#tribbios

“You killed Mydei,” she said, quieter now. “Aglaea. Anaxa. Do those names mean nothing to you?”

No answer.

He didn’t even flinch.

He wasn’t attacking her. Not even when she stepped forward. Was it restraint? Or something else?

She studied him. His posture. His silence. There was a wrongness about him — not just monstrous. Familiar, in a way that made her stomach knot.

He should have killed her already.

Instead, he just… stood there. Watching. As if waiting.

“I don’t understand,” she murmured. “You’re just destroying everything. What do you think you’re stopping?”

“She always… dies…”

The words slipped out too clearly. Almost like they hurt him.

Y/N blinked. “What?”

But his voice had already broken again — the moment of clarity drowned in static.

“Must… stop… her death…”

She took another step. She didn’t even know why. To reach him? To stop him? She wasn’t sure anymore.

He didn’t move.

Then, slowly — almost imperceptibly — he leaned forward. One gauntleted hand twitched, reaching toward her as if he meant to touch her face, or maybe remember it.

Y/N flinched—

And a voice rang out behind her:

“Y/N!!”

She turned.

Phainon.

He was running toward her, with the Trailblazer and Dan Heng at his side. Tribbie must’ve brought them — she could hear the panic in their voices, the frantic urgency in their steps.

But then—

“Y/N…”

The name came from in front of her.

Her head snapped back toward the Flame Reaver.

He had said it.

His voice wasn’t cracked or broken that time. It was low. Human. Fragile. Worn thin by time but unmistakably full.

He said her name again.

“Y/N…”

She froze.

It was the way he used to say it — just before he left to fight, every time. Soft. Like a goodbye.

She couldn’t move.

Not even as he stepped forward, slowly, and wrapped one arm around her waist.

“—NO!” Phainon screamed, but he was too far. Too late.

The portal behind the flame Reaver opened — wild, flickering like fire made of memory.

Phainon’s steps faltered.

“Don’t—!!”

Too late.

The Flame Reaver vanished through the gate — and Y/N vanished with him.

Phainon fell to his knees. His vision blurred. His heart cracked open in his chest.

He’d lost her.

Again.

Her eyes opened to ruin.

The air was heavy — thick with ash and quiet, the kind of quiet that hurts, that presses against your ears like a scream that never leaves your throat. Above her, the sky was painted in bruised indigos and reds, a bleeding wound of a world frozen in twilight. The ground beneath her was cracked and cold. Buildings stood like crooked teeth, jagged silhouettes against a dying sun.

She sat up slowly, disoriented, her heartbeat a frantic drum in her chest.

Where was she?

No… when?

She turned.

And saw him.

The Flame Reaver stood a few paces away, silent and unmoving — a sentinel carved from fire and shadow. His obsidian armor caught the sick light and shimmered faintly with residual heat, the crimson lines along his frame pulsing like veins. No words. No attack.

Just those hollow eyes behind the mask — watching her.

Y/N’s breath caught.

Her legs screamed at her to run, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. Tribbie had escaped, and she’d stayed behind to keep him away from the others — to stall him, to die trying, if it came to that. But now that they were alone in this place, something felt wrong. Deeply, disturbingly wrong.

“What… what do you want from me?” she asked, voice trembling.

Still, he didn’t move.

“Y/N…”

The voice was gravel. Distorted. But something in the way he said her name — slow, deliberate, aching — made her stomach twist.

He took a single step toward her.

She staggered backward, arms up. “Stay back!”

He paused. His head tilted — not in menace, but hesitation. Her fear made him recoil, just barely, like it hurt.

“Y/N…”

Again.

That voice.

Too much pain behind two syllables.

Her eyes darted around. No exits. No pulse of portals. Just this liminal, rotting place and the monster in front of her.

She tried again. “Why do you keep saying my name? Who are you?”

Silence.

He didn’t answer. Only looked at her — like someone looking at a ghost.

“Say something!” she shouted. “Say anything! Why did you kill them? Mydei, Aglaea, Anaxa… all of them! Why?!”

Stillness. A breath.

“Must… stop… the… cycles.”

The words came out slow, strangled, like pulling shards of glass from a dry throat.

Y/N stared, heart hammering. She had heard those words before — screamed in fragments, muttered under breath during battle. Always the same. Must stop the cycles. Coreflames. Reset.

But now, hearing them like this… it felt like desperation. Like ritual.

She took a small step forward.

He didn’t react.

"You’re not attacking me," she whispered. "Why?"

Another beat of silence.

Then he raised his arm.

Y/N panicked — flinched hard, breath catching as she braced herself for the strike. Her eyes squeezed shut.

But no pain came.

Instead, she felt something cold and careful graze her cheek.

A gloved finger brushed away a tear.

Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes opened.

He was still right in front of her.

Closer now.

But not attacking.

His hand trembled.

“Y/N…”

This time, his voice cracked.

Like something inside him was breaking just from saying her name.

Something surged in her chest — fear and recognition and grief all tangled together.

“Who…” her voice was barely a whisper now. “Who are you really?”

Still no answer.

But he didn’t stop her when her hands reached up — trembling fingers brushing the edges of the grotesque mask he wore. She hesitated… then gently lifted.

The metal gave with a soft click.

The mask slid free and dropped to the ground with a dull clang.

And Y/N’s world shattered.

It was him.

Phainon.

But not her Phainon.

His face was cracked like porcelain, veins of white threading through dead skin. His once-bright eyes — those beautiful, vibrant blue eyes that used to shine like stars — were dull, empty, sunken in with sorrow. No light. No warmth. His lips were dry and chapped, parted just slightly as he tried again to say her name.

Her hands dropped.

She stumbled back, gasping as her knees buckled.

“No…” she breathed. “No. No, this—this isn’t real—”

“Y/N…”

His voice was barely audible now.

Like saying her name was the only thing he remembered how to do.

She shook her head, tears spilling freely now. “Phainon… what happened to you?”

He didn’t answer.

He just looked at her. As if the sight of her was the only thing holding his mind together.

Her body trembled, heart breaking piece by piece.

This was him.

This was what was left of him.

And still… he had remembered her. In the ashes of a thousand cycles, buried under the weight of memory and madness, he had remembered her.

“Phainon,” she sobbed, reaching for him. Her shaking hands cradled his face, thumbs gently brushing the broken lines across his cheeks. “What did you do to yourself…?”

He leaned into her touch.

Like it was the first warmth he’d felt in centuries.

And for a moment, there was no Flame Reaver.

Just Phainon — a boy who had loved her, who had lost her, over and over, until the grief tore him apart and left behind this shattered, fire-bound shell.

And still, he whispered:

“Y/N…”

Her knees gave in.

The grief struck too suddenly, too violently — and she crumpled beneath the weight of it all, fingers still wrapped around his cracked, cold face. As she fell, he followed — not by choice, not by resistance, but because her hands refused to let go. She pulled him down with her, sinking to the ground among the ruins.

And there, amid dust and ash and fading echoes of a dead world, she held him.

Her arms wrapped gently around him as if he would break — no, as if he already had. Because the truth was crueler than any blade: he was gone, even though he sat there, breathing, staring, repeating her name in a voice that trembled like the last flame before darkness.

“Phainon,” she whispered, her voice cracking like his skin. “It’s me. I’m here. It’s okay…”

But it wasn’t okay. None of it was.

“I’m here now. You’re not alone,” she said again, softer, gentler. Her words shook with every breath. “You don’t have to carry this anymore. Please… come back.”

He didn’t move.

No reaction. No shift in his hollow eyes. No spark.

Just silence.

Like a lifeless corpse sitting upright, wearing the face she loved.

The same face that used to smile at her when she woke up, The same one that used to laugh, wide and open and warm. The same eyes that had once lit up every time he saw her, that used to shimmer with dreams and hope and all the fire he carried in his heart.

Gone.

All of it — gone.

And she couldn't bear it.

Y/N clutched him tighter, her fingers trembling where they gripped the back of his neck. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder and wept.

The sound that tore from her throat was raw — a cracked, helpless sob of someone trying to hold together the pieces of a world that refused to stay whole.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she whispered through the tears. “You were supposed to make it… you promised you’d come back.”

Still, he didn’t respond.

Did he even remember? Could he?

Or was she just a name — a burned image clinging to the last flicker of his fading soul?

“You… used to be so full of light,” she choked. “Do you remember? You used to protect everyone. Even when you were scared. Even when it hurt.”

She pulled back just enough to see his face again — her hands cupping his cheeks, thumbs brushing over the lifeless gray of his skin.

“You were a light. You were hope,” she said, voice breaking. “And now look at you…”

He blinked once, slow. But still said nothing.

Her voice fell to a whisper. “Look what they did to you…”

Then, lower still:

“Look what you did to yourself.”

The wind moved through the broken ruins like a sigh.

Y/N leaned forward, pressing her forehead gently to his. Her tears fell freely now, slipping down her face and wetting his skin.

“You’re still in there. I know you are,” she whispered, clinging to something — anything. “Please. Just… don’t leave me. Not again.”

His arms hung limp at his sides.

No resistance. No embrace.

Only the echo of her name — caught on his lips like the last word of a dying man.

“Y/N…”

But it was barely even that now.

A whisper of a memory. A soul too lost to recognize its own sorrow.

And still, she held him.

Because if no one else remembered who he used to be…

She would.