Chapter Text
𝕻𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄
― 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺
BORN IN DARKNESS, amidst starbirth, rising from nothing but gas and fragments, then shining so bright you can see it a million lightyears away before finally the frost-disguised celestial returns to presolar grains – this is the life cycle of a star. Because we forget as children that stars also die one day, and the cosmos is once again reigning over stardust. Until rebirth.
And this was the cycle of balance:
Their anatomy is undisputed. Determined paths, because of the choices we made, they define us and disrupt dimensions. Wraiths that haunt us in the form of bittersweet accountability. And the world stops spinning as she nurtures the cheek of red-ruin blood, skin of bright flashing silver, there is no divine, only demolition, signalling their penalty beneath the cold, empty sky.
I regret the end, she whispered. I was supposed to be your wishbone because you wanted to break me to get what you want.
She thought of it then, her body robed in the ancient vacuum of her homeland. Darkness was stretching its covetous fingers, consuming the atmosphere inch by inch until the stars burned out and there was nothing but ebony oblivion, the same ebony tresses as her crown, and the haunting stillness. Her hand on the ruin, tenderly. A mute world for a beat, two, three, the thumps of her pulse keeping time. Four, five, six. The devil enveloped her hand, and the moon did not rise. Seven, eight, nine. . . .
. . . . and the balance turned to flakes, and then to ash. The universe was dying, bleeding fire and dust.
Which brings us to this:
Until the last star dies,
Until the universe crumbles,
She will hold your hand, phonetics sung so loudly the very cosmos shivered with triumph. Soft, liquid, haunting silver, like starry-light on wet skin.
Until the last star dies,
The line is dwindling between traitor and savior, a usurper toils back. Before the thunder cannonades and the whole universe collapses into void. The stars screamed for refuge.
You may ask why. You may believe the price for greatness is engraved on one side to the replica coin.
That side is reserved for the light, the opposite of the dark, but surely you have gone to the dark once in your life. It is blinding, like the light, a blindfold to be darkness' canvas. We are so desperate to save something, we are blind like the newborn our mother met while our eyes were closed, invisible to the light as we cry for salvation. We betray a part of ourselves so involuntary, cutting strings one by one to the fastened tendrils of haven until the inky-drenched tarpaulin inundates with an overflow of deception.
And then the limbo spoke fluently in a dialect that was not their own, a thought on their mind, the hand embracing the other caressing limb, ravage and gleaming, more so a memory:
But you are so boundless.
Suddenly, all she is becomes all her end.
✷ ✷ ✷ ✷
WHEN GREENERY FINGERS of tall sentinels unraveled acres of woodland, light shadows of sunbeam ooze and the forest dipped into dense canopy tops like old bristles and noble knights, fresh from the fields of legend, the morning grew and grew higher in the dappled blue and grey skies. Unraveling, soaring, revealing the arena of an emerald community consumed by heaven-spun trees. Sleeping and dreaming together to the ambiance of bird trills and crinkling leaves, squirrels frolicked in the canopy and fowl trilled from their perches. Filling the air with light-hearted, wild music. It was lovely enough, just as lovely as the warmly springs and carpets of golden sunlight. But in the distance, beyond the chiefly copse, a mere traveler could hear the swarthy kvetch of rumbling shadow and corruption, a lion's chest smoldering in devilry. The earth trembled. A shift in the very fabric of the cosmos had befallen blind eyes.
Meanwhile, deep in the undergrowth, awnings of greenwood looming above their heads, a horse snorts into the air encased with pine and sentinel and pollen. Hooves and softened trots, a small convoy draped in gloomy reds and cobalt blues and sober grays decreed to travel in the company of silence. Dirt shifting beneath the steads' ligaments and leather reins crimping.
A bird called from somewhere beyond their sight, out of the way from the uneven path of dead moss and fallen leaves. Above them, taller than themselves, gargantuan then the earth itself, star-fire burned white in the eyes of a blackhole, screeching, screaming, tendrils unfurling like a newborn's fingers, outstretched to summon the world's curiosity. As the small convoy waded on, a mass of flesh and fabric and sewn-blooded astral moved with them.
They harbored Zarya Belyaeva; the luxury of fine thick silk against fair skin, grey Kefta embroidered with white splintering tendrils stitched to her arms and chest like white-hot wings, cascaded atop of the white mount fastened with brown embroidered Baroque bridle-wear . . .
. . . she is cold, like the warmth is bleeding from her bones, soaking her inky-doused cloak fastened to her shoulders with tufts of brown animal fur noosing her scapulae. A noose, betwixt the Baroque fabric of ruinous and unkindness harboring the reminder of her people's heritage. This horse is like Seryy Oruzheynik. An emblem for what they stood for . . . ghosts of a dynasty fallen into the moors of soiled hands drenched in bad faith. Her crevasse heart continued, slowly, as if her life organ began to stretch further into her veins.
Two Heartrenders, two Squallers and one guard captain escorting the incarnated macrocosm in the physical temple of a young woman with raven tresses pinned into a crowned braid. The stars anoint you, child. The wind murmured to her that morning.
In this blazing moment, surrounded by Grisha, her own golden pedigree, she knows what they thought. Zarya makes everything tangible and intangible. This concoction was sending the masses of luminous vapor to her own grave. This is where she feels most alive. Ebony-haired chaos, like folklore, created into a novelty all because her blood encompasses eons of rarified gas and interstellar dust.
The calamity is dormant, just for a time.
And it always goes something like this:
So, of course, the bravado of freewill crumbles easily. Every breath is a detonator, an ultraviolent string, plucked by a finger carved into steel. Growing razor-sharp debris for teeth, shrapnel gnawing at golden flesh, floating in savage apparitions. Because it is so, so ruinous, the destruction, the sinister snarl seething aftermaths of a fire long dead or decomposing to decay. And what do you know, what is it like to watch things burn? Shivering in the pitch scorch vastness of night in the day, bitter black blood clogging lungs. Razed to ashes, splintered to bony remains.
But remember this, too: she would destroy for peace, stamp her own stars into the earth until she witnesses fallen stellars gathering at her feet, pulverizing in the name of her own divinity. Burn dimensions of hell, tasting dying stars on her trickling red lips, watch as they erupt, slice through the cosmos, and watch it fall around her like snowflakes, frayed blue incandescence. Seeds of cataclysmic showers.
Warm as a grenade.
And chaos is not just in the form of a collateral woman, but of something else.
Suddenly, twigs snap and crackled off the beaten trail, the sound of heavy boots stomping through debris. The assemble twisted, nervous snorts and gravelly neighs, to see several colossal figures break from the dense trees and hilly inclines. Like a pack of wolves, moving mountains, giants knocked down to the realm of Ravka, punishment from godly beings, scruffy earth and dark armored tones clinging to their bodies like savage bears. Unkempt hair, swarthy features, mud dying their skin in dirt crusts and white paint clay, leers of battle and blood twisting their human faces like hellish beasts. The thuds of something heavy, and abruptly far-fetched, then a gunshot screeched into the air, tailed by an agonizing howl from behind her flank.
Dread seeped down into Zarya's spine like ice, her limbs catapulting as though encased by leather slings. Oozing through her bewilderment, deluging her in frost. Her heart thrashed against her ribcage, a relentless beat, her fingers curling white against the reigns to steady the whinnying horse. Her bones burst from her skin in fright. A body had fallen, shouts aggravated tenfold, and she lurched herself from the mount. The ground had been a rough safety net. Wisps polluted, like stained smoke. They are coming. . .
. . . And speaking of things that froth for liquefied rubies and gun power, Saints' prayers befalling into empty voids, a girl named Yulya is blessed with one last journey.
War tastes hellish and the Cosmos Saint withered into the underground furnace.
Beyond that, beyond the far tidal of time and space, blackholes and red giants and cosmos, dimensions and orbits, the opposition of chaos gave way.
An interstellar chose to fall.