id say this was inevitable but eh whatever

Chapter 1

Rukh runs in their veins like clockwork.

Oil spills between their fingertips easily, melting off their skin without any trace of black markings. They twist and turn their hands, uncaring of the way their fingernails were picked apart or how their hair fell over their eyes: they simply remained, and that was all. The murky water remained.

Simple tasks, that's what they were. It was not unusual for rukh followers to gain skills like these when on the run: they used backhanded tricks, weaving through crowds like multicolored koi fish, entranced by the crowd but too fast to catch. Light illusions, magic tricklings, they became secondhand. What did it matter? They just needed to survive. All things became secondary to that.

Java glanced up through partly-blocked vision, one hand casually shoved in a ragged pocket. Silver coins, gold coins. Paper money. They were all taken, and the hand fell accordingly.

The trailings of rukh shimmered above them, a second sea of light in comparison to the similarly-moving crowd below. Her eyes glanced up, subconsciously drawn to that incomprehensible pull that always managed to take hold upon her (upon them all, they didn't exist anymore stop it). Spirits of the damned, the old used to call it. They were messengers of the souls of those deceased, memories without purpose and people without a calling. Moral compasses for those who needed them.

Java's mouth pulled down into a scowl and her eyes decidedly fixed on a distracted shopkeeper as she turned her head away forcefully. Too much time had been spent staring, searching, wanting that reason but left with no answers. Those explanations were only folktales.

No matter. She ducked her head as she passed underneath a low-built bridge (shortcut, run quick before it finds you), stone carvings placed to match the grooves in the railings. Wherever humans were, the rukh were as well. Same with all living beings, existential matters aside. They did not exist without a source, and all moving things breathed anyway. Java almost likened them to parasites, but they were much too pretty (much too kind, too much) for that.

Silver rukh shifted in her palm, luminescent (a reminder, something she'd forgotten, why? Who cares it's all gone now anyway) and she quashed it with a relentless hand, clenching one shaking fist until half moons bore almost-red with the force she'd given it. She moved without a sound, eyes already elsewhere. It didn't matter.

Cloth strings dyed mahogany tied back loose folds of tent flaps, curtains, caravan seatings. The ground rumbled with the sound of feet and hooves, chaotic messes in the way only people could make. Dully Java heard the clink of chains and narrowed her vision until the rukh was gone, it would stop blinding her with its sight and the smell of rotten fruit, rotten apples. Silver, gold. Bared teeth. Darkened eyes. Her breathing slowed.

She continued on past the town and towards one of the large exits near the palace, high seatings of jeweled decorations and so many cultures intertwined in their foods and appearance (the clothing of the Heliohapt, the sea splendor of the Imuchakk). Vines traveled slowly along the edges like a rising crescendo, pouring over the walls she traveled past and waving underneath the bridge in sweeping movements.

Astrology felt strange, foreign to her. The stars were in the wrong places now, the entire perspective shifted. Constellations had vanished, replaced by meanings and new lights entirely different and somehow less overall. Night was the last place she wanted to be, black tendrils following after her with the greed to destroy, to tarnish with those deaths and prayers and half-hoped fatalities that was concentrated into too much feeling. It pulled the mind psychologically. It was too much.

(Once upon a time, in another world far gone and beyond their reach, three magi and a king formed a covenant, an agreement that this was for the best. Java's mouth remained shut. It would become nonexistent in the span of time: persistence would shut memory out.)

And she was angry: for a long time afterward, they raged and fought and battled and waged wars along the years branching onward. The rukh felt agonizing, like temperatures that felt a bit too cold for her liking, a bit too hot for comfort. Their history remained written in the rubble, far below in the ruins whose lands had been built upon and changed to fit the people sprouting forth from it. The Old World called out to those yearning: she was sure every magi still heard it. Java nearly cried from the force.

Take me home. Take me back, please. I cannot live like this anymore.

Home, home, home, home-

Grief is dark, broiling, hatred that burns the eyes and blazes like meteors across skin. Hatred here still felt wrong to her, too rough and revenge-stricken and unbecoming, love felt too unconditional, too much for the feeling without the integrity that came alongside it. Emotions were like limbs, too long and out of place. Java jerked back to attention, eyes alight with surprise. She was standing at a lightened pavement, almost completely deserted due to the heat of the sun blazing down without any semblance of cover.

Violence was natural. The Old World was natural. They had lived with beasts, struggled just like the rest, and this was the solution they had all come up with. It felt despicable to her now: the world was not meant to be split like this. Good and evil, wrong and right. What did it matter? Nobody was ever that perfect, and she despised anyone who thought otherwise. To be characterized by how much they used the rukh, sorted into slots and personalized, that seemed such a terrible thing to become. (The judge.) Smash that pedestal down, her blood drummed, beating counterclockwise, reverberating loud, dark against the second reckoning. Ignore it. Return, return, return.

(And unbeknownst to her, the rukh swirled in rivulets above, dancing faerie lights remembering the memories she did, singing to the history that they once remembered as well.)

Silver rukh was always something I'd thought about, and I was never able to shake off that idea. I haven't been updated on the manga and I finished where the anime did, so whatever inconsistencies occur will be solely my decision.

I've written about Java three years ago when I was still doing half-assed writing. I'm still doing that, to be honest, but I've gotten a little better about it. Oops.

I'm done for now. If I do write any more, I hope you enjoy it.

See you later!