A/N: Playing through Eunwol's story moved me so much my hands moved to write this of their own accord. Reviews would be much appreciated!

Laughing. There's the sound of laughter. It tickles his ear, pleasant and light, free of the weight of the world, and warm, like the gentle caress of sunlight. The voices mingle together, indecipherable, but if he struggled just a little, he could make out the tinkling melody of a young female, or the rich tenor of a confident man. They were inexplicably familiar, in a way that stirred his heart to wistfulness and contentment in equal measure. It was as though he had wished to capture starlight as it pooled hope in his hands and scattered dreams into the night.

His chest ached.

They were close. If he were to reach out a hand, surely there would be the brush of skin, the teasing of hair loose in the wind. He willed himself to move, to get closer. I'm here, he wanted to say, I'm here too. But a heaviness pressed upon his limbs. Look at me.

The voices were getting ever so slightly further, and he pressed more strongly, a sudden desperation alight in his veins. He couldn't lose them, his light. Wait for me, please, the words were stuck in his throat, don't leave me behind.

Don't leave me alone-!

But in the moment that followed he realised that the voices had fallen silent. A rush of relief. Perhaps they'd noticed and turned to wait for him? There was sensation in his limbs, now, and he leapt to his feet. Forward, forward, forward to join them.

Then he opened his eyes to meet blue orbs, large and fearful, and in his ears was not the sound of recognition.

The voice bled into him a deep cold.

"Who are you?"

Like starlight scattering through the night.

Eunwol started awake, heart hammering in his chest and drenched in cold sweat. Again. Again the nightmarish dream that had plagued him for months, ceaseless in torment. Again the unbearable knot at the back of his throat, a longing so strong it pained, and tears hot behind his eyelids. As he gritted his teeth and brought a hand up to steel himself, the cold bite of stone on his fingertips reminded him that he was alone, alone, again-

Alone, in a place where the wind did not reach.

He sighed shakily. Even through countless iterations of the same dream, it never failed to seize him with how startlingly real it all felt, as though with each rejection, the wound on his heart were cut open anew. It hurt. It hurt so much he could barely breathe, but like a phantom it would take him and let go, the sharp pain ebbing away to the settling of cold apathy.

Just today, it took a few more moments than usual before he regained his usual self-control. It tightened into his limbs and forced the tears back. Blinking his eyes against the rays of the morning sun, he took a glance about his surroundings. The same pillars lined the hallway, the same cracks running the length of the walls. He was still huddled up between two rather large chunks of runic stone. Distantly, he could detect imperceptible shifts in the space as wandering spirits drifted about aimlessly, occasionally brushing against rock or stirring up wisps of sand. Like Eunwol as he was now, those of the Temple of Time existed separately from the living beings of the Maple World, never to be in their time, in their space, in their hearts. Forever present and yet absent, everywhere and, as a result, nowhere. It was here in this otherworldly space that Eunwol had decided to settle, an existence that bordered on nonexistence, a contradictory being in and on itself.

He had already accepted his fate. To be forgotten by the world was a cruel thing, but as much as it broke him, he could never bring himself to regret his decision. Again and again, in the grand hall of the Temple of Time, Eunwol revisited the scene in his mind; and again and again, he came inevitably to the same conclusion, a hollow feeling in his heart: It had been the right choice. This was the right choice. For all the pain of one man, the world was freed from darkness and forged a future.

So he didn't regret it.

But he did, perhaps, regret just a little, that he had learnt of happiness once before – in a land of sunlight and laughter – for it made the dark and cold just a little darker, and a little colder, and it lit a traitorous spark of hope in his chest that maybe, just maybe, he would be allowed a single taste of it again.

Here, frozen in the sands of time, the forgotten hero Eunwol dreamt an endless dream.

"Mercedes," the name, bittersweet on his lips, like an anchor, a whisper of all he's ever known. "Aran, Phantom, Luminous…"

Blue eyes, deep pools like the expanse of sky and space before him, shining, twinkling, dancing, laughing, loving-

He choked.

"…Freud…"

In the expanse of darkness beyond the walls he might have imagined a slight shift, a whisper of sorts, though he had long banished the hope for any reply from this god forsaken place. But insistently it persisted, a light, smooth pattering of grains at the edge of his consciousness.

Like the falling of hourglass sand.