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There was nothing more he could do. The broken body he had dragged through four million and one cycles had finally given up. It was nothing more than kindling for forty-eight million Coreflames, burned away until not an ember remained in the ashes.
All he could do was entrust everything to the next Phainon, the next Khaslana, knowing they would carry the burden as far as they could and pass it forward, just as he did, before scattering to the wind.
The peaceful West Wind and Sea of Flowers were nothing but a lie. Just like the rest of Amphoreus and the promise of the dawn, it was another sweet fantasy to soothe the fears wrought by the Destruction and bring the cycle to a neat close. So at the end of his journey as Khaslana, there should have been nothingness.
No ground beneath his feet. No air pushing into the cracks of his body. He was completely weightless in a lightless void. The scorching heat of forty-eight million suns ablaze in his chest vanished like a candle blown in the wind. The only way it could have been more peaceful was if his own thoughts ceased with everything else.
But the silence was disrupted by his own breaths rattling through his gaping chest. If he was dead—not just dead but gone—then everything about his existence should have left with those Coreflames, the closest thing he had to a beating heart, torn from him for another.
He opened eyes still his to open and stared into a vast library.
The moment he realised he was somewhere, the weight of his existence came back. The ache in his charred bones, the pull of seared skin, the air stronger than his body sinking like nails into torn flesh. His feet hit the floor.
This was… unexpected was an understatement. The novelty of not knowing, of something never before seen in the script, froze him in place.
A straight path laid before him. A road he couldn’t see the end of but branched off into stretches just as long between the bookcases. The shelves gleamed like steel in a blue-tinged light he only knew descended from another somewhere above him.
His hand flew to his chest, instincts honed over and over again to plunge his fingers in and drag out his hollowed heart. Even if he didn’t know where he was, he knew he never left Amphoreus. This was still a part of Irontomb. The same endless series of cold calculations that he thrashed against with all his might at the conclusion of every cycle. As though these twelve new Coreflames would tip the scales. As though he would suddenly emerge from the prison he had never once overcome in four million attempts.
Maybe now. Maybe here Irontomb was weaker and he had a chance.
But the Coreflames that had destroyed and empowered him in equal measure for millions of cycles were gone. He was empty. The flames that consumed him had been extinguished. There was nothing left.
Just a burned out husk. The cremated remains of a man. There was nothing he could achieve on his own any longer. He had to trust the next Phainon and the next and the next and the next to make the same choice to decimate himself for a universe that didn’t even know of a place called Amphoreus when, in truth, all he wanted was—
“Deliverer?”
Deliverer. Deliverer. Deliverer.
Only one. Only one person had ever called him that with true sincerity.
He stared at the long, endless road ahead of him and couldn’t bring himself to look behind him. He had heard that voice too often in those four million and one cycles only to find they were nothing but delusions—of course. Of course. What else could they have been? What else could it be now? How could it be anything but his fractured mind trying to conjure some comfort he didn’t deserve in his final moments—
“You sure took your time getting here. Now you can’t even bring yourself to face me?”
Cruel. How cruel. The once familiar back and forth of jabs that only grazed skin, dodging all the bruises, cuts and broken bones where their words could do real damage. Words to prod, to incite, with the mutual understanding that they didn’t want to hurt each other. That it was just another competition between them, an opportunity to let themselves loose without repercussions, the way they understood each other best.
But it wasn’t familiar to him anymore. His tongue was heavy with the language he had all but forgotten with no one to speak it to.
“My… dei…”
His throat hadn’t escaped from the searing blaze in his chest. His voice was hardly his own anymore. Too dry and raspy. Too brittle. Any more and it would crumble.
Footsteps approached from behind, echoing off the floor. He knew that sound too. The weight of the footfalls, the soles clicking and armour plates sliding against themselves. He held his breath even as the polished floors showed him a blurry reflection of red and gold.
“Face me.”
“I can’t.”
Four million Mydei’s had seen him as his body degraded and crumbled; his mind always so soon to follow. But this Mydei? He didn’t know if he could handle it when his existence was already fraying apart. He wanted to be allowed to finally unravel. He didn’t know how to let himself. He could only desperately hold on, but to what he wasn’t sure. Just that he felt it slipping through his fingers.
“Deliverer.”
That voice was right behind him, practically murmuring in his ear. He could feel the presence at his back and the slightest distance left gaping between them. Only air. Instead of space, time and Gods from beyond the sky.
The thought curled his hands into trembling fists at his sides, breaths shallow as they whistled through him.
“Does the Deliverer not even deign to look at his former equal, now that he’s amassed such strength.”
His head whipped around. “That’s not—“
And there he was. The blue light cast a sheen over the exposed skin of his torso, his chest, his biceps. It shimmered off his tattoos, unable to mask the sheer redness of them, and the gold and blue jewellery. It glinted off his victorious little smirk.
Mydei. Mydei. Mydei. The first Mydei. His Mydei.
“Was that so hard?” Mydei drawled and his grin grew, bearing fangs, as he tipped his head. It drew him right in, turning the rest of the way on heavy feet.
He watched the gold plates and blue gemstone sway and glint on his ear. Then to the other side and that little braid, always perfect, not a hair out of place, even after emerging bloody from the battlefield. Not even when the two of them were—
“Wow, speechless? And it was always so impossible to get you to stop speaking.”
His eyes burned. It wasn’t the dryness that had haunted his every waking moment, born from all the moisture evaporating from his body, until just seeing through the grit was painful. As though he had lost the right to witness the world. This was something he hadn’t done in so long. He thought his tear ducts had shrivelled dry sometimes in the first ten cycles.
A shaky hand covered his mouth. “J-just… give me a second… and…”
His words broke into a high laugh. Cracked at the edges and the centre and truly just spilling sharp shards out his mouth onto the floor between their feet.
And what? And what?
But Mydei only crossed his arms and gazed up at the endless shelves above them, squinting like there was anything to see. “It’s a lot to take in. But you’ve always been adaptable.”
That really wasn’t the issue. That wasn’t the issue at all but how could he even begin to explain himself. Everything he had done. Everything he had become.
“What is this place?” His voice was still hoarse, tasting like smoke. He didn’t know if it would ever be anything else again.
Mydei hummed, arms crossed. “Honestly, I’m not sure. The last thing I remember is the Black Tide and how its madness consumed me. Until you were forced to return to Castrum Kremnos for our final duel.”
He recounted the events with the same brevity and confidence as any other report he had given, surrounded by the other Chrysos Heirs in the safety of Marmoreal Palace. But there was still an air of wistfulness at the end. Surely for life itself and not…
Not for the first time he had ever driven his sword through Mydei’s tenth thoracic vertebra.
“Then I woke up here,” Mydei said with a helpless little shrug. “I’ve been wandering around ever since. Never found anyone else, or an exit. Yet.”
At some point, he had been forced to conclude that time didn’t pass as it should within Irontomb. He had stalled for four million and one cycles, each of them over a thousand years long, and nothing from the true starry sky had ever sought out the new anomaly of the universe. One preparing to lay waste to all living things the same as it had done to Amphoreus time and time again.
There was no telling how long Mydei had spent inside this place. He was still lucid. Calm and self-assured. The same Mydei he remembered and admired, even if he never would have admitted that last part.
He glanced past Mydei’s head to the books on the shelves. On each spine was a number. Sequential order.
Eternal Recurrence #108,641
Eternal Recurrence #108,642
Eternal Recurrence #108,643
Oh. So he was correct: this was still Irontomb. Somewhere he had never been privy to before. It’s data archive. He really thought he would be… free once he passed the torch to the next Phainon. How foolish of him.
He was still data, after all. And his existence, though unforeseen, had been witnessed with keen interest and recorded for the sake of Destruction. He could only assume something about him and the cycles had prevented Irontomb from storing his data properly. There was likely a different reason behind its inability to process Mydei, who lived and died over and over again, disappearing and reappearing at will.
As much as he teased Mydei about his education in the Kremnoan Detachment and not the Grove, he knew Mydei was never one to turn down knowledge. Anything could be useful for turning the tides of battle at any time. Why limit himself? Especially when he had nothing but time and books.
“How much do you know?” he asked, eyes still caught on that number over Mydei’s shoulder. Cycle 108,642. He wondered if Mydei read that one. “About Amphoreus?”
He latched onto Mydei’s every feature, mapping every subtle shift in his expression with a pleasant tingle when he realised he still remembered what to look for. The corner of his lip thinned and his brows twitched. Ah.
Mydei turned away, throwing out an artfully careless hand. “I read a few things here and there.”
So he knew. The idea that Mydei shared the burden of truth wasn’t a relief. If he could, he would have let Mydei remain in blissful ignorance forever—that the dawn would come, that their actions mattered, that they were real. Only one person had to bear that reality, so why should it be anyone except him.
Mydei quirked a brow. “Do you plan on standing here forever?”
“You said there isn’t an exit.”
Mydei rolled his eyes and he saw Mydei’s hand move. It was nothing. A chiding pat, a friendly hand on the shoulder. He flinched anyway.
Mydei’s hand hovered in the air for a moment. Mydei’s eyes sharpened, a predator that saw weakness in a lame leg or bleeding cut. He still shied away.
Mydei lowered his hand. “If the Grove’s most notorious debate champion can recall, I said I haven’t found an exit yet.”
“You’re still searching.”
“Do you have anything better to do?”
Anything else in these vast rows of books. No night and no day. No one else for company. Only an endless path straight ahead.
“I suppose not.”
“Maybe there is no way out, maybe there is,” Mydei admitted with none of the rage that burned within himself at the thought of an eternal cage. “If we stop and roll over here, then we’ll never know.”
His nonexistent heart, last to he carved out after his stomach, lungs and ribs to make space for the Coreflames, squeezed. A journey with no clear end. Only the hope that the end would eventually come.
So they walked.
They didn’t speak much. Mydei was always good at knowing what he was trying to say and when he didn’t want to say anything at all. Kindred spirits. Ones who could read each other’s bodies and not just their words, and respond in turn. That used to mean sparring or slaying Titankin.
Now, it meant Mydei drifting closer, testing the waters, even as he gazed at the books they passed. His feet moved before his mind did, pointing towards his companion and shrinking that distance again. But he couldn’t bring himself to close it completely, not even to brush their shoulders together, and Mydei accepted that
At some point, the shelves began to change. It was subtle at first. The harsh blue lighting warmed into white then yellow and finally orange. It was reminiscent of a fire light if only he could see the lanterns. The metal shelves darkened, becoming matted and etched with swirls, until he could drag a finger along the grains of dark wood.
Something surfaced in the back of his mind, too hazy to grab ahold of through the fog that had come to accompany all his thoughts.
“We’re here,” Mydei mused with a genuine smile.
It was always a small thing, like he didn’t want anyone to see his happiness and ruin his scary Kremnoan Warrior Prince reputation. Never mind that he played with children in his free time.
He looked at Mydei in silent question but he was already facing one of the shelves, fingers running along aged spines. “I said we’d come here once. Remember?”
Now he remembered. The stain and grain of the wood. The shape of the shelves, if augmented to stretch onwards. The patterned tiles beneath their feet. The Library of Garbaniphoro.
Just the sight of it and his body felt too small for the feelings that rushed through him. Ones that had consumed him the first time he had witnessed the grandest Kremnoan library for himself. A lifetime too late.
“Why…”
Mydei plucked a book from the shelf. “Who knows. Many libraries here have merged into one. This one only contains books on Kremnos and Nikador. The ones in Dawncloud follow the Council of Elders, Okhema and Kephale. The Grove seems to contain their findings. I found some of your essays there. How did Anaxa never throw you from the classroom with that atrocious handwriting?”
“I burned your library.”
Mydei opened the book. “I’m aware.”
His head spun and he was dizzy even through the fog of holding a lit torch in his hands and taking it to shelves of history irreplaceable to everyone except himself.
“You…” he laughed, high and weak. “Aren’t you going to… retaliate?“
Mydei paused mid-turn, letting the page fall back into place. He glanced out the corner of his eye. “Do you want me to?”
Yes. No. He didn’t know. Wouldn’t it be right for Mydei to strike him as many times as he had done to him, some version of him, when he took something Mydei had loved so dearly. There was no grander purpose or ugly justification to it. Just grief.
When he didn’t reply, Mydei lowered his eyes again. “I have no interest in coming to blows now that I finally have some decent company.”
In the past, he would carry their conversations, loosing his tongue with whatever he thought could spur Mydei’s reaction. Now he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t decent company. He was hardy human.
“Although,” Mydei spoke slowly, tinged with amusement that came as a rough laugh, “perhaps the aftershocks of us trading blows could finally flatten this place for good.”
“Have you tried?”
Mydei’s look was flat, unimpressed. He was always one for actions over words if actions could suffice. He took a step back and swung his leg. It slammed into the shelf with a force that shattered Titankin. The books didn’t even shake.
He watched Mydei lower his leg and return to his book. “So even that unstoppable body of yours can meet an immovable object.”
The words came so easily that he forget where he was, who he was, for a moment. But then his skin cracked and ached at the corners of a smile and he could only remember.
“You are aware you were quite immovable yourself.” He tilted his head at Mydei as he slotted the book back onto the shelf with a sigh, “By my side, at my back, if I ever tried to shake you off, there you were anyway. A blade aimed at its purpose. The hope you offered to the people without wavering even as the Black Tide rose to subsume the holy city.”
He glanced down at his feet, shifting his weight between them. He never realised Mydei thought of him that way. If he did, then he never thought Mydei would admit it in a warm voice. A gentle one that seeped through the cracks in his chest and settled there without breaking or burning.
“I’ve changed since then.”
Mydei looked at him, really looked at him, and he didn’t know what he wanted Mydei to see. The Phainon he used to be, or the broken Khaslana he had become.
“From where I’m standing, you haven’t changed at all, Deliverer.”
Ridiculous. Ridiculous notion. Even the idea was laughable. So laughable he couldn’t bring himself to laugh.
Hadn’t changed? When the Phainon of Mydei’s memories was this shining, ignorant beacon of hope and heroism.
Now? Now his body was cracked open. His skin ashen like the final splinters of wood after a fire. His head cracked open where his mind slipped through and away from him and the fog came in. His chest where the Coreflames had burned through flesh and bone and skin and eventually burst like golden blood, pure blazing sunlight, to devour him.
Oh. Oh, he understood now.
“You’re not real,” he breathed.
“What?”
“The only reason you would say something like that is because you’re not real.” He shook his head, eyes wide. It made sense now. “You just… I just made you up. Again. Because—because I missed you. So much.”
“Mydei” narrowed his eyes. “Should I be insulted or flattered?”
“Both?”
“Mydei” sighed and muttered under his breath. Kremnoan. He knew what it meant. He knew. He had picked up fragments of the Kremnoan language over the cycles. At one point he could hold a conversation. But now he couldn’t recall. He’d let those skills burn away when each harsh syllable only cruelly reminded him of the person he wanted to speak them to most.
If he had been able to grasp the knowledge, the memories, he might have expected it when Mydei’s fist whipped him across the mouth.
Body all too frail, he stumbled and hit the shelf. It was solid at his back, nothing moving or creaking or raining dust on him. Not even when Mydei’s hand slammed beside his head, leaning close with a dangerous shine to his narrowed eyes.
He’d forgotten how beautiful Mydei looked when he was angry. All the Mydeis he’d encountered as Khaslana and not Phainon had never spared him much anger even as he aimed for their tenth thoracic vertebra. It was usually surprise. If those Mydei’s deduced something close to the truth then it was only ever grim grit and determination. Then peace crowned in gold.
His jaw throbbed. “You hit me.”
“I only claimed to have no interest in beating you. But I’m willing to beat the sense into you if I must.”
He massaged at the wound. It wouldn’t bruise. But it was nostalgic of tussles in the training grounds, in the ruined temples, in the dirt, and all the scrapes and bruises they came with.
“You’ve never done that before,” he said, which wouldn’t make sense to his Mydei.
One who had punched and kicked him and smacked him with the flat of a spear, sword or claymore—whichever Phainon presented as their newest competition with a flourish—many, many times.
But the Mydei in his head would vanish when he turned to look. A mocking whisper on the wind. If it stayed, it was to tease him with the deliciously painful possibility. Only to dissipate at the end of his outstretched fingertips.
Mydei snorted. “If you still need convincing, I can go again.”
“No…”
They were too close. He couldn’t breathe without smelling the musk of books and ripe pomegranates. If the Mydei of his hallucinations ever smelled like anything, it was only ever blood, smoke and death.
He slid down the bookshelf to sit.
Mydei stared imperiously down at him pathetically hunched on the floor, before he lowered to the ground beside him.
His clawed fingertips grazed at the floor. “You really saw visions of me? Heard my voice?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “More than the others. They would always try to stop me.”
They saw what he was doing to someone who looked like their Phainon. Whittling himself down to kindling and setting himself alight to hold back the darkness in wait of the true dawn.
And they told him to stop. That they would find another way. Abandon his god-complex, his martyrdom, his flawless being. As though he had never tried and failed and watched them drown in the Black Tide.
But Mydei…
“You were the only one who didn’t.”
Even when he embodied the role of Strife and challenged him every time without fail to that final duel with only one ending, it was only ever to deliver glory, respect and determination. A test of his resolve and a final farewell in a language only understood by them.
He breathed, an exhale in the vague shape of a laugh. “You always understood me best.”
Mydei shuffled in the corner of his eye. Then pulled something from his pocket and dumped it in his hands, something solid and heavy.
Mydei crossed his arms. “Open it.”
It was a book. Wrapped in a ragged cover frayed at the edges and spine. An amateurish bind, incomparable to the skilled hands of those responsible for the Groves’ library.
He knew what it was, but he shook it anyway, like a child with a boxed gift. There was only the rustle of parchment. “What is it?”
“Oh? What happened to the Deliverer who charged ahead so boldly with hardly a second thought? Perhaps you have changed after all.”
“Very funny.”
He curled his fingers around the cover. Mydei watched him do it, and not open the book.
“But what is it?”
“It’s a gift. Now open it before you disrespect the gift giver.”
“Should I gasp with surprise, too? Shed a few tears in gratitude? I would hate to insult the gift giver’s delicate sensibilities.”
“Haikas,” Mydei hissed and the meaning of that word came to him in an instant.
It was a real laugh now from his lips and Mydei was as startled at the noise as himself. He didn’t realise he could still do that either.
Then he opened the book to the smell of wheat fields.
The bookshelf at his back vanished and without it he tumbled flat. Rough bristles and hard ground. The scent of wheat and saltwater. The sun shining down on his skin that could no longer feel warmth like it could as a boy.
Slowly, so slowly every old ache in his body reawakened and even that couldn’t penetrate the fog in his mind, he sat up and stared down the hill.
No…
“How…”
It was over. It was over. He had passed the duty of Khaslana onto the next Phainon. So why is he back—
The wheat rustled and he whipped around in search of a glowing figure, a beacon, an ideal. A reminder of how far he had fallen.
There was only Mydei. His Mydei who hadn’t sat up from the long grass, hands tucked behind his head and eyes closed to bask in the sunlight so different from the dreary dimness of the libraries.
Mydei shrugged. “I found it some time ago and kept hold of it.”
He looked from Mydei sprawled out in the sun, more cat than a lion, to the small town below. Satisfied and content, in this tiny place he had only ever dared to dream—his most foolish, homesick dreams where he could have it all instead of nothing—could hold someone as bold and vivacious as Mydei.
“Welcome to Aedes Elysiae.”
Mydei opened a lazy eye. “Are you going to give me a tour?”
He wanted to. He wanted it so badly. Had dreamed of showing Mydei the small but cosy house he had grown up in, introducing him to his parents—as friend, comrade or something more didn’t matter—and everyone else in the village, catching fish and eating dinner together and falling asleep sharing one of the two cots they had at home.
But not when he looked like this.
Not when the smell of smoke and death wouldn’t come from the Black Tide at his back or the torch he had taken to the wheat fields. It would come from him. Just him.
He lowered himself to his side, staring at the sunlight catching on gold laid over a sculpted chest rising and falling. “Another time.”
And Mydei, who knew him best, learned him from the rhythm of his steps, the swing of his blade, the jabs and the competitions and everything in between, knew what he meant.
Mydei pushed himself up and stretched, muscles taut as his arms pulled overhead, back arching, like the chimeras he was so fond of. “Then tell me about it.”
Not Aedes Elysiae. Not his childhood. Not everyone he had called friends, neighbours, teachers, and cut down in pursuit of an endless, impossible journey. Just it.
Just anything he wanted to talk about.
He felt his eyes prick again and he squinted against the sunlight even though he knew the burn had nothing to do with the light shining in his eyes. Old but so forgotten it felt new.
He threw an arm over his face. “I killed you.”
Yes you, once. But also not you. But someone who was you to someone who was me. Someone with your face, your voice, your little smirk and your blush at the tips of your ears.
All for Mydei’s judgement. Words he never had the opportunity to say before…
“I love you,” he breathed but he didn’t feel lighter for it. It burned all over again, more painful and raw than ever before, and he shuddered with it. His breath scraped through gritted teeth. “And I still killed you.”
Dawnmaker through that tenth thoracic vertebra. Over and over again. Drenched in gold as it spilled through his fingers and pooled on the floor and he imagined scooping it from the ground, clawing it back from the earth, and letting it run off his fingertips back into the open wound. Of carving out his own tenth thoracic vertebra and slotting it in place of the one he had shattered, and then tenderly stitching him back together.
Something, a gauntleted hand, gripped at his forearm and yanked it aside. He was dazzled by the sunlight but when the white spots faded, everything in his vision was Mydei.
His hair like the endless wheat fields if not for the tinge of red at the ends. His skin flushed under the sun, burning hot like the tattoos that pulsed with the rage pursing his lips and pinching his brows. His eyes golden like the dawn, brighter and more blinding than the sun as they glared down at him.
“And on that day I told you where to stab your blade to claim my life, what else did I say to you?”
Those words had repeated endlessly in his head. Every time, he imagined the Phainon and Mydei of that cycle and recalled the fearhurtdetermination of the first and only time it was him entrusted with that terrible burden and highest honour.
“If there comes a day when we meet again on the battlefield, and you stand opposed to the Flame Chase, remember to stab my sword through your… tenth thoracic vertebra.” His breath hitched and he took two breaths to calm down before he finished. “That’s your weak spot and the only way to kill you.”
Mydei’s scowl pulled into something smug, preening that even after all these years those words never left him. As though he could ever forget anything about Mydei.
“And you gave me your word. With the way you’ve been acting, you made me think you’d forgotten.”
He tried to take his arm back, squirming under the weight of Mydei’s grip, Mydei’s words, Mydei’s… did he even have the right to call it affection? To claim something such as that for himself?
But Mydei shifted his weight and his body was just so tired, so frail, that he couldn’t stop Mydei from pinning his hand to the grass.
Another familiarity. A position so similar to the conclusion of many duels. Where he lost his sword and they went hand-to-hand, or Mydei picked up his spear to refute any jabs at his brutish nature devoid of finesse. In the end, it was Mydei’s legs on either side of his body and Mydei’s hand curled tight around his wrist to hold it above his head.
Mydei leaned down, hair falling around them, enclosing them in a world where everything was the colour of the sun breaking over the horizon.
“With that final duel, you fulfilled my greatest wish.”
His breaths quickened, rising and falling with the rattle of metal from Mydei’s necklace where it swung against the base of his own throat. It sat there, heavy and burdensome and cold, but his skin felt alive with it.
“Tell me, when the Mydeimoses that came after me faced you, did they ever retreat?”
He swallowed down the memories of four million and one duels, some less honourable than others, but he still knew. “Never.”
“Then you already have your answer. You gave me the honour of dying in battle, of crowning you in my blood, and fuelling the blazing sun of deliverance. And do you think I ever would have bestowed that honour onto you if it wasn’t deserved?”
“Never.”
Mydei’s hand squeezed his wrist and it might have felt like rage if he weren’t staring up at Mydei’s smile. “So open your eyes, you self-blinded fool, and face me.”
A command that he followed like second nature. He couldn’t deny Mydei even if he wanted to. The proof was soaked gold into Dawnmaker’s edge.
He searched for something. Disgust at his crumbling body. Anger at the actions he had taken. Fear at the knowledge he would do it again if he must.
There was nothing. Only—
“If you want something, then as always…” Mydei’s breath ghosted across his cheek, his lips, eyes lidded as he stopped at that final distance between them. “You’ll have to take it from me.”
He jolted up and smashed their lips together. It should have hurt. He felt the clash of their teeth, tasted the cut of someone’s lip and felt the gold running down his chin. His throat, tasting like ambrosia. Mydei only chuckled in a puff of air and rumble of his chest and kissed him back with equal fervour.
Pinned by the arm, his shoulder protested at the angle but he couldn’t bring himself to care. On rare occasions when Mydei was less considerate of his inevitable fate or Phainon was more bold, more reckless, he had seen this scene as a spectator.
A passionate kiss shared in secret. After a spar, in darkened corners, behind closed doors.
But he knew it wasn’t something for him. He hadn’t been so confident nor rash. His Mydei had been all too aware of his fated end. So no matter how he craved that scene between lovers, it was nothing but another pain to scald himself with.
He reached with his free hand, wound it around Mydei’s neck, and pulled. Mydei let his body fall in a crushing weight that made him feel more weightless, more free, than even that first, original cycle or the brief moment he thought his existence had truly faded away.
The two of them were more tolerant to pain than any other in Amphoreus. The ache in their lungs as they refused to part was nothing.
But Mydei still broke away first and a thrill raced through him at the sight of Mydei’s swollen lips, gaping around his heavy breaths. He couldn’t help winding his hand into his hair and pulling him back in.
He wanted to more. More sensation. More evidence. More proof that he had returned home to his Mydei at the end of it all and gotten what he wanted but thought he could never have.
Time didn’t pass in this preserved vision of his hometown. There was no way to know how long they languished there in the wheat fields, sharing kisses and words of missed time, longing, loneliness that, now shared, tasted like promises, relief, exultation.
He nuzzled his head into Mydei’s lap, sighing at the scrape of bare fingers through his hair, gauntlets discarded beside them. This hill had been his favourite place in the whole village. It had the best view of Aedes Elysiae and the sea, his home and the promise of more to life. Whenever he didn’t want to be found by others, he could hide here.
Now, in a corner at the end of the world, he didn’t care to gaze at either nor hide from the only person left to find him. Not when he could stare straight above him at the most beautiful view of all.
He blinked lazily. “You have a bit of wheat in your hair.”
“Hmm?” Mydei tugged at the ends of his own hair, trying to get a glimpse.
He raised both hands, reaching for the sky and the sun so close by but never scorching. “Here. Close your eyes, and let me help you.”
Mydei arched a brow but closed his eyes and leaned down. He easily plucked the wheat stalk from behind his ear and another shorter one from his bangs. But he let his hands run through Mydei’s hair and Mydei kept his eyes closed, his face completely relaxed as he leaned into the touch.
When he cupped both cheeks in his hands, Mydei finally opened his eyes and his face was no longer just relaxed. But soft.
“Deliverer—“
“Not that name,” he murmured before he could reconsider.
Because he wasn’t the Deliverer. There was nothing for him to Deliverer, no dawn or new beginning within his reach.
The twitch of Mydei’s brow betrayed his disagreement but the crease smoothed itself out. “Then what should I call you?”
Because Mydei knew that Phainon wasn’t his real name. It was the name he had chosen because the citizens needed something to call their hero. And then he’d left it behind with the naivety of his own heroism.
Except his real name didn’t quite fit either. A name he discarded and then reclaimed and discarded again. It was a torch he had passed on. A burden he had carried as far as he could.
“I don’t know.”
Mydei’s head tilted right into the hands cupping his cheeks. Cute. “Your name is irrelevant. I already told you: to me you’ve never changed. What difference does a name make.”
Tears stung his eyes again. This time he let them build. Let Mydei, gazing down at him with tenderness, see them fill his eyes.
“You have time to decide.”
And then spill. He could feel the warmth of them down his cheeks, catching in the small cracks, and the brush of Mydei’s thumbs under his eyes.
He grasped at Mydei, at his wrists, desperate to keep him in place just like this as he whined, “But I like how you call out to me.”
With sincerity. Like he was worth something even now after lifetime upon lifetime of failure and all the evidence of it carved into his body.
Mydei took one hand away, despite the weak noise of protest, and flicked his forehead. “You can’t have it both ways.”
He dragged Mydei’s hand back down and Mydei didn’t fight it. Mydei only indulged him, cradling his face and wiping away his tears.
“… you never did call me by my name.”
“You earned your title. I stood by my word to address you as such.”
“I know,” he breathed, feeling the weight of an oracle card and a ring set upon a scale. “But sometimes I wish I had lost that day, just to hear you call me that.”
Mydei’s lip curled into something too fond to be truly mean. “How embarrassing for you. I had no idea you were so desperate.”
“I wasn’t exactly subtle.”
A tinge of sadness, and another sweep of his thumbs for tears that hadn’t yet fallen. “The whole of Okhema had a betting pool for when we would finally become entangled, or whether we already were and would make it known. It was my… cowardice,” he said the word like it pained him, “that stood between us. And I would make the same decision again.”
He let his eyes close. It wasn’t cowardice at all. Just Mydei’s consideration. “It was better this way.”
If he had Mydei and lost him, had to kill him over and over knowing the feel of his lips, the taste of him on his tongue, the ardour shared equally between them—he would have lost his mind even sooner, knowing he would never have it again.
At least this way, the way they were, he had made a habit of keeping that love alive himself. He didn’t need anyone else to water it, nurture it. Only him, even when the ever growing flames charred everything else beyond recognition. He protected this feeling with all of his might and it persisted.
His hands dragged from Mydei’s wrists, up, so that his palms cradled the backs of his hands and he didn’t need to say anything more. You have me now, as I have you now. For however long now lasts.
A deep inhale and then…
“Phainon…” The soft press of lips against his forehead. “You did well.”
The last of his dignity slipped away like water through his fingers and he choked on a wet sob as the tears fell anew. Mydei did with words what four million and one cycles of torment could not. Phainon broke apart, but with love and not anguish.
Each heaving breath shuddered through him and Mydei couldn’t wipe the tears away quick enough. But he cried and kisses fell upon his cheeks like gentle rain to take them away.
“Break if you must. Later, we can put the pieces back together.”
The sound that tore from him was hardly human but it was the least monstrous Phainon had felt since he first abandoned the name Phainon. Mydei only smiled into every kiss lingering on his skin.
“You fought your hardest. It’s time for you to rest now.”
Strong arms gathered him up, wrapping him in gentle warmth, and Mydei laid them side by side. Mydei’s hands cradled his head and tucked him close but Phainon could only wail into him and clutch at his back in a plea to not let go. Never again. If the day came, then he would shatter completely.
“I love you,” Mydei said in words, in hands brushing through hair, in lips against everywhere touched by salt and fire. “Phainon, you delivered hope to Amphoreus.”
As he sobbed with the pain of four million and one cycles, Mydei held him close. He finally finally splintered apart and Mydei gathered all the pieces in his arms no matter how fragile and dangerous, and rebuilt him from the remains Phainon had been content to scatter as nothing more than ash in the wind.
In the wheat fields of home, he remembered how it felt to be human in tears that no longer turned to steam off his skin. But were tenderly wiped away by his Mydei’s hands out of love for his Phainon.