Chapter Text
“—Run!”
A dark blade descended.
Blood burst from the gash.
A body hit the floor—
Then came a scream.
Phainon broke into a dash when the cry echoed through the ruined walls. The piercing scream roused the nearby Titankin, emerging from their petrified stasis. The monsters raised their weapons toward him. With a twist of his wrist, a claymore materialized within his grasp.
One swing sent the stone creations crumbling behind him.
He didn’t stop running.
The sound had come from outside.
Grove of Epiphany
Twilight Courtyard
Within the lands of Amphoreus, a massive tree stood under the everlasting night. The ancient giant rose above the forest, its crown veiling the sky as its boughs cradled structures of stone and lime. Light burned from the windows of one such building.
Nearly every bed was occupied as nurses attended to their patients. Rolls of bandages, potions, and water basins were within reach on the nightstands. Groans and broken cries filled the room.
The smell of blood hung in the air.
“How are they?” Phainon asked the head nurse of the Twilight Courtyard, the Grove’s medical institution.
“Lord Phainon.” Hyacine nodded back in acknowledgment as she attended to one of the patients. A sigh of relief escaped the unconscious wounded man as the green healing light touched the deep gash on his arm, mending bone and muscle. Once the cut stopped bleeding, she deftly wrapped the wound with bandages and healing salve—conserving her strength for the rest. “If not for you, I fear that there would have been no survivors.”
She pursed her lips as she moved onto the next patient. Phainon followed at a distance, careful not to hinder the nurses.
He had been on an expedition in a ruined temple when a nearby caravan had been attacked. When he had arrived, the black tide monsters had swarmed the site. The dead had bought the survivors enough time to escape towards the ruins. He did not waste their sacrifice. Even then, with the wounded slowing them down, it had taken him a full day to bring them to the Grove.
His fists clenched as a wave of rage and helplessness washed over him. The black tide was becoming more active compared to a few months ago.
A violent coughing broke from one of the beds.
Phainon glanced over to see red petals falling onto the covers and floor. Then something heavier fell from her hand. And more.
The woman, one of the survivors, fell from the bed, body shuddering in seizure. The sheet was dragged onto the floor.
A nearby nurse gasped as she rushed over to help the patient. Phainon grabbed her arm just before she could reach the patient.
This is… Phainon furrowed his brows, recognizing the signs. Not just petals. Whole flowers.
Hyacine rushed over to see what was causing the commotion. She bit her lip. “Clementine, please stand back,” she said to the nurse whom Phainon held back. Clementine stepped back with shaky hands, and Phainon let go of her. “Everyone, return to your tasks! Do not touch the petals!”
The other nurses returned to work. Their faces tightened in worry as they stayed clear of the petals. Some had started moving the patients away to other beds.
“Clementine, head to the storage unit. Bring me a bottle, it should be dark red. Let them know that we have a code red. Get the quarantine room ready.”
Clementine nodded and ran out of the courtyard.
“Lord Phainon.” Hyacine knelt beside the convulsing woman to ease her onto her side, making sure to cushion her head. She brushed aside the red petals without hesitation. “Please be on standby. We have to wait for the seizure to pass before moving her.”
Phainon crouched beside her to help.
“Hyacine…,” Phainon started. Red petals clung to the woman’s lips. He carefully picked up a whole flower—covered in blood— from the floor and turned it in his palm. Red. Thin petals. Recognition flashed in his eyes.
A spider lily.
“It’s anthoemesis,” Hyacine said quietly, confirming what he already suspected. The woman in her lap stared ahead with unfocused eyes. The convulsions eased into small tremors. “This is severe… which means someone among the dead must have meant a lot to her…” She gently rubbed the woman’s back in slow, careful circles.
Phainon’s stomach tightened.
Whole flowers were fatal—the roots burrowed past the lungs, spreading through the body like a malicious tumor.
Anthoemesis. A new rare plague that afflicted the population in Amphoreus. He and Hyacine were immune, as were most Chrysos Heirs. Those without golden blood were not. Touching even the petals risked contagion. And it afflicted only those in love.
Unrequited love should not have been this painful.
Rejection should not have killed.
Aqua gaze, drowned in sorrow, flashed in his mind.
He crushed the flower in his palm. Thin, crimson petals floated to join their brethren below.
The doors opened.
“—Miss Hyacine, the quarantine room is ready. I’ve brought the medicine as you requested.” Clementine said, holding the wine-colored glass bottle in her hands. Her light brown hair was messy as she sought to catch her breath.
Hyacine nodded to Phainon, who took action, carrying the patient in his arms and following her outside the twilight courtyard.
Okhema
The Holy City of Light
The empty streets glowed under the light as the world-bearing titan towered over the city-state, carrying the dawn device on its back. Night was only the beginning of dawn in the Holy City of Light.
Phainon closed the door behind him and leaned against it. He closed his eyes and exhaled, the tension falling away from his shoulders after the day’s events.
After taking the afflicted patient to the quarantine room, Hyacine informed him that she could take over from here. She had told him to get some rest, as he had done more than enough.
Phainon had left the Grove only after a few more hours of patrolling the forest borders for any threats. Initially, he had thought to visit a certain someone before leaving, but changed his mind when he realized how late it was.
Another day, another time.
The monumental relics found within the city of Okhema and the Grove were blessed by the Titan Janus for easy travel between the two cities. He would visit when he was officially off-duty.
Opening his eyes, he pushed away from the door and crossed to the writing table against the wall. There were books and scrolls neatly stacked on the wooden surface, stained by dried ink. He ignored them. His hand moved towards the drawer on the side, opening it to take something out. He placed it in the clear space at the center of the table.
A blue flower.
Whole.
A forget-me-not.
He stared at the sky-blue petals still attached to the bud. Perfectly intact. They looked soft, as though freshly plucked from the garden. Vibrant. Beautiful.
But…
Bitterness overtook him.
Anaxa was still in love with someone else.
A heavy sigh left him. A familiar ache stirred in his chest. Flowers born of the disease did not decay as long as those feelings remained. He had found this one by chance in Anaxa’s study, back when he had still been a student of the Grove.
He covered the flower with his palm, careful at first, before he realized his fingertips were biting into the wood hard enough to leave shallow grooves. He could taste something iron on the tip of his tongue, and he swallowed. How pathetic. Guarding proof that another person still lived in Anaxa’s heart. He tried to imagine the other man’s face and hated that he could not. Nameless. Faceless. Still, resentment rose in him all the same.
This unknown man was killing Anaxa just by existing…
His hand shook when he uncovered the forget-me-not, gently brushing against the blue petals with near-reverence. The delicate petals trembled under his caress. Even after all this time, he still couldn’t bring himself to destroy anything that had come from Anaxa. His stomach twisted as something heavy settled in, and he hung his head. A year, and it had still not withered.
Why…
Phainon’s throat tightened.
Could he not have been that person instead?
The Grove of Epiphany
School Grounds
“Lord Phainon!”
Phainon paused and turned his head towards the voice. It was the young woman who had been afflicted with the illness a few months ago.
They became acquainted when Phainon would often come by the Twilight Courtyard carrying Anaxa, who pushed himself too far in his experiments, with him. This would be the first time Phainon had seen her outside of the med bay.
The woman raised a hand to wave at him. The wheelchair she was in was pushed by an older man with wrinkles on his face. Ah, the father. Their smooth black hair and darker skin were common among the nomads.
“It is good to see you again!”
“I see that the Grove has been treating you all well,” Phainon said with a smile. With Hyacine’s insistence, it looked like the group of nomads was all given housing at the Grove while they recovered from their injuries.
“Yes, they have even made me this contraption for me to travel in,” she said, sweeping a hand below her. It was a chair with wheels. “Although there are too many irregular branches in this place for me to safely go alone.”
Phainon’s eyes softened. He recognized the alchemical runes written on the sides of the wheels to prevent falls and slips. Even with a rigid schedule, Anaxa would lend a hand to even a stranger.
Her aqua eyes, a shade darker than the ones he would constantly dream of, twinkled knowingly. “I see that we have kept you long enough. Your ethereal brilliance awaits his knight of dawn to brighten his day after his long, grueling lessons.”
Phainon took a moment to process her words before giving an awkward chuckle. He’ll never get used to how poetically romantic nomads—most of them being performers and bards—can be with people. He was far too used to the dictating tone in Okhema, ruled by Aglaea, the demigod of Romance. The irony never failed to amuse him. “And I see that you’ve spent some of your days in class. Surely, his lessons aren’t as gruesome as you say.”
It had been only a few years since he had graduated from the Grove. Professor Anaxa’s lessons had been difficult, but the most rewarding of them all. If not for his duties, he would have loved to stay under Anaxa’s guidance longer.
Her face scrunched in on itself as though he was the bearer of all lemons in the world. “I believe even the titans would find themselves unable to tell left from right after spending a day with the Professor. As alluring and undeniably attractive as he is, I’m hard-pressed to understand what goes on in the minds of his students.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed, a debate with the Professor should have left a few souls drowning within the River of Styx, and yet, they come back revitalized and full of vigor. I fear that I, too, will soon be joining their plight, for who could resist those devilish words of wisdom?” She theatrically placed a palm on her chest in sorrow.
Oh. Phainon’s smile thinned. He had almost forgotten how fanatical some of Anaxa’s students can be. As difficult as the lessons were, most stayed out of desire to become close to the sage. He lost count of how many suitors he had discouraged throughout his years as Anaxa’s student.
Corrupting youths was another moniker for Anaxa, unknown to the man himself.
“And yet.” She looked up at Phainon with a teasing smile. “It is clear as day that the Professor longs for the one who can match his radiant reason.”
Without hesitation, Phainon jokingly replied, not admitting to anything. “That would certainly be a sight to see.”
“Indeed, I fear that many a heart will be broken when that day arrives.”
Ah… A broken heart. He knew that feeling all too well.
Phainon chuckled instead. “Well, I’ll be going, but do be well.”
There was someone he wanted to see before leaving the Grove.
However, just before he could leave, the father stopped him.
“Lord Phainon, a few words if I may?”
Phainon and the woman’s father had stepped away from prying ears. They were by a stone pillar with vivid flora surrounding them. The woman in the wheelchair found her classmates, who kept her occupied.
“We cannot thank you enough, Deliverer, for your timely arrival.” The father bowed his head.
“If not for your valiant warriors, who have sacrificed their lives, I doubt I would have arrived on time,” Phainon said, placing a hand to his chest to commemorate the dead. “So please, remember those brave souls, for they are more deserving of your gratitude.”
The father’s eyes watered as he looked towards his daughter, who now sang to her audience. A haunted look used to plague this man’s expression; now the wrinkles under his eyes were smoothed with relief. “Yet, if not for you, my daughter would not have been alive.”
Phainon stayed silent. The older man was talking about the disease.
“The Grove was the only city with the cure for what ailed my daughter.”
It had been the father’s request to bring them to the Grove when Okhema had been closer. Phainon hadn’t understood until he saw the daughter’s condition. The rest of the caravan had endured even with their injuries.
“… One of the men who gave his life to defend us,” the father started. “The one that my daughter loved was no nomad and had a lover. He could do nothing as my daughter suffered from her illness for months, getting worse every day. He was a noble and kind man, and yet… I’ve hated him for so long.”
Phainon listened. His chest felt heavy, for the father’s words had hit far too close to home.
“My apologies, Lord Phainon, that was unbecoming of me.” The father placed his fingers over his eyelids. “I fear that these negative feelings now have nowhere to go.”
He waited for the man to gain his composure before speaking once more. “… I understand your pain from watching someone dear to you suffer for so long, but we must let the dead lie in peace.”
Nothing good comes from holding onto such negative feelings, Phainon thought, remembering the flower in his room.
“… Indeed, I shouldn’t resent a dead man when he had only meant goodwill. It was not his fault that my daughter had fallen for him.”
Laughter could be heard from the other side, where a crowd had gathered, entertained by the woman’s storytelling skills. The father’s eyes looked brighter, but remorseful.
“Miss Hyacine had warned us that my daughter may never regain her ability to walk again.”
Phainon glanced into the far distance. Hyacine had mentioned that the roots had progressed beyond the lungs and dug into her spinal cord.
“Please thank the Sage Anaxagoras for us.” The father bowed again before lifting his head. “… though Lord Phainon, as grateful as I am, I must ask why Anaxagoras doesn’t make the cure available for all…? I would think that there are many more who require this medicine than just my daughter?”
His lips tilted when he recognized the reproachful blame hidden within the question. If Anaxa had made the cure available for all, then the caravan wouldn’t have suffered so.
“Professor Anaxa has his reasons for regulating the cure. Although making it available to the public would save many, it also increases the risk of abuse,” Phainon said with a measured tone. “If your daughter hadn’t been dying, would she have taken the medicine at all?” his voice lowered by another degree. “… Or would you have forced her regardless of her consent?”
The air around them turned frigid, and joyous laughter beyond the pillar faded to a faint murmur.
A rattled look took over the father’s dark eyes, the face of someone who had been unexpectedly punched in the gut. “M-my apologies, my Lord, I shouldn’t have questioned the wisdom of the Grove’s most prestigious minds. It’s just… if the cure had been within reach…”
The father’s face changed from fear to something broken. Phainon drew back from saying anything more, already knowing what the older man was thinking. Like how his daughter wouldn’t have needed to suffer for years, and they wouldn’t have lost so many lives on the journey if Anaxa had made the cure worldwide.
He exhaled a breath to calm himself before speaking. “Your daughter lost more than just her legs.”
She lost the memory of the one she loved.
She no longer remembered the man who gave his life for her.
And she’ll never get it back.
“Just be glad that she hadn’t lost the ability to love ever again.”
Phainon left the petrified man behind as he walked away.
With his mood ruined, Phainon took the deliberately long way toward his destination.
The path he took was more forest than stone. The thick leaves above him swallowed the moonlight, and green vines clung to the walls with barbs and thorns. Other than his footsteps, this part of the Grove was quiet, so still that even the critters seemed afraid to make a sound. The only source of light was the bioluminescent buds growing on the ends of the vines.
It was an unused path, discarded and forgotten within Cerces’s domain.
Perfect for avoiding people.
His conversation with the nomad’s father left him emotionally shaken. Violent energy pulsed under his skin, and his face was expressionless, lacking the warmth it usually held. With nowhere to turn his blade, he had resorted to taking a very long walk.
Thin branches snapped beneath his weight.
This flower disease had appeared out of nowhere. A cancer that had plagued Amphoreus for the past decade. Quiet and deadly, the affliction did not show itself until one fell in love.
Anaxa’s medicine was the only known cure… at the cost of the soul’s longing and memories. Survival meant losing a part of yourself and living with the consequences.
But it also meant the ability to find love again.
His feet stopped in the middle of the corridor of branches and vines. His mind replayed the events from months ago.
Phainon had watched Hyacine administer the cure that night. With a syringe, she had carefully injected it into a vein in her unconscious patient’s neck. He had watched her calculate the dosage, watched how quickly she had needed to act, watched how even a small amount was enough to break the soul apart.
His hand slipped into his pocket and closed around a small vial. He held it up to a bud of light. A clear, volatile liquid shifted within the glass.
While Hyacine had been busy, he had transferred a small portion into a spare vial—a theft and a violation of Anaxa’s will.
Phainon grimaced at the irony of it all. He was not so different from the nomad who had only wanted to save his daughter.
His hand closed around the vial as though keeping it out of his sight would help quell the violence within his veins.
It was a last resort, nothing more.
Phainon encountered no one on his way to Anaxa’s office.
Unsurprisingly, there were no lines of students. The end-of-semester exams had passed, and no one wanted to be caught in Anaxa’s office hours after a long, grueling session of oral exams.
He cracked a smile in reminiscence. Most of them were most likely healing in Hyacine’s medical bay.
His hand knocked twice on the door in front of him before opening it.
The office had rows of books and scrolls that overtook the shelves. A dark green carpet adorned the floor with two tufted leather club chairs in front of a rosewood desk. Stacks of papers and books were piled on the desk, with a light-blue Dromas plush settled on top of the books. There was the soft, gentle tapping of the quill on paper.
The lone lamp glowed with warmth, lighting the whole room.
His cyan eyes softened at the sight of a slender man with mint hair sitting before the desk, grading papers. His shoulders were bare as the dark green cape was draped over the back of the ornate chair.
The mint smell would usually have soothed him if not for the underlying sweet floral scent.
He hid his grimace behind a smile.
“Who?” Anaxa asked without looking up. Then his aqua gaze lifted from the paper, and he blinked. “Phainon. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Okhema?”
“Just coming by to check on you,” Phainon said. “Also, I’m off-duty today.”
Anaxa’s brows knitted. “Then wouldn’t you rather spend your time elsewhere than here?”
“Was it a bad time?”
“… No. I’m only grading papers,” Anaxa sighed. “I fail to understand why you always insist on coming here when there’s nothing to do.”
“Haha, it’s been two years since I graduated. Surely, you should be used to the sight of me by now.” With a few steps, he swept across the room to take a seat on one of the leather chairs.
“After almost a decade of studying at the Grove, I would have thought you’d have already become tired of the sight of me.”
“Tired of you? Never. If anything, I would have loved to stay a student longer,” Phainon said as he leaned back into the chair and crossed his legs. “But you threatened me with expulsion in my last year.”
“That’s because you constantly sabotaged your own graduation. I had enough of hearing the goldweaver’s complaints. We had to create new rules every semester, only for you to make a fool of yourself by barely failing my class.”
“What can I say? I still believed there was more to learn under your guidance. And they were creative, weren’t they?”
“I admit, you were the first to challenge the Grove’s graduation system so thoroughly.” Anaxa gave him a slight frown, but the amused look in his eye said otherwise. Phainon could only imagine how stressed the other sages must have felt having to review and revise centuries-old traditions.
“I’m also your most brilliant student by design.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You may have been my student the longest, but I’ve had others just as brilliant,” Anaxa said with a flat voice. “If anything, you’re my most brilliant chimera.”
Phainon breathed out with mock horror, barely holding back a grin. “Not a dromas?”
“I refuse to taint those magnificent creatures with your glib tongue and catastrophic sense of fashion.”
Ouch. He winced at the jab. He lowered his head to feign hurt. “There’s nothing wrong with purple and gold, Anaxa.”
“It’s Anaxagoras,” the sage quipped back instinctively. “And those colors used to complement each other until you touched them. Now, I can’t look at those colors without thinking of you. Honestly, what you’ve done to them should be considered a crime.”
—without thinking of you.
Phainon’s blood thrummed at the words. Even though it had been an insulting joke, the sheer thought that his favorite colors reminded Anaxa of him was enough to make his heart leap.
“—Well, might as well make yourself useful.”
Anaxa placed a handful of papers in front of him, along with another quill.
“Haha, isn’t this against the rules?” Phainon asked. His mouth twitched, but he still took the quill and settled the papers onto his lap. The blue Dromas plush standing grand looked at him innocently with its beady eyes.
Anaxa tsked. “Silence is golden. And weren’t you the one claiming to be my most brilliant student, Phainon of Aedes Elysiae?”
A chuckle escaped his lips before he turned his attention to the thesis papers. A wave of nostalgia bubbled inside him as he read through them. One of his earliest attempts to fail the class had been submitting a blank thesis, something that had both impressed and exasperated Anaxa.
For some time, Phainon graded in silence, accompanied only by the steady scratching of Anaxa’s quill against paper.
Phainon placed the graded papers on the table and stretched, joints cracking from sitting in one position for too long. He yawned as he massaged the back of his neck.
“Well done,” Anaxa said as he sifted through the papers that Phainon had graded. “Your grasp of concepts is still intact. You’re allowed to keep your title.”
As my most brilliant chimera… Phainon finished the thought in his head before speaking. “What can I say, Anaxa? I’ve had the most brilliant teacher in all of Amphoreus to guide me.”
Anaxa hummed as he tapped the stacked papers against the table to straighten the edges. “I’ll let it pass this time, but do know that flattery can only get you so far.”
“But I did a good job, didn’t I?” Phainon said with a roguish smile. Anaxa threw him a questioning glance. “So, don’t you think this chimera deserves a reward?”
Anaxa placed the papers aside with a sigh. “Come closer.”
Phainon leaned forward, elbow against the desk. His heart leaped in his chest when Anaxa leaned closer as well. He swallowed, suddenly aware of how close they were. Their lips would touch if he chose to close the distance.
He blinked when he felt a hand placed on the top of his head. The slender fingers lightly flitted through his white strands.
Anaxa was… giving him head pats. He almost pouted. It was playful, and he should have expected it… but not intimate in the way he would have wished, something he tried to ignore.
“What?” Anaxa asked, noticing the change immediately.
Phainon exhaled a breath before smiling. He could never hide anything from this man. His own throat felt tight, but he spoke anyway. “You never do change, do you?”
Even your feelings for someone else who doesn’t love you back…
Anaxa took his hand back. The phantom touch still lingered on top of his head, but Phainon held himself back from reaching for Anaxa. To kiss those fingertips. To intertwine their fingers. To pull the other man closer and capture those lips until they were both out of breath.
He knew it wasn’t his right, and… he didn’t want to break the bond they currently had.
Yet, something bitter settled in his chest, and Phainon wanted to look away from the aquamarine gaze, softened by guilt. He could almost taste the scent of mint and flowers from how close they were.
“Phainon, I…” Anaxa bit the bottom of his lip, pulling his hand back to his chest. “My apologies, that was unbecoming of me.”
An apology.
Of course, Anaxa knew about his feelings.
Something cracked within him at the apology, and he got up, suddenly not feeling well. “I should go, Aglaea is expecting me for a meeting tomorrow.”
Phainon had his own duties as the Deliverer.
He left the room without seeing the expression on Anaxa’s face. The sound of coughing slipped through before the door completely shut behind him. His hand stayed on the handle for a long moment before letting go. He forced himself to walk away before he could think of going back inside.
Anaxa was fine for now. The disease hadn’t progressed that far. Not yet.
The weight in his pocket felt heavier with every step he took.