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A statue sits on a small, grassy berm, forty paces from the back wall of the Academy of Light.
He is knelt upon one knee, his right hand resting on his thigh while the left hangs at his side. His head is tilted ever so slightly toward the ground so that his eyes appear downcast. He has the visage of a young man, no older than twenty-five, perhaps, and he is clothed in the traditional mage’s tunic from the old era. The long tabard which flows from his waist creates a curve of smooth stone that the rainwater catches in just right, inviting birds in the spring and summer months.
He might have had a name once, he thinks. He thinks, because he is not merely a statue, but a man. Humanity, however, feels so far away now that it may as well have been a dream. He can hardly remember it, or his name. Names are assigned to people, and to things which matter to others. He does not matter to anyone anymore. He is but a lonely statue standing in the center of the training grounds of a school of magic. He remembers that much because the students and teachers come and go, talking and studying and training.
He’s stopped counting the days, the months, the years he has been there. Time seems so meaningless when one doesn’t sleep, doesn’t blink, doesn’t move . He is a passive observer from a solitary location… he has seen the world move around him for what must be centuries, by now. And nothing felt different, nothing felt new, not until him .
When the devastatingly handsome young man with jet-black hair and bright eyes looks up at him with curiosity and wonder, he thinks for the first time in a long, long time, that he might matter.
-O-
Five hundred years before, give or take a season, his name was Yeosang. He was a mage, the brightest at the academy. The guildmaster had always paid him special attention, sensing his potential. Under his tutelage, he became a powerful sorcerer, the likes of which the world had not seen for some time. But there was another who sought the guildmaster’s favor. She grew jealous of the special treatment Yeosang was receiving, wishing to have it for herself. But the guildmaster sensed the darkness within her heart and turned her away.
Everything was settled with duels, back then. Slinging spells across the training grounds, seeing who could land the nastiest non-harmful hex to claim victory… it was tradition. When she challenged Yeosang to a duel, he accepted. He was an honorable man, and never would have spurned a challenger.
Although his master had sensed the hate within her heart, he had surely not foreseen the kind of wickedness she was truly capable of. For when she felt as though she may lose in this fair fight of wills, she cheated. She called upon dark, forbidden magicks, and with all the venom her twisted mind could muster, cast upon him, a curse.
There he would remain, bound to the earth, imprisoned in stone. To ensure that the curse would not be overcome, she infected the minds of all those around him, wiping their memories clean of him. Even the guildmaster did not recognize his pupil when he looked upon him, and the evil sorceress vanished without a trace.
And so he sat, and he screamed there within his own mind until the cloying dread set in… the knowledge that no one would ever hear him, or remember him, ever again.
-O-
He held out hope, in those first few years. Every so often, the guildmaster would walk the grounds and pause in front of him, watching him curiously. It was as though the memory was flitting by him as to just how he got there… and then, it was gone, and he would move on.
He never paused that way in front of the statues of the gods, the statues of the academy’s founder, nor the fountains or mausoleums spread across the grounds. Only him. But he never seemed to recognize him, never able to break through the hex upon his memories, see through the fog the witch had inflicted upon his mind.
The statue cries, crystalline tears streaming down its stone face, but only ever after the guildmaster has moved on. The students call him the weeping mage.
-O-
Eight winters after the curse, the guildmaster dies. The statue weeps as the eulogies are given, the entire training grounds filled with mourning students. He is interred with the other guildmasters in the mausoleum in the back corner of the property, and on mornings when the fog sits low against the hills, he thinks he can see the ghost of him there, still walking the grounds.
-O-
Time passes in a blur after that. Students come and students go. The statue notices them as much as they notice him; that is, that he is merely an object around which they live their lives. He sees the decades come and go, sees students grow, graduate, fail, sometimes spectacularly . He can appreciate their candor, their heart. Sometimes he can find it in himself to care about the tangle of their lives, when one of them brings another out into the quiet of the gardens to confess their love or share their worries. And then, he sees it over and over again, and grows tired of it. They are of different faces, different names, but it is all the same, the same love and heartbreak and it aches in his stone chest that he cannot have that, too.
Then, the raiders come.
It is in the middle of the night, while all the students are asleep in their beds, so few guards posted. There was never a need… after all, who would dare to attack a school full of the most powerful young mages on the continent?
He does not know what they call themselves, just that they wear shrouds of black with a red rune emblazoned upon the chest. They come in the dead of night and slaughter them… the students, the masters, the scholars, everyone , as though they meant nothing. The few who awaken with enough of a chance to defend themselves only die slower deaths.
He screams silently, willing himself to break free of this curse with all his might. He has the magic to be able to stop them, if only he could, if only he could break free. Tears stream down his stone visage as he watches, powerless.
The new guildmaster stands in the training grounds surrounded by enemies. She fights, fights hard. A bolt of lightning from her palms cracks past him, biting into the stone at the peak of his temple, just to the left of his eye. It is excruciating, feeling the rock chip away as though it is flesh and bone, but more excruciating, still, is how he must watch as the life fades from her, as the enemy forces overtake her.
They set the academy ablaze and then, they are gone.
Time starts to feel meaningless, in the dead silence of it all. The ruins of the academy sit upon the land like an open wound, fresh and festering.
-O-
In time, new mages come to rebuild. Some of them seem more devastated over the loss of the library and the archives than the people slain there. He wonders how many years it has been, for them to be so utterly unconcerned for the loss of life.
The bodies have become skeletons, picked away by animals and eroded by time. Plant life covers the majority of them, now. It’s been so still and so silent for so long that the statue does not remember watching the flesh rot, the animals scavenge… he cannot recall, he only knows what was and what is. The in-between is meaningless.
Whenever the mages dig up a new collection of bones, the statue tries to recall their name. He can’t even remember his own, now. There is a cleric who oversees the excavations, and she alone seems to care. She gives them each a burial out by the old mausoleum and ensures they receive their last rites. The statue wonders if she deigns to bless him, too, will he crumble into dust, finally free of this fate? He never learns.
The cleric girl fills the chips in the stone at his left eye with red clay, smoothing it into the cracks with delicate, gentle fingers. She has a kind, sweet face, and bites her tongue when she is concentrating. She plants flowering shrubs in an arc around him and he thinks he can come to appreciate the bursts of color every spring.
-O-
The foundations of magic itself seem to have changed. These new mages are different from the old… their spells sharper, their techniques more precise. They have categorized every incantation into its own subject, streamlined training, offered specializations. The statue wonders if there is anyone who is truly a journeyman of the craft, anymore.
Witches have long since been wiped out, it seems, and with it, his hope of ever returning to a mortal form. Now the people who call upon magic are known as ‘mages’ or ‘will users’, and they only seem to bother with offensive and healing spells. None of the old magicks, the transfiguration or polymorphic spells… those seem to have been lost to time. Curses and hexes are old hat. They settle their disputes with fireballs and lightning bolts, now, it seems.
One autumn, a new group of students comes through and he hears one of them call the other, “Yeosang”. The statue feels something familiar and visceral in his gut at the name, and he wonders if it was his, once. He pays special attention to that student, or, he tries, but he transfers out of the academy after a single season and he never sees him again.
No other name ever gives him that same feeling, and he tries hard not to forget it again.
-O-
The flowers are blooming when a spring wedding is held on the grounds. Rose petals are scattered along in the breeze and one ends up caught in the crevice of his stone collar. It remains there, and rots after the rains come.
He wonders if he will ever rot away, spared this endless existence… or if he will be forced to endure an eternity of powerless observation. He wonders if he will be witness to the end of the very world, or if the world will simply rot away around him, cold and silent and dark, until existing is like not existing at all.
He wonders.
-O-
The statue does not notice much of anyone, anymore. Until him.
There is a devastatingly handsome young man with jet-black hair and bright eyes, who stands in front of him and just looks . His gaze is analytical, and then it is not. It is simply observational, like he is taking in a sunset… open and bare and something that doesn’t have a name in any tongue he knows. No one has looked at him like that for a long time.
Perhaps no one has ever looked at him like that at all, whether made of flesh or stone.
-O-
The devastatingly-handsome young man returns again and again, sometimes daily. He brings his parchment and his tomes and he sits inside that arc of flowers and studies. Sometimes he reads aloud, mumbling to himself in horribly-butchered dead languages until he gets it right.
Sometimes, his friends come and find him only to drag him away, or they tumble down into the grass and sit with him, chiding him for being so focused on his studies. They talk about their families back home, their dreams and their goals and their desires.
The statue learns all their names, because they are always in close proximity. But the one who sits with him the most, the one who finds himself wandering over in the stillness of twilight or the first sparks of dawn, the statue learns, his name is Seonghwa.
It is a beautiful name. It can take the meaning of a torch; a guiding light. He claims once that he was named such for he was meant to be a star.
The statue has never much cared for the night sky, but he enjoys Seonghwa’s company as he has enjoyed no other’s.
-O-
Seonghwa has begun to research the statue.
He mentions it, off-hand at first, but the notion is quickly dismissed by his friends. His friends, all six of them, don’t seem to care much about his extracurricular studies. He mentions digging through the old archives and finding very little. Old paintings show the statue having stood there for at least three-hundred years, but possibly more. There isn’t much left from before the great attack; much of the records were burned.
Seonghwa does not appear disparaged when his friends do not share his interest or curiosity. He rambles on, his eyes alight in a way that suits his namesake. The statue feels privileged to bask in it.
“I’m just saying, the whole history of this thing is kind of a mystery. He’s called the weeping mage, but has anyone ever seen him cry? And even his pose has been hotly debated for centuries. Is he kneeling to honor someone? In defeat? Is he preparing to run? They’ve never reached a consensus.”
“Seonghwa, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I really don’t care about the stupid statue.” One of them—San is his name—mutters with a long sigh. “Why don’t you have a sexier hobby? Like invoking or… necromancy?”
“Necromancy is highly illegal.” Seonghwa counters.
“Yeah, that’s what makes it sexy. Love me a bad boy who can raise the dead.” San replies with a grin, waggling his eyebrows.
“You’re the worst.” Seonghwa grumbles, and the statue is inclined to agree.
-O-
Every friend group has a leader, and theirs seems to be the one named Hongjoong. Whereas most of the group seems to tease Seonghwa for his studying routines, Hongjoong is the one who seems to do so even more intensively, though apparently not in the fresh air. The others chide him for locking himself away in the library, sometimes overnight, while he works on new enchantments.
Seonghwa convinces him to study more in the fresh air, and the two of them create an interesting equilibrium, though it is largely spent in silence. When Hongjoong does indulge in conversation, allowing a small distraction for a time, Seonghwa looks at him as though he hung the moon. The statue has seen that look before. He has seen it a thousand times. Hongjoong does not return it.
One night, as they are about to pack up, Seonghwa stops Hongjoong with a gentle hand over his. The statue has seen this before… but he has never been so invested in it. He has never wanted to take hold of someone and wrap them up in his stone arms, encase their heart in a shield impenetrable by men. But he cannot. And he watches as Hongjoong apologizes, tells him that he must misunderstand, that there is someone else, that he loves him as a friend but nothing more.
The statue sits and Seonghwa sits, but only one of them is weeping.
-O-
Seonghwa still comes to sit in the gardens, and the statue is glad that his memory of this spot is not forever tainted. He spends even more time out there, it seems… all his friends pairing off and spending the majority of their time elsewhere. But Seonghwa… he is the one constant. He comes to his spot to study and read and work and just relax, sometimes.
There is a day when the summer rains creep up on him, but he remains there until the downpour threatens his work. He is forced to scoop up his books and make a run for the academy, pulling the water from his papers with a swift spell. He moves indoors, to the library, but he finds a spot close to the window and watches the rain fall.
The statue can see him through the thick glass windows of the library… he sits at the table nearest them, angled so that he can look out into the courtyard. His eyes flicker up from the pile of books spread out in front of him, every so often, his distracted gaze falling in the direction of the statue. The statue wonders if he is looking upon him, or upon nature, or simply into the middle-distance. Either way, he does not mind. He is beautiful, and from here, he can see him, too.
It has been a long time since the statue has felt anything, but now, he wants .
-O-
“I have six friends and they’re all dating each other.”
As a conversation-starter goes, that’s definitely a doozy. The statue isn’t used to being gossiped to, but he suddenly feels incredibly invested.
Seonghwa is lounging next to him, one knee up with his other leg is spread out under the statue while he luxuriates in the afternoon sun. When the light hits just so, his skin glows like bronze, and the statue thinks he is the most beautiful man he has ever laid eyes on.
“I kind of fell in love with Hongjoong but he… I guess he and Yunho are together? They were keeping it under wraps but then San just came out and announced he and Wooyoung were seeing each other so they didn’t feel like they needed to hide it. And then Mingi just… asked Jongho out, and that was that.”
Seonghwa pauses, as if politely waiting for the statue to absorb all this, giving space for a response where he knows there will be none.
“It’s not that I am envious or bitter.” Seonghwa says, and his tone is such that the statue believes it. “It is just that… I feel I may not be a very good friend to them. But they… they mean the world to me. So I hope that… they will still continue to be my friends.”
If they do not, the statue thinks, they are not deserving of his friendship at all.
“I’ve never been very good at friendship.” Seonghwa murmurs, and it is a confession more than it is self-depreciating. He truly believes it. “Perhaps I was too distant. Perhaps I expected too much but gave too little. Perhaps I…”
Seonghwa startles when he feels something drip against his leg. He looks at his ankle and follows the spot upward to see that the statue is crying.
He tumbles onto his knees, facing the statue and resting his hands on its solid tabard, peering closely at its stone visage. There are no holes or cracks; it is as if the water is coming out of the rock itself.
“It’s true… you do weep!” Seonghwa murmurs in a tone of such unbridled awe. He brings his palm up, cupping one soaked stone cheek and staring, so earnest and so apologetic. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to make you sad. Did I make you sad?”
The statue does not weep because he feels sorry for him. He weeps because Seonghwa deserves to be loved.
-O-
Seonghwa talks to him more and more. He sometimes lays a hand on his tone thigh and runs his fingers absently along the patterns carved into his tunic, talking about everything and nothing. He does not do so when his friends are around, but he tries to keep the conversation from getting too stale.
The statue thinks that if his is all he gets, after five-hundred years, he will gladly take it, and be eternally grateful.
-O-
The winter holidays have come, and the school clears out. Nine-tenths of the student body returns home to see their families, celebrating the solstice with their loved ones.
Seonghwa does not.
Seonghwa sits, bundled in a blanket and drinking some hot beverage that he is using fire magic to keep warm in his palms. There had been gentle snowfall, but he had brushed the icy clumps off of the statue before settling down in the dead grass. The plants around him are covered in white, no longer blooming. It is serene, and quiet. The mage lets out a breath that becomes steam as it passes is lips.
“Sometimes I wonder… if I don’t hold in too much.” Seonghwa says, as though he is only just beginning. The statue wants him to know that he is listening, but he cannot. He can only sit. “My friends even notice, you know? But I can’t… drag them down. They need to be uplifted. This is their time to learn and to grow. No one needs to be bogged down with someone else’s burdens.”
The statue thinks he would carry any burden that Seonghwa could possibly lay before him. He wants him to know that, but he never will.
“My… parents died when I was young. I lived in an orphanage for most of my childhood. It was a miracle of the gods that I was even able to come to this school. I’ve always had an inherent gift for magic, and while we never had the best access to books when I was a child, I devoured every one that I could find pertaining to magic. I practiced and practiced until I’d perfected everything within them. And when I came of age, I was able to get into a school that taught lesser magicks. I had to prove myself to get here, and I can only continue to improve if I study hard.”
Seonghwa laughs, a mirthless sound. “Look at me… babbling to a statue. Perhaps I’m afraid to tell my friends this, so I’m telling you. But… even you show emotions sometimes, don’t you?”
He lets out a sigh, breath quaking. He sets down his drink with a trembling hand, but it isn’t from the cold.
“Everyone needs to let it out, sometimes, right?” Seonghwa asks. His voice is so raw and broken that it hurts just to hear. He leans back, the curve of his spine conforming perfectly along the shape that the stone tabard makes between unmoving feet. His head tips up, cheek resting against a stone thigh, and the statue thinks… this is the first time he has been touched like this in at least a hundred years.
“Even you can cry.” Seonghwa continues, his hand reaching up, cupping over his cheek, his fingertips brushing against the clay that fills the chips next to his eye. “So I should… it’s okay to let myself… right?”
His voice cracks, tears springing to his eyes. They stay there for a long moment, pooling, turning his eyes glassy and sparkling. He is sad but he is so so beautiful. The statue hurts for him, hurts more than he has in a long, long time. The emotion almost makes him feel alive.
Finally, Seonghwa breaks. He closes his eyes, the tears falling freely. He turns his head away, buries it against the statue’s leg, sniffling, as though he’s trying to hide away. The tears burn against the stone.
The statue does not remember what it is like to be human… not until it happens, until the stone which had been his immortal prison cracks and dissipates, giving way to an unfamiliar mortal coil. He breathes, long and deep, and as his tabard turns to fabric and causes Seonghwa to fall, his hands dart down to catch him before he can hit the ground.
Seonghwa’s eyes fly open, wide in shock. He stares, unblinking, unmoving as he takes in the all-too-familiar features. The curve of his cheek, the cut of his jaw, the distinctive set of his brows… all now made flesh. His eyes trail over the mottled skin at his left eye, red like the clay used to repair the stone, staining the skin like a birthmark or scar.
Seonghwa jolts, rolling out of his hold and clambering to his feet. He sputters, sheer nonsense, no real words, as the statue—no, the man , stands and flexes his fingers.
His eyes haven’t left Seonghwa. He’s staring at him like the whole world has narrowed down to the space in which he exists, nothing beyond outline of him, as though he is happy if that is all the world is, after this place, this spot, has been his entire world for so long.
“Seonghwa.” The word tumbles out of his mouth, too quiet. He tries again. “Seonghwa.”
It’s the right volume this time, but it feels so hesitant, so unsure. “Seonghwa.”
The other’s expression shifts from stunned confusion to joy. His eyes light up. He hasn’t spoken for five hundred years but that name is the only thing he wants to say. “Seonghwa. Seonghwa.”
Seonghwa finally finds his voice, stammering out a coherent response. “Y-you’re real, you’re a person, I—who? What’s your name? Who were… who are you?”
A name. He has a name. He knows he has a name, it’s just been centuries since anyone’s used it. It’s been just as long since he’s used it himself. It takes him a moment to recall, to force the breath through his vocal cords, to say anything other than this glorious man’s name, but… he deserves to know it.
“Yeosang. I am Yeosang. I am… just a mage. I was cursed. Long ago… so long ago. But… you, Seonghwa, you…” He cannot help himself. He crosses the distance between them and gathers his hands up into his own, just to feel the warmth of them. To let Seonghwa feel the warmth of his. He looks down at the tangle of their fingers and when he meets Yeosang’s eyes again, he is still smiling, so so bright.
“Yeosang.” Seonghwa says, and Yeosang doesn’t need to hear anyone else say his name ever again.
-O-
Most of the students and nearly all the teachers are away, leaving the school halls empty as a necropolis. It is getting late, regardless, so Seonghwa just takes Yeosang to his room and puts him in front of the fireplace. He’s cold as ice, cold as stone, and he isn’t dressed for the weather.
Yeosang walks the unfamiliar halls, taking in the new changes since the academy has been rebuilt. It looks similar, and yet, entirely different. He is too distracted by relearning everything he’s forgotten. Touch… he has not let go of Seonghwa since he was freed. Taste… he gorged himself on the tray of food Seonghwa had managed to steal from the kitchens. Breathing, walking, everything feels new.
Talking feels new, too, but he has so much of it to do. He tells Seonghwa all about his life during those five-hundred years, and Seonghwa listens with rapt attention. He squeezes his hand when he speaks of the worst of times, and when he is done, Yeosang asks of Seonghwa’s research, which the student happily regales. Yeosang listens fondly, and is glad that Seonghwa knows that someone does hear him.
When night falls, Seonghwa offers him his bed, claiming he deserves it after spending five-hundred years trapped in stone. But Yeosang just takes his hand again, and his gaze must convey how desperate he feels because the other just nods, and they climb into bed together. They tangle up beneath the covers for warmth in borrowed pajamas, and everything is calm and silent and still.
Yeosang sleeps. He sleeps for the first time in five-hundred years and he dreams . He dreams of the worst of what he’s seen, and he cannot move. He has forgotten how the brain paralyzes the body when it slumbers. When he wakes with a panicked shout, it is because he cannot wrench himself from the mattress, his limbs feeling heavy and numb.
Seonghwa wakes, and he soothes him, holding him and whispering encouragements until Yeosang’s limbs no longer feel like dead weight, until he can move them freely, and he spends the rest of the night running his fingers over the curves of Seonghwa’s shoulders and back, just to feel , just to prove that he can.
He nods off again in the early-morning hours, with Seonghwa’s hand tangled up with his own.
-O-
The next time he wakes, it is with the sunrise. He stares at the way the light illuminates the curves of Seonghwa’s beautiful face, the ethereal glow of it. He traces his fingertips over the line of his cheek, his jaw, his neck, his collarbone. Seonghwa awakens and shies away, biting his lip to stifle an embarrassed laugh.
Yeosang’s eyes track the movement and he wants . He leans forward and captures Seonghwa’s lips with his own. The noise he earns in return is a sweet, melodic groan that is born of both surprise and delight. Yeosang could listen to it forever… and when he sinks his own teeth into Seonghwa’s bottom lip, he gets to hear it again.
Seonghwa is so utterly human , the way his cheeks pinken and his chest flushes and he gasps whenever Yeosang touches him somewhere different, somewhere new. Yeosang has not experienced humanity for a long time but he can bask in it with Seonghwa, can revel in every coo and sigh, can settle himself above the other and watch him fall apart. He takes them both together in his hand and feels , for the first time in centuries, and he watches as Seonghwa feels just the same, as though it has been just as long for him, too.
There are so many things that he wants to see and do. He wants to travel… to leave the grounds that have been his prison for centuries. He wants to taste, to touch, to experience all that this new world, this new life has to offer.
But most of all, he wants Seonghwa, the man who saved him, when all others believed him to be nothing but stone.