I don't own Golden Sun. Camelot does. And I don't own the lyrics to Nichiren. Duncan Sheik does.
Nichiren
By: Akiko
He looked into their eyes. Eyes that he couldn't delve emotions from, flat and expressionless. Eyes that glowed orange in the reflected light of the sputtering torches they held in their fists. One thing he was positive wasn't there was mercy. Compassion. Sympathy.
Not that he wanted those things. He was old, perhaps it was his time to die. But still he struggled with the wet ropes behind his back. Because like anyone else, old or young, he still had one desire at heart that made him almost hate himself.
He didn't want to die.
He beat the drum and lit the fires
He sent the messages in vain
But the sound of his philosophy
Rose above the falling rain
And what had he done to deserve to die, really? Yes, he had been one of the sole perpetrators in charge of the Golden Sun being unleashed. Yes, he had been a driving force behind the beacons being fired. But did that truly condemn him to death? The rain began falling in earnest from slate clouds. He looked up into those clouds, trying to find some hint of Sol. Without his glasses the sky was just a boiling mass of impenetrable gray. He prayed anyway, rain running down his lined face like tears. Hadn't he done the right thing?
And to you who find it difficult
To believe in anything
I praise you for the outrage
At the horror you have seen
He looked back at the silent crowd, rain and smoke conspiring to hide them all from his eyes. But he knew the ones he was looking for. He didn't have to see them to know they were there. Admittedly, it was him who had pushed them into the world far too early. He was the one that had shown them the horror and terror the world outside of Vale had to offer. And it had little else to give them. But hadn't he also shown them wonderment? Excitement? Through him they had been handed a seemingly impossible task. And they had come out victorious in the end. And still they stood here and watched in a somber silence as he was condemned.
So I'm trying to remember
I try to understand
Every holocaust has meaning
Not set in stone but drawn in sand
And even as he struggled with the wet ropes that dug into his thin wrists, and even as he struggled to understand, the first torch was lowered to the wood at his feet. At first there was only smoke, a thick black cloud that obscured his vision completely, sent him coughing and his eyes watering. And then the first tentative flame licked at the damp wood. Then another. As more torches were added to the first, the flames rose higher, and the smoke thickened. And still through the shimmer of heat and smoke he could see them, and he looked at them pleadingly, mouthing his last words. Even though he knew no one saw them. Even though he knew that even if they had it wouldn't have mattered. After all he was a man condemned to die. By smoke and heat and flame Kraden was condemned to die. And as the pain and flames consumed him, he felt the butterfly wings touch of a mind against his. He died with a smile on his face.
And in some cold and barren place
He spoke the phrase and thus I heard
With every small decision
You change a heart
You change the world