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And so night returned to the skies of the First with all the grandiosity and applause befitting the end of a century of ceaseless light. The heavens that had for so long bore the mantle of a fulgent reminder of broken balances now gracefully resumed the path they were always meant to tread. Day followed by night, the sun followed by stars. If the little hero managed to keep himself in one piece, all the Lightwardens may indeed find their existence ended by his blade. But even heroes needed rest, and he looked more and more tired with every passing day. A pity, the Ascian thought as he willed himself to appear in the now-familiar room in the Crystarium. The feathered proxy provided a safe guarantee that his spying might go unnoticed, but the ruse was hardly necessary when the man fell into the deep, exhausted slumbers earned by feeble attempts to save a shattered world.
Emet-Selch looked in the direction of the great window. Elyan slept, as always, with it thrown open to the dizzying view and gentle plying of the wind. The land itself acted as though it was trying to apologize for subjecting its inhabitants to an unending onslaught of light, the winds of Lakeland arriving ever-temperate, and almost comforting in how they teased at the edges of the curtains that were once used to permit the inhabitants a few hours rest from the ceaseless day. Those curtains were tied aside now, leaving the view unobstructed. Pausing to look out at the distant stars that gleamed overhead, he felt unease settle on his shoulders. The stars still looked as they had in ages long past. Cold and unrelenting, gazing back like a thousand hungry eyes. Emet-Selch could not remember when he came to be so unsettled by them, but in the days before the end, Deudalaphon had murmured to themself a hundred times over, The stars, it must be of the stars, this cannot be wrought from our own.
He had not come here to spiral into theories of what had caused the end of their world, a fact he reminded himself of as he pulled his gaze away from the sky.
Narrowing his eyes, the Ascian crossed silently to where the would-be hero lay asleep beneath down blankets and quilts so adoringly supplied him. His body looked peaceful enough, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of sleep. The man’s soul, however, was a different story. A faint smile twitched at the corner of Emet-Selch’s mouth. You’ve worn yourself too thin, he thought, not even you, with all of your blessed strength, can endure this. No soul should have edges that thinned, or places where it spattered and flickered like a flame guttering in the wind. Emet-Selch nearly felt a twinge of sympathy for the mortal who, undoubtedly, had begun to suspect that the light he took into himself would not leave him unchanged. The twisted soul reminded him of fabric worn threadbare, or of how the Emissary’s appeared when he first returned, raw and unhealed in the places that would remain missing for an eternity to follow. The inevitable end of Hydaelyn’s champion soothed the part of his heart that still struggled with the familiarity of his soul, an assurance that they were indeed all as broken and irrelevant as he had long believed them to be.
The mortal shifted in his sleep, and for a moment, the Ascian feared he might be caught. He stood still, poised to leave as soon as the other stirred. But Elyan’s bright eyes stayed mercifully shut even as he turned toward his undetected observer. Emet-Selch’s chest tightened as unruly strands of shaggy red hair that fell across the young hero’s face. A cruel trick of fate, giving the shattered remnant of his dearest friend the same copper locks that once framed a more deserving countenance.
You’re like his ghost, he thought, no longer smiling in the darkened room. At times, Emet-Selch’s lingering gaze had revealed similarities that disquieted him more than the differences. Moments of unmistakable kindness, or the cast of a shy smile that fell so similarly to Azem’s that the Ascian feared his heart might crumble to ash in his chest. Those were the same times when he asked himself why he bothered with the charade at all. For all his might, all mortals were easily felled in moments of weakness. And there he lay, oblivious to how simple it would be for Emet-Selch to cut the threads of fate that bound them together. As simple as wringing his neck, or nicking the throat of a sacrificial hind.
It was amidst the errant thought of how badly Elyan’s blood would stain his gloves that he watched the peaceful rhythm of his breathing change, falling into something more rapid. His face, so often slack and tranquil under the calming force of sleep, twisted in a way that Emet-Selch had never seen. Not on Elyan, at the least, but he knew the expression well on another, and in long-ago descriptions of how nightmares played out over his own face. He watched impassively as the mortal flinched, and wondered what sights might plague his mind. Lost comrades, perhaps, or visions of the scourge of light and how it twisted the bodies of its victims. Maybe something more personal, a childhood fear that refused to leave the deepest recesses of his mind. Emet-Selch had turned to leave when some murmured, weak string of words slipped past sleeping lips. He stopped. Closing his eyes tightly, the Ascian exhaled. How pathetic.
The Ascian had been many things in his long, torturous life, but when possible, he tried his best to avoid the role of a hypocrite.
He brought his gaze back to the unfathomably fragile figure with a shake of his head. “A sleep talker, are we?” Emet-Selch murmured through scowling lips. For all that he knew, this could very well be the last night of fulfilling rest that the hero might find. Surely, even the least deserving of adversaries had earned so simple a pleasure as unbroken sleep. He crouched down beside the bed. The Ascian pulled a glove from his hand before bringing a bare palm to hover over the fear-lined brow of his sleeping foe. Dreams were of a difficult nature, even in the days before the world was sundered. He had yet to discover how to calm his own propensity for nightmares, but, loathe though he was to admit it, he had found many shattered beings susceptible to suggestion and a gentle touch of aether in the same way that beasts might be.
“Rest easy,” Emet-Selch said in the smooth cadence of the long-dead language now spoken only by himself, the Emissary, and the shades far below the waves. “You need not fear,” A lie, truthfully, and one that nearly made him laugh. But the mortal man’s breathing slowed, and his murmured words ceased.
Good, he thought, as though he was unburdening some great karmic debt he owed to the long-lost intact soul of his friend.
Despite dispelling whatever nightmare had sank its teeth into the mortal man, Emet-Selch felt his eyes flicker open beneath his palm, the sensation of hero’s overlong eyelashes brushing against his skin almost enough to make him draw back his hand and risk shattering the lose hold he held over the situation. Before so much as a single word of confusion could leave him, however, the Ascian sighed. Hushing him, he spoke further. “You are dreaming, Elyan. Close your eyes.”
If he were more inclined to lines of inquiry, Emet-Selch might have attempted to uncover why the words of their language could incite such docile agreement from the sundered. Like someone recalling a long-forgotten lullaby, or a beloved voice they had not heard for a hundred years. But he was content to observe only that the simple request had worked. When he drew back his hand, Eorzea’s beloved champion lay sleeping as peacefully as possible. Scoffing at the absurdity of it all, he slipped the glove back on his hand, and vanished from the silent room in the city that ought not exist at all.