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Eizen stood at the world’s edge, endless blue stretching out as far as he could see. “There is no cure anywhere in the world”, Eizen heard in the roar of the sea, saw it in the way the waves crashed against the jagged rock. “There is no saving harbingers of death”, Eizen understood.
Eizen had walked countless miles, wearing out his boot soles, and had stowed away on countless ships, but it didn’t matter. He had failed. It was all for nothing.
The leather broke off with the punches Eizen sent to the ground, knuckles splitting and bleeding as the despair in his heart threatened to swallow him whole.
Numb to the pain in his hand, Eizen turned his eyes to the dark sea waves constantly splashing against the cliff’s base, sending white and salty spray into the air. Dangerous. Welcoming. Promising. It could be so easy. Malakhim were immortal by design, yet not invincible, and earth malakhim sank like stone. All he had to do was to get up and take another step.
Drenched in regrets, Eizen’s eyebrows knitted. He stood up, then rubbed his eyelids before taking a deep breath.
There was no one atop this place, unsullied by human feet, to listen to Eizen’s pleas. But something did, at least, hold him back from falling.
Shouldering his very little belongings, Eizen set off on a journey that would bring him back to the only person who had ever accepted whatever misfortune he brought.
Almost as if she knew, Eizen found her exactly where he remembered bidding her farewell, too many centuries ago to tell. This time, his sister stood on her feet with pride, determination, and no tear marks on her face.
The past centuries had hardened Edna, sharpening her gaze like rain did to stone. Unblinking, she fixed him with a hard stare that stopped Eizen in his tracks.
Edna wore a glove on her right hand just like Eizen, tied with the ribbons that he once bought for her, and she had also fitted his old boots to her feet. Those two details were the only things that set Edna’s appearance apart from how she looked in Eizen’s memories.
Not having grown a single inch, Edna looked frozen—lost—in time. The reality of abandonment snaked around Eizen’s neck like a noose, and the guilt weighed him down like a ball and chain. How much had Edna prayed for his return? To how many shooting stars had she made the same wish?
Any excuses got stuck in Eizen’s throat like thorns.
“About time,” Edna muttered, barely audible. Welcome home, her eyes said.
During Eizen’s travels, the color of the sky and that of the sea had always reminded him of Edna’s blue eyes. Now, it was with those same eyes he had missed that Edna watched him with, understanding without words: she never asked Eizen about what came of his travels, or about the reason for his return.
Sometimes, Eizen would close his eyes and bury his nose in Edna’s hair, and the faint smell of lemons and chamomile—such dainty flowers, just like her—would fill his lungs. With Edna in his arms, the cliff and its dark sea felt like nothing but a bad dream. It was almost as if that day, when Eizen had blindsided Edna by leaving her—his sister begging him to stay with a broken voice, weak legs, and a letter crumpled in her small fist—hadn’t happened. It was almost as if Eizen hadn’t found himself miles away from home, with an aching heart and a wet spot left on his clothes by Edna’s tears.
They had so much to catch up on, so much that they couldn’t put into letters. Time and time again, the bright blue sky turned into a canvas painted with shades of purple and orange, before giving rise to a familiar starry sky that could be perfectly seen from the peak of Rayfalke.
But something lingered in the air, something silent that had changed in all the centuries that he had kept himself away. Eizen couldn’t put his finger on it—or maybe it was more accurate to say that he didn’t want to acknowledge something like that could exist in his heart.
Until that day, at least.
The sun had risen in the east like any other day, and even the way Eizen’s breath stalled, for a fraction of a second, when he took Edna’s hand in the morning—she was so damn soft and so damn small, and did he really leave her alone for so long when she was this small—wasn’t any different. It was a day like any other, with nothing particular about it, when Edna kissed Eizen.
The kiss freed what was inside Eizen’s chest, and Eizen neither pushed Edna away nor protested, because Eizen had never not been selfish. Empyreans be damned if centuries of wandering hadn’t piled up, just like the mangled corpses did around him, leaving him with this twisted and unquenched thirst.
Convincing himself that he would never be able to say no to Edna, and burying any inconvenient memories that contradicted him, Eizen kissed Edna back.
Edna begged that they come down from Rayfalke, and Eizen’s plethora of there’s no need and it’s too dangerous wasn’t enough to dissuade her.
It didn’t take Eizen long to figure out the reason behind her insistence: his sister had a weakness for cute things, even though she would never admit to it, not even in another thousand years. Eizen watched Edna, whose feigned apathy about the Falkewin squirrels before her couldn’t disguise her shining eyes, and wondered how long these days would last.
The siblings from whom Eizen walked away not to make things worse, after they fell into a pitfall at an autumn-colored forest; the crew who perished in the maiden voyage of the Van Eltia, with the survivors considering scrapping the ship as Eizen left; the malakhim who sometimes accompanied him, before the overflowing malevolence from the humans got them,… Eizen never forgot the people whose lives he had affected. Malakhim often became unintentional witnesses of the world—like the earthpulse, yet lacking its almightiness—but that took a darker turn when the Reaper’s Curse was involved.
Eizen loved Edna and, shackled by a twisted malak blessing of growth as he did, that same feeling would be her downfall. The road to hell was paved with good intentions, and Eizen’s cursed blessing made him a ticking time bomb. His sister always insisted that she was careful, but that would make little difference.
Eizen knew it, felt it in his very bones: one day Edna would die, and it would be his fault. It was as inevitable as the change of seasons.
But until then Eizen could pretend—or at least would try to—that Edna would be alright, and that they would be able to share forever. Eizen needed to because, once Edna died, he had no idea what to do with himself.
Finish the job he hadn’t done years back, maybe.
Putting that thought aside, Eizen pushed Edna down. Under him, his sister stared back with a silent question in her clear, blue eyes. Her right hand was bare, and something in her ring finger caught the daylight rays. The red orchids by her side, the same ones that Eizen had named her after, when she still could wrap both hands around his pinkie, fluttered in the breeze.
Eizen leaned down and kissed Edna, again and again as if that could make up for the centuries that had kept them apart—as if that could make up for the fate that loomed over their heads.
It’s fine like this, Eizen thought, trying to shake off the sinking feeling that their days together were already running out, that it wouldn’t be for much longer that he’d be able to kiss Edna.
Eizen shifted Edna’s dress slightly, low enough to catch a usually hidden scar with his lips. He remembered every single one—how could he not when they were his fault—but this one was special. This scar was the ice-cold bucket of water that he had needed to turn around and leave—the one scar that made him realize that Edna wasn’t just a child prone to illness and injury. The true origin of her misfortunes had always been Eizen, and the fact that Edna knew and had kept it to herself so as not to hurt him and his feelings filled Eizen with shame.
It’s fine like this, Eizen thought, wrapping his arms around Edna. He could feel Edna’s heartbeat when they were this close, the sole proof that she was still alive.
But Edna was still too small, too fragile. Eizen couldn’t keep the promise he had once made to himself—He couldn’t protect her, no matter how much he wanted to.
It’s fine like this.
It was easy for them to lose track of time, being malakhim—or seraphim, as they were now called. It didn’t help that the mountain didn’t change, and when it did it took a long time.
More years than Eizen counted went by before a young boy arrived. The boy—Sorey, he introduced himself—talked to Eizen about plagued cities, washed-away bridges, and the Lord of Calamity while Edna, uninterested and on Eizen’s lap, played with the ribbon around her wrist.
Eizen wasn’t much different. Sorey’s words were abstract concepts for him, far away and foreign, and the naivety that Eizen found in Sorey’s green eyes when he spoke of purification, seraphim and humans coexisting, and Lords of the Land was almost irritating.
The dire need for an earth seraph had brought Sorey this far but, though a mountain was a good place to start looking—Eizen sure saw plenty of earth seraphim coming from the earthpulse before Edna’s turn—he wouldn’t find a volunteer in this one. Whatever happened beyond the border of Eizen’s and Edna’s domains, in that fast-paced outside world, was none of their concern. They knew too well what atrocities humans were capable of, and they had nothing to offer them.
But Sorey hadn’t come alone: Two seraphim stood by his sides. The water seraph, whom Eizen didn’t know the name of, expressed relief upon learning that the rumors were fake and the mountain held no dragons. But Edna and Eizen were the only seraphim in Rayfalke, and his words felt wrong in Eizen’s ears, almost like a bad omen.
The other seraph, on the other hand, was a familiar face.
Sorey was a Shepherd, and Lailah had become his Prime Lord. Eizen hummed. He had never understood Lailah’s convictions and probably never would, but he liked her—and hopefully she wouldn’t get herself killed from mingling with the humans.
Lailah, who was watching in silence how some parts of the mountain reached past the clouds, suddenly spoke:
“Being cursed with eternal loneliness is pitiable, is it not?”
Lailah’s words made Eizen stagger, but she refused to elaborate with an It’s nothing, returning to emphasize the urgency of the situation that had brought them into Rayfalke. And though the comment picked some of Eizen’s interest—he found the term a good descriptor for his situation—nothing could convince him to leave home.
And, as Lailah pointed out with a sad smile, Edna also wouldn’t do it—not without him.
Eizen watched the group leave in defeat. The sun was already setting, turning grass and stone into amber. An unfamiliar feeling that Eizen had only been able to grasp during his travels, somewhere among broad cloudless skies, the feel of freshly-rained grass and the smell of seafoam, gripped his heart for just a fraction of a second.
Edna raised her arms once the picturesque group disappeared into the horizon, as demanding as always, then cracked a joke.
Eizen didn’t smile. He rarely did.
Carrying his sister in his arms, Eizen retired deeper into the mountain. At least, Eizen thought, if what they had just heard were true, they might be getting the fortune of dying together.