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Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of the Deliverer, the Worldbearer—
Of Khaslana, the one who won’t reach the dawn.
---
He remembers burning. He remembers searing pain, he remembers the blazing fury, he is all that and so much more. He is Phainon, he is Khaslana, he is the Deliverer, he is the Worldbearer. And then—
He is ashes.
He sees gold above him, looming and so much more than him. He feels a gaze on him, one that sears him to the core and leaves him with ice in his blood. Just one scratch—but he now knows that even gods can bleed.
He is rage, he is hatred, and then—
He is nothing.
The clock ticks back. 33,550,336 returns to 1, to 0. He is Khaslana, he is Khaos—
And then he is Phainon once more in the fields of Aedes Elysiae.
---
He smells warm bread and someone is here to wake him. The wind is cool and gentle today, bringing the scent of cut wheat to him. The windmills turn idly in the distance, milling wheat into flour, which is turned into bread in someone’s kitchen. Wind chimes ring out softly across the village, mingled with the sound of children laughing, of little Livia and bold Piso. The statue of Oronyx stands in the square, whispering memories of what once was, mingling with the prayers of the villagers.
All is well with the world.
Phainon opens his eyes.
For a moment, he thinks he sees pink but no, what greets him is purple, in the form of gentle lilac eyes and lavender hair that trails downwards.
“Lord Phainon,” Castorice says, her eyes so very kind, her whispery voice gentle as if approaching a spooked animal.
“Castorice,” Phainon responds, “did I fall asleep?”
She smiles at him, equal parts comforting and sad. “You’ve had a very long sleep.”
“Was it…” The clock ticks backwards. It unravelled— he unravelled. He had fallen apart at the very end but at least he knew it was not all for nothing. It was never all for nothing.
His throat is dry.
Was it enough? Was he enough?
Instead, he says, “It’s good to see you again, Castorice.” And it is. The last time he had seen her it had been—
He did not even have the chance to say goodbye—
He slayed the dragon and gouged her Coreflame from her belly—
He plunged Dawnmaker through her chest and learnt that even Death can bleed the same gold that runs in his veins—
“Wake up… lost one...”
“I missed you,” he says achingly, his voice cracking.
“And I, you,” she says, her smile mirroring his.
He doesn’t know who reaches out for the other first—maybe they both did at the same time—and he wraps his arms around her thin shoulders. This is the first time he has ever hugged Castorice and it is nice. She smells like lavender and dried flowers, their faded fragrance rustling in the breeze.
“Welcome home, Lord Phainon,” Castorice murmurs into his shoulder. “We’ve all been waiting for you.”
---
There is a feast in the village today and everyone is invited. His father, Hieronymus, chops wood to feed the cooking fires and his mother, Audata, guts fish with finesse. They are warm when he hugs them, laughing and tousling his hair, teasing him for clinging to them even at his age.
He gets roped into helping out around the village, brushing shoulders with everyone who is preparing for the feast. Hands touch his shoulders, pat him on the back, tug on the end of his chlamys for good luck. Everyone is saying the same thing, welcoming him back home, and their eyes are so very kind, so warm.
Phainon feels the sun on his back as he walks around the village, looking for something to do. It had been too warm to keep wearing his coat so he discards it, leaving it folded over a fence he passes by. His booted feet dig into the soil, brushing against the weeds and flowers growing in patches along the road. He hears the sea not far away and in the distance, he sees a ship sailing on the horizon.
The sea is a perfect blue, the sky like a painting made with brushstrokes of orange and pink. It is like he never left. It is like coming home.
It is like becoming himself again.
His feet take him past the dock, towards the sound of people and music where there are tables set up in the Sacrament Courtyard. Someone is roasting meat, a special treat for the occasion, and he smells wild berries being cooked down, filling the air with a delectable aroma.
In the centre of the organised chaos, he finds the eye of the storm: Aglaea, resplendent in gold and cream, with not a single hair out of place as she directs where tablecloths should be placed and banners strung up with the coolness of a seasoned general and the critical eye of a dressmaker.
She is multitasking, arguing with a figure robed in black and teal, who gesticulates passionately at her before crossing his arms over his chest, his mouth set in a sardonic frown. Every word that Anaxa says, lost to the bustle around him, is met with a response from Aglaea, whose eyes remain impassive, her expression like cold porcelain. Phainon has the sense to steer around them, leaving them to wrap up their argument—or start another one, whichever they feel like doing at the moment.
Looking away from the bickering pair, he meets eyes with Cipher, who is poised by a table heaped with food, helping herself to the first slices of bread and cake, stealing an entire bunch of grapes with deft fingers. She looks coolly back at him, her blue-and-gold eyes complicated. She says something and Phainon reads it off her lips rather than hears it through the cacophony in the courtyard.
“So, we all ended up in the same place after all.”
And then she is gone, leaving the barest afterimage of herself in her wake.
“Snowy?” he hears a voice chirp from somewhere around his knee and he looks down.
Bright red hair adorned with three flowers, one for each of them, fills his vision as Tribbie smiles up at him in that bright and cheery way of hers. “Could you do us a favour?”
“Anything. What is it?” he says, the response coming to him easily.
“We’re missing De and Ciny. Could you call them over before the feast starts?”
“Where are they?” Phainon asks.
Only a smile answers his question. “We’re sure you’ll find them. You’re the one who knows this place the best after all.”
So off Phainon goes, trotting back out of the courtyard.
He looks for pink and blue, and red and gold. What he finds instead is Ica, fluttering about in the orchard where the villagers grow their fruit. Leisurely, the pegasus flits from tree to tree, helping itself to apple after apple from the boughs.
“Ica!” he hears a voice call out, sweet and feminine.
Hyacine rounds a tree, eyes swivelling around, searching for Ica, only to fall on Phainon. At first, she is surprised but that melts into happiness quickly, the joy of reuniting with a long-lost old friend.
He no longer knows where Hyacine begins and Aquila ends, their screams melded into one, rage but also sorrow—
He is standing in the Eye of Twilight while she looks back at him, eyes brimming with tears as she says her farewells—
He sees her collapsed in the streets, blood-streaked hands held to the gaping wound of a patient—
“How will the seeds of a new world… ever take root?”
“Do you forgive me?” he wants to ask. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“What brings you here, Phainon?” Hyacine asks and she must read the grief in his eyes. She has always been so good at dissecting his expressions, drawing from either her skill as a healer, or her lived experience as his friend.
“The feast is about to begin,” he tells her, remembering why he was sent out to find her in the first place.
Her eyes crinkle in understanding, her mouth turning up in a smile. “Then you shouldn’t miss it,” she says, so gently. “We’ve all been waiting for you.”
His throat is dry. He is still so sorry. To her, to everyone. He doesn’t know how they all look at him like that, with kindness and no judgement. But he is so very grateful, soaking it in like a parched man.
“I still need to look for Mydei,” he says, his voice sounding small and hollow to himself.
“Go look for him,” Hyacine replies, reaching out her arms to pluck Ica away from the next apple it approaches. “We’ll wait for you.”
Phainon nods, feeling sick, so full of contrasting grief and relief. Does he deserve this? He doesn’t know. But he wants it. He wants the quiet that comes after the fire has burnt out, when the sun has set and dies below the horizon.
He breaks out into a run, almost blindly, stumbling into the brush. Just one more piece to complete the person he once was. Khaslana, Khaos. The Deliverer, the Worldbearer. He is all that but also none of that anymore.
Gold and red pass him by as he sprints, the colours of Aedes Elysiae, the colours of Mydei. Once, twice, countless times in many cycles, he has wondered what Mydei would look like in his home. He has always wanted to bring him home, even knowing that Castrum Kremnos is Mydei’s just as Aedes Elysiae is Phainon’s.
But still, he wants. At the end of a long-burning fire, there are still embers, stirred up by emotions he thought long dead to him. He is feeling himself more than ever back here, back home, surrounded by everyone he has ever loved, who has loved him back.
He was called hatred but now he knows: they could never unmake him when he is a mosaic of everyone who has ever taken root in his heart.
He breaks into the clearing at an astonishing speed, too slow to put on the brakes when he finally catches sight of the gold and red he has been looking for. Golden eyes widen a fraction at the sight of him, and then he is crashing into a solid wall of muscle and armour, toppling him into the grass with the grace of a rampaging dromas.
“I see that your long journey hasn’t improved your manners,” Mydei says from under him, unimpressed, but his hands are curled around Phainon’s back, the points of his golden-clawed fingers poking at him through his shirt, keeping him in place.
“Your reflexes have dulled,” Phainon laughs, loud and bright. He feels like crying.
“Dawnmaker will stab you through your tenth thoracic vertebra. That’s your weak spot and the only way to kill you.”
Again and again and again and again—
There was only one way to ensure that the undying prince stayed down. Millions of cycles and that has never changed. He would know the shape of Mydei’s back in any life.
“Deliverer… I wish you… eternal victory.”
“Deliverer. You’re getting my shoulder wet,” Mydei remarks and it sounds like a complaint but his hand is on Phainon’s head, his fingers carding the snowy-white strands with something like tenderness.
Phainon can’t help it. He has just seen everyone he loves again and it has been such a very long time. 33,550,336 cycles and the 33,550,336 rebirths of his friends but none of them had been his, the ones who started this journey with him all the way at the beginning.
He knows this Mydei just as Mydei knows him. In their first life, he had told Phainon his weakness but Phainon never had a reason to use it against him. He was the first one to call Phainon “Deliverer” and to mean it, walking side by side with him in life until their paths diverged, Mydei left behind in that finished cycle and Phainon walking forward on that long road alone.
“Just let me have this, Mydei,” Phainon chokes out, half-laughing but mostly crying. He feels like he is dying, like he can finally breathe again after all those long cycles alone.
It is like coming home, to Aedes Elysiae, to his friends, to himself. Like seeing the sunset at the end of a long day. Like shutting the door once you come home. Like closing the last page of a long story.
Mydei continues patting his head, and does not complain as his shoulder steadily gets more soaked through.
---
With everyone here, the feast begins.
This is a feast with everyone he has ever loved seated around the table. It reminds him of the time Aglaea scolded him for wearing all his favourite colours at once. Have moderation, she had said. Select the ones you like the best.
But Phainon has never been good at choosing, at curating, at letting go. He always wants to keep everything he loves in his arms forever, tucking it away inside the treasure chest he calls his heart.
Despite everything, he has always been made to love , even if it meant burning himself down for his world. It is okay, he can do it. He can bear it. He did it, burning endlessly for those millions of cycles, keeping track of the tally even as his heart withered down into a void. Still, he has never let go—
Until now, that is.
He now understands that the sun and the dawn are not the same. Who would have, who could have, told him that he was the blazing sun destined to rise but not the rosy-fingered dawn?
Become the dawn, Deliverer.
Perhaps it is time to let go. Maybe it is fine to just be Phainon at the end of it all and when he goes, he will be surrounded by everyone he loves.
It is so very bright.