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He’s halfway across the Winding Wastes already before the moon comes to see him.
The moon is a blinding, beautiful thing: shining silver but only where the light reflects, spattered in grey and wrapped up in darkness like the stars can’t hope to touch him. Giorno (the Wicked King, the fated one, the one who makes the journey) waits patiently in his tent in the dark as the moon slips through the curtains and spills in beams across his floor.
“The stars say you've been greedy,” the moon greets like they're already but old friends; and his eyes glimmer in emerald green and garnet red and onyx black, all at once. “They say you don’t wish to wait for your prophecy.”
Giorno, who is by all accounts a greedy, greedy king, watches him thoughtfully. “Does that bother you?”
His crown rests on a cushion on a mat next to his bedroll; its rolling white-silver, stark against Giorno’s golden hair, strangely dull next to the moon’s cool skin as he makes to poke at it. Then, at the last minute, he pulls away, his face full of question and longing.
“Come to Stag’s Valley by the next blood moon,” the moon answers lowly, “and I will tell you of what the stars whisper.”
He opens his mouth to say anything, anything at all; but then clouds pass through and block all the light from the sky, and the figure kneeling beside him vanishes.
—
A great expanse of land, the Wastes cover the greater part of the center-north of our fair country and sprawl in plains, swamps, and sand. Though plentiful in rich ores and stones, all attempts to mine have inevitably led to cave-ins due to the region’s sandy soil and unruly disposition. As a result, the land is beautiful, its resources untapped — and entirely inaccessible.
I have also heard there to be quicksand. I once knew a boy whose brother had accompanied a labor group to the Wastes, and according to him, they once found a massive vat of it — nearly boiling, it was so hot, and deadly should someone slip and fall in.
The ground is sand, the weather unruly — someone, it seems, always slips.
— Traveler’s Guide Chapter 4.3: The Winding Wastes
—
Stag’s Valley rests across the Wastes and past several woods, through a tunnel, over a mountain, across a lake; it is, Giorno decides, a nearly impossible journey to make in such a short period of time.
With him he has: an archer; a tracker; a witch; a diplomat; a seer; a paladin. None of them, he thinks, are especially helpful in most regards — crossing water, for instance, or detonating dangerous explosives in order to clear a path.
He sets across anyway, staying up to stew over maps and journals by the moonlight.
Sometimes, he can swear he hears the moon laughing at him — but the sound is gone every time he looks up.
—
Shoulders broad and scarred with age,
The Knight becomes the young king’s page.
An arrow through his heart and eye,
He lives to fight and fights to die.
The Wicked King, so bright and gold;
And silver Knight, his edges old;
If true he comes of stories read,
He puts his Good King’s frets to bed.
His broken wishes dot the sky
Where Stars did bid his quest to die.
(But legends say that, for his part,
Old guilt brews heavy in his heart.)
— “The King’s Paladin”
—
The Dead Lake reeks when they cross it, but they do cross it; Giorno covers his nose in a silk handkerchief and watches his companions row him across the water. The morning comes and goes; in its absence, the lake breathes with heat, lowly simmering in a pink wash of color. It’s beautiful to look at and horrible to be around — angry, cloying. If they don’t make it before nightfall, they're as good as dead.
The labyrinth of docks reach for them from the shore; and Giorno knows better than to stop at them. On the shore awaits a horse.
Giorno drops his head immediately. The horse is all too still for a horse; its eye catches one of his men before any words of warning can come from his mouth; and before he knows it, they are docked, and the foot soldier is wading through the water. When his Archer makes to pull him back, Giorno grabs his wrist.
“Don’t,” he says, and what he means is, It’s too late.
The soldier doesn't scream when his hand sticks and melts into the horse’s flank as he reaches out to touch it; and he doesn't scream when it leads him in a strange, jerky gate to the water. He doesn't scream even as the sunset-pink water reaches his knees, then his chest, then his mouth — and then he’s gone.
All night, though, his screams echo out of the lake and into their camp a safe distance from the water. Giorno thinks about hiding in his tent as he climbs up into a tree to stare at the water — the moonlight softens it, almost, more light than pink, red bleeding from the center all the way to the shore.
The moon reaches out to brush a comforting hand through his hair. “You don't have to do this.”
Giorno tries not to look at him; it’s impossible; he’s shining through every cloud, every leaf, onto every plane of Giorno’s body. I do, he thinks, or maybe, I know. But he says nothing.
The moon keeps him company until morning.
—
The Stars, who had been watching the budding courtship with envy, devised a plan to steal the Moon away forever. One night, when the Moon left the Sun’s palace, the Stars sang to him, promising to warn him of all of the kingdom’s future troubles. Though peace rang across the land, the Moon (who always had been the worrisome sort) believed them, and followed them closer and closer toward the night sky until he got too close and fell in.
The night sky is a terrifying place, full of monsters and whispers and promises always kept. But though the Moon sought desperately to escape, he had lost his crown in his fall, and without his crown, he can never be free.
Upon waking the next morning and finding his love no longer there, the Sun was blinded: first by his love, second by his rage, third by his pride. All day he rampages and patrols and searches, unable and unwilling to ask for guidance. All day the Moon watches his fruitless journey, helpless, from behind the Stars.
At sunset, the Sun falls onto the sharp peaks of the mountains and dies. The next morning he is reborn with nothing gained from his experience at all and only his love, rage, and pride in his empty chest.
For the Stars had stolen not only the Moon’s crown, but the Sun’s heart — and without it, the Sun could never learn his lesson.
— Fairytales of the Northern Country Chapter 16: The Sun and the Moon
—
The sky is turning into night by the time they make it to Stag Valley.
The wood is strangely silent as they creep through; and though his companions are distinctly on edge, Giorno finds no danger in the quiet. It’s comforting, in a way — no competing voices, no distant rumbles, no need to be on guard. The Valley closes around him like a caress, soft and comforting, and he follows its lead.
The wind brings him to a clearing. Thoughtfully, he stares at it: at how the middle is open, at how the moon peeks through the canopy, at how the light it shines down is a dull, eerie red.
He orders his companions to wait for him from some distance away, and steps in.
This clearing, it seems, is the lowest part of the valley, as if though every step leads to here. It is its center stage, its pivotal point —
And standing in its middle, watching Giorno approach with a strange expression on his face, is the moon.
“You’ve done well,” he praises, though his brows are drawn together; Giorno can’t tell if he’s angry, sad, if some part of this had been done wrong or entirely too right.
Giorno eyes him thoughtfully; and he’s beautiful and strange and hard to look at, all color and lack thereof, his movements just to the left of normal and distinctly inhuman. He’s different tonight — more lively, maybe, or more dead — and the filter of blood cast over the lot of him makes Giorno’s absent heart ache.
And he’s beautiful.
“Thank you,” Giorno says eventually, heavily. The moon considers him another long moment before speaking.
“You’re searching for your heart, yes?” he asks, eyes glimmering. “I have seen it. You have a heavy heart, Wicked King.”
Something like irritation rises in Giorno’s throat, and something like admiration — because Giorno is impatient, has always been impatient, long before his burning fingers ever glanced a touch at the holy crown. But the moon tonight seems the way it always seems: far away and separate, unwavering. He wouldn't dare to influence him. He couldn’t.
The moon’s eyes are sad just as much as they're fond; and in Giorno’s chest, the ghost of a heart rings to beat.
“Tell me,” he whispers, and the moon opens his mouth —
And speaks.
—
Mica told me that there used to actually be stag in Stag Valley, and doe too, and all kinds of baby deer wandering around. He said he’d marry me there if the stag were still there, that they're beautiful and protectors and they glow pale-white. We came close to the Valley — took a mountain side path, and our mule nearly gave out — but it’s not safe to go in uninvited, Mica said.
He said that’s the moon’s place. I don’t know why, but I believe him.
— Journal found next to a burned wagon
—
At the end of the Valley, a guidepost,
a pitchfork stuck in desolate land, a desert of a place the moment the Valley ends. Next to the pitchfork — an apple, a few pieces of wood leading into a cabin, crushed by some unknown weight.
This world is wracked with conflict that Giorno hasn't been forced to confront in a long, long time.
The cabin sits on a road, and at the end of the road, there’s a sign. The words are clear on all but one, whose markings have been scrubbed away by the rush of the wind.
The moon’s prophecy sits heavy next to Giorno’s chest where he’d scribbled it down and hastily tucked it away. It doesn't matter, though, even if the paper bends and the ink smudges and the whole message distorts — he has it now. Even now, tracing his fingers along the smooth, aged wood, it sings behind his eyelids.
“Do you know what used to be written here?” he asks of one of his companions, though he knows that answer, too.
They decide to set out come morning. At night, the moon comes.
“You’re upset,” he says, slow and matter of fact, nearly amused, nearly worried; and it’s so hard not to see humanity in him like this.
“I am not,” Giorno says, because he knows this road and the knowledge spurs petulance in him like a curse. “I have no reason to be upset.”
The moon settles beside him on the far end of the tree branch where the wood narrows into being unable to support a human’s weight. “I don’t think I need to tell you this,” he begins, folding his legs up neatly and staring out into the sky, “but I am only the speaker of prophecies. The stars are the writers.”
Internally, Giorno says some very un-nice things about the stars. “I’m aware,” he replies eventually, “but — thank you. For coming.”
The moon shrugs one tired, boney shoulder. “I’m always here,” he says, that strange smile on his face again, a brush of a touch on Giorno’s shoulder, through his hair — and then gone.
—
I still don’t really understand why you had to leave, just that you had to, and I don’t really understand why I didn't go with you either other than that I was afraid. That, and the girls — it’s a hard age, you know, and Mom doesn't take care of them much. I guess that’s why I’m here, though. To take care of them.
I know you'll be fine, Eli, wherever you go, and I know we’ll be fine, too. My herb garden looks okay now, less yellow and more full since when you left, and I got some sort of something I don’t know the name of from a traveler passing through who said it tastes good dried. I hope the weather’s dry enough for that. It’s been thundering for days.
The thunder won’t let up, that. The girls are getting antsy — Nadi’s at that age, you know, where she just wants to go and go and go. I’m half worried one of these days the sky will open and just swallow her up.
— Letter found unstamped and unsent in the rubble of a collapsed house
—
At the end of the wind is a guide:
an owl, snowy-grey, wide eyes blinking in topaz like a searchlight, on and off and on again. Giorno eyes it suspiciously, halting his companions with a single raised hand.
He knows this road, and he knows this area, and he knows the direction the owl flies in, too. He has the thought, sudden and intrusive and ridiculous, that none of this is anyone else’s business. That if this is truly his path he must take on the way to his quest and if he truly has no other option, then his companions should just stay behind.
But of course, he is a king now, and kings don’t go on journeys by themselves, racing after a bird like a child at play. When the wind changes and the owl coasts with it, he bites down a sigh, silver-white crown heavy on his head, and motions for his party to follow.
“I’ve never been to this part of the country before,” the Archer says, looking around with eyes sharp as nails. “There was a civil war here years ago, wasn't there?”
“A revolution,” the Diplomat corrects lowly, and his eyes burn holes into Giorno’s back.
Giorno raises his chin. “Let’s not speak of it.”
The owl is a strange and temperamental guide — or maybe it’s the wind who carries it that’s the temperamental one, dipping away and leaving them to bake in the sun, coming back to batter their ears and bluster their capes and steer them all off course. It picks up, the wind, the longer they are on horseback, and they are on horseback for a long time; the ride is long — longer than they would normally ride in one sitting — and Giorno is certain they would have gotten lost already had he not known these woods like the back of his hand.
The wind picks up, brewing hard and fast into the beginnings of a storm. Eventually, the owl stops, not so much fluttering as faltering, before the sheer face of a cliff. Giorno hops off his horse to peer over the edge.
The Wicked Sea settles in a great expanse before him, stretching far into the horizon and beyond.
—
It’s impossible to capture on paper the depth of the wound the Uprising left, gaping and raw, into the regions it affected. Fields burned, houses destroyed, families slaughtered for waving the wrong flag and wearing the wrong colors — it was a brutal, bloody thing.
The history is hard to document, as the area was so thoroughly ravaged that few left with their lives, and many that did were unable or unwilling to speak of it. This makes the job of the historian that much more difficult, and that much more important, for without it this conflict would surely fade away into time, just as blood into the sea.
— The Northern Uprising: Prologue
—
At the end of the ocean, a blessing,
a seaside cave, ducked into the cliff face and beyond just enough lichen-covered rocks to be protected from the spray of white water crashing against shore. Giorno kneels inside it and eats bread and sips wine from the Paladin’s pack; familiar scratches in the walls stare back at him, and he can feel the presence of every god he doesn't believe in bearing down on his shoulders.
Lucky, they say, to have found this cave, so lucky; and everyone ignores all at once that Giorno had led them right here.
The clouds of the storm block the moonlight. When he stays up that night, long after everyone else has fallen asleep, he is alone.
—
The Fool and The Hanged Man spin a delicate dance,
Blood dripping rose-gold from their two joined hands.
A crown and a half and an undisturbed bed —
A heart won’t stop beating, and a love but stopped dead.
The Fool and The Hanged Man dance a delicate spin,
And the world all but tumbles, and the sky but falls in.
A nightmare, recurring, and a dream with no end,
And a tireless fool and a mind that won’t bend.
A waltz but repeating in cycles and rhyme,
And two-steps and half-beats and forced keeping time:
The Fool puts the crown back on The Hanged Man’s hanged head —
The whole world stops breathing, and the whole sky drops dead.
— Anonymous squire
—
At the end of the world is a line,
a thin road cut into sand and into the pale sea grass that sprouts in batches across it. Giorno stares at it with a heavy frown on his face before reluctantly following it upward.
The sunlight beats down on his back, oppressive and suffocating, like a deterrent. Giorno and his companions press onward up the path, elevation climbing until their hearing dulls and their heads full with cotton and their lungs ache from lack of oxygen.
It’s a half day’s ride to their destination; Giorno could draw them a map if he wanted to on the palm of his hand. They stretch that half day into triple that, camped a distance into the wood with the wind whispering all around them in saints’ reedy voices. The Archer and the Tracker go to hunt; the Seer and the Witch set camp. The Paladin stays very, very still, and watches him.
“You’re not lost, are you?” the moon asks, with that familiar wind-like barely there feeling of his hand through Giorno’s hair. “You’re a far distance from your friends.”
Giorno bristles at lost and he bristles at friends. “Of course not. Just… getting some air.”
The moon hums, thoughtful. “Your accent drops when you're not with them, you know.”
“What?” Giorno asks, eyes wide, turning; the feeling in his chest is almost fear, ricocheting and reverberating with no heart to contain it.
There’s a small, barely there smile on the moon’s face that’s just placid enough to be sad. “Nothing,” he says, and the conversation drops like lead.
Giorno realizes that he’s been unconsciously wringing his hands, spinning his rings, pressing hard against his knuckles until the tips of his fingers turn white. He hides them underneath his coat, hoping no one has noticed his stress-bitten nails.
Then: “Is it what you wanted?” the moon asks, sounding far away again, as if though their nearly-touching shoulders don’t matter, and Giorno couldn't dare to reach out and touch him.
There is a pause where Giorno stews over his words carefully. “It’s what I expected,” he answers eventually, and hopes it’s enough.
If the silence is anything to go by, it is, and hours pass in cold and quiet, darkness alleviated only by the shine of the moonlight on his cloak.
—
I had a friend as a child who’d gotten lost one night. Her folks and mine were out with torches looking for her, all of us kids wrapped up and kept at home. I remember waking up to her walking in the door at what must have been midnight, and I remember the look on her father’s face when he’d come in and seen her sitting there with me next to the hearth while she told me all about how the world shines at night and how the trees can all talk and how the Moon took her by the hand and led her home.
She told me once, years and years later, that when it’s a clear night and she’s afraid and alone, she opens the window just a little, to let the Moon in. Don’t know what she’s thinking, that, but she’s always been a little different since that night — dreamier, maybe, or farther away. Sometimes I wonder that the Moon never really led her back at all.
I have wondered before though, when the nights are clear. We all get a little lonely, and who knows — maybe the Moon gets lonely, too.
— Journal left in a tavern booth
—
Cross the line and you’ll beget your answer
rings around and around in Giorno’s head as he stares at the small, half-rotted house that sits across the road. It’s been years since he’s seen it — ten, maybe, maybe more. He never thought he’d see it again. He didn't want to.
His life in this house is so far behind him that by all rights there’s no need for it to exist at all. He knew he should have burned it years ago; he knew it. What’s the point of trying not to draw attention if he’s just going to end up right back here anyway?
The threshold is half burned, a wound he can’t even remember the house receiving — though he can remember the smoke, vividly, the lack of oxygen, the gasping breaths, the way his windpipes had been singed and his voice shredded until he couldn't even recognize the words in his mouth anymore.
The door, charred — flames licking at the heels of small feet, narrow calves, spreading from the dark wood to the straw right outside, a road block and an exit all at once, so much heat on his skin that even as the fire doesn't touch him it burns.
He remembers other things, too: the sound of birds crying in the morning. The chill of the mountain air before the sun came around its crest. Shoes by the door, and lights on inside; the smell of antiseptic. The sound of a woman, crying.
There’s a clamor outside as his rowdy companions try to stay quiet. He catches the Witch’s eyes through the broken window as she raises a hand and mouths, Sorry.
No answers await him here. He climbs out from the depths of history and steps carefully out of what used to be the back door.
It had been midday as they’d been climbing up, sun sweltering, air thin, muscles burning with the exertion. They’re just about at tree-line, now, the larger vegetation thinned out as the lack of oxygen becomes unable to support them; and even in the spring, the air is cold up here, and Giorno can see his breath puffed in front of him like cotton candy dissolving in water.
The sun is setting, now. Giorno’s eyes catch on the golden light falling onto the crests of the mountains like slowly impaling itself on spears —
and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s missing something very, very important.
No answers await him here; and when he leaves, it is with the dying sun on his back.
—
The battle did last for a night and a half,
And the King’s Men did lose, and the Victors did laugh
And stomp through dead bodies to stomp further still,
Content with the promise of having their fill.
The King’s Men did lose, with their swords and their shields,
And their fair Golden General slashed at the heels,
And their promises broken to family and kin —
And the King’s Men lay broken, and the Victors stomped in.
The Valley dips low in the sight of the Moon,
And the General loses, and loses too soon,
And the Moon mourns his loss, so it hits when it swings,
And the Valley collapses, and the blood tumbles in.
The Victors’ dark lives stain the Valley’s floor red,
And there’s red in the Moon, now, and death in its head —
And the Blood Moon does rise, timeless war in its path,
Though the battle had lasted but a night and a half.
— “Blood Moon Valley”
—
“Bring the spirits to your beck and call”
is easier said than done, Giorno finds out, as he realizes he has no idea what that truly means for him. He’s tempted to ask for advice, but the Seer is too knowing and the Witch is too meddling and the Paladin’s eyes are too heavy and too kind.
They make camp in the valley beneath the mountains, a fair walk from the road and a short one from the cliff that overlooks the ocean. It’s the longest they’ve stayed in one spot since leaving the palace, Giorno thinks. He wishes it hadn't been here, of all places.
They’re deep into the valley by the time the moon comes to see him.
“You seem tired,” the moon says in murmurs and whispers, moonlight streaming across Giorno’s skin like a caress.
Giorno has shed his furs and cape tonight, his white-silver crown on the grass beside him and his golden hair loose, and his fingers itch to reach out and touch just as he knows that they would phase through nothing. He shifts his weight, feeling the dew of the forest floor seep into his rich velvet pants. “I’ve been traveling,” he replies, like it isn't obvious.
The moon’s mouth quirks up, “So you have,” and he settles beside him on the grass.
It’s always disconcerting, how there’s no warmth coming from his body. Giorno is forced to remind himself again that he isn't even really there.
I don’t know what to do, he wants to say. I’m pretending I do, because you told me, and because everyone assumes that I do, but I’ve been kicking around these woods for a day and a decade and I never learned what they want from me.
He doesn't say that. Instead, he says, “Aren’t you cold?”
Surprise colors the colorless edges of the moon’s face. His eyes slide over to Giorno’s, and in that moment, their deep grey is nearly brown, warm and so strangely familiar that it makes Giorno’s head hurt. “Oh,” he starts, plucking at the collar of his thin shirt, “I don’t really — get cold.”
The night air pricks at Giorno’s skin through his clothes. He rubs at his arms absently and hums in acknowledgement.
“What’s your name?” he asks eventually. “Your real name.”
In that moment the moon’s eyes are so wide and far away that it’s like looking into the night sky itself; and there are ages and millennia in him that Giorno has no access to. He forgets, sometimes, in spite of his pallid skin, in spite of his lack of warmth, in spite of his inhuman stillness, that the moon has watched men and kings and kingdoms fall again and again with no respite. There are, after all, very few things as tired and ageless as the moon.
“I used to have a name,” he says, faint and echoing, “a very long time ago. I can’t say that I do anymore.”
Giorno, who was raised in the North and spoon-fed stories about the rise and fall of the Sun and the Moon, watches him carefully. Heart hammering, palms sweating, terror electric in every vein under his skin, he asks, “What did it used to be, then?”
The moon considers him with millennia of tragedy in his dull eyes. Giorno considers him back.
“Tell me,” he whispers, and the moon opens his mouth —
And speaks.
—
The night the boy came to the Station I was certain he was just another wartime urchin, some rebel’s abandoned pup kicked and beat on the side of the road. The only distinguishing thing about him was his hair, I think, and his eyes — golden, and they nearly glowed, and even as he was, dirty and small, there was something intimidating about him. That, and he staggered in straight from Stag Valley with a crown already on his head. That’s a long, long walk.
I’m no suspicious man, but I’m not about to raise my sword to a glowing child from Stag Valley, so I had Reya bring him to the Capital, and the next thing I know the kid’s the crown prince. They’re calling him Giorno, I hear. Crown Prince Giorno of the Wicked Sea. I swear that’s not the name he told me, but to be completely honest, I can’t remember, and Saints know my memory isn't what it used to be.
Sounds just like our king to fuck around, have a baby, and go missing. Not that I liked the guy too much as is, but you have to wonder if it’s all connected, you know? Missing king, violent uprising, and a new, mysterious, magic prince. I don’t know, though. Didn't hear it from me.
I’m just glad I didn't push the kid around. See, he scared me half to death, but there’s something in his eyes — cold, detached, like the life’s bled out of him. I wouldn't want to be at the other end of his army.
I swear by my soul, the kid’s got no heart.
— Letter from a soldier at the Wicked Sea outpost
—
And you, little king, hear the cursed forest sing —
echoes and echoes, around and around again, through one of Giorno’s ears and out the other. He keeps his companions in the dark and keeps on the path, feigning ignorance to the woods that keep his mother’s house. It’s a day and a half that they descend the mountain, all winding paths and scratchy scrub, scratched ankles, scratched composure. On his head, his silver crown burns white-hot.
There must be words, he thinks: conversations, arguments, questions about where they're headed. There must be more life, he thinks, than what he hears; but whatever words do pass, he doesn't notice them.
The journey is long but it is not difficult. He has, after all, traveled this path twice before. And finally, with the moon high in the sky, the mouth of Stag’s Valley opened wide in front of him —
He keeps his companions in the light of the camp, steps carefully into the dark, and falls in.
—
List of Missing Children of the Northern Regions:
- Adele Robins, age 15; brown hair, brown eyes, tall height, small build (reward available)
- Jacob Clemmins, age 9; light brown hair, blue eyes, short height, medium build (reward available)
- Marco Hob, age 10; black hair, blue eyes, medium height, small build
- Nadi Ley, age 7; black hair, brown eyes, short height, small build (reward available)
- Ella Yanis, age 13; brown hair, blue eyes, medium height, medium build
- Haruno Shiobana, age 12; black hair, green eyes, short height, small build
Please be vigilant of yours and others’ children. If found, please bring to the nearest Royal Guard Station.
— Notice stamped with the royal seal, nailed to a tree along the road to the Wicked Sea
—
But a thief at the heart of it all —
and he knows it, too, and the Valley knows it; the trees whisper in gossip and fact, spilled history behind waving hands. Giorno (the Wicked King, the fated one, the one who takes the journey) doesn't have enough of a heart to care about what they say of him, and he doesn't have enough heart to be afraid, either.
It’s different than he remembers. The last time, in search of his prophecy, he’d entered through the other side — the pretty side, the side with the path, tepid and only semi-docile, like it might spring up and drag you down at any moment if you move too quickly.
But the path he walks now is not a path at all — snapped branches and stubborn brush, scratched ankles, scratched composure. The trees loom around him, and their voices are high and reedy, nearly deafening. Their thick canopy blocks the heavy caress of the moon, and as Giorno shoulders further and further into the wood, he feels himself slipping further and further out of view, out of meaning, out of light.
Hooked and snatched by a low-hanging tree branch — his proud, royal cape. Its down and furs gone, he shivers in the cold, feeling the barely-there tinge of almost-numb at the tips of his fingers.
Abandoned in a particularly stubborn pool of mud — his high, shiny boots. Without them, mud sinks deep into his heavy socks, and they dip and drag and freeze; he rips them off with cold, shaking fingers.
Tangled in leaves and brush — his carefully plaited hair. His hands as he undoes the knots and braids are dirty, and he can feel them drag black-brown into the golden blonde like a message or a curse.
Clawed and ripped by a stray thorn — his bright, linen shirt. The thorn drags sharp over his chest, carving a paper-thin cut over his heart. Despite the shallowness of the wound, it bleeds.
Still, he shoulders on. The clearing of the moon is a bright light in the distance, matched in color only by the circlet resting on his brow. Everything else is dark as black and black as night.
The Moon stands with his back to Giorno, staring down the path on the opposite side of the clearing. It was known to Giorno in his childhood as the Victor’s Path, though he’s never said so, and it is the path through which Giorno had last come to see the Moon in his own domain. It is also, Giorno knows, the path through which the Moon has watched him leave, and twice: once with a kingdom and an entourage and a quest, and once with dirt under his nails and burns along his feet and a crown clutched precariously in his shaking hands.
He stands with his back to Giorno. Giorno hesitates for a long, silent, painful slice of history before he takes a deep breath in and steps forward.
The Moon is as he always is: motionless until, suddenly, he isn't. There is a strange quality to the way he moves that Giorno has never and will never get used to: a little bit too sudden and a little bit too still, too inhuman, no heartbeat bobbing in his throat and no breath rising in his chest.
His expression, too, is strange, just a little bit too off to be truly welcoming or reassuring. “You’ve lost your ornaments, little king,” he says, not unkindly.
Giorno had almost forgotten about that, in his haste; now, the wind reminds him, passing right through his thin, ripped shirt to claw under his skin. He feels empty somehow, like he’d had so much purpose in him until this, like he’s been leading for ages to this moment and yet somehow, now, at the denouement of it all, he doesn't know what to say.
He opens his empty mouth. “Fugo.”
The Moon’s — Fugo’s — eyes are heavy and expectant and tragically unsure. Giorno feels suddenly like a glass ornament cupped in Fugo’s hands, crushed or broken all too easily should you hold too tightly or think to let go.
He tries to take a step forward and finds that he can’t. He doesn't understand why he can’t. “What did I steal?” he whispers, prophecy echoing in his head, again and again and again; and his voice is raw with the history he wishes he knew, heavy with the words he wishes he could say. “What did I take from you?”
The laugh that tumbles from Fugo’s mouth is like the whisper of the trees all around him, only richer, as if though they’d been copying his echo for ages and ages and ages and had begun to forget what it sounds like. “Many things,” he says, quiet and clear and honey-smooth, “but only one that I want back.”
“Tell me,” he says, desperation at the back of his throat. “Name it, and I’ll give it to you.”
He has always thought of this clearing as strangely flat, a reprieve from the sloping, leading hills of the Valley. It feels peaceful, he thinks; there’s choice in flat ground, and responsibility. No one to lead you forward but your own feet.
It feels less like a gift, now — less of a blessing, and more of a curse. The Moon stands frozen in the Valley’s dead center, lips closed and feet still, simply staring at Giorno as Giorno stares back. Giorno jerks his body forward, or tries to; and again, it doesn't move.
His crown rests heavy on his head in holy silver and burning white.
“Fugo,” he says again.
The Moon smiles a smile so sad and old that it feels like a secret, and Giorno nearly looks away. “Giorno.”
“Come towards me,” he whispers, voice raw and ragged in his throat. “Please.”
Fugo is too strange, too still, too inhuman. He rests at the dead center of the clearing in the unfiltered moonlight, glimmering and incandescent and barely there. “I can’t,” he says, and there’s something like frustration in his eyes, like disappointment, and something like fear. “You know that I can’t.”
Giorno’s head throbs under his circlet. He scrambles to take it off, though it doesn't help; the pain only spreads, now, and the metal burns in his hands. “Why would I know that?”
Across the clearing, Fugo shakes his head, long bangs casting shadows over his eyes where no shadows can reach. Still half in the wood, with the cling of the forest all around him, Giorno watches him.
He steps forward; and this time, his body lets him. Fugo watches him with wide, uncertain eyes.
“Why can’t you come to me?” Giorno asks quietly. His legs are heavy and every step is a century, and he finds himself slowing with fatigue.
The look in Fugo’s eyes has changed into something more real, more tangible, more human. At his sides, his hands are shaking.
Giorno takes another step forward. “Fugo,” he tries, “please.”
The crown burns ever hotter in his hands as he trudges farther and farther from the safety of the trees. Their whispers grow louder, into almost shouts, and he can almost feel their cloying branches reaching for him as if trying to pull him away. Their voices ring in his ears, behind his eyes: what are you doing?, and, not supposed to happen, and, it can’t be this way.
Fugo stares with wide, wide eyes.
The sky bears down so heavily on his shoulders than his knees nearly buckle under the weight. His fingers burn where they grasp the crown and the scars uncovered when he lost his shoes in the forest burn, too, like a reminder of the past he can’t quite escape from. The oxygen pools in his lungs and then is gone, sucked from the air, and his whole body is warm, burning, a piercing sort of ache striking at his chest like a javelin through the heart.
Eventually, he can go no further. He sinks heavily to his knees, not a step from where the moon stands, watching him.
“Please,” he says, and there, on his knees in the center of the Moon’s Valley, he lifts the crown toward Fugo.
It could be only a second that passes; it could be an hour, or a year, or a millennia. Giorno watches Fugo watching him, watches the way his chest moves with breath, watches the way his fingers reach, haltingly, for the circlet. He’s a blinding, beautiful thing: shining silver but only where the light reflects, spattered in grey and wrapped up in darkness; and his face is full of question and hope and a sharp, fierce longing.
“My life ended a long time ago,” Fugo says quietly, like an apology or an explanation, fingers hovering but an inch from the crown.
The burn scars on Giorno’s ankles and feet shackle him heavily in place, knees sinking into the mud; and his whole body feels like it’s wrapped in heat and engulfed in flame; and his chest aches and aches and aches.
“So did mine,” he says.
The sky is a mirror; Giorno watches Fugo watching him. The rest of the world may as well not exist for as much attention as he pays it, though if he had been paying attention, he may have noticed how the wind picks up, how the trees rustle and whisper, and how overhead, the stars begin flickering in and out and in and out.
Giorno watches him hesitate a long second before taking an unsure, careful step forward.
“I’ve missed you,” Fugo says, slow and sad and achingly hesitant, and then, “There’s no going back from this,” and then, eventually, with the world standing still, “Are you sure?”
The Valley is empty but for the ghosts. Fugo’s hand creeps closer, closer, closer.
Giorno opens his mouth —
And speaks.