YUVEN

Derelicts howled underneath endless fields of frozen ice. A deep, abyssal ripple in the chains of time and space. Sweat stuck on the back of his neck and froze with the cruelty of the world which birthed him. Naveera. It manacled him to the mountain walls of Irimount and he bled out for someone else's needs. Waves of nausea curdled into a river of crimson goo across his brow. Though his prison cell blurred across two realities, a restless dream fluttered with his eyelids, and he pressed his cheek deeper into the pillow.

Into the doom of Irimount, the once great city belonged to the dead.

Their screams followed him into sleep, a crack Blackwall forced through the corruption of memories. Black tendrils flayed his skin and pulsed in his veins, engorging on his blood. Claws formed a carapace over his fingers, a creature of depravity and the Echo Obscura. Hellish pain pierced his rib-cage and tore through his throat. On his lips, the taste of rust pushed his fingers into the shattered remains of Maria's medication and her hopes. Twilight wrapped around his fingers, long gone cold from its exposure to the elements. Mist rose from the dying glyph forming over his palm, carrying the liquid back into a haze. It wasn't helping me anymore.

It went tainted black and dripped down his fingers. Stone scraped across his skin when he drew them across the broken edges of life. I'm sorry, he mouthed to her work and her stubborn faith. Truly, Myl'la. If I was stronger, this wouldn't have happened. I swore that I would be the best — and in the face of that conviction I failed. I swore to never kneel, but... Fangs slipped over his lips at Blackwall's audacity and the precious letter he found himself unable to let go with a fatal consequence. All I had were your words. Your name. Love. And in the end, I would kneel to those alone.

Candlelight buzzed through the dark, the sconces shone with the cobalt flames, where no sun lived. Dissonant music hummed through the air and tickled the barbs of his feathers, straight to the down. Fuzz tickled his ears, and he flicked out the itch when he raised his head to the false joy playing through the palace, with him an added piece of bone to the foundation of power. A Storm Warden crushed underneath the weight of the world, with his necklace out of his reach as a reminder of the promise he made underneath the light of the citadel and the golds touched his blade. Claws inched across his stomach and through the prisoner garb, tearing open his soul. He lifted himself out of the bed when metal doors clanged somewhere in the dungeons. Thumb into his eyelid, he scrambled away from the sudden influx of light when two shapes came from around the corner, all to observe his pathetic situation.

"What do you want?" he bit and tried to blink out the blur.

His knees locked up when the wraith-like figure opened the cell with a wave of their hand and pearly magick clicked open the locks. He bumped his back into the wall when the other shape came closer with an unsteady rush of inexperienced footwork, and he raised his hand to his brow when they knelt down in front of him. "Yuven?" a familiar voice called out, a silver fire. He lowered his hand but kept it in front of his face when she came closer, and a glyph sputtered to life against the stagnation of his birthplace. Silver sparks danced off the sharp peaks and formed into a magelight, where the flames pushed against the collected form. Adara Sazaka; on her knees in front of him and a hopeful, concerned smile on her face when she brought the light closer. He pushed his hand out when she edged closer. "Yuven, it's me."

Her dress dirtied on the floor he bled on, and he raised his attention to the obnoxious feathers poking out from the side of her head when attached to the mask trying to copy the beings they once were. "Adara," he said her name once, full of Anima power. "Those feathers made your head look bigger. I didn't recognize you."

Her smile dropped and her lips thinned. "And I almost didn't recognise you, Yuven," she said, and Yuven slunk into the wall when she cupped his forearm. "What did they do to you? Tell me." Her grip tightened, an unasked for connection to his short life. He stretched open his fingers, but found himself weak against his charge's innate strength. "I'm here now."

"I see you are unharmed." Yuven scooted into the corner, but she followed him into the abyss all the same. "It doesn't matter what happened to me. What matters is that you have to find a way out of here." His breath caught in his chest, and he coughed up a wad of blood into his lap. "I bet this is funny to you, to see me like this." He rolled his neck and grinned at her, baring his fangs. "Maybe this is just punishment for all those lives I sacrificed at the Summit. Justice for what I have done to my own Oathbound, by letting him go." He curled his fingers around her forearm. "By letting him fall into the sea."

Details faded into obscurity when her hand turned into Fenrer's. "I told you..." he rasped. "I told you that compassion would be the death of you, Molvisaliz... precious Molvisaliz. You never opened up to me, you just stretched out your hand and told me to take a chance." He loosened his grip on his forearm. "That same compassion which dragged me kicking and screaming out of the dark and into the light — was your undoing, and I couldn't protect you." River trails carved down his cheeks and mixed with the blood splattered across his lips. "In every moment we walked, I had never doubted your conviction, and I'm sorry I made you feel that way." He brought his other hand to the band around his forearm, another's cruelty and visibly ostracized for something out of Fenrer's control. "I berated you for not understanding me, when you're one of the few people who did."

"You're wrong." Adara tore out of his mirage and brought the magelight closer to his face. "If you mean that, Yuven Traye, you have to get up. Get up and fight," she begged and the silver splash of the dawn crossed her brown eyes. "You told me you never knelt. Fenrer's not the only one who can drag you kicking and screaming. You're the one who told me to let the world burn. Well." Her fingers dug into his bones. "Fenrer wants me to tell you that he's sorry, that he's here for us and we're going to go home. Together! Tell me we will. You swore that you'd get me to Euros, to show me what I can't comprehend. Show me the world that I've been ignorant of for my entire life! I want to see this world with you and Fenrer! I want to learn all these things, and I want you two to show me what it is I've lacked all my life." Adara dug her heels in, with stronger, passable footwork. "That I belong in this world, when Tebora made me feel like I would be better off dead."

"Fenrer... wants me to know that he's sorry?" Yuven's lungs tightened with the crack of dusk across Fenrer's features when he waded through the muck of his soul without a hint of struggle. "That he's... here for me?"

Where I will finally get to show him what our conviction means?

"Yes! We're so close, Yuven," Adara pleaded and lifted herself with her knees, though kept his forearm in her iron grip. "We're almost there. Just tell me you won't give up. Show me that same stubborn, abrasive mushroom that I know you are."

Show me, Fenrer called across the expanse. Show me and look upon this life.

Yes.

His wrist hung limp in Adara's strong hand. "You choose now to state this, Sazaka?" he whispered. "How close is almost when I am at the end already? Fenrer... is alive..."

"He is," Adara gasped out an expansion of happiness against his current of despair and rage. "He's alive, and he's here for us. You haven't failed yet. I'm ready now, and I will not let you freeze and die down here alone."

Yuven leaned around her, where the world fell into icy clarity. Princess Hayvala loomed at the entrance, her attention on the corridor where they came from. "What... are you going to escape dressed like that?" He slipped his fangs back into his mouth and tasted blood on his tongue. "Your footwork is already so horrendous... Fine, but not because I have a choice. I have no strength to even move." With her grip loose, his hand slipped onto his own boiled stomach. "How do you intend to escape with me like I am? You have no idea what it is like outside past those walls that keep this damned city from becoming another dune," his hissed words drew over his lips, a flutter of Navei. "Only the icy dead and wraiths wander out in those wind-sheared frozen wastes with little pieces of civilization dotted across it, disappearing in a blink. Even your flames will amount to nothing more than a single candle, if that."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there, what's more important is getting out of here," Adara said, then repeated the message from a man made out of the pyres of faith, "Fenrer says he's sorry. He is."

Yuven mouthed his name, and the joke of a nickname he gave him when Fenrer butchered a single word and to match the little pin which hung off the braid in his hair. Molvisaliz. Wolf Boy. A small, wolven dawn. "He's alive," he echoed the truth of their starlit bond, keeping them connected though worlds apart. "I let him go and he's alive." The more he spoke it out, the less he believed in it when the truth of Blackwall's construct bared its ruthless refrain and pushed him into the stone of Irimount and the flayed bodies of the innocents. One last inhale brought him back to the truth. "Tell him that I am... sorry."

A single Common word did no justice for the weight of his meaning and conviction.

"Anything else?" Adara squeezed his shoulder.

He licked the blood off his lips and smiled. "Just tell him to be ready."

"Of course." Adara bounced to her feet, unawares of his desperate wish for faith. "I'll tell him when I see him. We're going to escape, Yuven, don't worry." In a scramble past the hem of her dress, she returned to Hayvala, who guided her around the corner, but sent one last glance his way. Spirals danced across the pearls in her blue eyes, but she said nothing and closed the bars behind her.

"Tell me, Princess," he whispered through a hiss. "What will you do when Keeper Blackwall finds out, not if."

Hayvala's hand gripped the bar and her fangs bared. "I am not scared of him, Warden Traye," she echoed out his mumbled desire. "Though I am not his equal as an Aurus... he is not Fenrer Pyren's."

Yuven smiled into his shoulders. "Oh, yes," he rasped. "Come on, Molvisaliz... show them what you are — what you're really capable of without the constant shackles of a law, pushed to that fleeting edge you walk every day, where the thoughts wrap around you and their emotions tangle into your own." His giggle sent a flash of heat through his lungs, releasing a soft exhale at the thought. "Yes, you are right. I needed the reminder, Princess... Blackwall is not Fenrer's equal."

Fenrer sneered in his peripheral. "It stings that you believed I was just a mere projection of a Keeper I outpower."

Princess Hayvala considered him with her own fleeting edge. Yuven met her gaze, but she broke out of the auric examination and left him alone once more. You are dangerous. You always have been. Kept back by a law every Aurus fears with their entire soul, even Keeper Blackwall knows not to toy with it. He drove his fingers into the rock floor and tasted bittersweet vengeance. But he did, by creating that cruel construct of you, who dared to echo my words and sully your gentleness. Your compassion. Your good heart... to show you as a merciless beast.

His shape came closer. Relentless faith lost in the dark.

I am sorry, Fenrer Pyren, that it will come to this, but I am not going to kneel again.