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“Lyna! Lyna, can you hear me? Lyna!”
The Exarch, having raced up another flight of stairs, stopped at the landing to call out as loudly as he could. Catching his breath only for a moment, his throat sore from shouting, he raised his hand to his neck—
Crystal.
—the sensation, still foreign, of solid rock rather than flesh and bone, brushing against his neck sent a chill down his spine. But there was no time to bemoan his creeping transformation, no time to—
“E-Exarch…”
A weak voice. His ears nearly stood straight up hearing it, and he was back in full sprint in the source’s direction before he was aware of it himself, exhaustion be damned.
“Lyna!” he called out, a wave of relief washing over him even as his lungs burned, catching sight of the girl’s drooped ears from around a corner. As he ran up to her, he found her sitting most dejectedly on the ground at the foot of a flight of stairs, red marks and scratches adorning each knee. “Oh, dear me…” he gasped, dropping to his knees to pat her on the head.
“Exarch…” she sniffled out, biting her lip in a clear attempt to hold back her tears. “Exarch…”
“It’s alright, Lyna, it’s alright,” he reassured her, ruffling her hair and bringing her close for a hug. In a flash, the floodgates opened, and she sobbed openly into his shoulder.
“Exarch, I’m sorry…!” she wept, balling the cloth of his robes into her tiny fists. “I-I thought you were playing hide-and-seek, but then— but then, but then…!”
“Hush now, little one, it’s alright,” he chuckled, lifting her off of the steps and into his arms. “I’m just glad to have found you. Don’t cry, my dear; let’s go back to the bottom of the tower and fetch a snack, wouldn’t that be nice?”
Her face still firmly planted into the Exarch’s shoulder, Lyna nodded, her stomach growling as if on cue. She still sniffled, but more quietly, as the Exarch held her close against his chest with one arm and began to make for the steps winding downward. When she reached out instinctively toward the shoulder of his other arm, he smiled wordlessly, lifting that hand up so she could grasp it, her own hand just big enough to wrap snugly around two of his fingers—
Crystal.
His smile wavered for just a moment at the sensation— or rather, the lack of one. Where there should have been the warmth of his young charge’s hand, there was—
“Exarch?” Lyna tilted her head up from its buried position, her lip still quavering as she timidly faced him. “I’m really sorry.”
“Whatever for, my dear?” he asked, his hand closing down on hers. Even if I can’t feel it. Even if…
“For getting lost,” she answered sheepishly.
“There’s no need to apologize for that, Lyna,” he assured her. “The Crystal Tower is so big, it’d be more surprising if anyone could ever remember how to get anywhere inside it. In fact…” He dropped his voice to barely above a whisper, in the utterly barren stairwell. “Would you like to know a secret?” Lyna’s eyes widened immediately.
“I would!” she answered without a second thought, ears shooting up. The Exarch stopped in his tracks, and turned his head from side to side multiple times to complete the act, as if there were even the slightest chance of someone else making it this far into the tower while escaping his notice, and beckoned for Lyna to lean an ear closer.
“I sometimes get lost in here too.”
“Truly?!” Lyna belted out immediately, cupping a hand over her mouth in shock. “But Exarch, this is your house!”
“Exactly,” he nodded gravely, barely able to keep a lid on the smile that threatened to break across his face. “So it’d be quite embarrassing if anyone else were to know.”
“I won’t tell! I promise!” Lyna announced dutifully, her tiny hand clutching the Exarch’s fingers firmly and swinging his hand from side to side, beaming. “Your secret is safe with me!”
“That’s quite a relief,” he replied, the return of her smile bringing one to his own face. “Now, let’s go see what kind of goodies we can find to snack on, shall we?” She looked at him with stars in her eyes.
“Yes, Exarch!”
---
Reaching the peak of the tower, Lyna smiled to herself.
A little white lie to bring back a child’s smile. How very like you, Exarch.
After the First had finally been blessed with a lasting peace, she took it upon herself to maintain the Crystal Tower. Not that there was ever much to do; some tidying here and there, making sure the relics and artifacts therein were in good condition, but never much, for with the keeper’s departure, the depths of the proud beacon remained largely untouched.
In remembrance? Reverence? Then again, it is not as though anyone but you could wield its power, my lord.
Even still, she visited. As captain of the guard, she could have delegated upkeep to anyone else, but even still, something drew her back to the tower. Nostalgia, perhaps. Or the desire to keep it exactly as he had left it, as if he had never left. As if, one day, she might enter the tower and find—
She paused at the top of the stairs, severing the thought before it could form. Her eyelids were strangely heavy as she blinked once, then twice. How the years had passed…
“You treated me to coffee biscuits that day, and let me play with the mirror in the Ocular,” she said aloud, though she knew her words could no longer reach him. “You did everything you could to give a family to a child not your own.”
As she walked forward, step by step, he came into view. Ever standing tall, ever keeping his vigil.
“You did everything you could to bring salvation to a world not your own.”
A tear hit the floor soundlessly. Had she been crying all this time?
“At the cost of all that time, at the cost of your body itself…”
There he stood before her, unmoving, unyielding. Still the same stubborn Exarch who refused to let a dream scatter upon the wind and die. Now, then, and forever, a beacon of hope for all who called the First home.
Clenching her fists and heaving out one last sob, she straightened her back in a swift movement and saluted him. Stand tall, Lyna. Stand tall. And through the last of the tears, she smiled. For his journey had ended. His sacrifice had borne fruit. And his well-deserved reward was finally in hand. So as much as it hurt, as keenly as she felt the loss of the man who not only raised her, but saved her world, how could she not be happy for him? How could she not smile for him?
“Isn’t that what family is for?” she whispered aloud to the unhearing statue, to the unhearing tower. “Isn’t it, Grandfather?”
Without thinking, she reached out, closing one of her hands around his. Crystalline, like she had always remembered, solid and cold to the touch. How the sensation belied the warmth the Exarch himself exuded. Ever a man of contradiction…
“But you are free from all of that now.” Lyna closed her eyes. “Free from the shackles of duty, of sacrifice. Free to just be yourself.”
Letting her hand slip back to her side, her smile widened. The Exarch was gone. Gone to a place far, far away, a place she would never lay eyes on, but nevertheless, the place he belonged. Even still, as she breathed in deeply, she could feel his presence in the statue before her, in the tower around her, in the world he had guarded for all those years, and laid everything down to save.
“You are ever with us, and we are ever with you,” she said aloud. “So wherever you may be, be well.” The words echoed gently through the chamber. And, opening her eyes, she felt her message rising up toward the heavens, carried on an eternal wind, ever back to his side.
---
“Huh?!”
G’raha jerked forward with a start, blinking furiously as he reoriented himself. The Rising Stones came into view, a candle softly illuminating the table he sat at. But of course. He had returned from a brief mission some time ago to find the headquarters empty, and sat in waiting for his allies’ eventual return.
“I must’ve dozed off,” he mumbled to himself sleepily. “What an old man I’ve become…”
Leaning back in his chair, he tilted his head up toward the ceiling and raised his right hand in front of his face, staring at his palm. In the moment before he had awoken, there had been a sensation…
He blinked at the thought, as mundane as it was. Or perhaps, as mundane as it should have been. A sensation… a sensation. He turned his hand around, staring at his knuckles now.
Knuckles. Flesh and bone.
Softly he clenched his fingers together, and brushed his thumb across them. He felt it. He felt it.
A tear fell from his chin. When had he…?
“Someone had grasped my hand,” he mumbled to himself. “And I felt it. I felt it…” Slowly he doubled over, his forehead now pressed onto the tabletop, and found himself sobbing tears of joy in a momentarily empty room, at a momentarily empty table. The others could be back in an instant, but still he let the tears flow, even if he didn’t really know why.
It was faint, that warmth. Faint, but persistent. Traversing the rift between worlds, but ever there. His brief dream came back into his mind’s eye. The Crystarium came into view. The Crystal Tower came into view. Lyna came into view. The little girl he once held in his arms, and the valiant captain he watched her grow to become.
“You are ever with us, and we are ever with you. So wherever you may be, be well.”
He wept into the table, clasping his hands together so tightly that his nails dug into his skin. A message— an undying prayer, carried on an eternal wind, ever back to his side—
—he felt it.