The Shadows of Our Past

by maccom

Summary:

It’s the end of the world as G’raha knows it, unless Vahl can do this without him. Without the Scions. Without anyone at all…except the voices in his head.

This is a sequel to Shadows Kept Alive. I’d recommend reading that first!

Chapter 1: Hello, World

Notes:

Just a fair warning: this fic is not my best writing. My house caught fire part-way through and I lost most of the chapters I'd written by hand. My motivation to tie up all the loose ends fizzled out with the prospect of rewriting everything I'd lost. I did give it an ending...but it happens fast. I'm sorry!

He’s trying not to think about what comes next. He’s certainly smart enough to put the pieces together – he’d have arrived there eventually even without Urianger’s help – but they are dreary pieces, depressing and disappointing and altogether far too morbid. Hope, his ever-reliable standard, continues its overtime work even here: hope that Y’shtola was right; hope that three can solve what eight could not; hope that – when all this is said and done – they will return to Eorzea together. 

G’raha Tia rubs his nose self-consciously. That’s a king’s ransom worth of optimism he’s managed to pluck from thin air, but hasn’t he always? Whether he turns the end of the world into an adventure, or he powers through a Calamity thanks to sheer force of will, he has walked hand-in-hand with low odds for a very long time. The past century has been one long roll of the dice! What’s one more walk with Lady Luck, really?

He grimaces; any more of this poetic nonsense and he’ll be talking to himself. He should be talking to the Hyur standing across from him, but amongst stars and machines it is somehow hard to find the words – or, mayhap, all the words have been said. They have done this before, after all.They know what they must do. They know the cost, should they fail. Speech would only waste energy and time.

Time. Such a strange thing; at one point it had seemed almost malleable. It had felt like to a gift: something he could manipulate, something he could take advantage of, something that answered to him, silly as that seems. 

Even after everything they've been through, he thought he’d have much more of it.

“Raha?”

He glances up at the tall, dark-haired Warrior of Light. His Warrior of Light. His partner, his lover, his heart and his hope – and now the man he can hardly look at. The Hyur’s expression is complicated, and why shouldn’t it be? Vahl Rime knows how this goes: he’d listened to a similar farewell atop Syrcus Tower only weeks earlier. G’raha had promised not to do exactly this, but again his word is worth less than the future he might buy them. 

He’s buying time, isn’t he? Not a future guaranteed, but the chance for Vahl and the twins to find Meteion and put an end to this nightmare. Like Thancred, Estinien, Urianger, and Y’shtola, he gives himself over to fate so that he might forge a path their Warrior can follow. Better him than the twins, surely. 

Better him than Vahl.

He manages to meet the Hyur’s brilliant blue eyes in time to see them shift, just as he’s seen them shift so many times before. Darkness takes root, masking the self that G’raha associates with Vahl. It isn’t complete, thank the Twelve, but the shadow of another lingers. A familiar other, even if G’raha avoids mentioning it. Vahl’s eyes have told the truth ever since Garlemald: Fray and Myste are not tied to the soul crystal, as they had suspected, but the soul itself…

“Raha?”

More forceful this time, and G’raha attempts a smile. “I’m sorry, Vahl.”

Unreadable eyes slide from him to the spherical Omicron looming behind him, before settling again on him. “So am I.”

“If there was any other way –”

“I know.” Vahl’s smile is crooked. “‘Had to be you’, didn’t it? Just like with Elidibus.” He closes his eyes, taking a long, deep breath before he reopens them. “Wait for me, alright?”

G’raha frowns. “Wait for you?”

“If I fail. If we all return to the aetherial sea. Don’t – don’t go on without me, please? At the end.”

“I –” G’raha grits his teeth, swallowing the denial, the immediate optimistic rebuttal, that sits on his tongue. “I’ll wait.” Unwilling to linger on that impossible thought, he takes Vahl’s wrist and pulls his hand between them, turning it palm up to slip something small into his Warrior’s hand. “One way or another, Vahl Rime, I’ll be back to collect that.”

Dark eyes. Bottomless eyes. Familiar eyes, though he hates to see them. 

But if that’s who is needed to see this through…

“Good luck,” G’raha says, and somehow his voice is steady. “To all of you.”

A light shifts in those eyes; Vahl understands. He takes a step back, closing his fingers into a fist and bringing it to his chest. “Thank you. I…we will need it.”

G’raha stares for a few moments longer, drinking in the sight of the tall, armoured paladin before him, and then turns to face the machine. He glimpses the twins out of the corner of his eye – Alphinaud, jaw clenched and knuckles white; Alisaie, pink-cheeked and already shaking her head – but delaying this any longer serves no purpose. G’raha knows they will do what they must to see Vahl through to the end: Alphinaud has been with him the longest, hasn’t he? And Alisaie, through Doma and Ala Mhigo and all the rest. The twins will be enough.

The twins must be enough.

The Omicron dominates his vision. Here he must forge a connection, establish some sort of common ground as the others have done before him, else their venture goes no further. No trifling task, but it is, at the very least, a softer ending than being smothered by Light or turning to crystal. 

“A softer ending…” G’raha murmurs. He can’t help his crooked grin; who would have thought it would come to this? After all the ways he believed he might die, this ending blindsided him – yet still he greets it without despair. Still he steps forward. Still he remains undaunted. He will do as he must, just as he always has. 

Just as Vahl always will…?

Storing that thought away for later – should he be gifted a later – G’raha begins to speak.

---

Alisaie’s moan tells him all he needs to know: another pathway opened. Another dead world waiting.

Another soul lost.

Vahl Rime opens his hand. In the center of his palm rests a small, silver ring, its rounded edges reflecting the blue light from a nearby crystal path.

*Well?* Fray’s voice is deep, dark, delectable. *Time to save the world, Warrior.*

Chapter 2: Let's Talk of Graves, of Worms, and Epitaphs

Notes:

I had a lot of requests for either Vahl’s PoV during old MSQ, or a SKA sequel through Endwalker. It’s super self-indulgent of me, but this isn’t going to be quite one or the other…

Past – The Crystarium

*Wake up!*

*Please!*

*Move your ass, Rime!*

Vahl rolls hard, collapsing off the side of the bed as his legs tangle with the blankets. Ground hits hard – hurts – and he hits right back, smashing his fist into the stone floor before forcing himself to his feet.

He’s in the Pendants. Why? How? The last thing he remembers – 

*Don’t.*

Mount Gulg. Vauthry. The Light – Emet-Selch and – and –

Raha!

Reality cracks. Vahl’s vision shatters into a dozen pieces that splinter into a spiderweb of shards, each bursting with Light. He’s suddenly on his hands and knees, heaving hard against the bitter ichor spilling from his mouth, and his hands glow; radiate; pulse –

Darkness swamps him, drags him down, blots out the Light with cold, freezing rage. His movements are no longer his own as he staggers upright; a hand wipes at his mouth, flicking spittle and liquid Light across the room, and he – they – spot Ardbert glowing ghostly white near the window.

“Vahl?” Uncertain. Nervous. Afraid…? 

*Can you control yourself?*

Of course I can!

It’s what he wants to shout, but he can’t even manage a grunt. Fray holds his leash, manoeuvring his shaky body about the room like a puppet on strings.

Ardbert steps forward. “What happened –”

“Sorry – don’t have time.” Vahl’s voice; Fray’s words. Cold, cold, cold – and it’s a comfort! A release! It’s a chance to allow someone else to make the hard choice. “Too much at stake. We’ve an Ascian to find and an Exarch to save, and wasting time with words isn’t getting us anywhere.”

Fray leads him out. Fray walks him around the Crystarium; out to Lakeland; back with Captain Lyna’s key. Whether she realises anything is different is impossible to say: her grief overwhelms her, too. Fray at least keeps him standing…until they reach Syrcus Tower, and Vahl suddenly has control once more. Shaky, sickly control.

How many times had he stood before these doors on the Source? He’d cursed them; begged and pleaded with them; taken his fists, axe, and greatsword to them; sat on the top step and talked to them – words, words, words long lost to time. Stories and confessions and musings, rants, wishes, and wants, as if his rambling voice might somehow penetrate the layers of crystal to reach his sleeping heart, his other half. 

*Find Emet-Selch; find your cat.*

Vahl grimaces. He doesn’t want to think about the Ascian. Taking Lyna’s key in one hand, he steps forward, waiting as the tower doors slowly begin to open.

“And when you opened it, did you – did you find anyone? A Miqo’te – a red-haired, red-eyed Miqo’te?”

“A red-hued Miqo’te? No, I’m afraid not.”

“Liar,” Vahl murmurs, but there’s no heat to it. No anger. Instead a sinking feeling in his gut is eating his words, eating his words and drowning hope in confusion of the worst kind, a confusion rooted in deepest doubt.

Had Raha not wanted to be with him…?

Had Raha not wanted to live…?

Present – Ultima Thule

*He would have stayed,* Ardbert says quietly. *You know he would have. Had there been any other way…*

Raha’s ring digs into the flesh of Vahl’s left palm, the pain a reminder to focus; to be present; to stay on his feet. Emotions are complicated. Emotions are frustrating. He should just do it, shouldn’t he? Save the world. Save his friends. 

But – without Raha –

Blue crystal cuts across the space above him, crossing back and forth like lightning etched on glass. A path waits for him; he needs only take the first step. And the second. And all that comes after…

He looks away, barely subduing his snarl. Of course it looks like Syrcus Tower. 

The twins stand nearby, ready and waiting. Alphinaud fiddles with a chain on his jacket, his quick fingers belying the anxiety his face conceals; Alisaie, however, is a statue. Silent and still, with red-rimmed eyes locked on the crystal above them; tears stream down her cheeks.

“They’re still with us,” Vahl says, and his voice is loud in loneliness. “They’re here, fighting for every step we take.”

“And we’re still with you.” There is a light in Alphinaud’s eyes that unnerves Vahl; he looks away, pretending he doesn’t catch the words left unsaid.

We’re still with you… for now.

*You won’t be alone.* Ardbert, staunch and reliable as ever. *Not again.*

*Whether you want to be or not,* Fray adds.

Myste’s voice is so quiet Vahl almost misses it. *Until the end.*

Until the end. His end, or Meteion’s? The end of the world? 

*Until you no longer have need of us.*

Vahl closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Anchors himself in hope, because to do anything less would doom them all.

“Let’s find where this bridge reaches land,” he says, as if it isn’t Raha’s aether. As if he hasn’t said farewell four times too many. As if this were another ordinary adventure, in another ordinary place, and his heart isn’t aching. 

As if he doesn’t remember everything that came after Syrcus.

It’s easier not to think. Easier by far to focus on the long walk across the Omicrons’ metal land instead of what they have lost. What they still have. What remains to lose. It’s a sombre walk, closer to a funeral procession than the usual march to confront whatever evil waits, and perhaps that’s fitting. Perhaps this is the end for them all, and his head should fill in the dirge itself. 

*Never could hold a tune,* Fray says. *Better for all of us if you just live.*

Just live. Just live! He tried, the gods know he tried! He bought a cottage in Gridania and planted flowers for remembrance, for luck and for love, and hoped the world could get by without him! 

*We were never meant to be ordinary,* Ardbert murmurs. *Botanists, bakers, simple adventurers. That was never going to be our fate. Shards of Azem have more complicated lives than that.*

Why? Why? Because of what Azem had been? Was Vahl’s life already written for him – his curiosity, his wanderlust, his knack for finding a battlefield? Has nothing he’s done been truly original, or had it been scripted for him, as it had every other shard of the Fourteenth?

The Omicrons don’t have the answer, and he’s certain Meteion won’t, either. 

They find the crystal bridge at the far end of the Omicrons’ metal, lifeless land, its many-pronged path leading up and away, out and onwards, further and further from home, and for once he doesn’t want to walk the road unknown. There is no excitement in this adventure, no desire to see what waits ahead. He walks this bridge with dread weighing every step.

He doesn’t want to know how the twins will leave him. 

At first he’d hoped it was coincidence or a bad twist of fate, but he cannot keep up the fiction. Meteion is taking them away. The walls are coming down, one, two, three and more, and when he stands alone, what then? What is he without the Scions?

What will he be at the end of the world?

*Better than Azem, if we're lucky,* Fray mutters. *Though once a quitter, always a –*

“It’s so quiet,” Alisaie says, and Vahl quickly focuses on her, rather than the annoyance in his head. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been in a place so still.”

“If we are the only three here…” Alphinaud’s glance at Vahl is awkward, almost shameful, and it is with none of his usual eloquence that he attempts to offer some comfort. “I am sorry. About G’raha, I mean. This is hard for all of us, I’m sure, but for you…” 

“I’ll chain myself to him next time,” Alisaie growls. A sudden burst of speed carries her up nearly past Vahl on the path. “The fool. The fool! When he gets back I’m going to – to –” She cuts herself off as she comes to a sudden stop, her clenched fists shaking at her sides.

“I’ll chain myself with you. Twice the chance it’ll actually make a difference.” Vahl hadn’t meant for it to sound so bitter, but his words still manage to calm her: her shoulders droop and she wipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “We’ll get them back.”

“Just – just have to do it all ourselves. Again.” If her voice trembles, both Vahl and Alphinaud do a perfect job of pretending not to hear. “Let’s keep moving.”

Vahl again takes the lead, carefully navigating the uneven, narrow path of crystal as his thoughts wander to the stars around them. 

Ultima Thule is beautiful, in its own way: the vast array of colours and clouds defy description as they fill the space between worlds. Dead worlds; dying worlds; stars long gone to dust. From here he can see the Omicrons’ metal platforms, every tile reminding him of Omega and distant, long-ago battles; to the north are the deserts of the Ea, the sandhills of which would put both Thanalan and Amh Araeng to shame; to his left are the sickly green plumes of gas surrounding the remnants of Midgardsormr’s people, and he can’t help but wonder what the wyrm would think of this. To witness the last gasps of his long-abandoned people…

And beyond that? Drifting ruins and exploding stars. Who would have guessed there would be so many ways a star could die?

*It has a beauty all its own, doesn’t it?* Fray murmurs. *A beauty like diamonds: sharp enough it cuts to the bone.*

It isn’t the only place to hold such a power. Elpis had been beautiful; so had Garlemald and Amaurot. Strange how sorrow merely tints the soul of a place, yet other emotions can warp one’s perspective so thoroughly.

Syrcus Tower remains ugly. Syrcus, the Tribunal, Eastern Thanalan – 

*Fuck Sister Sina. Fuck all of them.*

Vahl doesn’t have to tell Fray she’s already dead; he knows. Most of the Sisters who ran his first orphanage were old even when he was a child, and the few who persisted into his twenties had perished in the Seventh Umbral Calamity. Even the orphanage itself no longer exists. The only piece of his childhood that remains in Eastern Thanalan is a small, child-sized grave.

*And your mother’s house.*

“Vahl?”

Pain. In his head, his heart, his hand. He’s come to a stop in the middle of Raha’s crystal bridge, his head swamped by worries, memories, thoughts he cannot – should not – spare the time for, not here. He glances down with a grimace: a small trickle of blood leaks between the fingers of his left hand. Raha’s ring digs into skin, cutting a thin line across soft flesh and old scars.

“I’m fine.” It sounds hollow. “I’m – I’m sorry. Let’s keep moving.”

The twins exchange a look, but mercifully allow him to progress onwards without calling his fiction into question. Who could be fine at a time like this? In a place like this? That any of them have the fortitude to keep walking is a miracle in and of itself, and yet this is the easy part. What comes after will be something else entirely.

And is that his fault? What would have happened had he never left Ul’dah? What would this universe look like had he never met the Scions? Never stood against Ifrit, never entered Sastasha, never picked up his axe? Would it have been easier for all had Azem’s shard remained unknown?

*You’d already be dead. Or near enough to make no difference.* Fray’s tone is unrelenting and unsympathetic. *What if you’d never become a dark knight? What if your cat had returned to Sharlayan instead of trapping himself within that tower? Every ‘what if’ ends the same: black. Black as the rift. Black as the abyss. Black as the roses Varis would have gifted Eorzea.*

*We can’t go back,* Myste adds. *Every decision led us here.*

*Every death.*

Vahl clenches his jaw. It wasn’t death alone that carved his path. He fights for the living, does he not? For their continued safety and security? Sometimes for vengeance, aye, but not often. Not always. He isn’t a monster.

*Not the monster, at any rate. We’ll deal with him, won’t we? You did promise.*

Ignoring Fray and whatever promises he may or may not have made, Vahl summits the last of Raha’s crystal. An explicable part of him doesn’t want to leave it: as he steps beyond the blue glow and onto rocky ground it feels as though he has truly left Raha behind. As if his aether had stood in for him, and now that they are moving beyond it they are leaving the last piece of Raha he might ever see.

*Vahl…*

He stops. A gentle drip – drip – drip – 

Raha’s ring. Blood from his hand – just a trickle. A small stream. A lifestream.

A reminder.

Taking the pain and the memories that come with it, Vahl leads the twins into the next dead world. Beneath a massive cracked star waits a deserted courtyard bordered by three cylindrical buildings. Alien though the structures may be, the bits and pieces before them are recognizable in function if not form: chairs and tables, lights or lanterns, a bar or service counter. Dust or ash covers everything – from neglect? Time?

The silence is absolute.

*Hate this. Bloody hate this. Where are the people?*

“Dead…?” Vahl hadn’t meant to answer Fray aloud, but his voice in the silence only provokes shrugs from the twins. They know nothing more than he does. Dead, deserted, hiding…?

The trio split up, each twin taking a side while leaving Vahl to investigate the centre. He moves through it awkwardly, expecting to be set upon by something at any moment – but that something never comes. Nothing moves: there isn’t even wind to breathe life into the grass at his feet. As he walks he takes note of the strange piles of dust – dust? – littering the ground; his stomach ties itself into knots when he realises many of those piles linger beneath chairs.

*Maybe the non-wind blew them there,* Fray says unhelpfully. *An entire race of people can’t have just combust in their seats.*

“You’re not helping,” Vahl mutters. Whether the inhabitants died or abandoned this place is a moot point: the emptiness alone sends shivers down Vahl’s spine, as if he’d walked into the Seventh Heaven at dinnertime and found it empty, or peaked behind a theatre curtain and found the set without its actors. It’s something he shouldn’t see; it’s something best kept secret.

He spots Alisaie standing alone near the ledge and aims his wandering feet in her direction. There is nothing more to learn from this place: if anyone remained they would have already made themselves known, and Vahl is more than ready to leave. This world and the three that came before remind him of graveyards, the landscapes themselves serving as headstones. Like Amaurot locked in twilight beneath the sea, these places remain as memorials to entire worlds.

But who is left to remember…?

*Meteion,* Myste whispers, and Vahl shudders. 

Past – Eastern Thanalan

Heavy boots wander a familiar path around the graveyard at the Church of Saint Adama Landama. Carved stones mark graves scattered in a slapdash fashion between tufts of brown grass and rusted fences. The land here is tough; the people are tougher. It takes strong hands and a good shovel to dig in this dirt, but dig they do: every year there are more headstones.

More shallow endings. 

Vahl shouldn’t be here. There’s a magic cage floating above Baelsar’s Wall; Cid’s airship waits for him in Gridania; the clock is counting down to something, something unknown and terrible, and they need him. His friends; the city-states; the Ironworks. Again, they need him. Yda needs him, but Yda is the one person he cannot face. Not yet. Not with Papalymo…

“Take her! Please, you have to take her!”

How many times will he hear it? How many nights will he lie awake replaying it? Wanting to stay, needing to help, knowing he must live – he must live, he must live, he must –

There was nothing he could have done. Again and again he repeats that tired line: he could not save Papalymo. The die was cast the moment they engaged Ilberd’s forces. Had Papalymo not done what he had the result would have been catastrophic. He could not save Papalymo.

One life. One life, and the world moves on. As it had for Moenbryda, for Ysayle, for Haurchefant and Minfilia. The survivors mourn, and then they move on.

His hand tightens around the cracked half of his soul crystal; its sharp edges break skin, piercing his palm in a half-circle of bloody pinpricks. He should tell someone. Tell someone about his missing aether, and the blue-haired boy, and the voice in his head. Tell anyone…

“Vahl?”

He turns so quickly he kicks up a small cloud of dirt at his feet. Pipin stands not far away, his confusion obvious even under that helmet of his. A small cluster of soldiers gather behind him.

“Vice Marshall. Shouldn’t you be at the Wall?”

“I could ask you the same.” Pipin signals to his half-dozen gladiators, sending them back in the direction of Camp Drybone. “My father anticipates pushing our line past the Wall itself. Doing so requires some reshuffling of our forces, which I’m overseeing here.” The Lalafell tilts his head to one side. “News reached us of Papalymo’s fate. You have my condolences.”

“Thank you.” Somehow his voice is steady. Somehow he doesn’t fall to his knees, keening out his misery. He glances at the headstone nearest him, a newer chunk of stone compared to most of the others. It belongs to one of the Scions they’d lost in the attack on the Waking Sands, though Vahl can’t match the name to a face. An Ala Mhigan, maybe? “Raubahn believes we’ll fight?”

“My father…” Pipin clears his throat. “The Flame General believes it best to be prepared. For any and every outcome.”

“I see.” The Flame General believes that, true, but Vahl is positive Raubahn will not hesitate should the opportunity to aid his homeland present itself. Whatever Ilberd may have said, the Bull of Ala Mhigo will fight for its people. “My reason for being here is…selfish.” The truth? No. The truth is overwhelming. The truth invites questions, and he doesn’t have the fortitude for that, not so soon after losing Papalymo. Better to give half of it – the safer half. “My mother died. Many years ago, really. I realise it’s ridiculous to keep searching for her after all this time, but she should be buried here. Should be…” He shrugs awkwardly. “When things are…more complicated than I can stand…I come out here. To search, and to think.”

“I see.” Pipin’s expression is unreadable. “What was her name?”

Vahl grits his teeth so hard his jaw aches. What is the harm? What could possibly come from this? They will march east and this moment will be forgotten. He will forget, and Pipin will forget, and one day he’ll return here to continue this fruitless search. This wandering, this forever-seeking that small bit of earth that is all that remains of his mother. “Ordelle. Ordelle Rime.”

“Ordelle,” Pipin repeats, and nods. “I best be off, but I imagine we’ll be seeing each other soon.”

“No doubt.” He gives the Lalafell a Gridanian salute, which Pipin returns with one of his own, and then he is alone among the dead. Before he leaves he spares a moment for the bit of earth that belongs to his sister, whispering to her headstone the same words he always has.

“I’m sorry I didn’t stop you. I’m sorry I can’t stay. I’m sorry I’m here and you aren’t – but I’ll see you again soon. I promise.”

Chapter 3: The Traveler's Compass

Past – Coerthas Central Highlands

Vahl sits in Whitebrim’s infirmary with bandages wrapped around his head; his arms; his torso. The healers will be by at any moment to change the dressing on his ribs, but for now he has a breath to himself. A shallow breath, but the pain is less than it was. Manageable. His notched axe rests beside him, leaning against the cold stone wall as if waiting for him to recover, but the rest of his private space is barren. Cloth curtains shield him from the other patients, but they can’t block the sounds. Coughs and groans and one poor soldier muttering about needles; the clatter of someone preparing trays of food down the hall; murmurs of voices even further than that, nurses or soldiers going about their business. It isn’t home, not at all, but at least the Scions know where he is, and Minfilia promised she’d send word to Raha –

For the hundredth time Vahl opens the small box in his hands to stare at the ring nestled in dark velvet within. It’s a simple silver ring, free of etchings and adornments. Almost bland, in truth, but the sight of it ties Vahl’s stomach into knots before he flips the box closed.

Stupid. Impulsive. He could have bought something nicer had he waited. Could have had something custom-made for him in Ul’dah, but he’d panicked, hadn’t he? He’d panicked, had allowed guilt and fear to cloud his judgement, and now he has a ring. An engagement ring. A ring for…

He’d been wounded before. Scars and burns and all sorts of broken bones, enough to make even Thancred jealous. With a life like his hurts of all kinds are guaranteed, and he long believed himself prepared for whatever pain came his way.

Until Shiva nearly killed him. 

The blow had caught him by surprise. He’d thought the battle won – himself the victor, of course, because he always is, isn’t he? The Scions and Alphinaud point him where he needs to go, and he does as they ask. Does what’s needed. Again and again and again, because of course he can. Of course he will. Eorzea’s Champion! Eorzea’s Warrior of Light! Eorzea’s…

She’d snapped her fingers, lashed out with ice, and the pain – he’d never felt anything like it. Fire in his lungs and ice in his core as his limbs became sluggish, heavy as rock, numb and useless and strange. Cold and hot and difficult to see, impossible to breathe, and as he fell he’d heard her final words –

“Hear…feel…think…”

In those moments, lying crumpled in Iceheart’s Amphitheatre as his blood stained her crystalline floor, he hadn’t thought about the Scions, or Coerthas, or what he might do to walk away from this battle. He hadn’t thought about what his death might mean for Eorzea and the war brewing in the north, or who might stand against the primals should he pass. He hadn’t even thought of Hydaelyn and what games she might be playing!

He’d thought of Raha. Raha, sitting alone in their Gridanian apartment. Raha, waiting for him to come home, not knowing where he is or what he’s risking.  

Raha, who makes all this worth living.

Again he opens the box and closes it. Purchased on a whim, but oh, what a whim! What a whirlwind! He’s never been in love, not like this, and it’s unpredictable – almost frightening, in truth – 

It’s the best feeling he’s ever had.

So he’ll propose. One day. Probably not soon. He isn’t ready, and he can’t be sure what Raha might say. Not yet, at least. Once they’ve locked Syrcus Tower and Raha is free from this worry, maybe. Once they’ve journeyed to Sharlayan together to solve the mystery surrounding the Isle of Val. One day, someday.

He flips the box open and closed one last time, and then pockets it. Footsteps on the stairs; the healers are coming. He rests his elbows on his knees, bending forward to look down at his scarred hands. Imagination paints a matching ring on his own finger, and he can’t help but grin.

It’s a path forward. A path built from hope, and dreams, and love. Not so much a road, but a compass that might guide him to a better future.

Oh, what a future that will be…

Past – South Shroud

It’s day. Or night. Or it doesn’t matter, really. There’s water in his boots and flies buzzing about his ears. He doesn’t want to be here, ankle-deep in muck, trudging around the Shroud with some stranger of a scholar. He wants to be alone. He wants to be standing before Syrcus Tower, throwing his axe at those fucking doors –

He’s running before the scholar’s scream cuts off, splashing through mud and midges as he draws his axe, but there are no assailants. No beasts or bandits.

Only a body.

Bile nearly gags him as he cautiously steps in front of the blabbering scholar. The blue waterlogged coat is unmistakable, but it takes him a moment to recognize the face. In life the boy had been bursting with energy, but in death Wilred is peaceful. Almost serene, were it not for the gruesome cuts across his body; the greyness of his skin; the way his hands float, aimless, at his sides.

Hoary Boulder and Coultenet heard the shriek, too, and they arrive before Vahl moves to touch the boy. They quickly take charge of the situation, and before he can process what’s happening Coultenet is escorting the scholar home, and Hoary Boulder is lifting the boy’s body from the water, and they’re asking him to tell Minfilia. Tell Minfilia about Wilred, Vahl. Tell Minfilia what was lost.

Sloshing footsteps recede and Vahl is alone in Urth’s Fount. Alone, again. 

He falls to his knees, splattering muck nearly to his neck. It’s Wilred, and it’s Moenbryda, and it’s Noraxia; it’s Morwen and it’s their mother. Another, another, another. Another grave; another story ended early; another empty space where there should be life. Life.

It is not Raha.

He tells himself they’ll open the tower. He tells himself Cid is wrong; that someone out there must have Allagan blood; that there is another key – somewhere. Somewhere. In every village he visits, in faraway camps and sanctuaries and even the cities’ housing wards, he finds himself searching for red eyes. 

Everyone fights for something. Power, vengeance, the safety and security of their people. Maybe gold or baubles, or even the thrill! He certainly has, in simpler times, when the future felt stable. When the future felt full. He’d fought because he could, and thought nothing else of it. Why would he? He was lucky to be a Scion – lucky to be alive! – and that had been enough.

It had been enough…

Vahl drags himself out of the muck, fighting past the sinking squelch as the mud tries to reclaim his soaked limbs, and clambers to the nearest rocky ground. Already his footsteps are disappearing behind him, his and the others’, vanishing as the water settles them back into a smooth muddy base. By the time he reaches the Rising Stones there will be no trace any of them were here. No trace at all…

Except in memories, and graves.

Present – Ultima Thule

The twins are gone. Gone. Gone like Raha, like Urianger and Y’shtola, like everyone he has ever loved –

Vahl shivers. Closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath and abandons the scream building in his chest. Not that anyone would hear it. Not that anyone remains to hear.

He is more alone than ever.

*Not completely. ‘If you need a push’, remember?*

Vahl’s grin is lopsided, but Ardbert’s voice is just enough to keep him on his feet. He’s being ridiculous, isn’t he – he isn’t alone! Ardbert, and Fray and Myste, of course, but others, too. Whether they know it or not, the friends remaining on Etheirys are with him even now. As they have been on all of his journeys, with their well-wishes, their hopes, even their prayers! Not that they pray to him, no, but if he should have the power to deliver them life…

This is like Ifrit, isn’t it? Ifrit and Titan and Garuda, and all that came after. Every battlefield he stood upon alone, every primal he faced by himself – and there have been plenty! Beyond counting! If he could do those before Ardbert and Myste and Fray, he can surely do this now!

*’Before Fray’,* comes the predictable scoff. *You know there was never a before. We’ve always been here, Rime. Even before you gave us names.*

That truth strays too close to something terrifying; too close to what waits beneath the surface. He is what he is, and now is not the time. 

He’ll deal with that truth if he survives.

The twins’ path is a singular road of light shimmering with colour; though smooth, the aether maintaining it ripples and shifts in continuous waves, as though an aurora borealis has somehow been trapped within glass. At its end waits a cluster of rocks, giant mounds of land that gather near the base of the cracked star. It is a straightforward road; it is exactly what he needs; it will take him from this deserted place.

Take him…where…?

Destiny. Fate. The conclusion to the lengthy, tiring journey started millenia ago by a question – and hasn't he asked the same? In the long dark of night, with no one by his side but his blade and his memories, hasn’t he, too, wondered if there might be more to life than this?

*We fight, and we fight, and we fight,* Fray says. *For what? For what? For them? They would bleed us dry ere their troubles cease – but she asked you this, did she not? ‘Has your journey been good?’ Have you found your answer?*

“Maybe,” Vahl murmurs. “Maybe.” His fist tightens around Raha’s ring; his palm aches, though the bleeding has ceased. “Let’s see where this leads.”

*The last road at the end of the universe. A lonely road.*

Vahl tilts his head back, taking a moment to stare at the stars peaking through the remnants of old worlds. Shepherd to the stars in the dark, wasn’t it? In Ultima Thule he has certainly found his flock.

Gripping Raha’s ring tight, Vahl takes the first step.

Past – The Lavender Beds

Tall walls, too tall to make sense in a thin wooden building. Creaking floorboards and blackened windows; branching hallways lead to dark corners and unknown places, shadowy places, and Vahl’s quick feet take him flying past. 

“Morwen?” His own voice, sometimes high like a child’s, sometimes low as he knows it now. “Where are you?”

“Here!” Ahead of him. To the left? “Here!” Behind? “Come find me!”

His sister. Three years his elder, and already brave enough to run away. She always comes back – always, always. She promised she would. She promised.

“Please! Slow down!” 

“Keep up! Keep up, V!”

“I can’t! Please just – just wait!” He’s struggling, desperation turning his words into a sob. He stumbles in the middle of an intersection as the hallways suddenly grow darker. The shadows consume the ceiling, the walls, even the floor, until all that is left is a tiny island of grey around his feet.

“Morwen…?”

Darkness. Utter blackness, and the worst kind of silence. He turns on the spot, searching – listening – and notices the ground beneath his feet has changed: the creaking floorboards are gone, replaced by bare earth.

A sound – behind him? He spins, empty hands grasping air, but there is nothing.

Or…?

A breath, like a huff through gritted teeth. Heavy. Low.

“M-Morwen?” He knows, gods, he knows she’s gone, it couldn’t be her, but he’s eight! He’s eight and she’s all he has, the only other Rime left in this sand-blasted world, his sister! From the very beginning, before the orphanage, before their mother died, before the church and the Sisters and the itchy, ill-fitting clothes –

A growl. Guttural. Feral. Inhuman – and as it steps out of the blackness he opens his mouth to scream –

Vahl shoots up in bed, hauling in lungfuls of air. The sheets are tangled all about his legs, stuck to skin by cold sweat, and he’s trying to stay calm, to be quiet, to remember he’s no longer eight.

It’s a mercy Raha’s still asleep: curled in a ball on his side, one hand gripping his pillow while the other dangles off the edge of the bed. For a moment Vahl considers lying down against him, taking every onze of comfort that he can from his sleeping Miqo’te, but he doesn’t want to risk waking him. Doesn’t want to disturb him –

Doesn’t want to answer his questions.

It’s a silent slide out of bed; out of the room; up the stairs of the small cottage they now share. The main floor is still dark, the furniture little more than shadowy lumps in the dim moonlight from the open windows. At his best guess he has at least two hours until dawn, but he hardly cares. This is not the first night he’s roamed the yard alone, and it will not be the last. 

The garden greets him with the smell of moonflowers, wisteria, and just a hint of wet earth; the only sounds belong to his feet on the grass and the wind in the leaves. From here he is hidden from the nearest cottages, his view angled towards a river and blocked by well-placed trees. It is a small corner of peace and seclusion, a tiny sphere of space all their own. 

It has been three weeks since Elidibus fell. Three weeks since Raha returned, whole in body and mind. Three of the best weeks of Vahl’s life, though it hasn’t been entirely stress free. He shoots a glare at the wooden practice dummy taking up the far corner of their yard; his sword and shield lay against its base, abandoned there after he’d lost his temper the day before. 

Raha says he’s making progress. Raha says he’s getting better, and he is, he is! Every day the moves are smoother; the magic comes easier; he remembers to actually wear his shield nine times out of ten. Raha can still put him in the dirt, but Raha’s had over a century of practice; Vahl doesn’t feel bad about that. No, it’s the oddity of only having one hand on his blade that continues to throw him off. If he had his way he’d chuck the shield and be done with it – but he can’t be half a paladin. Not if he wants to do all the things he can do as a dark knight.

Or, well – most of the things he can do as a dark knight.

Some things might be best left behind.

He thinks of his dream and shudders. Not every dark thought can be forgotten; not all mistakes remain history. How long before his past catches up with him?

“Vahl?”

He turns to find his sleep-mussed Miqo’te blinking at him in the doorway, his silver-ringed hand pulling a loose robe closed. The robe is Vahl’s and far too large for Raha; it drags along behind him like an oversized, fluffy cloak. With his hair dangling out of his braid he is a far cry from the noble, put-together Crystal Exarch of a few weeks’ past – but he is all Vahl wants. All Vahl needs. He’s everything Vahl’s dreamed of ever since the Crystal Tower closed, and the night terrors seem small, insignificant things now that he’s here.

“I woke you.”

“‘Tis certain you did your best not to.” Raha gives him a tired smile, but Vahl sees concern in those crimson eyes as the sleep starts to fade. “The nightmare again?”

It would be easy to say yes. It would be so easy to let Raha think he’d had the same dream he always has, to tell him it had been the same red-eyed beast that always sends him fleeing their bed –

“It changed,” Vahl murmurs, and Raha’s ears lie flat against his head. “At the very end. It wasn’t Maahes waiting for me.” 

Raha doesn’t say a word – just waits, watching him, until Vahl looks away.

Greatsword slung over one shoulder, ragged armour darkened by soot and gore, black hair nearly hiding blue eyes – 

A quirk of the lips. A hint of teeth.

Man, or monster?

“It was me.”

*

Dawn paints their kitchen walls orange; it burnishes Raha’s red hair, sneaking in through the main window to throw light directly across his half of the table.

Vahl’s half remains in shadow. He tries not to take it as a sign.

“Dreams are not truth, Vahl. They may reflect what we focus upon in our waking life, but they amplify or distort our worries and joys. Seeing yourself in place of Maahes isn’t a sign of anything except your own –” Raha suddenly stops, sucking his teeth with his tongue as his tail flicks about behind him. 

“Go on.”

“I was going to say your own guilt,” Raha admits. “But it might be more than that.” He cradles his hands around the mug of tea in front of him, interlacing his fingers as he frowns at the cooling drink. “With our journeys and the business of settling in, I hadn’t had the time to ask, and I realise now that was a mistake. I should have made time, and I apologise.” His gaze flickers to Vahl. “How does it feel to know your soul was once the Fourteenth?”

Vahl closes his eyes. Fights the urge to pull out the orange crystal and fiddle with it, as he has done daily since their return from the First. As he used to do with his broken soul crystal, before Myste fixed it. Before Myste returned to where he belongs. Before…

“Do you remember what Emet-Selch said?” With his eyes closed he can’t see Raha’s reaction, but the sharp intake of breath tells him enough. He will say this quickly. “Before I killed him. That bit about ‘revealing our true faces to one another’. And then he became…”

“A monster,” Raha murmurs. “Though he always was, no matter the face he wore.”

“What if all Ancients possessed such power? And if that was his true face…” Vahl shakes his head in frustration. He suddenly stands, too agitated to keep still, and begins pacing across their small kitchen. He doesn’t know how to put this worry into words, to twist the fear into something he can explain, but it’s eating him. Eating him alive, eating him in his dreams, eating his hope that something so simple as taking on a new soul crystal might solve him. Fix him. Make him safe.

What he’d done in Ishgard, Whitebrim, and even Holminster Switch won’t happen again. He is more aware than ever of the cost that comes with losing control. Power has its price, and his power requires vigilance – an iron will over the rage that once consumed him.

But he’d seen Emet-Selch’s true face. The transformation. The monster. If all Amaurotines had possessed the same power…had Azem ever lost control? Warred with the monster within? Had they, too, possessed a collection of voices and the inability to keep them contained?

Emet-Selch might have known. Or Elidibus. Even Hythlodaeus, his new-old friend…

Friends. Foes. Flickering, frustrating, feeble figments. Another life, another person. It isn’t him. It isn’t him, it wasn’t him, he is his own man –

His own monster –

*G’raha’s seen you as both.* Ardbert's voice is almost gentle. *Man and monster. Fought with and against. Ask him if it matters.*

He could ask. Raha is right here, watching and waiting; he'd tell the truth no matter how painful it may be. Vahl opens his mouth to voice the fear – and sees the small, silver ring on Raha's finger. The ring that had been with him to hell and back – to Ishgard and Dravania, Gyr Abania and Doma, Norvrandt and the Empty – before finally finding its way to Raha.

Yes, Raha had seen him as both; had fought with and against him; had even spoken with Fray! He'd witnessed the absolute worst parts of Vahl's soul and yet – and yet –

Vahl takes his seat with a shaky smile. "Thank you." He tips his head towards Raha's ringed finger. "For saying yes."

Raha glances at his hand in surprise. "Well, I mean – of course. That is, thank you for asking." His brow furrows. "Are you –"

"I need...time," Vahl says, and offers a shrug of apology. "To put it into words. To process, I suppose. I know so little about who Azem was, and what he accomplished..."

It's a relief that Raha nods, that he's willing to delay this conversation, and his words make Vahl love him even more. "It was not my intention to push, rather to let you know I am thinking of it, and I am inclined to talk about it. Whenever you may be ready." He suddenly yawns, his ears flattening against his hair as he waves his hand. "Ah, the night is catching up with me – morning or not, I fear I might need to return to bed."

"I'll join you." It isn't that he's tired, exactly – there is so much on his mind that he doubts he'd fall back asleep – but he cannot deny the comfort of their bed, in the darkness of their room, in the peace and quiet as he listens to Raha drift off into dreams –

"For sleep, yes?" Raha stretches as he stands, reaching his hands far over his head – and allows the oversized robe to open, leaving an enticing gap of shadows down his torso. There's a glint in his eyes as he settles back on flat feet, and he makes no move to adjust the robe. "At some point?"

Maybe a little less peace and quiet than he'd anticipated. "Eventually."

Raha grins.

Chapter 4: By Virtue of the Road You Walked

Past – Elpis

“Has your journey been good? Has it been worthwhile?”

Has it been…?

He wants to say yes. With the sun on his face and Venat standing before him, there is nothing he wants more than to tell her yes, all of this is worth it. All the pain and suffering pale in comparison to the friends he’s made, the lives he’s saved, and the adventures he’s been gifted.

He wants to say yes…

Past – Eastern Thanalan

Bare feet kick up dust clouds from the sun-baked earth; heaving lungs exhale breath hot and ragged. He’s running, running as fast and far as his feet can take him, but he’s only eight. He’s only eight, and there are half-a-dozen pairs of feet behind him. Heavier feet, clanking armour, angry voices: the church Sisters and nearby soldiers, whoever had heard the call to chase him down. 

He’s only eight, but he knows he isn’t going to get very far. 

A hand grabs the back of his tunic and yanks. He’s hoisted off his feet, held captive in the air as he flails his fists in every direction – one hand connects and he hears a man curse before the familiar voice of Sister Sina, the Sister who leads his orphanage, freezes him in place.

“Vahl Rime!” Piercing; ear-splitting; a crow’s shriek of disapproval. “Is it not enough that we have to bury your sister? Will you force us to dig a hole for you, too?” She takes him off the hands of his captor – a Brass Blade, by his armour – and plants him unceremoniously on his feet. Bony fingers bore into his shoulders to keep him in place, but the fight’s gone. The urge to run. The hope to get out. What’s left hurts – hurts his stomach, his head, his heart.

Bury your sister. Bury your sister. Bury your –

Past – Ul’dah

“You can’t stay here, you know.”

He turns his head, blinking sleepily at the Roegadyn lying beside him. Their mass of black curls drowns the bed in hair, but their prominent nose cuts a hard silhouette against the late morning light. “In bed?”

Zeid shakes their head. “No. In Ul’dah. In Thanalan. You have to get out.”

Now sufficiently perturbed enough to abandon his hopes of rest, Vahl levies himself up on his elbow to stare down at his partner. “What are you talking about?”

“You always wanted to see Gridania, didn’t you? Those big trees? Go do that.”

“I can’t just leave,” he argues, even as he fights the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. “What about Nik? What about this place? What about –”

“Nik’s a thief,” Zeid interrupts. “A thief and a bastard. His protection from the Blades lasts exactly as long as he says it does. What’s to say his mood doesn’t change? That it isn’t already changing?”

Vahl stares at them, speechless. Half his brain is running through denial – because life is comfortable, and Nik’s been good to him, and only cowards run away – while the other half attempts to keep up with his partner’s reasoning. Zeid has no reason to lie; no reason to plant seeds of doubt for their own gain. Zeid’s been the best part of living in this stupid, money-hungry city! 

Zeid slides out of bed, hugging their arms around their chest as they pace the length of the shabby, single-room apartment they’ve been generous enough to allow Vahl to share. “I found my way out, Rime. I’m done with this life – and don’t tell me I was good at it. I know that, alright? I bloody well know it, and I’m saying I’m done with it. Who wants to be a criminal?”

“I never said I wanted –”

“You said you wanted to live in the Shroud. So go! Get out of Ul’dah before it kills you.”

Vahl follows the Roegadyn’s lead, leaving their mussed bed behind to pace over creaky floorboards. Zeid stands almost five ilms taller than him; he attempts to step in front of them, to stop their pacing, but Zeid simply walks around him. 

“I’m out, Rime. Done and done. I’ve signed on for an apprenticeship with the Goldsmith’s Guild; I start tomorrow. I’m leaving Nik and his crew and everything about this life, and if you’re as smart as I think you are, you will, too.”

“The Goldsmith’s Guild?” It’s too early for this; he’s too hungover for this; five minutes ago he thought he knew what his life was, and now Zeid’s gone and turned it all upside down. “Just – just stop, alright? For a second? What brought this on?”

“You did.” The Roegadyn halts, their dark eyes boring into Vahl’s. “You killed a man last week, Rime.”

The words send anxious tremors through Vahl’s chest and stomach. Killed a man; killed a man; killed a – “It was in self-defence. Even the Blades took my side.”

“Would you have done it were you in Gridania? Away from Nik?”

“This has nothing to do with Nik! I had to protect myself –”

“Nik sent you on that job!” Zeid, normally soft-spoken and careful with their movements, lashes out before Vahl can even consider lifting his arms to block. Powerful hands grab him by the shoulders and slam him into the wall hard enough to rock plaster dust upon both their heads. “He sent you on that shitty Vesper Bay job and you could have died! You could have died, and for what? Gil? Gold? What were you trying to lift?”

Vahl licks dry lips. “A vase.”

Zeid’s face twists in disgust as they back away. “A vase. You almost died stealing a vase. A man did die because he went after the same! What a fucking waste.”

“Zeid –”

“No! No more!” They suddenly stop, dragging their hands over their face as their expression caves into misery. “How old are you now? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“Nineteen,” he says, but he isn’t really sure. It’s been a while since he’s seen a calendar. Been a while since he thought about anything other than his next job. 

“Nineteen,” Zeid repeats, and spits. “Thal’s balls, Rime. Fine. If you want to stay in Ul’dah’s filthy alleys and rub noses with trash like Nik, fine. But I’m done with it.”

Vahl watches mutely as Zeid dresses. He can’t argue that his last job had been shitty: big risk, little reward, and almost no intel. He might as well have walked in blind, and because he hadn’t brought home the vase Nik hadn’t even paid him. No gil, the Blades asking uncomfortable questions, and a man dead at his hands – maybe Zeid is right. Maybe he has overstayed his welcome.

“Nik gave me a place to live,” he says, allowing himself one last half-hearted attempt at defending the only life he’s known since he made his way to Ul’dah. “He took me in.”

“And I think you’ve repaid his hospitality in excess,” Zeid retorts as they begin to dig through their narrow, cluttered closet. “You’ve been working for him for almost five years, by my reckoning. I’ve been doing it for seven. He doesn’t need anything else from us, Rime. He’s been paid and paid and paid, and I’m done.” They finally turn around with a bag in their hands – and Vahl realises with a start that it’s his bag, and it’s full to brimming. “Here.”

“Wait –” He fumbles the catch, feeling the bulky thing tumble through his fingers and hit the floor with a thump. “What –”

“I packed it for you. Everything you need for a journey north.”

“Zeid –”

The Roegadyn crosses the room to lean over him, taking Vahl’s chin in their fingers to look him eye-to-eye. “Go to Gridania. Be a botanist, or a soldier, or even a shopkeep! Just don’t do this.”

“I – I don’t know that I’m good for anything but this.”

“Ah, Rime.” Zeid’s face softens, and their kiss is even softer. “Maybe you aren’t, but I’d rather see you try.”

Past – Mor Dhona

He’s far from home when Dalamud falls, one of the many held in reserve against the hordes and hordes of Imperials marching on Carteneau. He’s wearing Gridanian armour and there’s a bow in his hands like he knows what to do with it; like he knows what he signed up for; like he knows what he’s fighting for. 

He should have become a botanist. 

Past – Lower La Noscea

He’s killing sheep. Pathetic, harmless little balls of fluff – but everyone has to start somewhere, don’t they? The guildmaster said “go kill sheep” and so, while the rest of Limsa Lominsa is quiet on this, the anniversary of the Calamity, he is standing on a beautiful cliffside under the deepest blue sky he’s ever seen. Learning how to use the axe they’d gifted him. Learning what it means to stand face-to-face with an enemy – 

Or face-to-face with a sheep. 

Past – Western Thanalan

He’s been here before, walked beneath the towering statue of some Lalafell who’d no doubt paid plenty of gil to have himself immortalised in stone, but that had been a different Vahl. A different person, with different goals. A different purpose. 

It’s been six years since he last stepped foot in Vesper Bay. This time, he hopes, will be better. He has an invitation to meet – well, he’s not really sure who or what he’s meeting, but it sounds promising. Sounds like something he might want to be a part of.

Sounds like he might never need to steal anyone’s vase ever again.

Past – Upper La Noscea

Ifrit felt like a fluke, an unexplainable happy accident with a heavy side of luck. 

Titan feels like something more.

Past – Mor Dhona

He finally sees a face to go with the voice – the laughing voice that had followed him on his hunt through the Shroud – and what a face it is! Confident, cocky, handsome: humour brightens mismatched eyes as the Miqo’te stranger jumps from his perch to join the rest of the group around Rammbroes.

Wouldn’t do to stare. Wouldn’t do at all. 

Introductions are doled out and Vahl finds himself repeating the Miqo’te’s name in his head, missing every word of the discussion that follows.

G’raha Tia.

A good name. A memorable name.

A name Vahl hopes he will have plenty of opportunities to say.

Past – The Rising Stones & The Lavender Beds

“Minfilia? Do you – do you have a moment?”

She smiles at him, putting down her papers as she gives him her full attention from behind her desk. “Of course, Vahl. What would you have of me?”

It’s hard to find the words, and harder still to admit to himself why, but he tries. Gods, does he try. “I assume you’ve heard of my work in Mor Dhona, with Rammbroes and the Ironworks? Our expedition to Syrcus Tower?”

She nods, though her forehead creases in confusion. She doesn’t understand why he asks. “I’ve seen some of the reports, yes. Is it going well?”

“Oh, yes. Good as can be. Erm –” He looks at the floor, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand as he awkwardly – and quickly – forces himself to speak. “I thought it best I let you know that I’ll be moving to the Lavender Beds. With G’raha Tia.”

“With –” He can’t see her smile, but he can definitely hear it. “That is wonderful news, Vahl.”

“Well. I – I just – if something happens to me – not that I think it will, of course, but just in case –” He sighs explosively. “If something happens to me, will you let him know? Personally?”

“Of course. As I would for the family of any of our companions, should the need arise.”

“Thank you.” Having voiced his fear and his request, the weight lifts from Vahl’s shoulders, and he finally raises his head. His smile comes easily. “I’ve got to run: I promised him a walk through the Shroud before dinner, and I’d rather not be late.”

“Ah – before you leave –” Her expression is almost as awkward as his has been a few moments earlier. “Are the other Scions aware?”

“I, ah…not yet.” A terrible answer; less an answer than an invitation to ask. Why don’t they know? Why wouldn’t he tell them? Why is G’raha a secret when nothing else is?

She would be well within their comfort zone – as both close companions and fast friends – to ask any of those questions and more, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t make him say it. She trusts him, as he trusts her, and she lets him go without forcing him to put his worry into words. “Have a good night, Vahl.”

“You, too.”

*

“What a view,” G’raha sighs. “The trees, the stars, the little lanterns on the paths…! This is perfect.”

Vahl glances at the scene below them – the Lavender Beds spread out for what seems malms and malms, though he knows it is considerably smaller than his imagination paints it – before turning his head to the side. G’raha’s elbows rest on the windowsill, his tail twisting and turning behind him as he lifts himself on his toes to better lean out the window. Dusk paints most of him in shadow, but the candlelight behind them brightens the tips of his ears and his hair finally let loose to tumble over his shoulders.

“It is,” Vahl murmurs. “Perfect.”

G’raha dances back from the window, grinning as he pulls Vahl with him. “A perfect walk, and a perfect dinner, and a perfect view, and now…” He sits on their new bed, his grin widening. “A perfect end to the night?”

Rather than speak, Vahl slowly straddles him, sliding his knees around the Miqo’te’s waist. G’raha makes to lean back but Vahl holds him upright, cradling his jaw in both hands as he kisses him – softly, languidly, taking his time before his teeth catch and hold G’raha’s lower lip. He feels a shiver pass through G’raha and he grins, holding himself still as the Miqo’te’s breath comes heavy and his hands travel up Vahl’s back. 

“Vahl…” G’raha swallows hard as Vahl grinds against him; his hands dig into Vahl’s shirt, nearly anchoring them together with the sudden force of his grip. “I…”

Vahl releases his bite but keeps his hands where they are. His kisses are innocent, almost playful, but the longer he stays pressed against G’raha the harder he feels his Miqo’te become. “Who says the night has to end?”

G’raha’s tail flicks so quickly it snaps against the sheets, and in an instant his hands are at Vahl’s belt, tugging at the leather so frantically Vahl can’t help but laugh. He bounces off the bed, away from those eager hands, and drags his shirt up and over his head. 

“Seems like someone’s still hungry.”

G’raha slides off the bed to kneel, open-mouthed, at Vahl’s feet.

“Crude,” Vahl says.

“Tease,” G’raha counters.

Vahl bends forward to kiss him again, quick this time, and the words are on his lips – three short words, easy enough on their own, but – but –

Too soon. One day he’ll say it. One day he’ll let himself take the risk. For now, however…

“You’re wearing too much,” Vahl murmurs, and he hooks one finger under the white gorget around G’raha’s throat. “Take everything off – except this.”

Past – Old Gridania

“I love you, you know.”

“You…?” Vahl freezes. Even his mind hiccups – there are no thoughts, no emotions, not even a quick quip. There’s nothing between his ears except the sound of his own heartbeat.

Raha, seemingly unphased, leans forward to kiss him right in the middle of Gridania’s Ebony Stalls. He’s wearing something between a grin and a smirk, something that says he knows just how frazzled he’s made Vahl, and he’s damn pleased with himself for doing it. “Did I speak too quickly? Very well. I shall say it again: I love you.”

This must be what being clubbed over the head feels like. Vahl hoped to hear these words – he’s been hoping for weeks – but he hadn’t seriously believed…

“I love you, too.” It tumbles out of him, quick and stuttered but genuine, as genuine as he’s ever been, and now that it’s been said he wants to say it again. Again and again and again – “I’ve loved you for a while.”

“I know.” Raha grins as he leads Vahl through the market, winding him through crowds of merchants, craftsmen, and ordinary Gridanians doing their evening shopping. “I was wondering if you’d ever gather the courage to say it.”

Vahl stays silent, following after his Miqo’te while he browses at the nearest stall. Is it melodramatic to tell the truth? Would it spoil the moment? Shouldn’t he always tell Raha the truth, regardless? That’s what you do when you love someone, isn’t it?

“Coeurl got your tongue?”

“I –” Vahl rubs the back of his neck. “Thal’s balls, Raha. I’ve never said that to anyone. I – I wasn’t sure I’d ever have someone to say it to.”

Raha’s ears flatten, but only for a second before he grabs Vahl’s hand and stands on his toes to kiss him again. “Then I’ll be sure to give you plenty of opportunities to say it – to keep saying it.” Mismatched eyes meet Vahl’s. “Like now, for instance.”

Pretending as though the Lalafell behind the counter isn’t watching with wide eyes, Vahl leans over Raha. “I love you.” Again it makes his heart beat faster and his cheeks redden with warmth, but he likes saying it. He really, really likes it.

“And again…?”

“I love you, G’raha Tia.” This time it flows like water. “For tomorrow, and tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come.”

“I shall hold you to that,” Raha murmurs, and kisses him a third time before bouncing back with a grin. “Now, where was I…?” He glances at the stall, which Vahl belatedly realises only sells sweets. “Ah, yes. Dessert.”

Past – Mor Dhona

“Where is he?” Vahl drags on his chocobo’s reins, skidding the bird to a stop just outside of Rammbroes’ tent. “Where’s Raha?”

“G’raha?” The Roegadyn pokes his head out of the tent flap, blinking tiredly into the early rays of dawn; one hand grips the top of his sleeping robe closed at his neck. “I don’t – I mean to say – do you have any idea of the time?”

“He said he was heading up to the tower,” one of NOAH’s researchers calls from a nearby campfire, confirming Vahl’s suspicions even as his stomach drops. “Went that way about an hour ago.”

“Why would he – Vahl, wait!”

He’s already gone. He digs his heel into his chocobo’s flank, spurring him towards the Crystal Gate to the south. Behind him he hears Rammbroes shouting for Cid, for the others to wake, mount up, and follow, but fear overpowers any thought to wait for them. Fear for Raha and what he might do – fear because of Raha’s silence the night before. What should have been a happy night, a night full of celebrations – they’d bested the Cloud of Darkness! Returned unscathed from the Void itself! Saved Eorzea from who-knows-what! – had instead been quiet and sombre. Raha had barely said a word, barely even moved – until they went to bed, and then his Miqo’te had come alive. He’d moved like a drowning man, like someone love-starved, like someone partaking in their last meal – and the way he’d said goodnight won't stop replaying in Vahl’s head.

Why had Raha’s last I love you sounded like a farewell?

Past – The Steps of Faith

Snow and wind and ice and rock; there’s an abyss below him and a barred city before him; though Tataru and Alphinaud walk with him they are silent, both lost in thought as they approach the towering peaks of Ishgard.

It’s all gone wrong. Nanamo, dead; the Scions, missing; Raha, locked within Syrcus Tower. Vahl’s a wanted man in Ul’dah and a dead man if he enters the Rising Stones; he doesn’t dare teleport even to Revenant’s Toll in case the Crystal Braves catch him in the plaza. Life as he knows it has been twisted and he can’t even manage the energy for denial. He’s letting Alphinaud set the pace, following the boy to Ishgard and wherever else – for whatever reason, for whatever cause. Dragons? Why not? Nothing remains in Eorzea for him to fight for. He’s lost it, lost all of them, one, two, three, four –

Warrior of Light! Champion of Eorzea! Destroyer of the Ultima Weapon and slayer of primals! If only his enemies could see him now: not brought low by beasts or Ascians, no; it is politics that have sent him fleeing like a rat. 

Fucking Ul’dah. He should never have gone back. Now he’s leaving the only lands he’s ever known and it’s hard to see any of this as an adventure. What waits for him in Ishgard? A new beginning? After climbing so high and fighting so far it feels impossible to start again, and yet Haurchefant is optimistic. Haurchefant is always optimistic, but Vahl’s made the choice to buy into it this time. 

Not much remains if he isn’t willing to hope.

Past – Eastern Thanalan

He stands at the base of Camp Drybone, his back to the building that had once housed his first orphanage. There’s blood on his greatsword, blood on his armour, blood –

Fray waits in front of him. Seems to wait in front of him. Darkness seeps about the edges; lingers in the between space; pools at his feet and collects at his fingertips. 

Fray sings of the abyss even when silent.

“In sacrifice there is strength,” Fray says. “In sacrifice there is liberation.”

Strength is power. Liberation is freedom. 

The power to save his friends.

The freedom to make his choice.

But what does he have to give…?

Past – Fortemps Manor

“A knight lives to serve.” Count Edmont’s voice is strained and stilted; his words are a father’s cold attempt at comfort. “To protect. To sacrifice.”

It should have been Vahl’s. It should have been Vahl’s. Vahl’s choice; Vahl’s sacrifice! Is that not what he does? Time and time again? Against primals and bandits and beasts without hesitation or regret, yet when it matters most – when his greatest friends’ lives are on the line – where does he find himself? 

Like Moenbryda. Like the Scions after the banquet in Ul’dah. 

Like Raha…?

Past – The Aetherochemical Research Facility

Thordan lies on his belly, prostrated like a precant: his power drained, his knights dead, terror and disbelief etched into every line of his withered face –

“Who – what are you?!”

What is he? What is he? What is –

Past – The Fringes

Yda is Lyse, and Lyse is Yda, and they’re going east. East, to barren lands of rock and sand. East, to fight Imperials. 

East, to his mother’s homeland.

Vahl has a lone moment to himself before the trek to Rhalgr’s Reach begins; he leans against the back of one of Castrum Oriens’ few buildings, soaking in the silence. His greatsword stands on its own, rooted a good six ilms into the ground at his feet; one hand dangles across the hilt while the other holds a cracked soul crystal before him. 

“In death…there is life…”

“A smile better suits a hero.”

“Thank you – for showing me the way.”

“If this be the price I must pay, I pay it gladly.”

“Take her! Please, you have to take her!”

He closes shaking fingers around the glass-like crystal. Sid and Rielle will help. Sid, Rielle, and the blue-haired boy. He simply needs to keep himself together until they’re ready. 

The Scions don’t need to know about this. 

Past – Ala Mhigo

Flower petals shower the air like confetti, pinks and reds and whites complementing both the burnished sunset and the blood on Zenos’s blade as he drags it across his own neck – 

“Coward!” 

*Coward!* 

It’s Fray’s voice echoing Alphinaud, but Fray isn’t here – Fray shouldn’t be here! Vahl hasn’t seen or heard Fray since they dealt with Myste –

Past – The Lavender Beds

Fray, his eyes blazing red, power at his fingertips, the abyss at his feet – and it sings! It sings so sweetly, so beautifully that Vahl cannot help but give himself to it. Cold, cold rage, untouchable and unfathomable –

This is a dream. He knows he is dreaming, knows he must wake, but he also knows it’s safer here. Safe and cold and dark, dark, dark – 

The abyss grants him power. The abyss grants him freedom. And he, in return…

“Serve…save…slave…slay…”

Past – Ala Mhigo

“Now you know. Now you understand.”

Fordola shakes her head, her face pale in the dim light from the gaol hallway. “It’s too much. Too much for anyone! Even for you, Warrior of Light! How can you still stand? After everything they’ve asked of you? How can you still give, still –”

“Sacrifice?”

She shoots him a look of disgust. “Is that what you call it? It’s suffering, and dressing it up as something noble is going to get you killed.”

Past – The Crystarium

“I can giveth thee only my sincerest of apologies –”

“Tell me! Tell me!” His hands shake as he paces back and forth before the astrologian; the Scions don’t understand his anger, but Raha – ! Raha was here! Raha was here all along and Urianger knew! “Tell me the next time you play with people’s lives!”

“The Exarch –”

“His name is G’raha!”

Past – Holminster Switch

“Take it.”

“Raha –”

“Take it!”

Lightning flares across the courtyard and Raha’s face is thrown into eerie, unsettling shadows. Crimson eyes glare at him with an unexpected ferocity – but this is the Crystal Exarch, is it not? Raha, yes, but not-Raha, too.

Vahl numbly holds out his hand. He doesn’t want what Raha offers; he doesn’t want what comes next; he would rather lie in the muck, bury his head beneath the water and dissolve, cease, end –

But Raha is willing to fight for him. To challenge him. To risk his own life.

To make the hard choice.

Vahl takes the greatsword.

Past – Radz-at-Han

It’s Amaurot all over again. He can’t be everywhere at once: there are terrors in the alleys and creatures in the plazas; shrieks and screams and people fleeing without any idea of where they might find safe haven. Thavnair pulses with fear and it’s all he can do to follow, to swing his blade, to not cry out with base, simple-minded despair because he knows. He knows about the Final Days and the Convocation’s plan and what survival cost – what survival meant – what was lost to preserve even a sliver of life – 

And then Raha steps forward. Powerful, eloquent, level-headed Raha: he walks into that storm and becomes, for a moment, the Crystal Exarch once more.

Listening to Raha speak…it’s pride and it’s love; admiration and respect; it’s a gratitude so deep Vahl can’t help but make his way through the crowds to take Raha’s hand once he finishes. Against a sky of falling flame they stand, hand-in-hand, and Vahl draws his strength – his courage – from that simple touch.

“I don’t know that I could do this without you,” Vahl says, his voice low enough that only Raha hears. He keeps his attention on the others, the Scions and soldiers helping people return to their homes before the next wave begins, but he knows those crimson eyes are on him. “Thank you – for being here. With me.”

“Where else would I be?” Raha raises their hands to kiss Vahl’s knuckles. “Do you remember what I told you when we returned from the First? About your joys, pains, and prayers?”

“I still say I’m not the praying type,” Vahl murmurs, but Raha continues as if he hadn’t spoken.

“You’ve stood witness to much and more. Fought for Eorzea, for Ishgard, for Doma, for Gyr Abania and Bozja – even for Garlemald!” His grip on Vahl’s hand tightens. “You could do this alone. You won’t have to, but you could. Every step you’ve taken attests to that.”

“And if this is our end, as it was for Amaurot?”

Raha suddenly flicks him in the forehead – the silliest, most childish thing he could do in the middle of the Final Days – but the shock of it snaps Vahl out of his cloud of doubt. Of course this won’t be their end! After everything they’ve been through! With all they still have left to do, to see, to experience!

The twins and Matsya are already running for Palaka’s Stand, but Vahl takes a moment more to kiss Raha. It’s barely enough, a hungry, hurried attempt to pour all of his emotions into a single gesture, yet it roots out the last kernel of despair. He leaves Raha and the others behind with his head finally clear: hope will carry the day. It must. If even he begins to doubt…

Raha has fought for their world for over a century. How can Vahl give anything less?

Past – Ultima Thule

“Stop – not another word.” Vahl’s voice shakes, the tremor undeniable even as he attempts to prevent what comes next. He’d guessed, he’d guessed, he’d guessed, but – !

Alphinaud remains undaunted, and speaks a truth that hurts him worse than any blade: “You are no stranger to carrying the burden of others. But I can only imagine how heavy the weight would be this time.”

*No. No, no, no!* Myste is frantic, his voice high in a screech. *Stop him; stop him! Please, please, don’t – don’t leave us –*

*Sacrifice,* Fray interrupts.

*Not him. Not them. Please. It should be us; it should have been us!*

Fray doesn’t respond, but Vahl understands. Vahl knows. The sacrifice he gives is not his body or soul, but something deeper, something ephemeral. He sacrifices connection, a likeness to others – it is fitting, isn’t it, that he walks alone? The walls are going, going, nearly gone. Like in Ul’dah, after the banquet. Like above Amaurot, as they fell one by one. Friends and family. Those he swore to protect – to save – and what remains? What remains?

What is he, to do this alone?

A sliver of Azem. Chosen by Hydaelyn. Blessed; cursed. Man; monster. Whatever he is now, and whatever he was before, he always walked forward with both eyes open. He’d always said yes, always taken the next step, always made the next move. Whether he was eager or not, he’d always made his choice. He’d chosen to leave Ul’dah. He’d chosen to be a warrior. He’d chosen to join the Scions, and he could have said no! He could’ve turned aside at any time! He could have stopped!

*Not the Weapon of Light,* Fray whispers. *Not my Weapon of Light.*

Choices. Hard choices, every one of them, but he’d made them. For family, for friends, for Raha, for the world around him! For people, for life! And it hurts, oh, it has always hurt. It hurt in Thanalan and it hurts here at the end of the world, but he’s going to do it anyway. He’s going to choose to walk alone to the very end. 

Just as Venat had so, so long ago.

Present – Ultima Thule

Meteion stares at him, and he stares at her. The gulf between them is unbreachable – millennia, thousands of lives, a distance Vahl cannot even begin to comprehend – and yet. And yet.

“Can you hear me?”

He thought he’d be angry. He thought he’d curse her, yell at her, draw his weapon and let his rage do what it always does. As it had in Whitebrim, Syrcus Tower, and Holminster Switch; as it always seems to do when his emotions spill over. He calls it Fray to make it easier, but Fray is a piece, a single part, and he knows the truth. Fray is but a facet of the whole, and the blame always lies with the hand holding the blade.

Is Meteion the hand that destroyed Amaurot? Or is Hermes? One might argue Emet-Selch played his own part by forcing Hermes and Meteion to flee: had he been patient enough to allow the girl to finish her tale, how would this story have played out?

Might-have-beens. Would-haves, should-haves. Possibilities that no longer matter. Hermes and Emet-Selch are gone: laying blame at either man’s feet is pointless. All Vahl can do is put an end to the threat and save his world.

If only they’d told him how.

His left hand clutches Raha’s ring; his right hand, Azem’s crystal. His future hopes and his past self – and he finds himself wondering how much Azem knew. There had to have been some reason for the Fourteenth to abstain from the creation of Zodiark. Had Venat told him? Had he guessed? Had the required sacrifice crossed a line? Or had there been another explanation, some secret only Azem knew, that forced him to abandon the Convocation?

Venat might have known, but Venat is gone. Venat, Hythlodaeus, even Emet-Selch…

“Perhaps when our time comes to return to the star, we shall remember these few days we have lost.”

Vahl closes his eyes. Is this his path forward? He assumed Hydaelyn’s gift would be used to bring back the Scions, but summoning them now would unravel the very air he breathes. It would be the stupidest, most selfish choice –

But if Hydaelyn’s magic only works once…

“Do not squander it. The legacy I leave you.”

And what if he doesn’t want to carry this legacy? What if he wants to be average? What if he wants to marry his Miqo’te and forget about Etheirys and Meteion and whatever his soul might be made of? 

*You can,* Ardbert says. *But first we’ll finish this. Together.*

*Better to try.* Myste’s voice shakes. *Better to make the attempt. We’ve come this far.*

Would they know what to do? Would they understand? Would they realise all that has happened with Fandanial and Zodiark, the Final Days, Vahl’s fight against Hydaelyn…?

Would Emet-Selch forgive…?

It’s a roll of the dice, but isn’t everything? There’s never been a guarantee. No matter how long or how hard he fought, Vahl never knew he was going to win. Not in Thanalan or Azys Lla or the Lochs. Not even in Amaurot. 

*You’ve never been afraid of failure.*

Except…

*Except when it comes to those you love.*

It’s a risk, a gamble, perhaps the last choice he ever makes –

But it is still his choice.

Holding tight to both Azem’s crystal and Raha’s ring, Vahl focuses on two very old souls.

Chapter 5: Beloved Monsters

Past – Amaurot

“Remember us. Remember that we once lived.”

Vahl steps forward with a snarl. “And who were we, Emet-Selch? What was I to you?”

It’s the oh-so-familiar sneer – until it isn’t. For a brief breath of a moment the Ascian almost looks human, and Vahl’s snarl fades. There’s recognition in the other man’s smile: recognition, familiarity, and something – something else – something that lingers about the eyes, the corners of his lips, something that hints at a softness that terrifies Vahl far more than the monster he’d witnessed minutes earlier. It’s a glimpse into a past Vahl cannot possibly remember –

And then he’s gone.

Motes of light drift lazily, carried up and away to disappear into Amaurot’s dawn light. There is silence, and stillness, and the sensation that something has been irrevocably lost. Something Vahl’s having trouble putting a name to, just as he cannot name Emet-Selch’s final expression –

*Cannot? Or will not?*

He closes his eyes and tries not to think of it. Tries not to put a name to the ache in his chest, the queasiness in his belly. The blood on his hands isn’t only his own; he has the sudden urge to wipe his hands against his armour, to scrub at his skin, to scratch –

What has he done?

Who…?

Footsteps behind him. The Scions and Ryne – his friends, his family – approach with what is no doubt jubilation. They are ready to celebrate, to relish two worlds saved and the end of the villain who threatened everything they hold dear –

*He threatened you, too.*

Vahl opens his eyes. Ardbert’s glittering axe stands on its own, its blade sunk several ilms into battle-torn earth. 

Ardbert’s axe; Vahl’s Light. 

A quick wipe with his hand removes the tears from his cheeks, and he turns to face the others. They take his red eyes and quiet demeanour for reserved joy and exhaustion, and he doesn’t correct them. He doesn’t have the words to explain, but he does his best. He says nothing of Ardbert, Hythlodaeus, or Emet-Selch’s flashes of recognition. He dodges Ryne’s questions and stays silent at Y’shtola’s speculation – 

A hint of red catches his eye. A memory, from just before Emet-Selch changed – “We stand together!” – and Vahl starts walking, gently but firmly pushing aside his friends as his world narrows to the lone figure at the far end of this spit of land.

Shaking hands fumble with the straps on his gloves, fighting with buckles and clasps as he moves closer to the kneeling enigma he’d come to know as the Crystal Exarch. A part of him wants to rush, to revel, to scoop up the small, robed frame, but nerves hold him back. It’s been a very long time for him, and even longer for his Miqo’te.

His. His. Once upon a time, in a world far from this one.

Once.

Still…?

He kneels in front of Raha. Words – words would help – but disbelief steals his tongue. He tosses his gloves aside before gently pulling Raha’s bloody staff free from his grip. He’ll deal with the blood later – later – but –

Even as he takes Raha’s hands he fights against the rage, the oh-so-tempting slide into the abyss, and every scar and burn on Raha’s skin adds to it; winds him up; makes it harder to be present.

It isn’t Fray. Fray wouldn’t dare, not here. 

This anger is all his own.

Past – Elpis

He hears Emet-Selch before he sees him, the man’s nasally disdain filling the antechamber like water fills a sinking ship, and Vahl might as well be going under. Is it rage that chokes him, freezes his limbs, blinds his sight, curls his hands into shaking fists? Is it a cry for vengeance for the millions of lives, for a half-dozen worlds – 

For one bloody, scarred Miqo’te?

Or is it wanting? Wanting to know, to ask, to connect? He has craved answers ever since Hythlodaeus’ shade dropped a small crystal into his hand, and here! Here he could have them! He could ask about Azem, about Venat, about Amaurot and his new-old friend and –

*Breathe.* Fray is, for once, the eye of calm in the storm. *Breathe. You’re not here for him. Revenge and curiosity will have to wait.*

Curiosity is too meagre a word for the maelstrom Vahl’s caught in, but he can’t argue. Whatever happened in his past – and Emet-Selch’s future – will have to wait. 

He can only hope what he seeks won’t require being around the once-Ascian…

*

Hythlodaeus makes it bearable. The lavender-haired Amaurotine is a welcome tour guide in this, the strangest adventure Vahl’s ever had, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s willing to talk. Most of it is nonsense, meaningless chatter to fill Emet-Selch’s ill-tempered silence, but even nonsense is welcome. 

Vahl would take weeks’ worth of small-talk if it meant not thinking of the horrors of Radz-at-Han.

It is easy to play the part of a quiet, simple avatar. A construct, or whatever it is they believe him to be. It is easy to play dumb as his mind attempts to reconcile the disjointed reality that has become the past few days. He was in a war zone! An entire island filled with death and despair! And now he stands amidst a blooming garden with butterflies and gentle springs and he can’t calm himself. A creature will move out of the corner of his vision and his hand goes to his hilt, ready to strike down the imagined civilian-turned-monster. Hythlodaeus catches him doing it; the first time the Amaurotine offers a calming smile, but the second time his stare becomes more calculating – wondering what, really, have they let venture at their sides – and Vahl is more careful after that. 

This isn’t Radz-at-Han. The dangers here are far more subtle.

Like, for instance, the moment Hythlodaeus hands him a set of dark robes. Vahl takes the heavy cloth without thinking – he’s more concerned about tripping on the hem than he is the meaning behind it – until Fray grunts his disapproval.

*Don’t. It isn’t you.*

Vahl pauses. Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus have moved ahead, turning their backs to grant him a moment of privacy so that he might slip the robes over his armour. “Isn’t…?”

*You’re not one of them. You can’t be one of them. It isn’t you.*

*We can never go home,* Myste adds, and Vahl shudders. 

Emet-Selch audibly curses when Vahl rejoins the pair, but Hythlodaeus merely raises an eyebrow.

“Wasn’t my size,” Vahl says, and he hands the robes back.

*

Emet-Selch’s cup sits untouched. Hythlodaeus is already leaving, running after his friend without looking back – not that Vahl knows the words that might convince him to stay.

“You do not know me.”

Yet he’d walked the streets of the man’s ancient home, a recreation born of a longing so deep it nearly smothered the place. He’d witnessed the once-Ascian’s cocky confidence in the Crystarium; his flair for the dramatic – along with an unexpected show of empathy – in Rak’tika; his rage and desperation beneath the Tempest; the flicker of something familiar, something more real than any of it, above Amaurot –

And a light in the darkness, in that hopeless space Elidibus had banished Vahl to. With Azem’s crystal in hand and no thoughts in his head but please and help, Vahl had felt…something. Someone. An old friend with golden eyes plucking him from that destined death and bringing him, without question, back to where he needed to be.

No, Vahl doesn’t know Emet-Selch as he is in this time and place – but he knows what Emet-Selch became, and that is enough.

Past – The Gold Saucer

“And this, ah! This is where I shall truly shine. Ladies! Gentlemen! Honoroit! Prepare to be amazed!” 

Vahl stops a few ilms away from the mahjong table. The trio whom Emmanellain had unexpectedly joined look less than pleased by their new addition, but Vahl can bet they’ll be feeling much happier once they collect their winnings. For a moment he considers asking Honoroit, who stands anxiously at Emmanellain’s shoulder, to join him on a walk around the Saucer’s upper floors, but a voice distracts him. 

“Rime…?”

He turns to find himself looking up at a pale, dark-haired Roegadyn. It takes him a long, long moment to place the face before him – the prominent nose, warm eyes, and stubborn chin are immediately familiar, and yet…

“Go to Gridania. Be a botanist, or a soldier, or even a shopkeep! Just don’t do this.”

“Zeid?” Vahl asks incredulously. He looks the Roegadyn up and down: the black suit is a major change from the patchwork overalls they used to wear, and their mane of unruly black hair is tamed by braids. “You look…clean.”

“You look like hell.” Zeid flashes him an uncertain smile. “It’s been some time, eh?”

“Five…six…six or more years?” It’s hazy. Before the Calamity; before the Scions; before Ishgard and Doma and Zenos with his blade against his throat. “Been a while. You’re doing good?”

Zeid raises their hands and turns, gesturing to the entirety of the Gold Saucer. “Doing better! I work here, as security.” Their smile vanishes as they look back at Vahl. “Nothing compared to being Eorzea’s Champion, of course.”

Vahl flinches, bringing a hand up to awkwardly rub the back of his neck. “That’s – that’s just a title. You know me, Zeid, I’m –”

“Do I? Did I ever?”

He freezes. The Roegadyn’s tone has shifted. Intuition tells him to back away, to exit now, but Zeid had been his friend – his first partner! Surely there is something here he can scavenge! 

*This will hurt.*

“I’m still just Vahl,” he states, ignoring Fray. 

“Champion of Eorzea,” Zeid repeats, and they cross their arms. “Warrior of Light. Hydaelyn’s chosen. Slayer of primals, Imperials, and more besides. Rumour has it you single-handedly ended wars in Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, and Doma.” They raise an eyebrow. “You weren’t all that when I knew you.”

“I was a thief.” He’s trying to find stable ground, scrambling as what felt like a welcome reunion becomes brittle and sharp, but every word out of Zeid’s mouth hits like a blade against glass. “An alley-rat. I would’ve been a bandit, or a rogue, or dead if I hadn’t met you.”

“You were a good kid,” Zeid murmurs, and the regret in their voice is ice down Vahl’s back. “I sent you north to stop you from killing anyone else, to give you a chance at a normal life, but I suppose that was a fool’s hope. How many have you –”

“Don’t.” Against his own volition he reaches out, as if his hand alone might create a barrier between himself and that dreaded thought. “Don’t ask that. Please.”

“You don’t know, do you? You have no idea.”

“Zeid –”

“What went wrong?”

Vahl’s hand shakes, and he lowers it to his side. Curls it into a fist. Tries not to think of Wilred. Of Moenbryda. Of Haurchefant, Ysayle, and Papalymo. Minfilia and Conrad and –

Tries not to think of Raha.

“They realised I’m good with a blade,” he murmurs, and he stands up straight. Meets his old friend's gaze. Zeid isn't trying to hide it: their eyes are narrowed with disgust, disappointment, and the faintest trace of fear. “We all grow up, Zeid.”

“And what are you now, eh? What did you become?”

“I know what I fight for.” It comes out strong, but he’s thinking of Fray, calling him a weapon, and Ilberd, calling him a tool – “You fight for whoever bloody well tells you to” – and Thordan, asking what he’s made of, and Fordola, asking how he’s still standing. What is he, to fight and fight and fight and fight? “I’m not a monster.”

“I’m sure the Black Wolf said the same.” Zeid turns around, flicking a hand over their shoulder in a dismissive wave. “There’s work to do, Rime. Be seeing you.”

“I’m not a monster,” he repeats, but the Roegadyn keeps walking until they come to a ramp and turn out of sight. 

*Of course you aren’t,* says Fray, but Myste doesn’t say a thing. Amidst casino lights and the constant cries of winners, losers, and whatever Emmanellain believes himself to be, Vahl’s guilt speaks for itself.

Present – Ultima Thule

There’s an ache in Vahl’s chest, a sob caught halfway between his lungs and his lips, and he can do nothing but watch as two familiar figures appear before Meteion. He keeps his gaze on her because he can’t look at them. His lavender-haired new-old friend, his companion in Elpis and Amaurot and even the moon –

And Emet-Selch. Friend? Foe? Saviour? 

Complicated.

They’re asking him for a path forward, something they might create that would circumvent Meteion’s hold on this place, and he can’t think. He’d watched each of his friends out-reason the recreations from dead worlds and gaped at their logic; he couldn’t have said what they’d said. He never would have thought of any of it. Had he been alone he never would’ve stepped off the Ragnarok! What possible road leads on from here? 

Unless he doesn’t need a road.

His grip tightens on Raha’s ring. What had he called it, back when he gave into impulse and purchased the plain silver band? A compass, wasn’t it? A guide to a better future. A future with light, and love, and life.

“So I ask you – why live at all?”

Vahl bows his head. That had come from Amon, the shattered, warped being that rose from the ashes of Hermes – but while Hermes wanted answers and understanding, Amon wanted death. Death was his answer.

And Meteion…? Does she not want the same? Or...

“May we please be friends?”

A simple question. A simple answer to Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus' request. A simple possibility, here, at the end of everything. A few months earlier Vahl would have dismissed it as impossible – but if Raha has taught him anything, it is that he, of all people, must hold fast to hope.

Between dying stars, fading worlds, and the ghosts of dead civilizations, Vahl chooses to remember the girl he once met –

"Remember us. Remember that we once lived."

– instead of the monster she became.

Elpis flowers blaze across the land beneath their feet, blanketing the rock in blooms of light. Not a road forward, but a compass. A map. A guide to a future with light, and love, and life. 

With Azem’s crystal in one hand and Raha’s ring in the other, Vahl watches Meteion sink to her knees.

Notes:

Sorry this took ages - life got extra life-y these past few months!

Chapter 6: It’s the End of the World as We Know It

Past – Syrcus Tower

Constellation stones clatter across the blue and gold floor – a rainbow of clear rocks, a collection of histories spread between them – and Vahl bites his lip as Elidibus hurriedly gathers them into his lap. It is a childish gesture for the oldest soul in existence, a brief moment of joy at the end of millenia of hardship, and Vahl suddenly wishes he could do more. Nevermind that Elidibus had been at the helm of multiple worlds’ endings; that he would eradicate the Source’s peoples without hesitation; even that he’d tried to kill Vahl just now! 

In a past life they had known each other. Worked together. Been friends – maybe, maybe. Once, a long time ago…

Vahl takes a knee beside the small, white-robed figure as Elidibus begins to speak. The Ascian mumbles of memories, of people long gone, of friends – brothers – and each one is a blow to Vahl’s heart. 

What would he have done? Had he lost the Scions and Raha, his home and everything he once knew, would he have done the same?

Azem hadn't.

“The rains have ceased,” Elidibus murmurs, his voice cracking. “And we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here –” 

“I am here,” Vahl interrupts. “I am here.”

The small red mask tilts up. A flash; a flicker; a soft gasp –

And he’s gone.

Present – Ultima Thule

Meteion curls into herself, her shoulders nearly vanishing beneath the Elpis flowers' petals while the world above her cracks. It spills something blue and viscous into empty space. Not a true world, then, but a nest for Meteion and her sisters. A nest of memories? Other worlds long gone?

“May be please be friends?”

He has nothing left. Sympathy; pity; even regret! Vahl is blasted bare to the core, exhausted in a way he doesn’t know he’s ever felt, and he is doing his damned best not to look at the golden-eyed soul in front of him.

They’d been something, once. Before the old world ended. 

*It doesn’t excuse him.* Ardbert’s voice is clear. *Tempered, depressed, weary – none of that matters. Whatever he was to Azem is meaningless. We are not the Fourteenth.*

Vahl closes his eyes. He wants that to be true, with every hope in his heart and wish in his head, but the truth is complicated. Once was. Used to be. Shattered reflections. More than half an Amaurotine soul.

What remains…?

Choice. What he makes of it, how he moves forward, why he saves the world, even who he loves! He could lean hard into that old life, pull on the limited knowledge available to him and attempt to own it – but he hardly wants to be the Warrior of Light, let alone a Convocation member! He’d never wanted any of this!

*So be Vahl.* Fray sounds exasperated. *That’s more than enough.*

“You can call them back.”

He opens his eyes. Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus have moved some distance away, separating themselves from him. Hythlodaeus smiles his usual smile, but Emet-Selch…

The cockiness is a badly-held ruse; the attempt at smug disinterest little more than smoke and mirrors. Emet-Selch does care, very much so, and pretending he doesn’t is taking a toll.

“Your friends,” Emet-Selch continues. “Call them back if you wish. Their efforts no longer maintain this space.”

Vahl looks away from the once-friends to the orange crystal in his palm. Azem’s magic, Hydaelyn’s gift, and Emet-Selch’s longing: for all three to come together here to gift Vahl this – this chance to stand with his friends, his family, and walk forward with them at his side…

As he has done a handful of times already, Vahl clutches the crystal close to his chest and focuses. He has never summoned this group before, however: he’s never needed to! They’ve always been exactly where he needed them, whether he knew it or not. 

Y’shtola, from all the way back in Limsa Lominsa – before he knew of Scions or Ascians, before he started calling Eorzea’s leaders by their first names –

Thancred, who’d been his anchor even before Ifrit – their upbringings had been the closest, after all, and Vahl had needed something familiar amidst all the changes –

Urianger, who’d started as an incomprehensible intellectual but had become the most unlikeliest – and trusted – of friends –

Estinien, saviour and saved, another man whose monster requires a short leash –

Alisaie, as much a sister to him as Morwen had been, and Alphinaud, who he cannot imagine moving forward without –

And Raha. Handsome, talented, wonderful Raha. Raha, who never stopped believing in him; who traversed both the rift and time itself to bring him back; who still – still! – loves him, despite everything he’s done –

At the end of the universe Vahl thinks of the people he loves most, because he knows damn well he can’t do this without them.

Past – The Crystarium

“Because I love him!”

Alisaie’s gasp speaks for the rest of them; the Scions and Ryne stare, speechless, as Vahl’s exclamation echoes around them. The Crystal Tower bounces his voice back at him and he has to work not to shout it once more – to scream it again and again and again; to make up for years of silence and secrecy and staring at that damned tower –

“I love him,” he says again, quieter this time. It’s a weight off his shoulders, a weight he maybe shouldn’t have carried, but now is not the time. “Do you understand what that means? I’m going to find him. No matter the cost. No matter what it takes. I’m not leaving him.”

“You knew him.”

It isn’t a question, but Vahl nods to Y’shtola anyway. “Before all of this. Before Doma, and Ala Mhigo, and the Dragonsong War. Even before the banquet in Ul’dah.” His gaze roams over his friends, taking in their shock and disbelief, before settling on Urianger – ashen-faced, open-mouthed Urianger. “I take it Raha left that part out.”

For once the Elezen is at a loss for words. He simply nods, his expression speaking for him.

Vahl sighs and closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tries to calm himself. This is just as much his fault as it is Raha’s; they both kept secrets. They both played games. He cannot fault his friends for coming between them. He drops his hand to focus on the friends before him, steeling himself for the inevitable attempt to hold him back. “I’m going to the Tempest.”

“Of course you are.” Alisaie rests her hands on her hips. “And so are we.”

“But –” He falls silent as Thancred steps forward. The gunbreaker’s expression is unreadable, but there is a strange kind of comfort in the way he grabs Vahl’s shoulders to shake him.

“We are all going to the Tempest,” Thancred says in a tone that brooks no argument. “Partially because we all want to give that Ascian what’s coming to him –”

“Here, here,” murmurs Y’shtola.

“– but mostly because your…?”

Vahl feels his cheeks flush red. “Partner.” There are other words, better words, to describe his relationship to Raha, but in this moment partner is the most his shaking voice will allow.

Thancred’s tone softens. “Because your partner needs us. Because you need us. Because even if you can do this without us, do you really believe us capable of staying behind and twiddling our thumbs while you risk life, limb, and the fate of our world?”

“I –”

“I didn’t think so.” Thancred leans close. “We will find him. Whatever it takes, we’ll bring him home.”

Present – Ultima Thule

Vahl’s moving before the Scions finish materialising. He hits Raha hard, his quick steps sending up a storm of vibrant petals as he lifts the Miqo’te off his feet.

“You did it – you did it – you did it –” 

Raha’s whispers are the only sound that matters as Vahl buries his face in Raha’s neck. His smell; his touch; his body in Vahl’s arms; his hands in Vahl’s hair – it’s been barely any time at all but it’s been a lifetime.

“Here,” he says gruffly, gently placing Raha back on his feet. His hands feel clumsy as he takes Raha’s left to slip on his silver ring. “Back where it belongs.”

“For good this time.” Raha’s kiss is just a little wet, just a touch shaky, but Vahl doesn’t care. “How did you –”

He steps back as Raha’s words die away, his attention focused on something behind Vahl. Vahl belatedly remembers who stands at the edge of this flowery chunk of land and bites off a curse. He, and all of the Scions, turn their attention to the two Amaurotine souls waiting some few fulms away. Taking Raha’s hand in his own, Vahl steps towards them.

“You’re leaving.”

Emet-Selch won’t look him in the eye. Feigned disdain and disinterest do a bad job of hiding the true reason for his discomfort, and those golden eyes look anywhere else – everywhere else, roaming across the Scions, the flowers, even Hythlodaeus before finally settling on Vahl and Raha’s clasped hands. The man’s smile is crooked. “Of course. You’d have us overstay our welcome?”

“We have played our part,” Hythlodaeus adds, and his smile, though sad, is genuine. “I have no doubt you are more than capable of seeing this through to the end.”

“You’ve come this far without us, haven’t you?”

Hythlodaeus shoots a warning look at the other Amaurotine before refocusing on Vahl. “Unless you have any further requests…?”

Vahl stays silent, waiting until Emet-Selch finally meets his stare. He takes another step forward, knowing as he does that he is pulling Raha with him – Raha, who wants to go nowhere near this soul capable of murder and genocide and torture – but Vahl needs that hand in his. Needs to be grounded; centred; reminded. He remembers, oh yes: he remembers the scar on Raha’s forehead, the tears in his robes, the bloody handprints on that Allagan staff. He remembers the crack of a gunshot and his own garbled cry.

But he remembers Elpis, too.

“I could ask who Azem was,” Vahl says, and Emet-Selch flinches. “I could ask what the two of you were. Why Azem left; how Azem died. But it won’t matter, will it? It won’t change a thing. It won’t change what you’ve done, and it won’t change who I am.”

“No,” Emet-Selch whispers. “Those choices were made long, long ago.”

“Choice…” Vahl unconsciously tightens his grip on Raha’s hand. He wants to ask his questions. To know. He craves every crumb from that old life, every hint of a connection – but why? What is he seeking? Old friends? Old family? The reason for all of this; the reason it had to be him?

*You’re looking for the only answer that matters: your answer.*

His…?

“Has your journey been good?”

Dropping Raha’s hand, Vahl takes the steps needed to stand directly in front of Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus; he can’t help grinning at having to look up to them. 

Not the same. Not anymore.

“Someone once offered me a way out,” he says. “An end to all of this. A slide into darkness, where I might absolve myself of my responsibilities. My pain and guilt.”

*The offer’s always there…*

“You, Emet-Selch, proposed something similar,” Vahl continues, ignoring the voice in his head. “An end in Amaurot, as I succumbed to all of Norvrandt’s Light. Five Lightwardens’ worth!” He pauses, watching the once-Ascian before him. Emet-Selch has the grace to look ashamed, even if it is tinged with his usual sneer. “What would you have done had I said yes?”

“I – I would’ve – I don’t –” He cuts himself off, his frown chiselling deep lines in his forehead, and crosses his arms. “I knew you wouldn’t. No shard of Azem would.”

Vahl’s smile is slow but genuine, his heart suddenly light. It isn’t the answer he expected, but it is better, in truth, than any other Emet-Selch could have given him.

It tells him enough.

“Thank you,” he says, and he means it. It isn’t forgiveness – he doubts there would be anything Emet-Selch could say or do that would earn him that – but it’s enough to let him go. “I suppose I should offer an apology for disturbing your rest –”

“Azem wouldn’t,” Hythlodaeus interrupts with a grin. 

Vahl glances back to grin at Raha. “But I’m not him. Not entirely.” Raha’s ears twitch, and Vahl turns back to the Amaurotines. “So I’m sorry for calling you, and I’m grateful for your help.”

“Were we your house guests, I could well imagine you walking us to the door,” Hythlodaeus says gently, and his smile is kind. “And I, for one, am ready to leave. Hades?”

Emet-Selch twitches at the name, giving what might have been a shrug before his expression changes. He looks at Vahl – truly looks at him, those gold eyes evincing an emotion Vahl hasn’t seen since the aftermath of their fight atop Amaurot. It is a glimpse of the man he’d been before Zodiark: a glimpse of the man Azem must have confided in, worked alongside, trusted, and, in his own way, loved. It softens him – but it does not humanise him. Vahl has seen the man behind the mask and the monster beneath the man –

Just as Emet-Selch has seen him.

“Good luck,” Emet-Selch says. “And good travels.”

“They always are, in the end.” Vahl falls back on what feels familiar and gives them both a Gridanian salute. Hythlodaeus responds with a jaunty wave, while Emet-Selch rolls his eyes – but as motes of light dance around them, building in intensity until both men are nearly eclipsed by the glow, the last expression Emet-Selch wears is one of peace.

Vahl can’t put his finger on the emotions coursing through him as he faces the Scions, but it’s easier to let them go. Easier by far to take both of Raha’s hands and kiss him – slowly, lingering in this space, ignoring Thancred’s tired sigh as he takes what he needs. 

“Well,” he finally says, stepping forward with one hand still in Raha’s. “Let’s do what we do best, eh?”

*

It all goes to hell at the end.

Had Venat overestimated them? Had they underestimated Meteion and her sisters?

Doesn’t matter much, now. Too late. Too bad. Farewell, world.

“Stop it! Stop it, please!” Meteion’s shrill voice pierces through the wind and magic and cries; she's out of sight, lost even to Vahl’s keen eyes, but the sound of her desperate pleading breaks his heart.

He’s on his knees, crumpled on the dead earth before the Meteia's creation. Scion after Scion had been bested – beaten down and broken before being tossed into the air and swirled through the sky like confetti. Raha had been the last to go – the last at his side – and Vahl could do nothing but watch as the Endsinger swept him aside like a stubborn gnat.

*We can still save them.* Ardbert. As serious as he’s ever been, and that’s saying something. *And the people of Etheirys. If the Scions take the Ragnarok back…*

*That’s going to hurt.* Fray almost sounds impressed. *You think you can handle that, Rime?*

Vahl catches sight of Raha amidst the chaos. Dark power swirls in a maelstrom and his friends are caught in the middle, tumbling head over heels as the Endsinger prepares her next spell. Every ilm of him screams to reach out and stop it, to do anything and everything in his power to bring them back to land – 

But this is all he has. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the small device Moenbryda’s parents had gifted him. Gifted them. One for each, to guarantee everyone came home, and his smile is bittersweet. Seven is better than none, and they can help evacuate Etheirys. With the Ragnarok, and the Loporrits, and…

“No!” Alisaie, somewhere in the mess. “Wait!”

He can’t look away from Raha. Four times he’d watched Raha leave him. Four times he’d told himself the sacrifice was worth the cost; that Raha had made the right choice, no matter how painful it might be.

Four times he’d been the one left behind, and now…

Now he finally understands why Raha had done it.

His words are whispered into the wind and aether, stolen from his lips ere even he can hear them – but Raha sees. Raha sees, and in the instant before Vahl pushes the device’s button, Raha understands.

“Don’t – !”

The Endsinger’s spell comes to completion and Vahl ducks, hiding as much as himself as he can behind his shield. The spell's sound alone makes him scream – has he ever faced something backed by so much strength? He shuts his eyes and clenches his teeth as a planet’s worth of power tears the air to shreds above him, and he can’t help but wonder what had convinced them that they could possibly defeat despair itself.

*You’ve done it before,* a quiet voice says. *When Cid and Biggs dragged you from Syrcus Tower.*

A deafening silence follows. Vahl stumbles to his feet with his weapon drawn, because there is no other choice left to him. No friends to walk beside; no dead souls to call upon; no devices or tricks to make this any easier. All he has to hand are his blade and his hope, and both feel considerably meagre given the circumstances –

Until someone knocks on the sky, and all of Vahl’s expectations slip sideways.

Chapter 7: With a Little Help From My Friends

He remembers. He remembers that very first day, with its icy wind and overcast skies. He remembers how snow filled the cracks between cobblestones; how voices from the nearby aetheryte carried even to him; how the cold crept through armour and cloth to seep beneath the skin. 

He was there, whether the others knew it or not.

He was there when Thordan fell; when they lost the dragoon; when they saved him. He was there for Alexander and the mess of captured primals in Azys Lla. He remembers the day Papalymo died and the moment they pledged to march east.

He remembers the first time Vahl lost to Zenos.

Embarrassing, wasn’t it? The Champion of Eorzea with his face in the dirt, spitting blood at the feet of whatever that creature had been. Not a man, no. Something worse. Something even he feared to dance with – but he knew where Vahl’s path would lead them. If Vahl could survive Doma and Ala Mhigo and the demons in his head, of course he’d face the young Galvus. 

Of course.

Vahl was already fracturing, whether or not anyone could see it. Sid and Rielle had some idea, but even they didn’t know what Myste was. Even they feared to look beneath the surface. Papalymo’s sacrifice had started a landslide, and Vahl’s loss in Rhalgr’s Reach only encouraged it. Their failure with the Resistance triggered a bombardment of requests for aid and a path that led ever further from Syrcus Tower, and Vahl was far from coping.

Syrcus fucking Tower. It had been locked and dealt with long before he entered the picture, but Vahl couldn’t forget. Couldn’t move on, and it didn’t help that he hadn’t told them. The Scions. He hadn’t told them about his heart in the tower, or his blood staining the stonework at Whitebrim Front, or the blue-haired boy stealing his aether. He hadn’t even told them Ala Mhigo should’ve been home! 

Secrets upon secrets upon secrets. Those were some of the darkest days…the darkest nights…the darkest…

He remembers the end. Ala Mhigo. The wyrm in the menagerie. He remembers a flurry of petals and a blade across Zenos’ throat – but it wasn’t his. Wasn’t Vahl’s. No satisfaction in that death; no closure. Unsettling, upsetting, underpinning everything Vahl suffered through!

And then they were dragged to the First, and everything went ass-backwards. Light was bad and Darkness was good and the world wasn’t what they’d thought it was. Hydaelyn wasn’t what they’d thought she was, and that made Vahl’s path more complicated than he wanted it to be. 

But Zenos…Zenos survived. Survived to kill his father and unroot all of Elidibus’s plans on the Source!

Impressive. Annoying, but impressive.

The possibilities that come with an old foe’s re-emergence are fascinating; addicting; all-consuming. It could bring revenge, aye, but closure. Closure of a kind seldom granted to these damned fools. They need only leap at the chance…!

Vahl hadn’t wanted it. Hated the idea. He finally had his heart back; his mind was on the First. Elidibus. Saving the Scions. Amaurot, of all things. No part of him wanted to cross the rift and hunt down Zenos.

Well. One part did.

He held his peace. Allowed Vahl to solve his problems – and his friends’ problems, and the First’s problems. On and on and on for his Weapon of Light, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. He even allowed that little pantomime with the soul crystals, the motions of putting aside the greatsword and donning a shield and cape. Vahl had to have guessed it was patching over a leaking hole, that it wouldn’t hold forever, but there was no rush to prove him wrong. No rush to return to consciousness. He’d stay below the surface, content and complaisant, and allow Vahl to do what he pleased in that shiny white armour of his.

There’d been a moment – a breath of time, a few lucky seconds somewhere between returning from the First and investigating those damn towers – where he’d believed his time might just be at an end. Vahl had freedom, and friends, and love – everything he’d always wanted, right in the palm of his hand! Maybe he would heal. Maybe he would process. Maybe – just maybe – this was truly farewell.

And then they went to Garlemald.

The girls started it. The sisters. Bodies already cold; blood crystallising on snow. That incessant radio. The Garlean park helped it along, with Jullus telling family stories. Dead family stories. But Zenos and Fandanial tipped the scales. Sounded the alarm. Knocked Vahl hard enough that Fray tumbled free.

Fray likes being free.

But he’s had a chance to consider. As sweet as freedom might be, Vahl’s happiness would come sweeter. That glimpse of what he could be as a paladin had been enough to convince Fray that a road does exist, if they had the allowance to walk it. The time, the freedom, the knowledge that the world would be safe without Fray pushing, pushing, pushing…

Vahl wants to heal, and if Fray needs to let go to allow him that happiness, well…

Choices. Prices. Debts owed. Happiness owed.

Choices, eh? Choices.

For now he is needed. To save the world, to get Vahl home, to end this ridiculous chapter. Despair? Despair? Despair is an old friend, not an enemy! Despair is a tool to be used, not a child to be feared!

Fray can work with despair.

Can he work with Zenos…?

He has to admit the man entered with style. Unexpected and unasked for, but if Zenos-the-wyrm can turn the tide even Fray is willing to accept his help.

Temporarily. He knows better than to trust a Garlean.

Or a Galvus.

So Fray will play nice. He’ll take this ride on his enemy’s back, allow Vahl to use that little orange rock, give his Weapon what strength it requires…and after? After he’s seen to despair’s death and all that remains are the Weapon and the wyrm?

The voice in the abyss grins.

---

“I won’t leave him!”

“We’re not leaving anyone!” Thancred storms past the crowd of Scions and rabbits to point at the rabbit in charge. “Can you take us back? Return us whence we came?”

Livingway’s ears droop. “Your teleportation devices were not designed for that, I’m afraid. We could fly blindly, but if the place you came from was magical in nature…”

“This whole place is magical in nature!” Alisaie’s cheeks are pink and her eyes red-rimmed; it is hard to tell if she is furious or devastated. Likely both. “If you could just fly up…!”

“Were we to return to the broken world above the Elpis flowers, might we find a way inside?” The boy, though upset, has kept his head far better than his sister. “Or would we find ourselves lost in another maze of dead worlds?”

Urianger and Y’shtola both shake their heads helplessly. It is clear whatever magic moved them forward is beyond both mages’ ken…and it is unlikely the eldest of their group is in any state to provide an opinion.

Estinien doesn’t bother looking at the red-haired Miqo’te. G’raha hasn’t said a word – has hardly even moved – since they found themselves abruptly returned to the Ragnarok. The healers had checked him over, but, finding no physical injuries, they’d opted to leave him be. Now he sits at the far end of the ship, his forehead resting on his bent knees.

Has to be hard, leaving his partner behind. Being forced to leave. Choice, co-opted.

Estinien knows about that. A little. Similar, and yet –

Memories of Falcon’s Nest come to him unbidden. His armour soaked red; the downed dragon roaring beneath him; Aymeric drawing his bow. Not the same, no, but he knows the fear and the self-loathing; the voice in his head telling him if he’d only been faster, if he’d only been stronger, if he’d only been…

Vahl had saved him, brought him back, gave him a second chance. He owes Vahl and the boy everything he has – 

The Warrior of Light’s story will not end here.

The Scions don’t notice when he walks away. Some of the strange rabbits do, but they remain silent as he moves down the length of the bridge, carefully approaching the small, curled form of the once-Crystal Exarch.

“G’raha.” No response. Grunting with annoyance, Estinien crouches at the Miqo’te’s feet. It’s impossible to know if he’s even conscious; his tail rests limply over his lap. “G’raha?”

Nothing.

Estinien looks back towards the bridge. The Scions’ argument has grown more heated, though from here he can only make out garbled, overlaid echoes. If a solution will come from them, it will not come quickly.

But he is no mage. His solutions are practical: kill the problem or let the boy talk to the problem. But this problem is out of reach, beyond both weapons and words. He cannot solve this.

Yet the one who could…

“He wouldn’t have sent you away if he didn’t want you to live.” Gruffer than he intended. Harsh, almost. Should have let the boy do this – but Alphinaud won’t have the words. Alphinaud never watched his oldest friend aim an arrow at his heart, all the while praying they had the strength to fire. “There was nothing we could’ve done. We would have died had he not sent us here.”

Still no reaction, and even to Estinien it is hollow comfort. Death now, or death later! If Vahl can’t do this without them then their only hope is the rabbits’ mad plan, and Estinien will not abandon his home. 

“They’re going to argue until we’re out of time.” He leans closer, knowing he teeters on the edge of desperation – and well-aware that G’raha might have already fallen right off. “Vahl wouldn’t want you to go to pieces. He’d want you up there, making them see reason. Making them work together.”

G’raha’s ear twitches. 

“Hydaelyn sent us here as a team, did she not? Not as support to get Vahl here, but as integral powers in this fight. We cannot let him stand alone. Even if these damned rabbits disagree, I say we –”

G’raha holds up a hand, and Estinien falls silent – thankfully, as his plan amounted to little more than “charge in and yell”. He waits, watching the Miqo’te’s ears move until his tail suddenly snaps and he raises his head.

“Together, you said.”

“I did.” He’d expected tears, but G’raha’s face is dry; his eyes clear. There is anger there, anger Estinien recognizes because he feels it too.

“Like with Louisoix…” G’raha suddenly springs to his feet, grabbing his staff before he marches towards the rest of the Scions. “Y’shtola! Urianger!” The power in the Miqo’te’s voice! Estinien scrambles to follow him, grinning as he does.

This is more like it!

---

Present – Ultima Thule

It’s going terribly – until it isn’t.

Light in darkness. Hope in despair. Voices – one in particular – singing out through the silence.

When the time comes, Vahl sings along with them. A song of rage, yes, but hope, too. Wanting, wishing, willing this to be the end – not the end of his story, but the end of this long, exhausting quest. This need to put things to rights. This adventure he began so, so long ago.

He is more than ready for his happy ending.

Past – Foundation

“That Elezen wouldn’t be a bad match –”

“No, Cid.”

“The Champion of Eorzea and the Lord Commander? Think about how that would bolster the people’s spirits! Bloody hells, man, even I’m feeling encouraged by the idea.”

Vahl keeps his attention on the mug in front of him. This is his – what? Fourth? Fifth drink? Does it matter? Nidhogg is dead – for certain, this time – and Estinien is alive. Though the Warriors of Darkness have given him a new reason to fight, he has earned himself at least a few drinks after the hell he’s been through.

“Or one of the Scions? I’m sure that tall fellow back at the Waking Sands –”

“Cid.”

The engineer shrugs. “Can’t blame a man for trying, can you? Not with Syrcus…” His voice dies at the look Vahl gives him, and he grumpily raises his mug to knock back a mouthful of bitter liquid.

Swallowing his own gulp of ale, Vahl looks around the Forgotten Knight. Not many patrons mid-afternoon; even Sid and Rielle are missing from their usual table. Most likely enjoying the dragon-free skies, and Vahl should really be out there, too, but…

“I’m not looking for a relationship.”

Cid’s grunt is awfully noncommittal, so Vahl tries again.

“There isn’t time. There isn’t a need. I have friends –”

“Two bossy teens hardly count.”

“ – and I have work to do. Not fair of me to claim anyone’s attention and then leave them for weeks at a time, is it?”

Cid leans his chair back, balancing on its two rear legs, and rests his mug on his stomach. “You don’t deserve to be lonely, Rime.”

“Could we please –”

“You deserve to be loved.”

Vahl blinks. Freezes. Feels his frustration turn into something deeper, something both melancholy and somehow encouraging – a reminder, in a way, of what he’d had. “I am loved.”

“Rime…”

“What I had was enough. What I hope to have again one day moves me forward. I can’t abandon hope. Even knowing the odds.”

“Even if it hurts?”

Vahl’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not everyone gets their ‘happily ever after’, Garlond.”

Cid makes a face before downing the rest of his drink. His chair drops forward with a bang, and he slides his empty mug onto the table as he pushes himself to his feet. “Don’t I know it. Even them that deserve it most…” He claps a hand on Vahl’s shoulder. “I’ll see you near the Thaliak River?”

“Tomorrow, as we planned.”

“No hard feelings?”

“Garlond…”

“Hey! I just want you to be happy. Not much to ask, eh? Not for the Warrior of blasted Light.” He pats Vahl’s shoulder before walking off, throwing a lone wave as he takes the stairs. “Enjoy your drink!”

Vahl stares into his mug. Can he have that kind of happiness – that kind of relationship – with another person? Does he even want to try? He poured his heart into what he’d had, only to have it end…

“Forget the name G’raha Tia!”

He settles back in his chair, cradling his drink in both hands as he snorts.

Silly Raha. As if he would ever forget the man that made him feel human.

Chapter 8: In From the Cold

Past – Garlemald

*RIME!*

Vahl claws his way to consciousness. Nothing is familiar: black, twisted metal scores the horizon; the air is both acrid and cold enough to hurt; all he hears is the laboured, frantic scratch of his own breathing. His arms give way before memory clicks into place and his chin hits the ground, clashing his teeth together.

*Move! Move! Move now!*

“F-Fray?” Disbelief makes it easier; he’s focusing on the voice on his head, rather than the pain radiating through every ilm. He’s been hurt before – Shiva had as good as killed him! – but this, gods, this…! “What are you –”

*Doesn’t matter. Move, Rime. Move, or there will be nothing left to return to.*

As cold as the ice and dirt are below him, they are no match for the sudden burst of fear that courses through his veins. He remembers: Fandanial, Zenos, their circus of a dinner, and the nightmare that followed. His stolen body nearly convulses with tremors and he tries once more to stand. Pain arches up his leg, shooting through his hip and spine like lightning, and he bites off a scream before the snow and metal can echo it back to him.

“Leg is – broken –”

*Then fucking crawl.*

Sucking back a moan, he jabs one elbow in the snow. Drags himself forward. Other elbow. Forward. Again, and again, and again. Fear keeps him moving, keeps him going, keeps him breathing. Zenos wears his skin: fear is all he knows. He doesn't want to imagine what will happen to his friends when Zenos arrives in Camp Broken Glass, but his mind won't stop giving him scenarios. Possibilities. Dead Scions, dead Raha, dead everyone.

Can't stay on that train of thought. Think of something else – anything else!

With malms of untouched snow and blanketed, ash-grey skies ahead of him, he turns to the one question he might possibly find an answer to: Fray’s voice in his head when Fray should have been long gone. Vahl had hung up his greatsword; traded dark armour for light; he’d done everything Raha had asked of him –

*We’re not tied to a sword, Vahl.* Myste, too?! *Nor a soul crystal. You should know that by now.*

He grits his teeth. Great. Wonderful. Won’t Raha be pleased?

*Raha isn’t going to be in any state to judge if you don’t crawl faster!*

That sets a fire under him. He fairly flies down the first snowy hill on the outskirts of the city – but it’s merely the first. Another, and another, and even more wait for him. Climbing and descending, sliding where he can and dragging himself by his fingertips where he cannot, he moves ilm by ilm towards the Alliance’s base. Camp Broken Glass might as well be a million malms away – the entirety of the Eblan Rime stands in his way! With beasts and tempered Imperials and who-knows-what between him and the people he loves!

*Eblan Rime, eh? Any relation?*

“Fuck – off –” 

*I am trying to distract you, lest your despair outweigh your fury. Crawl, Rime, or I’m going to make you crawl.*

He’s sweating now, the effort already pushing this thin body to its limits. Tears freeze on his cheeks and snot crusts his upper lip; something warm drips behind one ear and he has the sickly feeling this poor Imperial has a head wound. Up another hill he goes, only to flounder in a sea of fresh powder before falling down the other side, sliding on his metal breastplate like it’s some strange type of sled. Every bump vibrates up and down his ribs; the big ones send waves of pain through his lungs. Punctured, maybe? Hard to tell. Hard to breathe, but that could be for any number of reasons. Doesn’t have to mean a puncture. Not always.

*You’re dying. It doesn’t matter what drives in the final nail.*

He isn’t dying. He is making his way to Camp Broken Glass – he might even already be there! It’s this poor soul – this nameless, faceless Imperial – who isn’t going to see the next sunrise.

He comes to the train tracks near Liminal Station IV and heaves himself over the first rail to disastrous effect: the metal screeches against his breastplate, announcing his presence in ear-splitting form. 

“Fuck.” 

*Rime!*

He hears the wolf before he sees it; the creature’s growl lifts the hairs along the back of his neck. He rolls onto his back between the tracks, drawing his much-abused gunblade just as the thin, gangly creature leaps. For a split second he sees it frozen mid-jump. It hangs in the empty space above his knees, all teeth and tongue and mad eyes in a thin skull – and then Vahl pulls the trigger and it tumbles out of sight with an echoing yelp.

*That was –*

“Don’t.” He closes his eyes. He hates when they sound like dogs. When they sound sad. 

*If you’re ready to give yourself up to the wildlife, why not finish this scenic crawl and offer your neck to Zenos?*

Vahl twists back onto his stomach. Holstering his gunblade proves impossible and he flings it away with a curse. Hoisting himself up and over the second rail without letting his breastplate grind on the metal sucks the breath out of him, and he tumbles headfirst down the other side of the tracks like a ragdoll. Something crunches against the side of his helmet and the world flickers black; pain hits him a moment before he lands in a clump of blissfully-soft snow. 

He's on his back. The sky is stars and wobbly lines; his limbs are cotton balls. Muffly. Tingling. Soft. He closes his eyes, listening to the radio static of his own ears –

*What are you doing, Rime?*

Ah. Camp Broken Glass. To the south. Whatever that means. He opens his eyes, but grey clouds give no waymarks; with tremendous effort he lifts his head off the snow. Left and right are barren. Forward, maybe? But where is…

*Vahl?* Myste’s voice is on the edge of panic. *Vahl?*

It isn’t as cold as before. Or as painful. He’s numb, that’s what he is – the tingling almost gives off its own kind of warmth, and there’s a strange comfort in that. 

*Don’t you dare.* Ardbert, for the first time in a very long time, offers more than half-hearted commentary. *Open your eyes, Vahl. You’ve got to keep going.*

*Please!*

He wants to tell them to be quiet, to give him a moment’s peace, to let him sleep – and that, that last thought, forces his hand.

“Fray – help –”

*I thought you’d never ask.*

*

Fray gets him to Camp Broken Glass. Across yalms of snow and ice they crawl, tumble, and slide, though Vahl is hardly conscious for most of it. He wavers between darkness and light, caught in a between-space born of utter exhaustion and bone-chilling fear, and the fog over his thoughts only lifts at the moment his borrowed body hits Zenos.

His relief at providing a distraction – becoming the distraction – is short-lived. Pain drags him to the ground and pins him there, and as bile floods his throat he hears a familiar, hated voice – Fandanial is here. Fandanial and Zenos. Some frantic part of his mind tells him to get on his feet, to offer some sliver of resistance – 

Useless. He may as well be a fish flopping about Fandanial’s feet. Consciousness ebbs and flows; he catches movement and words through fluttering eyes and near-deaf ears: the Scions. The Scions and Fandanial. The Scions and Fandanial and –

Raha’s voice. Raha’s angry, wonderful voice.

It’s enough. Vahl allows unconsciousness to take him into its dark arms, slipping into oblivion safe in knowing Raha will take it from here.

*

“A moment, please.” As Alphinaud kneels before Vahl he extends a hand, directing a gentle stream of blue aether that passes from Vahl’s head to his feet. The boy’s immediate relief is palpable. “Your pardon if this is a repetition of Urianger’s questioning, but – control remains your own? From fingers to toes and beyond?”

“I can even wiggle my ears,” Vahl murmurs, and watches colour flood the Elezen’s face before he finally smiles. “To my senses, at least, I feel normal.” As normal as one can be after having their consciousness forcibly ejected from their own body into another – but he won’t say that, not to Alphinaud. Vahl’s body is his own once again, but he understands why his friends want to be certain. 

He understands, too, why Thancred keeps his distance.

They’ll talk. Later.

“And my assessment matches Urianger’s.” Alphinaud drops his hand as his aether fades. He glances back over his shoulder, where the rest of the Scions wait in a half-circle for his verdict. “Though I doubt there are any lingering ill-effects either of us would miss, I do believe G’raha –”

“Will judge for himself,” finishes Raha. He steps forward and offers Vahl a hand, pulling him to his feet with a strange glint in his eyes. “No insult meant, of course.”

“None taken.” Alphinaud rises, quickly brushing the snow from his knees, and joins the rest of their friends. “I daresay we wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“‘Twould be prudent to conduct a visual examination,” Y’shtola murmurs, one knuckle tapping her jaw. “If you strip –”

“No,” Vahl interrupts. They can poke and prod him with aether all they wish, but he is not about to undress in the coldest part of Ilsabard.

She rolls her eyes. “Inside, then.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Raha says, and he hooks an elbow under Vahl’s arm to gently, but firmly, pull him away. “Come on. Let’s get you in from the cold.”

For a moment Vahl considers arguing – what about Zenos? What about Fandanial? What about that big ugly tower and the thing tempering Garleans within it? – but Raha’s expression silences him. He follows his Miqo’te through camp, allowing himself to be pulled past crowds of familiar faces until they reach a narrow, aged building near the perimeter. He enters first, blinking fast as his eyes adjust to the dim light. Metal cots and bunks crowd the walls in a crush of old, heavily-rimed furniture; a pile of dusty mattresses towers nearby. A relic of a magitek heater clunks away in one corner, its faint blue glow the only light in the room.

Vahl frowns. Of all the buildings to choose, this seems the least-useful. “I’m sure we could’ve used the barracks –” 

A lock clicks behind him.

“Raha…?”

The Miqo’te suddenly grabs him by his pauldrons to slam him back against the nearest wall. “You – could – have – died!” Each word is accented by the twang of metal as he smacks Vahl’s breastplate with the palm of his hand. “You could have died; you could have been lost forever; you could have –”

“Raha!” He makes a weak grab for Raha’s wrists, but his partner dodges it effortlessly. “Please, I –”

“Strip.”

“Ah –” He isn’t sure he wants all of his most-delicate parts on display with Raha looking quite so manic. “I’m sure Urianger and Alphinaud were thorough –”

“I need to see for myself.”

“I'm perfectly –”

“I need to see, Vahl.” Raha’s expression suddenly caves. He throws his arms around Vahl’s neck with a moan that nearly breaks Vahl’s heart, and when his voice comes again it is hardly more than a whisper. “I thought I lost you. When I realised it wasn’t you walking towards us, but some manner of fiend darker even than Fray…” 

“Raha…” He gathers the Miqo’te in his arms, burying his nose in Raha's hair to breathe in the scent of him. He knows this guilt isn't his, but it twists in his gut regardless. “I’m here. I promise you, I’m here to stay.”

*Making promises, hm?* Vahl twitches, and Fray quickly continues, *I’ll have one, too, if you don’t mind. The Galvus, Rime. Yae Galvus. Save him for me.*

“I –” A partition forms in his mind, almost like a door shutting off access, and he knows he’s as alone in his head as he can be. Whatever he has to say to Fray will come later.

“Vahl?”

Raha comes first.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, as if all of his regret and rage could possibly be conveyed in a single statement. It isn’t enough – but it never is, is it? He’s never had the words. "I don't know why I thought life would be less complicated with the Unsundered gone.” 

Raha's ears flicker back and forth against Vahl's chin. "You, too?"

"Every now and then I'm allowed to be optimistic." He leans back, lowering his head to catch a glimpse of Raha's face. "What do you need of me? What will put your mind at ease?"

“I did say I’d conduct a visual examination…” A series of clicks follows a surge of aether: every one of Vahl’s buckles and clasps comes undone at Raha’s silent command. The light in his eyes shifts as he takes a step back. “Strip for me, Vahl. We'll see where we go from there."

*

An Allagan teleporter waits above him, familiar and yet not, not at all, not when its destination is so far removed from everything he’s ever known. Journeying to the First was one thing, but this…this…! 

He doesn’t want to go. For the very first time fear outweighs curiosity: people aren’t meant to go to the moon! The moon is a fixture in the night sky! Like the sun and the stars: distant, unreachable, placed by gods or nature or some combination of the two utterly beyond his comprehension. He’ll be alone up there, alone save for a pair of madmen, and once he’s there how can he possibly return? Is there a second teleporter somewhere on the surface? Had Fandanial gone so far as to consider what would happen after reawakening Zodiark?

He nearly laughs at the ridiculousness of it. Here he is, worrying about how he might return home after landing on the moon, when he knows damn well there likely won’t even be a home to return to! What matters now isn’t what happens after; it’s what happens now, in the next few minutes, to stop Fandanial and Zenos.

Vahl takes one step up the metal stairs, blood pounding in his ears.

“You would go alone?”

Air escapes his lungs in a wheeze. In a far-removed place oh-so-many lifetimes ago, Thancred had asked Minfilia the same. Asked it in a quiet, hopeful voice – and Vahl had known, without a shadow of a doubt, that if she’d stretched out her hand Thancred would have taken it.

Vahl suddenly understands what it cost Minfilia to deny him.

“Raha –”

“I know. I know, Vahl. I do. But…”

Vahl turns as Raha’s voice dies away. The rest of the Scions gather as close to the exit as possible, giving him and Raha at least the pretence of privacy. “I promised you an adventure.”

“This isn’t an adventure, Vahl. Not of the like I’d imagined. This is…” Raha’s tail snaps behind him before his posture shifts so subtly Vahl doubts the others notice – but something in his eyes makes Vahl want to fall to his knees. “Come back.”

He tries for cocky. “Don’t I always?”

“Come back, Vahl.”

He fights the urge to look up. The moon. The moon. How the hell did it come to this? “I will.”

Present – Ultima Thule

Done. 

Done.

The Endsinger is gone and Vahl is still standing, through sheer force of will and stubborn determination. Body so weary even holding his sword hurts; limbs battered and bruised; mind exhausted from keeping up – keeping focused, keeping on track.

Meteion says she’ll create a path, a way back to the Ragnarok. Like following a will o’ the wisp – but she’s a friend, an old friend, one of the oldest. A creature of dynamis…

*But we’re not ready to follow, are we?*

Vahl closes his eyes. Licks bloody lips. Following Meteion will take him home, will reunite him with his friends, will bring him back to Raha –

But if he leaves now he’ll wonder. He’ll worry. He’ll know who to blame should the youngest Galvus make his way to Etheirys. Improbable as it sounds, Zenos died once before. It would be beyond irresponsible to leave him like this.

*Finish it. Finish him.*

Footsteps. Slow and steady, approaching in this bizarre horizon locked beyond time and space. Just the two of them –

Man and monster.

Monster…and monster…?

*He isn’t a reflection.* Myste, quiet but controlled. Sure of himself. *Whatever he may see in you, he doesn’t see the whole of it. He doesn’t see the connections. Empathy, Vahl. Guilt, regret, loss.*

*Love,* Fray adds, and in his voice it's a proclamation. *We know what we’re fighting for.*

The hesitation drains away. Of course he knows what they’re fighting for: what they have always fought for, even as the simple adventurer he’d once been! Not glory, or riches, or power for power’s sake. Sometimes vengeance, aye, but always, always, he has fought for his friends. For his family. For his people.

He has always fought for those he can yet save.

*Let me finish him. You promised me an end, should the means arrive. There: the means. Here: we stand. Let me loose.*

Vahl opens his eyes. Zenos stands before him with scythe in hand, watching him with piercing blue eyes. Mad eyes. Monster’s eyes.

Not a mirror. Never a mirror.

“Ready for one last fight, my friend?” Quiet as this strange place is, Vahl’s voice is loud, and he raises his shield as Zenos’s smile widens.

“Yes,” whispers the Garlean. “Yes –”

Vahl cuts him off with a snort. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Laughter howls within him, dark and deep as it echoes up from the swirling abyss – is it his? Maybe. Maybe it always has been. Friend or fiction, self-deception, the lie to hide the terrifying truth – it doesn’t matter. What matters is the power and the fury; the sense of self – of Vahl Rime – receding, withdrawing, gracefully giving way to the shadow that answers.

*I have always been ready,* Fray replies, and he smiles as Vahl smiles.

Vahl’s voice, Vahl’s mouth, Vahl’s body –

Fray’s rage.

“My turn.”

Chapter 9: Unfinished Business

Notes:

oh heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Present – Ultima Thule

Vahl’s hand holds the blade. 

Fray’s hand?

The line is hazy. What remains in that dark corner save knives whetted upon a lifetime of loss? The part of himself he calls Fray is a gallery of broken mirrors; a soul’s worth of sharp edges. 

Fray is a piece, a reflection. Fray is not the beginning.

Across from him stands Zenos. From their meandering journey through Ultima Thule to their breakneck dash through dead stars to his stand-off perched on Zenos’s back – Vahl is long past the point of needing rest. He feels every year in his feet, every day in his muscles, every moment in the wheezy, ragged breaths he draws into burning lungs. He wants a bed and some ale, and not necessarily in that order.

But he’d promised Fray, and so here they stand. Man-to-man as blood pools in the bottom of his boots. 

Zenos moves first. Vahl would’ve stepped back, taken the blow on his shield and prepped something offensive, but Fray doesn’t allow it. He lunges forward and Vahl rides along with him, feeling his shoulder slam into Zenos’s chest before Fray parries and nimbly dances to safety. It’s never felt like this before, as though he’s riding pillion in his own body, and fear and fury freeze him like an anxious mother watching her child’s first tourney. Fray sees what he sees and Fray knows what he knows – but Fray is fresh. Eager. Fray has never wanted anything more.

Vahl needs to do nothing but watch.

“I see it in your eyes,” Zenos croons. He circles, his curved weapon angled towards the ground. “The hunger. The bloodlust. You crave this! You desire this! You and I, my dear Warrior of Light – we are fated for this!”

“You are fated for nothing,” Fray snarls. “Your fate is dust.”

If Zenos hears – if Zenos understands – he gives no sign. His next charge forward brings that other soul, that voidsent tied to him, and Fray has to work twice as hard to keep his feet. Dodging left as the scythe slices past him; ducking back as the voidsent lunges with both hands; dancing in a near circle as waves of red and black aether erupt beneath his feet. All the while Zenos laughs, teeth bared in a mummer’s grin.

And Raha waits for Vahl to come home. 

*Don’t –* Fray grunts as he stumbles, cuts it too close, takes an elbow to the back of the head and both of them see stars. One knee hits the ground and they’re trying not to vomit, coughing hard as pain cracks their skull. *Don’t think! Don’t think about that damned cat, or home, or anything else! Don’t lose focus!*

“But –” Vahl’s back in control. Sickening, stomach-dropping control. “But I’m fighting for –”

*It doesn’t fucking matter what you’re fighting for! You’re fighting!*

Vahl wants to argue, but that scythe is coming towards his face. He takes it across his shield, the hit reverberating up his arm to make his pauldron rattle against his backplate, and then he drags himself to aching feet. Gives his sword a wave, more a flop than a slash, and isn’t surprised when it hits nothing but air. He might as well be flinging around a cannon.

*You’re the Warrior of Light! Act like it!*

His muscles won’t answer; his eyes won’t see; all he hears is buzzing as if a dozen flies have infested his skull, and Zenos’s next hit sends him flying. For a brief moment his only concern is the landing – and then he hits and skids, his armour screeching until he grinds to a stop nearly a dozen fulms from where he started.

*Well done. At this rate we’ll be home in time for lunch.*

Vahl rolls to cough blood onto the strange, glassy ground and catches his own reflection coughing back at him: black eyes, broken nose, split lip; blood trailing from his hairline, one nostril, his ears. Dried blood in his chin scruff and caked in one eyebrow, and the rest a motley collection of bruises. It’s a stranger’s face, a brawler’s face, and for one sickening moment Vahl considers stopping. Death would be less painful. Death would be easier. Death would be an end!

But Raha is waiting.

One hand under him, pushing him upright. Other hand still gripping the ruined metalwork of his shield. His sword lies five fulms away, let fall as he soared so majestically towards the dawn light. Now the sun’s at his back and his shadow darkens his body, stretching shade across scuffed steel and the mangled mess of his cape. The cloth has turned grey, rust-red in places and black in others, and Vahl huffs laughter at the ridiculousness of it. Wearing a bright blue cape to the end of the universe seems a fair foolish idea – but so does everything! Hope itself is a guttering light, flickering and feeble, and despair stretches like his own shadow to eclipse him from ringing head to blistered foot.

Zenos prowls ever closer, no doubt suspecting some form of trickery, and Vahl would laugh if he could muster the energy for it. He has nothing! No weapon, no strength, no hope, not even breath! Blood bubbles from his lips and he spits crimson liquid onto his lap, dribbles it down his chest, leans back to give his best bloody smile to the executioner coming to bless him with an ending.

But Raha…

Vahl flings his left arm wide, sending the ruined shield clattering across the ground. Takes a moment to wiggle his aching hand out of his gauntlet, but Zenos isn’t in a hurry. He’s curious, forehead furrowed like a child trying to put together a magic trick, and Vahl manages to throw the gauntlet away, too. His wrist’s rubbed raw; the centre of his palm bloody; he forces stiff fingers into the small pouch hanging from his belt. Finds Azem’s crystal and leaves it, digging deeper –

Flinches as brittle stone jabs into flesh.

It takes a moment to truly grasp it, to force tired fingers to bend, but after a few spluttered curses he finally drags the dark stone free of its pouch. In the dawn light it glows a red so deep it sings of wine, of the sea at dusk, of bloody cracks between cobblestones. A jagged, heart-shaped edge digs into his palm as he wraps it tight in his fist.

There is power in blood.

Power in pain.

Aether flares red and purple. For a moment it consumes his entire body, and as it fades so does his grime-covered platemail. In its place is the dark, jagged armour he’d worn on the First, as fresh as it had been the day he bought it from Grenold. A blinding white blade forms across his thighs and he grabs it automatically. There’s comfort in the heft of it, in the familiarity of its weight, and as he rises he returns the job stone to its pouch.

Much better.

Vahl gives the greatsword a twirl before flashing Zenos a toothy, blood-stained grin, a mad grin, and lifts his left hand. Two fingers twitch inwards, a come-hither taunt, and then he leans forward to drag dark aether from his chest. From rage, fear, and desperation comes a shadowy form, a being made from every cut, bruise, and break – not a soul, no, but a piece of Vahl’s own. Fray is the anger he could not face and the hatred he could not temper; the worst parts of himself made manifest.

But still him. His aether, his emotions.

His will.

Zenos moves first and Vahl dances back, ducking left, right, and left again as the jagged scythe shreds the air between them. It is an easy thing – a simple, foundational thing – to jab forward with his left fist. Though his knuckles barely graze Zenos’s shoulder, the aether behind his punch sends the man flying, forcing him back a good three fulms. In that instant Vahl leaps, greatsword raised high overhead –

The aether shifts. Where Zenos had stood is now an amorphous puddle floating at chest-height, while the man himself waits a good dozen fulms away. Vahl’s blade slams into the ground hard enough to dent it, sending a network of fractures along the glassy surface, but he doesn’t hesitate. He and his shadow give chase, him taking the left and his shadow the right.

Every ilm of him aches and he uses it, channels it, turns it to his advantage as he and Zenos clash together once more. His blade sweeps across Zenos’s chest before he spins on his heel; the momentum of his slash keeps him moving, carries his elbow around to make a satisfying crunch against the reaper’s brow. 

Every ilm of him aches and he ducks and dodges, shields himself in dark aether that shatters under the voidsent’s claws. He parries Zenos’s first attacks – left, right, left again – before falling for a feint and leaving his lower half open. The scythe nearly pulls his leg out from under him as it hooks just beneath his knee, and he just manages to grab Zenos’s lapel to keep himself from going over. The reaper’s head snaps forward and his brow smashes against Vahl’s nose. For a moment he sees stars – but then his shadow leaps forward and Zenos dances back, twirling free of Vahl in a flash of his cloak.

Every ilm of him aches and he doesn’t know why he’s still doing this. No part of him enjoys battling Zenos for the umpteenth time: he wants to be home! He wants to be adventuring, exploring, discovering! He wants to be with his friends, his family!

Why, then? Why is he fighting this fight? He could take Meteion’s path and return to the Ragnarok, leaving Zenos at the far ends of time and space as he zooms on towards his happy ending. Is it responsibility forcing him to stay, the knowledge that there is unfinished business between them? A sense that this time he will guarantee the monster stays dead? Or is it Fray demanding vengeance, blood, battle? Does the abyss require it?

No. A house cannot stand divided.

Heedless of the blood pouring over his mouth and chin, Vahl dashes after the reaper. He and his shadow keep the man on his toes, blades of light and dark slashing, lunging, stabbing, and for a breath his confidence is unshakeable. Zenos falls back, pressed hard on both sides, and the return of Vahl’s dark magic is a comfort. Like a familiar hand on his shoulder or a favourite sweater, it would feel positively cozy were he not fighting for his life. Maybe he shouldn’t feel good about that, but what do morals matter here? Why should he think about morals when he fights against a man guilty of regicide, patricide, and a whole host of other evils too numerous to name? It doesn’t matter how he kills Zenos, just that he does it!

Vahl smashes a fist into the glassy ground. Red and black aether erupts in a circle around them like a bloody stain; it drifts upwards in a twist like dust caught by quick winds. Red spots darken Zenos’s clothes and skin, yet still he smiles! Teeth bared and eyes wide, he advances without so much as a grunt, diving through the blood-red tornado as if it were clear air. Blade meets blade with a crash and Vahl braces, snarling up at that manic grin.

Zenos enjoys this.

Vahl’s stomach twists and he misses the voidsent’s sudden dive. Claws drag over his skull and he falls back with a cry, quickly throwing another shield around himself. A shroud with teeth and claws, the voidsent harries him, pesters him, screams at him, but it’s all background noise as the pain brings him to his knees. There’s something in his eyes – red, slick – and then it’s splattering against the ground, dribbling, raining. He sits back on his heels, blinking to try to see past the blood coating his face –

His shield shatters and the voidsent skewers him through the heart. 

 

 

Darkness. Around him, above him, below him. Not starry darkness, not the warm, expectant darkness of a night before a storm, nor even the darkness of his basement bedroom, the fuzzy nighttime of blurred edges and shadowy forms, of shifting shapes and badly-remembered outlines.

Darkness as an opposite to light. Clinging, filling, suffocating. Unfeeling, unrelenting.

And yet…

Vahl can’t say whether he’s sitting or standing. He no longer feels pain, but that might be because he feels nothing at all. If he has a body it is beyond his control. He is eyes and a brain and not much else, though he doesn’t know what good a body would do him here. Especially a body so mangled and abused, so pushed beyond its limits. Imagining what the healers might say – what Raha might say – makes him wince. 

He should have treated it better.

“Here we stand again.” Ardbert’s voice, and, a moment later, Ardbert himself. Glowing, faintly. Arms crossed; expression stony. A beat of joy where Vahl’s mind echoes Seto – Ardbert! Oh, how I’ve missed you! – until he realises why he’s seeing Ardbert.

“I never meant to make a habit of this. I never meant for any of this…” It’s hollow, even to him. He’s had some agency, hasn't he? Pretending otherwise is an insult to himself and his friends. “Dead?”

“Not yet.”

“That’s something.” Vahl takes another look around, hoping that Ardbert’s light might reveal a clue, a shift, a way out. “And how might I go about slowing that process?”

“If I had to guess…”

Vahl follows Ardbert’s gaze to the ground – to what lies under it. 

Storm clouds stir beneath them, black roiling masses that shift and merge without end. In the centre thrums a pulse, a steady two-beat rhythm that flushes the clouds red. The longer Vahl watches the slower the pulse becomes, and he finds himself lifting a hand to feel for his neck – except he doesn’t have a hand, or a neck, or much of anything at all. All he can do is watch, a growing sense of helplessness stirring him towards panic.

“You’ve taken up that job stone again.”

“Had I a choice?”

Ardbert’s shrug barely moves his shoulders. “Then and there? No. But it’s certainly left us some questions, hasn’t it? Unfinished business, one might say.” Blue eyes catch Vahl’s from under Ardbert’s dark bangs. “The voices you call Fray and Myste. You know what they are?”

“Yes.” More a croak than a word, the admission is torn from his throat ere he thinks to stop it. 

“It won’t last, Rime. You won’t last. The abyss takes, and it takes, and it takes – and what will be left of you once you give it your all? Will you be a beast like Zenos, a thrall to the darkest parts of yourself? Or will you finally fall to a foe beyond your skill?”

“Like I just did?” 

“Well.” Ardbert’s attention returns to the clouds. “Here we stand. Warriors of Light and Darkness, gifted with Blessing and Echo both, caught between moments. Between heartbeats, quite literally. Leads me to believe you might have a choice, much like you had in Amaurot, though I won’t pretend I’m half so clever as to work out what that choice might be.”

Vahl stares at the clouds shifting beneath their feet. Every now and then he catches a flash of the space beyond – the red-tinged darkness, the endless depths of the swirling abyss. Familiar, and yet it’s been quite some time since he thought of it. Of the power he wields and whence it came. He’d convinced himself Fray taught him of it…but Vahl had merely conjured a mentor to give his pain a name. His anger, his loss, his sorrow, his loneliness, his guilt – all bottled and bound and thrust as far back as his consciousness could stand. Of course all of that would find a home somewhere. 

Of course it would tear his mind asunder.

His gaze snaps to Ardbert. “You’ll stay with me?”

“Until our end.” 

“I…appreciate it.” Words don’t exist that might do justice to the depth of his gratitude, and there are bigger concerns. The pulse is fading, losing both intensity and frequency, and he must move now. Except… “Is death painful?”

Ardbert grins. “Considerably less so than all that came before.”

Buoyed by that news, Vahl takes a deep breath. Thinks of home, of friends, of family. Of Raha, no doubt equal parts furious and terrified. After all Raha went through to keep him safe, he throws it away for Zenos? Raha’s sacrifices are not worth so little as that.

As for Vahl’s sacrifices…

“This is going to hurt,” he mutters, and he sinks into the abyss.

Chapter 10: Our Answer

Fray and Myste meet him.

Fray stands in front, arms crossed and chin up like a man issuing a challenge, or a stubborn child rejecting bedtime. Myste’s head is bowed, eyes downcast; his fingers worry the ends of his sleeves.

“You’ve made a choice.”

Has he? It doesn’t feel made quite yet. It’s on the horizon, cresting into view, but for now there is possibility. He could, he couldn’t. Take it or leave it; live or die; hurt or cease. He looks down and realises he has a body once more, but the body isn’t quite the one he knows. No scars on his hands; no bruises on his arms; it’s a younger body. An alternate body. His body had he not become the Warrior of Light? “Maybe.”

“What are we, Rime?”

He closes his eyes. There’s a lump in his throat like to strangle him, to stifle any attempt at honesty. Pain tangles with embarrassment and shame, but denying it does him no favours. What waits for him if he keeps pretending? What life can he lead with his mind torn in three? Healing – really, truly recovering – means acknowledging even the parts that hurt, that scar, that he wishes he could rip and tear and end. 

There is power in pain, but there is truth, too.

“You are me,” Vahl murmurs, opening his eyes. Fray, looking like the corpse he’d found in the Brume. And Myste, a clear combination of the two Elezen he misses most given his sister’s height. What a fool he’d been to pretend otherwise. “And I need to be whole.”

Fray steps forward, walking slow and steady until he’s within arms’ reach. Cold eyes range over him – head to toe and back again – and when Fray suddenly lifts his arms Vahl actually cringes back. Fray smirks as he takes off his helm.

Vahl stares at himself. A younger version of himself, him as he’d been when he first journeyed to Ishgard. Shorter hair, less scruff, a few missing scars. The eyes aren’t the same, but they never were, were they? Raha once described Fray as having “stranger’s eyes”, and Vahl had never quite understood what he meant.

Now he does.

“One thing, before we go.” Fray tilts his head to one side; it’s unnerving to see his own face make that crooked, self-deprecating grin. “Did you ever find the answer to her question? ‘Has your journey been good?’”

It catches him by surprise, takes him back to a moment before everything went sideways, and though his smile is slow in coming it’s the first genuine smile he’s had in a while. “Hard to say. That’s the kind of answer you won’t find until your journey ends.”

“Ah, Rime.” Fray’s voice softens. “You sweet fool. Take your sweet time finding that end, eh? All the better for a fair, rounded-out answer.” He steps forward and rests his forehead against Vahl’s. “I love you. Be well.”

Vahl closes his eyes and breathes deep. When he looks up all that remains is Myste. Vahl slowly squats in front of the boy, his gaze roaming over his pale hair and red-rimmed eyes before focusing on Myste’s hands. He’d thought Myste was playing with his sleeves, unpicking the stitches and unravelling the seams, but he’s holding something. Something malleable and shifting, something both light and dark, something that leaks between his fingers, attempts to escape, fights to return home.

“I had to keep a little,” Myste babbles, seeing where Vahl’s attention has settled. “I couldn’t have helped if I hadn’t. It’s a grain of sand in a desert’s worth, but it’s still yours. I always intended to return it…” He hangs his head. “I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

“What’s a grain of sand to a desert?” Vahl reaches out to catch one of Myste’s tears on his finger. “Not every mistake comes with regret. Not every failure is someone’s fault. You did as best you could with the powers you were given. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

“But – but I didn’t help.” Myste wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “I c-couldn’t bring anyone back. I couldn’t even stop you! You’ve killed…so m-many…”

Vahl crouches lower, forcing Myste to meet his stare. “Some people are great bakers. Others are great gardeners or weavers. We both know where my talents lie.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“No, it isn’t. But I’d rather it be me than someone else.” His voice is soft, gentle, as he adds, “I can handle it from here.”

Myste looks up, eyes bright with tears, and searches Vahl’s face. For sincerity? Deception? Fear? Vahl can’t be sure, but whatever Myste sees calms him. “Might I – if you don’t mind – I’ll understand if you say no, but it’s been a long t-time since –”

Vahl scoops the boy into his arms, pressing him into a bear hug that squeezes the words from him. After a moment he feels small arms around his neck, the warmth of skin and the wetness of tears, and then –

He’s alone.

Crouched in the abyss with his elbows on thighs, Vahl turns his attention to the space around him. Stormclouds above him traverse a narrow, jagged gap left by two sheer cliffs. Without Fray and Myste the abyss seems so close – he could extend his arms left and right to touch either side – but instead he stands and pulls a small, sharp stone from his pocket. The deep red stone matches the red of the cliffs, like obsidian held in front of a setting sun, and now Vahl sees a tiny, heart-shaped notch in one of the cliffs. Without considering, debating, even wondering why, he leans to the side and slots the stone into the cliff. It shimmers, light thrown from within, and then bursts into flame. Vahl jumps back, slamming against the other side of the abyss, but everything vanishes the moment he opens his mouth.

Fog. Drifting. The body is gone, the young body that wasn’t his to start with, and the real body begins to filter in. His body, scarred and wounded and nearly destroyed, takes its shape. It had been a gift not to think about the pain and exhaustion, the throb at the back of one thigh and sticky mess on the side of his head and the lack of feeling in his toes, and they return with sickly reality. 

The blade comes next, the blade made of light, but before he can adjust to the weight of it in his hands a golden glow burns away the last of the fog. He’s on his feet, back in the Endsinger’s Ultimatum, staring down a perpetually-rising sun and a wide-eyed Zenos.

Alive. Alive, against all odds. Alive!

“You’ve learned something new.” Zenos lifts an arm over his head, summoning his voidsent to him much like a falconer might lift their wrist for a bird to alight. “So have I.”

A flash of master and puppet perfectly poised, one high above the other, and then aether wraps them in a dark, spinning cocoon. When it evaporates it leaves Zenos red and twisted, flooded with aether. The voidsent is gone, absorbed , and all that remains is the monster.

“Come on, then!” Vahl rolls one shoulder before cracking his neck from side to side. This ending comes at a rush, tumbling down to meet him like it had tripped head over heels, and there’s nothing between him and it save for empty air. No distractions; no third chances. He stands alone, as alone as he’s ever been, but his blade is steady. 

In his mind’s eye he walks with all the heroes he could ever need.

“Come at me, coward!”

---

“Mayhap…”

G’raha jerks back, so startled by Y’shtola’s voice that he nearly falls from his chair. The others around him look up in mirrored states of confusion; the silence had been so absolute they’d nearly forgotten they were surrounded by friends.

“Mayhap the time has come for us to entertain the possibility that Vahl will not –”

“He will.” G’raha and Alisaie say it together, voices like adamant, and he can’t bring himself to look at the Elezen. Her red-rimmed eyes and splotchy cheeks are a reflection of his own, and dealing with himself is trying enough.

“How long shall we wait?” one of the Lopporitts asks.

“As long as we can,” Thancred says. His voice brooks no argument. “As long as we must.”

G’raha finds himself nodding like a bobblehead doll in an earthquake, and stops so quickly he bites his tongue. He will wait. They can fly the Ragnarok home if that is their wish, but he will stay until Vahl returns.

No doubt finding the new silence too much to bear, Thancred begins to pace, and G’raha is momentarily tempted to join him. Walking would release some of his anxiety; it would use up some restless energy; it might even pass the time!

But what if he misses something? What if he turns from the Ragnarok’s windows and doesn’t catch a flare, or a glint, or something ? Some hint that Vahl is trying to return? Meteion said she’d left a path, and he believes her. He must believe her. A path must exist for Vahl to return. 

Why wouldn’t Vahl take it?

In a place like this there are few comforting possibilities. Mayhap the Endsinger’s Ultimatum collapsed; mayhap Vahl’s injuries are more severe than Meteion guessed, or the path was not as clear or as easy as described.

If Vahl is lost, drifting, dying – 

No. Vahl is resourceful. Determined. Vahl would fight with everything he has to return.

“Here.” Alphinaud passes him a rich-smelling mug that’s warm to the touch. “It isn’t much, but an old friend once did the same for us. For Vahl, Tataru, and myself, at a time when the world felt…hostile.”

“Thank you.” G’raha cradles the mug in both hands, touched and surprised in equal measure. “You packed hot chocolate for a trip to the stars?”

“It was built into the galley.” The boy flushes. “And stocked by the Loporrits. It may have distinct carrot undertones…”

G’raha snorts before taking a tiny sip. The drink does have an undeniable hint of carrot, but he doesn’t mind. “Mayhap they’ve stumbled onto something.” The good humour drains away as the sea of stars drags his attention back to the window. “Why wouldn’t Vahl have taken the path?”

“I…” Alphinaud frowns and, perhaps buying time, takes a gulp from his own mug. He immediately makes a face. “Ugh.”

“Something stopped him.”

G’raha and Alphinaud turn to stare at Estinien. The dragoon leans against the far wall, a distant look in his eyes. It’s G’raha who asks for clarification. “Something…?”

“He wants to go home just as much as any of us. According to that girl he had a way forward.” Estinien shrugs. “Something or someone must have stopped him.”

A shiver runs down G’raha’s spine. Nothing remains in this place that could harm Vahl that badly. Meteion said she’d left him alone – wounded, yes, but on his own two feet. Talking and walking and undoubtedly able to take the path. He should have been right behind her!

“Might we follow the path to him?” Alphinaud looks around, as though hoping to catch a glimpse of a physical path, some glimmer to light their way, but the Ragnarok is unchanged. Whatever form Meteion’s path takes, it is not one they have access to.

“Trust him,” Estinien says. “He’ll come back. He always has.”

“No. He hasn’t.”

Awkward silence, broken only by the gentle beeps of the Ragnarok’s control panel, ploughs a trench between the others and G’raha. The temptation to apologise ends up swallowed by memories, and it is easier to walk away. He turns, leaves the mug on a shelf, and exits the ship.

“The Warrior of Light died, sir, not long after your tower closed.”

G’raha wrenches himself from that memory, moves himself away from the Ragnarok towards one of the many jutted cliffs. Strange gaseous formations hover beyond land, constantly twirling in empty space, and it’s easier to wonder how and why than it is to ask himself how he’ll survive Vahl dying a second time.

“He won’t.” His voice is quiet, yet he might as well have shouted. And why not? Who might hear him? Who might care? G’raha tilts his head back to bellow, “He will live!”

Not even an echo. He’s talking to space, to the memories of dead civilizations, and their cold silence speaks for itself.

They’d saved the world. They’d averted the Final Days! They have the ability to return home to a world largely unchanged; to friends and family who can continue going about their lives. Adventuring, growing, learning, ruling, fighting, exploring! Living!

Could he do the same?

Alone?

How can a single word be so devastating? His chest hurts and his stomach twists and there’s a sharp pain behind his eyes like the littlest thing might start him crying, and the atmosphere certainly doesn’t alleviate it. Loneliness saturates every ilm of this place, from the scorched buildings nearby to the distant Omicrons repeating the same tasks day in and day out. Worst of all is the amorphous, bulbous drop hanging from the cracked planet in the centre. It draws the eye – it draws G’raha’s eye – though it is unchanging. Not even a ripple mars its surface, leaving whatever is happening inside a mystery.

What might keep Vahl from returning?

G’raha’s first idea is dismissed as quickly as it came: for all the despair and agony Meteion has caused, he does not believe her capable of lying about this. He’s not sure she can lie at all, in truth, so he must believe there was no duplicity in her words. She left a path for Vahl to follow.

What if Vahl had chosen to stay?

“He’s tired,” G’raha says to the stars. “He has been for as long as I’ve known him. But that does not mean he would give up all that he’s worked for. He wouldn’t throw everything away.” Quieter, hesitantly, more to himself than the stars, “He would not throw us away.”

Silence.

He bites his lip. Mayhap it is an outlandish, ridiculous thing to attempt, but if he is certain of nothing else at least he knows that it won’t make things worse.

“Azeyma? I – I’m not certain your power reaches this far, but on the off-chance you’re listening…” He twists one hand around the opposite wrist, his tail snapping against the back of his knees, and searches the sky for Azeyma’s constellation. “I’d truly appreciate it if – if you could bring Vahl home. I – ‘appreciate’ isn’t the word; I would be eternally grateful. Beyond grateful. I –” He stops, closing his eyes as he realises how loud his voice is. Try as he might, he cannot find the stars he knows so well, the tiny lights that anchored him both at home and on the First.

Alone.

“Damn it.” He hurriedly wipes his tears on his sleeve. “Godsdamnit…”

What a farce! For all his attempts at self-sacrifice it is Vahl who played the final piece, who swept the rug out from beneath his feet before G’raha had even been aware of the rug’s existence! He’d always known Vahl might die. It was likelier than either of them wanted to believe. But that he might do so willingly? 

Footsteps behind him make him spin on his heel, and his tail snaps when he sees Estinien coming down the Ragnarok’s ramp.

“Can’t just wait,” the Elezen grunts. He pauses at the foot of the ramp, a great big frown creasing his forehead, before he meets G’raha’s gaze. “I apologise for earlier. Having not been to the First myself, your tale is sometimes difficult to recall. I…” He looks away. “I was one of those tasked with investigating Black Rose. To say it killed relentlessly undersells it. Mayhap mercilessly paints a better picture, and I describe it thus after spending the majority of my life at war. When I learned there was a future where our efforts were futile…” He rolls his shoulders as if dislodging the thought itself, and turns towards the east. “He’ll come back. We’ve fought too bloody long for him not to.”

“Does it matter how long we’ve fought?” G’raha murmurs. “Does someone judge our efforts worthy? Some power, benevolent or not, decides whether our struggles deserve recompense?”

“Sounds nicer than the alternative.”

G’raha winces. “True.”

“I’m going for a walk. If something happens, shout.” Estinien gives a foul look to the stars above them. “The hells know I’ll hear it.”

G’raha watches him pass out of sight, down east towards the dragons’ ruined structures. For a moment he thinks to follow, but the silence suits him better. And what if Vahl returns? What if he’s needed?

“Not ‘what if’,” he mutters to himself. “When.”

A second set of footsteps follows the first, and Y’shtola pokes her head down the Ragnarok’s ramp. “Would you like some company?”

“Do you bring news?”

She clicks her tongue as she makes her way to his lonely cliff. “You shall have to settle for a distraction, meagre though it may be. Urianger promised to yell for us the moment something changes.”

G’raha’s shrug is more of a twitch. “The distraction, then?”

Her milky white eyes settle on him. “Did Vahl ever tell you that I met him first?”

“I – no. No, he didn’t. I suppose it never came up.”

“Why would it? We’ve all known him for so long that ‘firsts’ are rather meaningless. But the fact remains: I knew him before. Before primals and politics.” She tilts her head. “Mayhap my phrasing is off-colour, but the sentiment is justified: I was not blind to what Vahl was, nor what he could be. Powers from various factions drew him in all directions, and saying ‘we stretched him thin’ is an understatement. We recruited him, wanting to use the powers he held. For good? Obviously. With his wants, needs, and well-being in mind? I cannot be so certain.”

G’raha clears his throat. “Far be it for me to pass judgement…”

“Primals, wars, Ascians, Calamities! We – including you – have pulled him where we needed him. It is a difficult guilt to describe. We had no choice. We helped as best we could. We were there when we could be, and yet…”

A memory drifts across G’raha’s mind, a fragment of something Vahl had once said regarding his jealousy over Ardbert’s companions being Warriors of Light. “Encouragement isn’t the same as standing beside him.”

“And yet you manage it. Easily, it must be said.”

“What?”

She snorts at the look on his face. “While you cannot withstand tempering, in all other aspects you stand equal to him. Because your soul has endured an extra Rejoining? Because Syrcus Tower gifted you power? Because of your own courage, tenacity, and spirit? It hardly matters, aside from fulfilling my own curiosity. Whatever the reason, you stand with him as we could not.” She smiles. “I am glad he has you.”

“Oh.” Again that burning behind his eyes, and he blinks furiously as he looks away. “Thank you. I…I am also glad. To…to have him, I mean.”

Y’shtola moves beside him to hook her elbow in his. “The Scions have never celebrated a wedding for one of our own, let alone two. We must needs look to the preparation – planning, and decorating, and baking…” Her tail snaps against him. “I trust you have better sense than to elope.”

“Of c-course.”

“Then we shall consider the guest list. For a celebration worthy of Etheirys’ Warrior of Light and the First’s Crystal Exarch? It must either be miniscule or gargantuan, else you run the risk of insulting whole legions of dignitaries.” She leans against him as her voice grows softer. “It will be good to relax. To celebrate…”

None of what she’d just described sounds anything close to relaxing, but he doesn’t trust himself to speak. Any sound he might make would be more reminiscent of tea kettles than speech.

“Something’s happening!” Thancred’s roar makes them both jump, and Y’shtola slips her arm free from his. “The beacon’s lit up; there’s alarms from every end of this bloody thing –”

G’raha’s already moving, leaving Y’shtola behind as he sprints for the Ragnarok . Up the ramp and inside – 

Chaos.

Sensors beeping and blinking, Loporrits running amok with their hands in the air, Scions shouting over each other – Alisaie crying, Alphinaud and Urianger giving orders neither are listening to, Thancred darting from one to the other –

And Vahl, lying ever-so-still at the back of the bridge.

Y’shtola and Estinien nearly trample G’raha on their way inside, but he manages to keep his feet as they drag him forward. Voices merge – frantic, terrified, angry – and G’raha can’t understand any of them. He’s trapped in a nightmare, frozen in time, forced into the worst reality he could have imagined.

Vahl isn’t moving.

Thancred takes Vahl’s shoulders while Estinien takes his feet, and together the two of them lift the Hyur from the floor to a low cot. Vahl’s hand slides off the edge, dangling limply above the floor as the two men move him between the others. Aether from Alphinaud and Urianger immediately brightens the back of the bridge, and under the blue light Vahl’s wounds look otherworldly. Bruises mottle the little skin visible: bruises and gashes and blood. It can’t all be Vahl’s blood. It can’t possibly –

“G’raha!” Y’shtola, her voice shrill. “He needs you!”

Numb legs carry him there. He can’t look away – he, who saw Vahl after his fight with Elidibus; after his fight with Emet-Selch; even the disastrous fight with Eden where he’d attempted to abstain from dark magic. G’raha had even seen him shortly after his fight with Shiva, and Vahl hadn’t looked anything like this! Corpses have more colour! 

“I may be sick,” he mumbles, but no one is listening. Hands grab him, push him, keep him moving. He’s suddenly on the floor, kneeling at Vahl’s side, and he realises he’s next to Alphinaud. The boy’s curled so tightly in prayer his head’s nearly between his knees. Across from them stands Urianger, lips pursed, aether made from stars dancing from him to Vahl. Even Alisaie attempts the only healing spell she knows, growing more and more flushed with every failed attempt.

G’raha takes it all in mutely: the blood leaking from Vahl’s boot, the armour from the First, the greatsword made of light fallen at Vahl’s feet. It’s the wound disfiguring Vahl’s head that has him most worried, worried enough that he doesn’t dwell on Vahl’s strange armour and weapon: there’s something wrong with the shape of his head. There’s something wrong beneath the blood and gore and matted hair. There’s something…missing…?

For a moment he is a child seated with adults, a boy so wildly out of his comfort-zone he may as well be speaking another language, and he wants to scream. He wants to sob, and vomit, and run from here right back to Etheirys – but Vahl’s ring on his dangling hand catches G’raha’s eye. A hint of silver in a hand black with blood and grime; a hint of hope, of connection. 

A promise.

It isn’t much.

G’raha grabs Vahl’s hand anyway.

Bright as Urianger and Alphinaud’s power is, G’raha’s aether is a sun to their candle flames. It blooms around them in a burst that sends up a cloud of dust, ruffling everyone’s hair and clothes and nearly knocking the Loporrits to the floor. It is such a simple thing – such a trivial task – to find Vahl’s ailing heart; to lean over Vahl’s chest; to flick a finger against Vahl’s armour, much like Alisaie had once flicked a finger against G’raha’s brow. It makes an insignificant sound, the twang of fingernail against metal, but the power that flows from that small touch jolts Vahl’s body into an arc. As Vahl falls prone G’raha waits, unmoving, for any sign of life. A second flick, harder this time, and when Vahl’s battered body drops back into the cot it drags in an obvious ragged breath. 

“There,” he murmurs, and he leans back. The bright bloom of aether fades, and with it all of the strength in his knees. He drops to all fours and closes his eyes, biting his lip as a headrush makes the whole world spin. 

“He’s coming around!”

“Bandages – I require cloth, and water, and –”

“How many fingers do you see? Focus, Vahl. How many fingers?”

“Sleepingway! Time to go!”

“Vahl! Vahl!”

And, in a breath of quiet, one hoarse croak – 

“Raha…?”

G’raha fumbles his way up, swimming through exhaustion and sea of legs until he kneels over Vahl’s chest once more. “I’m here, Vahl. I’m here.”

“I lived?”

Not trusting his own voice, G’raha manages a nod. His tears pool on Vahl’s mangled breastplate; he vaguely registers Alisaie kneeling on Vahl’s other side, her hands wrapped around his wrist as she sobs against his hip. Somewhere behind him Thancred is directing Loporrits, but he can’t take his eyes off Vahl. Awake and breathing! Alive!

“Well, shit.” Vahl closes his eyes. His words are slurred, the consonants blurring together, and there’s a carelessness to him that reminds G’raha of when he’s drunk. “Your line, isn’t it? ‘Tis good to be awake’...” His grip tightens on G’raha’s hand. “You were right, though. It is good. It’s very good…though I might be missing an ear.”

“You might be missing what?”

“An ear. Is alright. Had two.”

“Urianger?” 

“A moment,” the Elezen says, though it is Alphinaud’s careful fingers that shift the mess on the side of Vahl’s head. Alisaie quietly gags. “Ah. Vahl speaks true.”

“How soon until we reach Etheirys?” Alphinaud’s voice is higher than G’raha’s ever heard it. “Livingway? Thancred?”

“Soon.” That from Thancred, leaning over Urianger’s shoulder to judge for himself. “Rime? How’re you feeling?”

“Alive,” Vahl says, though his eyes remain closed. “Keen to keep it that way.”

“Then let’s get you home.”

“Home,” Vahl murmurs, and a ghost of a smile graces his lips. “Home.” He pulls G’raha’s hand over his chest as he opens one bloodshot eye. “You lived.”

G’raha’s given up on controlling himself; his cheeks are wet with tears. His voice cracks and he tries again. “We both did.” For a moment he thinks to ask – about the old armour, and the strange weapon, and what had happened after Meteion left – but Vahl’s gaze stops him. Brilliant blue, without even a shadow of another; hopeful, teary, happy. 

G’raha’s questions will wait.

Tendrils of healing aether snake from Urianger and Alphinaud to Vahl, already stabilising, mending, keeping him here, and G’raha joins his own power to theirs. “That was a fair foolish thing you did.”

“Says one fool to another.” Vahl snorts, winces, groans. “Gods. Have you ever tried to lie down wearing a breastplate? Care to help me out of this?”

G’raha eyes Vahl’s ruined armour dubiously. “It might be the only thing keeping you together.”

“Ah. Ignore that, then.” 

Despite himself, G’raha laughs. If it’s a wet laugh, a note of hysteria ending in a sob, the others don’t call him on it. Alphinaud merely pats his knee, and then the Scions slowly put some distance between them and G’raha. Not enough for true privacy – the Ragnarok lacks the space for it – but the pretence is enough. Alisaie is the last to leave; she stands by Vahl’s cot, her fists clenched so tight at her sides that they shake, until she suddenly spins on her heel and stomps to the opposite side of the bridge.

“She’s upset,” G’raha murmurs, seeing the look on Vahl’s face. “She has a right to be.”

Brilliant blue eyes slide to him. “Are you?”

“I was.” 

“But…?”

“You came home,” he says simply. He adjusts himself, shifting closer to Vahl’s head to quietly add, “Should you leave me behind next time you shall find my fury outpaces Alisaie’s by a significant margin.” He cocks an eyebrow. “Do I make myself clear?”

Vahl actually smiles. There is no Next time? or But you need to be safe! “Crystal.”

“Excellent.” G’raha sits back, a weight off his chest he hadn’t realised was there, and takes another glance over Vahl. He’s no longer actively bleeding; his chest rises and falls in predictable motions; his grimaces of pain are fewer and further between. The last of G’raha’s panic ebbs away, and he relaxes with a dopey, lazy grin. “I’ve been given a nudge towards our next adventure, by the by. Whenever you’re feeling up to it.”

“And what might that be?”

“A wedding.”

Chapter 11: Epilogue

G’raha paces. He’s become quite proficient at it: not too fast or too slow, on a path that turns both left and right, with plenty of clearance for the furniture cluttering the edges of the room. Cluttering is too mean a word, in truth: the intricately-carved tables and wardrobes bearing flower-filled vases are spaced perfectly. At any other time he might sit and admire them. Likewise for the paintings and tapestries lining the walls; the gold mirror – twice his height! – opposite the large bay window; the bust of Archbishop Thordan IV staring down his thin nose at everything. The room they’ve shut him away in is large, opulent, even faintly perfumed. Every ilm of it drips with decadence and comfort.

And if he spends a single hour more locked inside he will start tearing apart the pillows.

With his teeth.

He hasn’t lacked for company, thankfully. All manner of well-wishers have dropped by, some of which came bearing gifts. He spares a glance at the pile of oddities he’s amassed over the course of the morning, a trove which had started on a table and now buries an entire corner of the room. Flowers from the Sylphs; fish (dried, thank the gods) from the Sahagin; poultices from the Amalj'aa and puddings from the Loporrits. A chest of woven fabrics from the Mol (with a note from Cirina explaining that tradition dictated their gift be a sheep, but she’d thought he might appreciate this more) and a smaller chest of tomestones from a bald, shirtless man (“As many as Rowena would let me carry, y' see”). Various other wrapped gifts and baskets round out the pile, with a small journal full of stickers on top. G’raha hadn’t recognized the tiny Miqo’te who brought it, but she’d looked at him so earnestly he wouldn’t dare turn down her offer.

The Scions, too, keep popping in. Krile and Estinien brought him food (Krile’s offerings being the tastier of the two) while the others come and go. They’re checking up on him, of course, and not being the least subtle about it, but he can hardly blame them. To say the past few days have been a whirlwind would be a grievous understatement: had he less courage G’raha would already be running for the hills; less stamina, and he’d be sleeping for a week.

“I saved two worlds,” he tells the polished bust of Thordan IV. “I’ve survived wars, personal attacks by multiple Ascians, and the Final Days. I led a city-state for nearly a century! I went to the edge of the universe and returned!” He glances over his shoulder at the garden doors – at the hint of snow-capped greenery beyond them, the light grey skies, the growing murmur of voices like a bubbling brook just out of sight – and shudders. “Just a little courage, G’raha!”

A knock at the hallway door doesn’t wait for him to respond; it opens and Cid’s head pops in. “They’re just about ready for you.”

“Right.” Feeling like he might laugh, vomit, and faint all at once, G’raha wipes damp palms on his jacket before holding his arms out wide. “How do I look?”

Cid arches an eyebrow. “You’re asking me?”

“Old Thordan isn’t likely to respond. No stains, missing buttons…?”

“Stray red hairs?” Cid sighs, but he comes into the room. He’s wearing a black outfit with accents in Ironworks colours. He does a quick circle around G’raha. “One perfect black suit. Will your tail be like that all morning?”

G’raha doesn’t even look at it; he knows perfectly well how bushy it is. “Until I calm down.”

“It’s a walk! How scary can that be?”

The murmur from the garden grows louder, laughter and exclamations and high-pitched voices above the general burble of excitement, and G’raha risks another peek out the glass doors. Two sections of chairs squished inside a small, snow-frosted courtyard couldn’t hold more than three dozen people, but three dozen seems a rather daunting amount when he knows why they’re there, and what they’ll be doing. He recognizes a few of the guests even from his view from behind – Merlwyb and Raubahn are tall even when seated – and he starts wringing one wrist with the opposite hand. “It’s a walk in front of all of them!”

“Here.” Cid suddenly turns him around and starts adjusting his suit – pulling the jacket down, straightening his bowtie, flicking away dust and hair as he tugs G’raha’s lapel into place. “It will be over before you know it.”

“Will it?” Somehow that, too, is terrifying. What if he misses something? What if he doesn’t remember to enjoy it? What if –

“People do this all the time. Some people do it more than once. It can’t be that terrible.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Would it help if I told you Vahl’s so bloody relaxed he’s taking a nap?”

G’raha’s ears flatten. “Is he?”

“Gods, no. When I left him he was half-undressed, doing push-ups.” Cid suddenly claps G’raha’s shoulders before turning him once more, this time towards the garden doors. “The music’s started. That’s your cue!”

G’raha nearly stumbles out the doors, catching himself at the last moment. The crisp morning air hits like ice water and for a moment he stands, hands opening and closing, and listens to the quiet piano drifting over the now-silent crowd. They’re beginning to turn in their seats, faces familiar and not, and rather than look at them G’raha turns to his right. A path runs behind the last row of seats to a door identical to the one he just passed through. When Vahl exits said door they are to walk towards each other, meeting at the T-junction formed from their small path and the aisle running between the two sections of chairs. It’s not a particularly long aisle, and they will walk that stretch together, but G’raha does his best not to look at it. At the people sitting next to it. At the dozens of people sitting and staring and whispering –

Vahl steps outside and G’raha suddenly forgets about the waiting crowd. He nearly forgets to breathe, too, which causes a beat of panic before he drags cold air into his lungs. Vahl’s tailored suit is almost identical to his own, minus the accents. Tataru had insisted she style them both: G’raha’s bow tie and boutonniere evoke Syrcus Tower; Vahl’s cravat is deep red, his pocket square burnished gold. Vahl's soul crystal had provided the inspiration for his look, of course – his whole, perfect crystal, without so much as a hint of the crack that had long run down its middle.

Vahl sees him down the path and immediately breaks into a grin. The few weeks have done wonders for his healing: he’s up and walking, no longer bound to a cast and crutches; the mottled bruises have faded to memories; even the devastating gash marring the left side of his face is no more than a pink mark along his hairline and brow. The best healers on Etheirys couldn’t grow back his ear, but his hair hides the scar well enough, and Vahl himself considers it a small price to pay.

With Vahl in front of him it is easy enough to put one foot in front of the other, to forget the crowd – or, mayhap, to be grateful so many came. They’re here for him and Vahl, are they not? They are witnesses to a new kind of story, an audience for a rather simple sort of joy, given all they’ve been through, but isn’t this why they fight? Why they brave every hurdle set before them? To live is to suffer, as one wiser than G’raha once put it, but there cannot be shadow without light. 

Time to be a bright spot on the path forward.

He and Vahl meet at the intersection. They pause for a moment, grinning at each other, and then G’raha takes Vahl’s hand. Vahl gives a self-conscious shrug, as if to say, “Well. We’re here now. Why not?” 

G’raha turns to face the long aisle ahead of them. Count Edmont waits at its end, cane in one hand and open book in the other, and on either side wait heroes from a dozen different stories: Scions, leaders, adventurers, friends, family. Vahl mutters a curse and G’raha’s grin widens, and then he tugs Vahl forward.

Onwards, to this journey’s beginning.

Notes:

I apologise for the long wait to get this finished - thank you to everyone who came back to read it!