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Dan Heng has been through enough to know when he is being watched. The three of them have been watched ever since they stepped foot into Okhema and into Aglaea’s golden web, and they are watched wherever in the city they go - by curious children, conniving merchants, and suspicious civilians. This much is true. However, Dan Heng also has a separate, distinct feeling that tells him that someone else is keeping an eye on him specifically.
What’s more, it isn’t always the same person. But, usually, it’s one of three: Anaxa, Castorice, or Phainon.
He can tell the difference between them, too. Anaxa’s stares are piercing, almost burning, like the professor is trying to dissect him by sight alone, but still subtle. Castorice is quiet, subtle; her expression is searching, and she glances away as soon as she notices him looking back. Phainon’s are much more obvious, but much less aggressive, yet heavy all the same. None are threatening, but all are searching.
Once, it’s Mydei. His stare is solid, steady, and doesn’t relent even when Dan Heng turns around to meet his eye. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get a chance to confront him about it before the prince sets off on his long journey home.
Anyway, the issue seems unimportant in comparison to everything else they’ve got going on. The twins squabble and then decide to take on Oronyx’s trial together, disappearing into the Vortex of Genesis hand-in-hand. When they both crash back out onto solid ground, they’re out cold, and everything is a blur. Mem tries to explain, and Dan Heng feels nauseous as she does.
Stelle and Caelus are both dead. He hadn’t imagined the blood, or the fading light of the Stellaron fragments when the shard that pierced Stelle’s chest opened an identical wound in Caelus’s. The twins had been huddled together like young children when he himself recovered from the impact… he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the sight. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget struggling to pull their limp bodies from the flaming wreckage.
Hyacine arrives quickly when called and examines them. They don’t have heartbeats, but their bodies are chugging along nonetheless. She asks Phainon to help Dan Heng bring them back to their room and follows them there, leaving the triplets and Aglaea to discuss the issue with Okhema’s mortician.
The twins keep clinging to each other’s hands in their sleep, faces scrunching when they have to be separated to be carried back. Phainon slings Stelle carefully over his shoulder, and Dan Heng pulls Caelus’s arm around his neck. Hyacine follows them back, face creased in deep thought.
“Fifteen entry hours,” She murmured. “The same time limit as Professor Anaxa. It’s as if the Titans are playing cruel tricks on us.”
“Don’t worry, Hyacine.” Phainon has to physically kick the door open, since his arms are occupied. “Lady Aglaea already looked as if she had a plan, and I’m sure Castorice will know what to do. We still have to find Thanatos as well, anyway. It’ll be like killing two birds with one stone.”
Or like killing two Trailblazers with one spear from the sky, Dan Heng can’t help himself from thinking.
They push two lounge chairs close together and lay the twins down. In their sleep, they reach for each other again, and Hyacine smiles softly at them both. Dan Heng finds himself watching her for a little longer than necessary before turning his attention back to them.
“There isn’t much I can do,” She says after a moment. “But they will definitely wake up soon, Dannie. So don’t look so down, alright?”
He nods, finding that he is without words. Hyacine and Phainon both leave soon after, but not before Dan Heng notices the Deliverer watching him again.
When the twins wake up, it is with just the same ridiculous grins as usual, and though they are clearly shaken, they’re also raring to go. Dan Hen stays with them for a little longer before they are to meet with the Servant of Death and plan their next steps, cherishing the sound of their bickering over who will wield the lance and who will wield the baseball bat for this trip.
When the argument peters out, Stelle suddenly turns to him with interest and asks, “So what are you gonna do while we’re gone, Dan Heng? Wait for us to come back?”
“I’m heading to the Grove,” He says. “There might be information in their records that is useful to us.”
Caelus snorts. “Typical. He’s still thinking about the Data Bank.”
“I’m thinking that we need more information on the Titan that shot our train car down,” He shoots back. “Hyacine said that there was plenty of research done into Aquila and the nature of the sky. We might be able to find out how to leave this planet. What’s more, your predicament might not be completely unique, and there might be—”
The twins clearly aren’t listening to him, because as soon as he said Hyacine’s name, they looked at each other with devilish smiles. Dan Heng doesn’t even want to know what they’re saying to each other with their eyes, but he asks anyway.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” says Stelle casually.
“Don’t mind us,” adds Caelus.
He narrows his eyes at them, but he has a feeling that they’ll just use their impending perma-death as a weapon if he presses, so he doesn’t. He sees them off when they head to the Garden of Life to meet Castorice, and takes a moment for himself before he goes to meet Hyacine out on the Path of Parting.
And suddenly he has the feeling again. Someone is watching him.
But, this time, they don’t disappear. The Deliverer walks up to him with a smile.
“Phainon,” Dan Heng acknowledges. “I thought you’d be with Lady Aglaea. Stelle and Caelus are meeting you next, aren’t they?”
“It’s to do with that, actually,” Phainon says, still smiling. “Anaxa is planning something, but we don’t know what, exactly. Lady Aglaea wanted to put in a request that you investigate some of his things for hints while you’re in the Grove. Hyacine knows where he keeps everything, so it shouldn’t be hard.”
“Yes, I’m sure we can do that.” Dan Heng can’t help but notice the strange way that Phainon hovers in front of him. “Is that all?”
“Not quite. I have a request of my own. Actually, this is a request from all of the Chrysos Heirs proper.” Phainon fixes him with a serious stare and finally stops staring. “...take care of Hyacine. She’s strong, but… she’s the type who hides her grief. The Grove is going to be full of memories. So, please be tactful with her.”
Dan Heng returns his stare for a moment and finally begins to get an inkling of why Phainon has been watching him. “...you have my word.”
Phainon relaxes and claps him on the shoulder. “Thank you, Dan Heng. Stay safe on your journey. I’d better get back to the baths - don’t want to keep Aglaea waiting.”
He nods slowly and watches Phainon leave.
Hmm.
In the Grove, Dan Heng finds himself at a loss for words. The black tide has ravaged everything beyond recognition - enough that he, who has never seen it in its prime, can still feel the awful, gaping void in all the spaces that should have been busy and full of life.
He looks up at the sacred tree. If he had a piece of jade for every time he’s come across a giant tree of divine power, he’d have two pieces of jade. Which isn’t much, but it’s strange that it’s happened twice. The Ambrosial Arbor feels so far away now.
So does Penacony. So does the Express itself, in a way. Time seems to have curled its neck around him and fallen asleep, like a dragon around a treasure. As it snoozes, precious memories of their journey drift further into the past.
“What are you thinking about, Dannie?”
He starts a little. Hyacine is smiling up at him, and he wonders how many times she’s watched new visitors to the Grove see the divine tree for the first time.
“Just… amazed, I suppose.”
“You aren’t amazed at all,” Hyacine says knowingly, and he realises with a start that he misread the smile on her face. She does surprise him sometimes. “Have you seen something like this before on your travels?”
“Something like that.” He finds that he doesn’t mind admitting it. “A piece of the past. I’ll spare you the details.”
“I won’t spare you mine, though,” She grins, placing a hand on a great root sprouting from the ground beside her. “I first saw Cerces when I was barely tall enough to reach my grandmother’s hip. I looked up from down by the groundmost root and dreamt of climbing the great tree one day.”
“Did you?”
She pretends to look around for eavesdroppers, then leans in and says conspiratorially, “I did, but don’t tell anyone. It’s against Grove rules - it’s almost a little blasphemous. But Professor Anaxa said that surely the Reason Titan wouldn’t care about something so trivial, so he wouldn’t bother to report it if I were to use his office window as a step-up. To this day, it’s still the closest I’ve been to the sky.”
There is a look of longing on her face - like a bird whose wings have been clipped. Dan Heng almost feels the need to hold his breath.
“...anyway, we aren’t in too much of a rush yet, so take your time investigating,” Hyacine adds. “Let’s head down. Feel free to investigate anything that catches your eye along the way, Dannie.”
She carefully avoids looking at the ravages of the black tide as they walk, and Dan Heng has no interest in drawing her attention to it. He asks her quiet questions about herself and answers truthfully when she does the same about him.
He finds out that she is a descendant of the Skyfolk who once lived above the clouds and worshipped Aquila. Hyacine learns a little about the strange political system on the Xianzhou Luofu. She shares an anecdote about one of Phainon’s more disastrous antics during lectures at the Grove. Dan Heng tells her vaguely about an old reunion between friends.
Hyacine describes the Twilight Courtyard to him, telling him about the garden she worked so hard on, about the stained glass decorations and the windchimes, about how she could forget the prophecy for as long as she lay there in the flower-perfumed grass. It sounds beautiful.
She stops on a platform just before the main body of the Grove and stares affectionately up at the tree spreading its great branches overhead. Dan Heng stops and doesn’t push her. This place is her home, and it has been killed in the worst way. He thinks he owes it to her to let her take her time to grieve.
Clearly he has underestimated her, though, because Hyacine’s face is serene when she turns back to him. “...the divine tree took good care of me while I was a student of the Grove. So did all the scholars. Reason has never treated me any different because I’m a follower of the sky.”
And Cerces lives on, in some way, inside Anaxa - but not for long. Hyacine seems to be thinking the same thing, and suddenly urgency returns to her demeanour.
“I’ll go check the scholars’ records,” She says, pointing up a detour to the right. “Dannie, you go ahead to the Library of Philia. It’s a lot easier to navigate for anyone who hasn’t been here before.”
“Are you sure…?” The trek here has been uneventful, but there still might well be black tide monsters about. “It might be best if I accompany you.”
“Have you no faith in me, Dannie?” She asks playfully. “We need to cover as much ground as possible. We’d better get going.”
Hyacine smiles in the face of everything. She is smiling when he comes across her cornered by the black tide monsters. She is smiling as he plunges his spear deep into the corrupted corpse of someone she may have once known, and she is smiling as she wipes the dark splatter from the skirt of her dress.
The sight of it reassures just as much as it pains him.
Hyacine even smiles when she learns that Anaxagoras is dead.
“Oh,” is all she says when Phainon breaks the news to her, wringing his hands and clearly pushing himself hard to maintain eye contact.
“Hyacine?” Dan Heng asks - softly, privately, trying to gauge whether or not he needs to get her away from here. He waits for her expression to break, for her knees to buckle.
People grieve in all sorts of different ways. He’s studied them before - offered platitudes to tight smiles and dull eyes, hovered awkwardly at arms’ length and attempted to provide words of comfort while they sobbed. He’s never had to stand and watch uselessly as a smile freezes on someone’s face, losing its light.
“Oh,” She says again, her voice smaller this time, and that’s all it takes for Phainon to step forward and pull her into a hug. Her smile disappears into the front of his coat as he draws her close, his own shoulders trembling just a little.
Dan Heng’s chest tightens. Phainon holds Hyacine for a long moment, and when he finally pulls away her smile has finally faded. Dan Heng feels terrible for being relieved.
“He, um… gave this to me after the meeting at Dawncloud. Told me I would know when to give it to you.” Phainon swipes a palm across his face, then holds out a dark envelope. “...here.”
When she only stares at it numbly, his arm shakes a little, and he pleads, “Please… please take it, Hyacine.”
Finally, she reaches out and lets him press it into her hands without a word. Dan Heng doesn’t recognise the wax seal, but she clearly does. She runs her thumb around its border with an achingly bitter look in her eyes.
“You stupid, selfish professor,” She mumbles. “You knew you weren’t going to say goodbye.”
To my ever-beleaguered assistant, Hyacinthia—
I write this on the fourteenth Entry Hour from the destruction of the Grove, from the guest room that Lady Goldweaver has deigned to grant me. At this moment, you are away investigating the Grove with the outlander named Dan Heng. I have not had the opportunity to speak with you at length, and I have written this letter in the likely event that we will not meet again after this. I do not and will not hold this against you. Your duties come first.
Were you able to question me, I am sure you would have discerned within minutes that I have no intention of surviving the fifteenth Entry Hour. To me, this time limit is only a deadline, by which I intend to have discovered the truth of this world. I have my hypothesis and the experimental procedure, and I have faith that the outcome will be successful. Tomorrow, we meet at Dawncloud, and I await the realisation of my life’s work.
It will be the first major project I have undertaken in a long while that you have not been consulted on. I am sure that you will scold me for not allowing you to help me now, but you have already saved my life several times over, even if you did not know it. Thus, there is no need for regrets.
It seems that your troublemaking professor must cause you more pain and force you to endure even more loss now. To this end, I am truly sorry. The Grove and the Courtyard were as much my home as they were yours. Despite it all, I have found that I miss them and the normalcy of our everyday lives sorely. I regret that we will not have the opportunity to see each other off.
Should my hypothesis prove correct, and should the Flame-Chase journey continue, you will soon take to the skies. You have no need of weaponry, but I will leave something for you in the desk of this room, as I have no need for it now. Ideally, you will never have to use it, but I would like you to have it all the same.
You are the only physician in all of Amphoreus who would dream of healing the sky itself, but I have never thought that this assistant of mine had foolish ideas. If there was ever anyone to do it - well, we have never even entertained the idea of anyone else claiming Aquila’s Coreflame.
Brave heart, Hyacine. I have already taught you all that I know. I look forward to what you will accomplish next.
With utmost regards,
Your humble professor, Anaxagoras
Hyacine has been quiet since she read the letter.
She’d asked Phainon if he wanted to read it as well - “We’re the last of the Nousporists. Don’t you want to witness his last words, too?”
Phainon had blustered and shook his head. “...I don’t think those are for me, Hyacine. He was very strict about giving it straight to you.”
“...that old meanie.”
She closed her eyes. “You’re going to make me carry this alone, too?”
She hadn’t offered to let Dan Heng read it. He hadn’t asked to see it, either, but he’d followed her without question as she set out with grim determination to a particular room in the Marmoreal Palace.
Hyacine tries the door. It’s locked. Dan Heng steps forward, opening his mouth to offer to find Aglaea and ask after the key, but then she pulls out her wand, and—
He doesn’t really see what happens, but the next thing he knows the door is sawdust on the floor.
More than slightly stunned, it takes him a moment to follow Hyacine inside. She steps carefully, glancing around the room. There is little in the way of personal effects in here, but Dan Heng is already fairly sure of its intended occupant.
Hyacine moves straight to the desk, and opens the drawer. She withdraws with Anaxa’s gun in hand - a marvellous thing in sleek blue and gold, and one that Dan Heng has only ever seen Anaxa point at his own head in the middle of a rambling conjecture.
He and the twins had been a little horrified, but Hyacine hadn’t even reacted with alarm - just snuck up behind the professor and plucked the gun cleanly from his hands when he lowered them to make a gesture. Amusingly, he’d fallen silent immediately, like a toy whose wind-up key had been removed.
Anaxa didn’t exactly spare Hyacine his theatrics - and indeed she didn’t seem to wish him to - but it was when the two bantered that Dan Heng felt the professor was at his most sane. He was almost normal.
Hyacine weighs the gun in her hands. She looks odd with such a weapon in her hands, but there is precise expertise in the lines of her arms as she lifts it and aims it at a vase in the corner of the room. Her finger is feather-light on the trigger, but after a moment she drops it, and stows both gun and orb away without a word.
She closes her eyes. When she opens them again, Dan Heng is almost fooled by the warm crinkle at their corners as she smiles once more.
He feels his body move forward, his arms half-raised as she turns to the door. This is not something he does lightly, but he finds himself thinking that, if she turns around, he will pull her into a hug without hesitation.
But Hyacine only takes a breath, sets her shoulders, and clicks her heels together, as if for good luck.
“Let’s go, Dannie,” She says.
At the edge of dusk and dawn, high in the Eye of Twilight, Dan Heng watches Hyacine aim Anaxa’s gun and fire. The bullet pierces through the firmament, and the Titan’s corpse lets out a horrible shriek that seems to cleave the air in two. Its twisted limbs shudder and moan; stark bone gives way to black mire around the wound.
“Now!” hollers Phainon hoarsely, and Stelle raises her lance and moves with him without a second’s hesitation, both of them racing for the spinning eye in the centre.
Hyacine shoots once more, and again the Titan howls. Caelus doesn’t speak, only raises his bat with a yell, and Dan Heng runs with him - the heat sears across his face, but the lightning strikes barely inches away from his feet and Cloud-Piercer sings triumphantly in his hands as he slams its into Aquila’s flesh.
Hyacine’s healing bubbles pop against his skin, streaming from her in endless, restless deluge as she tries her best to keep them alive. His heart thunders in his chest as the divine corpus convulses - they are dancing on a knife’s edge, and each bleeding second is another opportunity for Thanatos to claim them.
Phainon strikes like a man possessed, teeth bared and flecked with the golden blood that pours from his wounds at the same time that Hyacine seals them. The Black Tide clings to his white coat and crawls up his torso - Stelle doesn’t look much better, her bright eyes dimming through the murk - and Hyacine, so small and alone on the platform behind them, her eyes flashing with calculated mania, presses the muzzle of Anaxa’s gun to her chest and shoots.
Dan Heng swears his heart falls out.
And then Hyacine slams the Coreflame of Sky into the gaping wound and screams. Anaxa’s gun falls to the ground and spins away, disappearing over the edge of the platform and down into the golden sea below. For one, terrible moment, she remains hunched over, the bubbles faltering, but when she looks up she is wild-eyed and messy-haired and the hole in her chest is already closing.
She shines with brilliant, blinding light. The bubbles become a torrent, a stream of multi-hued colours. Hyacine lifts her hands to the sky and heals.
There is only brief reprieve after the final echo of Seliose disappears, and Aquila is finally extinguished.
“Hyacine,” says Stelle, supporting herself on her lance and gasping for breath. “You are a maniac.”
Little Ica trills in agreement. Hyacine allows a slightly hysterical giggle. Her clothes are drenched with her own dried blood. She is clearly exhausted, ready to collapse on a bed and sleep for eternity, and yet she smiles up at the three of them, every inch a demigod.
Phainon holds a hand out to steady her. Hyacine only takes it for a moment before taking a deep breath and moving away again.
“How did you know that would work?” Dan Heng asks her quietly.
Her smile remains, but she avoids meeting his eye. “...I didn’t. It was conjecture on Professor Anaxa’s part. I only extended the theory.”
“What?” Phainon looks horrified. “You mean - are you…?”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Dan Heng’s breath catches in his throat. Anaxa’s Coreflame had kept him alive after what should have been his death. Hyacine’s smile takes on a slight edge.
“No,” She says grimly. “I healed myself. The body doesn’t take foreign transplants well, and Coreflames don’t like to settle into mundane vessels. Traumatic injury was the only way to integrate it quickly. I made sure not to hit my heart. When the time comes, it should come out much more easily.”
He hates how detached she sounds - the clinical way she speaks, as if reading off research notes and not telling them why she shot herself in the chest.
“You’re insane,” says Caelus in a whisper. He looks awed.
Phainon only looks terribly, desperately sorrowed.
“We’ve only just lost Aglaea,” He murmurs, meeting Hyacine’s eyes. “Don’t make me have to…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. It isn’t a promise he can make her keep.
The Dawn Device is extinguished.
Darkness will consume the holy city in an instant... and the aftermath will be devastating.
The words spin into nothingness, and the dead silence around them solidifies.
“Dannie, you're still carrying Phagousa's spirit water, aren't you?”
His breath catches in his chest. He knows in an instant what she is about to request of him - and he knows that he will fulfil it, even though every part of him begs and pleads not to.
“Hyacine,” “He says weakly. “I can’t.” I’m not ready.
“Of course you can. I’ve seen it.” She smiles at him fondly. He wishes she wouldn’t. His eyes burn. “Phagousa’s water listens to you, Dannie. Just tell it to open the gateway, and it will. And then get out of this place.”
It takes the twins a moment to catch up, exchanging identical looks of despair, and then starting forward with matching pleas - “There’s got to be another way—” “We’ll go with you—”
Phainon only stares at her with heavy resignation.
“I’ll return Aquila’s Coreflame, and then return to the firmament.” Her gaze turns to the ruins around them. “The sky mural. I’ll take control of the Sky’s authority and protect Okhema from here.”
The twins argue again almost immediately, but Hyacine shushes them, only turning her eyes to Dan Heng expectantly. And he wants to argue, too - wants to ask her why she would ask this of him?
He is not as brave as her. He cannot smile in the face of this terrible fate. But he will do it - he will doom her to die at the top of the world, because she has asked it of him and he could never reject her.
Phagousa’s spirit-water rises to his command. It shimmers around her as she steps towards the gateway, and for a moment Dan Heng imagines a waterfall, a shining sun, a garden filled with flowers and a windchime singing a tune.
“Hyacine,” says Stelle hopelessly. “Don’t you… aren’t you sad?”
Hyacine meets her eyes. “Of course I do. It feels like… if I stop smiling now, I’ll never smile again.”
She takes a deep breath. “But the world I love is suffering. As a physician, how can I face a patient with a frown?”
There is another, terrible rumble, and all of them are reminded acutely of how rapidly time is running out. Dan Heng wants to curse - can Oronyx not allow them this, at least, the mercy of a farewell?
“This ‘blank page’ in this story… I’ll fill it with the lives of ordinary mortals. The rest of it is up to you.” A tear falls from her eye, but her smile is brighter than the sun. “We’ll meet again in Era Nova. Now run, all of you!”
The water rushes in, and then she is gone. There is no time to mourn and there is no time to pray. They turn and sprint for their lives - for Okhema’s lives - and Dan Heng grits his teeth and forces himself to breathe.
Phainon doesn’t look back, but he raises his blade and points it to the sky like a salute, and when Dan Heng catches a glimpse of his face, it is twisted with conflict and grief. As they reach Dawncloud, the dark cuts deeper, but high above among the cracks begins to glow the rosy light of dawn.
And he knows that Hyacine has done it. The eyes of twilight look benignly upon Amphoreus for the first time in time immemorial, and the demigod of the sky casts down her protection to save them from the black tide.
But he still feels the burn of grief in his throat as he battles. He can command the waters to rise like blades, but he can’t command them to bring her back. He almost stumbles when they come to an abrupt stop, but the twins steady him - one on either side - an understanding look in their golden eyes.
It isn’t enough, not really. Not when the world is ending.
Time curls in on itself and traps him in its coils. He claims the Coreflame of Earth, feels its weight solid in his chest, and wanders the labyrinth with neither string nor light to guide him. Amphoreus twists and folds around him; more than once he fights out from its guts as it threatens to swallow him whole; the memoria chews him out, spits him out again. He does not give up.
He aches to set his feet on solid ground once more; to look up and see the boundless sky, brilliant and endless and filled with stars, smiling down at him once more.
At times, it feels as if his longing will devour him before the memoria can. He can feel it - the slow erosion that sinks its teeth into his memories and asks wouldn’t it feel better? To let them sink into oblivion? To leave this weight behind and soar away forever?
But he thinks of golden eyes and grey hair - of blue cameras and pink bows - of an empty room on a quiet train waiting for him out in the endless cosmos.
He thinks of warm waters, marble pillars, a shared snack of figs and pomegranates.
He thinks of a smile that refuses to falter to the end.
And he keeps going.
“What, are you nervous?”
He pointedly does not look at Stelle. Or at Caelus. Or at March. He wishes he could say he didn’t miss being ganged up on like this, but Aeons, he did. So he can’t really bring himself to feel frustrated.
As I’ve Written rests in his palms, nondescript and mundane. It isn’t even the heaviest book he’s ever held, but he feels the need to sit down nevertheless.
“You parted the waters at the Scalegorge Waterscape, but you can’t even part the cover of a book,” teased Caelus, sprawled out on the sofa and kicking his legs like a little kid. “What’s the worst that can happen? Just try it!”
“There’s no guarantee that it will operate in the same way for me,” He says robotically, eyes fixed on the pristine cover. “You two received Fuli’s gaze, and March… is an entire other matter. I don’t have any connection to the Remembrance.”
“Sure you do,” says Stelle proudly. “You’re our best friend!”
Dan Heng’s heart has been treacherously sentimental since making it out of Amphoreus, and he feels himself visibly soften at the half-joke - rather than sighing as he might have, some thousand-and-one years prior. March coos, but (receiving a pointed look from him) doesn’t tease.
“We don’t know if it’s to do with the Remembrance," Caelus points out. “Maybe it’s just for Chrysos Heirs.”
March ponders this, then pauses and scrunches her nose. “...actually, Dan Heng, is the Earth Coreflame still in you? Did you ever take it out?”
“Yes,” He says with a long-suffering sigh. “We returned our Coreflames together. Did you manage to forget?”
“You said you could still talk to animals, though, so maybe something’s still in there,” considers Stelle, then leans forward and starts prodding him in the chest. “Are you gonna get tall again?”
He resists the urge to sigh. “Will you stop that if I open it?”
She shoots him an impish grin. “Maybe.”
“Fine.”
Dan Heng flips the cover open. A feathered quill slips from the pages between, and he catches it without thinking—
—before he can read anything on the page, the Parlor Car swirls and disappears. To his left, Caelus yelps as the sofa vanishes from beneath him, and with a great whoosh, Dan Heng finds himself with both feet on cobbled stones, an endless blue sky stressing out above him.
Stelle and March appear neatly beside him; Caelus lands straight on his ass and wheezes as all the air rushes out of his lungs. There’s some commotion from the civilians around them, and then suddenly Phainon is rushing towards them with a bright smile on his face.
“Partners!” He greets brightly, pulling Stelle (and Caelus, who manages to haul himself to his feet just in time) into a hug. March shakes her head and mumbles something jokingly about being left out. “You’ve brought Dan Heng this time!”
“Hello,” Dan Heng offers politely, then notices that he’s… unusually close to eye level with Phainon. He looks down at himself. He’s dressed in his ‘earthshaking dragon’ (Stelle’s words) clothes again. “...hmm.”
March hasn’t magically switched into Evernight’s dark clothes, so he isn’t sure why he’s changed, but— well, stranger things have happened. Phainon invites the four Trailblazers to follow him, though he’s being oddly cagey about where he’s taking them.
“...here we are!” He announces finally, stepping through a stone archway. Caelus and Stelle follow first and look around with matching round eyes; March lets out a delighted gasp.
The garden is beautiful. Dan Heng knows the name of each flower lining the grasses, as well as each little nymph fluttering by the pond. A wind chime hanging from a trellis chimes a quiet tune, and he realises in a moment what this is.
“Welcome to the new Twilight Courtyard!” Phainon announces with barely-contained glee. “We only just finished everything this morning—”
Then he pauses. “—oh, Hyacine is going to kill me for showing you first.”
“Where is Hyacine?” asks March. (The twins have already approached one of the more colourful berry bushes and are audibly debating their edibility.)
“Baking with Mydei,” Phainon replies, rubbing his neck a little sheepishly. “Inaugural cakes, I think. They should be done soon. I, uh, got kicked out earlier...”
“Phainon!” calls Stelle from across the garden. “Come take a bite out of this!”
“Alright!” He shouts back with equal enthusiasm, then turns to March and Dan Heng with a grin. “Make yourselves at home!”
And he scampers off to join the twins. Dan Heng suppresses a sigh. Really, he’s glad to see the boyish twinkle back in Phainon’s eyes, but partnering him up with those star-twins can only be a recipe for trouble.
Dan Heng hovers by the entrance for a moment, a little awkward despite himself. He really does feel like Hyacine ought to be here - he almost doesn’t want to explore the Courtyard without her. He hasn’t really had an opportunity to speak with her properly. They’d been more than a little wrapped up in… a lot of things.
March gives him a knowing look, then says cheerfully, “I’m gonna go find Agy. Will you be alright on your own?”
He nods, giving her a small smile. “Have fun.”
She skips off, clearly well-versed with the place already. Dan Heng is the only one new here - so, he reasons, he ought to have a look around the wider space of As I’ve Written first. He can return to the Courtyard when Hyacine does.
He ends up encountering several of the other Chrysos Heirs, spending longer chatting with some than others - Anaxa is rather exhausting as usual, and anyway seems to be quite distracted by the wall he’s madly scribbling on. Dan Heng is familiar with Amphorean script by now, but he can’t read a word of what he’s written. He’s not even sure if Anaxa really notices him, or if he’s just saying things on auto-pilot.
Hysilens greets him in the plaza, and he stops for a long conversation that meanders more than it makes any points; they part with mutual smiles, and she offers him a flask of honeybrew for refreshment. He sips on it as he wanders further into the space, feeling calm in a way that he doesn’t think he has in a long time.
Irontomb still pierces his dreams sometimes. Often he finds himself jerking out of a reverie, imagining himself to still be twisted inside Amphoreus’s recesses, resting in that room in Okhema, or listening at high alert to the Black Tide in the Grove. This isn’t quite the same world, but he’s seen these columns crushing bodies, these buildings ravaged by fire, these people consumed by black filth - to walk through its analogue with such peace in his chest is downright miraculous.
He runs into Mydei near a Verax Leo. The once-prince is engaged in hot debate with the lion, though he keeps glancing rather impatiently at the basket in his hands. Dan Heng, remembering what Phainon had said about the inaugural cakes, decides to sidle in and save him from the argument by bewildering the lion with an old Xianzhou riddle.
Mydei nods to him gratefully as the two speed-walk away from the statue. Dan Heng is actually quite curious as to the conclusions the lion will draw - he only realises now that he’d delivered the riddle with a logical mix-up that will make it impossible to derive the original answer.
“Looking for Hyacine?” Mydei asks him. Dan Heng blinks - was he so obvious? Mydei chuckles a little and clarifies, “You two were inseparable for a spell.”
Much of that spell had been due to necessity, but Dan Heng cannot argue that he’d chosen to spend quite a lot of his free time around her as well. “Wasn’t she with you?”
“Little Ica was making a fuss. Hyacine told me to go ahead with the cakes while she found them some snacks…” He bows his head with all the solemnness one would treat a sacrificing comrade with. “...I preferred not to leave her to fend for herself, but the cakes have been a long labour.”
Then he glances at Dan Heng, and with an amused glint in his eye says, “You can support her in my stead. I believe she intended to take Little Ica to the orchard…”
Dan Heng straightens “I see. I’ll head there shortly.”
Mydei chuckles as he turns to do so. Dan Heng pauses and shoots him a small glance, but the prince only shrugs a little and walks off to deliver his package.
…Dan Heng only realises once he’s gone that he doesn’t know which direction the orchard is in, and that he probably should’ve asked.
He finally finds the orchard with the help of a kind word from Trinnon. The gate opens easily at his touch, and he steps into a pasture dappled with sunlight, filled with rows upon rows of trees rich with fruit. Not just apples - oranges, peaches, pomegranates, figs.
In the centre of it, Hyacine alternates between packing apples into a basket and tossing them into Little Ica’s ravenous snout.
Dan Heng watches for perhaps longer than is sensible. He breathes with the rustle of the leaves, his mind quiet and his heart still.
Hyacine notices him before he moves. She glances over, eyes scanning past for a moment before catching on him, and he watches her face split into the most radiant beam he’s ever seen.
“Dannie! You’re here!”
His feet - which had just felt as if they were encased with concrete - suddenly feel feather light, and he has to will himself not to run over. “...hello. The others will be waiting in the Twilight Courtyard.”
Couldn’t have said something more profound? Stelle’s voice scolds him inside his head. Hyacine only smiles even wider, which he hadn’t been sure was possible.
“We’ll be there soon. Little Ica needs a little more feeding to make sure they don’t destroy the picnic.” She leans over her basket and picks out one of the rosiest fruits. “Here, try one!”
Dan Heng slows as he approaches her. His eyes rest on the apple for only a moment. He disregards it completely as he reaches down and pulls her into an embrace.
“...oh!” Her arms come up to meet him almost immediately, and her hair brushes against his cheek as she settles her head happily against his chest and laughs. “Hello, Dannie. Did you get taller? It’s been a while, hasn’t it?"
He closes his eyes. “...yes. It really has.”
Dan Heng feels that he is being watched throughout the gathering in the Twilight Courtyard. The puzzling thing is that it seems to be a different Chrysos Heir every time.
He leans over to Stelle and asks in a mutter, “Have I done something? Everyone… seems to be looking at me.”
She takes a pause from shoving figs into her mouth for long enough to snort at him. “Take a look at yourself, doofus. You n’ Hyacine have been glued together since you got here.”
Hyacine, sat beside him, mercifully doesn’t hear. Dan Heng takes Stelle’s advice and looks down at himself, and acknowledges with a little embarrassment that he is sitting perhaps closer to her on the bench than is strictly necessary.
There’s a cheer from halfway down the table, and he looks to see Caelus attempting to fit an entire stack of honeycakes into his mouth as Phainon and Cipher encourage him raucously. Beside them, Mydei shakes his head and mutters something to Hysilens, who only smiles indulgently.
As he turns his gaze back to his tea, he finally catches Anaxa in the act of looking at him. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he neither balks nor looks away; only meets his eyes challengingly.
Then his eyes shift to Hyacine, and very suddenly Dan Heng understands the stares.
This time, when Anaxa looks back at him, Dan Heng stares resolutely back. The scholar holds his gaze for a moment before quirking the corner of his mouth into a smile, and he turns to engage Aglaea in another endless debate.
Hyacine taps his arms and holds out a pomegranate. They split it between them, and he tries not to chuckle as she exclaims with dismay over the stains on her sleeves. She notices anyway, but doesn’t bring it up until a few minutes later, when she attacks his face with a devious smile and streaks red juice across his face.
He’s laughing before he can help it. March’s camera flashes from across the table, and when Hyacine leans against him and faces the lens with a grin, he can’t help but do the same.
His chest feels warm, and the skies are clear. He feels like he could stay here forever.