But it was only a flash, and so here he was again. Bleeding to death in the ceremony hall.
I… didn't die yet? What was that…? Was that the old world?
Heat faded, icy numbness replaced it, creeping through every leftover fiber of his body. His arms trembled, his vision wobbled. His chest... at least what remained of it was agony and absence all at once.
… Why did I see the old world?
"Mine," someone spoke, but it was no person, THERE was no person. Only him. And so there was no answer to who spoke, only She.
His vision flickered endlessly, deep crimson red bleeding into black, then back. Sound distorted, fading in and out, echoing as if it belonged to someone else entirely.
Always here, the voice that spoke. She was always here. Never left, never once since that day. Never once since my father… No.
His breath hitched in his throat. No… it would be more accurate to say, it was a neurological memory of it. He tried to gasp, but nothing came out. Blood. Blood. Blood. That was all there was to it; every time he tried to breathe, every time he tried to cough or gasp, every time he tried to swallow, the pain would only engulf him further until it stopped existing altogether. Leaving him in this perpetual state of numbness.
"I missed you so much," she said, her words coming out slow and spaced, echoing over each other, overlapping as if the words were spoken from multiple mouths from different distances, yet at the same time.
"Come home to me."
Damn filthy ainks.
I let my head tilt back, staring at the ceiling as if it owes me an explanation. A small, hollow laugh escapes me. Incredulous… Broken. I laugh, but do I really? Or at least... my throat tries. I'm dead. But I'm still alive enough to smirk. It's spectacular, really. The metallic taste of copper and iron, heavy on my tongue… Spectacular.
I blink against the spinning chaos. My eyes fall back down to my hands, now held out in front of me. The blood. The warmth. The cold. The searing absence of anything solid beneath my fingers.
Ha. Amazing.
Even like this, standing on the edge between life and death, I can't help but grin. It's stupid, I'm stupid. The arrogance of stupidity, the stupidity of arrogance.
Ha. Haha. Hahaha…
It was unfortunate, really. This young boy was no longer just the "soon-to-be royal" prince; he was finally recognized, revealed to the public, and dubbed the title of Crown Prince.
And on the same day, he found himself standing, dying all alone.
He did not understand it, not at all. He did not understand why this was happening to him. Why him of all people? Why did he have to be the one to die?
He did not understand it.
I understood far more than I wanted to.
"Do you, Sora De Astra, solemnly swear to uphold the honor of the kingdom of Vangardia, serve the Empire, protect its people, and wield your heart with the utmost courage and justice?"
That was the oath he had taken moments ago, or was it hours? He could not tell.
Only that he was kneeling before the Queen of Vangardia—before his aunt.
The son of the former High Marshal, who bore a name he never wanted to remember. And Nemi Von Veyra. Finally, the time had come for him to be recognized and introduced to the public. Seventeen years old, no longer hidden from the world. This day, this ceremony, it was all for him. To honor the name he had made for himself. To honor him. To celebrate him.
Sora is I.
But the whisper of mockery bleeds through, cold in nature like a mountain's peak:
"Sora is mine."
His aunt—Queen and Imperial High Marshal Illyana De Astra, stood above him, her vermilion red hair cascaded in waves around her shoulders and down her back, and her embellished military tunic meant more for ceremony than battle. It was of the same color as her hair, and the tunic was squared at the shoulders, folding inward as she raised the silver blade above her head, the fingers sheathed within gloves of black, tightened around the golden hilt as she looked down at her nephew. Her icy gaze, the color of frozen winter, locked onto Sora as he knelt before her, clad in ceremonial military garments, noir in color, masquerading as armor. Very boring, beyond bland.
But the opulent cloak that draped over his shoulders was perfectly white and pristine, silky smooth to match the leather of his white gloves. It was pure, befitting the prince that he was. Setting him apart from all in attendance, yet blending in seamlessly with the obsidian pillars and marble white flooring of the circular hall.
"I do," he said aloud in the memory. His voice was confident, obnoxious even. But he did not care. Why would he? After all, nobody was Sora De Astra, only him.
"Do you solemnly swear to protect the weak and serve with loyalty to your sovereign even at the cost of your own life?"
"I swear."
He remembered vividly, his fist tightening against the red carpet beneath him as he thought: "I don't really feel like dying, but who cares if I lied a little, right?"
How ironic.
In the memory, the air was thick with incense. Illyana lowered the ceremonial blade… his blade. The steel, a cool weight as she tapped each of his squared shoulders with the flat end. One. Two. A promise of service. A promise of life.
I feel her hands, not Auntie's. But Her's. These hands: impossibly thin, freezing, colder than winter, tracing the same path over each shoulder where the blade had just been, then across my collarbone. I'm alone in the hall. I know that. My blood, the only thing moving in the silence, pouring onto the pristine marble and gold flooring, overlapping with the blood dripping from my chin, and yet the pressure on my shoulders… real as day, real as life, real as Death. I shouldn't have felt it. No nerves remain to carry the message to my brain. And yet, I feel every fingertip as she maps the ruin of my body, over my shoulders, across my collarbone, over my bloodied cheeks, down to my chest.
"Rise, Lieutenant Colonel Sora. I dub thee, Crown Prince Sora De Astra. May your blade remain sharp, your aim true, your heart steadfast, and your name remembered."
The Queen's voice boomed with the kind of authority only she could command; her voice was thunderous, and the applause thunderous still, echoing in the marble cage that was the hall.
He stood, taking the ceremonial sword handed to him by his aunt, and soaked it in far longer than necessary. Smiled like a hero. Adjusted his sword strap at his hip just to waste time basking in their adulation.
Arrogant fool.
They call me the son of the strongest, the son of a devil. That is it. That is all I will ever be. A shadow of what they call… ainks.
"Liar." The voice echoed eerily in his ears. As if she were right… there. "You lied; you never wanted to die. Why do you escape me, beloved? Come to me. Love me."
Never would he admit it, but in this very moment, as he looked down and saw the fleeting final attempts of his useless heart...
I miss my family.
"Holding the carpet. Lie, you lie. Why lie?"
His heart, a deep red, barely larger than his scarred fists. That tiny thing frantically tried to keep him alive. And he saw it, just peeking from right underneath the curve of his lower chest, from the peak of the bleeding circle.
So that's what my heart looks like, eh?
Thud.
His vision went black as the blindness slowly overtook him, and the last thing that echoed across the vast darkness—reaching him even when nothing else did as his body hit the ground—the deafening, guttural screams of pure emotion. Screams that come from the person he shared the very same womb with. His own twin sister, whom he shared every heartbeat with, his own twin sister whom he entered this world with, her screams were so raw that his blind eyes shed tears without noise, his eyes, which no longer carried the vision of the living. Eyes of dark, eyes of the dead.
A strange, distant laugh fluttered in his fading mind:
I wonder who it was that killed me.
Cold.
No more pain.
Only fear.
Please, I don't wanna die.
"Liar."
Liar?
"Say it."
The thoughts spilled out without his say-so. The thoughts that held a truth but a lie at once, a truth embedded in lies, are but a lie engraved in truths. For there was no such thing as a lie or a truth. There was only the.,
I don't want to die, I don't… Why won't you believe me?!
"Still, you lie."
Yeah? he "scoffed," the blood shooting out of his mouth, painting a nearby pillar of obsidian in the crimson of his own blood, the sense of hearing no longer a possession of his as it dips into a void.
But the concluding moments of his own life did not come abruptly. He did not blink, he did not breathe, and yet without the trace of a transition, he found himself somewhere else with someone else.