Work Text:
a doomed timeline, somewhere on eorzea.
There are times when it’s already too late to turn back.
Rousing from years of slumber takes a toll on the mind and body both. G’raha gets up, slowly, giving himself time to feel out his body and the peculiarities of having been asleep for so long. Understandably, G’raha has little time to waste, little time to be afforded for gawking at his now-immortal body.
In spite of the abruptness of his awakening, G’raha spends every hour of the next week combing over historical documents. The memoirs of Count Edmont Fortemps sit on a shelf in his study. To an untrained eye, it might look in just the same pristine condition as when it was first written. The pages, however, are crinkled, tearing at the edges from G'raha's desperate hands soaking in each and every word.
Underneath his fingers sits a series of at least twenty separate documents, all stained in scarlet. A series of delivery reports filled under the name ‘M’naago Rahz’. An inn’s guest book from the Forgotten Knight in Ishgard. Scribblings from Tataru’s personal diary. A traveler’s journal depicting the splendor of the Azim Steppe, in dedication to the Mol tribe.
It’s an eclectic collection, no doubt. But every record salvaged from the time before is as good as the last. G’raha absorbs many names, both familiar and unfamiliar to him, though connected by a single tether from beginning to end. The Warrior of Light. However grim the circumstances, G’raha smiles. He lets himself bath in his youthful nostalgia, if only for a moment. G’raha thinks of their first meeting, as he leapt dramatically from the heights of Saint Coinach’s Find. And he’s grateful too that the Warrior of Light was kind enough to tolerate him. He envisions every inch of the Warrior of Light, the pride with which they carry themself, the softness of their smile, the determination that burns in their eyes. In those moments, the rest of the world turns silent, and he can only hear himself breathing.
Mor Dhona.
A series of words turn to visions, turn to memories under his fingertips. A past forgotten amidst a bleak future.
The Sons of Saint Coinach.
Soon enough, it will be time to cross the rift. A heavy knot sits in his stomach. It's been sitting there since he first awoke, but now he can't ignore it.
The Crystal Tower.
His gamble might fail. He might die before he even reaches the other side.
Allagan Eyes.
But, sitting here at the table in his study, it’s too late to turn back. G’raha knows the names now. He knows the hopes. He knows the dreams. He knows that, no matter what, they’re worth saving.
Biggs III is the first and last soul G'raha meets in this doomed Eorzea. Before he departs, G'raha offers him one last goodbye, one last piece of gratitude for his kindness. And though he will never see Biggs III again, nor this dark reflection of Eorzea, G'raha prays that it may too come to find its salvation.
unoccupied ground, lakeland.
Some people say they saw it emerge from the ground.
It’s an old bard’s tale, you know? The day the Crystal Tower arrived on Vrandtic soil. The tale's thread has been spun every which way, until singing tongues ache from the same worn words.
Despite the vibrant purple still strung up across Lakeland’s forests, the air is dead and cold. One might have called it winter, were seasons still with meaning and without the monotony of an everlasting light. A thin sheet of frost dyes the foliage white, pale as the flesh of sin eaters.
A quarry of elven hunters make rounds throughout Lakeland. They are, for all intents and purposes, the first observers, though long dead to tell the tale. The first witnesses of the Crystal Tower’s arrival, where once only dead grass and rotten game sat. One of the elven hunters grabs another by his sleeve, jaw hanging open as a beam of blue light engulfs the area.
Some would tell you that they saw it emerged from the ground and that the very earth gave birth to a last line of defense from the sin eaters. It was Norvrandt’s way of fighting back, they say. It was Norvrandt’s way of reclaiming what could still be salvaged, what was not yet lost.
A few malms away, what would become the foundation of the Crystarium, G'raha struggles onto two feet. His body aches from the impact. It's the relentless force of crossing the rift, his being stretched to the edges under the scrutiny of the Shards. G’raha winces, collapsed just under the light of the Crystal Tower, barely noticeable.
Two of the elven quarry spot him, young men forced into adulthood by the need to survive. There’s shouting above his body now. It doesn’t take long for the others to join them, a gathering around his strange arrival.
There’s a dead Mystel under the beacon!
He’s not dead, you idiot. Look, his eyes are opening!
Hey, are you alright? What happened here?
‘What happened here?’ Whatever words he has to offer, G’raha loses to the immense pain in his body. G’raha, unfortunately, doesn’t have an answer to what happened here. The fate of Norvrandt was sealed long before his arrival.
What will happen here is a different question. He doesn't know the answer to that one either.
the ocular, the crystarium.
The stories the Exarch tells Lyna are the stories he thinks are worth saving. Had he all the time in the world, he'd tell her every last one of them.
There were the nights that the Exarch held Lyna firmly in his lap. A book rested in his hands, as the Exarch rocked her back and forth. He holds on to every one of her baited breathes, as each turn of the page brings Lyna more excitement than the last. The origin of the Oracle of Light was her personal favorite. Her tiny fingers trace over the long, silky hair of the Oracle of Light and down to her white dress, soft as a brightlily. Everytime, Lyna was lulled to sleep, dreaming that she too could be an Oracle, a savior.
The Exarch's hands tremble as he flips through the pages. They're calloused, at least the one still made of flesh. The other hand is rough as an uncut gem. He lifts it, tries to twist his wrist, test each joint. And though it moves just as the other arm, it remains unfeeling and cold, an indescribable stiffness as if the arm were not even there. The crystal crawls all along it, spreading to far corners of his back and neck in patches. This many years, and still his limbs are that of a stranger’s. His body is that of a stranger's.
How fortunate the Exarch is, to be granted a life beyond that of a dying Shard. Beyond that of even the greatest heroes who ever graced the Source.
the umbilicus, the crystarium.
On occasion, the Exarch indulges himself in tales from the Cabinet of Curiosity. Tales of the scholarly kind, of course. Manuscript after manuscript of historical documents. His academic research has always had a time and a place. Two dedicated shelves in his study, in fact.
These tales are not those of scholars.
The Umbilicus is littered with a vast collection of fables illustrated for children. Despite the childishness, or perhaps because of it, the Exarch enjoys them all the same. His aching fingers trace the ridges of the paper. He’s spent nigh on a century in the Crystarium and has watched as the same tale becomes twisted in time. Just as the pathway grows ever larger, some stones break apart and are lost in the dirt and in the mud.
The Exarch is guilty of this too.
He enjoys such fables even more knowing that the figures in them are real. Heroes and villains forged from the same iron as the Scions and the Warrior of Darkness. He’s pestered them far too often, if only to hear from the eyes of those who saw it happen. Such are the stories that cannot be captured in simple illustrations.
The cause of the Flood is a popular tale. Every child knows it. They must, for it builds the foundation of their bedtime stories and of the monsters that sleep underneath their feet. Every child learns to brace for the sin eaters. Every child learns to long for the embrace of the sunless sea.
A weathered tome embossed with gold lettering on the cover sits in the Exarch’s lap. The cardstock is thick so as not to lose any ink, nor any color. He turns the page. Five figures cast a shadow across the page, with the wicked white looming above their heads in abstract swirls. These are the Warriors of Light, the harbingers of Norvrandt’s destruction.
These are the villains.
The Exarch looks deep into the visage of Ardbert. His blue eyes are vast and empty. His armor is smeared with heaps of blood, dripping and floating across the illustration like a fluttering pixie. He grips his axe with both hands, ready to lunge towards the reader and cleave them in two.
Ardbert was a Warrior of Light. A walking nightmare. But even Norvrandt’s cruelest villains were loved once, and loved in turn. Hidden inside the page are not the eyes of a monster, but that of a boy. A boy who would forsake everything to save what he loved, even if it destroyed him.
No different from the Warrior of Darkness. No different from the Exarch.
The Exarch slams the book shut. Though Ardbert’s death does not linger among the pages, among the youthful dance of crayon colors, it lingers in the heart of someone who still yet lives. It lingers in the heart of Exarch, though they have not met.
But if they did meet, by some tear in the cosmos, the Exarch wonders if it is too late to say sorry.
the exedra, the crystarium.
The Exarch knows that heroes are made not born. He wonders how easily they can be destroyed.
He admits, this is not the time nor the place he expected to meet a Warrior of Light. Norvrandt’s Warrior of Light. In a way, he's awestruck looking upon the flesh of a hero, such that has persisted in the Eulmoran crypts for centuries and now stands to tell the tale.
That's how it appears, anyway. And the captive audience of the Crystarium seems to believe so too. But something here is wrong. The Exarch can see it written on the Warrior of Darkness’ face. Their body tenses and a slight arch forms across their back. Closed, clenched fist, aching palms. They do not look upon this 'Ardbert' with the fondness of a close friend, nor of a soul’s savior.
The body is the same, there's no mistaking something like this. But the soul is different, is removed, is replaced with someone else altogether. And when he speaks, it's not as though this 'Ardbert' speaks in lies, in fabricated memories. He speaks in half-truths, more like it. That which is a truth hidden inside truth.
Soon after, the Warrior of Darkness, Y'shtola and Urianger enter, still a sour expression written on their faces. The solitude of the Ocular is their place of conference, of privacy from the corpse’s display. And indeed, the Exarch can feel the tension rising in the Warrior of Darkness’ body, scorching as the summer days of Amh Araeng, and a funeral pyre's rage burning inside them.
Then who is it, if not Ardbert?
The Warrior of Darkness knows their answer. They scoff at the corpse’s puppetry. "It looks like him and sounds like him," they say. Their words are as sharp as a blade, and of twofold anger. "But it isn’t him."
Elidibus, the Emissary.
A realization, a wave crashing against the shore. This is Ardbert’s animated corpse, such that Elidibus dons like a fresh suit of armor. His blue eyes are vast and empty and, for once, the Exarch recognizes the face of villainy from his story books.
There was life inside his eyes, once, over a century ago.
the ocular, the crystarium.
The Crystal Exarch is a living epitaph for those who have passed.
Without anyone else in the Exarch’s private study, it's a sobering quiet. He’s used to being alone with himself, having done so for centuries even before arriving on the First. His mind works best when he’s alone. It’s the archivist and the librarian in him, the quiet helps him process. And, more importantly, the quiet is where the Exarch works best.
Were his body not sleepless, the Exarch probably would have worked himself to exhaustion at least a few times over the past days. For hours on end, he goes back and forth over the same notes, refining his process. It’s not long before a lethargy overtakes him and his knees grow weak. He pulls out a chair and sits down with an exhale. He tells himself that he’ll rest soon enough. At least, after one last necessary push.
The Exarch pulls out a crystalline shard from a wooden stand, specially crafted by the Mean artisans for this occasion. It’s a deep blue, partially translucent, crystal that fits perfectly in the palm of his hand. The bottom of the crystal is coated with a thick red lattice that spreads across the rest of the crystal like a growth of spores.
One of six dedicated spirit vessels. The fruits of his labor have finally come to fruition.
Back hunched over, his eyes close as he tries to attune himself to his own essence. It's the process of connecting with an object, of taking your soul and creating an extension of yourself to fit the mold of a foreign vessel.
He rolls his head back, sinks his back into the chair. The Exarch lets his mind empty, a flood of memories inundating the crystal. It starts to glow in his hand and he grips it tighter. A sharp pain kicks in as he continues to extend himself, stretching the fringes of his soul to adapt to the vessel. His heart is racing. The pins and needles push deeper and deeper into his skull.
His grip relaxes. The Exarch exhales again and the vessel glows, an even brighter blue than when he started.
The Exarch already knows what he's in for. The Warrior of Darkness will notice his body and scold him for it. The crystal blight glows with an uncanny blue. Both his arms now are phantom limbs, an incessant tingling sensation that travels all the way up to his neck.
When the Warrior of Darkness sees him next, they'll remind him again and again of the same thing. He made a vow, a promise to live to see the end of their fight. Make no mistake, Warrior of Darkness, he will tell them. The Exarch has never been one to fold his cards while the game is still young. His spirit vessel is not a death wish, it is a fail safe. It’s a last chance at something the Exarch swore was impossible long ago.
The Exarch will admit that he’s a twisted sort, stuck in a cycle of endless self-sacrifice. But here he has no intention of dying, certainly not knowing the amount of stories that would die with him.
Not before the score with the Ascians is settled.
xande’s throne, the crystal tower.
When all is said and done with Elidibus, the Exarch feels two sets of hands brush his face. One body, two hearts.
Who’s there?
lost among the aether, somewhere on norvrandt.
There are sections of the archive that twist beyond the Exarch's control. His memory, an archive. An archive that spans all the way from the Eight Umbral Calamity to the aftermath of the Flood to the death of the Unsundered.
The Exarch existed, briefly, inside the Warrior of Darkness's soul. Or at least, he feels as though he has touched it and that the Exarch was left tethered to something unexpected. When he tries to think about it, the Exarch can't remember much else.
Here are the moments that stay in clarity: his hand around someone else's wrist. The starry sky of Amh Araeng, not yet consumed by midnight but still of vast beauty not unlike the fabled sunless sea. A laugh evolving from a giggle, from deep within his heart.
The Exarch remembers a warm face and a hand that wipes his cheek with a gloved thumb. He's floating along, trying to find that sensation again within himself.
And then he feels something—someone, of bruised fingertips and cut palms—grab him. It is sudden but not forceful, this someone is trying to hold onto the Exarch, so as not to lose themself among the debris of the mind. The Exarch is no longer alone is this liminal space, the gap between the memory and the soul.
Where are they? They’re here, somewhere, and that somewhere is nowhere at all.
His vision narrows to a single speck of blue light and then the Exarch realizes that he’s standing in the Ocular. There are three other bodies here: the Warrior of Darkness, Ryne and Beq Lugg.
The Exarch floats in between them, a sliver of a wind or breeze. He’s searching for something in the Warrior of Darkness’ eyes, the waters bordering a Kholusian islet. If he dives in deep enough, he sees the darkened, rotting floorboards and a boy too small for the courage he carries inside himself.
What the three bodies do not realize is that there are two others, amorphous. The missing pages of the archive come back into focus. Amh Araeng, the starlight above Nabaath Araeng and the Empty. Il Mheg, the sleepless air surrounding the Wolekdorf amaro. Rak’tika, the lush gardens of Slitherbough.
On the mining railways, Ardbert’s hand pressed against his chest. The Exarch gasps for breath, even in breathlessness, like his head’s been pulled back from the water.
“This is the final goodbye, huh?”
On the Kholusian islet, the boy, now a young man, removes his shoes and dives into the sea. The Exarch wants to follow him, out in the endless waters beyond.
No, why must this be goodbye, why now when the Exarch’s only just regained what was at risk of being lost forever? He turns around, now face to face with Ardbert. Two shades they are, and yet the Exarch is lucky. Another body, another Shard. Another time where his epitaph grows and grows, and where the words the Exarch first etched upon it are slowly fading away.
“What will become of you?" the Exarch says. "After the Warrior of Darkness crosses the rift, that is."
His voice quivers, though he tries to quiet it. This is fruitless, he’s even willing to call himself stupid. They were never supposed to meet in the first place, not in this lifetime or any other.
But the look Ardbert returns him is a smirk, boyish in a way that betrays a hardened exterior. “Oh, don’t you worry, Crystal Exarch,” the word ‘Exarch’ lingers on his tongue for just a second too long. “I’ll still be watching, just as I always have.”
His laugh carries too much levity for a last goodbye.
“Right then, promise me one thing,” the Exarch says and Ardbert’s head cocks to the side.
Whether Ardbert remembers or forgets, whether the Exarch remembers or forgets, this is worth a shot, isn't it?
“Next time we meet, call me G’raha instead.”
the rift, caught between shards.
Some encounters are displaced among the tides of fate. He—the he that is both past and present at once and the he that marks the center point of two disparate worlds—floats somewhere among those tides. Bodiless, free.
He has that thin tether cupped between the palm of his hands. He keeps it close to his chest, close to the warmth of his aether, he knows full well how fragile it is. He's become protective of it, even if he himself doesn't fully understand what it means or how it came to be.
When he reaches the other side, he is no longer just the Crystal Exarch.
G'raha Tia is waiting for him. Waiting to open his eyes.
revenant's toll, mor dhona.
This is the story he tells the Warrior of Darkness:
G'raha is sitting in a corner of the Rising Stones. His eyes float idly around the scene, from the shabby corners of each stone wall to the puffs of steam rising from his teacup. His hands are empty, though that's to be expected, isn't it? There isn't anything he could have taken across the rift, nothing tangible anyways, nothing that wasn’t already on his person when he awoke. And yet G'raha looks to his hands with disappointment, with a longing for such that cannot exist. Cannot exist or does not exist: one of these is true, G'raha is unsure which.
The Warrior of Darkness enters soon after. They push their fringe out of their face, a trail of rainwater and slush dripping behind them. Tataru perks up immediately as she sees them arrive. From afar, she waves both hands high above her head in an exaggerated, sweeping motion. Their conversation is out of earshot for a Hyur, though not for a Miqo’te. The Warrior of Darkness is a busy sort these days, they groan about endless hours of diplomacy and delivery updates to Tataru while she’s busy sipping tea.
A pause, a soft chuckle to themself and then a wave goodbye to Tataru.
The Warrior of Darkness must notice G’raha staring as they pull out a chair next to him and straddle it backwards. They lean closer to him, both arms crossed around the backrest.
"Our resident historian is hard at work again, I see," they say, fingers tapping across G'raha's pile of papers, unwritten and unfulfilled.
The two share a chuckle. "And good afternoon to you too, Warrior of Darkness," G'raha says.
As they speak, G’raha notices it more closely now. He notices the way the Warrior of Darkness pauses, as if to say something when they remain silent. A slight quiver in their lip or a furrowed brow.
“You’re talking to him, aren’t you?”
“To who?”
G’raha narrows his brow. “Don’t take me for a fool,” he says, sharper than he intends to and then stutters immediately after he realizes what he’s done. “A-Apologies. I speak of Ardbert. I could tell that your mind was briefly elsewhere, to which I assume was because you two were talking.”
Admittedly, it’s very cute seeing the Warrior of Darkness turn meek. “Yes, well, he had something to say to me,” they say, with a slight blush. "I'm still listening. He's just, er, part of the conversation too, I guess you could say. Not that either of us can help it."
Does Ardbert have the other half of the tether, he wonders. Maybe Ardbert’s talking about him, he just doesn’t know it.
“Unfamiliar as I am with the specifics of your Rejoining,” G’raha pauses to bring a warm cup of tea to his lips. “I can say he’s lucky to have a companion like you.”
That remark causes the Warrior of Darkness to get even more red. They take a few moments of silence and G'raha wonders if they're arguing with Ardbert about their embarrassment.
But despite the moment, G’raha frowns. He looks down at his palms again. That lack of something, lack of a tangible memento. He's unsure of what to tell the Warrior of Darkness.
(G'raha knew that this would happen and still he hesitates. What is it that his heart can’t understand?)
The Warrior of Darkness takes notice. “Something wrong?”
Twelve above, they look like a sad puppy when they’re fretting over something. G’raha swallows a knot in his throat.
G’raha’s ears sink a little bit. “Actually, I had been meaning to talk to you about something.”
“About ‘ something’ ,” they say. “Twelve G’raha, you don’t need to be so cryptic all the time.”
To that, G’raha sneers at them playfully and the Warrior of Darkness chuckles.
“You know that you can trust me,” they say. “No more keeping secrets. Especially not when I know they’re weighing heavily on your mind.”
Maybe it’s not trust in the Warrior of Darkness that he needs, maybe it’s trust in himself. Trust that his mind hasn’t been playing tricks on him since returning. So G'raha swallows his doubts and he says it. This is the story he tells the Warrior of Darkness: the pilgrimage across Norvrandt, the moments in between in which his soul fluttered freely. And he tells them of Ardbert.
For a hundred years, the Exarch had known of a name, of a distant ideal. Of the shallow eyes trapped in the pages of his fairy tales. And as a man so enraptured in the tales of heroes, G’raha searched for something lost in the heart of Norvrandt. He searched for a hero forgotten.
Like a moth to a flame. Solitude unto solitude.
"But even now," G'raha says. "It pains me to know that his noble sacrifice was used to such an end. I just needed Ardbert to know that, to tell him that myself."
The Warrior of Darkness gives G'raha a soft smile and closes their eyes, taking in a sharp breath. And then, faster than the drop of a rock, their eyes open again with a start. Their demeanor has changed, even to the most subtle shift in posture.
“One hundred years is a long time to suffer in solitude, in sleep,” they say, but it comes out different. Rougher, cutting as the edge of an axe. “Believe me, I too know the feeling, you even said as much yourself. Perhaps that’s why I was so drawn to you, why I appreciated your company so much ere we parted from Norvrandt.”
G'raha's eyes widen. He has the words, the response, but it bubbles up in his throat and fizzles into the air outside of his control.
But by the gods, he remembers. Ardbert remembers.
“Tis good to finally meet you, G’raha Tia.”