Umbra led Lunafreya to a small mountainside hamlet. It looked like there were no more than twenty buildings to make up this community. When she first stepped between them, Lunafreya could almost feel every eye in the whole village snap to her. Their suspicion is not unexpected. The people of the tiny villages in the hinterlands of her own kingdom had been just as guarded until they heard her name.
Yet she does not think her name would inspire the same confidence or awe in these strangers.
Although they are wary, they take her in. Some ask her if she is from the capital. They mention that the Gralean radio stations all play the same message on repeat: All travel to and from Gralea has been suspended until further notice. This broadcast will repeat until the situation has been resolved. The Imperial Security Bureau thanks you for your cooperation. They mention that they have not been able to contact their relatives who live and work in the city.
They mention that everything has gone topsy-turvy ever since they executed the ex-Commander Ravus Nox Fleuret.
Or he was supposed to have been killed. No one in this place knows if he is truly dead. His execution was supposed to have been broadcast live on both radio and television. But the only thing that the capital now broadcasts is that warning. It has looped for days.
This all does little to dislodge her heart from her throat. She must go to him. For twelve years, Ravus had been just like this Gralean broadcast: an echo. A thing that relives the same spent seconds again and again. Lunafreya believes she knows which moment he has been trapped in all this time. Can still remember how his expression collapsed in on itself when she and the royals of Lucis had turned their backs on him.
But Ravus would still come to her aid. He has already proven that to her. She must do the same for him.
Lunafreya asks nearly every villager she sees to take her to Gralea. Every single one of them refuses.
"Didn't you hear what they said?" a villager says. "Gralea's a no-go."
So she asks if she may borrow a snowmobile or car instead.
"No bloody way you're taking mine," says another villager. Practically spits at her. "Bloody outrageous. Just who do you think you are?"
It might be pointless to reveal herself as the Oracle. She suspects that they have only ever heard of her title in passing. Suspects that she no longer looks the part. These people are unlikely to revere her when she has never done anything for them in return.
But she tells them anyway. To prove herself to them, Lunafreya mends by touch alone the broken finger of a woman in front of as many witnesses as she could gather together in the street.
"Please," she begs. Her heartbeat shakes her whole body. "The people of Gralea will need my aid."
A few of the witnesses stumble backwards. One of them falls flat on his back onto a roadside snowbank. Lunafreya surveys the array of facial expressions before her: some look mortified. Two look mad. The woman whose hand she healed looks sympathetic.
"I'll take you," she says. Places her unbroken hand over Lunafreya's own.
"Thank you," Lunafreya says. Her heart begins to slide back down her throat.
The weather chooses that exact moment to turn. In a matter of seconds, Lunafreya can hardly see a foot ahead of her for all the snow that comes down from the sky. The woman pulls her into her own home and sets Lunafreya by the lit fireplace with a promise to take her once the weather clears.
Only the weather does not clear.
She knows now that Shiva's corpse had changed the weather patterns for this region. Wonders how long it will take before her influence over the Ghorovas Rift fades. Lunafreya's eyes wander over to the fireplace. The logs crackle under the weight of fire. Perhaps that is the reason why the Infernian had been tasked with cremating the Six: their bodies bleed power over the world long after their passing. Cremation might put an end to that.
A part of her thinks she should hate how immersed she is in the Six and their prophecy. Her brother could be dying or already dead somewhere in the grimy streets of Gralea. He could be something worse than dead by now. One half of her being screams at that.
The other half of her wonders where Umbra has disappeared to.
It is well into the night when Lunafreya considers stealing a snowmobile. She has no trident or companion. Nothing but her power to pull pain and worse from out of things. But that part of her begs her to do something.
Then the woman discovers Lunafreya putting on her winter boots.
"Don't go." She slowly descends the stairs. Like she fears the sound of her footsteps might startle Lunafreya. "It's too dangerous." Her fingers tug at a shoelace. With her head bent over her boots, Lunafreya listens to the woman tell her how a blizzard can hide the edge of a cliff from sight. How fissures in the earth crack open on occasion. Listens to the woman tell her how she has lost family and friends who assumed they knew the ins and outs of this land. "We just live on this land," she says. "It knows us far better than we do it."
The woman goes quiet. Lunafreya pulls at her shoelace again. Finds her heart is no longer in her throat. At some point, it fell into the pit of her stomach.
In front of the fire again, Lunafreya curls in on herself and falls asleep.
In her dreams, the Altissian sea is impossibly thick. Its current pulls her down ever further from the glow of sunlight overhead. The ring nips at the palms of her hands. Lunafreya knows that it was never hers to wear. Only, he is but a child in this space. Her hold on the ring closes tighter.
He is to be the King of Light, she knows. If only his heart could bear it. He is to be hammered silver: beat again and again into proper form.
She had hoped her heart could.
Lunafreya recognizes the Altissian water for the hammer it is. It beats words out of her. Farewell, dear Noctis, she tells him. Because this is the end for her. It is difficult to believe that all the hours of prayer, all the mornings spent in study, all the sermons she delivered had led her to here. Difficult to believe that every wound she pulled pain out of and every pain she could not spare herself from had led her to this moment. All of her had hoped she had been meant for more than just this errand. Lunafreya had hoped she would be more than just a ring-bearer.
I wanted to save you, he says. Her heart dies at how his voice breaks. So she does not have it in her to tell him that they were never meant for that. Once, she believed it might have been possible for them to pass through every ordeal unscathed. But that had been a different Lunafreya. That Lunafreya had died on the same sword as her mother had. Now she knows better: both she and Noctis are to be nothing more than knives. Meant only to carve away whatever of each other is not the Oracle or King of Kings.
The sunlight is so terribly far away. It feels so unfair that she cannot feel it as she dies. But she is well-acquainted with such cruelties by now. She has pulled its manifestation from out of the bodies of others too many times not to recognize it.
The Infernian had wrought the Starscourge. Or so she had been told. She wonders what cruelty she might face from him. It is a peculiar thought to have as she sinks.
Lunafreya wakes at that. The thought is no longer peculiar when she finds herself lying before the fireplace. The fire is in its death throes. Her eyes go to the blackened remains of the wood. It reminds her of her brother writhing in pain on the Citadel floor. Then she looks to the nearest window and sees the sky still dark from the storm.
Ravus is dead. He must be. The only other option is that the Starscourge has claimed him. Lunafreya supposes she should be afraid that she sees cruelty as synonymous with reality. There should be a point where the body count is too high to continue. There should be a price she is not willing to pay to fulfill her calling.
She can feel the strings tied around every joint in her hands. They cut off her circulation. The half of her that is human wants to pull against them. Snap every one.
But Ravus is already spent.
Lunafreya likes to think she can recognize a pattern when she sees one. So she knows that Noctis will be next. Before she had met with Shiva, she had felt the Draconian speak directly into her mind. The force of their voice had made Lunafreya hug her own stomach. Bahamut had needed Noctis. Immediately.
Between her and the Draconian, she knows that Noctis would have picked her. It had fallen on her not to pick him.
Lunafreya slips back into sleep and that same dream. The ring does not hurt in her hands any longer. She passes it to the child anyways. In its absence, her hands burn. Her thoughts do too. They are too hot to keep inside. Lunafreya tells him, Do not be like me.
She dreams herself into something inanimate. Something that flashes silver. Dreams herself into something that does not care if ever feels the sunlight again.
She dies.
But Lunafreya had not drowned in Altissia. When she wakes again, it is to a profound sense of déjà vu. Weeks ago now, Lunafreya had woken up from the roiling sea to a stern-looking man in a stained scrub. Next to him had stood a woman with hair the same colour as bone. Lunafreya had been told that the woman had rescued her. She could believe that just by looking at her. That person had looked like a weapon that could slice water clean into two parts.
Perhaps she can also cut a blizzard into two.
That same woman looms over her now. Umbra stands off to the side about where the surgeon had been. Aranea looks cross. Gives Lunafreya an unimpressed once-over. But there is something about the curl of her lip that makes Lunafreya thinks she is not truly irritated.
"Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty."
