Chapter Text
Part I
Before the Dawn
I say that the tomb that closes upon the dead
opens the heavenly hall;
And that what we here below take for the end
is the beginning
[Victor Hugo, À Villequier]
Chapter 01: A High Destiny
A high destiny seemed to bear me on
until I fell, never, never again to rise.
[Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein]
It starts as it will end: in darkness.
Black dots dance in front of your eyes, merging into dark shadows clawing at your consciousness. A dull throb pounds in your temple, a steady rhythm that speaks of life but isn’t enough to let you be aware of your surroundings. Memory is a foreign word you can’t explain, and trying to think of the past 24 hours is an unachievable task. Every glimpse slips through your fingers like sand, and the only steady reference point is the solid ground pressing into your hands and back.
Slowly, you open your eyes. Treetops dance in the wind, towering above you like silent guardians of ancient times. The sun winks at you through thick branches and dancing green crowns, indicating it is long past daybreak—but how do you know? Your memory is still a vast pool with no bottom and no means to dive into, and yet you think there is a voice calling out to you, a heart-wrenching young, boyish voice—no, those are real voices ringing through the woods, drawing closer to you. Alarmingly close.
“You’re awake,” a woman’s voice starts, moments later followed by a corresponding face. Round, lavender eyes surrounded by thick, white lashes peak from above at you, blinking curiously. It is an expression far from friendly, but not exactly hostile either, and of all the things you can think of at this moment, it is how strikingly beautiful she is. But before you can say anything, another person joins, leaning too close in for comfort.
“You got us worried there, stranger,” a young man chimes in, squatting down beside you. His uniform isn’t exactly what you’d call fit for travelling through the woods. A heavy yellow cape falls over his shoulder, more fanciful display than practical use. But something in his posture seems very attentive, his broad shoulders taut like a drawn bowstring that won’t miss its target. “Weird place to take a nap, but hey, I’m not judging.”
“I wasn’t—,” you begin, but you are interrupted by a throbbing pain behind your right eye that reverberates through your skull and wretches a groan from you.
“Take it easy,” another voice joins, and panic spreads through you. Why are there so many people here? Where the first man is a picture of warm colours—gold and sun kissed skin nourished on warm summer days, the other man observing you with a worried expression is clad in blue and black, blond hair falling into a pale face that carries the most striking blue eyes you have ever seen. Or so you think, because surely a colour like this, a blue stolen right out of the sky, would not be easily forgotten.
More movement comes from the woods, fabric rustles. A chill settles in your bones as you begin to fear that you have run into a bunch of ruffians who have only kept you alive for so long because they are hoping for valuable information. More people emerge from the underbrush, carrying large sacks and backpacks with billycans dangling at their sides. Among them, a tall man with a beard, clad in robust mercenary’s gear, steps forward, concealing another young woman with sharp features and unusual greenish blue hair.
The sight of her strikes you like a bolt. It tastes like familiarity and the relief of being reunited with a long lost friend. But that is impossible. This is the first time you have met her.
Is it?
“You brats, I told you not to head off too far,” the older man bellows, crossing logs for arms in front of his broad chest. The first three take one big, polite step away from you, but don’t look apologetic at all.
“I am sorry for our hastiness, Captain Jeralt,” the girl says, her eyes darting from you still sitting on the ground to him towering in his full height above them. “But it seems we would have otherwise not found this person.”
“This person who wasn’t really much conscious a couple of minutes ago,” the boy in yellow adds with a crooked grin. “How bad would it have been if someone else would have beaten us to it?”
“No need to make me look like the bad guy,” Captain Jeralt interrupts with a raised hand before the boy in blue can join his friends’ justifications. Instead, he turns to you and regards you with a scrutinising look.
“What are you doing out here?” he demands. “Where’s your family? Friends?”
“Uhm, they’re—,” you start, but nothing comes to your mind. Not only that. You don’t know why you are out here, where you are exactly … and basically anything about your own person remains shrouded in darkness. “I don’t know.”
Jeralt nods like that explains the very reason you are still sitting on the ground like a misplaced cargo of cabbage. He kneads the nape of his neck, his face softening the tiniest bit. “And what’s your name?”
Unable to hold his piercing eyes, you drop your gaze to the ground, curling your trembling fingers into the fabric of your wool jacket. “I, uh… I don’t know.”
If you thought you didn’t have their attention before, now their eyes are glued to your face in different levels of shock and disbelief.
“A case of amnesia?” the blond male says, not quite managing to achieve the right balance between blatant curiosity and polite worry. “Does this mean you have nowhere to go? Don’t know where to go?”
“Goddess help you, Dimitri,” the other boy groans, running a hand through his short, brown hair. “Be any more tactless, will ya?”
“He isn’t wrong,” the girl says, observing you like you are a fascinating new specimen in her collection of strange things. “You need a place to stay. And help until your memories return.”
If they return, you don’t dare to say because despite all things, hope still clings to you in the deepest corner of your heart, not allowing you to follow that train of thought and what it might mean for your future.
“Then by all means, if you want to join,” Jeralt says, waving a dismissive hand in your direction. “I don’t think you kids will accept a No, so I’m going to save my breath.” He turns around with a grunt. “Get them your horse, Byleth. We’re late as it is, and another night of Alois talking my ears off will make me do something I’ll regret.”
The woman called Byleth keeps staring at you even as Jeralt walks past her and gives her shoulder a solid clap. You can’t say if she is mute or just speechless because the same strange overflowing sensation fills her as well—like a basin filling with water but unable to drain off. It appears you are the same age, a couple of years older than the other three but still much younger than Jeralt, and yet the moment your eyes lock it feels as if there is something far older than any of you together passing between you. Something ancient.
“Well, first off, on your feet, little one.” Strong hands curl around your elbows, hoisting you up in one swift movement. A wave of dizziness hits you like an unavoidable spell, and the pounding from before settles back behind your right eye.
“Amazing, Claude,” the girl hisses, and quickly steps forward to steady you, pressing one hand against the small of your back where her strong fingers curl against the curve of your spine. Her other hand gently holds yours as she helps you regain your balance. “Excuse his manners. I promise not everyone from the Officers Academy behaves like a brute.”
“The what?” you ask, hit by another wave of dizziness that might originate more from the girl’s soft lavender fragrance rather than the world spinning around you.
“The Officers Academy at Garreg Mach Monastery,” Dimitri provides this time. His posture is straight like an arrow, the stance of a soldier speaking to his officer. “That is where we attend as students and hence are going right now.”
“And you want me to come with you?” you ask like you have the option to refuse and go somewhere else. Strangely, the thought of joining a group of armed knights and mercenaries doesn’t fill you with fear or anxiety. You are about to tread into foreign waters, and yet your heart is calm like a still compass guiding you in the right direction.
Claude clasps his hands behind his head like he bears no responsibility for you feeling unwell at the moment. “Unless you have another place to be?”
Luckily, your head does come clear and breathing becomes a little easier. You nod to the girl and she holds you a second longer before she nods back and lets go. “I guess not,” you mumble, looking at each one of them. Byleth still hasn’t moved. By now you can’t really tell if she is looking at you or through you. Surely, she would have said something by now if she thought you were familiar, right?
“Then it is settled.” The girl nods solemnly, throwing her silky, white hair over her shoulder. “We welcome you in our company. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to the Adrestian Empire.” Edelgard gives you a tight-lipped smile that quickly thins into a white line when the other two introduce themselves as Claude von Riegan, grandson of the Sovereign Duke of the Leicester Alliance and Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, future king to the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. None of these names ring a bell to you, but you nod, pretending to know exactly what they are talking about.
“Okay, we need a name for you as well,” Claude proposes, tapping a slender finger against his chin. He has a strikingly sharp jaw that looks fit to cut stone. “Can’t have everyone call you stranger or little one now, can we?”
“No,” you say. “Especially since we are about the same height.”
Claude laughs like you just told him the best joke he has heard in years. “Soo, since we found you here … how about Glade? Or Woody?”
“How about no,” you say with furrowed eyebrows.
“Apologies.” Edeglard sighs and shakes her head, her expression a mix between disappointment and annoyance. “Claude isn’t much accustomed to the notion of consideration.”
Claude rolls his eyes. “Then you come up with something, princess. Or is it impossible because you can’t take out the stick up your—”
“Claude,” Dimitri half shrieks, his pale cheeks splotched with red dots. As he stumbles over his own words trying to apologise for Claude’s behaviour, Edelgard simply deadpans, “Bold words for someone in stabbing range.”
The fourth in this round of strange people considers you with a blank expression, her steady gaze like a solid touch on your skin. Before a greater argument can break free between the students, Byleth says a name with a surety as if she has never said anything else in her life—as if this name is the only one that has ever mattered, the only syllable that holds any meaning to her. Hearing it, this barely whispered word immediately lost to the wind, you just know it is your name.
Dimitri nods. “That is much better than what Claude proposed.” He has regained his composure even though he is still staring daggers at Claude. “It sounds more civilised as well.”
“You didn’t even suggest anything,” Claude remarks, but the huff of annoyance quickly dissipates from his voice when he jerks a thumb towards Byleth. “That’s Byleth by the way. Funny story is, we met her just a couple of hours ago as well.”
“Fate must have brought us together here today,” Dimitri agrees with a solemn nod. “I swear on my honour as a noble knight from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus that I will see you safe to the Monastery. Lady Rhea will surely be able to help you there.”
“Okay. Thank you,” you manage, unable to conjure a familiar face to the name. Your head feels like it is about to burst any moment from allthe titles and names swirling in confusing circles.
The only course of action lies within those strangers who are so willingly offering help that you can’t stop worrying that it might be a ruse. But without anything to offer them except your life, there is little coming to your mind that they could anticipate from you. The fact that Byleth knew your name doesn’t sit right with you as well. There is something waiting to be grasped at the tips of your fingers, and yet you lack the strength to embrace it.
Following the little group of soldiers and students through the woods, you remain silent on the journey, only answering questions with approving or denying hums. How did you end up in this particular forest? According to Jeralt, you are currently moving away from a village called Remire and towards the mountains to the northeast where the monastery lies tucked away between two mountains. Judging from the clothes you are wearing, you are a commoner, and when Edelgard pushed a slim dagger in your hand, nothing rang in intuitive knowledge about how to handle a weapon. Your mind remained silent, like an untouched chord.
There is little you can say about the first impression these people left on you. There seems to be a unanimous dispute between the three students, hanging palpable in the air whenever an argument starts that is pregnant with implied insults or passive-aggressive comments. From that you gather there is tension between the governing fractions in Fódlan, something else you hve learnt from listening to them squabbling.
Byleth and Jeralt acknowledge their bickering as if it were flies buzzing around their heads. They keep more to themselves and their mercenary comrades, indicating they are really as much of strangers to the students as you. Their conversations are a lot quieter as well, their heads leaning close together to conjure the illusion of privacy. More than once you notice Byleth sneaking glances in your direction, and every time you lock eyes, there is something close to comprehension when she looks at you. The further you march through the woods, the less you try to meet her gaze. Reaching the monastery is the first step to regain who you are, or so you hope, because the opposite would mean you will continue stumbling through the darkness with no lead to your past or why you are in this particular part of Fódlan. You can only hope that this Rhea person really will be able to help you.
A sound from the underbrush cuts through your thoughts.
Thinking it might be an animal, you don’t let it bother you too much. No one else seems to have heard it, so maybe it was just your imagination. But your brain refuses to let it rest, and fails to push it away from your mind because something about the sound doesn’t seem to be right. The more you try to focus on it though, the blurrier it gets; the less you understand its origin.
Then, you hear a voice from within the woods. It sounds like a slurred whisper.
“What was that?” You stop in the middle of the road, looking around the thick trees. Claude barely manages to avoid walking into you.
“What was what?” he asks.
“There’s something there.” Unable to explain further, you wave your hand around for emphasis.
He looks at your hand, incomprehension written all over his face. “And that something is what exactly?”
“I don’t know.” You wave your hand wilder. “But I don’t have a good feeling about venturing further.”
“You may be still tired,” Edelgard offers, not hiding her irritation that the journey stopped. “It won’t be long until we reach Garreg Mach. You can rest however long you need inside the monastery’s infirmary.”
“I’m not tired,” you hiss, hand falling back to your side where it clenches into a fist. “I just really don’t think we should go further for now.”
“And why is that?” Dimitri enquires. He raises a hand and the soldiers following them come to a halt, a murmur of unrest breathing through their lines. It is just enough that you question if it would be better to play if off and admit your mind played tricks on you due to exhaustion.
But whenever you blink, a red veil falls over your right eye, blurring your surroundings. Little red dots move slowly in the distance through the forest. If you didn’t know better, you wouldd say it is some sort of life form far away, slowly advancing on your position. “Because someone is coming,” you finally manage, scratching the thin skin below your irritated eye that has started twitching slightly. “Someone is coming towards us from the southwest. And I can’t say if they are friendly or not.”
Three pairs of eyes consider you like you have grown a second head. Only Byleth stares into the woods as if she might find the strangers you are talking about waiting behind the trees if she just looks hard enough.
“Little one, are you sure this isn’t just an after-effect from you hitting your head?” Claude offers, squinting into the woods. You are certain he is staring directly at the moving dots but for whatever reason cannot see them.
“Unless amnesia is suddenly another term for going crazy, I don’t think so.” At least you hope it.
A whistle echoes through the canopy of trees. Byleth snaps her head in the direction of the sound, growing tense. She raises her hand into a tight fist, and all movement stills behind you. When you turn around, you see the mercenaries waiting in the underbrush like a flock of crows ready to swoop down on their prey. Jeralt breaks away from them and approaches Byleth, a frown cutting a deep wrinkle into his forehead.
“Bandits,” he says, and quickly signs a hand gesture to the nearest bowman. He nods and disappears between the trees. “Another mile away. If we stay on this road, we’ll walk right into them.”
“Seven hundred feet, actually,” you blurt. Jeralt looks at you like you are a cockroach under his boot. Another whistle cuts through the woods, one long followed quickly by two short. Byleth exhales audibly, and only now you notice she has moved to stand beside you. “Seven hundred feet,” she mutters, her eyes fixed on you.
Jeralt tenses. “How do you know, kid?”
“I don’t know,” you mumble towards your boots. “I just see.”
There is an uncomfortable silence falling around you, and you are too afraid to look up and read distrust in their eyes.
“Does it matter?” Claude finally breaks the silence, sliding his bow from his shoulder. “They won’t be a problem with the knights and mercenaries on our side.” He jerks his chin towards Byleth, already plugging an arrow from his quiver. “You should really see her fight.”
“Wait,” you say, reflexively reaching for the hem of his cape. “Don’t engage them yet.”
Claude stops, one eyebrow arched up in a curve. “Beg your pardon?”
“They come from the woods. Which means this is their hunting ground and they have the advantage. They have dozens of archers. I think they’re waiting until you reach a glade. And then open fire.”
“Which means we’ll end up as skewers.” Claude scratches his chin and twirls the arrow between his slender fingers. “I can think of better ways to shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Dimitri perks up. “You’ve read the Tale of Hamelot I gave you?”
“I’ll give it a six out of ten. His soliloquies were awful.”
“Boys.” Edelgard snaps her fingers impatiently as Dimitri opens his mouth to protest. “Not the time.” She takes your wrist and pulls it away from Claude’s cape, her hard gaze like a sharp knife. “Are we simply ignoring the fact that we have someone in our midst knowing the enemy’s movement and deployment?” she cuts in harshly. “Is this a plan to lure us into an ambush?”
“You think someone would give away their comrades’ position just like that?” Claude eyes her wearily. “Don’t be so suspicious of everyone.”
She glares at him. “I’d rather be suspicious than dead.”
Which is a valid point and a trait you willingly admit to share with her, but that doesn’t solve the problem at hand. Luckily, Dimitri seems to think the same. He doesn’t unfasten the spear on his back yet, but his fingers dance swiftly over the handle, immediately resting on where he can easily pull it from the straps if needed to strike down an enemy. “The fact is enemies that are approaching,” he concludes, looking at his fellow students in search for a consensual ceasefire. “We must put an end to them before they target defenceless travellers on their way out of the forest.”
“Spoken like a true crowd-pleaser,” Claude says, either unable or not caring to hide the mock in his voice. “We can resolve our new friend’s condition after we take down the enemy.”
“I don’t agree with this,” Edelgard declares, but nonetheless unclasps the double-bit axe from her back and swings it onto her shoulder like it weighs nothing. “But I accept that this is a more pressing issue.” The ease in the movement robs your lungs of air, and even though there are more important matters to focus on, you wonder how her muscles play under her black uniform swinging around a thing like that. Your admiration comes to a quick end when Jeralt and Byleth close the circle. Her hand rests on the hilt of a short blade as she scans the underbrush, her body rigid with the anticipation for battle.
“Let them come to us,” Jeralt announces. “Let them think they have the advantage.”
“Your knights over there move slower through the woods,” you say, gesturing at the waiting men and women clad in heavy armour and armed with shields. “But their amour can resist some stray arrows coming down on us. It’s the rearguard that will take them by surprise from another direction and—”
“And charge their flank or rear to finish them off,” Jeralt ends with a crude nod. “Indirect approach. I was thinking about that as well.”
Your mouth goes dry. The idea plopped seemingly out of nowhere in your mind, but yes, now that you think about it, that is the indirect approach tactic, first recorded after the Battle of Nicaea in … Faerghus? Or was it Adrestia? The picture in your mind is still blurry, but now you can make out definite lines of objects: Books with drawn pictures of pointing arrows and coloured lines, each lettered with a name or an approach in a neat handwriting that isn’t yours. The picture triggers another wave of dizziness, disappearing as fast as it appeared.
“They’re going to faint in three, two, one…” Claude’s voice rips you back to the present. You glare at him and raise a fist to show how close to fainting you really are. He only laughs as if you are merely a child trying to impress an adult.
“Enough, brats. Get into position!” Jeralt bellows, and the students scatter with a bouncing step in all their strides as they take the lead of a small unit.
You are about to retreat to the furthest point away from battle when Jeralt blocks the way. “Not you. You’re going with Byleth.”
“I’m what?”
“Byleth,” Jeralt nods to the young woman ahead of you, “will be the commanding unit and you’ll help her.”
The world tilts a little as panic takes hold of you. “I can’t. I don’t know how to fight.”
“You seem to know enough to plan a counterattack.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Your voice sounds horribly piercing even to your own ears. “It was just a lucky guess.”
“I don’t know what the deal is with you,” Jeralt says with a finality to his voice that doesn’t allow objection, and this time you clearly see the head of a mercenary guild, one that gives commands with every breath. “But that wasn’t a lucky guess. You see what it takes to win a battle. So, guide them.”
He turns around sharply and leaves, not bothering to check if you plan to abandon them.
This is madness. You should abandon these people, should flee from the fight that will demand blood and death.
One, two, three … six steps and you are standing beside Byleth, taking deep breaths. It doesn’t help. She eyes you sideways with a raised brow, and you flinch at the metallic rasping sound as she draws her sword.
“I shouldn’t be here,” you mumble, staring into the woods. The red dots are approaching faster, forming into more recognisable features of humans. “I’m going to die. Without knowing who I am or why I’m here. This is the worst day of my life. I think. I don’t know. It has to be.”
Byleth hums beside you. You can’t tell if it is a thoughtful or an affirmative hum. “This might sound crazy, but I do trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” you say, struck by a sudden fear that this all is a fever dream and you are about to lead them into ruin. It is enough that you don’t even notice this is the first time you two are talking to each other since your meeting.
Byleth studies you out of the corner of her eyes, then says, “A very persistent voice inside me tells me I shouldn’t.”
“That’s your survival instinct. Listen to it.”
“Yeah,” Byleth says, and there’s something like a faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips. You blink and it's gone. “I might do that.”
You don’t understand what reason she has to smile. There is no time to think about it as silence settles, only occasionally disturbed by a bird chirping away in the trees above you.
“So what exactly do you see?” Byleth whispers after a moment, barely shifting in her crouching position. You on the other hand really want to move your legs before they go numb.
“I don’t know why you guys even believe me,” you mumble, and pinch the bridge of your nose with your fingers, trying to stave off another rush of dizziness. “And I don’t understand it myself. It’s the opponent, in a way. I see their strengths and weaknesses, their armour and weapons. It’s like … it’s like the flow of battle is displayed in front of me.”
Byleth hesitates a moment, then nods as if everything is pretty much self-explanatory. You wonder if to her it really does sound plausible. She is someone who is practically born in battle, a daughter to a mercenary who breathes battle and fighting. Before you can explain anything further, she ducks more into the bushes and silences you with a sharp hush, her body tensed. The first bandits approach the glade, their bows and arrows ready to strike as the Academy’s knights engage them.
Swords and axes clash against each other, battle cries ring through the woods. Byleth gestures to you to follow her, and out of the corner of your eyes you see the students do the same, moving around the bandits. From the distance, you notice Claude gesturing wildly. It is a mix between pointing at himself and then at the space a couple of feet away from his unit, and though you are unable to fully comprehend it, you shake your head. He gives a thumbs up and slows down until he halts inside the thick cover of ferns.
Just when you reach the right angle, Byleth looks back at you, waiting for your approval, and after briefly hesitating, you signal with a short nod to attack. Edelgard is the first to emerge from the underbrush. She has a dancer’s grace and a seemingly unerring instinct for what her opponent will do next. Her axe cuts through the first bandits who are too surprised to regroup in time. Dimitri and Claude are quick to follow her. The crown prince of Faerghus wields his weapon of choice like he has never done anything else in his entire life. The spear is the instrument to a deadly song they know by heart, and whoever stands in the way of their melody is cut down swiftly. Claude doesn’t disappoint with his steady aim either, his eyes sharper than an eagle’s. He nocks his bow, draws and impales a bandit that has been running toward a mercenary with a crooked nose and eye patch. The mercenary gives him an offhand salute and goes back to fighting a thug twice his size.
And then there’s Byleth. At first you don’t see her as the battle’s chaos swallows her and she disappears between moving bodies. But once your eyes catch up to her again, it is hard to look away. Byleth moves through the enemy’s lines like an avenging angel on a mission. Her sword arm causes havoc as it conducts the tact of death’s complicated choreography and one by one the bandits fall to her deadly dance. Strangely, what describes it the best, you think, is divine.
The battle is almost over. The last bandits fall or flee back into the woods as they abandon their comrades who lay down their weapons and yield. A miserable sound of relief escapes you when you see the end nearing with little casualties on your side, thanking whoever watches over you and guides your weapons in victory.
That is until you see something, and at first you aren’t really sure you see it. Veiled by a red haze, a gruesome scene unfolds before you: As Byleth is focused on helping a soldier back up on his feet, a bandit strikes her from behind, wedging a dagger through her spine and right into her heart. When you blink, the scene is gone and with it the red veil covering your surroundings.
You don’t think twice. Jumping out of your hiding spot, you quickly recognise what will be Byleth’s murderer. Only he never gets the chance to approach her. With everything you have, you charge into him and send him flying to the ground, you on top of him. The bandit groans, groggily turning on his back to see what struck him, and before you can start to fear for your own dear life, Byleth is beside you and rams her sword into his throat, silencing him forever.
She looks down at you and you feel like she knows what just happened. The reason why you jumped in. It is written in those keen, piercing eyes that speak of an unimaginable wisdom. She reaches a hand out to help you up, and when you stand, the last bandits have been secured and the chaos has finally settled. That is when the throbbing pain in your right eye doubles you over, the pain akin to a pinprick of ice hammering into your skull. The pain makes you sick as stars explode behind your closed eyes, and the more they dance in feverish circles, the harder you press your hands against your eyelids, trying to smother the pain by pressure. It doesn’t work.
Unable to breathe properly, you stumble, and when you move your hands, your fingers smear something warm and wet across your cheeks.
Someone takes in a sharp breath. “Your eye,” Byleth whispers, a hand raised but remaining hanging in the air like she is unsure if it is okay to touch you. In the background, you hear someone calling out you’re bleeding, and it takes a few seconds to understand where you’re bleeding from. Your right eye weeps blood when the pain finally knocks you out, darkness falling onto everything.