Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Khun Eduan was by no means a good person.

If he had been, then perhaps he wouldn’t be the head of a Great Family under the reign of his old friend, Jahad. If they could even be called that anymore. Friends. Such a strange term now… If Eduan had been good, then he might have rebelled, or at least he wouldn’t have so many wives and children whom he couldn’t even bother to remember.

But that was alright. Being a good person wasn’t really something common or expected in the Tower. However, he thought, being uncaring was something a bit less common, in his opinion.

Khun Eduan knew he was by no means a caring man.

Not anymore, at any rate.

And, maybe he was illusioned. Maybe, doing this had been a way to make others and himself believe he did care, even just a little bit, but it was actually all the more obvious that it wasn’t working. That he did not care. He cared for none of them. None of the wives and none of the children. And maybe, when he started doing this, it had been different. Perhaps just a way to hold on that sliver of humanity that had been slowly ebbed away from his core. Back then, maybe he actually cared, when he only had one, two, five to ten wives. Maybe back then it meant something. 

Eduan didn’t know why he was doing this anymore. It was just an old tradition. No one was fooled, Khun Eduan didn’t care at all. Not even for the gifts his wives brought him when they came to his door like tonight. He was truly apathetic, deep inside. No true feeling, anger or joy, could touch him.

In his opinion, it was still better than the mad grief and rage Jahad had fallen into and kept swimming in even now, under his mask. When Eduan remembered what heartbreak had done to his former friends, he guessed it wasn’t so bad not having one anymore.

“Is it to your taste?”

The gentle, silky voice made him raise his eyes from the beautifully sculpted scabbard - which had come after an old painting from some renowned passed artist and the head of a powerful creature that Eduan couldn’t even name - to meet the eyes of the sublime lady in front of him. She was, of course, his wife. He had barely made the effort to browse through the lists to find her name again.

Head of the Agnis branch, she had a beauty that could not be described. Her intellect and prowess, along with her sister’s had made the both of them worthy members of his house despite their slightly lesser lineage. He had noticed that she had already come to see him once, with even more lavish gifts, to introduce him to the fetus of their daughter. He did not remember the name she had whispered to him then.

Her eyes were cold, he noticed again. Despite an apparent gentleness, there hid a strong and strict woman, as cold as ice. Many of his wives did not care for the children they bore. He couldn’t tell if she was one of those.

“I am very intrigued,” he told her, inviting her to sit by his side on the couch.

A lie. But for now, the scabbard was indeed the most interesting thing he had at hand. It wasn’t a very high bar. He ached for a glass of wine to alleviate the heavy boredom that constantly clutched at his heart. But this moment was special. At least, it was supposed to be. The least courtesy he could do was to keep his hands away from the wine.

Honestly, he didn’t really care if it was courteous. He itched for a drink, always, and didn’t know why he had first decided to stop himself during these strange and oddly quiet meetings when they first happened. But if anything, Khun Eduan was now a man of regularity. He didn’t like when the order was disrupted. Of course, that did not mean Eduan hadn’t drunk before. He was so used to the feeling of wine in his blood that he wasn’t sure he could make the difference between drunk and sober states anymore. He probably wasn’t sober, hadn’t been in centuries. But he didn’t feel drunk either. His mind was still with him.

Sometimes he wished it wasn’t. There wasn’t much in this Tower for his mind to witness.

“This priceless scabbard was found by pure chance,” Agnis was saying, “by my daughter during her first excursion. It was kept in the hoard of the monster she slayed, the same one whose head I now offer to you.”

Eduan didn’t remember that daughter was old enough to fight to death with a monster. Or maybe she was. He didn’t really care if she wasn’t. God knew how Maschenny had educated her own girl. He hummed passively.

“It revealed itself to have a very strange power,” she added, and Eduan did remember feeling the shinsu swimming in that suspendium scabbard. “It possesses regenerative properties like I have never seen before. It has the ability to mend any broken sword that is laid to rest inside, dagger, or even lighthouse. Should a skewered beast be put inside, it would come out unscathed.”

Such a powerful object was probably just as useful laying down in the obscure cave it had hid in for who knew how long as it would be gathering dust in his coffers now. That was what Eduan thought, his gaze already vacating, humming again.

“I wonder, though,” Agnis mused as she leaned on him delicately, “should a human being fit inside its hold, could it mend their death? Could it mend a broken mind?”

Eduan blinked slowly. Did such questions matter? The scabbard was very large, but it could not hold a fully grown adult entirely in. Neither V nor Arlene would fit, he thought idly to himself.

“I am very proud of my daughter’s accomplishments and discoveries,” Agnis told him, the perfect picture of a caring mother though perhaps just a tad too cold. “She is my treasure.”

As much of a treasure as Eduan kept in his vaults, surely. Useful. Trophies. Whichever. The half-lit chambers and quiet but warm atmosphere made it easy to say such words, and maybe believe in it. Eduan had long stopped paying attention to the words these women would speak to him, no longer caring to discern the false from the true. Not that it had ever mattered to him, surely. Eduan couldn’t remember a time it did matter. There was only one time in his long life that had mattered, as far as he knew, and even that didn’t matter anymore.

“What about this one?” he asked in a murmur, the content atmosphere - though it was truly a snake’s lair - making him sleepy.

“This one is a boy,” Agnis said, in the same tone, and he placed his hand over her prominent belly as she spoke.

This was the tradition, after all. His wife came, offered him precious gifts he couldn’t even bring himself to care for, and they would sit together. She would speak to him - whichever wife it was - and perhaps as a show of respect, he would listen as she told him the name of the new child to be born, a hand feeling for its tiny life. He didn’t know if that respect was still in there, somewhere, but he went on with that tradition, feeling the diverted flow of shinsu that indicated the growth of a life underneath the skin, showed just that one bit of interest even though he would forget soon after.

He wondered, if the teenage boy he once was could see him now, would he be offended at the lack of feeling Eduan felt when he was met with his future children. Would he be disappointed by the apathy Eduan felt even as a father?

But the teenage boy from that other world was long gone, Eduan thought. In the Tower, there was no need for parental affection, parental pride… parental care. Just like there was no need for love. Love, even, was dangerous, in the Tower, he had learned. Really, Eduan didn’t know why this tradition even existed when he never cared for being a father. Maybe, if it had happened before… But it was too late for that. Too late for feelings. Too late for being a father, let alone a good one. Too late for caring about it too.

“He may be smaller than recommended right now,” Agnis was still speaking softly, with an expectant gaze addressed to her stomach, whatever she expected from the child, “but he will grow strong. He will be a good son, my lord, and a good brother.”

Eduan didn’t need to imagine what those words meant. A son wasn’t what these women needed. They wanted daughters, the best tool to climb up ranks. May it be through the Khun hierarchy, or through Jahad’s system. It didn’t matter to Eduan either way. It just meant the sons had to be stronger, strong enough to survive and become true sons, strong enough to be rankers, fighters, guards, scholars… absolutely anything, as long as they weren’t useless. Eduan wouldn’t even need to remember their names. Oftentimes, those who survived and went high enough would find him again to reintroduce themselves… the others would die, and what was the point of remembering the names of fallen sons anyways?

Still, he put his hand on top of the round belly, feeling the warmth and the delicate flow of shinsu giving life to the creature growing inside, and listened as his wife expanded on what she wished her son would be.

“With your blessing, he will inherit your strengths, and with mine, he will earn wisdom.”

He will survive, she meant. He will be useful, she meant.

Truth was, Eduan wouldn’t care if he didn’t, he thought absently.

Just another ghost son. Unmoving, unfeeling, just like the rest of them.

“His name,” she whispered reverently, “is Aguero.”

His son, with a name that echoed silently, ready to be forgotten, as Eduan prepared to move away already.

“Khun Aguero Agnis.”

Then.

Then, something moved.

A pulse, against his fingers. Weak, but sudden… no, not a pulse. An attack? But more importantly, with the… kick, perhaps, was an onslaught of energy that he was well acquainted with.

A soft explosion of shinsu, cracking and icy, showing against his own with vindication. It was small, barely enough for him to feel it, and yet the slithering waves of ice rolling off and onto Eduan’s veins right now were powerful. Or at least, they promised power, with vengeance.

Like an impulse, reacting to his own shinsu, his own emotions.

Eduan found himself unmovinprokeeping his palm on the skin that separated their two shinsus, probing further, curious. But the foreign energy coiled back in its core. It slightly lashed out when Eduan kept bothering it.

Like a small, petulant, “go away.”

Eduan felt his lips twitch. He had completely lost track of what Agnis was saying, entirely focused on the weak and stubborn creature hiding away from him.

His teeny tiny son had just rejected his own father. The thought, although a bit disbelieving, also brought him something else. Something like… amusement.

He resumed probing at his son, making it hiss and bat away at his energy like an annoyed kitten. Was this what it felt like to playfight?

Now, Eduan didn’t really care, but just because he didn’t care didn’t mean he didn’t know. Shinsu was especially powerful when backed with emotion. This was the first time one of Eduan’s children had reacted that way to him. Of course, in this particular case, it felt both like the shinsu of his future son was especially powerful and…

Goodness, Agnis, what did you tell that soul? Even Eduan knew that children could hear their parents’ words and feelings. Eduan could only wonder what Agnis had whispered to his son all throughout his growth. It might explain the resentment it felt and pushed toward Eduan himself.

A little rebel, he mused, as the lifeling refused to be appeased by his touch, turning its metaphorical back to him. Why don’t you like me? He pushed an ounce of his own ice like a tentative touch, to show his kindred they possessed the same essence. But the little one seemed to become more indignant at the thought, pushing back more strongly - like a baby - as if to prove that no, they were different. And true, the shinsu didn’t really have the same quality to it.

Though of course, as of now, the youngest shinsu was far weaker than Eduan’s. It almost made him laugh. He repressed it behind thin lips, frowning instead.

A son… who didn’t want to be a tool.

It is a dangerous game which you are playing, little one. Don’t you know I could kill you right this instant?

A puff of frost answered him. I'm not scared of you, Eduan imagined it meant. You're stupid.

Eduan blinked at the blatant childish derision. It reminded him of the way children behaved in the Outside. The way he thought his children would behave, when he was just a teenager diving in for adventure and happiness.

The shinsu emitted from the tiny creature weakly wrestling with him now felt painfully honest, he didn’t know what to think of it.

Honest, blunt feelings reaching out to his apathy, despite the mean streak of rejection running through it. Eduan had rarely seen this sort of honesty since… himself, a long time ago.

There had probably been more, but he hadn’t been looking. And none come from his own blood.

He couldn’t deny it… this little one was his son.

Somehow, the thought made him pause, uneasy. This little weak thing… was his ?

It was such a strange realization to have. This being ending up as more than the tool or foreign trophy it was supposed to be. Not just related to him but… his… his child?

A shiver ran through his fingers. Caused by the shinsu directly formed from his own. His right heir…

A shinsu that could very well overcome his own, should it be left time to mature, he reminded himself.

Right. He focused on that thought. Such a potential in one of his children could end up being very dangerous for himself.

Someone to keep an eye on, he used.

Unnoticed from his wife, who had now fallen silent, he tore through his own power. A part of himself, a pearl of ice. A tear of shinsu. Traveling through his blood, reaching through his fingertip, and leaving his body to reach the embrace of the young shinsu underneath. It protested, of course, annoyed and prissy, but could only grumble against the invasion. A small quirk of the lips, Eduan didn’t realise he had started smiling as he watched upon his prickly son, emitting soft frost as the manifestation of its sulkiness. It recoiled back in the nest of its mother’s shinsu, refusing to engage further with his amused father.

You are interesting, little one.

With a piece of himself now snugly fitted inside his future son, he could already discern better the inner intricacies of that forming shinsu. It sure had a character, Eduan thought, and it was bold. No one would dare to treat Eduan like that, nevermind a young hatchling. Those were often too scared of his mighty presence. It might be the shinsu bound to become stronger than his own, that made the child so bold. Or it might be because the child… recognized him?

Unlikely.

Bold it was. And to become strong. But for now, it felt small, and so very fragile.

Eduan wondered if it was the connection the young being had inadvertently established between them when it had pushed back, but he found himself hoping this small fragile thing, like glass, would survive, and become stronger.

Nonsense. Eduan had no business protecting any of his children. Tools, enemies, sometimes servants, and oftentimes forgotten. If they couldn’t survive of their own, they weren’t worth his attention. Those were his rules.

He didn’t care, not really. Eduan knew the empathy at its core was too deeply rooted in to be shaken so easily.

But this child… should he survive, he would certainly shake things, even if not Eduan’s heart. He smirked inside.

“My lord?”

“Mh. The child is in good health,” he told her, feeling a bit of his eternal boredom thaw away infinitesimally. “Nurture it well.”

She wouldn’t want it to break prematurely.

Khun Aguero Agnis… Aguero. I shall watch over you for the time being.

I look forward to seeing you grow.

Chapter Text

The child was kind and quiet. Full of genuine intentions and curiosity. Eduan watched through the ice that connected them, as his big blue eyes - like those of a cat - cluelessly took in their surroundings at all times.

Eduan didn’t think kindness could be born from his clan. It was novel, even for him. Was that how all children were?

Strangely enough, Agnis spent most of her time with her son, going as far as taking him with her when she was with her daughter. It confused Eduan somewhat, since he was certain there were competent nurses and servants at disposal, but then he supposed it might be safer this way, in case someone tried to assassinate the child.

He doubted anyone would, though. It was a son, after all. They would die soon enough.

He watched on as the sister bonded with the boy tentatively, when Agnis wasn’t looking. Eduan could feel Aguero's shinsu reaching out, sometimes, to him or to others. Full of genuine curiosity and empathy. It was always such a wonder to see, Eduan couldn’t help but find himself reaching back, intermingling their tendrils. His nudges would often be met with the same petulant response, leading to more play fighting. Although, Eduan wasn’t certain that Aguero was quite aware himself of the games they played.

When Aguero started to speak and walk, things changed, and some things remained the same.

Eduan had been aware of Aguero’s quiet and reserved nature ever since their first meeting. That only became more obvious under Agnis’ guidance. She told him not to trust, not to mingle with others, not to show kindness. And the little one, still no more than a toddler, trusted her, kept to himself and his sister, though it didn’t stop him from being kind. Eduan smiled, entertained, at the thought that such a feeling couldn’t be snuffed out so easily.

Not only kindness. Eduan knew, after countless hours, day and night throughout the years, that Aguero had a strong heart, and powerful feelings that he didn’t hesitate to manifest in his own ways, unafraid of their depth. It fascinated Eduan to witness someone so honest with themself. Something headstrong veiled behind the quiet. Something that Eduan quite liked, if he admitted it to himself.

“That’s my favorite song,” Agnis’ daughter whispered with a grateful smile over the piano. “Did you know?”

Aguero, the hardworking genius, only hummed in affirmative as he ceaselessly hit the keys of the piano. It was enough answer for the girl, whose low spirits were slowly but surely lulled up by her brother’s attentions.

Eduan couldn’t look away sometimes. Even when the boy was taught to fight, to carry knives, to dance like an assassin, the shine in his eyes subsisted, his shinsu reaching out, answering his strong feelings under the surface.

The boy was tested with a training lightning spear. Without surprise, there was a glaring lack of result. Eduan was unfazed. The boy’s ice was different from Eduan’s as well. Should he take up a training ice spear, his ice might not even manifest depending on the form it favored. 

What did faze him, slightly, was the way Agnis continued to train her son with the spear after that. Forcing the shinsu out of him, painstakingly, even if it was barely enough to start working on reinforcement.

Eduan didn’t understand why. The boy wasn’t even seven quite yet.

One day, he went to sleep, drunk and out of his mind, and woke up to find Aguero lost in a forest far away from home, fighting a bear injured. It only appeared that everything had been under control once he headed back and Agnis patted his shoulder one with a cold ‘as expected’.

What was wrong with her?

At least the young Aguero was strong, with an intense survival instinct, and smarts Eduan had rarely seen at such a young age. It permitted him to remain true to himself, even through the hardships.

But then, the princess selection was announced.

Then, things did more than change .

They took a turn for the worse.

It started with the girl being taken away more times than not. Soon enough, she came back changed, and no matter how Aguero quietly reached out, he only met cold distance. Then, there was the matter of training. Well… it wasn’t so much training as torture.

Eduan could feel it burn, hurt, exhaust. A large part of his mind knew that it was mostly necessary, even if a bit over the top. The child had to learn to survive with the weapons at his disposal, so that he would survive when the day came he would fight his own siblings. Though, Eduan didn’t have a doubt that the child would survive either way- he had the intelligence for it, and Aguero personally saw to improving its use each passing day.

But, oh. If that were only that.

Something started to shift in the pure ice shinsu the day Agnis brought Aguero another child of Khun and told him to finish him with his knife. She slapped him for throwing up afterward. She gave him targets to assassinate. She punished him when he failed, when he was late, when he hesitated.

It had been long overdue, Eduan thought. A soul so earnest shouldn’t be able to survive in the Khun family. Except it did, and it could have survived longer. But it had been slowly cracking under the rough treatments, all along. Allowed to trust no one but a mother who asked him, “be a good tool will you?” and a sister who didn’t even look at him anymore. Agnis broke the inherent trust in humanity that the boy possessed, until nothing was left of it, showing him things that no child- even a Khun- should witness directly.

Eduan feared that something became lost permanently when she forced him to learn and torture his brethren.

“They don’t deserve to live,” she whispered strictly in his ears. “You owe me loyalty. Will you listen?”

She did her utmost to kill the kindness inside. She taught him to lie, to lead others to their dooms.

“Don’t show any emotion,” she reminded him, “or do you want your sister to die?”

They died to his manipulations, as he smiled flatly as he witnessed their demise, his eyes painfully empty.

And then, oh then, Agnis realized how good he was at that.

She thrusted him in the hostile world of society, so that he could learn and improve, and become even more deadly. So that he could serve her better.

Eventually, Aguero’s gaze changed, when he looked at his mother and sister. Maybe the words of his mother had taken a hold on him. Maybe he believed the words, that he was only a step-tool for his sister to become a princess, for his mother to gain importance. And yet, he seemed to understand that all of this was only originating from one goal: survival.

Survival of the most wicked. The whole was just a whole game of survival, different from the one he had been excelling at when he was but a toddler. Throughout his childhood, Aguero subconsciously understood that what he needed to protect wasn’t his body, but his heart. His fragile mind.

Eduan felt the soft frost that had once defined him retreat, away from his own grasp, shying away and recoiling back in the very depths of the boy, never to be seen again, unreachable, beaten down. The kindness in him broken and gone, jaded like fragile pieces of glass, of ice, them too were gathered back to where nothing could ever reach it again. Truth roughly shaken away from his grip, leaving only the lies and the numb.

A sort of numb that came with knowing one’s life was worthless but for what was expected of it. With knowing who one was didn’t really matter, with knowing one would never have a goal of their own, for they would never be allowed to be more than a tool for someone else’s purpose. A tool of cruelty and evil. Knowing one had no agency over their own life, and had no reason to struggle against that foreign control.

It was the sort of numb that came with not having any reason to live as a person.

Aguero liked to fish by the frozen shore. It was all about waiting without doing anything, moving when the rod reacted in his hands, pull back the fish, look at it briefly, and then free it back. Pointless waiting around with no true result.

He also liked to acquire beautiful jewels, fragile and immaculate, but he preferred to hide those away, even if he himself could not admire them either. Maybe to protect them not only from breaking, but from himself. Or maybe he just didn’t want to see his reflection in them.

A bit like he never confronted his sister anymore, even when he found her shedding silent tears in a corner of their estate one day. Wandering, aimless, anything that could interest him carefully sent away. A boy who didn’t see the point in struggling to live, let himself be used without any feeling or qualm. Because what did it matter what he thought? So might as well not think anything of it.

Eduan realized, one day far too late, that all that was left of his son was just an empty bored husk. All that was supposed to be inside had either been painfully cut down and broken or frozen by his own frigid despair, no longer soft frost meeting daylight anymore. Just ice lingering in the darkness, afraid of the light, in case it broke through as well.

Eduan trashed his castle that day, because his son was no more.

She took his son from him.

“I taught you well,” she said, before leaving him to his own devices, not caring anymore because she knew he would be loyal regardless of what happened.

“Nurture it well,” Eduan had once ordered her.

This wasn’t what he had meant. She had taken his words, twisted them, and twisted her son’s growth until it was inexistant, scarring the soul until it had no room left to feel. Or rather, until it erased its own feeling to stop the cuts from coming.

His kind, soft son, Khun Aguero Agnis…

But of course, Eduan thought after his rampage, it was his fault too. Here he remained, in his cold silver and empty castle, with his apathy for only company. He hadn’t done anything to stop it. Because he wasn’t a good person, nor a caring one. If he had been, he would have stopped this madness centuries ago. He would have taken the boy and taught him himself. Why hadn’t he?

“Khun Eduan?” Aguero’s voice reached him.

“Yeah! that’s our father, you know? My mother has been gloating because she sees him more nowadays.”

“Is it really important?” hummed the boy.

“Of course! Don’t you know who he is?”

Aguero repressed a chuckle.

“Of course I do. Khun Eduan, the head of the Khun family, one of the original members of king Jahad’s group of adventurers, creators of the Tower we know today, has hundreds of wives who compete for his affections, powerful and rich, our esteemed father…” Aguero smiled hollowly. “And the reason why we’re here. Very passive nowadays. Very drunk, too.”

The accusations were half-hearted, but stung nonetheless.

Why had Eduan remained so passive, even when something so interesting had been dangled in front of his very nose?

Probably… because it didn’t matter in the hand. Eduan’s touch would have broken the boy the same way Agnis’ touch had. Aguero was a gentle soul, but oh so fragile soul. It was inevitable.

Such a gentle soul wasn’t meant to be born in the Khun family.

He didn’t know why he thought anything else would happen.

Yet, without meaning too, he kept watching. Thrown in the hoes of alcohol, he visited what was left of Aguero, a body chained down to his cold floor, trying to ignore his restraints by never going further than the boundaries they established. Only rebelling in boring, self-relieving ways. Obedient because struggling wasn’t worth the effort.

Still, Aguero, in his own way, remained different from the rest of Khun Eduan’s countless children. It was the eye of him. No, not his cobalt irises, those had stopped shining years ago. But his eyes remained sharp, too sharp for a child. As he had always had, he saw more than any of his siblings did. The other children also bore their parents’ manipulation, their abuse and their way of teaching, but they were conceited. Arrogant, twisted, self-centered. But Aguero’s eye had, ever since he could think reliably, taken in the world he lived in, analyzed it, and understood it better than any child should have. He could see the main characters of his life, knowing he himself wasn’t one. Saw the plot, where all the gazes were drawn. But he could also see the relevance of all of it.

Oftentimes, there was not. Aguero, with the eye of an adult, could see it clear as day, from the side. Could see the chains, tied to his own wrists and also around the other children, even if most of them didn’t realize it. The numb he felt in himself, he could see it in front of him too. A meaningless world, which would have them all dead just for a couple of titles.

But Aguero was also worn out and tired, as per his mother’s intentions. He had no will left to try and change those paths.

How amusing, Eduan mused as he nursed a glass of wine back in his chambers. Aguero might really have been his. Like father, like son; the apple never fell far from the tree.

Absently, Eduan thought to himself, that Aguero might have fit in the mending scabbard if only Agnis hadn’t gifted it to him instead, as she planned early on how to break her own son. Even if he did, they never really learned the answer to that particular inquiry: Eduan still wondered if that pretty artifact could heal a broken mind.

Aguero was too tired to do anything but let it happen. Still, he saw, and to Eduan it already made him more interesting than any other boy his age. To Aguero, it wasn’t about surviving anymore. That had been taken care of, Khun Aguero Agnis wouldn’t die, it wasn’t a matter of skills. It was just about waiting for the time to come when he wouldn’t be useful anymore.

And how utterly boring that was.

The boy with dull eyes was bored, and he sought entertainment where he could find it. Entertainment… or perhaps, kinship.

That was why the boy distracted himself with endless games of chess, either with himself or rare adversaries, playing at hiding his strength, losing or winning only threads that his fingers manipulated. That was why he smiled coyly as he spent time outside, watching as dramas passed by, ironical and cynical thoughts entertaining him as he watched on, observant.

That was why he ended up approaching Khun Ran, Khun Maschenny’s son.

Eduan’s interest flared up slightly at the new face. Not that it was entirely new. Aguero had been watching him for a long while now. But it was only when he was nine that Aguero finally approached the young prodigy that was Khun Maschenny Jahad’s younger brother.

They ended up talking, briefly. Ran seemed rather annoyed at first. Eduan was not really paying a lot of attention to the conversation they were having, but it seemed to be about the ten years old’s tournament, at some point. And maybe about faux-semblants, too. By the end of it, Ran looked intrigued by Aguero and they just might have bonded - slightly - over their shared boredom.

They were actually quite similar, Eduan realized, except that Ran wasn’t even trying to play the game, bluntly refusing to be a part of it further than he had to. Meanwhile, Aguero remained the same, still dead inside but acting as a perfect Khun heir should behave, with a slight mischievous streak to him and just the right amount of cleverness to put other people’s guards down. Following the rules dutifully. But his experience seemed to draw Ran in, like he couldn’t imagine someone playing the game while simultaneously disdaining it.

Their meetings were scarce at first. Aguero seemed to like Ran, somewhat. Maybe he could see a bit of himself in Ran. The child who knew all too well that he wasn’t regarded for the person he was, but rather for what could be gained from him. For one, it was the title and relatives’ reputation, as well as his own talent in combat. For the other, it was the mastermind and tricks chained down and turned into slaves for another purpose. Except Aguero was never meant to be more. Not that he knew of.

Eduan knew better. He drank some more, to forget.

Soon enough, Aguero turned ten.

Aguero killed ninety-nine of his siblings in less than an hour.

Aguero won the death match.

This was the first time Aguero and Eduan actually crossed gazes. Aguero’s were cold and empty. But when they looked at him, something flared up. Just a bit.

It wasn’t the childish, cute rebellion of the child Eduan had unknowingly bonded with back then. No, that one was locked away tightly in the darkness of his soul, with his soft shinsu, both jaded with no chance of ever mending again. It was a cold vengeance instead, a numb spark that seemed to say, ‘oh. So this is that man’s fault.’

Eduan couldn’t even begin to guess what must have reflected in his eyes that day.

From then on, Ran sometimes joined Aguero by the shore. Maybe some kinship and respect had actually bloomed between the two of them. Eduan didn’t actually know how or why it happened, but it did. Somehow, Aguero had managed to make a friend. One that was his.

For all the good that would do him.

Chapter Text

The years went by slowly, the princess selection business and quiet murders giving them a dangerous rhythm. Just like the sea, a slow tide coming and going, deadly.

Aguero had gained more allies, more favors… whatever they would be used for. It was interesting to see how many Khuns looked at his heir for who he was and not who he served. They weren’t quite looking at him because they could see the kindness and the genuine feelings that had once been flowing out of his little being. No. Eduan could only guess that what drew them in were the cracks. Broken competency. The charisma of a broken boy going through the motions, with skills worthy enough to make anyone follow him, not for his personality but for his quiet confidence and said skills.

Quiet confidence, Eduan repeated to himself, pensive. Even if Aguero happened to play it up a few times, that was still all it was. The certainty of a servant who knew his schemes would be well used and claimed by his masters. A servant who knew his place.

Often enough, Aguero skipped school. In fact, he would do that as soon as he grasped the material being taught if that wasn’t already done, or understood the message the teachers were trying to convey. He would either go fishing or spend time with Ran. They sparred, sometimes.

Despite Agnis’ rude training, Aguero still favored the knives to the spear. Eduan didn’t find it so surprising. Spears were too rough, not… refined enough, for someone like him.

Ever since he had won his title as a true son of Khun when he was ten, Aguero had taken up to tie his hair up with the blue silk cloth he had received as proof of it, the crest of their family embroidered into it blue on blue. He had also been introduced to more social events by his mother and sister.

The princess selection’s trials went on, as well.

“Then Aguero… Aguero,” a voice called, then stricter, “Aguero!”

Aguero raised his eyes to meet his mother’s, neutrally.

“I know what I have to do,” he retorted blandly, standing to leave, hands in his pockets as his mother frowned at him before she nodded.

Aguero went to find Ran behind the school. The boy raised his head to greet him, seemingly bored.

“A.A,” he said, as Aguero leaned on the wall beside where the boy was seated.

A.A. A peculiar nickname that Aguero and his few acquaintances had come up with. It stood for Aguero Agnis. There was, in a way, a small difference between Aguero and A.A, Eduan considered curiously. Aguero was Agnis’, her soft child, her tool, her possession and object. Something without a form anymore, left pliant in her hands. A.A, in comparison, was cold and metallic, cynical and sharp-edged. He was independent, and the people around him always asked themselves what he was up to. Even the name felt a bit more impersonal. His smirk showed hard-earned experience, he knew what he was doing, and he was full of dark humor.

One could say, the one element both identities had in common was their eyes. They had the same empty eyes.

Inside, Khun Aguero Agnis curled into himself, cold and trembling, his hands in front of his eyes to blind himself to the world. Utterly defeated, and eradicated by his own cruelty.

A.A had a lot to learn, but he didn’t shy away from it. He was adventurous in that way, although that was in a cautious manner. Methodical.

A.A also had something a bit sadistic about him. It must be the jaded edges, Eduan thought as the boy took out something from his back pocket and… Huh.

“What’s that?” Ran asked as he tried to peek at the object A.A was manipulating, its shape growing in dexterous hands.

“A lighthouse,” A.A answered matter-of-factly.

Ran choked.

“Where did you get that shit!” he rasped disbelieving.

There. The sadistic grin.

“I stole it.”

Eduan arched an eyebrow. And was that a tinge of pride he heard in the lilt of A.A’s tone?

More important than that, Eduan wished he’d been watching then. He managed to miss all the good fun.

“I- why- who- you… Ugh!” Ran facepalmed before going back to being monotonously done with life. “Okay, why’d you need it again?”

A.A hummed, working on the object he’d obviously never touched before.

“Dear ‘older brother’ asked me a favor… It’s not free of course, I’ll collect later. I’m working on that request right now. Hm… Ah, I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured you’d know how to use it after only half a minute,” Ran deadpanned. “Remind me why I deal with your bullshit instead of reporting you?”

“Here, have some yogurt.”

“Thanks, guess you can stay then.”

Aguero- or A.A, didn’t really appreciate the whole lot of Khun people in the family, but throughout the years he had managed to build a small, yet solid network. It was far from what Eduan had expected when he had first imagined what his heir would be like, but that particular ship had long sinked. It didn’t mean that it wasn’t entertaining. Somehow, despite losing what made him unique in the first place, A.A never failed to impress with how special he was, regardless of kindness and ice shinsu.

It wasn’t what Eduan had signed up for, but it would do for a while.

“A.A, the classroom is on fire.”

“Rude. I’m just here chilling and fishing and you come to me with reclamations.”

“I know you did it. I just wanna know how.”

“Trade secret.”

But, still.

Most of the time, it was quiet.

Like water, underneath the frozen surface. Water, deadly, silent, with no trace of the passage of time. Easy to get lost in. Dreadfully, melancholically cold.

Eduan knew himself was nothing more than a skeleton at the bottom of that frozen sea. That, or he was the moon, above, watching it all with an indifferent eye. All the big fishes that swam underneath, carefully treading each other. Or hunting and eating each other. One wound and the blood would attract hundreds of greedy predators.

A.A never let himself bleed.

And Aguero… had already scarred over, pieces of him taken away. He had long turned as cold as the water, to blend in, unnoticed, learning how to feed the predators with other prey. His own skin pale, blood-drained.

It didn’t hurt.

It doesn’t hurt, Eduan murmured to the little scared thing that had been his child, as the numb took over him, maybe scared to disappear. I promise it doesn’t hurt. It’ll be okay. You’ll see. Just close your eyes.

Acquaintances, allies, enemies, parties and balls, negotiations, small talks, hidden knives, trials, preparations, lies and schemes, tools and sisters, lightning and spears, manipulations and duels, assassinations and torture. All of it was a slow but strong and cold, heady current that dragged the fishes down, more and more. Aguero had long since learned to swim and stay afloat, Eduan pondered, at the cost of himself.

Soon after Aguero gained his title as a true son of Khun, and as he was officially introduced to political events… Agnis’ sister passed away. Her only daughter, Kiseia, was then transferred under Agnis’ responsibility. Eduan only needed to glance at her once to realize that she wasn’t going to live long. Unable to control her emotions, no poker face, too vulnerable. The only thing she knew how to do well was fighting.

Aguero noticed as well. But he might have seen something of his past self, in her, in the way she kept running after an older female figure, starved of affection just the same as he was. Eduan took a few months to notice it, but Aguero ended up protecting Kiseia.

This might have been the only reason she survived.

She was kept afloat, in her ignorance, blind to the only person in her life who cared about who she was. Aguero continued on, seamlessly, as dull and broken as always, on his lonely road.

Then. Something new happened. It was years later.

A.A was fourteen, when he first met Maria.

To be fair, Maria and A.A probably had seen each other before. But it was the first time they truly interacted.

Like A.A, her hair - much longer - was silver, although perhaps a bit paler, whiter. Only the ends of it were blue. Sometimes, hair darkened with time, Eduan had no doubt that his heir’s hair would soon turn bluer. She was clothed warmly, contrarily to A.A, who easily resisted the low temperatures of the floor, even though he disliked the cold… symbolically. It was ironic, seeing as A.A got cold easily. Perhaps that was because he already had a cold power locked inside. But Eduan was digressing. Eduan wasn’t particularly interested in the girl, after all. He’d rather consider his cold and broken progeny some more. He didn’t even remember who had birthed this one.

She was a princess candidate, too, Eduan learned. A.A had most likely already been aware of this when she first showed up in front of him. Or rather, in his back.

“You’re Aguero, am I wrong?”

She had a soft, kind voice. Risible. Something like that wouldn’t be enough to fool A.A.

“...I don’t know. What do you want from him?”

“Oh!”

Interesting. The voice almost sounded genuinely surprised as she continued.

“My apologies, I forgot to introduce myself. Although, you probably already know me. Call me Maria.”

“Uh-huh. Be curt, you’re scaring the fish away.”

A small, embarrassed chuckle.

“I just wanted to have a chat. You’re someone I respect a lot, Khun Aguero Agnis.”

A.A ignored her.

“Can I sit with you?” she tried again, seemingly undeterred by his lack of interest.

“No.”

“Oh. Alright then. I won’t disturb you any longer, for now.”

That was how their first meeting had gone.

Nothing impressive, or particularly worth remembering, in short.

But it didn’t stop here. She came back the week after.

“Did you catch anything impressive?”

Eduan could feel Aguero's annoyance from his bedroom.

“I did. However they were so frightened by the sound of you that they leaped right back to the water.”

“That’s a lie,” the girl said with a smile in her voice, almost chuckling. “Is it fun, to catch fish?”

Was it fun?

Eduan knew the answer. It wasn’t fun. It just was.

“Is it fun, to ask stupid questions?” Aguero retorted flatly.

Maria frowned, taking a few steps forward.

“It’s not stupid!” She protested lively. “It’s about you. And you're not stupid,” she asserted.

Aguero didn’t tick.

“Indeed I'm not stupid,” he arched an eyebrow in her direction, looking at her for the first time. “And from what you have been saying, you do know that fact. You know that you are transparent, don’t you?”

Maria looked saddened.

“I understand your worries,” she stated gravely, and oh! Look, that was indeed Eduan’s spawn as well, “however, I promise you, my intentions are not to manipulate you. I only wish to learn to know you better.”

Alright, so perhaps Eduan had been mistaken. Either she was lying or she wasn’t his child.

But Aguero's lie detector didn’t find anything. The boy huffed.

“Go away.”

And Maria left.

But she also came the week after. And the week after that.

Maria never stopped coming. Eventually, she started to sit with Khun as he waited for the fish to bite. They also started meeting elsewhere. At the events Aguero had to attend, for example. At school, for another.

Ran didn’t trust Maria. Eduan couldn’t say he liked her very much either.

“Why are you so obstinate?” Aguero asked one day, unable to contain himself. “So stubborn. The only reason I haven’t gotten rid of you is your strength. You are stronger than me. So what do you want with me?”

She smiled, as though he had complimented her.

“That’s not true,” she protested gently. “I'm certain you had more than one occasion to dispose of me, but you didn’t. You are an extremely kind person, Aguero.”

Aguero flinched.

Eduan jolted.

‘ Kind’.

Aguero composed himself first. His lips thinned with agitation as he refused to face the young girl.

“Don’t make me laugh,” he hissed. “What kind of favor do you think you can gain like that-”

“You know it’s not about that.”

He did.

She sat by his side.

“You probably don’t realize how kind you are. With Kiseia. With Ran. With me. With your sister, too.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“What about the jewels you hide?” She remarked, and Khun physically flinched away from her.

But she looked upon him with nothing but considerate patience.

“They’re beautiful. It’s like you think they’re too beautiful for you. You cradle them to your chest like they’re so fragile, and then you had them away with so much courage. I think you're terribly kind, Aguero.”

Eduan lowered his glass of wine the more she spoke.

“I also think that you're a very sad person.”

It was like a hand, that someone extended to Aguero from above the water. Pointing out the shine inside him.

The shine that Eduan himself had failed to perceive since years ago. Until now.

Because that Maria. That child, she might be right.

She might.

He looked, intently.

“About your sister, I had one question.”

Aguero tensed up. It was another time again.

“Why does she want to become a princess?”

Aguero pressed his lips together before speaking behind his glass of wine, sitting away with Maria at a reception.

“Our mother asked her to,” he answered placidly.

Maria seemed, once again, saddened.

“Does she not have a purpose of her own?” She inquired with genuine concern.

Aguero didn’t look at her. He stared at her, at the young woman he called his sister, excelling in the arts of politics just a few feet away. Eduan didn’t know what he was thinking. His core was too well guarded.

“Children,” he began, “do not have purposes in this family. They are but the tools of their parents. Weapons they wield against each other. That is how this floor has always worked.”

“But…isn’t that too cruel?” Maria seemed frustrated.

Aguero blinked slowly at the blood like liquid in his goblet.

“Cruelty,” he replied, “is the hurt of feelings. We were not born to feel. …Although,” he added belatedly, as Maria perked up, “Weapons and cruelty are, in the end, simply other tools to defend themselves and their families… including us, I suppose.” 

He took a small sip.

“It may be cruel, but it is the only way we know how to protect the lives we have.”

Maria remained silent, pondering gravely on his words. She turned back to the crowd, and tired words escaped her.

“This broken floor… I want to change it.”

Aguero smirked.

“You can’t.”

“Wouldn’t you try as well, were you in the adequate position?”

“No,” he retorted. “What is the use to try when it is bound to fail?”

She held his gaze firmly.

“You know, Aguero… had you been a woman, I think you wouldn’t have lost it.”

He frowned.

“Lost what?”

She narrowed her knowing eyes at him.

“Your will to live.”

He recoiled.

Eduan hunched closer over them.

She smiled gently at him.

“I think you would have made a wonderful princess, Aguero.”

Oh, Eduan knew that better than anyone else. Aguero… he could have changed the world.

But Aguero- no. The entity inside was dead. The kindness gone with it. So how was it that she could still see it?

Gentle frost could only solidify to ice under the harsh temperatures of the Khun family floor. Nothing could possibly be left of it.

It burned.

Eduan didn’t understand.

There were flowers, on top of a hill. Somehow, Aguero had accepted to follow Maria there. They had become acquaintances, by now.

“Aren’t they beautiful?”

“...they will die in a few days.”

Maria smiled sadly.

“Maybe. But they will be reborn. Again, and again. Because they still have the will to live.”

Aguero looked down at her, certainly remembering what Eduan himself kept in mind.

The will to live. Something that the both of them lacked.

“Even if it is only for a few days… isn’t it worth it to see the sunlight?”

“It hurts worse afterward,” Aguero whispered.

They weren’t talking about the flowers anymore. Or maybe they were. Eduan wasn’t good anymore at metaphors.

But rebirth…

He felt something stir.

“You don’t have a reason to live,” Maria told him.

“I live for my sister,” Aguero told her dully.

“But you do not allow yourself to love her.”

Maria knew too much.

“What does love have to do with life?” Aguero asked her.

Eduan remained wary as Maria chuckled, turning to glance at him over her shoulder.

“Love,” she said, “is the difference between life and survival.”

She was dangerous.

“I love a lot. Therefore, I struggle much as well. But that is how one such as us survives.”

But she could be the key, as well.

“You love immensely as well, Aguero,” she told him, and Aguero froze. “But you let yourself drown, instead of struggling for it. You love them all… so you let them drown you.”

The key to awakening the pulse in Aguero's heart once more.

“Does it matter?” Aguero's voice quivered.

She smiled melancholically, holding the flower tenderly between her juxtaposed palms.

It was no frost she would awaken, however. But a small, frail candle, lighting up Winter.

“Did you know?

…Struggling to survive is beautiful.”

Chapter Text

She talked to him about herself, after that.

About how she lived her life. What she saw, what she wanted to do. What her goal was, in becoming a princess of Jahad. And Aguero listened. He never said anything.

It almost seemed like they had become friends.

They were two people who could, more or less, understand each other, enough to let go of the conventions when they were together. Their opinions often differed. However, they were both born in the same world. And they knew that world inside and out.

Their friendship wasn’t all that comforting, Eduan noticed. It wasn’t a smiling relationship to escape the harsh reality, no. If anything, their exchanges always seemed to confront that reality head on, albeit quietly. It wasn’t about feeling good, or loved. It was about standing in the same place, overseeing everything, and not being alone. Having someone to share the end of the world with, in a way.

Eduan had never felt that way. He wasn’t sure he could understand. But maybe, that was how V and Arlene had felt, a long time ago, when things started to fall apart.

Almost certainly, the girl had first gotten in contact with Aguero to ask for his help in the impending competition. But Aguero had no goal, and more than that, he still felt love for the people who had raised him. He looked at them distantly, but he still looked at them. Aguero himself didn’t seem to fully realize it, but now that it had been pointed out to him, Eduan did. That it was just a bit more than mindless loyalty. It was the resignation of not being able to change anything, and going along with the wishes of loved ones, if only because there was nothing else left to do to save them.

Maria knew that. She knew that, had she come just that little bit closer, she would have overstepped. So that was what they ended up becoming. Not quite friends, not quite allies. Just enough to create a weak feeling of companionship. Both had their own priorities, and both respected them. It was probably not what she had been looking for when she first approached Eduan’s heir, but… both seemed content with it now.

Somehow, there still existed kindness. Reminders of it.

“You always release the fish after catching it,” Maria remarked curiously.

Aguero only spared her a glance as he answered the implicit question.

“There would be no point keeping or killing them. What would I do with it? Eat it? Admire it? That’s boring.”

“But then why do you fish?”

He didn’t have an answer to that.

“Guess I'm weird. Maybe I like knowing I'm more intelligent than the fish?” Maria couldn’t help a small smile at the joke. “But yeah, all in all, I know it looks like a pretty useless endeavor…”

“I don’t think so,” she protested, blinking up at him. “Maybe you like the company of the fish.”

Aguero arched an eyebrow.

“Why would I free it then?”

She had her answer ready, fiem and certain.

“Because you're kind.”

Eduan marveled, both at the conclusion the girl came to, and at the hint of surprise that flashed through Aguero's features.

He had never seen it like this.

It made him wonder, sometimes, all the things that girl could see in his son… if he might not have drawn his own conclusion too fast.

But just then, Aguero's expression closed itself off.

“That’s enough,” he said quietly, but his voice carried power.

Maria didn’t insist.

In the meantime, the life at the Agnis estate did not improve. If anything, it kept worsening.

“Don’t trust anyone, Aguero,” his mother used to say. “Otherwise, we'll die,” that, she still said.

Eduan watched on as the selection became more and more dangerous, as all Aguero's cunning and wits redirected themselves to the tasks he was handed. The honor of the family, the status of their gentry, their continued survival both in the political life of the floor and in the most basic sense of the word, the emotional stability of the family members, they said it was all the princess candidate's burden… but all of it actually weighted on the young strategist’s shoulders. All the dirty tricks, and the dirty work, all of it incombed to Aguero as well. In a sense, it was a miracle that Aguero had kept his wits, and his own personality.

More and more, Aguero looked at them. At his family. Distantly, wondering, sometimes accusative… most of the time just resigned, pensive.

Eduan had no grasp on that closed off heart, even since the boy's childhood. He wondered, did that child’s pure love subsist under the harsh cold that separated them? Did he care?

Sometimes, Eduan felt like it was the case. Felt a hint of that longing behind the bone-deep resignation.

Eduan would have resented them, in his stead. But he wasn’t certain Aguero even held a grudge. Who knew, maybe a small one, for what they had become.

Aguero watched them.

Eduan felt something burn weakly, inside.

“You don’t trust me,” Maria said one day.

“I can’t afford to.”

She smiled.

“It’s okay. I don’t need you to trust me. All that matters is that I trust you.”

“Do you?”

“Mh. Just enough.”

All of them. They were too jaded to trust one another. They knew they could never, even if they tried. Maria and Aguero didn’t rely on each other, that necessitated too much trust.

But they didn’t mind using each other.

Life progressed.

Kiseia destroyed herself with her own devotion. Their older sister was but a ghost of who she once was, falling through the last dregs of the abyss. Agnis herself distanced herself, hoping, either loving or objectifying her children, but never caring for them. She too, was losing herself. Who wouldn’t? But she had long been broken.

Yet, Aguero inside her, still discerned an ounce of love.

What if? 

But there was no place for what if in this cruel game. What Aguero saw, Eduan could see it too.

The Agnis family was drowning, and Aguero watched on as they did, not once asking for help.

Maria too, was drowning. Ran. All the Khun children ended up drowning, one way or another.

But, Aguero was different. He wasn’t drowning.

Aguero was fifteen years old, when Eduan finally realized it.

“Maria. You want my help, don’t you?”

All this time, unnoticed.

“I'll help you.”

Aguero had been suffocating slowly.

Maria looked into Aguero's eyes, unafraid of the endless blue depth of them.

The eyes were the window to the soul, as they said.

In Aguero's eyes, and Maria's too, Eduan could see it, carefully buried deep under the surface. The desperation in them.

“What do you want from me?” she inquired, always so gently, but gentleness meant nothing.

“Follow my lead,” he said, his eyes painfully closed for a long second. “That’s all I need you to do.”

The truth was, Agnis would never get better. Kiseia would wither away. As for his dear elder sister, should she be sent away to that place, she might truly break to death.

“Do you trust me, then?”

“No. I trust myself.”

Never had one of Aguero's plans gone wrong. Because each and every single one of his plans were too big a gamble to lose.

“What do you gain out of it?” Maria asked again, non-judgemental.

“Maybe nothing,” he admitted. “But one thing is certain. I'll lose, if I keep going in this direction. This is my gamble. Do you bet on it?”

As always, she smiled.

“I do. I told you before, Aguero. I trust you just enough.”

She took his hand. He smirked, and Eduan felt it again, that flame, that something fighting to make itself seen again.

This might be it.

“Then, Maria. Let me guide you. Make a deal with the devil, and I swear to send you away from this place.”

The devil, huh.

Maria's quirk of the lips held a tinge of sadness to it, but there was nothing either of them could do about it.

“How cruel,” she said, her voice breaking noticeably. “Just when I thought we might become friends.”

Eduan looked at the both of them. Yes. He too, might have hoped for this. Maria, after all, had been the one to rekindle the spark of life in his heir's chest, even though it could be argued that her influence was indirect.

The truth was, she wasn’t the one to make him want to fight. He did that on his own, like a cornered creature, struggling one last time before the end.

But it was her who made him see the value of himself. As small as it was. As much as he willfully ignored it in his last attempt at fighting, because he still wasn’t fighting for himself.

Still. Aguero was gasping for breath. That was more than Eduan had ever hoped for.

“Then,” Maria added after wiping a stray tear from the corner of her eye, “does that make me one of your gemstones?”

It was unexpected. Both Eduan and Aguero blinked in surprise.

“What?”

She looked down at their joined hands in front of her.

“Like one of your precious gemstones, you will protect me, polish me, and send me away. I will be yours, and you will give me your kindness.”

Aguero remained speechless for a few seconds.

“I… This is not kindness, Maria,” he told her gravely. “You know that.”

“Mh. But I like seeing it like that. It makes me yours. I'm in your hands, Aguero.”

“You might regret it.”

She shook her head, instead pulling him toward her. He let her, surprised.

“I won’t. For however short a time it will be, I am now yours. Your jewel. But it also means you're mine, too.”

Her smile widened.

“I'll reflect your light in the way you've never seen it,” she promised him, eye to eye. “I'll teach you how much ‘Aguero’ can truly be.”

Not the Aguero that Agnis had created with her own two hands. Not the murderer, the liar that had had no choice but to crush himself and others. She could, would show him an Aguero that didn’t need to be any of that. An Aguero that lived for himself, who breathed and fought and shone .

Someone that was his.

“...Alright,” he whispered. “Yours.”

Her smile reflected a brilliant light already.

“Mine,” she agreed. “My Aguero.”

It took a year. An entire year. And Aguero shone. Eduan couldn’t believe his eyes. Didn’t dare breathe at times, scared that it would disappear at the first breeze.

No, it didn’t shine. It burned.

It fought, gasped for breath, it reached for the surface, struggling against rhe water’s hold, introducing movement into stillness.

Aguero's plans were perfect.

Like a phoenix. Aguero spread his wings the day Maria won the princess selection. Blinding fire, unleashed like hell on earth, like retribution.

Alive again.

But life had a price.

A life for a life. No human could be reborn anew without any scar.

Aguero wasn’t perfect. He loved too much. Had trusted too much.

He had overestimated his own flesh and blood.

He ran, desperately, but it was no use. He was forced to stop, when her body hung in front of his eyes, lifeless, hopeless.

Aguero lived, accomplished all his promises. Yet he still lost his gamble.

He broke through the surface, finally.

At that exact moment, Eduan felt something break.

He knew, had known for a long time now. Broken minds could not be mended.

This was the day Khun was born. The day that child became a young man, the day he felt hatred for the first time. Toward Eduan himself, and the rules he had enabled.

This was the day Khun Aguero Agnis gained his freedom.

Chapter Text

Khun Aguero Agnis was still sixteen when he was expelled from the Khun family.

He had to survive. To hunt, to fend off the beasts. To survive the cold.

Eduan found that Aguero was good at that.

No, not Aguero. Khun.  

Khun focused on surviving, and somehow the tasks allowed him to find a balance within himself. A balance between the cold, locked away frost that the core of his being protected, the sharp and solid walls of ice at his edges, and most importantly the flame he nurtured within.

Keep the flame in check, use it to fuel himself. Keep anything and everything at bay, with the walls.

Don’t let the frost out.

“The moment we show weakness, we die,” Agnis had hammered into his head. And Aguero had always embraced that. But now, in this fucked up situation he found himself, barely making a living after his own sister killed herself, Eduan discovered that Khun took the whole thing on another level.

Where Aguero had thrived to erase his weaknesses and simply be unbreachable, as empty as the inside had seemed, Khun took the practice a step further. He protected his weaknesses, buried them as far down as he could, but most importantly, he showed strength. Built confidence. Wore brand new smirks like razor sharp blades, all the time, to get used to it.

He made a whole new personality for himself, highly based off A.A’s laid back behavior and on his legitimate confidence in his hard-earned skills, turning it into arrogance and a healthy dose of snark and condescendance. Enough that said, follow me, and simultaneously, don’t get too close. Khun did not simply hide his weaknesses close to his chest, did not lie in wait to reveal the strength and tricks he hid under his sleeves. Instead, he took on luring his opponent, revealing a card, a facet, and waiting to reveal the rest while making sure no one else would get a glimpse at them.

A master at poker. All for the sake of survival. But deep down, Aguero was still looking for something.

Something that this self-appointed revenge could only somewhat fill, without assuaging the need for more.

But oh, Eduan had no doubt that this revenge, more than a revenge this world recreation Khun thrived for, would lead him to undiscovered heights, places Eduan himself had never been able to reach.

The truth is, he had always known that his dear, sweet Aguero would burn the world anew with the gentle frostbite of his care. Now, Khun would make it go down with an explosion, for he had found a pride that made him brilliant, that made him shine brightly, blindingly, through the Tower.

Eduan wanted to see his Aguero, Khun, smile down at the world he’d created, even for just a second before his body went cold at his son’s feet.

Yet Eduan knew, nevermind the brilliance of the impressive, world shattering fireworks his son was slowly preparing for, this goal of Khun’s was only one born of duty, kindness and empathy long buried under his precious lies. Eduan knew, that Khun was grievously missing something, something that Aguero wanted.

“Struggling to survive is beautiful.”

Is it really? Eduan pondered, watching the pale-blue haired boy struggle to keep his life, and his dignity. It was certainly fascinating, how a weak creature as a young human could find the resources to fight for themselves even in the harshest conditions. But he didn’t quite agree. Literal survival was prideful. That was what he thought of as the boy smoothed his edges with calculated victory and perfection at every turn. It was a point of pride.

Beauty? Aguero’s beauty, Khun hid inside, to be forever forgotten and for no one else to know of. A controlled flame, an icy figure, Khun had planned for every detail of himself while allowing a large margin of improvisation and freedom- a character painstakingly built to meet his own criteria of what his perfection and freedom would look like.

Something, hopefully, diametrically opposed to Khun Eduan, the man could guess. The thought made him smirk. His son- no, Khun hated him so much it became amusing.

Beauty had nothing to do with that. It was all tenacity. Audacity. Excellence.

Inevitably, one day, Headon found Khun - all within expectations, according to both father and son. When Headon extended his falsely helping hand toward Khun to guide him through the portal, Khun smirked haughtily, and walked right past the ‘benevolent’ hand toward the portal, his bag swung nonchalantly over his shoulder as Headon laughed which- oh, yes.

Right. That.

Right.

Eduan sighed at the very sight of the Mambarondenna. It never failed to give him a headache.

One day, he had simply opened his eyes, and taken a look at his son, observed his movements as he ventured through free life after being casted out, and then surprise! surprise! He’d realized what Khun had been holding all along.

He had gone to check in the vaults only to find a taunting message that yelled of mischief and grudge.

The worst is, he had no one to blame but himself, and he couldn’t help but let out a long, long-suffering sigh. Impressed, sure, because what the hell this boy- but nonetheless resentful and disappointed - in himself and whoever was on guard around his treasure trove these days.

But no matter.

Eduan could admit - to himself - that Khun might need the Mambarondenna and all the other stuff he’d stolen from him more than Eduan did. Especially now, as he stood in a field of golden grass - wheat? No, that was grass - and the administrator explained the rule of the first test… which had apparently changed a lot since Eduan had gone through it himself. But Eduan really shouldn’t be surprised.

He’d just forgotten about it…

Of course, Khun knew what to expect. But he went about it in a strange way… A very ‘Aguero’ way, if Eduan had been asked. But maybe Eduan was simply biased. Khun was right in his strategy. The more allies he got himself early on, the more prepared he was for what came next.

Smart boy.

Already halfway through the test, Khun had one kill to his new count, and three allies to show off… or rather, to hide, in the Mambarondenna. He took advantage of his new carefree look, that was stressed by his unkempt yet formal clothes, Eduan found, to also let the confidence shine at full potential. Khun was, in short, very convincing… but not simply because of the first impression he made. It was notably thanks to his clever words and the contracts he suggested. Khun didn’t sugarcoat anything, didn’t promise more than he could give. Khun only promised what he was certain he could give, and the people he spoke with could feel that.

Eduan himself could think of a reason why, but it seemed Khun never did take any risk, nor did he like to gamble so much.

Khun was very careful to make no mistake. His work was flawless, as survival had taught him. As the Khun family’s battleground had taught him.

However, he did end up doing a mistake.

One mistake, Eduan thought as he narrowed his eyes warily, that might just be the end of him. Not that Eduan would know that.

He would come to learn of this in the far future.

The thing was, Khun would never have made such a mistake. He was carefree, improvised when he could, and loved to break the rules. But he did follow the rules, in a way. If he dared one day to rewrite them, he had to be very intimately acquainted with the rules. Khun was ambitious, and everything he did stemmed from this particular quality.

Except this.

This boundless curiosity, that genuine intrigue he showed when he met him. That pushed him to walk toward the boy with the brown unkempt hair and the golden eyes, trembling like a leaf as he brandished a certain blade toward his passive opponent - a blade that Eduan recognized at first glance.

A free curiosity that belonged to Aguero. Deeper than that.

Seeing that inexperienced boy in the middle of the golden fields of Evankhell’s Hell, the boy from times long past poked his head out and took the initiative.

Back then, Eduan didn’t mark it for what it really was. But years after years, time after time, drink after drink he always came back to this moment, not knowing if it was when things started or if it had been the beginning of the end, where things went wrong. He didn’t know, is never certain to this day. But he always came back to this moment, and he could see it then, recognize it for the child he’d raised and played with once upon a time, could recognize the pull and the innocence of the gaze just before Khun had called out.

His son.

Signing his own end.

“Oi, stop that.”

The bane of Khun’s existence turned, and the end was signed at first eye contact.

“With a posture like that, even catching a rabbit would be difficult.”

Not Khun, nor the golden eyed boy, nor even Eduan that this moment sealed off their destinies.

If only…

…If only you had never met him.

Chapter Text

“Oi, stop that.”

Eduan watched as the boy with brown hair turned to reveal golden eyes, with veiled interest. His interest, of course, only stemmed from one particular reason.

That child looked like Arlene.

But that was something only Eduan knew out of the both of them. Why had Khun approached the son of V?

“With that awkward posture, you wouldn’t even be able to snag a baby rabbit.”

Curious. Very curious. Eduan tried to reach out, a seed of his ice shinsu spreading out of Khun’s own shinsu canal to feel the other boy. The brunet shivered slightly under Khun’s gaze, surely because of the cold feeling Eduan had sent his way.

Both father and son could see the thousand questions in the newcomer’s features - well, except that technically, Khun was the newcomer here.

Would Khun add him to the collection of allies hiding snuggly in the Mambarondenna?

“And, one more thing…” Khun took a stand next to the Da-An member and explained not unkindly, Eduan thought seeing the situation, “Those from the Da-An tribe have a mild temperament, so they don’t attack others. Not even in situations like this.”

After a few seconds of processing as the Da-An left lazily, the son of V relaxed with a sigh, letting himself fall back on a rock not so far. Khun, probably just as intrigued as Eduan by his easy trust that Khun wouldn’t strike him, went to sit by his side.

“Phew!” the boy let out another sigh of relief. “Thank you for stopping me.”

“No problem,” Khun considered the other. “But you can see those from the Da-An tribe from anywhere in the Tower,” he then pointed out. “Where did you come from? How come you don’t know about them?”

The boy looked uncomfortable at the inquiry. Eduan narrowed his eyes. Truthfully, he already had his own guess as to why.

He had thought that the child had died at Jahad’s weapon, centuries ago, if not millenia in the past. Arlene had long disappeared as well, Eduan had always assumed that she was no more. But if she had managed to hide then… in which obscure corner of the Tower had she hidden herself and her child all this time? And why did the child look no older than twelve or fifteen?

It made no sense. Unless Arlene accomplished the impossible and…

Finally, he answered, not looking anywhere near Khun.

“Well… it’s hard to say…”

Oh. A novelty.

Eduan could already tell what Khun was marveling about now. A hint of Aguero popping out, looking in wonder at the honest, fellow creature in front of him.

“I see,” Khun’s lips pulled into a reassuring smile Eduan had rarely seen before. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Now, even Khun acted strange.

It made Eduan uneasy, yet at the same time, he found himself anticipating future interactions with the boy. Khun made to leave. The brunet already looked disappointed to be left alone, it left such a bitter aftertaste of deja-vu to Eduan, he didn’t know if he wanted to take the sight in or look away entirely to stop it from hurting.

He drank another glass, pulling out briefly. Quickly enough, he immersed himself yet again in his abandoned son’s story.

He blinked, confused.

Where had this bizarre creature come from?

It let out a strong bellow, very helpfully, at this moment.

“I’m not a crocodile!” Uh, Khun must have been making comments judging from his face. “I’m the hunter, Rak Wraithraiser!” Ah, alright - not that Eduan felt any more informed, this explained absolutely nothing.

Khun, amazingly so, followed his mastercrafted personality to the letter, edging the creature some more toward frustration.

“Wow! A talking crocodile!” he exclaimed lightly while he considered the beast, “how much did it cost?”

The Wraithraiser? The Wraithraiser hunched to speak to Khun at eye level, even though Khun had deftly turned away, obviously neglecting it.

“I’m not a crocodile! You wussy little turtle!”

Turtle?

“And I’ve got no business with you! All I’m interested in is that Black Turtle, so you just bug off!”

The Black Turtle? It must have meant V’s son.

Eduan could see Khun questioning the situation quietly, but since he had correctly assessed it for now, he decided to go on his way, leaving the son of V with the dangerous creature attempting to hunt him. Eduan couldn’t quite tell whether he felt pleased or disappointed as Khun stepped away from the source of Eduan’s certain sleepless nights in the near future.

The son of V had survived, and had begun climbing the Tower. The information sat heavily on Eduan’s consciousness, as he debated his next course of actions. The natural thing to do would be to report it, but…

Strange. Only a couple decades ago Eduan wouldn’t have been hesitating like this.

He needed another drink. Hopefully, the boy would die to the Wraithraiser before he had to take any decision.

He ended up spitting down that drink, though.

Because of who? Because of Khun.

No, not Khun.

Aguero. Or- no. The child.

The kind child.

In a few tricky moves, Khun, guided by the genuine, compassionate soul that had hidden away for so long, overcame the threat of the Wraithraiser and took the boy’s hand, ensuring in the same instant the son of V’s survival.

Because Eduan knew his strong, strong child would not let him die now.

“Run!”

Eduan sighed, unable to stop himself.

He did think before that Khun Aguero Agnis would be the one to undo him… But he definitely hadn’t meant it like this.

His son then proceeded to hide the son of V behind a rock with him and find out about the Black March. Unsurprisingly, this caught his attention. Eduan was a bit surprised to learn that he hadn’t noticed before, because truly, why would the Khun that Aguero had created save an anonymous weakling just for the sake of it?

Eduan already knew his answer. It made him on edge, how easily that brown haired boy drew Aguero out of his shell. He… wasn’t certain it was a good thing, to be honest.

Khun clasped his hand on top of the boy’s, and Eduan frowned.

Khun did not like skinship. Or, at least, Aguero didn’t. Sometimes, Khun would initiate skin contact for the sake of his role, confident and irritating, but this?

This felt strange.

“You… Who are you?”

But the most peculiar thing was when Khun decided to retreat. Khun would never let go of a fish once he had it. Khun was not like Aguero.

Then, Khun extended his hand, and Eduan felt his strange feeling recede. Here. His son was back to normal. His muscles unwound as Khun explained his proposal to the son of V, he hadn’t even noticed how tense he had gotten.

He didn’t think he’d been so invested. No, it was just… mildly strange.

They exchanged names.

The name of the son of V was the Twenty-Fifth Bam.

Eduan frowned. Mh. Arlene was definitely not the one to give him that name. But no matter.

Now, all that was left to do was wait.

Chapter Text

Rak Wraithraiser - or the Gator, as Khun took to calling him - was now part of the team.

It turned out that Rak listened fairly well to what Khun told him to do, as long as Khun manipulated him well. As for the other boy, Bam, son of V, it seemed he was just as special as Eduan had expected, unphased by a Ranker’s wave of shinsu that should have pushed anyone back as far as possible.

Eduan’s senses were not developed enough through that kernel of ice shinsu to hear the conversation that boy was having with the man called Lero Ro. He didn’t bother trying to eavesdrop, even though he did feel a certain intent toward Khun at some point during the conversation. Instead, he focused on his son, who seemed to be lying in wait, watching over the rest of the Regulars.

Not a tactic Eduan himself would have used, but he already knew how much more sneaky his son was compared to him. Flashy only when he wanted to be. Liked to be in control of everything, and for his true thoughts to stay in the shadows, unnoticed. Eduan couldn’t begrudge such a strategy, it was a very good one… one that would certainly give an advantage to Khun as a son of Khun.

Yet he couldn’t help but think things would have been way easier for Aguero if he had allowed himself to lean into his shinsu. But Aguero had been too young back then, and Eduan didn’t expect Khun to figure out why he couldn’t access shinsu as easily as someone from the Khun lineage was supposed to.

Then came the wait. A mysterious, curious wait only punctuated by a few cries here and there when a team or two failed the tests. Khun Eduan didn’t know who was in charge of the Floor of Tests as off now, he never had truly concerned himself with those issues, but the time of emptiness they left between the two tests was the first time in a while that Khun had been able to… simply lay in wait and do nothing. Because Khun had no idea of what was happening behind the door.

For so long, Khun had always busied himself with his plans, his schemes, his adventures, his tricks and his own thoughts. He was methodical, approaching three problems after another. And he had isolated himself from true relationships for a long time. Nobody could tell how well ‘Khun’ would be able to do faced with real people with whom he would be forced to interact with for an elongated period of time. And right now he had nothing to do.

This was the true test, Eduan thought, to Aguero’s determination.

Eduan narrowed his eyes.

Don’t let the memories get to you now.

Khun held on. Busying himself with guessing at the upcoming test, worrying and feeding his new companion some chocolate bars. Eduan hadn’t eaten that shit in ages.

It started to go down when another creature showed up unexpectedly.

“I came here to give you a huge hint about the test.”

Immediately, Khun seemed already more disturbed.

Eduan wasn’t certain this would go well. But when did it ever, he thought, draining his glass but not immediately pouring himself another, even though he felt that he would soon need it.

Things never did go well. For Eduan, for Jahad… For V. It had never gone right for Khun either. But at least Khun was still fighting out there. Eduan quirked up a smirk. He certainly hadn’t got it from his father, he thought with dark humor.

Survive, young Khun. Show the rest of us how wrong we were.

Make us regret our past choices.

“We’ve got no clue at all. What is the basis of your deduction?” the boy asked warily.

What the creature - or the pink man wearing a plastic bag, whichever description fit best - went on explaining how the clue was the screams, and it indicated to the factor of time. All the explanation was very logical. Eduan wondered though, why the person found it interesting to talk to Khun and the Son of V about it instead of keeping to himself, or telling everyone. But just because of that suspicion, the truth in his statement should not be forgotten.

But Khun was wary. Wary like he had been taught to be. But Eduan knew better…

Khun agreed with the other contestant, Eduan heard his approval of the theory. Yet something seemed to be bothering him. It wasn’t the word, not the theory. It might be the help, or the intruder in his own space… the blanks left unfilled.

There was once a blank that Khun had left unfilled. A blank in which he decided to have trust in. That blank ended up making the rest of the sentence Khun had written completely unreadable. It had burned the paper, leaving Khun to question the rightful power of his ink.

Now faced with time, doing nothing, thinking and interacting with individuals, the uncertainties were all the more visible. And Khun was hesitating again.

“No need to thank him, Bam.”

“...Huh?”

“He just wants to see if his hypothesis is right,” Khun claimed.

Eduan watched the child hide his vacillations. Clutching to his puppet strings, hiding behind the wall, keeping it standing.

“You’re telling us to test your hypothesis, aren’t you?”

Keeping at bay the memories, as he did for a year of survival.

“If we, who heard your hypothesis, pass the test in five minutes, you will take the test using the clue. If we don’t, you’ll find another way, won’t you?”

The creature smiled cryptically, ominously, but Eduan had no eye for it. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the child, inside, who vacillated inside Khun, who couldn’t bear the blank slate in front of him, even though it had nothing to do with the task at hand, hesitating at the uncertainties set purposefully in his path.

The barrier was unstable, and the child was reminded of what he had been trying to avoid all along, what he had barricaded away from his sight, the creeping doubt that was but a sequel, left not from a failed plan, no, but…

“As expected of the abandoned son of Khun.”

… his mistake.

Khun vacillated.

Trembled. Faced with the memory of her, her death, his mistake, his uncertainty-

Khun attacked, a knife to the throat, unstable, dangerous… so very vulnerable.

A hole in the wall. Lightning melting ice violently.

That day.

That day, that day, that day that day that day thatdaythatdaythatdaythatdayth-

Time was up.

A scream echoed.

It wasn’t Khun’s. It wasn’t Aguero’s.

Not this time. Not the last time either. It had always been silent, echoing in the silence in his head, breaking the iced surface of the numbing sea, still numb-

But now there was a voice calling for him.

He was Khun. He could not falter.

Do not falter, son.

Breathing heavily, Khun took a second to calm himself, taking the lead and marching toward the door.

Eduan waited, with bated breath.

He waited to see if Khun would break, if Khun would disappear.

If ‘Khun’ could hold.

Chapter Text

First things first.

The ranker in the middle of the room gave Eduan the creeps.

No, he wasn’t afraid of the man, it was just…

Had Eduan seen him before?

Looking at that mug of coffee gave Eduan an unpleasant sense of deja-vu.

Second things second, Eduan really disliked the hooded gaze the ranker was giving his son, specifically.

“Within ten minutes, find the real door and open it.”

In only the few seconds that were needed for Yu Hansung, the current test administrator, to explain the test, Eduan had already understood that the man was lying through his teeth.

Eduan’s senses could not be deceived. Each of these doors led to the same place. There was no ‘wrong’ door. The clock above the room ticked two seconds in one. The real test could only be to have the initiative to open any door in five minutes.

It would surely be alright, if only the Ranker hadn’t given out false information. How was this even allowed? Test administrators are only fair emissaries of the Floor Administrators, and carried out their will most often than not. It was their job to make the climb of the Tower as fair as possible. There was a reason why Rankers weren’t allowed to attack Regulars.

By lying and twisting the rules, Yu Hansung was now able to harm regulars just like that.

Unfortunately, Khun knew all too well how Floor tests were supposed to work. It would be his downfall this time. But Khun’s real issue was the lack of more clues.

Eduan knew, looking at him, why he seemed so paralyzed.

Khun Aguero Agnis did not rely on luck to solve his problems.

Not anymore.

This child… and Maria. The core of the issue remained there. On Eduan’s Floor. Caught in Agnis’ words, a prisoner of his own trauma. Of a woman who apologized again and again for her failure, after all these years of causing pain to her own children (but she had wanted them to live) a woman who put so much pressure on a young child until he broke under it and then created another face for himself, a grieving woman- and a grieving child. Prisoner of his own choices, his own successful schemes, that caused the death of the family he loved, all because he had tempted his luck. Both Aguero and Maria had tried their luck at this deadly game, helping, using each other to get where they wanted to be, unaware of the price, but Aguero couldn’t blame Maria.

It was him, who had made that choice. Who had bet everything on this one plan, who believed too much in his own sister. The one who had thrown the dices with no 100% certainty that he’d get the double six. Maria had nothing to do with this. It had always been Aguero, Aguero who broke inside because of his mistake…

The mistake that was tempting fate. Hoping for the best.

Aguero had tried and hoped for the best.

But Khun never left anything up to chance.

“Trust no one,” Agnis used to say.

Behind Khun’s strong and confident facade was Aguero, drowning in those words, in those memories.

Aguero who couldn’t trust himself anymore.

Aguero who threatened to drown Khun with his immense grief.

And there, hidden just there next to him, was Eduan. Eduan who watched intently, almost praying somewhere in the back of his own mind, that this child be left with one more chance.

It didn’t matter if it would never be the little one, it didn’t even matter if Aguero would never come out of his hiding place. It didn’t even matter if Khun never opened up to anyone.

Just one chance. For this child to live freely, as he was meant to be.

Without the world rushing in his cracks to break him down.

Again. And again.

And again.

Sometimes, Eduan wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to spare this child from life altogether a long time ago.

Eduan hadn’t noticed when he had started to care so much.

In the end, it didn’t really matter.

The little one from back may not be gone, as Maria had wisely noticed three years ago, but he was too jaded to ever stand back on his feet.

A phenix without wings, Eduan thought. No matter how much it tried to resurrect, its wings had been cut off far too long ago. It would never meet the sky, not the way Eduan wanted it too.

From the beginning, it had never been Eduan’s role to act out to protect it.

He didn’t really notice, the way his jaded soul began to darken again, dim as his hope left him like a blown candle.

But…

Turned out, he didn’t need to, he realized suddenly, drawn by the light in the corner of Aguero’s eyes.

It was that Wraithraiser, along with the son of V.

For a moment, Eduan found himself speechless. Blindsided by this unexpected opening.

“That damn crocodile,” Khun, back in his own mind, cursed out expletives, shouting out, “What are you doing!”

Eduan could recognize the panic in his voice, in his heart. The unexpected, the uncertainty, the fear of something worse happening, of the world turning on its axis all over again.

You have nothing to fear, child, Eduan realized slowly, hope litting back up in the dark corner of his withered heart.

“What? There are no hints. So isn’t it obvious… to guess?”

You don’t need to trust yourself, not for now.

He watched them bicker away, something in him softening at the sight of this little something that he had been missing all this time, ever since their disappearance… ever since their entire team broke away into nothing but scattered ashes and dimming embers.

You only need to trust them. Until you can spread your own wings, they will guide you.

To the light that I once hoped to reach for myself.

A single person’s applause echoed in the test room, and Eduan tore his attention away from the hiding child who was only just taking a peek outside his prison, turning all his anger and irritation onto that one person again.

Yu Hansung.

“To pass the test, you just had to open any door within five minutes.”

That fucking liar.

“I knew you would be like that, Khun Aguero Agnis. You’re one of the ‘abandoned sons’, who was kicked out.”

Needling.

“You can’t do anything without assurance. You can never open a door if you’re not certain of success.”

With apparently far too much time on his hands, and who had thought that personally targeting Eduan’s son was somehow a good idea.

Who thought he understood Eduan’s son, when he was only doing more harm than good.

“You need teammates around you… who can sometimes open doors without hesitation.”

But he was not wrong.

Unfortunately.

Yu Hansung, with an unnecessary amount of cruelty and trauma prodding, had taught a lesson that Khun had closed himself to after his own perceived failure, about a year ago.

It didn’t mean Eduan appreciated him, far from it. Eduan hated him with a passion, who cared about old bonds and acquaintances. There was simply something about that gaze of his that rubbed Eduan off the wrong way.

Like the man was preparing to see this forming bond between Khun and the world be swept from under him leaving him with no balance again. Like he would relish in it.

Eduan knew better than to assume Yu Hansung was simply being a good teacher. There was always double meaning, everywhere, in everything.

Every step forward was a double-edged sword, waiting to cut the path forward under its owner’s feet.

But, even if Eduan could have, it was too late to warn his son.

Not when it became painfully obvious, in the next test, how attached his little one had gotten to his two new teammates.

It hurt, I know, he whispered to it as it curled on its side, hiding from the world. I know it does. To give your trust and your loyalty to someone, only for it to hurt just the next second but you can’t take it back, you can’t take it back-

Eduan watched as his son devised devious schemes to snatch the crown away and make the regulars dance to his tune, with pride that he swallowed bitterly. He watched as Khun gave himself to the son of V, only for that boy to throw it with only one wrongly given devotion. And in that single instant, in which Aguero screamed for Bam’s name, in which Bam’s screamed for his light’s, in which he bloodied himself and flooded the room with powerful shinsu that made Eduan want to throw up with longing that threatened to overwhelm him in his entirety- in that instant, Eduan could see it, the future, a myriad of instances that would never stray too far from this one.

The son of V, recklessly charging in with not a look for the ones by his side, and his own son, screaming helplessly, with his heart on his sleeve bleeding out.

If only Eduan had spared him this.

Chapter Text

Ever since the Door Test, things had started to change. At least, that was what Eduan could observe on his end.

It started with Khun’s goddamn loyalty vow in the Throne room, which Eduan still had trouble believing really happened. It continued with Khun’s own change of character after the whole debacle.

If before, Khun had only shown what he wanted to show to the people around him, now his ‘Khun’ persona had fallen apart, mixing strangely into something unknown.

“Khun-ssi,” the Son of V called out to Khun. “I found this yesterday in the bathroom, what… how do I use it?”

Khun turned to him, and Eduan hummed once he saw the object the Son of V held in his grasp.

This confirmed some of his theories about the boy and his origins.

“It’s a toothbrush,” Khun answered patiently, not letting Bam see any sign of surprise or bewilderment. “There should have been a sort of tube next to it. Actually, I'll show you now.”

The boy knew little of modern commodities and the likes. Recently he had mentioned that he only remembered a dark cave, and a girl who visited him sometimes.

Eduan had a feeling that the Son of V did not mean the Inner Tower, when he mentioned that his friend has always wanted to enter the Tower.

Eduan knew his son was far from stupid. But instead of confronting the boy or taking his distances from the clearly dangerous individual, Khun never hesitated to take Bam by the hand and lead him wherever he needed to be, and guide him in whatever task gave him trouble.

It was oddly fitting, Eduan realised as he watched it unfold, that Khun had been classified as a lightbearer.

Of course, Khun was not as nice and impassive with everyone else as he was with Bam. It was inconsistent in a way that made Eduan frown as he attempted to figure out patterns.

“Khun-ssi? What's this? It looks a bit strange and cold…”

Khun opened his mouth, but ended up closing it as he looked upon what Bam was pointing at. He blinked in utter confusion. His pause perplexed Eduan for a short moment, before it dawned on him as well that Khun was not exactly the best person to explain to Bam the mundanities of life.

Before Khun could compose himself and guess the answer, Endorsi who was passing by huffed.

“Where the hell did you come from not to know what ice cream is?”

Khun glared at her.

“Leave him alone,” he threw out meanly, “everyone has their own circumstances.”

Not simply defending Bam's ignorance, but his own as well.

It was peculiar. To show such defensiveness was only an indicator of the weakness lying underneath. The Khun Eduan knew would never reveal himself in this way. Yet this Khun snapped and glared and thinned his lips and crossed his arms around his new… teammates. Like, somewhere subconsciously, he was feeling safe enough to show them the limits.

Do not cross here, it said.

And the teammates they had met in the last few days, a team contracted through a silly paper list, pushed and pushed, always enough to trigger rejection, but never far enough to break through. It was almost a respect of boundaries, except if they really did they wouldn’t be pushing against it. Testing the limits tentatively.

“What do you want, swordsman?”

“That's my spot, stupid Earrings.”

“Why, is your name on it? I dare you, take it back right now.”

Khun too, was testing the limits. Like a child, curiously yet warily prodding at the new boundaries around him. Carefully trying to understand how far he could go while still feeling comfortable.

How far he could trust.

It was a tentative testing game that Eduan watched with interest. It reminded him of those old puffs of frost, sensing the surroundings curiously as they attempted to understand where their owner lived.

Back at the estate, the cost of breaking the rules was death.

In a way, this was the first time Khun, or even Aguero, really had the opportunity to settle like this, find his marks and his place for himself in this strange ragtag group.

It made Eduan think of the past. The long gone past.

They almost looked like friends.

The actual cursed word was first brought up by Bam, the Son of V, who did not seem to understand its true significance in such a cruel place as the Tower. Friendship, so easy to say, so difficult to accomplish and most importantly, to keep. Partnership was so much safer of a word, these days. Yet, somehow, the friend word stayed.

Because Khun had been but the first victim of the Irregular. Many more followed, attracted by his kindness, his novelty, surely the strange feeling around him. They could all sense he was different. Even Khun could.

And in Khun, the boy's kindness and openness brought something else out. It was as though it appeased the fearful creature inside, encouraged him to peek out and take a look for himself. Not just at the boy, but with the boy's calming presence, finally take a moment to learn the world around him.

A world that, perhaps, did not need to be as cruel as what he had always known.

Since the Crown Game had ended, it had become difficult for Eduan to classify Khun's differences in behaviour to his usual masks. It was like his son had decided that this place would be the beginning of his growth, where he could truly bloom into the person he wanted to be. And he let himself be. He showed the scouts the ice barrier that protected him, that warned all others openly not to come too close lest they get frostbite. With Bam, he was solid as a rock, a pillar and moral support. And no matter who he was talking to, he never let go of that facade of confidence, and the easy deployment of his skills.

It was like a mix of Khun, Aguero and A.A..

Or like someone who wasn’t trying to lie.

I am strong, Aguero said when he spoke with Bam.

I have faith in my abilities, he declared to the princesses of Jahad.

I am not used to you, he implicitly hinted at the friendly scout.

I am a bad person, he shouted to the honourable swordsman.

I don’t need you to understand, to the Wraithraiser.

But I don’t mind you seeing.

So. Is that okay with you?

Something real, hard and distant, instead of faux-semblants and constant cornering. But in a way, more honest than Aguero had ever allowed himself to be.

Will this work?

Forging a new, real identity under the name of Khun, no longer just a mask, but a real identity. And asking, silently, if he could stay despite the person he was. Despite his boundaries. If those people could live with him and accept him as he allowed himself to be seen.

A mix between a curious, scared will-o-the-wisp and the cracked blade that only knew violence.

Eduan did not know if he liked it. He only knew that what he was seeing was the child hiding inside, no longer so far away. Allowing himself to live, even under hundreds layers of metal. Trying to grow up into a human being. Something that made sense, that adapted.

He saw how brave the little soul was being, confronting the unknown world that could still lash out at it at a moment's notice.

On one hand, Eduan found his intrigue renewed, with something like awe mixing in. On the other, he wanted to tell it to hide again. Now that Eduan knew it was still alive, if jaded, he wanted it to be safe for a little longer. Wait just a little bit longer before it measured itself to the outside world's dangers.

Eduan blamed the Son of V.

If Eduan could understand his son's behaviour with the rest of the floor of tests’ residents, he could not find a rational reason for Khun's unnatural tenderness and softened exterior to the Twenty-Fifth Bam.

“Hey, Khun.”

Khun did not close the book he was reading, though Eduan could tell he was not focusing on it anymore.

“Shibisu,” he greeted, somewhat polite but cold.

The man did not get offended, visibly used to it by now, and sat on a seat opposite to Khun's.

“How are you feeling?”

Khun glanced at him briefly, just long enough to convey his veiled incredulity.

“What is that for a question? Do you always feel a particular way or something?” he asked right back, pretending to be uninterested.

Whether he was or not, Eduan could not tell. But his body was not as tense as it would have been in the past couple weeks. Because A.A. and Khun as Eduan knew them never did tense, but this Khun did. Now, he remained somewhat relaxed. It had to mean something. Eduan thought it said more about Shibisu than Khun.

Shibisu smiled.

“I guess it’s not too strange for you to think that,” he settled on, making Khun raise an eyebrow at him. “How is Bam, then? The closest to the test we get, the more restless he seems.”

Khun did not sigh. Yet in the aborted movements of his body, Eduan could feel that he had wanted to.

“The anticipation is a lot for him,” Khun answered, omitting the fact that what Bam was waiting for was not the test, but the person he might meet there once more. “He would tell you himself if you asked him.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Shibisu shook his head. “He doesn’t like burdening others, does he?” it was said as though Khun would know best.

Khun did know best.

“He does. But you can read him like an open book. Why are you asking me?” Khun closed his book. “I'm not his keeper.”

Shibisu inclined his head, thoughtful.

“You aren’t,” he agreed mildly. “But you care about him. More than you care about the rest of us, and more than the rest of us care about him.”

Eduan felt that Khun had always cared. Or, well, Aguero had. Not just the mask or the new person. Aguero had always cared too much. But so much care, love and kindness had been repressed in the dark place, behind the ice. Now Eduan wondered if they had been lying in wait, impatient to be given at last to an apt receptacle who would not refuse them. It seemed it had all bursted out when Khun had met Bam. All that love that Khun had never been able to freely give to anyone else. That he was afraid to give. Unable to be blocked away anymore, and seeping out, no. Flooding out.

“I care for him as a teammate does,” Khun denied swiftly.

“You care to learn and understand much more about him than we even could. How do you explain that?”

Khun stood, but his eyes were lost in the past.

How indeed?

“Maybe because I'm used to nurturing others.”

Eduan took the explanation as Khun left, leaving Shibisu to wave him goodbye while reminding him to take care of both himself and Bam.

Aguero had always had someone to protect. Once upon a time, it had been his sister. Then, more prominently, the desire had broken out when Kiseia had arrived.

Someone younger, less experienced, and struggling next to him, genuinely, almost falling. Aguero had always been there to lend his hand for the weak to rely on. He had, truly, always had that heart on his sleeve, well hidden in the layers of fabric but still there, bleeding frost despite all the barriers.

Kiseia had needed his help, grievously, but she had never asked for it. She had rejected him. So, Aguero had given it to her quietly, unseen, in small doses so as not to be noticed. Selflessly, not quite relieving the need in his chest to save and protect.

His inherent kindness would have made him a guide, naturally, Eduan mused longingly. But with Agnis’ harsh conditioning adding to what was already there, Aguero had become a shield instead. Just waiting for someone who would take advantage of him. Or not quite. Perhaps it was the opposite.

Aguero wanted to be taken advantage of, by people who did not wish to take advantage of him. A mark of free will, in his endless sea of devotion that nothing could cure nor dry.

Eduan found that Aguero might have latched onto Bam for this reason. Bam was a lost child, desperately in need of help, but also genuinely, so sincerely open and wanting to help. It made Aguero want to protect him, so that he would have a value once more. Not just a duty, but something more.

Something to fill the void. Oh.

Eduan was numb as it dawned on him that this was what had been missing. The will to live that Aguero, that his son had still lacked, even after finding his resolve.

Because his son had broken into so many shards despite all his defenses, he did not know how to live for himself anymore.

Maybe that was why Aguero had attached himself so deeply to the Son of V, who mirrored his own natural qualities so well, if not much more open. And, if Eduan left this bond to develop, it might even turn from protegee and shield to a sort of kinship.

So, Eduan ended upon the conclusion that Khun had not turned into an unknown entity as he had first thought. He had warped into something intimately familiar, pieces of himself that Eduan had only known scattered all around his varied masks. Now together, unknown certainly, yet familiar. Who he was, who he had learned to be, and who he wanted to be. Just like everyone else, finally forming a being.

But, the Son of V, by taking advantage of what Khun was, was already taking too much, disturbing the flow of him, and altering him further. So much, that it was dangerous.

The Son of V drew his own son in, like a long lost regret, a longing to fill a void inside his chest. An attraction that was already making him reckless in the smallest of ways. One that could kill his son, after all these efforts to survive and live on his own. An attraction that, if left alone, could turn into something stronger, that Eduan wasn’t certain he wished to see unfold.

Why, gentle soul, did you have to be a being of devotion?

Your nature calls you, and it will kill you.

The Twenty-Fifth Bam was an Irregular. If he kept on drawing Khun in and lighting that small flame inside him, then one day danger would take them both, and Eduan was not ready to see his son's steady rise be impeded by such unpredictability.

But did he have a choice? How was he supposed to intervene?

If Khun Aguero Agnis did not survive the climb of the Tower, then he would not survive the life at the top. It was the survival of the fittest. Khun Eduan could not temper with this rule, nor did he wish to.

But this boy, the Son of V, could. And it almost, almost drew him out of his apathy enough to make him feel fear.

As of now, it was simple apprehension. Dull apprehension, a mere feeling.

The Son of V was a gluttonous well. He soaked up all the affection Khun had to give him, and it in turn made something heave in relief in his son's shinsu. But for how long?

The flame stagnated, for now. It was fine. It needed not be any greater. His son was a being of frost. The warmth of ambition and life made him live, but too much would burn.

But, by the time the test came around, Eduan could tell it was no longer the affection of a guardian or a sibling that was there.

It had grown, as he had mused that it would, into a deeper bond.

One that might affect Aguero's survival, change his destined path and make him a servant again, instead of the temporary protector he should be.

Be on your way, Son of V.

My son is not for you to keep.

“I have a favour to ask of you.”

Endorsi turned, strangely grave. She was a princess of Jahad, but she was not old nor powerful enough to have turned into a calculating, bored being. She could still understand affection, and give it. She loved the Irregular, or maybe just liked him. But it mattered to her.

Looking at them, Eduan was reminded of A.A.. The Irregular's influence was great of course, but he thought he could still recognise the proof of Aguero's confident leadership magnetism in the way she listened with no complaint. In the way she took him seriously, just by listening to a couple of his words.

Khun was also someone who attracted others. With his skills, his leadership, his assurance, and most importantly his experience. Maybe that, too, intricately played into Aguero's broken kindness. Khun's control might be born of a will not to let anyone else get hurt under his lead.

He was recognised, just as implicitly as an Irregular. Eduan… felt something like pride, at the thought, caress the drunk heart in his chest. A satisfied smile appeared on his lips as he swayed his glass one way and the other.

“Don’t let them meet. Rachel and Bam. And Hoh, too.”

“Is this a matter of life and death?” she asked, perceptive.

Khun did not meet her eye, as his discretion obliged.

“It is.”

Succinct and clear. A.A.’s forms. Or maybe just Khun's, now. All of it was Khun.

Khun was Aguero and Aguero was Khun. They just bore different names and different clothes. Different caps, too. It was all about the angle of the light that shone upon him. What preferred the darkness, and what wished to shine harsher in the clair-obscur.

She looked at him gravely, then nodded.

“I'll try.”

But Eduan's smile had faded away, as snow against the rays of the real sun.

Again, that Irregular.

Nowadays, it seemed Khun would do anything for him. To be honest, Eduan disliked it. The idea that just by his presence and his radiance, Bam could take away all of Khun's resolve and make him revolve around his needs. Make him drift, so easily, from his own objectives, if it was for Bam.

The test drew nearer. Khun found his last ally.

“Join me,” he whispered, like a tempting devil, in the neck of his victim. “If you don’t, I won’t let you sleep.”

An innocent devil with unknowingly misleading words, Eduan mused.

He liked that purity in the child. Even if he also knew where it stemmed from. The child knew too much about pain, war, murder and blades, about political disguises and all the lowest states of humanity. Yet nothing about the world Khun Eduan had once been raised into, with ice cream and basketball, with normal school and friends, with cafes and outings. With birthdays, and true parties. Not that Eduan remembered much of that time. It was so long ago, he had forgotten all the details.

The only mundane pleasure Khun knew how to take for himself, was the simple vanity of styling his own hair, and taking care of it. He knew of no games, had had no freedom to explore, no leeway to even want to learn.

That innocence that had stayed, even if buried under the weight of the years and the pain, still there, unexpectedly. Eduan wondered.

If it was that innocence, that made Khun fail himself once more.

As Eduan feared, one day, Khun no longer listened to himself, as he should.

His always succeeding schemes, his sharp instincts that never misled him, and his unfailing perceptiveness. He ignored all of it, just for one person's desires.

Eduan could see the end approaching. He could see the failure that was on the Irregular, not on his son. Yet, doubtlessly, Aguero would blame himself once more. He would cross himself from ever fully trusting himself again. All of this because the Irregular had drawn him in, distracted him from his own senses and made him selfless. Because the Irregular had made Aguero do something that he would never have done otherwise, because Aguero knew that the only person he could fully trust was himself.

The Irregular had made of Aguero an Irregularity.

Team A has failed the test.