Chapter Text
Thrain didn’t look back as he fled with his platoon.
His injuries stung, and his throat constricted with every gasp taken in of charred air and the miasma of death. Wherever he looked, the scene was wholly crimson, and the longer he stayed looking, the more the haunting colour seared into his memory.
His surroundings blurred into a smear of motion as he ran — but then, there was a sudden flash of red amidst the hellscape, and his gaze snapped instinctively towards it.
A lone female warrior appeared through the chaos, carving down an Abyssal monster twice her size, wielding a greatsword nearly her own height. A gold-trimmed red battle dress clung to her frame, alongside armour pieces whose polish was lost beneath spattered blood and grime.
Her headband, neckpiece, and earrings framed a face contorted by fury, yet even that could not quite hide the graceful beauty of her features.
And then, his gaze found her hair.
It was a deep red, vivid like a living flame, the most striking colour he’d ever seen.
For a split second, he stopped in his tracks, despite the hell he was in.
Just then, the woman’s hair ignited into wild, blazing streaks, and she shot an arm skyward. Flames materialised and coiled around her splayed fingers, swirling together into a raging sphere which she brought down forcefully. The fireball obeyed her command, blasting forwards and obliterating everything that had the misfortune of being caught in its path.
Thrain attempted to track it with his eyes but failed, for it had gone beyond his field of vision in no time at all. As his gaze returned the way it came, he saw that the land had been torn asunder along the fireball’s trail.
He slowly turned to look at the woman again.
The fact of the matter was — she lacked a Vision on her person, yet she’d been able to summon the power of Pyro.
Something clicked in his intuition.
She was not just any woman, but a god.
An unpleasant feeling began to rise within him.
Nothing remained of Khaenri’ah but fire and ruin. His homeland was dying before his eyes, and the illusion that mankind had ever stood a chance had been completely and utterly shattered. He refused to think of his family and friends; if he did, he might just go mad.
The wretched king and five sinners had incurred an impossible debt — but it was the gods who decreed that the people would pay the price.
And the servant of Celestia before him served them—
“Commander!” Guthred’s frantic voice sliced through the haze of his blind anger. “What are you standing there for? We’ve got to move!”
Thrain’s presence of mind swiftly returned. Guthred was right — this was no time to dwell on grievances; his only duty now was to his surviving men. They had to leave here with their lives while they still could.
He forced himself to turn away from that fiery red hair and pressed on, running as fast as his legs would carry him.
── ⟡ 𖤓 ⟡ ──
Months had passed since Thrain had fled Khaenri’ah with his platoon — or at least, what few men remained of it. The fateful westerly wind had brought them to an Abyss-ravaged Natlan, and to the Masters of the Night-Wind, a tribe of eccentrics led by a man named Ayizu.
And eccentrics they were, for they showed no prejudice towards Thrain and his men. The night wind must have carried the words of others away from their ears — the words that said Khaenri’ahns caused the tragedy.
The Masters fed them, sheltered them, fought alongside them, and in time, they had become brothers-in-arms. It was a hopeful time, but as was the nature of war, such mercies rarely lasted, and not long after, Thrain had all but been left alone.
But as he understood it, souls were special things, and he had a special heart.
So did he shelter them in the deepest part of himself, and make his final promise to them. Until the day came when it could be fulfilled, he would continue to fight against the Abyss for all his days, and the Masters of the Night-Wind were more than glad to have him.
── ⟡ 𖤓 ⟡ ──
The Abyss’ attack at midday had come suddenly.
Thrain stood amidst the chaos, huffing, still catching his breath after dispatching a horde of Abyssal creatures. Out of the corner of his eye, movement flickered; when he turned, he was met with yet another wave of monsters advancing rapidly from his side. He raised his sword, ready to receive them—
But without warning, the charging wall of monsters shuddered to a stop. In the next breath, a searing line cut through them from left to right, splitting their sum cleanly into top and bottom.
Thrain’s eyes widened, hands stilling as the creatures crumpled before him and disintegrated into ashes upon the wind.
Through the disappearing cloud, a mane of fiery red hair appeared, wild and radiant.
Thrain’s breath caught as recognition flared in him.
Without a shadow of a doubt… it was the same woman he’d seen in Khaenri’ah.
“Are you alright?” the woman yelled over to him.
Surprise flickered through the hardened lines of his face, but he swallowed hard and managed a rigid, subtle nod of his head.
Inside, his mind leapt within his skull. What was a god doing here in Natlan? There was solely one position, one title, in the land that could plausibly explain it. Could she be…?
His confirmation came swiftly when the nearby warriors erupted into a chorus of relief at the sight of the red-haired woman, each and every one of them shouting:
“Archon!”
In response, the woman addressed her people with a rallying cry. “Dear friends, forgive my delay. I am here now. Now fight with me!”
Thrain was well acquainted with the command of a ruler calling his warriors to battle — but what he’d just heard did not sound familiar.
There hadn’t been the slightest hint of conceited grandeur in the woman’s words, no prescription of superior and inferior. Dear friends, she had said, and the battlefield felt inexplicably smaller.
Around Thrain, morale surged back into the warriors, and with reignited spirits they threw themselves back into the fray. Thrain, too, suppressed his gnawing unease that had arrived alongside Natlan’s Archon, and rejoined the fight.
They were the tribe’s last line of defence.
The roar of Abyssal beasts and cries of warriors swelled into a mournful dirge as a dark shroud rolled in, like a pall pulling over the earth which every man knew was soon to be a graveyard — whether it’d be themselves who lay in it or their brother-in-arm. Thrain soon lost track of the passage of time, how many monsters he’d already slain, and the dwindling numbers of his fellow men.
But no battle was infinite, and at last, the final beast fell.
Aside from the sibilant fizzles of the last monsters in the throes of death, everything grew quiet as a funereal silence settled over the expanse. Thrain was still gripping his sword in his right hand, drawing laboured breaths, the taste of iron thick on his tongue. He had yet to blink when something cold and wet fell from above and landed on his cheek.
He looked up and saw that the sky had begun to cry.
As the hissing of rain grew louder, so did the anguished voices in his mind, until he could hardly tell anymore which thoughts were his and which belonged to the souls he carried.
Disembodied as they were now, he still remembered the owners of these voices — he recalled their faces clearly amongst the Masters of the Night-Wind and his soldiers, their wine-laced chortling then worlds apart from their present tune of misery.
He clutched a hand at his chest as he confirmed the integrity of his mechanical heart. The souls were getting restless again — more than usual, but it wasn’t difficult to discern the reason.
Freshly stranded souls drifted all around him. The ones within him stirred, as if roused by the impression of something familiar. Perhaps they still retained some vestigial instinct that recognised their fellow warriors and brethren.
Thrain took a deep breath and stretched out his hand. Like glowing tendrils, threads of light extended between his fingertips and the numerous bodies that lay on the ground, swirling into a luminous vortex with tails converging to a nucleus somewhere within his heart.
After a few moments, everything became louder than before — but the difference could only be heard by Thrain’s ears.
”Gngh…!”
He failed to suppress a grunt and was similarly unsuccessful in his attempt to remain on his two feet, though he managed to break his fall by landing on a knee. Assimilating new souls always brought with it a change that needed to be adjusted to.
When his vision had returned and he’d grown more accustomed to the increased load of souls, — or as much as was possible, that is — he pushed himself back onto his feet.
He spotted a few surviving warriors in the distance, carrying their fallen brothers towards a makeshift lean-to shelter seemingly fashioned from wooden beams and soiled tribal banners.
Thrain trudged over to the man nearest to him on the ground. Though his eyes were open wide, caught in an expression of horror, his pale, blue skin said he was long departed — if the gaping hole in his abdomen didn’t already tell as much.
He knew this man. Just the day prior, they had sat at the same table, sharing food and drink, exchanging words as they’d done many times before.
To think that that was the last time. Fate truly was a fickle mistress.
He let out a sigh and knelt down on one leg, passing a hand over the man’s face and coaxing his eyelids down until his gaze was lost to the living world.
Carefully, he hoisted the man across his back. The weight settled heavily, pressing into his spine with each step towards the lean-to, where he laid the body down then turned back without pause.
Again and again he crossed the sodden field, the pile of bodies growing larger each time he returned.
As he approached the shelter on his final trip back, he glimpsed a figure through the ivory veil of rain, kneeling beside a body that looked comparatively smaller than the several dozen piled nearby. The figure’s long, red hair identified her as the Archon of Natlan to him.
Her locks were now dull, their usual lustre gone. Sitting alone amidst the downpour, her shoulders drooped, she looked far from the god she was in the moment — a thought that mildly surprised Thrain.
Why the Archon was at the lean-to, he could not be sure; he considered the possibility that she had helped move the casualties, but quickly dismissed it — he could not imagine her, a ruler, deigning to handle the battered remains of her subject, yet as he came up behind her, he saw that she was holding the smaller body in her arms.
The face was of a young boy’s — Matlal was his name, if he recalled correctly. A reasonable guess told him the boy had likely got caught in the crossfire when the Abyss attacked.
A knot formed in his stomach.
The Archon had lifted the boy’s head with one arm, her other hand gently brushing away the wet strands of hair that clung to his cheek. She seemed to have retreated somewhere into her own thoughts, her gaze fixed on the boy’s perfectly still face.
When Thrain took another step, a damp squelch came from under his boot. The Archon seemed to realise his presence at last, her fingers stilling.
She laid the boy down gently and rose to her feet. Thrain couldn’t glimpse her expression as she looked down at the piled dead, but he saw that her hands had tightened into fists.
He continued until he was beside her in the lean-to, making sure to keep a suitable distance as he lowered the body he was carrying. After placing it neatly in the row, he straightened, his own gaze settling over the fallen.
The two of them stood together in a solemn silence, with only the shrill percussion of raindrops pattering against the ground for company.
A good stretch of time passed this way before the woman spoke.
“…You must be the Sentinel Knight I’ve been hearing so much about. I’m Mavuika, Natlan’s Archon.” Her voice was firm, yet it lacked the oppressive air of a monarch that relegated the listener to mere subject.
But more curious than that was, she looked… young, now that Thrain was getting a closer look. If he had to guess, she was likely younger than he was, if only by a little — yet her demeanour would never have given it away. What she did not have in years, Archonhood and war must have given her.
She continued, “It’s… unfortunate that we have to speak for the first time in such circumstances, but you have my gratitude for your help against the Abyss. I apologise I cannot do more to thank you properly right now.”
Mavuika… so that’s her name. He hadn’t known it before, since the Masters of the Night-Wind only ever addressed her by title.
He thought it rather odd that she, an Archon, had taken the initiative to speak with him first — he was a mere Khaenri’ahn warrior, and a Khaenri’ahn wasn’t necessarily worthy of respect in the current belief.
Thrain hadn’t planned on speaking to a god — partly out of exhaustion, mostly because he would prefer not to — but neither did he plan on slighting one. He acknowledged her with a brief, sidelong glance and said, “I deserve no thanks. The Masters of the Night-Wind took me and my men in. There was nothing else to do.”
His curtness drew no ire from the god, but neither did it earn an immediate reply.
The skies had been weeping for a while now, and the warriors on the ground continued to sleep. After a pause, Mavuika’s voice sounded again.
“May I ask your name?”
A slight hesitation crept into Thrain. He didn’t speak immediately. Instead, he gave her another fleeting glance from the corner of his eye.
Their gazes met. He cast his back downwards, but continued to sense hers on him.
“…It’s Thrain,” he answered at last, voice low and measured.
“Thrain…” she repeated quietly, as if committing it to memory. “I’ll remember it.”
A heavy quiet fell again. Neither of them spoke for a while.
With the tension beginning to leave him, Thrain suddenly realised the extent of his exhaustion. He felt almost like a dead man still standing, which wasn’t very far off from the truth at all. As his tired, unguarded mind began to drift, he found himself longing for rest, for comfort, and for home.
Home.
It was hard to believe there had once existed such a place — where he’d grown from a young boy to a young man, where he’d had friends, family, and comrades. Now, it all existed solely in his memory. His world had shrunk from kingdom to contingent and finally to himself.
He never even had the chance to know what became of Khaenri’ah.
…No.
His eyes widened.
He was wrong. There was a chance now.
His head shifted a fraction. Then, for the first time, he truly looked at Mavuika.
“…I have a question to ask.”
“What is it?”
“You… were in Khaenri’ah.”
He could tell she had already predicted his question by the way she averted her gaze.
Still, he continued, hardening his voice lest it wavered, “What… became of my homeland?”
Mavuika breathed softly.
She lingered on the edge of speech, lips parting yet producing no sound. When she finally spoke, her voice slowed, as though the words might come gentler if she drew them out.
“…I’m sorry, Thrain. The gate has already been sealed. There was… no other way to contain the Cataclysm,” she said, preferring not to state the kingdom’s tragic fate outright.
Thrain knew she was referring to the door in the Sumerian desert — the same one he’d escaped through with his platoon.
If it was sealed, that must mean there was nothing left beyond it worth saving.
Deep down, he’d already known the answer, but hearing it like this, a fresh wave of grief came over him.
A strangled noise rose from his throat, but he half-swallowed it before it threatened to betray any more of his emotion. Mavuika seemed to have heard him regardless, and she drew a breath as if about to say something — but just then, the sound of footsteps approached from their left.
Both heads turned to see Ayizu, carrying a body of his own.
Compared to when Thrain first met the man a few months ago, Ayizu looked markedly older now, with heavier lines under his eyes and newfound jowls that bespoke his worsening condition.
Abyssal corruption.
While Guthred’s final invention, the Draught of Lucidity, subdued the mind’s afflictions, Ayizu’s physical health had withered all the same.
The tribal chief reached the lean-to and laid the body down with a grunt. He rose slowly and said, “He should be the last one.”
Ayizu glanced past Thrain and over the pile, his eyes quickly falling to the boy at Mavuika’s feet.
“Archons above. Is that…”
“…Yes,” Mavuika responded, tone heavy. “By the time I found him, he was already…”
Ayizu let out a sigh. He closed his eyes, made a gesture with his hands in solemn prayer and whispered, “…May the night wind guide his spirit.”
His eyes blinked open and he said to Mavuika, “I’ll assign extra men to the night watch tonight, just so we have more eyes on the tribe’s perimeter in case the Abyss isn’t done. And, seeing as it’s late, I’ve prepared accommodations for you in the tribe.”
“Thank you, Ayizu.”
Ayizu nodded in acknowledgment, then lowered himself onto one knee, leaning in to inspect the bodies.
“Their souls…” He looked back up at Thrain and started, “Thrain, you…” but then his eyes flicked to Mavuika beside him, and he stopped himself. “…Forget it.”
He stood back up and said to Mavuika, “I’d nearly forgotten. I haven’t introduced you and Thrain yet, have I? He’s—”
“We’ve already spoken,” Thrain cut him off.
“…I see,” Ayizu noted, shooting Thrain a sideways look before he turned his attention to Mavuika again. “Archon, the bodies show a conspicuous degree of Abyssal contamination. I fear we cannot bring them back to the tribe for funeral rites in their state…”
Ayizu trailed off, his words bearing an implication that only Mavuika but not Thrain seemed to grasp. She said softly, “…Let’s give it till tomorrow morning. If the night passes peacefully, we’ll check on them again… then I’ll decide what to do.”
“But—” Ayizu stopped himself again and sighed. “…As you wish, Archon.” He quickly changed the subject. “Where are Wanjiru and the others?”
“They’re helping out at the other tribes. It wasn’t just the Masters of the Night-Wind that the Abyss struck.”
“Their attacks are only getting fiercer, more unpredictable. It appears the final battle will come sooner than expected…” Before Thrain could puzzle over what Ayizu meant by final battle, the tribal chief continued, voice taking on a hushed urgency, “Archon, regarding what I said before… You really won’t change your mind?”
“…No, Ayizu.” Mavuika’s reply was patient, but there was a hint of weariness that said she’d heard this many times before.
Thrain caught the twitch of Ayizu’s brow. He didn’t speak at once. But finally he said, “…I’d thought Burkina’s passing would finally make you reconsider.”
Mavuika froze instantly at the name.
She went still, save for the small tremor in her lower lip as she bit down on it.
Thrain hadn’t thought the air could grow any heavier, but it did. The name definitely struck a fresh wound.
A silence settled, full of things he didn’t understand.
After a long pause, Mavuika answered, “…If anything, it only made me more certain. It reminded me again of what’s at stake.”
“Don’t you understand? There’s no guarantee in the future!” Ayizu’s voice grew, agitated. Clearly, this conversation had happened before. “Burkina, Sanhaj, Tenoch — their deaths could be for nothing. If you don’t act now, many more will go the way they went…!”
Thrain felt himself an intruder listening to something not meant for his ears. The names spoken meant nothing to him, and Ayizu’s plea — to act now — made little sense. He caught fragments of meaning but nothing whole, and trying to piece them together rewarded no fruitful conclusion.
“…We cannot forsake the futures of our children. Peace that crumbles at the Abyss’ return is not true peace. I will not dishonor Burkina, Sanhaj and Tenoch with half-measures, nor will I let their deaths be in vain,” Mavuika replied through a stiffened jaw.
Her words suddenly fell to a whisper. “And if Natlan forgot them… If even I forgot them… It would make everything we fought for meaningless.”
She took a deep breath, then looked Ayizu in the eyes once more. “That’s precisely why I won’t be changing my mind, Ayizu.”
The older man heaved a sigh of resignation. “…Very well. We’ve just fought a tough battle, so I’ll leave the matter be for now.”
A pause. Ayizu raked a hand through his hair awkwardly, as though contemplating his next words. He lowered his voice and said, “…I apologise for bringing up your comrades. I suppose I got carried away with my frustration.”
“…It’s alright. It’s been a long day,” Mavuika said with an air of finality that made it clear the matter was concluded.
Thrain glanced between the two of them, the air thick with palpable tension. Though their exchange was lost on him, he knew it wasn’t his place to enquire about the Archon’s affairs, nor would he concern himself to.
Mavuika was the first to break the silence. “…I have to break the news to Matlal’s parents — and apologise.” Her gaze flicked towards the boy on the ground.
Ayizu sighed. “That should be my responsibility.”
“No.” Her voice was quiet but unyielding. “I am the Archon. The loss of such a young life should never have happened… It is my failing, and mine alone to answer for.” She spoke as though it were the indisputable truth, then turned and walked off in the direction of the tribe.
“Wait—” Before Ayizu could get out any more of his sentence, a hacking cough overtook him and he doubled over.
“Ayizu…”
Thrain’s tone was equal parts worry and exasperation; Ayizu’s fits had been coming more often lately, and his pleas for him to fall back from battle and let him handle the fighting had so far fallen on deaf ears. Still, he couldn’t help but keep at him, persisting in his reminders which had become more akin to nagging.
Sensing his concern, and perhaps anticipating another lecture, Ayizu hastily said, “I’m fine, I’m fine” — Thrain knew he was lying again — “I’m sorry you had to watch that, Thrain. I’d better go with the Archon anyway.”
With that, he followed after Mavuika, leaving Thrain to walk back to the tribe alone.