Memories Of A Distant Past

   MIDGAR    “each town used to have a name, but no-one… remembers them”

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His crystalline blue eyes, which were actually impossible archives masquerading as irises did not study her face. From a distance they appeared merely extraordinary; up close, they were fathomless, their irises layered with concentric depths like the bindings of ancient tomes viewed from above. Tiny points of pale light drifted within them, like solitary lanterns wandering endless corridors. Looking into them produced the uncanny sensation that one was not meeting another's gaze, but standing at the entrance of an immeasurable archive.

They studied everything she had ever almost become. His expression never changed, yet something within those eyes acknowledged her not her face, not merely her name, but her existence, as though she occupied a place already prepared for her long before she had drawn her first breath. The faintest suggestion of a smile touched his lips, too slight to be called amusement, too gentle to be called triumph. It was the look of a curator discovering a manuscript thought lost to history.

His hands remained folded loosely before him, long fingers resting one over another with impossible elegance. Even the subtle flex of a knuckle possessed the precision of a calligrapher completing the final stroke of a masterpiece. One thumb brushed absently across his forefinger causing a change in the library. One by one, books nearest to Isrieal slid free from their shelves.

None struck the floor instead, they hovered weightlessly around her thousands with each bearing the same name.

ISRIEAL

No two bindings were alike some were stitched from white leather others appeared to have been carved from obsidian. One looked as though it had grown from living bark another shimmered like polished crystal each represented a life that had once stood on the precipice of existence.

"...You ask whether your path has always crossed his. You ask the wrong question. It assumes your meeting required chance." The books surrounding Isrieal began opening of their own accord. Pages fluttering audibly as entire lives unfolded in a silent flash.

A battlefield beneath Meteor

A flower field untouched by war

A Midgar that never fell

A world where ShinRa had become a republic

A world drowned beneath black water,

A world consumed by Jenova before human civilization had learned fire

A world where she had a sister

A world in which multiple realities combined to create new encounters with heroes of light and those who tread the path of chaos.

In every vision oddly enough Rikelus and Isrieal appeared, sometimes lovers, sometimes enemies. Sometimes strangers who exchanged nothing more than a passing glance before destiny carried them into each other’s lives. Once she was even the President of the company and Rikelus was a Turk.

The visions vanished and the Librarian folded his hands before him.

"It is inevitable that you cross paths in nine hundred and eighty-three thousand, four hundred and twelve recorded continuities."

Rikelus felt the weight of those words settle inside him it was as if they didn’t have free will then and there was no choice that was something that would deeply trouble most people but he understood fate often weaved a cruel game. His attention drifted not toward the demi god vessel she wore, but toward the shadow nestled impossibly deep within her soul.

For the first time since Rikelus had entered the chamber, the Librarian's breathing became visible. One slow inhale followed by an equally measured exhale. His eyelids lowered just enough to suggest contemplation, and ancient recognition settled across his features like dawn breaking over forgotten ruins. His expression grew almost fond not toward Isrieal, but toward the presence residing alongside her.

There was history there immeasurable history his smile deepened by the smallest conceivable degree, not because he found amusement, but because one old keeper had unexpectedly encountered another to something unseen within her. His head inclined respectfully, a greeting offered to someone invisible and accepted regardless of whether it was returned.

"...Lord Hades." The title echoed through the Library as he thought of the exact time that he’d seen him last “"...it has been approximately two thousand one hundred and eight cycles since your last visitation.”

A single volume failed to return with the river of books floated back into the shelves rattling as they settled into their proper place the single book remained suspended before Isrieal. Its cover bore no title only a single black wet handprint seemingly not belonging to her fate pathway but to something elses perhaps Hades.

"You ask how to defeat Rayleigh ShinRa. You cannot.”

“You may survive her, delay her, wound her but defeat requires that she seeks victory Rayleigh ShinRa no longer distinguishes between herself and her purpose. She abandoned that separation long ago. You cannot reason with purpose just as you cannot bargain with inevitability although you shall alter the conditions under which it manifests."

"The future has never belonged to authors or editors it belongs to those who become unreadable. Perhaps you find your answers within that volume."

When Isrieal spoke of Deepground of the quantum computer for the first time since either of them had entered the chamber the Librarian laughed out loud not in a mocking way but in delight. The sound that followed resembled pages turning in a thousand forgotten libraries.

"A machine designed to calculate every possibility how wonderfully human. As though infinity were something awaiting arithmetic. It will serve you this is already written, the machine will answer questions, understand that the cost of those answers have ended civilizations in some futures tread carefully.”

The Librarian rested one elegant hand upon the cover of the black book with the handprint, his expression serene, though something immeasurably old stirred behind those endless blue eyes. "You believe there exists one correct answer," he said softly. A faint shake of his head followed, almost sorrowful in its restraint. "There seldom does."

He moved between the floating shelves with the solemn grace of a priest his fingertips brushed the bindings as he passed, and each book he touched answered with a quiet illumination before dimming again, as though the Archive itself acknowledged the passage of its keeper.

"The Archive remembers outcomes," he said. "It does not prescribe them."

He stopped before three empty pedestals without command, three books descended from the darkness above and settled upon them, each landing with the soft finality of judgment withheld. "The Seraphim Protocol possesses three conclusions in which your world survives." His gaze moved between Rikelus and Isrieal, neither comforting nor severe. "None are perfect there are no perfect endings only faithful ones."

The Librarian placed his hand upon the first book. Its cover inscribed itself slowly the title upon the blank book shimmered into being, silver letters surfacing from the cover as though drawn upward from a depth no ink had ever touched:  The Future That Forgives.

When it opened, there were no diagrams within it no equations, no cold architecture of destiny only memories of Rayleigh and a life she had nearly forgotten and perhaps had needed to forget in order to become what she was.

The Librarian's voice softened until it seemed less spoken than remembered. "The Protocol is born from grief refined into certainty. Rayleigh believes compassion failed, and so she replaced compassion with perfection. The Protocol cannot survive if its architect remembers why she first wished to save humanity."

Rikelus frowned. "You want me to remind her who she used to be."

"No," the Librarian corrected gently. "I ask whether you still remember." Silence gathered around that question. Then the Librarian continued, his tone gentle enough to wound. "Rayleigh cannot be argued out of the Protoco she cannot be defeated into abandoning it; she must choose and a choice cannot exist where only guilt and anger remains."

He looked directly at Rikelus. "You are the final living proof that the woman she buried beneath the title of savior still existed. If she can accept that she failed as a mother without concluding she therefore failed as a person, the Seraphim Protocol dies unborn." The book quietly closed.

The Librarian turned toward the second pedestal upon the next cover, black ink spread like night across water until it formed a title: The Exile Beyond Memory. When the book opened, entire universes spilled across its pages: worlds unlike their own, planets where ShinRa had never existed, realities untouched by Jenova, civilizations beneath crimson skies, and others where humanity had evolved into forms beyond recognition.

"The second path requires no forgiveness," the Librarian said. "It requires separation." The pages shifted. Rayleigh stood alone not imprisoned, or slain but elsewhere beyond the reach of the reality she had once sought to perfect. "A universe sufficiently compatible to sustain her existence, yet sufficiently distant that her influence upon your own reality becomes impossible."

He gestured toward the endless shelves. "The Library knows those intersections your world loses nothing another gains one extraordinary soul."

At last, he approached the final book it remained blank longer than the others, as though uncertain whether it wished to exist at all. Then, slowly, letters emerged upon it’s binding in a new age typeface: The Revised Covenant.

Its pages unfolded into intricate geometric designs, impossible mathematics, quantum lattices, and fractal pathways intertwining like living thought within their center glowed the quantum computer, its architecture lit by symbols unfamiliar even to those who had built it.

The Librarian looked toward Isrieal. "You build a machine capable of calculating possibility yet it does not yet understand consequence." He rested his fingertips upon the page. "The Seraphim Protocol is altered into something radically different by your quantum engine not as forced evolution but as safeguards to allow humanity to determine their own path. The machine refines the protocol into a steward and not a sovereign. Its calculations would remain recommendations, never decrees. The future would remain unwritten.”

The rigid posture drilled into him through years of military service gradually softened. The squared shoulders gave way to the quieter stance of a son carrying questions far heavier than commands. One boot shifted no more than a fraction against the obsidian floor, redistributing his weight as though even standing required careful thought.

When his attention found Isrieal, his expression changed almost too subtly to notice. Those pensive eyebrows relaxed and the severe concentration in his eyes gave way to quiet observation.

He caught the smallest hesitation in her reaching hand, the minute tightening between her brows before she withdrew from The Perfect One. One corner of his mouth lifted into the faintest smile as a nearly invisible nod followed ya’know the kind that-were-both-small-but-respectful-as-though-affirming-a-decision-that-required-no-words.

Moving toward the three books, Rikelus slowed almost unconsciously his fingertips hovered inches above each cover, tracing invisible paths through the air without ever making contact. The motion resembled someone feeling the warmth of a fire rather than testing its flame. His fingers flexed once before relaxing again, resisting the temptation to reach for certainty.

His head tilted ever so slightly, eyes narrowing with the quiet precision of someone rearranging an entire philosophy inside his own mind. Every so often his gaze drifted upward toward the towering shelves before lowering again, following invisible connections only he could see. One side of his mouth curled upward in a semi-restrained ShinRa smirk.

A low, self-deprecating breath escaped him. “Turns out those principles don’t help much when the battlefield is someone’s heart. I think we’ve been making the same mistake Rayleigh made. We’re treating these as choices. What if they aren’t?”

At the first pedestal, his right hand rose from behind his back and came to rest lightly over his chest merely the natural placement of a hand over a truth too personal to leave unacknowledged. His thumb shifted once against the fabric of his shirt before becoming still. “This is a denization, the next a safeguard, and the final book isn’t victory it’s simply contingency. The Librarian isn’t showing us different futures he’s showing us three different acts to define a singular future.”

His features remained composed, yet a fleeting tension traveled through the muscles along his jaw. It appeared and vanished within a heartbeat, betraying years of unresolved grief before discipline quietly reclaimed every inch of his expression. His lips pressed into a thin line, then relaxed again without ever becoming hard. Only the weight of loving someone who had become almost unreachable.

“I won’t kill my own mother if another path exists. But at the same time I can’t allow her to sacrifice the Planet because I was too afraid to stop her.” Mentioning the possibility of rewriting the Protocol softened him once more and that certainty left his eyes. Hope small but cautious returned to them as that gaze wandered upward through the endless architecture of the Archive, lingering on shelves that stretched beyond comprehension.

“And if neither of those is enough,” he continued, looking to the third volume, “then we rewrite what she built not to erase her work to redeem it.” His gaze returned to Isrieal. “You said you built that quantum computer to save people. Then maybe that is exactly what it was always meant to do.”

When he finally turned toward the Librarian, every trace of internal conflict quieted his spine, straightened respectfully his chin lowered by the slightest degree displaying profound gratitude. The kind reserved for a teacher whose lessons had changed the direction of a life.

“There is one question you haven’t answered,” he said, his voice echoing quietly through the aisles. “None of that tells me what she was trying to protect.” As he spoke his final question, his crimson red eyes remained locked upon the Librarian's impossible gaze with unwavering sincerity. His fingers curled once at his side, unconsciously tightening before slowly unfurling again. The movement was the only outward indication of how deeply the question mattered.

“Every plan is born from a fear,” he whispered. “So tell me... what did Rayleigh see that convinced someone capable of loving that humanity could only survive if it surrendered the right to choose? Because I don’t want this to become a story that has to be saved twice.”

His gaze drifted briefly toward Isrieal, softening before returning to the Librarian. Whatever burden lay ahead, the look carried a quiet certainty he no longer intended to bear it alone. Only then did he speak again, his voice carrying the faintest trace of dry amusement. “You always did hate easy answers. I suppose that’s one more thing we’ve got in common.” His flaxen hair floated gently about his face, each strand moving with impossible slowness despite the absence of wind. Every now and then a lock drifted across his brow before settling back into place as though guided by unseen currents flowing through the Archive.

His expression remained composed and serene, yet never empty when Rikelus admitted his old way of thinking, faint warmth appeared around the Librarian's eyes a subtle softening that suggested quiet approval rather than satisfaction. A matching ShinRa smirk twisted on the Librarian’s face and those crystalline blue eyes blinked for once. It was recognition reserved for someone who had arrived at wisdom through compassion rather than certainty.As the final question echoed through the endless aisles, every trace of movement left him and he became utterly still.

His eyes remained fixed upon Rikelus, unblinking yet never unsettling. The silence between them felt less like hesitation than the Archive measuring the weight of what had just been asked. He had finally heard a question the Library itself had been waiting for someone to ask.

The Librarian sighed the sound resembled an old book closing his eyelids lowered. When they opened again, the warmth remained, but it had become tempered by something infinitely older it was simply regret.

"...You believe Rayleigh was changed by what she witnessed. No she was changed by what witnessed her." The Librarian turned, his hands clasped loosely behind his back as he walked toward a shelf so ancient its bindings had become part of the stone itself. His fingertips traced the spines without touching them, stopping before a single volume wrapped entirely in black cloth.

Unlike every other book it bore no title, no author, and no markings whatsoever.

"You asked what Rayleigh saw? You assumed she found an answer. She found a question. There exists a point beyond the Threshold. Beyond possibility, probability, destiny a place no reader in the Library is ever meant to reach.”

For the first time his smile disappeared entirely. “She found nothing the absence into which every possibility eventually falls.”  The lanterns dimmed and the shelves themselves seemed to retreat from the words.

"It is called by many names. The Last Silence. The Unwritten Sea. The White Horizon. I simply call it...Oblivion. Rayleigh believed she stood at the edge of existence but she was mistaken something was there. It noticed her and she returned different congvinced that in every possible future they end. No matter the choices, victories, nor sacrifices everything ceases. She searched four million futures, then forty million, then four hundred million and the ending never changed. So she decided to stop entropy all together with the Seraphim Protocol; to create the first civilization incapable of reaching that ending."

"You asked what fear the Seraphim Protocol created earlier? It wasn’t fear of humanity, Jenova, or extinction. It was fear that one day you would stand where she once stood and have witnessed oblivion as well.”

He had expected an answer he had not expected grief, his breathing slowed almost involuntarily. A measured inhale then another as though each breath required conscious effort to keep his thoughts anchored beneath the enormity of what he had just heard.

When the Librarian spoke of Rayleigh searching millions of futures, the faint narrowing between Rikelus's brows deepened. His eyes shifted only briefly not toward the shelves, but somewhere inward  tracing the impossible burden one mind must have carried to witness so many endings. His fingers twitched once at his side before curling loosely into his palm, the unconscious movement quickly restrained as discipline reclaimed them.

Then came the final revelation his gaze lowered to the obsidian floor between them, unfocused, as though seeing not polished stone but memories rearranging themselves into an entirely different shape. His eyes softened with a quiet disbelief that refused to become denial. For the first time he was no longer seeing Rayleigh as the architect of the Seraphim Protocol.

The feeling of her fingers interlaced with his and squeezing as if she needed him was all that he needed to preserve because he meant something to someone tangibly and he’d die on a hill before he let them down. “A friend huh? I held a few contracts in my day but have no need for them now.”

The silence that arrived next wasn’t exactly the absence of sound as much as it was the absence of expectation. Every whisper that had filled the Black Library vanished just as every impossible volume upon every impossible shelf closed in perfect unison. The sound of thousands or millions of books clattering together echoed throughout the corridors and the vibration settled somewhere beneath his heartbeat, as though his soul had remembered a sound it had heard before birth.

The corridors shifted shelves folded away into the darkness the endless labyrinth rearranged itself with impossible precision until only a single path remained.

"I don't like this..." Rikelus admitted quietly his hand instinctively squeezed Isrieal's thin fingers tighter as his jaw tensed those glowing crimson red eyes scanning and assessing for threats before he commented. "It isn't trying to frighten us. It’s making room for something.”

The realization came before he understood why he believed it the darkness ahead slowly unraveled. An immense circular chamber revealed itself, older than architecture itself. There were no walls only towering shelves disappearing upward until they vanished into a sky of black constellations. Rivers of luminous ink flowed between the aisles instead of water, carrying loose pages that wrote themselves before dissolving into the current.

Suspended in the center of the chamber stood a solitary desk. It was fashioned from petrified wood so ancient it had become obsidian upon it rested a single open book its pages were blank behind the desk sat someone or something.

At first glance, it appeared to be a scholar, the Librarian appeared almost human. He possessed refined features of an aristocrat born into privilege his face sculpted with sharp cheekbones, a straight patrician nose, and a jawline softened only by an expression of impossible serenity. There was an unmistakable elegance to him, the kind that spoke not of wealth but of someone who had carried himself with quiet dignity long before kingdoms had ever conceived of crowns.

His hair was a striking flaxen blonde, luminous without appearing golden, falling in immaculate layers that reached his neck. Individual strands caught no light of their own yet shimmered like pages brushed with silver leaf whenever he moved. There was something hauntingly familiar in those features reminiscent of the ShinRa bloodline ya’know; but, stripped of every trace of ambition, vanity, or mortality. It was as though the resemblance existed not because he shared their lineage, but because their lineage had unknowingly echoed something far older.

He appeared to be a man in his early thirties, forever suspended at the height of his physical prime. His complexion was pale, not with sickness, but with the flawless stillness of polished alabaster. It lacked the imperfections of living skin. No freckles, no scars, and no pores. His complexion was that of an *ivory paragon* resembling marble painstakingly carved into the likeness of a man who breathed only because the universe expected him to.

His eyes were perhaps the only feature that shattered the illusion of humanity. From a distance they were a brilliant, crystalline blue, calm and piercing like glacial ice. Up close they looked like the endless ocean bordering the northern continent.

The irises were impossibly deep, layered with concentric rings resembling the bindings of countless ancient books. Entire shelves drifted through their depths like galaxies suspended in an infinite archive. Tiny motes of pale light wandered between those shelves, each one a memory, a forgotten civilization, or a life that might have been. Looking into them inspired the unnerving sensation that one was not meeting another's gaze, but standing before an immeasurable vault in which every choice ever made had already been catalogued.

He blinked infrequently but when he did, the Library itself seemed to respond shelves quietly shifted. Books exchanged places without a sound and entire corridors lengthened or vanished altogether as though the Archive itself breathed in rhythm with its keeper.

His robes were neither stitched nor woven by mortal hands they simply draped effortlessly from his frame in layered charcoal and deep obsidian, each fold flowing with the unhurried grace of ink spreading across parchment. Delicate embroidery traced the hems in muted silver impossibly small passages written in forgotten alphabets that continuously rewrote themselves. Constellations drifted across the fabric one moment before becoming genealogies, equations, or names erased from history the next.

His hands were long, elegant, and unnervingly precise. Every movement seemed practiced over eternity. When he turned a page, he did so with the same care another might reserve for lifting a newborn child. When he rested a hand upon a book, the volume seemed almost relieved to have returned to its rightful custodian.

"...You are late." His voice never rose above conversation it carried no authority because it required none. Every word arrived with quiet certainty each syllable measured each pause deliberate. Listening to him felt strangely disorienting as though he had already considered every possible response before choosing the one that would leave the deepest impression.

Rikelus exchanged a glance with Isrieal before stepping forward brandishing that familiar ShinRa smirk before he spoke to him "I don't remember being invited."

The scratching of the quill never stopped as the Librarian continued, “no one is invited" another line appeared upon the blank page. The words seemed muddled before he was able to properly read them the text twisting into a typeface he recognized.

The threshold does not issue invitations

Rikelus frowned before he spoke to him again, “You know who I am."

The quill paused for the first time and the Librarian looked up the weight of that simple movement was unbearable not because it threatened him; but because every instinct he possessed insisted that something this old should never need to acknowledge anything.

"You misunderstand. We've never met but I do know you Rikelus ShinRa." around them, countless shelves awakened books began sliding free on their own. One landed before the two of them resting at his feet its cover bore his name. Another fell beside it, then another, then another, soon more than six dozen books were at their feet. Each carried the same title but the volumes differed by a single line of text undeath them.

RIKELUS SHINRA

The Tyrant.

The Martyr.

The Empty King.

The Last SOLDIER.

The Son Who Obeyed.

The Son Who Killed His Mother.

The One Who Joined Absolute Calamity.

The One Who Walked Away.

Every possible life was written across them and he stared silently at them before the Librarian politely answered his thoughts, “These are the lives you refused and possibilities. The Library remembers every decision abandoned.” Silence settled over the chamber and the books dissolved in gray ash scattering across the obsidian floor before Rikelus asked about Rayleigh ShinRa and if she came here and how many times.

“She came here but never reached this place.” The Librarian stood up his sheer height becoming apparent or was it that the chamber itself had simply lowered around it? "Rayleigh ShinRa entered the Library four hundred and twelve times."

A book appeared in its hand and he flipped through the pages continuing to answer the azure haired man’s inquiry, “She had opened every page she was permitted to read. She did not discover this chamber because it cannot be discovered it can only be inherited. There is a difference between seeking knowledge and accepting responsibility for what knowledge demands."

"Rayleigh sought answers." Rikelus responded blurting the words out as his mind began connecting the dots she came seeking ways to carefully curate the perfect scenario for the seraphim protocol to be initiated making arrangements down to the last detail and they’d played right into her hand.

"You sought burdens." The Librarian responded before flipping to another page reading from it, “She believed understanding would grant her dominion. You believed understanding would demand sacrifice. So the Threshold opened but understand this Rikelus James ShinRa no heir has crossed this threshold alone."

Rikelus followed its gaze noticing that the Librarian's endless eyes softened by the smallest imaginable degree. The chamber itself seemed to breathe before he spoke "She is the witness." Those words seemed to carry immeasurable gravity.

"No burden entrusted by the Library may be borne by one soul alone. Power isolates, Truth Isolates, Memory Isolates until you are lost to the Library. It has always been so but remembrance to retain self requires another.”

It was rather interesting if you really thought about it Rayleigh’s lessons were counterintuitive to becoming a true heir to the abyss. Strength through solitude was nothing if you’d lose yourself to power of possibility. Control through detachment meant you’d find yourself wandering in someone else’s memories. The Librarian shattered all of Rayleigh’s principles with a single sentence.

"That is why Rayleigh could never become what she wished to be. She surrendered every witness she ever loved and you did not.”

@ofgeneticperfection

She glances at Rikelus but allows him to step forward to speak in return. Meanwhile, she watches all the books that tumble to the floor before him. Her gaze lingers only upon one. The One Who Joined Absolute Calamity. Her eyes narrow at the thought of that ever being a possibility. She had made Jenova her enemy long ago when she consumed everyone she ever knew who touched those cells. Well, most.

She hums a curious tone, then looks back up into the hall around them, scanning every corner. She didn't trust what could come wandering out of those shadows at any moment. She didn't trust herself. Or the variants of herself. Only when she is addressed as the witness does she turn her focus back to the pristine man. "Well." She breathes. "I guess keeping memories intact is one of my new specialties." She concedes to the title. Makes sense in her book, but Rikelus wasn't the only person she was holding together.

"So we are allowed to know our answers then?" She slowly looks to Rikelus as she thinks. She wasn't even certain that she had the questions. "Do my paths tie with Rikelus in every timeline? Every possibility?" She asks. Her connection to him was stranger and stronger than never knowing him before. It felt like it resonated through ages and possibilities. She had to know how fated this truly was.

"I guess our only other question would be how do we deal with Rayleigh without hurting ourselves or others? I don't know what this plan of hers is or why we are so important to her new world. That alone is concerning." What exactly did she want with them? What does she need?

"I would like to put her back in the box we found her in. Sure we can confuse her enough to slip away, but how long until she comes out and does something to the world? Is this endless possibility plan safe in the long run?" She looks straight at Rikelus, folding her arms. If they were going to do this, he had to be right.

"Or once we are safely away and untraceable, maybe we can come up with more ideas. I never told anyone this, but I pulled some strings and had a quantum computer built into Deepground. It's probably sleeping until I activate it, but that too can compose...endless possibilities. See all. I wouldn't be surprised if it could open other realities." She says slowly. Whatever in the hell she needed one of those for was another mystery in itself.

"I'm sure we could stop her strange little project.."

His crystalline blue eyes, which were actually impossible archives masquerading as irises did not study her face. From a distance they appeared merely extraordinary; up close, they were fathomless, their irises layered with concentric depths like the bindings of ancient tomes viewed from above. Tiny points of pale light drifted within them, like solitary lanterns wandering endless corridors. Looking into them produced the uncanny sensation that one was not meeting another's gaze, but standing at the entrance of an immeasurable archive.

They studied everything she had ever almost become. His expression never changed, yet something within those eyes acknowledged her not her face, not merely her name, but her existence, as though she occupied a place already prepared for her long before she had drawn her first breath. The faintest suggestion of a smile touched his lips, too slight to be called amusement, too gentle to be called triumph. It was the look of a curator discovering a manuscript thought lost to history.

His hands remained folded loosely before him, long fingers resting one over another with impossible elegance. Even the subtle flex of a knuckle possessed the precision of a calligrapher completing the final stroke of a masterpiece. One thumb brushed absently across his forefinger causing a change in the library. One by one, books nearest to Isrieal slid free from their shelves.

None struck the floor instead, they hovered weightlessly around her thousands with each bearing the same name.

ISRIEAL

No two bindings were alike some were stitched from white leather others appeared to have been carved from obsidian. One looked as though it had grown from living bark another shimmered like polished crystal each represented a life that had once stood on the precipice of existence.

"...You ask whether your path has always crossed his. You ask the wrong question. It assumes your meeting required chance." The books surrounding Isrieal began opening of their own accord. Pages fluttering audibly as entire lives unfolded in a silent flash.

A battlefield beneath Meteor

A flower field untouched by war

A Midgar that never fell

A world where ShinRa had become a republic

A world drowned beneath black water,

A world consumed by Jenova before human civilization had learned fire

A world where she had a sister

A world in which multiple realities combined to create new encounters with heroes of light and those who tread the path of chaos.

In every vision oddly enough Rikelus and Isrieal appeared, sometimes lovers, sometimes enemies. Sometimes strangers who exchanged nothing more than a passing glance before destiny carried them into each other’s lives. Once she was even the President of the company and Rikelus was a Turk.

The visions vanished and the Librarian folded his hands before him.

"It is inevitable that you cross paths in nine hundred and eighty-three thousand, four hundred and twelve recorded continuities."

Rikelus felt the weight of those words settle inside him it was as if they didn’t have free will then and there was no choice that was something that would deeply trouble most people but he understood fate often weaved a cruel game. His attention drifted not toward the demi god vessel she wore, but toward the shadow nestled impossibly deep within her soul.

For the first time since Rikelus had entered the chamber, the Librarian's breathing became visible. One slow inhale followed by an equally measured exhale. His eyelids lowered just enough to suggest contemplation, and ancient recognition settled across his features like dawn breaking over forgotten ruins. His expression grew almost fond not toward Isrieal, but toward the presence residing alongside her.

There was history there immeasurable history his smile deepened by the smallest conceivable degree, not because he found amusement, but because one old keeper had unexpectedly encountered another to something unseen within her. His head inclined respectfully, a greeting offered to someone invisible and accepted regardless of whether it was returned.

"...Lord Hades." The title echoed through the Library as he thought of the exact time that he’d seen him last “"...it has been approximately two thousand one hundred and eight cycles since your last visitation.”

A single volume failed to return with the river of books floated back into the shelves rattling as they settled into their proper place the single book remained suspended before Isrieal. Its cover bore no title only a single black wet handprint seemingly not belonging to her fate pathway but to something elses perhaps Hades.

"You ask how to defeat Rayleigh ShinRa. You cannot.”

“You may survive her, delay her, wound her but defeat requires that she seeks victory Rayleigh ShinRa no longer distinguishes between herself and her purpose. She abandoned that separation long ago. You cannot reason with purpose just as you cannot bargain with inevitability although you shall alter the conditions under which it manifests."

"The future has never belonged to authors or editors it belongs to those who become unreadable. Perhaps you find your answers within that volume."

When Isrieal spoke of Deepground of the quantum computer for the first time since either of them had entered the chamber the Librarian laughed out loud not in a mocking way but in delight. The sound that followed resembled pages turning in a thousand forgotten libraries.

"A machine designed to calculate every possibility how wonderfully human. As though infinity were something awaiting arithmetic. It will serve you this is already written, the machine will answer questions, understand that the cost of those answers have ended civilizations in some futures tread carefully.”

The Librarian rested one elegant hand upon the cover of the black book with the handprint, his expression serene, though something immeasurably old stirred behind those endless blue eyes. "You believe there exists one correct answer," he said softly. A faint shake of his head followed, almost sorrowful in its restraint. "There seldom does."

He moved between the floating shelves with the solemn grace of a priest his fingertips brushed the bindings as he passed, and each book he touched answered with a quiet illumination before dimming again, as though the Archive itself acknowledged the passage of its keeper.

"The Archive remembers outcomes," he said. "It does not prescribe them."

He stopped before three empty pedestals without command, three books descended from the darkness above and settled upon them, each landing with the soft finality of judgment withheld. "The Seraphim Protocol possesses three conclusions in which your world survives." His gaze moved between Rikelus and Isrieal, neither comforting nor severe. "None are perfect there are no perfect endings only faithful ones."

The Librarian placed his hand upon the first book. Its cover inscribed itself slowly the title upon the blank book shimmered into being, silver letters surfacing from the cover as though drawn upward from a depth no ink had ever touched:  The Future That Forgives.

When it opened, there were no diagrams within it no equations, no cold architecture of destiny only memories of Rayleigh and a life she had nearly forgotten and perhaps had needed to forget in order to become what she was.

The Librarian's voice softened until it seemed less spoken than remembered. "The Protocol is born from grief refined into certainty. Rayleigh believes compassion failed, and so she replaced compassion with perfection. The Protocol cannot survive if its architect remembers why she first wished to save humanity."

Rikelus frowned. "You want me to remind her who she used to be."

"No," the Librarian corrected gently. "I ask whether you still remember." Silence gathered around that question. Then the Librarian continued, his tone gentle enough to wound. "Rayleigh cannot be argued out of the Protoco she cannot be defeated into abandoning it; she must choose and a choice cannot exist where only guilt and anger remains."

He looked directly at Rikelus. "You are the final living proof that the woman she buried beneath the title of savior still existed. If she can accept that she failed as a mother without concluding she therefore failed as a person, the Seraphim Protocol dies unborn." The book quietly closed.

The Librarian turned toward the second pedestal upon the next cover, black ink spread like night across water until it formed a title: The Exile Beyond Memory. When the book opened, entire universes spilled across its pages: worlds unlike their own, planets where ShinRa had never existed, realities untouched by Jenova, civilizations beneath crimson skies, and others where humanity had evolved into forms beyond recognition.

"The second path requires no forgiveness," the Librarian said. "It requires separation." The pages shifted. Rayleigh stood alone not imprisoned, or slain but elsewhere beyond the reach of the reality she had once sought to perfect. "A universe sufficiently compatible to sustain her existence, yet sufficiently distant that her influence upon your own reality becomes impossible."

He gestured toward the endless shelves. "The Library knows those intersections your world loses nothing another gains one extraordinary soul."

At last, he approached the final book it remained blank longer than the others, as though uncertain whether it wished to exist at all. Then, slowly, letters emerged upon it’s binding in a new age typeface: The Revised Covenant.

Its pages unfolded into intricate geometric designs, impossible mathematics, quantum lattices, and fractal pathways intertwining like living thought within their center glowed the quantum computer, its architecture lit by symbols unfamiliar even to those who had built it.

The Librarian looked toward Isrieal. "You build a machine capable of calculating possibility yet it does not yet understand consequence." He rested his fingertips upon the page. "The Seraphim Protocol is altered into something radically different by your quantum engine not as forced evolution but as safeguards to allow humanity to determine their own path. The machine refines the protocol into a steward and not a sovereign. Its calculations would remain recommendations, never decrees. The future would remain unwritten.”

During this time studying her and listening Rikelus noticed a fresh cup of unmistakably brewed Junon black coffee and carefully reached out to the enamel mug thanking the medical staff and lifting it to his lips to sip slowly. It wasn’t anything to write home about compared to fancy western teas or south eastern coffee beans; but it was wildly consistent and you kind of got used to the shit after a while.

He looked suspiciously well rested for someone that walked out of hell and back with her. His black tactical jumpsuit was zipped neatly to his collar, sleeves rolled once at the wrists, and for the first time in what felt like days there wasn't a drop of blood on him. He took a second sip from the mug with a deadpan expression on his face now before he remarked, "I appreciate you noticing."

The nearby nurse let out an involuntary snort before pretending to reorganize medical supplies. She thought the Lieutenant was a good man in his heart but sometimes his bedside manner could be flamboyant or facetious because he’d walk straight into hell and continue to bring people back for treatment with a high success level. The nurse hurriedly excused herself, hiding another laugh as she disappeared through the opposite flap leaving the two of them alone.

Rikelus had adjusted the folding chair from his position he was sitting there rather casually with it facing backwards resting his sunkissed forearms across the backrest more less like a lieutenant and more like someone that owned the fucking company.

“Paper."

"Ya'know ancient technology used when people wanted to communicate with one another over long distances.”

Rikelus said nonchalantly lifting the coffee up to his mouth taking another drink from it, “The devil in the details is in the seal—I know whose signet that is and you do too. My guess is when he didn’t hear from you—he sent written correspondence.” Rikelus lifted that mug to his lips taking a long sip of the coffee before he sat it aside on the table retorting trying to be encouraging at least after his dry humor.

Truthfully, he fit in quite well with the directors and aristocrats who had old money with his rich and diverse life experiences, sharp tongue, and even sharper wit. Rikelus ShinRa possessed a peculiar quality that allowed him to drift effortlessly between worlds that ordinarily despised one another. One evening he could be sitting around a rain-soaked campfire with infantrymen, sharing burnt coffee and arguing over whose rations from the Cosmo Café tasted least offensive.

The next, he could be seated beneath crystal chandeliers among directors, industrial magnates, old Junon families, and aristocrats whose fortunes had been measured in generations rather than years. The funny thing was he never looked out of place in either because he’d lived enough lives to understand them getting the best blend of practicality, discipline, perspective, and curiosity creating someone who really knew what made ShinRa work.

His knowledge was never performative he genuinely enjoyed learning and didn’t mind hard work and that alone made him the most dangerous ShinRa. Old money recognized it almost immediately even the Van Der Wald’s treaded carefully around him. He was tactful in he rarely humiliated people but often humbled them believing intelligence should sharpen conversations, not end them.

“Men like him don't write because they have something to say."

"They write because they found something too important to leave unsaid.”

He reached up and ran sunkissed fingers through that deep azure blue hair pushing it to the side less haphazardly and more stylized, “Fuhito is a bigger problem than the brass thinks—we cut a deal with him early on in the war and he became obsessed with ShinRa and became a fanboy of Hojo’s work. You probably know as much as I do about it—and his science projects. When you get your bearings come and see me if you want to strike back and get that motherfucker before he shows up again on his terms.”

Rikelus was pretty candid about his feelings regarding Fuhito he’d been assessing her the entire time that she was there out of the chaos of battle he could really see her. The calluses on her hands, old scars she’d probably stopped noticing years ago. The posture of someone who slept lightly because she'd learned young that safety was temporary as well as the stubborn refusal to admit she hurt. He’d seen *that* look before but it wasn’t in SOLDIER it was in the orphans and forgotten children who became cogs in ShinRa. It was in the Junon dockworkers with slipped discs and still reported for shifts because families depended on them. Engineers well past their prime climbing mako reactor towers during storms without complaint. Someone had to keep the system running when nobody else would and these people never thought of themselves as heroes but only as responsible.

As he got up from the seat he picked up the laboratory report flipping through it scanning the pages with one brow slowly rising as he read the toxicology findings. This wasn't some improvised poison or mass-produced compound. “You must have really pissed him off venom refined from a rare deep water fish, every drop has to be painstakingly milked from its dorsal spines before it loses potency. Someone had to keep the thing alive long enough to extract it without getting themselves killed. You must have been a spectacular inconvenience to him. That's personal—not assassination.”

He sat the report within an arm’s reach and waved bye to her giving her some privacy as he left the tent. He looked normal enough compared to his state of losing control. He knew the very thing she was up against, assuming the world would fall apart if she wasn’t standing underneath, it holding it up. Truthfully he could have sat there needling her but it wouldn’t have helped her feel better. He left he tent and went back to a camp that had settled back into its usual rhythm it was painfully ordinary and he preferred it that way.

For him the thought of food simply wasn't there still he’d drank the coffee to look normal almost like a chameleon blending in his stomach remained quiet, still not empty but wholly satisfied. Outside of the tent he rolled up the sleeve of his black jumpsuit slightly more to the elbow an old scar crossing his forearm had faded. Although it wasn’t completely gone it was softened to the point it was barely visible as if the years had quietly been peeled away overnight he pressed against the muscle beneath it.

This time he'd physically checked it against what he reemembered and recalled from last night. It was more dense than before his unique constitution had always been exceptional but this was on an entirely different level consistent with the Raven’s adaptations. His body felt fundamentally more improved the only unfortunate side effect was he remembered the miasma devouring them. Every second of their strength pouring into him providing terrifying vitality and overwhelming fullness. He had expected the sensation to fade overnight instead it settled in like it belonged to him his body accepting the change without resistance as though somewhere beneath conscious thought it had already decided this was what it was meant to become.

Did she remember it didn’t look like it the poison had been severe hallucinations weren't uncommon in the report and memory distortion even less so part of him hoped she'd dismiss the entire encounter as fever and another part knew better.

Suits noticed details.

That’s what kept them alive if she remembered she hadn't mentioned it. He appreciated that more than she probably realized answers were nearly impossible and that conversation could wait if it ever happened at all. Some secrets weren't kept because they were convenient some were kept because giving them a name made them harder to contain.

For now he intended to keep this one buried beneath the mountain where it belonged even if, somewhere deep inside himself a quiet voice still wondered what else waited down there and whether the next encounter would make him stronger still.

The day you start enjoying war is the day you stop deserving to survive it. Isn’t that what you said Heidegger?

Rikelus walked further into the camp before slowed his pace just enough to fall into step beside Sergeant Gainsborough, one hand tucked into the pocket of his coat his expression remained composed, though the corners of his mouth hinted at something unusually relaxed.

"Sergeant Gainsborough."

He waited until he had the man's attention before continuing.

Though, it was suspicious how together and seemingly unharmed her was after what happened in the caves. It left a degree of concern, but it was not particularly uncommon among high-ranking SOLDIERs. Even his leg where he stabbed himself in her - what she was chalking up to a stress dream - seemed relatively ok. No limp or change in gait. Surely it had been a dream then. 

His eyes tracked her like a lazy cat from his laid back position on the chair. She gave a soft irritated huff at his lack of answer about the letter. Must not have been particularly important if he couldn’t tell her. The humor didn’t strike well with her particularly poor health. She wished the poison had just dropped her into the lifestream. At least she’d be spared from his terrible jokes. 

Alas, she had developed a certain level of immunity over the course of her training. Shame. “Minerva, take me now.” She groaned.

That way of thinking was simply inept SOLDIERs were taught to overcome impossible odds whereas Turks were taught to ensure impossible odds never occurred in the first place. He had spent enough years working alongside both organizations to recognize the philosophies hidden beneath their uniforms. Neither approach was inherently superior because they simply solved different problems and he had respect for that. I suppose ShinRa as to blame for that they had a remarkable talent for asking extraordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things while pretending they were replaceable.

His thoughts drifted to the Legendary Turk as he reached for a bottle that Gainsborough had procured pouring himself a glass. The old bastard, he remembered lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling after what had felt less like a sparring session and more like a conversation conducted through repeated impacts with the floor. Gregory had dismantled him not with lectures but with experience, the fastest man alive, never fought harder than necessary. Every movement carried purpose every step denied opportunities before they could exist watching him work without bombs one would think he was solving mathematical equations with violence.

He recalled how elegant and economical he moved it was infuriating and he had lost count of how many times he'd ended those training sessions bruised, exhausted, and convinced he'd finally understood the lesson only for the old man to prove there had been another one hidden underneath. He created a new unique fighting style from these encounters a close quarters combat that he refined only taught to the finest operatives.

He remembered his words very clearly. Speed wins fights sometimes but not always it’s a fighters sixth sense that allows him to operate at a tier above them and that’s only honed from battle. Since that day Rikelus James ShinRa had fought every man in his camp and outside of his camp at every opportunity beating them decisively gaining that raw unfiltered experience in his muscle memory that made it so no one at or below his tier stood a chance in a ‘fair fight’ against him.  

The command tent had become less of an office and more of an ecosystem in the past two days maps occupied nearly every available surface. Colored pins marked patrol routes and supply lines. Three radios hummed quietly in the background while stacks of requisition forms threatened to collapse under their own weight. A lantern swung lazily overhead with each gust of mountain wind, throwing warm amber light across the canvas walls.

At the center of it all sat Rikelus he wasn't buried beneath paperwork he appeared... oddly comfortable inside it. One boot rested on the rung of his chair while the other remained planted on the packed earth. The familiar voice at the entrance drew his attention before he reached for the next file.

"Lieutenant."

Those glowing crimson red eyes looked up seeing her standing on her on two feet beneath the lantern light instead of laying beneath fluorescent lamps. He leaned back slightly in his chair, slowly lowering the report onto the desk for a moment he simply looked at her—but not obviously of course.

Never obviously.

Those s glowing crimson eyes swept over her with the practiced efficiency of a field officer conducting an inspection color had returned to her face her posture was steadier the slight tremor that had lingered in her hands two mornings ago was gone. Good his expression remained infuriatingly neutral.

"Hm."

He nodded once before thinking in his mind how the conversation would go. They’ve upgraded you. From critically injured to moderately intimidating. Meh—might as well let it go. One corner of his sunkissed mouth twitched as he lifted the glass bottle of Junon rye whiskey up and poured a small amount into another glass on the other side of the table before sitting it down. His hand cupped his own glass lifting it up to his mouth to take a sip.  

"I heard the weather decided to join the resistance shame what terrible luck."

His eyes flicked briefly toward the canvas ceiling as rain drummed overhead. He rested both palms lightly against the edge of the map when she asked about Fuhito a look on his face said everything that it was personal between the two of them. His fingers came to rest on one of the red circles marking an abandoned laboratory complex.

"I was sent here to investigate the mysterious the area around the Hodono temple and secure it at the request of a friend. He wanted to explore the temple but was worried about the psychological horrors of the forrest and the havoc they’d wreck on less formidiable SOLDIERS. After securing the temple and letting him take over the expedition I joined this regimen looking for a chance to settle the score with Fuhito after what he did. What I found here and here.” He pointed at different colored pins on the map before explained what they were, “smuggling, disappearing patrols, bodies mutated, and experiments”

His eyes drifted toward the mountain beyond the tent wall, though it wasn't visible "Fuhito hides behind ideals. 'Save the Planet. 'Humanity is the disease.'"

He let out a quiet breath through his nose before he continued, “I've met enough zealots to know that anyone convinced they're building paradise rarely notices the road they're paving with corpses. My interest is in stopping him from destroying anyone else’s life.” He spoke personally as if from experience those that knew him well enough understood after Fuhito accepted to work with ShinRa early in his stead here he had experimented on someone Rikelus shared a fascination with—a coworker and caused her to lose her memory and mutate.

"Men like him stop seeing people they only see variables. Successful experiments acceptable losses. I’ve buried too many good people to further his science anymore--did the old man offer you anything useful in his letter?” He was a little curious as to what he might write her but didn't dare break protocol to open it.

@blacksuit-gai153

And what kind of person were you before you met me?

A quiet laugh escaped him that was almost nostalgic as he thought about it, “The kind that believed surviving to complete blood oaths was enough. I mistook endurance for living. I thought if I buried enough of myself ya’know things would change. I suppose you reminded me there e was still someone left worth finding. You ruined the lie I'd spent years telling myself."

The abyss swelled curiously around them as his expression grew thoughtful ancient shapes drifted past in the darkness as towering shelves appeared with a broken cathedral in the distance. The cathedral had various swords planted around it and faces of people that vanished the moment you’d try to recognize them. He could see it in the distance from outside of the window of the Black Library.  

"I don’t think the Black Library is somewhere with fixed coordinates I think it grows around us whenever the abyss recognizes a question worth answering." She had made a valid point that they needed to get tactical and think bigger Rayleigh had spent decades preparing for people to run, hide, deceive, fight, and all possibilities. We beat someone like that by becoming less predictable and impossible to classify. He landed with her onto the obsidian marble floor their feet touching solid ground again.

"Every version of myself that could have existed. Come forth and find a path forward and report to me." His voice steadied as the strategy formed speaking to the abyss and the darkness around him responded by making countless silhouettes emerged from it. Some wore SOLDIER uniforms, other’s officer coats, Turk uniforms, or executive suits. Some were scarred others were untouched by battle. One still wore the face of the frightened young man he had once been the first time their plane went down in Wutai.  Another carried eyes colder than Sephiroth's seemingly from the worst possible outcome. They came and went on the different multitude of levels grabbing books, interacting with possibilities, studying, learning.

“I think I understand what we need to do we make Rayleigh have to consider every possibility and ever pathway regardless of how inconsequential. Having her walk all paths would definitely derail her.” It was a rather solid plan given the circumstances to use a method to feed to the abyss a stream of endless possibilities to have to action against. I suppose it was the only path forward at this point and his expression seemed to sober when she asked what the cost was.

"You asked what it costs. I don’t know the toll exactly for being here too long but I think it costs certainty. The deeper we go and longer we stay  the less we'll know which memories belong to us and if we’re careless we might come back believing someone else’s life was our own.” That was a frightening thought that such knowledge in the endless shelves hidden the void would create a disturbing scenario. His hand found hers again firm and steady as he stepped in closer his forehead resting briefly against hers. There were both light but no shadows in the library as if their bodies didn’t constitute them and physics were broken.

Endless corridors finally stopped stretched beyond sight, lined with books bound in materials that had never belonged to any living creature. Some bled black ink onto the floor. Others whispered in languages forgotten before mankind had learned speech. High above, where a ceiling should have been, constellations flickered into existence—only to rearrange themselves into words that dissolved before they could be read.

She watches curiously as the various versions appear, taking note of certain ones like the Turk Rikelus. She was always wary of Turks. Would any of these have deterred her from him? Or would it be a dangerous combination no matter which reality she met him in. It was worth the wonder. She inhales slowly and looks back to him.

"Yours are enough, right?" She asks with uncertainty. She didn't want to see the other possibilities of herself. She already knew what they were, how bad they could be, and if she knew herself they wouldn't want to show themselves out in the open, not without careful consideration. If he was right about not knowing which thoughts were real or not the longer they stayed, the more careful they had to be. She reaches out and locks her fingers into his own. "We shouldn't separate." She says sternly.

"We might not be able to tell each other apart if we do and..." She hesitates. "I cannot let the worst version of me encounter you...I don't know what she would do." Or say. There was one that already resurrected Hojo, and that one she did not trust. .The one that would do anything at all to win. And God forbid her connection to him made him manifest down here somewhere. She holds her breath as he kisses her gently on the lips, and she steps closer against him in response.

"And if we make it out of this without getting the world destroyed. I think I want you to stay this time." She meets his gaze for that brief moment before he's distracted by the presence outside the windows. It cannot be seen but can be felt. Her fingers curl tighter around his hand as she looks towards the windows as well. They couldn't be revealed.

She feels a surge of energy vibrate through her like cool black water. A pulse that syncs with his heartbeat reveals the overlay of a skull over her features, a hint of glowing red eyes as she raises her free hand towards the window. Around them swirls a black mist flooded with various ancient symbols that glow in different colors. They spread out and cover the window and walls around them, a mysterious alphabet lit up like a rainbow of sparkling symbols. A seal to ward off prying eyes. For now. The mist around her fades with the deep echoes of a spectral laugh at it fades off again.

For a long moment, she stares toward the sealed window then slowly turns her head to look back to Rikelus. "I forgot to tell you." She says quietly. "I made a friend. I think he may be on our side."

The feeling of her fingers interlaced with his and squeezing as if she needed him was all that he needed to preserve because he meant something to someone tangibly and he’d die on a hill before he let them down. “A friend huh? I held a few contracts in my day but have no need for them now.”

The silence that arrived next wasn’t exactly the absence of sound as much as it was the absence of expectation. Every whisper that had filled the Black Library vanished just as every impossible volume upon every impossible shelf closed in perfect unison. The sound of thousands or millions of books clattering together echoed throughout the corridors and the vibration settled somewhere beneath his heartbeat, as though his soul had remembered a sound it had heard before birth.

The corridors shifted shelves folded away into the darkness the endless labyrinth rearranged itself with impossible precision until only a single path remained.

"I don't like this..." Rikelus admitted quietly his hand instinctively squeezed Isrieal's thin fingers tighter as his jaw tensed those glowing crimson red eyes scanning and assessing for threats before he commented. "It isn't trying to frighten us. It’s making room for something.”

The realization came before he understood why he believed it the darkness ahead slowly unraveled. An immense circular chamber revealed itself, older than architecture itself. There were no walls only towering shelves disappearing upward until they vanished into a sky of black constellations. Rivers of luminous ink flowed between the aisles instead of water, carrying loose pages that wrote themselves before dissolving into the current.

Suspended in the center of the chamber stood a solitary desk. It was fashioned from petrified wood so ancient it had become obsidian upon it rested a single open book its pages were blank behind the desk sat someone or something.

At first glance, it appeared to be a scholar, the Librarian appeared almost human. He possessed refined features of an aristocrat born into privilege his face sculpted with sharp cheekbones, a straight patrician nose, and a jawline softened only by an expression of impossible serenity. There was an unmistakable elegance to him, the kind that spoke not of wealth but of someone who had carried himself with quiet dignity long before kingdoms had ever conceived of crowns.

His hair was a striking flaxen blonde, luminous without appearing golden, falling in immaculate layers that reached his neck. Individual strands caught no light of their own yet shimmered like pages brushed with silver leaf whenever he moved. There was something hauntingly familiar in those features reminiscent of the ShinRa bloodline ya’know; but, stripped of every trace of ambition, vanity, or mortality. It was as though the resemblance existed not because he shared their lineage, but because their lineage had unknowingly echoed something far older.

He appeared to be a man in his early thirties, forever suspended at the height of his physical prime. His complexion was pale, not with sickness, but with the flawless stillness of polished alabaster. It lacked the imperfections of living skin. No freckles, no scars, and no pores. His complexion was that of an *ivory paragon* resembling marble painstakingly carved into the likeness of a man who breathed only because the universe expected him to.

His eyes were perhaps the only feature that shattered the illusion of humanity. From a distance they were a brilliant, crystalline blue, calm and piercing like glacial ice. Up close they looked like the endless ocean bordering the northern continent.

The irises were impossibly deep, layered with concentric rings resembling the bindings of countless ancient books. Entire shelves drifted through their depths like galaxies suspended in an infinite archive. Tiny motes of pale light wandered between those shelves, each one a memory, a forgotten civilization, or a life that might have been. Looking into them inspired the unnerving sensation that one was not meeting another's gaze, but standing before an immeasurable vault in which every choice ever made had already been catalogued.

He blinked infrequently but when he did, the Library itself seemed to respond shelves quietly shifted. Books exchanged places without a sound and entire corridors lengthened or vanished altogether as though the Archive itself breathed in rhythm with its keeper.

His robes were neither stitched nor woven by mortal hands they simply draped effortlessly from his frame in layered charcoal and deep obsidian, each fold flowing with the unhurried grace of ink spreading across parchment. Delicate embroidery traced the hems in muted silver impossibly small passages written in forgotten alphabets that continuously rewrote themselves. Constellations drifted across the fabric one moment before becoming genealogies, equations, or names erased from history the next.

His hands were long, elegant, and unnervingly precise. Every movement seemed practiced over eternity. When he turned a page, he did so with the same care another might reserve for lifting a newborn child. When he rested a hand upon a book, the volume seemed almost relieved to have returned to its rightful custodian.

"...You are late." His voice never rose above conversation it carried no authority because it required none. Every word arrived with quiet certainty each syllable measured each pause deliberate. Listening to him felt strangely disorienting as though he had already considered every possible response before choosing the one that would leave the deepest impression.

Rikelus exchanged a glance with Isrieal before stepping forward brandishing that familiar ShinRa smirk before he spoke to him "I don't remember being invited."

The scratching of the quill never stopped as the Librarian continued, “no one is invited" another line appeared upon the blank page. The words seemed muddled before he was able to properly read them the text twisting into a typeface he recognized.

The threshold does not issue invitations

Rikelus frowned before he spoke to him again, “You know who I am."

The quill paused for the first time and the Librarian looked up the weight of that simple movement was unbearable not because it threatened him; but because every instinct he possessed insisted that something this old should never need to acknowledge anything.

"You misunderstand. We've never met but I do know you Rikelus ShinRa." around them, countless shelves awakened books began sliding free on their own. One landed before the two of them resting at his feet its cover bore his name. Another fell beside it, then another, then another, soon more than six dozen books were at their feet. Each carried the same title but the volumes differed by a single line of text undeath them.

RIKELUS SHINRA

The Tyrant.

The Martyr.

The Empty King.

The Last SOLDIER.

The Son Who Obeyed.

The Son Who Killed His Mother.

The One Who Joined Absolute Calamity.

The One Who Walked Away.

Every possible life was written across them and he stared silently at them before the Librarian politely answered his thoughts, “These are the lives you refused and possibilities. The Library remembers every decision abandoned.” Silence settled over the chamber and the books dissolved in gray ash scattering across the obsidian floor before Rikelus asked about Rayleigh ShinRa and if she came here and how many times.

“She came here but never reached this place.” The Librarian stood up his sheer height becoming apparent or was it that the chamber itself had simply lowered around it? "Rayleigh ShinRa entered the Library four hundred and twelve times."

A book appeared in its hand and he flipped through the pages continuing to answer the azure haired man’s inquiry, “She had opened every page she was permitted to read. She did not discover this chamber because it cannot be discovered it can only be inherited. There is a difference between seeking knowledge and accepting responsibility for what knowledge demands."

"Rayleigh sought answers." Rikelus responded blurting the words out as his mind began connecting the dots she came seeking ways to carefully curate the perfect scenario for the seraphim protocol to be initiated making arrangements down to the last detail and they’d played right into her hand.

"You sought burdens." The Librarian responded before flipping to another page reading from it, “She believed understanding would grant her dominion. You believed understanding would demand sacrifice. So the Threshold opened but understand this Rikelus James ShinRa no heir has crossed this threshold alone."

Rikelus followed its gaze noticing that the Librarian's endless eyes softened by the smallest imaginable degree. The chamber itself seemed to breathe before he spoke "She is the witness." Those words seemed to carry immeasurable gravity.

"No burden entrusted by the Library may be borne by one soul alone. Power isolates, Truth Isolates, Memory Isolates until you are lost to the Library. It has always been so but remembrance to retain self requires another.”

It was rather interesting if you really thought about it Rayleigh’s lessons were counterintuitive to becoming a true heir to the abyss. Strength through solitude was nothing if you’d lose yourself to power of possibility. Control through detachment meant you’d find yourself wandering in someone else’s memories. The Librarian shattered all of Rayleigh’s principles with a single sentence.

"That is why Rayleigh could never become what she wished to be. She surrendered every witness she ever loved and you did not.”

@ofgeneticperfection

He looked down at his own sunkissed hand, slowly flexing the fingers as wisps of black ichor briefly surfaced beneath his skin before disappearing once more. "She can afford to lose a hundred moves if it means winning the hundred and first. So we stop trying to out-plan her. We can't because we've only been alive for a few decades. She's been thinking in centuries.” As Isrieal spoke of the Black Library, his expression shifted to something curious.

"The Black Library...I’ve only brushed against its power for a week but it could contain some secrets worth unraveling. I think answers exist there  but I don't think they're free.”

"As for the miasma if it carries echoes then they shouldn't flow in only one direction. The problem is I've spent my entire life trying to make that connection quieter and suppress it not make it stronger. If I reach back I can't promise she'll never know but if she's as certain as she pretends to be certainty breeds blind spots ya’know. I suppose it’s worth a try."

Those glowing crimson red eyes studied her for a minute she acted differently when there was a big obstacle in her path she didn’t have  a plan for and her machinations had failed she went full blown detective mode she was actually kinda cute

“We should take the initiative instead of run—I need to find a way to become an equal participant to the miasma so I become unreadable. I also think I need to visit the black library with you this time and know what history refuses to remember. Since the Black Library contains unrealized possibilities it may yield some clues. We could setup a clever diversion here using the possibilities to make it nearly impossible to distinguish what we would do next.”

“Essentially we could give her a thousand maps to follow and quietly walk off the edge of one of them.”

Her voice was alluring and he could feel the subtle shift in her breathing against his flesh. She had a deliberate cadence to her words and her fingertips lingered a fraction of a second longer than they normally did. She was acting he knew it anyway but the heat within him stirred with her lips brushed his jawline. His pulse quickened at that familiar proximity his hand rose slowly settling against the small of her back drawing her closer.

“Maybe you have you change everything you touch because you make them question what they were before they met you.” His voice dropping to little more than a breath giving into the miasma instead of fighting it or trying to hold it back. When his forehead touched hers and her lisp met the negative lifestream answered before he did and the air shuddered. Years of restraint cracked at once black wisps seeped from beneath his sleeves like ink bleeding into water, curling around his boots before climbing higher in slow, graceful spirals. Shadows stretched impossibly long across the room, swallowing the corners as though the light itself had become uncertain.

It gathered around them not as something violent, but possessive as if recognizing a truth its bearer had denied for too long the mattress beneath them darkening as the walls trembled with faint whispers too old to belong to any living tongue.

"And what kind of person were you before you met me?" She questions in response, keeping her forehead against his own but being mindful of the room vanishing into darkness. As much as she wanted to be distracted, she couldn't be. She draws in breath and turns her gaze from him, looking at the room as they float in the darkness. "What is this?" She whispers, feeling his grip tighten upon her body. She could only hope he could learn control over this to the point of blinding Rayleigh.

"Can you get us to the Black Library from here?" She asks quietly, as if afraid the dark itself were listening. "You were the tactical man in the army. I need you to help figure out all those diversions. Overload the abyss. I think the Library would be a good place to start to get some information." He said it wouldn't be free, but what would it cost? The floating feeling was unsettling; she didn't mind him holding onto her. In fact, she hoped he wouldn't let go. The sooner he could call the library and not just this void, the better.

Something within her stirs in response to the darkness, a brief shudder reminding her it was there, a quiet respite that it was okay. Hades was part of that element, and it was with them. "Rike." She says a bit louder to get him to open his eyes and see what was happening. "Get us anywhere but here." Her voice demands but her eyes beg.

And what kind of person were you before you met me?

A quiet laugh escaped him that was almost nostalgic as he thought about it, “The kind that believed surviving to complete blood oaths was enough. I mistook endurance for living. I thought if I buried enough of myself ya’know things would change. I suppose you reminded me there e was still someone left worth finding. You ruined the lie I'd spent years telling myself."

The abyss swelled curiously around them as his expression grew thoughtful ancient shapes drifted past in the darkness as towering shelves appeared with a broken cathedral in the distance. The cathedral had various swords planted around it and faces of people that vanished the moment you’d try to recognize them. He could see it in the distance from outside of the window of the Black Library.  

"I don’t think the Black Library is somewhere with fixed coordinates I think it grows around us whenever the abyss recognizes a question worth answering." She had made a valid point that they needed to get tactical and think bigger Rayleigh had spent decades preparing for people to run, hide, deceive, fight, and all possibilities. We beat someone like that by becoming less predictable and impossible to classify. He landed with her onto the obsidian marble floor their feet touching solid ground again.

"Every version of myself that could have existed. Come forth and find a path forward and report to me." His voice steadied as the strategy formed speaking to the abyss and the darkness around him responded by making countless silhouettes emerged from it. Some wore SOLDIER uniforms, other’s officer coats, Turk uniforms, or executive suits. Some were scarred others were untouched by battle. One still wore the face of the frightened young man he had once been the first time their plane went down in Wutai.  Another carried eyes colder than Sephiroth's seemingly from the worst possible outcome. They came and went on the different multitude of levels grabbing books, interacting with possibilities, studying, learning.

“I think I understand what we need to do we make Rayleigh have to consider every possibility and ever pathway regardless of how inconsequential. Having her walk all paths would definitely derail her.” It was a rather solid plan given the circumstances to use a method to feed to the abyss a stream of endless possibilities to have to action against. I suppose it was the only path forward at this point and his expression seemed to sober when she asked what the cost was.

"You asked what it costs. I don’t know the toll exactly for being here too long but I think it costs certainty. The deeper we go and longer we stay  the less we'll know which memories belong to us and if we’re careless we might come back believing someone else’s life was our own.” That was a frightening thought that such knowledge in the endless shelves hidden the void would create a disturbing scenario. His hand found hers again firm and steady as he stepped in closer his forehead resting briefly against hers. There were both light but no shadows in the library as if their bodies didn’t constitute them and physics were broken.

Endless corridors finally stopped stretched beyond sight, lined with books bound in materials that had never belonged to any living creature. Some bled black ink onto the floor. Others whispered in languages forgotten before mankind had learned speech. High above, where a ceiling should have been, constellations flickered into existence—only to rearrange themselves into words that dissolved before they could be read.

"...How fascinating.”

The words were spoken not to the empty room but to something far older than either of them. Her fingers rested upon the microscope before she carefully removed the slide, holding it beneath the laboratory lights. The cells shimmered with impossible geometry for only an instant before settling back into familiar biology.

"You continue to mistake me for someone playing a game." She spoke aloud to herself her voice drifted in the empty chamber. "I stopped playing games before your ancestors learned to write."

A slow smile crept across her face she knew precisely why her presence awakened him in certain aspects. Answers given too early become cages and the abyss has always sought completion. Isrieal possessed something neither Jenova nor humanity could replicate.

"It always would have found you one way or another. Creation has always mistaken itself for the beginning. It rarely remembers what preceded it."

Rayleigh had no desire to rule what comes next only intending to survive long enouh to witness whether it deserves to exist. She handled the slide with care carefully placing it inside a case.

"I do hope you continue opposing me, Isrieal. It is one of the few variables I will never attempt to remove." She spoke to herself that carefully curated sadistic grin spreading across her alluring face.

The door had scarcely closed before Rikelus looked up from the chair beside the window. He had stopped reading long ago the journal resting in his lap had remained open to the same page for nearly twenty minutes. His glowing crimson red eyes met hers immediately the exhaustion behind them was difficult to miss.

"...I know."

His voice was quiet and more somber than usual it wasn’t defeated but contemplative. He listened without interruption as she paced every frustration, every suspicion, every half-finished thought. Only after she had finally sat down did he answer, "I don't think she's hiding something. I think she's hiding everything."

The distinction mattered he leaned forward, resting his forearms upon his knees.

"The problem with Rayleigh is that she's incapable of having one conversation every sentence she speaks is answering another one you didn't know to ask. I've spent my entire life trying to determine when she's lying. I've never caught her I realized she almost never lies but arranges the truth until it becomes impossible to recognize. It’s much more effective I suppose.”

He lifted the journal before responding to her, “I learned she isn’t afraid of us, Absolute, the planet, or anything for that matter and whatever she’s waiting for she believes neither of us can stop it regardless of what path we choose. That’s what bothers me—that ultimate certainty. It’s kind of strange ya’know it’s like someone that knows the inevitable is coming and just simply has to wait.”

He laughed once softly without amusement looking down at his hands, “I learned a bit—I’m able to manifest the black library now and these powers they don’t feel more closely to mine now. Although sometimes it feels like the abyss isn’t obeying me it’s simply just listening and I don’t know whether that’s better or meddlesome.”

"I have suggestions but I'm going to need some help here. Do you think we can find anything useful in this black library? There are a few things to consider. What happens if we leave and leave her free? And is she expecting us to leave? We have to figure out whatever she wants us to do and then do the exact opposite." She taps her chin. "But how do we know....does she expect us to stay?" She raises a brow.

"She told me that she knows all, feels everything that you've felt. You and I together even." She narrows her eyes. "She knows what you struggle with, what you want and why. Can't you do the same? She senses it through the connection of the miasma. Does that connection run both ways? Can you slip in undetected and see what she is expecting us to do, perhaps?"

That was one option; the other wasn't so careful. "Or we do try and leave but just push the self-destruct button as we do." It wouldn't be her first time letting reactors blow just to destroy the Jenvoa specimen contained within them. "Simple. But too much room for error." She furrows her brow as she thinks harder.

"I think you should try to feel her as she feels you. Quietly. We cannot do whatever she wants us to do or we lose so we have to be careful." She falls silent again, staring back at her own sharp gaze when something clicks. "She may not be afraid of anything happening to her but if we go after her anchor, her beliefs of everything that hold all her ideals in place. The one thing she absolutely needs to succeed." Her gaze moves to Rikelus and she flashes a grin.

"She does mention you an awful lot....the link with the abyss." She presses into the chair and rises to her feet. "What if you are said anchor after all..." She muses while making her way towards him, she leans over him and slowly glides a finger under his chin. "I bet she wouldn't expect me to destroy you." She says with a soft laugh. It was a disturbing thought and one couldn't tell if she meant it or not with that gleam in her eyes.

She also didn't trust Rayleigh to not be spying in some way or form. Even if it all had to be a perfect act she had to make it seem real. "Could I do that Rikelus?" She whispers in his ear. "Would you let me?" If she could evoke the thought in him, the modicum of fear of the reality, it might just translate back to her. Only then might it strike a hint of worry. Maybe he was good enough to read between the lines but even so she only hoped he would play along.

She trails her lips along his jaw. "I do seem to destroy everything I touch.." She whispers, smirking against his lips. "Or maybe just knowing what you want is enough to destroy you. Hm? And you want...me."

He looked down at his own sunkissed hand, slowly flexing the fingers as wisps of black ichor briefly surfaced beneath his skin before disappearing once more. "She can afford to lose a hundred moves if it means winning the hundred and first. So we stop trying to out-plan her. We can't because we've only been alive for a few decades. She's been thinking in centuries.” As Isrieal spoke of the Black Library, his expression shifted to something curious.

"The Black Library...I’ve only brushed against its power for a week but it could contain some secrets worth unraveling. I think answers exist there  but I don't think they're free.”

"As for the miasma if it carries echoes then they shouldn't flow in only one direction. The problem is I've spent my entire life trying to make that connection quieter and suppress it not make it stronger. If I reach back I can't promise she'll never know but if she's as certain as she pretends to be certainty breeds blind spots ya’know. I suppose it’s worth a try."

Those glowing crimson red eyes studied her for a minute she acted differently when there was a big obstacle in her path she didn’t have  a plan for and her machinations had failed she went full blown detective mode she was actually kinda cute

“We should take the initiative instead of run—I need to find a way to become an equal participant to the miasma so I become unreadable. I also think I need to visit the black library with you this time and know what history refuses to remember. Since the Black Library contains unrealized possibilities it may yield some clues. We could setup a clever diversion here using the possibilities to make it nearly impossible to distinguish what we would do next.”

“Essentially we could give her a thousand maps to follow and quietly walk off the edge of one of them.”

Her voice was alluring and he could feel the subtle shift in her breathing against his flesh. She had a deliberate cadence to her words and her fingertips lingered a fraction of a second longer than they normally did. She was acting he knew it anyway but the heat within him stirred with her lips brushed his jawline. His pulse quickened at that familiar proximity his hand rose slowly settling against the small of her back drawing her closer.

“Maybe you have you change everything you touch because you make them question what they were before they met you.” His voice dropping to little more than a breath giving into the miasma instead of fighting it or trying to hold it back. When his forehead touched hers and her lisp met the negative lifestream answered before he did and the air shuddered. Years of restraint cracked at once black wisps seeped from beneath his sleeves like ink bleeding into water, curling around his boots before climbing higher in slow, graceful spirals. Shadows stretched impossibly long across the room, swallowing the corners as though the light itself had become uncertain.

It gathered around them not as something violent, but possessive as if recognizing a truth its bearer had denied for too long the mattress beneath them darkening as the walls trembled with faint whispers too old to belong to any living tongue.

Our probably last chance to speculate on Part 3’s title before Summer Game Fest hopefully spills the beans! 👀🔥

Her voice had become quieter the kind of voice that seemed less spoken than remembered.

"Don’t mistake it for Sachi (幸)” Her fingers rested upon the edge of the table and the steel beneath them groaned not from strength but from her mere presence. Gravity itself acknowledged her. “Names imprison understanding." She tilted her head ever so slightly. In the line of study they were in curiosity has always been a more faithful servant than certainty. Her attention shifted not toward the darkness but through it as though walls, flesh, and distance were meaningless inconveniences.

A faint creepy smile crept across her sunkissed skin, “Rikelus already has chose a third path and that’s why he surpassed me already. Not in strength, strength itself is a child’s obsession the same as intelligent and knowledge. These are merely accumulated memory. He surpassed me because he remained capable of becoming something I no longer could. I abandoned pieces of myself long ago. He simply did not.”

She stepped away from the microscope the shadows in the room seemed reluctant to release Rayleigh. "I sought an ending. The world mistakes endings for destruction. It is a very human mistake "Everything living clings to what it is. I am interested only in what comes after."

What she saw today was the first honest thing this Planet has shown her in a long time. Rayleigh did not stop her she merely watched Isrieal drift toward the doorway, her expression as placid as still water. “He believes you awaken something dangerous and he is correct but not to reasons he imagines. Will he remain who he believes himself to be

or become who he has always been capable of becoming?  He fears what he would lose if he embraced it without restraint. That fear is the last chain binding the abyss. Chains are curious things they exist to be tested.

She turned back to the microscope, dismissing the conversation with effortless finality. "As for your request. I will honor it but understand this, Isrieal." Rayleigh's voice carried no threat  which made it all the more unnerving. "I am not granting privacy because you asked. I am granting it because the next chapter must unfold without my hand upon the page."

Knowledge has a peculiar tendency it changes the observer not because knowledge itself possesses power; but because every truth carries with it a corresponding law. Laws are not things that can simply be spoken into another mind. They must be discovered, suffered, contradicted, and ultimately accepted. A truth handed from one person to another is merely information; it has no weight, no gravity, no authority until experience carves it into the soul.

Revelation cannot be gifted it must be earned

The moment one truly understands something fundamental about the world, they are no longer capable of seeing it as they once did. Every certainty they possessed rearranges itself around that newly uncovered law, like stars bending around an unseen singularity. Ignorance offers the comfort of infinite possibilities; understanding collapses them into inevitability.

The observer is forced to surrender old identities, old convictions, and sometimes entire lives built upon assumptions that can no longer survive the light of comprehension. There are truths that do not merely answer questions they dissolve the one asking them. They strip away comforting illusions, expose hidden motives masquerading as virtue, and reveal that what mortals call choice is often nothing more than the visible surface of currents set in motion long before they were born.

To reveal such truths prematurely is not enlightenment but theft, for it robs another of the transformation required to bear them without breaking. Some laws are ancient enough that they refuse to be taught; they demand witnesses rather than students. They wait patiently for a mind to become sufficiently burdened by failure, sacrifice, longing, and loss before allowing themselves to be recognized. Until then they remain invisible, no matter how plainly they stand before one's eyes.

"It's curious that I could awaken such danger as you claim. Are you ever going to tell me why that is? Or maybe you don't even know." She fights the smirk that threatens to pull at the corner of her mouth, and it just makes her smile all the more uncanny. Isrieal had always been a chaotic catalyst, but she didn't want to have any part in whatever this game was. Why Rike was so reactive to her was the age-old question she'd been trying to answer for decades. Not just her but both of them together. She'd never met someone quite so addictive.

"You chase what comes after, but what if nothing comes after? Perhaps that is why people cling so hard to what is here and now. Don't chase nothingness." If Rayleigh wanted to stop playing games she would consider a conversation with her again, but for now she wanted to get far away. Not for the fear of Rayleigh, but for fear of what she might do in her presence. She glances to the slide still in her hands and nods. "Well then, I guess we'll see you when the time is right. Thank you for being so generous." Poison could never be spoken more sweetly. She backs from the room still smiling until the darkness swallows her.

Her smile drops the moment she turns, her steel gaze piercing the shadows like daggers as she makes her way back to their quarters to finally find Rikelus. "We can't stay here." She says the moment she sweeps through the door. "Rayleigh is up to something and I can't figure out what. She's playing games and she's hiding things." She was the pot to call the kettle black.

"You know I can only tolerate that for so long. I am trying so hard Rikelus." She says with a click of her teeth. "And besides that I have so much to do, and I can't do any of it here." She throws her arms into the air and lets them fall to her sides. "I was told to look for signs of what she clings too..." Her voice drops a tone quieter as she paces the window, thinking aloud. Told by who? Finally, she sighs and turns to face Rikelus with gentler eyes.

"I learned nothing by talking to her. I hope you were able to figure something out at least?" She inquires, leaving out the bit about Hades hiding within her. "Were you able to learn more about those powers of yours?" She plops herself into the cozy chair angled towards the center of the room facing the bed. "I need to at least hear something useful today." So far it was a whole lot of nothing. "I need your thoughts. You know we shouldn't stay here, right?" She just wasn't so sure they could leave without putting her back to sleep.

"...How fascinating.”

The words were spoken not to the empty room but to something far older than either of them. Her fingers rested upon the microscope before she carefully removed the slide, holding it beneath the laboratory lights. The cells shimmered with impossible geometry for only an instant before settling back into familiar biology.

"You continue to mistake me for someone playing a game." She spoke aloud to herself her voice drifted in the empty chamber. "I stopped playing games before your ancestors learned to write."

A slow smile crept across her face she knew precisely why her presence awakened him in certain aspects. Answers given too early become cages and the abyss has always sought completion. Isrieal possessed something neither Jenova nor humanity could replicate.

"It always would have found you one way or another. Creation has always mistaken itself for the beginning. It rarely remembers what preceded it."

Rayleigh had no desire to rule what comes next only intending to survive long enouh to witness whether it deserves to exist. She handled the slide with care carefully placing it inside a case.

"I do hope you continue opposing me, Isrieal. It is one of the few variables I will never attempt to remove." She spoke to herself that carefully curated sadistic grin spreading across her alluring face.

The door had scarcely closed before Rikelus looked up from the chair beside the window. He had stopped reading long ago the journal resting in his lap had remained open to the same page for nearly twenty minutes. His glowing crimson red eyes met hers immediately the exhaustion behind them was difficult to miss.

"...I know."

His voice was quiet and more somber than usual it wasn’t defeated but contemplative. He listened without interruption as she paced every frustration, every suspicion, every half-finished thought. Only after she had finally sat down did he answer, "I don't think she's hiding something. I think she's hiding everything."

The distinction mattered he leaned forward, resting his forearms upon his knees.

"The problem with Rayleigh is that she's incapable of having one conversation every sentence she speaks is answering another one you didn't know to ask. I've spent my entire life trying to determine when she's lying. I've never caught her I realized she almost never lies but arranges the truth until it becomes impossible to recognize. It’s much more effective I suppose.”

He lifted the journal before responding to her, “I learned she isn’t afraid of us, Absolute, the planet, or anything for that matter and whatever she’s waiting for she believes neither of us can stop it regardless of what path we choose. That’s what bothers me—that ultimate certainty. It’s kind of strange ya’know it’s like someone that knows the inevitable is coming and just simply has to wait.”

He laughed once softly without amusement looking down at his hands, “I learned a bit—I’m able to manifest the black library now and these powers they don’t feel more closely to mine now. Although sometimes it feels like the abyss isn’t obeying me it’s simply just listening and I don’t know whether that’s better or meddlesome.”

The word escaped quietly almost inaudibly as she spoke "I have misunderstood the equation."

Her fingers adjusted the microscope one final time before she slowly leaned back. For the first time in centuries...something had surprised her and it was nature itself. “the key is rejection that lasts long enough for both sides to change. Inadverently I ave been my greatest obstacle in my centuries attempting to strengthen and perfect humanity. Removing their weaknesses and elevating them prevented the mutations I required. Every attempt met greater resistance and the genome defended itself the body preserves its identity refusing replacement.”

Rayleigh ShinRa let out a laugh that seemed to linger before she whispered the words "How...remarkably human.”  A faint smile appeared on her face as she understood the differences after studying her blood. She was in a state where her body stopped fighting and yielded becoming reception to the ascension instead of interpreting the evolution as an attack.  

"I require quieter genes that do not dominate and are willing to sleep. Recessive.” Her eyes became distant as countless possibilities assembled themselves into a single conclusion. The word left her lips almost reverently. A thousand years of research reorganizing itself before her eyes.

Her perfect reflection shimmered within the glass and the Seraphim Protocol unfolded within her mind, no longer as a weapon of forced perfection, but as a patient inheritance. Generation after generation a dormant covenant written into humanity's blood powerful enough to decouple them from the lifestream invisibly and remove the trump card the planet had against them.

Her gaze drifted beyond the laboratory, into the endless crimson depths beneath the Planet and somewhere within the abyss...The old god smiled the corners of her lip curving almost resisting the natural shape of her mouth before she snorted, “You believe he is jealous?"

Her crimson eyes met hers unwavering and ancient without judgement but possessing keen observation, "I suppose that would be the expected conclusion."

She stepped closer not enough to invade Isrieal's space just enough that the crimson glow reflecting from the abyss danced softly across both of their faces. "The truth is considerably less complicated. I already understand Rikelus.” The words were spoken with complete certainty as she continued, “I’ve known him for a *very long time* how he thinks what he chooses to do, which principles he will refuse to abandon. I know the burdens he willingly carries. There is very little mystery left. I’ve been listening the whole time through the tainted ichor that’s within our blood.

She finally looked back toward Isrieal the admission carried unusual weight. The laboratory itself seemed unusually still even the suspended materia rotated more slowly, as though reluctant to interrupt the conversation. Rayleigh folded her hands neatly behind her back her lips curling up again, “The miasma does not obey the quaint limitations of distance every droplet of that black ichor remembers it’s progenitor. I know every argument, every confession, every lie, every laugh, every silence that carried more meaning than words. I heard every heartbeat that quickened when the other entered the room.”

Her voice never rose it remained disturbingly calm and her lips curled again making her facial expressions more ominous, “I heard the nights when *neither of you slept* and the mornings where he convinced himself he was fine. I know every scar, every failure, every trimph, I also know every time he wished I had simply been his mother."

She fights the welling pride and sarcasm that so badly wanted to correct Rayleigh, demean her. With a roll of her eyes she looks back towards Rayleigh and breathes a soft sigh. She had to not piss her off until she knew how to deal with her. "I don't think you are quite right." She points out gently, leaning in closer. "If I may offer advice...because none of us are perfect." She nearly chokes on those words. "We only learn by being...receptive." She tilts her head. "I think you look at things too black and white. There is nothing recessive about my cells. They don't yield or give in. It's the opposite. Resilience. They resist and then they...conquer." She smirks slightly.

"If they yielded to Jenova's cells, then I would have ended up like all the others. Just a puppet of hers. My resilience changes things and I'm not so sure that is a trait that can be mimicked. I've already tried to put my cells into others in hopes of saving them from degradation and madness. It didn't work..." She sighs. "I know you are fascinated but I'm not sure that it means anything."

She leaves her with the slide and glides around the room, curiously eyeing the other equipment and modules while running her hand along the counter. That motion slowly draws to a stop when she admits her connection to Rikelus. Facing away, Isrieal squeezes her eyes shut tight before responding.

"As someone with psychic connections myself, I know that you can shut that off. You listen because you want to listen. I find that a bit invasive." She turns to look back at her. "Though you must know that he hesitates to give into his desires of me because something about me makes him lose control. Or so he thinks. If I have such an impact on those powers then...what does that mean?" She lifts a brow. A rhetorical thought for Rayleigh to ponder.

"I only asked for privacy; that shouldn't be too hard to honor." She wanders towards the doorway. "I think I should go see what he is up to." She hesitates at the frame once more. "Are you so sure he hasn't surpassed you? He is just afraid to yield to his true powers and truly give in. I know what that's like...I was there once. But it's too late to go back now." Whatever the hell that meant. She flashes a soft smile, an apologetic gaze as she turns to leave and find Rikelus.

Her voice had become quieter the kind of voice that seemed less spoken than remembered.

"Don’t mistake it for Sachi (幸)” Her fingers rested upon the edge of the table and the steel beneath them groaned not from strength but from her mere presence. Gravity itself acknowledged her. “Names imprison understanding." She tilted her head ever so slightly. In the line of study they were in curiosity has always been a more faithful servant than certainty. Her attention shifted not toward the darkness but through it as though walls, flesh, and distance were meaningless inconveniences.

A faint creepy smile crept across her sunkissed skin, “Rikelus already has chose a third path and that’s why he surpassed me already. Not in strength, strength itself is a child’s obsession the same as intelligent and knowledge. These are merely accumulated memory. He surpassed me because he remained capable of becoming something I no longer could. I abandoned pieces of myself long ago. He simply did not.”

She stepped away from the microscope the shadows in the room seemed reluctant to release Rayleigh. "I sought an ending. The world mistakes endings for destruction. It is a very human mistake "Everything living clings to what it is. I am interested only in what comes after."

What she saw today was the first honest thing this Planet has shown her in a long time. Rayleigh did not stop her she merely watched Isrieal drift toward the doorway, her expression as placid as still water. “He believes you awaken something dangerous and he is correct but not to reasons he imagines. Will he remain who he believes himself to be

or become who he has always been capable of becoming?  He fears what he would lose if he embraced it without restraint. That fear is the last chain binding the abyss. Chains are curious things they exist to be tested.

She turned back to the microscope, dismissing the conversation with effortless finality. "As for your request. I will honor it but understand this, Isrieal." Rayleigh's voice carried no threat  which made it all the more unnerving. "I am not granting privacy because you asked. I am granting it because the next chapter must unfold without my hand upon the page."

Knowledge has a peculiar tendency it changes the observer not because knowledge itself possesses power; but because every truth carries with it a corresponding law. Laws are not things that can simply be spoken into another mind. They must be discovered, suffered, contradicted, and ultimately accepted. A truth handed from one person to another is merely information; it has no weight, no gravity, no authority until experience carves it into the soul.

Revelation cannot be gifted it must be earned

The moment one truly understands something fundamental about the world, they are no longer capable of seeing it as they once did. Every certainty they possessed rearranges itself around that newly uncovered law, like stars bending around an unseen singularity. Ignorance offers the comfort of infinite possibilities; understanding collapses them into inevitability.

The observer is forced to surrender old identities, old convictions, and sometimes entire lives built upon assumptions that can no longer survive the light of comprehension. There are truths that do not merely answer questions they dissolve the one asking them. They strip away comforting illusions, expose hidden motives masquerading as virtue, and reveal that what mortals call choice is often nothing more than the visible surface of currents set in motion long before they were born.

To reveal such truths prematurely is not enlightenment but theft, for it robs another of the transformation required to bear them without breaking. Some laws are ancient enough that they refuse to be taught; they demand witnesses rather than students. They wait patiently for a mind to become sufficiently burdened by failure, sacrifice, longing, and loss before allowing themselves to be recognized. Until then they remain invisible, no matter how plainly they stand before one's eyes.

Blank under the cut. Found here.

Tagged by: No one. I snagged it. fufufu. Tagging: @engineering-robotics @katana-otoko @ofgeneticperfection @rikelusshinra @your-worst-nightmare-elena And anyone else interested

Blank under the cut. Found here.

Tagged by: No one. I snagged it. fufufu. Tagging: @engineering-robotics @katana-otoko @ofgeneticperfection @rikelusshinra @your-worst-nightmare-elena And anyone else interested

Cissnei weighed almost nothing because of his unique constitution and her deadweight was near inconsequential. With one smooth motion, he bent slightly, slipped his left arm beneath the back of her knees, and lifted her completely off the ground effortlessly as if she were sleeping instead of collapsing from enough poison to kill most men twice over.

Her head rested against his shoulder, loose strands of ichor-stained copper hair brushing against the battered pauldron of his uniform his crimson eyes lingered on the darkness only a second before turning to look behind him he hadn’t heard anymore scratching. Ravens instinctually knew that unique characteristic of him was a predator and they were simply food.

Rikelus reached down briefly, scooping the discarded gravity materia from the cavern floor before slipping it into one of his utility pouches. "I traded materia with you once and look where it got us Fuhito." He passed through the caverns with her quickly and even at a faster pace once he cleared the mouth of the caverns until he reached the men everyone of them froze. The lieutenant stood covered in black dried ichor, splashed of crimson, and a smear of purple around his mouth. His coat was torn his face streaked with dried blood.

"Boys." His voice carried with effortless authority. "I'd appreciate it if we all agreed this has been a thoroughly unpleasant evening." A few exhausted chuckles escaped the infantry despite themselves this was good they were still capable of laughing it meant they hadn’t been completely broken.

"Form security." He barked the order quickly and immediately the surviving SOLDIERs snapped back into formation.

Four moved ahead four took the flanks and the remaining infantry established a staggered rear guard, rifles trained on every branching tunnel. No soul dare argue not after what they’d witnessed the march back through the mountain to their camp passed in tense silence. Every distant scrape made fingers tighten around triggers every shadow looked alive. Twice they heard shrieks echo through forest and felt like the mountain was going to take its vengeance on him. No one stopped moving for about a solid hour. Until they reached the ShinRa encampment where cheers erupted almost immediately.

"CONTACT! They're back! Medical!" Several medics sprinted across the muddy clearing carrying field equipment while engineers rushed to secure the perimeter. The moment Rikelus crossed the barricade, two combat medics met him. "Poison exposure," he said before they could ask. "Strong shit—probably Class IV. She's been fighting it for a couple of hours."

The senior medic's expression hardened before he barked “get her into treatment tent two." within moments Cissnei had been transferred carefully onto a field cot. An intravenous hydration pack with a heavily dose of remedy was started immediately. The clear antidotal fluids dripping steadily through reinforced tubing into her arm. Another medic prepared an Esuna transdermal patch, pressing the enchanted medical seal gently against the side of her neck. Faint green runes illuminated beneath the transparent dressing as restorative magic slowly began neutralizing what the potion could not reach that was in the dermis area. The senior medic doubted that color wouldn't return to her face until morning.

The medic finally exhaled causing the lieutentant to give him a single nod of affirmation that he’d perform his job well, “wake me if that changes." He didn't wait for further conversation instead, he left the peculiar stillness only military encampments knew after surviving catastrophe. Generators hummed making white noise the drown out the sounds of the jungle and mechanics worked beneath portable floodlights while night shift guards brewed coffee strong enough to wake the dead.

Infantry sat around ammunition crates cleaning rifles with shaking hands. This type of life was messy and comforting to them where ordinary was stale and bitter. Rikelus eventually ducked beneath the canvas flap of his own command tent. Compared to the outside, it was almost civilized a folding desk occupied one corner beneath several electric lanterns. Maps of the mountain system were pinned across one wall with colored strings and handwritten notes marking patrol routes, cave systems, supply caches, and known Raven sightings. Stacks of mission reports competed for space with maintenance requests, requisition forms, casualty lists, and half-finished after-action reports.

His makeshift office far from Junon where they’d already erected the golden statue of him.  Above the desk sat several framed photographs the largest showed Rikelus standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside Heidegger after the fall of Gorki both men wore broad victorious grins beneath soot-covered faces giving each other a clasped hand squeeze solidifying the security forces and the military at their their feet lay the shattered remains of Gorki's weapon, split cleanly in half where Rikelus had destroyed it during the battle. ShinRa propaganda photographers had perfectly timed the shot, capturing the two officers framed beneath rising smoke and triumphant infantry raising their rifles in celebration.

It had appeared on recruitment posters for months afterward beneath the slogan:

"Strength Secures Tomorrow." [ honorable mentions to @warprotocol ]

Another photograph showed Rikelus seated around a campfire with several members of his company, helmets discarded, sharing coffee and burned rations while someone inevitably made fun of one another. There were no medals in that picture just tired soldiers smiling because they had survived another day and Heidegger telling them some story about how he’d dehorned a Behemoth because it wouldn’t stop following him. One of his favorite stories that sounded like tall tale but the men knew differently they were aware of his strength that was within the top five in all of ShinRa.

On his desk sat his favorite sword the one that tapped into that abyssal power inadvertently, Calamity Fang, resting carefully against the dark on the right hand side. He tossed the battle torn requiem sword off to the side into another pile of weapons that were visually blunted or damaged from the way he used them. The elder ShinRa brother lowered himself into the chair with a tired sigh looking at everything he’d left on the table, paperwork, mission reports, casualty confirmations, requests for reinforcements.

Someone had to do it the tedious administrative work of running a military campaign outside medics fought to save the wounded engineers rebuilt defenses, SOLDIERS finally slept, and inside the tent lantern light illuminated page after page as Rikelus quietly filled out report after report in his familiar, meticulous handwriting.

Only once did his pen stop his eyes drifted toward the medical tent visible through the slightly parted entrance flap. He remained there for several seconds then, without another word, he returned to his paperwork morning would bring questions. Tonight, it was enough that everyone who could still be saved had made it home. When he had felt he sufficiently caught himself up Rikelus pushed himself away from the desk with a tired groan, rubbing at the bridge of his nose before glancing down at the black blood that had dried across his sleeves.

Raven ichor his own blood dust from the mountain he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began anymore. The lantern hanging from the center pole of the command tent swayed gently as he crossed into the partitioned corner that served as his quarters. A military style double cot, battered storage locker, and portable shower rig fed by a lukewarm water tank the engineers had managed to assemble from salvaged equipment.

He reached for the clasps of his pauldrons first one by one, the pieces of armor landed on the wooden bench with dull metallic thuds. He disassembled the pieces before peeling off his combat jacket where dried blood had glued portions of the fabric to his skin. The discarded garment joined the growing pile beside his boots.

Someone tuned a battered radio to music giving the camp some life as he walked to the shower and twisted the valve. Not river cold nor hot steamy water hissed through the showerhead. The first stream struck his shoulders, washing away layers of dust and grime in dark rivulets that disappeared through the grated portable floor. Black Raven ichor dissolved first, followed by dried crimson streaks and the fine gray powder of pulverized stone.

He closed his eyes letting the water wake his muscles back up and cause them to contract there were no whispers from the miasma only water. When he finally stepped out, a clean towel hung waiting from a nearby hook. He dried off methodically before opening the narrow locker beside his cot. Folded with military precision inside sat a fresh uniform it wasn’t formal SOLDIER attire nor ceremonial dress it was his preferred fiend clothing  a matte-black tactical jumpsuit like what the mechanics wore. Extremely flexible, able to blend into shadows, practical, comfortable, and above all inscribed with runic inscriptions to boost magic defense. An area in which he’d welcome help of all sorts. He stepped not the fabric and pulled the zipper steadily upward until it rested just beneath the collar of his neck. The familiar fit settled naturally across his frame, replacing the weight of armor with something infinitely lighter. He rolled each sleeve once at the wrist out of habit before he extinguished one lantern, then another, leaving only a single dim light burning above the maps.

Without bothering to leave the office section of the tent, he stretched out on the double cot  one arm draped across those glowing red crimson eyes. The canvas ceiling swayed gently with the night's breeze and he thought of something odd for a minute his stomach should have been growling. He hadn't eaten since before the operation, hours of marching running, fighting, casting magic should have left him peckish instead he felt uncomfortably full. Not the fullness that came after a meal; but, something deeper like every cell in his body had already been nourished by something it wasn't supposed to consume.

Slowly, he flexed his fingers strength answered immediately not soreness or fatigue, the countless bruises he'd earned throughout the engagement had faded completely from dull aches to something that didn’t registered anymore. Cuts that should have still been stinging had already closed, leaving no faint traces or crimson lines left behind. Even the deep stab wound he'd driven into his own thigh to break the miasma's influence had become little more than a tender memory beneath the black fabric of his jumpsuit. There wasn't an ounce of physical exhaustion left in him if anything...he felt like he had just woken from the best night's sleep of his life although mentally he felt somewhat taxed.

That realization unsettled him he sat upright on the cot, planting his elbows against his knees. "No..."

His body felt complete which was absolutely disturbing those muscles of his carried an unfamiliar density to them, as though every fiber had been rewoven into something stronger. His joints moved with unnatural smoothness. Even the lingering stiffness in his shoulder had nearly vanished. He slowly rolled it no pain even in the shoulder that had bothered him for years he reached down and pressed his thumb hard against an old scar running along his forearm his constitution itself felt different, harder as if he limits of his body had quietly shifted while he wasn't looking.

The Ravens it had happened after the Ravens not after any serum or battle it was after the miasma had devoured them and consumed their unnatural forces it hadn't felt like stealing it had felt natural as if his miasma had simply reclaimed something that already belonged to it and in doing so it had fed him. Devouring the ravens had strengthened him was this why Rayleigh had recommended he go to Wutai again.

Very rarely did he ever have any discourse with his mother during their conversations in Junon; but she was rather blunt about him needing to go to Wutai and fight in this campaign.  Did she know? He moved his hand thinking about losing control and a faint ripple of black mist leaked between his knuckles before disappearing just as quickly.

This caused him to frown because calling on it was easier now and he seemed to have some basic level of control. Containing it and understand it was a foreign thing that frightened him his mind wondered to how much stronger I'd become if there were more he uttered outloud, “no…” before he rose from the cot and procured a powerful sedative and downed the entire bottle. Within a few minutes he slipped into darkness on the cot not letting his thoughts drift to temptation or curiosity on the matter.

The knock came past sunrise three quick raps against the aluminum support pole in a professional and measured manner—too familiar.

His glowing crimson red eyes cracked open years of fighting in this jungle and waking to that rhythmic tap conditioning him to the noise and his body was erased the sluggishness most people carried between sleep and consciousness seemingly instantly. One moment he was asleep on the narrow field cot tucked into the corner of his office. The next he was upright "come in."

The canvas flap pulled aside a field physician stepped inside still wearing the white coat she'd thrown over her combat uniform sometime during the night. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, evidence that she'd seen little sleep herself. She glanced briefly toward him “Good morning, Lieutenant."

She stepped farther inside, carefully navigating around completed stacks of reports and supply manifests covering nearly every available surface. Her eyes lingered briefly on the photographs decorating the office lingering on the one of the company photographs around the campfire then back to him. "You've been asleep for... maybe six hours."

"Felt like five minutes." He responded after a bit of silence settled his thoughts long enough  that he realized she wasn’t here to discuss that particular topic with him which he bluntly mused out loud, "you didn't come here to discuss my sleep schedule."

The doctor folded her clipboard beneath one arm. "No sir your guest is waking up. The poison has been contained, neurotoxins almost completely broken down, Esuna patch has prevented any epidermal infection the remedy infusion handled the chemical side of it. The treatment isn’t restorative so she will probably be sore, maybe angry.”

Another pause before the response earned the smallest laugh Rikelus had managed since returning from the mountain "...i'd expect that even more."

"You should probably let me *examine* you too Sir."

"I'm fine." His automatic response slipped from his lips as if he’d trained the words into his very being causing her to sign and she mouthed I’ll survive as he uttered it as well, “I’ll survive.” She’d knew him quite well from her interactions with him causing him to provide a genuine response for once as he noticed her annoyance at him, “OK OK—I’ll stop pretending SOLDIER officers don't require medical evaluations and attend one rather than consider one."

Another silence settled between them this one lighter and less burdened, the doctor finally gesturing towards the medical tent outside. He walked over his desk and picked up a wax sealed letter with a unique character script with a V on it and walked stepping out into the cool morning air the first rays of sunlight spilled across the encampment, catching rows of tents, humming generators, steaming coffee pots, and soldiers already beginning another day's work. Life had resumed unabated by the travesties in the mountain as though the horrors beneath the mountain belonged to another world entirely.

Rikelus took one slow breath of the crisp morning air then following the doctor headed to the medical tent where he waited for the doctor to open the tent and went inside the canvas flap rustled softly as he entered allowing unfiltered morning light to dance across the ground. The medical tent had a few different openings above with screened texture allowing warm golden light to filter in from above instead of the harsh latern lightning. The smell of antiseptic mixed with brewed coffee and medicinal herbs lingered in the air. He found her exactly where the doctor had said. The IV remedy continued its slow, rhythmic drip into her arm while the Esuna patch rested against the side of her neck, its faint emerald runes pulsing every few seconds.

He quietly exhaled. "Well...you still look terrible but you’re too stubborn to die so that’s a plus" He folded his arms a faint grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. He was something else a bit of a mixture of the President and his mother he often tread the line between crazy and facetious with how he talked to anyone and everyone. Telling her she looked terrible more than once was something he doubt she’d heard in her life his blunt honesty something uniquely different than his brother.

"So unless you secretly plan on dying out of spite...I'd say you won. I suppose you should count your *lucky stars*" The humor faded slightly as he walked towards her he was reminded of the banter the men had about her this morning that he overhead walking to her tent. Some of the men talking amongst one another whether she was crazier than a S type SOLDIER. The consensus probably would have been flattering to her given another set of circumstances. The lieutenant dressed in a solid black jumpsuit pulled a folding chair closer and sat beside the cot and for a few moments he simply studied her.

Or the ever looming threat of a scientist wanting to drop in and steal her unconscious body… 

It pulses right behind Cissnei’s temples. This sharp, throbbing reminder of whatever neurotoxin had leveled her in the field. 

She blinks against the glare, her throat feeling like it's coated in ash. The absolute worst part isn't even the lingering ache in her limbs or the cold sweat dampening her cot. No. It's the sheer, compounding irritation of the situation.

 A Turk doesn't get blindsided. It’s sloppy. It’s a blemish on an otherwise clean record, and she is already anticipating the dry look Tseng will give her when she logs the incident report. 

Shit. With her phone gone, she probably missed the check-ins. Which probably triggered Tseng to send someone to fetch her. If it was Reno and Rude, she have to face the relentless teasing of how SOLDIER had to clean her up off the floor. There went her reputation. 

Then she’ll be stuck on ‘vacation’ until they deemed her ready for the field again. Nothing irritated her more than being kept away from field work. 

She tries to sit up, but her stomach instantly heaves in protest. The antidote is clearly doing its job, aggressively flushing the remaining toxins from her bloodstream, but the process feels less like healing and more like a violent, chemical hangover.

"Damn it," she mutters, her voice a rough, gravelly rasp that barely carries over the ambient noise of the encampment.

Outside the tent, the camp is alive with the grating, mechanical efficiency of the Shinra military machine. Mag-loaders grind into gear, troopers shout coordinates, and the heavy, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of a helicopter's rotor blades vibrates straight through the earth and up into her cot, making her headache spike with a vengeance. Every sound feels amplified, grating directly on her raw nerves.

She glances to her right. Resting on a metal supply crate is a nearly empty IV bag and, right beside it, her shuriken. At least something of her’s was retrieved. Though it had been left in her lodging prior to being nabbed during the festivities. 

Seeing the weapon does soothe her pride slightly, but the irritation remains, simmering just beneath the surface. Someone is going to have to pay for the sheer inconvenience of this recovery time. Hearing footsteps crunching on the dry dirt outside, heading straight for the tent flap, Cissnei forces herself onto one elbow, ignoring the wave of vertigo. If some low-level infantryman is coming in here to offer her a lukewarm ration, he is going to bear the brunt of a very bad mood.

Alas, it was Rikelus, coming in with his assumed humor. Probably closer to the level of dad jokes. She huffed and fell back against her pillows to stare at the ceiling in response to her looking terrible. A scathing retort, showing she hadn’t quite lost her wit, "That’s just the antidote working its way through my system. What's your excuse? Natural causes?" 

She looked away from him, a frown touching that pale complexion. “You can’t make up your mind, can you? Earlier you stated that I looked too eager to die. Now you are saying that I am too eager to live, unless I had been planning to die.” She gave another soft huff. He was trying to figure it out because she refused to talk about the background or why they were so angry. It wasn’t simply because she was a spy. “Lucky Stars or star crossed: to be determined.”

He pulled up closer to her cot. He was determined to be the hammer in her headache today. She felt herself instinctively wanting to inch away from the azure haired man. As if her subconscious told her that the strange dream of seeing him hungry and cannibalising was real.

She stubbornly refused to move. 

Her eyes traced to the letter on the counter but she didn’t reach for it yet. Last time Veld gave her a letter, he had decked her so hard in the solar plexus she passed out. When she awoke the note had been crumpled into her clothes. She wondered if this note was passed as kindly to Rikelus. He did nothing without reason. “What is this? Writing letters now?”

During this time studying her and listening Rikelus noticed a fresh cup of unmistakably brewed Junon black coffee and carefully reached out to the enamel mug thanking the medical staff and lifting it to his lips to sip slowly. It wasn’t anything to write home about compared to fancy western teas or south eastern coffee beans; but it was wildly consistent and you kind of got used to the shit after a while.

He looked suspiciously well rested for someone that walked out of hell and back with her. His black tactical jumpsuit was zipped neatly to his collar, sleeves rolled once at the wrists, and for the first time in what felt like days there wasn't a drop of blood on him. He took a second sip from the mug with a deadpan expression on his face now before he remarked, "I appreciate you noticing."

The nearby nurse let out an involuntary snort before pretending to reorganize medical supplies. She thought the Lieutenant was a good man in his heart but sometimes his bedside manner could be flamboyant or facetious because he’d walk straight into hell and continue to bring people back for treatment with a high success level. The nurse hurriedly excused herself, hiding another laugh as she disappeared through the opposite flap leaving the two of them alone.

Rikelus had adjusted the folding chair from his position he was sitting there rather casually with it facing backwards resting his sunkissed forearms across the backrest more less like a lieutenant and more like someone that owned the fucking company.

“Paper."

"Ya'know ancient technology used when people wanted to communicate with one another over long distances.”

Rikelus said nonchalantly lifting the coffee up to his mouth taking another drink from it, “The devil in the details is in the seal—I know whose signet that is and you do too. My guess is when he didn’t hear from you—he sent written correspondence.” Rikelus lifted that mug to his lips taking a long sip of the coffee before he sat it aside on the table retorting trying to be encouraging at least after his dry humor.

Truthfully, he fit in quite well with the directors and aristocrats who had old money with his rich and diverse life experiences, sharp tongue, and even sharper wit. Rikelus ShinRa possessed a peculiar quality that allowed him to drift effortlessly between worlds that ordinarily despised one another. One evening he could be sitting around a rain-soaked campfire with infantrymen, sharing burnt coffee and arguing over whose rations from the Cosmo Café tasted least offensive.

The next, he could be seated beneath crystal chandeliers among directors, industrial magnates, old Junon families, and aristocrats whose fortunes had been measured in generations rather than years. The funny thing was he never looked out of place in either because he’d lived enough lives to understand them getting the best blend of practicality, discipline, perspective, and curiosity creating someone who really knew what made ShinRa work.

His knowledge was never performative he genuinely enjoyed learning and didn’t mind hard work and that alone made him the most dangerous ShinRa. Old money recognized it almost immediately even the Van Der Wald’s treaded carefully around him. He was tactful in he rarely humiliated people but often humbled them believing intelligence should sharpen conversations, not end them.

“Men like him don't write because they have something to say."

"They write because they found something too important to leave unsaid.”

He reached up and ran sunkissed fingers through that deep azure blue hair pushing it to the side less haphazardly and more stylized, “Fuhito is a bigger problem than the brass thinks—we cut a deal with him early on in the war and he became obsessed with ShinRa and became a fanboy of Hojo’s work. You probably know as much as I do about it—and his science projects. When you get your bearings come and see me if you want to strike back and get that motherfucker before he shows up again on his terms.”

Rikelus was pretty candid about his feelings regarding Fuhito he’d been assessing her the entire time that she was there out of the chaos of battle he could really see her. The calluses on her hands, old scars she’d probably stopped noticing years ago. The posture of someone who slept lightly because she'd learned young that safety was temporary as well as the stubborn refusal to admit she hurt. He’d seen *that* look before but it wasn’t in SOLDIER it was in the orphans and forgotten children who became cogs in ShinRa. It was in the Junon dockworkers with slipped discs and still reported for shifts because families depended on them. Engineers well past their prime climbing mako reactor towers during storms without complaint. Someone had to keep the system running when nobody else would and these people never thought of themselves as heroes but only as responsible.

As he got up from the seat he picked up the laboratory report flipping through it scanning the pages with one brow slowly rising as he read the toxicology findings. This wasn't some improvised poison or mass-produced compound. “You must have really pissed him off venom refined from a rare deep water fish, every drop has to be painstakingly milked from its dorsal spines before it loses potency. Someone had to keep the thing alive long enough to extract it without getting themselves killed. You must have been a spectacular inconvenience to him. That's personal—not assassination.”

He sat the report within an arm’s reach and waved bye to her giving her some privacy as he left the tent. He looked normal enough compared to his state of losing control. He knew the very thing she was up against, assuming the world would fall apart if she wasn’t standing underneath, it holding it up. Truthfully he could have sat there needling her but it wouldn’t have helped her feel better. He left he tent and went back to a camp that had settled back into its usual rhythm it was painfully ordinary and he preferred it that way.

For him the thought of food simply wasn't there still he’d drank the coffee to look normal almost like a chameleon blending in his stomach remained quiet, still not empty but wholly satisfied. Outside of the tent he rolled up the sleeve of his black jumpsuit slightly more to the elbow an old scar crossing his forearm had faded. Although it wasn’t completely gone it was softened to the point it was barely visible as if the years had quietly been peeled away overnight he pressed against the muscle beneath it.

This time he'd physically checked it against what he reemembered and recalled from last night. It was more dense than before his unique constitution had always been exceptional but this was on an entirely different level consistent with the Raven’s adaptations. His body felt fundamentally more improved the only unfortunate side effect was he remembered the miasma devouring them. Every second of their strength pouring into him providing terrifying vitality and overwhelming fullness. He had expected the sensation to fade overnight instead it settled in like it belonged to him his body accepting the change without resistance as though somewhere beneath conscious thought it had already decided this was what it was meant to become.

Did she remember it didn’t look like it the poison had been severe hallucinations weren't uncommon in the report and memory distortion even less so part of him hoped she'd dismiss the entire encounter as fever and another part knew better.

Suits noticed details.

That’s what kept them alive if she remembered she hadn't mentioned it. He appreciated that more than she probably realized answers were nearly impossible and that conversation could wait if it ever happened at all. Some secrets weren't kept because they were convenient some were kept because giving them a name made them harder to contain.

For now he intended to keep this one buried beneath the mountain where it belonged even if, somewhere deep inside himself a quiet voice still wondered what else waited down there and whether the next encounter would make him stronger still.

The day you start enjoying war is the day you stop deserving to survive it. Isn’t that what you said Heidegger?

Rikelus walked further into the camp before slowed his pace just enough to fall into step beside Sergeant Gainsborough, one hand tucked into the pocket of his coat his expression remained composed, though the corners of his mouth hinted at something unusually relaxed.

"Sergeant Gainsborough."

He waited until he had the man's attention before continuing.

"Love in bloom, found on a battlefield, among the fray and grime, lost."