Chapter Text
Kaveh has never seen his father's ghost, and not for lack of looking. He's checked his old home, and the place that his father grew up, and the gravesite. He's checked every corner of the Akademiya. He's checked the place his parents lived before he was born. And he's made perhaps a dozen trips out to the place where the body was found. Kaveh's father most likely either did not leave a ghosts or moved on shortly after his death.
It's a good thing. Ghosts are almost always the result of sudden, violent deaths. People who become ghosts largely died afraid, or angry, or saturated with some other painful emotion. And ghosts move on when they are satisfied and content. If there is no ghost, then Kaveh's father found peace.
Kaveh cannot stop himself from checking. Just in case he's missed something. Just in case.
---
When Kaveh was little, he tried to tell his parents about the people that he saw. The others who lived--well, stayed--in the cottage at the edge of Sumeru City with them, or wandered the surrounding area, or made appearances for a few weeks and then never showed up again.
They didn't understand. They thought he was talking about imaginary friends, when he was young enough for that to be a sensible thing. Then he got older, and they didn't want to listen to it at all. Especially when Kaveh began to detail their appearances. Especially when they were...
Ghosts usually look the way they remember themselves looking. But when in particular distress, they take on the exact form they had at the moment that they died. Kaveh learns, later, that most people do not truly understand what a violent death can do to the body. He knows. He's known for as long as he can remember.
Aunts Mumtaz and Esmat, when they still lived, resided in a house a short walk away from Kaveh's family's cottage. They raised three children together. Those children were grown or nearly grown, and busy with their own lives, and so none of them were present the night that an incense burner tipped over and the house burned down. But Aunties Mumtaz and Esmat were home, sleeping. They were not fortunate enough to be taken by the smoke before the roof collapsed on them, crushing them as the fire came for them.
Usually, they looked just like living people to Kaveh. But sometimes, when they were upset, they looked like they must have in those final moments. Smoke and ash wafting off of them. Soot-black, burn-black over their bodies. A roof beam broke Esmat's spine when it fell.
When it happened and they noticed, they would insist that Kaveh close his eyes as tight as he could and cover them with his palms until they calmed themselves. But every time, he had already seen.
The Aunts were more lucid than most of the dead. They knew who they were and what had happened to them. They were the ones to explain to Kaveh that most people could not see ghosts. And so he learned not to speak of the dead to the living.
They're gone now, to whatever place all the dead go in the end. Kaveh does not know exactly what settled them. Just that one day they told him they were going to leave, and he never saw them again. They looked happy.
That was the first and most important lesson. Happiness is leaving.
---
Alhaitham's first memory is the memory of his first death. He remembers it extremely clearly, though he did not really understand what was happening to him at the time.
He was three years old, and he was with his parents, and some other adults he did not know. They were in an old building--a ruin of King Deshret, he knows now. He was not enjoying himself. There was sand in his clothing, and he was upset about it.
And then there was a loud sound, and the floor was moving. Descending. It was not very fast, but the adults started shouting at each other in distress. He began to cry.
This meant that his eyes were blurred. It meant that he did not see the rest of it clearly. And his own wails masked some of the sounds.
He fell to the ground, hard, and felt the spray of something hot and wet as he heard a sound that he now knows as a power core charging. Something fell on top of him. Something else fell on top of both of them. There was more wet spray, and more charging of power cores. The adults screamed. He screamed, too. All around him were horrible, wet noises.
And then the weight on him was too heavy, and he could not breathe to cry anymore. He could not breathe.
For what seemed like hours but could only have been a few minutes, he managed the occasional sharp gasp of air that smelled like metal. But then he could not do that anymore, either, and everything truly faded away.
Alhaitham was found four days later, under the corpses of the adults in their group. They had shielded him with their bodies. (They had crushed him with their bodies.) At first, they thought he was dead, too. But then they saw him draw in a sudden, sharp breath.
His grandmother was told it was a miracle, a blessing from the gods, that he was entirely intact after everything: the initial attack by security droids, followed by the crushing and the lack of food or water. He should not have survived.
She knew he had not.
---
In Alhaitham's family, sprinkled here and there through the generations, there is a certain magic. And so Jaddah introduced Alhaitham to his cousin Karam. They are not actually entirely certain of the exact familial tie between the two of them, because Karam is over three hundred years old and record keeping was simply not taken as seriously in those times. But there is certainly a physical resemblance. And there is the connection of the magic. So they call each other cousins.
Karam looks like they are in their fifties. They are not the only family member with this old magic, but they are the only one who has kept in contact with the rest, watching generations from birth to death. And so they visit every few years to see Alhaitham and discuss this thing they have in common.
The origins of the magic are long forgotten. When Karam was young, it was speculated that it has something to do with the land itself, with memory and life.
Memory seems to be a part of it. They remember each death in complete clarity, perfect and sharp. Even if they should not have been awake for it, they remember. Even when all the surrounding events are long gone.
This is why it is best to avoid death, Karam said. The mind is not designed to assimilate these memories into the rest. A small number is tolerable. A large amount will drive one to madness.
Alhaitham believes this to be true.
He has died twice more since he was a small child. The first death came after Jaddah died. In his grief, and with the knowledge that he would not die forever, he stopped caring for himself and got very sick, and then died. He remembers his heart struggling to beat. How that felt in his chest. His teenage sense that this was appropriate--until he was finally afraid, but it was too late and he could not get up.
He woke three hours later, got out of bed, and drank water until he vomited.
The last death was only a few years later. Alhaitham was learning the sword, and he overestimated his own skill, and he was reckless because he knew he would come back after dying. He was stabbed in the gut. The pain was... beyond description. It took two weeks for him to wake up in a heap in the sand. He does everything in his power not to think of it.
He learned. He guards his own life like anyone else, now. He is not reckless. He strives for the peaceful life Jaddah wanted for him. He will hold on to himself.
---
Sumeru is the land of Dendro, and Dendro is the element of life. But that is far from its only domain. By being the element of life, it is also the element of death. And by being the element of life and death, it is the element of memory, and by extension the element of knowledge. And so it is nothing strange that so much converges at the Akademiya.
Once there were even two young men blessed with gifts of memory that walked the halls together, unknowingly. Can you imagine?
Though it must be said... that part of the Akademiya's story was not actually very interesting. They did not recognize each other. They guarded their secrets closely. And those secrets were part of their very selves, so they guarded themselves closely. We cannot understand when we do not know there is something to understand.
They parted ways because of that failure in understanding. One retreated to the companionship of the dead, and the other retreated to the loneliness he thought suited the ever-living, and their lives went on.
Is that too sad for you?
Well. The rest of those two men's story is not the story of the Akademiya, or the story of Sumeru. But there is more of it, if you would like to know.