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He dreams well for over two centuries.
After that, it gets harder.
G'raha Tia, they call him when he wakes. They shape his name with wariness, with care, as if the convention of his people has become a foreign thing over the centuries, all clans dissolving into dust. They are strangers, after all; they know him only as a legend in the annals of the founder's work -- work which had devoured the remaining years of a single hyur's lifespan, and then consumed two hundred more before yielding fruit. G'raha Tia is not a person, but a component of a theory, a key element: an abstraction taken life, like an alchemical formula which is just as likely to explode as to form a tonic.
G'raha is what he hears -- and it is all that he hears. There is no longer Krile's vexed, authoritative voice cursing him out affectionately: Raha! You miscreant! Get down from there, you'll break the entire array! There is no one left alive who knows him well enough to call him without his tribal appellation. He does not even know what has happened to his tribe.
Gone and scattered, most likely, like all else after the Eighth. They would not have cared for him to know, either way. He is a tia, haunted by his father's words and his father's Eye; he was not part of the fold. When he had left to wander, it had been with the understanding on both sides that he was taking an undesirable element away.
The Tower, in contrast, is reluctant to let him leave it. Its aether has fed him for centuries; he is its possession now, its last royalty to protect. It sings to him whenever he is nearby, luring him back towards the Emperor's Throne like a parent crooning a lullaby. He grows lethargic the longer he is away from its shelter, yawning wide enough to split his cheeks, dropping into unconsciousness as soon as his head rests upon a pillow.
After being roughly shaken awake each morning by an Ironworks engineer all the way through Coerthas, Raha understands, suddenly, why the revived Allagans of Xande's court had remained in Syrcus groggily, rather than embark on immediate conquest. The Tower makes it clear: Syrcus is where they all belong.
They lose four engineers escaping Ishgard. Shockwaves from the explosions snap the once-elegant towers like softwood; spires crumble indiscriminately, vomiting stones across the soot-filled avenues. Raha does not even know how it happened. No matter how often he replays it in his mind, he remembers hearing them pelting along behind him, panting for air as they clattered along the blistered stairwells, broad hands pushing him forward whenever his shorter legs began to lose the pace.
They were right behind him the entire time -- until they weren't.
There is no chance to go back for the bodies. No one makes the suggestion. Instead, once the Ironworks are safely outside the city and en route to the airship, Biggs stops and watches the barrages still hammering the upper fortifications. Light sheens hot reflections on the black discs covering his eyes. He prods at his goggles with a fingertip angrily, face contorting in broken grimaces, and then finally yanks them off his head entirely, shaking them hard to clear the sights.
The lenses gleam with dampness, shedding water in the snow.
Raha knows there is nothing he can say which will make any part of this better. "It will all be undone," he tries anyway, hating the weakness of an unfinished promise already shriveling on his tongue.
Biggs gives his goggles one last flick. "Aye," he replies: a rough noise that barely qualifies as a word. He clears his throat twice, and even then, his voice remains husky. "When this's finally over, they'll never have been born in the first place."
Very little is known about the exact coordinates they need to aim for on the First. Charting a flight path intended to fling an entire building between worlds adds too many factors, all of which leave the engineers sighing, re-reading documents in hopes of reprieve. Cid had only made it so far before his health had given out in old age. Nero had been soon behind, stubbornly declaring to the last that he wasn't about to let Garlond beat him in death, either.
"There's the chance, y'see," one of the Ironworks engineers admits, too exhausted to keep herself from honesty, "that the Tower will try to manifest inside a solid object -- a mountain, maybe, or even far above a chasm 'stead of sunk deep into one. It's plain that we don't know."
Raha is too perturbed not to ask. "Is that likely?"
"We can try to add in limited spatial corrections to the calculations," is the reply. The engineer's face is marked with oil and filth, deep streaks across her brow which only smear like mud when she scrubs her fingers through it, trying to wipe away her own weariness. "Means it'll have to map its own dimensions first before doing the jump, with a margin for what it'll possibly survive -- extra time on the portal, but with the A-339-T routine, we should be able to get it close. Better than revving the shields to max and blasting the landscape out of the way, I suppose. Guess we'll have to trust in the Allagans and their own distaste for dying, and hope the Tower's got that same stubborn nature inside it."
Trust in the Allagans. It almost makes Raha want to scoff, except that he -- of all living creatures now -- cannot make light of such a tactic.
Their time window is equally shakey. History lists when the Black Rose publicly erupted, but the time of the weapon's full production cycle is less precise. Their best opportunity, as far as they can tell, is just after the liberation of Ala Mhigo, so close that one revolution rolls into the next. It had been the Rejoining of the First to the Source which had tipped the balance -- terms dating back from scholars long-dead, passed on through libraries noble and common alike. The First should have been an unremarkable star. Books gathered from House Fortemps had offered vague descriptions of how Archon Minfilia had been blessed a second time by Hydaelyn, and had gone there shortly before the Eighth Umbral Calamity in an expedition to permanently relieve the shard's Light.
That should have been the cure of it. It took over two hundred years to realize otherwise, and just what that had meant for the Source.
But Minfilia is their first navigational locus, the one that gives them an estimation of how far to reach back. The gap between her estimated departure and Black Rose's rise will give Raha very little time to gain his bearings -- but if he is there to assist the Scion in her fight, if he can lend both his strength and whatever the Crystal Tower can provide, perhaps he may be able to help sway the tide.
Despite the gravity of such a task, Raha must do it alone. The Throne is more than capable of keeping him in stasis, but it will only recognize one with royal blood. The Ironworks do not have the resources to try and reverse-engineer the stasis pods they have found, and even if they wished to open an intact one -- battling whatever beast was held within -- there are no guarantees of the consequences if they shove another person inside. One of Xande's clones would have the highest chances for survival. Barring that, they have Raha.
He has, he thinks -- not without a rueful laugh at himself -- become just as key a component as a pinch of stolen aethersand.
Preparing to leave is easier than Raha expects. Eorzea is in ruins; there are no ties in the Source for him to cling to. The Ironworks engineers perform the hardest work, following centuries of labor for a promise they will never see fulfilled. They break themselves past every limit imaginable for the sole purpose of allowing someone else to escape, while they must dwindle away behind: embers from a fire that once burned with purpose, and can only wait for their extinguishing. Raha does not have the same responsibility. His role is merely to survive being flung through the rift, find a way to help Archon Minfilia counter the Light, and then -- once everything is over -- to fade away into oblivion.
He will not be the only casualty, either. If Raha succeeds, all the remaining Ironworks will be obliterated -- along with every survivor huddled at the remains of Mor Dhona, all the Ishgardians who have dug their footholds deep in the snows, each beast tribe who has carved fresh territories out from the remains of the city-states. The annihilation won't stop there. All of Eorzea and beyond will become erased. Another future will rise in its place, regardless of the consequences.
Even so, it only makes sense to agree. There is no reason for Raha to wish to live in such a time. Not anymore. If the Warrior of Light dies here, then it is more than hope which dies with them -- it is the idea that a single person can move to change a world, and open the way for others to follow.
Raha has always been ready to throw his life towards a cause. Now, it seems, he is simply late to the parade.
He assists the Ironworks in their final efforts to make the Tower ready, watching as they stuff every workroom available with supplies for his trip: clean water and crystals to generate more, dried meats and fruits, medicines and spare clothing. Books, of course, everything they can find. Tomestones end up shoved into every available crevice, spilling out like cards from a gambler's sleeve, deciphered and encrypted mixed together in a disarray that would make Rowena weep.
"Don't you need these for yourself?" he asks Biggs, frowning as he watches one room become packed full, only for the engineers to promptly move to another. "Winter will be here soon. You'll still need food, and who knows if I can even use gil on the First, you'll need it here, for trade -- "
Biggs hefts another crate in his arms, heavy enough that the muscles strain through his fraying uniform. "Worry about yourself from here on out," the roegadyn orders sternly, not sparing a look in Raha's direction. "Won't do us any good if you're caught short against the Light with an empty belly, will it?"
Raha watches the man disappear up the stairwell, and he knows: he will never hear the answer spoken out loud.
In his last few days on the Source, Raha finds himself trying to make a fevered inventory of anything he might be forgetting from his own affairs. He wanders aimlessly up and down Allagan corridors as he tries to sort through memories of the Isle of Val, of other Students of Baldesion, of Mor Dhona and the Sons. There is nothing he can think to seek out. He has already said his farewells once. He never thought he would have to repeat them.
In the end, his hands remain empty. Everything Raha needs is in the Tower. Everything else he would want to bring is buried in the ground.
Ephemeral, he thinks, remembering the expected longevity of Unei and Doga's gift to him. They had meant it to be temporary, a measure to allow him to close the Tower, and then for the Eye to fade away completely over the generations. His duty to it would have been surrendered. Instead, Raha had chosen to throw himself straight back in. He was the one who chose to separate himself from everyone he knew when he shut Syrcus's doors behind him; it was his decision and his alone, and it is too late to cast blame on anyone save himself.
All of his life, it seems, has been a cycle of departures, with nothing left behind: his tribe, his world, his breath.
This was, he thinks, how he was always meant to end up.
As it turns out, none of their calculations make any difference.
Raha arrives on a star which has already lost all sense of night. The sky is blasted open, swirls of aether staining it like soap poured across cream and worked into froth. Light drenches every quarter of the forest that nestles around the Tower's spires, so disorienting that he wraps himself against the glaring brightness, and still has to squint.
Minfilia is already gone.
The few survivors he meets outside the Crystal Tower confirm his fears -- so stunned by the sight of its appearance that they give up their answers freely, after Raha has reassured them that the Tower is not another manifestation of Light come to slaughter them all. He has missed the Scion completely -- not by a few bells, or moons, but years, nearly a full decade's worth. The Ironworks have succeeded in splitting open both time and the rift, but Raha has already failed; there is nothing he can possibly do now for the hero he was sent here to support.
Untangling himself from their questions, he flees back to Syrcus and slams the Tower's defenses shut in his wake. He stumbles through each workroom, grabbing at copies of the calculations which had been left behind, cross-checking them against his own history notes taken before the leap.
Only after he manages to finally coax the Ocular's viewing portal open -- like herding an irate chocobo with his voice alone -- does Raha understand what has happened.
Time is disconnected, mismatched between both stars. Each second on the Source stretches longer than an hour on the First, leaving one world frozen while the other gallops ahead. It might be five years before the two worlds catch up. It might be five hundred. Or the difference might collapse the exact moment that Raha glances away, rushing forward through the liberation of Ala Mhigo and the subsequent Garlean repercussions, skipping headlong into the outbreak of Black Rose in the time it takes for Raha to climb a flight of stairs.
For the moment, he still exists. By the proof of his own continued breathing, Raha knows: the Calamity merely waits to be ushered in the rest of the way.
He is on a world alone with few resources and even fewer ideas, and -- with every bell that he is alive to see pass -- Raha knows the Warrior of Light remains dead.
Everyone goes a little crazy at first without the night -- himself included. There are the aftershocks of the Flood, of course, both literal and figurative. Nations have vanished. Entire clans are wiped out. It is a Calamity for a world which has never known one before, and which had nearly meant the end of their entire star.
There is more than simply the aether itself which is left imbalanced on the First. Nature thrives under a mixture of light and dark, sun and shade, and destroying that circadian rhythm cuts through all forms of life which depend upon it. Flowers which are meant to open with the dawn stay perpetually unfolded, straining wide while their innards dry into powder. Animals which require the night to hunt starve; crops which need gloom to endure end up burning slowly to death in the light, their leaves blanching pale green and then white. Insects swarm in helpless clumps, and then die from exhaustion, their bodies dotting the ground in patches of black dust.
Even the Spoken races are not immune. Fatigue is, by far, the highest complain that Raha hears, sapping both minds and bodies dry: the hot, gritty feel with each squeeze of your eyes, perpetual nausea haunting the back of your throat, the way that each breath of air is weighed too thin, one second away from smothering. Eternal sunlight drives everyone past their own endurance. Years after the Flood, people's bodies press their owners to stay awake expecting for the evening to come, for rest to claim them, ushering them to peace. It never comes. One endless day, promising relief any moment now. Any second.
It never comes.
In the absence of darkening skies, timepieces become as vital as water, dictating arbitrary shifts between waking and sleep. Crystals quietly mark off each bell, shifting colors discreetly on wrists and armor alike. Raha takes to his with a sigh and forgets it conveniently -- at first, because he has slept so much that he wants to spite it, some part of his old rebellious streak surfacing with a miqote's prank and fire. Then, because he forgets he needs it. Sleep is a strange lover for him, showing up less and less, estranging itself in hopes that he may come to value it all the more for its abandonment of him.
The more he denies it, the more he can forget what has happened at all.
He sets about first to gathering information, both to understand this new territory and to prevent it from understanding him. His wits serve him well now as he relies on the excuse of a homeland too far away to even be named, pulling his hood further and further down over his eyes. Raha has always preferred to approach his problems from the sidelines first, circling and observing his target before finally making himself known; it is a predisposition which serves him well now, armoring him in anonymity as he continues to stumble through the First. There are many who are like him, luckily. All their nations are far away, eaten like the others in the Flood; they are unused to unrelenting light, and shadow their face equally.
I am here to provide aid, he says when asked, and carefully turns the conversation back to Minfilia, whose name deserves to be sung for her sacrifice -- and who may have died needlessly, the victim of a few unsynchronized seconds on the Source.
Aid, he says. And yet, for all of Raha's calm promises, he has no real idea of how to undo the Light.
This world can heal -- must heal in order to prevent the Eighth Umbral Calamity, which will only become harder with each generation that passes, raising children who will never know of a life before the Flood. But he is no great arcanist, neither conjurer nor thaumaturge, and this is an entire world which aches with wounds. He is simply G'raha Tia, and while he can fight against a few Sin Eaters, it is a home that people need: not more blood.
The buildings themselves happen faster than he expects. As soon as the first pack of Sin Eaters attempts to rush the Tower -- and are incinerated for their troubles -- tents spring up overnight like mushrooms around the pillar of Syrcus. Wagons pull together to serve as caravan lines, carts transforming into rough shacks held up by rope and planks. Loggers work the forests of Lakeland, partnering with hunters for protection while carpenters trade their skills for other goods. Those who can build, do so; those who cannot, learn. Everyone has something they can offer. Everyone has something which they need.
Raha expects the same hostilities that he woke to on Eorzea: bandits, murderers, predators and parasites of every kind. The First holds some -- but far less than he expected, and once they realize that neither the Tower nor its caretaker will allow it to be misused, they move on to easier marks.
After the third time that the Tower effortlessly incinerates a thief attempting to break its doors open, Raha sighs, and offers it a soft pat of his fingers.
He purges the Ironworks supplies feverishly once he has the measure of the survivors, and can guess who has honest need and who is planning to steal extra and sell it later. The storehouses of the Crystal Tower are easiest place to begin; he professes ignorance over items as familiar as gil, and shares honest confusion on discoveries that even he has not seen before. Room by room, the crates get hauled out. Raha watches each lid come off to reveal bundles of clothing and medicines, methodically-wrapped rolls of blankets, canisters of machine oil and elementally-attuned crystals sectioned off by size and weight.
The total is far too high for anyone to spare. Raha had seen the patchwork repairs which had stippled all the Ironworks equipment. He remembers the weak broth in their dinner bowls, the stained canvases wrapped around the chocobo stables for weatherproofing. What he is looking at now is enough to have fed the entire company all winter long -- all year, and likely the next. They had saved it all up for him. This is their last inheritance, passed on to strangers who will never know their benefactors; the Ironworks have given all of their chances to Raha, and he cannot waste them.
Raha hands out each crate to a set of waiting hands, and forces himself to smile, his voice on the edge of wavering as he remarks on how lucky they are to have stumbled across such vast resources by accident.
Here, on this star as well, there are the dead to attend to.
As caretaker for the Tower and the shields it provides, Raha ends up being known to many in Lakeland by default. He has been given offers to join their gatherings for many reasons: for meals, for planting crops, to assist in carting firewood for houses. He has even been there to celebrate, miraculously, the birth of a new child, its angrily kicking feet squirming in his hands -- but this is the first time Raha has been invited to join the mourning.
There are others in attendance as well, a motley assembly of workers who could be spared from tilling the fields laid out to the west of the Crystal Tower. The family itself is a small one, elven stonecutters from Kholusia. Their grandfather had been struggling for weeks before finally succumbing, withering away not from an infection of Light, but from the same ills affecting them all: not quite enough food, not quite enough rest, not quite enough hope.
There is no ceremony to stand on. The doctrines of the Church of the First Light have already crumbled. In the emptiness, each family has turned to their own practices. Some pray to the darkness, some to vengeance. Some to nothing more than their own dreams, making promises for their children's children to remember when it comes time for their own graves to be dug.
The family does not burn the body -- no need for more light, more heat -- but they bury it and lay stones across the top to discourage scavengers. Raha helps along with the rest, made part of the chain of hands as they pass the heaviest rocks across. Beastkin, confused by the activity, snuffle at the edges of the treeline, driven back by a few diligent sentries. The hour is late, but the brilliance of the sky is no less dim. Midnight will arrive soon, in theory.
When it comes time around the circle for Raha's turn to speak, he founders. He knows that there are simple condolences to recite -- basic promises of peace for the soul, that each life is not spent in vain. But all he can think about is the truth behind this man's death: that all this occurred because of a Source that none of these people have even heard of, that they are blameless victims in a war that has claimed seven other shards, and thinks of them as nothing but an eighth.
Raha stares down at the cairn with its hump of fresh dirt, spilling out like an infection across the bleached earth, and his thoughts go blank.
"Your family will see the night return one day," he swears, though he is the only one who knows exactly how much he means it. "I promise."
Afterwards, while the gathering disperses into smaller clusters, the grandfather's eldest son remains at the grave. The man's own children have already been ushered away, off to restore themselves with food and rest before the inevitable work tomorrow. Only he remains for memory.
"Few enough good people left after the Flood," the man remarks at last, gaze still fixed on the cairn. "Stay alive as long as you can too, Exarch."
Raha shifts uncomfortably at the title -- an honorific unluckily passed on from survivors of the Church, but it seems a neutral enough frame of reference for natives of the Source -- and bows his head. "I will do my best."
"That's all I suppose we can do." The elf lifts one shoulder in a resigned, wry shrug. The next noise he makes is a ragged sigh; the man tries to twist his mouth into a smile, but the corners remain tugged firmly down, forming creases that are already deeply molded into his face. "Did you have the same custom, back in your homeland? What was it like there?"
The question is idle, meant as a distraction away from the immediate moment; any pleasant lie would be enough to soothe. Raha cannot manage even that much. He can only think of Ishgard in flames, of Syrcus's doors shutting out NOAH with a final thump, of wandering for years in search of answers for a single red eye.
He can only think of Biggs, feet planted in the snows of Ishgard, fighting to convince himself that he had no reason to grieve.
Raha has no future. He is already in the process of abandoning his past. Between those two voids, he does not exist, and despite his own horror, he hears himself answering, "I don't -- I don't have one."
Shame slams his mouth shut; he cannot force it open again, paralyzed even when he knows he should offer an apology. To overshadow a funeral with his own woes is beyond callous -- and yet, he cannot bear to acknowledge his own words, even to take them back. The muteness of his denial feels like a tumor swelling in his throat, pressing against his tongue, strangling his airway until every breath tastes of bile.
The elf glances over to him, his eyes sympathetic, but no less drained. Both of them struggle in the silence to find enough energy to offer comfort outside their own souls; both of them fail.
Eventually, the other man manages to recover first, gamely nodding his head. "Well, it's here now then," he reasons gently, giving Raha a light clap upon the shoulder. "Welcome home, Exarch. It's good to have you with us."
The moment of kindness is graceful enough to sear. Raha manages a flicker of a smile, feeling it already bleed into a wince. He does not belong, he cannot belong, or else he will have lost every hope entrusted to him from the Source. Every part of him yearns to seize the invitation anyway. The survivors already accept him. Raha could simply settle down among these homes, adopting the disguise of refugee as his new truth: to be just like them, just as deserving of their support.
But he will leave them. It is only a matter of time, and Raha can offer no comfort in advance, nor warning. And if -- when -- he vanishes, he will take all their generosities with him. They will have no body to mourn, no answers for their confusion. They will only know that Raha had briefly lent them the Tower's protection before it had all been snatched away, another loss just when their lives might have begun to trust in stability once more.
He bids the man good eve, and flees back to the Tower before he can disgrace himself further. Each door that swings shut behind him -- sealing the world away -- divides him from the First, layering itself like a shield until Raha is tucked in his library, hands opening and closing uselessly on his lap as he tries not to choke on his own mistakes.
This was not the kind of battle he expected.
Fiends to slay, runes to decipher, ruins to search through and battles of glory and defiance -- all this, Raha had been braced for. He had arrived on this star already planning to find other adventurers to fight beside, shoulder-to-shoulder as they sought out Minfilia and struck down whatever menace had kept her from originally saving the First. Even though the path might have been difficult, courage would have brought them through it.
Such is the recipe for a proper hero's story. Raha knows each step by heart.
But what he faces now is far different. These are wars of supplies and starvation, where victories are measured by how much grain can be harvested in a season, and where it can be stored without rotting; where they must make a count of how much smeltable ore is on hand for tools, and then find the heat to forge it with. Glory is of far less importance than the materials to build new homes with, walls which might guard one's family against hungry beasts and from other predators of the Spoken kind. Within the ragged community, there is no law yet to keep those houses from turning upon each other -- nor to manage hygiene and disease, to establish education for new generations, and to ensure the precious knowledge of previous nations is not lost. Though the refugees have come together, they have no reason for loyalty beyond their own survival. There is no dream of a Warrior of Light to unite them all, not when hunger is scratching at the door.
For all Raha knows, that will be the real flashpoint for the Eighth Umbral Calamity -- not from Sin Eater, but from mankind's own despair, after giving up on themselves and on each other.
Raha cannot rise to lead them. Not directly. It would be easy to step into the role of hero; some of Lakeland's survivors have already tried to title him king, and he can feel the ease of it waiting like a neglected coinpurse upon a table. It would be a child's game to try and pretend to be a Warrior for them, rising bright as a rallying cry to inspire them throughout the years -- only to disappear right when they relied upon him most.
There are too many ways for Raha to hurt these people. Telling them his origins in a misguided attempt to cushion the blow would be even more disastrous. That is a kind of madness which he cannot imagine anyone on the First would resist: to know that there are other shards which they could run to, instead of trying to salvage the remains of this one. If the survivors all worked together, they might argue, they might be able to escape. They might be able to live.
If the people of the First came to him like that right now -- if they pleaded with him, held up their families in their arms, begged for a chance to flee -- Raha does not know if he could say no.
He does not want to see that. To watch their courage decay, as if the bravery of the First is all a lie, and every star is doomed to fall into a selfishness born of self-preservation. That life might die in people's hearts and leave only their bodies struggling behind, never to be restored to nobility, because they have forgotten what heroes are -- because all that word means anymore is someone who will die moments before you will, and vanish just as you begin to trust.
No matter what Raha does, his last message to the survivors will be one of abandonment.
His fingers ache with his own shame, clenching together until the knuckles whiten. He folds his arms instead to try and still them, gripping himself tight enough to hurt. His back slumps against the wall; he presses against it in hopes that it might swallow him whole, staring up at the gleaming ceiling in hopes of an answer.
He doesn't know what to do. Like the defeat of the Light, Raha has no map for such a course. He does not know how to build a tribe when all the memories of his own involve the jeers of the other children, the superstition against the redness of his eye, the unspoken expectations pressing down upon him that he would leave as soon as he was of age. He can fight a threat himself, but has never taught others how to do the same; he has no idea how to build an entire city, let alone how to provide others with both the means and patience to do it themselves. The clearest examples from his own histories are that of Allag, where prosperity had led directly to ruin. His greatest hero is dead. All of his companions are gone.
At best, all Raha can do is give these people everything and yet allow for nothing in return, so that in the end -- once he has changed, died, become erased from history -- they will have lost nothing by losing him.
He has no idea where to start.
His own ignorance leaves him breathless. Raha rolls his head back, feeling the dull thump of his skull against the lowest bookshelf; his ears brush against the wood, flicking in distress. "'And I much prefer to chronicle the accomplishments of the bold and the mighty,'" he recites aloud helplessly, remembering the pride of his declaration to the Warrior so long ago. The words feel so arrogant now. Boldness did not dig latrines; zeal would not clear a camp full of lice any faster. The next sound that comes out of his mouth is a laugh, dry and mocking as he rubs a hand against his eyes. "History only remembers that which is memorable. And I -- at heart -- am merely a historian."
He does not know what causes him to reach for it. A half-remembered anecdote about moogles, possibly; maybe a reference to chigoes. But Raha pulls himself upright and makes himself hunt for the shelves with the Warrior's records, every book that the Ironworks had managed to gather between fact and legend. This time, he refuses to allow himself to skip straight to the section about Ifrit, turning instead to the very beginning of the records, before the Warrior had even been given such a title and was still competing with other adventurers for bills in Copperbell Mines and Sastasha.
They are small tasks at first glance. Recovering a worn battleaxe from the hands of bandits, posting hiring notices to encourage workers to aid in construction. And yet, even as the Warrior's legend grew -- rising up against nations, treated as an equal by the leaders of the city-states, overturning the Archbishop Thordan and laying the Black Wolf low -- those moments never stopped. Like smaller threads woven alongside those of gold, Raha finds hundreds of tales of Eorzea's people recorded alongside that of armies. There are stories of the Warrior bringing mulled wine to wounded soldiers, of how they encouraged a young miqo'te ranger to not give up her efforts in the hunt, of laying lilies on the graves of the dead. There had been sylphs rescued from being digested alive by hungry plants, and a Vanu Vanu who had been paralyzed by poison and left for sacrifice. There had been a mother's plea for her son's death to be avenged by slaying the gorgotaur who had claimed him, and insect-harried sentries hoping to find relief with the beat of a griffin's wings. There had been a rogue band of Ixal who had refused to accept being earthbound, seeking to reach for the sky on borrowed wings when their own would not suffice.
He reads of an auri warrior who feared being exiled from his tribe for having the wrong soul, only to discover that he had been welcomed all along. Of recovering the wedding ring of a woman who had died frozen in ice, freeing her spirit to find other loves; of rescuing a Questiri boy's stolen bow from those who had imagined his talents to be magic. Of helping a refugee save his brother's life, after he had gone off into the wilderness to die when the elementals had rejected them both.
Here -- in all of these tales -- the Warrior had not been held aloft for their work with the Grand Companies, or for battling endless Primals. To these people, the Warrior had simply been khagan, dancing one, gobbie friend, ijin. Stranger.
Adventurer.
Exarch, Raha thinks, adding his own title to the list. Another unknown wanderer who had appeared on the road to help guard a weary traveler or carry an extra crate when another pair of hands was needed. Lucky enough to be in the right place and time to save a life -- and brief enough to move on, disturbing nothing with their departure.
With rising speed, Raha continues to flip through the pages, pausing to trace his fingers over the letters at random, finding confidence rising with each new passage. If he had been his old self on the Source, he would have skipped over these minor tales -- as the authors must have wanted to do more than once, he thinks, reading the fifteenth account of the Warrior helping a farmer with their vegetables. And yet now, he craves them as proof of the way forward, each one resting like stones laying the path before him. These are not the epic stories of triumphing over fiends, of changing the course of nations. They are not the works of a Warrior of Light who broke Primals like brittle twigs. These victories were won for individuals, with often little reward -- but they were victories nonetheless.
Every one of those tasks had mattered to someone in the end. Even as a stranger, the Warrior had made a difference in all of those lives.
It will be enough. It has to be. If Raha can believe in the Warrior of Light -- if he can believe in everything they have done, no matter how small -- then he can believe in his own ability to accomplish the same.
He finishes a passage speaking of how the Warrior had helped ferry gil and ingredients between the residents of Drybone, all so they could thank one of their own with a simple gift of cinnamon cookies. The next page continues on -- but Raha pauses there, closing the book instead. His fingers run over the worn leather of its cover, memorizing the softening whorls of its inscriptions. He pulls it tight to his chest and folds himself around it like a child, hugging the paper and pretending that the warmth absorbed from his own body is that of another radiating back.
After only a few bells of reading -- somewhere between Ultima Weapon and Good King Moggle Mog's dreaded first incarnation -- Raha knows the next step he needs to take.
Habits from long nights of research had kicked in early, lulling him into a fury of bookmarks and scribbled cross-references. Connections had drawn themselves between the most unexpected of places, bringing the Warrior back to families that had already been helped once before, or introducing opportunities that had previously been concealed. Raha spiders long chains of consequence across continents and alliances, watching some names reappear over and over, while others had only needed assistance once before moving on.
In the end -- stretching in one agonized motion, the muscles of his stiff back complaining after being hunched over for so long -- he has one unavoidable conclusion.
He will need more time.
It is clear enough that the First will take generations to heal, even if the Light could somehow be banished within a moon's time. But it can, Raha thinks. It will, if given the opportunity. The Source itself may have looked like this right after the Eighth Umbral Calamity, when the living were still full of hope. If so, he dare not allow it to take the same course, allowing these seeds to wither before he can prove their final bloom. If the people of the First cannot keep their spirits strong throughout the years, it will not matter if Raha can find a way to destroy the Light or not -- the ground will be ripe for the Ascians to simply try again.
He goes back into the Tower, climbing all the way up to the Emperor's Throne once more, where he had slept for so long that his body knows the shape of it better than any pillow or cushion. His is a small frame, made even smaller by its scale. It has cradled Allagan rulers for centuries, keeping Xande's clone alive through years of stasis even underground. Now, Raha must ask it to do even more.
Radiance filters down around him, glittering through the Tower's walls; it was a structure intended to feast on the sun, and the First feeds it well in this regard. He can feel its aether simmering in the air. It had always beckoned eagerly for his attention, and he had always forced it aside; now, he can no longer afford to ignore its capacities. He must allow the Tower to claim him the rest of the way, to accept its embrace and permit it to make their connection -- the royal blood within -- a permanent one. He will be Salina's heir in truth, and Xande's through her, and lose the simplicity of G'raha Tia forever.
His breathing speeds up. Fear tightens his chest; the waterfall rush of liquid surrounding the dais reverberates like a storm.
The Throne is warm against his skin.
Raha spreads his right hand wide, feeling aether brushing against his nerves, like an animal's whiskers snuffling against his throat in the dark.
I cannot refuse this, he tells himself, even as he watches his fingers tense and curl, unconsciously trying to pull back. Whatever happens to him next shouldn't matter. The plan has always led to his death, in the end. All that matters is that Raha gets there.
He is a creature who should not be mourned, not even by himself.
He thinks of the engineers lost in Ishgard, always keeping him safely ahead of them, steadily urging Raha forward even when it meant that they had lagged behind. He remembers running until there had been only cold air and silence behind him. Like wisps of smoke, their lives had faded away into the ashes.
He had never learned their names.
Raha counts out each of his heartbeats, feeling the gallop of his lungs begin to ease. He exhales carefully, rationing the air like the last crumbs in a beggar's bowl and then -- slowly, deliberately -- lowers his palm to rest it squarely against the Throne.
"All right," he says. "I'm yours."
That night, he does not remember his dreams.
He wakes disoriented, from a rest so deep that he does not know if another two hundred years have passed, or if all of it was a fantasy to begin with. When he stretches, yawning, each muscle is stiff enough to bring a wince to his face.
He rolls his shoulders, flexing one arm and then another -- and as he does, Raha sees the first, tiny glitter of crystal particles embedded in the skin of his hand, as if he has dipped it in sand that will never come clean again.
His next clue comes nearly a decade later, when the first Lightwarden breaks through into Il Mheg, and shatters all their assumptions with it.
He has the honor of meeting Titania once before the end, soon after they are named king of all faerie for their valor. Even before then, as ruler of the pixies, they have already distinguished themselves as a creature of unsurpassed wit and wisdom, of rare kindness in a people most often known for their pranks. It had been by Titania's hand that the faeries had rallied in an unprecedented unity, driving back the Sin Eaters from gnawing on the remains of Voeburt, and claiming the abandoned lands for their own. They are more cunning than the Fuath, some say, and better spellweavers than even the Nu Mou. Their courage is matched only by their rabidity.
When Raha goes to Il Mheg, however, it is not a joyous occasion. The land is still raw from its first ravaging by eaters only a few years past. Half the maps still list the territory as Voeburt. Even with the Oracle's return, their land had still been lost; Eulmore's army had snapped her up before Raha could contact her, hearing too late about a young girl with enough power to withstand the Sin Eaters, but not enough to remember her past.
But this time, the eaters have come with even greater force. Travelers and scouts alike have watched dozens of the creatures congregate towards the faerie lands, their jointed white bodies skittering like albino spiders through the stones and forests, ignoring easy prey in favor of whatever inexplicable hunger calls them elsewhere.
Raha comes for diplomacy, and also for support.
Titania deigns to meet him on one of the hills outside Lydha Lran, with all the splendor of the new land shining on display. Vast clumps of flowers glitter orange and pink, worming their way between cobblestones already softened by moss. Raha can see the lake where the Fuath have conjured floods in place of fields, muddy outlines where the waters had splashed hungrily over their new cradle before receding glumly into place.
Before he can wonder if he has been misled -- the directions given wrong on purpose for a pixie's entertainment -- fireworks of color burst around him with a crackle of tiny bells. Titania flickers into view with a cry, circling around him in a hectic spiral that disorients him for how it shrinks and spins, looping in impossible ways as their path cuts through the air. Raha gets dizzy trying to keep track of their flight; then he realizes that such an outcome is exactly the intent, and forces himself to hold steady until Titania grows weary of the game in slowly decaying arcs.
With one final cheer, the faerie king spins in the air, long gown whipping into a spiral before they suddenly vanish. The air pops in Raha's ears. He has a terrifying moment of disorientation as he wonders if he's suddenly become a giant -- but no, Titania is the one who has shrunk, down to a pixie's scale once more as they dance back into view.
The reward for his patience is a giggle. The faerie king extends one slender arm to point directly at his face. "Look at how you sparkle!" they cry, delighted. "What a fancy thing you are. Lakeland sends us its prettiest things as tribute!"
Raha holds up a hand in half-formed panic, a nervous smile blooming across his face before he can regain his poise. "I am here as a representative," he defers politely, before the pixie can get too many ideas, and possibly turn him into a paperweight.
"Represent still is a present," they tease, toying with the common tongue as easily as a whittret with a mouse. Then they flit closer, peering at his palm with the ravenous curiosity of a child. Slowly, their lips part, showing hungry, tiny teeth. "Does it hurt?"
"A little," he admits, forcing himself into honesty, just in case a lie will be sensed and punished accordingly. "Not here," he clarifies, turning his hand before using it to touch his heart, "but here."
Again, Titania creeps nearer, slicing the distance between them by fractions each time that Raha blinks. "Are you scared?"
"A little," Raha repeats, laughing. His finger taps his chest again, and then his brow. "Not there. But here."
This time, the answer gives the faerie king pause. They drift backwards, tilting their head contemplatively while tapping one long finger against their chin. "Change is frightening. Even for pixies sometimes, and we know best of all what an illusion it can be. But even so," Titania continues, their voice so steady and somber that Raha feels the fur on his tail prickle in warning, "you'll do it anyway -- won't you, pretty pebble? Because you'd go through with it no matter what the pain. So there's no point in noticing how much you'll suffer. You'll make the choice, all the same."
A bleak way to look at it, in Raha's opinion -- but reasonable, when the extermination of your entire people is on the table. He mulls over the king's words, tasting them as they settle in his own thoughts before he presses on. "There are far more Sin Eaters than the last time," he warns. "Eulmore has said that the Oracle is already at a front in Duergar, and they cannot send her back in time, not without risking the line. Of Lakeland's forces, we can send enough soldiers to hold fortifications at Clearmelt, and funnel any retreat back to the Stay, making use of the terrain there to slow any Sin Eaters who pursue. Knowing this, will you still choose to fight?"
It is bad luck, some commanders might say, to plan for your own failure on the battlefield rather than your success. Raha is no general -- but he has seen the maps, white blocks marking out each swelling wave as Sin Eaters crawl across the mountains. He has seen the odds.
Titania has no such concerns. "Oh." Distracted by the shift in topic, they whirl about in the air, the pale curls of their hair lifting briefly like dandelion fluff. "Yes, of course, of course! We'll not do the same as these mortals have, fleeing these lands and leaving them fallow. There's been simply too much work in making everything look right, you see." Rainbows flicker off their wings, blurring like a hummingbird. "We've seen the Sin Eaters swarming all northwards, just like a hive of angry, cranky bees -- though not half as much fun. So the north is where we'll go. It's as good a place as any to deal with them."
Such courage is undeniable. Raha wants to believe it will be enough. All the stories he has heard of the Lightwarden speak of a giant, even by galdjent standards; he cannot help but envision Titania being snapped up like a griffin's beak swallowing a mayfly, even in their larger form. "And if the Lightwarden is among them?" he presses.
"Then I will kill it." Titania's answer is prompt. The pixie's eyes are wide and mirthful; Raha tries not to notice just how sharp their teeth suddenly look in the light. "It will know its end with me."
There is nothing Raha can say against such bravery -- such bravery, along with bloodlust. All he can do is nod, and attempt not to think of worst cases. "Lakeland will do what it can," he promises, even knowing it cannot possibly be enough.
This time, rather than take back to the sky, Titania drifts lower, surveying him thoughtfully. "The Fuath would like for you all to be slaughtered," they inform him nonchalantly. "So that then they'll have their pick of places to drown, and make orchestras from your bones. The Nu Mou believe they can hide, and all will go back to what it was someday -- if only they close their eyes long enough. It is such a tricky little game," they sigh, tucking their legs up in the air, as if trying to curl themselves up into a small enough bundle as to disguise themselves as a winged fruit. "Rallying faeries to fight together against something such as this. Much easier to play."
"Will you, though?" Raha glances at them, a little more sharply than he intends. If there is pixie mischief, he must inform the Lakeland forces to be ready to defend against both faerie and Sin Eaters, just in case.
But when he looks in Titania's eyes, the only thing he sees is war. "Oh, this world's much more entertaining with mortals in it, don't you agree?" they grin merrily, tilting their mirth towards him as if to share the joke. "No matter how sweetly the Fuath may fiddle on your femurs. Worry not, pretty pebble! Il Mheg is our home now, and even the Nu Mou will fight for that. I'll make sure of it."
Unsettled by the implications -- but well enough aware not to push his luck -- Raha bows to them then, offering farewells in what little he's studied of the pixie-tongue. He thinks he manages goodbye well enough, and then tries to add something that he hopes means Regal Oak, but he must have mangled the pronunciation, for Titania shrieks in delight and whips around to pull his hood off, exposing his face to the sky. When he grabs for its protection, the pixie promptly straddles one of his ears instead and kicks gleefully, one heel drumming against his neck, and Raha must resist the impulse to do something as blatantly suicidal as grabbing a faerie king in his fist and flinging them directly towards the sky.
Instead, he manages to squirm enough to encourage them to dismount, their tiny hands slipping away while he flicks his ears madly. Titania twists in the air as they float free, laughing gaily before swooping back around to hover in front of him. Their bare feet swing as if they are swimming through water, stomping and smashing gaily at thin air.
Then, before Raha can apologize -- apologize, or prepare himself to be turned into shrubbery -- Titania darts forward, aiming directly for his face.
He shuts his eyes instinctively with a flinch -- but the touch that graces his brow is light. The brush of Titania's lips feels like a hot coal pricking his flesh, an echo of fire that sears beneath the skin. It is the littlest of kisses, a benediction from one king to one not-king, and Raha catches his breath as he recognizes the gift.
"Be brave, little pebble," they tell him, already drifting out of arm's reach. Silk suddenly ripples down in petals around their heels; their hair tumbles like a flaxen waterfall, each of their peacock wings spreading wide to glisten in the Light. They rise in full regalia, taller than him once more, scintillating with all the power of nature distilled into pure wonder. "Keep following that glimmer of yours, no matter where it goes next."
It is Titania who gives him the idea. Titania, the first among the pixies to seek to unify their people in defense. Titania, the Longest Thorn, the Ichor-Bramble. The Dancing Plague.
Titania, the first among them to fall.
It is, more accurately, the fae as a whole who provide the inspiration. For a whimsical folk, they do not shy away from brutal necessity when their king turns. Sacrificing themselves by the dozens, they halt what would have been an endless cycle of slaughter and rebirth by locking the newborn Lightwarden away forever.
When Raha reads the report, the world seems to shudder to a crawl. He lowers the scroll in his hands to the table. The ribbon that had tied it shut flops limply over his fingers, a scrap of color like a wilting petal on his skin. He brushes it away carefully, and then touches his brow with the same hand, remembering the feel of Titania's blessing like a brand.
It will know its end with me, whispers their voice in his memory, and he allows himself to close his eyes briefly in mourning.
But he listens to the other stories hungrily, as do all the survivors whenever news of the Oracle arrives. Eulmore's troops chase a mass of eaters from Rak'tika Greatwood by way of Lakeland, and Minfilia goes with them, digging a second Lightwarden out of its burrow in Laxan Loft. Their forces send it scurrying westwards towards the mountains, harrying it until it goes underground once more; without the ability to slay it, the best they can do is seek to track the creatures and take note of their capacities. At first, Raha fears that Lakeland may be infested with them -- yet no other Lightwarden surfaces nearby, and he does his best to keep alert for the potential threat, like a chirurgeon chasing a tumor.
Like an Allagan formula puzzling itself out on the page, each tidbit of information slowly knits together. After trading another handful of reports with Eulmore's army, Raha retires to the Crystal Tower and spreads out all the notes he has on the floor of the Ocular, setting himself down in the middle with a boilmaster so that he can mull over data while the tea brews.
Light flows to Light, he thinks. It makes sense now. If that Light cannot be banished -- if it has simply been congealing all this while, instead of Minfilia negating it during the Flood -- then it is only a matter of time before it overwhelms the survivors, triggering the Rejoining and subsequent Calamity. The Lightwardens themselves are useful by way of irony, concentrating the corrupted aether together in localized, tangible masses. They are not the only means by which the Light manifests, but -- like abscesses which swell in taut, infected blisters -- they are pockets which must be drained in order for the larger body to heal.
He circles around the conclusion once, twice, as mercurial as a pixie himself. His fingers tap on the scrolls, glittering faintly in the azure light of the Ocular.
Such an overflow of aether must be taken away from the First. That much, Raha has the answer to. Like Titania, he will take the Light into himself and then take it away, locked where it cannot escape. The Tower has the capacity to travel again, one last time, and he does not need the support of engineers to help him calculate a destination that will never arrive. Once it is stranded in the rift, the Light will be removed forever from both worlds; though the First will be depleted, it will at least not be skewed.
Without an active threat to the First, the Eighth Umbral Calamity will be forestalled. Both worlds will have a chance to recover. And there, in the darkness, Raha -- needing no violence for the act -- will simply cease to exist.
If Raha is to perish anyway, he may as well make practical use of his death.
It is, at best, a theory. It may be that when all the Lightwardens are removed, the Light will simply fester new ones instead. Smaller Sin Eaters may fuse together to replace the list; he does not know for certain yet. No new Lightwardens have invaded, but all the same, Raha does not know if others will congeal anyway if these ones are removed.
And -- as with all fragile, fledgling theories -- there is one critical piece missing. Raha must still be able to gather the Light safely to him, and in a manner where it can be transported entirely within the Tower when the time comes.
He stacks the papers aside, marking a few for further review with the Lakeland scouts. All the tactical options which spring to mind -- to gather and imprison the Lightwardens using Allagan technology, to hope that perhaps the Oracle may return with greater strength -- are too risky to be relied upon. The Oracle's gift is uncertain in its reach, and none of her rebirths have reported any knowledge of how she had stopped the Flood in the first place, let alone if it can be repeated. She can be slain, and her own resistance to the Light may mean she may not be able to contain it within herself at all; the foreign aether may slough off her like oil and water, spilling out to infuse the nearest candidate in her stead.
Like Primals, the Lightwardens are too dangerous even for those immune to being tempered. Anyone joining the fight without sufficient protection would only risk becoming a liability. Even a seasoned veteran can be killed or turned. Primals are not forgiving.
And, like Primals, Raha can think of only one person best suited for the role.
He resists the idea gamely before his own weakness undermines him, all resistance cut steadily away to leave only a wistful longing in its place. The Tower knows his desires even before he does. Ripples tremble across the crystal viewing portal as Raha turns to face it, clouding the surface momentarily before parting the distance, and revealing the face of the Warrior of Light.
On the other side, time is moving slowly, slowly enough that it will take several bells before the Warrior even finishes blinking. They are traveling by chocobo, it seems, through the woods near Tailfeather. Their head is turned to the side; they are speaking to someone just out of sight, a familiar affection creasing their eyes as they either laugh at a joke, or offer one themselves. Raha can see the colors of autumn coloring the trees around them. The Source radiates like a kaleidoscope of jewels with the Warrior at its center -- off on another minor errand, he thinks, with more fondness for the idea now, rather than considering it an irritant along the way to greater glory.
"I haven't given up yet," he tells them dryly, and even as he knows he should regret it, he cannot prevent the leap in his chest at the thought of them on the First.
He dares not try and pluck the Warrior away until the very last moments, when Black Rose is already back in production; to do so would jeopardize everything accomplished in history past that point. If he is too hasty, he may accidentally destroy the peace of Ishgard, or the freedom of Ala Mhigo. Doma might once more find itself conquered. Black Rose could be developed faster, taking advantage of the Warrior's absence to ruin the Source ahead of schedule.
And he will need every second of that time that he can get. The Tower may have granted him life, but Raha is still no great arcanist; he is not innately prone towards magic, though he has studied the principles well enough in his research for everything even remotely related to the Allag. And while the Tower has knowledge, it has far too much of it, categorized in ways that he is only barely beginning to understand. Raha does not have the moons spare to throw himself into the nearest creation index, only to waste all his efforts on accidentally studying how to combine a seedkin and wavekin together into some chimeric culinary disaster.
He does not have the engineering skills necessary to perfectly reverse the Ironworks equations. But the Tower has bridged three stars now, as if born to the task, and Raha knows it will do the same again if properly asked. With it handling the primary effort behind opening a connection, then all Raha needs to do is be able to yank the Warrior temporarily through -- a leash that could to be released back to the Source with his own death, not unlike an egi itself.
The last part is vital. If Raha cannot adopt the same magic as an Allagan summoner, he might as well strand the Warrior on the First forever once the Tower is gone. The end result will be just as good as letting them die in the first place.
Yet he is here, in the Crystal Tower itself -- there is no better place in all the stars to learn such an art. And even though Allag eventually turned its back on the practice, the Sons of Saint Coinach labored for years to uncover it, meaning that here, too, Raha is twice lucky: he is the inheritor of their work, packed carefully by the Ironworks to be sent with him to the First.
He spares a grateful thought for Rammbroes -- not yet born in one world, already dead in another -- and digs with renewed hope through the tomes in the Umbilicus. Some pieces come easily to hand, penned by Y'mhitra the Learned and filed carefully with the rest of the research from the Sons. Others are mere collections of rumors, claiming gruesome techniques by the Beast Tribes to summon even more potent versions of their Primals. Several tales only muddy the waters, listing Primals which had been called for by faith and power alone, with no roots in Ascian meddling to spark them.
His enthusiasm weakens slowly with each formula he comes across, squinting at the tangle after tangle of arcane patterns, until -- with dismay -- Raha realizes his luck has already run dry.
He should not have expected a beginner's manual, of course. But neither did he plan for just how much of the knowledge relied upon a soul crystal either.
Dread winds through Raha's belly, cooling his blood. With rising panic, he paws through Rammbroes's collection again, hoping for some fragment to tumble out of one grimoire or the other. Each dusty crate is flipped open, bags upended across the floor. He combs through every box marked with the stamp of the Ironworks three times over, starting a fourth round before he can finally force himself to take a deep breath, setting himself down in the middle of the chaotic wreck of his library.
There is no soul crystal among Rammbroes's belongings. There is nothing in the Ironworks. Raha is neither trained, nor skilled in magicks; he will have to start at the beginning, a neophyte learning ciphers, practicing proper aether control by rote in order to keep his own spells from becoming lethal in their casting. He has the Crystal Tower -- there is no better tutor. He has a few books on history, enough to help guide his search in its records. But even with those both, Raha still lacks a means to control the required power safely, along with an understanding of how to learn and categorize the spells quickly enough. Without a conduit to perform the basic steps of formula construction and aetheric flow, it does not matter how many books Raha may have access to: he will not be able to learn it all in time.
A soul crystal would have been key to that. He cannot simply grab a chunk out of the nearest piece of Allagan equipment, not unless he wants to risk killing both himself and the Warrior with pre-existing formulas garbling their aether. Any similar stones on the First may have already been corrupted by Light. And -- despite how the entire Tower itself is made from crystal -- Raha does not know where he can find a spare piece. He will need one that is blank enough to be recorded on, new enough that it would not have already been filled with other spells, only recently formed --
"Oh," he says abruptly, stunned enough to go utterly still for a moment, as if it is the First's turn to be caught on the other side of time.
Slowly, Raha lifts his right hand, turning the palm carefully away from him. He flexes his fingers experimentally, watching translucent flecks glitter along his knuckles. Like granite trapped in sand, the crystal has already crawled deep into his arm, burying itself alongside his veins.
"Go ahead," he says softly, to himself, to the Tower -- to the First itself. The world is hushed around him. "Change me into what I need to be."
He rushes into it before he can let himself doubt, throwing himself into his studies with a manic fervor now that time is once more a finite, unpredictable thing. Raha has been late too often in his course, missing an entire Umbral Calamity, along with a Flood. He will not be late again.
It is clumsy work. Brute force is the only way that Raha knows how to use aether, pointing it blindly at things like aetherytes and machinery, trusting in the spells already engraved within those structures to shape the results appropriately. The same approach is less efficient now. He runs through each spell with barely any attention to the finer details before attempting to manifest them, and finds himself weaving the wrong formulas in reverse. He has always felt the Tower's presence ever since traveling through the rift; that tug has only grown stronger ever since he allowed it purchase in his body. Now Raha is the one reaching back, pulling like a needy child in demands for more aether, leaning into the Tower's strength when he cannot properly channel his own.
His control is laughable. He uses more far energy than he needs to, seeking to overcompensate by drowning each spell with raw intent, as if to bully his way into mastery of the art. But the Tower responds, channeling its aether obediently into him whenever he flounders, so that his skin prickles with borrowed power rather than exhaustion. It sups on the excess that would have otherwise killed him, draining away any malformed aether and absorbing it within its own placid spires. Its strength seeps into his body like the slow warmth of the sun it feeds on, and he welcomes it in.
If he can only cast one spell, Raha figures, then that is all that he needs.
It is that spell which he throws himself towards, recklessly quartering out the malmstones he will need to measure his own progress. Before he can adapt the proper formulas to properly bring the Warrior between worlds, he first must be able to grasp the principles of summoning at all. Before that, Raha needs greater aether control -- and before that, he must be able to prove he can channel enough energy to connect both worlds at all, or else his attempt will fail before it can even start.
He lets himself think -- very briefly -- about if he should stop to consult one of the other mages on the First, and then seals the doors of the Tower instead, heading resolutely for the Ocular.
The viewing portal responds with confusion when he touches it, expecting that he wishes to use it for mere scrying. It spins through a vision of Old Gridania to that of Yanxia, and then to the Burning Wall. When he does not give it any guidance, it flicks through several more regions before finally tilting resolutely towards the sky itself, like a baffled chocobo that has decided that its rider has gone mad.
Raha steels his nerves, and then tries to reach for the sky itself, drawing the first attunement arc in his mind.
The portal shudders around his fingertips, distorting like a puddle in the rain. Eorzea's clouds waver, flexing as wildly as if they were projected on screens made of rubber. Every ilm of Raha's hand stings red-hot. Like steel wedges, the pain drives itself through his nerves with the same ferocity as if it were shredding them, grinding muscles into pulp. Raha clenches his teeth; despite his efforts, a scream breaks loose anyway, distorting into a garbled roar even as he feels the crystal ripping through his body, the Tower digging trenches into his flesh in order to provide him with greater power.
He thinks about the story of Lady Iceheart, plummeting through the skies of Azys Lla as she made herself into a living shield for the Enterprise, made glorious for one last time before shattering into diamond dust -- and then he grasps wildly for the slipping thread of his concentration, frantically connecting every summoning incantation he can think of into a chain of pure intent.
The aether of his hand ignites.
Nearly blind with agony, Raha forces the raw energy back towards the controls. The outlines of his fingertips blur away, knuckle by knuckle. But the Tower locks his form back into place, refusing to lose him; it captures his life energy and weaves it back into shape, keeping him bottled within its grip even as it continues to inscribe each control spell into place. Shudders run through Raha's body, spasming his muscles. Through each wave of sensation, he can hear the whispers of Allagans long-dead, the vibrations of their voices pouring through him like a thousand mismatched drums while the Tower carves formulas into the molten crystal of his flesh.
Pain overwhelms his balance. The Tower releases him suddenly without warning; he lurches precariously towards the portal, fresh stone crackling up through his body and splicing through his bones. The voices go silent. Their spells finish with a final swish of an unseen quill, leaving Raha alone once more.
But the portal shimmers and then stabilizes, and Raha feels -- against the feverish heat of his skin -- the hint of a distant breeze lapping his cheek.
He braces himself against the edge of the portal, panting hard.
It is not a stable bridge between worlds, not by any stretch of the imagination. Raha knows better than to try and pull anything across it. He can already feel the weight of the Source's aether pressing against the connection, threatening to distend it like a steel ingot tipped against a sheet of silk.
Even so, he could try to step through it someday. Return to the Source, bond with the Tower there, and try an impossible attempt to live -- keep the Warrior alive through the Eighth Umbral Calamity by force, possibly by asking the Tower to craft a shoddy clone of the Warrior and leave it to die in their stead. The Rejoining would still occur; millions of lives would still be lost. But the Warrior might live, and Raha with them, and there were other shards remaining that the Ascians had not yet broken.
He thinks of the dozens of clustered families in Lakeland, their tiny fires camped together in a huddle against the Light, and -- without hesitation -- sweeps the portal shut.
He loses two fingers as the price for his recklessness. The Tower replaces them, not bothering with matters such as bones or muscles or skin. Like jewels adorning him, Raha holds the digits up to the sky, watching endless Light stream through his new body, tinting the heavens in a long-absent blue.
The crystal erodes his body more aggressively, now that he has given it full permission to possess him. It shoots through him like a runner vine. The color of his skin darkens in patches, flaking away like paper-thin scabs to reveal glossy stone underneath instead of scars. The flesh of his right arm is marbled through with crystal like two buckets of paint splashed together, not yet fully mixed. Every time he wakes from the Throne, there is a little more of him gone. After a while -- his own aether unbalanced from his attempts to force it into spell fodder -- Raha does not even need to rest upon the Throne for the stain to advance across his skin.
It unnerves him despite the lack of pain -- such things he knows as petrification or disease, a hazard to be feared. But the Tower is only trying to do its best to preserve him, as it had Amon and Xande and so many others throughout its centuries, and Raha knows that this was no less his own decision.
And his studies go far quicker now. That alone is worth it. Instead of memorizing each equation meticulously -- and then cringing back from the explosions of mistimed aether sequencing -- Raha needs only allow the intention to flow through him, following the channels which the Tower has already inscribed into his body. The crystal provides both aether and guidance, slowly tapping into his own life force, and then expanding upon it. It gives him a catalog of rituals in lieu of his veins.
With time, as the crystal crawls the rest of the way across his right arm and hand, devouring them whole. Stoneblight, he occasionally hears whispered -- refugees from Kholusia usually, the occasional dwarf caught away from home on one task or another, and who must now struggle home.
But other races are not as concerned, and Raha learns little about the condition even when he asks. It is already being forgotten, and his own crystallization is simply another quirk in a very long list of what his people accept from him; like the Tower, he is a benevolent curiosity, and they do him the kindness of not being curious.
The Warrior would not shirk from this, he tells himself sternly, in moments of hesitation whenever fear threatens to return. It is the stark truth. When it comes time to conquer the Lightwardens, the Warrior will not shy away; no matter how the Light might strain Hydaelyn's blessing, they would still struggle on. Raha reminds himself of this, more than once. Whenever he remains unsettled for too long, he takes one of the books from the Umbilicus up to the Throne and tucks himself around it as he reads, until the pages are too heavy in his hands and he lets himself slide into rest, the warm aether of the Tower swelling around him as it changes him further and further.
The crystal works through him. He, in turn, works on his magicks, broadening out his spells now that he has the basics down. He throws himself into whatever he comes across in the Tower's repertoire, tentatively exploring new patterns with a growing sense of wonder. He learns curatives and shields, fire and lightning, filling himself up like a grimoire until he finds himself reviewing spells he has never seen before: magicks for invisibility and illusions projected across the malms, glittering swords with razor edges that weigh no more than a feather. He draws patterns of stars across the ceiling of the Ocular and summons wispy flames to curl around his fingertips, floating like a leaf atop the Tower's aether while it continues to offer him more and more.
He walks the Tower often now, but only to explore the halls which open easily to his touch; there are corridors he remains wary of, and with good reason. The Cloud is not the only threat which the Tower chose to see as harmless. Raha's blood carries the command of Allag, but that does not make him its master -- he is simply another beast added to its collection, to be pampered on occasion, yet also to remember his place.
He stops sleeping as much. He stops sleeping at all, on occasion. It is easier now, so long as Raha remains close to the Tower and the slow tides of its strength. Over time, he stops being startled by the sight of his own changed form, only sighing wryly whenever he examines the continued ebbing of his skin. He is becoming something other than flesh; he is transforming into raw purpose alone, a statue powered by intention. Each new spell brings him one step closer to banishing the Light, even as it eats away his flesh.
The progress is satisfactory. Raha knows the bargain he has struck. He will hollow himself out and replace every part of his body with stone, allow himself to become an extension of the Tower itself, a living automaton, and then -- like any other construct -- once its purpose is over, it will be shut down.
Years later, Raha finally has the opportunity to ask one of the Oracles about courage. He is lucky; she is one of the ones resigned to her fate, still seeking hope but welcoming oblivion when it will come. The battlefield has left her dry of any expectations save that of endurance. She keeps her sword ready on her hip, and her hand resting easily upon it -- but he can already see how tired she is, exhausted by her own existence.
"We are the ones who must go before." She does not meet his eyes. Her words have the cadence of someone who has heard a rallying cry once, and now must repeat it endlessly whether they believe it or not, for it is the only force keeping her alive. "We cannot forget that it is for the sake of those who will come after."
She answers with Minfilia's words, but underneath, he can hear the strained, frightened voice of a child.
They do not have time to speak beyond that. Like Titania, Minfilia is called back to the front. Like Titania, she dies before Raha can see her again, leaving only her edict behind to whisper in his mind.
The next Minfilia does not remember.
When the fiftieth year arrives after the Flood -- a cause for stubborn celebration among the residents of the Crystarium, who shout out their jubilation like a roar against the sky -- they hold it in the tiers of the fledgling Musica Universalis, still rough with construction. It is little more than a wooden skeleton, a mass of unpainted boards and half-finished stairwells, ground flattened smooth in layered tiers around the central circle. There is nowhere clean to sit, so the merchants haul out every bench and stool imaginable, lining them up together so that the revelers must perch like handfuls of ragged mushrooms across the dirt.
It is crude. But the joy of it is not, and together, the Crystarium's people unite in exhilaration. They celebrate the earthworks, the carpentry, themselves and one another, embracing each indulgence as proof of their sins. It has been fifty years since their world tried to kill them. With every cheer they raise, they remind the Light how much it failed.
From a distance, Raha watches the revellers lift their glasses and cheer, bidding the musicians to louder heights, stamping their feet on unfinished planks. He has escaped early -- on purpose, and they have let him go after a few laughs and smiles, accustomed to his ways -- but lingers anyway, haunting one of the stairwells like a ghost clinging to shadows. Tomorrow's schedule will be a full one. Crafters have been busy with expanding the Crystalline Mean, and the Facet of Gathering has asked to speak on what type of trees might be best replanted near the Hour of Certain Durance. Raha is not instrumental in any of these decisions -- but he is a part of all of them anyway, brought in to listen and offer reminders of past efforts, or simply to lend a broader perspective to the table. He contributes his spells when he is able, and diplomacy when appropriate. He is the voice of the Crystal Tower, and all of the Settlement council knows by now just how stable that voice remains.
Raha has been alive for over three hundred years now. He has been awake for over half a century of it. He does not know how much further he has to go, but there are weeks when he can feel every single bell, adding up like scales on his body, invisible to the unaided eye. Nothing about his health has stopped functioning yet -- Raha still eats, blinks, breathes -- but there is a mass being layered on his bones, as if his soul is changing into something new, slipping further away from the confines of mortality with each sun that turns.
There is the chance, he is forced to acknowledge -- as more and more of his body is transformed into stone -- that the Tower will not allow him to die when the time comes. It has already been asked to keep Raha alive for this long; he cannot imagine that it will allow itself to be conquered so easily by something like time itself. Perhaps only his flesh will twist and melt away, while the crystal inside him will merge with the Tower directly, infecting it with a world's weight of corrupted aether. The entire structure itself might become a Sin Eater that way -- conscious and very, very hungry.
But even in such an event, the Tower will be trapped safely within the rift, never to leave it again. Raha can imagine it now: a great winged castle fit to rival Alexander itself, transformed into a bastion of living Light as its caretaker succumbs, haunting the rift and hunting Ascians as they flit from shard to shard, preying upon their Darkness as its preferred meal.
The thought brings a smile to his face whenever Raha considers it.
His third era of years is a mere addition to the second. Instead of decay whittling away his muscles, he has crystal coming in to replace him, making him feel heavier, slower, an arthritis of stone, a literal calcification. He walks with the steady patience of an elder, relying on his staff more often than he would like to admit. His strength has not ebbed; his magicks have not weakened. It is almost as if the Tower seeks to give him the experience of growing older in a well-intended facsimile, blindly trying to comfort its newest pet by providing it with something familiar.
But it is in his heart that Raha feels his age the most. His heart is the heaviest part that he must labor to get out of bed whenever he rests, levering himself out of chairs and up stairwells, hearing a soft, reluctant groan in his throat when he forces himself to move. It has become thick with the memories he has stored inside it, like a muscle damaged so many times that it becomes reluctant to beat, until the final day it will spasm -- and fail.
As the years move forward -- each one a celebration for life, each one another step towards doom -- Raha finds that they go more gently than expected, as if sensing how part of him is already winding down, readying itself to become nothingness.
He dreams the Tower's dreams at times, or what he imagines are the Tower's dreams. They may have been Salina's inheritance, passed similarly down through the Eye along with her knowledge of its purpose. They may have been Raha's own imagination, painting dusty old legends with the vividness of fantasy. In them, Raha sees hazy faces smiling together, outlines of Allag's prosperity stretching out like a brilliant, endless tapestry. The Crystal Tower had played a very different role back then, radiating its sun-gathered energies to the nation and housing inspiration in kind. Raha knows its history before Xande's hands; it had been fashioned to serve as a beacon of support for its people, meant to nurture a civilization beneath its shields instead of being turned towards destruction.
He wonders -- a little, when there are gatherings in the Exedra, or children playing by the Dossal Gate, giggling beside the walls -- if this outcome is what the Tower itself might prefer. It has come full circle back to its original purpose like this, surrounded by a nest of tiny lives back in its care. He wonders what the Allagans might say about it if they saw the Tower now, or if they would scoff to see what their miqo'te heir has done with it.
Either way, the Tower has found a home again, if only for a little while.
None of this was what he had expected. Raha was a tia with no tribe; he is a caretaker with no name. All the same, the Crystarium has made a place for him as well, working around his limitations as nonchalantly as they had the Crystal Tower itself. Exarch, they call him still, and he does not hear nunh, nor even leader, but simply protection. Sometimes: hope.
It becomes more and more easy to think of himself as nothing more than this. A stranger, come to the First from parts unknown, so much a part of the Crystal Tower that he is indistinguishable from it. Habit has solidified around him like a second layer of stone; his routines are secretive, but harmless. Even newcomers to the Crystarium do not question his name or face anymore, advised by the residents as if the Exarch is a beloved oddity, as familiar in his strangeness as one of the plants harbored in the Hortorium, its origins forever a mystery.
He has always been like this to them. They believe he will always remain this way.
It is not forever, but it is enough.
Whenever he is discouraged by losses from Sin Eater attacks, or from merchants panicking over cut supply lines, or yet another batch of travelers lost to the Fuath, Raha turns to the records in the Umbilicus. There, the Warrior always answers him. Not in Raha's imagination, but through the tales which have grown so familiar over the years, with moogles in need and pilgrims in search of protection, chocobo flocks that must be fed and roads that must be cleared of beastkin. He reads stories that he can recite word for word by now, taking comfort in the simplicity of each task, the sleepy routines of lives that kept Eorzea going regardless of any glory.
Then he gathers his courage with a sigh, remembering the touch of a pixie's tiny hands against his brow as he descends the Tower once more, looking towards the next steps needed for the Crystarium to grow.
After an expansion of Spagyrics's facilities -- allowing for more alchemists to contribute to the treatment facility -- Raha stops by to congratulate the medics during the opening ceremony. He leaves just as quickly before the chiruregons can threaten him with more sleeping draughts, yielding the floor for others to make grand speeches instead. Before any of the Facets can catch him, he slips out to the upper walkways with a shake of his head, holding his hood in place as he glances over at the fresh dome of crystal being built across the Rotunda, helping to filter out some of the light as well as shelter the aetheryte from the sky.
Ever-present, his Tower -- and when did he start thinking of it as that, truly, when Raha is the one who belongs to it -- gleams nearby like a frozen waterfall, singing softly to itself in notes that only he can hear. Its energy reserves are full to the brim; there have been no direct eater attacks for several weeks, and Raha is grateful for how the reprieve allows him to conserve its resources. Despite every shield that he can offer it, the Crystarium remains a city surrounded by enemies which would like to see it smothered and dead, crushed under the Light just before it becomes fodder for the Source.
But here, within the Crystarium's walls, there is comfort and there is safety. Guardsmen march in step in practiced routine, confident in themselves and each other. Children shout as they race towards the Quadrivium for their next game, temporarily freed from their school lessons; crafters ply their trade in stalls which are decorated with every color imaginable. Lives from every part of Norvrandt blend together freely, bringing viis together with elf, zun with drahn, and even the occasional helmeted dwarf.
They will survive without him, when the time comes. Raha reminds himself of this often. They will move on, filling in the space where the Tower once stood with a new building, perhaps a spiral of new apartments to provide the homes which Syrcus never could. They will flourish, their world renewed and the night restored -- and then they will forget him, as is intended.
It will be, Raha thinks, a good rest.
His heart aches. It has not stopped for years, it seems. Whatever crystal change has continued to work its way through him has not yet fully devoured that piece of himself, allowing it to linger on like a patina of rust that refuses to be scraped clean. When it finally does -- burning the aether of his heart away, rebuilding it in lines of gem and facet -- then perhaps Raha will forget what it is like to feel emotion as well, just in time to spare him from any terror of dying.
He thinks of Titania, locked up for nearly a century -- another immortal ghost haunting an older kingdom's empty tower -- and knows what they would say, if there is even a small amount of their sanity left: I would choose the same fate again anyway.
The wind picks up as he heads towards the next council gathering. Raha reaches automatically to the edge of his hood, tugging it back into place. His staff makes patient clicks as he walks, a faithful metronome that he leans on more and more. Two dancers pad by, chatting eagerly together about an upcoming performance. A patrol of guardsmen salute in passing; Raha nods automatically to them, smiling at one recruit who is fresh enough out of the barracks that she cannot stop talking animatedly about her latest patrol.
He never knew he could hurt so much, and yet still feel so glad.
Time becomes his hobby, as he waits -- another strange alteration from his earliest days, when it was a source of panic and little more. He watches it with a careful eye, charting ratio after exacting ratio as he reads visions through the gate. Splashed like paintings on the portal, Primals fall, Omega rises, and Doma shouts in exaltation as its people finally drive the Garleans back. Years on the First become mere seconds to the Source. The pages of Raha's books narrate what becomes life, and then history once more.
They are coming close, Raha knows; he has watched Vauthry's rise, and Eulmore's decay. He has guessed how the Flood might be triggered again, this time without salvation.
With the time comes, Raha's own nerves leap unexpectedly, fumbling the first summoning through eagerness alone. He rationalizes the best time to make an attempt, trying to fixate on that date alone; then his heart betrays him by jumping desperately forward anyway, until Raha finds himself padding into the Ocular with very little conscious thought behind it, imagining the Warrior already there beside him. Instead of focusing on the proper formulas, his concentration slips away to imagining how they would react to the Crystarium, how they might marvel at Il Mheg's beauty, what their first ride might be like upon an amaro. He reaches clumsily forward in his fervor; he hopes for success.
Instead, he gets Thancred.
It is hard to tell which one of them is more aghast at the error, particularly once Thancred has calmed down, put on pants, and told Raha about the latest Garlean hostilities. Between the sparse news, Raha can hear the machinations of Black Rose unfolding; it is a struggle to bite his tongue over knowledge he should not possess. He feels young again, skittish with uncertainty, only calming down himself once he redirects the man's fervor towards Minfilia.
Given the choice, Raha would rather have left the Oracle out of yet another battle, if only as a kindness. But Eulmore has altered their affairs. Sin Eaters sit alongside their mortal prey, and the Oracle has vanished into the city's depths; Raha does not even know anymore if this Minfilia is alive or dead, save that he cannot find a new incarnation yet.
Her imprisonment may doom them all. Raha cannot ignore the fact that if he cannot reach the Warrior -- for whatever reason -- they must prepare an alternative.
Logic does not make the decision any less merciless. Nor is it something Raha can pretend to avoid. He is no longer headstrong enough to count on boldness alone to save a world. His plans have matured over the years, becoming meticulous as they incorporate thousands of tipping points; he is a far cry now from the miqo'te who would accept traveling across time and stars without a backup contingency already established. The Crystarium and its people are always in his thoughts. The Tower's aether is a constant hum through his body. Raha is no less himself -- but he is more at the same time, acting on behalf of thousands of voices, breathing for the sake of two worlds.
"What is there to say?" Thancred answers much later when Raha asks him. Only two years on the First, and already he speaks like a native: bitterly. "This isn't how Minfilia would have wanted to live. Knowing that she must choose between children cursing her name as they die, or leaving others to be slain helpless in their place? Every generation means another new girl who grows up in her guise, without even their own names or faces allowed to them. Each stone of their hatred is enough to build an entire castle by now, and that -- not salvation -- is the legacy which Minfilia leaves in her wake."
"We will stem the Light once and for all," Raha assures softly, and pushes over a fresh bottle of wine. "And then Minfilia will no longer have to murder children for the sake of saving others."
Yet Thancred will not be stayed by this. His fingers clasp the stem of the glass, twiddling it with enough force that the liquid within slaps against the rim. "How can you expect someone to bear something so monstrous?" he demands. It is a mercy that his eyes remain on the table; Raha does not have to fear his own mouth betraying him with a twitch. "To force such a duty upon someone, knowing that it means they will loathe the creature they become?"
In those words, Raha hears too many questions with the same answer. "That is our half of the duty," he murmurs, keeping his voice measured. Seeing Thancred so agitated feels like looking at himself nearly a century ago, driven wild by his own helplessness. Raha stands on the other side of patience now; he has learned what he is able to risk, and what he must sacrifice when he cannot. "Heroes are bound to fight the world as it is. Thus, we are the ones who must change that world, so that they never have to face that burden at all. Be brave, Thancred," Raha adds, and though his own touch is less potent than that of a faerie king, still he rests his fingers briefly on the man's shoulder. "They will make their choices, all the same -- and so shall we."
He pours another round for the Scion without being asked. He does not tell Thancred, but the wine the man drinks is worth more than any gold. It comes from the Source's vineyards, stored in private cellars to gather dust for years before the Ironworks had looted them. Wine takes time to age properly, and there was no opportunity after the Eighth Umbral Calamity for such forethought. The remaining vineyards that survived Black Rose had burned; the knowledge lost, like so much else.
They have a similar state on the First, of course. The Flood ate grape and soil alike, gnawing through any land fertile enough to produce. Yet on this shard, they have already crept back towards brewing; the Facet of Nourishing's first batch was cause for great celebration, and cups are filled by wine and ale and mead alike now. The small gardens that have grown in the Crystarium have continued to spread, each one offering up bounties to be discovered once more.
But he does not feed grapes of the First to Thancred. For Thancred, he saves the last taste of home that the man may ever have.
They work through three bottles together, pulling the last few drops from the bottom of each glass. Thancred tips over onto the table before he can demand a fourth, sliding gracelessly into unconsciousness. Raha pours himself tea from the boilmaster that has been quietly simmering in the corner, and brushes his hand gently in a curative ward to Thancred's head, shooing away hangovers and ushering in sleep.
He studies for two more years; he fails two more times, calling other Scions across the rift. Each attempt brings Raha a little closer, even as it widens the debt he owes to the Source. He can bridge the gap in spirit, but the key to snaring a physical connection eludes him; he does not understand why he should have any trouble touching the very star he originated from, where a version of himself still exists intact.
But it is to Urianger that Raha voices his truth to for the first time in nearly a century, one conspirator sensing another's scent on the breeze, and he is not disappointed.
In the end, with Urianger's assistance, the rest of the pieces come together. They slip notes like trade deals hidden inside other missives, discussing the Ascians, the nature of Black Rose's aether, and even the first Minfilia's history. They are two betrayers together; their machinations have always been crafted for those whom they love, but that makes neither one of them more honest for it.
The Ironworks beacon should make the difference this time. Soaked in the aether of the First, it will serve to temporarily harmonize the Warrior with the proper star -- despite, as Alisaie blurts in a moment of vexation, the chances of summoning the Scions' accountant next. Brief as it will be, that opportunity should last long enough for Raha to bridge both worlds, and bring the Warrior to him at last.
The Tower has more than enough energy spare. Incantations hum inside Raha's body, engraved in place of his veins. He has a count of days remaining on the Source before Black Rose appears, marked off in clear notations.
But there is one final matter which Raha must address before the Warrior arrives, and now that the time is on hand for it, Raha cannot help but dread it.
He speaks to no one of his intentions -- not the Scions, not Urianger, not the Crystarium guard. Instead, Raha sets himself to the task of methodically tidying up the Umbilicus, stacking together piles of books that have never found room on the shelves, and sighing over how he had somehow collected more. He files an entire row of pixie riddles underneath a set of alchemical manuals; with luck, the two would keep from mixing. He begins a heroic attempt to index the entire history of Nabaath Areng, and then gives up before he reaches the second malik.
When the evening bell finally arrives, Raha steps out of Syrcus and pads through the city towards the Rookery, climbing up each flight of stairs in the western tower. The air tickles at his skin, toying at his hood merrily. He does not look down -- only up, towards a swirling sky that has been as constant as the Tower itself for nearly a century, even as the First has slowly sought to rebuild.
Tomorrow, he will send the Ironworks beacon across. He will call for the Warrior and direct them to find the physical object that will serve as a fixed set of coordinates, attuned to another shard's aether. Tomorrow, Raha will pull his hood down more firmly than he has in years, hiding his face and controlling his voice as he pretends to be a native of this shard in truth, with no loyalty to the Source past that of curiosity.
He is ready for it. He has rehearsed the last steps of this plan a thousand times over. Once the Light is banished, the Warrior will be the one to continue on, and G'raha Tia of the Eighth Umbral Calamity will be forgotten, replaced by a different miqo'te who has never known such a fate. That G'raha Tia will sleep on, unaware of what had conspired around them. They will wake in a future far distant from anyone else, on a Source where the Warrior had departed life due to age, and not Calamity.
And yet -- there is a chance, a small one, that the Warrior might be perplexed enough by the Tower's presence on the First to return to Mor Dhona once more, and try breaking its sleep somehow. To wake G'raha Tia early, before he can become bonded to crystal and can still roam free -- a G'raha who will inherit the newborn future, as the Exarch will not. Somehow, perhaps, the Warrior will refuse to give up on Raha's other self so easily. After all is said and done, they may go back to the Source and pound on the door, shouting until even the Tower stirs in annoyance, G'raha Tia! Are you still there? Wake up! Wake up, and speak to me!
And then: to have the door open again at last, with a yawning G'raha Tia there, blinking in confusion at how few years have passed. Perhaps the Warrior would bring him to Ishgard afterwards, to Azys Lla, where they might sail among the massive Allagan engines and marvel at the chimera still thriving on islands floating in the heavens. They would chase shadows together in Neverreap. They would touch the carved stones of Sohr Khai, and murmur quietly about the tragedy of Ratatoskr.
Memory after memory adding up together, story after story -- the skies would be endless. Nor would they be lost. Right as death would come for the Exarch, the rift yawning wide in its vast indifferent emptiness, Raha might find his own memories being rewritten with a lifetime of shared adventures, ones where the Warrior had decided, I will change your fate as well, I will keep you from going missing one day, stay awake with me instead. And then, one day, for their G'raha Tia to use the Tower to journey to the First in search of unraveling another mystery, only to find that this was where it all began: a journey born from curiosity rather than terror, knitting each end of his tale together in a finished whole.
Perhaps, someday, the Warrior will come to save him, too.
It is a good dream. It is the best one Raha has ever had.
But he cannot fall into its comfort without remembering the duty still remaining to him. He is not the hero of this tale. Raha is only the final messenger for a long chorus of voices, a chain of sacrifices which have led towards the final goal of saving both the Source and the First, and one which he will not allow to be broken.
There is no more time left, in a world which gave him both too much of it, and far too little.
Bracing himself, Raha pulls together all his courage and turns to look down across his city, even as every part of himself begs to flinch away. It is agonizing to see the sum of all his years exposed. All he can see is the endless mountain of work left unfinished: the faces still afraid of the Light, the dreams not yet able to bloom, the gossip from Eulmore which grows worse every moon. There is a standing argument between the blacksmiths and goldsmiths which Raha still has not managed to resolve. Two soldiers were gravely injured last year in an accident with the ballistics that Raha could have prevented if he had only known more about the Allagan technology. He has a list that could fill the Umbilicus twice over with all his mistakes. He could fill even more lichyards with the bodies he has not been able to save.
But he is out of opportunities now. There is only one thing left that Raha can do for his people, and that is to die.
He tightens his hand on his staff, struggling to accept the weight of his failures in full.
Then -- like a pixie's laugh upon the breeze -- the rattle of amaro harnesses trickles up to him, winding through his despair. Along with the clinking of metal buckles, Raha hears the jaunty whistle of a drinking tune; he jerks his gaze over despite himself, seeing the distant speck of a fisherman on the way back from the day's catch, pole bobbing over his shoulder. The gardeners of Sweetsieve are yelling good-naturedly at one another over what looks like a stack of pumpkins; chimes clang from the direction of the Crystalline Mean, announcing the closing of the forges for the day.
Like instruments tuned perfectly to one another through long practice, the symphony of the Crystarium is familiar and soothing. It reaches straight past Raha's nerves and whispers to his soul, joining together with the sleepy pulse of the Tower. He has heard this same song for generations now; he has measured sleep and waking by the steadiness of its beat. Evening rolls in. Merchants pack up their stalls, while others pull out racks of fresh food for the night shifts, the smell of simmered meats and vegetables drifting through the breeze. On the walkways below, he can spot Lyna returning from Accensor Gate, surrounded by a swarm of her guards.
He can recognize her ears so easily, even across this distance.
Slowly, impossibly, Raha feels his shoulders begin to relax -- and as they do, he feels the fears which have steeped for nearly a century finally begin to ebb.
The city thrives. In defiance of all his worries, it shines. The years have knitted all its people together, finding a common purpose beyond mere survival; they have drawn a communal government out of their patchwork communities, formed a new currency system, given themselves a new land to protect. Even with the protection of the Tower gone, they will be able to hold together. They have taken the rudder of their own fates into their hands, so that even if Raha's final disappearance erases more than simply his life -- unraveling memory and action like a thread from history -- the loss will not undo them.
He will harm as little as possible by his death, and the sheer relief of it -- of everything he has second-guessed and berated himself over for decades, fumbling through everything he knew nothing about for tribes and families -- feels like a forgiveness he has not earned.
He is lucky, he thinks, to have seen this all, before the end.
Tears sting his eyes as he blinks. One slips free before he can stem it, trickling down his cheek before becoming lost across the crystal ridges. Raha lifts his finger to the dampness, brushing both stone and skin.
He had thought all along that his transformation would only be a price, nothing more. The coin of his flesh spent out, his name forgotten. Every part of himself would have been traded for a final goal, and his own life made moot in the process. That had been the plan. He had made himself ready for it.
But the First has given him a city to treasure, and the Tower has given him the First and the power to nurture it, and now Raha belongs here, as he has nowhere else on two worlds. He never planned to be a nunh, but this is his tribe now anyway. Here is a star which has made room for the Exarch, which has woven a century of moments which have included him in their reach -- a world where everyone came together instead of falling apart.
Every time he had thought of his death, Raha had imagined he would go to it alone, everything soft within himself cut out to make room for crystal and spell and purpose, denying temptation as his body turned further and further into stone with each passing year. There would be only silence in his heart and mind, carrying nothing with him into the rift but the Light. Nothing else would have belonged to him. Oblivion would have arrived with the same bleak release as a man letting go of a long-held rope at last, falling into a void as Raha's soul finally vanished into nothingness.
But his soul is not empty. Not here, at the end of it all. It is a cacophony of everything he loves, everything he has been given the chance to love, all the life which the Tower has gifted him with, the cradle of the Crystarium and all of its people with their innovation and compassion and grace. Raha's heart will never turn to stone. It cannot. It is here: it is in the tribe which has blossomed from the survivors of many lands together, fighting for kindness even despite their own Calamity. As the Tower has infused him, so too has his soul seeped into the city around him, until they are one and the same.
His people are full of life. They are full of hope. They have given him a second dream to carry into the nothingness, a memory to counteract every year of despair on the Source, so that even if Raha fails to die fully, he will not face eternity alone in the rift.
They are his living heart, and it will beat forever here.
With all the days he has left to him, he will carry their memories forward, proof that hope can survive even when all else seems lost. The crystal of his body has been inscribed by more than mere incantations -- it carries the tales of his city now, no matter how great or small. He has written all of their histories inside him, so that even if the stone he becomes is shattered into a thousand pieces at the end -- like a hammer to glass -- each piece will still sing with the knowledge of all of his names.
And perhaps -- another year from now, another star from here -- the Warrior will shout and shake the Tower open, calling out, G'raha Tia, or someday, simply, Raha, and fate will turn forward for them both once more.
Above him, the sky roils still, bathed in Light. It has been a long battle; it will rage even after Raha is gone, inspiration passed from one hand to another, one shard to the next. He remembers Titania's bright grin, Biggs's determined resolve, Minfilia looking away into the distance. With them stand Cid and Nero, Rammbroes and the Sons of Saint Coinach debating under the swirling clouds of Mor Dhona, Unei and Doga facing down the Cloud of Darkness to protect them all.
But most of all, Raha thinks of the Warrior of Light, whose tales had showed him how to endure, making the same choices over and over regardless of glory, or fame -- proving that unnamed adventurers could lay the dead to rest and reunite lost families, bringing lovers together and justice to comfort even the coldest of nights.
Without those stories to guide him, Raha's own hope might have broken long ago.
"Thank you," he says, to them all.
He touches the fingers of his left hand to the crystal of his right, tracing the glittering stone of its knuckles, and feels the weight in his chest make an answering thump, tight with expectation.
It's almost time.
That night, Raha's sleep is heavy. Warmth sings through his blood. He rests cradled in the Tower, and he dreams of the stars.