005. the lost sealed away on a dying moon.

the stars never call your name anymore. not that they could in the first place. the universe is dying, after all; what good is it to attempt to cry when the chords never had time to reform anyway?

the stars never speak when you come to visit. all they have are tears to shed and ears to listen—if their wails ever grant leave to hear.

the day is the same as any other. you tread through the gaping void past your foolish, ruinous coworkers. some have been degraded by hydaelyn’s sundering to the point of inhumanity; you glimpse only a trace of what once was within paper-thin aether and memory, no matter how hard they try to recall their pasts. no stone and no memory makes any of them whole again. they squabble and moan and they never listen to your judgement anymore. you are not who you say you are; you are not who they care for. at the end of the day, all that matters is the restoration of the people you all loved. this does not include you.

so you leave the fools to their own devices, turn on your heel, and walk away, abandoning your coworkers to the darkness. you ascend the shallows and arrive lightyears away from the most whole shard of your star, so far away you could ground yourself and stare at the decays of its past glory. the new moon reconstructed in the wake of your mortal enemy’s catastrophe is not empty, but it is quiet; no matter what grows and what survives, no matter when you visit, no matter ever speaks to you.

you have fallen too terribly for fate to end like this. and yet, you continue to travel—because this is your duty, and this is your burden. you keep the beating heart of so many fragmented lives in your chest so that no one else loses their memories. you keep watch to ensure that their hearts still remain, that the cage they lay in remains intact, that they still respond to your footsteps and your whispers. your soul stings, ice to claim what remains, and guts you inside to bone. still, you carry on. you walk past strange creatures and shadows, pass brands that burn through your cloak and flesh, and you find your way to the cradle that saved their souls.

you reach out your hand into your own heart. then, you step forward and let darkness claim you again. then, you open your eyes to the empty, and the heart of zodiark is more silent than even the wailing moon.

you still have your mask on. you fumble with the sides and take it off, then push your hood to your shoulders. the person who greets your old brethren is a stranger to your own memory.

they open their mouth to speak; at first, there comes a hoarse whisper, then nothing comes out. finally, you hear, as do the masks of the fallen: “…Hello.”

are you supposed to be polite to the people you once loved? you know nothing these days about who you used to be. only just—just—

“I’ve come back for you,” they mumble. “Elidibus. Your own heart.”

the moon turns, as it always does.

“Do you remember me?”

of course they do. but whatever they tell you, you fail to hear. it all sounds as nonsense to you: a language you began to forget a lifetime ago. “Of course,” a mouth moves: like clockwork, poorly oiled. “I would never forget any of you.”

that quiets them. you lack the heart to tell them the truth. it’s clockwork, how the lie loops again; it’s another part of a performance in a play. someday you’re sure the recital ends; you just need to swallow the sick down when you say it.

“Emet-Selch has been claimed by oblivion. Forgive him,” you echo. “Forgive me. His pathetic sentimentality was our undoing. Now he has left like the rest of them.”

the mender, the contender, the creator and the rhetorician. now, the redeemer has gone and abandoned you; and he was the last other who still knew what it meant to be whole. if you were like the sundered souls then you might offer a prayer. but the customs of muscle memory offer no motion and no misery. only an emptiness floods his remembrance, and whatever whole sorrows the ghosts can give for the man who was meant to give them peace.

it falls to you now. you, who was not appointed his seat for good reason. you are the best for the duty of the emissary and not the position of a redeemer. the person you echo likely did no well with the returned; the person you are now is too busy drowning in the needs of the half-dead. you cannot judge what you do not remember and what has only one memory—of contrition, of desparation, of desperation for the last moments in a time long forgotten.

“But your heart is still here. There is still hope yet. And I will see it through.” the visitor reaches a clawed hand upwards past the chamber of its heart and brushes the masks it can reach. “So… do not entrap yourself in mourning him. He will return. As shall the remainder of you all, and so shall our former star. And all will return to the way it was. I shall not let those who fell him—nor anyone else—slaughter our hopes and our people blindly after we have come this far.”

your hand tightens around the darkness. eventually, you need to let go. but not yet. if you still had your way, you would never.

“Your heart will come back to you. No matter how long it takes. I can promise this.”

this is when the visitor lets go. this is when the audience keeps silent and the masks abandon you to the depths, as though no whole person remains. for an eternity, it is only you and those in the shadows who remain in the cradle of the darkness.

then, you give up and let go. you step out from the darkness and from the matter of the moon—and that is the last time you ever visit the people you claim you loved.