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Liar, Lover, and Legend

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Prologue

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'Brat. Do you want to live?' asks a man with a cloak as black as raven's wings and a smile as fickle as the moon.

'I don't want to die,' answers the ghost-child with eyes of amethyst blue.

'But do you want to live?'

'...I want to live.'

'Then follow me, and don't look back.'

. . .

A phantom thief must preserve their own legend of invincibility above all else.

The moment that legend shatters, a phantom thief is a phantom no more – only a common criminal, one who can be caught, chained, and killed. He must remain more than mortal, beyond the impossible, safe in the realm of myth and mystery. In Master Raven's words, "Even if you must swallow your own blood, smile through clenched teeth and never let them see a drop of it." A phantom sheds neither blood nor tears. He is only ever charming, mysterious, and whimsical. Ageless. Nameless. Fearless. Free. He fights his battles clad in immaculate white, taunting the world that cannot lay a finger on him, no matter how many blades, arrows, or spells they hurl at him.

It is a lie, of course. He is still made of flesh and blood. He can bleed. He can die.

But they must not see it.

Master Raven lives and dies by that creed. Even burned beyond recognition and bleeding where the blast has stripped the flesh from his bones, the man still makes it home and lives just long enough to name his successor. The newly named Master Thief burns the body and places his master's bones in an unmarked grave. Whereas the ancient kings of Ariant raised great pyramids and even the lowliest peasants have their bodies embalmed for their next life, the Lord of Thieves has nothing in death, not even a name. There is no love lost between master and pupil, but for the first time in his life, Phantom kneels, touching his lips to the earth in utmost respect. It is to acknowledge that this will be how his own legend begins.

This, too, will be how his own legend ends. Phantom thieves do not live long lives nor die peaceful deaths.

But he doesn't hesitate. His hands are steady as he pulls his master's black raven mask over hair still streaked with sand and ashes. It fits onto his face snugly and he feels his lips curl into that iconic smirk of taunting, arrogant invincibility, the same one he has seen on a dead man's lips time and time again. Perhaps, if someone looks closely, they'll notice that the face behind the mask is younger, the shoulders less broad, and the limbs lankier, but the rich bastards celebrating his demise are too stunned at his reappearance to notice. In that moment, gazing at their gaping expressions, his decision is made. A true master thief would never give these men the satisfaction of knowing they had finally struck him down. And so, when he opens his mouth to speak, it is his master's voice he mimics, burying the last of his own identity forever.

"Did you really think you would be rid of me so easily? I find your lack of faith disappointing."

The Heart Diamond is never seen again, squirreled away in some hidden vault of the greatest thief of all time. He flaunts it, mocks them with it, and never tells a soul that the 'vault' is only an unmarked grave somewhere deep in the Ariant desert along with a pile of bones and ashes. The man buried there has no name.

That name belongs to him now. He is the Master Thief, the Raven – Phantom.

To the world, he is an enigma, so far beyond their ability to capture that they can step back and admire his performance for what it is. He is a man made of moonlight and lies, vengeance upon the corrupt, victory to the oppressed, scoundrel and savior rolled into one. He is faerie-blooded and demon-hearted. He many more strange and fantastic things besides if the stories are to be believed. People see what they wish to see and hear what they wish to hear. They can admire his fearless justice and praise his bottomless generosity. They can chase him in their fevered rage, but never even come close to catching the hem of his cape. His golden smile never wavers. He slips right through their fingers in a taunting swirl of cards and laughter, just as his legend claims he can.

No one knows how thin that mask of invincibility really is or how closely he dances on an edge of a grave. The stories of his impossible skill will never reveal how the phantom thief reappears in the ceiling rafters, too exhausted to go any further and bruised all over, where he must stay perfectly still for two entire days before he spots a chance to escape in a barrel of kitchen scraps. The romantics will never mention how he crawls out of the filth hours later, utterly sick of the smell of onion and vowing unholy vengeance on fermented beans. And the stories of his chivalry and heroism will never include the bastard grin that slowly stretches from ear to ear as he draws the jeweled pendant out of his pocket and feels the sight set his blood on fire.

Phantom does not steal to punish the wicked rich or save the dying poor. If such a noble cause had been his only motivation, he would have burned out long before now. No, he steals because it makes his blood sing and his heart roar, because his life burns so brightly against the night that it cannot last - he wants to live every moment to its fullest.

Even if he lies to the world, Phantom must be honest with himself. He is no self-sacrificing martyr. He is a thief, a scoundrel, and a madman, addicted to thrill and destined for hellfire. He will always remember that there is only a nameless grave waiting for him at the end of the road.

But he will be laughing all the way there.

. . .

A young woman waits on a moonlit balcony high above the troubled world below.

Her new station leaves her feeling frail and fragile, as if someone has scraped away her insides and left behind only a thin, hollow shell of her former self. The holy power of the divine bird fills her veins now, an endless ocean of calm and wisdom that smooths away all the rough edges of her personality. Shinsoo's all-pervading calm unsettles her. She hasn't shed a single tear for mother or father yet, even though a part of her wants to rage and scream her grief for all the world to see.

She misses the foolish, rash girl she once was.

She no longer runs barefoot through the palace gardens with mud up to her knees, nor does she compete with the servant boys to see who can spit watermelons seeds the farthest. Her little sister no longer comes to her in the middle of the night with tears and nightmares to soothe away. The knights that once snarked back at her whenever she lashed out with her sharp tongue now bow to her without meeting her eyes. The worst part is that nothing is stopping her but herself – she can run through the gardens and spit all watermelon seeds she wants - but those things have lost their joy. Shinsoo's ancient wisdom is a constant echo in her soul that makes her feel so much older than she should be. The once brilliant world around her has faded into gray.

Deep inside, part of her rails against her fate. She's not ready to let go of her passion and be the wise and impartial ruler of the world. There's so much she still wants to do. She wants to dance like no one's watching and laugh like no one's listening. She wants to see all the messy corners of the world and stain them onto her memories. She wants to fall in love with a man who will wring both tears of joy and tears of sorrow from her heart.

Emperors can live for centuries; she feels as if the light of her life has been dimmed to a bare flicker to make her last longer. She'll run out of laughter and tears too soon otherwise. Her new-found heart is as calm and vast as the ocean, unchanging, unyielding, and unshakeable, and the girl she used to be is drowning in it. In a few years, a few decades, what will be left?

So she hopes against hope that somehow, before she loses herself completely, she will find something or someone that will bring all the color back into her world. Something that can strip away all the trappings of the throne and find the silly girl with muddy knees that she has misplaced.

On a moonlit balcony, a young woman listens to the wind and longs for freedom.

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Author's Note:

Buckle in for a long ride, because this story is going to go from before Phantom meets Aria all the way to the final fate of the heroes being sealed in ice, with a lot of world-building and ignoring canon in between.

i) We know from Phantom's 2nd Job quests that Phantom is originally from Ariant and learned under a master thief named Raven. Raven died in a failed bomb defusing. Considering how Phantom's hat is called 'Raven Persona' in the game, I put two and two together and came up with a legacy of the phantom thieves, a name passed down from master to student, because it's just more romantic and dramatic that way.

ii) Regarding Aria - if Cygnus is her niece, then two things have to be true: Aria must at least one sibling, and royalty lives a really, really long time. Given that Aria seems older and less frail than Cygnus, I'm guessing she has had some time to adjust to Shinsoo by the time she meets Phantom. In keeping with that theory, something bad must have happened to Aria's parents, especially if their lifespans are extended.

Anyway, reviews are desperately desired, and any ideas or corrections you want me to put into this story would be awesome.

Enjoy and review!