YUVEN

It slammed into the side of his head where it rested against the floor; the reverberation of power a shockwave through his bones when he turned over to escape it. Upright, he heaved up to his feet with a scowl, weary from the tribulations before with no chance to rest — the one time he longed to, the one time he tried. Every time he failed when the wood below burned, but refused to set aflame. Hands pressed against the misshapen woodwork, it lodged in his throat when the silver embers faded as quickly as they tried to catch. He whipped around for an answer.

Neven, unable to give him one as he had many times before, fast asleep on his deathbed. Maria, finally having gone to get some rest. Yuven rubbed his fingertips together, then headed for the door. What the hells is Adara doing down there? He paused at the threshold, looking over at Neven once more, fearful to turn his back again. Another type of pressure built at the center of his ribcage, a low tug bringing him out into the tight corridor, for the stairs with a hand on the banister to steady himself. He won't perish. Get a grip, Yuven Traye. Hand against his temples, he reached Fenrer and Adara's door, sending his knuckle into it. "What are you two doing in there?" he snapped. "Some of us are trying to sleep. Now's not the time to train — least of all with fire magick in a treehouse."

The night's silence pulsed through the nearest window, the stars glittering along the ridges of the clouds. Air tucked into his feathers, with no voices or movement on the other side. A scoff left his lips, and he turned the knob.

His fingers fell from the lacquered surface at the slumped shape sprawled on the floor. One body. Wood creaked underneath his boot when he entered, searching, though found his attention drawn to the roof, where the silver embers fell against the sky as stars. Empty beds. Empty rooms. Yuven knelt for the slumped shape, their brown hair tangled from their attempt at motion. "Adara." He checked the bed, one more time for the truth. The window, closed off from the outside world; the door, shut from someone's departure. "Adara." His fangs pressed against the sides of his tongue as he grabbed onto her shoulders. "Adara, wake up." His lungs pressed against the wall of his chest as he examined her closer. Skin pale, breath far too light. "Adara." Yuven poked, prodded, all but shook her for any sort of response and the truth. Magick flowed through his hand, and he sent the power straight for her eyes.

Silver fire blazed the honey-browns when she snapped her eyes open, colour returning to her face all at once with her gasp. Her hands latched onto his arms, but he found himself at a loss for words. All but his question, "What. Happened?" he drew through his teeth. "Where is Fenrer, Adara? He's in no condition to be wandering—"

"He did this." Tears cracked down her cheeks. "Yuven, he slept me." Her breath came out in panicked bursts. "Yuven, he's going to get away. You have to go after him! He's not thinking straight!"

Yuven released the pressure on his tongue. "...you're mistaken," he pleaded for any sort of reprieve. Adara's lips sucked in, and he bit on his own. "Why?"

"He said no one would understand," Adara sobbed. "He said we weren't doing anything, that—Yuven, I don't know what they did on that mountain but something is wrong with his eyes." Her fingers dug deeper into his weak bones, barely recovered from his dance with death. "We have to go get him." She got on her knees first, but Yuven kept her in place. "What are you doing?" her sobs turned into angered words. "Are we just going to let him leave? After all of that, Yuven?"

"...he broke the Law," Yuven said.

Adara clenched her fists and wrenched free. As wild as fire. "Who cares about the law? It's only us that knows. Are we going to tell?"

Yuven got on his feet, then left her as he rushed out of the room. Down the stairs, masking his rush through the ghostly mirage with Adara trailing behind him. He swiped his crescent blade off the rack, diving out of the treehouse. Off the steps with a single hop. He rushed along the dock, with the dawn so far off the horizon. Fiery tendrils barely reached the evenfall. Nary a soul haunted the streets as Adara's footsteps followed suit, a pale echo.

The starry connection faded, darkened on one end. Fenrer, come on. Don't do this now. He rushed for the watchtower, where he set some Storm Wardens to make sure no activity rumbled through the night, for no Derelict to endanger innocent lives. He sent his foot into the door, rushing up the steps as Adara clung onto the doorframe, hair flyaway as she grimaced, but she was soon out of sight when he reached the top. His chosen guard through the night, slumped at their table, the lamp flickered out. He grabbed onto their shoulders, shaking them with far more success than he had with Adara. "Wake up!" he bit louder, causing their eyelids to flutter.

"Captain?" they slurred.

"Did anyone leave through the gate or have you been sleeping the entire time?" he hissed.

"Wh-Wha'?" They looked around, the blue in their eyes hazy and cloudy. "No, no one's gone through as you've ordered, I was just—" They motioned around the tower, but another rattle left his throat, caught in the web Fenrer created. "...What's wrong, Captain? I promise I didn't fall asleep. I don't... I don't even remember falling asleep." Memories, precious memories. His fingers slipped past their armour, and they stumbled back into their chair. "Captain Traye?"

No. He left them there. Nothing more than a failure of his own making, he crawled down the stairs, losing feeling in his legs with each step as Adara rushed to him.

"Well? Have they seen him?" Her hope, ash in his fingers. Always ash.

If only I had words instead of strength. Yuven pushed past her.

"Yuven," Adara said, the hopefulness dwindled. "No one's going to tell. You know I won't." Her tone quieted. "We can still find him. We can still fix this. We can make him see. The Elder Convocation doesn't have to know, how would they find out except if someone reported it? Isn't that how it works?" Adara latched onto his arm. "Yuven, please talk to me."

Yuven ignored her to gaze towards the horizon, waiting for the dawn to come.

The dawn must always come. Such a... twisted ideal. Is it a good or bad thing, that it will always come? His teeth pinched his lips and her pleading became but white noise in his ears and damp air in his feathers. Neven, a shield against the crimson night, the dusk painted with his blood — Fenrer, the dawnblade supping on the darkness and creating burning light, cast aside and cauterized the mountain, straight into the sky. Adara's words came in and out of focus. Every time he reached out to Fenrer, his blank, uncertain expression.

The first tendril crawled over the ocean horizon.

"Yuven, please," Adara begged. "We've got to do something. Don't just freeze up again. It'll be okay. No one has to know what happened."

Neven. Yuven winced when the sun's arms stroked the sky and turned it far too bright on his eyes. Her grip on his arm ceased, but he found his own holding her back when she went for the gate. "Don't."

"What?" Adara asked.

"I don't think you understand how serious this just became," Yuven rasped, no sooner had the sun ascended, he was left in the dark, with a crimson-splattered Fenrer trudging his way through the muck toward him. Hand tight on his crescent blade, dripping with Derelict pus, the uncertainty washed away for resolve he never managed to gain. "Adara, you cannot go after him. He is dangerous."

"What?" Adara wrenched out of his grip once more, aghast. "Yuven, he's not dangerous, he's confused."

"I need you to get it through that thick skull," he tore through his closed throat. "I do not say it lightly, or with malice." His breath skipped into a laugh. "Fenrer... is a powerful Aurus. Among the most powerful of this Age. I know you won't tell anyone. I don't plan to, but this situation is beyond the pale." His laughter died on his lips. "He is dangerous, not because he's an Aurus, but because of what we both know he'll do now that he's crossed a line — or worse, why he's decided to. What he plans to do. Adara, I can't get through our connection," Yuven said, his anger boiling over in his veins. "What do you think that band is for? Excess fabric?" Tears stung at the corners of his eyes. "It's woven at the Elder Convocation. Think."

Adara went wide-eyed. "...how long?"

"I don't know. They move at their own pace. It could be they're coming now... or they'll wait until it's opportune, unless he took it off before he did what he did, I'm not holding my breath," Yuven said. "Do not go chasing after him. Regardless of our relationship with him, he is dangerous because he has just become unpredictable, that is just fact. We need to get Neven on the boat before taking any rushed action."

"Are you going to hide it from him?"

Yuven shook his head. "I just need to think."

"Yuven, we don't have time!" Adara followed him. "He is your friend, are you just going to abandon him?"

"I'm trying to piece together why he'd do this," Yuven said, the pressure in his head mounting.

"I told you."

Yuven shook his head. "No, no there's more to it," he muttered, with only the barest relief at her footsteps following him. "It's a part of it, but not why. Not why he'd take such drastic measures. If he thought I wasn't doing anything—what did he expect me to do?" It tore through his throat as the shadows stretched over from the rise of the sun. "We almost lost Neven, our Guardian. The person who saved us both when the world would've abandoned us. I needed to think, I just needed time," he said, turning to her, and she slowed to a stop. "But this is what happens when I let myself have it." It sent a hot flash through his arms, and he sped into the treehouse, making sure Adara followed before locking the door behind her. "...so, you are not going to follow him. Not yet."

"He's going to get farther away."

"He's not defenseless."

"That's not the point," she rasped.

Yuven bumped his brow against the door; nothing more than cold stone when he lifted his eyes up into the stars. Fenrer stood in front of him, eyes downcast. "Fenrer, why?" he rasped, one last time. "Why? You know the price of what you've just done!" He punched the space between, unable to crack it even with his storied power. "Why couldn't you wait?"

Fenrer lifted his gaze. Crimson bled along the greens when he shook his head. Slowly. He let out a silent sigh, then, hand retracted to pull him into the embrace of the light, turned his back and disappeared into the darkness, stretching the stars between thin. Yuven held on tight to the boundary, but found himself digging his fingers into wood without the strength to turn them into splinters. "Godsdamnit," he forced out. "Adara, just go lay down. Let the effects wash out and think with a clearer mind."

"Yuven—"

"I'm not asking."

"Yuven, you can't—"

"I can and I am," he snapped, twisting to her. "We are going to wait for that boat. We are going to get the Storm Wardens on it. Then we can go after him."

"It might be too late by then."

Yuven took a step for her. Away from the darkness. Into the silver light. "...I told you," he whispered. "That this world is cruel."

Adara's pained expression stiffened, then turned into fiery, tempered steel when she met him head on, no longer the shaken women he first met. No longer the uncertain magickae afraid of her own power. "...and you told me that despite that, you still fight for it, and so does he, because someone has to. Someone has to face that cruelty and bring hope to this world, even if thankless and results in death. So, Yuven, if you don't act in time, I will follow Fenrer whether you like it or not. We made a deal. That Oath song wasn't one way, Yuven. You don't decide that alone now." Adara's nostrils flared. "So you don't get to break it."

In the cell of icy stone, a shade of a white-haired princess knelt to him, drowning in grief when she showed her a portrait.

Oathbreaker. Traitor. 

"He died because he wasn't willing to forsake you." 

Neven held the wall of ice firm against the crimson bolts while he remained trapped in the chains of royalty.

"He was willing to break his oath to save his family."

Neven sat beside him, with himself too afraid of the dark to move. "Don't worry," the young Warden said though he decried him a suspicious, untrustworthy beast. "I'll protect you."

Me, a child he had never even met. And what did it lead to? What did it lead to but the destruction of our family, of you, of your little crowned peacock of a king?  What did it lead to but the death of so many?

Yuven dug his teeth into his knuckle the moment Adara turned on her heel and stomped up the steps. 

Gods, how am I going to tell Neven without him dying from the stress?