Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I…So everything she had done, everything she had asked us to do, had commanded us to do….”

“It pains me to say this, but even I am unsure. Perhaps she started out with good intentions in mind, but the Stellaron’s influence on her pushed her into making more warped and skewed decisions. Decisions which we followed.”

Could they even have chosen not to follow them?

“I…I’ll need some time to think about this.”

“Take the next week off, Captain. Tie up your work for today and get a break. The truth…is not easy. It is why I could not tell the public about what truly transpired. It would shatter any remaining trust they had in the government.”

“U-Understood. Yes, Lady Bronya.”

-

It begins as a routine patrol with four other fresh recruits and a higher level lieutenant. Something that was a rite of passage, to be led by the Captain of the Silverane Guards himself, along a patrol route within the outer limits of the Silvermane Guard Restricted Zone to ease them into the job just after they had graduated from military school. 

Where Fragmentum creatures were few in number but occasionally encountered, it was supposed to be simple, unsurprising, and tense but not anything out of the recruits' level. 

However, the battlefield was rarely forgiving and things often quickly took a turn for the worst. Gepard had not been expecting to face down a pair of Ice out of Space during this patrol, since they rarely manifested or spawned within the confines of the narrow, empty, freezing streets and abandoned houses that lined the restricted zone. 

Already, he knew his path was disadvantaged against such a creature, for ice could not counter ice, and a series of mishaps happened during the fight. A trickle of avoidable oversights and poor human reaction to a new threat.

One of the new recruits had panicked and used the wrong strategy against the Ice out of Space, which had forced Gepard’s hand to pull the younger soldier out of the fray and away from danger. In doing so, he was forced to use his abilities to create a window of opportunity, which naturally lasted a lot shorter than what he was accustomed to and reacted in an unpredictable manner. Ice against ice was not a very good combination after all. 

Meanwhile, the second Ice out of Space had injured his lieutenant, and Gepard knew he had to call for a strategic retreat. So he buys them time by erecting an icy wall and retreats back from that junction, two of the calmer recruits helping the injured lieutenant back whilst Gepard covers their flank. 

Using the newly developed communicator, he radios back over to base and informs them to send for a medical evacuation for their team, and another two squads to take down the Fragmentum creatures. 

“Is everyone alright? I’m aware that lieutenant Gabriel has his leg injured. How about the rest of you?” 

The group of them had settled within the confines of a shophouse within the restricted zone, as Gepard tended to his lieutenant. The other four younger recruits were quiet, with Lenard being apologetic about his performance out there, whilst the other three were uneasy. 

Having lodged themselves within the first floor of the shophouse, the recruits looked at the boarded up windows around them, followed by the shattered window glass and marble tiles which were scattered across the floor. Beatrice moves and shifts a few of them aside with her boots, nudging the pieces away to the corners of the room so that they have space to sit and set down their equipment on a cleaner floor. 

“We are alright, sir.” Evans replies, the young, brown haired male unable to stop flashing glances at the gaps between the wooden boards on the boarded up windows. He was careful to stay away from the rusty nails which hinged the thick planks over the windows, blocking it up against something from the outside.

Either the cold or the Fragmentum, if Gepard could hazard a guess. 

Most of the furniture in what looked to be the first floor of a clothing shop had been dismantled, with metal and steel hangers piled up on the floor having long since been frozen stiff by the cold. There was no wooden furniture in sight, indicating that the last few survivors had likely used them up as fuel to fend off the cold. 

The old, orange and warm wallpaper which used to line the walls had long since deteriorated and had been peeled off by the harsh temperatures, where many objects not built for the eternal winter did not last. Gepard nudges a fallen mannequin with the tip of his boot, the fabric on its surface long being stripped to feed a fire, leaving behind only its metallic skeleton and frame which laid fallen from an elevated display. It also pushes aside some snow that had blown in through gaps of the planks on the windows, leaving behind a trail. 

An empty granite cashier receptionist stands at the back of the room, having been stripped bare of all items that could be used to be, and only inflammable objects such as glass paperweights, a mechanical cash machine, and gold lined chairs remained. 

It left them standing in the centre of a sparse space, with boarded up windows and a door leading out into the alleyway, and the cashier facing outwards, but located furthest from the entrance. A closed, lead lined wooden door lead deeper into the shop house, and next to it, was a grand, ornate set of stairs leading to its upper floors. A thin sheet of ice had formed a crust over the granite bannister,  

For now, Gepard was certain they were safe from the Fragmentum from the outside, but he still needed to clear out the inside and make sure it was safe. Whichever creatures that could possibly be in the shop house had to be small, so no elite bosses or monsters, and likely individual fragmentum creatures he could take care of by himself.

“Lieutenant Gabriel shall stay behind with Evans and Francis, until backup comes. Lenard, Beatrice, come with me. We need to clear this shophouse out to make sure there’s nothing lurking around.” A quick analysis had shown that his lieutenant’s leg was likely fractured or broken, and he left the two recruits, one of which was trained as a combat medic, to help take care of him. 

Beatrice and Lenard make their way over to him.

“Let’s clear this shophouse to make sure there’s nothing lying in wait for us. I believe splitting up will be the most efficient choice, and I want the both of you to head upstairs to clear it out. If there’s any trouble, you can shout for Evans or Francis to assist you. But remember to stick to protocol and clear the rooms accordingly.” He briefs the two of them, who are the most unshaken and unphased of the four recruits. 

“We’ll use our communicators to check in on each other during the process. Let’s meet back here in fifteen minutes. This shophouse does not look too big, but if it leads to another building, do not head there and close the entrance off to prevent any unwanted visitors from entering. Are we clear?”

“Yes sir.”

The two of them run a check to make sure their weapons and communicators were working, as did Gepard himself, and he decides that due to the small confines of the building, he has to leave Earthwork behind in the main foyer. Lieutenant Gabriel offers him his standard issue rifle, which Gepard thanks him for and takes it up.

With a nod, he waves for the other two recruits to head out before he alone approaches that steel reinforced wooden door. 

The knob opens with a few rough twists, as he scans the corridor ahead of him. 

The floor which used to be carpeted was simply bare, filled with white linoleum tiles that lined the floors, the walls of the corridor which had roughly six rooms three on each side, a faded, cracking grey. He closes the door behind him, taking a step into the corridor, each of his footsteps clacking across the floor, with no way to completely silence his presence due to the material of the tiles. 

Gepard raises his rifle, holding it at the ready as he cautiously scans the corridor. 

Small, elegant flower shaped ceiling lambs which hung overhead had long since rusted away, with many hanging empty or having fallen onto the white floor, brittle steel having cracked or snapped from the cold. Even within the building, while it was slightly warmer, Gepard could feel a cold draft blowing towards him, indicating that there was an opening which led out into the cold. It also meant that heat was being bled out from the building. 

He traces the crack along the wall to the first door, finding the door wide open as he peeks over the edge of the door.

His breath hitches.

Around a fireplace, a group of people were huddled around it, of which he counted three individuals. 

“Hello?”

He calls out to them, setting his rifle down.

There was no way they had missed out any survivors. Even if this was the edge of the restricted zone, only military personnel were allowed in this area. There should not be anyone here. 

The silence is uneasy.

The three of them were bundled up in layers of clothes, as the captain made his footsteps purposefully loud, hoping to catch their attention, any one of them. 

The lack of response from them was foreboding. A sign that…

Gepard walks closer, and gently shakes one of their shoulders. 

The person falls back across the floor with no movement, curled up, cold and dead. 

The captain freezes. 

He did not want his guess to be true, but all the signs pointed to it. No lack of response, no movement, no sounds made, there was not a single sign of life. 

Even so, he reaches out with a gloved hand to try and feel for a pulse.

There is none. 

Their skin is frozen solid, even beneath layers and layers of clothes, as Gepard checks up on the other two individuals, finding them both also dead. He glances at the fireplace, where a pile of dead embers and ashes were, ice having formed within the fireplace.

The fire had long since died out.

Who were they? Why had they been stuck out here, having frozen to death in this cold? How long had they been here? And how did none of the guards know of their presence and existence?

Questions bubble forth, only coming unanswered as Gepard lays the corpses to rest, arranging them neatly down on the floor so as to give them a respectful send off. He would get the rest of his men to investigate and handle this. 

He was not new to the sight of frozen corpses in the snow.

Littered across the frozen, arctic landscape, corpses buried beneath mounds of snow occasionally emerged. It was a disturbing sight, but a reality for them, for the scouts who ventured out and past, many did not make it back. Many also discovered more bodies, from a bygone era, lives taken when the Eternal Freeze had begun to set in. It was simply a reality, a sight that all soldiers grew accustomed to, once they had ventured out past a certain point from the safety of their city. 

With soldiers dying on the frontlines, death became a constant companion, and the sight of those having long since fallen to the snow was just another numb memory.

It was why Belobog was the last bastion of humanity on this icy wasteland.

With the sealing of the Stellaron by the Nameless, he knew more and more bodies would be recovered as the snow melted. It was simply a matter of discovering when they had died, and if they were of the current natives living amongst them now. 

Still, it unnerves him slightly to realise the sheer amount of people who had died due to exposure and hypothermia. All the more reason why survival training and always being prepared was extremely important. There were always stories on how the cold could kill, and it killed quickly. 

He continues to scan the room, finding nothing else remarkable, the shattered window blew a cold, harsh breeze in, as Gepard stepped over broken glass to approach it, wary of the stripped floors beneath his feet which gave way to damaged concrete. Peeking out the window, he found an internal courtyard in which was enclosed by the shop, long since stripped bare of all life.

A broken fountain sits in the small open area, perhaps being large enough to fit five men across standing shoulder to shoulder. It was as if someone had tried to repurpose that crammed space into a decorative area, but the scale of the imposing brick walls which surrounded it on all sides merely made it suffocating instead.

Gepard tears his gaze away from the broken fountain, with its almost crimson coloured rusted bronze worn off and cracked, and towards the corpses in the room with him. He should return to the others and report those first, lest they get another scare. He doubted the recruits could take too much, especially on their first patrol.

Tuning in on his communicator, he flips through a few channels, finding only static on most of them, which was not unusual, as Serval had mentioned that Belobog’s signal was quite poor.  

The static claws at his mind. Akin to a thousand hushed whispers and conversations overlaid over each other until there was nothing left but gibberish, Gepard winces at the noise, at how it causes a sharp pain through his mind and forms the beginnings of a migraine. His mind subconsciously laps at the noise, diving in deeper into the sound as if trying topiecetogertheramessageheshouldstop.

Gepard turns it off, trying to get the residual buzzing out from his brain before he continues what he was supposed to do. When he returned back, he was definitely going to complain to his sister on how annoying the static was.

He opts to use his phone instead, and also finds that he has no cell service.

Scratch that.

If none of his devices were working, he should just walk back and tell them himself, since they were what, a few metres away from where he was.

Leaving the room behind, Gepard walks out into the corridor, past the hanging chandelier and back to the door leading into the front of the shophouse.

“I found a few corpses back in the room there-”

The room is empty.

Gepard blinks, his gaze sweeping the room. 

“Evans? Francis? Gabriel?” He calls out, as he moves over to where the injured lieutenant had once been laid upon. 

There is no answer.

Nothing but the sound of howling wind piercing through gaps in the broken planks boarding up where windows had once been, a whistling noise which cuts through the air. Gepard looks around, searching for where they had unpacked some of their items for first aid supplies, for where he had left Earthwork-

The corner sits empty.

“Beatrice? Lenard?” He walks over to where the stairs were, calling out to the room above. 

No one answers.

“Is anyone here?”

No one answers.

“Hello?”

No one answers.

He should stop.

He trudges up the stripped stairs, finding not a single person in sight, as he walks back down and confirms what he knows. 

The emptiness of this shophouse settles in.

He tries his communicator again, finding nothing but static. 

Buzzing, ever present, a hum of a million whispers which tried to speak to him.

He shuts it off immediately and steadies himself against a wall.

“Let’s never turn that thing on again unless you really, really have to, Gepard.” He murmurs to himself. The second floor leads into another set of rooms, which Gepard opts to not explore yet.

He knew his men and their training long enough to know they would never move an injured man from a safe zone, and there was no signs of a struggle or anything to indicate they had been forced to move Lieutenant Gabriel out of danger. In fact, their disappearances were clean. Too clean.

“Think, Geppie, Think.”

Earthwork and the first aid supplies had been moved. He walks back over to the corner where he had left his trusty weapon, and where the first aid kit had been laid out. 

The corner stares at him blankly, the dull faded orange wall paper peeling and dulled by the cold.

His men would never move Earthwork without his permission. Even the recruits knew that. He walks back over to where they had let Gabriel rest atop a stripped lounge chair. There is no traces of blood, no indentation or even any residual warmth, Gepard notes, as he peels off his glove to feel for anything his injured Lieutenant might have left behind.

He tightens his grip on his rifle involuntarily, as he sets his glove and gauntlet back on.

Everything else remained the same.

The slightly shifted skeleton of the mannequin, those boarded up windows and barricaded doors from the outside world, broken glass that had been shifted into a pile to clear space for them. They could not have gone past him in the corridor he had taken, because he would have known the moment they entered. The marble floor simply amplified any person’s footsteps, and he definitely would have picked up on it. 

That leaves exploring the shophouse and its corridors as his only option. 

He was certain his men were not deserters. 

He was certain.

His men had never disobeyed him.

They had not.

(He recalls a time when he had carried out the late Supreme Guardian Cocolia’s instructions to advance on the frontline by 20 metres. That had been one of the few times his men had argued against him, but who was he to deny her orders then? Of course, the resulting death toll from such a poorly thought out and issued command had fell onto his shoulders. By then, he knew his men had a right to disobey him.)

He shoves those thoughts aside.

Thinking about Lady Cocolia brought him great…internal frustration. 

More so after Bronya had told him the truth.

“Focus, Gepard. Focus.”

He decides that his next best course of action is to investigate the second floor of the shophouse. Following that, he would head deeper into the confines of the house.

But first, he casts a quick glance at the door they had barricaded on their way in. It was hard to peer out through the boarded up windows, especially knowing how the snow easily blinded them, so he opted to push the barricade aside, shoving the decorative marble block away from where it blocked the door. 

Doing it alone was not easy, since he had two others helping him when they initially sealed the exit in, and the debris on the ground caused more harm than good, creating more friction between the rectangular marble block and the ground. What kind of clothes shop had such random pieces of decor anyways?

He eventually gets it clear, giving him enough space to open one of the two aluminium decorated doors to swing inwards, as Gepard raises his rifle and steps out of the building. 

Instead of the back alley, with its cobblestone walls and worn down bricks, which should have been the sight he would have been greeted with, he stares ahead.

He stares ahead at the sea of endless snow, stretching on and on infinitely into the horizon until he could no longer see the end.

He was lost.

Chapter Text

“The Commercial District has fallen. We've transferred the residents to the Outer Municipal District for the time being. The Garrison lost 26 fighters... but I…”

“Go on, Gepard.”

“I... I'm not sure that they're dead... I saw their broken figures lingering in the Fragmentum…What happened back there defied all reason... it was madness. Madam Guardian, if this continues…”

“...I know well the consequences, Gepard. You may leave.”

Did she really comprehend the weight of his words? The loss of life he had to handle, had to bear the burden for? She had not seen their corpses reanimated before his own eyes, crystal growths jutting out from bleeding skin, puppeteering and defiling his men who had given up their lives to protect others. 

It leaves him feeling tired. 

-

None of this makes sense.

Gepard steps back, back into the room where his men had just vanished on him, and back into the confines of what seemed to be the only building standing in the entire area. The wind no longer howls, no breeze tries to force its way in. 

The captain tries to think.

He pulls the layers of his clothes closer to his person, and closes the door behind him. 

He sits down where his lieutenant had once been, and thinks.

He was certain that they had been in an alley before this. Retreating from an unexpected attack by a pair of Ice out of Space, to which they sought shelter in this shophouse that was on the outer limits of the Restricted Zone, but still within its confines. 

There were two pressing problems.

Firstly, the disappearance of his men, all their equipment and supplies.

(They would not desert him. There were no signs of a struggle. No signs of life. Earthwork was missing. Their supplies were missing. What happened to them? Was there any motive for this? How could they have vanished so cleanly and without a trace?)

Secondly, the disappearance of the entire alleyway. 

(There was no way to materialise an entire space out of nothing. Could he have been teleported? He knows the Astral Express Crew possesses such technology, but he had not moved from the house.)

Unless…he had been the one displaced.

But how?

How would that have happened without him knowing? In the very least, there had to be signs, a strange distortion in reality, a feeling, a sensation, anything, anything.

Clues.

There had to be clues. 

Traces or something leading to an exit, back to his men, back to where he should be.

The world outside howls.

Gepard shivers at the thought of venturing out of the shophouse alone and into the approaching blizzard. He shivers at the thought of being plunged into this strange, and likely dangerous situation. 

He even pinches himself, just to make sure this was not a dream.

It was not a dream.

The reality of his situation slowly sinks in, and the captain cannot hold back the walls of denial that he had erected to give him a facade of calmness and rationality. He does not even care when his old bad habit of fidgeting and tapping on the rifle sets back in, even when Lady Cocolia had been the one to throw a derisive comment whenever he did that. 

His finger taps against the barrel of the rifle, as Gepard gives a sweeping gaze across the room. 

Catalogue his supplies.

Formulate a plan.

Find a way to get out of here.

Gepard keeps his back against the wall, as he huddles himself in a corner, sitting down in a spot where the cold chill did not reach him, and picking a spot which overlooks all possible exits and entrances within the shophouse. Holding the rifle in his arms, he keeps both hands on it, ready to shoot anything which might cause him harm. 

He was isolated, and without aid or any form of communication. All factors that would trap him in. A dangerous situation, because if he was ambushed by anything else, he would be easily outnumbered, easily out manoeuvred. 

It is cold. He will succumb to the elements if he does not find anything that can keep him warm. Supplies, food and water, on his person are limited, consisting of only a single flask of hot water and two energy bars. (It was meant to be a short patrol, not a scouting mission out into the Snow Plains). His layers are adequate for the time being, but would not keep him warm if a blizzard decided to descend on him. His icy abilities could only help him so much. 

He has not cleared the compound out. Enemies could lurk within it, and he only had a rifle with forty bullets (including a spare magazine he had been given), and his bare fists. 

He has no idea if his men knew he was missing. 

How long would it take them? He had given them a rough estimate of fifteen minutes before meeting back up, but that could stretch up to twenty minutes or more easily. However, they must know if he did not answer his communicator. It would be the surest sign that something was wrong. If the communicator even worked at all.

Regardless, a rescue team was already en-route to find them, since Lieutenant Gabriel was injured. 

The next question was, how would they find him?

Would they scour through the compound endlessly, unable to find a single trace of him? Were his men even still there? Or would they be lost somewhere else too? Had the shophouse been a hive of supernatural activity caused by prolonged exposure to the Fragmentum and had he doomed his men by choosing to retreat within its confines? Were his men all equally separated like he was? 

He can feel his heartbeat wildly in his chest, a surge of anxiety translated into vicious paranoia which coats his thoughts. Fight of flight. He needs it. He hates it. It is a suffocating feeling, the need to secure all his bases, to barricade every single door, to find food, to secure water, to assess his probability of survival so he can get out of here alive. 

He is prey to whatever had ensnared him and trapped him within this place, as Gepard resolves to head out and scout the outer boundaries of the shophouse before the blizzard picks up even more and forces him to stay inside. 

He switches his phone to power saving mode, lowering its brightness and doing everything he can to preserve its battery life as long as possible. The screen shows him a substantial seventy-eight percent of his phone battery left, and he leaves it on silent mode. A last check shows him that he has no signal, which means no connection to anyone, not even the Astral Express Crew. 

He steps on some of the broken glass, which is crushed beneath his heavy duty combat boots, as he opens the door holding it in place with a substantial amount of force as the cold wind blows in. It was already picking up, and the captain decided he did not want to risk spending more than three minutes out in that weather. 

Snow gets into his face, and Gepard pulls out the pair of goggles and slips it over his eyes, tugging the door closed behind him. He neglects the fact that the door is broken and had to be barricaded in the first place, and instead, drags a fallen stripped mannequin to hold the door open. He wedges it in a manner that the door will not swing in any larger than the gap the mannequin’s stand was, making the decision to keep the door open because he could not close it. 

It is freezing. 

He was not immune to the effect of windchill, as he already begins to shiver. It is cold, so much colder than what was normal on the outlying snow plains. He quickens his footsteps, but the thick snow traps his limbs in and makes every movement a gargantuan task. 

Keeping a hand to the wall of the building (It could not vanish on him like the alleyway did. It cannot), he finds that the building…is a lot smaller than his initial observations. He walks down, following along the width of the shophouse front, where the corridor should have been, with its three other rooms that would have provided substantial width. 

The snow stings his skin.

There is nothing. 

In fact, he finds the corridor he swore he was in a few moments before this, the right half cleaved by an invisible force, exposing the corridor and its left side rooms to the harsh blizzard. 

Gepard stares.

He stares, at the edges of where the wall and the building should be, finding only concrete that had been parted by a deadly clean edge, unable to be replicated by anything human that he knew.

His limbs begin to shake from the cold, but he still raises it up and traces where the edges of the wall should be.

There is no more wall left.

With no more wall, there were no more rooms either.

The corridor had been vertically cleaved into two, as Gepard watches half a chandelier, missing its right half, fallen onto the snow which began accumulating on its marble floors. 

He looked vacantly at the sight, before turning to glance out at the white nothingness that laid ahead.

He watches, until his limbs go numb.

By then, he does not know what to do other than to simply return and wait in the first floor of the cursed shophouse.

-

He barricades the door shut behind him with stiff limbs, as he settles down in the corner away from any breeze. He pulled his limbs closer to himself, to conserve any warmth he had remaining, including that thermos he kept close to his body, of which the water within it had begun to chill. 

"Remember, Gepard Landau."

"Doubt breeds arrogance, and doubt breeds evil. As a model for Belobog, you shouldn't overthink."

He tells himself to forget what he just saw. To set aside the anomalous nature of the situation he was in, and focus on his own survival.

He needs to build a fire. Acquire a source of warmth. Things he should have done a long time ago. (But there was nothing left to burn here, was there?)

He only now notices a shattered piece of a mirror at his feet, which reflects his image back at him.

A dead gaze, with dark rings beneath his eyes, and exhaustion was written into his features. 

Most importantly, he needs to keep moving. (No matter how he was sleep deprived for the past few months, no matter how he could only ever dream of dead corpses, remorseless commands, blind obedience, and that agonising truth of what he had helped to cause, no matter how he could not get Bronya’s words out of his head.)

A window shatters.

He flinches at the noise, raising the rifle.

It comes from above, and he leaps off of his seat, deciding to head up and investigate. Perhaps he could find something to burn as well, to find enough materials to start a fire. (This place had been stripped bare of wood. Anything flammable or combustible was likely to not remain)

The captain makes his way up the stairs. 

Carefully, and quietly. Rifle in hand, he points at where the noise was, finding that the glass had given way to the freezing wind from outside, the glass shattering across the empty, hollowed out second floor.

They are thick, some parts coated and frosted over with ice, and others still attached to the main pane. The freezing wind strikes him, and Gepard shivers, the brutality of the cold making itself more apparent by the minute. 

He should not stay on the second floor.

Nor was the first floor the most suitable for him either. 

Perhaps he could make use of that fireplace, and close the door to retain the heat. If he managed to find enough material to burn and keep a fire going. 

Even if…

He shudders at the thought of stripping the corpses of their clothes and burning the clothes. The other alternative of wearing those clothes also was…not pleasant.

Then again, nothing in this situation was ideal. At some point, it had turned into a case straight out from a wilderness survival class, something Lynx was more suited for than him. There were some courses he had to take on surviving in the wild, yes, but he had not had to face such a situation alone, or by himself.

It would boil down into a simple set of actions based on one reasoning.

What would he do in order to survive?

Seventy percent of men who went MIA were never found. The remaining twenty percent were dead, and only ten percent were found alive. 

He walks over to the door on the second floor, finding it blocked off by what appeared to be…a fallen marble statue. Whatever humanoid figure it used to be of, was now a chunk of worn out, cracked marble. A chunk of what appears to be a helmet, a lance and a finely carved marble made to resemble armour. He clears out the bigger pieces, crouching down and low as he ducks beneath where the marble statue had fallen across the doorway.

If he clears out the larger pieces, he could create a small gap to squeeze through it. 

So he begins to move the pieces. 

He picks up an elongated piece of marble, resembling the shaft of an elegant lance, which had now been broken into two. It is almost sharp enough to pierce his armour, if it were to be used as a weapon. The captain glanced at where it had torn a gash through the wall, and wondered how marble could be stronger than the concrete wall. (There was no way. The physics in this place seemed…strange.)

Nevertheless he carefully handles the broken halves of the marble lance, and sets it out on the floor behind him. Out of morbid curiosity, he joins the two broken halves together, and…the lance looks greatly like what one of the Silvermane Guards would use. 

In fact, as Gepard holds up both halves of the lance and sets the pieces together, and…it is no coincidence.

From the crystal  tip of the lance, the six pointed ring around its tip, down to its handle, it was an exact replica of a Silvermane Guard’s lance. 

He lets out a breath he did not know he had been holding.

What did this mean? Why was this here? Was the previous owner of the house some sort of avid collector? To go so far as to commission a marble statue of…a Silvermane Lieutenant? He sets the marble piece on the ground, before returning to where the statue was. 

He continues to move the marble pieces out, and he knows, he can feel daylight fading away. 

He moves the next rounder piece out.

It is the head of a Silvermane Lieutenant, still in its helmet, carved intricately into marble. 

Lieutenant Bernard comes to mind.

(He wonders if he could have made a better decision to avoid getting him injured altogether.)

Even if it was simply a quick, flashing association, Gepard hopes that the man was alright. He hopes that none of the others were displaced like he was, in this…temporal? Spatial? Anomaly. He did not even have a name for this. 

He hurriedly clears the next few pieces, before he settles down and takes his rifle out. 

Within the triangular gap formed between the floor, wall and tilted statue, Gepard crawls his way under and through, wincing at how his armour scratched against the marble, before he pulls himself up and out through the other side.

He picks his weapon up, checks that it is working alright, before he looks down the corridor.

“What is this?”

He is met with a corridor that stretches on, so far down that he does not see its end.

On his left, is adorned with marble statues that follow the relentless infinity that pursues him.

Chapter Text

“Sir, the number of casualties have increased.”

“...By how many?”

“Twenty more are found to be KIA or MIA. Our estimates are that twelve were killed in action and the remaining eight are missing.”

What was he doing wrong?

What mistakes he had made? 

What had he not seen coming?

“Is there any possibility of sending out a search party?”

The wind howls. The white out begins.

“Not in this weather, and not without risking more lives.”

He can only leave them stranded. 

-

The few tentative steps he takes down the corridor, worsens the anxiety he had been holding back.

Overhead, a sloped glass ceiling shows him the dying light, time which is falling out from his grasp, and the ever decreasing temperature which he has to contend with.

Standing before the row of tens, no, hundreds of marble statues, Gepard’s sanity…begins to waver. (The building did not stretch on endlessly. It could not. It did not fit. Why, why are there so many statues? Where is the end?)

Still, he pressed on. 

He walks, eyes landing on each of the statues. 

They are all Silvermane guards. His men. With their helmets removed, caps and face guards down, each statue was a perfect replica of their human counterpart, standing at attention, arm raised in a salute for their commanding officer to walk past. 

He was their commanding officer.

He takes in another sharp breath.

It felt like it was getting hard to breathe.

He tests his abilities, using it to raise the temperature of the air to the level of cold he was accustomed to. It helps, taking out the stinging burn in his throat and lungs, and making it more bearable.

(Who made this? Why was this made? Was it for him to see? What was behind this? Why him? Why his men?)

Even so, he takes deep breaths.

He continues walking. 

The floor beneath his feet is cobblestone. 

Gepard peers through the gap between the marble statues, finding that orange, dingy wallpaper from the first floor still smattered across the walls. 

He passes by more of his men.

(Alexis, Beatrice, Monica, Travis, Mckinnely, Aiden-)

He stops at a statue which was carved from black granite, a stark contrast to the white marble statues that had seemed to greet him before. (Those lifeless, pale eyes-)

The black gravestone stares at him. 

With its details scrawled out, scratched over, the gravestone could not remember who it was who had fallen. But Gepard knew. The order in which the guards were being presented to him was that of alphabetical order by rank. 

He remembers the names of all the different guards who had been slain, who had died out on the frontlines, lost their lives for, their bodies retrieved after weeks, if not months from where they had fallen.

Followed by the endless amount of funerals.

(He had spoken words of their honour, of their bravery, their loyalty, courage and strength, had sent them off both into battle, and sent them off at their wakes. Some families were proud, but most grieved. He too had grieved, for every single life lost, wondering if it could have been prevented.)

This was the burden he had to bear. As the captain of the Silvermane Guard, it was an inevitable fact that he had to face death and loss. 

He only hoped that he would not become numb to it, his heart growing cold and distant from his duty, from the faith that his men had held, from the hope that the guards were supposed to provide for the people. 

The corridor stretches on.

He continues walking, as more of the white marble statues are replaced by obsidian gravestones. 

The sun sets overhead. 

His shadow casts a murky, distorted shape against the marble statues, tainting the white stone with splashes of shadow, casting his image over the corridor and his men. The obsidian gravestones lurk in the darkness he cast, belonging to the dark void his presence brought, as Gepard turns his body and casts a look back. Orange tinted light which was shaded by snow and ice clinging onto the skyglass overhead, cast down nearly crimson coloured light on his being. 

Soundlessly, all the statues he had passed were now gravestones. 

He swallows, biting down on his lip with a frown. 

He wonders if he should stop walking. 

Rationally, if he stopped here, there would be no progress out of here. 

(Irrationally, perhaps he would stop getting more people killed if he simply halted here.)

How many statues would he pass by? How many more men had been recorded and carved, each figure standing by to salute him, only to have their fates sealed beneath a tomb as soon as they passed under his leadership?

Whoever trapped him here was cruel.

Night would soon fall.

The temperature difference would be much sharper. 

He tries his best not to pay attention to the gravestones which he knows are forming behind his footsteps. Even if he begins to walk backwards, keeping his eyes straight on the statues he walked past, the statues in the front inevitably reverted into gravestones when he did not maintain a direct line of sight with them. 

At the very least…there was no real physical danger out to get him, wherever he was now. 

He continues walking. 

And walking.

And walking.

And walking. 

The faces blur. 

He does not remember these names, or these people. White marble statues seem to bleed into grey, its shades changing from off white to grey, to charcoal grey, and then to obsidian black. 

Night falls overhead. 

The chill sets in. 

Visibility dims, as faint moonlight becomes all that illuminates his path. A look at his phone  tells him that five hours had passed. (The battery has dropped to seventy percent). The corridor does not seem to end. 

Gepard turns back, and sees only a pitch black void in the path he once tread. He inhales a sharp breath. The captain decides to use some of his precious phone battery, using the torch function to shine a light back down the corridor he had walked. The makeshift flashlight illuminates only a few metres back down the corridor, obsidian gravestones now gleaming. 

They gleam with fresh, crimson blood, dripping from the gravestone and pooling onto the floor, and the captain tightens his hold on his phone instinctively, as liquid travels across the horizontal floor and crawls towards him. 

Drop by drop, streaks of blood inch towards him. 

He backs away, and doubles his efforts in his walk out. 

Soon enough, the walk turns into a brisk walk, which turns into a light jog, which turns into a maddened dash. 

His brain cannot comprehend what he just saw. 

He cannot understand anything that was happening to him. 

The moonlight fades away. 

The phone’s torchlight illuminates the rest of his infinite path, marble statues growing increasingly warped. Faces disappearing, arms and limbs merging with their weapon until there was no difference between human and weapon. Soon, the statues begin to form a set of movements, and the captain realises he is pinned on his left by the row of statues. Behind him, he simply knows that that pool of crimson will catch up to him. On his right, he is trapped in by the wall. 

His breath grows cold, and he can see it form mist in the air. 

Weapons in the form of lances, of guns, of bayonets and axes, are now raised at him.

Respect, followed by failure and death, a disappointment culminating in a mutiny, of anger and resentment now directed at him. This was the tale which the statues were telling him.

He knew.

He was not dumb nor blind. 

It grows increasingly apparent that this set of circumstances is not by human creation. 

He does not know what is worse. That growing dread that pools in his stomach, the sharp anxiety arising from the pool of liquid blood chasing him from the back, the cramped pathway he was being left with, or the frightening sense of fear, which arose from seeing so many weapons pointed at him. 

Weapons wielded by inhuman figures, with their uniforms having been melted down into an amorphous mess, white marble melting and oozing down across the floor (Marble does not do that. Don’t fool yourself, Gepard.)

He throws a hand out behind him, and summons his abilities, the stark cold wall of ice, which forms a barricade behind him, and seals off the past section of the corridor he had walked through. The weight of his power reassures him, proof that he had not lost everything, even in the face of what he knew was slowly, but surely, driving him towards a mental limit that he could not exceed.

Still, he must move. (He wants to collapse and drop dead onto the ground.)

He turns to face the wall of statues, of which all of them had their rifles raised at him.

(It reminds him of a time where he had to issue an execution command against a group of soldiers that had gone too far out into the Fragmentum. To stand before them with their own comrades. With their rifle raised, he had ordered them to be put down, for they had returned without realising that they had become the Fragmentum.)

(He recalls the time he had to implement the severance of ties with the Underworld, under Cocolia’s command. There had been riots, injuries, and-)

He cannot bear to continue thinking about it. 

Not here, when he was running away from something, not here when the environment was becoming slowly, but surely, more hostile to him. Weapons raised at him to fire, and if he were to be caught, to be forced to turn and face them, he would be the one standing in the middle of the execution grounds, to be trialled and eliminated.

He looks at the front, where he continues to run.

There is no end.

All the beckons are more marble statues, which turn to grey, and turn eventually to a deep black tombstone as soon as he passes by them. A torturous purgatory, a hellish infinity trapping him in a never ending cycle of misery, a distorted world which was unreal.

There is no end.

(He is lost in a place where no one will find him.)

There is no end.

(He is lost in a place that does not exist.)

He stops and leans against the wall, legs numb from not just the cold, but exhaustion. He has been running for a long, long time. The place truly did not end. Would not end. Even when the marble statues were rendered into nothing but cylindrical shapes wielding weapons that were aimed and pointed at him, even when there was nothing left for him, but darkness in the shadow of the night…

He turns off the flashlight on his phone. (50% of its battery remains)

He leans against the wall, sliding down across the ratty wallpaper and onto the floor. 

He buries his face in armoured hands, tugging his collar up higher and winding his cape around his person like a scarf and a blanket. 

Alone, he sits in the dark, with rows and rows of marble statues gazing at him.

He waits.

He wants to wake up from this bad dream, but does not know how to. (This is not a dream you can wake up from.)

The marble statues only serve to remind him of the number of people who relied on him, and whom he would eventually fail. Whom he had already failed. The choices that he made, would make, had already been made…it spread out like a thin, but pervasive spiderweb that linked the lives of all of his soldiers to him.

Their lives were in his hands.

Was he worthy of them?

(He never did tell anyone about this. The struggle, the pain he had faced, with each fatality, with each injury, why he had always, always been hesitant to ascend the ranks. But alas, the time called for him, and he stepped up when no one else was willing to. The role of the Captain of the Silvermane Guards was a painful one. To fight for just one more day, to live for just one more week. The future was distant, and yet they could not abandon the present.)

They trusted him, but he had failed them.

(Blood, death, carnage. A sudden snowstorm which cut their men off, a sudden ambush, faulty machinery which kickstarted a chain of events leading down to a disaster. Disasters which he could never get rid of. No matter what happened, something went wrong every now and then, and ended in catastrophic failure.)

(Why did you become a captain in the first place if you could not bear this burden? The weight of the lives of your men, shackled to your throat, to your arms, to your very survival and existence. You must have known, didn’t you?)

He digs a gauntleted hand into the wall.

Get up, Gepard Landau.

Get up and move, before he falls asleep here, in this freezing cold. 

Wallpaper tears beneath armoured fingers, and Gepard hoists himself up. His fingers are numb, losing feeling even as he shoves them in his pockets, letting his rifle sling around his back. 

The trek forward is hellish.

He simply now walked in the pitch black darkness, the inky shadows cast by distorted, alien marble figures crowding his path forward, casting their warped image on him. The faint moonlight dims, until it is nothing but passing rays of flickering light which leave as quickly and suddenly as they arrive. 

The darkness flickers, and it writhes, drawing and touching upon a fear that the captain had long since thought himself to have forgotten. The primal fear of the dark, coupled with seeping thoughts that pour through the cracks of his rational mind, whispers of moving statues, of a crawling madness behind him, of how he was lost, and perhaps would never be found.

He tries to soothe himself by reminding himself that darkness was merely the absence of light, a scientific phenomena, (but since when did this place obey the laws of physics?) but in this warped reality, nothing could be trusted. 

(What if he simply chose to stand still and let whatever was behind him swallow him whole?)

No. Stop thinking of things like that.

(What if he simply decided to curl up on the floor and rest?)

Stop. Stop thinking like that.

Keep moving, Gepard. If there’s a will, there’s a way.

(Since when have you had a will? A will of your own? The only will you ever had was Cocolia’s, of your family’s, nothing of your own choices.)

Gepard forces himself to keep moving.

Perhaps this place was playing tricks on his mind. Not perhaps. It definitely was. Of all things, the last thing the captain expected was to have to protect himself from this warped, intrusive psychological attack, that was directed at him, and only him. 

First, he needed to survive. 

He clenches a fist, hard enough for armoured fingers to dig and bruise into the softer pads of his palms, and reminds himself that this is not a dream. 

(Of course, it’s not a dream. But when was the last time you had a painless dream?)

He shakes his head, trying to physically force out the thoughts that clung and dug into his consciousness. 

But how? How could he get that inner voice of his to shut the fuck up, when it is his own voice?

He needs to rethink his strategy. 

Walking on infinitely had not gotten him any closer to his goal. With his sides blocked, he turns to face the wall on the right, and decides to try and punch a hole through it. Better to give it a shot, than to continue wasting his time and energy marching on.

He readies himself, clenching his fist and taking up a steady stance, before he punches at the wall.

It does not budge.

Wallpaper tears, but the surface behind it is rock hard, stubborn, a black marble surface now laid behind the faded orange wallpaper. It reminds him of the black marble they use in all of the war memorials within Belobog. (How fitting it must be, that this place sought to entomb him along with the desecrated, mimicked graves of all the men who had served him before.)

He throws another punch at it, with his remaining strength. (It does not help that his hands and muscles are trembling from the loss of sensation, as the cold gnaws at his very bones.)

A calculated but precise blow, and it does nothing to the inky black stone.

There went that option.

It meant that the walls were not meant to be breached.

Thus, this left him with three more options.

One: To walk forward

Two: To return in the direction where he came from

Third: To go up, or to go down.

He pounds a fist against the floor, meeting the same resistance as he did the walls. No luck there. His right hand begins to throb. 

Raising his rifle, he aims at the skyglass slightly ahead of him, and fires off a shot. 

A searing pain cuts through his side. 

The glass does not break, and the bullet ricochets and strikes him in the side. Gepard nearly drops his rifle from the sudden pain, as he inspects where the bullet had embedded itself in his armour. 

His armour is bulletproof, thank the Aeons, but it would leave a nasty bruise where it struck him. 

How was the skyglass completely undamaged?

Gepard considers his remaining options, as he leans against the obsidian wall and picks at the bullet, dropping it onto the ground as he pressed a hand on his side. It was sore, as it did with sharp precise blows, but his armour had withstood and saved him from being potentially mortally wounded. 

If it had struck him in his throat, or in his head….

(He would be dead. Or perhaps laying down paralysed, unable to move, knocked out, and he would freeze to death or die of blood loss, whichever came first.) Stop making foolish decisions, Gepard. Your hands are shaking so badly you can’t even hold the rifle steady.

Ah. He had missed out on that. 

He sets those thoughts aside.

He considers his only options remaining.

To turn back.

Gazing at the inky darkness behind him, his eyelids feel heavy, limbs and legs weighed down by invisible weights and chains which sought to pull him to the ground. To undo the progress he had made, he inevitably had to return back to where he came from. To face his lingering regrets, to confront the madness that he had thought himself to have overcome already. 

Even with the presiding danger of that crawling pool of blood. 

Perhaps he could just freeze it over and form a safe path over it.

Gepard takes a sip of water with shaking hands, nearly dropping the flask. (He could not do that. If he did, his fate would be sealed.) 

He blinks wearily, as he begins to walk.

Up till then, he had not realised how he had ignored how much his feet hurt, how he could not feel his toes, and how his skin began to sting from the cold. Frostbite? Hypothermia?

He is mildly aware of a single candle he had in the small carry on kit he had with him. But he resolves to abstain from using it. The path back in the dark was more or less fixed, and he might need the candle to help him start a fire once he got out of this forsaken corridor.   

Exhaustion naturally quiets his thoughts down, but it is not a heavy, blanketing fatigue. It is a weariness which forcibly imposed itself on his current, stifled fear, an additional layer holding him back from simply giving into the despair of this twisted trap, as he drives himself to continue onwards. To find an exit. 

He walks into the ice barrier he had set up prior. 

The cold wall hits him in the face, and Gepard smells, and tastes blood. His own, dripping from where he had accidentally bitten down on his lip. The dry skin of his chapped lips tears easily, giving way to blood which seeps from his lips. 

Instintively, he swallows, feeling the sensation of moisture on his lips, and gets a mouthful of his own blood, which he winces upon tasting. 

He takes a few steps back, using the precious battery on his phone to shine a light on the barrier he had erected. 

It is no longer a wall of ice.

Rather, it is a wall of frozen blood, crimson and sticky, which dyes the crystalline icy blue a stained maroon. 

Ah. He fucked up.

A crack appears in the ice.

He reached out with a hand and gently lays it on its surface. Willing upon the power of preservation, he sought to fortify the wall with more ice. (But how would he leave? He can’t get out. He’s trapped here, if he seals his only option out)

He pulls his hand back.

Behind him, the black gravestone stares at him.

The crack enlargens.

He takes a deep breath, and presses his body close and flat to the wall, as the icy barrier breaks.

Chapter Text

“Madam Cocolia, please consider my proposal to revert back to our previous military formations.”

“Gepard, Why should we let a few deaths deter us from the mission of reclaiming our land?” 

She had not looked up at him from behind her desk.

She was right. People died on the frontlines all the time. 

“Their deaths…feel needless.”

“Everyone’s sacrifice matters, Gepard. If we are afraid of loss, we can never push forward and uncover our history, we can never recover what was meant to be ours. Their deaths were not needless. They simply only seem pointless at this point in time, but will accrue to a greater cause in time.”

In time.

How many more would die until then?  

“Do you not have the patience to play the long game? It is just like a game of chess. Some pawns will be sacrificed.”

Was he a pawn too in her eyes?

“Stop doubting yourself. Stop doubting the path that I have set us out on, and the path you chose to follow when you decided to become the Captain under my service. Stop doubting, and follow, Gepard.”

“...Yes, Madam Cocolia.”

Her words dig into his mind.

Even after her death, even after the truth, they still haunt him.

-

His clothes and gear are drenched in blood. 

Even the layers of icy shielding he had erected just moments before shattered beneath the rushing crimson liquid, and all Gepard can smell is its copper scent. He gags, with how overwhelmingly suffocating it is, but finds that he cannot even bring himself to throw up across the floor. 

He hates this.

He wants to go home.

The blood is warm, on his skin. Almost hot even, which leaves him with more questions he does not want answers to.

For a while, it soaks him in an unholy warmth, coating his skin and clinging onto him thickly. 

Push on.

Gepard closes his eyes, trying to find his bearings and calm himself down from the overwhelming scent, texture and knowledge that he was close to drowning in a pool of blood. 

Progress was progress. (Even if it came in this sick, twisted form)

He walks on, returning along the path he had traced, the building corralling him down a predetermined path that he was forced to take or waste his life away down a path that led to nowhere. (Where did all of this blood come from?)

Stop questioning about the nature of this place, Gepard. It has not led you any closer to the way of getting out of here. Moving forward had not led him anywhere. If anything, it had exhausted him, allowing this place to carve and shave off more of his own dwindling sanity with each distorted statue, and an ever growing infinity. 

He is ashamed to turn back, but recognises that it is his only choice left.

If he did not want to be trapped, did not want to continue being a prisoner of this perpetual torment, he had to turn back and face whatever was pushing him forward, and break through. 

Moonlight returns overhead, scattering pale, ethereal light across the bloodsoaked corridors. Gepard wrings off excess liquid from the fabric portions of his armour, even if the residual warmth from the blood was able to raise the temperature of the room, he does not want it to drag him down. The path ahead was slippery, and warm, steam radiating from where blood came into contact with frozen obsidian gravestones, lifeblood raising the ambient temperature of the corridor.

He steps across the flooded floor, gaze and mind distant as the exhaustion seeps in, and the captain likens all of this to be a horrible, horrible dream that he would soon wake up from. 

(Do not think about how this is your reality now. Distance yourself from this place, and retreat into a place which allows you to retain your rationality.)

This was just one terrifying nightmare. 

It is a terrifying nightmare that was all too real, forcing him to confront the burden of the lives he had indirectly taken in his tenure as a captain, to face his regrets, his mistakes, and relieve them. All that he had hoped to forget, to put behind him, resurfaced like how blood drips from the gravestones and onto the flooded floor, a tap which refused to stop leaking. 

He knows, he knows how his choices had led his men to their deaths. He knows, he knows that he could not save all of them. He knows that he is still flawed, and that from his position, any mistake he made would cause the lives of others. 

He knows it so well. 

He hates that this place thinks he does not know.  

With how much he wants to run from all of this, he knows he must cross this trial to move on. 

He walks.

And walks.

He traces his steps, as he stops by one of the gravestones. 

Perhaps it was instinct, the repressed, but present desire to simply know what was carved on each gravestone, and whether it would be the same words that he had to recite at every soldier’s funeral. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps it was because he knew if he was stuck in this purgatory, he may as well do something irrational in hopes that something would be different.

He cleans off the coagulating blood on the surface of the black marble gravestone.

Here lies Gepard Landau, Captain of the Silvermane Guards.

A man of valour and honour who died a martyr and a hero of Belobog against the Fragmentum.

May he rest in peace.

Here lies Gepard Landau, Blind follower of the Mother of Deception

A man of cowardice and doubt, who died a traitor to Belobog and succumbed to the Fragmentum.

May he always burn in hell.

Gepard flinches, when he reads what is carved onto the gravestone. The venom and resentment which radiates from those words…he tries to understand it. 

The pieces fall into place. 

The Mother of Deception…that referred to the late Madam Cocolia. The one who had deceived them all. His title as a blind follower of hers? It was true. He had gone along with her plans, her instructions, because his adherence to the rule and authority meant that she was always right. 

-

“I know the truth is hard, but you have a right to know, Gepard.” 

Gepard stood in the Supreme Guardian’s office, all other staff having been asked to clear out as he reported directly to her, and alone within the confines of this room. It feels less oppressive now, as Bronya asks him to take a seat across from her by her office desk, the grey haired woman shoving and keeping a stack of reports inside the drawers to clear some space. 

“The truth…behind the Stellaron?”

“The Stellaron and my mother. It’s…different from what I told the public.”

“...I don’t understand. Was Madam Cocolia not a hero who sacrificed herself to seal the Stellaron away?”

“She was both that, and the one who allowed the calamity to escalate to the point in which it did.”

He did not understand. How could one person be both hero and villain at the same time? His last and final impression of her were her instructions to stop the outsiders and to hold the line within the restricted zone, at all costs. When she had told him that the Nameless only wished to steal the Stellaron away and use its destructive powers to bring down an endless onslaught of calamities upon them before making off with it…

His version of the truth that he had constructed for himself was messy.

Why would Bronya have testified for them, why would Serval have stood by them, if they were truly as evil as Madam Cocolia had told him?

How did things turn out into a matter in which Madam Cocolia was a hero who sacrificed herself to seal the Stellaron away, when she had given conflicting orders just before that, to hamper their saviours?

A sinking feeling pools in his gut. 

“I have reason to believe that my mother was…corrupted by the Stellaron’s influence. I’m not sure when or how it started, but back there, on the platform atop Everwinter Hill, every single Supreme Guardian before her has resisted the call of the Stellaron. Everyone…except my mother. Perhaps it grew experienced and more persuasive in its tactics…but my mother gave in.”

No. No. No.

“She wanted to wipe this old world out, and make me its new ruler, using the power of the Stellaron. To undo what she called an old order and replace it with a new world.”

Gepard looks at Bronya, in disbelief.

She dips her gaze, in sympathy for what it felt to know the truth for the first time.

She reached out for another drawer and pulled out a stack of papers.

“...I was not entirely convinced by what happened, by who she was, and whether she was the person I ever knew. So, I did some digging. Through all of her commands, reports, and issues plans and policies and even the military strategies she wrote up.”

She sets them on the table, a thick, bound stack of paper.

“In these are reports. Reports of the number of soldiers she had sent out into the Fragmentum, be it to investigate the Fragmentum or for what she had listed as redacted purposes…. Where she obtained your approval to take some of the guards under your command to aid her in several projects…”

Bronya flips open a page of the reports for him. 

“She sent them out to feed the Stellaron. She sent them out to die.”

-

He collapses onto the gap between the two gravestones, ignoring the fact that his uniform and attire was already drenched in blood. 

He was tired. 

(His thoughts spiral)

He was a coward, deep down. That fear he felt towards Madam Cocolia, learnt from stern words, harsh whispers, thinly veiled frustration and disappointment at him whenever he expressed hesitance, it all fed into something greater. Something ugly which rooted itself in his heart and eventually choked his voice whenever he wanted to oppose her ideas. 

(You nearly killed the Trailblazers for trying to stop the disaster from continuing. You were so rigid and absorbed by this self constructed idea of authority and twisted faith in a woman whom you feared, that you would have arrested your own sister and thrown her into jail. Would you have executed her if Madam Cocolia demanded it?)

He had killed his men with his own bare hands. Turned them over to a monster (He knew..he knew something was wrong in the way she had ordered for the separation of the Under and Overworld, the way she had quelled all the protests down with an iron fist and arrested, if not executed anyone who was considered a rebel. He knew. He knew.)

And still he had given his men over to her.

Doused in blood, sitting next to his gravestone, Gepard sits in a daze.

What would it take for this place to cease torturing him?

It ruthlessly tears at the doubts that already fester in his heart, amplifying every single negative emotion on top of paranoia, anxiety, the oncoming knowledge of being lost, of being trapped in this place forever, with no way out, and with no one able to find him. 

If he really died here…he would only be listed as missing in action, forever and ever, just like those endless names and lists, decades old accumulated reports of men who went missing at the frontlines, with no corpse ever recovered or reported to confirm their deaths.  He would leave Serval and Lynx behind, leave behind his father, leave his men behind, his job, his responsibilities, everything. No more having to face the weight and impact of his actions that had only piled on and on from years ago, just simply a quick and painless end. 

No more bantering with Sampo Koski, no more training with his recruits, no more paper work with Pela, no more watching his sister’s concerts, no more gardening, no more.

He would not have to face the burden of the truth.

If he simply laid down his life and let go of his will right here, no one would blame him. 

No one would even know what happened to him.

Could he stand to just let them happen to him? 

(It hurts.)

Could he stand to let himself just waste away next to this facsimile of a grave, of a place which seemed to exist between the borders of reality?

He was the Captain of the Silvermane Guards. 

He was the one who had the backs of his men, the one who still lived, who had to fight for their survival alongside them.

He cannot let the effects of his mistakes continue to travel down the line, and he needs to get up, and get out, so he can face all the wrong decisions he had allowed to happen when Madam Cocolia had been in charge. 

Resolve yourself, Gepard.

You cannot die here. You cannot die now.

He digs an armoured gauntlet into the gravestone and hauls himself up onto his feet.

He begins his walk back, in full.

Even as he treks through the dimly lit corridor, coated in coagulating blood which seems to coat nearly every inch of its surface except the ceiling, the captain constantly reminds himself that this place was strange, and to steel himself. 

The walk back takes only twenty minutes. 

This time, a door waits for him, clean, pristine and made of a varnished wooden oak, to which he has to dirty its polished, well worn door knob with bloodied hands, and he pushes it open.

Chapter Text

He wakes up on his desk.

His heart pounds heavily in his chest, as he feels each powerful, panicked beat thrumming in his veins, drowning out in his ears, fingers clenched and digging into the palms of his hands, tense, and ready to react and get up and get out in the slightest moment. 

He sits up, kicking back against his desk from the force at which he does so, sending a few papers flying from his desk as Gepard breathes, forcing himself to count down from twenty until he has calmed down enough to regain his bearings.

A quick survey showed that he was in his office. 

Wondering how he had fallen asleep so hard on a stack of uncomfortable papers, he takes and pries off the pen and paperclips that were stuck to his skin, prying them off as he blinks and sorts the papers out on his desk with groggy fingers. His side faintly hurts, but he brushes it off as simply falling asleep in the wrong position. 

So it had all been a dream.

He lets out a sigh of relief, as he arranges and neatens out the stack of reports on his table, pushing the set aside and filing them away as he stands up from where he had slept on his desk. 

A horrible dream, but it was just a dream.

(He does not want to think about it)

He chuckles weakly to himself.

At least it was now over. 

The large office he had been given was a room that had the layout of a square, which he had filled up with shelves on both sides, as well as steel cabinets which held filed records and reports on the sides next to his desk. The geomarrow powered fireplace behind him acts as a heater, though it was designed to function as a fireplace should the central heating fail. 

Gepard watches a small fire burn away behind its grailed opening, the heat warming him up as he wonders what happened to the central heating. 

As he ponders, he opens up and sorts a few extra files away, returning to his desk and tidying up the remaining materials. He looks at the window behind him, gazing at how the snow beyond the confines of his office was so heavy it created a heavy blanket which blotted out any light he could make out in the distance. The ledge on which a few of his succulent plants stayed on was small, in contrast to the vast night and the heavy snowstorm which seemed to be occurring outside. Gepard arranges them, pushing the small palm sized pots into a neat row closer to the range of light cast down upon them by his overhead ceiling lights. 

The warm lights overhead reassure him, in this dark wintery night, as he walks over to the coat rack and dons on a thick coat, wondering when he had brought a rifle into the office, as it hung from the same rack. It reminded him that he needed to check his messages. After all, if he was returning late from work, he had to update Serval lest she ended up waiting for him to have dinner but he never turned up.

He withdraws his phone from his coat pocket, and wonders why there is no signal or any cell service in his office. His phone battery was at thirty percent as well, a low number for someone who disliked keeping things at such a risk of running out. He rummages around his drawers for a charger, plugging his phone in as he sits at his desk. 

The phone lights up with the charging sign, before it falls into its sleep mode. 

In the meantime, Gepard tinkers around with a few apps, and even his GPS, finding that none of them were working. It was puzzling, considering how Lady Bronya had instructed for such technology to be implemented and maintained in the administrative district. Which was where his office was located. Perhaps the snowstorm had caused some damage to the relatively new cell towers and caused a blackout.

The captain walks over to the large windows which span from ceiling down to the middle of the wall, and he peers out into the abyssal darkness.

The only thing he can see is specks of swirling snow which continue to pile outside his window. 

Perhaps it was because of the snow, which obscured his vision on what was going on outside. After all, massive whiteouts were not uncommon even within the city centres. 

He looked over at the small fire burning.

(Why was a fire burning instead of the geomarrow central heating system being turned on, as per usual?”

The pain in his side was persistent.

(Why does his ribs hurt?)

He looks at the rifle hanging from its strap on his coat rack.

(Why was it here? He never used a rifle with the exception of a few military campaigns. It had been years since he had to touch one.)

He looks down to his phone. 

(Why did it have no signal, or GPS location of where he was? When he was clearly located in the heart of the administrative district?)

He walks over to the door leading out of his office, and swings it open.

He sees nothing but endless snow plains beyond. The warmth and light glitters off of fallen snow which continues to pile beyond the confines of his office, light fading away into the pitch black void that was a lightless place. 

He slams the door shut, and locks it behind him.

He tries very, very hard not to hyperventilate.

It was not a dream. It was not a dream. It was reality. It was reality. 

It’sallrealits’sallrealits’allreal.

He laughs, a pained, tired, broken sound which scratches at his dry, raw throat, a choking sound which digs into a half sob as he stumbles back from the door, dropping the rifle in his hands as he falls into a heap on the ground.

He pulls the thick cloak over his shoulders closer to himself, using it like a blanket to which he hoped that he could pull over himself, to block out the world, the reality around him which tore and played around with him like a toy.

The walls of this place were all that protected him from the treacherous infinity that laid beyond. Wherever he was, no one would be able to find him. Wherever he was, he did not know. He doubts anyone can even find him, he doubts he can even find his way out. 

Alone in this mimicry of his office, a lone hut amidst the immeasurable snow plains that laid beyond, Gepard thinks of all he had already had to go through. He thinks about what else more that laid before him, and the overwhelming desire he had to simply curl up on the carpeted floor and close his eyes. 

What had he done to deserve this?

To be trapped in this infernal underworld, tormented by an ever changing environment?

To be tortured by a being he could not fight, where he was left helpless to the whims of this haunting reality?

He wants to get out of this place.

It is filled with nothing but lies, poisonous thoughts, and growing regrets and doubts, one he was done having to handle. 

He wants to leave.

He wants to leave.

He wants to leave.

Ice forms at his feet, spreading out from the base of his boots and outwards across the carpet, his presence radiating with a pure and powerful will, a single minded desire to remove himself from this position, and go home. In his already fragile state of mind, of skewed emotions, tarnished with lingering regret, horror and guilt at his own actions, the captain lets out a dry, sardonic laugh.

He hates this place, abhors it with a vile, agonising resentment, the strongest negative emotion he has felt in a long, long time. 

Frustration and anger dilute his panic and fear, as he pulls the coat off and forces himself up from the ground. 

He is done with what this place has set in store for him.

A plan formulates as he pushes anger and uses it to fuel his cold, logical rationality. It brings out hyper focus, an unhealthy fixation and desire to get something done at all costs, to burn through his life if needed, and Gepard works.

-

He strips shelves of useful and valuable items, from the spare clothes he kept in one of the drawers whenever he stayed overnight in the office, an extra blanket, a few snacks here and there. 

The office seemed to be an exact replica of his office back in Belobog (because he knew wherever he was, it was not anywhere close to Belobog.) That meant all the items were in the same places. A spare first aid kit was found and salvaged, as Gepard found a set of his cleaned armour hanging from the other rack. The items inside of his pockets were drenched in blood, which had now dried and coagulated into a disgusting pile of mush. 

He cleans them off, discarding the flares and matches which were no longer usable, but finds a usable military grade flashlight and a multipurpose tool consisting of a switchblade and a screwdriver all in one. Serval’s prototype for a multifunctional tool. (Mr Yang had said that they called this a Swiss Army Knife back in his homeworld). He pockets that as well. 

The candle was useless without the matches, so he set that aside. 

On second thought, he remembered that the Swiss Army Knife Serval had created for him as a prototype included a function to start a fire, and retained the candle in his kit. A quick check and cleaning of the rifle with a spare towel he had lying around allowed him to maintain its functionality. 

He also tends to the bruise at his side, a stray bullet caught on his armour and bullet proof vest beneath it, though there is little to do for it other than to apply some ice onto it. He needed to retain as much heat as possible, so he opted to ignore the pain, as he did not want to waste any painkillers as well. 

Looking around the room, he takes a bunch of scrap paper and older drafts of reports, and feeds them into the small fire, keeping it alive and continuously burning as he sets his kit on his desk. The flask he had on his person was the only source of water he had on his person, unless he could head outside and take some snow to melt it over the fire. 

A decorative steel bowl used to store fake fruits that had been gifted to him by several of his guards as a gag gift a long time ago would do the trick. 

Emptying it of the fake fruits, he opens the door outside, and digs the bowl into the hard snow, scooping snow with his gloves into the bowl until it was three quarters full, all whilst ensuring he still remained mostly within the room. Who knew what would happen if he left the confines of the room entirely?

He brings the bowl back, and takes out the iron grail that was in front of the fireplace, fashions it into a wire rack and suspends it over the fire, setting and balancing the bowl of snow on the wire rack over it. He sieves through a few useless and decorative books he had gotten as gifts by other noble families who clearly did not know what his interests were, and stacks them by the fire. 

Considering the safety of consuming weird snow water, Gepard decides that he will take the risk, as he digs through for an empty thermos around the office, since he knew he always forgot to bring back his empty bottles from the office back home. Who knew that forgetfulness would be an advantage?

He finds an old bottle that he had shoved into his drawer some time ago, the interior dry yet still clean as he sets it on his desk. 

He takes stock of his supplies as he has another mouthful of water from his flask.

If only he could find a geomarrow heater or lamp to bring with him outside.The captain begins digging through all of his shelves, shamelessly pulling books on military strategies down, after all, this was not his real office. He feeds them into the fire. 

His hands run across the tomes on the shelves, as he pulls out and stacks books to burn and feed the fire, wondering what other items he could use to burn and feed the fire within this room. For now, it would be his safe room, and he needed to recover as much energy and warmth here before he headed back out to figure things out. 

The sight of an antique lantern sitting on one of the shelves stops him.

He takes it out with its stand, as he puts it on his desk, and taking out the candle that he had, he opens the door to the lantern, its old noisy hinge squeaking as he did so, and he carefully places the candle in its holder. He could bring this along with him, as a source of heat in the cold. An easier fire starter, if he was already carrying a torch in his hand.

Its insulated and thick glass walls which surround the candle in its centre, topped with an insulated metal covering on the top and bottom of the lantern had the Captain consider if he could simply attach the lantern to his belt. He curiously uses a finger to push and tilt the self adjusting candle holder in its centre, which always kept the candle in the centre upright, going so far as to collect any melted wax so that he could reuse it.

Why had this just been sitting on his shelf this entire time?

Still, it would definitely be useful.

Never had he thought simply collecting a bunch of memorabilia in his office would come in handy, as he walks over to the row of plants by the ledge of his office windows. 

Sadly, none of them are suitable to be consumed raw. 

Wow. He can’t believe he’s actually considering them as a food source. 

Gepard grimaces, as he glances at the three protein bars he had found while rummaging around his office. One was a few months past its expiry date, and Gepard decided that he would eat it if it ever got down to that point, but he would probably consume the rest first. 

The way he craved the taste of a Belobog sausage….

He swallows down his hunger and continues with his work.

He fishes out the reports he had stored all over his cabinets and drawers, as his eyes scan them instinctively.

On them, detailed the schedules and instructions of his dispatch of guards to Cocolia’s supervision. 

Guards who never made it home, and he had never questioned, because Cocolia had told him that they were doing fine. She had lied to him, and he had not dug into her lies harder, had not unveiled them and tore them down even when he knew something seemed off. 

The report is crushed within his palms, as he feeds it to the fire. 

(Those lingering regrets will forever haunt him, now with the burning truth unveiled and made known to him. He can only live with the weight of his choices, the deception he had allowed to happen, the deaths he had been complicit with. It is a secret he must live and die with, for he can never show the truth to the people, lest political unrest cause a civil war. Alas, Bronya had told him the truth that he wished he never knew, but could never run from. )

The paper catches fire, which hungrily devours the report, burning away into darkened ash as the crimson flame burns through ink and paper alike, leaving nothing behind but ashes and the heat which fed him. 

He creates a makeshift pack with one of the empty sacks lying around the room, a sack created for him to store his armour and items to bring back home from work. It was a bag made of high quality, durable tear resistant material, as he gets around to packing the spare clothes and items within it. 

He gets around to stripping the armour he had worn, the cold steel of its material would only leech more heat from his body rather than to protect him, since it was made to conduct his ice rather than to preserve heat. 

The fire flickers, as Gepard shoves a whole stack of papers into its flames, stoking it with an iron poker that was meant to be a decorative one, but ended up actually being useful. 

Having piled the stacks of books next to him, he settles down in the desk chair in front of the fire, and rests. 

The snow melts and boils, as the captain reaches out with a gauntleted hand, using his abilities to cool the gauntlet down to protect him from the heat, and takes the bowl of hot water from the fire. Setting it on the floor, he opens up the empty flask, rinses its insides out with some of the water and pours it into one of his succulents. Following that, he pours the water within the bowl and fills up the flask to the brim. 

The remaining water he keeps and waits for it to cool, before he uses it to clean himself, scrubbing out the accumulated dirt and grime from his person. Strangely enough, there was not a trace of blood left on his person, indicating that the effects of that blood shower only clung to a few items and not all of them. 

He decides to chalk it up to magic.

He keeps a few sheets of reports and tucks it away in a bag of plastic, sealing it up to use as tinder in case he needed to use it as tinder and kindling to start a fire down the line. 

The window in front of hims shows nothing but empty snow plains, devoid of any dead trees or structures, and Gepard groans at the thought of having to dig a snow cave out there if he needed to camp out. 

He rummages around the office for something he can use as a tarp.

Never had he been grateful that military school had put him through an extreme wilderness survival class, and had he always listened to Lynx on how to survive out in the cold. 

He has no way of measuring the temperature of the terrain outside, but he has a few rough estimates as to the temperatures he could survive within. (A few rough estimates? A few degrees off and you would be plunged into a hypothermic state.)

Gepard pulls off his Silvermane cape, deciding that it would be suitable as a piece of tarp, since it was built to be waterproof and lightweight enough, with a strong material that did not tear easily. 

Wait…he could just construct a shelter out of ice. 

The captain huffs as he realises his own oversight. 

He could work with that.

Glancing at his still charging phone, he sees that he has around five hours before the time day was supposed to break. He hunkers down by the fire, feeding it more books as he decides that now was as good of a time as it got to rest and catch up on sleep. Even if it was only in short bursts of an hour or two each time, he would have to make do, so as to keep on feeding the fire to ensure it persisted. 

He sets a few alarms on his phone, making himself comfortable on his office chair, and closes his eyes. 

Chapter Text

“Hey, Geppie, you look like you could use some sleep.”

Gepard shoots an annoyed glare at Sampo, who comments on his features as the con man perches outside his apartment’s half open window. 

“Go away. I don’t need you nagging at me, or stalking me for the matter.”

His voice dips into a growl, as Sampo’s eyes widens and the man raises a hand up in defence. 

“Alright, alright, just…take care of yourself, I’ll stop dropping by like this if you promise to…you know, get some sleep?”

Gepard walks over to the window.

“I’ll consider it.”

He closes it and latches it shut from the inside, and draws the curtains on the man.

The muffled complaints of the conman fall on deaf ears, as Gepard returns to his desk within his apartment, one overflowing with reports that he had given up on clearing during his office hours. 

He needs to…finish this stack by tomorrow. Any more delay and it would affect the progress of the re-establishment of ties and logistics chains down into the Underworld. In the morning, he would have to head out into the Restricted Zone and face off against more of the Fragmentum, coupled with having a meeting on how to counter the new Antimatter Legion enemies that were resurfacing once more. 

He looks at the pile of work in front of him, and begins to write.

He did not get any sleep that night.

This continues, on and on.

Somewhere along the sleepless nights, Gepard begins to realise that this work will kill him. 

-

He wakes up to a cold, empty office, the fire having burnt out the night before, as none of the four alarms he had set had managed to wake him up. Gepard takes his phone and the power bank with him, unplugging the device as he gazes at his desk. 

Something dark drips from above, and down onto the marble desk.

Gepard looks up, and finds a body hanging over his desk.

He startles, a frightened yelp as he backs away, kicking and shoving his chair aside as he backs up and away from where the body hung, a noose over its head which was covered in a silk sack.

The nightmare begins once more. 

The hint of daylight from the windows behind him shines a weak, feeble light upon the body hanging over his desk, which twists and rotates as the rope it is tied to tangles upon itself. 

Gepard watches. 

In the hazy grogginess of sleep, suddenly struck awake by the surge of adrenaline, he breathes heavily, hands trembling as he watches the figure rotate, still and heavy, until he sees the uniform it wears.

His own.

The fragile sanity he holds onto begins to crack. Precious logic, rational thoughts, begin to decay and fray, as the captain shivers, turning away from the sight to look at anything but the representation of his own corpse.

The windows do not fare any better, handprints left all across the crystal clear glass which stretch up to the ceiling, dozens of hands that had tried to paw and pound at the glass whilst he was sleeping, an invisible mass that had now fled which sought to kill him while he was vulnerable. 

He packs his things together and snags a book from the shelf, latching the lantern to himself as he puts on his layers and decides that he cannot stay here any longer. 

He takes the iron poker with him and leaves. 

It is only after miles of walking that he realises he has no idea where to go. 

-

“Foolish boy. You always make the most unsound choices.”

Gepard flinches beneath his father’s words. 

“One should never let their heart guide their actions on the field. Rationality and logic are all that matters.”

The older man tosses the newspaper down onto the desk in front of him.

Its headlines scream at him.

‘BREAKING NEWS - 24 CIVILIANS DEAD IN FRAGMENTUM SPILLOVER FROM BACKWATER PASS! Just what are the Silvermane Guards doing?!’

“The right call of action would have to begin burning the Fragmentum infested houses down right away instead of simply isolating it in and sending out search parties to recover survivors. Look what happened instead.”

Gepard clenches his fist, and he cannot tear his eyes away from the bolded, crimson words etched onto the paper. 

“I cannot give up on anyone that still remains trapped within it.”

“And so you risked the lives of others instead. Thinking with your heart leads to loss, Gepard. Your intentions mean well for the people, but sometimes, the most logical choice is to sacrifice them.”

His father’s voice is neither cold, nor angry. Simply disappointed.

“This will be a lesson for you, Gepard. Do not think with your heart.”

And so Gepard listened.

Even when his heart hated Madam Cocolia’s proposal to seal the Underworld away, he accepted it as the most rational choice to make to preserve the lives of the people in the Overworld.

-

His hands shake, as he pulls the goggles over his eyes and gazes at the snowy plains which lay beyond him. 

An irrational choice.

He had made an irrational choice.

(Even if the safe room was no longer safe, even if held his dead, hanging corpse, even if the fire had died out, even if the glass had begun to show signs of fractures and cracks along its unstable surface even if even if even if-)

He should have stayed in the shelter.

(He should have stayed even though it was telling him it wanted him dead.)

He walks.

There is little else he can do now, as the wind begins to pick up behind him. 

Turning back, he does not see anything but blank snow.

Perhaps even the safe room had been forgotten, where this place and its ever changing terrain, nothing here remained constant, and everything could change on a whim. He must cover as much distance as he can, reigning in his emotions because there is nothing else for him to do apart from walk and think. 

The warmth and rest from the previous night had done him a lot of good. Even if he had not eaten, he had managed to satiate some of his thirst with warmed water and cleaned himself up whilst gathering supplies. The trek forward however, would be a test of his mettle. 

(Perhaps he is glad to not be trapped in that suffocating office with his corpse)

Even if it damned him to a death brought on by exposure.

The captain walks, as the snow around him gets deeper and deeper, thick, heaping mounds of snow across a seemingly flat terrain that goes on and on, forever and ever. White flecks of snow and a bright sky covered entirely by falling snow made visibility poor. There is no strong wind opposing his movement, for the time being, even as snow continues to fall around him.

It reminds him a lot of the winter training exercises he had with his men in the outlying snow plains. A march across its entire stretch, carrying supplies and camping out in the snow. To get them acclimatised to fighting and surviving in the extreme cold, to remain calm even when a sudden whiteout or blizzard hit. 

He should be immensely glad that he has no need to navigate steep ice ridges, crevices, or unstable rock walls like Lynx did, because he has no training in that area. In that line of thought, having nothing but flat snow plains was preferred. 

(He only hopes this march will not be an endless one.)

He had picked a direction and simply allowed his instincts to lead him forward.

An irrational choice.

But there was no rational choice in handling this, was there?

He walks, each foot sinking deeper into the thick, soft snow which clings to his boots. He is glad he dried them out by the fire the night before, and he prays that they do not get wet.

(Wet clothes are a death sentence in this weather.)

He needs to find shelter by nightfall.

He has no map, no knowledge of the terrain. 

(It is an impossible task.)

Still, he walks.

The rational decision is to walk.

The irrational decision is to continue walking.

When both rational and irrational are no different, it means he never had a choice in the first place. 

Gepard shoves his hands into the pockets of the thick winter coat he had gotten from his office, having stripped himself of most of his armour which he kept aside in his pack. The cold steel would only leech heat from his person. 

The cold walk dulls his mind. The constant blank whiteness begins to reflect itself from his eyes into his mind, a dull, monotonous, repetitive motion of walking and trekking blindly into the snow. 

The wind begins to pick up, and fights against his motion. 

His resistance to the cold can only help him so far. 

Frostbite, Hypothermia, Exhaustion.

He would discover which one would stop him first. 

(The first signs of hypothermia include shivering, exhaustion, drowsiness, followed by slurred speech, memory loss, and confusion. Near its end stages, one faces paradoxical undressing, in which a person feels burning hot and strips away their clothes to relieve themselves of the sensation, which leads them to their death.)

He drags a boot up from the thick snow, travels up to his knees. The pack on his back was already lighter than Earthwork, and yet it began to dig into his shoulders, a bone deep ache which resonates with the rest of his limbs.

(The first signs of frostbite include numbness, white and greyish skin, coupled with unusually firm and waxy skin. Most will not notice it until pointed out by others.)

Gepard tugs the coat and its high collar over his mouth and nose, retaining as much warmth as he could. His lips are dry, chapped as he licks them, coating them with a layer of saliva as he ventures out further and away. Soon, they would be chapped and the skin would break and bleed. 

The snow is deep. 

Behind him, all his tracks are buried beneath fresh, falling snow, erasing all paths back to the safe room, and removing all traces of his presence. There was no going back now. He walks forward.

Alone in this icy wasteland, all that exists is him and the cold. 

He dares not think of why the room had given him such a harsh treatment, a melancholic fate of suicide and death by hanging, coupled with those stained windows, marks and imprints of a crowd which had sough to break in. A sign of karmic retribution, a future where the guilt had been too much. 

A future in which his mistakes came to light, a future where he was too weak to bear the consequence. 

(Perhaps it could have come to pass, in due time. The weight of the truth was a death sentence, one where he was his own executioner. After nearly a decade of service under Madam Cocolia, it would be a price to pay, a punishment he would exact on himself.)

The news had…pried at his will. His faith, shaken by the consequences of his actions, the lives he had put to death with his own hand. Everyone had asked if he had been alright, and that was a few weeks before the patrol that had thrown him into this place. 

A small part of him knew that he had been trying to block it out. To run away from that creeping, lurking dread that came up whenever Cocolia’s name was mentioned, to bite down on the flinch on whenever she had called his name up and out, and with her death, the nagging feeling that nothing had been as it seemed. 

When the Nameless arrived and they fought to a standstill at the restricted zone, he was glad he was too weak to stand up to them. (A part of him had been begging to simply disobey Cocolia’s orders, if only just once.)

That…was why he jumped at the chance Bronya’s instructions had given him. 

(He…would never have the strength to put his sister in jail. Not when he knew, had heard of rumours of what happened to any of the dissidents, protestors who had been jailed, who died under mysterious circumstances.)

He was a coward. 

To always bend over to the will of others, and not making his own decision, not trying hard enough to change something, to alter fate, to do anything! To have quietly enabled Cocolia to do as she pleased, to enable the Stellaron to persist. (But…he did not know.). He suspected something was off. He was powerless in the face of indecision, of conflicting loyalties. Doubt crippled him. 

He trips over something in the snow, barely catching himself as he stumbles across.

Sticking out from the freshly fallen snow, was a gloved hand, frozen stiff.

Gepard bites down hard on his lip. A stress response, because he cannot dig his nails into his palms, like he usually does to use the pain to ground himself. His chapped lips bleed.

He kneels down, and digs through the snow with his gauntleted hands. 

The protocol was to recover the dog tag from each soldier assigned to them the moment they entered the Silvermane Guards, as Gepard shovels up heaps of snow with both hands, digging down and uncovering what lay beneath.

Protocol grounds him. 

It does not end. 

He uncovers the arm, then the torso of a soldier who long since had his headgear frozen to his skin on his face, unable to uncover their face to find out who they were. Gepard removes the dog tag and finds it to be blank. Attached to it is a necklace, closed and clasped.

He does not know what this is supposed to mean.

The soldier’s legs are entangled with the arms of another. Those arms are attached to another body, who is entangled with the waist of another. And another. And another. 

He digs himself up a mass grave, filled with frozen, undecaying corpses forever left stranded in where they were, piles of unendying bodies filled with twisted, frozen limbs. The sight of frozen, snow covered silvermane blue, coupled with the white and silver, are burned into his memory. It is a grave which beckons him, a mound of bodies piled deep, beneath where he stood, from where a hand had reached out to him. 

This place hates him.

It hates him.

It hates him.

It would kill him.

It would drive him mad with grief and guilt, pushing him closer and closer to the edge, towards the limit he could take before he would take his own rifle and turn it upon himself.

(There had been guards who committed suicide. Some who hung themselves in their barracks, others who had shot themselves in the head, or those who simply walked out into the snow and never came back. Their job was bleak, miserable, and filled with despair. Some had seen too much. Some ceased believing. Some could not live with the guilt.)

He cannot give in.

As Gepard clutches at the stiff dog tag in his hand, he tucks it into his own pocket, and knows that he must move on. 

He would not recognise any of the faces in there, nor find out what any of their names were.

He tears himself away from the mass grave, despite what it calls to him, with its deathly silence and enveloping sight, a future which welcomed him in with its cold mercy, an easy escape from this purgatory.

He walks.

His hands are numb. The snow wet his gauntlets, and he needs to start a fire to dry them. 

He walks.

The snow grows deeper, grows thicker.

He misses home. 

He walks.

The sun sets above him.

Darkness falls. 

His hands are too numb to light the candle within the lantern. He uses his phone as a flashlight.

He keeps walking.

It becomes apparent that the time and energy he had spent digging up the grave had easily jeopardised his journey. Precious energy and time burnt on such a useless, pointless task, digging and digging only to find no answers waiting for him, to wet snow seeping into his clothes and to his skin, escalating the process of hypothermia and frostbite. 

Had digging up more bodies eased his guilt? Or had it simply validated his grief, confirmed his worst fears, and fed deeper into the gnawing fear of coming death and madness?

Irrational choices, Gepard.

The dog tag burns in his pocket. 

With stiff fingers, Gepard takes it out and coils the chain around his wrist with shaking fingers. The button on the clasp…he presses on it, and finds it popping open with a rusty spring. 

Within it, a compass points him to the north.

A direction. 

He pours what is left of his faith into this object. This last key that led him somewhere, because his mindless trek would not lead him anywhere better. He also cannot stay still. He cannot allow himself to simply fall into the snow and get buried and smothered by the cold, never to wake up once more. 

It was foolish to cling onto the possibility that this compass could bring him somewhere safe. Foolish to pin his hopes and remaining strength onto a salvage piece of metal scrap that he had taken from the corpse of a dead man. 

The compass shakes.

He tries to steady it, only to realise that his hand was the one making the compass shake. 

The thin, faded piece of metal within the compass points North.

North he proceeds to.

Chapter Text

“Eat. And don’t give me any excuse. Eat and go and sleep. The world won’t collapse because you aren’t around to handle things.”

The bowl of hot stew is shoved into his hands, the heated ceramic bowl warming his fingers as Gepard stares at its contents.

Looking at chunks of meat floating alongside vegetables, he questions when he stopped feeling hungry. 

“Sis…you really don’t have to-”

“I recognise that look on your face. Exhaustion and that obsessive, manic desire to keep working to punish yourself. I’ve been there before, Geppie. After Cocolia got me kicked out from the Architects research division.”

Gepard sets the bowl of soup down on the table.

“...I..I-” He chokes on words he wants so desperately to say aloud. To tell his sister the truth, because he knew, he knew that she had long suspected Cocolia of becoming a twisted, demented version of who she was. But she had long since put her conflict with Cocolia to rest. To have smashed and broken that guitar at the base of the Eternal Engine, to have put the past behind her.

Who was he to drag such ugly, vicious truths back up to torture her once more.

“You’re right. I…I need a break.”

Serval sits across him.

“...I’m here, if you need someone to talk to, Geppie.”

“...Thanks for the offer, sis.”

How can he ever tell her that he sent his men to their deaths under Cocolia’s command, that he had opposed his own sister when her ideas about Cocolia had been right all this time?

How? How? How?

He forces himself to eat, and to smile at his sister, to allow himself to bask in her warmth and to rest. Even if he hid the truth from his sister…perhaps he could just let himself live just this once. To enjoy and bask in the warmth of her care and concern, even though he did not deserve it.

Not at all.

The stew is the most delicious thing he has tasted.

-

The small shack arises and peeks out from the snow, the last salvation Gepard could hope to find.

His body was cold, almost unnaturally so, the brink of death right before he would come to feel the burning sensation of overwhelming warmth, before dying due to hypothermia. 

His thoughts are but strands to grasp at, long since scattered with only the compass in his hand. It is a miracle he has not lost his sanity to the freezing cold. The compass had indeed led him somewhere, perhaps safe, as he takes every single, slow, arduous step.

He wants to go faster.

He cannot.

Every step is dragged on by the weight of a thousand chains, a deep ache which permeated through every inch of his body, a water and snow logged fabric which clung to his skin and further depleted him of his strength. The drag of his heavy limbs, against the flow of the harsh cold winds which whip against his motion, claws and tears at him. 

In the deep, swirling miasma of his exhaustion, there is no panic. There is no excitement.

Only the slow, painful march.

He opens the door to the stone shelter, and swinging the door shut, he collapses to the ground. 

He curls up on the floor, huddling in on himself as he seeks to warm his limbs in, curled up into a foetal position as he simply throws in the towel and…and…

He wants to cry. He has no more strength to cry.

He drags himself across the floor, digging a stiff numb hand into the floor boards and pulling himself forward to where the fireplace was.

He needs to start a fire.

Maybe if he got warm enough, he could afford to have a mental breakdown after everything that happened. 

Gepard fumbles through his pack, fingers and hands unresponsive as he struggles to unzip and dig out the multi-tool and start a fire. The logs and dry tinder already sat waiting for him in the fireplace, as if they knew he would come, and that he would use it.

All he needed to do was to start the fire. 

He finds it.

He shapes his fingers into a grip, using any surface he could to press and mould his fingers into something usable, and strikes the flintstone.

It takes five tries for him to get it right.

The spark travels from the firestarting rod and onto the tinder.

Wisps of smoke begin curling upwards, as Gepard blows at the fire, with tired, disjointed breaths, scared of accidentally smothering it as he tries to feed oxygen to the flame. 

He watches, eyes trailing the growing embers which jump from the edges of dried tinder and onto the firestarters, before small, warm glowing tinder latches onto the cracked surface of the wooden logs. The wood cracks, as smoke wisps from where it was in contact with the tinder, before the wisps evolve into something thicker, and smoky, the bright edges of a burning flame catching onto the wood. 

The fire builds itself up, as Gepard holds his shaking hands up towards the flame, and curls up by the fireplace.

The warmth and the heat is a solace, after the amount of time he had spent out trekking in the cold. The flames flicker, as Gepard stares, and watches it with a half lidded gaze. He is slow to register the fact that he was…he was safe.

If only but a small, temporary bit of solace, a shelter in the storm, but he was safe.

He pulls his legs close to himself and huddles by the fire. 

He rests.

He let the heat take the cold away from his limbs, as he held his hands and limbs close to the fire, allowing the heat to thaw his limbs out gradually, because he had no warm water on hand to help him manage any possible frostbite. Feeling returns, followed by the sensation of pins and needles, static noise which travels up from the tip of his fingers and on towards his wrist and forearms. 

A straddling feeling, as he brings his hands down and nudges them against the floor to get the bloodflow moving.

He thanks the resistance Qlipoth provided to him to bear against the cold. 

He will not lose any of his limbs to frostbite. 

So, he continues to bask in the warmth of the fire, as the darkened sky outside the shelter descends into a void of darkness, with not a single star in the sky. The sole window leading into the endless plains beyond the shelter reflects nothing but snow which settles a few metres beyond his hut, the light from his fire unable to travel far in this darkness. 

Gepard resolves to stay up, to keep the fire going. 

Once the feeling returns to his fingers, he can find the strength to pry off his gauntlets and gloves from his hands, letting the soaked material dry up by the fire. He too pries off his boots and socks, all wet from the endless trek.

Were he not blessed with his abilities, he would have lost his limbs to frostbite some time back.

It was fucked up that this place was built to torture him, yet ensure he stayed alive long enough. The floor of the cabin is still cold, despite being made of cabin grade hardwood that was meant to retain the precious heat supplied by the fire. Still, with his bare feet on its floor, Gepard faces the fire as he uses the iron poker to carefully adjust the logs. 

On the side, he unpacks his remaining items and pours himself a cup of water, using the steel cap of the thermos and setting it near the fire so it could warm up. 

He opens up a pack of the protein bar and opts to eat a third of it, letting it heat up and defrost near the fire as well before unwrapping its packaging. It was tough and stiff, tasting savoury yet with hints of honey. He savours the third of the bar which he allows himself to eat, and drinks the now hot cup of water. 

He rests.

He is too tired to allow any intrusive thoughts to disturb him, yet he knows he cannot fall asleep here. He sets an alarm on his phone, raising its volume and turning on its vibrate mode and slipping it into a breast pocket before he rolls his pack into a thick bundle of fabric, and sets it down as a backrest to lean on. 

Studying the small cabin he was in, he allowed its details, and every nook and cranny to sink it, letting his limbs rest as he simply resorted to scanning and analysing what resources he had on hand. There was truly no way to rest when he was alone in a foreign place. 

He spies a bundle of wooden logs, messily chopped but piled at a corner to the left of the fireplace. He estimates that it can last him the night. An axe laid leaning against the pile of logs, stacked horizontally into a wall of logs which gives the captain hope that he could obtain more wood himself. Above the wooden log pile hung a portrait of…a family with scratched out faces. 

He could spy a family consisting of…a pair of parents, two sisters and a brother. 

He ignores how their blonde hair is similar to his own. 

Nursing the still warm cup in his hands, Gepard remarks how dead his nails seem, a purple, blue colour which coats his finger nails, the tips of his fingers still bright red from the frostbite which plagued him. 

His lips burn with pain, as hot water comes into contact with chapped and still healing lips, and Gepard drinks the water nonetheless, and closes his eyes. The water is good. It warms him up from the inside, and returns some strength back to him. 

Having draped his cape over himself like a blanket, he makes sure not to let its edges near the fire, lest it catches fire and end up burning the whole cabin down. 

An empty holder for what seems to be a gun rack was attached to the wall, next to the family portrait. Beneath it, was a cabinet. Filled with what, he did not know. Further away from the fireplace, was a rectangular bench covered in what appeared to be a fur coat, sewn and stitched together from the hide of a direwolf. Its white pattern is a pale shade darker than that of the snow, the only thing which sets it apart from its environment.

His gaze lands on the door leading to the outside world, which stands right across the fireplace. 

He does not wish to leave.

On his right, laid a large chest which he would uncover in the morning. Or whenever he was up for it. A door stretched into a smaller corridor, ending in an attached bathroom with a small sink and a toilet. 

It appears that this was all he had to work with.

It was enough.

He rests by the fire.  

Chapter Text

After the Astral Express Crew had departed, and after he had been told the truth, Gepard had settled into a routine. 

Skip breakfast. Head to work. Patrol. Lunch break with Pela. Write reports. Training. Meetings. Dinner with Serval. Work. Try to sleep. Fail to sleep.

Skip breakfast. Head to work. Patrol. Lunch break with…someone. Write reports. Attend a funeral. Training. Dinner with Serval. Rewrite reports. Sleep for a few hours before the nightmares woke him up. 

Eat breakfast Sampo had thrown at him. Patrol. Lunch break. Write reports. Test…recruits. Prepare. Dinner. Reports. No sleep.

Eat. Patrol. Reports. Dinner. Stay awake.

Eat. Work. Collapse and sleep. Wake up and work. Ignore their screams.

Wake up.

He cannot do this alone.

-

The alarm jolts him awake, as he tosses a few more blocks of wood into the fire. 

He had dug through the cabinets, finding nothing of use except a few photo albums, silvermane badges and insignias here and there, pieces of metal and trinkets which meant nothing to him now. The photos all have his face scratched out.

He hopes this was the last room.

After resting, he was sane enough to put together what this room was meant to represent. 

His family, and the weight of expectations that had been placed onto him. Items of value, to show off pride and face, along with scratched out faces on the photos, medals, certificates found in drawers and cabinets all around…acts that he knew not to be proud of, because he had made mistakes that cost him lives. 

At the same time, he also recognised that he had also done some good. For events where he had managed to save lives without a single death…he had…done something good, for once. 

What was amusing was how the cabin and his entire situation was so obviously telling him that none of his achievements, his feats, his family’s legacy, would matter to him now if he were stuck in this state of survival. 

He opts to keep the photos to be burnt as tinder. 

Gepard shifts a few items around, as he peers outside the window.

The howling wind beats at its thin glass, a darkness which is only cut through with the light from the inside of this cabin. Snow settles on the glass panel, as the surface fogs up when he places a hand on its cold surface. 

At this rate, he would never return home.

Trapped within this cabin, which also played the role of his sole shelter in this isolating storm, the captain wonders whether he would ever escape from this purgatory. Two days had already passed, and it was becoming more and more apparent that he would have to brave this alone.

He pulls out the notebook he had fished out from the chest. A pencil was all he had to work with, as he flips through its pages and begins to pen down his own thoughts. After all, if he was going to die here, he may as well detail his findings and everything he had done to get here. 

The events of the previous day are recounted in point form, as succinctly as he can, from start to end. From the moment he had been separated from his men within that cursed shophouse, down to every action he could remember taking. Including his call for help on the experimental communicator, his phone, every decision he made, the rooms and corridors, as much as he could. 

If anyone would find this journal, he would hope that it could help them stay alive, long enough to escape.

He sets the pencil down, as he leans against the wall, placing the leatherbound journal down onto the hardwood floor. He closes his eyes. 

His will, his desire had been whittled down so quickly by the environment and all he experienced. Within the span of two days, with no clear threat, no threat he could face off against physically, he was left to keep himself alive in a brutal fight against the elements. Why was he already thinking of how he could not make it out alive?

No one should be thinking that way, especially if they have the goal of leaving this place.

“Get yourself together, Gepard Landau.” He combs a hand through his hair, sweeping his hair back as he opens his eyes. 

Step by step. 

Follow protocol. 

Create a set of instructions and a list of actions to work towards leaving this place. 

He had not ascended to the ranks of a captain based on half assed will. Neither had he become a pathstrider without sufficient need to protect and to preserve. He could not die here. 

He picks up the pencil once more, as he flips to a new page and begins listing down all he thinks he can do.

• Test the limits of this shelter (whether it is permanent or temporary)

• Find a way to contact anyone

• Find a supply of food and wood (Venture further out? Hope that the terrain changes?)

• Figure out where I am (Not in the Restricted Zone anymore. Patch of Fragmentum distortion?)

• Find out what this place wants with me (Feeding off fear)

• Find out how to leave (How to clear a zone? What demarcates a zone?)

This place was really something else. 

Tapping the end of the pencil onto the faded paper, Gepard closes the book, setting the pencil inside as a book mark as he fishes out the remaining items within the chest. They consisted of a spool of rope, a spare traveller’s pack containing a set of extra clothes, and nothing else.

He might as well clear number 1 from his list.

He ties an end of the robe to the bench, and the other to himself, as he stuffs the spare pack with his critical supplies. Lighting up the candle within the lantern, he clips it to his belt as he loops the compass with its chain around his neck.

He puts on his gloves, boots and gauntlets, as he opens the door and takes a few steps out.

It is freezing. The harsh winter chill which robbed him of his breath as soon as he exited the confines of the cabin, it tears at the exposed skin on his face, and Gepard can only walk forward, out into the darkness. 

He has a firm hand on the rope tied around his waist, the lantern by his side only able to shine a flickering dome of light a few feet from each step he took. Otherwise, it was entirely pitch black out there. He walks, trudging through the ever piling snow as he places more distance between himself and the cabin, roughly around a hundred metres. Which was the maximum limit allowed by the rope. 

Turning back, even the dim glow of the cabin’s presence was nearly drowned out by the ever falling, endless cloak of snow, the rope tied to his waist stretched taut. There was nothing else but miles and miles of darkness. It beckons him, an unholy aeon which simmers and gazes back at him, cold, detached, and all consuming. 

As someone who had fought along the frontlines, developed a keen sense of knowing when monsters and predators had their sights set on him, he trusted his instincts. 

So why did he feel like he was being watched?

He makes the split second decision to follow the rope back. That sensation of gazes on his back, it tears into him, something unfamiliar and foreign, a paradox contained within his situation, paving way for a disturbing possibility that he could not think about. 

He does not lie to himself when he says he feels scared.

Scared that something would cut the rope and rip his lifeline away from him, stranding him in the darkness (he was not alone). Even the rifle’s presence is not enough to comfort him. The snow clings to his boots, making the trek back much, much harder than the trek out had been, a trap laying in wait. 

For a few metres, he is left staring blindly ahead and running back along the length of the rope which he could not even see where it began, stumbling through the darkness as he coiled the rope around a hand whilst making his way back. His heart beats wildly, the eyes on his back only looming closer and closer.

(It is not something he can fight.)

Second turn into minutes.

One hundred metres was not meant to take such a long time to cover. 

He chokes on his own breath, grasping and clawing at his throat, as he spots the flicker of a light in the horizon. The freezing temperatures suffocate his lungs. 

He sprints straight to it, pulling any excess rope back in with him as he closes the door shut behind him.

He drags the bench over and barricades the entrance. He pulls the curtains over the window shut. 

He collapses onto the ground in a heap, breathing heavily. 

There is something out there. 

(Could your mind be playing tricks on you?)

His instincts do not lie.

(There is something out there.)

1. He is not alone. 
2. The night is dangerous.

He sits by the fire. 

He waits until morning before he dares to set a foot out of the cabin. 

-

Day breaks painfully slowly. 

At least it lets him know that this place still follows a day and night cycle. He roughly knows that the cabin will not disappear on him, as he lets the fire die out into smouldering embers, having extinguished the lantern he had on his person as well. 

He must head out to find supplies, and to bring back wood to feed the fire. The night alone had already gone through a third of the logs, and the presence of logs indicated that there must be trees around. As for food…

If there was really nothing else out here, his mind flashes back to the corpses buried in the snow. 

No.

He shakes his head, as he pushes the bench aside and removes the barricade, picking up the axe and a day pack, spool of rope within his pack in case he needed it. The compass would remain firmly around his neck, inseparable, because all he could deduce was that it was a key for him to return to the cabin. Something he could not afford to lose, because it would always guide him back to the same spot. 

Sunlight is soft and quiet, the skies overhead cloudy and shrouded in the gloom of having an entire world engulfed in a perpetual snowstorm. In this manner, it reflected Belobog, especially when they were out in the outlying snow plains. He closes the door behind him, having been left without a key or a keyhole to lock the cabin.

As long as he returned before nightfall, he would be fine. The cabin would be safe. 

Turning forward, he slips the snow goggles over his eyes and marches out into the snow plains. He had long since shed his armour and only left behind its lighter portions, opting to prioritise agility and to minimise the drain on his stamina, especially since he was lugging his pack around. 

What was he looking for? Anything. A sign of civilisation, even a mound of corpses was better than nothing in this interminable hellscape. He had grown up around snow all his life, and now he was beginning to hate it with a vengeance. 

Even if he finds a copy of his own corpse…that was preferable to nothing.

Aeons, he was really being driven insane by this place.

(At least with a corpse, there were materials he could strip, scavenge and salvage. More materials and resources means longer survival.)

He prays for dead trees, because the wood would keep him alive.

The trek is mind numbing. 

He keeps track of time using his phone, where these are the rare moments he regrets not wearing or bringing along a watch to his patrol, because it could save him a lot of power and energy. He hates how the battery on his phone drains, something which could possibly get him out of here as soon as possible.

The communicator clipped to his shoulder only echoes the same ear shattering frequency, all throughout his time here. 

The captain trudges on, hoping for something. 

Anything.

Anything that would mean that he was not doomed here to die a slow, cold death, freezing and falling prey to hypothermia, or dying of starvation. 

(He dared not confront what awaited him in the night.)

Something dark and thin pokes through the horizon.

Gepard tightens his grip on his rifle, as he nears the objects, thin and piercing, which emerge from the snow and grow larger as he approaches it. They are still, and Gepard does not sense any outward hostility directed at him, judging from the lack of movement.

He sets it down, as he sees the dead forest ahead of him. 

Of trees long since stripped bare of its leaves and vegetation, leaving behind empty husks that had died and dried out in the cold. Gnarled and twisted branches which spread open and outwards reaching out like spears pointed towards the heavens.

Yet from their deadened, blackened branches, hung the corpses of hanged women, men, children and even the elderly.

Gepard stares.

He remembers.

Mass executions were held for rebels who wanted to overthrow Cocolia, to silence the dissidents, in prison complexes, in the execution rooms. To be hanged, sentenced to death to resist a tyrannical regime that had begun to sink its claws into the populace, a madwoman at the helm of the ship that was Belobog.

Bodies and corpses on the execution stand, for those who had rioted, those who had been arrested for protesting against the division and separation of the underworld and the surface, limp and lifeless. 

He had stood on the same stage to impose the authority of Cocolia’s reign over the people. 

Being faced with this sight….Gepard turns away.

He is not ready to face this yet.

Eventually, he has to, to cut down the trees and take down their corpses, to harvest the wood from the trees, to lay past crimes and horrendous misbeliefs to rest, but he is not ready yet. (They hang, still and dead from its brittle, thorny branches.)

“Not today, please.”

He whispers into the falling snow, voice caught and ensnared, but forced out regardless.

So he walks once more.

-

He finds a broken mess of weapons and warped steel, scattered brick and shattered glass. The traces are strewn across the snowy field, white surface marred by the fragments of war, a disaster which resulted in a mass destruction that had levelled a civilisation. He follows them, tracing the history of an event that should have, could have, but fortunately did not come true.

The remnants of a calamity which descended, taking away with it the lives of all he knew dear. He spots a gloved hand beneath a pile of rubble, frost forming on the surface of the shattered metal wall which buried the person beneath it. He kneels down to try and uncover the body, out of…out of trained protocol, going through the motions of rescuing survivors whenever a tragedy had befallen.

The glove rips off, revealing a crystalline arm made of ice. 

Flesh and blood had long since been distilled and rendered down into a cruel transmutation of something inhuman, the fragmentum having consumed and subsumed the corpses of the dead, defiling them even in death.

A death which awaited him at his post at the frontlines, a death which haunts all the soldiers. Of those who had been missing in action, bodies unrecovered for extended periods of time, the Fragmentum devoured them and assimilated them into its unholy corruption. 

Here, it looked like something of a large scale descended upon the entire city civilisation, and silenced all human life that remained.

He holds onto the torn glove, the way the ugly crystalline Fragmentum clung to the material, a disease that would spread, from the heart of a cancerous Stellaron. 

(This was the end if the Nameless had not come.)

He crushed the glove within his gauntleted hands.

He walks deeper into the heart of a dead city.

Somewhere along the way, he finds that he becomes numb.

Where the Everwinter Monument once stood proudly, was now nothing but a shattered mess of warped steel and corroded crystal. 

The Goethe Hotel had collapsed, something large and cold having diagonally cleaved through its building from the top, an icy lance forged from an ungodly divinity having pierced the hotel from top down to its base. 

Qlipoth Fort was…rippling. Shuddering and groaning beneath the weight of the cold, as something foreign had impacted and removed the top half of the building. It’s as if a star fell from the sky and consumed its top half, leaving a gaping hole carved into whatever of it remained. Ice and Fragmentum grows from its base.

As for the rest of the district, he meant it when he said it had been levelled.

Perhaps it is the sight itself, or his already unstable mental state, but he laughs at what he is shown.

Absolutely nothing was left. 

The alternate end presented to him a living nightmare in which he alone could see, he alone, would ever lay his eyes on. He lives through the end in which his mistakes allowed the death of Belobog to come about, even if he knows this is not the case back at home. 

It is the possibility that it came so close to this, that shakes him to his core. 

To how close he had been if he had stopped the trailblazers in the restricted zone, arrested his own sister, and damned the people he had sworn to protect. 

The possibility alone is enough, to push him to the brink, to bend his will until it would break. 

The future which would have awaited had played out like a tragedy, leaving him the sole survivor to participate as a character within this unfortunate tale. The grim, haunting silence which permeated through the air, still rubble amongst the buildings which still remained in its broken fragments, was deafening. 

Worse so, was the blank land of snow where everything else was meant to be.

Gepard stops before where the town square was meant to be.

The ruins were here to stay.

To haunt him, the monument of his sins, if he had chosen to go through with them, if he had been the one to make the wrong decision, that blind, distorted faith, that twisted trust and poisoned devotion.

He reflects.

-

He returns back to the safehouse empty handed, with nothing but the knowledge of what laid out there beyond the confines of this small cabin, and resolves himself to get out and start scavenging the next day.

He decides to only start a new fire when the temperature forces him to, and lasts through the night on five wooden logs.

He would start again the next day.

Chapter Text

There is always something profoundly sad about seeing how one’s past friendships, and camaraderie has fallen apart. From good friends turned into cold, distant strangers hunting down each other across the stars, to mentors who fell prey to mara…he always wondered why things had turned out this way.

And he had watched all of it unfold, starting from Baiheng’s death, and everyone’s guilt and regret which culminated into choices that…

He could understand why they made those choices. It would be foolish of him to pretend that he did not. 

Standing beneath the High Elder’s statue at Scalegorge Waterscape, the general reminds himself time and time again that he could not change or alter the path of where everyone had gone onto.

A series of unfortunate events, propelled by desperation and blind faith, had sent everyone down on their own separate paths.

And him? He is the only one left to remember their legacy.

His head hurts.

One must not linger on past grievances.

One must let go of their regrets. 

One must reflect, and cleanse themselves of hatred.

But how could he ever silence the longing for the past?

Those fond days, spent beneath the iridescent light of a distant sun, drinking wine and cherishing memories and time sent together, of a time where the future was still bright and not shattered as it was now. 

How could he forget what the High Cloud Quintet stood for?

He coughs into his hand.

Alas, it is dangerous to think of such thoughts.

He releases his grip, revealing ginkgo leaves coated in blood.

-

Jing Yuan toys around with the antique vintage radio that had been found in Fyrestroll Garden. An old thing, as Hanya and Xueyi had informed him, that had been sitting around and collecting dust in their office for a few centuries. Neither of the two could remember how or when it arrived in their office, and were cleaning it out so that they could tidy the place up. 

He had been passing by when the two siblings were about to donate the radio, the sleek, antique box still capable of working and capturing frequencies using technology from…millenia ago. 

No one onboard the Luofu relied on such archaic technology anymore, and the two of them had deemed it harmless enough for him to bring it back to the compound he resided in, since he was curious as to how it worked. 

It simply seemed like a waste to throw it out and away, despite how old and outdated it was. It would also do him a lot of good to take up something to keep his mind occupied, apart from the work he had thrown himself into ever since the ordeal with Lord Phantilya, followed by the events of the escaped Heliobi. Diviner Fu had been nagging at him recently…something about returning back to his hobbies…and returning to nap. (The bags under his eyes were making him more exhausted by the day). 

There were words which went unspoken. 

So he tries. 

He spends more time sparring with Yanqing, coaching him on sword techniques, playing chess with him, his young retainer being ecstatic that he was spending more time with him.

But was that enough?

Enough to assure his companions and those close to him that he had moved on?

He preferred not to use the term lie.

He does not tell them of how he dreams of the past every night. From cherished memories playing themselves out with a dash of fantastical elements, down to the nightmares of madness, shredded corpses, and imprisonment. (Baiheng would have loved to tinker with this radio)

They did not need to know such things. 

What is growing increasingly harder to hide and figure out is…why his memory was slipping. From misplaced items, down to blurred faces and foreign names on the tip of his tongue, it is a mystery he has to solve. 

Or perhaps he did not have to.

Those things could wait.

What he does remember, is how to do his duties, how to keep those medical reports locked shut in his lowest drawer in the office within his gifted compound, and to ensure everyone that he was doing fine. 

Everything was so tiring these days. Doing work, training and sparring with Yanqing, even sitting down with nothing on hand worsened this sensation. It was funny, wasn’t it? How boredom and free time only worsened that feeling of crushing weariness, a need to simply fill up his thoughts and mind, to occupy them with something, with…with the past.

It is foolish.

The past has long since faded away.

He knows this, but his heart cannot accept this. 

He sits at his desk within his bedroom, and uses a finger to push a button on the top right edge of the antique radio. The sleek black object was a rectangular device, with a collapsible antenna that extended upwards, and two silver knobs on its side. It was old, the material of its speakers clogged with dust, which he had dusted out using one of his calligraphy pens. 

He turns it on, pressing on a button made of faded red plastic, which was on its side.

A burst of static screeches at him.

The general winces at the noise, and dials what he assumes is the volume button down, lowering the noise level to something that no longer renders him deaf, but still grates at his nerves.

He dials the frequency channel, watching a small rectangular glass display showing a red pointer moving across a coloured bar steadily, with each angle and degree he turns on the knob. 

The scattered static changes form, taking a raspy sound that becomes distorted and warped, sounds and tunes singing in lost, forgotten harmony, a collage and smattering of a thousand different choirs which sought to sing at once. It is a chaotic miasma that hounds after his attention, pleading to be heard after millennia of being silenced, a selective honour bestowed upon him as its sole listener. 

They do not vocalise, but yet they speak. 

From odd tones and tunes which overlap and tear into each other, the general finds himself entranced. 

T̵h̵e̴ ̸n̴o̷i̶s̷e̶ ̴c̴a̷l̶l̴s̴ ̴t̶o̶ ̶h̴i̸m̶.̵

It wants him to come home, to come back. To enjoy and immerse himself in what was, in what could have been. Back to times when promises were unbroken still, back to when everyone was alive, safe, well and healthy. 

It is uncanny, the effect it has on him.

Sitting along in his bedroom, the radio mesmerised him.

It is something deadly. A rational thought whispers to him. 

He shuts off the radio.

He blinks, wondering what had just taken place. He taps the box with a finger, as he flips it over and inspects it.

It is when he realises that there were no batteries inserted into where they should have been.

He sets the object back down.

Shaking his head, he decides that what he needs is rest. He sets the radio down, an irrational thought to muffle it with cloth and stuff it deep into the recesses of his largest drawers and lock it away, for the unsettling encounter it had given him. A rationally irrational thought, considering that it had just worked without a power source. 

He feeds into it, and bundles it up in a thick cloth, wrapping it around the radio and setting it inside a box, which he locks away with a key. He sets it aside, leaving the key on his desk. 

The general yawns, as he strips down to a set of more comfortable clothes, heading to wash up and prepare for the night. 

A brief thought slips into his mind, reminding him to take the medicine prescribed to him, but the general despises how it only seemed to make him forgetful. 

He could go without it for one night. It would not hurt. 

He climbs into his bed and closes his eyes. 

-

He waited patiently in the dead of night, within the confines of his own home as he waited for Baiheng Bailu to prescribe him a remedy for the constant slew of headaches that had seemingly increased in frequency ever since the troubles onboard the Luofu began. 

At first, he had brushed them off because he had gotten migraines occasionally in his line of work, from overstraining himself, hence why he tended to doze off, skimp on work, and take breaks whenever he could, but recently none of it could relieve him of the pain. 

They strike him out of nowhere, whenever he is reading reports, or even making himself a cup of tea, or in the middle of a spar. Aeons, it was debilitating, where some of them began to cripple him with agony in a way it hurt to even breathe or think. The Master Diviner had caught wind of it somehow, despite how he tried to pass it off as a side effect of old age of being overworked or something, but she had been adamant on sending him to the healers.

Giving him medical aid opened up a whole other slew of issues, because any word, gossip, or rumour that the General of the Luofu was sick was bound to be exploited by others, viewed as a weakness for someone of his position. Thus, began a whole other set of arrangements which Diviner Fu had thankfully taken care of for him, lest it caused him another set of headaches. 

He was grateful for her meticulous work and assignment, with Yanqing even going out of his way to shoulder more of his menial reports and meetings for him so that he could find more rest. Bless that child. He did not deserve someone like him. 

Of all the healers of the Alchemy Commission, Lady Bailu was selected as she had already tended to him once before, was trusted by his inner circle, and generally loyal to the Luofu and his command. Of course, she was also highly skilled at curing most, if not all diseases, barring the mara, which he had heard she could delay at its outset. Which was impressive as it was, and the most advanced medical technique available on the Luofu. 

“General! I’ve looked through all of the list of illnesses and checked you out!” She had stood in front of him, as he sat down in his softest lounge chair available within his living room. He could hear the quiet, muffled footsteps of someone stopping outside the doorway. 

“Please, keep your voice down. I wouldn’t want any of us to disturb my sleeping disciple, now, do I?” He calls out in a softer tone, but loud enough to get his message across to where he knew Yanqing was likely trying to eavesdrop behind the doorway.

The footsteps betray something akin to sheepish retreat. 

Ah, his disciple had never failed to amuse him with his antics. 

As much as he would feel obligated to share his problems with his retainer, he had a sinking feeling that this was something not meant for someone so young to know of. 

“My apologies, General. From the way you described your migraines, seemingly striking out of nowhere, happening wherever and whenever without a pattern, from sitting at your desk, to a casual stroll in the garden and even in the middle of a spar…It is just too vague to make any conclusion about your condition. However, you also mentioned that you haven’t been sleeping well recently. That could be another reason contributing to your headaches.” Bailu hands him a stack of letters, which the general takes from her gratefully. 

He spares the only but a glance, because he has an inkling of what is happening to him.

“For now, I’ll be giving you some medicine to help you sleep better, and some painkillers to ease up the pain of your migraines. If there’s anything you have to tell me or add on more about, please do so!” 

Looking at Bailu, her eager sincerity and pure, earnest concern, he almost says something.

Almost.

He almost mentions the spottiness of his short term memories, that hollow emptiness within his heart, the bloodied dreams he has when he does manage to sleep, and how he wants to leave to chase after Dan Feng, after YingXing, after Master, after anyone who still remembered. 

Instead, he simply smiles.

“Rest assured, Lady Bailu. I will update you if there are any other symptoms or problems.”

-

He stares at the ceiling of his room, watching the dark night and dim artificial moonlight cast something akin to shifting shadows on his ceiling, a restless hum in his veins. He has been staring at the ceiling for the past three hours. 

He simply, just cannot sleep. 

In recent times, he begins to grow frustrated with how his thoughts, which always gave him useful insights, keen observations, resourceful methods, could no longer stay quiet. Instead, they begin to delve into words, conversations that had happened a long, long time ago, into familiar voices, that soft comfort he once had and will no longer have anymore. 

He was supposed to be ecstatic that Master had lived. She looked well, with the mara under control. Even if she had been locked away in the Shackling Prison, she lay waiting for something. An opportunity he had yet to decipher. Dan Heng had left with the Express. Yingxing…No, Blade, roamed the galaxy with the Stellaron Hunters. 

And Baiheng…he sees her often.

Her image overlaps with that of Lady Bailu. The same carefree spirit which both possessed, the need to be free and ever roaming, he cannot deny that something had been borne of Dan Feng’s desperate attempts at reviving the one they had cherished. At least he and Yingxing had tried.

What had he done? Nothing.

In the end, his inaction would once again be something that damns everything he knows and loves. 

His head begins to hurt. The dull throbbing pain which forms at the back of his head, as Jing Yuan pushed himself up and reached out for the pitcher of water on his bedside table, pouring himself a cup with slowed movements. 

He simmers in the pain, as it gets worse and worse, memories which flow in a disoriented, haphazard manner diluting his current, present thoughts, flashes and glimpses of emotion, scenes of death, lingering, persistent regrets. 

“Jing Yuan, you look like you should rest.”

He shoves the blankets off of himself, and stumbles towards his desk.

“Oh how our mighty general has fallen sick. You know, you aren’t infallible, right?”

He sets the cup down on his desk, as the pain grows increasingly sharp.

“̷W̴e̴’̷l̸l̵ ̵l̵i̷v̶e̸ ̷w̴i̶t̵h̸o̸u̴t̶ ̵y̴o̵u̸r̴ ̶h̴e̸l̶p̴ ̵j̴u̷s̷t̴ ̶t̸h̸i̵s̵ ̶o̴n̸c̴e̸,̶ ̸s̸o̶ ̸d̶o̵n̶’̸t̸ ̷w̷o̷r̷r̶y̷ ̷t̴o̸o̶ ̶m̸u̸c̵h̷ ̸a̸n̶d̸ ̸g̷e̷t̶ ̵s̴o̸m̴e̶ ̸r̷e̵s̸t̴.̷”̶

The half filled glass of water spills across his desk, as Jing Yuan reaches into his drawer and finds the sachet of medicine that had been given to him.

“̶O̷n̶c̶e̵ ̶y̷o̶u̵’̸v̶e̴ ̶h̴e̷a̵l̴e̵d̴ ̴u̴p̵,̷ ̶w̸e̷ ̸c̶a̶n̴ ̶c̶e̵l̵e̸b̵r̵a̷t̷e̷ ̴w̷i̵t̸h̷ ̵s̸o̴m̵e̴ ̵w̷i̴n̶e̵!̶”̶

He shoves the pills in his mouth, swallowing it down as he hauls himself up into the chair, and leans his head down across his desk. 

He waits for the medicine to take effect.

He waits for the voices in his head to quiet down. To let go of the stream of memories, having drowned them out by the drugs he had taken to slow down his mental faculties and silence his awareness, he waits for the blissful oblivion to sink in. 

The pain eventually dies down.

By then, he is drenched in a layer of sweat, is sticky, uncomfortable, yet too tired to do anything else apart from just closing his eyes and falling asleep on his desk.

Chapter Text

“Disciple, have you ever wondered about what the Ten Lord Commission does to those who have been mara struck?”

Jing Yuan shook his head. It was best not to think about the implications the Commission withheld from them for the expressed purpose of simply keeping the painful truth away from the main populace. 

“No, master. They simply perform a task that is required to keep us in check. There has never been any need to doubt them.”

Master had been acting strange lately. Since the passing of Baiheng, he had accepted the fact that nothing would be the same. Yingxing and Dan Feng were both devastated, and mourned in their own ways. 

While Master had seemed like she had accepted the outcome, had mourned for Baiheng’s death in the conventional rite for Foxians, he knew that she only seemed unaffected on the outside. Deep down, out of all of them, Master had been the closest to Baiheng. He, on the other hand, was still in a daze. 

Baiheng’s death had yet to fully sink into him, with its implications, but the gaping absence of their companion would slowly carve its mark on him. Slowly and surely, as it had torn at everyone else within the High Cloud Quintet. Such was the way grief was, at least for him. 

He does his best. He stays by Master’s side, even if they were now equals and free to leave and mourn as they pleased, he stayed by Jingliu’s side. He did not want his Master to go through this alone, and…neither did he want to face this alone, when his heart would eventually accept the finality of her death. 

“I see. In that case, would you rather be put down by someone you trust, instead of being taken away into the hold of the Ten Lord’s Commission, should you become mara struck?”

Jing Yuan pauses.

No one knew what happened to the mara struck which were taken in by the Ten Lords Commission. Not even him, and he was well on his way to be promoted to the role of the General of the Luofu. 

“I’d rather have someone strike me down.”

Such was the curse of being mara struck. To undergo the process of slowly losing one's self, one's reason, emotions, personality, into a deep inescapable spiral of despair which was irreversible…it was a living hell. 

The only comfort he could give, or he could get if he ever became mara struck, was to be put down immediately. 

“Good.”

His Master’s tone leaves him troubled. 

-

Wet sleeves and clothes stick to his skin, as Jing Yuan is roused from his dream by a vigorous shaking motion. Someone laid their hand on his shoulder, jostling him awake harshly enough to slam him back against the back of his chair, as the general bites down a wince.

The surprise is enough to have him standing on his feet, leaping away from his chair and desk as he redirects the assailant’s reaction to grab at him, huffing as he forces himself to quickly wake up and clear the grogginess that slowed his mind. The sedative effect of his medicine certainly only made things worse.

“General! Please collect yourself! We don’t have much time until your trial begins!” Yanqing’s voice cuts through the fog in his head. 

“And you! You are dismissed. I will handle the General from here.” Jing Yuan rubs his eyes, as he hears the footsteps of a…Wraith Warden leave his office. 

“Yanqing? Pardon this old man, but what is going on?”

The Yanqing before him frowns. He is familiar, yet a stranger all at once. The friendly sincerity in his eyes are no more, hardened by the experience of countless battles. He is taller, as well, attire slightly different, and his floating swords hover in the air around him. His mind churns with a million questions, no longer crowded by the drowsiness of sleep, it becomes increasingly apparent that something is off. 

“We have to move. Your trial begins soon. Your memory hasn’t been doing well of late, and I can’t believe that you only remember to ask this question today, and right now of all times.”

Jing Yuan flinches. 

This Yanqing is sharp, bitter, and resentful. He wonders what happened.

What was this about a trial as well? What was he being tried for? A crime he committed? But what crime had he committed?

Yanqing’s gaze softened reactively, the younger male biting back a wince as he realised the effect he had on him.

“This must be jarring for you, but General, you’ve been mara struck for a few months now. During one of your episodes, you committed one of the ten unpardonable sins. The fifth sin of Phathry Murder, where you took the lives of ten Cloud Knight soldiers under your command during a mission.”

Jing Yuan stills.

“You’ve been in an unstable mental state the past few months, and the healers mentioned that your memory, both short and long term, have been deteriorating exponentially ever since you started getting those crippling migraines of yours.”

He does not understand. 

“I…I should have known better. Should have pestered you to see the doctors more, to escalate the matter of your health to Diviner Fu, to anyone who could have seen through you and pushed you to get help.” Yanqing’s voice dies down to a small, harsh whisper. 

Jing Yuan begins to understand. 

He must be hallucinating about the future. Or perhaps, he really did lose his mind since that night he had fallen asleep by his desk, and…and…

The signs had been there. He had only been in denial. No, he had been trying to hold it back, at bay, even as the symptoms had begun to manifest itself in increasing severity. 

He sees the tears which glisten in Yanqing’s eyes. 

This is all too sudden for both himself and his protege. 

“...N-Now, the trial for your crimes has come. The Ten Lords Commission has come to bring you away. I…I can only send you off.”

This must be a nightmare. 

It must be a horrible, horrible nightmare. That is the only conclusion which makes sense. A vivid, intricate nightmare spun by his own subconscious fears, made into reality, as Yanqing turns his gaze away from him. Out of shame, guilt, or regret? 

Still, Jing Yuan’s heart throbs at the sight of his protege. The young retainer he had raised since he was a babe, who now had to send him off and escort him to be sentenced to his unknown fate. One certainly as good as death, behind the thick, obscure walls and hidden knowledge of the independent Ten Lords Commission.

It is a nightmare, but also his reality now. 

He reaches out and places his hand on Yanqing’s head. 

Yanqing looks up at him, eyes tired and holding in them so much withheld grief, the desperation to not let go fighting staunchly with his own sense of duty, and loyalty to all that he had been raised to know. 

“I’m proud of you.”

That is all he himself can say. In a situation where this may very well be his final words to this Yanqing, even if it was some sort of dream, a passing of something illogical which bled into the world, he cannot deny the possibility that all of this could be real. 

If it were real, he would have to make his final words count. 

Yanqing falls silent, and he watches him choke down a sob, and wipe away the tears forming in his eyes with the back of his sleeve. 

This is all too real, and perhaps it was real.

If it was real, Jing Yuan realised he most definitely fucked up and he had to unravel how he came and arrived at this point. To stand before a trial before the Ten Lord’s commission, after waking up from his desk even though he was certain he had only fallen asleep a few hours ago, at some point in the past. 

It forces him to confront a great deal of emotions, thoughts and ideas which even he struggled to process then and here, in such a crucial, pivotal moment. He had never once considered what would happen to his retainer if he had become truly indisposed, had he?

He had never considered what would happen to everyone else if he suddenly just…fell over and died. Or perhaps gave in to the mara which incubated within his body. 

This is too little time for him to say everything he needs to his protege. He has so much left to tell him, such as how he had been so happy to have been able to raise him, and been so proud of each and every one of his achievements, no matter how big or small. All those times spent together playing starchess, shopping for swords, sparring, would now wither and fade away like the falling leaves of a withered tree. 

“...It’s time for us to go.” His protege manages to choke out.

He does not blame him. He too, has a thousand words left unspoken on the tip of his tongue. They will culminate in more regret, a finality of remorseful meanings and emotions he would never get to convey to the ones he had loved and cared for the most. It would pass by all the same, just as how the High Cloud Quintet had slowly fractured and broken all at once, and he had been too late to say his part, to salvage what had been left.

He had always been a coward. 

This is why he was always left with nothing. 

He follows Yanqing out of his room, and steps straight into the hall of judgement.

-

The lights are bright.

Draped in cold, harsh crimson, he stands in a containment hexagram in the centre of the circular room, Yanqing no longer able to follow him through to stand by his side. Unknowingly, or perhaps, he had known but simply did not accept, was the fact that he would never see his protege again. 

The muted violet lights of the illuminated hexagram beneath his feet reflected off the colours of his night robes, as Jing Yuan stood before the court who had been sent to detain him. Their faces are all shrouded in veils and blindfolds, cloaked by shadow cast from the inversion of the lanterns which hung in the air. They sat on high seats covered by blackened marble, carved with the tenets of the ten unpardonable sins in white granite. 

“The Divine Foresight, one of the Seven Arbiter-Generals. Jing Yuan, you are hereby stripped of your title and your status on all official records, for committing the fifth unpardonable sin of Phathry Murder, against ten Cloud Knights who were under your command, within the confines of the Seat of Divine Foresight.”

He recognises the Master Diviner’s voice. 

It is harsh and cold, compared to what was supposed to be neutral and unfeeling of the Judges of the Ten Lord Commission. She too must hold great resentment for him. For his mistakes, for his choices to let himself rot away and to leave everyone behind. 

He would not be able to bid his farewell to her. 

“Do you plead guilty?”

In a trial like this, which he too had to give once, and only once, to another, the defendant could not speak, for they had long since lost their mind to mara.

It is why he does not blame Yanqing for saying so little. If he had been in his place, the small moment of lucidity he offered could have been nothing more than another trick of the marstruck mind, a flickering hope which led only to a dead end, and would only deepen the emotional wounds and scars left on his protege. 

He gives in to the fate given to him.

If it were a nightmare, he would wake soon enough. 

If it were not…

“I repeat. Do you plead guilty?”

If it was not a nightmare…

Would he let himself lose everything without even trying to fight for the smallest amount of lucidity that remained within him? Those unspoken words, the bonds and reforged connections he had with the people around him, with the Astral Express Crew who he knew would need his aid in the near future?

Would he simply give up like this?

The court whispers around him.

“Do you plead guilty?”

It would pass by him, a tragedy in the making, because he had accepted it. Like the shattering and fragmentation of the High Cloud Quintet, Yingxing’s choice, Dan Feng’s grief, Master’s insanity, all things he had been powerless to stop because he had not known how, and had simply accepted that because he knew not how to change anything.

In the face of a situation where he was thrown into without any foresight, information available, in the deep end of something unknown, would he allow himself to withhold from making any moves because he did not know which moves to make?

Perhaps any move was better than not making any move at all.

The only thing he could do in this situation, to prevent what he knew would come. 

“No! I do not plead guilty!”

He throws out his words, forcing them up from this chest and out into the open, heart racing as he hears nothing but the rapid thumps of his own heartbeat resonating in his ears, and glancing down at his shaking hands, not realising how he had truly and nearly reached the verge of wild panic and anxiety. 

The court falls silent.

The lanterns are extinguished.

Jing Yuan falls to the ground, as he is plunged into darkness, with nothing but the glyphs on the floor illuminating his position in the space he could not comprehend. His chest was tight, constricting in on itself, as he chokes on his own saliva. 

“Breathe.”

He whispers to himself, amid shortened, strangled breaths, as he tries to calm himself down.

The pain passes, slowly, as he is left lying half crouched on the ground, clutching at his chest as he peels away strands of hair which clung to his sweaty skin. 

This was an illusion.

Something unreal, with how the court had connected directly to his office. Either that or the mara was capable of spinning such an elaborate hallucination that twisted his sanity and rendered him down into nothing but a helpless victim to the machinations of his own twisted subconscious.  

This was an illusion.

Court proceedings did not take place like this. Then again, none had ever pleaded not guilty in such a clear, undisputed trial. 

He pinches himself, twisting the hand of the fleshy part of his thumb hard enough that it leaves a bruise. He does not wake. This is no nightmare. But neither is it reality, as the court has fallen silent and disappeared entirely, leaving behind nothing but a patch of darkness that stretched on.The glyphs at his feet are the only thing which give him light in this darkness, as the general sought to recollect his thoughts and think of a way to escape from this strange, warped dimension. 

He must admit, whatever had just transpired had truly left him shaken. 

From what he recalls about the symptoms of mara, the first few symptoms included the loss of short term memory. Small incidents of forgetfulness which accumulated into something larger, until one began to forget the names of their loved ones and even themselves. Vivid hallucinations, strong emotions of regret, guilt, despair, frustration, and psychological effects such as anxiety attacks, mental breakdowns. 

Furthermore, there was restlessness, insomnia, worsened state of post traumatic stress disorder, and other psychological illnesses like depression and even bipolar disorder. In rarer cases, the mara would exhibit physical symptoms, including strange floral growths within or outside the body.

Why did he know all of this in such vivid detail?

Because he suspected. 

What the court had put him through, what they had stated as his crimes, what Yanqing had mentioned, it was all a series of events that could play out step by step, just as they unfolded. 

It is insane to think about everything which had just transpired. 

He decides to take some time to think. He desperately needs the time to clear his mind, sort through his thoughts and figure out what in the world was going on.

Figuring that it had been ten minutes or so and the hexagonal glyphs beneath his feet still remained lit while everything else was not, this had to represent either some sort of safe zone…or maybe he just liked the reassurance its dim violet glow gave him. The sole source of light in this place. He figures it must be safe. 

Next, the matter of what he could remember. Falling asleep by his desk after taking the painkillers. Walking up to a Wraith Warden rousing him from his sleep, and Yanqing escorting him to a trial. The flow of events made no sense. It’s as if he lived through a time skip, and his consciousness skipped ahead into a probable future which could have unfolded, which may have unfolded. 

He is 80% sure that his mind has not yet deteriorated into a state in which he would lose consciousness and lucidity for…a few months. Even with the mara within his body, still dormant with the cusp of its symptoms settling in, there was no way it would have deteriorated so quickly. Most mara struck took up to a year to completely lose themselves. Then again, it did vary from person to person, but Jing Yuan is certain that within the timeline that he was living in right now, he could not have lost his sense of self so quickly.

Then again, there was no way he got sent a few months into the future. Time travel simply was not feasible as of this point of time, and not within the Luofu, and definitely not within his own office. There must be a way to check where he was, or what time it was at the very least. 

He reached into his pockets, digging through the pockets of his night robes and fishing out his phone, relieved that he had something with him that he could use. His phone’s screen is dim, having been set into the low power mode which he sighs at. He had forgotten to charge his phone before he went to bed, leaving it at a measly 19 percent of battery life left. 

Still, it is enough for him to catch a glimpse of the date and time amidst the backdrop of him and Yanqing at a new years eve party. 

It has only been a month since the Astral Express has departed from the Luofu, and the time told him that it was around five in the morning. He scrolls through to open up the navigation app, trying to find his location and wherever he was in the universe. Instead, it leaves him with no signal. However, since his phone incorporated some of the newest tracking technology that allowed him to pinpoint his location even in the farthest reaches of space, he is puzzled when he sees his location hovering over a few coordinates that stretched on for an obscenely long set of numbers. 

He pinches the screen, trying to see where his location is relative to everything else in the universe, or the Luofu for that matter, and it takes him seven full sweeps of the screen to locate the nearest planet. A dead, unnamed planet. 

He unsuccessfully attempts at sending out an SOS signal or a text to anyone who could pick up, and powers his phone off when he realises that he is in some place else entirely. 

In conclusion, this was no hallucination. Nor was this any attempt at having time travelled far into the future. 

He does not know if this is worse.

Chapter Text

“Of five people, three must pay a price.”

Yingxing had been wrong. 

Of five people, all would pay the price. 

Jing Yuan pours out five cups of wine, sitting each glass down on the table in the pavilion of the garden they used to frequent. Much had changed, the surroundings different, with newer buildings, different shops, the carved stone of the circular table now worn down and showing signs of cracks and disuse. Even stone would erode with time, just as how nothing was meant to last forever. 

In his hand, he clutches at the last remaining gift he had from Baiheng. A beautiful, yet simple silk ribbon, which he used to tie his hair up.

He could only regret how quickly things had fallen apart. 

On days like this, he wonders how and why all of them could not last even half a Xianzhou lifetime. Why Baiheng was the first to depart, to pay the price with her life, for Dan Feng to dabble into immortal arts and undergo a forced moulting rebirth, and for Yingxing to be cursed with the flesh of the Emanator of Abundance. Master had lost her mind and succumbed to mara, and he…his punishment was to live through all of it. 

When they had last met two weeks ago, he could only see what had become of them. The fragmented pieces of the High Cloud Quintet, a heroic legend that fell away into a bloody tragedy ending in resentment, hatred, death and forgotten memories. 

He already had to kill his Master once, and now he had to arrest her and put her away in the Shackling Prison. Yingxing-Blade, he had let him off. He could not bear to see another in the depths of the Shackling Prison, and he did seem like he had found a place with the Stellaron Hunters. As for Dan Feng, no, Dan Heng, he too, had his own life left to live.

In the end, he alone would be the sole remnant of the High Cloud Quintet, proof of a legend which once used to shine, yet was torn asunder and would be soon forgotten with the passing of time. 

He wonders if he could have changed the outcome. Held the four of them together more tightly, supported each of them more, when everyone had been grieving. Or perhaps, it was bound to fall apart from the start. Even if Baiheng had not been slain that fatal day, the High Cloud Quintet would have dissolved by itself, with Yingxing nearing the end of his mortal lifespan, followed by Baiheng who would have departed next.

Then there would only have been the three of them left. 

Even so, would that have been a better outcome than whatever had transpired?

It would.

Dan Feng would not have resorted to the forbidden techniques, Yingxing would not have been cursed, Master would not have succumbed to mara, and Baiheng would not have died leaving behind a gaping wound in the High Cloud Quintet.

Perhaps they could have stayed a quintet longer.

His head throbs. Something scratches at his throat, an itchy cough he got when he thought too hard about the past. 

“General!”

Yanqing stops by the table to inquire about what he is doing.

He looks at his retainer, and realises that he too had once been in his very same position, except towards Jingliu. It comes together all at once, vivid memories of late night conversations, training, discussion about the future and how to handle the fate the long lived species met near the end of their lifespan. 

For a moment, he sees his executioner looking at him. 

He downs the cup of liquor and lets it scald his throat.

-

He has to leave the comforting safety of the hexagram eventually. 

To wander off into the pitch black darkness, he has to leave the sole spot behind. To move on and wander blindly into nothingness. It truly was poetic, as he was physically and figuratively diving into this situation headfirst, blinded. 

The first change he senses is the shift in temperature.

It grows hot. 

The floor simmers. It is a relief that illusion Yanqing had him put on something more comfortable for his feet, which were the pair of combat boots he wore out into military campaigns and the like. If the floor indeed was heated, it meant that he either should have stayed in the safe zone, or that he was being chased out and away to some place else. 

It wants him to move. 

Whatever and wherever this place was.

Why had he begun to think of it as a sentient place?

Nevertheless, he breaks out into a brisk jog, as the temperature begins to rise all around him, the dry heat from the ground beneath him soaking upwards. In the dark, the general gropes around, breaking out into a sprint as he opts to use some of the precious phone battery he had to illuminate his path ahead. 

The darkness seems to…narrow.

Think harder, Jing Yuan. You need to get out before the temperature rises beyond something you can withstand. Think, think, think there’s no way you can possibly run forever, and there’s no way this place stretches on infinitely.

The heat had to come from somewhere, even if it exhibited no visible light. 

The sound of his footsteps changes. 

It changes from something like marble to that of shaky, uncertain wood, as he begins to smell smoke. 

He was being burnt alive.

The darkness narrows further, as Jing Yuan runs, the ground beneath his feet illuminating itself with the sinister, damning glow of red hot charcoal waiting to be ignited. He reaches one hand out to the wall of darkness, pulling it back as the heat which radiates from its surface causes him to flinch. 

The smell of smoke grows stronger. 

He was cornered on all four sides, as he tried to jump up into the darkness above and figure out what was above him, only to scald the side of his hand which he had raised above him with burning pain. There was no going back now. 

He sprints ahead, crouching down low as he most definitely senses the walls closing in, the waves of oppressive heat from all sides causing him to be drenched in his own sweat. Smoke meant there was fire, and he figured that he needed to get across where the trail of burning coals was leading him over to. 

He finds it.

Where the place had been shuttling him into.

It is a bronze coloured door, the inside of a smelting furnace he had recognised that the Alchemy Commission used. However, the bronze had long since been charred and worn down by countless uses of flames, and Jing Yuan had little time left to study it as he pulled down his sleeves to cover the palms of his hands as he struggled against the latch which locked him inside. 

It does not budge, as the General refocusses and readjusts his grip in the heated metal, trying to twist the handle and wind the lock which resembled a crank that spun in a clockwise direction. With the phone in his mouth, he can feel sweat pouring from his skin and down into the sleeves, as he forces both arms down to move the stupid crank into moving. His skin blisters.  

The crank finally moves this time. Slowly but surely, it winds up painfully slow as the heat around him begins to sear at him. The smoke would fill soon, as the general crouched down low to take a few gulps of air and resumed his work.

He winds it down, as the door parts vertically, a razor sharp edge at the end of the two panels which opens up to allow the dim light from outside the furnace. He needs to time this carefully. If any of his limbs get caught in it, he would die of the resulting blood loss. 

The crank reaches its limit, as Jing Yuan lets it wind down, to test how long he had to climb and leap out from its gap.

As soon as he lets go, the gates to freedom slam shut with a resounding clang.

There was no delay.

He needs the crank to hold in place, perfectly still.

Think, think, think.

He needs rope to tie it to another metal piece. 

The only piece of rope he had was the ribbon in his hair.

The ribbon which had been gifted to him by Baiheng and Yingxing, as an idea the former had conceptualised and gathered the materials for, and refined by the latter. The simple, but precious item gifted to him as the last remnant of someone he had mourned and grieved for, had lived and experienced a short, fleeting lifetime. Proof of the High Cloud Quintet’s history and bonds fashioned into a silk ribbon. 

The fire grows hotter. His vision swims, as the heat around him sears at his skin and he can feel the material of boots get worn down by the continuous exposure to the heat.

The rational answer was obvious. Use the ribbon to help him survive.

Even if it means losing the silk hair tie that had kept pristine and clean all these years. 

He hates that he must choose.

He hates that he must give up on it to live.

He tears the ribbon from where it ties and holds up his hair, as he fashions a quick knot out of it and ties it to the wound up crank, pulling the strong, resistant fabric and tying it around the next metal fixture which stuck out. 

It holds firm, as the general coughs, struggling and gasping for breath as he tries to get the smoke out from his eyes, as the heavy pollutant blinds him and he is forced to hastily tie the knot and throw himself through the now open doors of the furnace.

He crawls out and away from the furnace, adrenaline slowly dying out as the pain comes to him. The doors to the furnace close, coming down and cutting the smoke off as he hears the crank wind back to its original position within the furnace. It also meant that the silk ribbon had barely lasted against the intense heat, and was no doubt already incinerated into a pile of ash, sitting within the furnace forever.

He would never see it again, never behold its soft, reassuring weight and smooth texture in the palm of his hand. 

Jing Yuan coughs, clenching his fists instinctively and wincing at the pain it gives him. The heat had not been kind to him, as he glanced at the singed edges of his sleeves, which part to show his scalded skin on the palm of his hands, pink and raw.

With shaking fingers, he peels off his boots and examines the damage done to his shoes, finding the soles melted down into a pile of mush. He half drags himself over to where a huge vase of water is laid, and using the wooden scoop, pours some water out into a basin and dips both his hands into it.

The relief is instant, but the general knows he has to handle the damage done to his feet as well, especially since the ground had been the first to heat up.

Cleaning up his injuries is messy.

Even after removing his feet from the soles of his shoes, the general finds himself missing bandages to help with the wound. As he sits on the makeshift bench, dipping both his injured feet in the water bath, he considers his options. 

He busies himself with mundane, menial tasks of bandaging his own injuries, because it keeps his mind from wandering onto other topics that would only sow more doubt and regret within his own heart. To have a distracted mind in a foreign, hostile place, would craft the way to an inevitable death. 

He coughs, clearing his throat as he drinks water from the wooden scoop. It comforts his parched, dried out throat, as he tries not to linger on the decision he knew he would come to regret. An object of great sentimental value which he had traded for his own survival, a logical, rational trade that Baiheng would have urged him to make the same choice. 

His hair falls over his face, hanging down in long, messy strands coated in sweat as they cling to his skin. He glances down at his wounded hands, which tremble from the scalds and blisters which form across his palm, even when it was soaked within the cool water.

Jing Yuan tries to understand how and why he ended up here. 

He studies the room around him, a small space which resembled a traditional temple of old, with smooth, polished wooden floorboards that protected the warmth and kept the heat of the furnace in. As he sits down on the bench, he turns away from the golden doors of the furnace that burned, turning to face the front of the room, where an elaborate altar faced him and watched him silently. 

A rectangular altar forged with multiple steps ascending upwards, he eyes trays of offerings of food, from fruits, particularly mandarin oranges, new year’s cake, traditional cookies on ornate tiered trays offered up, all placed on its lowest tier. All of the food is fresh. In the tier above it, a jar of burning incense steeped in sand and the fallen ashes of previous burnt out incense sticks smoulder on, wisps of smoke which trail from the burning tips of the joss sticks. On its highest tier, stood a holder for something missing.  

Jing Yuan casts his glance over at the two pillars next to the altar, round, cylindrical marble pillars which spiral upwards into the high ceiling overhead, carved dragons and phoenixes in bronze taking flight from the sky and falling down to earth. He concludes that he was in a temple. 

However, the temple he was in lacked the doors that were meant to be around, and instead, he was trapped and imprisoned in a place with only walls and walls filled with rows and grids of small shelves, each filled with a pot of ashes that decorated its spaces. 

No, this was not a temple.

It was a columbarium. 

The general tries to understand where he was. 

With walls and walls of golden, shining urns polished enough to show his own reflection in their surfaces, he is surrounded by the remains of hundreds of people. There is no way out, no windows or opening, as he is completely surrounded by walls and shelves of urns, something which defied the construction of this room as it was completely sealed. No doorway, no hatch or vent, as he could feel the stifling heat from the furnace through its stone surface, and certainly no opening above him.

The room was illuminated by a large glowing lantern that hung down from the ceiling, a burning fire glowing within its paper confines, something that could easily burn were the candle within it to tilt and feed its flame to its surface. Looking upwards into the lantern through the hole at its base, his gaze is caught on its orange flickering flame.

“Come on, it’s Mid-Autumn Festival! Can’t you spare your poor disciple a day off from his training? He looks like he really wants to go and see the lanterns!”

Master had only given him a day off after Baiheng had teased her.

“̴I̶ ̶s̵u̶p̶p̸o̶s̴e̵ ̶t̵h̴a̸t̴ ̴c̶a̸n̶ ̸b̷e̴ ̷a̵l̷l̶o̵w̸e̶d̸.̷ ̴C̴o̴m̴e̴,̶ ̷J̸i̷n̵g̵ ̴Y̶u̸a̸n̷.̶”̵

He had kept his sword, stunned at how Baiheng had easily changed his master’s mind, allowing him the first holiday off since he had been under her tutelage. 

He tries to remember what he had been doing that could have possibly gotten him into this situation in the first place. The details of his office were hazy, in his own memory, and he struggles to confidently conclude how many years it had been. He yearned for the past, his chest throbbing even then as he massaged his temples, trying to get the headache to go away before it would fully sink in. 

To think that recalling the past would already give him so much pain-

Jing Yuan doubles over, as he drags himself to sit down on the bench by the vase of water, head dropping into his hands as he forces himself to take in a few slow, deep breaths. 

Focus on something else.

He clenched his fists tight, until his makeshift bandages dug into his own palms, sending searing pain up his hands as fabric dug into his scalded flesh. 

It chases away that reminiscence, as he is reminded of the depressing situation he was in. 

Focus.

He stood up from the bench, looking through his pockets once more, and remembered that he did not have his medication on his person. So much for bringing it along with him wherever he went. Now, he needs to find a way out. 

With renewed determination, the general battles the remnants of his migraine as he sets about searching the room for a way out, scanning the walls and rectangular spacings that held the urns, for anything out of the ordinary.

After all, if this was a sealed space, it would be illogical for the ashes of the dead to be stored here, much less a tiered shrine that was meant to be worshipped, and visited by people to pay their respects to. 

He can make that conclusion with 70% certainty as the courtroom he had been forced into had the same roles and its function was kept, with the same that could be said for the furnace. If the same consistency were to be applied here, there had to be a means for other people? Entities? To access this altar. 

That meant there was some sort of secret doorway. 

Aeons, the migraine was not going away. 

Jing Yuan reached a hand out to search the walls, deeming that the place had not killed him yet with any threats, to be safe enough to do so. A sharp throb of pain sends him stumbling, as he accidentally knocks his hand into an urn, displacing it from its position on the shelf and onto the wooden floor. 

The general withholds his urge to curse. 

Instead of ash however, he finds that it is empty.

Nothing spills across the floor. 

Wincing, the general resolves himself to look at the spot where the urn was placed, finding that behind the urn, was a spirit tablet lodged horizontally in the wall. Instead of words however, there was a bloody arrow drawn on it, pointing towards the right. 

Jing Yuan stares in disbelief.

This…this set up reminded him of…what the younger ones called an escape room. 

He pressed his head against his forearm, as he leaned on the wall, the ball of pain in his temple becoming unbearable, something that would have put him out of commission and he would have taken the rest of his work day off to rest. 

He needs his medicine.

He opens an eye, moving his hand into the next square where the next urn was, and feels the object, lifting it up and finding it light and empty as well. He sets it on the floor, finding another tablet pointing to the right. 

He must double check if this is a pattern.

Moving a hand down, he removes the next urn and finds a tablet pointing to the right. 

All of them were pointing in the same direction, it seemed. 

Jing Yuan moves pots of urns, pulling them out from the shelves and tossing the empty ones onto the floor as he grows to realise that he cannot stand the nausea of standing and bending over to place the urn on the floor, no doubt caused by his migraine. 

The arrow points from right to down.

Down to right.

Up thrice.

He follows its directions diligently, until he stumbles upon a heavy urn, no doubt filled with something. 

He picks the container up, shaking it gently to take out its contents, hearing a cling of metal against metal, feeling something land in his palm. 

A lock charm.

The one he had given to Yanqing. The charm that Yanqing always kept on his person at all times, a charm for protection and safety.

A small slim scroll falls out from the urn as well, as he opens it up to read it. 

Prisoner: Jing Yuan

Summary of crimes: Previously a general of the Xianzhou Luofu, fell into a state of mara and wrought destruction upon the Divine Foresight, killing 1504 personnel and civilians in the vicinity. Currently unable to be put down.

Detention method: The prisoner is to be kept sedated and blindfolded, to be deprived of all of his senses. Amnesic meditation therapy is to be administered weekly. 

Remarks: We are unable to execute him due to [Redacted]. 

His ears are ringing.

Jing Yuan keeps the scroll, as he looks at the spirit tablet embedded in the wall, and finds that on it, was Yanqing’s name. 

He pulls it out, before he collapses on the ground, scroll falling from his shaking hands as he looks at Yanqing’s name, neatly inscribed upon the surface of the smooth stone. His mind puts the full story together without his permission, of how his mara would spiral out of control and result in the deaths of his own men, the people who trusted and put their faith in him, and the death of his own disciple.

Blood seeps onto the lock charm, through bloodstained bandages as he tightly clutches onto the lock charm.

H̷e̶ ̶w̴o̸u̴l̸d̵ ̵k̴i̶l̸l̶ ̷h̷i̷s̴ ̴o̷w̷n̶ ̴s̴o̷n̶.̴

The revelation is all consuming, choking and robbing him of his breath, the weight of a future bearing down on his chest, a future which he does not know if it can, has, or already had happened. With the time he has lost, the disorientation he has experienced, he pulls out his phone and tries to find the date and time, as he feels his vision blur. 

Out of pain or out of grief, he does not know. 

The words and numbers blur, as the headache digs into his vision, and the mara flares in his system. 

His lungs fill with liquid, a choking sensation of roots gripping and curling within his chest, digging into his organs, curling around bones, a parasite leeching off of him at his weakest, at his lowest. 

It hurts to breathe, as Jing Yuan kneels on the floor, choking and clawing at his own throat as the nausea spikes in intensity, and the combination of everything overwhelms him.

He retches, throwing up a bloody pile of flowers and dead gingko leaves that splatter across the floor in a mess.

Jing Yuan heaves, until the pressure alleviates, if only somewhat, the wave of nausea and pain surging forth and pulling back, a painful discomfort in his chest as he closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. 

Medicine. He needs it.

He looks at bloodstained hands, pulling out something that had been trapped in his throat, as he gagged and pulled out a long stalk of something coated in deep red. He throws the stalk down onto the floor, and stares down at the mess. 

He must find his medicine. 

He needs to cure himself, as fast as he can. To avoid being a threat to anyone else, and to ensure he managed to leave. 

He is dying. Dying a slow, painful death, the rotting of the mind, a decaying sanity, loss of time, loss of memory, loss of humanity, the future that can, would and had come to pass, being too far gone, and doomed to eternal punishment. A living hell, built from the curse of the Plagues author, smearing his legacy and undoing everything he had been working towards for centuries.

He takes up the spirit tablet, pushing himself off of the floor and stumbling towards the altar on shaky, unstable legs, to the vase of water. 

He cleans the blood off of it, washing his own slick palms and rinsing his mouth of the metallic taste of blood. 

He sets the tablet up to where it was missing, and kneels down in prayer, lifting up the incense and bowing his head down, kowtowing to the memorial once.

Yanqing. He…he regretted not spending more time with him. To still be so caught up in his own memories, to have succumbed to mara without imparting all he knew onto him, for failing as his father to watch him grow up. 

He lifts his head up, looking at the offerings and the tablet.

He kowtows once more. 

If he had killed him with his own hands, in a state of mara, he must apologise and ask for forgiveness. 

He kowtows once more. 

His son….

His vision blurs, as tears bead at the corners of his eyes, and he lifts his head up.

He does not know if any of this is real. It feels all too real. It forces him to confront that which he had not considered. 

The altar scars itself in his memories. A permanent brand, of what could happen, of what would happen, if it had not already happened. 

The lights in the room dim. 

Jing Yuan turns around, and finds that the walls have now disappeared. 

Casting a last, painful glance at the altar, he takes his leave and moves into the deeper unknown.

The walls, now no longer standing in his way, beckon him into a field full of wheat. The sky is tinted a shade of grey, as nearly rams his leg into something large and wooden, hidden beneath the stalks of dried out, wilting crops. 

A desk.

His desk.

This place must still have a heart, if it was going to give him what he desperately needed. 

He opens up the drawer where he kept his medicine.

He finds it, sealed in a metallic container, as he removes a dose and throws it down his throat.

Chapter Text

“General, are you sure you’re alright? You haven’t been looking too well these days,” Diviner Fu is the first to notice. Ever perceptive, as she was trained and brought up to notice such changes. Faintly, Jing Yuan wonders if she’s divined something that would tell him about his eventual descent into mara.

The stack of reports on his table pile on endlessly, with unseen reports that he had to mentally prepare himself to come. On top of countless meetings, he also had to meet several ambassadors and sign treaties with them, make an appearance at several festivals, all whilst avoiding any assassination attempts. 

“Just tired. I’ll be better after a nap or two,” He slips his subordinate a smile, vision shifting as something overlaps his image of Diviner Fu, a version of her adorned with a thick cloak over her shoulders, long hair tied up into a neater, more controlled strands, eyes no longer as bright as they were now, but burning with twice the bitter determination. 

“You…should get more rest. The events that came to pass recently did take a toll on your body. This is what you get for over exerting yourself when you should still be recovering!” She scolds him gently.

Jing Yuan huffs.

“Right, right, but I couldn't just-”

The migraines flare up again. 

It ruthlessly cuts him off mid speech, as he dips his head into the palm of his hand, and winces. 

“General, shall I go and fetch a healer?” This time Diviner Fu is truly concerned. To earn her care and concern…oh how undeserving he was of it. She had better things to spend her time on, and he had other things to handle as well. What was more important than the safety and stability of things when he would eventually fade away and be taken away by the Ten Lord Commission?

He shakes his head.

No need to raise any alarm.

“...I’m already seeing Lady Bailu. It’s the residual effects of when that lord ravager tried to turn me into a void ranger. Don’t worry too much, Diviner Fu.” He lies, even though he knows very clearly what the cause of this is. 

“Seeing as you are unwell, let me take care of some of your work for you. You should rest more, general. Take the rest of the day off. The Luofu will not collapse when you aren’t around.” Fu Xuan removes a good three quarters of the papers and reports on his desk, to which Jing Yuan gives her a quiet, grateful smile as she leaves the room.

Oh how she trusted him to find help by himself. 

He was weaving a web of lies to conceal the fact that he was marastruck. Something that was considered treason under the edicts of the Ten Lords Commission. For their sake.

That’s what he told himself.

For their sake.

So he returned home to rest, and he feels Yanqing’s growing worry as soon as he discovered that he had taken a half day leave from work for a migraine. 

“General, I…I can’t take it any longer. Please, what is ailing you?” The young child had pleaded with him, and  he had merely shaken his head with a slow motion, waving his disciple off.

“It’s a minor illness. It will get better. Don’t worry about me, Yanqing. Focus on your studies and your training. An old man like me shouldn’t be burdening you.” Still, he had gratefully accepted the glass of water from his disciple, and drank from it like he had been afflicted with a mad thirst.

“But general, you’re not a burden to me, and you…you haven’t been getting better.”

“As with all sickness, it takes time to heal.”

“It’s been a month.”

A month? That…that had been a lot longer than he thought. He’d have to give a more compelling reason then.

“...The after effects of Phantilya’s attack will take me a few months to recover. No doubt a lingering poison left by the Lord Ravager.” He gives his disciple the same reason he had given to Diviner Fu. It would give him more time, and worry others less. 

“...I…doesn’t it mean its very severe? Should we put you on bed rest? I can ask Diviner Fu to take over your duties for the time being, if she can’t handle it, I’ll help her! General, you really need to take better care of yourself!”

Jing Yuan chuckles.

“I will be fine.”

-

He rests in the field of wild, drying wheat. Time needed for the medicine to settle in and get through his system, to dry his tears and bind his wounds back once more. He ponders over what just happened. Over whether it had happened. 

Where he was now, as he looked at the time on the phone. 

And the date. 

He’s lost three days? He...realised that he forgot what day it had been when he had last looked at his phone before he had been plunged into this nightmarish purgatory. His phone would die on him if he decided to continue perusing through his applications to figure out the timeline, and he decided to put it aside to conserve what remaining power it had left. 

His heart still throbbed from the raw grief he had felt, a calmness settling over him as he realised how manic he had become in his emotions, the sedative effect of the medicine beginning to take effect. In a way, the medicine acted as a sort of anti-depressant, as he looked at the intended effects on the packaging, and the pain in his chest was slowly fading.

He rummages through the drawer, hoping if he could find anything else, and finds a notebook and a pen. 

Flipping through its pages, he finds…some diary entries where he had tried to take note of the growing severity of his illness, and he had not realised how committed he had been about it at the start, before it simply devolved into something else. Pages and pages of reminders followed, many blank spaces for forgotten days, before it became one where he had described his dreams. 

Somehow, he had managed to fill up half the notebook even though he could have sworn he started this maybe two weeks ago? The dates definitely proved him wrong, which went to show that his perception of time was getting distorted already. 

At least he could still draw rational conclusions…

He flips to a fresh page, ignoring pages where it simply fell into unintelligible gibberish of incoherent keywords and cancelled lines, glancing at the date and time on his phone, and writes about his situation. 

Knowing his short term memory and constant migraines may prove to be detrimental to him, he describes to the best of his memory, what important key details there were that could potentially help him leave this place. 

The action of planning soothes him. Distracts him from the image of the altar, the weight of the lock in his pocket, the words engraved onto the scroll sentenced by the Ten Lords Commission for those confined to the Shackling Prison. 

He knows that for each room or stage he experienced, there was some sort of… ‘clear’ condition. To follow the not-Yanqing into the courtroom, to escape the burning furnace, to leave the columbarium…

If anything, everything they forced him to do more or less tried to get him killed or cause the mara within him to flare up. 

He looks up at the ball of light overhead. Its rays were grey, almost monotone, as it shone down on his skin. 

The sky was a deeper grey, something colourless and impossible, akin to something out of painting. 

No wonder the plants were dying. 

He turns his thoughts back to his notebook, letting the pen roll into the wedge formed by leaving the notebook on the table, as he leans over his desk. The pathway back to the altar had disappeared, and he regrets not keeping an eye out on how the surroundings changed. He’s left looking over at an expanse of wheat, that seemed to stretch on and on into an infinity that he struggled to comprehend. 

Location? Unknown. This place did not resemble any area he had been to, not in all of his travels or expeditions as part of the High Cloud Quintet or in his tenure as the general of the Luofu. If anything, his experience was pointing to something supernatural. He reaches into the pocket, and feels for the bloodstained lock charm that felt too real.

This was no dream. 

He rummages around his drawer for anything else he could salvage, but every drawer is empty, save for the one where he had placed his medicine in. His palms and fingers sting, as he shoves his hands into his pockets to calm the tremor in his movements. He needed to find suitable aid for his injuries, not with makeshift bandages or hastily put together bindings, but something professionally made. 

If he was going to be solving any more puzzles that required a proficient dexterity, he hoped that it would not require any fine, steady movements. 

He should keep moving. 

Moving off to where?

He spies something in the distance.

A tall building, that was a clear speck of dark in the distance. 

He supposed that was where it was trying to lead him to. 

He leaves his desk, the only thing he could recognise and hold some sort of familiarity to in this situation. Distantly, as he walked across the field, he remarked on his lack of sense of hunger, no doubt something that the mara in him had killed, with his appetite having dwindled quickly. 

The sky overhead is sickly grey, the false sun above unreal, simply a pathetic attempt at painting a source of light and mimicking the true sun. Its rays were not warm, but cold, sending goosebumps down his bare skin. Inspecting the dried wheat by his side reveals them to be nothing more than strands of plastic, whittled and reproduced to look like wheat. The frills of its unnatural, manufactured texture was warped and distorted, as he came to find clumps of wheat simply stuck together.

The environment was one, false, big lie, consisting of numerous small, well placed lies that gave him the impression that this place was real in the first place. In an unexpected manner it gave him a shred of hope, that he was not truly in the realm of the real. 

A faint noise of static disturbs the quiet silence. 

Jing Yuan stills, as he pauses mid step.

“Rest assured, Lady Bailu. I will update you if there are any other symptoms or problems.”

It is his voice.

“Rest assured, Lady Bailu. I will update you if there are any other symptoms or problems.”

It repeats once more.

It reminds him of how he never went through with that, despite having promised the Vidyaraharn doctor that he would do so. The shakes, chills, disorientation, painful migraines, coughing up blood and throwing up gingko flowers, were all symptoms and issues he had never informed her of.

From a far away place, something was recording the promises he had never fulfilled and broadcasting it for the world to hear, except there was no one else in this dead, fake realm apart from him. 

“...The after effects of Phantilya’s attack will take me a few months to recover. No doubt a lingering poison left by the Lord Ravager.”

A lie that he himself would like to believe. The after effects of a foreign poison were far easier to comprehend and a better fate, because it was something that had a chance of being reversible. Of being cured.

“...The after effects of Phantilya’s attack will take me a few months to recover. No doubt a lingering poison left by the Lord Ravager.”

It was the lesser of two evils, compared to the fate of being mara struck.

Now, now he knows what Master Jingliu had felt, in the months, in the days after Baiheng’s death, the dissipation of the High Cloud Quintet after but a few months from the failed attempt at resurrection, the abomination that had to be slain.

A quiet detached dissociation from his own humanity and worsening condition, as one slowly lost their grip on reality and rotted away into a husk of themselves, a hollowed construct of who they had once been. She had been breaking apart too, chipped by the ever continuing series of tragedies, and Jing Yuan had watched it happen all before his very eyes, powerless and unable to reach her.

Now, none could reach him either.

None except…the weight of the lock charm in his pocket, and the words etched onto the scroll. The altar to which he had bowed down to, a memorial of his son, the sentencing of the court, the furnace which urged him to give up all of his past regrets. 

None could reach him, and it was because he needed to reach out himself. 

“I will be fine.”

He wished he was.

“I will be fine.”

No, no he was not. 

He would be lying to himself if he said he would be fine. He could only hope to be fine, especially with the mara flowing in his veins. There was no point lying to himself anymore, lying to those around him. It would only result in tragedy, a web of lies that would explode in his face and drag everyone down along with him, if he continued to harbour such a dangerous secret. 

He sees the structure in the distance, something resembling a half constructed gate, the kind of gate he had seen in the lands of Izumo, what they called a Tori gate. At least before their civilisation disappeared like a star which simply blinked out of existence.  

It stood, alone, the only structure in this false land, made of weathered coloured wood, a gate that seemed to beckon nowhere, as nothing different laid beyond it but more and more fields of endless false wheat. It was worn down and cracked, the wooden beam at its top having splintered apart into two halves, shards of broken wood on the floor.

Perhaps it was not meant to show anything different.

A symbolism of cleansing himself anew if he simply stepped through the gate, knowing that the situation would not change, but doing so because he had to try, to finally face the reality of his condition, of the damage his actions had done, and stop it from destroying the future he had sought to protect. 

So, he steps through it.

He expects to feel something different. 

Nothing happens. The fields continued, dry, false and endless as they stretched on and on, a boundless, dreary infinity that awaited him. He does not know what to expect, if he had already confronted the lies he had told others, and the lies he had told himself. 

Or perhaps, nothing was meant to happen. 

After all, if something big did change, then it defeated the message that this place was trying to tell him. Jing Yuan decides to keep walking, forward, or simply just trying to get somewhere or anywhere. 

If he was on the wrong track, then he might wind back up there. If not…then perhaps the Tori gate was never meant to stand for anything at all. He scribbles a few things down on his notebook, a note regarding the tori gate and his surroundings. 

The radio had fallen back into a wave of static, that distorted, disturbing tune filling the air. It was the same static, the same tune and frequency as he had heard the night he remembered playing and tinkering around with the old antic radio gifted to him. Was it really a coincidence? 

His situation was like a puzzle he needed to pry apart, to draw similarities and conclusions with the little available knowledge he had, to piece together what had happened to him. 

Even now, he could chalk his experience up to some strange dimensional slip in reality, into something that dug into his deepest fears and fed on his resentment, feeding the mara within his system with ample nutrition to enable it to spiral out of control. 

The other hypothesis was that all of this was one, big, grand, fever dream. A hallucination born of the marastruck, regardless of how detailed and real it felt. He did not like to think about this option. 

The last hypothesis was that he was trapped in a simulation. Either created by advanced technology even he himself had never seen, or perhaps entrapped as a plaything by the Joyseeker.

He raises his free hand, snapping his fingers together as he tries to conjure forth the lightning he had mastered the skill of manifesting and using, and is pleasantly surprised when small, but steady sparks appear at his finger tips. However, they sting at his burns, and he winces at the pain. 

Best not to push it.

Perhaps he could call forth the Lightning Wielding Thunder Clapping Spirit Squashing Lord. 

To what end, however?

He could not ask it to tear through this realm and destroy it entirely, could he? Not without knowing what the consequences of destroying this place would be. Therein lay the dilemma. He did not know what this place was, where he was, whether it was sentient, and how powerful this place was. Thus, he could not destroy it. 

Without destroying it, he could not escape nor see the true nature of this place. 

Still, he wished to tap onto the Lightning Lord to determine if the connection was still present. 

Usually, summoning it came to him with practised ease. An inherited spirit who resonated and understood his own thoughts, forged and honed by his own will, it felt like another pair of eyes watching over him, watching out for him. Something which he embodied and hosted,

Now, there was nothing. 

An empty hollow space where the well of power usually coated his shoulder, the hovering entity nowhere to be seen or felt.

The sensation of desertion.

A quiet, silent parting that he had not been informed of.

Jing Yuan lets out a slow, shaky exhale.

It was because he was mara struck. It had to be.

One’s connection did not simply get severed. An aeon’s blessing was absolute, especially one by the Reignbow Arbiter. If he no longer possessed it now, it simply meant that he was no longer worthy of it. No matter how far off or deep into the vast reaches of space, an Emanator did not lose their status simply because they were in some deep unknown area. 

Alas, he’s lost something he had taken for granted.

Jing Yuan keeps walking. 

He was no longer worthy of being the general of the Luofu. After the series of lies and harbouring the mara within his own person, of being ungrateful, it all the more spelled out to him why he was simply unfit to be in any position of leadership and power. 

His thoughts spin, head growing heavy, chest getting tight. He presses a hand to his head, combing his hair back and out from his face as he calms himself. 

He must keep going.

He must.

The static grows louder, as Jing Yuan finds himself being drawn to the source of the sound. 

That warped, distorted noise dips into something familiar, music played by some of the famous musicians onboard the Luofu, a tinge of familiarity in this strange place. 

The thought of it being a trap of sorts comes to his mind, but he cannot determine a motive for this place to harm him. Apart from scarring him emotionally and nearly having him burned alive, this place did not actively seek to kill him, which was a relief considering the state of his own body and mind. 

He weaves through the plastic stalks, pushing them aside as he stops at the source of the noise. 

Bending down and over, he feels his hands through the not-grass, trying to grasp at what should be a radio.

It takes him a while, but he does find it. After crawling on his hands and knees, getting his clothes stained by dirt, well, it was not dirt but bits of fabric made to resemble dirt, he finds the rectangular device, and raising it up to the grey sunlight, he tunes the radio.

Turning the knob on the dial, he scans through every possible frequency, and watches with wide eyes as his surroundings change and evolve with the twist of the knob. 

Twisting it anti clockwise causes the grass to recede, into a form where they had once been green, and spouting forth from the ground. The sun overhead shifts its position, going back and reversing the path of its motion, and he felt very, very displaced as time warped and distorted around him. 

He stops tuning it at a point where the grass were but young sprouts out of the ground, tucking the radio away as he knelt down to touch a leaf.

It was fresh, and it was real. 

He scans his surroundings, finding it much easier to make out the Tori gate where it was after the waist high grass was no longer present. Making his way back to it since nothing else in the environment had changed, he is stunned when he finds that there is a small shrine where the gate led through.

The distance between him and the gate is covered fairly quickly, as he finds a small incense paper burner bin next to a rack of yellow incense paper within the small, open air shrine. 

Passing through the tori gates once more, he finds that it was now in its newest, most complete state. 

Perhaps it would work now.

He steps up to the shrine, wondering if he needed to undo the transformation. A glance told him that it had control over the happenings of this dimension, as he stops at the incense paper burner bin, a round metal barrel decorated with images of a phoenix flying up towards the sky.

Next to it is a marble table, of which stacks and stacks of incense paper were piled upon, as Jing Yuan takes one off from its top to inspect the words written on it, and finds that they are comprised of the same lines the radio had spoken to him.

“I will be fine.”

“...The after effects of Phantilya’s attack will take me a few months to recover. No doubt a lingering poison left by the Lord Ravager.”

“Rest assured, Lady Bailu. I will update you if there are any other symptoms or problems.”

They are stacks and stacks of lies, half truths, and empty promises all written down, crimson ink printing out his words on all of those sheets of paper.

He looks down at the paper, and turns to let it flutter into the hungry maw of the fire, burning within the incense burner. The thin paper easily catches fire, as he watches the edges crisp up and carbonise into blackened ash, fire spreading and burning the lies he had spoken.

This place had a flair for poetry.

He settles himself down, and takes a stack of paper, and begins feeding it to the burner. 

It became easier and easier to understand the intentions this place had towards him. A subtle nudge here and there, using information or customs from the Luofu, imbued with symbolism to force him to repent. 

This place was more like a purgatory, a level between the living and the afterlife, or perhaps he was within one of the ten levels of hell, making his way deeper down and down until he faced its final level. 

He focuses on his task, to burn the lies he had told, even if the damage was already done. Smoke mingles with the scent of burnt ink, as Jing Yuan knows, having faced the painful reality of what would happen if he kept up with all these lies and half truths. 

The lock charm was still in his pocket. As was the scroll. 

He would come clean, once he managed to escape from this place. To be forthcoming, and to tell the clothes about the true extent of his condition. No more half truths and lies, because they did not protect anyone as he had wanted them to. He would only be spinning a false illusion of wellness, before everything inevitably fell apart, and he could not let that happen. 

His palms and hands tinge with fresh pain, the burn wounds having come close to the heat of the flame and flaring up again, as he winces and switches his hand, wishing there was some water around here for him to soothe the pain. 

 Time passed by quickly, as the incense paper burnt itself down to ash at a steady rate, and Jing Yuan shuffled through the stacks, feeding each sheet one by one still.

The sound of fire against burning ashes fills his ears. 

Chapter Text

“The mara takes root in all of the long lived species who reach the end of their lifespan.”

“But Master, how does our lifespan end? Are we not long-lived?”

“We are long lived, but our lives are cut short by the curse of the mara. We Xianzhou Natives do not die of old age. We die because of the mara, or for other external reasons. Of course, the mara is the main cause of death, apart from the loss of lives in wars and unfortunate incidents.”

He is asking her a question he already knows the answer to.

“Is there really no way to cure ourselves of mara? I’ve always heard about attempts at trying to do so, such as the Amnesic Meditation Therapy, or whatever the Ten Lords Commission does at their end. Are all of them truly unsuccessful?”

Jingliu gazed down at him. Her gaze was colder these days, especially after the passing of Baiheng recently. 

“You have heard countless lectures from your time as a student. I do not need to say more.”

Jing Yuan falls silent. 

“Perhaps if you ascend to be an Arbiter General, you may find out for yourself what has happened to all of the attempts at reversing or curing ourselves of mara.”

The group fell apart quickly after.

-

He finishes his second bottle of wine.

Why did he choose not to tell any of them about his condition?

The gingko leaves remained curled and crushed within the palm of his hand, as he sat beneath the rays of the cold, unfeeling artificial moon. The truth had made itself clear, and he had known all along. 

He did not want to admit to having fallen prey to the mara.

To eventually lose himself like his master had, over grief and tragedy, which scarred the heart and tarnished the soul, turning his body and mind into fertile soil for the mara to bloom. Being well over eight hundred years old, he had seen and experienced far too much. 

The apathetic detachment he had had never felt more clear, after all, a long life led to a natural numbness that accrued over the edges. Few things could make him feel much apart from slight amusement, all slight emotions, and he distantly wondered if a part of himself had closed off when Baiheng had perished. 

Never anything real and lasting.

Now, he was finally losing it.

Centuries of waiting for something to happen, of lingering on past regrets, had taken its toll on him.

Now, he wondered why he could not have more time.

After meeting Dan Feng’s reincarnation, Yingxing, Bailu and Master, it was all like a cold wake up call.

To see how everything had fallen, it was a reminder that all he yearned for no longer existed.

In the end, he was still a selfish bastard.

-

The fire in the spirit burner burns out. 

The general keeps a bird eye view on his surroundings, as the sky overhead deepened into a crimson hued tint, grey, monochrome light being replaced by something doused in vermillion. 

The ground beneath his feet rumbles, as he turns to the Tori gate, holding his items and valuables close to himself, wondering what would happen next. 

Carved steps rise up from the ground, large marble blocks of which a similar set of Tori gates trailed behind in an ascending sequence, a never ending set of a thousand gates all laid one after the other, forming a snaking passageway high up into…somewhere else. The ascend in height, with each new gate seemingly raised from the ground, taller and taller until it seemed to touch the sky.

So he had managed to obtain the clear condition.

And now, it was time for him to move on. 

With nothing else left for him to do here and little resources to settle with, he moves, beginning his slow ascent upwards through the thousands of vermillion gates. 

Each step was beginning to hurt him and his feet, with how long he had walked in the previous few times, not only over burning coal, but through the fields for quite some time. His shoes were highly damaged as well, but something was better than wading through this place barefoot. 

He reflects further, as he walks, stepping through each gate that beckoned him upwards. He opens up his phone to scan for his coordinates. Still plunged in the middle of some insanely high value that was not anywhere within any known star systems. He switches off his phone. The battery hovered at a precarious 9%, and he did not have the means to charge it. 

Well hypothetically he could try and charge it with his own gift of manipulating electricity, but…at the high risk of frying the phone and destroying it. 

He sighs, choosing to leave that option out until another solution could be found. 

The earth rumbles and shakes, as the Tori gates he had passed begin to slowly descend back into the earth, lowering itself deep into the ground. He quickens his footsteps and pace but estimates that the steady pace of the disappearance of the trail was not accelerating. If he maintained a certain speed, he would be able to keep a safe distance between him and the disappearing trail.

A simple way of telling him that he had no way back, and this was a one way trip.

Well, everything had been a one way trip. 

He wonders what others would have done had they been in his place. Yanqing would no doubt panic and attempt to forcefully attack the imaginary barriers of this place. Diviner Fu would remain calm and analyse the structure of this place before making any moves. Dan Heng…it was hard to say. He seemed like he would take a calm, rational approach like Dan Feng would have. 

Thinking about others would have fared within this dimension made him realise that throughout this entire time, there had been no physical threat out to harm him. No other signs of life, apart from that version of Yanqing and the constructed court. No monsters or entities out to hunt him down despite his weakened state that made him a vulnerable prey. This only served to confirm that this place had a single entity in charge of the entire area, likely using the environment to push him forward.

The more concerning part was how it was able to glean into his heart. To feed off his regrets and manifest them into something real. 

He’s quite confident that everything he was seeing and experiencing so far, from the fields onwards, was nothing like the hallucinations the mara could generate. The injuries were real as well, as he feels the stinging pain on his hands and skin, lingering and still fresh. 

He could now eliminate one option off his list. 

Jing Yuan glanced up at the sky, as the Tori gates began nearing the surface of the sky.

What seemed and appeared to be vast and endless, stretching up into space, was nothing but a sheet of paper. 

Everything here was truly a lie.

The sky down to the wheat in its fields, was simply a fabricated plane of existence, one that he was currently walking through and out of. 

-

The scent of smoke hits him.

As he walks upwards through the literal tear in the paper sky, the Tori gates fade away and the path behind him disappears into the earth below. Passing through the boundaries of different realms, he steps onto a carved, wooden step, and lands on the docks of the Starskiff port outside of the Seat of the Divine Foresight. 

He turns his head, watching as the sight below him ripples into a mirage, one that he reached a hand into that only causes it to ripple and dissipate quicker, as he is left behind on the starskiff port. 

Except, the scent of smoke is heavy, a burning fire roaring in the distance. Waves of fire, arched by thick, heavy lightning across the skies, devour the buildings and consume the streets, the Ambrosial Arbor in the background burning with a hot, crimson flame. 

It is here where the general feels like he has truly stepped into hell itself. 

He feels his pockets, feeling the weight lightened, as he realises that out of the things he had on his person, the lock charm and the scroll were now missing. He must determine if this place is real or not. If he had been allowed to return home, without any items taken from the strange dimension he had on him.

He checks for his location on his phone. 

It refuses to turn on.

He bites back a curse. 

He cannot determine if he has returned back to the present or not. 

The general gets to moving, as the wave of heat strikes him. He runs past shophouses, wondering where everyone was, why there were no fleeing civilians or cloud knights- All the while, blood pools and scars the streets, which are all but silent, no screams of pain or terror, no clashing of blade against the enemy who had no doubt infiltrated the Luofu, nothing but the sounds of burning wood, falling buildings that collapsed due to the flames, and the sound of thunder in the sky.

Where was everyone?

He stumbles into the courtyard of the Exalting Sanctum.

His eyes fall upon the piles and piles of corpses, gathered up into a hill of blood, guts and burnt, scarred flesh, piled up high. Amour and broken weapons littered the floor, as blood stained the glass tiles and pooled around the hill of corpses. 

He chokes at the sight, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air. 

The Luofu was burning with crimson frenzied flame, a growing pile of singed corpses, dripping heated, coagulated blood across the stained glass tiles of the floor. 

All around, the flames of war burn bright.

Hell. He is in hell.

With cursed flames casting a grim shadow in the night, the bonfire at the centre was illuminated with forsaken shadow, as ashes rained down from the sky, coating the ground in a layer of grey.

“General!” The pained cry called out, and he whips his head to hear the source of the noise, and finds Yanqing, who pointed at a figure atop the mountain of corpses with his blade. 

The general looked down at him, from his position at the top.

His eyes are filled with madness, a longing despair that clouds his clear amber irises, tarnishing them with a sickly green, as vines snake down the length of his arm. His armour is blackened, from the flames of battle, as sparks of electricity dance across the charred plates. A bloodsoaked cape follows his movement, heavy from the weight of the liquid that had soaked through its material. His once white hair was now tinged in blood, streaks of black dyeing his age an unnatural mixture of regression and continuous ageing, as the mara sought to conquer death.

Jing Yuan gasps, words and breath caught in his throat.

“Stand down, Yanqing.” The other ‘him’ commands, voice apathetic and cold, with a gaze that does not even spare the boy a look.

Yanqing, already drenched in blood, raised a shaky blade against his master. 

“No. I cannot. Not until you cease this senseless violence. This is not you!”

His retainer shouted back, voice breaking, as Jing Yuan watched the sharp light of the burning flames refract off of the tears that slipped down his son’s cheeks. 

He must stop this madness. Even if it is a vision of a possible future, he must-

He reaches out to Yanqing, attempting to pull him back, only for his hand to pass harmlessly through him. 

Of course. He had no power here. He was meant to be a watcher, to live through this future as a watcher. 

The other ‘him’ raised his glaive towards his protege. He may not have the blessing of the Lightning Lord any longer, but the mara was generous, and it gave and gave. 

Jing Yuan could only watch the coming clash, as blade and glaive clashed, electricity darting through the air. His eyes were glued to the clash, unable to take them off as he watched the mara struck version of him face his retainer down.

Yanqing had grown immensely in his flexibility and adaptability, the analytical part of his mind supplies, but the other ’him’ was utterly unpredictable. Sacrificing limbs to take blows as they simply regenerated as soon as he lost them, making use of his protege’s clear hesitation in trying to execute him to create openings. Amidst the burning fire, the falling ash from the burning of the Ambrosial Arbor, he could not hope to conceive the kind of insanity that he had fallen into, to bring about so much destruction. 

His retainer sent his flying blades to pierce through the other ‘him’ from all directions, as he brought his own blade down on the man, in a bid to corner and imprison him, freezing his limb down with a blast of ice. The other him merely shrugs off the blows, using electricity to cause the projectiles to explode, as he swiftly ducked and dodged each blow in practised motion. 

Jing Yuan watches his protege, seeing how the extent of his exhaustion and injuries were beginning to take a toll on him, as he senses others entering the fray. Back up cloud knights sent to back up the young retainer, no doubt.

The other ‘him’ is quiet in his clash, even as Yanqing shouts at him to wake up and regain his sanity, to remember who he was. Jing Yuan had an inkling that the version of him had long since succumbed to the mara, immersed himself in regret and detached himself from the world entirely. The him that acted now, was simply the destructive tendency of the mara, puppeting a soulless host body that retained the knowledge and fighting techniques he had spent centuries honing. 

“Wake up, General!”

Yanqing could not afford to show mercy at this point.

Watching his protege face off against a future version of him was nerve wracking. He could only hope that his son knew to be cold and cruel, to put him down before things got worse. 

The General shatters one of Yanqing’s blades, as Jing Yuan can no longer hold himself back and lunges for the other ‘him’, a futile attempt at trying to do something to stop what was to inevitably come, to give his retainer a chance to survive. 

Ĝ̶̘̀̌̍̉̉e̴͕͊̉̍́t̶̡͇̦̬̖̣̬͑̈́́͋ŏ̴͎u̵̟̤͊͑̿̊ṱ̷̢̦͖͙̉̈́g̵̛̬̍̿͠e̵̗̤̙̱̓̊t̴̢͒̽̔̚͠͝ǒ̴͉̼̈ù̵̜͑̂́͊̊t̸̻̦̭̖̃̿͆g̴̢̨̞͋̀͂̒e̸͖͂̃͝ͅţ̵̗͓͔̳̫̠͐̂̿͛̌̍̏o̸̟͍͚̿ȗ̸̧͊́̈́t̸̙̺͓̔ġ̵̩̝̼͎͔̮̂̕e̸̜̔͊̍̈́̒̅͘t̶̡̢͙͈̥̍ó̷̠̥̣͙̤̦̫̔̃̆͌̔ü̶͉̟̦͔͕͆͠ẗ̶͇̙͚͍̫̈́̊̏̒g̷̨̺̿͒̔̅̉e̷̢̯͈͍̯͉̽̀̈́̊̽͠ͅt̴̯͎̩͂̅͐o̸͚̽̈́̈͝u̵̬̹̦͐͘t̵̢̻̮̄̎͆ģ̶̥͇͙̤͔̋̓̎͑̅̕e̴̤̖̝͋ͅẗ̴̝̥̣̭͇̯̞́͂̕͘o̴̙̙̓͛̔̊̎͝ȕ̴͎̲͇̺̲̲̔̈̚t̴̡̞͎͚̺͆̈́g̷̼̗̠̝̬̱̱̐̚̕ȩ̶̧͔̙̙̉̈́̏t̸̛̮̪͛́̒͗͜͝ǒ̴̻̤̪̽̇̑̂̆̕u̴͇̓̓ť̵̨̢̳̩̤̣̞̏͒̄̂̚g̴͕͓͙̳̣̬̪͂̊̎̓́͛̃ẹ̷̢͕͚̝̫̯̇͆̒̄t̴̠͍͖͎̖̎̿̃́̉̆̿ó̶̱͓̙̌̈́͝u̴̡̻̦͌̇̉̒͂t̶͙͈͚̾̑̑͝

Blood soaks his skin.

Ỵ̶̟͇̥͔̀̄͊͑̃ó̶̧̺̀͊͑͘͘͘u̶͔̻͖̖͊͑͂̏̚ ̸͖̅̈́̿̉s̷̡͕̥̖̩͓̕h̸̢̼͙͖̭̹̐̎̎͆̊̃̂ǫ̶̛̪̩̾̒̇ǘ̶̪̒͐̍̄̚l̴͖̠̤̙͗͌̍͘͝͠d̵̠̫̀̽̍̆̀͗ͅ ̴̣͔̬̼̏̈́̆n̸͙̹͌̀͆͑̒̀o̵̧̠͐̈́̊͘̚t̵͙͍̻͚̞̀̔̓̚ ̵̢̩͈͈̯̤͖͛b̵̨̛́͒̓e̵͍͚̹̲̮͋͂͜ͅ ̵̻̗̇̐̀̓̉̋̽ḧ̵̟̩̹͖͖̜́͐̂̾̌͑̕e̴͎̯̐̊̂ͅr̵̡̰̬̪̺͎̈́̐̄e̴̡̢͇̜͍̳͉͋.̷̨̬̙̳̒̄

He is drenched in it, in the manic frenzied desire to clean the mara from his own skin and bones, to march towards a crimson decay of death. The sharp metallic scent of blood is all he smells, accompanied by the faint scent of gingko flowers and burnt flesh. It is overwhelming, a de-evolution of his higher thought into base instincts, as the other ‘him’ not writhes in pain. 

He has now become the other ‘him’.

For a single moment, he wrestles control from the other ‘him’.

“...Yanqing-”

His son already had a blade hung over his neck, making use of his momentary weakness to send the blade flying down, forged from ice and indomitable frost. 

“...General?”

At the most crucial moment, he hesitates. 

And that is all it takes. 

Y̴̢͗̇ó̷̗͇ṳ̶̙̓͝ ̵̡̘̈k̵̛̤͋ȉ̵͚l̷̼͆l̵̹̹̇̅e̴͙̼̽d̶̠̺̊ ̴̠̠͝h̴͇͈̀ī̷͕͝m̷̻̒̀.

He thrusts his own glaive through his weakened son, Starfall Reverie soaked in blood as it pierces Yanqing’s chest and severs his spine, its blood stained blade emerging forth, as Jing Yuan freezes. 

Yanqing clutches at the weapon, blood dripping from his lips as the light in his eyes dies out. 

He watches, frozen, as another blade cleaves his head from his shoulders.

Jing Yuan dies.

Yet his consciousness remains. 

His head rolls across the ground, as he sees the silhouette of two, no, three figures sprinting to the scene, all too late to prevent the tragedy which had just happened. Diviner Fu attempts to stem the bleeding, and Master Jingliu freezes his body in a bid to prevent him from regenerating. She still bore the shackles of her time in the Shackling Prison, no doubt only pardoned to execute him.

His head…is picked up by none other than Yingxing’s new form, who stabs the shard sword through the stump in his neck and upwards, resulting in another wave of excruciating pain. 

The Astral Express crew are shell shocked, in the background.

Yingxing is horrified, as Dan Feng’s reincarnation sprints over, summoning a wall of water to extinguish the flames of lunacy, as the Jing Yuan’s headless body moves of its own accord. Crimson tinged lightning strikes down upon the field, sending all of them to scatter as Diviner Fu raises her own shield up, drawing a protective dome around them. 

Jing Yuan….

His mind cannot process what has just happened. 

The great burden of the death of his own retainer at his own hands, his interference which had damned his own child…the guilt smothers him in all consuming flames, an agony of sin and retribution aimed at himself. 

If only he had remained a passive observer.

If only he had chosen not to interfere.

His decapitated head swerves its eyes around, as Blade stabs his eyes out, ripping nerves and tendons from his flesh, pulling it out with a harsh jerk. 

The world goes black, but all of his senses remain alive. 

The scent of smoke, blood, and thunder, burning ash that coated his bloodstained skin. The screaming and crying, a mourning of what had happened, as he realises that it is him who weeps, a half choked wail emerging from what was left of his throat.

He is being driven mad.

M a d.

He killed his own protege, in a realm where he could not distinguish between truth and lie, for if he had managed to influence the outcome, where did that put him? Without a concrete conclusion, he does not know if he made it back to the real world. He does not know.

For all he had been proud of his own sharp, logical deductions, he had nothing left.

The mara flares. 

He cannot go home. 

T̸h̵e̶r̷e̴ ̵i̷s̵ ̷n̵o̸ ̵m̷o̸r̷e̵ ̸h̸o̴m̶e̶ ̶l̶e̷f̷t̷ ̸f̶o̴r̸ ̶y̵o̴u̸.̴ ̴Y̴o̵u̸ ̶d̴a̴m̵n̸e̷d̶ ̶y̴o̶u̸r̵s̶e̶l̴f̵ ̷i̸n̶t̸o̵ ̶a̴n̸ ̴e̸t̴e̵r̵n̷a̷l̸,̴ ̴i̵n̷f̷e̷r̶n̸a̶l̷ ̷p̸u̵r̵g̸a̴t̴o̴r̶y̸,̵ ̵t̵r̵a̵p̷p̷e̴d̶ ̷i̶n̴ ̵a̷ ̷c̸y̷c̴l̴e̴ ̵o̵f̷ ̴o̴b̷l̶i̶v̵i̸o̶n̶,̸ ̵u̸n̷a̴b̷l̶e̸ ̵t̷o̵ ̵m̵o̴v̷e̶ ̴o̷n̵,̷ ̵u̵n̷a̷b̴l̶e̵ ̵t̴o̸ ̵l̷e̸a̶v̶e̷.̸ ̷T̴h̵e̸ ̶p̵a̴s̴t̵ ̷w̸i̸l̸l̴ ̶r̶e̵p̴e̷a̸t̶ ̸i̸t̷s̷e̷l̸f̵,̷ ̵a̵s̵ ̶i̷t̶ ̶a̴l̴w̵a̸y̸s̷ ̵h̴a̶d̸.̶ ̷F̷r̸o̶m̸ ̸B̶a̶i̷h̵e̴n̵g̶’̶s̴ ̵d̴e̵a̸t̵h̸,̶ ̷t̴o̸ ̴M̷a̸s̶t̴e̴r̸’̶s̵ ̶d̵e̷s̷c̴e̷n̶t̸,̷ ̸t̵h̸e̶ ̸l̶o̵s̵s̴ ̵o̶f̴ ̵D̸a̶n̸ ̷F̷e̶n̴g̸ ̵a̷n̷d̵ ̵Y̶i̵n̴g̴x̶i̷n̵g̸’̶s̴ ̴c̶r̴i̸m̸e̵,̵ ̴a̴l̸l̴ ̴f̶i̸v̷e̸ ̵s̸h̸a̴l̶l̷ ̴p̴a̸y̴ ̸t̸h̵e̷ ̸p̶r̶i̸c̵e̸.̷ ̸

̶

̶Y̶o̷u̶ ̶p̴o̴o̴r̷,̵ ̷p̷o̶o̸r̸ ̴t̴h̴i̷n̴g̸.̵

̶

He will die a thousand deaths, sentenced to eternal life as his punishment. 

If that is what he must do, for his failures, then he will.

He would pay the price, as his corpse walks towards the large bonfire in the distance. 

May the fires cleanse him, and burn away all that he was. 

-

For the past 700 hundred years after Baiheng’s death and the fall of the High Cloud Quintet, he had toiled.

To pardon Dan Feng’s reincarnation of the mistakes of his predecessor, to protect Bailu from assassination attempts, and ensuring she was well.

He had taken in the young child he had found in the fields of a dying war, and named him Yanqing, for he had forgotten his own name. The small grimalkin had turned out to be something far larger than he thought, but it was still a short lived species, it’s lifespan a speck compared to their own. 

“....Snowmoon’s passed on.” His young retainer had knelt down by his beloved pet’s grave, tears still wet in his reddened eyes. Jing Yuan sets a hand on his shoulder. 

“She lived a long and happy life. It was time for her to go, even if we weren’t ready for it.”

“...Will we ever be ready?”

Jing Yuan had looked at his protege.

“...No matter how ready we think we are, death is something one cannot be ready for.”

Yanqing looked torn, as he set the plush toy down on the grave. It had always been Snowmoon’s favourite item to play with, a sturdy toy with a ball of feathers attached to its end connected to a rod.

“But we will learn to accept it and move on. No matter how long it takes.”

Chapter Text

Given the two choices presented to him, Jing Yuan looks between the bowl of liquid, and the pair of cuffs. 

Before him, he stands before the sisters of the Ten Lords Commission, glancing at the apparatus set on the table for the newest individual who had been found to have been marastruck.

“You wanted to know what happened to the mara struck, general?” Hanya’s voice is a quiet drawl, as Xueyi tows in the marastruck individual, bound in chains and talismans to keep the unnatural growth subdued. 

He nods.

“They are presented with a choice.”

Xueyi settles the Xianzhou native down on the chair, attaching the chains binding their limbs to the chair. It was a middle aged man, someone whom he had seen frequent the teahouses, listening to Xiyan’s tales and offering others a treat. Jing Yuan remembered him to be a joyous man, all smiles and soft kindness, itching to hear more tales and always inviting others to join him for a cup of tea. 

His name was Fengyue. 

“Prisoner Fengyue.”

His eyes blink, as he is roused from his marastruck state. It was but a temporary cure, simply something to ensure that they made this last decision with lucidity, and could determine what fate they wanted to have.

“As you have succumbed to the mara, you will now choose what fate you wish to have.”

 Hanya sets the flaming candle in the centre of the two objects.

“You may choose to continue living as a marastruck individual, but locked away within the confines of the Ten Lords Commission and used as an experimental subject to help in finding a cure for the mara.”

She points at the shackles. 

“Or, you could choose to drink this potion of forgetfulness, to bleed your memories dry before succumbing to death as a human. It is an experimental cure we have developed, in hopes of curing the mara, granting you a temporary release as your former self, but you will soon die after.”

She points at the bowl. 

“Either way, we will ensure that your death is an honourable one.”

Hanya opened up her ledger.

Fengyue had chosen to forget, and die as a human.

-

Presented with the same choice, Jing Yuan waits at the desk, the red candle flickering within its jadeite holder, wax dripping down its surface as it burns with a soft, warm glow, illuminating his own choices before him. 

The mara writhes in his skin. 

Now, he sets the radio on the table. 

The lock charm remains with him, as does the scroll that sentenced him to an indefinite period of time within the Shackling Prison. 

He tries to tune the radio one more time.

The static is calm, soothing almost, as he sits before the black marble table, of which holds the four items. 

The wax drips down onto the candle holder. 

His hand hovers over the bowl of soup. 

To forget temporarily and simply die peacefully….this was the way for him to go. Lest he turn into a monster, a demon capable of executing the very people he swore to protect. To slay his own child, and to burden the world with the weight of his sins. 

It is the right choice. 

He holds the soup up to his lips, the ceramic bowl light and heavy all at once, the pale liquid within it reflecting his own image back at him. It is smooth, light and like a white syrup, a bowl of comforting liquid, heated to the right temperature to invite him to make this choice. 

Why was he hesitating?

He stares at his own eyes, which flicker crimson.

Why?

His hand trembles. 

Was this…really the right choice? 

Think rationally, general. The mara will kill him eventually, by consuming his humanity and turning him into a weapon against everything and everyone he loved. He would be doing everyone a favour in ending his own life before he became a threat, before he would cause harm to everyone else. 

By ending his own life, he would save thousands. 

He would save Yanqing’s.

His approach to problems had always, always been a preventative one, to prevent a problem from ever taking place by uprooting it before it had the time to spiral and grow out of control. It was far more effective than a corrective measure, to solve a problem when it had truly begun to affect everything around it.

That had been his philosophy, ever since he Baiheng had perished. 

Now, it should be the same. 

To halt the problem at its core.

The problem that was him. 

In fact, ending his own life now would be a relief. It would save him the suffering of the delusions and mental anguish caused by the mara, and save Yanqing and Diviner Fu all the care, concern and worry they would no doubt be saddled with. 

It was the rational choice.

Others would do the same. 

He should do the same.

He should practise what he believed in.

Yet…he cannot drink.

His limbs clam up, his lips touch the liquid but do not part to allow it to seep into his mouth and down his throat into his system. His chest hurts, an unbearable pain that shakes his limbs and cripples his nerves. If he chose to drink, he would forget. Everything. From good to bad times, to be wiped clean as a blank slate and return to being a human before he would die.  

He had come so far, experienced so much pain, because he sought to resolve his sins, to seek forgiveness from the others for his mistakes. If he died now, there was no more chance to do so. 

Then what would be the point of all of this?

He sets the bowl down.

His hand hovers over the shackles.

Shall he choose to become an experimental subject instead? To be chained and imprisoned for all eternity, damned to a life of rigorous testing and experimentation, until he inevitably perished?

He stares into the reflection of the flickering flame on the smooth surface, and ponders.

He reaches for the candle, and its bright, orange flame.

He wanted another way.

A third way, to bring himself back from this edge of madness, without sacrificing all that he had done, without giving into the possibility or the future. 

He takes the candle from its stand, watching as its flame bursts and roars within his grasp, hot wax melting and landing on his bandaged hands, as Jing Yuan keeps his grip tight, despite the pain of the fire flaring up. 

It illuminates the room around him, as he finds himself surrounded by trees, branches and vines, ripe with fruits of golden sheen, perfect and whole spheres which hang in bounty from low hanging branches. The walls of the place had long since been overgrown, wild weeds and gluttonous plants and greenery shimmering with the colour of jade and precious jewels having long since conquered the surface. It is a paradise unfound, lost for good reason, a harvest waiting to be reaped, for its next guest to enter and seek shelter. 

A statue of a deity on an altar had long since been conquered by the vegetation, claiming and marking it as its own as a vivid, cherry red flower blooms from its left eye, a powerlessness in its own nirvana. Peace that came at a price. To let go of all worldly desires, and to give in to the blissful tranquillity of a quiet death.

Snaking vines find themselves moving across the walls and towards the floor, shimmering crystal of organic, perfect leaves in optimal positions and lengths feeding off of the light, as the general lifts up a foot to find that he has trailed into something wet, moist and coppery. 

Pockets of red and wood show him that he was in what used to be the main hall of a temple, as tendrils of vines approach him tenderly. The burning flame keeps them away, even if the heat sears hot, melted wax into his skin. 

Jing Yuan runs. 

The plants around him shower in the grace of Abundance, flawless leaves and blooming flowers dripping with moist, silver dew. They shed a mixture of gingko leaves, rose flowers and petals, a hybrid of plants and floral life that should not go together. Everything about this place is wrong, from the metallic scent in the air, to the tendrils which sprout barbs as they lunge at him with lightning speed. 

He nearly trips over an outstretched arm, rotting and deceased, from which a six petalled flower bloomed from the centre of its outstretched palm, a stalk that grew out, cradled by five rotting fingers. 

He raises himself up, steadies his footsteps and sprints. 

Tendrils form into hands, a spiralling fractal as he is herded somewhere, towards a place with no end in sight. Radio in his arms, and candle in the other, the general flees, trying to find a way to escape from this corridor of living death. 

In its eyes, he is the prey waiting to be devoured, a delicate treat they had worked so painstakingly hard to consume, thwarted only by his choice. The choice which saved him from suffering a terrible, horrifying fate. 

His path is useless against these vines, for he could no longer call himself an Emanator of the Hunt. Electricity only tingles at his fingertips, as he holds on to the things he has on his person. 

Waving his candle around like a madman is one way to stave off the attacks, but-

A tendril yanks him back and down, slamming him onto the ground as the candle falls from his grasp. 

He falls, as they swarm over him, digging into his flesh and choking him, as the general reaches out for the last thing he had. Desperation overrides all of his other senses, the hyper focus to reach and reach and reach and pull, 

Even as thorns and barbs dig into his skin and numb his flesh, even as his vision darts in and out with large spots of black.

Even as-

Even as-

He pulls and pulls, tearing open wounds as he reaches for the fallen candle, whose flame was reduced to a bare ember.

He…he must.

He must fight.

The tendrils around his neck choke him of his breath, they dig into his skin, burrowing down into his veins, and still he reached out. The pain was nothing compared to the pain of letting everyone down. 

His fingers grasp onto the candle. 

The flame burns bright, and it spreads. 

From one tendril to the other, Jing Yuan writhes against the dying tendrils, prying away and ripping out the barbs from his skin, ignoring, no, dissociating himself from the pain as he tunnelvisions. 

Flame.

Fire.

He wills for it to burn, and to burn bright. 

Heat singes his skin, waves of fire that spread to purge the madness of this place, replacing eternal life with a permanent incineration, as Jing Yuan regains his bearings, pushing himself up from the ground as vines and fruits begin to fall. The smoke fills up the corridor, forcing him to run on unsteady feet, to mentally block out the pain and push past its madness, and to simply run before he too was consumed by all consuming flame.

The burst of light and incineration would result in an unholy cremation, to burn and spread its wings over all that were in its path, leaving behind not even ashes. 

For a single second, he wonders if he should let himself burn with it.

The thought is tangible, a decision he considers out of pure irrationality before he slaps himself in the face and forces himself to keep moving. 

Stop hesitating.

Move on, Jing Yuan.

He runs, even as he inhales the acrid scent of smoke, towards the end of the corridor. 

He runs, and he runs, as the soles of his boots melt in the infernal heat, as his clothes singe, the ends of his hair burning as the fires get too close to his person. 

They burn and burn and burn.

The bright flames are seared into his vision, when he turns back for a second to glance at what he was running from. Rings and waves of flame, flowing towards him with heavy dark smoke, as he coughs and chokes, but persists. 

He must.

He continues to run even when the flame licks at his skin, and he rips off strips of clothing that had caught fire. 

He runs until he reaches the end.

Where he is greeted with the sight of soft snow. 

He collapses.

-

Diviner Fu pushed to him a plate of teacakes.

“General, I noticed you have a bad habit.” Jing Yuan takes up her offer, taking a bite of the sesame paste pastry as he chokes slightly, muffling the cough in his throat with his hand. 

Clearing his throat, he pressed the handkerchief to his throat, masking the blood and dead leaves. 

“You always tend to take things on alone. That’s a bad habit. It’s not healthy. We are here for a reason, are we not? You should trust us with some of your plans. It feels kind of insulting here, following your orders without knowing what outcome they lead to.”

Jing Yuan keeps the bloodied handkerchief in his pocket.

“But you can divine what the outcome of my plans will be, can you not?” He shoots his Diviner a knowing smile.

“Tch, I have to rely on such abilities to understand your plan, to understand you, instead of simply having you inform us yourself? If you really trust us, you don't have to make us go through such roundabout ways to ensure your plan falls into place.”

Jing Yuan had merely smiled.

“Tell us about what troubles you. I’d rather hear it from you than to divine it from the Matrix of Prescience.”

For a second, he contemplates telling her about everything that had plagued him for so long. To have another person share the burden of his sin, to have someone to…

But did he have the right to?

“If you would be agreeable, you can start trusting us with the smaller details. Those of lesser importance and lower weightage compared to the grand schemes you no doubt have, before you move onto something further and larger.” Diviner Fu sips at her cup of tea.

A tempting offer. 

One he is uncertain if he is ready for. 

After all, he had grown to shoulder all the burdens on his own shoulder ever since the collapse and dissolution of the High Cloud Quintet, figuring out that handling things with his own power was easier than having others fall apart in doing so. 

-

The snow bites at his skin. 

As ice digs into his exposed wounds, seeping the frost into his raw and open wounds, Jing Yuan faintly remarks to himself that he has no more strength left to keep moving. The look of those plants, out to consume him, after everything he had been through, he was exhausted and worn out mentally and physically. 

He gazes up, blinking open an eye as blood drips and trails down the bridge of his nose, slowing down and coagulating as he loses warmth. He hadn’t even realised he got a cut along the bridge of his nose. 

His thoughts move sluggishly.

Burns bite at his skin, as does the cold. 

His hands grow numb and cold.

He looks up into the snow covered sky.

A beautiful, haunting grey that casts itself over him, a sight he had never seen before, in all the time he had spent alive. 

He closed his eyes and sighed.

The pain was being numbed, as the cold began to take away all sensation.

He watches the cold, cruel sky.

He wished that he was not alone.

-

The rifle-wielding hunter nearly missed out on the stranger in the snow.

A near miss, as he dropped the stack of raw wood in his arms, making way and space as he approached the figure that looked like a corpse in the snow. Except…they were not dressed like anyone from Jarilo-VI, drenched in dried, crystalised blood that shone a brilliant crimson against the white snow. 

Most importantly, they were still warm, and breathing.

The captain shook himself back into his senses, pinching and twisting his own hand to make sure this was no dream, and that this was real. It was no dream. 

Deep in the frigid depths of this nameless land, he had found someone else, someone who still breathed, albeit very weakly. 

Gepard Landau drops everything he has and kneels down to inspect and check the individual out, reacting out of practised instinct as the surreal sensation and shock of finding someone else trapped in this no man’s land works its way through his system.

He readjusts his priorities, as he sweeps the man’s long, bloodied matted hair out and feels for the pulse on his neck, having removed his gloves to do so. It is weak, but faint. Wasting no time, he tears off and peels the heavy fur cloak from his shoulders and drapes it over the man.

He digs out the snow further, inspecting him for any injuries that could be aggravated by any movement, and finds that there is nothing noticeably fatal or grievous. He adjusts the cloak, before he slings his rifle towards his front, and kneels down to find the best way to bring this man to safety. 

The man is heavy on his shoulders, but Gepard holds him tightly and close, carrying him on his back as he pulls the cloak closer over the man, knowing that hypothermia would set in deathly fast, especially for someone who had little resistance to the cold. 

He makes his trek back to the cabin. 

Slowly but surely, with another slung over his shoulders, as he swore he would keep this man alive for as long as it would take for them to leave this place. 

Chapter Text

There were times where he woke up briefly to strange sensations.

“General, please let me take up the role of your retainer.”

“Why would you like that role, Yanqing?”

“Because you have helped me so much, I want to repay you for your teachings? What better way than to do so as your retainer?”

From the freezing cold, to something warm and dry on his being. 

He had chuckled at the request of his young ward.

“Really, I’ve done very well in all of my studies and even succeeded in one of the military campaigns! It would be an honour to fight by your side!”

Fleeting sensations of touch, pain flaring, warmth and coolness.

In the end, he had agreed.

He tossed and turned, as the mara tried to flare but could not. It was simply too cold, his body having shut itself down to minimise all unnecessary functions, including all rational thought.

He fell back into the welcoming darkness.

-

An eye opens, as the amber, crimson eye blinked open for the first time in a while. 

White strands of hair partially obscure his gaze, but he easily sees the soft orange glow of a cackling fire, one that makes him flinch when he recalls the burning inferno he had-

He pushes himself up, regretting it instantly when he feels something tear, bandages rubbing and tightening against his skin as Jing Yuan is met with the conflicting urge to pull the blanket tighter over himself or to tear it off his skin, in the face of the cold. 

“Careful. Take it easy.” The shuffling of movement, as someone offers a gloved hand, which Jing Yuan startles at, having heard a voice for the first time in sometime. 

This…was this a dream too?

A hallucination meant to keep him trapped down here, or perhaps some form of false hope?

“Good point. That’s what I would have thought too.”

Jing Yuan sharply turns his head to the source of the voice, raising a trembling hand to brush his long, messy hair out of his face. He had not been aware that he had said that aloud. 

“...Would this help you?”

The blond haired man in front of him takes out his phone, and taps on the screen, showing the date and time. 

The general wearily glanced at the numbers, having already forgotten when he had arrived here. His hands move instinctively to his pockets as he fumbles to fish out his notebook, hoping to find a few useful dates written on it. 

The blond haired male before him helps him, handing him the notebook.

“…T-Thank-“ Jing Yuan coughs harshly, the dryness in his throat reaching a point where it caused his voice to break. A mug of water, in thin aluminium alloy, is given to him, still warm from where it had no doubt been sitting by the fire. 

The warmth of the metal stings his hands, which he realised had been well wrapped and bandaged with professional skill, the mug steadied in his hands by a pair of calloused ones. 

“Let me help you.” Jing Yuan accepts the aid gratefully, as his saviour helps to slowly bring the mug up to his lips and tip it into his mouth. The first few drops of water are heavenly, as he satiates his thirst slowly. 

With a free hand, Jing Yuan flips open the notebook and disappointedly finds no dates written on it. He sighs between sips of water, holding the cup by its cooler handle as the man in front of him pulls his hand back. 

“Thank you. I’m Jing Yuan, hailing from the Xianzhou Luofu. You are…”

“Gepard Landau from Jarilo-VI. I found you near the ruins of my city.” Gepard replies, blue eyes keen and sharp, but gentle behind the hardened edges, as he seems to dig through a pack of items and hand them back to him.

“I apologise, I had to remove much of your clothes to dress your injuries. The items that I found on your person are all here.” He points at the small pile of items, as Jing Yuan nods in appreciation.

“Your burns were really bad. If I could ask, where did you come from? There’s no one here apart from me and….the ruins.”

Jing Yuan takes a good look at his surroundings. 

The sparseness of the cabin’s interior decorations, with its weathered and scratched wood, followed by the apparent abundance of firewood, a pile of equipment and crates of items filled with tools he did not quite recognise was…surprising. All he could remember was the fire, the altar, and Yanqing. 

Yanqing.

His head throbs, as the headache comes back, creeping into his system slowly and surely. His hands reaches out to sieve through his remaining items, finding the radio, the packet of medicine he had, the lock charm and the scroll. 

The items are hauntingly familiar, painful and reassuring all at once. 

He turns his head away, and finds himself peering through the glass of a window into an endless sea of snow. A sun sets behind the horizon, painting the sky a muted orange as the weather outside buries them in the cabin.

It had been centuries since he had last seen snow.

“I….I’m afraid I do not know how I ended up here either.” He can only admit that, as Gepard hums, rummaging around in a crate and pulling out another blanket and handing it over to him.

Jing Yuan took it from him, before he began to realise how sharply the temperature dropped. In contrast to the burning heat he had experienced prior, this place was the exact opposite. The chill had already begun to permeate through the walls, frost forming on the window as a blizzard picked up just beyond the pane of glass, and even the light of the setting sun was buried beneath waves of snow. 

Gepard had mentioned ruins. Ruins of his city. What did that mean? The only thing he knew about Jarilo-VI was….was nothing. He had never heard of the planet before.

“G̸̯̻̅e̶̮̓n̶̻̹͐͑ë̵̠̮r̴͈͈̿̂ȃ̶̧̞̆l̶̺̦̔͛!̵̭̉͝ ̴̝͂͘C̶͉̊̅a̷͎̓̋ḛ̸̫́̑ḷ̶̅u̶̻͗̈́s̶͎̪͆̓ ̸̲͜͠w̵̮̤͛ȧ̶̘ņ̸̘͝t̵͙́s̵̺̱̉̋ ̴̱͉̕t̶̳̫̆̂o̸̹͕̚ ̸͚̦̏̚ï̴̘̬͝n̶͚̍t̶̗̣͆͆r̶͍͌͐o̴͚͋̽d̸̳̐ú̸͎̞c̶̯̉̋ê̸͙̭ ̴̨͒ḿ̵̝̲̅e̴̞̓̉ ̷̮̕͝t̸͎̰̆o̵̱̱͐̐ this martial captain who resides on a planet filled with ice and snow! W̶e̸l̶l̷ ̶I̵ ̸d̵i̵d̷ ̷r̴e̶q̸u̸e̶s̶t̴ ̷h̷i̷m̶ ̴t̴o̵ ̴c̶o̵n̷n̸e̵c̵t̶ ̵m̵e̵ ̵w̶i̴t̵h̶ ̵f̵o̴r̵m̸i̶d̷a̷b̶l̷e̴ ̸f̷i̶g̷h̵t̶e̷r̴s̸ ̸h̸e̸ ̵h̷a̸s̶ ̵e̸n̶c̵o̸u̸n̴t̴e̵r̵e̷d̷ ̴d̴u̸r̷i̸n̷g̴ ̵h̶i̷s̸ ̴a̵d̴v̵e̶n̷t̴u̵r̴e̴s̵,̸ ̵a̸n̶d̶ ̴t̷h̸i̶s̶ ̸m̸a̸n̵ ̸h̷a̴d̴ ̸g̷r̶a̴t̸e̸f̶u̶l̴l̷y̴ ̴a̴c̴c̷e̷p̵t̷e̶d̵ ̵m̴y̴ ̴r̷e̴q̷u̵e̵s̸t̴.̷ ̶W̷o̷u̸l̶d̵ ̵y̶o̵u̶ ̸l̸e̷t̷ ̶m̵e̸ ̴v̷i̶s̷i̸t̶ ̶t̴h̴e̶ ̷p̸l̷a̴n̸e̴t̸ of Jarilo-VI?”

Jing Yuan blinks.

“I”ve been trying to figure out what this place is. Wherever it is, it seems like it’s some sort of purgatory. That’s the closest I can describe it using supernatural terms, because I can’t figure out how to explain any of this scientifically.” Gepard begins, taking the initiative to speak first. 

“You mean this is not your home world?”

Gepard shakes his head. 

“As much as it looks terrain wise, this place is…it’s a living nightmare. The places and locations don’t make any sense, and landmarks I’ve been to simply just…vanish. It’s hard to explain. I…I don’t know if you understand me, but this place feels like it’s trying to pry me apart.”

Jing Yuan’s head snaps up to look at the man.

He understood that feeling. From the way the man’s lip seemed to quiver, the frown etched into his features, the surge of painful memories, of a place that seemed to haunt their thoughts and push them into a corner. 

“I…I know what you mean.”

Gepard looks at him, as Jing Yuan can only give him a tired, painful smile. 

“It appears that our situation is similar. Last I checked, the GPS on my phone showed that I was at some place far, far away from any civilisation. Whatever it is, we’ll be stranded for some time.” The general concludes, as he tugs the blanket closer to himself. The chill began to set in now, and he bundled himself up in the woollen blanket, experiencing the cold for the first time in centuries. 

“...That…that doesn’t make any sense. Then again, nothing made sense from the start of this nightmare.” 

Gepard finds himself being more talkative, especially after having gone the past week without any social interaction, simply struggling to find resources and survive. Running into this man was a life saver, the only other living being he had met ever since he was separated from his men seven days ago. In fact, the very real threat of isolation and loneliness had been draining as a mental burden, one he had never realised how painful it could be until he was put through this experience. 

Jing Yuan sips at the cup of water.

“We’ll have more time and more incentive to figure things out, especially since there are two of us instead of just being isolated and thrown into our own personal hell. Thank you, for saving me, by the way.” 

He meant it, because he knew he would not have survived out in the cold had Gepard not appeared at the right time. 

“...It’s no problem. I’m just really…really glad that I finally found someone else,” The captain smiles weakly, as he too sips at his own mug of hot water. Something bubbles in the cooking pot over the fire in the fireplace, as Gepard sets his mug down and makes his way over, using a pair of tongs and makeshift metal rods to leverage the put and remove it from the fire. 

Two emptied out cans are used as bowls, as Jing Yuan watches him ladle some sort of stew into each can, as he offers him some. 

The general could not remember when he had last had a meal. It is only now, that he realises how much he had been starving, the persistent hunger having been dulled out by the adrenaline, the pain, the despair, everything culminated and crammed in the past few days? Hours? That had severely caused him to lose his appetite. 

The stew is not the best thing he has eaten, being somewhat diluted and having a few conflicting tastes, but the more he ate, the more he enjoyed it. Small chunks of meat, potatoes and strange fish chunks flavoured the stew, making it hearty and enjoyable in the small, isolated cabin. 

The silence between the two of them is comfortable, reassuring, filled with only the sounds of metal utensils on stew, and metal scraping against the rough edges of the makeshift bowls. Being in the presence of someone else was immediately a relief, for he knew his mind and the mara lacked the capacity to conjure an entire person from thin air, nor could it conceive or piece together knowledge about a planet he did not know of.

Which further solidified Gepard’s existence as someone real, and not an illusion made to fool him. 

He glances at the items he had removed from his pockets, finding the notebook, the lock charm, the scroll and the packet of medicine. Counting the number of doses he had remaining, it would only last him another six days. This was already including the fact that he was going to be skipping doses, from taking the pills thrice a day to once a day. Thank the Aeons he had the foresight to leave the slip of the prescription within it, because he would not have known what the correct dosage to take was. 

“...I have a powerbank for that, if you need me to charge your phone?” The captain gestures at his phone, which Jing Yuan observed had died out entirely.

“Oh! Please do,” Jing Yuan handed his phone over, as the blond took it in and plugged the cable in, the display of the phone lighting up to show that it was getting charged. 

The general leans back and into the comfort of the thick fur coat over his shoulders, coupled by a mess of blankets and extra layers of outer wear that had been used to make a makeshift bed and blanket for him.

Gepard watches him, gaze flickering with something uneasy and hesitant.

“You look like you have something to say, Gepard.”

“...U-Uh yeah. I uh…I’m obligated to tell you that I…salvaged most of the furs and cloaks from…the corpses out in this hellscape.” The captain stammers, as Jing Yuan merely raised an eyebrow at his statement. The layer of clothes on his back feels far more heavier with this knowledge. However, he would rather the captain be honest with him about it.

“...I see.”

“P-Please understand, I…had no choice but to do so. Most of the things I have here are scavenged from the ruins of my dead city. I think that’s how this hell is trying to torture me, since I really need the resources and items to survive.”

“I’m not judging you for anything of that sort.”

There’s a reason why he too was carrying the lock charm in his pocket, and the scroll dictating his life sentence within the Shackling Prison.

Having seen his fair share of war and conflict, the general was not new to the idea of scavenging the belongings of the dead to survive. Once, when their men had been pushed by a tricky opponent, they had been forced to camp out and loot the bodies of the deceased. 

Jing Yuan had told himself that they would have wanted them to live, to win the fight, and would not have minded. 

But he does understand the kind of mental burden it would have on another. 

“I was heavily involved in a war for a period of time. Doing something like that is not an unfamiliar act, nor is it shameful if it ensures your survival. The dead have no use for such items, after all.”

Gepard looks at the man, who looks back at him with a pair of all too tired eyes. 

Here the two of them were, stranded in a purgatory of someone’s making. 

If the man had been a war general as well, was that why he was here too? Were they both here because of the roles they played in causing the death of others? 

“...Thank you, for not…for not criticising my actions.”

The general looks at him, with something akin to a pained, kindred understanding. 

“Shall we move onto less depressing topics? Such as how to get out of this place…”

Jing Yuan glances at the window. Gepard gets up from where he was seated on the floor, and collects the emptied plates and sets them aside. 

The general watches the darkness beyond the feeble light of their fire, and finds nothing but the black night. 

“It’s best to close the curtain. I have reason to believe that there’s something out there.”

Out…there?

In the vast expanse of snow, filled with nothing but cold, hollow emptiness, an infinity which he had gazed upon for himself, a place where nothing was meant to survive. The way the captain had warned him was unsettling, as the general took head and closed the makeshift curtain over the window. 

“Is it something that can be killed?”

The captain stills.

“To be frank, I don’t know. Staying out there when the sun sets is just…bad news. I have no real reason to back up my claims, but there’s something wrong about the darkness beyond. Wrong in a way I cannot explain.”

This realm was wrong in every way possible. Jing Yuan did not blame the man for picking the safer option to not risk anything, because who knew what laid out there? The man himself seemed far more familiar and acclimated to the place as well, which made him wonder how long he had been here.

“One’s instincts should never be ignored. That would be the safest move, and I agree with it.” Jing Yuan tugs the clothes closer to himself, feeling the chill permeate through the walls. 

Gepard pats the empty space next to him, where he had been seated right in front of the fireplace, beckoning the man to join him. 

The Xianzhou native joins him, soaking in the heat of the small fire. 

“How many days have you spent here?”

“This marks my ninth day.” The captain wears a steel gauntlet in one hand, and etches another mark down on the floor by the fireplace, a set of lines counting the days he had spent here.

Nine days.

With no contact, trapped in this cabin, lost to the world.

Jing Yuan would go insane. If not because of the isolation, but because the mara would have exponentially consumed his mind the more mentally unstable he became.

“..I-I cannot begin to fathom how torturous this has been on you,”

“It’s been a lot of resource management and the fight against loneliness,” Gepad chuckles softly, as he fed another log into the fire. 

“You must have also gone through alot.”

“...Yeah.”

Jing Yuan remembers everything he had gone through, and it leaves him feeling painfully empty. 

Gepard takes note of the shift in the mood of his new companion, and lets the conversation die there.

-

His body is drawn and quartered. 

Each part refusing to die, always constantly seeking life. 

His head is locked away in a glass prison, suspended over fumes that sought to dull his mind and keep him perpetually drugged.

The mara in his veins is so strong, so potent, that it refused to let a single part of him die.

-

He wakes up gasping for breath, a writhing struggle which is soothed by the presence of someone gently, but firmly nudging him awake. 

His head throbs, but Jing Yuan finds himself grounded by the heavy weight of the fur cloak over his shoulders, the warm heat of the fire fending off the chill that began to eat into his limbs. His nails dug deep into his knees, where he had fallen asleep huddled by the fire, as he fixated on how the bandages on his fingers were bleeding through once more, from the pressure.

“Jing Yuan?”

Gepard looks at him, as the general takes in a few deep breaths.

“..I-I will be fine.”

The general expects the pain of the mara to flare, as it always did after a horrible nightmare. It hurts him, a stinging pain welling up from his core esse, but it did not burn as wildly, as manically as it had before. 

“Would you like some snow? I…give them to my men whenever any of them have a bad flashback. I’m not the best at comforting or reassuring others, but if it helps you take your mind off of things, it helps to chew on it.”

Jing Yuan blinks, as the man takes the offered cup with shaky hands. 

He has never eaten snow in his life.

He tips it into his mouth, as chunks of ice fill his mouth and he starts nibbling and gnawing at it, finding the crunch and texture oddly satisfying. It seemed to also be helping to manage the warm sting caused by the mara stirring in his core esse, ice to combat its burn. 

It helps.

The man inches himself closer to the fire, regaining the warmth he had lost due to the cold. 

“Nightmare?”

“Sadly so.” Jing Yuan responds with a weak chuckle, as he sighs. 

Turning to glance at the window, he could see the slightest streaks of daylight peeking through the curtains. 

“How long was I out?”

“Four hours since you roused in the middle of the night.”

“I see. Well, some sleep is better than none. What about you? Have you been tending to the fire all night?”

Gepard shrugs.

“I had a two hour nap before you woke up, and another three hour nap after. So, five hours total. Though I’m not too concerned about the amount of rest I get per night, since some of the whiteouts basically keep me trapped within the cabin and I sleep to pass time.”

The whiteouts? Jing Yuan is unfamiliar with this term.

“Whiteouts are dense blizzards and snowstorms that make it impossible to get anything done outside. I mainly spend my time organising my items and supplies and reinforcing the interior of the cabin. It’s happened twice since I’ve found this place.”

The captain explains, as he watches the fire die down into burning coals.

“I see. My apologies, I have little experience with snowy terrains and the dangers they pose.”

“Don’t worry about it. The only experience I have with any terrain is that of ice and snow. I suppose our experiences are the opposite,” Gepard chuckles. 

He gets up and moves over to the pile of firewood, arranging a small pile next to the general as he hands the makeshift metal poker over to the man.

“I’ve got to head out and collect more firewood now when I can. Please do not leave the cabin under any circumstances. I’m not sure what would happen if you do not have this compass on your person.”

“Oh? Will the cabin disappear if one is left without it?”

“...Probably. I think. I’ve been too afraid to risk it. This place has its strange laws, but otherwise is awfully quick at changing the terrains and its environment to strand someone in the middle of nowhere.”

“Alright. You have my word that I will sit tight.” 

Besides, it’s not as if Jing Yuan can get up and aid the man in such manual labour. With the burns on his palms, his injured and strained limbs, he should take every minute he had to rest. 

“I’ll be back in a few hours. Your phone should be charged too. Well, not that there’s any signal here, but it's useful in telling the time.” 

“I will find a way to keep myself occupied. I owe you many thanks, Gepard. Please focus on your job without me being a burden.”

The captain had already gathered up his supplies by then, consisting of a makeshift haversack, thick cloth to bundle up logs, a…rifle, and an axe. 

“I’ll be back soon.”

Chapter Text

He scales the tree, loosens the noose and lets the body fall onto the snow.

Four days of doing the same thing, where he spent half his day gathering firewood, with the other days spent scavenging for materials in the ruins of Belobog. 

The weariness has been grinding him down. Making him numb, and so painfully cold.

Dropping down from the branch, he looks at the corpse, loosens the noose around its neck and begins to dig a grave for it beneath the snow, using the flat side of the axe as a makeshift shovel. 

He refused to let himself become apathetic and distant. 

Gepard Landau painfully clings to routine, allowing himself to pay respects to the dead. He does not know how long he must do this, even when he has already cleared what seemed to be a noticeable size of the forest. With its dead trees and frozen bark, he must persist, for he needs the firewood to survive.

He cuts the tree down, bringing the axe down with a heave and doing so multiple times before switching his position at the base of the tree he was aiming to cut down. One tree would yield him a generous amount of firewood, enough to last three days, or five if he rationed it well enough. 

The captain continues with the motions, finding a suitable point in which the trunk had been weakened enough that he could kick the tree and let it topple and fall over. 

The past few days had been aimless, and painful.

By doing the same thing over and over again, gathering supplies amidst the corpses of those he loved and those he was meant to protect, he was becoming numb to those bodies, no matter how realistic they were. In fact, it felt like he had hit a dead end of some sort, unable to move forward. The scenery and the setting never changed, for the past few days.

Regardless of how far out he ventured, he would reach no end until he inadvertently gave up and opened the compass, allowing him to navigate back to the cabin despite how none of the distances coincided. 

That was until he had stumbled across the stranger.

Jing Yuan, he called himself, with clothes and looks that told him he came from a far off land, proof that this was only a living nightmare, and not reality. Albeit a horrible purgatory they were set in, but a relief that none of what he was seeing was actually real, nor it actually happened. 

He wonders if their meeting was orchestrated by whatever manipulated their surroundings, for there was no possible way someone else would have also made it here. Gepard lifts the axe over his shoulder and halves the last remaining pile of wood into sizable chunks. Tying them to a sleigh he utilised, he stacks them on and begins tugging the makeshift sleigh onto his next location. 

The sudden appearance of someone new, and entirely unexpected had jarred him from his state of bland, sinking numbness. Given a new purpose, he had hauled the man back to his cabin after covering him with his thickest coat and immediately brought him to the safety of his cabin to treat him. 

He had been concerned, shocked, and extremely relieved when the man opened his eyes and was willing to converse with him. Proof that he was not alone here. In this desolate wasteland which forced him to ruminate in his mistakes, had the worst truly come to pass. 

Then he realised that Jing Yuan himself had managed to get through his own version of purgatory and make it here, having yet again been stranded in a whole new hostile environment. The two of them are now trapped in his hellscape, and he begins to wonder if he is the reason why both of them are suffering like this. 

It dawned on him, that there was a possibility that Jing Yuan should have been freed, if he had made it out of his torture, he should have been able to return home, or wherever he came from. Instead, he was now imprisoned here with him. 

Gepard may not know why, but he wonders if his inability to overcome this scenario has held Jing Yuan back from embracing his freedom. It was a simple deduction, no? For someone he had no knowledge of, to be drawn into the blizzards of his personal purgatory, this place wanted to punish him.

To force him to now bear the weight of the life of another, within his own hellscape. 

His gaze watches the shattered fountain of the Administrative District.

Leaving his sled behind, he lightens his gear and prepares to enter the buildings to salvage more resources. 

Now, he had to find enough food to feed two, and to find medicine and more medical supplies to tend to the wounds of the other man. 

For the past week, scavenging has been easier for a single person. Now, with another to take care of, he would have to adjust and divide their resources equally. He must now hold and be responsible for the life of another. 

The captain’s belief in his ability to care for and save another wavers once more. 

It is an ultimate test, he realised, when he had been wrapping the man’s burn wounds and slowly wrapping him up in layers of blankets and furs, that he needs to do everything in his power to keep this man alive, and find a way to send him back home. 

Only the dead lingered in this place, after all.

He ducks under a partially collapsed roof, the building half sunken down into the cracked ice beneath. Squeezing himself through the narrow gaps, the captain shifts aside smaller pieces of debris, using his ice to manifest and construct support structures to prevent any accidental collapse. 

Scavenging has taken a toll on him, as he finds a corpse and strips it off its outer layers, letting it keep its inner layers. The frozen eyelids had long since sealed shut, crystal structures resembling a ghostly form of Fragmentum piercing through her bare skin. With its pale grey and black appearance, it flickered in and out of existence, an anomaly in reality that he never got used to accepting. 

He realised earlier on that those were relatively harmless, almost made to be placeholders of the Fragmentum corrosion in reality. Still, he makes sure not to touch them so as to avoid the unpleasant experience of having a strange, painful flashback of a memory of corrosion that left him hurting. 

(He supposed he was not in a right state of mind when he had peeled off his gauntlets and ran his bare hand against the length of that crystal, hoping that it was a way out from this miserable hell.)

He prefers not to think about it. 

He peels back the thicker layer, bundling it up as cloth, before moving through the ruins, rummaging through drawers and closets for a first aid kit. Beyond a tilted floor due to the orientation of the building in its current state, everything was preserved in pristine order, either by the crystals or by the Eternal Freeze, its power magnified a thousand fold to render even the air unbreathable for someone without a blessing.

It takes him the better part of three hours for his searches to find something useful, a first aid kit still bundled up with all of its components deep in the lower levels of the buildings, and he brings that with him. Other objects and resources he managed to scavenge for were more paper, because this was once an office building after all, and more pencils. He’d have to move onto the next building to find more food. 

He will persist in his search, because he needed to make sure that Jing Yuan would heal, that he would be fine, that he would live, and that he would escape. 

As he gathers the provisions he managed to salvage, he leaves and crawls out of the area, finding his way back to the edge of the shattered fountain where he had left his items.

The sun was showing signs of setting, and he did not want to push his luck.

-

Jing Yuan had spent his time reading through his own notes. Sitting by the warm fire, he huddled close up to it, arranging his meagre belongings carefully as he looked at his phone and navigated through the applications on it. 

There was still no signal present, and his location registered as something lost in deep space. 

He tries to piece together how feasible everything had been. To move seamlessly from one place to another, from one scene to another, he felt as though he had lived, reliving the life of a future version of him. Perhaps it was a strange mix of space time interaction, or a vision of the future?

He does not know.

It pains him, puzzles him so much, to have gone through so much yet made so little progress on uncovering what and where he is.

Turning the screen of his phone off, he is left to look at his reflection, with tangled, matted, bloodied hair that was slightly singed, red, frost bitten skin still recovering. He is a mess. Not only is he mara struck, he is unable to think clearly, unable to move on. 

He hates it.

He wisely sets the phone aside before he turns to gaze at the fire. 

As Arbiter General, he was known for his foresight and strategies. His main talent was his mind, the ability to think rationally, predict, forecast and conduct assessments accordingly. With his body bruised and battered, recovering from burns, he cannot move around much without sending pain up his limbs. 

Even now, the pain was beginning to gnaw into his thoughts, the bandages and treatment being makeshift, without actual medical equipment on hand. Neither is he used to such archaic forms of first aid, for the Xianzhou had long since revolutionised and increased the efficacy of its healing. Here however, he had no access to such medicine, and can only rely on Gepard and the supplies he found. 

Focus.

His thoughts scattered quickly, as he tries to regain them, pulling them back together, akin to pushing water back in on itself as it seemed to spread outwards from the source. 

He needs to think.

Rationalise whatever was transpiring around his person, around Gepard, around the both of them, and find a way out. 

They were stranded in deep space. Likely by some spatial anomaly that displaced them far from their homes an native planets, if Gepard’s words were true. Left without signal, unable to call for aid. 

The painful hollow sensation in his chest reminded him of how the Lightning Lord had forsaken him, for he had become mara struck. He wonders if Diviner Fu received their guidance instead. 

If an anomaly sent them here, it had the power to send them back. They would need to locate the heart of this anomaly, possibly bargain or defeat it depending on its level of sentience (he was assuming it was what was putting them through copious amounts of mental torture) and send the two of them back.

Things far easier said than done.

Especially when so many threats here seemed equally made up and yet had the very real threat of killing them. 

It is hard enough for him to discern whether something is real or not, but the flames that threatened to incinerate him, that were meant to do so, were real. Yanqing had seemed real. Diviner Fu had seemed real. He could feel them, touch them with his senses, but they could not exist in this place. Not physically.

Jing Yuan is struggling with the fact that the only thing convincing him that none of this is an elaborate hallucination is the fact that he was in this cabin with Gepard, and the way his phone registered his location at some Aeon-forsaken place in deep space. 

He recognised what this place has done to him. Shaken his own perception of reality so much so that he grew unwilling to trust his own thoughts. It did not help that he was also mara struck, and coping with that poison growing in his gut. He needs to…

He needs to tell Gepard.

Warn the man in case he loses control, in case he…

Jing Yuan finds himself reaching for the red hot poker. 

He stops himself before his hands touch the heated metal.

Pulling his hand back with a flinch, he gazed into the flickering flame.

Did he have the courage to admit that he was a sick, dying beast that needed to be put down at a moment’s notice? The younger had been kind enough to be truthful about the origin of the clothes over his shoulders. It showed that he was a man of honesty and sincerity, even at the cost of disgust and judgement.

What was morally right was to treat the man the same, for that was the most fair gift he could give in exchange for his company and his aid. 

Still, it is a shameful secret that festers within his heart, one he hopes he never will have to bring to light until someone rips it out from his chest. He is uncertain of how long he will remain sane, with the dwindling medicine, and how long he can last.

The last thing he wants to do is to be the reason why Gepard dies. 

That, he absolutely cannot allow.

Not with the image of Yanqing’s corpse seared into his mind, with Blade’s sword removing his head from his neck as Jingliu strode forth and dismembered his corpse into a dozen pieces that refused to die.

He tugs the blanket over his shoulders.

Sitting cross legged by the fireplace, he pens his thoughts down, a finalisation of his will, for a future he cannot allow to come to pass, a promise he must make.

-

Jing Yuan grows worried when the sun sets, and Gepard has yet to return. 

Despite the human urge to leave the cabin and do something helpful, the general knows he cannot set a foot out, lest he risk losing his life to the elements. In unfamiliar terrain, and having been warned by the younger man, he cannot set a single step outside of the cabin. 

Having spent most of his day dozing off intermittently and writing down his thoughts, he found that he had to resort to using a pencil to fill the pages as the ink within the pen did not work well in the cold. His body still hurts, but not as badly as before. He wonders if the mara played a part in numbing his pain down into something bearable, or perhaps it was just the cold that was all encompassing. 

He waits, peeking through the curtains for any sign of life for the man to return. There is nothing, no light, and the general pulls himself back to sit by the warmth of the fireplace. 

Gepard had told him that he himself did not spend too much time outside, because something lurked beyond. That meant he should have returned some time ago, because the man also did not feel safe in the dark. Could something have happened to the man on his way there and back?

If the man was truly injured or incapacitated…didn’t it seal both their fates?

His mind sieves through the possibilities of all the worst case scenarios, and he realises now how heavily dependent he is on Gepard for his survival. Having no knowledge of the place, with the exception of the hastily drawn paper map of the area that divided itself into two different zones and locations, he can guess that the blond made his way into the place called ‘Ruins’ to gather supplies.

He thinks of what he can do, with the remaining supplies, and debates how long he has until he should leave to find the man. Except…leaving the safety of the cabin might put him into greater danger. Gepard had mentioned something about a compass, one he did not have on his person, that helped him navigate his way back to the cabin. 

If he left to find Gepard, but the man was simply late on returning with a perilous trek through the darkness, then he would make the situation worse.

In the end, the general decides to wait, knowing that is the best course of action, despite the growing unease that pools in his gut. 

He glances at his phone to see the minutes turn into hours, and night falls.

That’s when he hears a knock on the door.

“General, it’s me. My hands are full, could you let me in?”

Jing Yuan blinks, stunned and shocked out of his anxious state, as the man steadies himself and makes his way to the door. Standing up from where he had been crouched by the fire sends a few stabs of pain up his bandaged feet, as he half hobbles and makes his way to the door. 

His hand pauses on the knob.

He never introduced himself as a general.

No matter how bad his memory was, he was absolutely certain he did not mention his title to the man. 

“Jing Yuan, my hands are pretty numb right now, so I kind of need your help to open the door.”

If his hands were full, how could they be numb at the same time?

This is the point where his mind immediately enters a scarily focussed state, using rational thought to hold back the growing wave of dread that was piling up and choking his thoughts. The door has no hole for him to peek through to ascertain the identity of the person behind the door, no matter how much it sounded like Gepard’s voice. 

“It’s really, really cold out here. Could you help?”

Every additional sentence it spoke sent a shiver down his spine. 

Jing Yuan finds the closest window he can, and attempts to take a peek at whomever was out there, and finds that there is nothing but darkness. His view is obstructed by the side of the house, but if Gepard were to be trekking through the night, it only made sense for him to be carrying a lantern, should he not?

And he was certain the man had brought a lantern with him on his way out. 

“Open the door.”

This time, the voice no longer pleaded with him. Instinctively, Jing Yuan ducks behind the curtain and below the makeshift bench, as it knocks on the door. 

If it could knock on the door, it could most definitely have the hands to open it by itself-

The knob rattles, as something seemed to be furiously trying to open the door. 

His thoughts are drowned out by white noise, as Jing Yuan lunges for the barricade by the side of the door, and brings it down to prevent the thing from entering the cabin. He’s certain his wounds have opened up again, but nothing mattered more than to keep that thing out.

“Open the door. Open the door. Open the door.”

It pounds at the door, and for those very few painful moments, Jing Yuan huddled himself behind the barricade, jamming it up against the door as the knob rattled dangerously loud above his head.

That thing outside was not Gepard.

“General, would you please open up the door for me?” It begs him, in Yanqing’s voice. 

It is a monster.

“Baba, it’s freezing out here, please!”

He knows now that he must not open the door at all costs. 

The pounding gets louder, as Jing Yuan can hear the thick wood groan and shriek beneath the weight of something he did not know. All of his instincts were screaming at him to run and hide, to do something about this foe that he knew nothing about. 

It continued to shriek and scream at him, in the voices of everyone he knew, from Diviner Fu, to Dan Feng, to Dan Heng, to Bai Heng, to Yingxing, to his old master. It curses him for his cowardice, whispers sweet nothings all in an attempt to have him open the door. He draped the cloak over his head and pressed his hands over his ears.

The voices drown out every other thought he has in his head. Madness distilled into a haunting chorus of noises, an orchestra of pain and pleading that gnaws and wears down at his soul. Each word, each breathe was a blade, used to 

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Jing Yuan teethers on the brink of hyperventilation, the rational part of him telling him that he must calm down as soon as possible, because it wanted to provoke him, and he simply needed to wait it out until everything calmed down and went away. 

Breathe in.

Breathe out. 

Eventually, the voices die down.

It fell silent abruptly, and still the general refused to move from his position.  

His hands do not cease shaking.

Chapter Text

He wants Gepard to come back. The real Gepard. He needs to ask him if he has encountered this being before, if..if..if…

“Jing Yuan, I would appreciate it if you could…move away from the barricade? I need some space to bring in the things I hauled back. Sorry if I was late by the way, the place screwed with my sense of time.” He hears Gepard’s voice through the door.

“Prove that you are him.”

The thing behind the door pauses. 

“Would me heading to the window help? We…don’t really know each other that well, so I can only give you the facts that you told me when you woke up. Like…you hailing from the Xianzhou Luofu? Is that how I pronounce it?” The man sounds partly confused, amidst the exhaustion in his voice. A slight edge of frenzy was in it too, which had the general on edge.

The footsteps lead to the window.

Jing Yuan holds his breath, as he peels the curtain aside.

A pair of pale blue eyes looked at him, as Gepard seemed to be biting on his own lip anxiously.  

Jing Yuan decided that this was human enough in its response.(Even if the thing could potentially change its appearance) He did not have to gauge the answer, but rather the way it was delivered. That was the last thing he could rely on, his own sense and experience in handling others. 

He moves the barricade aside, and opens the door slowly. 

The pale light from the lantern attached to his belt shines on him, as the blond wipes off the snow which landed on his face.

“...Are you alright?”

Gepard pulls the sled of items in, before the captain closes the door shut and barricades it behind him with a high level of aggressiveness. 

Jing Yuan stares at him numbly, before he shakes his head. 

Clutching his head in his bandaged hands, the general leans against the new barricade, as Gepard feeds the fire to warm the room back up. The blond is very concerned, but knew that he needed to make sure the room was habitable first before he could tend to the man. 

He too struggled to shake off the remnants of trekking through the night, as he shoves his trembling limbs into the deep pockets of his coat and hopes that his fear did not show. 

The heat of the fire calms him. 

Peeling off the thick gloves and gauntlets, the captain stripped himself of his armour and thick cloak, hanging them to dry by the fire as he walked over and settled down on the floor next to the general. 

“....Did something approach you?” The blond asks, as Jing Yuan nods his head. 

“...I-I’m beginning to see what you mean by the night bringing nothing but hostilities. S-Something came up on the door bearing your voice, but it was not you.” 

Jing Yuan does not want to say more. Not when his throat chokes up and closes at how he ignored the pleading cries of his dead and dying son, of how it echoed and spoke in a thousand variations of pain and begged for him to let it in. 

Gepard freezes. 

“...Damn it. It’s already trying to turn us against each other.” Having been stuck in survival mode for the past week, the captain turns over the nature of the threat in his mind, analysing and reaching down to what it was trying to achieve.  Glancing at the white haired man, he knows that he should comfort the man, but does not know how. 

So, the captain offers him a glass of warm water, heated by the fire, to which Jing Yuan looks at him with a smile that does not reach his tired, drained eyes, but nonetheless accepts from him gratefully. 

The captain waits. As he sips at his own mug of frozen, melted down snow, he waits by the man’s side to gauge and see if he would be willing to say more. One could not pressure another into speaking about things that hurt them, so the captain could only wait. After all, they were in no hurry, having been trapped in by the heavy snow and the horrors that laid in the dark, abyssal night. 

The fire crackles, as the two of them watch the wooden log gurn, the fire spreading across its surface carbonising the thin bark layer into ash first, whilst the fire grows. 

Gepard added another mark to countdown the days that had passed. 

Jing Yuan looked at the captain, who pulled over more sets of blankets and furs, having found a set of new ones, and began to air them over the fire, whilst he brought a set of cleaner, folded blankets over to him. 

Jing Yuan accepts his offer, and decides that he wants to nestle up against the wall at that spot for the time being. 

“It begged me to let it in.”

Gepard sits next to the man, leaning against the barricade against the door. 

“I don’t know what it was, but it spoke to me in the voice of my dead son, my subordinates, my trusted advisors, my soon to be successor. It begged.”

Jing Yuan looks at him, a hollow pain and resignation in his eyes. 

The captain is hit by an influx of information all at once. Namely, the threat at hand, but also the fact that this man had a son, a son who was also dead, and was being tormented by the very being that sought to exploit both of their bonds and relations with others to put them through hell.

“I did not let them in. I realised it was something trying to impersonate you, and them, and everyone, for the matter.”

Jing Yuan set the now empty cup in his hands on the fur lined floor.

“I can’t stop thinking about the voices.”

Gepard…thinks of how he can respond to such a comment. At the very forefront of his mind, is the priority to survive. However, morale came hand in hand with that. Seeing the only other person here, trapped in this pool of unending madness with him, suffer this much as soon as he disappeared was a cruel, painful feeling. He needed to do his job better to be a protector, as he was meant to do so ever since he took up the mantle of a soldier, of a captain. 

He feels powerless, but he must try. Try, because any attempt was better than to simply let things be. 

“This place…is cruel. It digs in deep into your regrets and worst fears and throws them all at you at once.”

“Am I weak for feeling so distraught?”

“No. Never.”

“Even if I knew that it was a trick? An illusion? And I still felt so strongly for it.”

“That does not make you weak. To continue to feel for it, and to also know that it is false and refusing to give in, that makes you strong. Incredibly strong willed,” Gepard looks at Jing Yuan, whose sullen gaze has shifted into something a little more bright. 

“Those are wise words, Gepard.” The man seems to mull over his words, as Gepard  beckons him to move closer to the fire.

“It’s simply the truth.” Were he in the man’s position, even Gepard would admit that his resolve would falter. Even more so if you factored in the addition of familial ties. 

Jing Yuan moves closer over to him, both sitting by the warmth of the fire. 

The captain moves to prepare the meal for the day, a few stale pieces of bread within some watered down can of corn soup which is devoured by the two of them despite how flimsy tasting it is. Food was food, and they needed all the sustenance they could get. They discuss more on how to handle the new threat, thinking of a passphrase to speak to ensure that something unknown would not make itself in. They decide on the word ‘will’.

On that note, the captain decides that it is better for the man to be armed. 

Having managed to salvage a few spare weapons, he gets around to digging up a few of them, mainly consisting of knives and blades, compared to rifles which long since jammed or had their mechanism frozen by the cold. 

He offers one of them to Jing Yuan, who looks at the dull surface and its sharp edge with something akin to a deadened madness. 

“...It’s alright. I…don’t quite trust myself with one.”

Gepard nodded, and kept it away.

He wonders what the man had gone through. Having also been from a military background, as he had explained earlier, the man seemed familiar and unsurprised by the tools of war and survival, but remained reticent about many things. 

Instead, Gepard rummages through the items he had brought back.

“Would you prefer this instead?” 

He finds a simple red coloured comb, and raises it up to him.

Jing Yuan turns to look at the new offering, his eyes lighting up with something pleasantly comforting. 

“Oh, yes please. My hair has been a mess for the past few days.” The man takes the comb from his hand, and tries to get through the tangles in his long white hair. The bandages and the numbness of the burning pain in his palms prevent him from doing a good job, and Gepard offers his aid.

“Let me help.”

Jing Yuan dips his head in a slight apology, which Gepard waves him off for and begins to work through the tangles in his hair. Having never met another person with such long hair before, Gepard is…curious at whether this was common onboard the man’s homeworld. Having hailed from Jarilo-VI, the only people who had hair as long as this was usually the women, because it was hard to upkeep and maintain long hair in general, especially when things took much longer to dry in the cold weather.

Gepard is fairly certain there had been some form of restrictions against long hair for the Silvermane Guards purely because it was hard to care for their hygiene out on the frontlines with long hair, but can’t remember if the rules were abolished and now it was left up to each individual’s personal preferences. 

Still, as he gently combs through the tangles of the man’s hair, he is reminded of the times he helped Serval and Lynx with their hair. Well, back when Lynx had longer hair. 

“...Thank you.” Jing Yuan murmurs, the man turning back to look at him with a grateful smile. The white haired man is still under his touch, holding himself firmly before he eventually melts beneath the gentle treatment of Gepard’s successful attempts at untangling his knotted hair.

“It’s no issue. I used to do this for my sisters back home.” Mainly when they had been too lazy or had their hands full, and when they were much younger. Honestly, the captain was surprised he still remembered the motions. 

“You have sisters?”

“Mhm. One older and one younger.”

“Ah, so you’re a middle child.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty interesting when you have both a younger and an older sister. What about you?”

“I’m an only child.”

“I see. Were there any perks?”

“Other than getting pampered and not having to share anything, not really.” The general responds somewhat cheekily, and Gepard realises that the man has relaxed enough to slip into something less stressed. 

“Must be nice not having to share things.”

“It was, but it was also lonely.”

Gepard hums. The pros and cons of having siblings and not having them were just that universal.

Once he finishes smoothening the man’s hair out, he removes the strands caught on the comb and tosses them into the fire, and Jing Yuan looks wide eyed at the amount of tangles and loose hair which go up in the fire. 

“You want a mirror?”

“No need. I trust you enough to style my hair decently.” Jing Yuan feels comforted, as he runs his own fingers through his hair and enjoys the smoothness of it. It’s a pity that some of the edges were frayed because they were caught by the flames and semi charred, but he could live with it. 

The general is grateful that the man had offered to help him with such a simple act, knowing that he himself would be unable to manage something that required high dexterity. He realises now how pathetically useless he is, nothing but a burden to the man who had literally rescued and saved him from freezing to death in the snow. 

The only thing he can offer is his mind, but even that is…unstable. 

Still, he should try to do something to help.

“Is there anything I can help with? Something that doesn’t need too much dexterity. I wish to make myself useful.”

Gepard thinks of what the man can do, to make the time more efficiently split between the two of them. He’s also thinking of procuring a hair tie for the man due to how long and voluminous his hair is, but he realises he can get him to help count and ration supplies. Nothing too strenuous or intense, but an important job nonetheless. 

“...Is your maths good?”

“Decently so.”

“If you don’t mind, you could help count and ration the supplies. Anything and everything ranging from food to the firewood. Those are the main resources for now, and the bandages could be another.”

Jing Yuan will settle for the rationing duty.

“When your wounds heal and get better, you could accompany me to fetch supplies. Though you probably should keep to light duty for the time being.”

The general gazed at the window which was being covered up by the thick makeshift curtain. To venture out of the safety of the cabin…he could do it. When he was suitably well enough. Even if there were unseen threats and horrors that laid beyond. With such a risk laid opportunities. He needed to get a visual look of the terrain and what lay beyond the two of them in order to help figure a way out. 

“I would like that.”

-

Jing Yuan offered to take the first shift of the watch. 

Having learnt of the threats that could potentially bring them harm when night fell, the two of them agreed that it would be safe to take turns sleeping and keeping on guard, even within the confines of the cabin. 

Gepard tells him where to find all the neatly inventoried items and supplies, if he wished to begin with his work now or to help put some of the things away to kill time. The general is willing to do just that, before the captain goes to sleep and rests by the fire. 

The blond haired man is quick to fall asleep, a testament to how exhausted he had been traversing across the terrain. By his side, Jing Yuan pokes at the wooden log in the fire, measuring how long one log would last to retain heat using his phone’s timer. 

He realises he had yet to inform Gepard of his condition, and also realises he needs to explain the entire Xianzhou Native’s physiology and cursed immortality as context, and so much else that he needed to know to understand the consequences of being mara struck. 

It would take one long explanation, but it would have to be done. 

He looks down at his bandaged hands, wondering how long burn wounds took to heal. Without the usual healing provided by the Alchemy Commission healers, his body was forced to rely on its natural healing abilities to repair the damage that had been done. The recovery time would be quadrupled, or even multiplied by ten times depending on how bad the wounds were. 

At the very least…he was beginning to notice the lack of the burning sensation in his gut. His core esse did not hurt as badly as before, almost as if it were improving. Was it due to the medicine? Or was it because he was plunged into a situation so entirely and completely bizarre and foreign that there were no traumatic flashbacks that he needed to endure? 

Maybe it was even the cold. 

The nightmares however, were still present.

He counts the doses of the medicine he has left.

Two weeks if he stretches it. 

He’s certain he can stretch the doses. 

Penning that down in his notebook with some difficulty, he gets around to counting the number of logs, before helping to inventory the remaining supplies of food. It’s strange how the food ranged from canned goods (something he had not seen in some time, all the way back to the very first few campaigns he participated in against the followers of the Plagues Author), to jerky strips, a single bag of rice, and random assortments of food and snacks.

It is a good thing that the snow resolved all of their water troubles, but it meant that firewood became all the more precious as a resource. 

Somewhere in the middle of his work, he realises how entirely surreal the situation he was in now was. 

It hits him like a crashing starskiff, as he pauses mid count and loses track of how many logs of firewood he had counted, that he had gone from falling asleep on his desk to counting supplies in a cabin in the middle of nowhere but snow. 

Things had happened so fast and so quickly, and now he was here.

He looks over at the sleeping form of Gepard, and back to the fire and chest filled with supplies. 

If he ever got back to the Luofu, this would be one hell of an explanation for Diviner Fu. No doubt she would come after him for his disappearance for such a lengthy number of days. 

He returns back to work.

He cannot dwell on the past.

To do so was to invite mara.

-

Gepard dreamt of war. 

Of burning buildings, war torn battlegrounds, the curse of a Stellaron that consumed all. 

He dreamt that he had chosen to remain by Cocolia’s side all the way to their last moment, where he had slain the Astral Express as she had commanded, and brought about a new age.

Blind faith and blind loyalty brought about an irreversible calamity, as he slaughtered his own sister in cold blood and killed all remaining hope for their homeland. 

When he came to regret, it was too late.

The Stellaron then consumed him, and rebirthed him into something heinous.

The trees were filled with crystalised corpses, hanging from nooses from its branches that pointed up at the sky. They writhed in cocoons, soon to be reborn anew. There was no going back. 

The thousands of gravestones that would emerge from the snow, mass graves overflowing and piled up with those who resisted and rebelled, only dying at the hands of a tyrannical ruler that had long since lost her humanity.

By her side, was an equally sinful enforcer, who long since lost his own faith and autonomy. 

-

He wakes with a choking gasp, a hand shaking his shoulder to rouse him awake. 

“-I-I’m awake.” He is no stranger to such nightmares. 

Gazing at Jing Yuan’s concerned eyes, he hastily reminded himself that he was nowhere near that path of an alternate future, and that he had resolved to move on, even if it required him to face the weight of his sins. 

Jing Yuan nods.

“The sun has risen.” The blond rubs his eyes, and looks out the window, finding nothing but the dim, barely shining light of the sun beyond. It is barely day, but a brief check of the time on his phone told him that it was indeed, supposed to be day. 

“...I managed to make something out of the supplies. Would you like something to eat before you head out?” Gepard takes the offered food, something with crackers paired with one of the canned foods. 

Jing Yuan looks like he pulled an all-nighter. Which, the captain supposed he did, judging by how neatly put away and arranged all the supplies were. 

The food tasted like rations, which he supposed was to be expected because these were all salvaged rations. 

“Did you get enough rest for yourself?”

“Don’t worry about me, Gepard. I’ve been spending my time here resting and sleeping that an all-nighter will not kill me,” The white haired man responds, something akin to wistfulness in his voice. The general scratches at his bandaged wounds, which reminds the captain that he ought to change the dressings in a few hours. 

The nightmare still lingers in his mind, and Gepard wonders if he should even head out to continue bringing in more firewood from the forest of hanging trees. 

He decides that he will not have the mental strength to do it. Not with the dream still so vivid in his mind, that poignant, painful guilt that stained his consciousness and creeped up in his heart.

“...I think I’ll stay in for the day. Help to settle the things down,” His voice unintentionally dips down into something quieter, as the captain heaved a sigh and glanced once more out the window.

If he did not head out now, he would be wasting time. Wasting precious daylight, time needed to retrieve and obtain resources. 

Jing Yuan must have noticed his look of consternation, because he suggested something else.

“...You do not have to force yourself to make a supply run if you do not feel up for it. Based on my calculations, we have enough supplies to last us 2 weeks, and 1 week’s worth of firewood.” He flips through his notebook, of which he hands over to the captain to take a look at.

Meticulous lines and tables were drawn, sorted by category, expiry, and varying periods of usage. 

“What type of job did you work?”

Jing Yuan is startled by the question, as Gepard hands the book back.

“...I am-was, the Arbiter General of the Xianzhou Luofu. In charge of planning defensive and offensive strategies against invading opponents and to decimate the enemies, as well as managing day to day activities onboard the fleet.” He finds that honesty would be the best way to repay the man for the aid that had been given to him.

Gepard’s eyes widen.

“Woah. That…must have been a heavy burden.”

Indeed it had been. He knows that Diviner Fu must have taken over his role since his disappearance. Though, she already had been handling most of his share of the work ever since the symptoms of mara made itself more and more known. 

“I count myself fortunate that I have an excellent successor.”

Gepard leans against the wall, making himself comfortable.

“What were your plans after retiring?”

Jing Yuan chuckles upon hearing the question.

Retiring? He had never thought about it like that. The only thing that forced him out of that role was the simple fact that he was mara struck and now stranded in this unknown location, possibly millions of lightyears away from the nearest civilisation. He had not formally stepped down from his title either, and…and he simply never did foresee a life in retirement. 

It was only ever going to be him, dying on the job, either by way of some assassination that he had finally missed out upon, or perhaps one that he meticulously planned beforehand to serve the Luofu. Either a planned death, or a slow descent and spiral into the madness brought about by being mara-struck. Regardless, he had intended to serve the Luofu for as long as he could, without respite. 

“I…never thought about retiring.”

The long silence that had followed the ending of Jing Yuan’s initially warm chuckle had trailed off into something cold and miserable, a stark contrast to his earlier optimism that left Gepard curious, but also wondering if he had overstepped a boundary.

Jing Yuan sighs.

“I must explain, onboard the Xianzhou Luofu, we are considered a long lived species that can live for centuries.” The general explains the concept of their lengthy lifespan, the types of people that live aboard the Luofu, and the pain of immortality. 

The curse of mara, and what followed.

Even with the context finally set, the general could not muster the courage to say the truth aloud. A truth that permeated through every corner of his mind, a painful reminder that he was damned, and living off of borrowed time. 

All the while, Gepard listens patiently. 

“....and that is why I’ve never properly considered an actual retirement. Most Arbiter generals remain in service until they die or succumb to mara. That is…likely to be my fate as well.” The white haired man smiles, the tiredness and mental exhaustion ripping apart the facade he was trying to put up.

Gepard…relates.

Most Captains served on the frontlines until they died. 

Retirement was a concept unheard of to those in his position, holding his title, for the lives of soldiers were meant to burn bright like a candle in the darkest night, only to be extinguished when daybreak arrived. It is the very same philosophy drilled into everyone since they chose to join the Silvermane Guards.

To guard and defend, even at the cost of their lives. 

Now, with the Stellaron on his home planet finally sealed, things were looking up for the future of Jarilo-VI. To be given that sense of hope after so long, was unnerving. 

“...we…cannot let the norm remain.” Gepard’s response is quiet, something tentative and hesitant as he himself wondered if he had the right to say something like that aloud. 

Jing Yuan chuckles.

“Well said. Though things are often easier said than done. To go against the expectations that weigh us down, to overturn and throw the pre-existing tradition into disarray…is much harder to execute.” The general thinks about how he is already mara struck. His chance had…come and gone, a future that had left him behind. 

Gepard turns to the general.

He thinks of the soldiers, the people from the Underground who had finally seen the sky after decades, of how they embraced the change they had fought so hard for, despite how uncomfortable and how foreign it was to them.

It reminds him of his failure to aid the Trailblazers and to free his own people from Cocolia’s deception.

It reminds him that to move on, was to accept the change that had come. A change in perspectives, revelations, and the way he needed to move forward. 

“It is because it is hard, that we must all the more throw ourselves into accomplishing such a feat.”

Gepard thinks of his men, who finally began to venture out from the Restricted Zone and deeper in, to find the Engine of Creation and uncover secrets that had nearly been lost to them forever. 

“If not for ourselves, then for those who will come after us.”

Jing Yuan gazes at him. 

His amber eyes are filled with a flicker of a long forgotten wish, of a dream of freedom, as the man dipped his head with something akin to a pained smile written upon his lips. 

“Perhaps.”

It will take much more to convince another who has long since resigned himself to his fate. 

Chapter Text

The two of them work and exchange information in quiet bursts of staggered conversation. As night slowly fell once more, Gepard tended to the general’s burn wounds. From his observations, they were healing at a rapid rate, and the captain is certain it is not due to any of the medicine and ointments he managed to salvage from the ruins of this world. 

“I’m starting to wonder if this place provides some form of accelerated healing…” Jing Yuan looks at him, something perplexing in his eyes. 

“Maybe.”

Gepard continues to wrap up the bandages.

“That’s a good thing though, especially with how severe your burns were initially. In a day or two, we might be able to venture out of the cabin.”

Jing Yuan finds his focus drawn to the word ‘we’. 

“That’s my theory for now. This place…is only a safe room of sorts. An actual safe room, not the damned office-” Jing Yuan raised an eyebrow at his sudden shift in tone.

“It means that there's some other destination we are ultimately meant to arrive at.”

“Do you have an idea of what the clear condition is?” The other asks him.

Gepard thinks of nothing but an endless field of snow. The ruins of his home, and the corpses hanging from the trees. 

He does not know.

“...No, I do not.”

“Let’s figure it out together.” 

The general looks at him, with a gentle encouragement in his eyes. Gepard is comforted by his words, a camaraderie filled promise, especially after he had spent nearly a week and a half alone in this unknown situation. 

Pulling out the map he had begun constructing sometime ago, he lays it across the rug covered floor, smoothing the rough parchment that had been decorated by his drawings. Thankfully, the landscape was much easier to draw than any other human portrait, and he was able to create a…decent looking and understandable map for the general.

“When I leave the cabin, the approximate locations of the ruins of my city appear after a two hour trek through the snow. Connected to it on its outskirts is a forest of hanging trees. Both are equidistant from the cabin’s location.” He used a bottle cap as a marker to trace a straight line path from the cabin to both locations, creating a triangle leading from one destination to the next. 

With the compass in his hand, he removes it from where it hung around his neck and sets it on the map, shifting it around, though the needle did not seem to change its direction when it should.

“I’m pretty sure this needle points only at the cabin, and does not follow a magnetic north or south, by the way, so cardinal directions aren’t too useful here. I use the direction of the cabin’s door to orient the position of the two locations, though.”

Jing Yuan leaned over the map, as he glanced at the blank spaces located behind the cabin.

“Do you know what lies here?”

Gepard shakes his head.

“I did not make it far enough to determine what lay beyond the endless piles of snow. In fact…when I exceeded the twelve hour mark, nightfell and I…found the cabin’s light once more.”

“So it appears that locations are not exact in this area. A certain consistency exists for important landmarks such as the…ruins of your city, and the forest, as well as this cabin.”

Gepard nods. 

“One more thing….when I trekked to the furthest point of the ruins of my city…I found myself facing a high wall.”

It had been a tall wall, the colour of black marble, which bordered the edge of the outskirts of Belobog. A wall so tall it stretched up into the sky, its start and end lost into infinity. He had not managed to trek along to find the end of that barrier, but figures that it would be worth a shot this time around.

“Was it a wall that could be scaled?”

“Nope. It looked like something out of a dream. A black marble wall that stretched up so high I could not see where it ended.”

“Alas, that sounds like what this place likes to craft and develop for us. I’ve already experienced non-euclidean geometry and spaces that most definitely should not, and cannot exist. Even so, it is possible to find a way to move on.” Jing Yuan taps a bandaged finger along the paper. 

“I have yet to explore where the wall might possibly end, as well as what might lie beyond the forest.”

Jing Yuan considers their options. This place was tied to emotion and memory. Likely to an aspect of the trauma that laid in their pasts. The ruins of this man’s city must weigh heavily on his mind, as did the forest. Their only way through this stage was likely with the wall, and the forest. 

“Then I suppose those two locations are our best bet for now. Pardon me, for my knowledge on such terrain is lacking, but I noticed that this place of yours holds much trekking and walking.”

This makes Gepard think if the man experienced the same thing as him.

“Did your series of events not have this much walking?”

Jing Yuan chuckles nervously.

“On the contrary, they wore the face of my son, judged me in a trial, trapped me inside a furnace and a temple, amongst many other things. The most walking I had to accomplish was a literal flight of stairs to heaven, though it was more like hell with what waited on the other side.” He helps himself to the warm water and sips from the salvaged thermos. 

This surprised Gepard. In terms of the variety of locations and environments this area could spawn and create. He only thought it was limited to imitations and liminal spaces from Belobog, but it appeared to draw inspiration from each of their experiences. 

“Pardon me, but I think it is necessary for us to exchange information on what precisely each of us went through, even if it is going to be a very painful recollection. Will that be alright with you?” 

Jing Yuan dips his head in agreement, his eyes showing that he had long since been resigned to this possibility.

“It will be a long night, but I agree that this is the most prudent choice to make.”

-

They exchange words until deep into the night, to which Gepard gains a greater understanding of the man who was Jing Yuan, as the other did for him. He notes that each of them had glossed over the more gory details of their stories, glazing over identities and loved ones that were lost or tormented before their eyes.

Both knew not to press the other for extra details, simply enough to put together the setting and the environment cleanly. 

He urged the general to rest for the night, whilst he took the first shift. 

Jing Yuan had tried to argue, but eventually gave in when a yawn gave away his exhaustion. 

As the man fell asleep, Gepard settled down and cleaned his tools, preparing them for the expedition he would undertake in the morning. 

It should have been an uneventful night.

It should have.

Three hours after Jing Yuan falls asleep, he hears a faint tapping on the glass window. 

“Is anyone here?”

The fact that there were some sort of creatures that mimicked a human voice was well established by Jing Yuan’s encounter, as the white haired male had yet to rouse. With his hand tightening around the gun, he slips on one of his gauntlets as he softly walks over to the window.

“It’s c-cold out here.” 

The captain chooses to remain silent. 

“I need some shelter…could you let me in?”

No. Definitely not. This was a warning sign all in on itself, and the captain stood where he was, as the heavy curtain hung over the glass window. As much as he wanted to take a look at what the entity looked like, he knew that he would be exposing their presence within the cabin by doing so.

“I know there’s someone in there…I can smell the smoke from the fire.”

It’s voice is unrecognisable to him, thankfully. One less emotional weapon to use against him. 

“...I-I’ve been lost for so long.”

It yearned with the same human desperation as any lost traveller would. In fact, it is so convincing that Gepard could feel his heart hurt on behalf of whatever laid beyond, because he had been lost for a long time, too.

The tapping at the window grows more persistent, as Jing Yuan wakes from his sleep turned abrupt nap, eyes and head focussing on the noise on the glass. Gepard raised a hand to signal to him to be quiet, as the tapping grew in frequency.

The captain pressed a hand against the wall next to the window, allowing ice to spread and reinforce the window, just as the sound of glass giving way could be heard. 

Immediately, the ice and frost flowed readily from the captain’s gauntleted hand, freezing the entire window beneath a thick sheet of impenetrable ice, as the voice behind immediately died down.

The two of them remain wary of the window, even as the seconds pass into minutes, and eventually into an hour. 

The general is the first to break the silence.

“It should be safe.” His voice is soft, filled with reservation, as he casts his amber eyes to the window. The frost had built up along his own skin, Gepard realises, having remained on edge for so long that his ability has instinctively worked to protect him.

“...It seems like it.”

As the rest of the night passed into daylight, the captain leaned against the back wall with a huff. 

Jing Yuan moves over to inspect the window, or where Gepard’s ice had solidly frozen the spot which it was meant to have been. The thick layer of ice was nearly impenetrable, though it was still vulnerable to the heat radiating from the fire on the inside. The glass outside had indeed been broken and shattered, rendering one of their defences useless. 

Whatever the entity was, it had shown a sufficient level of intelligence to switch up its tactics and identify the weak spots in their safehouse. 

“I’ll reinforce the ice on the outside, but…I need to find something sturdier to protect it as well. Maybe find some way to board it up…” The captain murmurs, as he peels the gauntlet from his hand and rests near the fireplace. 

“Let me come with you.”

Gepard looks at him.

“Are you sure? How are your wounds? Doing well enough to walk a long distance?” Jing Yuan nods, even if his feet still hurt. He needs to pull his weight around here, and he’s certain the numbness from the cold will help him forget the pain.

He too could not stand to be in the cabin alone, lest something like that happen again.

Gepard’s gaze stares into his own.

“....I guess it is safer for us to stick together. I’ll bring us over to the forest to get more wood. We’ll take things easier for today, but you must stick closely to me in this harsh terrain.”

“Of course.”

Gepard helps him to salvage clothes suitable for the cold, packing a light bag for the man to carry on his person as the captain himself prepared the makeshift sleigh to help carry supplies back. He usually tied up the empty sled and carried it over by hand, as he found a suitable walking stick to assist the general with making his way through the snow. 

Grabbing both of their phones, Gepard had kept the communicator on his person ever since he had ended up in this strange purgatory, hoping for a response to eventually come through. 

The fire in the cabin is smothered and put out, as Jing Yuan slips on the spare pair of boots, his own having long since been ruined by the fires he had faced in his own trial. They were a little large, but the bandages and socks helped them fit snugly and comfortably. Gepard helps him to adjust the snow visor over his eyes, as he bundles a thick scarf around his neck and throat to protect him from the cold. 

The captain does the same for himself, a practised set of actions, combined with the rifle slung over his shoulders, and the axe slung over his back.

“Shall we?”

“Let’s make the most of the daylight we have left.”

Gepard opens the door.

-

It is freezing.

Jing Yuan realises how terrifying the cold terrain is, even after being bundled up in so many layers of clothes and protective layers, that to venture out into the snowy infinity was something that required a lot of bravery and tenacity. 

The cold harsh gale which beat down upon them, combined with the thick heavy snow that caused each step taken to sink down into the ground and required more effort to pull up, only to repeat the same steps over and over again. Gepard slows down his pace to match his, making the general more determined to not be deadweight and to not slow the two of them down. 

It spurs him to think of how unused he was to such an environment. 

The heavy oppression of not being able to see far ahead, the cold which made each breath sting, combined with the exhaustion of culminated steps taken, a march through a deadly isolation. A single misstep and miscalculation resulting in a broken bone, a twisted ankle, and a person would be gone. Left to die as the cold eroded their body and mind, and eventually buried beneath frost and snow. 

Faced with such real possibilities of danger, his mind focuses on moving, and keeping his blood circulating. It is the most intense form of exertion he has undertaken in the past few days, and it wakes him up. Startles his mind from the cagey apprehension and wariness of the outside world, as he too tread and explore that which he had not seen.

Little words are exchanged on the way to the dead forest, but Gepard communicates his messages well through hand signs, gestures that check in on him, even as Jing Yuan nods and struggles to clumsily reciprocate amongst his building exhaustion.

A two hour trek on Gepard’s standards becomes a three hour one, which isn’t too bad of a time loss. 

Even Jing Yuan is surprised at his pace, despite his injuries. Then again, most of them were only superficial burns and blisters, not broken limbs or sprained ankles. 

“We’re here.”

Gepard’s voice is apprehensive, as the two of them stare into the forest.

The swinging corpses are a sight that unnerves him, but Gepard seems unbothered, no, he was bothered, but the man had long since accepted this as the norm of the place. 

Jing Yuan is glad he had taken a dose of the medicine previously, to suppress any potential flare-ups of his condition…(which he had yet to tell Gepard of). At the very least, nothing here and now should trigger it. With everything being such a foreign situation, where corpses hanging from dead trees down over a blank, snowy terrain, a sight that was now forever engraved into his mind, he follows Gepard deeper into the forest. 

He is no stranger to dead bodies…but the sight of a child’s corpse hanging from a tree, ice frozen over his features, has him choke, the captain doubling back to encourage him to move along and not to stare too long at the corpses. 

At least…

As he followed on behind the captain, weaving through the deadened trees.

At least he could get a sensing of the type of terrain they were handling.

Gepard coaxes him to rest on the stump of a felled tree, as the man set to work on a large tree which would provide them with planks large enough to board up the windows. 

“I shall…observe and see what to make of this.” The captain had only nodded, his back facing the man as he unloaded the items carried over, with only the axe in hand. Jing Yuan is surprised to see the man scale the tree with firm claws made of ice, reaching up to the height where the corpses were being hung and cutting them loose.

First, he recalled that he had neglected to ask the man if he was a pathstrider.

Second…if this terrain was associated with him, what could he have possibly undergone for this place to torment him with something as brutally haunting as this?

Gepard goes out of his way to untie the rope around the hanged corpses' necks, and buries them within the ice. 

It is a set of actions done and performed on repeat, something the captain was familiar with doing and had done so for many, many times. He recalls the mounds of snow they had passed by on the way here, marked out with sticks and thin branches that poked out of the snow. 

And Jing Yuan is reminded of the countless ceremonies, funeral wakes, and processions he has attended. 

For all the soldiers who had passed on under his command, either as sacrifices, unintentional casualties, or due to the mara…he…had not been so emotionally attached to them as Gepard saw each of these people. 

It makes him think of what he was, of where he stood. 

His long life had made him numb to the weight of death. The countless memorial erected in the name of Cloud Knights who had passed on during the war against the Abundance, of Knights he had to personally put down when they became mara struck.

Of the number of casualties incurred when he had failed his duties or neglected to prevent a situation from exacerbating…

He closed his eyes.

Was that the same reason why he had not been so affected upon Baiheng’s passing? Because he knew that she had willingly sacrificed for a good cause, to save all of their lives and bring the campaign to a victorious end…and it was why he had not understood his companions' grief. 

Death was not something meant to be easily handled, to be so distantly treated.

It took Yanqing’s death for him to realise what it meant for someone to die.

So he stands, and walks over to Gepard, and aids him in shaping the grave down.

Gepard looks at him, head dipped in silent, grateful, appreciation. 

-

Gepard hefts the axe up as he cuts the tree down, watching the old wood fall onto the snow, as Jing Yuan watches from afar. Thinking of what the man had assisted him with, the captain cannot help but feel reassured by his presence and the very act which demonstrated that he understood. 

It fuels him with more strength to keep going, to make things work, to hurry up and make the most of the limited time they had left. He doubts they can make another trip into the ruins to check the wall out, or to salvage and find nails to use in boarding up the window. 

The sky darkens overhead by the time they return back to the cabin, the cold picking up as Jing Yuan keeps close to him, and Gepard finds the familiar comfort of simply having someone by his side a blessing.

By his side, Jing Yuan finds himself more settled, having gone out to see and get a grasp of their surroundings and the threats which faced them. While he cannot speak for the entities which emerged at night, it seemed that it was safe in the daytime. 

The cold air seems to…chill his lungs and soothe the burning pain in his chest and gut. 

It is a surprising change of pace, and the general wonders if he should spend more time outside, for it seems to be slowing and helping with his condition. He would have to run a few more tests as time wore on, and he continues to trek through the deep and heavy snow. 

The cabin comes into sight, though Gepard seems to drag the sled around, with the shaped wooden planks within it.

“I’ll reinforce it both on the inside and outside.”

Jing Yuan nods, understanding that it would increase the strength of their defences. 

He watches as the captain picks up the wooden planks and freezes them to the walls of the cabin, fastening thick ice and holding the wooden planks firmly to the cabin. It is fascinating to watch how the captain manipulated the ice, shaping it in rough patches here and there into a makeshift barricade over the wood and the ice. In fact, the captain went above and beyond, setting a gauntleted hand on the ground and on the cabin, and raised forth a wall of ice that stretched from the snow and up across the window. 

“That should most definitely do the job well.” Jing Yuan smiles, enjoying how he was not taking any risk and simply doing everything he could to patch up the worn out defences of their shelter. 

“If it gets through this…then we can only fend it off from the confines of the cabin.” The captain drags the sled over to the front door, as Jing Yuan follows behind him. 

“Speaking of….you must be a pathstrider as well? Seeing how you aren’t surprised by my usage of ice…” Gepard asks him as he opens the door to the cabin.

Jing Yuan dips his head. 

“Indeed I am. Though I am one who follows the path of the Hunt. Elemental abilities wise, I can manipulate some forms of electricity.” He feels comfortable to share this information with the other, especially when he had blatantly shown him the extent of his abilities. 

“Oh! That’s…interesting. I know my sis likes to play around with some of her gadgets and electric guitar to weaponise electrical discharges, but how do you use yours?”

Gepard pushes open the door and urges the man to enter. 

“In a similar way. Though I largely used to be able to access more power, but since-”

Jing Yuan falls silent abruptly. 

Gepard drags the sled in and barricades the door behind them, before making his way to the fireplace and beginning to feed and construct another fire. 

“Since I became mara struck.”

There he went.

Saying something like that aloud, a ludicrous truth that he had once so fervently denied, until it could no longer be forgotten and pushed aside. Standing with his back to the barricaded door, Jing Yuan looked down at his gloved hands, to which he peels off the protective layers and sheds them from his person, setting them aside as Gepard looks at him softly.

“That…must be one hell of a long story. Come take a seat?” The blond asks him patiently, as he pats the carpeted floor by the fire. 

Jing Yuan cannot help but crave the warmth that the man was offering him.

Even if he was a cursed being now, he wonders if he is weak for daring to put himself so close to the only other living being here, who cared. 

So he settled himself down on the floor, as Gepard fetched a few blankets and makeshift pillows for the both of them to rest on. 

Before them, the fire slowly built itself up, fed by the captain’s gentle attempts to feed it tinder and arrange the firewood to allow the fire to build up bit by bit. Jing Yuan watches, as the spark burns at the tinder, and the flames begin to consume the firewood. 

“...Gepard, I am cursed to rot into something mad. To forget myself eventually, to lose any and all sense of reason, to give into the pain of the past and watch it distort my present and consume my future.” 

He confesses, before the glow of the fire. 

It is no longer a fate he could run from. 

It was about time he told the captain anyways, as the man softly set a blanket over his person. Jing Yuan’s eyes flicker to his, as the captain’s pale blue eyes flicker with something akin to surprise, which melds away into a contemplative concern, and a dozen different thoughts which run through the mind of the other person. 

He does not deserve such treatment. 

“...I…want to find a way to cure you. If that is possible, I want the both of us to make it out alive, no matter how hopeless everything seems.” 

Gepard stokes the fire, as he looks at the general, who had curled up at his side, pulling the thick blanket over his own shoulders in an act of preserving heat and comfort. 

It was impossible. Those who were mara struck could not be cured.

(But what use was there to wallow in the inevitable?)

In the face of Gepard’s tentative optimism, Jing Yuan feels…warm. Even if the man was but an outworlder oblivious to the workings of mara, and how long his species had been cursed with immortality that broke a person down into nothing but a shell of themselves, to see one so earnestly speak their mind with a glimmer of hope…it rouses him. 

Gepard had long since recognised when someone was on the verge of simply giving up and laying their life down. To an inevitable fate, as they put it. However, he could not, and would not let them so easily throw their lives away. Especially with how much he had grown fond of the general, and gotten to know so much about him. 

He was someone who deserved to live, and to live a good life. 

“Is it right of me to desire a hope as ludicrous as that?”

Gepard asks him in turn, as Jing Yuan rests at his side.

“Hope is never anything foolish.”

Stand by what you say, Jing Yuan.

“Then let us do our best.” 

Gepard smiles back at him, something soft, hesitant, but all the more determined. 

Chapter Text

The first time Gepard had heard of the concept of Emanators and the various other Aeons came from Jing Yuan. The general was a masterful storyteller, as they conversed through the night. 

The man had only grown regretful when he realised being an Emanator did not save him from the fate of being marastruck. 

“Even the Aeons cannot undo a destined fate.” 

The white haired man had murmured, as he spoke deep into the fire. 

It reminds Gepard of the entire Stellaron Crisis aboard Jarilo-VI, the entire cause of their planet’s demise, brought about by an eternal winter. Even the Stellaron could not save their planet from the invasion of the Antimatter Legion which came long before, not at a great price. The man seemed familiar with the concept of Stellarons, and the havoc they could wreck upon any civilisation. 

When it had been his turn to speak his story, the general seemed to perk up at the mention of the Astral Express.

“So your people have received their aid too,” The general looks almost wistful, gaze flickering from deep in the fire towards him, as Gepard nodded.  

“You’ve met them too?”

Jing Yuan nods, a chuckle on his lips.

“They have a stellar reputation for being out and about. In the time of the Luofu’s own Stellaron Crisis, they assisted us in subduing Lord Ravager Phantilya, an Emanator of Nanook, who had been stirring quite a lot of trouble on the ship.” Nanook. That was the name of the Aeon of Destruction who had also created the Antimatter Legion. 

Was he surprised that their planet had also been ravaged by that Aeon’s forces?

Gepard sighs, as his head starts to hurt at how large and vast the universe out there truly was. 

“There’s way too many Aeons and their followers running around…” 

The captain huffs, as Jing Yuan chuckles lightly.

“A man once told me that we are but the playthings of Aeons. Perhaps his words hold some weight, but an Aeon is formed from those who believe in that path. In a convoluted manner, we sentient life are the reasons for the culmination and creation of Aeons, and perhaps brought that upon ourselves.” 

“The philosophical things are a bit too much for me to grasp right now, general.”

“Of course, they are heavy in any conversation. Do feel free to call me by my name.” Gepard perks up.

“Alright, Jing Yuan. I hope I didn’t butcher the pronunciation…”

“You did a great job with it.”

Jing Yuan responds, as he makes himself comfortable on the carpeted floor. It was a refreshing experience to talk to an otherworlder like Gepard, who had many of his own tales to share with him. Especially about a world that had never been before seen, one that had been lost for so long it was effectively a new world unexplored. 

He would like to take a tour around Belobog, if they managed to leave this place.

Not if. When. 

He needs to get used to forward planning and thinking again, as he listens to Gepard tinker around and polish the blade of the axe. The night outside was cold, but it was quiet. Blessedly so, because if something else came knocking at their door they would have to either chase it away or simply hide away.

Action was something he contemplated if it would be a good tactic to handle whatever laid out there in the night, but seeing how most, if not all of the threats he had faced could not be conventionally killed, even his own abilities could not help him.