Ah, how subtle are the changes of a heart, the conclusion of a thousand, thousand insignificant alterations and the untold moments of uneasy acquiescence that leave one stranded, miles away from the beginning. In this way, my heart was reborn through years of quiet adjustment—the strangest period of my life, as I look back upon it.
A single night marked the beginning of an upheaval, borne of a curse which nature had wrought and which human minds had exacerbated. Alas, such is the misfortune of man that our darkest dreams infect the fabric of our perception, distorting the world which we inhabit and tainting the minds of those around us.
The evening itself passed quite uneventfully, as I recall; there was no fretful preparation or solemn contemplation of a looming disaster; it simply was. As snowy dusk fell throughout the kingdom, I found myself unable to sleep. In my quarters, I paced fitfully, unable to focus my mind on meditation and uninterested by the volumes of literature which surrounded me. The moon rose slowly in the night sky, illuminating the sleeping town far below with silvery light. After an indeterminate amount of time, I took to wandering the candlelit halls of the residential wing; a whim brought me to the room where that twin, Fai, had just fallen asleep, tossing and turning fitfully. As I gazed upon him, I was reminded again of how bereft of the charms of innocent childhood he was. His face, even at that young age, looked haggard and sickly, and his wispy blonde hair had become plastered all over his forehead which was glistening with sweat in the dim light. I felt a twinge of pity as he rolled over and moaned softly in his sleep, in wonder at the sheer audacity of fate. What cruel world would strike down even this child so heavily? As I listened to him breathe sorrowfully, locked in some nightmarish memory, a curious thought occurred to me. Though I realized, of course, that the idea was absurd, my curiosity overcame my apprehension. Glancing around myself cautiously, I sealed the doorway and drew the curtains shut, sealing out the light of the luminous aurora that fluctuated in the night sky. As the room plunged into a dim twilight, I knelt by his bedside. Without pausing, lest I lose confidence, I reached out my hand and clamped it firmly—though not roughly—over his mouth. Within moments, he began to squirm as he found himself unable to breathe. With fascination, I watched as he turned his head one way and another, probing anxiously with the bridge of his nose as he sought air. My ears listened sensitively to the sound of his increasingly frenzied vitals; my fingers absorbed every nuance of the muted racing of his blood and the slight erratic heaving motions of his chest, and all of it filled me with a sort of curious gratification. My hand grew moist and, after a time, his eyes began to roll and twitch in their sockets and he seemed to be on the verge of awakening. I released my grip on him. The twin drank in huge gulps of air, coughing roughly, yet his deep slumber was not disturbed. As I left the room and wandered down spiraling staircases, I was somewhat perturbed by the insanity of what I had been contemplating and my lack of control in the matter, but overall I truly only wished to satiate that restlessness which plagued me so fiercely. I would have to try again. Silently, I descended into the main hall and glided out an obscure side-door, passing unnoticed through the silvery night.
The air was brisk, even for winter, but fires roiled in my blood and I slunk through the frigid overshadowed alleyways of Celes indifferent to the cold. Sparse lights still flickered in these lonely nocturnal hours, warm glowing windows like twinkling stars in the dark. I drew close to the common residences surrounding the castle, every moment aghast in some small corner of my mind, every moment yearning and indulging in anticipation of heated struggle and surging vitality. Upon running my tongue across my cold and drying lips, I imagined the ferric taste of dripping warm blood. I became fully aware of what I sought; I discovered the sole method of my reprieve: what I yearned for was the frenzied and wasteful destruction of life, the brutal rupture bleeding across the sordid earth, an ignoble culmination of an existence lived, for years, for decades—for nothing, nothing in the end save pain and the dread emptiness of death. This is what would drive out the fire in my veins, the indulgent and blasphemous passions of senseless bloodlust. I trudged through the snow to my swiftly converging fate.
Long afterwards, when the moon had nearly completed its slow arc across the sky and the stars had begun to fade, I began the frigid return journey home. The madness had left me at last, and all that remained was a sickly sort of exhaustion. I could hardly walk, could hardly think of anything save for the blissful oblivion afforded to me by sleep. Weakly, I stumbled up the many stairwells to the residential wing, slid into my room, and bolted the door shut.
My energy was utterly sapped; As my limbs alternately burned with exertion and shivered with cold, I collapsed ungracefully into an armchair and blacked out.
A few fleeting hours later, I awoke again, aching all over from the awkward position in which I had fallen asleep and wincing at a throbbing headache which besieged me. A nightmare awaited my waking mind. Blood was plastered across my robes, glistening. I reached out to touch it, and my hands came away an earthl reddish-brown. Dimly horrified, unable to think of what had happened but still able to react, I fled to my bath and stripped the sinful clothes from my skin, wincing every time I felt the nauseating weight of bloodied cloth drag across me. I desperately needed to forget, to cleanse away this evil. A gush of steaming water cascaded down upon me and I scoured my skin with soap and abrasive magic, driven to erase all evidence of my sins. My skin grew raw as I blasted the hateful stain again and again. Water slid down my entire form, sending spirals of red twirling down the drain like soft blossoms of spring. The haze was overwhelming. Plumes of scalding steam enveloped me as I scrubbed desperately, yet still I felt sordid. Soon, I had scrubbed so hard that I saw thin layers of blood, my own blood, oozing onto the sponge. I flung myself painfully from the bath feeling cornered, unable to cope with what I had done, unable to find escape. My reflection leered at me like some brutish beast, and I would have let out a sob at how low I had fallen, raged at myself and howled with the insanity of my predicament, but the world had become distant. Merciful isolation had descended again upon me, and I wandered as if in a dream. Smoothly, I pulled new evening robes from my wardrobe and, as I felt the fresh feeling of new clothes, my anxiety began to be replaced with resolve. I would forget. The world would forget my wrongs; there could be no other way of salvation besides this. Stiffly, painfully, I lowered myself into bed and gave myself to consuming sleep once more.
The moon slid behind the distant hills, illuminating with its white rays an almost invisible rivulet of black blood on the snow which was overshadowed by a canopy of skeletal coal-black trees.