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Yenifer had only just had her sixteenth nameday when the red light appeared in Eorzean skies. At first, it had been distant, an ominous twinkling that watched the sleepy hamlet of Quarrymill like the eye of an angry god. As weeks became moons, that light only grew larger and larger, blotting out the stars behind it with a furious crimson glow. Something, only Rhalgr knew what, was coming.
For the refugees that worked and sweat and bled in the southern reaches of the Black Shroud, however, dread was an easy emotion to live with. It faded steadily into the background of daily life, aroused only when one cast their gaze skywards come night to see how much larger that red dot had become. The fear it brought faded less and less with the morning as the days went on, and as what, impossibly, was Hydaelyn's falling moon took up more and more space in the night sky - and then, inevitably, in the day's.
Rumors abounded as scant information traveled south from Gridania, first to the ears of the settlers to which the hamlet belonged, then eventually to the refugees that was its life. The stories seemed to change by the day, a din of information and misinformation that bombarded Yenifer's mind like a besieging army. It was the displeasure of the Twelve made manifest. It was a new Garlean weapon meant to wipe out the defiant Eorzeans and clear the way for a final invasion. It was nothing at all, just a mirage lingering in aether trapped in the sky. Yen wasn't sure which of them was true; she half-suspected none were.
For as much as she was becoming her own arbiter of reality with her approaching adulthood, there were still two pillars that she built her foundations on. One was her mother, Aebba, tired but still somehow smiling as fear began to grip the hearts of the Gridanians she worked for. The other was Meffrid, the old bear who was as close to a leader the refugees had as any. The problem was, neither of them had a clue, either. The ground beneath Yenifer had become sand, and she was steadily sinking. The only way out was the move, to work, and so she did - her calloused hands grew tough as her skin was torn open, healed, and then was torn open again. All the while, Dalamud grew closer and closer.
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It was a day like any other when the moon descended low enough to be finally, truly visible. Quarrymill awoke to panicked screams as the earliest to rise looked up and saw the oncoming disaster clearly for the first time. Groggily, Yenifer had stumbled out into the hamlet's center, and felt her body turn to ice as she beheld the thing hanging overhead. Veins seemed to criss-cross the surface of Dalamud, glowing a faint blue like its blood was levin. The round shape it had before was broken now, disturbed by spires that rose from the moon's surface like buried knives. Around it, clouds darkened and rippled with growing storms, angered by this foreign presence in the sky.
The star stopped making sense; the meager aetheryte crystal that was Quarrymill's glowing heart seemed somehow to warp, its faces stretching and shrinking by ilms as waves of some invisible force tugged at it. The Wood Wailers, who viewed their posting here as little more than the death of their careers, consigned to watch over the detritus of Garlemald's decade-old invasion, soon found themselves pressured by creatures no one had ever seen before spilling out from the depths of the Shroud. It was the first time that Yenifer had taken her spear to hand for anything other than training, conscripted by Meffrid to maintain a tight cordon around their fellow Ala Mhigans as they attempted to find any hint of normalcy beyond the palisade walls. Yenifer could feel eyes, hidden in the shadows of the boughs, staring hungrily at her, but mercifully no threat made its presence known. How much longer that luck would last, she could never be sure.
The next morning, a messenger rode into the hamlet on chocobo's back, breathless from his dangerous trip through roads that had once been safe. Work was canceled across the city-state and its holdings by order of the Elder Seedseer herself, all labors dedicated instead to defense and the martialling of the Twin Adders for a hasty campaign north. Supplies would be sent as possible to Quarrymill and her sister settlements, the messenger assured before climbing back onto his bird. As Meffrid heard the news, his visage furrowed with impotent rage. "Not for us," he muttered over and over beneath his breath. "Not for us."
Aebba wouldn't know of the decree for another bell, having sprinted her way through the treacherous forest to her work at a humble inn built along the road to the central Shroud. A different runner found her and her coworkers there, frantically making a final inventory in preparation for the worst. Buscarron, the inn's owner, sagged against the bartop as he heard the order before nodding his silent ascent. Some half a bell later, the doors were locked for what felt like the final time, and Aebba made the trip back to Quarrymill as fast as her tired feet would let her. She had no time to search for her daughter when she returned, instead immediately being pulled away to help the settlers that had only yesterday pretended she didn't exist. As Yenifer stood, scared and armed, in the growing shadow of the palisade, Aebba prepared gauze and stocked bottles of potion. Work for work's sake, she felt, but it gave her something to focus on. Mother and daughter both felt terror begin to bite at their stomachs as day slowly turned to night.
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Late in the evening, two strangers came to Quarrymill, though they knew that they could not linger. By the power invested in him by Kan-E-Senna, the lalafell and his hyuran companion rang the meeting bell, calling Quarrymill to the hamlet's center - settler and refugee alike. Yenifer stood next to Meffrid, her mother lost somewhere else in the crowd, and stared at the agents of Gridania with weary eyes as they spoke. They were different from the rest, scared too, the hyur in the turban glancing up nervously from time to time at storming, falling Dalamud… but the lalafell's voice was strong, confident. Despite her good sense saying otherwise, Yenifer listened to him as he spoke, and believed.
"We have all watched the skies and felt fear," the man said, his audience deathly silent as they listened with rapt attention. "For our families, for our friends, for our peoples. We have felt powerless in the face of something we could not understand." He paused, taking a deep breath before pressing forward again. "Tonight, we watch Dalamud descend. Your brothers and sisters, your friends across Eorzea, watch too. We are brought together by this - and together, we can find strength!"
The lalafell's voice grew bolder, louder as he went, a mad energy urging him on. "To our north, a great battle is being fought to prevent this Calamity-" The crowd bristled as the word burrowed into each and every one of their hearts. Calamity. Yenifer knew precious little about them, beyond old and older stories of floods and the destruction they wrought. The lalafell raised his hands to draw attention back to him, to his voice, to his words. "-and they need all of our help. Every last one of us, young and old, can press back against this terror!"
The unspoken question - "how" - echoed in every mind. None dared to ask it aloud, for fear that whatever power spurring the speaker on would falter, and the madness of the end would fill Quarrymill to its brim.
"All of you must pray," the lalafell called, driving on to his conclusion. "Pray to the Twelve with every onze of our souls, that They may return Dalamud to its rightful place in the sky! Together, here, as one, lift your voices so that the worst will not come to pass!" He paused again, and for a moment, desperation flickered across his face. "Please." He said, his voice wavering almost imperceptibly. "Please."
The hyur to the lalafell's side reached down, placing her hand on her companion's shoulder, but other voices had begun to call out now. The conjurers that made the hamlet their home began to chant, loudly but shakily, a plea to Nophica. One by one, the Gridanians joined the chorus, the refugees surrounded by a growing wall of sound as the settlers begged the sky for salvation. Yenifer looked to Meffrid, as did every one of her fellow Ala Mhigans, seeking the old warrior's face in the throng. He stood there, silent; in his eyes Yenifer could see the terror of being trapped. She reached for his arm, and his attention jerkily snapped over to find her face. In her eyes, he saw a reflection of his own, and the soldier swallowed hard. His composure - or maybe just the illusion of one, not that it mattered tonight - returned, and he breathed in deeply before beginning to cry out himself. His voice was buried beneath the Gridanians', but Yenifer, and Aebba, and every other soul that looked up to him knew what he was saying. Saking like a leaf, Yenifer cried out to Rhalgr as her eyes began to burn and her hands grew only colder.
Beyond, red Dalamud trembled and glowed as the final act approached.
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Yenifer was only sixteen when the star ended.
Even though Dalamud itself hung malms away, its epicenter in some insignificant stretch of road cutting through the Carteneau Flats, the sound of its triumph echoed impossibly across every ilm of Eorzea. It was a tremendous groaning sound, like binds being pushed to - and then past - their limits. Then came light, a blinding flash that made the night become day once more. The prayers stopped, became screams, as Dalamud erupted, and as black wings emerged from the broken eggshell. The roar the monster, now finally freed, made caused the ground to tremble, the land itself shuddering in fear of what was about to come.
From the plume of destruction rising from broken Dalamud streaked trails of gold, arcing across the sky before turning downwards. Yen watched, frozen absolutely still, as the first fragments made landfall somewhere beyond the horizon. She could still feel the explosions, seconds delayed but still strong enough to make her footing viciously unstable. More fragments began to descend, closer and closer, until Meffrid's voice cut through the panic with a terrible clarity. "Cover!" He screamed, only barely audible, but still piercing enough to reach Yenifer's mind. She moved instinctively, sprinting towards one of the hamlet's few stone buildings as one of the streaking stars dove to the south.
The blast this time was impossible to weather, the ground heaving as a terrible explosion filled the air. Water and fire joined, rising into the sky, as a fragment of Dalamud crashed into the lake only malms south of Quarrymill. Yenifer was thrown off her feet, collapsing to the ground as it shook like a thing possessed. The thing that had emerged from the moon roared again, streaking against a fire-touched sky. Yenifer couldn't imagine how large it actually must have been, for even dozens of malms away it was yet visible, and so, so terribly great. From its wings emerged new streaks of gold that arced and danced through the air before spiraling back to the ground. More explosions - distant and close - assaulted every survivor's ears.
Stumbling, not quite to her feet but at least to some posture where she could crawl, Yenifer tried to find her mother in the madness. Smoke was beginning to drift into the hamlet, and her eyes stung and welled up with tears as she tried vainly to peer through the clouds. She screamed for her mom, but her voice was lost, swallowed up by a new wave of blasts and the terror she was adrift in.
A heavy hand suddenly grabbed Yenifer by the head and pushed her down into the dirt, and a heartbeat later was replaced by the heavy weight of a person. She struggled, but the body on top of her ignored her flailing arms and only drove her deeper into the soil.
The star ceased to exist, replaced with a blinding light and awful heat. Her hearing vanished, blown out by a wave of sound and air. Even with the man on top of her, nothing could stop her from being thrown; she was launched back, carried into the stones she was hiding next to with a painful jolt. White-hot agony worked down the arm that had struck the wall first, the bones broken by the terrible impact. Was she screaming? Was she crying? She didn't know. She wasn't dead, unless death hurt far more than she had ever feared. She couldn't open her eyes, or couldn't tell they were open, all of Hydaelyn seemingly consumed first by white, then by a settling crimson.
Seconds passed, then minutes. The ground continued to shake, until finally it settled. A blue glow came to join the red, and Yenifer's slowly returning hearing graced her with the crackling of fires and piercing screams. A hand, maybe the same as before, shook her with desperate intensity, trying to will her to move. All she could do was groan, and be moved with the hand. Her one good arm weakly attempted to wave, to announce that she was alive and in pain. The blue glow disappeared, and through her wounded ears, Yen could hear nothing but the final roar of the monster that had destroyed Quarrymill, Eorzea… hells, the whole damn star.
Then, white.
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Yenifer's eyes slowly flicked open, the aches and pains of her body announcing themselves all at once as she returned to consciousness. Smoke burned her exhausted lungs, making her cough and gasp for clean air that came and went with the breeze.
She tried to raise herself up, an attempt aborted when she realized just how badly broken her right arm was. A second attempt, slower and favoring her only bruised left, raised her to an awkward sitting position. She was alive, somehow, and others like her were beginning to pull themsleves off the soot-coated ground. She glanced over her shoulder to find Meffrid lying on his back, blinking and breathing slowly. Thank Rhalgr, she thought, thank Rhalgr.
A fire had burnt itself out only a few dozen paces from where she lay, the ground scorched and upturned where it had been struck. There were no roars in the sky anymore, no further explosions. It felt perversely peaceful, like normalcy had returned to the star, indifferent to the suffering creatures coming to.
She was alive. Meffrid was alive. Aebba…
A desperate strength filled Yenifer's exhausted body, and she somehow found the ability to stand. Aebba! Where was her mother? She cried out as loud as she could, "mom!" Her voice was so weak that it was only barely better than a whisper. She swallowed, trying and failing to wet her mouth and throat, before trying again. "Mom!"
Other voices started to join her cries, searching for different parents, different children. She couldn't hear a reply, not from Aebba. She staggered forwards into the gray, smoke-stricken dawn, searching the others lying on the ground. The living were dazed, injured - a few weren't likely to be living much longer. The dead made revulsion work up from her stomach and out her throat, only bile leaving her mouth as she retched. They weren't Aebba, at least. Different faces, ones she knew, but not Aebba. Gods, please. Not Aebba.
Yenifer found her mother lying only a few fulm from the side of the simple longhouse that the Ala Mhigans called home, or what was left of it. She was crumpled over, like a toy discarded carelessly, her back curved to its maximum as her head ducked towards her knees. Yen knew the truth already as she saw her mother lying there. She could see how terribly pale her skin had become, how tiny vilekin danced about her like her body was a stage. She knew.
As she wailed, anguished, her voice became the first of a new song, as the hamlet of Quarrymill began the grim work of census and grief.
Yenifer was only sixteen when she became an orphan. When she became an adult too soon.