Ebwynnos Evermore

The moon.

The brightest full moon you have ever seen hangs in the sky. Your limbs are weak and frail, your mind a little sluggish.

You raise a hand, and the lines of old age have crept across your skin.

Memory drifts back, and strangely, you feel no fear of death at all. You smile instead, out of a peace that comes from somewhere deep within.

Your family gathers close around you. Your youngest granddaughter, Vera, understands nothing of it yet; she lovingly nestles against your hand.

She sets a lopsided grasshopper made from palm leaves on the quilt.

Your son, worried for you, moves to carry her away; Vera's lip trembles as her eyes tear up.

You cough a few times with a smile, struggling to prop up your frail bones and lean against the headboard.

Your gaze falls on the brass compass that has never left your side. Untouched by the years, it wears a soft, downy rim of silver in the moonlight.

You run your thumb slowly over its surface, full of longing, and your voice goes hoarse as you sink into memory.

The harbor whistle blew. Pontos's "friends with benefit," unable to see him off in person, had left behind a jangling heap of jewelry for him, and now boarded the ship with regret on their faces.

Your mother Leisha looked at you, half amused and half exasperated. With a sigh, she tucked the jewelry into the little box. It would go back to the captain to return when the ship next made port.

Your family ran an utterly ordinary little inn in a seaside town. Only one thing about it was the least bit unusual...

The door swung open again on a gust of salt wind, and the one unusual thing in question swept you up around the waist, laughing, and spun you through the air.

He snapped his fingers, spread them wide against the empty air, and a heavy copper-plated compass dropped into your palm.

Leisha tossed the box of jewelry back to him with a smirk and tipped her chin toward the window, where the ship carrying the other half of those "broken hearts" had just left port.

Grinning, Pontos tilted his head and dodged a hard swat from Leisha, then set you down on the floor.

Too busy studying your new treasure, you missed the darkening look on Leisha's face. Pontos ruffled your hair.

He held out his hand, and for the compass's sake you took it, It's the "Deal Handshake" that belonged only to the two of you.

...

Lying on the floor of the upstairs bedroom, you dug out a map and set about, in deep concentration, using the compass to find the bearings from those seafaring tales.

But the house was very old, worn down by the sea and the wind, and a few scattered words still drifted up through the cracks in the floorboards.

Uncle Pontos's voice grew increasingly desperate. Just as you pressed your ear closer out of curiosity...

Bang! Thud!

...The door slammed open, Pontos was hauled in by the collar and tossed inside your room, and Leisha gave him the there would be no discussion look.

You'd rarely heard Leisha speak so harshly. She drew a breath and managed a strained smile for you.

She left those words behind her and hurried downstairs to the ledgers that never seemed to end, as if eager to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

Pontos raised an eyebrow and shrugged at you.

...

Maybe those tales had spilled out of the ship's hold along with the cargo, too strange and full of twists. Either way, even at midnight, you slept only lightly.

The moonlight beyond the window laid a film of silver across your closed eyes, and then something blotted it out.

A click, the window latch. You opened your eyes. The window had already been pulled wide open.

Pontos was already halfway out the window. Without thinking, you reached out to grab hold of him, you didn't even stop to wonder why he looked as if he were... hanging in midair.

Weightlessness took you, and then...

Whoosh!

Riiiip!

You were yanked up by the cloth at the small of your back, a strange smooth fur brushing across your face.

When you opened your eyes, a chill of horror ran up your spine.

The tail of a featureless, unspeakable creature was hooked behind your back, its tip crawling thick with hideous barbs.

You had no room to register that this terrifying thing had clearly just saved you, uncontrollably, a choked-off scream forced its way up from your throat.

Pontos, crouched low on the back of the faceless creature, pulled you up against him and clamped a hand hard over your mouth. The creature spread its huge batlike wings and slid soundlessly into the dark.

Pontos wrapped an arm around your shoulders to soothe you, tucking you in between himself and the creature, his body held low, his eyes fixed on the rocky shoals in a remote corner of the harbor.

Before you could ask anything, an ominous sound came crawling up out of the sea, like worms.

Rustling, rustling...

Slap, splish... SQUELCH,

First the scaled talons, then arms, or soft writhing limbs; barnacle-crusted bodies and a slime so foul it made your stomach turn.

You only knew the sea as an endless source of food. You never imagined it could also be home to such abominations. Their bulging, dreadful eyes were full of malice as they stared at the town's buildings.

In the next moment, the faceless winged creature beneath you darted down. Pontos spread his knuckled fingers, and a murky light leapt toward the two contemptible monsters.

They slid limply to the ground, like two statues snapped in half.

A soft tap.

Then the half-bodies pitched to the earth and crumbled into gray ash, swept off on the sea wind.

Fright nearly buckled your legs, and you almost slid off the creature's smooth back.

Pontos patted your shoulder, then guided the creature to carry you both toward the coastline on the far side of town.

...

Squelch.

Blood sprayed, and you stared, stunned, at Leisha and several of the inn's regulars fighting astride the same creatures you rode.

Leisha and her companions left. You and Pontos stood in the shadows. You'd have crumpled straight to the ground if he weren't holding your shoulders.

You clung to the hem of his clothes. His voice was calm and soft, as if he were trying his hardest not to frighten you any further.

He paused, his hand resting against the Gaunt's flank, cracking his knuckles, as if hesitating over how to explain.

A flicker of frustration crossed Pontos's face, rare for him, and he swept the loose golden hair from his brow back over his head.

The sheer weight of it all left you blinking blankly. For the first time, you knew every single word and still couldn't make sense of any of it strung together.

Pontos seemed to catch himself, came back to the moment, and gave you a smile.

In the distance, Leisha seemed to glance your way. Uncle Pontos made the shhh gesture at you again.

...

The window opened and closed again, without a sound.

As if it had only ever been the wind that opened the window, the waves outside broke and drew back, and you heard Leisha coming up the stairs.

You and Pontos buried your faces in your pillows, breathing evenly, pretending this was still an ordinary night.

That night, worn out from too much fright and too much thinking, you soon fell asleep.

Both you and Pontos thought you'd have many more chances to talk about it.

But you didn't.

SPLASSHH!

No, this wasn't right, you thought. A hero's story wasn't supposed to go like this!

Pontos holds you tight and runs inland, away from the coast, his back shielding you. You stare in terror at the flames everywhere and the people scrambling through the chaos.

It's not supposed to go like this.

It was supposed to be that you discovered your bloodline by accident, that Mom, talked round by Uncle Pontos, took you under her wing, and that the three of you set out together on a journey full of thrills and danger and wonder.

And then you would become a great hero. That's how the adventure stories always went.

The once peaceful town was entirely engulfed in flames.

Only a single day had passed. Then, out of nowhere, a tide of cultists came crashing down and swallowed everything you could see.

Among them were humans and out-and-out monsters alike. Their indiscriminate assault set the whole town burning.

Blood, salt and reeking, sprayed across your face and body. Pontos drove the hunting-whistle in his hand for all it was worth, and alongside the Gaunts he tore a path open by sheer force.

Leisha, fighting with the other Gauntwards to hold the tide back, saw that you were safe. Her eyes lit up, and she screamed at Pontos with everything she had.

A Gaunt's claws shredded another head shaped like a sea anemone. Leisha flung out a lash of the same murky white light Pontos wielded, stopping him from charging toward her.

You didn't know what Uncle Pontos meant by "a way out." You only saw his gaze fall on that hunting-whistle, the one he hadn't let out of his hand since the day he came back.

In a furious tearing of scales, a cultist whose body had already been ripped half open lunged at Leisha, its crimson eyes bulging, gibbering in a frenzy.

Then, a teeth-aching sound of skin and muscle splitting open.

Two bodies striking the cobblestones.

The sound of viscera spilling out.

And then the world went abruptly silent. You could hear nothing, see nothing.

Blood, the night sky, the moon.

The crimson moon, hanging far, far away in the distant sky.

After a brief, breathless whimper wrung from deep in his throat, Pontos let out a sound you had never heard in all your life.

A wail that was nothing like a human's.

A sharp ringing went off in your skull. A vast blankness rushed at you like a wave. No, no, no, no, no no no...

No one survived. The Gauntwards, who by day had seemed no more than friendly neighbors, were falling one after another. The ordinary townsfolk shrieked in the sea of fire and the tide of monsters.

But you could no longer hear any of it. Your body had betrayed you completely, and it was wailing right along with them, a raw, piercing cry.

The other cultists locked onto you without the slightest trouble, and just as those scaled claws, dripping with blasphemous slime, reached for you...

Pontos blew the hunting whistle.

You had never heard a sound so shrill and so ancient. Some unreasoning power drove straight through your eardrums and hammered at every last shred of sanity in your mind.

An incomparable, vast pressure came crashing down upon the land!

A huge, invisible force pressed Pontos flat to the ground, but he didn't seem to feel it at all, eyes wide enough to split as he recited an incomprehensible prayer.

Countless beings shaped like black arms reach out from a rift deeper than the most ancient ocean, groping toward the one prey they desire...

...and the master they have chosen.

On that face that had always worn an easy smile, there now came a brutal, reckless resolve.

As something far greater and more torrential fused into him, sky-blotting wings rose, raising barrier upon barrier of pitch-black dark.

By now, no one could tell that deep, unknowable sound apart from the voice that had once been Pontos's.

They became one, indistinguishable, as They wished.

As the shrill whistle echoed along the coastline, every last cultist crumbled into white ash.

...

Vera had been holding her breath the whole time, and finally she couldn't help crying out, tears all but brimming in her eyes.

...

Through your childhood friend Orney's account, choked with sobs, you learned that the entire town had been wiped out in a great explosion.

Only a handful of people had survived in the rubble, sent off to relatives or friends in the neighboring town. You had slept for four whole days.

The sharp white noise in your skull dragged you back down into a daze. When you woke again, you found yourself dimly cradled in someone's arms.

You had seen with your own eyes how the cultist tore Leisha's belly open, yet here she sat at your bedside, whole and unharmed. A sudden, overwhelming joy made your eyes fly open and the tears come.

Leisha fell suddenly silent. After a moment, she gripped your hand tight, pressed the copper compass you had dropped back into your palm, and bent down to kiss your forehead.

You tried desperately to shake your head, but Leisha gave you no chance to.

You bolted upright.

A soft wind stirred the leaves. Night had fallen before you knew it.

Was it a dream? Your mother Leisha was nowhere in sight. Orney, dozing at your bedside keeping watch over you, seemed startled.

You stare blankly out the window; the moon still hangs far away in the sky.

Beyond that, there was nothing at all.

The memory ends. You fall silent for a long while.

Call it an old man's selfishness, you think, because you may be the last person who remembers them, and you don't want them to be forgotten.

You look tenderly at Vera. Your family, considerate, has left the two of you alone so you won't tire yourself out.

You can't help smiling. You draw out the compass that hasn't left your side in decades, and place it in Vera's palm.

Tap, tap, tap,

In the very instant the compass leaves your hand, a dense, soft rustling comes from outside the window.

Followed by a low chuckle.

On some vast, invisible force, the window flies wide open. In the deep, churning dark, a silver moon flickers through the gaps.

A sky-blotting mass of countless huge black membranous wings surges toward you. Your pupils tremble as you stare, frozen, at the dark heart of it.

Gurgle-chk... gurgle-chk... *a wet, squelching sound*

Vera's tiny hand clutches at you, leaving behind only a deep scratch. You are enfolded. Smothered. Swallowed.

Serene. Calm. Familiar. Pleasurable...

Tidal waves of white noise have engulfed your ears.

And you are falling.

...

A sharp white noise sends a stab of pain through your eardrums, and you bolt upright in bed on reflex.

Pontos nudges Leisha with his elbow, grinning. Orney, Uncle White, so many familiar faces are crowded around your bed.

Your mind feels as if it has sunk into deep water. You can't shake the sense that you've forgotten something, and a strange ease in your body feels subtly wrong.

The evening sun breaks through the clouds and cuts the sea into shimmering scales of light, scattering like flecks of gold across the windowpanes. You are back at the seaside inn where you grew up.

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A throbbing ache, a shoving pressure. The town's name catches on your lips.

A screech like iron scraping glass slams from inside your skull down into your throat, until your brain turns to thick, gluey paste.

Until that warm, rough palm cups the back of your head, and as always, he laughs and presses his forehead to yours.

You slowly open your mouth, groping for your voice.

Pontos watches you intently, and you don't understand, the way he looks at you, it's the way someone looks at a thing they thought they'd lost forever.

Like looking at the most precious thing in the world.

Consciousness floods back. You stare at all the familiar things around you, the sunlight baking the floorboards until they sweat out grains of salt...

A strange, serene happiness drowns out any other thoughts. A smile slowly surfaces on your face.

Your thoughts seem to soak into a slime called happiness. Everyone around you is as young as the day you parted...

Oh... parted.

When did you leave Ebwynnos, and how did you come back? It seems only a little while ago you were lying in some other bed. You had a granddaughter, named...

Pontos leans back against the window. The setting sun has already sunk into the sea, and the last thread of light hides behind him.

He slings an arm around your shoulders and steers you down to the newly refurbished hall downstairs, casting you into the dance floor along with the cheering crowd.

Only now do you notice the inn has become a hall of dazzling splendor.

Familiar faces laugh across the dance floor, raising their cups and waving at you, wooden and glass cups knocking together in a scattered clamor.

A heavy dizziness washes over you again. That strange happiness grips you tight, not letting go.

You lift your arm and see two young, strong hands;

you look to the glass, and a young man's face wears the same laughter as everyone else.

Before you can gather yourself, Pontos reaches past your shoulder and raises his glass to the crowd.

You raise your cup along with the others amid a bewildering, immense joy, and the roar of voices sweeps you deeper into the crowd.

You celebrate, you dance, you drink with abandon.

The high house's beams of light pierce the mist rising off the sea, glittering all night long.

Only when a faint pallor creeps into the edge of the sky do the revelers slump down one by one and fall asleep against each other. Then you too, a little drunk, humming a tune, sink crookedly into a velvet-lined cushion.

You are almost dozing off when you suddenly see Leisha's face in a corner of the hall. You hurry over to her.

An inexplicable panic seizes your heart, and you can't help murmuring to yourself.

Your steps jerk to a halt because of the look of utter helplessness and grief on Leisha's face.

Your mother's tears fall on your hand, cold enough that you flinch on reflex. The chill air sends a shiver racing across your whole body.

Lopsided, rough, a little prickly, there is a grasshopper there.

A grasshopper made by Vera, named Vera.

Everything around you spins in chaotic disorder, two completely different trains of thought tangled together.

You clutch your head, doubling over in pain, gasping for air.

Orney barrels into you from out of nowhere, and the droning in your ears vanishes all at once.

You look up, and Leisha is already gone.

Orney stares at you with an expression you don't recognize at all, and he stares for a long, long time, until you almost want to flee.

And then...

He sighs. With a perfectly matter-of-fact smile, he then finishes the rest of the sentence together with another voice.

Someone walks out from behind Orney. He speaks low and hoarse, like the most magnanimous and dignified of elders.

That is not the voice of Pontos.

It is so ancient that it sweeps away every trace of the familiarity, leaving only the deepest reaches of the ocean, the echo of seawater washing through your mind once more.

You are so happy, so at ease. You are in Ebwynnos.

Every other thought, all of it unimportant, dissolves away.

And yet, for some reason, you let no one see that grasshopper whose name you have forgotten.

A strange, smooth fur. The sharp barb on its tail. Vast membranous wings carving open the night sky without a sound.

Pontos brings you along on the hunt that precedes Ebwynnos's nightly revelry.

Through countless mediums beyond comprehension, the people of Ebwynnos hunt their "prey" across countless dimensions.

That uncanny glow still pulses from inside the house's windows.

Gaunt after Gaunt wheels in the air, until Pontos, standing beside you in a chariot that sheds an indescribable pearly light, lets out a resounding cry.

Clouds.

Earth.

Sands.

Snow field.

Emptiness.

And then back to night again.

This is no journey or course a human could comprehend. Time and space lose all meaning; you only pass through, on and on, patrolling, experiencing everything and then being destroyed by everything.

Pontos spends the power he has taken with reckless abandon, and the beings who have gained him now tear his enemies apart as well.

Countless twisted, loathsome monsters are hunted down by the Gaunts and the Gauntwards.

They are run through, made part of the revelry, drawing whistles and laughter of celebration without end.

You watch with your own eyes as the beam Pontos looses reduces this cultist to dust, only for its body to reassemble an instant later, howling in terror.

This was the most devout of all the cultists. And now it has already endured death and reassembly in agony, more times than anyone could count.

As lightly as if it were a trifling matter, Pontos raises his palm. An invisible force spreads the cultist's arms wide and folds its upper body down, until it kneels prostrate before him.

The cultist, its mind in ruins, lets out a twisted, sobbing laugh and, crawling forward on its knees, cranes its neck up in a grotesque posture.

The light melts its throat away entirely, like a hot knife through butter. Its body collapses at once into ashen dust and is swept off into the sea on the wind.

This time, the pitiful cultist does not come back.

You half understand. The moonlight shines. The Gaunts guard you as this strange journey draws toward its close.

You fall into the moist, familiar, tight embrace of darkness. Then darkness swallows you whole.

You are back at the house. Pontos steps down from the chariot and raises the curtain on yet another round of revelry.

Near the windowsill by the terrace, Pontos draws apart from the bustling crowd and reaches out toward a Gaunt that hovers, unwilling to leave.

As if he hadn't expected you to ask so bluntly, Pontos raises an eyebrow in mild surprise, and then, he laughs.

You draw a deep breath. Once more your fingers find that grasshopper, lopsided, rough, a little prickly.

His brows draw together, ever so slowly, with a refined arrogance that feels foreign to you.

No sooner has he spoken than the Gaunt's barbed tail dips from the window toward your pocket...

Toward the lopsided grasshopper you've been hiding.

You jerk back on reflex, but the movement seems to anger Pontos, and he seizes you by the arm.

Gurgle-chk. Gurgle-chk...

You freeze where you stand. It isn't only Pontos's fingers against your skin now. A nameless dread makes you lift your head, and Pontos's deep blue eyes settle heavily on you.

You are swallowed once more.

...

Squelch! Muddy water splashes across your face. You snap back to yourself and stare, dazed, at the man beside you. Aged, stooped, muttering, but you recognize him. It is, beyond any doubt, an old Orney.

He claps you on the shoulder and, with trembling hands, takes two paper bags from the pharmacy window.

Orney goes on muttering about something. You stare at his lips opening and closing, and a sudden dizziness wrenches you out of the petty everyday.

...

And you see. Yourself, lying in a bed, withered to a husk.

You see a couple and their little daughter out for a walk to clear their minds, comforting one another.

Winter, spring, another winter. You watch the dust slowly settle through the house.

Pontos's voice echoes in your ears, and the next second you stand once more in the hall of that house in Ebwynnos.

Orney, Uncle White, every single person on the crowded dance floor of Ebwynnos, all of them suddenly notice you.

They laugh heartily, gathering you into their midst.

People are now passing their spoils around. The tides are ringing in your ears again.

Pontos holds out his hand, waiting for you to take it.

Like that "Deal Handshake" you two made up when you were small.

Looking at that familiar, warm hand, you finally, take a step back.

He knits his brows in disbelief as if you've just talked gibberish.

The grasshopper's prickle presses lightly against your fingertip, and for reasons you cannot name, you remember the trembling back of a child weeping by your bed.

The people stop talking. Every last face turns to look at you all at once.

Your eardrums swell and ache as if about to split; the seethe of seawater bores into your skull.

Through the muffling water, you hear a sigh.

Again, huh.

Creak... mn, gurgle-chk, gur...

The walls tremble. Everything drips down through a sodden slime.

You suddenly realize that he is no longer Pontos.

Before you stands a being so ancient as to be forgotten, vast, majestic, impossible to look upon. A deep cold dread freezes you where you stand and tears from you a soundless scream.

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You remember now. That same voice you heard, when you first set foot in Ebwynnos, when you left, and when you returned.

Skin, ribs, unfurling outward, and then...

Nothing, hands, nothing, nothing nothing NOTHING, hands, the abyss, @2y@2, @4@4@2@4 @3@2@4@3@1@3@3!!!

The moon.

The bright, pure moon, hanging far, far away in the distant sky.

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Here in His embrace. Here in Ebwynnos.

Layer upon layer of wings, carrying within them an embrace, tight and solid and impossible to refuse, and a swallowing-up.

You are shoved, you are enfolded, you are taken in, you are falling into an endless stillness.

Someone forces her way through the mindless, cold crowd and rushes at the vortex of "Pontos."

It does Him no harm, but an unmistakable shock makes His pupils tremble, His gaze fixing on her face.

Orney. White.

All the people of Ebwynnos.

In silence, alongside the Gaunts, they close in on you like a crushing wall.

Leisha looks at you: She sees her son Jago, and she also sees... you.

Leisha is trapped once more. She twists her body around with all her strength and stares at you, not at your face, but through it, as if trying to see into the deepest part of your soul.

The dense, swarming black wings spread wide. It is all so serene, so... alluring, that you find your feet moving toward them.

And then you hear it, the voice of "you."

From the depths of your mind, a spirit struggles its way free.

The survivor of the Yakutsk explosion, "Mythag's Keeper", "you", take hold of this body.

A silver radiance flickers in your palm.

Jago's scattered memories are gathered up, piece by piece.

"Pontos" does not speak. He studies you in silence.

He closes his eyes, weary, his patience finally spent. You shake your head firmly.

He raises his hand. The wall of Gaunts closes in at you.

The suffocating pressure recedes like an ebbing tide. A violent stab of pain shoots through your brain, and your vision goes white in pulsing waves.

Pontos stands there, utterly alone. You can't make out his expression.

But clearly, something has left him.

His voice is hoarse, his body still drawn taut, like some desperate, cornered animal.

You have no way to answer. Your memories now are as tangled as a shaggy dog that has rolled three times through the mud.

Leisha, all but spent from the earlier battle, struggles to her feet and places herself between you and Pontos.

Pontos's lips press into a cold, flat line, his jaw clenched.

Pontos freezes. For the first time, you see such grief in his expression.

He closes his eyes, as if to hide from something he can't bear to face. In the end, his lips twist into a self-mocking, defeated smile.

...

Pontos yields in silence. The chariot that once carried him to vengeance against his enemies now carries Leisha on her way as well.

As the chariot of indescribable pearly light slides into the sky beyond Ebwynnos, a look of release comes over Leisha's face. She turns back to face you both...

And then, she vanishes away, into the night sea wind.

Neither of you speaks. You only stare for a long while into that void, until Pontos breaks the silence.

You hadn't expected his first words to be this. You blank for a moment before you start sorting through the tangle of memories.

Something seems to have gone wrong with this Domain. Neither Jago's memories nor yours are entirely intact.

You reach into your pocket on reflex to touch the grasshopper.

He gazes into your eyes, quiet and still. It almost feels like the way... the way Leisha once looked at you.

He is not only looking at Jago.

A chill runs through you. How can he know "your" name? Isn't this only a Domain?

He slips back into that cold, aristocratic composure, as if nothing has ever slipped from his grasp, and calmly gives you a smile.

The muffled noise that belongs to the seawater closes over your ears once more.

You were wrong. He never yielded. He will not, and was never going to, let go. He only set down a glowing lure.

He had long since discovered the other part of "you." He was going to find "you." He would allow no more surprises.

Too easy. That battle, that victory. It had been a trap to lure "you" out.

No one knows why he has suddenly allowed age to take hold of him.

All of Ebwynnos shakes with him. The mediums around him and the seawater surging from his chest meld together, indistinguishable from one another.

Perhaps there are friends, perhaps enemies. Countless black arms reach out from his chest, clawing at his skin, caressing it.

As if trying to flee. As if longing to be with him forever.

A weightlessness catches you off guard, wrenching you up and out of the torn-open space. Sky-blotting Gaunts spread their membranous wings and come surging toward you in a soft rush.

The marks of age weather across Pontos's body like erosion.

Laughing, he raises a toast to you from Ebwynnos as it rapidly recedes into the distance.

In your last glimpse before darkness engulfs him, you see two figures standing at his side.

He let no one go. He kept them all, every last one.

Right next to him stood Leisha. And a young Jago.

...

As you and Aurita angrily go over what you got put through in the dream, you turn around and...

...And immediately get spooked by a certain someone who's standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets. Heaven knows how long he's been eavesdropping.

The other main character of the story leans against the wall of Aurita's bedroom, and in a low, unhurried voice, supplies the ending.

Aurita lets out a small, contented snore and gradually drifts off into a hazy sleep, just like the Vera in your memory.

Pontos tilts his head toward the door and makes a gesture of invitation.

...

Cut off so bluntly, Pontos isn't annoyed at all. He grins and arches an eyebrow.

The hostility in your words is probably getting too obvious to miss. Pontos doesn't answer directly; he just gives you a smile that infuriates you to no end.

Pontos tilts his head slightly, and you look into his deep blue eyes.

The sound of seawater, the beat of wings.

That familiar, distant white noise slowly seeps through your body once more.

Over your chest, over your ears, over...

You snap back to yourself. In the distance, Ogier, Lotan, and Ramona are walking toward you, fresh off a training session, while Doll's puppet analyzes their training data.

The person beside you lets out a deeply regretful sigh.

With that, he leaves. The horizon, where the setting sun is about to sink, refracts a faint, dreamlike, gentle pearly glow.

There is still so much you want to ask. About the mass slaughter that N stirred up among the cultists on nothing more than a whim, with no purpose, no target at all.

About the Lightbearers fanning the flames of it, about the hundred-odd years of mad vengeance Pontos waged afterward.

About... whether, for even a single instant, he too had wavered toward another possibility, and so had let the years leave their mark on him.

About whether Jago and Leisha are still reveling in Ebwynnos even now.

...In the end, you can only pray he won't get into something with Professor Dexter at the school.

You shake your head and walk, without the slightest hesitation, to your friends' side.