NEVEN

"Nev,

We've been looking through those ruins further, and I noticed something of interest. I've compiled my thoughts for you when you get back, but I can't put things further in this letter on the off chance it's compromised. I'm going to be sending the rest of my Trainees back to Euros... and I'm not going with them. They're not ready for this, they keep asking me where Kayal went, and I had to tell them the truth — this is what they walked into, they deserve the knowledge and to have their questions answered. Ancients only know I know how it feels to never get one, to never get closure from not having a question answered. Reluctant am I to shake their resolve in what they have chosen, but we both know there is always that choice, to back away if this is not for them.

There's too much at stake here, but we'll talk more when you come back around. Try not to get into too much trouble, and remember to read your damned letters from Yusari.

~ Kemal Tyronai."

Neven stood in the atrium as light fluttered across the personal cupboards of Warden correspondence. A connection between all of them to the home upon the sea. He rifled through his personal section, using his fingers to flip through and organize his letters. I will have to respond to him, tell him how Kayal goes. Evyriaz willing... we will have an answer. Tonight. He shut the cupboard and sent his magick through the runelock. Sapphires swept across the borders, and he left it behind to get to work on pulling Kayal out of the obscure echo. Days with no change. It drew into long weeks. Report given for the senior Wardens to consider the next course of action, he found a new goal to settle on.

Across the citadel to the dedicated shrines for those who sought a peaceful communion to the Ancients so far out of reach, Neven went to meet Fenrer. Ornaments bounced across the heart-shaped, white sprinkled leaves of the tree in the center of the shrine, wrapped around with protective supports. Separate prayer rooms sat around in the circle, dedicated to each Ancient with their likeness perched on top of the doorways, but he found his charge at the base of the tree's roots, head bowed low with his hands over his eyes. He waited on the edges, to not disturb Fenrer's gathering of peace. Fenrer lowered his hands and turned his head around with a smile.

"Is everything ready?" Fenrer got off his knees and smoothed out his sleeves.

"Yuven and Maria are already down in the lower level." Neven rested both hands on his shoulders. "Are you sure you are well enough for this?"

"From what you told me, I don't think we can wait anymore," Fenrer said and nudged him out of the garden's whispers. "You know I'll help, Neven. You need have only asked me." He rolled his shoulders and Neven took the lead back into the citadel, taking the large spiral staircase into the lower bells, where the chill descended into a touch of the sweltering heat below. Obsidian stone carved through the passages they built to follow nature's whims Into the pits of essence pools for the worst patients who required the assistance. Neven stopped in front of the thick door, then faced Fenrer.

"Are you ready?"

"I am. It'll be okay, Neven." Fenrer, like Kemal, threw a gentle fist into his shoulder, and he took the Hanekan way of showing affection in stride before pushing open the doors with both hands. Beside Kayal, Maria prepared a small station of tonics and tinctures to stimulate his magick for the hopeful moment when Fenrer tugged him out of the embrace of a darkened soul. Yuven leaned against the wall with a nod in their direction, closing and locking the door with them inside.

"No one will be coming down here for a while," Yuven observed as Fenrer headed up to Kayal, his brow furrowing.

"Is there anything you require before we start?" Neven asked, putting a hand on Kayal's shoulder.

"No. I should be fine without essence." Fenrer knelt down in front of Kayal. "It is his eyes, Neven. I cannot sense his thoughts."

"Julis said much the same thing."

Fenrer took a deep inhale and nodded when he straightened himself out on his knees. "Then the only thing I require is consent, and he can't give me it." Fenrer folded his arms, but Neven nodded at him.

"I understand that you are bound by the Law," Neven whispered. "But this is for his well being. As his current Guardian, you have my permission on the matter, and if you are going to face repercussions, I will be taking the brunt of them, not you." Neven let go of Kayal, who continued to breathe but not truly live.

"Very well." Fenrer took one more step back, then nodded at Yuven. "I'm ready to induce an Auric Trance."

Yuven stepped closer and gave his hand to Fenrer. Fenrer clasped it, then closed his eyes with another steady intake of air. Uncertainty cracked through his knees at the pressure he put on Fenrer, who pushed himself through the persecution of Aurus and hid his anger deep in the dark. Maria bustled around her small table, and the world took in its own breath when Fenrer opened his eyes. Both blazed with an opalescent fury of the flow. Flames swirled into a drain with no view. In the inferno which turned the forest into a pyre of evershifting colours, Fenrer swayed on his feet, straight into Yuven's waiting hand.

"You hear me, Fenrer?" Yuven questioned.

The moment of truth.

Fenrer gave a single, simple nod.

"Good." Yuven let him go, the anchor to his Oathbound. "I'm right here. You have my permission to guide yourself out of it with the river of my thoughts if things go wrong." He nudged Fenrer for Neven, who brought his hands to his arms. "He's ready to go."

"Listen," Neven pleaded, a flimsy hope to protect as he squeezed Fenrer's cheeks, battling his blank expression. "Do not push yourself. Ask only these questions. Ask if he can hear me. Ask if there is anything I can do for him. Try and pull him back through into his own soul. You still hear me?"

Fenrer's lips parted. "What must I do to prevent these tragic spirals? For all I have sought — in the truth, no matter how obscure."

Neven flinched at his own shame, and patted Fenrer's face. "Thank you, Fenrer... but I am not the one who needs your presence." He stepped to Kayal's side, and waited for Fenrer's approach. He raised his hands. Glyphs born of the opals glimmered across his fingers. He clenched his fists, then pushed them through the crystallized magick as Kayal swayed to the thrum Fenrer delivered. Flames curdled around them in a connected circle.

"Is there nothing else you can tell us about what happened?" Yuven asked.

"No, I was not there." Neven knelt at Kayal's knee. "Kayal? Can you hear me?" He checked on Fenrer for a response, but he gave none, lost in blank concentration. "It is Captain Lotayrin. Neven," he said, and hope swelled when Kayal stilled at his voice. "You are home. On Euros. I do not need to know what happened back then. All that matters to me is that you are returned to yourself. Kemal is worried about you. You are to take your Oath, and no one would question your dedication." Neven squeezed his shoulder. "I am sorry."

Yuven switched his attention to Fenrer when his brow knitted — a spark of reaction against the emptiness of the flow. "Fen?" he whispered.

"Wrong."

Such a simple, horrible word.

Fenrer released the opal glyphs and brought his curled fingers into his cheeks. Horrific trembles overtook his arms when he leaned backwards with a small gasp of blank-faced terror. "Hey!" Yuven grabbed onto him once more. "Ai! Molvisaliz!" He snapped around to Kayal, and Neven stepped back when he reached out to his sleeves, tugging at them.

"Captain," Fenrer rasped. "Though I have asked the questions, the right direction was not what it was." His breathing became ragged as the circle of aura refused to break when he stumbled backwards, and his back hit the wall as Maria lunged at Kayal whose eyelids fluttered, and he slumped forward. "I am the sword in the darkness—"

Neven widened his eyes when Kayal whispered, "I am a shield of light."

In a single moment, Kayal fell out of the chair, the air growing silent as Fenrer slid to the ground, lost in the Trance of continuous shaking when he pressed his fingers closer to his eyes as Yuven followed him down, and Maria pressed her fingers over Kayal's throat. Her expression broke in confusion and despair as she snapped her head up to Neven, and he loomed over his failures.

"No..." Neven whispered when Maria sucked in her lips.

"Fenrer!" Yuven shook his arms, though he held them stiff. "Fenrer! Let it go!"

"In the jaws of the abyss, I saw—" It rang out through aura, but his entire body trembled as tears fell down his empty expression. "Conviction, ever endless."

Yuven gripped onto him tighter. "No! Fenrer! Take a different path, not through there."

"Nev," Maria whispered. "He's dead."

Blood slipped over his fangs when he slid them out, then hurried over to Fenrer. "Little Wolf," he spoke an ancient song and the power of a name as he held onto Fenrer's trembling arms. "Listen to my voice." He took Yuven's spot and grip. "You've done all you can."

Confusion coiled across Fenrer's features, breaking them apart in the expressionless apathy of an Auric Trance. "It's wrong," he rasped as the fluttering opals began to die.

Neven rubbed his back. "I know, Fenrer." Under threat of his own tormented emotions, he stepped on them and buried them in the dirt. Yuven raced for Maria's side when she flipped Kayal onto his back, but Neven returned his attention to the one he threw into Kayal's torturous existence.

"Diiha," Fenrer said with another pant, blinking in rapid succession. Every flame died when he clung onto Neven's forearms. "No."

It broke apart all at once.

Fenrer scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room.

"Stay here with him," he ordered Maria and Yuven, with Yuven sliding to his feet. "I'll go take care of him. I'm the one who asked this of him." He rushed out after Fenrer, who had run straight to the end of the corridor, into the light before stopping and covering his face with his hands.

"Fenrer," Neven caught up to him as he sank to his knees and curled closer to the corner. Tears swept down Fenrer's skin as he dug his fingers into his temples, lost in the panic of his twicefold empathy. Neven sat beside him, but avoided touching him until Fenrer acknowledged him with a flick of his gaze. "Can I put my hand on you?"

Fenrer dropped his head and nodded with a tremble. Neven rested his hand on his back as he breathed hard and sharp. Thoughts emptied, he sat there and waited for Fenrer to outpace his attack of panic. He tipped his head when Fenrer dug his fingers into his arm, quivering when he opened his mouth to speak.

"Fenrer, don't—"

"Get this out before..." Fenrer rasped through tortured emotion. "He was dead."

"Yes—"

Fenrer shook his head in one wild motion. "I felt it," he said past his tears, digging his fingers deeper into his head. "The last moment which lacked faith. He was dead."

You felt him die?

He cursed his own thoughts when Fenrer doubled over into his panic. "Wrong. I felt it, the tearing of the bridge." He straightened himself out and clung onto his shoulders, his face damp with his own tears. "Neven. Neven. His soul was halfway stuck — it was necromancy." He swayed on his knees. "He should've been dead a long time ago, he was resurrected. A single sliver... it was oozing past the boundary of the flow. It felt so wrong..." Fenrer broke with a soft gasp, holding onto him tight. "I tried. I'm sorry. He's sorry too." A sob left his lips when he hid into him, as he had done when he was but a seven turns old child carrying a lifetime of pain long beyond his time.

Lost with his hope for mercy, Neven kept himself in the cold of Naveera's clarity. "I know," Neven mumbled as Fenrer cried to someone else's pain. Kemal's letter danced around in his head, the hints the cult left — whether purposeful or accidental, with the largest one long gone to a dead Trainee. His fangs slipped over his lips once more, but the rattle deep in his throat refused to escape when he sat there. "Neither of you have to be sorry."

Resurrection — is this where this has led to the cult? What are they doing? Is that what happened to the missing Wardens? Questions without answers, and he let them go to soothe Fenrer through his tears. "We will figure this out," he mumbled, more to himself and all the lives who sacrificed themselves for a hint. And when I get back to Elvkana... I'll find those answers that Kayal died for.