Night mingled into dawn as I lay in suffocating silence on the unfamiliar mattress. I kept staring at the low wooden ceiling, unfeeling. My brain buzzed with so many thoughts that I couldn't rationalize anything. 

I was glad when there was a gentle knock on the door and a familiar voice called. "Asterius?"

I sighed and sat up straight, rubbing my face and trying to keep my voice from shaking as I called for Azure to enter. He did after a few moments, his eyes emotionless as they rested on me 

"Asterius," he sighed and took a few steps closer to me. "How are you?"

I felt a pang of anguish at his words and laughed humourlessly. "What do you want?"

He didn't really want to know how I was. He knew how I was. It was a rhetoric question, and I didn't want to entertain it. He didn't deny the materialistic nature of the question however and sighed, "You can stay here today. Familiarise yourself with the isle. You will be here for a while I assume. Also-" he took a deep breath and shut his eyes for a second before opening them. "I will be bringing both Aahan and Neveah here today. I...I think their presence might be helpful to you."

I nodded even as I felt another piercing agony. He called both of them by their first names. And me, I was always just 'Asterius.' Was it because he knew I was ephemeral? Was it his way of keeping at a distance? Because he knew coming close to me would only result in pain. 

In a way, I was looking forward to meeting with both of them. They had to be as angry at Aris as I was. 

"Azure," I began, struggling to meet his eyes. I couldn't understand why I didn't feel angry at him. It was him after all, who had kept me away from Aris. What were his reasons? Would they ever be enough to justify the hell I had gone through? "Why...did you do this?"

My voice cracked on the last syllable and I bit my lip, turning my gaze away from him. He remained silent. 

I had always respected him. Perhaps, even grown a little fond of him. Despite his cold demeanour, he had saved my life. Stopped the Znicit from ripping away my powers. He was the reason I had ever gone to Asteria in the first place. Even if it was for his own selfish reasons. 

"I hope you understand soon," he replied finally before turning and leaving the room, dissolving it in deathly silence. 

Hours past. Hunger and thirst and all other humanly urges seemed to have taken leave of me. I sat quietly on the bed, terrified of stepping outside into the unknown isle and still terrified of my own thoughts. As I floated timelessly, there was another knock on the door and I rose to my feet, slowly dragging myself towards the wooden fixture before opening it.

A small warmth thawed my chest when I saw a wide-eyed Aahan and a pale-faced Nia standing in front of me. 

"Zeke?" Aahan gaped open-mouthed at me. "Wh-what-?"

Before I could reply, Nia flung her arms around me and I hugged her close, some semblance of humanity returning to me at the gesture. She pulled away and gawked at me. "Zeke- we-we heard about the- the whole-"

"Come inside," I said and stepped back to let them in. Both of them entered and gazed around, their mouths open in identical expressions of awe. 

Aahan turned to look at me, his eyebrows creased with worry. "We heard that Elijah put a bounty over your head and that's why Azure brought you here," he shook his head. "What's...been going on?"

I took a deep breath. My voice sounded croaky but I managed to choke out, "Aris is alive.  Azure found him and brought him here and he's training in secret."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop to sub-zero as they both froze. "Wh-what?" Aahan stuttered, gazing at Nia. 

I nodded, waiting for their disbelieved gasps. Before Nia could say anything, however, the door opened a second time and Azure walked in, followed closely by Aris. 

My heart jumped to my throat, my entire form deluging in icy water. He wasn't looking at me, the emerald eyes that I was so in love with were fixed on Aahan and darting to Nia. He looked at Azure who nodded before he spoke in a small voice, "Hi, guys."

I waited for Aahan's retorted. I waited for Nia to burn him into cinders. But I stood still, frozen in time as both of them ran towards him and embraced him like brothers. 

Aahan seemed to be mumbling something incoherent as Nia burst into tears. I stood still, unable to move. They were talking, but their words made no sense to me. How could they tolerate him after everything? How could they bear being so close to him after everything that had happened?

I was aware of Azure's eyes on me and clenched my fists, wrenching my eyes away from the happy reunion and glaring at the wooden floor instead. A few footsteps told me that he had left the room.  A while later, Aahan finally extricated himself from them and turned to face me, beaming. His cheeks were stained with tears, but his eyes twinkled with naked joy. 

"Zeke, Aris-"

"How...can you be okay with this?" I asked him in a strangled whisper. 

Even though my voice was too low for even myself to hear it properly, it seemed like Nia did. Aris finally looked at me, and the joy in his eyes was quickly replaced by terror. Something that sent a sadistic pleasure through me. 

"I-what?" Aahan stuttered stupidly. 

I felt a rising tide of anger. "How can you be okay with his disgusting lies?"

"I didn't lie," Aris said quickly, gazing at me. "I told you, Zeke I-"

"I don't care," Aahan said softly and shook his head. "He's okay and I'm grateful. And...I just-maybe I want to forgive him for myself, Zeke."

Nia sighed and walked over to me, imploring with her eyes. "Zeke, I...I don't have the energy to feel angry anymore." Her voice trembled and she took a deep breath. "I just...I just want this to be over."

My heart that had been numb since so long, seemed to pound in my head. I turned away from their gazes and left the room without a word, embracing loneliness as my only refuge. 

                                                                                            *

The fairy isle was beautiful.

Perhaps if I wasn't so hollow inside, I might have found pleasure in the soft breeze, the gentle grass and the open skies, somehow more enigmatically beautiful in their absolute darkness. I wasn't sure if I was the one plunging the stars to their deaths. I had no way of knowing how to control it.

I knew there was no way I could sleep tonight anyway. The catatonic emotions exploding in my chest seemed to have died, leaving behind a terrifying chasm. I couldn't stop thinking about my dad and how he was. If something bad had happened, there was no way I wouldn't have heard of it. Was there?

The image of Aris in the arms of the stranger somehow didn't make me feel as bad as I thought I would. In all honestly, it made me feel nothing. I had been wrong to think he was different. I had been wrong to think he truly loved me. I had been wrong to believe in the utopian idea of 'us'. My sole purpose now loomed in front of me. The sole reason that I was alive.

To die when the time was right.

Aahan and Nia, how easily they had forgiven Aris. Was that fickle? Or was I? Holding on to my anger as an excuse for my emotional instability? 

I lay in the meadow, gazing upwards timelessly. The peace and tranquillity of my surroundings a placebo to my heart. Why had Azure kept him away? Or was that just another one of his lies?

I pulled a blade of grass on where I was lying and held it in front of my face. The artificial lights form the isle gently touched its edges, making it glitter under the faint glow. I gazed at it silently, my thoughts preoccupied with vacuum.

"It's been this way for a long time now." My heart catapulted when I heard Aris' voice floating towards me as if from somewhere far away. "The sky has been infinitely dark."

I grit my teeth and didn't look at him. The yearning to ask him to fuck off and ask him to never leave clashed in a monstrous contrast in my being. "Why are you here?" I asked finally.

I was aware of him walked closer and finally sitting on the grass beside me. I couldn't believe how different everything had felt. How much I was regretting ever falling for him.

"I just...thought we should talk."

"There's nothing to talk about," I spoke through gritted teeth. 

"Zeke...I know you're angr-" he began. 

"You don't know any fucking thing, Greenwood," I spat, finally sitting straight and glaring at him. "You don't know any fucking thing so stop pretending like you do."

His eyes glittered under the twinkling lights, his bottom lip quivering slightly before he took a deep breath. I hated how beautiful he looked. I hated how badly I yearned to reach for him and beg him to never leave. But he had broken his promise. 

"I did want to go see you, Zeke. But Azure was-"

"Shut up, Aris."

"Ze-"

"I said shut the fuck up."

We relapsed into an uncomfortable, thick silence that I was in no way going to break. I couldn't believe he had the audacity to try to talk to me after replacing me within a few months or perhaps weeks.

"Things with Ellion...it isn't what it looks like," he spoke in a measured voice. "I j-just-"

My heart seemed to twist in my chest. Ellion. I hated the way it sounded on his tongue.

"Did you fuck him then?" I asked, my brain fogging with rage. 

He was quiet. I didn't look at him and instead took his silence as a confirmation. 

"I was scared and lonely and he was just kind to me," his voice was so low and shaky that it was hard to decipher. "Zeke, I-" 

"I don't care," I lied.

"Would you just listen-"

"I said-" I grit my teeth, anger ravaging my insides. "I don't care."

He bit his lip and sighed softly, his eyes pits of darkness. "I missed you, Zeke. I know you're angry at me. But I thought you knew me better than this. Do you actually think it was easy for me?"

"I don't care," I spoke honestly. "You wanted me to live without you. I'm learning now. So just fucking leave me alone."

Every inch of my body was telling me to get up and leave, but somehow, I couldn't get myself to move.

"Zeke, I've been alone here with no idea what happened to my dad or to you. I was kept in complete darkness and only told about you after you were already in prison. There was nothing I could do. I was forced-"

"Fuck you," I declared, turning away from him and pulling another innocent blade of grass. "Fuck you and your pathetic excuses, Aris."

He sighed. "Azure wants me to replace Zemouis as the Earth Deus," he spoke softly. "He...wanted me to change my anchor."

I grit my teeth, my heart wrenching in agony. I had been prepared for this, but still, somehow, the realization that he had decided to cut away every inch of me from him crashed onto me with the force of an avalanche, burying me under.

I remembered the time he had made me his. I remembered when we had made love. I remembered the unearthly connection I had felt to him. I felt like my entire body was ruthlessly punctured with sharp knives, scarlet oozing from my punctured wounds at the thought that he had done the same thing with someone else. A stranger had touched him. A stranger had kissed him. A stranger had loved him. All while I was dying with excruciating pain.

"Why does he want you to replace him?" I asked instead, my lungs constricting in the anguish.

"He won't say anything except that he doesn't find him trustworthy."

I scoffed and picked at another blade of grass, twirling it around between my fingers. "So you'll be a god?"

His cheeks flushed, his eyes widening as if he hadn't considered the possibility before this. "In theory."

I had a brief imagery of Aris in the flamboyant robes that the Deus often wore. Of him and Ellion, perhaps somewhere far off in the future. Being together. Happy. Soon memories of me would also be feeble ghosts of the past to him.

"What do you know about the Ultimaria?" I asked him, forcing myself to glare at him.

He looked slightly taken aback at being asked the question. "I've heard that its an impending threat to this universe. Some massive star that is set to engulf both Obscura and earth. And that the reopening of the chasm will spew out shadows of the Achtsenza that we as the Vartiyahs are supposed to battle against."

I gazed at him silently, wondering if he knew what exactly the completion of the prophecy would entail. Did he even know about it? I wasn't sure. How could I trust him now anyway? He was a stranger now.

Tentatively, he moved closer to me, his eyes darting around nervously. "Zeke?"

For a second, even just the way he spoke my name made me want to break. Made me want to forgive him. But my pride won out and I leaned away from him. His eyes flashed, the anguish in them breaking the pieces of heart into impossibly smaller shards. What had he expected? That I would accept him? That I could ever forgive him? Him, out of all people. The only person I had truly trusted. The only person I had truly loved. The only person who knew me in all my ugliness and yet decided to love me.

Or so I thought.

"Zeke, you need to give me one chance," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Just-"

I rose to my feet. "I'm out of chances, Greenwood."

In a way, maybe it was better this way. I had no future anyway. It was much better that he would have a future with someone else. A real future. 

But was there any way he would stop apologizing? Clinginess had always been a problem he had had. And how long before I broke? 

I had to make sure he would stay away. I had to make sure when I inevitably left, there would be no tears. I had to make sure there was no one I would need to stick around for. 

I turned to face him. It required all my courage to speak in that very moment. I bled more than Geoffrey had ever made me. I cried more than my mother's death ever made me. And I was crueller than fate had ever been to me. 

"I wish Azure had never saved you."

The light behind his eyes seemed to go out, as if his spirit had broken. 

I turned around and left, quickening my pace as I made my way back to the cottage where I assumed I would have to stay for a while till Azure decided to take me back to the Sognare. It didn't matter anyway. In theory and practice, for the second time in my life, I was homeless. 

It was a small price to pay to make sure when I left, no one would cry. 

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This chapter hurt me. 

Do you think Zeke's reaction, is justified? Do you think  Aahan and Nia's are? Zeke has his reasons, twisted as they are. But are they justified, even in their bitter truth?

Thank you so much for reading!