Shanirin says nothing. He just averts his gaze.

Umirin can hardly comprehend what he's looking at. Heart, is Shani injured? The right side of his face looks the same as it always has, his beautiful beloved.

But the left...the left looks inhuman.

His skin is akin to burnt umber, rough like tree bark, and his left eye is completely black, no sparkle in it. Half of his nose is flattened away to his face, merely a slit of his nostril left. A lot of his hair from the left half of his scalp is gone. He no longer has lips, just half a maw filled with gleaming jagged teeth.

The textured skin flows down his chin and throat, disappearing under his tunic, seemingly the whole left of him taken over. His hand is entirely curled over and clawed

Umirin just stares for a good few heartbeats, his body numb with shock.

What even...? How...?

"Shani, you..." he tries to speak again, to get answers, but his husband still stays quiet, still stares at the stone floor, sitting surrounded by Elders.

Umirin walks closer, his limbs trembling with the awful dichotomy tearing his soul in two directions, overwhelming joy that his beloved is here and cold horror of witnessing whatever has happened to him.

He sits on his knees in front of Shani, and ducks his head to catch his gaze, unsure whether to look at the normal eye or the...new, one. He struggles to maintain contact with both. His left eye has completely changed shape, not just color.

"I had to do it," Shani finally mumbles, his gaze shifting so Umirin cannot meet it.

"Beloved," Umirin shakes his head, his voice gentle but shaking with stress, "do what?" he pleads.

"If I said no, they would have made you do it instead," Shani says again, speaking so meekly, his voice so high-strung in his rush to justify himself.

Umirin feels his chest ache, he cannot withstand watching this, despite all his fear and reservations reaching forward and drawing Shani into a hug, winding his arms around his waist tightly as he embraces him, "Shani, love," he mumbles to him.

Shani takes in a hitched breath, Umirin feels him desperately grab onto him in turn, the talons of his left hand tearing through his tunic and leaving stinging scratches on his skin beneath it, but Umirin doesn't care. He just tightens his hold on his husband. Shani shudders in his arms, gripping him in return just as tightly, his face pressing into Umirin's neck.

Umirin bites his lip at the mild shiver that comes down his spine when he feels the rough surface of Shani's new visage press and scratch against the soft flesh of his neck when he pushes his face against it. Umirin does not react though, he holds his husband, lets him do whatever he needs.

No matter what Shani looks like, he is still Umirin's one true love. He just wishes to know how this became of his love. Did the Elders do something to him? They must have.

Umirin grits his teeth, a flare of fury spinning alight within him. How dare they? The bargain he'd struck with them was made only in the name of them leaving Shani alone.

He takes a deep breath, snapped from his tumultous thoughts by a soft whimper against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Oh, his poor love. He embraces Shani tighter, enveloping him as close as he can when his husband starts to cry against him.

"Shani, it's okay, it's all okay, my love," Umirin mutters to him, rubbing his back with one hand while cradling him, his poor darling shaking with his cries, little hiccups breaking through between his sobs.

"Y-You c-can still l-love me, r-right?" Shanirin stutters out through the crying, voice broken and defeated.

Umirin feels his hold on him tense like steel, his chest suffused with heartbreak, "Shanirin!" he scolds a little, "I would love you if you lost all of your limbs, Heart forbid. I will love you through the end of times, please. Never ask me such a ridiculous thing again, beloved," he reassures, speaking with all the conviction he feels.

This seems to mollify Shani, Umirin feels him nod against his shoulder, his sobs slowly starting to ease away into sniffles. Umirin still holds him as tight as he can through all of it, not letting go even when he calms completely.

He does, however, repeat his question, "Now please, what happened?"

This time, Shani manages to answer, "I...I did some bad things, after you were taken away that day. I went home and begged the council for help, but they refused. I got into a fight, I asked other hunters, no one would help me, they all told me you're as good as dead and I should just give up," he explains, voice still shaking, but the line of his body in Umirin's arms growing tense as he tells his story. Heart, Umirin had missed out on a lot.

"I destroyed the soil stores, Umi, I was just so angry. And I ran out to look for you alone," he explains, still hiding in the crook of Umi's shoulder, "but I couldn't do it on my own. A storm hit and got me lost, and it just—all went so wrong," he sniffles as a shudder goes through him clearly recalling this.

The storm, right. Umirin remembers sheltering in place with the Elders through it. He has to slowly take in everything Shani is telling him, struggling to keep up. He destroyed the soil stores? Heart, he would not have assumed Shani willing to do something like that. He fears to even ask how.

"Oh love, you went through so much," he shakes his head, so heartbroken as all this new information sinks in. He had been a fool to hope that Shanirin would just get home and stay there after Umirin had gone off with the Elder. Truly, he should've expected Shani would try to find and help him.

He finds himself unsurprised no one would help his husband. Perhaps Umirin is too cynical, but he had at no point expected the council to try to find him. Poor Shani though, he believes so much in everyone. Or did, it seems that he has gotten ever so slightly disillusioned now. Oh, Shani.

Shanirin nods against Umirin, leaning on him bodily, still holding onto him, "I didn't know what to do, I just prayed for help. And an Elder heard me and took me here," he says.

Umirin feels his heart stutter at this confirmation of his earlier suspicions. So it was the Elders. He grits his teeth. Beasts.

"What did they do to you?" Umirin manages through a tensed jaw. He glances at the Elders laying around them. They merely regard them in silence.

Shanirin lifts his head from its shelter then, finally meeting Umirin's gaze, his face a sight Umirin still hasn't entirely adjusted to.

"They...made me the opposite of them, I think. They take life force out of bodies, and I...believe I can channel it into bodies," he says, though he sounds unsure himself of what exactly this ability entails.

As is Umirin, for a moment, until he glances at the discarded body of the fawn he brought back, and he twigs together the full picture. He'd wondered before how the Elders intended to accomplish the resurrection part of their plan to resurrect the Divine Beast. He'd tried not to question things too much, not having wanted to earn their ire, but simply putting together a body and a heart on its own will not bring the being to life.

He doesn't know how they did it, nor why it deformed Shani's appearance this badly, but it makes sense that this is the solution. He thinks about what Shani said earlier. If he hadn't agreed, the Elders would have had Umirin do it instead.

Of course. He agreed to help them carry out their plan, naturally this would be included. Yet, they never mentioned becoming awfully disfigured with potential blasphemous capabilities as part of what Umirin needed to do. He shakes his head, unable to even muster up anger at this. Beasts are as beasts do. Clearly they, too, will be as monstrous as they must for their own plan.

What he can muster up the anger for, however, is the fact they put this on Shani. That wasn't their deal.

He leans in to Shanirin's forehead, and presses a kiss to the mid point of it, the spot where human skin and tree bark meet. He feels the rough, dry texture beneath his lips, and finds himself undisturbed, "Oh, beloved, you should not have been the one to go through this," he mumbles, filled with such profound sadness when he looks upon him, his anger never aimed at his husband.

He lifts a hand to cradle his left cheek, pressing his palm against the rough bark surface gently, his heart feeling so incredibly heavy.

Shani gazes back at him, tilting his head to lean into Umi's touch, his eyes, though one is different, still so warm and loving as ever, "I called to them to help me help you. I had to do something to make your situation better. It was worth it, I don't care about any of this," he sniffles, but smiles, "so long as you can still love me even looking like this, it's all okay," he moves his taloned hand from around Umirin up to his face, and rests it over Umirin's own palm cradling it.

Umirin lets out a little, shaken whimper, so destroyed by the painful earnesty of his love, "Oh Shani, I will always love you, no matter what," he reassures again, so certain of this.

He turns his eyes to the Elders then, also certain of their treachery, "Our bargain was made for Shani's safety. How could you do this to him despite that?"

One of them tilts its head, opens its jaws and begins to speak in answer, "H-Hee c-calleddd to u-uss," it says simply, as if that validates anything.

"You should've refused!" Umirin snaps, his teeth gritted at this insolence.

"H-Heee o-offereddd," the Elder replies, its milky eyes trained on Umirin, its voice a harsh rumble, "h-he b-bargainedd," it says.

Umirin scowls, his face twisting up with ire. How opportunistic. 

"Umi, hey, it's alright," Shani draws Umirin's attention by clutching tight his hand resting on his cheek within his taloned one, "I agreed to this. I wanted to do it. The Elder is right, I made my own bargain," he nods, his gaze pleading.

Umirin lets out a long sigh, the fight from his body draining under the assault of Shani's puppy eyes. He is far too weak to his love, "I—fine, very well. I still believe this should never have happened to you," he grumbles.

Shani merely smiles softly, "You bargained for my sake, and I bargained for yours. We save each other, like a team. Do you remember our vows? Together in woe and virtue alike," he brings Umirin's hand grasped in his own to his mouth and places a kiss to it with the half of his lips he's got left.

Umirin feels such a sudden surge of raw love suffuse him at this, his eyes stinging with newly gathered, unshed tears, "Oh, darling," he mumbles, his voice choked with emotion, and draws Shani into another tight embrace, which Shanirin happily returns.

Squeezed in his arms, eyes closed, Umirin's body melts, his mind unburdened and eased by his husband's presence. He'd missed him so much.

"We'll get through this, yes? Together," he mumbles, nodding against Shani's shoulder. He has a point. They are always one, and will always give for each other.

"Yeah, exactly! You got it, little one," Shani happily confirms, some of his usual pep returning to his up to now fairly somber demeanor.

It warms Umirin's heart to see.

A crackling noise from behind them draws all eyes then, and Umirin turns to look at what just entered the cave, only to look upon the Elder that had saved him earlier rolling in, slow and sluggish from the wounds all over its body.

Umirin studies the many bite marks, torn black flesh with a shimmery flow seeping from the injuries. No one has ever seen an injured Soulbiter before, this sight extremely novel.

It did win the fight over what had been his mentor though, as he'd presumed. The Elders are unmatched in size and strength among Soulbiters.

Shani also observes the injured Elder as it heavily collapses among its brethren, obviously exhausted. Despite how displeased he is with what the Elders did with Shani, Umirin can't help but feel bad for the creature. He owes it his life, after all. He knows there would have been no way for him to have made it out of there had it not rescued him.

He doesn't know how it knew he was there, or where it had come from, he presumes it had just been roaming, but he feels grateful nonetheless. Umirin reaches out and places a gentle hand on the Elder's side, nodding in appreciation, "Thank you," he says.

Shani shuffles closer then too, his face flooding with sympathy, and he strokes gentle fingers over the Elder's long snout, "You poor thing," he tells it as if he is speaking to a beloved pet and not a beast.

Then again, Umirin supposes he, too, has developed somewhat of a kinship to them, after everything that has happened.

Shani's expression slowly turns deeply thoughtful as he fusses over the Elder, which has closed its eyes for its part, seemingly rumbling with contentment despite its wounds, "I think...I should be able to heal it. That's...what they made me for," he mumbles, thinking aloud.

Umirin pauses at that. Huh. Channeling life force into a wounded creature would certainly have that effect, yes. He assumes so, anyhow.

"You can try, love," he nods in support. It would be good to get the hang of this ability, however it may work, before he is tasked with reviving the Divine Beast anyways.

Shani takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes, bracing himself. He places both hands on the Elder. Umirin wishes he could know what this must feel like, but he doesn't interrupt, merely sitting back and allowing Shani space.

After a moment, he notices Shani's left side dimly glowing with the same sickly white hue of the Soulbiters' eyes.

He swallows his noise of surprise, his gaze helplessly drawn to the scene. Heart, it's real. Something is clearly happening.

The Elders around them rumble, their heads stretched close as they, too, seem to bask in this.

And then the wounded Soulbiter's body begins to heal, as it seems to absorb the dim glow outlining Shani's left hand pressed over its skin.

It lets out a slow hiss of ease.

Umirin can hardly reconcile with watching wounds simmer closed and seal over, disappearing as if they had never been there to begin with. Yet it is happening now, right before his very eyes.

Whatever they had done with Shani had clearly worked exactly as intended.

Perhaps, their unholy plan has a chance of working, after all.