Chapter Text
Ting-ting.
Ting-ting.
An uncomfortable pressure. Tight, painful binding.
A crawling sensation bit into his left pinkie. It felt all wrong as if something thin and sharp were coiling around the bone itself. The pain pulsed, but not with his heartbeat—it kept time with that strange sound, faint, airy and far-off, like the tinkling of glass hidden behind a thick wall.
Ting-ting.
Ting-ting.
The sound resonated briefly before fading into an abyssal silence. Only emptiness remained.
Eyes open, eyes closed—it made no difference. The vast unending blackness consumed his world like an insatiable monster. A darkness that was thick and alive, somehow both soothing and suffocating.
It clung to him like fog, a fluffy cloud curling softly over his limbs, luring him back to sleep, whispering promises of rest. But also stirring something inside him, waking his slumbering mind. Inducing confusion, disorientation, pushing him against the limits, pushing too far. Opening a yawning chasm of panic.
He jerked forward, his muscles were taut like strings pulled tight. Wanted to sit up, stretch out, to see.
But there was no room, only a flash of pain in his violently bumped forehead. The thick, metallic scent filled his nostrils as something warm trickled into his eye. It stung. He couldn’t even reach his hand further than a few centimetres from his face and not scrape his fingers against a rough, unyielding wall... no. Wood. It was wood, he could feel the distinctive texture as he pressed his palm against it. A plank slightly damp and not well made—covered with splinters now prickling his skin.
The truth clawed at his mind.
It was a trap. He was trapped.
Locked in a prison cell in the underworld, a place where nothing remained but his own slowly decaying thoughts. The ragged breaths, mounting dread, surging anxiety and growing helplessness.
Scratching of nails against the accursed box.
*snap*
Nothing really broke, no. Nothing literally—but his mind was another story. There was no sound to mark its collapse and finalise its end, make it real. Like a piercing crush made by a glass falling to the floor or a dull crack of a tree falling under the assault of an axe. Or maybe no, there was a sound: someone screamed. A strangled, raw cry filled the dark. It was a heart-wrenching wail of a wounded animal and a throaty growl of a vengeful wrath. It took him a moment to realise the sound was coming from his own throat.
He trashed around, ignored the pain in his elbows, knees, and every possible joint, frantically slamming against the walls of his devilish solitary confinement.
His breaths quickened, each one shallower than the last, spiralling into short, frantic gasps. A crushing weight clamped around his chest, his lungs tightened, his throat closed as he started to choke. He couldn’t tell if he was suffocating, if the last traces of oxygen were finally slipping away, or if pure terror itself was squeezing the life from his body, refusing to let go.
He wanted out.
Wanted out so desperately but there was no way out.
It was a space woven from despair, thick with misery, crushed under the weight of powerlessness. And he’d been swallowed whole, plunged into its depths with no chance of escape.
What awaited him here was death, cloaked in shadows and punctuated by a soft, subdued yet relentless ting-ting, ting-ting. An otherwise cheerful sound suddenly twisted into something hollow and taunting, each note dripping with unmistakable mockery.
*~*~*
Lumine gripped the shovel tightly and looked around. The pale, cold light of the moon reflected off the half-clean, half-rusty tool.
She didn’t want to be here—who would? There’s a world of difference between a casual stroll under city lights and a midnight walk amongst the graves in a small seaside village.
The girl had to know, though. Find the answers and see the truth with her own eyes.
And so, she took the job. She became Morepesok’s gravedigger.
Now stood in the middle of a graveyard, surrounded by the eerie silence of the dead. Fog slithered between the headstones like a hungry serpent. Weaving and circling and swirling through the darkness as though it had a mind of its own. It felt like the worst kind of cliché, the sort of trope you’d laugh off in a cheap novel—but overused ideas are only funny if you don’t have to experience them yourself. When you feel the chill of the humid air creeping up your arms and legs like something alive, when you struggle to break free, as your boots sink into the mud, when you look the strange black-and-white crow perched on the crooked iron fence in its beady eyes and its caw sounds almost like mocking laughter—that's the moment you realise every horror is real when you’re the one living it.
It’s just my mind playing tricks on me, the blonde thought refusing to let doubt creep into her conviction and she had every right to assume as much. That’s what often happens in stressful situations: we see monsters and ghosts where there are only branches and wind.
Not every day, however, one decides to disturb eternal rest.
Perhaps when you cross a certain line, stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, branches and wind turn into monsters and ghosts?
Nervously biting down on her lip, Lumine forced her feet to move. She’d walked the grounds in the daylight before, during her so-called "job orientation"—the Major was very outspoken about believing in her abilities despite Lumi’s utter lack of experience and then hurriedly departed as if the graveyard itself were breathing down his neck. Back then she’d thought his haste was amusing. Now, the thought of it made her stomach twist, especially since finding her way around after dark proved far more difficult than the girl expected.
Every path twisted into darkened shadows, every headstone seemed to loom and lean, and the silence pressed in, thick as the mud beneath her feet.
A lone howl pierced the night, distant but sharp enough to make Lumine flinch. Hurry her steps. She knew she had a goal to fulfil. Something neither pleasant nor swift. That shovel she was clutching with white-knuckled hands was there for a reason and no, it didn’t exactly tie with her new employment.
Or maybe, in a twisted way, it did? After all, Lumine indeed intended to dig up a grave—just the one she sought was already occupied.
Allegedly.
And there was no room for "allegedly" when it came to matters of life and death. You either were alive or not.
Ting-ting.
Ting-ting.
Lumine jolted, torn from her thoughts by the soft, eerie chime.
Ting-ting.
Ting-ting.
The unexpected sound sent a shiver down her spine as if tickling her with a cube of ice.
Maybe being a gravedigger wasn’t her true calling and she came to Morepesok with ulterior motives—something far more personal, darker—but even little children knew what purpose the chimes in the graveyards served. And what it would mean if they suddenly started to ring.
Lumine’s pulse spiked, and she broke into a run. Looked left and right, heart hammering, frantically trying to locate the source of the tinkling, her mission momentarily forgotten. She didn’t have the time to worry about the potentially-dead when not-yet-but-almost-dead needed her more.
Ting-ting.
She was getting closer. She was almost there!
Why is this damn graveyard so big?!
She was suddenly on the ground, out of breath, knees and palms raw and stinging. For a second there felt like another dead body waiting for this cursed soil to swallow her whole. The girl winced, groaning as she rolled onto her back, gazing up at the sky. But there was no comfort there—only heavy clouds creeping over the stars, smothering their light. Soon the moon would be gone, too, leaving her to stumble in the dark.
She shuddered, pushing herself up, cursing under her breath as her hand brushed against something cold and damp—a thick root that seemed to twist up from the soil. The culprit that made her trip. Lumine was certain it hadn’t been there before... had it? She quickly brushed the thought aside, deciding to push the blame onto her dulled senses instead. It was more convenient that way.
Easier to keep the sanity intact.
Ting-ting.
There was no time to cry over the spilt milk, though. Her whole body ached but self-pity had to wait.
Chimes like the one currently screaming into the night were a common part of the graveyards’ morbid landscape. It was an old custom: a little, cheap metal bell was hanging from a simple wooden pole beside every grave. A thread was then tied to the bell and the little finger of the deceased, thus linking them together. The idea was simple—and terrifying: if someone had been buried alive, their desperate struggles after waking up in a coffin would rattle the bell above and alert the gravedigger standing watch in the dead of night.
Lumine had never seen it happen. Duh! She had never heard of this mechanism fulfilling its purpose even once.
But now the chime was unmistakably ringing, slicing through the silence, its thin metal cry piercing her bones.
And unluckily, tonight she was the gravedigger in charge.
*~*~*
It was hell. It had to be.
Not like the one his mama used to whisper about, full of roaring flames and tortured screams of the damned. No, this was worse.
Here, the silence pressed in thick and suffocating, a hollow, endless quiet that amplified the feeling of loneliness. So dark and empty that he could feel pieces of himself slipping away, dissolving into the void. He was alone, utterly and horrifyingly alone. Abandoned. As though someone had cast him into a bottomless pit beyond time and memory, a place where he’d be erased, forgotten, left to fall into nothingness forever.
Ting-ting.
Ting-ting.
It was some kind of torture box for the soul, offering a sliver of hope in the form of the cheerful tinkling just to plunge him deeper into madness with the realisation of how out of reach that sound was. The faint, mocking tinkle throbbed in his ears and he couldn’t help but wonder: did he really deserve this? Maybe he did. Perhaps there was no absolution for the blood staining his hands.
The panic that had clawed at his mind finally began to fade, but the dejection and sorrow it left in its wake was far worse.
He’d never been one to give up—fighting even covered in gore from head to toe, struggling against all odds with a smile on his face, laughing in the face of death, defying it again and again. That’s how Ajax led his life. What earned him the title of a Harbinger Tartaglia and the codename Childe.
He pledged his loyalty to the Fatui, the army was supposed to calm his restless soul but it never did. Battles, facing strong opponents, even participating in wars. Standing against both monsters and humans. It was exciting at the beginning, quenched his thirst for adventure and fed his hunger for chaos just fine. Each fight was a surge of adrenaline, each victory a fleeting high. But even that eventually lost its charm.
He didn’t like when life was ordinary and boring—and lately, the Fatui became just that.
Boredom, however, didn’t explain, how he ended up here, in this situation. Confined and surrounded by dark.
Was this some kind of retribution?
*thud*
I was kind of a bad guy, huh? He mocked himself, too tired to laugh. The air felt heavy and sticky. It was getting harder and harder to breathe and he felt as if his consciousness was slowly slipping away again. This time for good.
If he were to fall asleep now, there would be no waking up.
*thud*
I always hoped to die looking at the stars.
At the little flickering lights that kept him sane and led him out of the Abyss all those years ago. Ever since he enjoyed looking at the night sky even in moments of peace.
I guess that’s not happening...
Wouldn’t it be nice to make one final wish on a shooting star?
*THUD*
The pain was sharp and sobering.
Something broke through the outer wall of his cramped prison and stabbed his arm. The wound was shallow, but the shock of it effectively reminded him he was still alive. A sliver of light—cold and ghastly shining through the narrow jagged gap opening before him as if it were teeth of some monstrous maw—cut through the blackness, forcing him to shield his eyes.
The assault continued in the meantime, he heard stomps and metal hitting the wood. At last, accompanied by the creak of rusty hinges, someone opened the box that had held him captive. Dirt and decaying soil rained down, damp and dense, coating his face and filling his mouth.
He coughed and squinted, felt as if needles were prickling his eyes that got used to the darkness and now had to once again face the light.
The sight before him was mesmerising.
Almost seemed like a mirage brought about by a dying mind but if so, then maybe dying wasn't so bad?
Moonlight spilt over the blonde hair of a beautiful, though panting and sweaty girl, surrounding her with an almost supernatural aura, as though she were a creature pulled from some wondrous myth. She looked like a goddess, an angel sent to soothe his dejected mind. And her eyes...
Her terrified, wild golden irises sparkled like the stars he had just been dreaming about.
*~*~*
As Lumine pried open the coffin lid, bracing herself for anything—a decaying corpse, a zombie trying to bite her, or maybe just an empty casket mocking her desperation—she felt the cold dread crawl up her spine. The rusty hinges wailed into the night and her heart hammered like crazy.
What the heck was she doing... could it be? Did she finally lose it?
But no. What she found inside was not a rotting body, nor a void space, but a man. A young man, not much older than her. His eyes, now staring into her in wonder, were like nothing she had seen before: so deep, so vividly blue, and so unsettlingly... dead. Devoid of light. In a split second, as the wind whispered through the graves, it made her wonder if the stranger was real or maybe just a figment of her panicked mind.
But could she really imagine him? A whole person?
The girl shivered, her breath shaky from overexertion as the damp fog swirled beneath her feet, thick and sticky like syrup, pouring into the open grave. Its icy touch gnawed through her clothes, sinking into her bones.
No, she couldn’t have just made up a random guy, so he was either a revenant sent to punish her for disturbing the dead, or something just as terrifying—a man who’d clawed his way back from the void, surviving his own burial.
A sharp, hoarse caw shattered the silence and she flinched, looking up to see the familiar crow watching her intently. It had abandoned its perch on the fence, moving to a twisted branch nearby to get a better view at her "grave robbing" efforts. Its eyes glinted with unsettling intelligence. The girl quickly looked away.
Swallowing, she forced her trembling hand forward. The tension in the air grew denser, as if the whole graveyard held its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.
"You’re all right now," Lumine rasped through a half-clenched throat as she extended her palm, wary yet unable to resist the urge to help. "Come on, let’s get you out of here."
It almost felt like a test, but she didn’t know what results she expected—her fingers slipping through empty air? His hand passing coldly through hers like smoke? However, the stranger hesitated only a moment before he snapped the cord tying him to the bell outside and firmly grabbed her hand, allowing Lumi to pull him out.
Now that they had finally climbed out of the dug-up hole, the blonde could take a closer look at the man. He was much taller than she’d anticipated, looming over her like a tower. His hair, a dishevelled mop of fiery orange, glowed like embers in the misty night and his uniform—military by the look of it—was haphazardly buttoned as if he’d thrown it on in a hurry. The insignia on his chest was unmistakable: it was the mark of the Fatui.
He was handsome and, as she had noticed before, young. Definitely too young to die mistakenly buried in a grave, but then it hit Lumine and her heart started to pound with fresh dread. Digging up a grave on foreign soil under cover of darkness, hoping for secrecy was already quite bad, but now a witness to the whole affair had appeared—and to make matters worse, one who belonged to a state organization, no less.
...she was totally screwed, wasn’t she?
"Maybe it’s a little late for introductions, but I’m Lumine." She took a deep breath to calm herself and decided to start with that. "Who are you and how did you end up in this grave?"
The best way to cover up a crime is to shift the blame onto someone else. Or so she heard.
The man’s brow furrowed as he searched for an answer. "I... I'm not sure," he admitted in a slightly hoarse voice. "The last thing I remember is tracking a dragon in the north with my squad. After that... nothing. Just darkness. And then, I woke up here."
His confusion cast a shadow across his face, and before she could react, his gloved hand reached for hers again, his fingers tracing along her skin with an eerie tenderness. Lumine froze, breath catching.
"I thought I was already dead," he murmured, almost to himself, his gaze far away. "And that you were just a ghost. But you’re warm... so that can’t be it, can it?"
His fingers lingered, as if reassuring himself she was real, yet the look in his eyes held a flicker of doubt, as though he was only half-convinced that she wasn’t some phantom conjured up by his wishful thinking.
Snapping out of the daze, the girl snatched her hand away and took a hasty step back. A flush of heat crept up her cheeks but she hid the embarrassment behind a sharp retort.
"Of course, I’m not a ghost!" she snapped, forcing a steadiness into her voice. "I’m the gravedigger here. And you still haven’t introduced yourself," she added, eyeing him warily.
"Ah, right. I’m... Ajax."
The pause hasn’t gone unnoticed, but she decided not to pursue the matter any further. At least for now.
"Okay then, Ajax," she said, her voice softening only slightly. "Whatever happened to you, first and foremost, you need rest. And then we will talk some more."
Lumine gestured towards the narrow, twisted path winding through the alleys of graves, leading to the edge of the cemetery, where the gravedigger's house stood—her house now. Its silhouette loomed in the distance, half-shrouded by fog; a faint light flickered from a small lamp hanging on the porch like a mini lighthouse leading them to a safe harbour.
Before following Ajax, she cast one last glance back at the weathered tombstone beside the disturbed earth and the name inscribed on it: Dainsleif. A strange unease settled over her. What were the chances, huh? Of all the graves, this was the one in which some unknown man had awakened— this grave, belonging to the very person she’d spent months searching for.
Dainsleif. The key to finding her lost brother.
Lumi turned the strange mask over in her fingers, feeling the cold, unnatural weight of it. She’d pulled it from the coffin when she helped Ajax climb out, and now it sat in her palm, casting a faint, unsettling glow. The mask was deep blue, streaked with veins of energy that pulsed dimly, like something alive, and designed to cover only the right side of the face.
Though she had only met him once, she clearly remembered that Dainsleif had worn the same kind of mask, though his was larger, whole. What she held now was only a fractured piece.
Her heart sank as she traced a crack line.
It must have broken...
At some point, split from its other half.
Just like me.
Now it lay buried here, discarded, while Dainsleif—and her brother—remained nowhere in sight.
With a sigh, Lumi slipped the mask into the pocket of her dress and began walking.
Overcome with disappointment didn’t notice the thin tendrils of purple smoke leaking from the fragment and following her closely behind like a slithering snake ready to bare its fangs and strike when she least expected it.