Title: "The Watcher of Darkness"
Author: Joanne Blessing
Series: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Setting: Post-game
Note : I have tried to remain as neutral as possible, to avoid any excessive shipping. There is enough indication in the canon that Knoll thinks very, very highly of Lyon, despite being marked for execution by him.
Disclaimer: It goes without saying, but I will state it nonetheless: I own nothing of this franchise, it belongs to Nintendo/Intelligent Systems.
Summary: The War of the Stones is long over, Grado is nearly restored to its pre-war glory, and time is marching on. Weary with grief at the loss of someone he loved and admired, and saddened to see that person's sacrifice forgotten or misinterpreted, Knoll resolves to guarantee that Prince Lyon's sacrifice will not ever be truly forgotten by using forbidden Dark Magic to become the silent guardian of Lyon's tomb.
Credits: Special thanks to youtube user brisulph for introducing me to this game, to a pair of pals on Tumblr (one of whom asked for anonymity so I'll honor that for both) for putting this plotbunny in my head and to my other friends for supporting me even when I bitched endlessly about a stupid plotbunny

"The Watcher of Darkness"

It has been five very long, very difficult years. Five years ago, the Emperor died, beginning the chain reaction that consumed Grado Empire in its insatiable hunger. Four years ago today, the Empire was conquered, and ultimately freed from the tyranny of the Possessed Prince and the Reanimated Emperor. Some three and a half years now have passed now since Fomortiis, the Demon King, was finally defeated thoroughly and destroyed, freeing all of Magvel from its treacherous grasp. Three and a half years to restore a country ravaged by war and natural disaster... it has been very hard, and the healing has been slow, even if significant in strength. The country is nearly restored, though.

The shaman draws his hood down to cover his eyes as he looks out over the plaza from the balcony in Grado Keep. The past five years have been very hard on him, harder than anyone who knows him can ever imagine. His heart is badly damaged, bandaged, broken onto shards and glued together with fragmented glue. He has grown weary of life now, but he tries to hide this behind a mask of humility and servitude.

Nearby, he hears the hushed chatter of several druids and a summoner as they speculate on the reason Grado fell onto hard times. Did you hear, they whisper, I heard it was Prince Lyon's ego. I heard that he just went insane. I heard that Emperor Vigarde died five years ago instead of four, and that that's what drove the prince insane. You're crazy. We would have heard if the Emperor had died! I heard it was hushed by the prince himself! Why would the prince lie about it? So the Emperor could take the blame if the war failed! That's even crazier, why would they launch a war that might fail? I heard that Lyon was so crazy that he turned on anyone who didn't worship him! I heard he executed anyone who knew about the Emperor being dead. I heard he even executed people he used to trust. Well he wasn't a very good prince. He wasn't strong like Emperor Vigarde.

The shaman, once the top of Prince Lyon's research teams, grips his cloak tightly, trying hard to not take personally the insults against the prince he served selflessly.

Then he hears the heavy booted footfall of the stalwart retired General Duessel as the old general interrupts the group and chastizes them for disrespecting Prince Lyon so. It goes over about as well as anyone would expect, considering those druids never really knew Lyon.

Knoll grinds his teeth silently and turns away from the railing, looking up at the restored Grado Keep.

Who is that shaman? He picks up the words on the edge of his hearing. Oh that's that one researcher. He was on death row, I heard. Insulted Lyon and got the death penalty. Was supposed to be executed but was liberated by Prince Ephraim's forces storming the Keep. I forget his name.

Knoll sighs to himself as he steps away from the ledge. Insulted Lyon, huh? Let them think that if they must. His heart is too tired and scarred from five long years of agony and guilt. He once accepted a promotion into a Summoner for the sake of Prince Ephraim and Princess Eirika, to help them win their war against Fomortiis and to prevent Lyon's wishes from being forever lost, but once that was over, he shed the mantle of that office. Now he is just a shaman, as he had been before Lyon, the prince he loved and admired for years, lost all grip on himself in the madness of Fomortiis.

"Knoll?" A voice queries from behind. It is voice he recognizes instantly and he readies a cool, confident expression to face.

"Don't listen to those idiots," another voice says as Knoll turns around to see Grado's esteemed Obsidian, General Duessel, and the younger brother of the glorious General Glen Sunstone, Commander Cormag of the Wyvern units. Both men, like Knoll, assisted the Prince and Princess of Renais in freeing Magvel from Fomortiis's grip. They have always been loyal sons of Grado Empire and were both party to Lyon's descent into madness, even though they didn't know of Vigarde's death and reanimation. Knoll has trusted them above anyone else these past several years, despite a growing sense of futility and loss.

"It doesn't really bother me all that much," Knoll fibs. It is important that these two men, whom he respects and admires to some degree, understand that they should not try and shield him from the unpleasant reality that Lyon's sacrifice has been besmirched by time and rumor.

Cormag frowns, marring the rugged handsomeness of his tanned face, accentuating the scar across his cheek (a scar that Knoll has heard was given to him by his own brother in a sparring match many years ago). "You're lying to us, Knoll. You knew Prince Lyon better than any of us. You watched him descend into that madness, watched what the Stone of Grado did to him."

Knoll puts on a brave smile; "Yes, I watched all that happen, and it hurt to watch. But I cannot expect others to remember what was hidden for so long."

"You know that we worry about you, right?" Duessel says, his grizzled old face, adorned with a salt-and-pepper beard and many scars from his decades of service, folded in worry.

Knoll allows his irritation to show through; "I am not so fragile as you seem to think. It hurts me that people do not honor Prince Lyon's noble vision, but I know that as long as we live and remember, Prince Lyon's generosity and graciousness will never be truly forgotten."

Cormag shifts uncomfortably; "Now just a minute there, Knoll. I don't really know much about Prince Lyon or his vision, truth be told. I was just a simple soldier, after all."

Knoll just maintains his expression; "All the same, you have seen first hand what Prince Lyon wanted to save."

"Yeah but wasn't that the same thing that we've all been trying to save?"

Knoll shudders silently as he remembers the horrific visions of the lower half of Grado crumbling away, folding in on itself and mercilessly swallowing its people. It is a vision that has only barely been averted by the ordered evacuation of people from the afflicted areas prior to the collapse. Prince Ephraim (now King Ephraim) took Prince Lyon's vision seriously and used the remaining court mages in Grado to determine when the collapse would happen, and evacuated the afflicted areas, rather than use supernatural powers to try and stop something unstoppable. The resulting displacement of people has made King Ephraim quite unpopular amongst the Grado populace, though the recent series of sinkholes in the far south have gone a long way to restoring some of the people's faith.

"Prince Lyon was nobler than anyone will give him credit," is all Knoll can say.

"You'll have to forgive me," Cormag says finally, unhappily, falling into the usual pattern of denial, "but I fail to see how Prince Lyon was any more noble than the rest of us who have pitched in to rebuild the country after it fell apart due to his weakness."

Knoll flinches at the way the Commander's words have unknowingy resonated with words Lyon himself spoke five years ago.

"It's not what he did," Duessel says gently, seeing that this is not helping Knoll's mood. "It's what he tried to do. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save the people of Grado. He believed he could avert the whole disaster."

Cormag then voices the same argument everyone uses to criticize Lyon; "Did he really think releasing the Demon King would be a good idea? Did he really, honestly believe he could harness that kind of power?"

Knoll has had enough and excuses himself from them both. It saddens him that his last conversation with them has devolved into this, but it cannot be helped.

Prince Lyon, he thinks to himself as he glides through Grado Keep, you were misguided, yes. You believed something you should not have believed. But no one knows that you are not to blame for this. I unsealed the Fire Emblem, despite my misgivings. I let you take the first steps on that terrible path. No one can truly judge you, because no one knows what you suffered. No one else saw His Majesty entrust you with the saving of Grado. No one else saw you when the seal was broken over the Fire Emblem. No one else was there to witness the relief and burden you displayed as you picked it up and declared that you would save everyone even if it meant that you would become the most hated person in history, even if it meant that all the people you loved came to despise and curse you.

Silently, he breaks the minor seal holding shut the door to the royal catacombs. The tomb he is going to is an incomplete one because there is no corpse, no human remains, only some personal belongings enshrined to honor the fallen Prince. Prince Lyon's body was completely consumed by the Demon King, and the destruction of the Demon King left only a pile of toxic ash. All that remains of the Imperial Prince that Knoll knew and loved are his ancient magic tomes and a set of formal robes.

Closing the door behind him and reactivating the seal, Knoll lights a candle and then sets an additional tome upon the empty crypt. It has taken him a long time to recover Lyon's favorite tome, Naglfar, and he intends to see to it that the tome never leaves these catacombs again.

"My Prince," he says softly as he quietly seats himself on the pedestal beside the empty crypt, arranging his robes and carefully placing himself into the lotus position, "I could not be there with you when you died, sharing your fate. I shouldered your vision, fulfilled it as best I could. King Ephraim did his best to help."

King Ephraim and his beautiful royal sister, Eirika, are the only two people Knoll can think of who truly understood Lyon's dreams and visions. So long as they hold those thoughts in their hearts, Knoll had hoped, then Lyon's legacy will not be completely forgotten. But time has proven otherwise. Princess Eirika has remained in Renais all these years, ruling over the country as a regent when Ephraim journeyed regularly to Grado to oversee its restoration. Now with the restoration nearly complete, they will be appointing a steward to rule over Grado until a new royal dynasty of Grado can be founded. It is likely that King Ephraim will venture into Grado territory no more.

"I could not be with you then, and so I am here with you now. The spell you shunned, that you said could never help us tame the wild earth beneath our country... this spell will guarantee that someone will always watch over your tomb and safeguard your lost memory."

Prince Lyon's selfless vision and desires have fallen into obscurity; the soft-hearted Imperial Prince is now remembered as a weak-willed tyrant who tried to destroy all of Magvel, not as a powerful mage with a tender heart, capable of wielding powerful ancient arts and determined to seize control of the very earth itself in order to force it to behave.

Knoll is determined that Lyon will not languish alone in death and obscurity. So long as one person lives who remembers the true Prince Lyon, then the legacy of Grado's last Imperial Prince will never be truly lost. And there is a spell that will guarantee that Knoll lives and remembers... even if that is all that he does. He is prepared to make this sacrifice in order to honor the prince and friend he watched grow up, that he admired and adored from his silent post as a leader of a research team.

As he slows his breathing down, he gathers Naglfar into his lap and opens the tome, to guarantee that it will fuse with him, to no longer be usable by anyone. It is far too powerful and it is Lyon's. Knoll has no intentions of using it, only of holding it as he chants this final spell.

With measured, slowing breaths, he begins the spell, calling up from the bowels of the earth an energy far more ancient than Fomortiis could ever imagine. It is a sleepy energy, incapable of being used in combat, and ignorant enough of its own accord that it is useless in trying to scry for the future. But it is a powerful, steady energy for it is the energy of the bedrock itself.

He feels the spell begin to take hold, and for just a moment, he tries to indulge himself in a moment's panic. What if there is something he has forgotten to do?

But he cannot bring himself to shake out of this trance. Nothing matters any more. All that matters to Knoll is that Lyon is never forgotten or lost.

As he feels his skin begin to solidify into a substance harder than granite, a substance similar to the earthly bedrock itself, he focuses his final living thoughts on the prince he has lived his life to serve, even after that Prince died.

I could not be with you in life, in your death. So I will forego my own death, and I will become the Watcher of Darkness, to ensure that there will always be someone who lives to remember your noble intentions, someone who knows that you did not intend to hurt anyone.

I hope that you will not be displeased by this, my prince.

The spells works more quickly than Knoll has expected, so he loses active consciousness shortly after these thoughts. Though he is not dead, he no longer breaths or lives either. He is in a permanent state of recollection, silently watching the shadows of the single, weakening candle, remembering without emotion all the things Lyon wanted to do with his life before illness cut short the life of Emperor Vigarde.

He continues to watch even after the candle has guttered out, plunging his stony remains into permanent darkness.

He continues to watch the darkness of the tomb, recalling Lyon's ambitions and desires, even as the Keep goes into a quiet panic as it becomes known that the shaman believed to have been closest to Prince Lyon has disappeared without a trace. General Duessel and Commander Cormag scour the entire Keep in search of their missing comrade.

Years later, when the seal on the Tomb of the Imperial Prince finally disintegrates from lack of reinforcement, druids eager to learn about the Prince they never knew swarm the tomb to find an empty crypt and a disturbingly-realistic statue whose eyes seem to bore into their very souls. No one recognizes the face of the statue and so it is presumed to be a generic shaman. They begin to call it the Watcher of Darkness.

Knoll is never seen again, but that does not mean that he does not see.