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When the Watchers destroy a world, they leave behind Ash.
Grian knows more about the process than he really likes to admit. How the Watchers take a world and pull up the Void through the very bedrock of a server, using the burning, black nothing to make the air unbreathable, to kill the plants and dissolve anything that remained into a snowy ash. To thin the very air itself, to fill it with poison and suffocate any player lucky enough to survive Macan's swinging broadsword.
Usually, you need to combine the powers of both a natural-born admin and a Watcher to cause this level of destruction, one use their commands to break the bedrock, and one to pull and manipulate the void itself.
Grian had thought, now that he'd escaped, that Exae wouldn't have been able to destroy Evo. Apparently, he was wrong.
There had been many things that had been changed, deep inside him, when he'd been taken. The mask, the clothes, even the wings, once he'd been accepted. In the past few weeks, he'd shed them all; left the mask behind, burned his robes, cut off his wings.
But he cannot rid himself of the ability to breathe the poison, End-filled air of Evo. It is a burning reminder of what he cannot destroy.
Burying the bodies is backbreaking work. It looks like Macan had gotten to at least half the server, in their attack. He counts them as he finds them, closes their eyes and whispers their names. Mini Muka. Tomahawk. Salem. Zee.
Taurtis.
He finds their corpses scattered about the server, half-buried in the falling ash. The code of the world is broken, the chunks glitching in an out of reality at times, but Grian knows his creation, knows it well enough to find them from their lasted dredges of ones and zeroes.
He buries them at spawn.
Mumbo helps him.
Grian has never been more grateful for the existence of a single man in the entirety of his life. From noticing his disappearance, to getting Xisuma's help, to rescuing him and offering him a home and a shoulder to cry on and helping to find Evo and never ever expecting anything but friendship in return. Nothing but what Grian himself is willing to offer.
They bury the bodies together.
He doesn't know where the others are. Perhaps they escaped, made it out before Exae destroyed spawn. That's what Mumbo says, through the mask he needs to breathe here, optimistic comforts about Netty, his second-in-command, his replacement as admin, being among the missing. But it's also possible that their code is so destroyed that the trails that led him to the confirmed dead simply didn't remain for them.
It's hard to be optimistic, so Grian lets Mumbo do it for him, lets him whisper comforts about better places and escape . And then he lets him return to Xisuma's side, whispering something about plans as Hermitcraft's admin keeps his communicator open, practiced fingers throwing up protections to keep them from Exae's prying eyes.
He holds Taurtis' headphones in his hands, broken and frail in his hands, and grieves. He does not cry, but he stands there, looks out across these rudimentary graves, and grieves.
He'd let himself hope. Hermitcraft had been so extraordinarily kind to him, let him stay in their exclusive little server even though he'd only expected it to last a few weeks. He'd thought, that even though Exae had known about Evo, that his server would still exist, or that it would be intact enough for him to access the exit logs and find where they had gone.
Luck is not on his side, today.
Domrao had messaged him, back when he'd first escaped. An offer of refuge, a place to stay. They could go and stay in his old creative worlds, or hide in the crowds of Wynncraft--Jumla or Salted had made it clear that he would always be welcomed there with open arms.
It's tempting. He might take him up on it. Maybe he'll stay on Hermitcraft. He's not sure.
Ash dusts the headphones, lands on his eyelashes and billows about with his breath. His home, once so vibrant and happy, no longer exists, buried underneath layers and layers of falling ash.