#spade.writes

Looking around reveals nothing, except for the fact that you hadn't finished packing up the things you'd been using to draw or pushed the chair in. He ignores that bit since you were just a child, and the chair was meant for an adult, but is slightly irritated that no one seems to have taught you to always finish cleaning up after yourself.

Stopping at the edge of the desk his irritation melts away as he stares down at what you had been drawing, a niggling curiosity filling him as he picks up what almost looks like a blueprint for a weapon. It looks like a shuangdao yet instead of the typical half-moon design the guard and hilt look like a taijitu, the blades more similar in shape to a guandao than regular single handed dao blades.

An interesting idea to be sure, and one drawn impressively clean considering the typical unsteadiness of a child's hand. Rolling it up he takes it with him, it should be a fun challenge to see if he could make your idea come to life.

The second time Yingxing sees you is a week later, as he's melting down another failed attempt at creating those shuangdao. You're holding General Huaiyan's hand as you trot along at his side, your head turning in every direction like you weren't sure what you wanted to look at most. Like this he can see the resemblance between the two of you, the shape of your eyes and the lines of your jaw are so similar it makes Yingxing wonder how he hadn't noticed your resemblance to his Master.

Barely seconds after he thinks this, your eyes connect with his and Yingxing smiles kindly at you. For some reason you startle, tucking your face into Huaiyan's side to hide from him, the same pale orange heliobus at your side swirling in what seems to be–amusement? Reassurance? Yingxing isn't quite sure, still unused to reading heliobi despite the near three decades he has spent on the Zhuming.

"Now, now, no need to be so shy. I told you about him, remember?" Huaiyan says gently to you, who must be his daughter, because Yingxing's Master had no relatives with children for you to have been the man's niece. You peek out from behind the General's leg, face scrunched up shyly and your eyes teary as you look up at Yingxing.

Looking at you properly you have to be eight to ten years old, and Yingxing actually can't believe that it has been that long since his Master had taken paternity leave. Even for a short-life species like himself, Yingxing swears that is was barely last year that Huaiyan had set aside his duties at the Flamewheel Forge to help his wife look after their new child.

Yingxing shakes himself out of his thoughts as he sees you start to shrink behind Huaiyan again, stepping away from the anvil he'd been working at and crouching near his Master. He smiles again at you, softer, less pronounced than he had before and making sure not to show any teeth this time, his hands hanging over his knees, palms in plain sight facing you. Perhaps he is treating you similar to the stray cats he feeds, but it works; you inch out from behind General Huaiyan, a tremulous smile on your face as a meek little greeting leaves your lips.

"I'm Yingxing, an apprentice of your father. It's nice to meet you, little one." Mentioning that seems to make you perk up, blatant interest lighting your face as you stare up at him. Though the words that come out of your mouth shock him, Yingxing gaping at you in surprise.

"Oh I know you! You're the one papa says has more arrogance than common sense!" You beam up at him despite the damning words leaving your lips, the gap between your teeth on display. Mechanically Yingxing's gaze slides from your face up to General Huaiyan standing behind you, though his Master has suddenly become quite interested in the ceiling of Flamewheel Forge.

"Is that so?" Yingxing grits out, eyebrow twitching. Discounting when he'd seen you the other day he had never met or spoken to you before, just what kind of stories had his Master been telling you about him? Before he could get too annoyed Yingxing hears a quiet giggle, drawing his gaze back down to you.

"Your projects sound so cool though Mister Yingxing, can I see one?" Your eyes shine with more genuine interest than most people, and it makes him pause. Yingxing was so used to all Xianzhou Natives other than his Master judging his ambitious projects, but as you stared up at him there was nothing but honest curiosity in your gaze.

"Okay." Yingxing folds immediately in the face of such innocence, standing back up before offering his hand to you. You look utterly delighted as you grab his hand in both of yours, your little pet twirling happily at your side–at least, the chiming it lets out sounds as if it is happy.

"Reeeeeen shush!" Yingxing hears you whine at the heliobi, likely attempting to be quiet yet not aware that that made it more obvious. It amuses him slightly, the fact your heliobi must have been teasing you going by how you reacted; he can only guess that it had been your enthusiasm about getting to see his work.

He doesn't find out the real reason until several months later, through a passing remark made by Huaiyan's newest apprentice Hanguang. The young man who looks so similar to how Yingxing used to they could have been mistaken for siblings, watches in fond amusement as you leave Flamewheel Forge running after the heliobi messenger your father had sent to collect you.

"That puppy crush she has on you is rather cute you know? I can only hope that if I ever have kids, that the people they crush on are as kind about it as you are." After saying that Hanguang leaves Yingxing alone, the other man heading further into the Forge back to his own workspace.

Yingxing however is frozen in place, staring down at the mess of canvas paper you had been doodling messy weapon ideas on. A puppy crush? It made sense of course, so much that Yingxing can only blame the fact he usually never spends extended amounts of time around children on the fact he hadn't picked up on it.

Yet Yingxing also has no clue how he hadn't picked up on it, now that he's thinking about it you act so differently around him compared to the other artisans that work for your father. Your eyes are always on him even though you shy away each time he catches you staring, until he could coax you into calming down again. The heliobi always by your side laughing each time you would switch to clinging to Yingxing, attached to his hand like a vice or hanging off his back when he needed both of his hands.

He had indulged your clinginess because of the fact that there wasn't really any children around your age, whose parents would be comfortable with them being near the Flaming Heart's daughter. Yingxing remembers what it was like to grow up with no one willing to get to know you, after all half the kids he had tried to befriend still acted like teenagers.

All Yingxing had wanted to do was to make sure you had someone you could rely on, since he hadn't had that as a child–even though Baiheng had tried, she was so busy as a pilot in the fight against the Plague Author. He couldn't imagine how lonely it was for you though, not with your father being the General of the Zhuming. Lonely enough that you had gotten Ren as a pet at least, and how lonely did a child have to be to turn to a heliobus for company?

On one hand Yingxing wonders if it had been a mistake, now that he knows of your crush on him. Had he done anything to accidentally encourage it? On the other hand he doesn't want to suddenly be cold to you, such a sweet little girl who had no friends because of the position her father held.

Would you grow out of it, if he just acted like normal? If he ignored your crush without damning you to the loneliness that had Huaiyan letting you keep a heliobi as a pet? Yingxing doesn't know, he can't remember having ever had a crush on Baiheng or any other adult as a child; but perhaps he doesn't remember because it had passed so quickly?

It's possible, he thinks, that it will just take longer for you to get over due to the differences between a short-life species like himself and a long-life species like you. The thought relaxes him, there is no need to shut you out for something that will pass by anyway. Yingxing goes back to cleaning up your messy blueprints, lips quirking at the sight of a sword that seemed to be floating around the stick figure wielding it.

The next time Yingxing sees you, he really can't believe that it took Hanguang pointing it out for him to notice your crush. Little sparks of flame linger on the end of your hair, a brilliant red that matches the artisanship commission-ship uniforms rather than the pale orange of your heliobi. Not only that but you fidget with your sleeves and top, always ducking your head and glancing at him when Ren says something he can't hear to you.

"Heh," Yingxing laughs at himself once you are gone again, shaking his head with a sardonic smirk. Maybe he really did have more arrogance than common sense, too stuck in his projects and proving that he was as good as any Xianzhou Native to notice something so obvious.

Ah well, it doesn't matter. Yingxing will continue to treat you as he always does, besides his Master had never complained about your little puppy crush. On top of that Huaiyan always seemed to prefer Yingxing to be the one to babysit you, though it was hardly a chore to look after such a well behaved child like you.

During the next festival Yingxing finds himself being the one to take you, since Huaiyan is too busy with his duties as General to take you himself. It's nearing the end of the night, when Yingxing gives into your begging and lets you have drag him towards the goldfish game, when another off-hand comment gives him an idea.

"What a cute little sister you have," the lady running the stall coos to Yingxing, as both of them watch you struggle to catch a goldfish with the paper net. The sight makes Yingxing's lips quirk up, but then what the woman had called you registers in his mind and his eyes widen.

"Oh, no she is..." Yingxing pauses, rolling the idea around in his head. If he makes himself into your big brother, then surely your puppy crush on him would die faster wouldn't it? Then you could develop one on someone your own age, and someone you won't outlive by centuries.

"Don't let her cuteness fool you, she's a little devil just like that pet of hers." Yingxing says instead of denying the connection, a warmth forming in his chest. He hasn't had family since the borisin tore his planet apart, part of him feels like he should have denied it; if not due to you being unrelated, then solely because Yingxing likely shouldn't be declaring himself to be your big brother without asking Huaiyan first.

But isn't that what he is already? Yingxing protects you when you are with him from the assassins you don't know exist, he is the first one to look after you when your father is busy. He knows all of your favourite things, knows how you want to make weapons that outshine any others ever made within the Xianzhou's long history. Aren't these the types of things an older brother does and knows?

Hearing a sniffle makes him shake himself out of his thoughts, focusing back on you and tensing at the sight of your eyes tearing up. Quickly he swoops in, standing behind you and grabbing the last one of the paper nets he had bought you. Yingxing puts it into your hand and wraps his hand around yours, guiding you into catching the one you had been trying to get. It is only after you cheer and the stall owner claps, that Yingxing realises what he's done.

Ah, I'm going to have to explain your new pet to Master Huaiyan, aren't I? Yingxing thinks, and yet he can't find it in himself to worry too much about the oncoming conversation. Not when you turn to him, a wide and brilliant smile on your face, flames sparking in your hair as you carefully hold the bag containing the little black and orange fish.

"Come on little flame, it's about time to go home now." Yingxing hums, holding a hand out to you. Usually you would cling to his hand immediately, but this time he watches as you swap between staring at him and the fish in your hands. A quiet huff of laughter escapes him at the sight of you, too worried about your new pet to latch onto him with your normal enthusiasm.

"Don't want to let them go, hmm?" He says playfully, though he doesn't wait for you to respond. Yingxing steps closer to you and crouches down, before reaching out and scooping you up into his arms. Standing back up Yingxing tucks you against his chest, unable to stop a smile crossing his lips as you curl into his neck while still clutching the fish bag.

You are fast asleep by the time he gets you home, and Yingxing has long since had to take over holding onto your prize. He grimaces slightly at the faintly disappointed look Huaiyan levels at him at the sight of the fish, but Yingxing stays silent not wanting to wake you up.

After a moment his Master relents and guides Yingxing to your bedroom, taking the fish off of his hands and leaving. Yingxing tugs the blankets on your bed back and lowers you down, taking a moment to remove your shoes before he tucks you in firmly. Yingxing lingers for a moment, gently brushing your hair aside and then leaving you to sleep.

A few months later Yingxing gets an opportunity he can't refuse, not with how short his life is and yet. When he sits you down–on what is likely the last day he will ever babysit you–and tells you, Yingxing feels his chest squeeze so tight he briefly wonders if he's having a heart attack. He can't stand the sight of you in tears, sobbing and wailing at the idea of never seeing your beloved big brother again.

"Don't cry little flame, we can write letters to each other!" Yingxing blurts out without thinking, just wanting your tears to stop. Not only does it work to stop your crying, but when he thinks about it for another minute the idea appeals to him very much.

"We might not be able to see each other for a long time, but as long as we write you wont loose me. It will be okay little flame, I promise." He crouches down to your height, giving you a reassuring smile as he holds his arms out. As he expected you launch yourself at him, making him grunt slightly as you cling to him like an octopus.

Humming he picks you up, even though Yingxing probably shouldn't be indulging you so much right before he's set to leave the Zhuming. Resting his chin on top of your head he sighs faintly, he's going to miss you once he's moved to the Luofu but the chance to make his own forge is just one he can't give up.

Unsurprisingly he gets a letter from you after only a week of living on the Luofu, and it makes the stress of being looked down upon by the artisan's here melt away. More surprising is the letter he gets from Huaiyan alongside your own, but when he read it his lips twitch up. It seems his Master isn't above spoiling you either, if he's using the fact a General's correspondence is delivered faster to make sure Yingxing gets your letters quickly.

Ignoring the mass of supply invoices and commission requests that he still has to go through, Yingxing sits down to write a reply to your letter first. Before he takes it to the post office to send it back to you, he decides on a whim to make you a hair stick. Yingxing crafts flame like ornaments the same colour as your heliobi for the end, smiling to himself as he imagines how excited you'll get at seeing it.

Two decades pass like that, through letters and gifts sent back and forth between the two of you from the Zhuming to the Luofu. Yingxing wonders sometimes if he should be sending you photos, of the sights of the Luofu, of his friends or the weapons he makes; but always ends up distracted, and rushing to send his latest letter off until he eventually forgets all about it.

It comes back to bite him, of course it does. It comes back to bite him when you decided to visit him, all grown up now without needing to get your father's approval to leave the Zhuming. Reading his Master's latest letter it bites him in the ass, because he has no clue what you look like anymore but now you're apparently going to be visiting him.

The only reason he knows you intend to visit at all is a throwaway line at the end of Huaiyan's letter, two days before you're set to arrive in Stargazer Navalia. And really you are just like your father, neither of you remembering to tell him anything until the last second yet Yingxing can't help but find it charming from you as apposed to how it irritates him from Huaiyan. Thankfully it is just enough time to get the guest room ready, and hastily clean up the mess that has accrued in his home due to his long hours in the forge.

When Yingxing goes to the docks to pick you up, he's thankful that Ren is by your side letting him easily recognise you; he sees you before you see him and you take his breath away, in a manner that has to be damaging for his health. As you look around–likely searching for him–the artificial sunlight makes you look sublime, like a divine emissary from stories he half remembers his mother telling him about.

The last time he saw you, you only reached his hips but from where he's standing, he thinks that now you at least reach his shoulders. Remembering how you had declared you would be taller than him when you grew up makes him smirk, but then you turn in his direction and it's like everything else falls away.

You're the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Yingxing could craft a million weapons in his meagre lifetime, but none would ever compare to the beauty you hold.

Is this why the Knights of Beauty insist in THEIR survival? Yingxing can't help but think, but it is a fleeting thought because in the next instance your mouth opens. Those beautiful lips part and he feels what the weapons he creates must feel when they are quenched because, because through his own fault what leaves your mouth is an excited cry of "Yingxing-gege!"

It's like a balloon has popped and the sounds around him come crashing down on him, but Yingxing makes sure to plaster on a smile as you draw closer; the burgeoning regret he feels isn't something you should concern yourself with, big brothers are supposed to look after their little sisters after all.

His smile turns more genuine as you wrap your arms tightly around him, Ren swirling around the two of you chiming happily. Yingxing has missed you during his past two decades on the Luofu, unable as he was to spare the time to visit you back on the Zhuming. Having you in his arms, even with the complicated mix of emotions in his chest, feels like coming home.

"It's good to see you again little flame," Yingxing sighs into your hair, basking in holding you for just a little longer before drawing back. Setting his hands on your shoulders, he pushes you back gently so he can look over you properly.

It wasn't just the light of the artificial sun behind you that had made you look beautiful, you were just naturally breathtaking. A kind of beautiful that would make heads turn your way, the idea of other people staring at you with desire fuelled by lust instead of love infuriated him. Made Yingxing grit his teeth and glance around the docks, shooting a dark glare at a few people that were staring.

"Gegeeeee," your whine recaptures his attention, Yingxing's gaze falling back onto your face–lingering on your pouting lips for barely a second, before he forces himself to look in your eyes. "Where are your friends you always talk about? Did they not want to meet me?"

Yingxing blinks at you, it wasn't surprising you wanted to meet his friends, but you had said that like you'd expected to meet them now. His eyebrows crease slightly as he removes his hands from your shoulders, crossing his arms and giving you a familiar exasperated look.

"Why would they be here? If it hadn't been for Master Huaiyan mentioning your visit in his letter, I wouldn't even be here to pick you up!" Yingxing exclaims in mild annoyance, though he can't find it in himself to stay angry at you. Not when your lips part cutely in shock, your eyes that shine like gems filling with embarrassment.

"I… did I… did I forget to send… you the letter I wrote?" You stammer meekly, red sparks flickering at the end of your hair. Yingxing sighs in both amusement and sympathy, Huaiyan's letter had been all about you passing your artisan finals so it isn't that shocking to learn you had intended to tell him and had simply forgotten.

"I'll make sure you can get to meet them before you have to go back to the Zhuming, okay? Just remember to warn me in advance next time you intend to visit me," Yingxing relents to you, as he always finds himself doing when it comes to you. It doesn't stop him from pinching your cheek though, smirking almost tauntingly at you as you whine at him.

Releasing your cheek he snatches your bags while you rub at the spot he'd pinched, smirk turning arrogant as you try to take them back from him. Yingxing just lifts them above his head out of your reach, teasing you about your height difference.

"Aw, what's wrong little flame? Can you not reach them?" He chuckles at the way you scowl up at him in response, resisting the sudden urge to bite your cheeks as they puff up so cutely. Yingxing lowers his arm again but refuses to let you take your bags back, instead he grabs your hand in his and tugs you after him.

He can feel it when you hesitantly intertwine your fingers together, but he doesn't protest it. No, in fact it softens his smirk back into that small fond smile that he reserves just for you.

When the two of you reach his home in Aurum Alley, Yingxing is slightly nervous at the possibility he might have missed something when cleaning. He doesn't want to worry you, yet at the same time the idea of you fussing over him is strangely appealing. Yingxing takes you on a tour around his house, dropping your bag on the guest rooms bed (though if he were honest with himself, when he had bought his house he had only made sure it had a second bedroom in case you ever visited).

After that he leaves you in his living room, heading to the kitchen to make you some proper food. Yingxing highly doubts that the food on inter-fleet starskiff rides had improved in the past two decades since he moved, if it was ever improved it would likely be long after he died. Thinking of it makes him pause for a moment while washing the rice, the reminder that you will live long after he has died.

It makes him maudlin, makes him want to carve out a spot within your heart for himself that nobody else could ever fill; but no, that would be cruel of him. Yingxing has at maximum another forty years left, at best likely only twenty with the strain his craft puts on his body. You however, you will live another seven centuries at least before Mara becomes a problem for you, and if you inherit your fathers peculiar resistance to it, you could even live for millennia longer.

To carve an irreplaceable spot in your heart for himself would be the cruellest thing Yingxing could ever do, and yet. The idea is so tempting, as tempting as it is to abandon the congee he is making to go kiss you.

Yingxing lets out a slow breath and goes back to stirring the rice, trying to ignore the way his heart pounds in his chest. Are your lips as soft as they had looked? He can't help but think, getting irritated at himself for the thought. Feeling the spoon start to bend in his grip he snaps out of his thoughts, shaking his head roughly to get rid of them.

Refocusing on the rice he decides it's cooked enough, turning the heat off and moving it aside. Yingxing moves to the cutting board as the rice cools, chopping up some onion and left over chicken from his dinner last night. Grabbing a ladle he puts a generous amount into a bowl for you, nearly forgetting to grab you a spoon before heading back to the living room.

Yingxing pauses in the doorway and watches you, warmth filling his heart as he spots you curled up on his couch fast asleep. His throw blanket is pulled halfway over you, and Ren is trying to tug it so that it covers you better. Yingxing goes back to the kitchen, putting the bowl of congee in a warmer for you to have later before returning to the living room.

"You can stop now Ren," Yingxing says quietly as he circles the couch, taking care not to wake you up as he removes the blanket from you. Chucking it over the back of his couch again Yingxing crouches down, grunting slightly as he picks you up in his arms.

He freezes for a moment when you stir, letting out a slow breath as you nuzzle into his neck sleepily. A shiver runs down his spine as he moves towards the guest room, Yingxing doesn't know if it's a blessing or a curse to know that; yes, your lips were as soft as they looked.

Yingxing has to shift you into one arm to open the door, and then pull back the blankets on the bed. It is hardly a struggle though, to him you are as light as a feather. He takes your shoes off and tucks you in, thoughtlessly smoothing his hand across your forehead as you sink into the mattress. What a familiar scene this is, though back then he had viewed you as nothing more than his little sister.

If his friends could see the smile on his face right now, Yingxing is sure they would be teasing him relentlessly. He doesn't mind though, Yingxing isn't ashamed of how much he cares for you even with the complicated addition of these new emotions he feels for you.

Even with his promise that you could meet his friends before the end of your visit, Yingxing hadn't actually been sure he could manage to make it happen since Baiheng was off ship. Yingxing nearly sighs in relief when just three days before you are due to go back, he gets a message from Baiheng that she's back on the Luofu.

He doesn't tell you where the two of you are going when you leave that morning, not wanting to get your hopes up about meeting all of them–just in case Dan Feng has to suddenly cancel because of the Preceptors nagging him. Yingxing just couldn't stand to see the disappointed pout on your face, if he promised for all his friends to be there only for three instead of four to greet you.

However after he has introduced you to them all, after the two of you have sat down at the table; where you sit as close to him as possible, practically sitting in his lap as you cling to him. Obviously intimidated by Dan Feng and Jingliu, despite the fact he has heard you speak of Teng Xiao in annoyance while calling the man your uncle, and Yingxing wonders if he should regret this meeting.

Because Jing Yuan is staring at you with wide eyes from his spot next to Jingliu, it is perhaps the most unguarded expression Yingxing has ever seen on the kids face. But it burns inside Yingxing's chest, the sight of a brilliant blush erupting on Jing Yuan's face as the lieutenant stutters his way through introducing himself to you.

Why was that brat introducing himself? Yingxing had already done that barely even five minutes ago! His eyebrow twitches, a scowl briefly crossing his lips before he hastily replaces it with a reassuring smile when you glance up at him.

Yingxing wants to reach over the table and throttle the brat for making eyes at his little sister, for thinking he was in any way good enough for you. But isn't he? An insidious whisper rises in the back of Yingxing's mind, Jing Yuan is young and strong and most importantly he has a life span that could match your own.

Why wouldn't you pick him over Yingxing? He can't help but grimace at the bitter truth his mind has reminded him of, that even if you did choose him. Yingxing was just destined to break your heart all over again when he died, like he had when you'd had that puppy crush on him.

"Is something the matter Yingxing?" Dan Feng's voice brushes against his ear, making him stiffen slightly as his eyes snap between you and the High Elder. But his friend is staring at him with veiled concern, tea cup raised to his lips and no one else seems to have heard the vidyadhara speak.

"Should I ask Jingliu to reign in her apprentice?" Dan Feng's lips barely move, and Yingxing thinks: ah of course, he's using cloudhymn to speak to me. Yingxing contemplates his friend's offer for a moment, staring into sea foam coloured eyes.

Yingxing can see the concern in Dan Feng's eyes, but he can also see slight amusement. He isn't sure how he feels about it, the idea that Dan Feng must have guessed just what was irritating Yingxing and why. It is however something he can think of later, if he takes too long to respond Dan Feng will likely do whatever he thinks is best–and Yingxing doesn't need Jingliu figuring out his complicated feelings for you.

He shakes his head minutely, Dan Feng raises an eyebrow at him but tilts his head ever so slightly and concedes to Yingxing's choice. As always, Dan Feng's unwavering support makes Yingxing relax, even as it makes him wonder if it would really be so bad to give into the feelings for you that had been rapidly growing the past two weeks of your visit.

Dan Feng was rather disconnected from the normal day to day life of citizens on the Luofu, but even so the vidyadhara was best at predicting how the public would judge something out of all of them. If his friend was willing to subtly encourage Yingxing's possessiveness over you, then surely he could; but no, he cuts the thought off before it can take root in his mind.

Yingxing is like a mayfly compared to you, and he does not wish to be a scar upon your soul for the rest of eternity.

Dan Feng stares at him, likely having seen Yingxing waver for a moment but he doesn't say anything else; not through cloudhymn at least, no instead his friend inserts himself into the conversation to ask–perhaps a little too sharply–about how you got Ren. It humbles Yingxing, for just a moment. Dan Feng's willingness to not only cause potential friction with one of the vidyadhara's only friends, but to try and get to know you just because he can tell how dear you are to Yingxing.

It soothes Yingxing when he realises you don't seem to notice Jing Yuan's stuttering attempts at flirtation, even if each one sparks another flicker of irritation within him. No, in fact you seem more interested in Dan Feng, or rather; the stories about Yingxing you can pry from Dan Feng, and he ignores the look it has his friend sending him.

Yingxing doesn't know what that look means, and nor does he want to; to have false hope is the worst kind of thing he can imagine.

The next day Yingxing takes you to his forge, barely able to hold back an excited smirk as he thinks of what your reaction to his surprise will be. It is only a shame that he hadn't had time to drag you here sooner, with how you'd wanted him to show you practically every inch of the Luofu during your visit.

He watches as you look around his forge, unable to stop himself from practically preening at your starry eyed gaze. After a moment he tears himself away from you, heading into the back where he keeps all of his personal projects separated from his commissioned work. Yingxing retrieves the gift he had finally made for you, though the only reason it had taken him until this year was because of how much work he'd had since moving to the Luofu; well that, and the fact he'd wanted to make it with the best materials possible.

Stepping back into the main room of his forge, Yingxing huffs out a laugh as he spots you snooping through his blueprints. A smirk crossing his lips as you jolt and look up at him, a guilty pout on your face as the familiar chiming of Ren's laughter echoes as the heliobi swirls next to you.

"Well I had a gift for you, but now I'm not so sure you deserve it." Yingxing teases, setting the wooden case he was carrying down over top of his blueprints on the table. Crossing his arms he leans against it while listening to you stammer out excuses for a few minutes, taking perhaps a little too much joy in watching how flustered you get.

"I suppose you can still have it, it's your design after all. I just made it a reality," Yingxing says in mocking thoughtfulness, nudging the box towards you with his elbow and raising an eyebrow. He watches with a sense of almost nervousness as you open it, wondering if there was something wrong with them even though he'd checked them over several times before bringing them out to you.

You freeze after opening the box and for another moment Yingxing thinks he messed something up when forging your gift, then your lips start to wobble and tears are forming in your eyes. Yingxing tenses at the sight, panicked at the sight of what must be your displeasure at his audacity; and then you open your mouth.

"Y-you made… made these for me?" Your voice trembles but you don't sound upset, no. Yingxing relaxes as he registers the sheer delight coating your words, his smirk melting away into a fond smile. Even though the tears don't leave, he isn't panicked anymore as you pick his gift up out the box.

The scabbard containing the real gift is darkly lacquered alder wood, stained to look almost a deep black. Silver metal coats the chape, mouth and middle of it; all three in the shape of the flames you wield as easy as breathing. Just like the blueprint you'd made as a child, the guards for the shuangdao are shaped like a taijitu, each blade having one magatama.

Your eyes are still teary and your lips still tremble, but your hands are steady like stone as you remove the blades to look at them. Made of a metal so black it appeared to suck the light out of the surrounding space, and sharp enough they make a slightly ringing sound as you withdraw them. You stare at them silently before abruptly sheathing them again, making Yingxing's eyebrows furrow in confusion.

Gently you set the scabbard down on his work table, then rapidly circle around it and throw yourself at him. Yingxing grunts as you slam into him, but wraps his arms firmly around your form as you cling to him. Yingxing smiles helplessly down at you as you bury your face in his chest, able to feel the tears wetting his clothes as you mumbles endless "thank you"'s against him.

"I knew you would, but I'm glad you like them." He says smugly, belying his earlier internal certainty that you had hated them. It's not like you needed to know about that anyway, to you he was strong and unwavering and Yingxing didn't intend to do anything to change your opinion of him.

"I don't like them," you sniffle, making his heart drop instantly–had he misread your reaction twice? "I love them! I can't believe you really made me those shuangdao I drew as a kid, Yingxing-gege you're really the best."

"You made an interesting design is all," Yingxing dismisses your praise, though he feels faintly as if he'd had a heart attack. He keeps rubbing your back soothingly, huffing his next sentence out with slight irritation. "Besides, how can I trust weapons made by other people to protect you? My little sister deserves the absolute best to protect herself with."

For some reason his words make you giggle, despite the absolute seriousness he had behind them. The thought of you dying in the middle of this war, just because the weapon from some rushed artisan broke on you features in his worst nightmares. It has ever since your letter a few years ago about joining the Zhuming cloud knights, though he decides not to push the issue right now.

When Yingxing sees you off the next day, he is slightly irritated when Jing Yuan tags along without any warning. Yet the sight of his gift hanging at your side, of you clearly wanting to show it off, instead of putting it inside your quantum storage fills Yingxing with a smug sense of childlike glee.

Each time after the first that you visit him, Yingxing can feel his resolve to not be a scar on your heart forever weaken. Not helped by the way you never seem to notice Jing Yuan's increasingly desperate attempts at flirting with you, or the way Dan Feng always subtly encourages Yingxing to do something about his feelings for you.

At night he is kept up either by thoughts of you, or dreams of you, nothing but you in all your glorious splendour. Thoughts that make him feel guilty in the morning, dreams that wake him up in a cold sweat; both good and bad. Although Yingxing tries to convince himself they are all bad, in an attempt to ignore the more carnal desires he has for you.

In his mind you are pure, innocent. Unaffected by the desires of others, either because of how your father has shielded you or how you simply have no interest in interacting with new people. Yingxing doesn't know which it is, but the way you never register the constant interest directed at you makes him burn.

Yingxing wants to introduce you to desire and pleasure in all its different form, to make you feel so good that no one else will ever compare no matter how many centuries you live. Yingxing wants to make sure you stay his innocent little sister forever, so that if he can't have you no one else will ever get the chance either.

And Yingxing knows it's wrong of him to feel like this.

For him to feel so good about the attention you give him, to preen and stand taller when without fail you always search him out first even if his friends are nearby. Even if he took the title upon himself, even if there really is no reason not to give in considering a lack of blood relation to make it truly taboo; Yingxing is held back from pursuing you, due to his own morals by the role he has given himself of being your older brother.

Yet he can't help but continue standing taller whenever you look his way, always takes great effort to make sure you never see the different ways his age has started to affect him over the past decade since you've started visiting him. Yingxing wants to remain the strong, skilled, handsome man that you had once had a puppy crush on; he wants so horribly for you to still have those feelings for him despite the time that has passed since then.

At the same time he can't help but pity his young friend, Jing Yuan's infatuation with you in genuine even if it had started due to your looks. Yingxing knows that Jing Yuan would treat you well, that if you had to fall for anyone Yingxing would prefer it to be Jing Yuan. At least if you were with Jing Yuan, than you would have someone with a lifespan comparable to your own at your side who has the smarts to keep himself alive for you.

Still though the idea of you with anyone else makes Yingxing sour, so he tries to avoid thinking about it and mostly succeeds. In fact he manages to nearly put it out of his mind entirely, at the very least Yingxing doesn't worry about anyone except Jing Yuan managing to steal you away.

Hah! Steal, as if you belong to him. Yingxing really doesn't deserve the way you look at him, with such absolute trust believing that he won't let anything happen to you. Sometimes it makes Yingxing feel like he's rotting inside, twisting into a version of himself he can hardly recognise as he struggles with the ever growing urge to keep you all to himself.

Yingxing lets out a slow sigh as he realises he's thinking about it again, setting his tools aside and taking his gloves off to rub at his face. It's likely because of the fact you're on the Luofu right now, and yet he hasn't been able to see you because you're busy in meetings with General Teng Xiao on behalf of your father. Knowing that Jing Yuan has been able to see and speak to you due to his position as liuetenant, when Yingxing has been stuck waiting for your meetings to end irks him more than it should.

Taking a deep breath in Yingxing decides that he is long overdue a break, the sun is low in the sky and he has been working all day without stopping. The latest batch of devastator glaives he had been commissioned to make were nearly finished as well, so there would be no harm in him leaving the forge early today.

Nodding to himself Yingxing sets about cleaning up his workspace, putting away his tools and clearing the bench tops of all the random paper and rubbish covering them. Locking up his forge as he leaves, Yingxing chooses to take the back alleys on his way home on a whim only to stumble upon a scene from within his nightmares.

Well, that's probably an exaggeration. But it certainly feels like something directly out of a nightmare, spotting you and Jing Yuan standing across from each other underneath a gingko tree. It looks like something out of one of Baiheng's romance immersia's she's so obsessed with, and Yingxing hates it; yet he can't bring himself to leave even though he knows he should, instead Yingxing lingers around the corner listening to the conversation he'd nearly interrupted.

"Although, so far, you have either failed to notice or chosen to ignore my endeavours to sway your heart. I," Jing Yuan hesitates for a moment, which strikes Yingxing as strange. Even during outlining the most risky battle plans ever heard, Jing Yuan's voice had never wavered like it is right now.

Was there something Yingxing was missing? Jing Yuan was one of the most perceptive people he knew, which was likely why the kid was already a lieutenant, did he know something about you Yingxing didn't?

"I still wish to make sure, for my peace of mind if nothing else, that you know of my feelings for you. You, who shines brighter in my eyes than the arrows of the Reignbow Arbiter, I utterly adore you." Jing Yuan breathes out, though he sounds almost resigned to Yingxing. Even so Jing Yuan's gaze never wavers from yours, looking resolutely into your eyes as he waits for your response.

Yingxing can't see your expression–the way you close your eyes, a faint grimace crossing your lips–but he can see the way calm acceptance blooms to life on Jing Yuan's face. There is pain hiding behind the acceptance, as if Jing Yuan was anticipating a rejection; or had been rejected by you already without you ever opening your mouth.

"I'm… sorry, Jing Yuan." You speak haltingly, as if it pains you to reject Jing Yuan. Yingxing wouldn't be surprised if it did, Jing Yuan was the only person you knew that was the same age as you in a similar position as your own after all. "But I can't return your feelings."

"You don't have to answer me of course, but may I ask why?" Jing Yuan's voice is quiet, and it sounds like he already has an idea. It sounds less like he's asking you a question, and more like he's looking for confirmation.

"I…" Your voice wavers, and you cross your arms shifting almost nervously in place. It seems that now it's your turn to hesitate, though surely if you liked someone Yingxing would have noticed, wouldn't he?

"I'm still… still in love with Yingxing-gege. I know it's stupid, to be in love with someone who probably still sees me as that little girl he met three decades ago but I am." Your voice is as quiet as Jing Yuan's, but in Yingxing's ears it is like a scream. You cross your arms and straighten up, raising your chin up as you presumably look into Jing Yuan's eyes.

Yingxing feels faint, surely he must be dreaming–to hear those words pass your lips, to learn that your crush had never disappeared only that you had learned to hide it from him. Yet he also feels as if a bucket of ice water has been poured over him, wide awake as his heart rabbits in his chest.

He shouldn't be here. He really, really should have left when he had the chance because now he is rooted to the spot just waiting for the two of you to leave.

"Haa… just as I thought then." Jing Yuan sounds unsurprised, though Yingxing can barely process that fact.

No. Yingxing is still stuck on the fact you're rejecting Jing Yuan–Jing Yuan who has fan-clubs upon fan-clubs filled with various long-life and short-life species–you're rejecting him, for an old man like Yingxing. It does obscene things to his ego, and if he wasn't so shocked it would be much harder to control himself.

"Perhaps this is… crass, of me to suggest. But do you think, that after Yingxing passes." Jing Yuan pauses for a moment, staring at whatever expression that has crossed your face. He stays quiet for another moment, before clearly deciding that since he'd already been bold enough to start speaking he should at least finish his statement.

"Do you think there is any possibility, that you could grow to care for me as you do for him, after he is no longer here?" Jing Yuan asks you, in the same tone of voice he uses when playing star-chess with someone. Soft and probing, looking for doubt or any signs of giving up; in this case he was probably looking for signs of you giving in.

"That's not fair, not to either of us." You shoot him down immediately, a distraught tone creeping into your voice. Yingxing twitches at the sound of it, resisting the urge to go comfort you before you start crying only by reminding himself that neither of you knew he was listening.

"I don't know how long it will take, or even if I will ever move on from him." You stop but Jing Yuan doesn't reply, just staring at you with endless patience. "Logically I know that with how long we live, that that is unlikely but emotionally I can't see that grief ever ending."

"It's not fair for you to expect me to have an answer for something like that, and I don't think it's fair on you to be giving yourself false hope." You turn–thankfully away from Yingxing's direction–to leave, uncrossing your arms as you do.

"That's my choice though, isn't it? If I choose to wait and see if you ever develop feelings for me, it is no fault of your own and you should feel no guilt for it." Jing Yuan points out gently, reaching out and taking your hand to stop you from leaving. It stops you in your tracks, despite the fact that Yingxing can tell Jing Yuan grabbed you loosely enough you could still leave if you wanted.

"Jing Yuan…" You sigh heavily and turn back to him, and now Yingxing can see your expression. Face twisted up in equal parts love and despair, lips pressed tight together as you visibly struggled to gather the words for whatever you were thinking.

"I have loved Yingxing, I have been in love with Yingxing for three decades now. Despite," you pause and clear your throat as your voice cracks, taking a deep breath before speaking again. "Despite several attempts to like other people I… just cannot seem to move on from him, and I will likely be in love with him for the rest of his life and a significant portion of my own."

Yingxing barely processes you tugging your hand free of Jing Yuan's grip and leaving, or the almost bitter bark of laughter that escapes his friend before he too leaves. Again Yingxing tells himself he must be dreaming, he has to be; if he isn't, then he doesn't know how to shove down the feelings threatening to explode out of his chest.

There is smug pride because of course, of course you love him, Yingxing is a better artisan than most if not all that are in the Xianzhou and became so within a tiny fraction of their lifespans; why wouldn't you fall in love with someone who has proven that they can get things done.

Ah but Yingxing loves you too, loves you in every way a person can love. Like a brother who wants to protect you from every bad thing in the universe, he loves you. Like a friend that cherishes every moment spent with you, he loves you. Like a lover whose mind is always on you no matter what it is he is doing, he loves you.

Yingxing's love for you is like a brand on his soul, it is a feeling he doesn't think he could ever forget. A twisted part of him is glad that you are in the same boat.

Alongside love and pride, lust too, bubbles up. Even if he had dismissed the signs of you liking him as his own foolish delusions, Yingxing knows you are the type of person to only think about intimacy with someone you're attached too. You had said you couldn't like anyone but him, which would mean that Yingxing must be the only one to feature in any fantasies you have. The concept of it makes him dizzy, opens a gaping pit of hunger inside of him without an end.

Yingxing wants to buy you anything you've ever looked at for more than a second, to spoil you until you no longer know the concept of being unable to have everything you want in life. Only that if you want something you just have to look his way.

Yingxing wants to chase after you, grab you by the hand and take you back home. Back where he can lay you out on his bed, could take you and teach you all the different pleasures of the flesh. Somewhere he can spend as much time as he wants worshipping you, until you know that in Yingxing's eyes you are more perfect than any aeon in existence.

But he can't, he can't.

Just because no one on the Xianzhou would bat an eye, except for maybe at your differing lifespans, doesn't mean Yingxing can have you how he wants the most. At best he has another forty years, but realistically with the way he works his body he probably only has twenty. Not nearly enough time to spend with you in his opinion, which would make it like the blink of an eye to you.

It would be cruel of Yingxing, to give himself to you with so little time left.

And yet that rotten, covetous piece of his soul. That part of Yingxing that wants to carve himself so deeply into your soul, that there is no removing the stain of him from you grows stronger and even more ravenous. It eats at his insides, burns him up with a fire hotter than his forge or the Pseudo-Sun in the Flamewheel forge.

It feels as if you had reached into his soul and set it alight with your words, a fire that burns and burns until it threatens to destroy his self control completely. Yingxing wants and wants and wants. Perhaps this is the real reason he gets along so well with Dan Feng, despite not being a dragon like the other man Yingxing is just as greedy and covetous as one when you look into the meat of his soul.

But Yingxing knows self control, knows it intimately after six decades under the scrutiny of a race that judges the lofty ambitions of someone as short lived as him. All he has to do is ignore the flames of his desire, like he ignores the icy rage that blisters inside him when someone refuses to believe Yingxing make the weapons he sells; just because they think someone with as short a life as his can't create the kind of quality he does.

At the very least, he is well practised in the art of ignoring his own desires, and it is easy to ignore them the next time he sees you. As much as it pains him to do so, now that he recognises the affection in your eyes for what it really is in all its entirety. Yingxing smothers the flame inside him until it is barely an ember, until he can pretend it has gone away the same way you had once convinced him yours had.

Yingxing is just a mortal, a blink in the universe compared to the centuries upon millennia that you will continue to shine brightly for. He has to be content with the role of being your big brother, Yingxing… is content with the role he has chosen for himself, he convinces himself.

[At night the words you said haunt him, they repeat endlessly over and over. In his mind, in his dreams, they keep him up, they make him sleep in. Bit by bit that cavernous hunger within him grows and grows, and every morning Yingxing wrestles it down so that it goes unnoticed.

Dan Feng stares at him sometimes, his eyes filled with dark understanding. Neither of them speak of it, that delirious fever that lurks in the depths of their souls; mouth gaping wide as it waits for them to slip up, so that it may devour them and then everyone in their surroundings.]

Yingxing is content to get to be in your life at all, despite the way he keeps breaking your heart. Content to get to love you, to experience a life with you and his friends. He doesn't need more than that, than the company of you and Dan Feng and Baiheng and Jingliu and Jing Yuan. All of you are more than he ever thought he would have, after those wretched wolves destroyed his homeland and he was reborn in the flames of his people's pyre.

Yingxing… can die satisfied like this.

[But he can't, he can't. Baiheng sacrifices herself in the fight against Shuhu. You–who shouldn't have been on the front lines of one of the Luofu's fights–catch that reprehensible Emanator's attention, and the affection bestowed upon you by Shuhu nearly makes the mara in your blood consume you whole.

Yingxing was never supposed to outlive any of you, not him, not the poor short-lived man with dreams that extend far beyond his natural lifespan. He was supposed to be the first to go, not Baiheng who picked him up from the wreckage of his world and not you who Yingxing would destroy anything and everything to keep safe.

When Dan Feng asks him to research something that could help you two he says yes without thinking, when Dan Feng takes him to the roots of the Ambrosial Arbour and shows him Baiheng and you–covered in branches, why had nobody told him your mara had gotten so had?–laying there his heart lurches.

In the roots of that tree they commit three unpardonable sins, although Yingxing had only known the plans for two of those sins. The third sin Dan Feng's alone.

First is the creation; Dan Feng brings out something that beats like a heart and siphons power straight from the arbour, the waters of the gorge swirling around the vidyadhara as he pours it into Baiheng's corpse through the beating sphere. They don't know it yet, but they have just created an abomination that will soon destroy the Luofu's vidyadhara's homes.

Second is the alteration; the High Elder retrieves an orange flask from his robes and pours it over you, covers you in the gorge's water and Yingxing watches in dizzying relief as the branches covering you melt away. Dan Feng changes you, as long as you have oxygen you will continue to burn.

Third is the extension; is the sin of betrayal.]

You are safe, you are safe and alive and that is all that matters to Yingxing. He can die happy now, he can, he can, he can, he…

The first time Blade sees you—he is in the middle of hunting down that traitor Imbibitor Lunae once more—on the planet 216813, he stops in the middle of the busy street and stares. You look and feel familiar, the colour of your hair, the glint of your eyes; how you stand, how your hair is pinned with a stick made of flames, it all seems to tug at the back of his brain. Strange that you would, with how far 216813 is from the current location of the Xianzhou fleet and yet. And yet the flickers of Yingxing's soul flares into an all consuming blaze at the sight of you, making his breath catch in his chest.

It's strange, Blade thinks, your familiarity that is paired with nothing but an overwhelming feeling he dare not name. Not like the burning sense of betrayal that bubbles up at the sight of Imbibitor Lunae or that Swords-master that submerges him under the mara, not like the complicated mix of regret and pity that swells in his chest at the name of that General on the Luofu. The clothes you wear are nothing like the clothes of the Xianzhou, and yet you must have come from there to be so familiar to him, for your name to be on the tip of his tongue yet just out of reach.

What Blade feels looking at you from across the street, walking alongside a chattering teen with long blond hair is unlike anything he has ever felt. What Blade feels watching as you laugh at something the kid says, the way it briefly chases away the empty look that he hadn't realised was lurking in your eyes, is like a soothing balm on an irritated wound.

Your familiarity is less like a chain around his heart, and more of a gentle pressure filling the cracks of his fractured soul. Similar to the feeling that surges through him alongside revival, yet instead of agony following Shuhu's twisted gift it is a gentle warmth. Looking at you, Blade feels alive, and yet there is no pain, no suffering.

The sight of you and your smile lingers in his mind even as you disappear into the crowd, soothing the mara down until he no longer even wants to continue chasing that traitor today. You make the lingering remnants of Yingxing's soul swell with affection, and cause Blade to momentarily wonder if eternity would be bearable standing at your side.

You let another laugh and the sound rings in his ears rousing faint memories from the depths of Yingxing's shattered soul, snippets of Yingxing spending time with you like you're with that boy. In these memories your face is without the stress lines Blade had spotted around your eyes–and without the bottomless grief in them–but bare of any of the baby fat the boy still has.

Your eyes which had been so empty until the boy had made you laugh, are filled with an endless ocean of devotion in every single one of these scraps of memory. Affection that makes the heart in Blade's chest swell and twist inside him, beating faster and faster; like it wants to crawl out of his body, and go running into the tender mercy of your hands.

It makes him wonder–this feeling of this heart in his chest reaching for you across the crowd, a lingering surety that he needed to beg your forgiveness present–if Yingxing had died whilst the two of you had been arguing. Blade's mouth sours at the idea, knowing even without any memories that if you had been arguing; the chance it was because of Yingxing's arrogance, rather than something you had done was much more likely.

How foolish of Yingxing, to let his arrogance cause strife with someone that looked at him like she did. Blade thinks to himself, disquieted by the urge he has to go over and plaster himself to your side. Yet Blade is glad that you are alive, under the confusing mix of Yingxing's memories and emotions, that relief is so overwhelming it almost brings tears to his eyes.

Even stronger than the relief that you're not dead, is the relief that you have not become mara-stricken over the past seven centuries. There are no branches growing from the soil of your flesh, no golden leaves clinging to you like a second skin, no nauseating fruits that have grown ripe on your blood.

Blade thinks he would shatter completely, if he had to see you like that. The mere idea of it causes the shards of Yingxing to flare up, the mara bubbling up in a frenzy; both demanding he hunt down and destroy every single thing that might cause the mara lying dormant in your blood to bloom. This too, is another familiar feeling to him.

Yingxing would have cleaved the skies in two to protect you, would have made monstrosities beyond the pale–even more so than the ones crafted by that High Elder–if you had been taken from him so soon into your long lifespan. In fact the concept that you could have died barely a century old sets Blade's teeth on edge, the fact that at nearly eight centuries old it's a wonder you aren't mara-struck makes him dizzy with the urge to steal you away, to a place where he can watch over your every waking moment.

Usually whenever Yingxing's emotions swell inside Blade's chest thick enough to choke him like this, he would bundle them up and shove them as far down as possible until they faded. For a moment he considers doing the same with this lot, but then another memory flashes through his mind–more akin to an imprint then any tangible memory–of your eyes bright and shiny and filled with pure devotion as you hold a pair of shuangdao in your hands.

Blade melts like steel in the furnace, unwittingly moulded by the faint memories of your smile. No, this feeling is good, the feelings you inspire in Yingxing–in him, are as pure as freshly fallen snow and as gentle as a spring breeze. Perhaps it is selfish for a weapon like him to crave such sweetness, but you are the only familiar thing that hasn't brought him pain and he yearns for more of it.

Something loosens and tightens in his chest at the same time Blade decides to keep these feelings, like another chain around his heart; and yet it is one that soothes him, soothes the mara too. Letting his feelings for you in feels almost like coming home after a hard, almost endless day, as if you are the panacea to all his troubles that he has been desperately searching for all these centuries.

Someone brushes against him as they walk and it snaps him out of his reverie, blinking as his eyes automatically searched for you among the crowded street. Blade's head snaps back and forth with more urgency as he realises you aren't here, and that more importantly he can't even recall anything about you other than the curve of your lips and the sound of your laugh.

Scowling slightly he stalks through the crowd, looking for the high blond ponytail of the boy that had been at your side. Surely if he finds the kid, then he will find you, he will have you back in his arms where you belong. Blade searches for hours, and then lingers in the shadows of the only way off of 216813.

After nearly two weeks of haunting the singular interastral dock at all hours of the day, Blade is forced to admit that the day he saw you might have been the last of your travels here. This revelation agitates not only him but the mara as well, its voice clamours in the back of his head but this time it says something Blade agrees with.

If Imbibitor Lunae hadn't killed him last week trying to escape his sins, forcing Blade to wait until the mara finished healing him. Then maybe Blade could have been on 216813 sooner, would have had time to find you after that first glance of your figure had disoriented him so badly. It irks him badly enough, that when he catches a glimpse of black hair and jade green eyes slipping onto a ship; the mara manages to take over sending him into a bloodthirsty haze.

That memory again… Blade opens his eyes slowly, staring at the green light flickering over his cell's ceiling. How long has it been since he caught that glimpse of you? It must have been at least a decade now, and even though the memory of your face is blurred his feelings for you have festered like an infection inside his chest since then. Growing stronger and deeper, into an all consuming hunger that gnaws at his bones every time a thought of you slips into his fractured mind.

It swells in his chest again as he thinks of you–the faint curve of your lips that flickers on the backs of his eyelids nearly every time he blinks, your laugh that had sounded like the wind chimes Yingxing had made you to ward off bad luck–clawing up his throat not unlike the mara, but still different enough he does nothing to stop it's ascent.

A heavy sigh spills past his lips as the feeling settles in his gums, an incessant need to mark you up and mark sure everybody knew you were still his–even after all these centuries apart. Hearing the echo of footsteps down the hall, Blade shifts to sit up on the meagre cot in his cell. Rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, idly testing the strength of the cuffs on his wrists as he waits for the next scene in his script to begin.

I wonder if I'll see her while I'm here. Blade muses, watching the green lighting ripple against the wall like waves on the shore. Your name hadn't been in his script, even if he didn't recall it Blade is positive he would have recognised it regardless. He had recognised you on sight even after centuries lost in a haze after all, he is sure your name would have been the same.

If I do, will she recognise me? He decides that's a stupid thought after a moment of consideration, since in every scrap of memory he has of you. Your eyes had shone with an unwavering adoration and while he can't remember anything said between the two of you, by the feelings that felt as if they'd been growing in that endless haze only to swamp him on 216813 at the sight of you; Blade is certain you must have been lovers, and just as sure that you're heart would have never wavered.

He is drawn out of his thoughts at the sound of the door unlocking, eyes sliding over to see two cloud knights standing in the doorway. A smirk tugs at his lips, seeing how they hesitate to enter and the way their hands tighten on their glaives. How weak. Standing up he scoffs under his breath when they startle, but exits his cell silently and lets them pretend to guide him through the Shackling Prison to their General.

Stepping into the darkened hall he can hear five heartbeats besides the one in his chest, yet when Blade's gaze sweeps over the room there is only two figures visible on the dais. That blond boy who had been at your side on 216813, and the uncanny figure of little Jing Yuan; not so little anymore, now all grown up. Jing Yuan esteemed General of the Luofu, a sharp lance of grief wells from within Yingxing's memories.

What a pity.

"Yanqing." So that is the boy's name, Blade doubts he will retain the knowledge for long but it is good to know regardless. "Watch this person carefully."

As Blade draws to a stop where the floor shifts from glass to stone, stepping fully into the light of the hall. That extra heartbeat stops for a moment, only to start up again a sharp staccato that threatened to burst out of its owners chest.

"Do you remember me?" Jing Yuan asks him, and though Blade is curious about why that extra heartbeat is so erratic at the sight of him. The script demands Blade has this conversation, so he casts it aside for now and answers his old friend.

"I remember." Blade starts, unable to hold back a smirk as he sees Yanqing tense. That smirk splits into a roguish grin as his next word make the kid shift, clearly preparing to summon a weapon. "Of five people… three must pay a price."

"You are not one of them, Jing Yuan." "Yingxing-gege is… is that really you?"

You step out of the shadows from behind Jing Yuan, eyes wide and lips trembling as tears line your lashes. His chest seizes at the sight of your tears, thumps faster at your divine figure clad all in white. As Blade rakes his eyes over you, greedily taking in the sight of you; he can't help but notice that your clothes cling to your body, even that the bone white armour of yours–so similar to that of the Cloud Knight's armour–seems several sizes too small.

A slight frown tugs at his lips, because there is no way that you could find that comfortable. In addition the only colour on you is on the dao–no, the shuangdao hanging from your side. Familiar in design, a blueprint flashes through his mind briefly. Yingxing had spent a long time making those for you, and you had clearly taken good care of them over the years. The red silk wrapped around the grip is still in pristine condition, and the yellow tassel hanging from the pommel looks near untouched.

That and the sight of your face lighting up, a subdued grief lifting from your shoulders makes his heart skip a beat as a thought flickers into his mind. But it can't be, surely not. Someone would have had to notice, wouldn't they? Would have noticed that you started wearing too tight, uncomfortable clothing right after the period to continue wearing your sangfu had run out.

Yet that look on your face as you take a step towards him–only to be stopped by Jing Yuan's outstretched arm, like you hadn't even realised you'd been approaching him–says Blade must be right in his thoughts. You look like someone who has been told up is down and down is up, like someone had revealed to you that everything you ever knew had been a lie.

Yet. Yet you also look as if you have seen the sun after a long, long night, a fragile hope blooming in your eyes as your hands curl over Jing Yuan's arm. That familiar gleam is returning to them as well, that look that was always in your gaze whenever you looked at Yingxing that the artisan had always pretended he couldn't see. Blade can see your hands trembling ever so slightly on Jing Yuan's arm, and he is frankly surprised you haven't shoved it aside to throw yourself at him.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a strange expression flash across Jing Yuan's face, bitter resignation twisted together with a sort of helplessness that looked strange on the man's face. It looks so familiar, like Blade had seen it on his face before but when? A faint memory stirs in the depths of his soul, of you who have bewitched him and little Jing Yuan standing under golden ginkgo leaves, of a stammered confession and a refusal said because of him.

Blade is suddenly reminded that his script had had a divide in it, a blank space between this conversation with Jing Yuan and Blade meeting back up with Kafka that Elio had simply labelled "choose". He can remember Kafka spotting it and asking Elio about it, Blade remembers his reply despite the mara because it had disturbed him for some reason.

"Well… this is a choice Blade will never get again, so if felt necessary to point it out. He can either take it, or someone else will have their patience rewarded."

If pointing out that Yingxing was dead, if telling you he couldn't be that man again meant pushing you into Jing Yuan's arms, then Blade refused. The idea that someone else would get to hold you at night, some other persons lips would touch yours when it's all he could think of since seeing you on 216813; that your heart could possibly stop beating for him, and start beating for Jing Yuan instead fills him with an indescribable rage.

"Yes." Blade answers you, Blade decides it on the spot. Whatever reasons Yingxing had to make you treat him as your big brother, none of them mattered to Blade anymore, all he knew was that he wanted you and so he would steal you for himself.

He rolls his shoulders and breaks the flimsy handcuffs around his wrists easily, lunging forward while swinging the shard sword at the boy and Jing Yuan. Blade holds you in one arm, tucked into his chest your arms wrapping around his shoulders. He can feel your tears soaking into his coat, the same way Blade can feel your trembling lips pressing desperate kisses again and again to his neck.

Blade smirks again as he turns his back on Jing Yuan ignoring the resigned look on the General's face, ignoring too the way the boy was shouting after you in a panic. Blade may have been wrong about the fact you were lovers, but by the way you cling to him he is self-assured that he had been right in thinking your heart had never wavered from him.

Yes, even if Yingxing had been a hesitant coward. Even if Yingxing had been too scared of receiving scorn, due to the chains he had placed upon himself when making himself your older brother, to claim you for himself. You had always belonged to him, ever since that day in Stargazer Navalia when you had looked at Yingxing; eyes full of love and Yingxing had foolishly let his sensibilities make him ignore it, you had been his.

Blade has not been Yingxing in nearly seven centuries. Not since the flesh of that Emanator twisted him into this undying abomination, not since that Swords-Master killed him over and over until Blade rose from the shattered remains. Yet for the first time he is glad for it, because for all that Yingxing insisted on calling you little sister if you had been his by blood than Blade wouldn't have you in his arms right now.

Blade will keep this one, pure, thing left over from the forge of Yingxing's mortal existence for himself and cherish it. Like a sword he will take care of you, will look you over at the end of every day and make sure to wash away your sadness so that radiant gleam of happiness stays in your eyes.

All the things that Yingxing wouldn't let himself want, all the things that could have happened between you and him don't matter anymore. All that mattered to Blade was this; this cavernous want for you in his chest that kept growing ever bigger, and the desperate want with which you clung to him as if to be separated from him again would kill you.

For all that Yingxing had played the role of big brother to you, Blade can't help but think he had been a horrible one. An older brother should look after his little sister, should help her through life as she grows and protect her hearts from being broken. As your older brother Yingxing should have looked after your heart better, but that artisan had been too cowardly and had broken it so many times it must have shattered upon his death.

Blade was just… correcting a mistake is all, one that had stewed inside you for seven centuries getting worse and worse. Until the point that your heart had startled to crumble, because all your memories of Yingxing were painted with the heartache of his negligence. Seven hundred years may be a lot for him to catch up on, but for you Blade thinks anything would be worth it.

That thought is why he is sure Yingxing had been a horrible big brother, the way he had broken your heart over and over again even though he'd returned your feelings; but Blade would be better. Blade would make sure you knew he would never let you go like Yingxing had, that he would hold onto you tightly and worship you like the pious did aeons because that's what you were to him.

Holy. Sublime. Utterly divine.

Only once he's finally through the Artisanship Commission and stepping into Stargazer Navalia, does Blade let the shard sword dissipate back into his quantum storage. After a few minutes he finds an area completely devoid of cloud knights or abundance abominations and shifts his hold on you, his arm moving from under your thighs to grip your waist as Blade carefully sets you on your feet.

Blade can't find it in himself to let go as he draws back, eyes raking over your form again as if you could have been injured somehow (impossible, he had shielded you from all the aurumaton shards that had gone near you). You can't seem to let go of him either, your arms still curled around his neck your hands tangled in his hair.

Your face is twisted into a strange expression, the slightest pout graces your lips and Blade is startled to realise he can feel the heat emitting from you. There is a warmth in your face he can see, due to the way little clouds leave your mouth as you breath; a searing heat in your body that warms his hands, even through what must be three or four layers of clothes.

A frown tugs at his lips, there is no reason for you to be this warm, for the fire you wield so easily to be burning you up like this. Blade tightens his hold on you, intending to check if you had a previous injury he hadn't noticed when snatching you (surely you didn't, surely Jing Yuan wouldn't have let you follow him to the Shackling Prison if you had been injured) only for you to whimper.

Blade pauses at the sound, blurry quicksilver fragments of memory flashing through his brain. It causes that ravenous feeling inside of him–that only shows up when he thinks of you–to flare, a bestial hunger so similar to the mara yet more covetous in nature clamouring at his mind. He doubts the possibility of the scenarios his mind conjures up inspired by those memories, with how long it had been there was no way a simple touch like this would unravel you and yet he can't help but indulge in them.

You had never seen Yingxing when he looked like Blade, had only met him one when he was already half grey and by the next time you had seen Yingxing his hair had been fully silver. Maybe that didn't matter to you though, it hadn't done anything to stop you from falling in love with him after all.

Blade adjusts his grip on you again to test something, acting like he was making sure the belt holding your shuangdao and overcoat in place was still secure. It causes you to squirm and he uses it as an excuse to squeeze your waist gently, forcing you to stop moving and behave for him. Another whimper escapes you, louder this time, and Blade can feel you trembling in his hold like a scared little rabbit.

When he raises his eyes from your belt to your face, your eyes are wide and bright as you stare at him. There is an innocent embarrassment in them, in the way you bite your trembling lips as if you think he might get mad. Like Blade could ever get mad at you, his sweet little sister who had spent so much of her life stuck in grief over him.

No, the sight you make, trembling in his arms with that shy cluelessness in your luminous gaze makes Blade faint with hunger. The surge of love and lust running through him making him dizzy, causing his grip to tighten ever so slightly as he struggles to control himself. You look as if you have no idea why you'd reacted like that, and it drives him insane.

Of course, of course you wouldn't. Blade doesn't remember much but ever since he saw you on 216813, he had clung to any scrap related to you that he could. You had always been stubborn and loyal like a dog, and grief did strange things to the body–even moreso for Xianzhou Natives. It only made sense that you had never looked another person's way, not when the man you had wanted the most was dead.

There was no way you didn't know what you were feeling, that old man of yours would have never let you go without proper schooling at the very least. But you probably had no clue why you were feeling that way, if your grief had really made you completely uninterested in sex like he suspected it might've. Especially when Yingxing had never touched you, Blade is sure he would have remembered that if nothing else of you.

Yingxing had been so scared to loose you, that by confessing his feelings he would scare you away and had wilfully ignored the neon signs that you had wanted him; and then too scared to scar you, to act on them after finding out the truth. Blade however has nothing to loose, nothing except this. The feeling of you in his arms, so flustered by a simple touch yet clearly wanting more of him.

Yingxing might not have given you what you wanted, but Blade would give you everything. Every last scrap of his body and soul, it was all yours to do whatever you pleased with just so long as you stayed at his side, as long as he could bask in your presence he would welcome anything you wanted to do to him.

Cut him, kick him, kill him, if it was by your hands he would happily die a thousand deaths. It is what Blade deserves for leaving you to think him dead for so long, though he knows you are too kind, too relieved to have him back to do such things to him. You are his very own goddess in the flesh, one he will worship like a supplicant does at the altar for as long as you allow him to do so.

There are no shadows in your eyes, even though with how you had ghosted at Jing Yuan's heels you must have seen even more war over these long, long years he had been absent. Only a bright adoration directed all at him, as if Blade being here holding you meant that all the suffering you'd endured over the years no longer mattered.

It inflames him, it engulfs him. His hunger for you grows and grows and grows, the way it claws up his throat until it fogs his brain is so similar to how the mara seeps into mind except. Blade gently squeezes your waist again as he glances around, nudging you gentle until you start taking a step back for every one he takes towards the nearby stack of crates.

Reluctantly he removes his hands from you to divest himself of his coat, reaching around you to lay it out on top of the cold metal surface of the crate. His lust for you tugs at his mind, unravelling him just like the mara does. Except still when he picks you up and sits you on the edge he is careful, barely putting any pressure on your shoulder before you lay yourself down.

Blade feels half insane from lust when your thighs spread for him before he can even touch them, feels like he could choke on it as he undoes your belt just enough to pull your pants down. A low unrecognisable sound drags itself out of his throat when his eyes land on the wet spot on your underwear, a guttural growl like sound rumbling through his chest as he stands frozen by his desire.

His hands tremble ever so slightly as they hook in the waistband, the air stolen from his lungs as he watches your arousal cling to the seat of your panties when he drags them down your legs. Blade is almost scared too look at your cunt as he drops to his knees between your legs, distracting himself from it by picking your legs up and ducking under your clothes to set them upon his shoulders.

His heart pounds, hands curling against the soft flesh of your thighs as he takes a deep breath in. Groaning low in his throat as the scent of your arousal floods his nose, it makes his head spin the exact same way it does when the mara starts to take over. This isn't the mara, though it feels the same, unravels him the exact same way; when Blade brings his gaze to your cunt, his mind is as clear as glass and just as sharp.

Shiny and slick your arousal drips down onto his coat as he watches transfixed, mouth watering as his hands slide from your thighs up to your hips. Holding you firmly in place he leans in a licks a stripe up the middle, shuddering both at the sweet sound it pulls from your lips and the salty taste that beads on his tongue.

The taste of your pleasure intoxicates him like finely aged wine, making his eyes flutter closed briefly before he snaps them back open. Blade wants to watch after all, wants to see you painted in the strokes of ecstasy as he guides you through this new experience. His eyes never leave your face as he wraps his lips around your clit, sucking on it gently, his thumbs rubbing reassuring circles into your hipbones.

Supporting you, like a good older brother should. Blade thinks sardonically, a little smirk tugging at his lips. A faint sound passes his lips, partly a laugh but mostly a satisfied sigh as your taste continues to flood his mouth. It fills him with a sense of deep satisfaction as he hears your whimper, sees your face scrunch up as you try to keep quiet.

Blade adjusts his grip on you, moving so that his left arm pins your hips down across the soft pudge of your stomach. His newly freed hand sliding back down your leg, over your thigh that twitches on his shoulder, and down to your dripping entrance. Pausing for a moment he reluctantly draws away from your clit, licking the slick from his lips before bringing his gloved hand to his mouth.

Biting the fingers Blade tugs his glove off, a ripple of amusement running though him as he hears a quiet whine leave you at the sight. He sets his glove to the side of you then returns to his previous position, though this time he gently prods at your entrance with a scarred finger. You squirm under him as he slides it into you slowly, Blade being oh so careful not to hurt you with the intrusion although your weeping cunt makes it easier.

Still it doesn't hurt to go slow, no, in fact Blade would much rather be too careful with you than ever risk hurting you. Seeing your face twist into a slight grimace Blade sucks on your clit again, laving his tongue over the small nub; pleased when the discomfort melts away from you, privately ecstatic when he feels your hips try grinding into his hand.

Blade obliges you, of course he does, sinking his finger in all the way and curling it inside you. He can feel the heart inside his chest quicken at the sound that leaves you, high pitched and breathy as your cunt squeezes his finger. Enraptured as he is with the expressions on your face, Blade almost doesn't notice your hands reaching for him.

Curious he stops and waits to see what you want, if you wish to stop he will even though he thinks he would die to be separated from you without even making you cum. Only for a low groan to leave him as your fingers tangle in his hair, the sound vibrating against your wet heat as you tug his face closer to it. He can feel his pants becoming a little too tight, but ignored it in favour of focusing on you.

"Y-Yingxing-gege please!" You whine in a needy tone, staring down at him with hazy eyes and a wobbly pout. It makes him want to coo at you, so small and fragile in his grasp; yet so trusting that he can give you everything you want, even when you weren't able to find the words to ask him properly.

"Blade." He huffs against your clit finding himself slightly annoyed, the sight of you like this belonged Blade and Blade alone. Yingxing's cowardice had deprived him of the chance to ever see this, the corpse he inhabits shouldn't get to have his named called out by you.

"Wh-ah, mmn… what?" A cute little look of confusion washes over you, making him realise just how far Jing Yuan went to make sure you wouldn't find out Blade was alive. Had he been scared that you would run away to find him? The idea amuses him, especially since Jing Yuan hadn't been wrong in his fears, after all you had all but jumped into Blade's arms inside the Shackling Prison.

"Call me Blade," he draws back just enough to clarify, before flattening his tongue against your clit again. His sunset eyes boring into you from between your legs, midnight blue tresses scrunching up in your hands as you tug on them again. It sends another bolt of lust down his spine, heat pooling between his legs making his cock throb.

"If you call me that, then I'll give you everything you want," Blade adds on, even though you both know he would do so regardless. His finger inside you curls once more then stills again, his tongue a warm weight against your throbbing clit. Blade can practically see you deciding it doesn't matter what name he goes by, as long he continues with what he's doing right now.

"Blade-gege I want… I want…" You sound like you don't know what you want, or like you can't bring yourself to say it to him. That's okay though, Blade can easily tell what it is you want by the way your hips keep trying to move under his arm. He almost wants to reach down and palm himself, but to do that he would have to stop touching you; something he refuses to do unless you ask it of him.

"Good girl," he says pressing a kiss to your clit, voice a low growl as he feels how the praise makes you shiver. Carefully Blade removes his finger from your cunt, lapping at your clit again to distract you as he slips two fingers back into you. Languidly he pumps them back and forth inside you, curling them every so often as he searches for the spot that will let him unravel you.

He can tell when he finds it because you gasp and tug roughly at his hair, it makes his smirk return wider than before. Blade makes sure to rub his fingers directly against your sweet spot, bullying your clit with his tongue at the same time. Blade revels in the divine noises escaping as you give up on keeping quiet, babbling little pleas for more spilling past your lips as you writhe on the crate.

He nips gently as your clit while slipping a third finger into you, a ragged moan leaving him when the reinforced metal heels of your boots dig into his back as you buck wildly into his mouth. A faint noise echoes from down the alley but Blade ignores it, refuses to look away from you and risk not seeing how your first orgasm reflects on your face unless absolutely necessary.

"Blade-gege please, ah, feels nghh… weird!" You whine above him, fingers almost ripping out his hair with how hard you're tugging on it. Even though you say that, even though someone else might think you're begging him to stop Blade knows otherwise, can hear it in your tone of voice. It was the exact same tone you'd get when Yingxing bought you something expensive, wanting it but not wanting to seem greedy.

"That's it, my sweet little sister," he groans into you, almost dizzy as your slick floods into his mouth. "You're being such a good girl for me baby, so perfect."

Blade can feel how close you are, can see it painted across your face, hear it in how your sounds of pleasure keep rising in pitch and your breathing gets progressively more ragged. Even as you whine and babble you pull him closer to you, hands balled tight enough in his hair to hurt; your heels digging further into his back, thighs squeezing his head as you start to full on pant.

Withdrawing his fingers from your cunt Blade ignores the pitiful whimper you let out, instead dipping his head further down to lap at your entrance like a starved dog. He swiped his thumb over your clit teasingly at first, before rubbing it firmly pleased at the way it not only makes your body jerk under him but causes you to let out a pleasured sob.

You sound so divine, he is sure your sweet voice would fit right in the middle of a godly choir. Blade can't help but lose himself in you; your taste, your voice, the expressions on your face, and the pain you are unknowingly inflicting on him. It all causes the heart in his to chest race, makes his cock throb and leak in his pants.

Blade pauses for half a beat, realising just how close he is to cumming in his pants like an overexcited teenager. Yet it just makes him more eager to tip you over the edge, the idea of cumming simultaneously with you makes him pant and growl hungrily into your cunt. He goes back to devouring you, with even more enthusiasm than before, determined to bring you the rapture you were begging him for.

His tongue dips into you, a groan rumbling through him as your arousal drowns him in the taste of you, you, you and nothing else. If he were to die like this, to die suffocated by your thighs and cunt it would easily be his favourite death, because you–his precious little sister, who had waited so faithfully for so long to reunite with him–would be the one killing him. As he drags his tongue in and out of you, his fingers pinch and twist your clit.

"Blade-gege I'm ah, haa g-going to-!" His eyes are wide and unblinking as he stares up at your face, the heart in his chest stuttering and skipping a beat as he feels you tense up. Blade seals his mouth against your cunt as you shudder and fall apart, crying out his name as your release floods his mouth.

"Fffuck baby, you taste so good." Blade growls against your cunt, his hips jerking and warmth filling his pants as he messily drinks up your release. He is unashamed by the wet sounds of him feasting on you, proud of the way you moan and mewl as your hands switch between tugging his head closer and attempting to shove it away.

It's only when you slump down onto the crate, face slack your fluttering eyes closed as you pant heavily that he draws back. Blade licks his lips once, then twice as he stands up; lifting your legs up over his shoulders first, your pants and underwear still bunched around your knees. He stands in front of you, right hand rubbing your thigh soothingly as he summons the shard sword with his other.

Swish, shiiiink!

Blade glances briefly to the sound of splattering blood and metal slamming against the ground, watching dispassionately as the spying cloud knight crumples to the ground; his sword pierced right through the armour's gap over their neck. A sense of satisfaction fills him, no one should see or hear you like this but him. Especially not spying voyeurs who should have more respect for you, as annoyed as Blade is by it he is sure the Luofu assumes you are Jing Yuan's partner.

Yet this knight had stopped to watch, as if they had had any right to look upon Blade's little sister with such lust. If it wouldn't have alarmed you, if it wouldn't have risked making you feel sick that someone else had seen you in such an intimate position. Than Blade would have gone over and done more than just kill them, he would have made them regret their very existence.

"What's wrong Yi… Blade-gege?" Your voice is shaky as you ask your question, it has a rasp to it that pleases a primal part of him. His gaze drops back to you laid out on his coat, the pleasure on your face giving way to confusion, and a sense of almost panic shoots through him as your gaze starts to shift in the direction he'd been looking.

Blade does the first thing he can think off to distract you, something that he'd wanted to do since he first saw you on 216813. Leaning over you he makes sure to block your view of the corpse, angling his head slightly as he looks into your eyes. A small smile forms on his lips, the inferno in his eyes dying down into gentle embers as Blade looks deeply into your eyes.

Cupping your cheek with his left hand he leans in, Blade presses his lips against yours soft and sweet and loving. Exactly like you, exactly the kind of first kiss his beloved little sister deserves to have, a kiss from someone that adores her more than anything else in the universe. Closing his eyes he melts into the kiss, like hot metal on an anvil he welds himself to you.

Blade pulls back reluctantly when he feels your hands tugging at his hair, eyes opening to look at your dazed expression. Something warm swells in his chest at the happiness he can see shining in your eyes, nothing like that bleak emptiness that used to be there. It fills him with a spontaneity Blade finds himself unable to resist, so he presses another soft kiss to the corner of your lips.

Then one to your cheek, one on your jawline; one, two, three kisses down your neck, Blade peppers several across your collarbone before making his way back up to your lips. He can't help but smile, though it borders on the edge of an arrogant grin, as he feels more than sees the smoke leaving your lips.

"Is this too much for you, sweetheart?" Blade purrs low in his throat, smugly pleased to know he made the fire in you flare out of control. He nuzzles your right cheek gently feeling how warm it was, sunset eyes staring into yours again as you let out a flustered whine.

The sound makes the heart in his chest throb, the inside of his chest feeling just as warm as your cheeks and the smoke emitting from your mouth. Blade wants to kiss you again, again and again. Until there was no doubt in your mind that he belonged to you, just as much as you belonged to him.

"Will you let me kiss you again, my sweet little sister?" He asks almost breathless, his voice rumbling through his chest into yours. His eyes are wide and bright, filling with delight when your fingers–still tangled in his hair–tug him closer. A content sigh escapes him as your lips connect again, they were so much softer than Yingxing had ever dared to imagine, and they were all Blade's alone to kiss.

It feels good to kiss you, it feels right–makes something in his chest unwind, and soothes the mara away better than Kafka's spirit whisper ever could. Blade could spend forever kissing you and not get tired of it; of the way your lips and skin feel against his mouth, the way your skin is warmed by the fire burning inside of you that steadily grows warmer with each press of his lips. No, Blade could never tire of this.

Almost laying on top of you Blade looses himself in the feeling of you, your hands tangled in his hair and the way you kiss him back. Licks away the happy tears that trail down your cheeks, his hands moving back to your waist–his grip firm and grounding, making you melt under him in a way that causes the heart in his chest to skip a beat.

Time looses all meaning like this, nothing except for the trust and love you hold for him matters to Blade right now. So focused that he is on you, it isn't until familiar footsteps approach that he is drawn out of the haze your affections had put him in. Blade slows his kisses down at the nearby clack of heels, irritation welling up inside him at having his time with you interrupted.

"You do remember that we are on a Script, don't you Bladie?" Kafka asks him, amusement clear in her voice. A soft laugh leaving her as he stills above you and Blade grits his teeth, burning in embarrassment knowing that she'd likely already knew how redundant her question had been.

Taking a deep breath in, Blade lets it out slow sighing against your lips. Opening his eyes slow he feels his chest tighten, worried that you might be uncomfortable or scared regardless of the way his body is covering yours. Tension melts from his shoulders at the sight of your trusting eyes, he can see the embarrassment in them at being caught like this–but you are still relaxed underneath him, still trusting that you aren't in any danger because of how close Blade is to you.

He softens again at the sight, pressing another quick kiss to your lips before shifting his weight back slightly. Blade makes sure to keep you covered from Kafka's view, although he doesn't think she would be so crass as to look there without your permission. Reaching between your legs with one hand he tugs your clothes back up, his other hand sliding under your back to lift you up enough to slide them over your hips.

He gives you another soft kiss before standing up fully, ignoring the way it makes Kafka laugh again in favour of adjusting your pants. As he does your belts up Blade notices that your shuangdao are gone–liking put into your storage, making his lips twitch up at the blatant show of trust.

"Hm?" Blade blinks faintly surprised as you sit up once he's done, giving him a kiss this time. A small smile curls on his lips, though this time he doesn't return it but only because he can hear Kafka tapping her foot as if telling him to hurry up. Blade stops you as you go to hop off the crate, leaning closer he reaches behind you to lift his coat up.

Holding it up by the collar up with one hand, he uses his other to hold the sleeves up one by one for you to thread your arms through. It pleases him to see you in his coat, a primal satisfaction filling him as he tugs the strings tight and does it up. A flicker of amusement building at the way the collar half covers your mouth, though it disappoints him that you won't get to show off the marks he had left.

Picking you up by your hips Blade is gentle as he sets you down on the ground, lips twitching when he spots the hem of his coat nearly touching the floor. Feeling your hand grab his, Blade automatically threads his fingers into yours as the two of you turn to face Kafka. That cloud knight's corpse is nowhere to be seen, and Blade feels a flicker of gratitude towards Kafka over the fact you won't have to know one of your subordinates had tried spying on you.

Kafka's eyes flick down momentarily, a smirk crossing her lips that Blade ignores. Between his powers over wind and the heat that was still rolling off of you, his pants will have dried by his next appearance in the script. Shrugging she turns and starts walking down an alley, tightening his grip on your hand the two of your follow after her to where the Master Diviner will "capture" Kafka.

Trailing after her with you at his side, Blade feels at ease like he never has before during this long life he had been cursed with. So when your hand twists out of his it makes the heart within his chest seize, Blade's head snaps around to look at you; the shard sword already materialising in his other hand, ready to cut down whoever was trying to take you away from him.

All he sees is you though which makes him pause, his eyes creasing in confusion until you curl your hand into the crook of his elbow. Blade relaxes at that, his chest squeezing as you rest your head against his bicep and look up at him with pure adoration painted on your face. Mindlessly Blade tugs you along as he keeps walking after Kafka, though his eyes remain locked on yours as you open your mouth.

"I do not know what happened to change you from Yingxing into Blade, if it left you as empty I have been since he died but I don't care. I don't care if you wish to be Blade, instead of Yingxing." You whisper to him, and although your lips wobbles and tears line your lashes, your eyes are resolute. "As long as you're still my older brother I love you, even if… you do not wish to claim that title, I will continue to love you Blade."

"When you took me away, the grief that has ruled me for so long melted away like ice under the spring sun. The world without your radiance was cold and empty and colourless, and I don't want to go back to that." Blade feels a stabbing pain in his chest at your words, a long forgotten feeling–guilt?–swelling up at hearing how his poor sweet sister had suffered in his absence.

"Father might be upset when he finds out I left without telling him, but please let me stay by your side?" Your eyes stare unshakingly into his, and Blade can tell that even if for some unfathomable reason he refused you; that now that you know he exists, you would follow at his heels with the relentlessness of a Galaxy Ranger chasing their prey.

"Of course," Blade grunts out blandly, a poor attempt to hide the lump forming in his throat. A wicked gleam sparks in your eyes and fuzzy memories of a younger you overlap your face, but Blade cuts off whatever you were about to say to tease him by pressing his lips to your forehead.

Lips twitching he mouths the words he had–Yingxing has–yearned to tell you for decades–centuries–now, it soothes an aching, nameless regret he has had since Blade first woke up in Scalegorge Waterscape. Similarly it seems to settle you as a radiant smile blooms on your face, the sight entrances him. Even more so as your free hand comes up to rest on his bicep, right under the spot your head is lent on.

Blade almost misses the next turn Kafka makes, nearly having to double back as the two of you follow after her. He knows he should brush your hand off his arm, just in case any cloud knights stumble upon the two of you after Kafka is "captured". You will need at least one hand free to summon one of your shuangdao, when they attack in a futile attempt to take you back.

You must know, must be able to read it in the line of his shoulders that he has no intentions of letting you go. Blade is both gutted and made whole by it, by the unwavering trust you have placed into a bloodied weapon such as himself. He had already been resolved to keep you by his side, but now that resolution has gained a razor sharp edge; Blade thinks he might kill anyone who dares to look at you wrong, might cut down anyone who turns a covetous gaze to his precious little sister.

The first weapon Yingxing forged as a gift may have been your childhood scribbles brought to life, intending to ensure you could always protect yourself with those shuangdao he had crafted with the blood of the Pseudo-Sun. Now though it seems like he had forged an even better weapon in the dying embers of his soul, had let himself be drawn out into Blade.

You won't have to fight ever again, Blade thinks to himself. Unless you wish to fight, unless you crave the rush of battle, Blade will make sure you never have to raise your swords again. He will temper himself within the fire of your soul, draw himself out into an even sharper point; one that can cut down even the Aeons THEMSELVES.

Sharper and sharper, until his edges are sharp enough that the ones you had grown in his absence grow dull and soft. Blade will become sharp enough to slice his way through fate, all to make sure that cruel destiny can never hurt you so badly again. Maybe he shouldn't be wishing for all your edges to grow dull, maybe Blade should make sure that you can still fight even if he intends to make sure you never have to again.

Yet the idea that under his protection your skills might dull enough that you would be unable to leave him, it makes the heart in his chest pulse with a possessive desire. Unlike Yingxing who had denied himself until the very end, Blade would weld himself into every aspect of your life–until the two of your were as inseparable as your shuangdao, utterly incomplete without the other by their side.

Good older brothers were supposed to make sure to protect their younger siblings after all, and Blade would make sure you became so unfamiliar with the feeling of pain, that the word would become completely foreign to you.

Track I: Origin Point of Failure

Track II: Hands like Pygmalion

Track III: Blinded by Eros

Track IV: Stuck in Orbit

Track V: The Siren Sings

Track VI: tba

"Little lamb..?" He questions wordlessly, tilting his head slightly as he watched them head to the door. The moonlight streaming in through the window glistens off the sickle hanging at their hip, making it shine a luminescent silver. ██ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ██ ███████ █████ ████ ████ █████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██████ ██ █ ██████ ██ ██████. It is a little amusing to know that the tool that ████ ████ ██████ █████████████ ██ ████ ███████, is being used for something like ███████.

"Yes? Is there something wrong with the food █████████?"

He blinks at them from behind his mask in shock, feeling heat spread across his face as he mutely shakes his head, voice failing him. The sound of the door shutting snaps him out of his thoughts, and he returns to looking at the food on the table. He hasn't stopped to eat anything since the time they had given him those tiganites to welcome him as a guest, he hasn't needed to eat since ██ █████ ███ ████ ███ █████ ███ ████ █ ██████████.

His mask looks out of place when he sets it on the table, off putting in the homely kitchen that belongs to his lamb. He averts his eye from it and looks back at the food they had prepared for him, something unravels inside his chest as he picks up a pear slice along with a fluffy tiganite to eat. The feel of it on his tongue is strange, warm and wet yet not at all similar to the thick tang of blood that he has been choking down day after endless day for epochs now.

It is soft, and sweet, and so achingly like a hug that warmed him from the inside out much kinder than the flames within did. When was the last time someone had cared enough for him, not ███████ or ████████, to feed him something because they cared, and not because they were scared?

… strangely enough he cannot remember.

The lamb refuses his help when he offers it later on during the second half of the action hour, staring him down until he capitulates and backs away from the wheat that needed to be threshed. Seeing them labour so endlessly fills him with an emotion he wishes not to name, swirling and snapping and surging to flood his chest until it threatened to drown him. Akin to the tide bearing down on the solemn catacomb that is the Eternal Land, where all the ████ ████ encapsulating its people resides.

This repeats for several days, his strength returning slowly with each gleam of the thief star that passes by during curtain-fall. Each day the lamb refuses is help, and he is relegated to the sidelines that he is so unused to haunting. If it were anyone else he would ignore them and help regardless, but something about this particular titankin's gaze stopped him in his tracks. It was as if they could see through him, through his mask and his mask and down past the infernal rage that fuels him.

It was as if when they looked at him, that they saw ███ ██████ ███ ███ ███ ██████ ███ ██████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ █████ █████ █████ ████ deliverance.

Their sheep toddle around after him as he lurks around the shepherd's farm, too weak to leave and return to his eternal samsara, yet too unyielding to admit that he had been laid so low by the Ruler that embodies Strife that he could not even assist in their work. Farm work at that, he couldn't even do farm work in the state he had been put it! Something that had once been as easy as breathing to him, mindless in it's blissful simplicity.

By the time they let him help with the work their flock has practically interred him into the fold, treating him as if he is a sheepdog like that that the false-hound portrays itself to be. Luminescent silver trots behind him the most out of all of the shepherd's flock, the once again ram Heliotrope seeming to adore him as much as he adored the shepherd that raises them.

During the parting hour Flame Reaver insists on helping the shepherd make dinner, the two of them working side by side at the sprawling counter. He is missing the pumpkin but it is easy, practically muscle memory to make her favourite salad to share with his little lamb. When dinner is finished being made they try and leave the room so that he can eat first, which warms his chest, but he stops them and makes them sit down to eat.

Once their sat at the table he turns back to the counter, ignoring the feeling of their stare on his back as he starts to peel several pears for a pie. After a few moments he can hear the quiet noises of utensils hitting the plate, the faint sound of chewing as they eat, and he has to resist the urge to look and see if they are enjoying the salad he made. Just as he finishes putting the pie together he hears them getting up from the triclinium, the clinking of dishes being stacked and then set down in the sink.

He give into the urge to look at them, turning his head just enough that he can glance at them as he picks the pie dish up to put it into the oven. For a split second their is a soft almost loving expression on the shepherd's face, one that takes his breath away and makes him freeze in place as if his ████████ ███████████ have been removed. He wouldn't mind if they had been, not if it meant he got to look at that expression on their face for longer but almost as soon as he sees it their face returns to its usual apathetic visage.

He watches as they leave the room so that he can eat his own dinner next and part of him is tempted to call them back, to show them who he is even though they wouldn't know the significance of it. Instead he puts the pie in the oven and sets a timer before sitting down to eat, once he has finished he takes advantage of their absence to do wash the dishes before they can insist on doing it themselves. He might be a guest in their home but he refuses to act like an entitled brat, he would much rather treat it like his home as well.

█████ ███ ██ █████████ ████ ████ ██ ███ █████ ████████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ████.

The timer for the pie dings as he finished washing the dishes, so he gets it out and sets it on the counter to cool then goes to find the little lamb. When he finds them they are in a room that looks like it is for crafts, it has a table with a variety of sowing supplies, a loom and even a spinning wheel. His lamb is sprawled out along a lounging couch underneath the window in the room, flat on their back with their hands folded on their stomach and a peaceful expression on their sleeping face. Their sickle is propped up against the edge of it, presumably so that they can grab it immediately if anything from the Black Tide were to break into their farm.

He stops in the doorway and stares at them, their cadaverous like body making bile rise in his throat. The way they're resting on that couch, chest moving so slow that if he blinked he would miss it, it was frighteningly easy to imagine how they would look on their bier after death. Thinking of their inevitable death makes the fire in him flare into a blazing bonfire once more, making him realise that it had simmered down whilst he was here which just fuels his determination even more.

He refused to let them die in this horrid world, they deserved to feel the sun on their skin once more. His ███ deserved to be free of their "flaw" and enjoy life properly, no matter what he had to do to make it happen.

Leaning down he goes to shake their shoulder only to pause, glancing down at their sickle he picks it up and moves it aside before actually shaking their shoulder. It seems he didn't need to be worried about them attacking him though, because all they do as he rouses them is grumble sleepily. A yawn cracking open their jaw as they turn to nuzzle mindlessly against his hand on their shoulder, quiet incoherent mumbles leaving them as they crack an eye open to petulantly glare up at him.

A quiet laugh escapes him before he can stop it and their glare darkens further, the slightest hint of a pout crossing their lips as they shove his hand off and sit up on the couch. They cock their head to the side and raise an eyebrow at him questioningly, arms crossing over their chest and one leg crossing over the other as it to say 'well? what do you want then?'.

"Why… are you sleeping… here, and not in bed?" He copies their stance, tilting his head to the side and crossing his arms over his chest. An unimpressed look is on his face though it is hidden by his mask, nonetheless they must be able to tell because they avert their eyes from him their face twitching slightly in what must be their version of sheepishness.

"Well. That would be because I gave it to you." They say it with a blase shrug, as if it shouldn't matter that they'd given up their bed for him. That it was irrelevant their sleep had likely been disturbed for however long he had slumbered for whilst injured, if they had been sleeping on this couch the entire time instead of a bed.

He frowns heavily at the thought of that, the work they do each day would already put so much puts stress on their back, and yet they had given up their bed up for him? Did they not have another? Why would they do something as foolish as that? A pallet on the ground would have sufficed for him, it had been unnecessary for them to give him the bed it wasn't like his back had been injured in that fight.

"Why?" His voice comes out harsh and grating, making him grimace slightly in distaste.

"Do you not… have another bed? Why would you give… up your bedroom for.. me?" He clarifies haltingly, taking extra care to make sure that his words come out calmly this this time. It confused him, they had no reason to give up their own comfort for him. Sure they must have been alone for a long time but they hadn't seemed to be lonely when he first interacted with them, though the look on their face then had been strangely bereft.

"No, and this is hardly the first time I've spent months sleeping here. I did it back when…" The lamb trailed off, eyebrows furrowing like they couldn't quite remember who it was they were thinking off. His eyes dipped to the small bag on their waist, only to flicker back up when their voice sounded out once more. "It doesn't matter now, what has been done has been done and nothing will change it."

That only causes his frown to turn into a scowl, impulsivity overtaking him as he scoops them up into his arms and holding them tightly against his chest as he swiftly leaves the room. Behind him he can hear the sound of paws ghosting along the stone and the faint clanging of metal, a quick glance shows that Peritas has picked up the sickle in it's maw before following him out of the crafting room.

He had only woken them up to inform them about the pie and get them to go to their actual bed, but having learnt that he had been taking it from them for so long irritated him and filled him with a twisted form of self-loathing. Not anything unusual for him though, not after having to ████ ███ ███ ███████ ███ ██ ████ █████.

The pie could wait for tomorrow, it wouldn't go bad, not in a place like this, and their certainly wasn't anyone around to steal it from the kitchen. It would still be there when the next lucid hour began, meant that they wouldn't need to make breakfast tomorrow so it wouldn't matter if they woke up later after sleeping in a bed for the first time in only they knew how long.

Stepping into what he had previously assumed to be a guest room he finally looks down at them in his arms, gold creeping up his cheeks a the sight of them just staring up at his mask with an amused little smile ghosting along their lips. Their eyes were soft and filled with an emotion he didn't want to name, for fear that it would break him ██ ████ ████ ███████ ███ █████ ███████ ██ ██████ ███ █████ ██████████ ██ ███ ████.

His lips thin as he looks back up and away from them, hesitant to acknowledge the way his heart had softened at the sight of them so comfortable in his arms. Yet he can't help but tighten his grip on them as he moves over to the bed, shifting them into one arm as he pulls the blankets back. Leaning down he lowers them onto it, sliding his arms out from under them with the intention of leaving.

He grunts in surprise as the lamb latches onto his arms and tugs him down, sending him sprawling over top of them on the bed. His arms slam down either side of his lamb as he catches himself moments before he would have crushed them, the raised ridges of his mask ghosting along their cheek as he stares down at them wide eyed.

"If you insist that I have to take the bed back, then I insist that we share it." They say it so calmly, like the idea of it doesn't set his heart and mind ablaze with a dizzying surge of emotions. He watches transfixed, feeling as if he was outside of his body looking in, as they reach up and wrap their arms around his shoulders.

Ba-dump. Bad-ump. Ba-dump.

His heart thuds loudly in his chest as he feels their fingers play with the shaggy ends of his hair, skipping a beat as a content smile slowly spread across their lips. If only he didn't have his mask on, then he could lean down and taste if their smile is as warm as it looks. His fingers twitch against the bedsheets at the thought, mouth parting in shock at himself.

Where had that come from? He tilts his head in confusion, turning his face to the side slightly so that their smile (and the temptation it caused) wasn't directly in front of him anymore.

He isn't given time to mull it over however, because the second he turns his head the shepherd attacks. Their hands sliding from his hair the the backs of his shoulders, one of their elbows hitting the inside of his to make him crumple. Suddenly he is on his side next to them, one of his arms hooked over their stomach with how he had fallen down.

"What was… that for?" He huffed out, a little frustrated by their actions. He could have crushed them! And his mask wasn't exactly soft, what if he had cut them with it on accident.

"You wouldn't have agreed to share, so I decided for you. It's the beginning of curtain-fall now, so we should be going to bed." They said matter-of-factly, their hands grabbing his arm around their waist. He shuffled closer as they used it to tug him towards them, his breath catching as they leaned back into his chest.

He can't find it in himself to say anything in response, or even move away in half-hearted protest as a little relaxed sigh escapes them. It feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest as they tug the blankets back over the both of them, their eyes closing as they fall asleep quickly.

Flame Reaver is stuck, staring at their sleeping form pressed so trustingly against him. Swallowing thickly he tries to relax, moving slightly to get more comfortable. Leaving the arm around their waist where it is he moves his other to rest under the pillow beneath his head, curling around them and tentatively resting his chin on top of their head.

"Mm," the lamb hums drowsily, making him tense as they stirred for a moment. Relaxing again only when they slipped into a deeper sleep than before, a tremulous smile blooming onto his face as he takes in the feeling of them in his arms.

It was so nice, it was so, so, so nice. He had forgotten that things █████ ████ █████ ███████ ██ ████ █████ ███ ████.

"Ahhaahaa…" He breaths out a shaky laugh, his fingers curling into the pudge of their stomach ever so slightly. He wanted to bury his face in their hair, but that would necessitate taking his mask off and he was too sure that they would wake before him to risk it.

He could get used to this, to being curled up against their back at night and sharing the bed. They had been right to assume he would have refused if asked but now… now he yearned to feel this bliss during every curtain-fall for the rest of existence. To be wrapped around them like this, knowing that no danger could get to them without going through him first. It soothed something broken inside of him, filled the cracks of his heart up with a beautiful gold he would welcome as long as it was accompanied by his shepherd.

He wasn't going to let them go back to sleeping in that crafts room, not now that he'd gotten a taste of having them laid out so trustingly in his arms. No, the bed was big enough for them both and this way they could both sleep without any worries.

Even if he had to collect them each night until they automatically went to their bedroom, he would do it until this became part of their daily routine. Until it was muscle memory for them to curl up in his arms at night, then maybe one day he could feel secure enough to take his mask off and burying his face into their hair or their neck like he longed to do.

This way not only would they get the rest they deserved but to be able to stay by their side at all hours of the day would be sublime, a soothing balm on his tortured soul. It's the last thing he thinks before he follows them into sleep, succumbing to the blissful allure of unconsciousness.

When he wakes up a few weeks later he reflexively moves to curl closer into his shepherd's side, only to reach and reach and nearly falls off the bed before his hypnopompic brain that they must have already gotten up. Soundless grumbles escape him as he pries his eye open, pushing himself up from the bed and staggering up out of it. He pauses halfway to the door and glances back at the mess of blankets and pillows on the bed, half of them hanging off the edge and a handful already on the floor.

Reaver picks up all the fallen pillows and sets them back onto the lamb's bed, adjusting them until they were back in their original places. He has to remove all the blankets and put them back one by one, just to make sure that they're all laid on top of each other evenly. Once he's done he leaves the room to go find his shepherd, the scent of fresh honey cakes fills his nose as he walks down the stairs drawing him into the kitchen.

When he steps inside the first thing to catch his eye is his shepherd, standing at the stove pan in one hand and a pouring jug of batter in the other. The window behind the sink is open with it's doors swung to hang outside, the short curtains on it flutter in the light breeze outside and the moonlight spills into the kitchen bathing everything in a soft glow. Including his ███████.

The light seems to hug them, engulf them in a gentle caress that makes him look resplendent and makes his breath to catch within his throat causing a lump to form that he has to swallow down. A soft melody is coming from them, the lamb humming once again to fill the empty air around them. The tune strangely familiar and yet not at all like anything he has ever heard before on the winds of Amphoreus, it captivates him and binds him to his spot in the doorway where he lurks silently enraptured by their mere presence.

Again his heart swells inside his chest at the sight of them, again his heart melts at the sound of their voice, again a smile graces his lips, and again they cause him so much joy he feels like he could choke on it and fade away. Every time he sees them his beaten heart stutters in his chest, every time they grace him with a smile a chunk of ice is carved from his chest, every time that blank mien of theirs changes even the slightest bit it sends his mind into a tizzy.

Enthralled by them he silently steps closer, then again, and again, and again. Until he is right behind them without them ever noticing, the stack of honey cakes to the side of the stove growing highers. The fact they trust him so much to not even register when he approaches does something strange to him, makes his chest convulse and twist up into knots and clogs his throat with a thickness similar to ichor.

Just a step away from them, so close he could feel the chill of their body. Close enough he could wrap his arms around them and they would welcome it, could set his chin into the crook of their neck and bask in the way the warm metal of his mask always makes them let out a faint giggle. That sound that he loves so much, the sound of their joy floating in the hazy air of their farm. It is a sound he loves almost as much as the source of it, dousing him in a fuzzy warmth that replaces the scorching supernova that is always on the urge of burning him to cinders.

Love, is it that which he feels when he thinks of them? When he looks at them? Love, that emotion that she had started trying to explain to him so long ago, reading him story after story in her attempts to fill his empty chest with something other than the burning hatred he was born from. Love, the thing that had killed her, killed everyone, the thing that had killed, and killed, and killed without stopping all in search of a new end.

Love. Did love feel like this? All encompassing and like he would dissolve into the air if they were to look at him with disdain, yet refreshes his soul and mind better than any type of medicine? Is it love, then that makes him want to stay here with them? Even though he knows that the only "ending" the two of them could ever have, is a bittersweet tragedy already written down in golden letters slowly drying on a page sometime far away from now.

Love… it feels so different from hatred, and yet it feels the exact same; as if he had simply stepped through a plane of glass to the other side. Haa, she had always said that the two of them were akin to a mirror, always the same and yet always separated by the thin panes of perspective. Is this what she feels everyday? Is this what she feels when she looks at the rotting core of this world yet keeps on writing it's eternal eulogy?

If it is, then perhaps he can finally understand just why every facet of her chooses to tread the same beaten down path as him, regardless of how different their motivations for chasing that ephemeral dawn were. But, he thinks as he looks down at his lamb from behind, maybe his motivations weren't so different to hers at all. He had heard somewhere that to love or be loved is to change, to undergo a metamorphosis akin to Mnestia's transition into countless gleaming butterflies within the cradle of Cerces' roots.

Looking at his lamb, it is an easy thing to believe in.

He is only one step away from them, barely any distance at all but for a moment it feels like a yawning chasm without a safety net waiting to catch anyone who fell into it unawares. Then his fingers ghost along their waist as he slides his arms around them, sets his chin into the crook of their neck as his arms overlap across their stomach until his hands rest on the opposite hip that they're wrapped around. A faint, content sigh slips out of his lips as he listens to the puff of surprised laughter that escapes them when the sudden warmth of his mask tickles them.

What a beautiful sound, it is one that causes a smile to curl across his lips.

For the rest of the day he follows at their heels, never too far apart from them and all the while resisting the urge to grab their hand in his at any given moment. As the parting hour begins, he feels one of his vessels dissipate the memories of it flooding his mind. The lamb starts to head back inside after locking their flock into the barn for the night, only for him to stop them.

He gives into the urge he has been resisting the past two hours and grabs their hand in his knowing he must leave soon, entwining their fingers within his own. The sight of his pallid yet scorching hand against their lively yet glacial hand makes his chest tighten, emotion syrup sweet and just as thick on his tongue. Though now that he knows it is "love" that he is feeling, he finds he does not mind the way it knots his tongue up even more than the flames inside him do.

He doesn't say anything when they look at him, simply overturns their conjoined hands and raises them to his mask. For a few moment he holds their hand against the part covering his mouth, wanting to give them a kiss. He has no intention of removing his mask though, not when he wasn't sure they wouldn't run into his other half so for now he contents himself with this.

After a few more moments he lets go then follows them inside, instead of hounding them into the kitchen though he goes into the bedroom. He changes out of the lilac tunic he was wearing, trading the soft fabric for the sturdy black ensemble he has worn for an eternity now.

The pieces of his armour ring like bells in his mind as he starts to put them back in place, starting with his greaves. Then the pauldron of his right arm, followed by it's rerebrace, couter, vambrace and finally the gauntlet. Picking up the skeletal sun he uses it to fasten his cloak to his garbs, twisting it into place in the moon on his chest until it locks into place.

Heading back downstairs he lingers in the doorway of the kitchen just like he had this morning, gaze soft as he watches them make themself dinner. He stays longer than he should, taking a few long moments to soak up the sight of them so at peace. Before reluctantly turning and leaving the farm house and then the farm all together, passing through the barrier that surrounds it back out onto the stage.

The sweet breeze that usually buffets your farm dies down and turn almost stale, as the air around you seems to freeze making you pause in the middle of harvesting the wheat and look up. A strange feeling builds in your chest at the sight of the fields, the stalks are unmoving as if they have been frozen in time and the sky seems even darker than usual. Slowly you let go of the wheat you had been about to reap, adjusting your grip on the sickle in your hand as you sweep your eyes around over and over again trying to pinpoint the source of your unease. It clicks in your brain suddenly, even as the sound of shattering glass reverberates deafeningly and almost masks the echo of ringing bells.

The twin moons have turned dark within the cradle of Aquila's wings, and you can no longer hear the river.

A surge of energy sweeps over the fields, heavy and dark as the sound of crashing waves returns louder and wilder than before. The Tide rising to devour the safe haven you had carved into the earth, shattering the fragile bubble you had hidden away inside. Water the colour of poppies cascades through the empty river bed that surrounds your farm, with the it the cacophonous sound of a thousand tortured screams follows as it spills out onto your fields.

From the Black Tide rises countless monsters, the corrupted husks of the old world haunting the new; eroded blades, corroded axes and daemons, decrepit bows, there is even a champion and a gryphon of the dark sun. Searching for their lord they spread across your wheat fields, rot dripping from their blackened forms as they mindlessly sow destruction with their every step.

Nearby a Corroded Axe swings it's blade, fire sparking from the metal and setting the fields ablaze. A familiar yet nameless feeling rolls in your gut at the sight of the flames, and in the glimpses you get of the Evernight between them you almost swear that you can see somewhere else. Someplace that is so similar to the village you live in, yet filled with people that corrupt and mutate as the Tide swallows them whole.

The sight of their transformation is gruesome. Flesh blackening as they are devoured by flames and rot alike, bones cracking and twisting to pierce through their skin in jagged peaks. No sound accompanies the ghoulish visions plaguing you, the soundtrack of their agony muted in favour of the roaring flames devouring your fields and the panicked frenzy of your flock.

It is a gruesome sight, yes. But it is one you do not have the time to focus on, so you turn your eyes away even as in glimpse and flashes you see their flesh slough off their bones. The people being shown to you are already dead, long since assimilated by the virus that lurks in the marrow of the Eternal Land like a cancerous rot that refuses to leave no matter how many times it is flushed out.

Their fate is a pitiful one, but it is one that has already been written long ago. The ink used to pen it down is old, and fading, and written in harsh black strokes that have bled through to the rest of the tomb. Your flock on the other hand are still alive, the panicked bleating loud enough that you can hear it even over the flames.

Smoke rises thick and dark into the sky, blocking out the light of the twin moons and the stars cradled in Aquila's feathers. The only source of light you have is the flames that show a new image each time they flicker, and so you close your eyes; to the ashes of the past, and to the ruin consuming the only place you've ever known.

Sight has never been something that you needed, the things your eyes tell you have never matched up with what the quantum energy around you displays. The sickle in your hand hums with it, quantum turning the white blade a deep lavender colour as it whistles through the air cutting down monster after monster.

The sound of glass shattering resounds nearby as Peritas spreads himself thin to cull the hoard, while you move as fast as possible to the closest of your flock. Quantum energy reflects back at you as you gut the Corroded Daemon about to strike it down, the ram that you had saved was Heliotrope. Always so close at your heels, it seems that his clinginess had saved his life.

The taste of rot fills your mouth as you rush through the fields, cutting down monster after monster; trying to save the rest of your flock, even as you are constantly forced to pause and backtrack to yet another blow aimed at Heliotrope. A brief opening of your eyes lets you see how the flames paint his wool, shifting them from a soothing silver into a brilliant gold that matches the blood flowing in your veins.

Another vision flashes at you from the flames, of a boy with hair the colour of wool small with tears in his eyes. Red blood and ash smeared on his tunic, shakily he holds a rake in hand the prongs of it bent and the metal of it coated in gore. The next second he is eclipsed by a man drenched in gold, half bent over resting on his knees as his hands fists around a familiar sickle.

You close your eyes again to stop anymore visions slipping through the flames, twisting around and dragging the sickle in your own hand through three Eroded Blades as they lunge at you. Liquid so hot it chills splashes onto you though it barely affects you at all, and you shift to make sure that none of it can reach the ram at your heels. Viscera drips from the ends of your tunic with your every movement, the taste of iron resting of your tongue as blood drips into your mouth from where it has splashed onto your face.

Letting out a sweep of quantum energy it reflects back at you, your ram is safe but with every passing moment another one of your flock is torn to shreds; you and Peritas both being overrun by the monsters from the Tide, three rising from the ashes of every monster that you cut down. Still though you try your best, for your flock who have been the only company that has never left you. You cut through monster after monster, sickle gleaming an ominous red in the firelight, jaws crunching down shattering bones as you try desperately to save the panicked sheep who have no one else to depend on.

As the black blood of the Tide soaks you in it's gore, the deafening bleating that had been clamouring across your fields gradually lowers in volume even as you continue to tear through the corruption consuming your farm. Sickle held tightly in one hand, a snarl painted on your face and a guttural growl bubbling in your throat that matches the growls spilling from Peritas' myriad maws. Quantum energy spills off of all of you, saturating the fields and slowly choking out the flames as the Tide ebbs and flows against the wheat.

When the bleating grows silent you grit your teeth in anger, glass shatters again even louder than the last two times; a flurry of wisps rushing through the burning stalks, monsters falling almost faster than they can form now that there is nothing left to protect. As you slice through another group of Corroded Axes, the blade of one just misses you instead cutting through the pouch hanging from your hip and sending what was inside it flying towards the flames.

Dread floods you at the sight, and you lunge after it in a panic; your fingers wrap around the small red headed doll right before it can fall into the flames. Heliotrope darts in front of you to stop you from falling into them, his head pushing against your stomach helping you stand back up just in time to cut down the arrows a Decrepit Bow shot at the two of you. Since the pouch is unusable you make sure to keep a tight grip on it as you keep moving, a group of wisps passes you by and envelopes Heliotrope as Peritas whisks him away.

For a moment you are confused, but then you hear a faint whistle of the wind behind you and dive out of the way just in time to avoid a claymore. Dirt kicks up as the blade digs into the ground, and you twist in place until you are face to face with the Champion. Bringing your hand up the sickle slices through its chest, making it take a step back as it hefts the claymore back up onto it's shoulders to take another swing at you. Reinforcing the sickle with quantum energy you block the claymore with it, a grunt leaving you as the blades lock in place muscles straining as you struggle to twist it's blow away from you.

As focused as you are on trying to divert its attack, all your quantum focused on making sure the sickle doesn't shatter underneath its claymore you have no warning as it raises its other hand; not with how your eyes are still closed to avoid the visions flashing withing the flames. Not until you hear liquid splashing against something, quantum energy fluctuating as the pain registers belatedly. Your finger slacken on the sickle for a moment, eyes snapping open to see the Champion bathed in golden liquid above you.

Above you? When had it pinned you to the ground, you don't know but then again you don't feel it remove it's hand from your chest even as you see it draw back. Your eyes feel heavy as you blink, your golden blood drips from it's hand down onto your face and also the blade of the sickle. There is a ringing in your ears, the chiming of bells playing an unfamiliar hymn that makes your body thrum as the blood on the sickle disappears. Faintly you can hear Peritas howling in defiance, making you grit your teeth and tighten the grip you have on the sickle as it starts to glow again.

Disappearing like this. Disappearing with no one around, you refuse to accept such a miserable fate. The little hummingbird had looked so sad when she had left you in your crafting room to go up into the bedroom, and now as you feel your blood seeping into the soil beneath you you can understand why. Disappearing alone, when you know there is a person that has no one but you to care for them, it fills you with an utter loathing that you are ill equipped to deal with feeling.

████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ████ ████ █████ ████ ███ █████ ██ ████ ███████ ████ ███ █████ ██ ██ ████ ████, you refuse.

a/n: raaaa the next chapter is one im super excited to write 🙏 some things ive set up get revealed next chapter hehehehe. also for anyone thats read this far, would u consider this a slow burn? should i tag it as slow burn on the masterlist bc its taken nearly 25k words for reaver to realise his feelings and the lamb isnt getting a clue anytime soon

ACT I: HOMESTEAD

ACT II: DESOLATE

ACT III: RESTORATION

ACT IV: VASTATION

ACT V: APOTHEOSIS

ACT VI: oblation

ACT VII: damnation

ACT VIII: kismet

ACT IX: orphic

ACT X: summation

Extrapolation: full file access

Extrapolation: an act of worship

Opening the doors your eyes are immediately drawn to the way your flock is piled in the middle, right under where the hole in the roof was located. The next thing you registered was the large puddle of dried golden-black liquid underneath them, the mess caking half of their coats and the strange red powder shimmering like dye that covers half the barn. Alarm fills you at the sight—that familiar syrupy liquid rises in the back of your throat, the faint sound of cracking glass echoes in the distance—causing you to rush over, nudging your sheep out of the way to find Flame Reaver splayed out on the floor.

For a moment, one horrifying moment, you think he is ████. And then his chest rises ever so faintly, a rattling sound escaping his immobile form. Relief crashes over you with enough force to make your knees buckle, yet you have no reason to be relieved, do you? Nothing has changed, he was never going to ███ here, the Time for that has not yet come.

As you kneel down next to his sleeping body a frown crosses your lips at the ghastly injury taking up most of his torso, it is a grisly thing, large gashes that split him open from his chest to his stomach. Almost as if a mangy beast had tried to rend his flesh from his bone, your fingers ghost along the middle of the ribbons his chest has been made into, lilac energy sparking from them and numbing his flesh. The next breath Flame Reaver takes is much smoother, a faint sigh of relief leaving his lips as his body relaxes.

Grabbing the edge of his cloak you drape it over his chest, leaning over him to hold it taut with one hand; your other hand lifts him up by his shoulders enough that you can lean him against your knee, your now free hand grabbing the cloak from under him. Wrapping it around him tightly in lieu of bandages, you tie it off using the extra tassel on your tunic—exorbitantly glad that your flocks habit of chewing on them had made you keep extras on you—making sure that it wouldn't unravel and leave his wounds open to the wind until you could get him inside.

Taking a second to check that the knot won't come undone, you adjust your stance and bend further over him. Sliding one arm underneath his knees and the other across his shoulders, you heave him up into your arms as you stand grunting as the sharp edges of his mask fall onto your shoulder. You take a moment to shift him into a more comfortable position, turning around you're glad to see Peritas had nudged your flock into making a path for you to walk through.

Stepping up onto the back porch you walk through the door you had left open in your hurry, moving through the kitchen into the hallway and up the stairs while trying not to bang his limbs against any of the walls. Entering your bedroom you spot Peritas tugging one of the large plastic sheets you use when painting over the bare mattress, the blankets and pillows scattered all over the floor.

"Haa…" You sigh quietly, glad that Peritas has remembered the sheet when you hadn't yet slightly frustrated as you eyed the obstacle course he had made of your bedroom floor. Shattering glass rings in your ears and Peritas is whisking most of the mess to the side, pattering paws loud on the wooden flooring.

Well, it's not like the sound would wake Reaver up anytime soon. He might not be able to ███ to anyone except ███████ but it will take time for him to heal, and even more for him to be back to normal so it mattered not if you or Peritas made too much noise around him.

Stopping next to the bed you lean down to lower the man in your arms onto the middle of the bed, placing him down you go to move away only for him to cling onto you tightly his gauntlet wrapping around your wrist. His thumb, strangely enough is pressed against your pulse, as if he needs the reassurance in his sleep that the one looking after him is flesh and blood and not… not what? Your eyes crease as the thought slips away, but the feeling of something being pressed against your leg distracts you letting it disappear silently.

Looking to see what it is reveals Peritas with the large first aid kit kept in the upstairs bathroom, the very thing you had been about to leave the room to go retrieve. You concede and let Reaver keep his vice grip on your wrist, sitting with one leg crossed on the edge of the bed as you take the medical kit from your ██████████. Placing it down on the space between him and the edge you crack it open, digging through it to find the antiseptic, a needle and thread, and as many bandages as you can.

Carefully you twist your hand in his grip until it slips out, moving his hand to grip the edge of your tunic so that you have both hands available to clean his wound. Pulling on a pair of gloves you get to work on cleaning his wounds of the strange red dust covering him, the golden sections of what must be his blood are a shimmering pink with how much of the dust has gotten in his wounds. It makes you grimace, already dreading how annoying it will be to clear it from your house and barn.

Once the wounds are clean of the dust, or as clean as you can make them when half of his blood is the colour of tar making it hard to be entirely sure. You peel off your gloves replacing them with a clean pair, before turning your attention to the curved needle to sterilise and thread it. Lilac energy coats the needle and thread as you painstakingly stitch all four gashes running down his torso, until his skin looks like skin again instead of misshapen ribbons that have been poorly dyed.

You tied off the thread carefully and cut it, getting up and leaving the room momentarily to retrieve a bowl of warm water and a washcloth. Setting both on the bedside table next to the bandages you haven't used yet, you set about stripping him of his ruined clothes and all his armour though you leave his mask on feeling like it would be wrong to take it off whilst he slept.

Cleaning him doesn't take as long as cleaning his wounds did, yet the red dust clings to his chalky skin like it is an adhesive annoying you to no end as you eye where it covers the plastic sheet and your hardwood floors. You pick him up for a moment as Peritas carefully tugs the plastic off of your bed, thankfully with none of the dust falling on to it, then set him back down as you begin to bandage his chest up tightly.

Peritas passes you a light blue tunic and disappears with the bowl and then the washcloth as you dress the unconscious man on your bed, the tunic fitting him perfectly. The greyish tinge of his skin from earlier now looks like ivory, as if it is a porcelain doll or a stature laid out on the soft mattress and not a living, breathing man whose sleep is only peaceful due to the steady stream of lilac energy you are using to numb his pain.

He looks almost like the small effigies of Kephale that the people in town would carry before they all moved away, but more peaceful than the pitiful titan, less burdened by the cruelties of fate in his slumber. You pick the pillows up from where Peritas placed them against the wall away from the dust, sliding the under his head. You throw the blankets over him one by one, tucking him in and making sure he stays warm even though his skin had felt cold to the point of almost burning you.

When you take the broom Peritas brings you, you make sure to be as silent as possible whilst sweeping away the crystallised dust that mangy beast had tried to drown him in. Even though you know he will not wake up for another ███ ██████, as long as you have the ability your moon will sleep peacefully, hidden away from his cruel fate, tucked within this ████ ██ ████ that you created long ago.

The door falls shut with a quiet whisper as you leave the room, sweeping up the trail of dust as you leave the house to go back to the barn. As the curtain-fall hour begins you back inside, absolutely bathed in the red dust you had spent all day cleaning, and only remember that Reaver is currently occupying your bed as you step into your room.

You stare silently for a moment, the retrieve a fresh tunic from your closet and go to the bathroom. You sleep on the lectus underneath the window in your crafting room that night. For the first time since the little hummingbird was injured by those eagles, and the first of many nights to come until Reaver will finally awaken once more.

As the next entry hour begins you slip into the bedroom to check on Reaver, changing his bandages and making sure none of the sutures have come out. Satisfied you take a work tunic out of your closet and leave the room again, chewing on a tiganite as you head to the barn spotting Peritas enter it ahead of you. Opening the barn doors you step inside after them, swapping your sickle for the sheers on the wall resigned to sheering off the mess that had become of your flocks wool over yester night.

By the time you have finished sheering them all, washed the excess dust off, and swept all of the red inside the barn it's already the beginning of the parting hour. At the very least even if you haven't yet been able to attend to the rubble in the barn, you will not need to wash your flock again tomorrow due to them getting in the dust again overnight. Peritas is already herding them back towards the barn as you dispose of the dust into your composter, as much as a pain as it had been the iron rich dust would be good for your fields.

You change Reaver's bandages again after eating dinner, and again during the last quint of the next entry hour. Each time you pour more energy into him keeping the wounds numb as they heal, letting him sleep undisturbed by the pain that has followed nipping at his heels constantly.

Clearing the last of the mess in the barn from your moon falling in, you roll your shoulders to disperse of the lingering tension in them though it doesn't work as well as you had thought it would. On your way back outside the barn you pick up the ladder resting on the ground, circling around the barn to set it against the wall outside.

Peritas keeps the flock all far away from the barn as you work on tidying up the hole Reaver had made, prying jagged half broken bricks out and chucking them to the ground beside the barn. It is the second quint of the action hour when you finish, the hole in the barn roof now neat and tidy with no risk of any loose bricks falling in onto your sheep. A quick sweep inside gets rid of the small stones and the dust, you also replace the hay on the floor that had to be cleaned up.

You stop for a minute to admire the Evernight through the hole in the ceiling, the stars glinting in the sky are so beautiful, almost as beautiful as the twin moons that hang over the spire where Thanatos rests. The moons are overlapping above you, the blue and red mists surrounding them blurring into a purple that steals the breath from your lungs.

The lilac mist covering his vision reminds him of that seaside town the Siren Princess drowned in her misery, the one swept from history and called a fairytale in most ██████. The birthplace of the Maiden of War, and the birthplace of Death. It feels just as peaceful as all her ████████ ██ ███ ███ ██ ████, he almost doesn't want to wake up but he can sense someone nearby.

Hands touch him, gentler than anything he has felt since his first step into the cave. Gliding against his skin carefully as something is removed, his chest aches for a moment before the lilac mist grows numbing the pain. What has he done to deserve such kindness? Why is he receiving such a gentle touch? … who is it, this person that cares so much for a monstrous cur like himself, that treats him like a delicate treasure?

The haze of lilac soothes him further as he tries to wake up, making it a struggle with how his mind is already disjointed from the countless ██████████ within him. It is only the fact that he has no recollection of where he is—just the memory of fighting the Ruler and losing (for the first time in what felt like aeons)—that gets him to open his eye, cracking open just enough to look around the room he is in.

His mask is still on, the metal he took through ████ from that cursed ██████ █████████████, that keeps his face hidden from even the titans of Trickery and Reason. His mask was still on? He could understand, if reluctantly, why the sight of his face may inspire enough sentimentality to keep him alive for an interrogation, but to keep him alive without having ever seen his face?

He can't think of anyone who would, and then he hears their voice talking about something, though the sound is muffled by the Hand of Thanatos still trying to drag him underneath the waves.

Ah, his lamb. Of course they would, his ███, his awesome █████ that chose to admit him into the few that they cared for amidst the many that their ██████ ███████ ████. How could he have forgotten them? He isn't supposed to be able to forget, he doesn't want to ever forget them.

Not the one who picked him, who picked him not ████████, him and not ███████, but the him that is broken and torn and all but burnt to cinders and ash.

███ ███ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ████ ███████ █████.

With an eye that barely opens he watches as the lamb unravels a light yellow tunic from his chest that he doesn't recognise, before cutting off the bandages they must have wrapped around him. His vision hazes over at the sight of the long lines of stitches on his chest, the black threads stark against the ivory ████ that makes up his body. Yet strangely he feels no pain, until he had seen them he hadn't even known they were there.

He can't muster the energy to talk to the lamb, his eye steadily drooping, breath hitching as the pain suddenly returns. Lilac energy ghosts along his lamb's hands and seeps into his body, the pain slips away like a dream and oh, oh doesn't it make sense? His lamb has the same type of energy as that accursed █████████████, it is no wonder then that he cannot feel any pain whilst under their care.

Unlike when that immoral dastard's energy floods his body, the farmer's energy feels like falling asleep. No pain, no attempts to █████ ███ ████, for a moment it feels like he is back home in █████ ███████ with his mother tucking him into bed as she kisses his forehead.

What a pleasant feeling. ████. He had forgotten what it had felt like, to feel it from someone and reciprocate the feeling. How lovely, how serendipitous that his lamb had reminded him.

His eye slips shut and he falls back asleep as they tie the tunic back into place, over top the fresh bandages on his wounds.

It is irritating, you think to yourself, irritating that with each brick you slot into place with concrete you have to stay on the barns roof. Hunched over it and half hanging into the barn, Peritas' weight on your calves is likely the only thing keeping you from falling in as you hold the brick from the bottom and the side of it as it sets. Heliotrope, that clingy ram, is settled down below you, sitting with his legs folded underneath him to the left of the hole.

At the very least your lamb is smart enough to have parked himself just outside the moonlight spilling down into the barn, so even if you drop the brick or fall nothing will not hit him. A small thing, but it is one you are grateful for, that Heliotrope stays out of the way of the moonlight. You do not know what you would do without him by your side, you cannot recall a single moment that you weren't accompanied by either the ram or Peritas.

Hours pass by as you set in each brick into place, holding them until the cement dries and you can slot the next into place. Hours and then days pass you by as you split your time between fixing the barn, tending to your farm, and changing Reaver's bandages during each lucid and parting hour that passes you by.

Noticing that there are only a few more bricks needed to finish fixing the hole your moon had caused you stop early for the day, stopping during the third quint of the action hour instead of the first of the parting hour. You finish up with your tasks outside and then go inside, taking a quick bath and having dinner before heading upstairs to where Flame Reaver is resting.

Carefully you untie the latest tunic (a soft pink that looked strangely sad on him) you had clothed him in, unfolding it so that it rest around his hips below the longest of the gashes that mangy beast had inflicted on him. It only takes a few moments to undo the bandages, and like each time you have unravelled them you look over the lines of stitches to check to see if any have finished healing or gotten infected.

The two leftmost lines have finished healing, his skin starting to tint red due to his body healing them so much since you had checked during the lucid hour. Getting up you leave the bedroom, retrieving what you need from the med-kit in the bathroom before returning to his side. Medical scissors in one hand, and a pair of tweezers in the other you sit on the edge of the bed and lean over his side.

Snip. Fwp. Snip. Fwp. Snip. Fwp.

You cut through each stitch and pull them out one by one, methodically going along the outmost line and ████████ them in little wisps of lilac energy. You finish removing the first line of stitches and move on to the second, barely noticing as Peritas enters the closed room and settles underneath the windowsill behind you. The hound's crystalline eyes set on Flame Reaver's slumbering body, even though they lay completely relaxed with their snout resting on their paws.

It is the feeling of something being tugged through his skin that rouses him from his peaceful slumber, fields of wheat and the giggling of fairies slipping from his mind as another tug pulls his skin. He still has to put effort into opening his eye, his eyelids still cling together as if there is something other than sleep glueing them shut; but when he does manage to open them, he casts his gaze towards where the strangely familiar sensation is coming from.

His lamb is the one causing it, stooped over his torso a pair of what looked like scissors in one hand and tweezers in the other. The latest tunic (this one a pale green) they have wrapped him in is bunched around his waist, the bandages all gone from his mutilated chest revealing the lines of meticulous stitching from where they had pieced him back together.

For a moment he cannot fathom what it is they are doing, then they hook one side of the scissors through a stitch on the right side of his chest, and he realises they are removing them. Had the gash left by the thumb and index of the Ruler's gauntlet already finished healing? It must have for his lamb to have already removed all the rightmost stitches, having now moved onto removing the second line of them. His face twitches in discomfort at the strange sensation of them pulling it out by the tweezers, his skin getting tugged by the movement.

A faint sound of displeasure escapes him before he can stop it, and the lambs head snaps up in the exact same way their hound's head does where it is sitting behind them underneath the windowsill. The lambs eyes are alert and sharp as they stare at his mask unblinkingly, probably trying to determine whether or not he was actually awake or had simply made the sound in his sleep.

He wants to talk to them, tries to open his mouth to say something, anything (perhaps ask why they are wasting their Time on a wretch like him). Yet his body fails him once again, and just like the last time he had awoken his body does not co-operate with his wishes. His mouth opens but words fail to form on his tongue, the ability to make any type of sound escaping him no matter how hard he tries and still he cannot even move his hand to grab his lambs attention.

He feels strangely bereft as he watches his lambs focus return to the stitches on lining his chest, that uncomfortable tugging returning as they continue to remove the thread from his body. Another sound, even fainter then before, slips out of his lips and the lamb looks up at his mask once more. Still his body refuses to comply, and he has to wonder ██ ███ ████ ███ ████ ███████ ████ ███████, but they must sense something because that familiar lilac energy coats their hands.

He can see that them removing the threads from his body, but the sensation is blissfully gone. Now that the discomfort is gone he can feel his eye getting heavier, the lethargy caused by his wounds and the energy they were pouring into him making it hard to stay awake. His eye slips shut as the little lamb starts to wrap new bandages around his torso, his mind slipping back to dreams of █████ ███████.

You sigh as you leave the barn, having finally finished fixing the hole in the ceiling. It is barely the halfway through the fourth quint of the lucid hour, you are finally free to do whatever you wish and yet your mind lingers incessantly on Flame Reaver. Gaze drifting over to the window of your farmhouse that you know is the one in your bedroom, part of you wants to go check on him but on the previous curtain-fall hour you had removed gashes left by the middle and ring fingers of that mangy beast's gauntlet.

The sickly gray tint from his skin has been less and less apparent each time you have changed his bandages, a pearlescent ivory slowly growing stronger as he continued to heal, you even think that you might be able to take out the last line of stitches during today's curtain-fall hour. Yet even so your eyes dart to the window every so often.

You glance at it as you spend the rest of the lucid hour, and the first three quints of the action hour harvesting wheat. Even as you work from the fourth quint of the action hour until the fourth quint of the parting hour threshing it, the grains falling into large barrels that Peritas brings and takes away while simultaneously watching over your flock.

Irritating, so irritating. You do not think you can ever recall a time where you have been so distracted by anything, not even when the hummingbird was the one resting in your bed had you been so off track. Dropping the last of the grains into a barrel that Peritas whisks away, you absentmindedly roll your shoulders only to let out a hiss of pain as your back locks up.

When your body gets like this there is only one solution that ever works, yet before you can do that you need to check on the last of your moon's stitches.

Entering the bedroom you go over to him, folding back the silver tunic and unravelling his bandages. The skin around the threads has started to turn slightly pink, so you quickly retrieve your scissors and tweezers to remove them from his skin. Once you are done removing them, you wipe a damp cloth over his chest to get rid of the irritation.

Fixing his tunic again you stand back up and take a moment to stare down at him, the moonlight from the window encapsulating him in an effervescent glow so much different then how he looks awake. Your hand settles on the edge of his mask, your thumb slips underneath it.

He looks so silly, laying in bed his armour all removed except for his mask. How long has it been since he removed it? Was it when you fed him those tiganites? Has he let himself feel the wind, and the moonlight on his skin since? You brush your thumb along his cheek, stare at the hand shaped mask covering his face.

You leave it on.

Tucking the blanket back around his shoulders you grab a few things and then leave, doors closing softly behind you as you exit the house. Peritas has herded the flock back into the barn, and so on your way past it you lock the doors up before continuing on.

Peritas heels behind you as you reach what had once been the bridge to town, stopping as you crouch down to lay out a small tarp that you put rocks on the corners of; then the rest of your things before you stand back up, stretching and hissing as it sends pain up and down your tense back.

The bricks from the bridge that had fallen into the river form a small pocket of space, where one could sit and not be swept away by the frothing purple liquid. You step down into it as Peritas watches your surroundings intensely, as protective as they always were even though there has been no one around for a long, long time now.

A pleased sigh escapes you as you sink into the water, leaning back against a pile of bricks that had almost formed a small wall in the river. You rest your head against it, face turned up to the two moons hanging high above you.

For a moment the murmuring that has been missing from the back of your mind since Reaver's last visit returns, childish and angry and feeling upset as you look up only two moons instead of the six you know should be there. Then you blink and your mind returns to silence, six moons? Why had you thought that?

█████ ███ ████ ████ ███ ███ █████ ███████ ████ ███ ████.

You brush the thought aside and close your eyes, relaxing into the water as it whisks all your aches and pains away. Back unknotting and muscles growing lax as the water swirls around you, the wind making your wheat rustle together and the haunting lullaby that rises from the depths of the sea combine in your ears.

It is almost enough to make you fall asleep. Yet the sound of shattering glass that comes with Peritas splitting his attention rouses you, making you arch you head back to look at him without having to move from your comfortable position.

When he wakes up this time it is unprompted by anything, just his body naturally deciding that he is rested enough and rousing him from his ██████ ████ slumber. His eye flutters open, no longer feeling like rheum is gluing his eyelids shut, and when he looks around there is no longer any blurring in the half of his vision he still retains.

He pushes himself up without thinking, only to freeze expecting agony to wrack his form and yet it is strangely absent. Not even the noticeable and complete lack of sensation that his lamb's energy had caused, the agony has simply died down enough that he can barely feel it. Only a faint spark of pain shoots up his spine as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, pausing momentarily to peer underneath the silver tunic he has on to check the state of his chest.

All five gashes are gone, no stitches left in his skin and his body has not even left any scars to remind him of how the Ruler had debilitated him so. Letting go of the tunic he looks around the bedroom, spotting the door he slowly leaves and makes his way through the farmhouse looking for the little lamb. Stepping outside he has to lean on the railing of the back porch, breathing ragged as he squeezes his eye shut in an attempt to stop the dizziness.

When he opens them again the false-hound is sitting on the path staring at him, it gets up and turns around to walk away when he spots it. When Peritas reaches the sea of wheat they turn to look back at him, head tilted at an unnatural angle clearing waiting for him to follow it. Taking a deep breath in he pushes off the railing and goes after the false-hound, stumbling ever so slightly as his limbs get used to being used again.

He follows them down the path through the wheat that shows signs of being recently harvested yet is already blooming once again, past the barn where the only flock of sheep left alive reside, and down a slope towards what looks like the remains of a bridge. He is forced to stop at the edge of the wall for a moment to catch his breath, vaguely irritated over the fact that he cannot even muster up enough energy to float without the ██████████ ██████ ███ threatening to ████ ███ ████ ███ ██████ ███.

He is reluctant to get so close to the Sea of Souls, even if at this point the ███ ████ ███ ██████████ ██ ███████ stop it from being able to claim him. Even so he approaches the river edge as the false-hound coalesces into itself once more, wondering why it had brought him here instead of to it's masters side. As far as he was aware the false-hound never let it's attention be fully split from the lamb, and yet they were nowhere to be seen.

The first thing he notices on the river edge is a tarp on the set on top of the bricks. On top of it is a set of towels, a tunic, the sickle, and bathing supplies. The sight stops him in his tracks, and he looks to the false-hound laying comfortably next to them as it stares at him unblinkingly. A frown forms on his face as he stares at the strange collection of items, a memory coming to mind unbidden of his first glimpse of the lamb.

They had approached the river edge without any concern that it was made up of the Sea of Souls, and their clothes had been dripping yet that had been before the rain had started. The only water that existed outside of that so called eternal city was the Sea of Souls which meant the lamb must be immune to it's affects, his lips thin as he thinks of this his eye drifting away from the hound back to the pile of bathing supplies.

Surely not, surely they weren't actually bathing in the river were they? But then with how far this place was from Okhema, there wouldn't have been anyone else around for hundreds of years so why would they hesitate to use it in that manner? Reaver hesitates for a moment before walking closer, intending to peer over the edge only for the lamb to pull themself up from the water.

He stumbles at the sight of them climbing up onto the bridge, breath catching as his heart leaps into his throat. The purple water drips off of them, their hair clinging to their face and their bathing suit practically glued to their skin. Even though they are fully covered it feels almost indecent to look at them, the moonlight above coating them in an ethereal glow that makes them look like one of Phagousa's sirens from the depths of the seas.

Looking at them he feels like he is in the presence of something holy, something that he would be willing to bend at the knee for and follow blindly into anything that came after. Looking at them unravels something inside of his chest, makes him relax, causes the ██████████ ██████ ███ ██ ███ ████ ██ █ ██████ █████ ███████ ██ █ ███████ ███ ███ ██ ████ ██████ ██.

They look up at him and blink in surprise, before a smile splits across their lips knocking the wind from him. For a split second Flame Reaver swears their eyes are a bright luminous gold staring into his soul, a transcendental glow he has seen before on THEM who he loathes; yet on his lamb's face the golden eyes just enhance their beauty, sublime when paired with their ████████████ humanity.

He blinks against his own wishes, and it must have been his mind playing tricks on him because their eyes once again normal. Mindlessly he grabs one of their towels and hands it to them, glad that he ██ ██████ █████ ██ ██████ when it makes his body seize up as their smiles grows wider in response. Swallowing thickly he averts his gaze from them, going as far as to turn around trusting that they wouldn't hurt him ████ ████ ████ ███ ███ ███████ ███ ███ ████ █████ ████ ██ ████████ ███ ████.

It feels, for some reason, a little like absolution.

a/n: some of this was like pulling teeth an idek why lmfao. also like I thought this was going to be a 3k transition chapter max and yet 💀 6.2k words later! flame reaver and the lamb need to stop yapping so much, what is it with these wheat farmers being so VERBOSE give a guy (me) a break man!!

blade would look after you so so so well, granted you would probably be something dumped on him by kafka or elio or even some raggedy stray he picked up out of pity during a script but he'd be like one of those dads that didnt want the pet and now its his favourite thing in the world

blades always making sure to feed you the best food for whatever type of hybrid you are, meat, vegetables, fruit, something that can only be found in one specific galaxy?

it's in your dish at the same time every day no matter what and if he's ever on a script he cant take you along with him he leaves the other stellaron hunters with an exacting schedule on when to feed you and what youre allowed to have. he will know if any of them feed you even a second late or something forbidden, it doesn't matter how many galaxies away he is

of course he also gets you toys or enrichment devices so that you're never bored, things to scratch, things to chew on, things to kick around or cuddle with. if you're the kind of hybrid that needs space to hide he'll clear out a section in his closet for you to burrow, or under his bed.

if you're the type of hybrid that needs to interact regularly with other hybrids to be healthy then hes dressing up in that disguise of his and taking you to the nearest hybrid park he can find, no he doesnt care how suspicious he looks. what does that person mean did he kidnap you? does someone as weird looking as him treat you right? dont they know hed slaughter hundreds to keep his precious pet safe and happy? he silently memorises the face of anybody who says these kinds of things, strangely anybody that does goes missing soon after and their poor pet ends up in a shelter waiting to be adopted again

if you're the type of hybrid that needs regular hunting trips to be happy he just takes you along to chase down some random bounties, herding them away from the main streets into the back alleys and letting you loose. the money he gets from those trips go right into the account he uses to buy you whatever you need, after all you did such a good job hunting them down. why would he take your hard earned money from you?

needless to say that when you get dirty he's reluctantly rolling up his sleeves to wash you, no it doesn't matter if you think you can do it yourself, he wouldn't be a responsible pet owner if he can't even make sure you're clean himself now would he? blood (from hunts or tagging along on his scripts), mud, dirt or food or the filthy stench of someone that pat you without asking he scrubs it all away meticulously as if hes polishing a sword to a brilliant shine (in his eyes you shine as bright as any star, though he would sooner give up on dying then admit it after claiming to not want you for so long)

he dresses you up in a mix of whatever clothes you show interest in when hes forced to take your shopping (at least thats what he claims), things hes picked out himself, and the endless clothes that the other stellaron hunters buy for you acting like your the groups personal dress up doll. and yes he personally helps you dress, he may not be able to help if theres any super small buttons or zippers because of his hands (reluctantly he gets one of the girls to help you, usually kafka) but everything else he does (to make sure its all one right. obviously)

if you're the type to be clingy and affectionate he doesnt even bat an eye, the other stellaron hunters have act like personal space doesnt exist half the time anyway. but with you he even welcomes it, calmly lifting up the end of his coat without a word so you can sit under it and huddle against his legs while the two of you are waiting somewhere for the other hunters.

always makes sure either a seat or spot on the floor is open next to him so you can cling to him. death glares anyone who dares to joke about you being needy (they must not recognise him when they do, but they certainly recognise him later when its dark out as his sword is piercing through their chest) because after you finally learnt enough of the common language for you synthesiea beacon to understand strangers, you had drawn back for a week after hearing a joke like that and he refuses to go through that again (not having you clinging to him constantly was worse than the mara in his mind)

the only times hes on his phone is when hes looking something up for you. one time silver wolf changed his background to a picture of you sprawled in his lap sleeping, a small smile on his face as he stroked your head. he destroyed one of her game consoles in response (one she needed to update anyway) but noticeably he hasnt bothered to change it back to the default setting

obviously the other stellaron hunters interact with you as well, how could they not? they all live in the same building after all. but blade not so secretly takes great pride in the fact that all he has to do to get you to leave them for him is enter the room, a faint smirk lingering on his lips each time you ditch one of them to scurry up to his side

The baker is already waiting when you reach the town, a young man is shifting next to him while looking anxiously at the sky for some reason. Eupraxia is the same as ever, kind brown eyes and a caring smile as you step off your cart. His crows feet seem a little more prominent than the last time you saw him, yet you don't mention it.

"I believe this is the first time you're meeting my apprentice, isn't it dear Farmer?" Eupraxia asks as the young man hesitantly approaches your cart, eying Peritas with unease painted clear on his face. You hum in agreement with him, nodding as you eye Eupraxia's apprentice with faint amusement.

"I thought so, Myron was out on errands the past few times you delivered the wheat." Eupraxia chuckled softly, handing you a bag of balance coins before moving to assist his apprentice. A whistle leaves you and Peritas stops teasing Myron to heel, following you as you head further into town.

The market is busier than usual, people in garments threaded with gold walk in the crowds. Standing out against the muted browns and yellows the townspeople wore, a little girl at the far end of the street catches your eye briefly. Her hair the same golden colour of the wheat you reap, her eyes opaque like the hound at your heel yet she seems so cheerful.

They connect with yours for but a passing moment, that familiar cloying taste forming on your tongue, something you can barely hear whispers to you in tongues. Someone walks between the two of you, and the taste bursts on your tongue then disappears once more. You make idle chatter with the market vendors as you shop, piling jams and preserved fruits and bottles of wine into your wicker basket.

Eustathios clambers to her feet as you settle the basket in the back of your cart, securing it carefully with rope. You hold the reigns loosely in your hand as she starts the journey back home, humming a faint lullaby as you lean back to watch the clouds drifting overhead. You close your eyes and bask in the warmth of Aquila's gaze, feeling a lick on your cheek they flutter open to see Eustathios' face close to yours.

"Ah, back home hm? Good girl Eusta." You smooth your hand over the scales on her snout, smiling at the soft chuff she let out. Sitting back up you lean forward to undo her harness for the night, letting her walk off to her stable. Fetching your basket you walk inside, putting away the things you'd bought and then going back outside.

Stepping inside the barn with a quick glance around to make sure Heliotrope wouldn't get underfoot, you go about making sure there is enough hay laid down for your flock. Setting the pitchfork back in place once done, and topping the troughs inside off with water to make sure they had enough for the night.

The sheep started to trot inside as Aquila's eyes start to droop, each of them followed by Peritas making sure they wouldn't wander off into the night. Heliotrope walks right up to you, butting against your legs gently the nubs of his horns rubbing your overhauls. Indulgently you lean down to rub his head between the horns, smiling at the content bleat he lets out in response.

Peritas distracts him as you move through the motions, checking the flock for any signs of illness and the locking the barn behind you. Turning the stove on you cook yourself dinner, humming that same haunting lullaby you hear in your dreams. Setting the plate on the drying rack and leaving the kitchen you go to the bathroom, washing all the sweat and grime off your body. Wrapping yourself in a towel you head up to your bedroom, Peritas already at the end of the bed.

Climbing into bed you tug the blankets up as Aquila's eyes finally close for the night, falling asleep to the sound of that haunting lullaby and the feeling of Peritas curled behind your legs. Your dreams are as muddled and confusing as ever, people you've never seen bathed in gold, places you've never seen pristine one moment and turned to rubble the next. A behemoth of a man appears in the black and is just as quickly swallowed up, a strange ache throbbing in your chest at the sight of him.

The sun is what wakes you, as always. Dreams slipping away like water in your hands, Aquila's eyes seem more distant than usual. How strange. You don't focus on it for long though, breezing through your morning routine and out to the barn. Unlatching it you step inside and close the doors behind you, hanging your sickle on the hook you pulled the sheep shears off of. Peritas has already herded one sheep into the sheering pen, one that you know likes to run off you not as you hop the fence into the pen rather than opening the gate.

With each sheep you sheer Peritas leads them out through the side door of the barn, the pile of wool next to you growing larger and larger. Polymnia would be overjoyed when you took it to her later, you thought as the last sheep toddled out into the fields. Humming you gathered up the wool laying each piece out one by one and rolling them up, tying them up with twine. Every three pelts you bound together into a bundle that Peritas came in to carry off, feeling something against your thigh you glance down to see Heliotrope nestled up to you.

"Heh, so clingy aren't you Helio! How cute," you chuckled softly, pausing for a moment to pat him. Going back to work you started humming absentmindedly, hefting up the last bundle of wool onto your shoulder. On your way out the barn you swapped the sheers with your sickle, hanging the blade from your belt as you walked to your cart with Heliotrope prancing playfully around your feet.

A grunt left your lips as you chuck the bundle up on top of the rest, lips quirking as Heliotrope jumped onto the lip of the cart. The expression on his fuzzy little face was so stubborn looking, like if you tried to get him off it he'd refuse to move away until you gave up. It wouldn't hurt to let him come along, you decided as you started to hook Eustathios up to her harness and then the cart. In the unlikely scenario that Heliotrope got curious enough to wander off, Peritas wouldn't let anything happen to him.

Yawning you blinked and looked up as Eustathios slowed down, spotting Polymnia waiting for you with her apprentice Thaleia. Hopping off the cart you walked around to the back of it, pulling two bundles down from the pile. Chucking one to Peritas who caught it by the string and took it inside the tailor shop under Thaleia's guidance, pausing to grab a second bundle of your own you followed them both inside.

Once all the wool was inside the shop Polymnia paid you, a smile on her tired face. The sunlight glinted off her silvery hair, but wasn't her hair supposed to be brown? Glancing at Thaleia you figured you must have been remembering hers not Polymnia's, getting peoples appearances mixed up was a common mistake for you so you shrugged it off and moved on.

You took a quick walk down the main road, ducking into the bakery to buy some spanakopita before returning to your cart. Sitting down you peel back the paper just enough to nibble at the pastry, the handle to Eustathios' reigns looped around your other hand that rested on Heliotrope's flank. The flaky pastry felt like it was gone before you could even blink, a slight moue crossing your face.

Heliotrope's horn brushed your side as he hopped down from the cart, the ram turning to watch as you undid Eustathios' harness the dromas slowly trudging off to her stable. Stretching languidly you followed after Heliotrope towards where Peritas was herding the rest off your flock into the barn already, Aquila's eyes starting to droop shut as star peeked out from the feathers on their wings.

A blink later you were getting ready for bed, pausing for a moment at the window to stare out up at the expanse of their shimmering wings. It feels like you're being watched back, the wind outside howling as the sea of wheat outside swayed creating an illusion of flowing gold. The back of your throat clog up with that familiar cloying taste, vision blurring and drifting past the wheat field to the river on the far-side. The rushing water looked purple under the moon, you can hear a faint murmur coming from it.

Peritas nudges your side snapping you out if your daze, blinking away the sticky feeling on your face you absentmindedly pat Peritas turning from the window. That night you have another strange dream that you will not remember, there is a man bathed in the gold of a new dawn and a behemoth of a man bathed in the blackish purple of the devouring abyss. The sun-kissed man swings and swings his great-sword, an ugly knotted feeling festering in your chest at the sight.

Like a puppet on a string you jolt towards them with a wordless snarl, your sickle (a different sickle, that looked like the waxing moon) flashing in the light as your memosprite surges forwards. Both men turn to face you but the Abyssal man is quicker to move, your hound lets him past as he throws himself at you. He knocks you over causing your grip on the sickle to slacken, shadows obscure his face but you can see his lips moving although no sound comes out.

"█ ████ ███" his body covers yours. "I'm sorry."

The sun is what wakes you, as always. It takes effort to open your eyes glued shut as they are, when your vision focused you can see your hand outstretched above you to cup something. Gold drips off of it onto your face, you blink, your hand is dry but trembling. How strange, had you been dreaming?

There was a yawning emptiness expanding on your chest, THEIR gaze drifts over you and a gasp catches in your throat.

You blink. Why were you holding your hand up, had you been dreaming? A curious him leaves you as you get out of bed, the faintest taste of something lingering in your mouth as you breezed through the motions. The sound of Eupraxia's brittle voice reaches you rousing you from the recesses of your kind, you look up at his wrinkled face spotting Myron already unloading the wheat from your cart in the corner of your eyes.

Was he always that tall?

The thought doesn't linger long as Eupraxia pays you and you leave to stroll through the market, you must have missed the rush. There wasn't as many people as last time shopping, but there seemed to be less stalls too unless you were imagining it. You don't let it bother you, wheat, meat and wool may be the only produce you sell to the village but you grow enough vegetables to keep yourself fed.

Shadows envelope you making you look up, Aquila blinks above you all. (One day soon, at least for you, they will fall into a deep slumber and a thousand flowers will blow on a thousand winds across the lands of Amphoreus.) You blink, the sky is normal. You figure it must have been a cloud, oblivious to the the shaken looks on everyone's faces. You go home, you have sheep to tend to and wheat to grow.

The sun wakes you, as always. You sheer your sheep and sell the wool to Polymnia, you reap your wheat and sell it to Eupraxia. Occasionally you sell a sheep to the butcher, but never Heliotrope. The sun is what wakes you, as always. The river that runs at the edge of your farm, and around the town, has a lavender hue to it as Eustathios pulls the cart across the bridge.

For a moment your reflection has a line of gold across the throat, you (and Aquila) blink. Your reflection is normal.

You sell your wheat to Myron, who has a young nervous looking boy at his side. Myron smiles at you kindly (his eyes heavy with sadness and a bitter understanding). You sell your wool to Polymnia, Thaleia takes it in the shop with minimal assistance from Peritas. You can't help but think they both look pale and drawn thin, were they spending enough time outside in the sun?

You decide not to ask, it would he rude to imply that they looked sickly if they weren't. Wheat is reaped by your shining sickle, gold spilling over your blade like blood, Myron and his apprentice buy it. The sheep are sheered and the wool sold to Thaleia, Heliotrope's horn start to curl.

While you are walking over the bridge back home, the river turns from purple to black as Aquila closes their eyes. A reflection sparks across the murky abyss, your gaze drawn up to Aquila's slumbering from. A thousand iridescent lights shoot across the sky, colours blurring together like a blazing flame devouring the sky.

It takes your breath away, eyes widening in awe even as the sight causes you an inexplicable sense of sorrow. Out of the corner of your eye the wheat glows, the lights in the sky turning the field into a bright solid gold. A thousand flowers are flying on a thousand winds above you and yet. And yet.

The river gleams a brilliant silver under them, and suddenly you are sick to your stomach with something you cannot name. Your throat is clogged with golden blood, they are begging you for their freedom, your moon is gone. Your moon is gone. Your moon is gone. Your moon is gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Something slams into either side of you, you take in a ragged gasp of air as you look down. Heliotrope is on the side of you closer to the river, Peritis on the side closer to the wheat. You breath in, breath out. You do not look away from the ground as you enter the barn, your flock surrounds you and you go to sleep your face stained with golden tears.

Peritas wakes you and for a split second you wonder where Aquila is, then you remember that they fell into a deep slumber (one that will last until the last flower has been plucked from the world). You drag yourself out of the pile your flock had made, taking your sickle off the wall to hook on your belt. Leaving the barn you get to work, reaping your wheat under the shimmering canopy of Aquila's feathers.

You take it into the village to sell, there are people you think you've never seen before arguing with Myron. You frown, who works an old man up like that? His milky eyes turn to you at the sound of Heliotrope's hoofs (you think they were brown at some point), his face lined in stress as he points you out to the stranger (to the guard).

Tilting your head curiously as you draw closer intending to listen in, but your eyes are attracted to the sight of gold nearby. Your eyes connect with an opaque green that widen ever so slightly, they look familiar and yet shouldn't the face belonging to them be smaller, rounder and more cheerful? She looks away from you first, moving to Myron and murmuring something to the stranger. A maid follows half a step behind her, a devout loyalty painted on her scarred yet beautiful face.

She speaks to Myron next and a conflicted look appears on his face, two pairs of eyes slide to you both of them blind. Yet you get the sense they both see you still, albeit in different ways. Whatever it is that Myron sees it makes his face grow melancholy, your fingers twitch at the sight Peritas brushing gently against the old mans legs. You favourite baker blinks and smiles tremulously, his eyes misting up as he turns back to the woman with a defeated looking nod.

Instead of Myron it is the maid that buy your wheat this time. She gives you a bag of balance coins that looks as if it will burst, you glance at Myron in confusion but he nods as if it were correct. You're still confused but you trust him, tucking the bag into your pockets eyeing the men in white and gold as they move Myron's things into a nearby cart.

This woman must have hired him to be her personal baker, is the only thing you can think looking at her extravagant dress in a new light. That was good, Myron was too old to run the bakery by himself after his apprentice disappeared.

"Might I have a moment of your.. time, if you would?" The question breaks you out of your thoughts, you blink and only the woman and her maid remain. Her green eyes stare into yours, and you are instantly fascinated. No one except Myron and your animals ever looked in your eyes, not even for a second. You hum in agreement, obligingly following along as she makes a gesture to follow and walks down the road.

"Soon, today in fact. Everyone in this village will be moving away." Is the first thing she says as you walk down the road, it explains to you why Peritas is so present today. You hum and she continues calmly. "Myron says you will refuse to leave, if that is indeed the case may I ask a favour of you on his behalf?"

Curious you nod.

"At some point in the future, you will get a visitor that has red hair." She informs you as the three of you turn the corner to your farm. You step on the bridge only to realise she hasn't followed you, turning back you study how the rainbow above makes her whole body shine like liquid gold (just like it will when she meets her end).

"The favour is this; when she arrives, whenever that is, try to listen and follow her instructions won't you?"

"... Myron wants me to do this?" You check.

"It is the only reason he was willing to move."

"Listen and follow her instructions," you echo her words, making her golden form nod. "I can do that."

Something that almost passes for a smile crosses her lips, her maid looks almost relieved. You watch the two of them give the river a wide berth as they leave, looking at it like the dark liquid was dangerous. You do not acknowledge the river but not because it is dangerous, the silver colour of it simply makes you inconsolable for reasons you can't remember. (You miss your moon so much it feels like a hole in your chest, you haven't even met him yet.)

Peritas wakes you up, as always. You go outside and let your flock out, you reap the wheat and grind it into flour. A baker you owe a favour to left you a recipe for spanakopita, maybe if you make some the red haired girl you must listen to will arrive at last. Something shambles across the broken bridge, in a flash the fiery husk dissolves under the silver gleam of your sickles blade.

An agitated bleat behind you has your blade swinging before you even turn, but it sails harmlessly over red hair. You look down, a doll? No. A young child stares up at you, surprise painted clear on her face. Small white flowers cover her hair, neck, skirts, even the small set of wings hovering behind her have the small blossom on them.

"Well that was rude!" She huffs, pouting and putting her hands on her hips. It is hard to take her seriously when Heliotrope is taller than her, oh but she reminds you of the first time he was a little lamb. Back when he shone golden under the sun, his fur now glimmers silver under Aquila's wings.

"My sincerest apologies dear Triantafyllia." The resemblance to your ram has you apologising without thinking, though both of you blink when you say her name. Did you forget her introducing herself?

"Oh. We see what Agy meant now." Triantafyllia nods in understanding, crossing her arms as she floats up to stand atop the fence. Usually someone doing that would annoy you, but it down mean you don't have to keep looking down at her.

"Listen up!" She says loudly, hands back on her hips. A solemn expression that doesn't suit her on her face, her purple eyes stare directly into yours which would have caught your attention if her red hair hadn't.

"I'm listening." You answer obligingly.

"You might not understand it, or maybe you understand it too well. The titans time is at an end. We must take over for them if we want to live," she speaks passionately yet a sort of resignation bleeds into her tone. Floating up she pokes you in the chest, a severe look on her cherubic face.

Something in you sits up in attention, the murmurs always in your ears quiet into near silence. Your gaze stares deep into her soul, unravelling her at the seams a thousand stitches coming undone one after another. Yet all she does is star back into your eyes, lips parting her voice drowned out by the murmuring suddenly returning.

"My instructions for you are this; when you ███ ██████ █████████ you must ██████ ██ only then ███ ███ ███████ ███ ████ ████ ██ ███, ███ ████ █████ ██ ███ ███ ████."

"I already have," you tell the doll in front of you. "The moon ███████ █████████ it to me, ███ first act of ████████."

You hear a sigh of relief, there is a feeling like sand over your skin. You blink, Triantafyllia is gazing pensively at the near thousand lights in the sky. As if sensing your gaze she looks back at you smiling widely, you can't help but smile back.

"See you tomorrow Houndie!" She says cheerfully, darting off into the sky blending in with the other lights.

You hum a lullaby as she goes, turning back to the broken bridge. Adjusting your grip on your sickle you lash out, a spiderweb of cracks spreading out to the gap in the middle. You stamp down on them hard, the bricks shifting slightly pieces falling off the edge into the churning river below. It widens the gap between each side of the bridge, the purple waters splashing at the bricks just a little.

Good.

Less of those shambling husks should be able to jump across now, you turn back to your fields of wheat moving through them to the pasture your sheep are in. Heliotrope trots along next to you, his gnarled horns catching on and cutting some of the stalks. Peritas glitters where they are playing with the lambs, you huff in amusement at the sight of them acting like a puppy.

The next time Triantafyllia visits you, you're in the middle of sheering your flock. Silently she sits down on the open window of the barn, her purple eyes sparkling in fascination as Peritas splits off to lead each one out into the clover field. Once you're finished sheering them all you gather up the wool and take it inside, Triantafyllia and Heliotrope following behind you like a pair of ducklings.

You set the pile down next to your spinning wheel, before going to the kitchen just as your timer for the spanakopita goes off. You wash your hands then get it out the oven, sliding it off the tray onto the cooling rack. Humming you move to get out a set of plates and cups, placing them on your dining table then moving to set the kettle onto boil.

As the two of you eat she rambles on and on about her sisters, a hundred handfuls of flowers blowing about the sky outside your kitchen window. When she leaves this time it's with a mischievous giggle, and a plate full of spanakopita she thinks you do not notice her taking. Another cheerful—"see you tomorrow Houndie!"—leaving her as she goes.

By the time Peritas' chilling howl reaches you, the dishes you had been washing lay shattered on the kitchen floor. The back door hanging off it's hinges as you bolted outside, your ears filled with the sound of snapping threads. When you reach them Peritas is standing over Triantafyllia, gold pooling beneath them both.

You snarl, Peritas lunges, the sight of your sickle sinking into the moonlight pegasus fills you with a vicious satisfaction. Twisting the blade you tug it out roughly as a dozen fang filled jaws fill with meteoric eagles, you pick up Triantafyllia and rush inside to the echoing dirge of Peritas devouring the crepuscular beasts.

You have no spare room to put her in, so you place her in your bed and do your best to patch her up. Peritas has dragged all the blankets and pillows in the house into the room by the time you're done bandaging her. You tuck her in then go and wash up, Peritas staying by her side as you do a check over the farm. There are no other beasts not that you expected anymore, you lock your sheep up and return inside collapsing in the pile of blankets next to your bed.

Between looking after your sheep, reaping the wheat and the rest of your tasks you watch over Triantafyllia. The flowers blowing across the sky dwindle as she slumbers, dropping from half of their original number to a few hundred to mere dozens. You can look at the river without bursting into hysterics again, the lights above no longer strong enough to turn it that agonising silver.

Spinning the wool into yarn you pause as a pair of small arms hug your neck, turning slightly you see Triantafyllia's pallid face. A tremulous smile is on her face as she looks at you with a guilty expression, but what did she have to feel guilty about? You let go of the spinning wheel and turn just in time to catch her as her wings give in, a concerned frown creasing your face. Gently you smooth back her sweaty bangs, glad that at least no gold was bleeding into her bandages.

"It must he so lonely for you Houndie," she mumbles tearing up. Adjusting your grip on her you reached up with one hand to wipe her tears away, growing more confused by her crying. Sniffling she wipes her face with her sleeves, taking a deep breath in before giving you a beaming smile with closed eyes.

"I guess you don't notice it, huh? That's okay Houndie, we will remember for you. Even when we aren't here, so no need to worry. Okay?" Triantafyllia chirped, patting your cheek as she jumped out of your arms and glided down to the floor. You make an aborted move to grab her as she tilts, bringing your hand back as she steadies herself.

"I will see you tomorrow Houndie! So try not to forget me, okie dokie?" She twirls to you, giving you another wide grin that seems to fall flat with her eyes closed. You hum quietly in agreement, returning her grin with a soft smile of your own when she opens her eyes to look at you.

You blink as she leave the room, turning to pack up the spinning wheel. On the way up the stairs a familiar light shines down them, the same sort that shines in the sky as the flowers blow about in the wind. When you enter your room it is empty, the curtains fluttering about as a light winks out just above the pile of blankets on the floor.

She must have gone back to her sisters, you not idly as you move to clean the room up. Removing all the blankets and setting them in a neat pile downstairs to be washed, carefully tucking the gift she left you into your pocket so it stays safe.

With Triantafyllia gone, you return to the routine you had before. Although you find yourself stuck in the habit of making enough for two, a vaguely annoying but ultimately harmless habit for you to have. Each time another thread snaps in your mind you find yourself making spanakopita, dropping all but one piece into the river as you eat the last one yourself. It is a peaceful activity, one that feels like a warm hug.

At some point the lights in the sky dwindle from dozens to a handful and then down to just three, eventually even those three disappear. You got the feeling that those three haven't been snuffed out yet though, and for some reason that fact soothes you. Idly you brush your hand over the pouch on your hip that holds the gift Triantafyllia left you, perhaps you are glad that at least for now pieces of her continue to live.

You shake your head to clear your thoughts, flicking your other hand to get rid of the dust falling onto your sickle. Your gaze drops down to the injured sheep left on the ground, letting out a heavy sigh you hook your sickle on your belt and crouch down. A grunt escapes you as you scoop the ewe up, heaving her over your shoulder you hum a soothing lullaby in response to her weak and pained bleat.

Something lights up the sky with a golden gleam, you look up to see Nikador's lance crash into something in a fiery collision.

Your ears fill with the sound of shattering glass and sand spilling out rapidly, only for it to glitch and stutter before haltingly rewinding. A curious noise leaves you as you draw closer to the suddenly surging river, getting a glimpse of grey as you lower the fading ewe into the waters. Your hands come back wet but empty and you dry them on your apron, only to sigh as Peritas dives past you into the river dragging a husk alongside them and splashing you.

Heliotrope presses into your side rubbing the nubs of his horns against you, you smile and rub your hand on top of his head making him let out a happy bleat. Standing back up you turn to head inside for lunch, making it halfway before the feeling of being watched settled over you. You slowed to a stop a frown crossing your face, resting a cautious hand on your sickle.

Looking around your eyes lock onto a figure lurking in the trees across the river, wrapped up in a dark cloak his face was covered in a mask that reminded you of a clawed skeletal hand. You tilted your head as you watched him, getting the sense that he was watching you back with just as much interest.

You'd never seen anyone that looked like him before and yet, he seemed so achingly familiar like a dream just out of reach. A part of you cried out for him, desperate for the familiar (familiar?) feeling of his arms wrapped around you. You are forced to stop approaching him as you reach the riverbank, your eyes never leaving him.

Something wet hits your cheek and you blink at the feeling, noting that the figure had disappeared as you look to the sky. You blink again in surprise, it was raining. Softly at first and then faster, then harder and harder until it was falling down in sheets. Peritas emerges from the river and splits off to herd all the sheep into the barn, you pick Heliotrope up and run for it since it was closer than your house.

Once inside you set him back down and move to secure all the doors and windows, hearing the wind start to howl outside. You pause after latching everything shut to try and squeeze the water from your clothes, slicking your hair back as water dripped down your face. Wiping an arm over your face you move to check over your sheep, Heliotrope and Peritas haunting your footsteps.

All of them barring the one you had to lower into the river earlier are here, but you are forced to wait until Heliotrope falls asleep before leaving the barn. Otherwise your little lamb would try to follow you back out into the rain.

By the time you get to your house you look as if you had gone swimming in the river, as you open the door Peritas brings you a towel. An unbearably smug expression on their muzzle, you roll your eyes ay him and take it to wrap around yourself as you shrug your wet clothes off. Going upstairs you head into your room putting nice dry clothes on, before going back downstairs to pick the wet pile up with the towel so they wouldn't drip all over your floor on the way to the laundry.

Peritas wakes you up twice to the soundtrack of rain falling outside, making you dig out your umbrella to go care for your sheep in the barn. Each time you swear you see a glimpse of that man across the river again, though you can't be completely sure due to the rain blurring your view. What you can can see is how the river swells from the rain, threatening to overflow and drown your wheat fields.

The next time Peritas wakes you up the rain is gone, the sound of crying you hadn't noticed before falling silent as THEIR gaze sweeps over Amphoreus. You stop at the riverbank and eye all the debris washed up on it, there were so many bricks that you entertained the idea or making a short wall along the side of your field facing the river. If it rained like that again than a wall, even a short one, would stop your crops from flooding if the river overflowed.

A sharp whistle has Peritas bounding up to you dragging a small cart behind them that they drop at your side before going back to the sheep, though Heliotrope trots up to sit near you. His beady eyes staring you down as you stack the bricks into the cart, a familiar lullaby leaving you as you work. The feeling of being watched returns as you're removing a section of the wooden fence around your wheat, you ignore it until you have finished removing the fence piece.

When you do look up, the cloaked man from before is standing on the other side of the riverbank, presumably staring back at you as he tilts his head when you look at him. Getting up you dust your hands on your legs as you go inside, grabbing the plate of tiganites you'd cooked just after Peritas had woken you up. You paused and grabbed the honey before going back outside, tilting your head at seeing that the man had taken another three fence panels out for you.

Peritas is sitting nearby watching the man with unblinking eyes, you stop next to them and watch him for a few minutes. His movements are smooth as he pulls the fence posts out with clawed gauntlets, like he'd had to do it a thousand times before now. You weigh the merits of walking up to him, wondering if it would end with those gauntlets in your chest.

You decide to kick a pebble towards him, raising an eyebrow when his instinctive dodge reveals one of your sheep sitting peacefully next to him. Dragging your eyes in his direction you rake them over his form now that you can see it clearly, a faintly intrigued noise slipping out at the almost skeletal sun ornament on his chest. You raise your eyes back up to the area you assume his are, lifting the plate of tiganites up to offer in hospitality.

"Thank... you." He rasps slowly, almost sounding like he'd forgotten how to talk–or gone long enough without doing so that he was no longer used to it. He reaches out and grabs a tiganite, an almost melancholy air forming as he stares at the pastry.

Deliberately you turn your back to him, Peritas still watching him unblinkingly as hear the click of his mask being removed. You wait until you hear his mask click again and Peritas to bark to turn back around, the tiganite now gone. Setting the plate down on top of the bricks in the cart you approach him with an amused smirk, stopping in front of him you reach up to brush the crumbs stuck on the skeletal sun off.

Your hands are covered in a mix of black and gold as you draw them back, your throat clogging up with that syrupy feeling once again. Your blank stare flickers between your wet, sticky hands and ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███ █████ in the middle of the skeletal sun. The ever there murmuring in the back of your head grows into a crescendo, drowning out everything except the sound of rushing water and flowers swing in the wind.

"–ap out... of it ██ ████ lamb."

The combination of that raspy voice and a clawed gauntlet shaking your shoulder snapped you out of your trance, hand flexing at the phantom sensation still lingering. The strange black and gold liquid was gone, though your throat still felt clogged up. You swallow thickly and shake your head, plastering on a bland smile as you looked up at him. You make an aborted motion to pat his chest, redirecting yourself to instead pat his arm.

"I'm fine, that just happens sometimes." You say blithely, patting his arm again then waving your hand dismissively. You breeze past him to the fence, examining the work he'd done so far. It was typical of him to go behind your back and do it himself that insufferable Reaver of yours, you think in fond exasperation only to blink.

Where had that come from?

Distracted by him coming up to your side the thought slips away as you turn to look up at him, getting the sense that he was frowning in concern. When you go to start removing a fence post he—gently—whacks your hand away and starts doing it himself. You huff in reluctant amusement but concede and let him do it, something tells you arguing would be useless, so you don't bother to try.

Instead you sit down on the grass nearby, leaning back into Heliotrope as his stocky form settle behind you. The man watches you for a moment as if to see if you're trying to trick him, before he turns back to the fence. You observe him as he works, the way his cloak shifts, how his gauntlet and greaves barely make a whisper. It would scare and unsettle you if you didn't know he would never hurt you, though you aren't quite sure how you know that.

Oh well.

You shrug the confusion away, twisting in place to snuggle into Heliotrope while still being able to watch Flame Reaver working quietly. You trust Peritas to keep watch over the rest of your sheep, they'd never failed at it before. At least he'd never failed one until the other day, when the river had dropped low enough for a large group of husks to jump it. The river was still swollen right now though, so that currently wasn't a concern.

You stir briefly at the feeling of cold metal picking you up, eyes slitting open momentarily to spot Flame Reaver before closing again. A faint sigh of contentment leaving your lips as you relaxed into his hold, curling into his warmth. Your moon would look after you, he always did even to his own detriment.

In his arms the murmuring that ever haunts you goes silent, like a scared child trying to hide. For once you are not pulled into a nightmarish dream, not even as he follows Peritas and tucks you into bed. Your sleep is, for the first time, peaceful and dreamless. If only he could be by your side when you fall asleep everyday, how blissful that would be.

"Good night... little lamb."

His raspy words are the last thing you hear before succumbing fully to sleep, melting into your bed with a pleasant sigh. The faint swish of a cape echoes in your bedroom as he leaves, the door shutting silently behind him so not to rouse you again from your peaceful rest.