his arms into his hands, fingers digging into the stone, claws scraping uselessly. And for a terrifying moment, Hypshay thought he might simply tip forward and not get up again.

“Raha,” she whispered, voice breaking. “Raha, look at me. Please.”

He couldn’t hear her. 

His head stayed bowed, forehead almost touching the back of his hand braced on the ground. She shifted, scrambling around to kneel in front of him, trying to catch his face in her nonexistent hands, to force his gaze up.

“Hey,” she commanded, knowing he couldn’t hear. “G’raha Tia. Breathe.”

His chest hitched. The first inhale was still too fast, too shallow.

“In,” she said, counting softly. “One… two… three… and out. One… two… three…”

His breath stuttered, but it did come. Another short inhale. Another shuddering exhale. Somewhere between her counting and his panic, the rhythm began to lengthen, almost despite him. Lightning flickered beyond the shattered ceiling, casting a brief, stark light across his face. He looked pale. Eyes squeezed tight. Rain and sweat mingled on his skin.

His lips moved.

“…Hypshay…” he rasped, barely audible.

“I’m here,” she answered immediately, even if he couldn’t hear it. “I’m right here.”

His fingers twitched against the stone. Slowly, as if prying them open took ten times his strength, he lifted one hand. It hovered in the air between them, reaching toward something only he could see—fingers curled like they were used to closing around a bow, a horn, a hand.

She leaned in, pressing her cheek to that hovering hand, pretending—for both their sakes—that he could feel it.

“Raha,” she said softly. “You didn’t kill me. And what they did with my body in that world? That’s on them, not on you.”

His hand dropped. It hit the stone with a dull slap.

“I miss you,” he whispered raggedly, eyes still closed. “I miss you.”

She wanted to reply, but that same dizziness was returning now—the one that kept dragging her from one memory to another, unstuck in time. Gritting her teeth, Hypshay summoned the last of her strength and reached out with both hands to seize his ears—though she couldn’t touch him in truth—and forced each word past the rising weight of the pull.

“I’m coming for you, G’raha Tia,” she said, as the artifact—or the Echo, whatever it was—began to strip her consciousness from her again. “Wait for me.”

Chapter Text

“With the last surge of aether amplification here—” Biggs gestured to the technical schematic outlining the system enabling temporal displacement, “we’d be able to launch the entire Tower back, crystals and all. Though none among us can resonate with it—save you.” He lifted his gaze briefly toward Raha. “None of this would’ve been feasible had we not journeyed to Sharlayan for that amplification tome you managed to unearth.”

“Nor would it have been feasible,” Raha replied softly, eyes lingering on the diagram, “had the Garlond Ironworks not conceived this device in the first place. Without Cid daring to propose such a mad, reckless notion—one that endured across two centuries... None of it could have happened.”

“Sentiment upon sentiment,” Fezonzon chuckled. “Who else is there to thank but the Warrior of Light herself? Alexander was the linchpin in developing this mechanism. Defeating Alexander allowed our forebears to decipher the Enigma Codex—and understand how it governed Alexander, and time alongside it. And then…” She turned the small toy in her hand—a six-armed little thing, passed down through Garlond Ironworks for generations. “With Omega’s data—another foe she felled. ’Tis almost unthinkable, what that woman achieved with Cid Garlond and the Ironworks.”

Raha’s eyes settled on the toy—once a symbol of destruction, now a relic of memory. The dimension-traversing superweapon designed to destroy Shinryu, the adversary she had faced alone after he sealed himself away. A thing once without a soul…that had, somehow, found a heart.

“...She is forever,” he murmured, voice reverent, “and truly extraordinary. Without her heroism, none of this would have been possible. The food, the resources, the refuge freely given wherever we went—offered because they knew it was in her name. Even this organization exists only because of her. It was through it that you were able to awaken me…”

He faltered, then spoke again, solemn and sure.

“…And so we’ll rewrite history—for her.”

“With the temporal and dimensional coordinates fixed, the end draws nigh,” Biggs the Third murmured. “In less than three bells, we’ll be ready for departure. The Tower will supply the aether required to carry out the plan in full—no other construct holds so much now that Black Rose has devoured the living land. But…” He swallowed, “only you can go through. With your blood.”

“And you sound jealous,” Raha laughed. “Is that what this is about, Biggs?”

“Damn right jealous,” Fezonzon muttered, half a curse, half a jest. “You get to do this alone—risk your life on a plan that might not work at all, and in the slim chance that it does, erase your own name and face, just to witness a different timeline—with hope, and life, and love—only to vanish from it in the end. What a marvelous fate. What’s not to envy?”

“’Tis not as grim as it sounds,” Raha chuckled, lifting his mug to savor the ale—one of the last luxuries they might enjoy for a long while, perhaps ever. “I…I get to see her again. With luck.”

Biggs exchanged a look with Fezonzon; both of them sighed. Fezonzon exhaled slowly and pushed herself to her feet.

“May luck be with you, G’raha Tia,” she said, regarding him intently, as though trying to commit his features to memory. “You’ve a good heart, lad. Use it wisely—and kindly. The road ahead is still long. I’ll get some sleep, and you two should do the same. Big day for a launch tomorrow.”

“You have been a good mentor and friend to me, Fezonzon,” Raha said, nodding firmly towards her,  “’Twas an honor to have met you—and to have worked alongside you for our shared cause.”

Fezonzon gave a curt nod, and the Lalafell—no longer young, but still unbending—turned away. Her small frame looked worn, but resolute, as she made her way back toward her tent. Raha’s gaze followed her until she vanished into the night.

The drawing lay between them by the campfire, and above, countless stars stretched across the sky of Mor Dhona. He couldn’t help but recall that a lifetime ago, he had sat beneath these same stars, under the same Tower, sharing ale with the Garlond Ironworks crew as well. With Cid, who had grumbled about their recklessness and indulged them all the same. With Biggs and Wedge, whose chatter always brightened any gathering. With Rammbroes, perhaps the only truly serious one, watching over them while they charged ahead too quickly. With Nero, who complained, sneered, and cursed at everything—but poured more fervor into his work than anyone else.

They must have put their whole lives into pursuing this path too. How could they not, after witnessing a star rise toward the heavens—only to fall into the darkness of the Black Rose?

He could still recall her scent—something floral and clean, like autumn lilies blooming in the morning mist. The way her eyes caught the light—twin stars lodged in his chest. The way her muscles coiled and released every time she moved with effortless grace. The sound of her voice—soft and commanding all at once, sometimes teasing, sometimes light.

The stars still shone on him tonight. On Garlond Ironworks. On the Crystal Tower.

And she lay long buried beneath the earth.

A long silence stretched between them until Biggs finally broke it.

“I know we’ve spoken of this several times now, but I’m going to ask again.” The Roegadyn’s hands gripped his mug of ale as though it were a lifeline, knuckles pale. He looked at Raha intently across the flickering fire between them. “Are you certain you would like to do this, G’raha Tia?”

“Who else could do it, Biggs?” he replied softly, a sad smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “If there’s even a chance—no matter how slim—that this world can be saved...if it means rewriting that vile history...then I’d be honored to carry out this plan.”

Biggs’s brow furrowed, the weight of his worry deepening the creases on his forehead. 

“But there are no guarantees,” he pressed, “No one’s ever tried anything like this before. Though we’ve gone through the calculation multiple times, there’s no saying that this would actually work. You could be lost—time, space, reality itself could twist beyond recognition. You might—”

“Die?” Raha interjected, a bitter smile playing on his lips as he took a sip of his ale. “Yes, I’m well aware. But what is one life compared to the chance to save countless others? To undo the devastation?”

He looked down into his mug, watching the faint ripples of the amber liquid. The thought that this might finally work—after so many sleepless nights, after centuries torn apart from her in time—and perhaps the ale loosening his tongue more than usual, drew a softer smile from him as he went on.

“...To bring her back?”

Biggs fell silent.

Raha drank, then lifted his gaze to the stars that had watched over them for ages. Countless constellations gazed back, as if to say this was nothing but a fool’s dream.

Yet to him, his life had already been forfeit—the day he heard of her death, a mere five years after he’d gone into his slumber. From that moment, he had decided his own life would be meaningless if it could not be spent to save hers. He held no claim to her heart, had no real hope of winning it—for all he could tell, Lord Haurchefant Greystone had deserved it more than anyone, far more than he ever would.

But if he could…if he could save her—if there was even the faintest chance of saving her—then he had to try.

Some small, stubborn part of him still hoped the plan would succeed. That if he could bring her back, then whether she remembered him or not in the end… would matter little.

As long as she lived a better life.

A happier life.

“Why did you do it? Why did you stay behind in the Crystal Tower?” Biggs asked suddenly then. 

“You would ask me this now?” Raha blinked, caught off guard, then let out a curt sigh.

“Would you rather I asked you on the morrow?” Biggs grinned, though it didn’t reach his eyes, “I understand you were the only one who could have done it, and hindsight has shown it to be the right choice. Were it not for you, our dreams would be just that. But you couldn’t have known that at the time. Not for sure. What if we had never opened the tower?”

What if. Indeed.

He thought of the tears he’d shed once the great doors had sealed behind him, the fear that gnawed at his heart knowing he’d awaken in a world where none of his companions remained—where she would be long gone. But even then, it had been the best choice—the only choice. A desperate measure to prevent the Tower from falling into the hands of the Empire—or worse, the Ascians.

And though he had questioned his decision a thousand times in the long silence that followed…

He had never once regretted it.

“I would have slept for all eternity,” he found himself smiling. “Which would, if nothing else, have been ironic. For it was only as the gates of the tower were closing behind me that I realized what it meant to awaken to one’s true purpose.”

“Go on...” Biggs the Third leaned in, eyes gleaming with childlike intrigue, as if awaiting the next lines of a bedtime tale.

Raha’s heart stirred, unexpectedly full. He met those eyes and smiled.

“In those days, I could but dream of being counted with the likes of Cid, Nero, Biggs, and Wedge─indeed, I would still give my right arm to achieve half of what they achieved. But more than that… there was her. Asakuara Hypshay. Did you know I stole her spoils the very first time we met? Right under her nose.”

He almost felt young again, remembering her. The years had passed, and though not many, they felt like a lifetime.

“You?” Biggs asked, incredulous. “From the Warrior of Light?”

“Yes. Me,” Raha laughed. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? We didn’t exactly hit it off at first. She probably saw me as a brat—which, to be fair, I very nearly was. I was there on behalf of the Students, overseeing the expedition. My role was to translate and identify Allagan relics. So when Hypshay was tasked with entering the Tower, I asked her to bring some artifacts back.”

He could still hear their argument—how stubborn he’d been, how careless. And how, despite everything, she had taken his words to heart… even at the cost of her own blood.

“She brought them back, of course. Being who she was. Cleared the path for us, slew a dragon, a behemoth—and, mind you, Phlegethon himself, a hero of the Third Astral Era’s rebellion against Allag. And yet,” Raha’s voice softened, gaze drawn to the dancing firelight, “she got hurt. Protecting those relics.”

“That was when I…” He looked down at his open palm. “When I first learned my healing spells. The way her strength radiated—and more than that, her character…‘Twas utterly extraordinary. But I feared for her safety…for how she treated herself—or rather, how she didn’t.”

Biggs the Third looked at him, silent. Yet the way he leaned forward, his gaze fixed and nearly spellbound, told Raha that he was committing every word to memory.

“We pressed on with the exploration of the Tower after that,” Raha continued, his eyes now soft with reflection as they flicked to the fire. He noticed his cup had grown heavy again; Biggs had risen to refill it. “Ah—thank you,” he murmured. “Doga and Unei found me then, as you’ll have read in the records NOAH kept. Their Allagan royal blood opened the Tower’s path for us, and Hypshay—she fought Amon. Even Emperor Xande himself, to clear the way. I could only support from afar, but I watched her… the way she moved, the way she faced down legends from a forgotten age. It felt like I was witnessing the birth of a new legend—one that would outshine the stars.”

“‘Twould be mesmerizing,” Biggs the Third murmured, “to see the Warrior of Light with one’s own eyes, as you had.”

“It was. More than words can express.” Raha took a slow sip of ale. “Then… Doga, Unei, and Nero were drawn into the Void. We’d been at odds—well, mostly Nero and Cid—but still, he was part of NOAH. And Doga and Unei… We moved quickly, prepared the portal, and followed them to confront the Cloud of Darkness. And before we stepped through, I asked her—I begged her—to let me go with her this time.”

He paused, recalling the single moment he'd managed to gather his courage and ask her outright.

“I told her I would follow every command without hesitation. And to my astonishment… she agreed. It became the greatest adventure of my life,” he said, voice dropping to a whisper. “She was a brilliant star, Biggs. You should have seen her. Her strength. Not even the Void could touch her. She… she is a force of nature. I kept close behind her, because if I ever faltered, I would have been left behind. But then…after we defeated the Cloud of Darkness, after the battle was won, Doga and Unei bestowed their blessing upon me…”

He drew a deep, unsteady breath, unable to go on.

“…And that’s how you came by your Allagan blood,” Biggs finished softly, “The gift given, that you might become the Tower’s guardian.”

Raha nodded as he gave a wistful smile. 

“Yes. And through that blessing, the will of the ancients passed into me—their resolve, that the Tower might become a beacon for those in despair. Behind me stood the thousand wills of my forebears. Before me stood the very embodiment of heroism, the fables of my childhood made flesh. And in the light of so shining an example, I saw at last the part I had to play. How could I do aught but remain in the tower?”

"Quite easily,” Biggs chuckled, “were you and your exemplar not cut from the same cloth. Being of a rather less heroic disposition, however, I can tell you that my first act, having endured such an ordeal, would have been to go home to bed. But tell me...were you not scared?”

“Of course I was. I was but a man, fear was with me all the time. But courage is not the absence of fear.” Raha chuckled, and leaned back. “It is the triumph over it.”

“Tell me something,” Biggs said quietly, his voice barely louder than the crackling fire between them. “You’re doing this for her, aren’t you? You’re going back...not just to stop the Eighth Calamity, but to save her.”

‘Twas utterly selfish.

But how could the reason be anything but?

Raha held his silence and drained the last of his ale. Words eluded him. How could he speak of this when the selfless souls of the Garlond Ironworks had labored toward a future they would never live to see—while he, the linchpin of the design, agreed to save the world because it meant he could save her?

“You know,” Biggs continued, his voice catching slightly, “the world remembers her as the Warrior of Light. The hero who faced down gods and darkness alike. But when you speak of her, ‘tis almost as if...”

“...as if I’m speaking of someone I loved,” Raha finished for him, hearing the truth slide from his own tongue before he could restrain it. Yet how could he not? His comrades had bled beside him; they deserved to know the truth—or at least the heart behind his resolve.

He turned toward Biggs, bracing himself for doubt, judgment, anger—some reprimand for daring to tether a world-saving endeavor to something so private, so human.

Yet Biggs’s expression held none of those things. His eyes widened, startled perhaps by the rare glimpse of Raha’s unguarded heart. Fire popped between them, filling the silence. Then Biggs’s face shifted—first surprise, then something far gentler: sympathy. And Raha’s heart tightened at the sight.

“You...loved her,” Biggs murmured, almost as if testing the words on his tongue.

Raha shifted his gaze back from the flickering fire to meet Biggs’s eyes.

’Twas so hard to say it aloud then. To shape feeling into words. He had told himself he was not worthy of her time, her beauty, her strength. He told himself it would be presumptuous, even frivolous, to confess—he must prove his worth first. He told himself she likely had suitors by the dozen—by the hundred, gods take it—and that he wasn’t worth a single gil if he had done nothing for her.

So he told himself he would wait. He would help her win what she sought. They would travel to Doma; he would persuade the Students to lend aid where it was needed—surely the land’s history and archaeological merit would suffice.

And then destiny found him first.

“I love her,” he whispered. “I was but a fool, a coward back then. Too afraid to tell her. I kept telling myself there’d always be more time.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” Biggs pressed, desperation lacing his voice. “What if...you go back, and nothing changes? Or worse, what if you can’t save her?”

He asked himself that same question almost every damned night when he closed his eyes.

Who was G’raha Tia, truly?

He lacked the unwavering strength and devotion that Haurchefant Greystone had given her. He didn’t share what Hien Rijin had with her—the bond of growing up side by side, of driving the Empire back together. He had none of the title or military might Aymeric de Borel could place at her back. He could not match the Scions in fighting at her side, lifting her when she fell.

So what did he possess that could save her?

He would have nothing but the Tower. No one but himself to rely on. He would be an anomaly in time and space—something the world itself might try to correct, erase, undo. She might not even remember him, after all those years—as he had been so small a fragment of her long road.

He reached into the innermost layer of his robe and closed his fingers around the envelope he had taken from the Baldesion Annex, then tilted his head back to the night sky, to the distant stars.

No matter how brightly they burned, he could ever only see one of them.

Hope.

That was all he had left—and all he needed.

“Then I will die trying,” he said at last, solemnly, lowering his head to meet Biggs the Third’s gaze.

Biggs fell silent for a long moment, staring into his mug as the weight of those words settled on him. Finally, he let out a long, weary sigh and dragged a hand over his face.

“You’re a damned fool, you know that?” 

“Perhaps. I’ve been called that often enough,” Raha replied. “But aren’t we all? Risking everything for a future none of us will live to see.”

“Fine,” Biggs shook his head, finally relenting. “We’ll do it. I’ll make sure everything is ready by morning.”

Almost reflexively, Raha called after him. Gratitude swelled too large to be contained, and he took in a breath, voice rough with emotion.

“Thank you, my friend.”

Biggs paused, glancing back over his shoulder. Raha couldn’t see his face clearly, but there was something in that moment—an echo of shared burden—that struck deep.

“Just promise me one thing,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “If you succeed—if you manage to save her—tell her. Don’t waste a single second this time.”

“I won’t,” Raha vowed. 

Biggs nodded. 

“Then let’s make sure you get that chance,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Let’s make sure you don’t have to live with regrets.”

—---

The next instant Hypshay came to, ’twas dawn, right by the lakeshore of Silvertear. Golden light filtered through thin cloud into the violet hues of a land reshaped by several Calamities. Even under the blight of Black Rose and in the wake of the Eighth Calamity, it was undeniably beautiful with the morning sun kindling the sky. The silver surface of the lake shivered as a small gust of wind passed over it, and it was the most serene sight she’d seen since being pulled into the time loop with Raha.

The first time the rain had stopped in his memories—and given way to an almost beautiful day.

She turned her head at once toward the Tower she knew, without a shadow of doubt, should be hanging in the sky—and sure enough, there it was. 

The Crystal Tower.

But there was something else. A massive structure encased its base—something not unlike Omega and Alexander, or perhaps some monstrous fusion of both. It was vast, so large that it swallowed the entire foundation of the Tower. Countless metal frames coiled around its lower reaches, as though they had replaced its original roots and become the new foundation of this beacon of hope. No longer raised by the Ancients, but by men and women—by their sweat, their blood, their desperate hope.

She moved toward it at once. As she drew nearer, she saw people—not only Garlond Ironworks engineers, but civilians too. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, gathered at the base of the colossal framework, all eyes fixed upward, voices buzzing over one another.

“Today’s the day. Twelve, I’m nervous.”

“’Tis so big!”

“Ah—there! Look! Up top!”

The crowd stirred like wind through a field of wheat, every gaze tilting skyward. Her horn caught the murmur as her own eyes followed, rising to the apex of the structure.

A lone silhouette stood there.

Just as he had, all those years ago.

And she knew immediately who it was.

The stairways had been cleared—no doubt by the Ironworks crew in preparation for the launch—so she took them at a run, racing up towards the summit of the structure, toward the base of the Tower.

To G’raha Tia.

She arrived just in time. He stood there, framed against the morning light, a portable transceiver in his hand. From it came the voice of another—Biggs the Third, without question; she knew that voice by now.

“...Forgive me for asking this yet again,” the voice crackled through—calm, yet edged with nerves, “but are you ready for this?”

She watched his fingers curl around the transceiver as he nodded.

“I am,” Raha said simply.

His armor was in place, cloak falling neatly down his back. He carried little else; whatever he needed, he had likely already prepared within the Tower. “On your command, President.”

A brief silence followed. Then the device spoke again.

“Very well. You may proceed to the Gate. Once it’s sealed, we’ll initiate the protocol. Let us know when you’re in position.”

“Copied that,” Raha replied. Then, almost hastily, he added, “Thank you. I’ve no better words than this, and I know I’ve said it a hundred times already but… I—thank you. Every one of you. For everything.”

On the other end, there was a heartbeat of quiet—and then a rough chorus of voices spilled through.

“Well, say hello to the Warrior of Light for me, will ya? Been a big fan!”

“Don’t forget that burger you told me about! I’d hate to miss it if we get the chance!”

“Go, G’raha! Don’t you worry about us—we’ll manage just fine!”

So many voices: Ironworks engineers, civilians gathered at the Tower’s base, cheering—almost foolishly—for a future they would never see. For a future they might be erased from entirely, sacrificed to the vagaries of a temporal anomaly.

And yet none of those voices sounded grim, every one of them burned with hope.

Such faith, staring down despair.

Such fire, in the teeth of the cold.

Hypshay swallowed hard as tears began to prick at her eyes, watching Raha draw a deep breath and rub at his own with the back of his hand. At last, Biggs the Third’s voice came through once more.

“…Seems the farewells are spoken. Take your place, my friend.”

“Copied that,” was all Raha offered. He cast one last look at the crowd beneath the Tower, then turned his back to them and walked toward the great structure—toward the Dossal Gate.

It was almost identical to the sight she remembered from all those years ago: watching him seal himself away within the Tower. Without thinking, she moved with him, this time walking at his side instead of trailing behind, as she too made her way toward the Dossal Gate. Toward the Crystal Tower.

Raha laid his palm against the vast Allagan gate. Almost at once, it thrummed to life, mechanisms waking as the gateway slowly unfolded before her eyes. Without hesitation, she slipped through first, unable to bear the thought of letting him go alone one more time—even if she was only spectral now, and he could not yet see her.

He hesitated for the briefest moment at the threshold, and she turned, waiting—half-hoping—to see him glance back over his shoulder as he had before.

But he didn’t.

Instead of looking back, he stepped cleanly across the threshold, and the Dossal Gate slammed shut behind him with a deafening thud.

For a moment, there was only silence as Hypshay gazed at him. In those crimson eyes—eyes she knew so well—there was no fear now, no trace of doubt.

Only iron resolve.

Then Biggs the Third’s voice came through the device again.

“We are ready to begin,” he said, and started the count. “On the count of five.”

“Four,” Raha whispered.

“Three.” She could only hear his heartbeat.

“Two.” Time stopped. 

“May the Twelve be at your side, G’raha Tia.”

A blinding light speared through the sky of Mor Dhona—and in the next heartbeat, the Crystal Tower vanished in a single, brilliant flash.

Chapter Text

“Hypshay.”

She blinked. For a heartbeat she thought she was still a ghost—but the sting in her nose was cordite and oil, too real to dismiss. Gingerly she opened her eyes and realized she was lying on the ground, a pair of hands gripping her arms as aether flowed steadily into her.

“Good, you’re awake,” was the next thing she heard, and when she turned her head she found Y’shtola looking down at her. “We need to move. Now.”

“You can see me?” Hypshay blurted, half-confused.

Y’shtola’s pupils narrowed. “Of course I can see you. Are you alright?”

“I—” Hypshay drew a deep breath, taking in mud and fire—scenery all too familiar from her childhood. They were in the middle of a battlefield. A large one.

Y’shtola’s patience was thinner than usual—not that Hypshay could blame her. The older woman rose, offering a hand to the Au’Ra.

“Whatever you saw will have to wait,” she urged. “Your Echo’s been evasive for too long; I didn’t expect such wretched timing. Can you stand?”

She was mistaking the cause of the fainting for the Echo. Hypshay realized. 

She took the proffered hand and pushed to her knees—ready to ask what was truly happening, or why she’d been hurled from the time loop to the Crystal Tower and then straight into a warzone—

Boom.

Both women whipped toward the sound. An eruption shuddered across the field.

Y’shtola grimaced. “That bodes ill.”

The horizon was a jagged saw of wrecked magitek and torn bodies. Alliance banners snapped raggedly in the wind, retreat lines snaking toward the ridgeline. Garlean skirmishers pressed forward between hulking walkers, purple-black vapor blooming and curling where shells struck.

“Thancred’s pulling back the Alliance cohort,” Y’shtola said, already lifting her staff, voice clipped. “Go. Raise him on the linkpearl, join the rearguard, and get them to the treeline. I’ll hold here.”

Her first immediate question was why?

Why would there be an Alliance army at all? The Empire should already have fallen, and they should be in the Tower, seeking a way to rouse Raha.

But time was a luxury they did not possess—the screams around her shredded thought as another wave of soldiers surged toward them.

Hypshay’s jaw set. “Lest you forget that I could—”

“—do what you are best suited to do,” Y’shtola finished, a spark flaring at her staff’s crown. Fire licked up the carved wood, steady and controlled. “I am hardly fragile.”

Hypshay drew breath to argue—and cold shot down her spine.

She moved before thinking, slamming her shoulder into Y’shtola and knocking them both aside as a katana sang through the space their throats had occupied a heartbeat earlier. The blade slammed into a sandbag barricade with a wet hiss.

They hit the mud hard. Hypshay rolled, bow already in hand. Y’shtola rose to one knee, a ward flaring between her fingers.

Hypshay didn’t need to look to know.

“Zenos yae Galvus,” she whispered.

The Empire prince stepped through the thinning smoke like a bored god arriving late to a play, armor lacquered in blood, pale blue eyes alight with a terrible patience. He rested that empty sheath against his shoulder, as if the throw that nearly slit their throats had been an idle warm-up.

“Asakura Hypshay,” he sighed, almost tender. “There you are.”

Another katana slid free at his hip, its edge catching firelight and blood.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Realization hit Hysphay like a wave then.

This wasn’t the Source. This wasn’t now.

This was then. The doomed timeline.

The Eighth Calamity.

“Seems both of us are needed here,” Hypshay said with a crooked, rueful smile, as she tiled her head to Y’shtola.

“For once,” Y’shtola replied, lips quirking despite the reek of blood. She turned, her dress snapping in the wind, and lifted her staff. “Half a bell. Hold the wolf at bay. I’ll keep the pack off our throats. The Alliance shall send reinforcements by then—or I will have Thancred’s head.”

“I can hold longer than that,” Hypshay said, already angling her body to the open ground, bow rising. 

“Good,” Y’shtola answered without looking back. “Then leave the rest to me.”

She strode toward the oncoming Garlean line—one woman walking into a tide of gunmetal and red lights—sigils kindling along her staff like a constellation ripped from the sky. Her voice carried—calm, clinical, implacable—as wards laced the earth and the fire warped to her will.

Zenos watched the exchange with something like…patience. His head tilted, pale blue eyes warm with the anticipation of a predator humoring a beloved prey. When Y’shtola moved out, he drifted a step closer. 

“When you are quite finished,” he said gently, “shall we?”

Hypshay exhaled. 

She almost felt nostalgia to see him—if only for the aid he’d offered at the end of the universe.

Her fingers found an arrow without looking, nocking by feel, drawing until the bowstring sang through her bones. The bow creaked softly at full draw. A crosswind tugged loose strands along her cheek. Somewhere behind them, a magitek rearguard blew blue fire; Y’shtola’s ward shuddered and held, held, held. 

Zenos’s mouth curved. 

“You taste it too, don’t you? The edge. The end.”

“Save your poetry,” she said, leveling the arrow at his eye. “Not one for it.”

She loosed.

Zenos stepped left once. The arrow shaved his cheek and vanished into a magitek chassis with a shattering scream. She was already moving, skimming sideways, boots kissing mud and broken plate as she fought to keep distance—far, far from him. But the prince knew her too well. He surged in with a speed few had ever matched, stepped into her space; she bit back with three shots in a breath—hip, ribs, throat—forcing angles, buying heartbeats, kicking off his blade to spring farther away.

’Twas just the two of them now.

Their footwork carved a circle into the churned earth—her path wide and quick, his line straight and inexorable. She knew better than to mistake memory for mastery. The knowledge of their last duel lived in her muscles, yes—but this was here and now, and she would need everything she had to stall him.

Arrows dwindled. She snatched fletching from fallen quivers as she slid past bodies, nocking in a blur and loosing before the shaft had fully seated. One arrow punched through his shoulder plate, ripping the thick armor from his right flank. A heartbeat late, his katana—a true extension of bone—bit deep along her left thigh. Ignoring pain was second nature; she pressed on, three more shots hammering his chestplate and tearing it free as well.

Zenos only brightened at the challenge. He laughed, shook off the remaining plates, and charged—body taut as a bloodhound on scent—so fast she couldn’t slip this one. The blade kissed into her ribs, giving a hot, bright pop that stole the air from her lungs. She grunted, cut past a fallen spar, reached for a shaft protruding from a corpse, fingers closing on fletching, pivoted hard right—

Zenos’s blade found the opening.

He cut down.

Hypshay snapped the bow up out of reflex. The katana met yew and horn. Wood screamed. Her bow burst into two jagged halves, upper limb spinning away like a thrown jawbone, lower limb still clamped in her hand around the grip.

“Ah,” Zenos breathed, joy blooming across his mouth in a slow, red smile. He stepped in, blade rising for the finishing stroke, the gleam of perfect inevitability—

Clink.

His steel met steel—stopped.

“I said I was good with a bow,” she said, voice calm despite the throb in her ribs. “I never said I couldn’t use a katana.”

Zenos’s eyes half-lidded, turning soft as honey, melting into a kind of reverence. 

“Show me.”

She met his charge, blades crashing. Training from that year in Kugane flared to life in an instant. She had rarely used a katana—she prided herself on the bow, on pairing keen hearing with long range, on agility over brute force.

But she had killed often enough with steel.

The world narrowed to breath and the bright, cruel ring of metal. Zenos pressed her weakest angle—precisely where he’d cracked her ribs minutes before. She let him—leaned into it—because every inch he took she bought with meat and a mark. Adrenaline burned cold and clear, sharpening all edges. She slipped beneath his guard and drove the blade low for the seam between greave and cuisse, the tender muscle of the lower abdomen—

“Mm,” he breathed, delighted.

His blade came for her throat.

Hypshay ducked a hairsbreadth at the last second; steel whispered over horn, shaved a line along her fin. Her stolen katana bit deep, tearing through lacquer and flesh. Heat sprang across her knuckles.

He laughed into the pain and turned the sword one-handed, stepping in as if to embrace her.

“Closer,” he coaxed affectionately.

Her heel snapped up, boot angled to buckle his knee. He caught her ankle mid-kick, fingers clamping like iron.

“I have you now,” he murmured, and cut down.

Her left hand came up on instinct.

The blade took it at the wrist, her entire left hand gone.

There was no room for aught but the cold flare of absence and the awful lightness as her hand spun away, a black arc against the smoke. Blood burst hot over his gauntlet. He yanked, meaning to pull her off-balance.

She went the other way—in.

Hypshay stepped into his space until her body pressed his chest, breath mingling, horn nearly brushing his jaw. His arm lifted to strike again. Her right hand drove the katana home, hilt slamming into his back as the point punched through his body, parting flesh, sliding out between them to stop an inch from her own belly.

They hung there in the shock of it, bodies locked, each feeling the other’s shudder.

“…Then stay,” she laughed, “With me.”

“Ah,” he rasped, lips curving red. “At last—”

His eyes flooded with a manic joy she knew too well—the high that came on the lip of the drop. Their wounds were savage but not yet mortal; she could read that much in the steadiness of his stance, the burn in her ribs, the heat of their mingled blood.

And then her nose pricked on a different scent. Sweet. Wrong. Cold.

Black Rose.

The air around their locked bodies soured, the purple haze coiling like a serpent about their legs. She felt the first, awful tug—aether unspooling from her veins as if some invisible hand were plucking her clean.

Now, she thought, even as her left wrist poured hot down her vambrace. He had to die. Here. Now.

No one in the Alliance would be able to stand against Zenos once she was gone.

Zenos’s hand kept its iron grip on the katana lodged through him, trying to pry them apart and reset the dance. She refused him, closing her right arm fully about his back and driving the blade deeper. He made a sound between a satisfied groan and a choke—excitement breaking on pain—and then, suddenly, his arms wrapped around her, heedless of the steel near his heart, and dragged her tight to his chest.

His mouth dipped to her horn, breath warm, voice almost tender. 

“Did you enjoy this, my friend? Us…bringing death to each other?”

“Enjoy?” Her lips pulled back from her teeth. “I endured you.”

He laughed, soft and obscene. Then his strength rolled through her like a tide. Her bracing arm, already weakened by the missing hand, buckled; the katana that skewered him shoved forward the last inches, through layered mail, under her armor, into her upper abdomen—through her. The shock stole her breath. Blood climbed her throat in a hot rush and spilled over her tongue iron-bitter.

The scent thickened. Sweet, chemical, cloying.

Black Rose.

Whatever tattered aether she still held shivered—and failed. That malice gas crept up her spine like winter. For the first time Zenos’s hold faltered as he felt the gas too.

“…Why?” he murmured, head tilting as if hearing a note beneath the noise. “You are weakened, my friend…what is—?”

No wonder he had burned it when he learned the truth of the Eighth Calamity, she thought dimly. No wonder at all.

“Black…Rose,” she rasped. “You die with me here. Today. Zenos yae Galvus.”

A flicker crossed his face—quick, strange, almost repentant—before it hardened to fury.

“Fools,” he hissed. “Such ignorance. They dare interrupt my dance—our dance.” His jaw set. “I will summon the commander. We will purge this insult. I will fetch the cure, my friend.”

“Spare me,” she coughed, fresh blood threading her words. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Her right hand slid along the blood-slick hilt, eyes locked to his. Those pale blue eyes were entranced upon her, and she knew not what he’d seen on her face, yet at that second, his hands moved to help hers—

Together, fingers laced over hers, they lifted the hilt and pulled. The katana’s edge carved a single, clean line through them both, kissing heart and lung, parting them in one perfect symmetry.

“...Together then.” he breathed.

His eyes closed—again, for her—and his weight leaned, strangely gentle. The purple frost crept past her collarbones, numbing the fire under her skin. Her legs trembled. The world narrowed to the drum in her horn and the slow hush of aether draining from the air.

More than half a bell. She thought absurdly, lashes lowering. Kept him more than half a bell.

She let her eyes close.

Chapter Text

Aether roared through her like a river tearing free of its banks. Hypshay felt herself sink—down and down—through cold layers of nothing, the world narrowing to a single bright thread. For a breathless instant she couldn’t tell whether she was falling through the Rift or being borne upon the tide to the Sea of Stars.

She didn’t know how long had passed before a fissure of light split the dark and everything flashed to white.

Hypshay coughed and tried to open her eyes—but the body wasn’t hers to command. Its owner coughed as well, scrabbled for fabric, and yanked a hood over a world too bright to endure until the eyes beneath obeyed.

She was in Raha’s body again.

He drew one breath. Then another. A third—long and uneven.

Almost hesitantly, he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright against the floor of the Tower—on the ground level, no less. He certainly hadn’t discovered the Ocular yet.

She followed as he looked around, then seized his staff and edged toward the door.

It swung open on a sky of brilliant glare—stained with the sickly hue both of them would later learn too well: the First.

Blinding radiance poured down, a vault of white-gold that pinched his pupils to points. The land beyond lay bleached and lovely in its ruin—Lakeland’s purple trees rolling for leagues, grasses pale as ground bone, the river a ribbon of mirrored quicksilver.

He ventured from the Dossal Gate, cloak pulled tight for shade. The surrounding ground—what would someday become the Crystarium’s heart—was only a dense wood, scorched by the Tower’s arrival.

Hypshay could almost taste the feeling she’d known when thrust into another world—what Raha must have felt now: wary, uncertain.

He moved carefully, casting a ward about himself as he stepped beneath the boughs, scanning for any sign of life. But the Flood had kept its promise; aside from a few lucky survivors, almost nothing remained. She felt his heart beating erratically in his chest—nerves jangling at the isolation. He circled the Tower rather than straying far—a choice she herself would have made in unknown terrain.

He was nearly through a full circuit of the Tower’s base when his ears twitched—movement in the grass. He turned at once, staff raised.

Two pairs of eyes stared back.

Two Hyurs, perhaps in their thirties, clutching rustic swords—or pretending to. The first, taller and broader, took a trembling step closer. Fear lived in his eyes, but he swallowed and forced the words out:

“...Esne ex Turri?” (Are you from the Tower?)

Raha let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and lowered his staff, sliding it back over his shoulder. He raised both hands as he approached.

“...I don’t know your language,” he tried, palms open. The two Hyurs exchanged a wary glance, clearly confused. “But I mean you no harm.” Keeping their gaze, he angled his body away from them and pointed deliberately toward the Tower. “I only just arrived—moments ago. Is this—”

He stopped himself. The past sounded wrong. Another world sounded worse—and none of it would be understood anyway.

The Hyurs remained uncertain, but they could see he wasn’t hostile. The shorter one looked from Raha to the Tower, then slowly lowered his sword and said something quick to the taller man. Just as the taller Hyur began to reply—or gesture—an awful, squealing shriek cut through the trees.

Both men flinched. Raha frowned.

They drew a steadying breath. The shorter Hyur glanced at Raha and made a gesture whose meaning needed no common tongue.

Run.

A sin eater. Hypshay realized as she inhaled with him. A big one, judging by the sound.

Raha, of course, had no way of knowing that yet. The two Hyurs bolted, sprinting away from the shriek, and Raha followed almost instinctively, murmuring an incantation that reshaped his staff into shield and sword.

Their speed, however, was no match for a thing that hunted on the wing.

The clap of pinions swept closer, closer, as the three of them ran. It felt like a lifetime—likely only minutes—before the eater overtook them. The taller man cursed as the beating wings thundered just behind; instead of fleeing farther, Raha stopped dead and raised his shield.

He sucked in a sharp breath at the sight. The eater wore the body of a beautiful woman, wings vast as a carrion bird’s. It fell from the white like a broken hymn: a woman’s silhouette sketched in gold, wings like cathedral glass smashing the air, a face that began as human loveliness and then—horribly, inevitably—unfolded into a mouth wide enough to swallow a man whole. Its eyes were coins of pale, counterfeit mercy. Its claws were iron aching for blood.

Anyone seeing such monstrosity for the first time would be stunned.

So was Raha.

It wasn’t until the sin eater loosed another squeal that he reacted—drawing a sharp breath and snapping his shield up just in time to meet the iron claws scything for his face. His sword flashed a heartbeat later, angling for the talons—only to rebound, jarring his arm.

At this point in his life he was still green. Barely three years awake from the Calamity; hardly incapable, but far closer to the Archon she had first met than to the Exarch she would come to know. And yet, in every age he was G’raha Tia—reckless threaded through his bones. So when he charged rather than falling back to regroup, Hypshay wasn’t surprised in the least.

The creature shrieked—offended, almost—and vaulted skyward. Catching the scent of the two other souls not far off, it tucked its wings and plunged. Raha cursed, body coiling, and sprinted toward the Hyur pair even as he murmured an incantation. The instant the eater stooped, a ward blossomed over the men. They stood frozen, horror melting into stunned relief as the barrier held. The taller one, panting, managed a hoarse, “Magus,” before their faces turned to fear again: the eater had twisted in fury and fixed on Raha once more.

He dispelled shield and sword, lifted his staff, and—practically taunting—let out a piercing whistle before bolting the other way, flinging a globe of fire over his shoulder. Hypshay was instantly worried for him, but then relaxed as she noticed the direction that he was running towards—the Tower. 

The sin eater took the bait, mindless without a Warden, and gave chase. Raha vaulted roots and deadfall with surprising agility, drawing it straight for the Tower’s base. Just shy of the plinth, the creature overhauled him. Its claws tore a furrow through his cloak; a rake caught his back and drove a gasp from him, but he ran on until he reached the foundation stones. There he spat another incantation—and his blood seeped into the soil around the Tower.

Allagan royal blood spilled into the soil, and Syrcus Tower’s defenses woke almost at once. Arrows of light snapped from apertures along the base as Raha ducked low. Slots irised open around the plinth; a dozen Allagan ballistae—sleek, vitreous engines older than empires—pivoted on silent rings. The sin eater’s shriek broke into a ragged keen as bolts of hard light stitched its wings mid-beat. Feathers of false gold vaporized. It pinwheeled, slammed into a scorched trunk, and fell in a shudder of fractured radiance.

He stayed braced a heartbeat longer than necessary—lungs empty, ears pinned—then let out a torn laugh.

Pain found him when the adrenaline ebbed. His cloak hung in ribbons; heat burned between his shoulder blades where claws had found flesh. He crouched by the eater—close enough to see the warped grace of its mask, the almost-human cheekbones beneath that lacquer of Light—and winced as his back flared. He hissed through his teeth and forced himself upright. Still, he lingered over the corpse, the scar along his back throbbing, before dragging his gaze away—while she, within him, cursed and urged him to heal. Now. Immediately.

As if summoned by that will, the grass rustled. Raha turned, guarded—then relaxed as the two Hyurs from before emerged. Their swords now hung at their belts. One pointed at Raha’s back and spoke quickly, gesturing toward his satchel.

Raha offered them both a warm smile, turned to present his back, and sank to the ground, lifting his cloak.

They set to work at once, almost deftly. Clearly practiced in treating such wounds, they rinsed the gouges with a potion, smoothed a salve across the torn flesh, and sealed the worst with a simple healing cantrip. Fortunately, the injuries were less dire than they looked, and they finished quickly.

Raha dipped his head in thanks. They returned his smile, then pointed from the Tower to him inquiringly. He held their gaze a moment, then nodded—gesturing to the Tower, then to himself.

Their eyes brightened. They glanced from the fallen sin eater back to him, exchanged a look, and one of them made a clear, welcoming motion.

An invitation, unmistakable.

“Well,” Raha murmured with a small nod, “I suppose I should learn when—and where—I am.”

The three of them wound their way deeper into the woods, the Hyurs keeping Raha in the middle while they watched the treeline. After roughly a bell, their pace eased as a makeshift settlement came into view—if it could be called that at all. A handful of torn tents. A scant bonfire ringed with spotted timber. The two men entered first, calling out, and leaf-shadows shivered as three Viera dropped from the branches like knives. Spears dipped toward Raha on instinct, then lifted when the Hyurs raised both hands and rattled off a quick explanation.

Refugees trickled from the tents—several children among them—rushing to meet the returning men. It was a small camp, and the people wore hunger plainly in their faces. By Hypshay’s count, there were no more than forty souls here, perhaps fewer—thinned by the nearby sin eaters, no doubt.

The terrain had changed too much for her to place it against the future Crystarium, but judging by their walk, it could not be far from where the city’s border would someday lie—likely within its future bounds. Most likely they had fled their village under eater attack and had been wandering ever since.

The refugees soon gathered around Raha, eyeing the hooded newcomer. For a moment he stood awkwardly in their midst while the two Hyurs spoke—whatever they said pleased the crowd, for the mood softened. A child even crept up behind him and tugged lightly at his staff; he dipped his head with a quiet chuckle. Hypshay caught a glimpse of the child then—a young Elezen girl who stirred a vague recognition she could not immediately place.

The murmuring faltered as the tent flap parted. An elder Hrothgar woman emerged, muzzle fur gone steel-grey, one great paw resting on the forearm of a younger Au Ra woman. Hypshay felt Raha’s body straighten, tail giving a single lash—he knew at once this elder would decide the tenor of what followed.

The Hrothgar matriarch studied him, and Raha swallowed. She bowed—an almost universal sign of thanks—and he returned the gesture. Then she pointed toward the Tower and back to him, a question clear in her eyes:

You are from the Tower?

Raha drew a steadying breath, gestured to the Tower and back to himself, and nodded firmly. The elder inclined her head, turned to the two Hyurs, and listened as they recounted events once more—one of them indicating the torn cloak at Raha’s back, no doubt mentioning the wounds. She heard them out without blinking, then patted the Au Ra’s forearm. The younger woman slipped away and returned with a wrapped bundle and a narrow, cracked-leather book.

He hesitated, then accepted the items and opened the small bundle—dried meat, of all things. Precious beyond measure for people in such straits; a gift scraped from scarcity.

He thumbed through the little tome and found it a primer—pictures of man and woman, flower and sky, each with its word beneath. He rewrapped the meat and pressed it gently back into the Au Ra’s hands with a small, apologetic smile, then tucked the book into his cloak as if it were spun gold.

The elder watched, said nothing at first, then inclined her head and murmured,

“Tenebrae te protegant.” (May the Darkness protect you.)

Through her Echo, Hypshay understood every word; Raha would not—but kindness needed no translation. The elder made a courteous gesture toward their tent—an invitation to stay if he wished—then coughed and, with the Au Ra’s support, withdrew. The onlookers answered with warm nods before drifting back to their tasks. Only the Vieras lingered, eyes measuring him a moment longer before they, too, returned to their posts—ever wary.

Though Hypshay had no body of her own here, she felt his shiver as night’s gradual chill crept in. The First had no true day-and-night cycle, but seasons still left their mark. Children drifted to the cook-pit by instinct, hands extended to the meager flame. The fire licked damp wood and complained; the smoke smelled of sap and patience.

The two Hyurs came next, smiling and beckoning. They led him to a low tent tidied in a hurry—blankets shaken, a tumble of clothes shoved into a corner, a small hoard of food set upon a woven mat with ceremonial care. A place to sleep, offered with quiet dignity.

Raha nodded his gratitude, glanced from the tent to the two men, and then—after a brief hesitation—pointed toward the Tower. They exchanged a look but did not try to stop him as he took his leave.

Hypshay, moving with him, blinked at his sudden pace as he cut back through the trees.

He went straight to the Tower’s storage, carefully packing several dried buns into his satchel, then down to the artifacts chamber to fetch a device the Ironworks had devised after the Eighth Calamity—an internal combustion heater that burned wood cleanly, doubling as a stove. Years of refinement had wrung miracle from simplicity: a single stick that might have lasted mere minutes now warmed for half a bell, teasing every scrap of worth from scarce fuel.

With a murmured spell he lifted the machine, bore it from the Tower, and started back toward the camp.

Hypshay’s heart swelled.

No matter the world, no matter the time…he was still the man who would give anything he had to those in need.

When he finally returned to the settlement, the first to meet him were the Viera sentries. They dropped from the branches like shadows, eyeing him with cool suspicion as the machine drifted beside him in midair.

Raha set the device down at the camp’s edge. One Viera halted him with a raised hand, circling the contraption, studying it, then flicking her gaze back to him—wordless inquiry writ plain.

He lifted both hands in a careful, placating gesture as faces began to gather from the tents. He stooped for fallen branches, fed them into the device, and sparked a modest flame. With a firm press of its switch, the machine hummed to life, swallowing fuel and exhaling heat—blessed warmth in the cold, pallid winter of the First.

Refugees drew close as the fire pulsed—though the sky itself glared like day. Heat simmered up, and soon the whole camp clustered around the steady engine. The watchful Viera eased their grips, settling back against a nearby trunk. Raha offered the children a gentle smile, then went to fetch more wood, severing thicker limbs with his summoned blade.

He was hefting a cut log to his shoulder when small fingers tugged at his robe.

Raha looked down. The Elezen child from before stood there, cheeks flushed with cold and pride, clutching three switches and a crooked branch like trophies.

“Ah—” His mouth opened, instinctive praise colliding with the language barrier. He tried a smile and a foolish thumbs-up, then winced at himself for not knowing whether it was rude here. He softened the gesture, turning his hands palms-up—the safest form of thanks. “Good. Very good.”

The girl’s grin flashed quick as a swallow. Hitching her bundle like a soldier presenting arms, she tapped her chest with one finger.

“Chessamile,” she whispered.

As if a lantern were lit behind her eyes, Hypshay recognized the name—the little one who would grow into the gentle elder who tended her more times than she could count, fierce guardian of every wounded soul sent her way. 

“Chessamile,” Raha echoed softly, nodding to the girl.