Chapter Text
Crown of leaves, high in the window on a gold morning
Young today, old as railroad tomorrow
Days are just drops in the river to be lost always
Only you, only you, you know
(X)
In the windswept, snow-battered northern reaches of modern Faerghus, there is a legend passed down across the generations, whispered from mothers to their babes as they lull them gently to sleep in their bassinets.
Far beyond the twinkling electric lights of the city streets and past the frozen fields that ring the outskirts of town, there lies a stretch of forest that covers the hills with a blanket of emerald green as the land slopes ever upwards towards pristine, snowcapped peaks. Deep within those woods, surrounded by the ancient firs, folklore has it there is a strange place not quite here nor there, not for the living nor the dead, unmoored from time and space. It is a place where many unwitting travelers have met their ends, whether by exposure to the elements or through more malevolent means.
In that place, there is a man—or at least he appears as a man, but one cannot be too sure with these kinds of things—who keeps watch over this ethereal domain, invisible but to the select few that happen to cross his path unawares. Some say the man is a specter, sent to kill those he finds trespassing. Some say he is a guardian instead, guiding travelers through the harsh climate and unforgiving terrain.
And though it has been centuries since the days that princes and knights ruled the former Kingdom of Faerghus, they say the man is most often found atop a horse, wearing a suit of armor and carrying a glowing lance that pulses with an unknowable power—almost as if it were breathing, as if it were alive.
Many find this story preposterous, of course. It’s an old wives’ tale, they say, a silly monster invented to scare children into not wandering off. But this is a region so shrouded in the myths and legends of old that others believe magick still slumbers deep within the evergreens.
It’s haunted, some whisper.
Travelers enter and never return, others warn.
Only a fool would enter Gautier alone.
But Felix Fraldarius has never been the type to put much stock in superstitions.
❖❖❖
Sylvain remembers what it was like to be mortal.
He was raised not unlike any other child of one of the great Faerghan families, schooled in the arts of nobility and war alike, perfectly molded to be an intelligent and capable leader in order to one day take up the mantle of Margrave from his father. He spent much of his youth with his childhood friends, unaware of the monumental grief and sense of duty that would come to define his later years.
Dimitri, the crown prince, was one of Sylvain’s oldest companions. Despite the tragedy that had marred his upbringing, he was a kind and knowledgeable leader. Sylvain truly believed Dimitri would have made a great king, if only he had been given the chance.
Ingrid was the sister Sylvain never had. She was tougher than the rest of them put together, and she knew her way around a lance better than anyone Sylvain had ever known. Most of all, he could always count on her to set him straight when he really needed it.
And then, of course, there was Felix.
Sylvain doesn’t remember when he first realized what love truly meant. He certainly never felt loved by his father and mother, who both saw him as a pawn to continue the Gautier line and valued him solely for his crest. He never got the chance to truly love Miklan, either—his parents’ constant pitting of brother against brother snuffed out any hope of normal siblinghood between the two.
But Felix…Sylvain had always loved Felix. From the moment they met as little more than toddlers until their feelings toward each other became more complicated in their teenage years, Felix was the one shining, constant beacon of light in Sylvain’s tumultuous childhood. They were inseparable, unable to imagine a life without one another.
Until the fragile veneer of peace they'd known all their lives was shattered by Edelgard's war.
And when nefarious experiments by Those Who Slither in the Dark caused spirits and monsters to begin infiltrating Faerghus, stealing children from their beds and leaving only death and destruction in their wake, Sylvain was faced with a choice. In addition to their standard responsibilities as rulers of Gautier, Sylvain's family had stood watch over the boundary between Fódlan and the spirit world for generations. The power to keep monsters in line ran deep through their veins, passed down from father to son and mother to daughter along with the Crest of Gautier.
Until then, it had been largely a ceremonial role. Yet only the life force of a true Gautier, preserved in the hallowed halls of their ancestral home, could maintain the border and keep the evil at bay. Sylvain's mother was crestless, and his father was nearing his final days. That left only one option, and Sylvain knew what that meant for him.
So Sylvain bid his old life goodbye and decided to take up his post as warden of the space between worlds, a place where time itself stood still as the snow-covered forests surrounding his family’s mansion. The mere thought of saying farewell to everyone he'd once known was unbearable to Sylvain—so he simply didn't, at least for most of them. He disappeared into the forest without a word, too afraid to face his friends lest he lose his resolve completely.
He did, however, make one exception.
He still remembers the feel of Felix's lips on his, the way he shook and how his breath caught in his throat when he held him close, Sylvain’s tearful apologies and Felix’s whispered promises to one day return, no matter what the cost. He remembers watching Felix’s retreating figure, draped in furs and the familiar dark teal of his cloak, and trying desperately to burn the image into his memory.
Over the next few years, he occasionally received letters from Felix detailing the latest developments on the war. But as time went on, the news they bore became grimmer and the letters themselves became few and far between. The final message was simply a package containing a sword—Felix's sword, wrapped in that same teal cloak. There was no note attached, but Sylvain understood its significance perfectly.
After that, with his last remaining connection to the outside world severed, Sylvain tried not to think about the past and what could have been. He walked the halls of his empty home, increasingly indifferent as the travelers stopping by became less and less frequent and their garb became stranger and stranger. First they wore the kind of things Sylvain was used to—armor and cloaks and sturdy riding boots good for a long day’s travel on horseback. But as time went on, their outfits morphed into strange shapes and bright colors that Sylvain had never seen before his exile.
Sometimes, he wondered what other changes had taken place in the outside world as he slowly lost track of time. The years passed him by like so many snowflakes in a storm, piling on top of one another until Sylvain was buried underneath the avalanche.
Everyone he knew back then—they’re all gone. It’s been centuries, long enough for their names to be lost to history, for their bones to turn to dust in their graves. There's nothing to be gained from ruminating on the past, but there's nothing to look forward to in his future, either.
So he waits.
And waits.
And waits.
❖❖❖
Felix came to Gautier mountain on a whim. In fact, it’s just the latest in a long list of places he's passed through, drifting about the country like a fallen leaf on a gust of autumn wind. Ever since the accident, he’s been meandering from town to town, seeking nothing and everything all at once, forever running from the conspicuously silent halls of his childhood home and the seat at the dinner table that will remain forever unfilled.
He departed Fraldarius the day after the funeral. He couldn’t stand to be there a second longer, not when the air was so heavy with grief he could barely breathe and his father's never-ending, maddening platitudes about Glenn's death filled his waking hours.
In the months since then, he’s summited the rocky crags of Fodlan's Throat, sailed the narrow canals of Derdriu, traversed the wide open fields of the Tailtean Plains on foot, and walked the shimmering, neon streets of Enbarr until he lost himself in its urban labyrinth and could scarcely remember why he came in the first place. He even spent a brief stint in the golden hills of Almyra when he happened to wander across the border for a week or two.
But he's still never found a place where he feels at home again. He’s not sure he ever will.
He writes to his father sometimes, but more often than not he reads his messages without responding. Felix feels a bit bad about it, of course, but what else could he say that hasn’t already been said? What else can he do, short of turning back the hands of time, short of bringing the dead back to life?
It’s with this in mind that Felix sets off to go hiking in the Gautier mountains. He's heard locals talk about the hiking trails that offer striking views of the ice-covered landscape, and something about the area piques his interest more than any of the nameless towns he’s passed through.
What he’s looking for, he’s not quite sure. But he has a feeling he’ll know it when he finds it.
Felix leaves for the mountains before dawn, rising long before the winter sun begins its sprint across the northern sky. He’ll be back before nightfall, so he brings only a backpack of dried meats and bottled water to tide him over until he returns. He makes his way to the bottom of one of the lesser-traveled trails along the peaks and begins his slow and steady ascent, the hazy lights of the city below growing smaller and smaller behind him until their faint pinpricks are washed away in the early morning fog.
He makes steady progress, stopping only to retie his boots and hydrate. As he climbs, he remembers the countless times he and Glenn trekked through the wilds of Fraldarius together. It was just them against the world, invigorated with the sense of invincibility that comes hand in hand with unbridled youth.
Felix stops when he comes to an area along the trail that overlooks the mountain slope. The day’s first light slowly turns the muted grays and browns of the snowy landscape to striking hues of brilliant white and rich mahogany, bringing the forest to life before Felix’s eyes. Swathes of evergreens ring the mountain’s base like brushstrokes on a canvas, their proud branches bending gracefully towards the ground under the weight of the last storm’s snow. The tales weren’t wrong: Gautier is absolutely stunning.
He only wishes Glenn were here to see it.
Hiking has always brought Felix a sense of peace. He finds himself wandering about without purpose, his feet leading him ever onward as he reminisces about days gone by. The rhythmic march through the woods leads him over hills and through gently sloping valleys filled with pure, untouched sheets of snow. Each step brings Felix deeper into the Gautier wilderness, and he loses track of time following one winding trail after another.
It’s only when Felix stops once more to drink that he notices the sun has faded and looks up to see a wave of clouds blowing in from the east. Not soon after, Felix sees his first sign of trouble—a tiny snowflake, gracefully waltzing through the air until coming to rest at his feet.
At first Felix hesitates, unsure of whether to continue or turn back for shelter. But when the snowflakes grow in size and start falling in earnest enough to obscure Felix’s line of sight, he reluctantly begins his retreat down the mountain.
As he walks, Felix notes with growing trepidation that the storm is rolling in faster than he expected. The snowflakes that were once dainty and few and far between now whip across the forest, buffeted every which way as the storm’s winds gather strength.
Soon enough, blinding white curtains of snow flash across Felix’s field of vision, forcing his descent to slow to a crawl. He can barely see, so he holds his arm up to shield his eyes from the biting cold and finds that he’s still unable to make out anything in front of him save for fleeting shadows and the blurry outlines of trees. By now the trail Felix was following is surely lost in the snow, all signs of the way back to safety cleanly erased like chalk wiped from a slate.
Fuck. He feels his heart thrumming against his ribs, his breaths growing shallow as he tries his best not to panic. If Glenn were here, Felix thinks, he would know what to do. He would never have gotten into this mess.
He vaguely remembers Glenn once telling him that if he were to get lost in the wilderness, he should find the nearest river or creek and follow it downstream. But visibility is far too low for Felix to see ten paces in front of him, let alone inspect his surroundings, and his thoughts grow more desperate as the winds grow fiercer, chilling Felix to the bone.
All he can do is focus on putting one foot ahead of the other, trudging through the drifts that are now nearly up to his calves and praying that he’s on the right path, or for that matter, on any path at all.
Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left fo—
There’s a familiar crunch from under his left boot, and Felix realizes a second too late the ground he’s on isn’t ground at all, but solid ice. And then as if in slow motion, the sheet beneath him collapses completely with a sickening crack.
The plunge into the water below soaks Felix through to his very soul. The sudden shock to all his senses renders him helpless as his head dips below the surface, and he tries to shout but instead chokes on the ice cold liquid rushing into his mouth.
He comes up heaving, hysterically flailing about in search of something to grab ahold of. He finally finds the edge of the ice around the hole he fell through and tries to pull himself up, but his arms are clumsy, sluggish, and ultimately useless when the shelf of ice splinters under his weight, sending him tumbling back into the frigid waters.
Every second he’s submerged feels like Felix has been set on fire, alarm bells ringing throughout his body from the tips of his toes to his thin, blue-tinged lips. He gasps as he struggles to stay afloat and air rushes back into his lungs, but it’s not enough to stop the warmth from slowly seeping out of his body.
It’s funny how he’s never felt so alive until the moment he's about to die.
Out of the corner of his eye, a flash of red—then everything goes dark.