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His whittles away his time by dreaming.
It is painless that way. He closes his eyes, slips into sleep, does not pay as much attention to the hours and days sliding away, past him, all his siblings and relatives growing older and life continuing without him.
It’s fine. It’s how it’s supposed to be. Things are normal. Things are fine. So why does it hurt so much?
He’s fine. Everything’s fine.
He remembers small, chubby fingers, lightly tanned skin and dark auburn hair in a burgundy shade when the light didn’t hit it just right. He remembers brown eyes, so dark the pupils were almost swallowed by the color, and babbling words spoken with such fondness, love, adoration for the dragon that held.
He remembers an enveloping, drowning, overwhelming power. He remembers the essence. He remembers it, choking, grasping, swallowing, grabbing himself and pulling down down down down down -
He remembers not knowing, not remembering. What was done to him. What he would be cursed with. What he was becoming.
The other world had been - kind to him. Had given him a sliver of life without the pressures of being a leader, without worry for all his siblings that surely must have agonized over him while he had been thrown into that other world. It had been only a year, in that other world. It had been almost twelve in the one he was born in.
He had been given a name, in that other world. Kiseki. Miracle. It was fitting, because he armor-evolved from that digimental that the boy - Daisuke - had found. It was fitting, because it was a miracle to Daisuke that he would be there to keep him safe.
It was fitting, that he would be named after the thing that twisted through his veins and remade him in some sick, half-broken mirror image.
It had been small, at first. Small spots in his blood. He had thought it was nothing. His blood was already gold, and it shimmered in the way that the river did sometimes when the light danced across it.
The spots grew. They were thicker, more coagulated than his blood normally ran, and he would stay up in the night, coughing and coughing and coughing until globs of the blood - his blood - finally were forced out of his throat and into his shaking, trembling hands. (He did not tell Dukemon. He did not tell Examon. He did not tell UlforceV-dramon.
. . . he did not tell Alphamon.)
His blood became white . Slowly, creeping through his veins and arteries and every moment, every time his heart beat, that sickness that enveloped grew.
It had started with his blood. Turning white, thicker than his gold blood had been, bleaching the small capillaries in his eyes and claws more white than they had been before, that small gold sheen to them gone.
It had not ended with his blood.
He only noticed it when Gankoomon - blessedly wonderful baby brother in comparison to Alphamon and UlforceV-dramon - had patted him on the shoulder one day.
Gankoomon had froze, and then said, with an odd sort of tone, that he hadn’t expected his brother’s fur to be that soft.
It was true, yes. Kiseki’s fur had gotten softer.
It had grown in denser, as well. Much more fur than there had been before, harder to find the skin in-between where all the fur grew from the little pores and spaces in his skin.
UlforceV-dramon had caught Kiseki off-guard, one night. Kiseki had jumped and bristled , and it was if his fur stood on end and became like many sharp, sharp needles, all sewn into his skin.
Neither of them mentioned it the next morning.
It was the way his legs twisted and bent, bones creaking as they lengthened, arms and legs both evening out to the same length, tail twisting even longer than it had been - he could barely clamp down on his jaw hard enough to contain the scream, that morning when he’d woken up to agony tearing its way down his tail, the bones and flesh splitting apart from about halfway down. Like the forked tongue of a snake, except it was the end of his tail, where the many small bones had quietly doubled themselves and then split away in one long, drawn-out, excruciatingly painful moment.
His hands and feet bent more, now. Better for gripping things. Better for running. Better for gripping, hanging from the ceiling of clambering up the side of a wall or something else.
He lay sick and delirious one long month, slipping in and out of alertness. Perhaps all of his siblings visited him. Perhaps none of them did. Kiseki had no way of knowing, no recollection of that time aside from an ever-present pain and confusion and wanting it to just stop . A burning in his chest and his tail and his eyes and his ears and nose and skin and there was white blood everywhere, a slickness underneath his fur itself, blood seeping out from every pore, and it hurt so badly -
He barely remembered how he had held on, that month. It was probably the words. The soft, gentle, delicate words, whispered sweet nothings, crooned apologies, the rumbling purr and heat of something that smelled the way stone and something like spice. The words that made him try to stay awake longer, even though it hurt. Even when everything hurt. (It made him think of Dukemon, but Dukemon’s scent was more like spice and warmth and the sand of a desert. This was more like spice and heart and the tumbling rocks of a volcano. Perhaps - it could have been Megidramon, his husband’s first form. The dragon had always been protective, and Megidramon was certainly enough of a threat to keep away any outsiders. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.)
He came back to awareness a month after it had begun, with an ache in his middle back, an ache in his lower jaw and where his teeth would be, blinking a third eyelid that had not been there before.
There was the beginning of something on his middle back, underneath where his arms might have reached. In the place where there might have been wings. Kiseki had seen his younger sibling often enough - an UlforceV-dramon was not a Magnamon, but they still shared many similarities from their shared V-mon form, and limb placement was generally one of those things.
There was the beginnings of wings on his middle back, except instead of developing into anything fully they were just there - growths of bone and muscle and skin and fur that he could raise or lower but not do much else with. Smooth spines of bone jutted from the end where the skin did not cover, almost like the spines that ran down his back, except these were just the pure whiteness that his thickened blood brought, and not the spines that were covered with skin and fur so as to be soft and blunt enough to not be a threat. These were proper spikes - these were deadly. There were four of them, one set of two on either side on his middle back, a second set of two just a small way under that. Not wings - never wings. They would never be wings. But they were there all the same.
The ache in his jaw went from dull to shooting spikes when he opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, once he had been conscious enough to do so - it took several more minutes before he could compose himself again. Kiseki was almost afraid to find out what it had been, but - but he needed to know.
Gentle tracing down the jawline with a serrated claw, he felt around where his chin would be and stopped, poking gently at a divot that - had not been there before. He could not hear, still, not properly, but something warm was there, something safe. So Kiseki continued. Gently prying between the divot, as a jaw opened and two halves split apart - two hinges to a jaw, a jaw that split apart, only both halves were like smaller jaws in their own right, strong and carefully flexing together and apart. Teeth on the outer side, while the inner side held delicate flesh still. Gums and the bottom of the mouth and a tongue that was split in half as well. He prodded delicately at his teeth with claws, then with the tongue, and wasn’t it odd how he had two tongues, in a way? The split of the jaw went all the way back to his throat, almost. His tongue had been split in half, and so there were two tongues rather than one. He did not even have to think very hard to move either, or both at once.
He had more teeth, now. Crammed into his mouth - rows of them. The biggest ones on the other row, the longest thickest canines and incisors and molars. A second row, right behind them, and a third row behind that, and a fourth row behind that, the fourth row being made of smaller, more delicate teeth, no less sharp or wicked. Kiseki couldn’t say that he didn’t have three more sets of gums, to anchor the teeth into his mouth. His mouth felt bigger, somehow, even in spite of having so much more teeth within it. It was not the lower jaw that was affected, not alone. Even his upper jaw, the piece of bone connected to his skull, held those three additional sets of teeth. Teeth that went almost all the way down the jaw now, both upper and lower, with very little gum space between the teeth in each row. It was not like it had been before - before, it had been a more cat-like dental pattern. Now his teeth were crammed together, like that of a more humanoid digimon.
Kiseki had slipped in and out of being awake, after that, and he did still. Sleeping was an easier way to pass the time. Sleeping meant he didn’t have to deal with any aches left in his body. Sleeping meant he didn’t have to see the way his twin or his siblings or his brother looked at you out of the corner of his eye, that mix of worried and confused and frightened. Sleeping didn’t mean he had to see his husband, his loving, wonderful husband, and worry about if Dukemon - if Megidramon - would be disgusted by whatever thing he was becoming.
Kiseki didn’t think he was a digimon anymore. Not entirely. His data was far too corrupt, far too overtaken by that foreign essence that swallowed him whole and spit him out to painfully, slowly, be made into a more proper vessel.
Daisuke must have known, some small, small part of him. He would never agree to it, Kiseki knew, not that small, innocent, kind boy. But he had known. It was proof in the name, proof in the way that the child had given such an affectionate, strong nickname. How Daisuke had called Kiseki “Ki-chan” as if that was all he would be, something smaller, lesser, something cute to be cooed over. Something owned by that God that had twisted and folded itself away until it fit into a human body, and was leaking through the bond tied in their souls to Kiseki. Changing Kiseki. Changing his body, perhaps his mind.
Kiseki couldn’t find it in himself to regret this, even now. There wasn’t anything to regret, really. He had not asked for this. It had simply happened . The transfer of power over the bond was something that happened to both the vessels of Miracles and Fate. it was just that being torn apart to a different world did not do much to help the process, merely sped it up so much more. Merely led to Kiseki being hollowed out that much faster, scooped out his insides and his soul and any empty spaces and filled them with that overwhelming overflowing Godhood that the God of Miracles and Death thought Kiseki was fit to hold.
He could not even blame Miracles, because he was Miracles. He was Miracles, and Daisuke was Miracles, and they were both Miracles, were a force of nature that did whatever it could to keep both vessels alive, because they would surely be devastated if there was only one left. Miracles was the both of them, both of their subconscious wants and desires. Kiseki could feel the echo of Daisuke’s emotions through the bond, worse when he had been awake longer, and worse when that Godhood pulsed along his bones and through his ligaments and tendons and twisted another part of him until he became a step further away from what a Magnamon had ever been, day by day.
Kiseki - Kiseki was scared. He slept. He did not want to be awake to see. He did not want to be awake to feel . He knew, he knew what it was that he was becoming. A God. a piece of a God. humanoid in shape, dragonic in nature, just barely enough to fit on a technicality - and an abomination in everything else. His armor tore itself apart, ridges and creases and mechanical shapes, as it became something more like Examon’s wings without the sentience - organic metal that fitted itself to his skin and muscle, slithering over him and allowing whatever movements he needed, yet still pliable enough to be removed, still enough to appear as regular armor when he needed it. If he needed it.
Kiseki did not want to do anything other than sleep and forget about the slow decay he was in, a caterpillar becoming a moth without a cocoon, sickly orange glow and sweetness dripping out of his lips when he dreamed. An infection, except it was simply in his mind, because when he woke his body held nothing but white, white, white fluid, white blood and white bones and white muscle.
Megidramon curled around him, now. Always. Constantly. Kiseki was. . . grateful for it. It was not quite the comfort of Dukemon, the form he had first become fond of his husband in, but whether Dukemon or Megidramon, it was his husband, the dragon who had provided steady comfort, a relationship stabled and kept strong through millennia. They could have been in the towering pillars that held the Four Great Dragons as Examon held their council in the Dragon Empire, or they could be in the plush bedding and nesting material of either of their rooms in the Castle of Hyperion, or they could be a million different places that Kiseki did not know. Having Megidramon, simply there, helped.
And still, he slept. Dreamed. Of a boy with eyes so dark they were almost black, and a gentle comforting laugh, tender hands holding his own. A brother, a baby brother so tiny and small and delicate, to be protected. Kept safe in the pouch on his belly that held far more than it should, with his impossibly soft fur and gentle holding of things even with serrated claws. In dreams they were not Kiseki or Daisuke - it was simply Miracles, its memories and will mostly held in one body and its power and form shaped in the other. It was great, and endless, and powerful, and everchanging.
And then he woke, and he was Kiseki, and he was wrapped in the heat of Megidramon’s snakelike coils that grounded him in this world, in this time, in this reality. Not the work of Reality, but simply reality - not the work of what pretended to be a person, but simply something that happened the same way that miracles were created without it being Miracles’ actions.
Kiseki did not know what he was, or what he was becoming. But - he slept, and he woke, and each day he came a little bit further to being ready to go back to living in the way he had. A decay rotting himself from inside out over the span of five months, and clawing his way back up to living again through the aching three years. A God of Death scrabbling its way to living, the same way that the God of Life would never have to search hard to see all the deaths of the worlds behind its eyelids.
Kiseki breathed. Slept. Woke. Ate. It wasn’t living, not yet - just surviving. Not living, yet. But - soon. Soon. the ache in his jaw grew less each day, the fork in his tail did not prevent its function as a prehensile limb, and those almost-wings on his back being just another small ridge along his back. White blood and immeasureable power, and Kiseki - Kiseki would get better, soon. Soon. the lines along his ribs where white fur crawled in a pattern, the white that covered his eyelids, and the thin tendrils of gold fur all along the inside corners of his eyes and the hollow of where his collarbones connected to his throat - this all became normal.
It was not a Magnamon. He was not a Magnamon. Not any longer - close enough, but not true enough to be called one by those who looked past the first image. He was Kiseki, though - and that was. . . that was good enough, to be. Kiseki was enough to be.
