Chapter Text
Black fills his vision, the fiery glow of daemons lurk in the corner of his mind—
Blood splatters over his eyes, he burns and he dies.
Swords pierce into him, and he drowns in the light.
Pale fingers clasp a sylleblossom—
The ring is nowhere to be found—
He breathes, and the world begins.
Noctis wakes with sweat clinging to his forehead and his hand cramped as it clenches desperately to his covers.
Something is off.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something.
Shooting up from his resting postition, he wearily twists his head around in confusion.
His eyes are blurry and not adjusting as fast as he would like to the sudden light infiltrating the room.
Everything seems too bright, and he can't help the innate reaction to sweep out his arm to summon the Armiger.
But nothing comes forth and—
Oh, right.
He doesn't have that anymore.
Something quiet and sharp—bitterness, is this what bitterness is?—fills his heart, and the frustrated huff that leaves him burns his lungs.
It's not fair how he's the only one here. Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto did a lot of the leg work too.
He wants to curse towards fate, because if this was supposed to be his happy ending—if this world where young children are targeted by madmen is the reprieve he gets for sacrificing his own line—
he doesn't want it.
As he quietly wallows in his thoughts, he pulls his arm back and is snapped out of his brooding by a sharp clacking that abruptly stops when he slowly pulls his blankets off to the side.
His eyes track toward an odd shadow in the light of his room.
The light seems to bend around an odd shape, not quite larger than what would be an odd shaped rock in the Duscae wastelands.
It's refracting the small gap of light through the door, and if he shifts his head just a little—oh.
Potter.
Of course.
He doesn't know what he expected.
Ruffling a hand through his hair, he glances at the sun barely rising across the horizon as he calls out to the boy.
"What are you doing at this time of the day?"
The odd shaped boy does not answer, and Noctis can't help the sigh that leaves him.
He feels so old.
Shooting his hand forward—Potter may be a Seeker, but he is still a child in comparison to him—his hand slides onto the silky fabric of the Invisibility Cloak and he yanks.
The cloak comes flying off, and there in the middle of his room, stands Hogwarts' resident troublemaker with surprise evident in his green eyes.
A headache seems to be forming, and Noctis already regrets his decision.
Maybe he should've left this all alone and gone to live in the mountains near a pond.