Chapter Text
The Archduke of Izumo was dead. He had died talking to the gods, taking too great of a cost. He had died speaking to the young prince Takumi.
But yet here he was, eyes open, in a mysterious neverending void that swirled with deep inky blues and purples.
“Izana,” two voices echoed.
“Yello?” he replied.
“Welcome, child.”
Izana quickly picked up on what was going on.
“Wait a moment… I’ve got it! You’re the ancient gods! What’s up?”
There was a pause, and then two orbs of brilliant pink light appeared in front of Izana.
“That is correct, child. We are the Stone Dragons, but you already know this. I imagine you have much more pressing questions for us.”
Izana looked between the two orbs.
“Am I really dead? Like, for real?”
There was a pause again.
A dim mote of light appeared in front of the orbs. The light floated gently into Izana’s hands. It was warm like a fuzzy blanket.
“This, child,” the right orb began, “is the last of your life energy. I am no stranger to the departure of mortal lives, so I was able to retrieve it just before your connection to the living world was permanently severed.”
That explained why the feeling of warmth was tied to the feeling of blankets, then.
“Mhm, I get what you’re putting down,” Izana said. It was a little concerning, but he had originally thought that he was dead anyway.
Then the orbs began to move in a direction that seemed backwards, and Izana followed them. They suddenly stopped at a seemingly random spot.
“You sacrificed so much, child…” the left orb began.
“So it only seems fair that we repay you,” the right orb ended.
Their lights glowed brighter, so bright that Izana briefly has to close his eyes. When Izana opened his eyes, he saw a large arched doorway made of dark blue stone.
“A nice door? For me?” Izana said appreciatively.
“This is a Dragon Gate,” the left orb said. “A temporary one formed from our own power.”
“Where it leads, we have no idea,” the right orb said. “But what we do know is that this will give you a second chance at life.”
Izana looked at the gate, and then looked back to the orbs again.
“Am I going to be reborn as the adorable baby of a demon lord?” he asked.
“I am afraid you have somewhat lost me with that last part, child…” the left orb ‘spoke’. “But, to answer what I can, you will remain as yourself, so long as you hold onto the last of your life energy when you step through the gate.”
“Hold onto the ball, got it,” Izana replied.
“We are not certain that you will still be able to call on us, but you will still retain the other gifts we shared,” the right orb spoke. “Hurry now, child. You must go.”
Izana stepped towards the gate, his usual demeanor relatively unshaken.
“Take care, child,” both orbs spoke in unison.
“Thank you, both of you. With that being said… peace out!”
Then Izana stepped backwards as he held his life energy in his hands. The moment he stepped through the gate, everything went dark.
“-who-“
“-still breathing-“
“-of all the darndest things-“
There was a commotion above him. Multiple voices talking above him, voices he didn’t recognize. His eyes were closed. Maybe it was all just a weird dream? Izana slowly opened his eyes, and saw faces he didn’t recognize.
“He’s up,” one of the faces said, some rough-cut man with a braid.
“He doesn’t look injured,” another face said, a girl with red clothes.
“Are you alright?” Yet another asked, a boy with blue clothes. “What happened?”
“A man in a funny hat dropped a bunch of snow on my house,” Izana said, slightly out of breath but coming to his senses just fine. The others didn’t seem to think the same, though, judging by their reaction. They seemed… confused?
“Is that so,” said even yet another face, this one was a boy with yellow clothes. One could even describe them as golden.
The girl with the red clothes seemed concerned, the most out of them, though Izana didn’t really understand why.
“He doesn’t seem to be affiliated with the bandits. We should bring him to a healer,” the boy with blue clothes said.
Bandits? What? He still didn’t know what had been going on. But he couldn’t deny that getting to a healer would be nice. He did just kind-of-sort-of die, after all.
Izana stood up, not about to let confusion keep him down any longer (figuratively OR literally).
“Sounds great! I’m Izana, by the way. THE Izana,” he introduced himself. There was a good chance he was in a place where nobody would know the importance of him being ‘the’ Izana, but he figured he would pepper it in anyway.
Then he stopped himself, making sure he was in fact still Izana. He looked down, and saw his usual clothes. He glanced to his side and saw his wonderfully lush white hair (give or take the two entire days where he’d been interrupted from his haircare routine).
The rest of them still seemed confused, even after his introduction. He’d had worse reactions, he could roll with it.
“I know you said he was unaffiliated with the bandits, but I am still wary,” he could hear one of the three color coordinated youths say.
“C’mon, cut him a little slack. Maybe they attacked him and that’s why he’s still dazed.”
“Should we bring him to a local healer? Or to the monastery?”
Now that piqued Izana’s interest. A monastery could be a good place for him to find common ground with others, even if it wasn’t the exact same faith.
“We’re already headed to the monastery, aren’t we? What’s one more?” a jubilant man in white armor said.
Strangely enough, throughout this whole exchange, the person with dark greenish-blueish hair hadn’t spoken a word to him. Perhaps they just needed to warm up to him?
He drew his eyes away from them to look back at the man in white armor.
“Sure! I’d be happy to join you.”
“Well, if that’s that, we should probably introduce ourselves back,” the golden-clothed boy said.
And they did. The color coordinated youths were Claude, Edelgard, and Dimitri. The man with the braid was Jeralt, the man with the white armor was Alois, and the person with the dark greenish-blueish hair was Byleth. And he’d already introduced himself, of course.
Izana took to walking up front with Jeralt and Alois, not out of snobbery or condescension to the youths or the younger adult, but because they had asked him to do so.
“That thing on your head’s not a wound, is it?” Jeralt asked. It was a bit blunt, but Izana didn’t mind.
“Nope! It’s a birthmark that runs through my family,” Izana explained.
“So I take it you do have a Crest,” Jeralt replied.
“Like a family symbol?” Izana said. Of course he had one of those, but he didn’t quite understand what Jeralt was referring to.
Jeralt sighed. “We really have to get you to a healer. We’ll be there soon.”
As if on cue, they passed into a great clearing and Izana saw a large, sprawling building.
“Ooh! Love the architecture,” he commented. It seemed to be more Nohrian in design, but he felt it was way too warm and sunny out for him to be in Nohr right now. Maybe Nestra?
Alois looked at him and nodded.
“That’s Garreg Mach Monastery,” he said.
Izana didn’t recognize the name. He recalled the words of the Stone Dragons, how he would be brought to a new place. He realized that maybe he wasn’t in Nestra at all.
“It’s a spectacular view,” Izana replied, as he was still taking in the scenery. Once he got his fill of it, he turned back to Alois and Jeralt and continued walking with them.
Once they reached the gates, the group started breaking off. The color coordinated youths (as Izana still referred to them in his mind, even though he knew their names now) went their own ways, and Jeralt and Byleth went off in another. Meanwhile, he stuck with Alois.
Izana continued to look around, ahhing and oohing at the monastery around him, into a building and up the stairs, finally they were in an infirmary room. Izana could tell that it was an infirmary easily. Izumo didn’t get its reputation for healing for nothing, after all.
“Wait here, I’ll go get Manuela,” Alois said.
Izana sat down in one of the chairs. It had certainly been an eventful day. First he woke up imprisoned in the one singular cell in the entirety of Izumo’s palace, then he’d been freed, and then he’d died for a prophecy. But then he un-died. And now he was here.
Now that he was alone, his mind also began to wander to the state he’d left Izumo in. Thankfully none of his palace staff or citizens had been killed in the original invasion or battle, but he could imagine they would have been scared out of their minds. But what about the property damage to the village? He hadn’t been able to properly assess the scale or costs of the damages, or any of that REALLY official Archdukery stuff.
However, he didn’t have too much time to dwell on all of those political ramifications to his humble little home before he noted that Alois had returned with a lady in tow. She wasn’t exactly… dressed like how he would imagine a doctor or healer would dress, but then again, he didn’t know the customs of the land. And he wasn’t necessarily disapproving either way, just a bit surprised. And she looked a bit surprised too.
“When you told me you found a man passed out on the ground, I wasn’t expecting him to be in such fine condition.”
“It’s not his face we’re worried about, Manuela. I’ll leave the explaining to him, I have to go catch up with the other knights,” Alois said, and left.
“So…” Manuela said. “He told me some things about your… predicament, but would you mind repeating them for me?”
“Hm…” Izana trailed off. He wasn’t actually sure how much he could explain, and settled on an abridged version of what had happened. “It all started when a pretty rude dude broke into my house, and then locked me up in my own basement. Then he started pretending to be me so he could trick the next people that came into my house, and because of that, the rude dude gets snow absolutely everywhere. So I’m still locked up in my basement while this was happening, but eventually the other people finally came in to free me! But after they did that, I got all woozy and wobbly, and passed out. The end.”
Then he was done telling his long-winded and very abridged story. Manuela looked down at him, and he looked up at her. Manuela looked like she was trying to ponder his many statements of what had happened. Then, she finally let out a drawn-out sigh.
“…I’m going to need Hanneman for this.”