YUVEN

Neven.

Ripples of disruption sang underneath a thin layer of gold-speckled ice, followed by a melodic song of a sleepy lullaby. Hark, it screamed out in the roar of Evyriaz's ascension of a chorus. Through layers of blackest tar into white-feathered grace. Nails dragged along bumpy mountain rock, in the distance ooze dripped from a bulbous mass to birth a Derelict; formless maw wide open as it bloomed underneath the water and snapped the image in half, into threefold puddles of blood, and the song died. A glaive, studded with sapphire scales clattered to the ground underneath his feet, burnt to a crimson crisp.

Fly higher.

Blood pushed against his throat, and with every breath it slipped down into a thick cascade, but he forced himself to take each step into the darkness. Lost. Alone. Worst of all, confused. Questions threatened to leave him for dead, but he repeated the names, over and over, bringing himself closer and closer to the edge of life.

Fenrer.

Metal shaped by the teeth of walks fluttered with the arrows of memorized war. Molvasolevu, Evyriaz — no, Euron, called him. Wolf of the Dawn. Back against the obsidian stone, scared of his own little shadow, he forced his attention into the light, where Fenrer Pyren, a young Hanekan boy no older than he was, held out his hand into the abyss without hesitation and without trepidation even when the emerald grass below bled into black blood. His features melted into a fuzzy recollection, but no, no, his memory couldn't fail him. Fenrer Pyren. Fenrer Pyren. He repeated the name, even when jaws grew from the grass and chewed on the shattered memory of an outstretched hand which fell into the sea, past his own, and an intense, world-ending light came to life with a final gasp, screeching at the pain he beset upon it as it melted the shadows. Even when his own mind played the question of the event ever happening at all.

Higher.

He drew out a shaky hand to try and disrupt the cascade slipping down his chin and leaving a sticky texture on his shirt. It turned his skin into a formless abyss, pulsating veins of serrated teeth crawling around his arms. He dragged himself forward, his boots skidding across the rockdust underneath his feet. Higher. He had to get higher. Fly higher. His fingers dragged against the wall of lava-carved chambers. Go higher. I don't even remember how I got here. What was I doing? As he questioned, the caustic flow continued. No, keep saying their names until it's your last word! Do not let the abyss take them too. You swore an oath. You swore. You promised! Don't forget it now!

His knee hit the ground as he tried to gasp for gurgled breath, trying to free his tongue from the spiderwebs clinging around his cheeks. Fever waves slipped down his shoulder blades as he tried to grasp for sunlight, for her hand he wanted to follow into the unknown future. A lone, gray-splattered feather fell into the blood trail at his feet when he tried to shake out the burning haze. If I lay down here, I will never get back up. He forced himself off his knees and continued onward, abandoning the feather to its swallowed fate.

Maria.

The high point of the sun.

Would that I was able to have hope, to have faith, to believe. But this world has shown me nothing but its fangs. Tears escaped down his cheekbones and coursed through the crimson mud. I have to get higher. Out of here. Out of this familiar darkness before I destroy everything. Cobbled marble scrunched under his feet. Spires of splendorous alabaster cracked at the leash of formless tendrils swirling around him, up into a sphere of death along the lines of the cradle. A laugh escaped his bubbled throat, into a gasp for life, and another push through the tide. It chewed and stuck to his toes, and he faltered, though the Fenrer Pyren born of unwavering, unyielding conviction continued through as if it was nothing but a meaningless puddle. His own steps followed his Oathbounds darkened dogma. I have not your strength of gigantic spirit. I am but an Avaerilian, a dying wyvern unable to fly. Yuven followed all the same, pulled along by a forceful storm. How?

How?

Fenrer's crescent blade melted into a swirl of fiery mist as he drew out of his reach. It tapered over the guard, formed into the shape of a rising sun. Waves of sunlit fury solidified into blazing steel, and Yuven slowed to a stop at another wave of heat in his blood. In the orange gemstone as the centerpiece, an eye glowed with light fury. It seared his skin when he tried to reach out for it, for salvation, and Fenrer dissipated into the fire.

Back into reality at a stream of sunlight through a veil of lichen.

Hippogryphs cooed in the sky around the mountain of Euros, a shared home as he pushed the lichen out of his way with his crimson-soaked hand. Her soft touch urged him forward on his loved ones faith. It burnt the black trails in his blood into nothing but golden ash.

Higher.

He went for another step, but he choked when a leash of pain struck him in the ribcage. Bursts of bubbled blood escaped through the expulsion and splattered the rock with life. He waited for the pain to subside, but life never left him with any other option. "Molvisaliz, tell me this," he whispered and stepped into the dark puddle, and opened his eyes to a starlit field, where his end of the trail scattered into dust, held on by a thick vine of magick which tied him to a single individual, by the souls. "If your faith is so stalwart, resolute, how can you still have it in the face of death?" He stopped near the midway point between them, staring down at the twilight sea beneath him. "No amount of wishing would've ever changed this outcome. The moment I opened my heart, I was doomed by something else in chains." He licked his lips free of the spindles and dragged his attention upwards to the fading mirage of Fenrer, who stared at him in uncertainty. "I can cut this. Right here... but does it matter? Either way..."

Higher.

I must go higher.

Forsaken, body and soul.

He embraced the sun and pushed himself through the constant Gauntlet of his sickness. Rest would come in some form or another. Maria's clock had stopped ticking on the final bell of the harbor.

I am...

It melted at his fingertips, his mind left to a dull, uncomfortable thrum.

I...

Why is it slipping from me? Don't I know who I am?

Higher.

Lead weighed down his boots, and made it difficult to climb when he held on tight to a ledge with a groan. Legs sprawled out from underneath, dragged along a white, royal carpet to the depths with arms hooked underneath his, his strength dwindled. He closed his eyes from the truth, but he frowned at a nagging, infuriating voice calling him through his rest.

"You have to get up and fight!" Adara Sazaka screeched as she thought against their armored, ice-cold captors.

Easy for you to say, Sazaka. You don't know me.

"That is who you are! That is all you've ever been doing since I met you! Don't let these people win!"

Isn't that what you said, Yuven Traye?

Isn't that what I swore underneath the light of evenfall?

Wake up. Fly higher.

He found his footing as the noises from the mountain blurred, the crystal beacons at the highest peak spreading the barrier of safety which kept the Derelicts away from the Storm Warden's home, and he walked higher. It danced in his vision as he released another weak laugh, his fangs catching the corners of his lips, and he only needed to repeat one name for it to matter.

Yuven Traye. Yuven Traye, I am Yuven Traye. I will never be anyone else, even as the dark seeks to claim it. He hauled himself over ledges and rolled out from his own trail of blood at the damp moisture in the air. None of you; Maria, Neven, Fenrer, Adara. None of you gave up on me in your own way, though I gave you ample reason. He threw his fist into the rock and jolted himself into a second wind, and the noises came back to life. I have to get back up to the citadel. Now. Watery cascades slipped over the edges to return to the ocean. Bridges creaked in the wind as he pushed lichen out of his way, stepped on abandoned branches, and forced himself through death as he stumbled in front of a rope bridge over a plummet of a white mist. Tix'snuv's call rumbled down his spine, and he lifted his head when a shadow sped from around the peak. He braced himself for the force of his landing when Tix'snuv sped to his side, lowering his beak to him with another blurry squawk.

Yuven drew his gaze over his flank. "I don't have the strength to climb on..." He coughed out another burst of blood, and it slipped down the edge to stain the mist.

"Yuven!"

He switched his attention to the familiar soul song.

Neven Lotayrin ran from around the rocky path. He skidded to a stop in front of the bridge, his pupils thinning into beads when he drew his attention over the ropes.

Hah... I keep forgetting you're afraid of heights... that's... still funny. Yuven tried to drag himself up to his feet, but he came to a stop when Neven snapped, "Don't move! Tix'snuv, don't let him move if he tries!"

He scowled when Tix'snuv stood over him, wings outstretched as he dug his claws into the stone and left marks. "You're not serious..." Yuven coughed, and held his chest when it burned. He kept his focus on Neven when his feathers fluffed out a single time, and he walked along the planks as the wind shook them. Brow furrowed, Neven refused to stop though the mist climbed higher with the waves below. Over the first hurdle, Neven took the next bridge, coming closer. Tix'snuv stepped back when Neven rushed off the bridge and went to his side.

"Yuven..." Neven's hand rested against his back.

"Miesero..." Fear broke the dam and he clung onto Neven, a child right to the end. "I don't want to die here," his song quivered on his tongue. "I don't think I can move anymore... I need her. I need Fenrer..." Neven switched his attention to Tix'snuv, who unfolded his wings along the saddle, an open invitation. On his feet with Neven as a crutch, he trembled and slammed to a stop when a new cascade dripped down his shirt. "No," he hissed through his nose. "You do not need to be splattered with my blood."

"Clothes can be washed." Neven whistled at Tix'snuv, who bent his knees with ease.

"Miesero."

Neven hooked his arms around his own though he tried to fight the inevitability.

Higher.

Tix'snuv took flight with the two on his back. His heart swelled with a sense of home, of belonging and true happiness. He held his hand against his lips when another wave threatened to pour between them, using his other arm to cling onto Neven. Up into the caldera, Tix'snuv landed with a quiver in his wings, and Yuven moaned when Neven pulled him out of the saddle and onto the ground. Shapes molded, and he swung around as another shape rushed through the blurry field with golden hair. Maria. His hand found her arm.

"Yuven!" she snapped underwater. "I'm going to get you set up in the lower wards!"

He looked around further as blurry shapes brought a litter closer. None of them with Fenrer's facial features.

"Myl'la." He clung onto her as Neven knelt beside him with crimson blood splattered across his arms. "Where is my Oathbound? Where is Fenrer...?" It spun down a drain when Maria put a hand on his back and he rolled into the litter with a gasp.

Without any more strength, he sank into the crimson lake, bubbles streaming out of his lips as he tried, and failed, to touch the surface for air.