Archive of Our Own ^beta

I.

"Mydeimos thinks no one knows, but we all could hear him weeping after we lost one of our youngest in the last skirmish. Kremnoans are so used to death that we no longer see sorrow in it, but he still cries. I respect our ways – the feasts, the songs, the proud tales for the fallen. But ever since I laid awake and heard his grief from across the barracks, I thought it must be nice to have someone crying for you. I doubt our king will ever read this, but on the chance these words find him… remember to cry for me, will you?"

– an entry from an unknown soldier’s diary

Kremnoans did not grieve.

A valorous death before a glorious return was not merely a phrase. It was etched in their bones, in their very blood. To cut one of them open would be to find only courage and honor. Death, therefore, was a point of pride, not an occasion for sorrow.

You would not find them weeping for their fallen. There were no regrets, no anguished “what-ifs.” Instead, you found stories of the long-departed, told with fierce pride. You heard songs of their accomplishments and witnessed festivities held in their names. No mother cried for her child and no lover wept for a missing soul. Only pride remained, no matter how foolish the death might seem to an outsider.

Mydeimos, Son of Gorgo, King of Castrum Kremnos, was, in all observable ways, the same. He had lost years adrift in the Sea of Souls, but he had spent far more fighting beside his people. He bled for them, with them. Each and every time they went to battle, he would never say they would survive victorious, but that they would all die united – a death with honor, securing a memory of the same.

And so, he smiled with them, joined the festivities without being asked to. Honored their name.

It was the same when Perdikkas died.

As the man himself had wished, Mydeimos did not mourn. He spent the day in celebration, painting Perdikkas’ image for the younger soldiers – an intelligent, noble man. He helped write the songs, he told the stories, he drank in the name of one of his dearest friends.

But Mydei, his friend, when the fires had burned to ash and silence was all that remained, finally found himself alone, and there, in the silent pride of his people, he wept.

He had no idea how long it had been, only that his throat had grown raw and his eyes stung beyond remedy. It came as no surprise, then, when Krateros appeared – likely drawn by the sound of poorly concealed, ragged breaths while on patrol.

Mydei already braced himself for what was to come. He expected a reprimand for this display of weakness, a command to clear his head and remember his duty. A king doesn’t cry, he would say, with that disappointed tone he often used when Mydei failed to reach some expectation he didn’t even know was there.

It caught him off guard when the man simply lowered himself onto the stone beside him, no words falling from his lips to diminish him.

Mydei, unsure and exposed, tried and failed to stem the tide, swallowing the sobs that shuddered in his chest. But the tears, once granted permission, would not be commanded. They fell silently, steadily, no longer willing to be stopped by shame of being seen by another – his teacher, no less.

After long minutes that felt more like hours, when they finally started to cease, Krateros spoke, his voice low. “You are going to wake the entire detachment at this rate.”

He sniffed and then hummed in agreement, too tired and worn to think about anything but Perdikkas’ body in his hands.

“Are you not going to lecture me?” Mydei’s own voice was barely a whisper, still raw from all that time swallowing the sobs threatening to escape from his lips.

“Not really.”

“It is a weakness,” Mydei insisted, echoing the ghost of the lesson he’d awaited. A liability. Soldiers don’t cry. You should only honour them, not grieve them.

“It is not.” Krateros shifted, the polished steel of his armor all whispering together. “Though I wonder who you took that from. Queen Gorgo would have laughed to see you weep so. She’d have called it a waste of water, I’m sure.”

The mention of his mother was a familiar, dull ache beneath his ribs. He didn’t know if she would have laughed or not. Her face in his memory was nothing but a blur of warmth and long hair, her voice a melody without words. There is barely time to brace himself to the raw pain that thinking about how crying on her lap would feel like, before he reels it in. It was past the time to accept that there are kinds of pain that will hurt for a lifetime.

“Is that so,” he answers back, the familiar apathy he never feels when he talks about her already coating his tone of voice, a familiar shield to mask how much it bothers him, to know less of the woman who is his mother than all the others who met her.

“I know so,” Krateros said, his voice certain enough to not have room to be argued against. “We talked about it once. Of the price of the lives we lead. She said a tearless victory is a hollow one. That to feel no grief is to have loved nothing worth defending.” He was quiet for a moment. “At the time, I thought it was foolish but now… I’m sure it would give the fallen soldiers great pride to know someone would weep for them like this. Nikador knows they earned it.”

Krateros placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, the grip both warm and heavy.

“So weep, Son of Gorgo. Weep without shame. For the price of love is grief.”

Many years had passed since then, and although many of his predictions about his teacher had come true, it took longer than Mydei wanted to admit to notice that perhaps Krateros had always been grieving in his own, clumsy way. He had always called him "Son of Gorgo." A reminder, perhaps, that she once existed. For him, or for Krateros himself, Mydei no longer knew.

Maybe all his people mourned this way – not with hidden tears and somber silence, but in their fierce celebrations. Every feast a I will remember you, every victory song a I will miss you, every shared story around the fire a You mattered to me. Grief was not erased, simply dealt with differently.

Still, nothing could have prepared him to return from the cold clutches of Thanatos to find Phainon crying so unashamedly over his body.

The Deliverer himself was on his knees, cradling Mydei’s limp left hand between both of his own, as if he could warm it back to life. Endless tears traced clean paths through the dust on the Deliverer's face, falling in a steady, silent drip onto their joined hands. It seemed wrong, somehow, for Phainon, whose existence was woven from light warmth, with eyes that crinkle when he smiled, to look so distressed over something so minimal.

Such a sight left him laying there, stunned and speechless as he watched the unexpected spectacle. He could only wait, his returning breath shallow, until the other man sensed the shift. When Phainon’s streaming eyes finally lifted and met his, they widened in shock. The tears stopped almost immediately, but his grip on Mydei’s hand tightened, almost desperate.

“Deliverer,” Mydei’s voice was a dry rasp, scraping from a throat that had no longer known breath. “Just what do you think you are doing?”

Phainon flinched as if struck, reluctantly retracting his hands, already moving to rise from the floor, his motions stiff. The sudden absence of contact left Mydei’s own hands terribly cold.

“You died, Mydei,” he refuted, his voice thick, lips forming a thin line. His gaze darted away, fixing on a nearby pool of shimmering gold blood – Mydei’s own. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“You are aware that is not possible for me,” Mydei said simply, pushing himself up on his elbows as well. The world tilted, then settled. He knew Phainon understood this. He told him about his curse more than once and the Goldweaver did the same.

“I know.” The words were flat, final.

“I won’t die, Deliverer.” He repeated a truth both of them knew well. A statement of fact.

“I know, believe me, I know.” This time, the words came almost out of frustration. Phainon looked at him then, the sorrow his eyes hardened into something else — a relief so deep it turned into agony. “But I watched the light leave your eyes, Mydei. Knowing is one thing. Seeing is…”

He trailed off, unable to finish. The silence that followed was taut, stretched thin between them like a thin line held at both ends, vibrating, ready to snap.

“Even though I was the one who should have watched your back, they still managed to strike you. I–”

“Do not flatter yourself,” Mydei interjected, his tone sharper than he intended. Leave it to Phainon to shoulder a blame that wasn’t his to carry. “This is hardly your fault. I was simply reckless, that’s all. When I asked you to fight alongside me, it hardly meant for you to become a human shield for a man who cannot stay dead.”

A strange, choked sound escaped Phainon – not quite a delirious laugh, but a near thing. He ran a hand through his hair, the motion smearing the last traces of golden ichor through the pale strands. Mydei found it difficult to banish the thought of how the color suited him. “You are infuriating.”

He paid no mind to the jab, knowing it was spoken without true venom. Instead, he turned his gaze to their surroundings, taking in the aftermath. A low, assessing hum escaped him.

The place was littered with the forms of fallen Titankin, their armor cracked. There were more than he’d realized. “You must have been having a very good day to spare,” he remarked, a note of genuine surprise in his voice. To have held his own against so many foes alone, to have cleared the threat while also… attending to him… it was something to be acknowledged for, at least.

Phainon followed his gaze, his expression tightening.

“It would be a better day if you would exercise a modicum of caution. You cannot simply throw yourself into every breach because you assume you will walk away.”

“And why not?” Mydei countered, stretching his arms and legs, testing for any lingering weakness, gladly finding none, only his familiar strength. Some deaths took their tool on his body, letting his limbs pay the price for days. This one, however, seemed to be kinder to him. “This curse of mine allows me to take the risks others cannot, to do what must be done without the cost of a permanent end. I should exploit the advantage it gives me, instead of turning away from it.”

“I understand, but…” Phainon took a step closer, his blue eyes pleading. “Please.” The word was out there, stripped of the usual teasing tone the other always held around him. In that moment, Amphoreus' hero looked as if all his formidable defenses had fallen away – his hypothetical dog ears drooping.

Mydei looked at him, at the earnest plea in a face that was usually always sporting a smile and felt something within him shift and soften. Krateros must be right, he thought with a surge of internal irony. I am growing soft, spending so much time among the Okhemans.

“Very well,” he answered, surprising even himself. He met Phainon’s gaze and gave a single, slow nod. “I will try.”

Phainon’s shoulders immediately relaxed, the rigid line of his posture softening into something approaching ease. The familiar, faint smile returned to his lips, brief but genuine.

“Good,” Phainon said, his voice regaining its usual teasing timbre. He glanced around, his eyes cataloging all the fallen enemies. “Now… final count. Forty-two.”

Mydei immediately frowned, a protest rising in his throat. He bit back the urge to complain that this was hardly fair, considering he had been indisposed for the majority of the engagement. But he had just claimed full responsibility for his own recklessness.

“Twenty-nine,” he spat out, the admission tasting sour.

Phainon’s grin widened, becoming something bright.

“A decisive margin. It seems someone is going to the baths with me today, after all.”

Mydei shot him a withering look, but accepted the outcome nonetheless. If conceding defeat was the price for seeing the shadows fully lift from Phainon’s eyes, for restoring that familiar, luminous brightness to his demeanor, then it was a cost he was willing to pay.

Some battles, as his teacher once said, were not won by being right.

II.

"New soldiers are always surprised by our king’s soft spot for the young. He'll see one who hasn't eaten and slide his own rations over without a word… We are often taught to stand alone, to need nothing, but ever since I watched him stay through the day beside a feverish boy with a damp cloth in his hands, I have formed a different thought. It is my grandest honor to be led by a man who has not forgotten how to care."

– a note found on the body of a fallen soldier

Mydei had died many, many times. Enough to have stopped counting altogether. What he could still keep track of, however, were the times he’d woken in an infirmary bed.

Since joining the Chrysos Heirs, he’d been under Hyacine’s direct care once before, and that was only because Phainon had insisted. Most returns from the Sea of Souls left him lying on a battlefield, and as his deaths grew more frequent, the Deliverer himself had begun dragging him to safety.

It was a surprise to find himself in the familiar bed of the Twilight Courtyard, greeted by its warm, golden-hued ceiling, with Hyacine’s gentle presence humming somewhere nearby.

Before he could make a sound – or even remember what affliction had brought him there – a tiny finger tapped twice on the back of his right hand. He turned his head, still groggy and far from alert, and met Tribbie’s large eyes. She placed a finger to her lips, then pointed deliberately to his left.

Unsurprisingly, given the man’s predictable consistency around his deaths, Phainon was there, asleep, slumped over the bed with his head buried in his arms, the sheets beneath him damp with what could only be tears.

What a silly man.

His sleepy brain acted before it could analyze. Mydei carefully shifted into more of a sitting position and let his left hand – without its gauntlet, he noticed belatedly – rest on the crown of Phainon’s white hair, stroking it gently. A soft, almost content sound escaped the sleeping man, almost as an answer to the touch.

“This is the first time Snowy’s slept since you fell,” Tribbie offered, her voice so low he barely caught it.

“How long have I been dead?” he asked, plain and simple. He still didn’t understand their need to tiptoe around the words.

Her small face pinched into a frown. “Two days, De. You made all of us worried sick.”

Mydei drew a sharp breath, trying to piece together the last threads of memory, remembering being shot by an arrow filled with, what he could only guess, was venom.

“I hate dealing with venom,” he mumbled. It always took the longest to recover from. He assumed it was because poison ravaged the whole system, not just a single part. The regeneration was… thorough, but slow.

“Next time,” he said, his voice still rough, “drag him away if you have to. He’ll stay here for days otherwise.”

“We tried,” she said, her tone too fond to be truly annoyed. “He even threatened to climb in through the window.”

To that, he said nothing, his thumb still moving slowly through Phainon’s hair. He had long given up on trying to make the man understand that his title “undying” was not for show.

“I hope both of you recover soon,” Tribbie’s offered to fill the silence, expression softening, “We enjoy watching you two interact. Snowy only acts his age when you’re around.”

At that, he finally took his gaze from the sleeping man and moved to have a proper look at her. Beneath her usual calm, there was a deep weariness in her eyes, a sag to her small shoulders he hadn’t noticed at first.

“How long have you been sitting here, Lady Tribbie?”

Her smile became strained, thin and fragile. She didn’t answer.

Guilt, a feeling he didn’t have often, came to him cold and sharp. It hadn’t been long since she lost Trianne, her memory still a fresh wound for all of them, especially to her and Trinnon, and here he was, making it bleed again.

“How are you holding up?” he asked quietly, the question feeling both necessary and inadequate.

She shrugged a little, looking down at her hands. “We manage. Agy has been around more lately. It helps.”

Mydei nodded, his gaze drifting back to Phainon’s sleeping form. “I miss how the three of you braided my hair,” he admitted softly, the words leaving him before he could reconsider. Maybe he just wanted to express he missed her as well, in his own way.

“Me too.” Tribbie looked up, her expression almost apologetic. “It’s just… it’s been hard to enjoy things when one of us is missing. It’s always been the three of us, after all.” She paused, her gaze turning distant, seeing something – or someone – else. Perhaps a tomorrow all of them desperately wanted to reach, albeit unsure of how.

He hummed as an answer, knowing she still needed to say more, using her time to carefully find the right words.

“It’s a strange, melancholy feeling, you know? To still keep finding such beautiful things even though she’s gone. The soft furs of a new chimera. A perfectly brewed cup of tea. The way Snowy’s hair shines in this light.” She gave a small, shaky sigh. “It feels like a betrayal, sometimes, to notice the beauty without her here to see it too.”

“It’s not a betrayal,” he said, his voice low but firm. “You can only see the world this way because she taught you how to see those things. To notice the shine in his hair.” He gave a gentle tug, eliciting another sleepy murmur from Phainon. “Seeing them now is just you carrying the part of her that knew how to look.”

Tribbie’s eyes shimmered. She was so strong, despite everything she had endured and will have to endure. Mydei wanted to carry at least a little bit of her load as well, as useless as that sentiment was.

“The next time you and Trianne are willing to braid my hair, let’s miss her together. How about that?” He offered, with a smile on his lips.

A tear finally escaped Tribbie’s control, tracing a clean path through her cheek. She caught it with a swift, practiced swipe.

“Okay,” she whispered, her voice small but clear. “We would like that.”

He nodded, relieved, and shifted slightly, wincing at the lingering stiffness in his regenerated body. Mydei lifted his right arm, an unspoken invitation.

She didn’t hesitate, climbing onto the mattress in one fluid, quiet motion, curling into his side with a sigh that seemed to release weeks of tension. Her small frame fit against him like a missing piece, and within minutes, her breathing evened out. Soon, a soft, rhythmic snore filled the air – she had always been the loudest sleeper of the three of them, a fact that had always made Trianne laugh.

As both of the other occupants of the room slept, Mydei watched the slow dance of dust motes in the warm window light, one hand in Phainon’s hair, the other around Tribbie’s shoulders. It was perhaps half an hour later when Phainon stirred in earnest. He jolted, his head snapping up, eyes wide and wild as they locked onto Mydei’s face.

“You’re–!” he began, his voice a hoarse, sleep-thickened exclamation.

Mydei’s reaction was immediate. He moved the hand that was previously on his hair to cover his mouth, the gesture firm but gentle. “Shut up,” he breathed, his own voice barely a whisper. He tilted his head meaningfully toward the small form now snoring softly against his other side.

Phainon’s eyes, puffy and red-rimmed, followed the gesture. The panic in them melted into a soft, wistful gaze as he looked at Tribbie’s peaceful face. Mydei could see the exact moment Phainon processed the scene.

Before the king could think about the idea of two grown men and a child sharing a bed barely made for one person, Mydei lifted the corner of the blanket on his left side and gave a small nod.

Phainon took a second to understand the invitation, his brain still sluggish from sleep, for sure. Then understanding dawned. In a flash, he was moving, scrambling over Mydei with a surprising lack of grace for someone usually so composed. He settled on Mydei’s left, his body a warm, solid line against him from shoulder to knee.

It was a tight, ridiculous fit. One of Phainon’s legs dangled off the side of the bed, and Mydei was now pinned, feeling the ache of every muscle of his recovering body. However, as Phainon let out a long, shuddering huff of pure relief, his head finding a place on Mydei’s shoulder, it was clear there was nowhere else he wanted to be, deciding this was nice enough as it was. Perfect even.

“You came back,” the white-haired man whispered, in awe.

“I always do,” Mydei whispered back, his own voice a hushed rumble in the quiet room. He turned his head just enough to have to reel in the urge to press his lips to Phainon’s temple. “Now, sleep.”

Phainon made a sound, something between a whine and a sigh, and burrowed closer.

Within moments, the soft snores on Mydei’s right were joined by deep, even breaths on his left. Both of them were finally claimed by the rest they desperately needed.

Mydei, however, was wide awake, having slept enough the past few days. Unfortunately, this meant he was the sole witness of Hyacine’s disappointment when she came to check on them a while later.

Her eyebrows climbed slowly toward her hairline as her gaze swept over the scene. Then her eyes returned to him. No words were spoken and none were needed. The sheer, silent weight of her judgment was absolute.

A faint, almost imperceptible sigh lifted Hyacine’s shoulders, before her shook head once, slowly, then turned and left as quietly as she had come.

III.

"My mother once told me about a dromas found dead atop the highest peak in all of Amphoreus. What could it possibly have been seeking up there? As my own death draws near, I find myself thinking about this question more and more. Was it merely lost, stranded in a place it could never come back from? Or was it driven by a purpose, climbing ever upward until its strength gave out? I cannot help but see our king in that lonely carcass, sometimes. He would, I’m sure, be most displeased by the comparison."

– a passage written in the margin of a tactical Kremnoan ledger, author unknown

When Mydei opened his eyes, everything hurt, a wheezing breath rattling in his chest. He stared at the unfamiliar, cracked stone ceiling, willing the pain into a manageable shape before he dared to move. Gathering all his will, he pushed himself up, groaning as every muscle and bone screamed in protest. Agony, bright and sharp, lanced through him, a familiar yet unwelcome companion.

He waited for the dizziness to recede, his body freshly stitched back together, protesting the sudden demand. When his vision cleared, he took in his surroundings: forgotten ruins, their grandeur long surrendered to time and damp. Faded murals were ghostly smears on the walls and moss-clad pillars lay in broken segments across the floor. A small, crackling fire cast the only living light in the chamber.

Before him, laid out neatly where he had awakened, were clean white clothes, folded in something similar to a pillow. With a huff, he barely had time to crouch – a movement that sent fresh spikes of pain through his legs – and gather the garments to fold them properly before he heard familiar approaching footsteps.

Phainon emerged from a shadowed archway. In his hands was a dented metal cup steaming with something herbal. He stopped a few paces away, his gaze sweeping over Mydei.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The fire popped, scattering amber embers like tiny, dying stars.

Finally, Phainon’s shoulders slumped, the rigid line of his jaw softening into something weary and profoundly relieved.

“You’re awake,” he said, his voice flat, stripped of its usual energy.

“What happened?” Mydei asked, ignoring the thick tension for now. He finished his clumsy fold and set the clothes aside.

“The last Titankin managed to cut your throat," Phainon said, the final word leaving his lips like a curse. “And you died. I found this place nearby, and brought your body here so you could recover.”

As Phainon approached to hand him the cup, Mydei noticed the other man’s puffy eyes and the faint, salty tracks on his cheeks. He refused to name the warmth that bloomed in his belly as fondness. It was too dangerous a word for them.

“Won’t you ever grow tired of crying for me, Deliverer?”

“Won’t you stop dying?” Phainon retorted, with a defiant look.

“You know the answer to that.”

“Well, mine is the same.”

To that, he almost smiled. Phainon could be stubborn about the strangest of things, and this was his oldest, most persistent fixation.

“I always come back,” Mydei said, accepting the cup filled with water.

Phainon watched him with a shadowed gaze, then moved to sit beside him before the fire. He prodded the burning wood with a stick, his expression complicated in the flickering light. “Well, and what if one day you don’t?”

Mydei took a slow sip, letting the cool water soothe his parched throat. He looked past Phainon, to the crumbling mural on the far wall where some forgotten hero was forever slaying some forgotten beast. Time made relics of all victories.

It would be a lie to say he never thought about that possibility. The day his luck against Thanatos finally ran out, the day death stopped being only a stop and became a definitive ending. But, like most what-if scenarios, this one was not worth the currency of his attention. Their lives were built on a foundation of uncertainties, this could not become another.

“Then that day,” Mydei said, his tone deliberately light, “you will no longer have to concern yourself with dragging my body to safety.”

“Don’t.” The word was sharp, final. Phainon’s stick snapped under the force of his grip. “Don’t say that.”

“What do you want me to say, Deliverer?” The question was softer now, both of their defenses down. “That I promise it will never happen? We are both too old for lies woven that thin.”

“I know, it’s just–” Phainon interrupted, the frustration raw and unformed in his voice.

“Phainon.”

At the mention of his name, not his title, the white-haired man immediately looked at him, his face unguarded – not unlike a child waiting to be scolded.

Mydei’s voice changed, falling into the commanding tone he always used before his people. “You shall have your final bath in warm and radiant gold,” he began, the words filling the silence. “At the end of the rainbow bridge, the Skyfolk will mend dusk and dawn. One day, you shall die with a wound in your back. You will bear the blazing sun, until the pale dawn breaks.”

Phainon stared, his breath caught.

“You shall, Phainon,” Mydei repeated, his gaze unwavering, the fire in his eyes burning brighter than the one before them. “You will. We all know the shape of our end, but we choose to thread our fate toward it anyway. We move forward, toward the Era Nova. Don’t forget that.”

Phainon looked at him, a profound weariness settling in his bones, and offered nothing as an answer. His gaze drifted back to the consuming flames, as if seeking in their dance a pattern more forgiving than the one in their lives.

Mydei reached out then, his hand – soft, eternally mended – cupping Phainon’s cheek and turning him gently from the fire.

“If the day I fall for the final time ever comes,” Mydei said, the words coming from his lips barely above a whisper, yet heavier than all the prophecies fate had ever laid upon them. “Remember me, Phainon of Aedes Alysia. Remember what all of this was for. That is my curse upon you.”

"You are an unfair man Mydeimos," Phainon murmured, leaning into his palm, the warmest touch he'd ever known, and he held himself there, suspended – unwilling to close the distance, yet unable to pull away. "As if I could ever forget you."

Mydei scoffed softly, the sound brittle in the quiet air. He leaned back at last, his gaze lingering – stolen – on the curve of Phainon’s lips, before he finally granted them both the space they should keep, even as his own body screamed in protest.

They could never be more, no matter how much he wished so.

Their duty would always loom larger – larger than their hearts, larger than themselves.

IV.

"Mydeimos, you are known by countless names – The Last Prince, The Guardian of Amphoreus, The Undying, The Lance of Fury, The King with no Kingdom, Son of Gorgo. To some, you are a warrior. To others, a hero. But I have long learned titles and names are not enough to define the entire existence of a person. The closest truth I know – the only one that truly fits – is this: you are the love of my life. If Thanatos should ever dare to take you from me, then… I wish you a valorous death before a glorious return, Mydei."

– a man's handwriting, on a slip of paper used as a bookmark, forgotten in a volume of ancient love poetry

The day he killed Mydeimos began like any other. Khaslana had long since accepted that Amphoreus was indifferent to the loss of precious things, as unmoved by suffering as a mountain is by the rocks that tumble across its surface. The cosmic scales here were balanced by a hand that felt no pity

The him from a few years ago would have had no such acceptance that things would end this way. There would be a piece of him still willing to believe that Mydei winning was a possibility. Current-day Khaslana – Flame Reaver, now – not only knew that it was impossible, but he also knew that pure stubbornness and wishful thinking wouldn't keep one from dying. The universe didn't care whether you still had unfinished business to take care of. It didn't care whether you really, really didn't want to go yet.

However, his legs still felt too heavy for him to walk toward the future as if nothing of importance would happen.

For the first time in many cycles, Khaslana let himself stop.

He sat on the jagged ground, his legs dangling over the abyss under Castrum Kremnos, wondering, idly, if the fall through that mist-shrouded nothingness would be enough to kill a monster like him. Would the impact finally grant silence, or would he simply lie shattered and healing at the bottom for days?

It was no surprise when Mydeimos found him, as he did in every one of these rare, stolen pauses. Perhaps, Khaslana thought, his own battered heart wished, in some subconscious crevice, to be encountered. To be seen, even if by the one who will soon meet his end by his own hands.

Their encounters typically erupted into violence. On rarer occasions, a tense, brittle conversation would precede the inevitable clash. Mydeimos stood there now, the same way as many others, his gauntlets clenched at his sides, softly assessing the threat.

“Flame Reaver.” The title dropped from Mydeimos like an insult. In his voice, it was never only a name – only an accusation.

“Mydeimos,” Khaslana offered back, his own voice devoid of any feeling beside boredom. He didn’t turn, his gaze fixed on the swallowing mists below. He was trying to calculate the fall, the seconds of weightless oblivion. One thousand. Two thousand. Perhaps forever.

“Are you here to steal the Coreflame from me?”

“Yes.”

He expected the attack then, a powerful punch, perhaps. Instead, he heard a low sigh.

“What do you need them for?”

When long seconds passed and he didn’t answer, he heard the sounds of footsteps and steel before Mydeimos sat down on the ledge, leaving an arm’s length of cold stone between them.

Khaslana finally moved his gaze from the fall below and stared, perhaps, for the first time in many cycles, surprised at the turn of events.

“I could shove you over the edge right now,” he stated.

“You won’t.” Mydeimos didn’t look at him, his own profile glowing due to the orange sky. “I know the posture of a man waiting for a fight. You’re not in it yet.”

Khaslana considered this. He would kill Mydeimos today. But not this moment, that much was true.

A long silence stretched, filled only by the distant cry of wind through stone teeth.

“Will you not remove your mask?” Mydeimos asked, his voice quieter now, stripped of its commanding edge. “Before our final fight?”

“Why?”

“I like to know who I am battling against.”

A hollow amusement, the ghost of an old habit, stirred in Khaslana’s chest. He hummed. It had been a century since he’d looked upon his own face without the mask’s cover. The reflection that greeted him… he hated it. Despite being the same person as always, he looked completely different now. Yet, he had always been weak toward Mydeimos. Years would never change that.

With hesitant fingers, he pried the mask from his face. The cold air bit his cheeks, touching the parts of his face falling apart. He did not look at the king, but he felt the exact moment Mydeimos saw him. The sharp, arrested breath was louder than any gasp.

“Phainon?”

Despite everything, a small, twisted smile touched Khaslana’s lips. More of a grimace than a smile, really.

“It’s been a hundred years,” he said, his voice rough from disuse, “since you called me by that name.”

“How?” Mydeimos was looking at him fully now, his golden eyes wide, scanning every familiar-yet-altered line of his face. He couldn’t help but wonder what the other saw there. If he hated just as much as he does.

“I am not the one you know,” Khaslana said, turning to finally meet his gaze. “I am from another reality, if you will.”

Mydeimos drew a sharp breath, as if the air turned into poison.

“Your Phainon,” Khaslana continued, the name feeling like regret on his tongue. “and I are not the same.”

“What happened to you?” Mydeimos asked, the question laced with a tenderness meant for another man, a devotion painfully misdirected.

“That doesn’t matter,” Khaslana answered, because it truly didn’t. He turned his gaze back to the consuming nothingness below. “What matters is: I will kill you today.”

A slow, defiant smile touched Mydeimos’s lips, the familiar, arrogant flame of challenge rekindling in his golden eyes. How he would give anything to keep it there. “I would like to see you try.”

But Mydeimos could never win, not against what he had become. They had long stopped being equals. Knowing this, however, did not stop the unexpected pang that lanced through Khaslana’s chest – a sharp, foolish ache. He didn’t think such a thing could still hurt him.

Ignoring the knowledge he alone possessed, he let himself indulge in this conversation just a little longer, daring to ask what he’d never had the opportunity to before.

“Do you regret showing your weakness to me? Knowing now I will use it all against you?”

“No.” The admission came too quickly, as if Mydeimos didn’t even need to think about it. “I’ve seen death many times… Phainon. I have stared into the eyes of men who have given up all hope. They aren’t your eyes. Not yet.” He spread his arms slightly, a king offering his chest to the blade. “If anything, it will be the utmost honor to die by your hands. My only and one equal.”

Khaslana, no, Phainon – the ghost of who he was, the man buried beneath years upon years of failed attempts that never, ever amounted to anything – let his gaze roam freely over Mydeimos’s face. The strong brows, the luxurious long hair that always reminded him of home, the faint, defiant smile on his lips. And then – his eyes.

Mydeimos had always had kind eyes.

For a dizzying instant, as he looked at them, the scent of food cooking in the kitchen seemed to rise in the air. Children’s laughter echoed, carried on strong shoulders. The honeyed warmth of a summer sky at dusk – brief, breathtaking, perfect and devastatingly beautiful.

A wave of pure and undiluted want washed over him, so profound it was a physical nausea.

Oh, how he missed them. Food being cooked wrong on purpose. Castorice’s shy smile from behind a book. Hyacine badly hidden annoyance at his antics. They all had heavy weight on their shoulders, but they were still together through everything. Everybody was alive.

How he would give anything to have it back.

Fate had always been cruel to all of them. It gave them hearts only to dictate how they must be broken, it gave them love only to design its perfect, world-shattering loss.

The day light was passing, painting the sky in bloody oranges and bruised purples. Khaslana realized, with a start, that he hated the sight of it. He hated the light in this world, where it promised another dawn that never came. In his world, the light had only ever disappeared.

“You should resent me,” Khaslana said, the words grating out. “You should scream at me. Curse my name. Injure me, if you must.”

Mydeimos simply looked at him, his kind eyes full of something too soft to be anger. “But I wouldn’t ever do something like that to you.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes, the pain consuming him completely. “But you should. I… I killed you. So many times, in so many ways, through so many different paths, trying to do it right. I held your shattered body more times than I can count.”

Mydeimos didn’t flinch.

“But it hurt you just the same, didn’t it?” he said softly, with a terrible, gentle insight. “Every single time. I can see it. It broke your heart.”

The accuracy of it was a final blow.

It hurt.

It hurt so, so much.

All the defenses, the purpose, the cold rage – it crumbled. Khaslana, the Flame Reaver, were both gone in an instant. Only Phainon remained, nothing more than that little boy who once wanted to be a hero, standing on a cliff edge, exhausted and heartbroken.

He remembered watching the day pass once, with his Mydeimos, a lifetime ago, talking of nothing. He wondered when the color of gold had stopped being wheat fields, the radiant spill of the hair he loved most, and had become only the dull, accusing color of blood drying on his hands.

It was almost over.

“I don’t want to keep going,” he admitted, the truth escaping easily, a surrender. “I don’t want to go.”

Mydeimos rose then, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “I never thought you were a coward, Phainon. Are you so afraid of losing?”

He offered no answer to the teasing. Mydeimos closed the distance between them, took his hands – carefully, as if gathering something broken – and drew him to his feet.

“Listen to me,” Mydeimos said, his tone shifting into something solemn. “Phainon, if you ever lose yourself in your path again… if you ever surrender completely to fate… I swear to you, I will come after you. Just like I am trying to do now.”

Mydeimos words struck a place in Phainon that he had believed was nothing but scar tissue and dust. A pressure, hot and impossible, immediately built behind his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, to offer some brittle retort, but what emerged was a fractured, shuddering breath.

And then the world blurred.

A sob cracked through him, harsh and unfamiliar, a sound he didn’t recognize as his own. He flinched from it, from the sudden, shocking wetness tracking through his cheeks. He brought a hand up, staring at the moisture on his fingertips with a detached, bewildered horror.

Tears.

He had thought his body, in its comprehensive ruin, had forgotten how to create such a thing. Yet here they were, falling silently.

Far less surprised, Mydeimos didn’t hesitate. He drew Phainon into him, arms closing around the racking shoulders, holding him with a gentleness he no longer remembered ever receiving. Then, his voice came, a soft rumble against Phainon’s temple, laced with that familiar, irreverent warmth, “There now. What a big baby.”

Phainon choked on a wet, half-laugh, half-sob, his face buried in the worn fabric of Mydeimos’s clothes. He clutched at Mydeimos’s back, fingers curling into the cloth, desperate. He didn’t want to let go.

He didn’t want to let go, he didn’t want to let go, he didn’t–

But he had to.

He had to release him. He had to step back. He had to seal his face behind the mask again. He had to raise his blade against the kindest person he had ever known. He had to drive it home. He had to watch the light gutter out in those golden eyes and hold the hand that fell–

“All stories need an ending,” Mydei murmured, the lips filled with gold blood sparkling in the fading light, “and my time has come. It was an honor to share my story with you, Phainon of Aedes Alysia.”

A final, feeble squeeze. Then all strength left Mydei’s hand.

Phainon only held on tighter.

“The honor,” he whispered into the stillness, “was all mine, Mydeimos, Son of Gorgo.”

Long hours passed as he held him. The wind grew cold, whispering through the stone teeth of Castrum Kremnos, but Phainon did not feel it. The only cold was the one seeping into his own hands from the one he cradled, almost as if to protect him.

With a tenderness that belied the monster he was, he laid Mydeimos down upon the jagged ground, arranging his limbs, closing his sightless eyes.

Then he turned.

The drag of his sword against the stone was the only sound in the world. A low, grating screech that tore through the day’s fragile silence. The only way he let himself scream.

Khaslana did not look back.

VI.

“Perhaps in another universe, you will come see me in my library.”

“I hope so.”

There is no dawn.

VII.

“I wish you eternal victory.”

There is no dawn.

VIII.

“The honour was mine.”

There is no dawn.

LXXIV.

“I’m sorry you have to do that.”

“No… I’m the one who is sorry.”

There is no dawn.

CXII.

“I’ve grown tired, Mydei.”

There is no dawn.

CCXL.

“You won’t accept this ending, will you, Deliverer?”

“... I won’t.”

There is no dawn.

CDLVI.

“Tell me… was I at least a worthy adversary?”

“The best out there.”

There is no dawn.

???

There is no dawn.

There is no dawn.

There is no dawn.