Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The stranger appeared in a flash of green light. Blinked into existence through an iridescent flicker that appeared and vanished so quickly that Ferdinand had thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Reality fractured for but the smallest instant, then reverting back, unblemished, with an elastic snap.

“You have been awfully quiet this evening, my love. Is the meal not to your liking?”

There was no answer from the other side of the table. His beloved was slumped, nearly hunched in half over his untouched dinner.

The man smiled encouragingly at his love and pressed another forkful of sauteed pheasant into his mouth.

“The dish is one of your favourites. I think the cook did a commendable job replicating the recipe from our academy days. Do you not agree?”

More silence. His beloved remained limp and unmoving, still drooped over his plate. Not a single muscle twitched.

The halls of the manor were quiet as of late. The staff maintaining the estate shorn down to a skeletal framework, only the barest minimum needed to keep the grounds from crumbling into ruin. Those who remained barely spoke a word. Barely remained in the presence of the estate’s master for more than a handful of seconds. Their eyes carefully averted and focused on their respective tasks. The corridors carried the muted hush of a crypt. A stillness held within the manor walls that clashed sharply with the glowing rays of sunlight that blazed through the towering windows, and the crash of waves slamming against the cliffy shores that looked over the Pearl Sea.

A constant tinnitus ring of flies flitted through the dining room, the wingbeats coming to a rest as they landed on a piece of fruit, only to ignite in a flurry of buzzing once more when they lifted into the air and returned to the other man seated at the far end of the table.

The man speared more pheasant and egg onto his fork. The morsels savory and swimming in an enchanting melody of spices, each note exploding to life upon his tongue. Exquisite beyond words. A dish fit for the finest of dinner parties; to be presented to kings and the noblest of lords. It was almost enough to make him forget about the ever present reek decay that burned at his nostrils and sank into the very walls.

More pheasant was cut into chunks, stabbed alongside scrambled egg and shaved strips of cabbage, then daintily plopped into the man’s mouth. It was not long before his plate was empty. A sigh of contentment sank through his chest, his belly full.

Across the table, his love’s plate remained untouched. Not a single nibble taken from the sauteed pheasant and eggs. His love had slumped over even further, curled around the plate as if protecting it from thieves, yet his arms remained limp at his sides.

“Are you feeling ill, my love? You have not tried a single bite of your meal,” the man frowned as he rose from his chair, crossed the dining room, and moved to his beloved’s side.

The vibrating hum of insect wings grew louder with each step. The foul odour of rot burned deeper.

Gently, the man placed his hands on his beloved’s shoulder’s and pulled his slouched paramour into an upright seated position.

Hubert’s head bobbed as he was jostled in place. He remained limp in the man’s grasp, his chin nodding slack against chest. His right eyeball fell out of his eye socket, shaken loose by the movement, and dropped onto the plate with a wet “plop.” His remaining eye stared blindly ahead. The once bright citrine iris dulled into a cloudy murk. A fly crawled out of Hubert’s slack mouth and flew to the detached organ now resting in a heap of pheasant and eggs.

The lord of the estate grimaced at the sight. His paramour was due for another treatment.

“My apologies, beloved. You must be utterly exhausted,” the man spoke lovingly, carding his fingers through Hubert’s dark curls, “Shall we retire early for the evening?”

He pressed a kiss to his beloved’s cheek, the skin was cold, waxy under his lips. A faint taste of embalming fluid, bitter against his mouth. He placed one arm across Hubert’s shoulders, and hooked the other one under his knees, scooping his beloved up and holding him close to his chest. Together, they made their way to their shared bedchambers, Hubert’s head lulling against the man’s shoulder.

A fly flitted about the empty eye socket, fluttering inside the gory chasm before buzzing away in a shrill hum.

The stranger stepped into their world through that momentary fissure, crossed the monastery grounds in a brisk, confident stride. A wild mane of seafoam hair hung around his shoulders, the man garbed in armour of gleaming silver, with a cape billowing behind him bearing the image of a set of flames embroidered into the fabric.

There was before the incident, and after the incident.

He had no memories of what came before. The occasional sensation of warmth. Love. Comfort. A burst of joy and laughter, but nothing tangible that his mind could hold onto. The fleeting glimmer of a weak spark before being snuffed out and swept away by a gust of wind.

All he knew for sure was that one day, he woke up in the dark. A cold, sterile room of stale air, lit only by the shrill strips of light lining the edges of the darkened walls like branching neon arteries of sickly bright cyan. The innards of a massive beast forged of strange, onyx metal, built on a skeleton of eldritch architecture that hummed with bizarre machines pulsating with alien sigils. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, yet the fogged recesses of his mind had struggled to conjure another location that was supposedly more familiar. For all intents and purposes, the young man was born in that strange room. Birthed in the shadows with the cloaked phantoms as his nursemaids.

Time in that dark placed blurred together. It stretched out forever, yet remained coiled in a never-ending instant. A single scene of a play stretched over an eternity.

Shadows constantly flitted about him. Wraiths with beaked faces and sharp talons that cut into his arms with surgical precision and extracted streams of blood from his body.

He remembered pain. Remembered fear. Remembered the way he writhed in his bonds as magic burned through his arteries. Screamed a name until his throat was raw, a name his mind could not remember. A caustic stench would sear his nostrils during such rituals, the only scent that penetrated the suffocating staleness. Ominous chants vibrated in his bones. Sigils were carved into his very flesh, each one blazing into scalding coronas.

He could not find the words to describe it, but over time, he felt himself change. A strange thrum that pulsed through his veins. His very blood electrified, infused with shards of lightning. The abnormal energy ached in his chest, burned against his ribs with the heat of a stoked blacksmith’s furnace. The fear smothered under a blanket of numbness.

Occasionally, a lock of hair would fall across his face. Lank strands of seafoam green (strange… had it always been that colour?) hanging over his eyes in a greasy curtain. Limp, stripped of its luster. He felt impossibly weak. Drained into a dry husk with a cloying fatigue that clung to his bones. Yet at the same time, the sparks continued to burn through his arteries. His muscles twitched, eager for him to be freed of his bonds. And his mind spun in a flurry of clamouring, bladed thoughts that screeched over one another in a violent cacophony.

Voices bloomed from nothing and sung directly into his mind. Strings of thought that could not be traced to their origin.  

The boy did not know when exactly it happened, but one day, the doors to the dark room burst open. A flood of armoured bodies poured into the shadowy chamber, the thunderclap of their steel plating and boots grinding against his eardrums with a deafening scream.

Leading the newcomers was a man. Stout with thinning copper hair, garbed in heavy armour and brandishing an axe and shield, the latter of which gleamed with a majestic radiance, a lion’s face of searing gold carved into its centre. A shimmering aura clung to the shield in a pale, emerald mist.

The man’s eyes met his, a strange look twisted his face.

“Duke Aegir…” one of the other armoured figures approached the table the boy was shackled to, a hesitant waver to his movements as his gauntleted hands hovered above one of the boy’s tethered wrists, “Is this…?”           

“Of course it is! Release him!” the leader barked.

One by one, the shackles were unlatched. The boy winced as blood rushed to muscles that had been little used, sharp tingles jabbing at flesh that had long since turned numb. Joints popped, and bones creaked as he tentatively moved his limbs and dragged himself up to a seated position.

The leader approached the boy in heavy, armoured steps.

“Ferdinand… my boy…” the man rasped, standing before the boy. His gaze roved up and down, his eyes pausing at the mop of green hair, assessing the lank, seafoam ringlets with the appraising stare a blacksmith would give to a freshly forged blade. A smirk curled his mouth.

“Well, boy. How do you feel?” he asked, his voice brusque. Impatient. More of a demand than a question.

The boy tilted his head to side, blinking.

“Who are you?”

The man’s face darkened.

He turned to the nearest soldier with a growl.

“Get him to the surface!”           

The boy was taken from the dark place that day. Brought to a place nestled by the sea and bathed in sunlight. So different than the dark tunnels that encapsulated the entirety of his memories. Warm rays and the gentle swell of waves washing across sandy beaches replaced the shrill, neon lights that had flickered and hummed around him every waking second of the day.

The warmth and the light had been agony at first. Scalding coals that stabbed directly into his retinas. The boy had hissed, shied away from such blinding radiance, his eyes unaccustomed to such brightness.

When he arrived at the seaside manor, a willowy woman seated in a wheeled chair pushed by an attendant had been there to greet him at the door. Lank hair of dulled ginger hung around a hollowed face of sallow, ashen skin carved with deep, haggard lines. Frail. Sickly.

Wearily, she lifted her head as the boy entered the manor. Eyes that were sunken and nearly swallowed in dark halos had lit up like a pair of gemstones when she caught sight of the boy. Tears streamed down her cheeks, a smile of feverish happiness lit her face.

With great effort, she pushed herself from her chair and staggered towards the boy.

“My sunshine!” she cried as she drew the boy into her arms.

Reed thin arms, emaciated from illness, clung to the boy with a strength that did not seem possible from someone who looked as if a gentle breeze would snap them in two. The boy responded to her embrace with the listlessness of an overcooked noodle.

After a moment she pulled back. Watched him with eyes that were drowned in pools of warmth and fondness.

The boy said nothing. Made no move lift his arms to return the loving gesture. He just stared back at her, eyes blank. The stony gaze of a statue that saw all who passed by but held not recognition in its cold, carved stare.

The tearful smile on the woman’s face wilted at his lack of response but did not disappear entirely.

“It is okay, my dearest,” she sniffled, brushing a lock of green hair behind his ear and placing a kiss on his forehead, “I am just so happy to have you back!”

Over the next few days, the woman fussed and fretted over the boy. Ensuring his favorite meals were prepared, the hobbies he had enjoyed were readily available, and that he was comfortable in every way possible.

Dishes of grilled herring, saghert and cream, and an array of other foods that had supposedly delighted the boy at one point tasted stale in his mouth; his movements through the activities he once took part in with great skill, clumsy and unfamiliar in his grasp. Through each of them, the kind woman had smiled and cheered encouragingly, always close by in her wheeled chair no matter how dark the circles around her eyes bloomed, or how often she had to pause to catch her breath.

Shortly after his arrival, the kind woman had taken the boy to one of the manor’s many rooms, this one with a spacious cage and a fluffy bunny housed inside.

The woman, his mother, pushed herself from her wheeled chair, limped over to the cage, and stooped down to lift the tiny creature into her arms.

“This is Sir Cotton,” she explained in a warm rasp when the boy continued to stare at the animal with blank unrecognition, “You used to feed and cuddle him everyday! I made sure he was well taken care of for when you returned. Would you like to hold him?”

The boy approached slowly, held out a tentative hand over the quivering ball of white fluff.

The rabbit shied away from his every touch. Nipped at his finger until he bled when he tried to stroke its soft fur.

The boy recoiled his bloodied hand with a snarl. A surge of anger blazed through him. Thoughts of retaliation flooded his mind, murderous and bloody. The feeling washed over him in a hurricane’s swell. Appearing so suddenly it left him momentary stupor of stunned shock.

His mother set Sir Cotton back in his cage, and gently took the boy’s bleeding hand in her own. An incantation was whispered under her breath, and a warm light glowed from her fingertips. Within seconds, the bite was fully healed.

“He just needs time to become accustomed to your scent once more,” his mother explained gently, leaning over to place a kiss on his brow.

The boy barely the saw the man who had freed him –his father, he had been told. Any time the boy crossed paths with him, anytime their gazes met for the slightest second, the man’s teeth would gnash, his nostrils would flare, and his mouth would curl back into a silent snarl before storming away.

Through the many halls the boy drifted. He would see the portraits. The painted images of a boy with copper locks, brilliant like the fire. The antithesis to the ringlets of deep emerald that now wreathed his face. Watched the smiling echo of his own visage beam back at him, sunlight trapped in his cheery expression. So innocent and bright.

The looking glass held not that radiance.

The boy tried to picture himself with the very copper curls he sees in the portraits, tried to twist his mouth to capture the cherub’s glowing smile. Yet the mop of seafoam locks refused to give way to buried memories of fiery curls, and his facial expression would always fall back into a state of dull blankness.

Occasionally, when passing by a mirror, he would catch a glimpse of a man staring back at him in his peripherals—hair and eyes a stark shade of white; a constant sneer upon his lips. But every time the boy turned to stare at the man directly, he only saw his own face gazing back at him.

It was late into the night when the boy was travelling those many halls when he first overheard a conversation. It was as he passed the room the master of the household used as his office –the prime minister’s office he had been told.

Candlelight, low and flickering had bled out into the darkened hallway from behind the closed doors, well past the time most of the manor’s occupants had retired for the night. A murmur of voices coiling from the recesses of that private study with a wasp’s buzz.

The boy pressed his eye to the narrow crack between the double doors to peer inside.

“You people were supposed to make him stronger!” his father growled jabbed a finger at a cloaked figure, one bearing the same attire as the figures who had sliced into the boy’s veins in that dark place, “Instead, I’m cursed with that deranged, unrecognizable… thing haunting the corridors of my manor!”

“Duke Aegir, we assure you that the experiment was a success,” the cloaked man preened, adjusting the beaked mask concealing his face, “Unimaginable power flows through your son’s veins. In fact, our very leader has—”

“Yes, your leader. Where is Arundel anyway?! I have heard no whisper of his whereabouts since I agreed to his blasted proposal!”

Footsteps echoed from the other end of the hallway, the faint glow of a lit chamberstick bobbed down the darkened corridor. One of the estate’s servants, most likely.

The boy dashed back to his room before he could hear the masked figure’s response, hiding in the refuge of his own bedchambers.

“—an absolute disaster! Just what am I supposed to do with a deranged wraith as an heir! You try speaking with him and not a single thought or reaction can be seen in those dead eyes!”

“You are being too hard on the poor boy! He has been through so much! He needs time to heal and adjust.”

“Those foul, conniving wretches deceived me! Promised me they would mould him into Fodlan’s next ruler.”

“Deceived—what are you speaking of?!”

“Put it from your mind, it matters not.”

“Are you suggesting that you know the fiends who had kidnapped our dear Ferdinand?!”

“I said put it from your mind!”

A sharp inhale of breath from the woman. Furious and braided with volcanic flames.

“Ludwig… What did you do?!”

The days and weeks rolled by in a repetitive calm. The boy attended to his many lessons: etiquette; horseback riding; weapons training; studies in arithmetic, the arts, history and governance; all were completed diligently and with increasing proficiency, quickly catching up and overtaking the level he had supposedly been at before being stolen away to the dark place.

Once in a while, the boy would attempt to care for Sir Cotton, coaxed by the kind woman’s encouragement. She would watch from her wheeled chair, offered the boy a gentle smile each time he reached into the cage.

And every time, the rabbit flinched away and retaliated with a sharp nip.

It was two months after the boy moved to the seaside manor that the kind woman’s illness had taken a turn for the worse. Adequate care could no longer be provided at the manor. Only a sanitorium could provide the extensive medical aid she required.

A handful of the estate’s attendants helped her into the carriage, bundling her in thick wool blankets despite the summer humidity hanging heavy in the air.

Her weathered face only grew more gaunt. Her form wasted away, leaving her emaciated. Skeletal. Eyes that were little more than dim sparks stared out from dark, sunken crags.

She lifted her brittle arms with a tearful smile, beckoning the boy closer.

“I need to go away for a while, but just until I am better,” she rasped as the boy was folded into her frail embrace.

The boy made no comment in return. He returned the hug with limp, mechanical movements.

For a blink, the smile on the woman’s face dampened. The warm glow that emanated from her, even in illness, dulled to spilled ash.

Her usual sombre cheer quickly returned as she wrapped her arms around the boy tighter and embraced him again.

“We will see each other again, my sunshine,” she had promised him, placing one last kiss upon his brow before the carriage doors shut, and the vehicle ushered her away to Boramas’s sanitorium.

The boy stared as the carriage rattled down the gravel pathway and disappeared from sight. The hollow in his chest remained as numb as ever.

The next day, the boy plunked Sir Cotton down in the hounds’ kennel. Barks and yips echoed through the early morning dim as he went back inside the manor.

“Now… this intruder who spirited young Vestra away, you say his appearance was a mirror image of your own?”

“Well…not quite…” he trailed off, frowning, “The man appeared to be several years older than myself… and his hair… it was…”

Like yours , the thought nibbled and scratched unnervingly at his mind as his eyes drifted to the seafoam ringlets spilling out spilling out from her ornate crown and cascading down her back in vibrant, green spools.

He shook the thought away with a scowl. Surely, such a detail was a mere coincidence.

“The boy has not been the same since he was recovered!” growled the man who called himself “father.” He paced the length of the parlor with the movements of a trapped bull.

The door to the parlour was opened a crack. The boy had peered through the crevice to spy on the muffled conversation happening inside.

The conversation was about him, it always was. His father stalked the inside of the room, his boots thumping across the carpeted floor.

A woman, one the boy had never seen before, sat on one of the parlour’s ornate settees, a saucer and a cup of tea balanced carefully on her lap. The woman was garbed in flowing robes of billowing ivory fabric, almost ethereal in their appearance. A gown of woven clouds, accented by a cloak of royal blues and soft bronzes, the luxurious silk embroidered with the sigil of the Crest of Seiros.

However, what was most striking was her hair. Soft waves of seafoam green cascaded in elegant silky strands from the ornate crown that adorned her head.

Hair a shade of green that was not so different from the boy’s own.

“You are right. Your son is no longer the same boy he was before, but this is a good thing, Ludwig. In fact, your son has blessed by the goddess herself,” the woman explained, her voice soothing, kind, “I know much tragedy has befallen your family, with Ferdinand’s abduction, and most recently Lady Aegir’s illness, but think of this as a spark of hope amongst a time of such hardships. In fact, your son and the blessing he holds may be the very beacon of hope Fodlan has long been waiting for. The one who will truly bring salvation to these lands and usher in a new age of faith and devotion to the goddess.”

She turned to the doorway and smiled.

“Come here, Ferdinand. No need to be shy,” she addressed him warmly.

The boy hesitated for a moment with a frown of uncertainty.  

He pushed open the door and stepped inside, feet padding on the ornate rug blanketing much of the floor. His father glowered at him from the corner, seething, his face stained a blistered crimson. The boy paid him no heed and went straight to the green haired woman who was beckoning him closer.

“Now there’s a brave lad,” her smiled brightened. She set her cup of tea and saucer aside on the end table, and glided to her feet. The woman knelt so that she was eyelevel with the boy, reach up to caress a lock of the seafoam hair that fell across the boy’s brow, “I understand that this must be a confusing time for you. You have endured so much, for more than what any child should have to face.”

“Everyone says that I am different… that I have changed…” the boy whispered, blinking at the woman with a curious tilt of his head.

“You have, that is true. But such change has only made you stronger. Forged you into the magnificent young man you are destined to be. For you are protected by the goddess herself,” the woman praised, a radiant smile shining upon her face, and her eyes wet crystals that glittered with unshed tears, “She has chosen you to be her champion. Her very vessel. So that her voice may spring from your lips one day.”

The woman cupped the boy’s cheek. Her face brimming with unbridled happiness.        

“A foolish beast. Offering her hand to the one destined to rend it from her very arm!”

The voice had appeared out of nowhere. Cackling. A lilt of amused cruelty curling the echoed words.

The boy’s eyes went wide.

He ripped himself out of the kind lady’s embrace with a ragged gasp. His eyes went wide, bounced around every corner of the room in search of the source of the voice.

“Did you not hear… Who was…?” he murmured. Confused. Tremors itched at his skin. The thick heaviness in his chest swelled.

“Now he’s hearing disembodied voices. Wonderful!” his father threw up his hands and snarled.

“Perhaps it is the voice of the goddess that you hear,” the woman suggested, a teardrop sliding down her cheek as a hopeful smile tugged at her lips.

“Maybe…” the boy answered with a growing frown.

He could have sworn the voice belonged to a man. One that sounded vaguely familiar…

He had encountered many a person afflicted with some form of madness—speaking to voices that only existed within corridors of their own mind. Most were harmless, more terrified of those around them who would seek to inflict more harm upon them.

This though… This was different.

There was a certain heaviness, a surety to his captor’s words. As if he truly were conversing with an entity that evaded his perception. That another presence lurked, looming between the tenuous gaps of observable reality.

It started softer than a whisper. A stray thought sprung to life from a corner of his mind that he did not know existed. The scattered thoughts soon grew clearer, solidified into words the boy could understand, just a single one here and there a first, glimpsed through a murky haze. Flared bright like a campfire spark, yet fleeting like a wisp of fog streaming through his fingers.

Over time, the words resonated, became stronger. Left their impression on the boy’s mind. Frail words became phrases, then soon crystalized into full conversations. One sided at first. Barbed observations of the world around him, or glowing accolades poured directly into the boy’s thoughts. But eventually, the boy was able to answer the voice’s words, and the secret passenger hiding within the confines of his mind responded in turn.

It was at night that his companion spoke the clearest.

“Your blood flows with power beyond anything this continent has ever seen. You are destined for greatness.”

The words were icy, spoken in a smooth cadence. Calculating, and carved of dark glaciers, yet they made the boy’s chest swell with warmth. A glow (Happiness? Pride?) that filled a core aching with emptiness. Everyone at the manor had watched him with eyes that fell within nebulous chasm between sympathy and wary suspicion. A beaten dog, both pitiable but bearing the high likelihood of snapping back in a rabid frenzy.

The boy rarely saw outside the world outside the manor since he was unearthed from that dark place, and his father could barely stand to being in the same room as him for any length of time.

Things later improved somewhat when the green haired woman (Rhea was her name) had taken him under her wing and brought him to live at the monastery. She had even come to the estate to collect him herself.

“You are destined for greatness,” she smiled down at him as they rode in the carriage together, her words echoing the very sentiment his passenger had instilled into him.

She was kind, spoke to him with a sense of reverence. A treasure more precious than any she had ever laid eyes on before. However, even her interactions held an uncanny sense of distance. As if she were speaking through the boy to some unseen entity that lay dormant within him.

But no matter how lonely the boy felt, the passenger was there. A friend all to himself. A calming, confident voice that offered the praise he so desperately craved. Validation. Filled him with a sense of worth. That the boy was one to be respected, not shunned to the dark corners of a gilded cage.

It was not long before his passenger began to share images. Tableaus, fleeting and glimpsed through plumes of mist, that depicted scenes from a life not his own, before vanishing into the ether. The boy would glimpse battlefields, rooms filled with students scribbling at desks, figures garbed in armour and grim faces gathered around a long table and speaking in stern voices, the one at the head of the table constantly shifting – a woman garbed in crimson and bearing a horned crown; a man cloaked in gold with cunning mischief glittering in his smirk; while another man, stooped with grief, a mane of onyx and royal blue draped over his shoulders, surveyed the room with a single, mournful eye…

And most notably, the boy saw himself. Or another version of himself, one whose head still bore a crown of copper curls. Brandished a smile of theatrical exuberance and sunny confidence that fit so uncomfortably on the boy himself.

He had asked his secret friend about the mind pictures, what they meant and where they came from.

“All will be clear in time,” his passenger had assured him.

Years passed, and the images in the mind grew vibrant. Brighter. Flashes of a life that had not yet come to pass. Glimpses of a life not his own, yet parallel to his own existence. A set of streams flowing together, side by side, drawing near and rolling over the same terrain, but never crossing.

“What are these?” the boy had asked.

“They are you, in a matter of speaking,” his passenger responded.

“They seem… different,” the boy frowned. The features were certainly recognizable, even those of his older counterparts. That said, despite the familiar visage, there remained a nagging sense of disconnect to the man with the flaming hair and the radiant smile. As if the young men were all actors in poorly tailored costumes. A two-coin cheap pantomime of his current self.

“That is because you are the greatest among them. Those other lifetimes are but pale shadows to the glory you will one day achieve.”

“Because I am blessed by the goddess?” the boy whispered, parroting Rhea’s words.

“Yes, dear boy,” the passenger hummed. Amused. A dark chuckle braided through his voice.

One day, he was introduced to a girl with hair of silver. The emperor’s daughter and only surviving child, he was told. The girl looked to be the same age as him.

It was at a luncheon held at the monastery. An open house intended for heads of distinguished houses across Fodlan, exhibiting the vast array of classes and formal training that Garreg Mach’s officer’s academy had to offer as a way of drawing in prospective students from the continent’s noble families.

They bowed to each other with well-practiced courtesy.

“I am pleased to meet your acquaintance, Lady Edelgard,” the boy greeted her, his mannerly role performed with exemplary precision.

“Thank you,” Edelgard smiled back, “I hear that you have lived in the monastery for several years now.”

“Yes,” the boy answered, curling his lips into a smile just the way he had practised, “Lady Rhea was kind enough to take me into her home when things had become… tense with my own family.”

“I see…” the girl went quiet, a note of sadness washing over her face.

Behind her stood another boy. This one taller and slightly older, with dark hair and growing scowl. His eyes, bright yellow like freshly carved citrine, narrowed at the boy with suspicion. The bow he offered was little more than an irritable jerk of his head.

The tall, dark haired boy was aloof. Did not speak a single word to him. Yet there was something captivating about him. Something that drew the boy’s attention in a way he could not pin down.

It was later that day when the girl had pulled him aside, dragged him into the dark crevice between two buildings with a strength that had surprised the young man. The tall boy that followed her everywhere like a gangly shadow lurked near the alley’s entrance, keeping watch for anyone drawing near.

“I believe we may share a common thread in our past,” she spoke, a mournful pinch to her brow and a solemn note in her words.

The boy blinked. Confused.

The girl swallowed thickly and pulled back the sleeve of her tunic. Scars, surgical and perfectly straight, lined much of her exposed forearm. A near perfect match to the carved lines adorning the boy’s own flesh.

“Do you… remember much from that time?” she asked. Pained. Hesitant.

The boy remained silent. Images of dark corridors cast an eerie fluorescent light briefly flashed through his mind. Of beaked faces and robed figures…

He shook his head. Stared blankly at the marks and the girl who bore them.

“I see…” she sighed, her eyes downcast, the scars concealed behind her sleeve once more, “My recollection of those dark days is quite faded as well. I only catch glimpses here and there, and none of them are pleasant… I’m sorry to hear that your own memory has been similarly affected.”

They had parted ways shortly after that, Edelgard drifting away with her sullen companion, while the boy returned to Rhea.

At a first glance, the man looked to have walked out of the pictures found in the many fairytales Ferdinand had read as a child—a radiant knight, seemingly forged of sun’s rays—the type of figure one would see staring down the razored maw of a mighty beast and charging forth bravely, nonetheless. A paragon of true virtue and honour, whose blade was wielded to cut down evildoers who dared to harm the innocent.

It was just another session in the training yard, no different than any other. A continuance of the drills the boy had participated in when he had lived in the coastal estate, and one of the few times the man who called himself father had viewed him with something other than disdain. The lessons were simple, each armament he took up –lances, swords, axes—answered fluidly to his call as if each piece were an extension of his very limbs. The steps of well-practiced attacks, feints, and graceful dodges executed with precision. A choreographed dance, one that would be intricate, difficult for many, memorized and performed with fluid perfection. Few could match the boy’s prowess in the training yard. Even the Knights of Seiros were impressed by his proficiency.

The boy squared off against one of the monastery’s many squires. Both were armed with training lances tipped with dulled wood. The squire scowled at him. Clutched his lance in a white-knuckled grip.

Truthfully, it had been a fluke. A slight, unpredicted stumble on a loose bit of gravel that had left the boy unbalanced. Stumbling when he should have been able to glide across the training yard. Swinging out sloppily with his spear when his strikes should have been measured and strong.

It was the opening his opponent needed. The squire spun his lance, parried the boy’s clumsy strike, and knocked him to the ground.

The boy gasped as his back slammed into the gravel mound, a cloud of dust flaring upward a the impact. The squire stood over him, the blunted tip of his training lance still pointed at the boy’s chest. The look of shock and disbelief on his face quickly morphing into an expression of pure delight.              

“Ha! I won!” the squire cheered, hoisted his spear into the air with a triumphant pump, “I actually won! I beat the monastery’s perfect little prince!”

Fire burned in the boy’s chest as he watched the squire childishly gloat about his unearned victory, watched as the instructors nod and offer their words of praise to one so undeserving. Crimson engulfed the boy’s vision. A corrosive, all-consuming sensation of magma poured through every vein. Something heated, something with a mind of its own.

The boy snapped his training spear in half over his knee. The end he grasped now a sharp, jagged stump.

He charged towards the squire with a roar, brandishing his broken spear.

Amber exploded around him. An insignia burst to life before him bearing the image of a fire’s blaze.

It looked like a crest, but not one he had ever seen before. And it certainly did not match the sigil of the enchanted blood he had been blessed with since birth.

The boy’s blood ignited as the sigil flared. Electrified. A frenetic, unstoppable power that spiralled through his veins in a hellfire’s inferno.

He dashed forward, broken spear in hand, and shoved the jagged stump deep into the squire’s belly.

The squire’s eyes went wide. A warbled gasp, pained and surprised, the only sound he made as he was skewered by the broken shaft. He stared down at the gushing wound in horrified disbelief. Pawed at the spear embedded in his guts, tried wrench out the broken spear with a weak tug.  

In seconds, the squire dropped to his knees and flopped to the ground with a wet gurgle, the light dimming from his wide eyes.

White noise fogged the training yard. Knights, tutors, priests, they all scrambled to the fallen squire’s side. Poured waves of healing magic into the fallen squire, even as his eyes stared glassy and blank up into the sky, and pools of crimson soaked the ground. They turned to the boy with looks broiled with condemnation. Screamed at him over what he had done.

The boy stared at the corpse. Tilted his head to the side. Watched with flat curiosity as the scarlet puddles swelled further flowed between the hunks of gravel.

He tried to muster up a sense of shock. Looked inward for the same sense of horror that had enveloped the crowd of knights and priests futilely attempting to revive the squire.

No such emotion brushed against him. So sense of pain. No regret. No sorrow.

Only a dulled ember of smug triumph. He had bested a foe who dared mock him.

“Marvelous! A spectacular display of martial prowess! I told you that unimaginable power flowed through your very veins! Laying dormant, just waiting to be wielded!” the passenger cheered. Had he been physically present, his companion would likely be standing and celebrating the boy’s accomplishment with a hearty round of applause. An enthusiastic clap to the boy’s shoulder, expression his glowing pride and approval of such a deed, “Though, it would appear things are about to get rather messy. Such scrutiny will not do us well at this point of time. Perhaps a do-over is in order…”

The boy opened his mouth about to question what his passenger had meant, but just as the inquiry coiled on his tongue, a hidden ability awoke within him. A tiny spark igniting from the same place the strange sigil had burst from.

At his command, the world began to shift. It was not something learned, but rather something buried in the dark void of his instincts. Something baked into his very essence, embroidered into the ethereal fabric of his soul.

Time rolled backwards. The trails of scarlet retreated, leaving no blemish on the dusty gravel, and returning to the body from whence they had been spilled from. Light returned to the squire’s eyes, the gasped pain resurging for a second before fading away as he was pulled upright. A marionette tugged to its feet by invisible strings. Faces twisted into horrified shock from the circle of onlookers gradually gentled, melted back into expressions of muted praise and interest. The spear that had cleaved through the squire’s soft flesh retracted, its splintered end rendered clean and reforged once more. Pure. The gaping wound sealed, the tear in his tunic restitched, and the fabric scrubbed of all blood.

Their footsteps recoiled, the squire pulled back to his original position –training spear raised in the air, and facing his tutors with a glow of triumph.

“Ha! I won!” the squire cheered and thrust his spear into the air victoriously once more, “I actually won! I beat the monastery’s perfect little prince!”

The boy twitched. The spear felt hot, electrified in his hands.

He lowered the weapon and offered the squire an icy smile.

“Yes. It would seem you have won this round,” the boy responded pleasantly as images of deep crimson streaming across the ground and pooling at his feet danced through his head.

“The goddess lives inside you, dear boy,” Rhea praised with a near sob. Eyes brimmed with joy, near feverish in their intensity, “You will hear her words, and she will become a part of this world once more!”

That day, she had brought the boy to a new place. Somewhere deep below the monastery where few people had ever tread.

The Holy Tomb. The sacred place where Saint Seiros was said to have received her revelation from the goddess.

The room was vast. Alien in its architecture. An enormous, desolate cavern of strange apparatuses illuminated with an eerie glow that brought forth memories of the dark place with its shrill lights.

The tread of their footsteps left a loud, hollow click as they made their way across the tomb.

Rhea brought the boy to the far end of the tomb, gestured for him to take a seat upon a massive stone throne set upon a dais.

The boy quietly did as ordered and took his seat. Settled into the throne as Rhea stared back at him. Expectant. Beaming. Vibrating with barely contained excitement.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened.

The air within the tomb was every bit as stale as when they entered. Unchanged. A monument to fossilized grief.

The frenzied joy in Rhea’s face wilted and crumbled.      

“Is something the matter, Lady Rhea?” the boy had asked, still seated upon the throne.

“Nothing is the matter at all, dear Ferdinand,” the archbishop smiled through her pooling tears, “Every is just fine.”

The unseen passenger cackled.

Image after image flashed before his eyes. A dream, but more. A colourful mosaic etched together of his many lives. Shifting, swirling in a clouded haze, and always in flux.

The boy spent many of his nights admiring the surreal tapestry, trying to puzzle the meaning behind the surreal flashes that stirred a tingling sense familiarity, yet at the same time remained so distant. So untouchable and removed from his own reality.

The boy had seen himself be reborn innumerable times; seen himself achieve greatness in so many ways, and plunge into failure and despair in so many others. He had seen himself die: cut down in battle in a blaze of glory; die of old age surrounded by loved ones; perish alone and in obscurity. A never-ending cycle of death and rebirth playing out before him.

However, in many of those images, many of those different lives, there was often someone else by his side.

A man, tall and dark, with a wry smirk and sharp eyes like gleaming citrines. A man who spoke with a rich baritone. Sang words that were often woven of scorn and snide, condescending amusement; but at times, and only for a select few, carried such immeasurable warmth. A fondness that softened the jagged, icy edges of his exterior. A look so painfully beautiful, so vulnerable, that the boy wanted to seal it inside a glass box so that he could keep it at his side and admire it for every waking second.

The boy blinked, the strange sparks electrifying in his chest as he suddenly realized that he had met the man before. Or, at least, a younger version of him.

The tall, dark haired boy who had trailed after Edelgard’s very move. Hubert? He thought that was the other boy’s name.       

The boy had flagged his attention at the luncheon, allured him in a way he could not describe. But now, the man’s face entranced him. Snared at every thought, feeling, and impulse with a siren’s hypnotic aria. The boy could not tear his eyes away from the man; from the gestures and tender looks he cast upon the boy’s other selves.

Hubert…

The man he would one day fall in love with.

The man that would one day be his.

Years passed, and the boy grew into a young man. Around the time of his eighteenth birthday, he was formally enrolled in Garreg Mach to attend the officer’s academy.

Students from all over Fodlan had filed into the monastery as they did every year around that time. Since the young man had been born to an Adrestian noble family, he had been assigned to the Black Eagle class.

The young man was the first to be seated in his class, finding a place for himself in the first row under the professor’s watchful eye. The professor who had been assigned to lead the class –a retired priest of middling import from the north-Varley region—tottered to the front of the class and began recording attendance of the current students on a curled sheet of parchment.

It was three names into the roster, that the young man’s eyes fell upon the subject of so many visions, so many dreams.

Edelgard entered the classroom, and by her side was none other than Hubert. Tall and lithe, towering over his lady liege, and moving with the elegant grace of a liquid shadow. Eyes of carved yellow gems, sharp and sweeping across the room with an assessing glare. His lips curled downwards in the beginnings of a scowl. His classmate’s appearance should have been the definition of unwelcoming, even bordering on hostile in his sullen demeanor.

Instead, the young man found himself enthralled. Already, he could see the echoes of the man who had looked at the young man’s other selves with such devotion and fondness. The razor-sharp, almost harsh features that would one day soften tenderness and amorous affection.

Hubert and Edelgard took their seats at the other side of the class, barely casting a second glance at the young man seated in the first row. A chilly start, but there was still time. Plenty of time. Hubert was his, it was destiny. An incontrovertible fact, just as the sky was blue and sun’s rays bore warmth. It was a fate already reflected in so many lifetimes, and a possibility that the young man had more than enough power to make a reality.

The young man settled himself at his desk, quill in hand and waiting for the first class to begin; his face twisted into what could almost be called a smile.

Horror clawed at his chest as he watched the stranger lean down to press a kiss to still lips that offered no consent. Pawed at Hubert’s slack face with touches that were sickeningly clear in their intention.

His passenger had remained with him through all those years, the voice growing sharper, more commanding. His unseen companion showered the young man with praise.

“One day, entire nations will crumble before your might!” his companion had crooned, “You alone possess the power to reforge the world to your will! The people of these lands are naught but feeble puppets who are to dance at your very command.”

Veneration—sweet, and addictive in its taste—swelled in his chest with every glowing acclamation, every promise of greatness. The esteem and reverence that had been long overdue, poured upon the young man in generous, overflowing cups.

He bathed in those very accolades. The hollow chill in his chest washed away and filled with the passenger’s comforting extolment. The young man could feel the other presence sink further into his flesh. Bind their wills, their desires, their very thoughts together as one. A single entity of unmatched strength, unrivalled power.

Alongside his loyal passenger, the young man continued to spend his many nights perusing the many lifetimes. Scrutinized and examined every detail. Analyzed what had gone wrong in the lifetimes he had met an early demise (falling from his horse broken and bloodied; streams of crimson slithering across the bridge; a rain of sanguine droplets pooling into the river below) to determine what had gone wrong, and how to ensure that very scenario would never befall him.

Fortunately, the young man held one distinct advantage over his other selves: none of them possessed his uncanny ability to bend and rewind time. A skill he had carefully honed over the years, a secret talent hidden from all but his passenger. He had used the ability many times during his training. Accolades of an innate talent for strategy and tactics being contributed to his preternatural awareness of the battlefield.

So many lifetimes the young man glimpsed. Watched with clinical appraisal. However, it was the images depicting shared lifetimes with Hubert that remained his favourite.

True, there were other lifetimes, some so unrecognizably alien that he had a hard time believing they belonged to some variation of himself, where he found himself entwined with another. But those lifetimes he gave little thought to.

No, it was only the lifetimes he shared with Hubert that had enraptured him so.

As the young man grew older, watched his other selves share their lifetimes with Hubert, the details became more vivid. Moments of quaint, chaste courtship –faint dustings of pink blossoming across the cheeks of both men; the trembling brush of gloved hands—eventually took on a more passionate, more heated aura.

The first time he had spied Hubert and his future self entangled in a carnal embrace, the young man had blushed furiously. Had ripped himself from the vision so quickly it felt as if his brain had slammed against the insides of his skull. Magma seared at the insides of his chest, a caged beast raking its claws against his sternum threatening to burst free. His breathing, laboured and hitched, unable to drink in the gulps of air his lungs desperately screamed for. And fire spiralling through his veins.

He could not get the images out of his head. Tableaus of panting, writhing bodies; skin flushed a deep red and dewy with mingled sweat.

Soon, he craved those alluring scenes. To watch his beloved transform under heavy waves pleasure and ecstasy. The knife-like lines of his cheekbones and jaw, the scowl he wore so often, all softened with arousal. Pale skin dusted an endearing shade of pink. The entrancing symphony of moans and howls his beloved would unleash every time the young man’s other selves thrusted into him. Unguarded and wanton. So different from the dour boy who glared at him from the other side of the classroom. The young man would watch with rapt attention as the two lovers kissed, stroked one another, and fucked. An unseen voyeur to their hidden moments of vulnerable intimacy.

Eventually, what were originally fleeting images solidified into something tangible. Murky, dreamlike wisps fused. Stabilized. Swirled and shifted into something tactile.

One night, the young man noticed the scene he watched had shifted further. The sensation different than the many other times he a peered into his other lives. The detachment – as if watching the scene through a thick sheet of fogged glass— that was usually sewn into the fabric of his awareness was now severed. The murky veneer that clouded such visions stripped away, leaving the surroundings crisp, clear.

He stood in a bedroom. One of lavish furnishings befitting the noble of a sizeable estate. Furniture, adorned with ornate carvings and varnished with rich ochre, filled the room. A plush rug woven of brightly dyed wool rested at his feet. An elaborate painting depicting the Airmid River in blooming swells of watercolours lay framed in sculpted bronze, and hung on the opposite wall.

He reached out to touch carved set of dresser drawers set out before him, eyes lighting up with wonder as his fingers pressed against the polished oak.

“Ready so soon, love? My, we are eager tonight.”

The familiar voice teased. Loving and playful.

The young man whirled in the direction of the voice. His eyes went wide, his mouth watered at the sight before him.

Hubert was lying on his back, naked and blindfolded, his hands shackled above his head and hooked onto the headboard, while restraints wrapped around his ankles secured him to the posts at the foot of the bed, spreading his long legs open.

The young man swallowed thickly. Took a halting step forward.

Even in the dim flickers of candlelight, Hubert was radiant. Lithe and elegant, his pale flesh shimmering with a diamond’s glow in the amber halos of candlelight. The sharp edges of his beloved’s face softened as pink tints of arousal bloomed across his body.  A celestial being carved of moonlight plucked from the very stars, brought down to the mortal realm, and served like an offering to a deity.

Fire engulfed the young man’s body. Gnarled and braided through the branching pathways of his arteries, cutting and sinking into place with the touch of molten barbed wire.

He was really in the bedroom. Mere steps from where his treasured loved lay bound and begging for attention. No longer just an observer, but a participant. He could finally touch his beloved. Taste Hubert’s lips and feel the warmth of his flushed skin under his hands.

The young man took another step forward, his boots leaving a muffled thump across the rug.

Although blindfolded, Hubert’s head turned in his direction. A lurid smiled curled his lips.

“You would not keep your dear husband waiting now, would you?”

Husband…

The word sparked a glowing warmth through his whole body. The thought of he and Hubert, forever bound in matrimony. Theirs hearts and souls shackled, sewn together as one. Inescapable. Damnation and salvation threaded together in chains forged of heated blood and frenzied passion.

Yes, he would attend to his husband.

The young man crept forward. Carefully knelt on the bed between Hubert’s spread legs, wincing as the mattress dipped under his weight. He held his breath. Waited for the dream to shatter.

“Well?” Hubert purred, canted his hips, his hardened cock bobbing slightly at the movement, “Do you intend to make me beg? Keep me strung up for the night while I writhe in untouched agony? And people accuse me of being the sadist…”

The young man released the breath he was holding. Reached out with a trembling hand, and placed his palm firmly against his beloved’s chest.

A moan threatened to burst past the young man’s lips the instant his palm pressed against that silky flesh. Satin, velvet—the most luxurious fabrics in the world paled in comparison to the lavish sensation of finally being able to touch Hubert’s skin at long last. Hubert was warm, soft in a way that even his most decadent dreams had never imagined.

He could feel Hubert’s heart flutter against his touch. Excited, thrumming with anticipation. Under his hands, with the prominent ridges of Hubert’s ribs poking at his palm, his beloved seemed so delicate. An ornament, molded in the finest of porcelain, that would shatter under the slightest pressure. It would take so little force to cleave open the cage of bone under his palm, to sink his hands into the gory abyss, and take the beating organ tight in his grasp.  

The young man dragged his palm down Hubert’s torso. With rapt fascination, he watched how his lover’s muscles twitched ever so slightly under his touch. The lean abdominal and pectoral muscles clenching under his fingertips as he rolled his hands down the lithe body. The softy, downy prickle of the dark hairs dusting his chest and belly. A tiny huff of air bubbled from his beloved’s smiling lips. Ticklish?

“Being a tease tonight, are we love?” Hubert chuckled softly. Squirmed sweetly in his bonds. A needy cant to his hips. Coquettishly, begging to be ravished.

The young man grinned at the term of endearment sung from those pretty lips.

He wrapped a hand around Hubert’s cock. The young man choked back a sharp gasp. The length hard and scalding against his touch. A heavenly cry, more enchanting than a serenade sung by choir of angels rang out from Hubert’s soft lips. The young man’s eyelids fluttered as he savoured the heat of the flesh in his palm. He pumped the throbbing cock, ripped another euphoric sob from Hubert’s lungs. Beads of precum gathered at the rosy tip. Sweet nectar just begging to be tasted.

The young man continued to slide his palm along Hubert’s shaft; his other hand trailed down the dip of Hubert’s pelvis, skimming teasing, spider-like fingers across his husband’s scrotum, and following the slope of his perinium to the glistening ring of muscle tucked between his cheeks.

The entrance was slick, leaking oil his love had used to prepare himself with. The young man groaned, imagining his beloved squirming amongst the satin sheets and opening himself up with his own fingers. Did he arch his back and cry out, desperate to be filled in a manner that he could not achieve on his own? Puckered muscles fluttered against the young man’s fingertips, delicate and shivering. The touch of a butterfly’s wings.

The young man gulped. His lungs a tangled knot. He applied pressure and sank the tip of his finger into that slick, pulsing clutch.

Hubert cried out, wanton and moaning like the most shameless of harlots, his back arched, and body drawn taut.

The finger slid into the moist, heated tunnel without resistance. Muscled walls pulsed, squeezed, but gave way to the probing digit. The young man slid in another finger. Satisfaction filled his chest as Hubert mewled at the extra stretch, thighs quivering, that glistening hole swallowing the young man’s digits to the knuckle. So warm, so tight, yet inviting around his fingers. He pressed them deeper, earning a gasped mewl from his writhing lover. Hubert’s toes curled and his hips bucked. Soft pink spread across his cheeks. Pretty, like the pastel blooms of a cherry tree.

He scissored the fingers, pleased to feel Hubert’s walls yield under his touch. Pumped the digits in and out of the oiled hole. Hubert tensed. Whined. Keened. His body arched from the bed as the young man prodded a hidden nub buried deep within his love.

“Ferdinand! Please!” Hubert whimpered. He squirmed against the manacles binding his wrists, rolled his hips down on the young man’s fingers. The young man grinned and pressed the fingers in firmly.

Hubert’s back arched. His lips parted in a silent scream of ecstasy. He rocked his hips down on the plundering fingers.

A low groan stirred in the young man’s belly. An animalistic, territorial sound. One of hunger. Caustic, unbridled want, stronger than anything he had ever felt. His cock filled, strained against his trousers, demanding to be freed. His eyes remained locked onto the clutch of quivering muscles clenching so sweetly around his fingers and swallowing them whole.

Surely there was no harm in partaking in such a tempting treat. Hubert was his husband after all.

He released Hubert’s cock –ripping an anguished whine from his beloved—and pawed one-handed at the laces of his own trousers, cursing under his breath as his clumsy fingers failed to pry the tangle of knots apart, while the fingers of his other hand continued to explore the silky heat of Hubert’s insides.

The young man’s eyes were drawn to Hubert’s lips, parted in a soft “o” shape as he gasped and writhed against the fingers sliding in and out of hole. Plush and pink. They were too tempting not to taste. The young man pulled his fingers from Hubert, earning an endearing mewl from his beloved husband. He crawled up the bound, trembling body, and captured those heavenly lips with his own.

Warm and velvety, with a slight scratch of chapped dryness. A faint taste of coffee clung to the insides of that moist cavern. A flavour he normally did not care for, but sweetened by Hubert’s lips, an ambrosia gifted by the goddess herself could not taste more divine.

The young man plunged his tongue inside. Explored every inch of that hot, moist cavern.

He wanted more. To become one with the man writhing beneath him in a way that transcended their bodily prisons of flesh and blood. He wanted to merge with every one of his beloved’s cells, every fibre of his being, their very souls stitched together in a grisly tapestry. He wanted to carve out Hubert’s insides and fold himself inside his skin. Wittle away every tendon, ligament, and bone so he could sink into Hubert’s very marrow.

The mouth beneath him went tense and rigid. Teeth bit down on the young man’s tongue. He howled and found himself being shoved away, nearly thrown across the room, his back slamming against a nearby dresser.

Copper filled the young man’s mouth. He spat a gobbet of crimson onto the floor, his gaze looking up in time to see Hubert release the hidden mechanisms that unlatched his shackles, rip the blindfold from his face and tear the bindings from his ankles before leaping from his bed with blistering fury.

Rapture had twisted into horror and disgust.

Violet erupted in the palm of Hubert’s hand. Sulphur choked the air as dark magic pooled at his command. Murderous rage was etched into every line of his pinched face, so potent the young man could feel its blazing inferno scorching every morsel of air in the room.

“Who the FUCK are you?!”

The young man’s mouth flapped silently, uselessly, as he struggled to form an answer.

Another voice, a disquieting echo of his own, shouted from outside the closed door.

“HUBERT?! Are you alright?!”

The door to the bedchambers crashed open as the words were shouted. A man, several years older than himself, so similar, yet so different than himself, burst into the room. Half-undressed, sword in hand, and a blistering inferno blazing in his amber eyes.

A brief flicker of confusion and horror crossed his doppelganger’s face before melting into searing rage. The young man’s older self charged at him with infuriated roar, sword raised and tangles of fiery hair swirling about him like the mane of a ferocious lion.

Shimmers of green light surrounded the young man, spiriting him away from danger before the blade could hit its mark. He blinked to see himself back in his dormitory chambers.

The air was still, almost stale compared to the charged atmosphere— one of broiling passions, then molten rage—of bedchambers shared by Hubert and one of the young man’s other selves.

The taste of copper filled his mouth from where Hubert had bit him. He touched his bleeding lip, fingers, still wet with oil, came away with smears of crimson.

He sucked at the fingers with a low moan. The young man still agonizingly hard in his trousers. With a grunt, he finished unlacing his trousers, and took himself in hand.

Low groans filled the room as he worked his cock, fixated on the fleeting taste of Hubert’s lips upon his own before the rapturous tableau had fractured. He imagined what those lips would feel like wrapped around his cock. Branded the sensation of the how Hubert’s oil-slicked hole had felt clenching around his fingers, fantasized how it would feel to sink his cock deep into that soaked clutch. Carving himself deeper with each possessive thrust until that lithe body beneath him howled, the young man’s spend painting his beloved’s insides—an uncontested, primal brand of ownership.

The young man came with an infuriated roar. His release sour. A stagnant wetness that flowed over his hand and left his palm sticky and clammy.

He cleaned the mess with a spare rag. Tossed the dirtied cloth to a corner of the room and crawled into his bed as a bitter swell of envy settled into his chest.

However, the stranger’s next actions fell well outside the realm of virtue.

The young man continued to flourish. Excelled at all his lessons. Quickly rose to the ranks as the academy’s top student.

His year at the academy had been an exceptionally eventful one. First, the doddering old priest who had been their professor had fled in the heat of a bandit attack during an academy-wide field excursion. The young man had followed the trail of the three house leaders who had become separated from the rest of the students, had aided them in repelling the brigands who had cornered them just outside Remire. Dimitri and Claude had thanked him for his assistance, but there remained a chilly chasm between Edelgard and himself. Her gratitude stilted, a prickle of ice frosting the edges. Nonetheless, she maintained a sense of propriety during her exchanges with the young man.

To everyone’s surprise, Rhea’s second-in-command, Seteth, had been appointed their professor in the stead of the priest who had vacated his position.

“Seteth is an old friend of mine,” Rhea had spoken to the young man privately, explained with a gentle smile, “There is no one I trust more to oversee your safety and guide you to greatness.”

Though despite Rhea’s words, there existed an air of suspicion between the young man and his new mentor. A prickling veneer of distrust and scepticism from the other man during all of their interactions, with Seteth eyeing the young man from edge of his peripherals much the same way one would keep a deadly snake they were skirting around within their line of slight, bracing for a lunge of venomous fangs.

Soon later, heretics from the Western Church had attempted to raid the tomb of Saint Seiros during the Goddess’s Rite of Rebirth. It had started with a letter stating an intent to have the archbishop assassinated. The young man’s class had deduced that the Holy Mausoleum was the true target in the attack. The Black Eagle class was sent to defend the mausoleum at Rhea’s behest once the theory was shared with her and Seteth.

It was in that sacred chamber, whilst under attack of an enemy ambush, that the young man laid eyes upon his greatest weapon.

It called to him in a melody. An entrancing ballad that vibrated directly into his blood, threaded with lyrics sang with an unfamiliar tongue. The words indecipherable, yet clear in their intent. They beckoned to him, lured him to their origin.   

The young man strode across the mausoleum, striking down the dark mage trying to pry open a crypt at the far side of the cavernous room. Inside the crypt was a most curious relic—The Sword of the Creator—he was later told was its name, once wielded by Nemesis himself. A weapon that appeared grafted from the cleaved bones of a slain beast.

The macabre blade blazed to life at his touch. Pulsed with eerie crimson glow, its eldritch power answering to his command in a surge fire.

The melody thrumming through his blood raged to a crescendo. The new weapon fusing and stitched together with the ether of his soul. The young man becoming one with his new blade.

Throughout the room, everyone froze. His classmates—save for Edelgard and Hubert who exchanged uneasy glances— stared on in wide-eyed wonder. The assailants from the Western Church trembled in place, their emboldened shouts crumpling into panicked cries and whimpers. Seteth blinked, eyed the relic and its new wielder with a mingled look of disbelief and intense wariness.

The young man stepped down from the dais, The Sword of the Creator pulsing in his grip. In a flash, he launched himself at the remaining invaders.

It was a flawless duet of blade and divine power.

One by one, the heretics fell. Even the dreaded knight who bore death’s visage had been forced to retreat in a flare of scarlet warp magic. The young man’s new sword sang to him as he used it to cut down his foes. Sliced through bone and flesh alike as if they were forged of little more than wet parchment, their bodies falling apart and spiling across the ground like overripe fruit with each cut. The young man pressed a hidden mechanism built into the hilt, and the blade shifted, the carved vertebrae separating into a chained whip of serrated knives. The young man swung the whip chain into an arc, bisected an archer attempting to hide behind a statue at the opposite side of the room.

“Good. GOOD!” the passenger had crooned, cackling with delight with every spray of viscera carved open by the new blade, every severed head that rolled across the dust-encrusted stone. The glee of his invisible companion braided with his own thoughts, his own feelings. The gory exultation was one that was shared.

Occasionally, he spun back time. Not for any strategic purpose—every one of his moves with the blade had been immaculate, unmatched— but simply to observe the different ways he could take his enemies apart: one slash to decapitate an enemy, rewind reality, and strike out again, this time by slicing their belly open. Cut at the spine of another enemy and watched them flop helplessly on the ground before stomping on their skull. Flicked his wrist and severed the legs of a fleeing swordmaster with the ease of plucking wings from a fly.

The battlefield was his to command. The tenuous threads of reality bending, snapping, and being re-woven to his very will. A god made flesh. Raining divine retribution on those who dare turn their blades upon him.

And in the peripherals of his triumph, Seteth had watched him, wide-eyed and ashen at the carnage flowing from the young every strike of the sacred relic. The bone notches of the bade dripping and soaked with blood.

The young man paid his mentor no mind. Ripped his blade through the spine of a fleeing, enemy priest. He stalked forward, focused on his task of eliminating all who dared cross him. Did not rest until every single one had been cut down as he walked a path painted with their spilled entrails.

“Rhea, I am begging you. There is something dark inside that young man.”

“You are mistaken, Seteth. It is the very light of the goddess shining within him.”

“The goddess’s light?! Rhea, you were not there! I am no fresh-faced, unseasoned novice to the brutality that can ensue on a battlefield, but I have never seen such carnage, such unflinching savagery from one so young! I dare say, he almost seemed to enjoy taking part in such a massacre!”

“The apostates of the Western Church committed grievous crimes against the goddess and were to be punished accordingly. Had any one of them not been slain in battle, I would have ordered their execution myself. It sounds as if he did nothing more than fulfill his sacred duties.”

“There is due punishment, and there is rabid slaughter! Rhea, I know you hold a soft spot for that young man, have raised him almost as a son for years, but this… this behaviour… sheer sadism is the most apt descriptor for the mannerisms he displayed.”

“He is young and merely needs guidance to grow. That is why I selected you as his teacher when the Black Eagles’ former professor left us. There is no one I trust more to lead him along the path he must take; a path that will one day lead to salvation for all of us…”

“Why are you so certain that this young man is some sort of harbinger of the goddess? So eager to hand over such a deadly weapon to one so inexperienced, and quite frankly, completely unsuited for such power?!”

A pause fell heavy between the two.

“His strength in both martial prowess and magic… The colour of his hair… The Crest of Flames flowing in his blood… Was this all your doing?!”

“I had no hand in this.”

“But you know something!”

A silence fell once more, only broken when Seteth let out a defeated sigh.

“Very well…” Seteth answered, his voice tight, “Hold onto your secrets if you must, but knowledge of that young man’s true nature will not remain hidden forever. I just sincerely hope you know what you’re doing…”

The goddess clearly smiled down upon the young man once more for he was assigned to stable duties alongside Hubert for the entire week. A task his future paramour had groused about in whispers with his lady liege, but acquiesced to complete, nonetheless.

Hubert was already hard at work by the time the young man made his way to the stables. His peer grumbled under his breath, wielding a broom with the same irritable jabs he would employ when training with a spear as he swept the excess clods of dirt and stray bits of hay out of the stables. He lifted his head as the young man approached, a sneer curling his lips.

“Well, I see the archbishop’s haloed pet has finally deigned to step down from his pedestal and attend to his assigned chores,” Hubert spat. The scornful grin quickly shifted to an icy glare, “Our shared stable duties were to begin over fifteen minutes ago. I suggest you get started.”

“My sincere apologies, Hubert. I did not mean to be so tardy. Let us work together to complete this task with the utmost dedication and precision!”

Hubert snorted at the comment. Shook his head and returned to his task without another word.

The young man set about feeding and brushing the horses, his eyes continuously drifting back to his companion as he worked.

He watched the fluid way Hubert’s lithe form moved even during such a mundane task. The uniform he wore was far from flattering. The balloon pant variant of the academy’s attire masking Hubert’s legs with voluminous swells of fabric. The young man remembered how those legs looked unclothed: long, lean, pale and elegant like carved moonstone, and quivering with unmasked pleasure under the young man’s ministrations.

Hubert continued to sweep out the stall. Bristled when he felt the young man’s stare burrow into his back. He whirled around and glared at his workmate.

“Are you actually going to do something constructive, or is his divine lordliness simply going to loaf about while us lowly mortals toil away.”

The young man said nothing in response. He tilted his head to the side, and observed Hubert with a curious hum.

His eyes remained locked onto those soft, pink lips—slightly chapped and currently downturned into a scowl. The young man itched to taste them once more. Drink in their plush sweetness as if he were sucking the very nectar from a clutch of ripe cherries.

Hubert shifted uncomfortably under the young man’s piercing gaze. A low growl rumbled in his chest as he returned to his sweeping, a wary eye kept on his partner from the corner of his gaze.

The young man stared at his intended, unabashed. He had pulled moans of pleasure from his lover’s writhing body. Knew exactly how to tease and torture his beloved in a way that left him gasping for more.

This time, he would do it right. There would be no imposter bearing his face to usurp his affections. This Hubert’s lips would only know his.

The young man stepped forward, blocking the exit to the stables. Descended upon his fate-promised love. A wolf devouring a cornered rabbit.

Hubert froze. Lifted his head and cautiously turned in the young man’s direction. He let out a squawk of confused indignance as the young man pounced and pinned him against the wall, his back slamming against the wood paneling hard enough to rattle the array of tools hanging from the hooks nearby.

The young man’s lips were upon his beloved’s in an instant. Soft and warm, their taste addictive like honeyed wine. So similar to the lips of the other Hubert he had sampled. Lush. Velvety. Emanating such intoxicating warmth. The young man mashed their lips together, pressed himself bodily against his love, seeking to fuse them into one entity.

A bolt of pain seared its way through the dense muscle of his left tricep. The young man howled, staggered away from his quarry. He blinked away the black dots and light-headedness that clouded his vision, stared blankly at the dagger buried into the meat of his upper arm, and the trickle of blood soaking his tunic. His gaze flicked back to see his beloved staring back at him, repulsed. As if the young man were a diseased pustule to be excised. A mirrored portrait to the palpable disgust that had twisted the face of the other Hubert—chest heaving, eyes bulging, and sharp incisors bared as his lips curled back into a snarl.

Miasma crackled and surged to life at Hubert’s fingertips. A whirlwind of violet whisps spiralled and lashed around his hands.

“I see the mask of saintly virtue has fully slipped off at long last. It would seem that your bestial side extends far beyond the bounds of the battlefield,” Hubert hissed. The plumes of purple mist pulsed, flared in a violent corona of dark light, “So this is who you truly are…”

The young man stared back at his seething lover, unperturbed. With a simple thought, he rolled back the hands of time, and reset the scene to mere moments earlier.

The sharp stings of pain ricocheting through his arm faded as the world receded to a time before Hubert had stabbed him, their movements cycling backwards until Hubert had returned to his position at the edge of the stables, sweeping away at the bits of straw and dirt.

The dance of courtship repeated once more, this time with the young man having the proper steps memorized.      

In seconds, he had his love pinned against the wall as before. He felt Hubert claw at him in a panic with one hand, while trying to reach for the pocket that held the hidden blade with the other.

The young man smirked: he was prepared for the counter-attack that time. With ease, the young man gathered both of Hubert’s thin wrists in one hand and pinned them above his head.

Once again, the young main laid claim to Hubert with a bruising kiss. Bit down on his beloved’s lip in a sharp reprimand to his actions from a splintered thread of time. Hubert flinched but made no pained whimper. The taste of copper seeped into the young man’s mouth as he continued to ravish Hubert’s bloodied lips with affection. He leaned close, pressed his knee firmly against Hubert’s groin.

His paramour thrashed against him. Tried to wrench his hands free from the young man’s steel grip. The young man’s free hand roamed his love’s flank, glided along the shallow dip of Hubert’s waist, and palmed the sharp hipbone through the thick fabric of the academy uniform. He tugged at the coat and tunic, slipped his hand beneath the folds of cloth and savoured the lavish warmth of Hubert’s skin under his touch—

Suddenly, he felt himself tackled to the ground.

Someone was on top of him, pinning him to the ground. A fist smashed into his face, over and over. And a woman’s voice roared in outrage at every vicious strike.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!”

Another newcomer’s voice bellowed.

The young man blinked through the pained haze clouding his vision. A blur of silver, red, and black floated over him, the image solidifying into an enraged Edelgard who still had him pinned to the ground. Her lavender eyes burned into him, seething. Murderous. Fistfuls of the young man’s tunic still clutched in her shaking hands. The young man caught sight of Seteth’s blurry, infuriated face as he stalked towards the two students; the advisor staring down at the young man with smouldering with a rage that nearly matched Edelgard’s own.

“Professor Seteth!” Edelgard gasped, scrambled to her feet and gestured furiously at the young man, “He—he… tried to… force himself on Hubert!”

A flash of horror washed over Seteth’s face. Fury instantly melted into worry.

“Hubert…” Seteth turned to the mage, his voice gentle, “Is this true?”

Hubert pushed away from the stable wall. Took a trembling step forward. His clothing still dishevelled, a bead of blood dribbled from his swollen lips and spilled down his chin in a jagged branch of stark crimson.

He wiped at the bloodied smears with the back of his gloved hand.

“During the course of our shared chores, Ferdinand and I got into an argument that turned into a physical altercation,” Hubert explained with clinical detachment, “A simple brawl between two quarreling students, nothing more. That I assure you.”

“Hubert!” Edelgard balked.        

Seteth looked between the three students. His mouth pressed into a grim line. The piercing gaze lingered on the young man for a moment. Silent. Awaiting a confession.

The young man stared back, still laying on the ground. Impassive, with not a single word uttered.

“Very well…” Seteth’s voice wavered but grew stern once more, “That said, such physical altercations between students outside of designated training exercises are strictly against the academy’s code of conduct. I ask that the three of you come with me to report to the archbishop at once.”

Hubert was the first to move. He stalked across the grounds in the direction of the archbishop’s audience chamber without a single glance back at the young man. Edelgard quickly joined his side, firing a look of cold, searing hatred over her shoulder. She placed a gentle hand on Hubert’s back as they departed.

The young man dragged himself to his feet and moved to follow his classmates, with Seteth trailing just behind. He could feel the other man’s gaze burrow into the back of his skull, the narrow-eyed gaze dripping with suspicion.

No attention was paid to his mentor. The young man strolled down the gravel walkway in a leisurely gait, the taste of Hubert’s freshly spilled blood still lingering on his lips.

He peeked in on the Hubert he had touched. Had tasted. The lingering memory of his sweet lips and warm body still branded into the young man’s mind.

The scene appeared before him in a flash, spun to life at his very will. A set of brushstrokes rearranging the canvas of reality until it formed a portrait of his liking. The vivid details of that fateful memory repainted and sparked anew.

He lurked just out of sight in that very same room as before. Unseen and intangible to that world, slipping into the role of voyeur once more. A window for his eyes only to an intimacy—a raw, desperate moment of unmasked vulnerability never meant to be witnessed by others.

It was right after the young man had fled the wrath of his other self. Just moments after he had tasted Hubert’s lips for the first time.

The once immaculate bedchambers the young man had treaded through were in a state of disarray. Bedding was torn and strew across the floor; the canopy stretched over the mattress ripped down and hanging from its frame in shredded strips; the desk, wardrobe, all the elegantly carved polished pieces that furnished the room, now overturned and tossed about with a cyclone’s rampaging fervor.

And in the midst wreckage, Hubert paced. Stalked back and forth, searched the entire perimeter of the room with the stomping fury of a charging ram.

“Do not leave a single place unchecked! There is something here. Something we missed!” Hubert barked as he ripped a dresser away from the wall and shoved it to the ground, the drawers sliding open and spilling their contents onto the floor. His eyes darted and swept over every corner of the room. Wide and bloodshot. Feverish. Manic.

“Hubert…”

The young man’s other self reached out to touch Hubert, his hand pausing mid-air, hesitant, his palm hovering just over Hubert’s quaking shoulder.

“There must be some trace of foul magic left by that swine! Something that allowed that him to slither into these chambers undetected!”    

“Hubert… please…”

His other self spoke again, his hand gently resting on Hubert’s shoulder.

Hubert whirled around with a broken noise that sounded like a mix of a sob and snarl. Eyes wide, and furls of dark magic energy braiding between his fingers. The young man’s other self retracted his hand with a whispered apology.

It was at that moment that the last fragments of Hubert’s mangled defenses crumbled. Frenzied outrage melted into timidity and terror, his face crumpling as a wave of sobs crashed over him. He dropped slowly to his knees, the dark magic snuffed away, as his arms wrapped around himself in a protective embrace. Quivering, an almost childlike defensive.

Tentatively, the other man joined his weeping love on the floor. Held open his arms, unmoving, letting Hubert make the first move.

Sniffling, Hubert crawled into the lap of the young man’s other self, clung to the other man and sobbed into his chest. A broken sound of shattered glass and scraped iron. One his beloved should never have to make.

The young man’s alternate form wrapped his arms tightly around his husband. Leaned down and pressed a kiss to Hubert’s head, whispering soft words the young man could not hear.  

“I thought he was… I had no idea… Please, forgi—”

“Shhh…” the other man soothed, holding Hubert closer and rubbing calming circles across his husband’s trembling back, “Please do not apologize, you did nothing wrong. You were attacked.”

Hubert continued to sob, his words cracked like age porcelain.

“Why did he have your face…?”

Silence fell between them.

“I do no know, love,” the young man’s older self spoke quietly, his tone soaked in unease even as he tried to present a veneer of comforting calm to his trembling husband. He swallowed thickly and spoke again in halting, brittle words, “Though… If the similarities in our appearances make you uncomfortable, I can give you some spac—"

“No!” Hubert’s arms tightened around the other man, “Don’t leave… Please sta…”

Hubert’s words trailed off into more hiccupped sobs.

“Always…” the red haired man whispered, pressing another kiss to Hubert’s brow and holding him close.

An unpleasant sensation sluiced thickly through the young man’s blood as he watched the loving couple. Bitter and cloying. The same stagnant sourness of congealed pond water that accompanied his release from other night. He gnashed his teeth, fire blistering at his nerves. His eyes narrowed into blades, fixed murderously on the unworthy alter that Hubert clung to so desperately.   

“So vulnerable, so unguarded in this tender moment. You could kill that imposter who bears a mockery of your face… Take this version of your beloved for yourself…”

The words entered the young’s man in a dark whisper. He could not tell if the thought belong to himself or that of his passenger.

The young man’s other self continued to cradle Hubert. Card his fingers through tangled, dark curls, and soothe the shivering man held in his arms. 

They were distracted. It would be easy.

He could summon himself fully into their world just as before. Plunge a blade into the back of his unworthy other self. Claim this Hubert for his own. He would wipe away Hubert’s tears. Drink in his frightened cries. Show him how much he was loved.

The young man shook the voice away. Snarled the vision—and the pair of lovers twined in a comforting embrace—away with a swipe of his hand.

He had a Hubert already. One just for himself.

His Hubert just needed to be taught that.

As instructed, all three of them met with Seteth and the archbishop. The young man had been the first to be questioned about the incident in the stables, followed by Edelgard, then Hubert (the order in which the testimonies were delivered something that Seteth was vehemently against—implored that such accounts should be delivered in private, with the harmed parties given the first opportunity to speak— but Rhea had insisted upon).

The young man spoke, clear and brisk. A honed confidence to his words. He offered a heavily sanitized version of what had transpired in the stables—one riddled with omissions and adorned with one or two embellishments. Just a petty argument that got out of hand, nothing more. Revealing the whole truth would only stir up unnecessary trouble for himself. Rhea and Seteth did not know of the young man’s destiny. They would not understand.

Nearby, Edelgard dragged in a sharp inhale. Her eyes blazed, her fingernails digging, clawlike, into the wooden armrest of the chair she was seated in.

She was the next to speak. Fury vibrated through her voice, each syllable burbling like a pool of magma teetering on the brink of volcanic eruption. Rhea reprimanded her once she began unleashing a barrage of scathing, defamatory epithets all directed at the young man–a scolding that only made the simmering fire in Edelgard’s eyes burn deeper.

Hubert’s account of the events had been stilted. Clinical. Sheared away of anything of emotional substance, and purged of several key details. His hands balled into fists, held firmly upon his lap, with only the faint tremor that rolled down his arms belaying what had truly occurred. Seteth’s eyes flitted between Hubert’s face and his clenched, shaking fists. He had tried to gently coax the mage into speaking more, but Hubert remained stubbornly reticent.

Eventually, the three were dismissed with a mild word of reproach from Rhea, as if the whole affair was a mere tussle between squabbling classmates.

The young man spied his classmates in one of the monastery halls just minutes later. He lingered behind the pillars. Eavesdropped on the two as they spoke in hushed whispers.

“Hubert, why didn’t you tell them what happened?”

“It would make no difference. His word is nearly gospel to the archbishop.”

“He needs to be held accountable for what he did to you!”

A harsh bark of laughter. Ugly, and without humour.

“That spoiled, glorified wretch might as well be the second coming of Sothis for how the archbishop dotes on him. Disclosing what truly happened will accomplish nothing but bring more suspicious eyes upon ourselves. I will merely need to exercise more caution from now on.”

It had quickly become a yearly occurrence.

The young man would be marched to the bowels beneath Garreg Mach and instructed to take his seat upon the Goddess Throne. Rhea would always accompany him through this strange, annual ritual. Delight bubbling from her every pore. Her very aura pulsating with anticipation, eyes glittering with near-delirium as she instructed the young man to take a seat upon that hallowed altar.

And every year, the chamber remained every bit as dead. And every year, Rhea’s frenetic joy would deflate. Eagerness crumbled into hollowed, brittle shell.

This year, things took an unexpected turn.

The doors of the tomb burst open, and a flood of dark robed mages, and armoured knights bearing the banner of the imperial army poured into the chamber. At their head was Edelgard, garbed in the vestments of the Flame Emperor, her blade pointed at the archbishop.

Rhea had seethed. Her kindly face twisted and distorted into hellfire of blistering rage. She ordered the young man to execute the traitor, to kill Edelgard. The young man drew the Sword of the Creator, and moved to cut down his former classmate and her co-conspirators.

The battle had been simple enough. The imperial soldiers following the Flame Emperor’s command fell just as readily as the insurgents from the Western Church. Paper dolls cleaved before his blade, shredded beyond recognition and splayed before him in fleshy ribbons.

He stalked across the chamber and pointed his blade at the Flame Emperor.

Edelgard’s eyes flashed as she lunged at the young man with a roar. Axe and sword clashed with one another in a deadly waltz of steel and bone. Edelgard had done well to keep up with his strikes, match every slash with a parry of her own. However, just like all the others, the young man proved the superior combatant. Fiery sigils of their twin crests exploded to life as they clashed with one another.

The Sword of the Creator separated into its chain-whip form, wrapped around Edelgard’s axe and wrenched the weapon from her grasp. Terror lit her eyes as she found herself unarmed. The young man advanced on her, his sword raised, ready for the final blow.

A burst of red light flared in front of Edelgard. A new figure emerging from the glow, arms spread protectively to guard the woman behind him.

The young man froze mid-strike. The Sword of the Creator raised mid-air and hovering inches from the neck of the new arrival.

Hubert stood before him, using his own body to shield Edelgard’s. His face twisted with fury, spools of dark magic beginning to thread between his fingertips.

The young man’s blade wavered, dipped away from the vital artery it had been aimed at, as he stared into the burning glare of his beloved.

And in a flare of crimson light, Hubert had vanished along with Edelgard. The deadened silence enveloped the chamber once more.

War fell over Fodlan. And Garreg Mach was the first to be besieged with its flames.

The monastery had successfully repelled the empire’s armies, the strange beasts moulded of dark magic that had thundered up the mountain in a disjointed gallop, but not without a hefty cost.

Rhea had taken to the field, transformed into her true draconic form. She had ordered the young man to remain within the monastery, to let her handle the approaching enemy. The Immaculate One spread her great wings, soared through the skies, and rained countless bursts of fire upon their foes.

But it was not enough.

He had watched as the twisted beasts overwhelmed her. Dragged her into the nearby chasm and pulled her to her doom. The young man had witnessed it all from the safety of the monastery’s walls, the empire’s armies retreating with their greatest foe slain, and their own casualties staggeringly high.

After the battle, he approached the cliff’s ledge, peered into the abyss that swallowed the archbishop, and felt nothing but emptiness at the lifeless chasm that greeted him.

There was nothing he could have done, everyone had assured him.

The hold the Central Church had on Fodlan splintered. Many had fled in the wake of the archbishop’s death, returning to their respective homelands for refuge.

However, there were those who stood and fought. Those who sought to avenge the archbishop’s death and restore order to Fodlan.

And the church had flocked to the young man as their leader. The Anointed One, they dubbed him. Protégé to the former archbishop, believed to be blessed by the goddess herself. Their saviour for the dark times ahead.

The young man rallied the Knights of Seiros, the few eagles who had not fallen under Edelgard’s sway, as well as strays from Faerghus and Leicester who had grown disenchanted with the state of their own homelands.

Together, they forged an army. One strong enough to meet the empire’s might.

Years passed, and the continent-wide maelstrom of bloodshed and battle dragged on. Fortresses fell and were recaptured. Defensive lines between both armies surged forward with each victory claimed, then pushed back with the roll of a tide in a clash of steel and magic, only to swell once more and reclaim what was taken.

Freedom from tyranny! Freedom for Fodlan! Those were the mantras spread through the Resistance Army’s ranks, as the banner of the Crest of Flames was planted across every territory they liberated.

Some within his ranks had expressed doubt about the Anointed One’s methods. Even suggested that the church had lost its way, that the devastation, the carnage left heaped with every battle, was not what the goddess would have wanted. Some had even dared whisper that Edelgard’s motives may have held merit.

Those individuals were swiftly sniffed out and disposed of.

Most had come to revere him, and those who shared skepticism quickly learned to remain silent. However, not all so readily accepted his word as gospel.

Despite holding a clear disdain for the Resistance Army’s leader, Seteth had remained within its ranks as well. The unease in his face cragged and further deepened with each passing moon, each blood-soaked achievement, watching the Anointed One, no doubt waiting for the moment that the unspoken line of maleficence was truly crossed.

And through those years of war, the Anointed One continued to search for his beloved.

Hubert had gained prestige for himself through the war as a decorated general in the imperial army, as well as the emperor’s right hand. The new Minister of the Imperial Household’s deadly reputation whispered about in hushed, fearful voices.

Several times the young man had tried to capture his wayward soulmate. Issued strict orders to the battalions under his command that not a single scratch was to graze Hubert’s flesh. That no bruises nor welts were to blemish his skin. His love would be returned to him unharmed. Pristine.

And every time, his beloved managed to slip away from his grasp. A trail of massacred church soldiers left at the site where he had last been spotted, the only indication Hubert had been there in the first place.

The strange ache in the Anointed One’s chest burned with each evasion. Crackled and snapped like charred wood.

Keep going. Carve your way through the empire’s ranks, blaze a trail of conquest to the capital, and claim your fated prize. He cannot run forever…

The thought coiled through the Anointed One’s mind. He was unsure if it had been whispered by his passenger, or gathered from the corridors of his own mind. It did not matter. The words spoke truth, nonetheless.

His beloved would be his once more soon.

It had all happened so quickly, yet every detail of what transpired would remained carved into the insides of Ferdinand’s skull.

The day the Anointed One had long awaited finally arrived.

The gates of Enbarr loomed before him. Battered, ruined, and strangely small under the barrage of catapult fire, battering rams, magic explosions. Not the majestic glittering jewel that slid dreamlike through the amorphous fog of his old memories—that nebulous, intangible blink of time before the cold halls of shrill, neon light.

The imperial capital was just another city to be conquered, one that would fall under the crushing might of the Anointed One’s armies just like the others.

Onward he pressed. Relentless. Through the streets, his horse’s hooves thundered over the polished cobble. Roads that sparkled like polished diamonds now cracked and burnt, just like the pillars of carved marble that flanked many of Enbarr’s buildings. The Sword of the Creator unfurled and lashed out with a whip’s crack with a flick of his wrist, the cord of razored bone fragments singing with each slash. The strange, crackling heat in his chest flared with each imperial soldier that was felled, his heels digging into his horse to urge his mount to gallop faster, to ignore the blasts of fire and lightning magic exploding around them.

It would happen soon. There was nowhere else for his beloved to flee to.

Hubert would be awakened to the error of his ways. That he had chosen the wrong side in the war. That he would be swayed away from Edelgard, and be brought to the Anointed One’s side where he belonged.

The Anointed One’s breath hitched as he reached the base of the massive staircase leading to the palace; looked up to see his love waiting for him at the top. Dutiful and loyal to the end, holding the last line of defense between the emperor and its foes.

Corpses of the Resistance Army’s soldiers littered the marble steps—the bodies still bubbling under a sludge of mire, or nailed to the ground in a hail of dark spikes.

Violet mist swam and danced around Hubert’s outstretched fingers, the stench of sulfur carried along the breeze and choking the air—the stage eerily reminiscent of their last encounter in the Holy Tomb.

The Anointed One barked at his horse, ordered the animal to charge forward. His steed whinnied, its hooves stumbling as it tried to climb the steps. He snarled, snapped at the animal to go faster, narrowly dodging a Dark Spikes spell that had been launched at him.

Suddenly, a shadow glided from overhead. The leathery flap of a wyvern’s wings, following by the hum mithril blades whistling through the air.

It happened in an instant.

Seteth weaved out the way of a blast of Miasma, the burst of magic narrowly whistling past his wyvern’s wings, raised the Spear of Assal and drove its blade right into Hubert’s chest.

No…

It had all gone wrong.

Hubert, his Hubert, staggered, the spell gathering at his fingertips snuffed out, and Seteth’s spear impaled through his chest. His hand pawed weekly at the blade skewered through his ribs, lurched with a gurgling, wet gasp as the weapon was wrenched from his body, a thick stream of blood burbling from the massive puncture.

With a final shuddering breath, Hubert collapsed and crumpled to the ground. His arms falling limp at his sides, as rivers of red pooled along the steps.

No.

NononononoNONONONO!!!

The Anointed One dismounted his horse. Charged forward, shoving Seteth out of his path, and dropped to his knees with a sob beside Hubert’s bloodied, crumpled form.

He dragged Hubert into his lap. Snarled and snapped at the nearby by healers for aid all while pouring sluices of healing magic into the bloodied gouge carved into his love’s chest.

It was no use.

His love stared back at him, eyes unseeing and fogged by death. Stone still. With death’s clammy chill already creeping into his flesh.

Over and over, he tried. He ripped at the threads of time, tried to reweave that moment a thousand times. Tried to approach Hubert from different times, seize the city from different angles, deployed different stratagem when charging through the capital’s streets.

And every time, the Anointed One failed.            

In the first attempt, a squad of pegasus knights had managed to reach Hubert first, their lances still stabbing into felled imperial general by the time the Anointed One reached the palace stairs; while in another timeline, a battalion of bow knights charged forward, intending to aid their leader and saviour, unleashed a barrage of arrows on Hubert that pelted and impaled the mage until he was reduced to a pincushion; and in the next, he witness his beloved be pulverised by a boulder of molten rock from an ally’s Meteor Spell.

Nothing. Absolutely, nothing worked!

He watched Hubert die, over and over again. His destined love. His soulmate. The one he was promised, cut down in a repetitive macabre spectacle that he was powerless to prevent. A mockery concocted by the universe itself.

All of his hopes… All of his dreams of sharing a life with his beloved—the life fated and promised to him…

All naught but ash. Cold, just like the corpse of his love laying limp and unmoving in his embrace.

The Anointed One had been inconsolable. He wept over his beloved’s body. Hands clutched over the gaping wound in Hubert’s chest as if trying to stave the flow of blood that had long since coagulated with death; poured brittle rays of healing magic from his trembling fingers that would do little more than swaddle the gory chasm in shimmers of light.

And through it all, Hubert remained still. Unmoving, like the many statues that adorned the streets of Enbarr, and every bit as cold. His face slack, almost peaceful in its expression. Had it not been for the deathly pallor, or the bloodied hole in Hubert’s chest, the young man could almost pretend his love was merely asleep.        

An agonized roar was ripped from the bottom of his lungs. Vibrating, tectonic in its grief and fury. Several allies who had cautiously watched him from afar recoiled back a step at the raw screech.

This was not how it was supposed to be.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Seteth speaking to some of the Knights of Seiros. His spear still in hand, cleaned of Hubert’s blood and gleaming in the sun once more.

Cold fury bloomed in the Anointed One’s chest. His hand itched and drifted to the hilt of his sword.

All in due time… his passenger chided gently, a dark chuckle thrumming through his words You will be able to claim your pound of flesh shortly…

Icy calm seeped back in the Anointed One’s flesh. He retracted his hand from the hilt of his blade, and released a breath through his clenched teeth.

He would wait, just as instructed. The right moment to exact vengeance would come soon enough.

Seteth choked, clutched the gaping slash in his stomach –a desperate attempt to keep his innards from spilling out—as he dropped to his knees and slumped to the ground.

The Anointed One stood over him, the Sword of the Creator drawn and aimed at his opponent’s throat. Beads of crimson dripped from the carved bone, splashing against the ground with a light “plink.”

The great tactician who fought side-by-side with Seiros against Nemesis—Saint Cichol himself—cut down and choking on his final breaths.

Seteth had put up a good fight, had forced the Anointed One to rewind reality three times and strike again.

But in the end, even a hallowed saint was no match for his immense power. Abilities that smashed through and descended the bonds of paltry magical skills wielded by mere mortals, and skirted the phantasmal edges of the divine. No one could best him.

Seteth growled at him through blood-stained teeth.

“I know what you are… Knew what darkness you would bring upon these lands…” he rasped, blood frothing at his lips, “You are no vessel of the goddess. No long-awaited saviour! You are a monster, pure and simple. A plague of pure, festering evil. And you will bring nothing but absolute ruin to our world…”

The Anointed One stood there with his blade still raised.

He could have ended it in a second.

The passenger whispered. Offered another path. A way to make one last use of the broken saint bleeding out before him.

The Anointed One lowered his weapon. Flares of red light bloomed around him, and a pair of dark cloaked figures flanked his sides. Bird masks with dark, hooked beaks adorned their faces. The sight of them should have filled the Anointed One with fear. Instead, he felt disconnected from the newcomers—as if he observing monsters from another’s nightmares.

They are your allies…the thought stirred within him, cooed directly into his mind by his passenger.

Fear, unmasked and quaking, flashed across Seteth’s face for an instant before melting into resignation. He let out a broken laugh as the robed figures approached him. Spat a glob of blood at the feet of his soon-to-be executioners.

“May the goddess curse you…” Seteth hissed, “For you have damned this world.”

Together, they returned to Aegir.

He and his beloved, hand in hand, together at last. After so many years of turmoil, so many years apart, they could finally return home together and live in peace.

The man once known as the Anointed One sat in his carriage, his arm wrapped around the still form of his love who rested against him—his head drooped and leaning against the man’s shoulder, a swath of dark curls hanging over his slumbering face.

He leaned over, brushed the locks of hair aside, and pressed a kiss to his love’s brow.

This Hubert’s face did not twist and contort with disgust at the very sight of him. Did not spurn or lash out violently at his advances…

…but nor did he embrace them.

No light lit his beloved’s eyes. No delicate flutter danced under the soft flesh of his pulsepoints.

Instead, his lips pressed against skin that carried listless chill of icy clay. His love’s face holding the painted vacancy of a doll.

What should have been triumph tasted bitter in his mouth. Soured and curdled like milk left to spoil in the sun.

The man tightened his arms around his beloved and drew him close. Released a huffed sigh and tried to loose himself in the rhythmic cadence of horse hooves and crunched gravel as the carriage made its way to the coast.

And by his side, leaning against the seat, was his newly forged lance. A freshly carved piece of twitching bone, embedded with a glowing stone that bore the insignia of his birth crest.

If he listened carefully, he could still hear the screams of its originator echoing from its marrow.

Ferdinand froze. The very breath stolen from his lungs as his eyes fell upon the impossible sight of his own visage staring down at Hubert’s unconscious form with deranged fondness.

“You cling to that putrid, decaying flesh, yet there are more like him,” the passenger whispered, “More of your beloved across countless times and lives, just waiting to be claimed.”

The man’s eyes flicked open. He pushed himself from the bed, rolling away from the cold stiff arms of his beloved. The flies that constantly buzzed around them, landing on chilled, waxy flesh, and scuttling in and out of the void where his beloved’s right eye had once resided.

He mulled over words, the crackling embers reigniting once more, as a new plan—one that flickered to life from the ashes of his crushed hopes— began to take shape.

The new lifetime he walked into was like so many others. A simple timeline, so similar to countless other realities the man had traversed.

It was within the first couple months of attending the officer’s academy. A time of seeming tranquility. The fires of war still moons away, the fresh crop of students just getting settled into their roles and duties at the Officer’s Academy.

It was to the stables where the man was drawn. His love’s presence calling out to him like a beacon of torchlight through the dense, amorphous fog.

The man watched his beloved from a distance. Lips downturned into a scowl, his brow furrowed with distaste as he swept stray bits of dirt and hay from the stables. The scene so reminiscent of the time the man tried to share his affections for his paramour back during his own academy days.

This time, there would be no interference. No missteps.

The man had come prepared. He plucked a rag and a vial from his coat pockets. Staying out of sight, the man uncorked the bottle and doused the cloth in the noxious fluid held within. With slow, careful steps, he approached his waiting paramour from behind and pressed the soaked rag to his face.

Hubert’s eyes went wide for a moment, a snarl of alarm prickling at the tip of his tongue. Gloved fingers scrabbled at the hand and rag held firmly over his mouth.

“Shh… Be still, my love,” he cooed softly to his beloved. He stroked the sharp bone of his paramour’s cheek as he held the soaked cloth firmly against Hubert’s mouth and nose.

Hubert flailed in his embrace. Muffled cries—both indignant and panicked—snarled through the cloth, but the Anointed One was strong, far stronger than the lithe form cradled in his embrace.

Within moments, his beloved’s struggling ceased, and the thrashing body went slack against him. He held the cloth in place for a little longer, ensuring such pliancy was not a ruse.

He removed the cloth as his love continued to remain still. Stroked a fingertip along the sharp contours of Hubert’s cheek, luxuriating in the warm silk of his beloved’s flushed skin.

“There. We will be home soon, beloved,” he beamed down at his slumbering love, placing a kiss on those lips he had spent so many nights dreaming of. Chapped yet soft. Sweet with the lingering bitterness of coffee. Hubert remained limp, pliant against him. Those pink lips so soft and yielding.

And so perfect. Warm like those of the love whose kiss he had stolen.

There was no waxy texture, nor bitter taste of embalming fluids. No stiff coldness, and no blunt nails clawing at his neck and face, no blade being driven into his flesh, nor any sharp teeth sinking down into his own lips.

No one to interfere. No one to tear his beloved away from his arms once more.

This Hubert was all his, to savour as he pleased.

He smiled down at his intended. Stroked Hubert’s docile face as shockwaves of delirious rhapsody thrummed through his blood.

“I will show you how much you mean to me, my love.”

The stranger appeared in a flash of green light. Blinked into existence through an iridescent flicker that appeared and vanished so quickly that Ferdinand had thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Reality fractured for but the smallest instant, then reverting back, unblemished, with an elastic snap.

The stranger stepped into their world through that momentary fissure, crossed the monastery grounds in a brisk, confident stride. A wild mane of seafoam hair hung around his shoulders, the man garbed in armour of gleaming silver, with a cape billowing behind him bearing the image of a set of flames embroidered into the fabric. At a first glance, the man looked to have walked out of the pictures found in the many fairytales Ferdinand had read as a child—a radiant knight, seemingly forged of sun’s rays—the type of figure one would see staring down the razored maw of a mighty beast and charging forth bravely, nonetheless. A paragon of true virtue and honour, whose blade was wielded to cut down evildoers who dared to harm the innocent.

However, the stranger’s next actions fell well outside the realm of virtue.

It had all happened so quickly, yet every detail of what transpired would remained carved into the insides of Ferdinand’s skull.

The stranger crept across the stables with the disembodied silence of a wraith to where Hubert was currently preoccupied with sweeping out one of the stalls. Hubert’s back was to the other man, his attention focused on clumps of mud and straw that stubbornly evaded the straw bristles of his broom.

With a sudden burst of speed, the stranger closed in the distance between Hubert and himself, struck with the lightning reflexes of a viper. Hubert had paused his task, had just whirled around to face the intruder when he was grabbed from behind. The stranger shoved a rag into Hubert’s mouth, his other arm clamped tightly around the mage’s waist.

The pail of horse feed slipped from Ferdinand’s hands and clattered to the ground at the sight of Hubert thrashing and clawing back against the stranger’s firm grasp—a rabbit tangled within a hunter’s snare. Ferdinand ripped out the ceremonial sword from its sheath, and moved to charge across the grounds to confront the foul villain.

The ordeal should have been a simple matter from there. Ferdinand had the jump on the intruder, and once Hubert was freed, the villain would be outnumbered. Knights patrolling nearby would no doubt hear the commotion and come to their aid and see the foul brute put down. There was no way such a brazen attack would succeed, not in the very heart of Garreg Mach.

But it was then that the stranger’s head turned. Just slightly—enough to angle the side of his face in Ferdinand’s direction whilst his attention remained fixed on Hubert who had just gone limp in his grasp.

Ferdinand froze. The very breath stolen from his lungs as his eyes fell upon the impossible sight of his own visage staring down at Hubert’s unconscious form with deranged fondness.

Older the stranger’s features may have been, they remained unsettling mirror of his own. The same slant to his nose, the same shape to his eyes, the familiar contours of his own jawline—more pronounced on the older man, but disquietingly recognizable, nonetheless. The hair was wrong—an ethereal shimmering green, rather than the copper locks that adorned Ferdinand’s own head. Yet even that noticeable difference did little to calm uneasy swell curdling in his stomach.

Horror clawed at his chest as he watched the stranger lean down to press a kiss to still lips that offered no consent. Pawed at Hubert’s slack face with touches that were sickeningly clear in their intention.

Every part of Ferdinand’s body screamed at him to move. To vanquish Hubert’s attacker.

The paralysis that caged Ferdinand’s body must have only lasted a matter of seconds, yet it felt like an eternity.

The tethers cast by his own shock finally wore off and relinquished their hold on Ferdinand’s limbs. He launched himself forward, sword in hand, and bellowing a fierce battle cry at the depraved villain.

But by then, it was too late…

Just as quickly as the stranger had appeared, he vanished once more through the glowing fissure, taking Hubert with him. With nothing but dust and footprints marking where they last stood.