that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried
He does not expect to survive. Not when his soul was so shattered. His body so fractured. Even if he had managed to live through the trials placed before the group, he had thought he would come back a husk of himself—too broken beyond repair to live. He had thought, at best, that he would see the rising of the sun and take his last, rattling breath, content to know that he had played his part in seeing it happen.
But that is not what happens.
The light blazes so brightly, too bright, and he has to drop his eyes because he finds that he cannot stare at it directly. He has to swallow hard and the light comes back to him, settles into his bones and then becomes a living thing at his side. And then, perhaps strangest of all, he feels the curse drain from him—as though siphoning off of him in response to the magic that now surges through his veins.
This magic that is a counterweight to the light.
A shadow created by it.
But magic all the very same.
Magic that knits him back together. That pulls his flesh taut. Magic that chases the sickness and hollowness from him, but magic that also restores his memories—bringing them into painful clarity. He remembers every night since the beginning. The hunger and loneliness. The pain he’d felt and that he had inflicted. He remembers each detail in vivid reality and it is tattooed upon his subconscious.
His magic wraps around it, sinks into it, and he becomes that pain.
His magic becomes that pain too.
The hours that follow are a blur for him. Hours of finding himself and recreating himself. Hours of learning the way to breathe again, blinking against the sun and taking joy in it even as some vital piece of himself now recoils from it. He wonders if he will ever look into the day again and feel nothing but unfettered joy—if he would feel that pure radiance that he is sure so many feel across Beqanna today.
Instead he feels something skittering along his subconscious and he pulls away. Wraps himself in a thin cloak of darkness as he retreats into the shadows, that half-formed companion trailing in his wake. And it’s there that he rests, his golden eyes vibrant and half-closed, some sort of hum in the back of his throat that doesn’t falter as the magic sings off of him in waves, crashing against him and then rescinding.
It’s only when night comes that he opens them fully, not noticing the faint glow that comes off of him when the moonlight peeks through the trees. Not noticing when the shadows stir around him or when the wind slows and lazily winds up his golden legs. He feels alive, he realizes, in a way that he has never felt before—certainly not during the night—and when his lips pull back, his predator teeth gleam.
so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried
