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FELIX ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE. His horse’s pace is brisk beneath him, thighs bouncing up and down in his saddle, but a part of him’s still stuck, tethered: Dimitri’s execution, his father’s sombre voice. Hacking off his hair with a dagger and collapsing into sobs.
Feelings are complicated. Feelings about the boar even more so.
Creatures like him don’t die. If he wanted to, he’d come back. Know, despite everything, that there’d always be a place for him at House Fraldarius.
In the meantime, Felix won’t make a habit of chasing ghosts.
Tugging on his reins, he turns his horse around, breaking into action with a kick of his heel as the world blurs around him: the alabaster sky, the mist of his breath, the scant new growth of the Great Tree Moon.
Another year, and Felix isn’t quite convinced that Dimitri isn’t here to see it.
The wind cuts at his skin, his lungs, rips the moisture from his eyes. The faint sunlight catches the glitter of water in the distance, and he urges his horse to chase it, hooves churning up a mix of mud and white foam.
In the forest, he dismounts, letting his horse drink as he takes stock of his surroundings. Weathered trees with gnarled branches. A well-worn path, carved into the earth. The ancient evidence of a rope swing, now ghostly remains.
He’s struck by a memory of Glenn pushing him, Dimitri begging him for a turn. Ingrid climbing sky-high, because Sylvain promised to catch her.
Six years is a lifetime.
Felix swallows a savage breath. They used to come here all the time, made promises under the same dappled shade. They’d never forget this place. They’d never fight again. They’d be friends forever.
“Dammit!” Felix snaps, fist swinging out to connect with the tree trunk. The bark draws blood. “What was it for? What was it for, if you were just going to—”
He breaks off, breathing too fast. The boar isn’t—the boar isn’t dead.
“Come back, you idiot!” He grits his teeth. Closes his eyes, and the wind howls a deafening chorus. “You’ve done it. The world’s stopped. You’ve made your tribute, so just—come back.”
“Fe.” Something touches his shoulder. He jerks at the familiar voice, whipping around to face Sylvain, who’s still in thick furs and gloves from the ride over.
“What are you doing here?” Felix hisses, murderous. “What kind of shitty heir leaves home at a time like this?”
Sylvain frowns. “I’d rather be a shitty heir than a shitty friend, Fe. It’s been a year. I followed you ‘cause I figured you’d be feeling a little raw, and…” He chews on his words, infuriatingly thoughtful. “I don’t think Dimitri is dead either.”
Felix rubs at his temple. They’ve had this argument, screamed it until their throats were torn—even if the boar’s alive, it doesn’t solve any of their problems.
Eventually, they ride back to House Fraldarius, together beneath the poached blaze of the setting sun. When they arrive, a courier drops a letter into Felix’s hands.
He holds it to the light. The hand is shaky, but unmistakably Ingrid’s; Felix hooks a finger under the flap.
“She wishes me well,” he says. There’s a furious surge of fondness in his throat. “She… misses Dimitri too.”
GALATEA IS BLEAK AND drowning and, in the centre of it, there’s Ingrid, scrubbing furiously at her pegasus’ coat, mud on her cheek and an upturned bucket beside her undone boots.
“Whatever this is, I don’t have time.” She stops to swipe the sweat from her forehead. One of her ribbons has come loose; Sylvain moves forward to fix it.
“You need a ride,” Felix says, stamping an impatient rhythm on the stone. “You need a break.”
Sylvain watches her swallow as she whirls around, rage igniting her eyes. “Not all of us have the time to chase ghosts, Felix!”
Sylvain pales. He’d written to her about last year in confidence. “Ingrid…”
“Whatever,” Felix interrupts; Sylvain steals a glance at him. For the first time since he hit puberty, there’s an absence of fury in his expression. “We’re going. Grab your weapon.”
The head of her lance gleams in the silver wind as they ride out, Sylvain pulling up the rear. He follows it like a beacon through the foliage, watches as the blade carves through the trees.
At the head, Felix leads them to a clearing only made more barren with time. Here is where Sylvain and Glenn used to tie the horses. Over there, the squirrel hole Felix adopted as his den when no one else could fit. The sapling tree Dimitri once broke must’ve dissolved into the ground, rooting death into the very grass.
Sylvain dismounts first to tie his horse, and a subdued Ingrid hands over her reins. In the centre of the clearing, Felix swings around with his sword arm high, the blade a bright line in the blanched light.
“Spar with me,” he demands. For once, he isn’t looking at Sylvain.
Ingrid reaches for the pole of her lance, punctuated by fury. “You already dragged me out here, even though I haven’t come here since Glenn died.” Marching forward, she shifts into position. “Do your worst.”
Felix charges.
Their weapons collide, a cacophony of clashing steel, and birds flock from the trees, emitting piercing screeches into the summer silence. Where Felix is fast, Ingrid is faster; the two of them blow for blow on the trampled grass.
Until Felix knocks the lance from her hands. They’re both breathing heavily, and his arm is bleeding where she cut him. He lunges forward, a foreign look in his eyes as he abandons his weapon, and she seizes his arm, spitting, ruthless in wartime, her fist connecting with his cheek, and someone should stop them—
—and no one will.
Felix eats the hit, an angry mark blooming on his face, while Ingrid staggers back, cradling her vicious hand. The world stills as Dimitri's absence sinks in once more.
“Knew this was a bad idea…” Sylvain looks up. The rest of his sentence dies in his throat.
Faerghus never fully thaws. Instead, the ice shatters, the world destabilising beneath Sylvain's feet as Ingrid—proud, brave, strong Ingrid—chokes on a sob.
And while Sylvain feels like he’s wading through mud to get to her, Felix immediately envelops her in a fierce hug. She shudders into his embrace, head dipped, breathing heavy, and Sylvain reaches for them both, holds them; his fingers find Ingrid’s shaking shoulders, wet warmth on Felix’s cheek.
Goddess.
The wind strips the trees bare around them. Sylvain tucks his face into Ingrid’s neck and tries not to think about how his arms are too long for them both; how, even now, there’s room for one more.
THEY CONVERGE AT GAUTIER. Unspoken; it just seemed like the right thing to do.
That morning, Sylvain greets them with tired eyes and a worn smile. Leads them out to the stable, Ingrid pressed against Felix’s arm as she tries to shake the bitter northern cold from her limbs.
Above their heads, even the dawn is slow to rouse: milky clouds, a currant sky. She walks her horse out beneath its syrupy light and mounts first, smiling down at the top of Sylvain’s head, the warm bronze of Felix’s.
“Where are we going?”
Felix shrugs. “You lead.”
She ends up losing them quickly, letting the familiarity of the earth and the adrenaline guide her, grow wings and carry her through to the outermost part of the world. Here, mountains pierce the skyline, bleached by snowcaps and the feathered undersides of clouds, and the trees are sparse, sprouting from steep, rocky ground.
Sylvain and Felix could be anywhere. Rediscovering the corners of their universe like they did when Glenn died, like she’s doing right now. Dimitri is gone, and, once again, their worlds are irrevocably changed.
Or not. Ingrid never knows what the other two are thinking. Sometimes, she thinks she never did. They’re all so busy, distant, caught up in a war on the verge of reaching its peak.
She pulls to a halt, her steed uneasy beneath her.
“Easy,” she whispers. Is she speaking to the horse or herself? “Shall we leave?”
She guides him in a clumsy turn, retraces their steps. She can’t bring herself to go to any of their old haunts—thick with fog and faces she’s terrified to forget—so she retreats to House Gautier; to the library that always welcomed her home.
The air is drenched with dust and age, and Ingrid is glad for her thick clothes as she curls up on the floor, a book in her lap. They used to come here all the time and huddle together, reading stories about knights and chivalry. His Highness would tell her how he would love to have her as his protector, his knight. Would bid her down on her knees as he tapped her shoulders with his sword, practising for the day she always dreamed about.
Even now, Ingrid is dreaming, and she won’t let go. She will fight for Faerghus. She will be a knight.
His Highness is alive, and he will keep his promise.
In the hollow silence, it’s easy to fall asleep. She wakes up—hours later, or maybe days—to warmth: a blanket across her lap, Sylvain slumped against her shoulder, while Felix dozes peacefully in a chair nearby.
POLITICAL NEGOTIATIONS ARE A farce. How can his old man sit there with the woman who sent the boar to the slaughter and pretend their country isn’t falling apart?
“Stop pacing.” Ingrid buries her head in her hands.
“Should I just sit here?” Felix snarls back. As if to mock him, lightning flares at the windows, haloing every edge in the room with searing white.
“Maybe,” Sylvain says, hands placating. “Maybe we’re stuck here for a reason. We can’t go outside so maybe now’s a good time to, I dunno, sort out our feelings?”
Ingrid peels her face from her hands. Felix halts mid-step. “What feelings?” he growls, watching Sylvain swallow, find his words above the restless din of the hellhole they call home.
Historically, none of them have ever been good at emotions, and Felix can’t decide whether it’s laughable or insane that Sylvain would suggest such a thing.
Sylvain sighs. “It’s been four years of this, and we’re not taking it well. Instead of letting our horses stamp out our feelings for us, maybe we oughta talk this out.”
“What?” Felix lunges forward. “You think us saying things like how much we miss him, how much we think about him, how much we dream—” he cuts himself off, dragging a frustrated hand down his face. “It doesn’t help. Let me tell you, the boar was a lot more useful to us alive!”
“Felix!” Despite the tremor in her jaw, Ingrid’s anger burns bright. “How can you be so cold?”
Felix flings a hand to the window. The night is bleak and dark and thick with fog. Splinters of hard rain lash the glass, a reminder.
If the boar’s alive, he’ll drown in it; slip through Felix’s fingers again.
“Because if he wanted to come back, he would have,” Felix spits, slamming his fist against the window. The glass rattles, but doesn’t break. “Because I live in shitty Faerghus, where we can’t even track a boar!”
“We can do more!” Ingrid surges up out of her seat, grasping his tunic in her trembling fingers. “We can—”
Felix jerks out of her grasp, a hair short of doing something unforgivable. “You can. I already bled for him. For years.”
Sylvain is silent. Ingrid’s jaw works around muted rage. Saints.
He’s had enough.
Shaking his head, Felix storms toward the door. Maybe now, with this bitter taste in his mouth, the boar will finally show his face.
“Don’t leave!” Sylvain yells. Jerking violently, Felix releases the doorknob, clutching his empty hand into a fist. Sylvain glares at him, then points at his empty chair. “Sit down. Please.”
It’s a terrible thing that Sylvain mirrors the worst parts of him. Worse still, that Felix listens.
The silence is an icy shadow, and he retakes his seat beneath its damning weight.
“Sorry,” he eventually mutters, choking on the scalding looks that follow.
In the end, their conversation was neither laughable, nor insane. Just pointless, as all things without the boar seem to be.
FIVE YEARS AGO, THEY promised to reunite at Garreg Mach. And now…
“What are we doing here, guys?” Sylvain broaches the conversation after half a day on horseback. The pounding of hoofbeats is beginning to drive him crazy. “This is absurd, you know. We’ve been riding out to nowhere every year, insisting it’s to cope, when we all know, really, that we’re… Searching. Hoping to find something—”
“Don’t say it—” Felix warns.
Sylvain ignores him. “—someone, who’s no longer around.”
“Sylvain,” Ingrid says, almost pleading.
He looks at her, shaking his head. “We were meant to have this conversation a year ago.”
She clutches her arms, shivering slightly. Even with the winter sun glistering off the melting snow, the Ethereal Moon is brutal to them all. “I don’t ever want to have it.”
Sylvain pulls to a stop. “No. We have to this time. We need to—stop pretending it’s for any of us. It’s not. I mean, tell me honestly if it’s doing anything for you!” He feels his voice rise, desperate in his throat. “Reliving the pain, finding nothing, meeting every year like it’s a celebration. What the hell is this for, then?”
Ingrid looks down, hair hiding the garish, frostbitten colour of her cheeks. “I still think he’s alive,” she whispers. It’s not a surrender. He will be alive, even if she has to resurrect him herself.
“Ingrid—” Sylvain shakes his head, sets his jaw. “Right.” He urges his horse onward, to Felix’s side.
The Oghma Mountains scroll out in front of them, marking a crossroads. On one side, the beaten path to Garreg Mach; the path to delusion and a promise that could be long since broken. On the other side, the Dukedom; the epicentre of Cornelia's tyranny.
Each year, Faerghus grows more fractured, and less like home.
But maybe there is a place for doomed hope, somewhere in the cracks.
Licking the chill from his lips, Sylvain glances back at Ingrid. Regret makes his voice hoarse. “I want to believe he is too, Inky, but… I’m not sure we really can. Not anymore.”
Ingrid trots forward, slanted desperately in her seat. “Sylvain—”
It’s Felix who cuts her off. Not looking at either of them, his gaze trained on the ash of the sky, where, come nightfall, the King’s Right Hand will shine bright and true. “One more,” he says.
“What?”
“One more try. We were already headed there anyway, weren’t we? The monastery.” Felix shakes his head, nostalgia softening the sharp cut of his features. Sylvain blinks and, for a moment, he sees the little boy who tottered around in Glenn's shadow, who clung to Dimitri's tunic when he cried. “If there’s anywhere that sentimental boar is going to be, it’s there.”
Sylvain exhales. “And if we find nothing?”
Felix turns his head, lips parted and death in his eyes. “We stop. This isn’t sustainable. It’s about time we moved on, regardless of—he could be dead. He could’ve been dead this whole time. So, we owe it to him to go there. Find out.”
“Okay.” Ingrid makes a proud silhouette in the dim winter light. “Then… Let this be the deciding moment.”
For so long, Sylvain's been holding them together. Maybe he forgot how strong they’ve grown up to be.
“Okay.” He nods, picks up his reins.
They ride out together.
THE MORNING OF THE twenty-fifth should be no different. Yet, he remembers, even when he shouldn’t.
In the sepulchre of Garreg Mach, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd—ghost, corpse, one-eyed demon—reanimates to the sound of thundering hooves.