He traced his body with tender hands. Slender, cold fingers tracing every hollow, every cell of his skin, every tiny scar, mark, and mole. His whole being was at his disposal; they both knew it, even if they hadnât spoken of it recently. Val had given Suon everything he could, and when that proved insufficient, he found solace in tracing his body one last time. In kissing his face, in illuminating his soul with a spark he would never see again.
The eclipse was approaching.
Val kissed every part of Suon with silent tears. The salt of his skin and the salt of his tears mingled in his mouth into something that tasted of lovesickness, of longing for something he had not yet lost. But soon he would lose it. Soon there would be nothing left but ashes, and he would drown in them.
His cold arms drew him towards his body as the dark-haired manâs sobs intensified. Breathing was difficult; thinking was difficult. He had made a promise to himself not to let his self-indulgent crying interrupt the last moment he would have with Suon before an endless eternity of solitude. He couldnât. He couldnât look into his eyes, which held infiniteness in their sea-blue orbs, without thinking that this would never happen again. His cold hands caressed his hair, his back, his entire soul, trying to soothe the ravages within him. It was impossible. Only being with him for eternity could illuminate the dark universe in which they found themselves. Without him, everything was empty. Without him, nothing would ever make sense again.
He buried his face in Suonâs collarbone, letting him fill his head with bittersweet kisses, whispering delightful vows of a future they would never possess. Expressing gratitude. Val clung to his belovedâs back as this happened. It was his fault that he was leaving, and yet he was grateful to him. Never, in any universe, would there be anyone as noble as Suon. Never would anyone burn with the eternal flame of passion across the lunar entertainment programme; never would anyone be able to save the universe from despair.
And there would never be anyone to hold him as Suon did, embracing his soul with warm genuineness. From that church where they met, where an ignorant child asked the creation of a God if he wanted to be his friend, when Val first knew how authentic love could feel. Perhaps before that he had never felt what his followers called affection. Perhaps, if Suon had never burst into his chapel, blindfolded and with a smile akin to the sun, he would never have felt anything. Now he wished he felt nothing, for the pain of losing him would be his demise. Nothing would ever again bring the silent euphoria of a smile from his beloved.
Val was the embodiment of destruction. An artificial body fashioned from the very fabric of the universe itself, with organs sharing material with time and a fragment of the soul of his Father, his Creator, with a single purpose. Weeping for the loss of his beloved was not part of it, since he should never have felt so much for him in the first place; his obligation would have been to abandon him, to assassinate him when his Father commanded it. He should have made a clean cut and then prayed for the wretched soul that Kolize had corrupted; he should have returned to his sisterâs side when he was summoned. But, once he discovered that his mission was to kill the one who had crossed universes to find him... He could not. His hands had gone numb and all the feelings buried in the ashes of the Earth had resurfaced with renewed strength. In shock, he abandoned all purpose in search of a new one, of surrendering to a passion that was beyond his reach.
And now that too was coming to an end, with prayers he did not know being whispered in his ear. Love songs from a religion he did not profess. If he could choose whom to pray to, to whom to offer his eternal devotion, it would be Suon. He repeated her words, one by one, and felt their hearts synchronise for the last time.
Kolize was cruel. It was because of it that Suon existed; it was because of its actions that he had been buried and thrown into a new world to ruin; it was because of it that Suon was kept alive. It had dangled him before him like a piece of bait, had cursed him to force him to draw closer, and when he finally managed to take his hand, the antidote became his own soul. And his soul did not belong to him, but to his Father, whom he had begged for millennia to allow him to remain by Suonâs side, to save him. And every refusal only worsened the illness, and every failed attempt to surrender himself to Kolize resulted in blood and tears, but not in salvation. And now it was far too late, for the eclipse was about to arrive and Suon would depart with it. His curse, his fate, his end. The love songs, being by his side until the very last minute, it was all a small consolation. For Suon was leaving behind the suffering the Lunaries inflicted upon him, but Val would continue. Eternity loomed before him, and a hurricane called âhistoryâ was pushing him towards it.
The Eclipse, Vollendett. You must flee, you must run. Iâll be waiting for you, you must return, you mustâ
Suonâs handâicy, almost as if he were already a corpseâlifted his face, forcing him to look at him. His eyes were also filled with tears, which trickled down the pale freckles on his dark skin. The curls of his hair tangled with the runes that were growing ever more densely around him, a sign that their time was running out. A bittersweet smile graced his face, an expression heâd practised in front of the wall to ensure it would work, that the last thing Val would see of him would be cheerful. That he wouldnât remember his final moments as the most sorrowful of his existence.
But it didnât make a difference, because the moment he spoke the words, Val felt overwhelmed by grief once more.
âNo, please,â he took his hand in his own. His farewell smile did not falter for a single moment. âStay, donât go. Pleaseââ
âValâŚâ his voice was soft, as if comfort itself were speaking to him. He kept refusing.
âDonât go, Suon. Stay here, they canât take you. You canât leave me, noââ his words dissolved like sugar in water, knowing that his voice would never amount to anything against the whims of the Lunaries. He was a drop of water in the desert, meaningless. His wishes were nothing more than entertainment for beings who could never understand the bleakness his soul felt at that moment.
Suon pulled his hand from his grasp and cupped his face, looking at him with the most magnificent eyes that had ever existed. A single glance. A single glance spoke louder than any words in any language. A single glance was the most powerful of farewells.
âSmile, Val,â he said, looking at him, baffled. âI want your smile to haunt me wherever I go. I want to take you with me.â
Val was no one to deny that to the one who was about to make the greatest sacrifice in history. Val was no one to deny anything to Suon, to whom he would have given his soul if only he could. For him, he would have destroyed worlds and universes, torn the fabric of reality, and claimed time for themselves. But none of that had been possible, so he offered one last smile to a soul on the verge of vanishing.
âThatâs it, Val,â he caressed his face. Val leaned into the touch. He could feel mortality emanating from him. âYouâre going to be all right, you know? Thereâs nothing that can touch you, nothing that can happen to you.â
Happiness is woven into your destiny, Val. Please, donât weep for me.
But happiness would never be on his side again. It would be his captor, his cruel prosecutor, tormenting him with what it was, what it is, and what it will never be.
Vollendett, please. You still have time, come. I implore you, I need you.
He watched as his partner rose from the bed (and a vast coldness filled the space he used to inhabit), blindfolded himself with the fabric of existence itself, and opened a door that had never existed. And after murmuring words in a dead language, he vanished through it.
That was the end. The continuum of time would follow its eternal course, Panahelama would continue, and no one would ever know of the abrupt farewell. But it was the end; Val knew it. From this moment on, nothing else mattered. Time lost all meaning from then on.
The Eclipse, Val. Come, please. There is nothing left for you there.
It had begun. He could feel it coursing through his veins, a breeze from a different world sweeping through Panahelama. A darkness from which the Light would be reborn, a different kind of Light. A new era, completely dominated by Kolize. His original aim had been to prevent such a thing from happening. His current aim was to find a way not to unravel.
Vollendett, Val, words cannot express how much I need you to listen to me, to come back. The portal is open; Father will forgive you. Father will purify you before the gate closes. You donât have to suffer, Val. You can come back; you can redeem yourself.
But I donât want to get redeem.
His sister's pleas were silenced by those seven words, words that expressed his whole truth. He did not wish to return to her side, where they would treat his last life as a taboo, where Suon's name would forever be unspoken and his love cast into oblivion. He could not, would not forget him, even if it meant an eternity of anguish.
The room lit up with runes that made his body burn. It mattered not. The portal was open; his beloved was about to vanish. Something else would take his place. Nothing mattered. He could not move, he could not leave the room, he did not want to, not whilst the sheets still smelled of him. His essence had not yet faded.
Val, please. There'll be no other chance. Father is losing hope in you.
He wanted nothing to do with Him, not while his beloved was fading from the ink of the universe. Not when he could have helped him, not when he had whispered in his ear that it was better to leave him to die. Heâd rather stay where he was, in the enemyâs territory, than going back to his side.
In that very moment of ruin, he preferred to try once more. It was too late; it would achieve nothing, but at least he had to try. His fingers traced the enemyâs language in the air and his mouth began to recite the spell he knew by heart. Again and again, in vain. The blood still refused to flow from his body. His father continued to prevent him from achieving his purpose.
Please, he begged, but he knew immediately that he had not been heard. And if he had been, then he was choosing to ignore him.
He hated him. He hated him, he hated the Lunaries, he hated Kolize, he hated his sister, he hated every membrane of existence, every fibre and every atom. He hatedâ
A cosmic hand (he wasnât sure whose) touched his forehead and, almost immediately, forced him to fall unconscious.
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