The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Interlude: Empathy, Part 1

Bishop's Lace, Southern Fiore, X704

Whichever outdoorsy, suntan-obsessed preacher had come up with the popular cultural conception of heaven had clearly never been to Paternoster Street. Forget pearly gates and floaty clouds and never-ending golden fields – what could be better than an entire street of bookshops, each one dimmer, seedier, and more enticing than the last? Behind grimy windows and spider-woven warnings hid shelf upon shelf of secrets: forbidden first editions and unfinished manuscripts; texts in languages no one remembered and magic buried in the mire of deep time; books which had hitherto escaped even his notice.

As a man who could not die, Zeref considered himself fortunate that places so heavenly existed in the world of the living. Or, to be more precise, in the otherwise-unassuming town of Bishop's Lace, in the south-east of Fiore. Life didn't get much better than a dark and mysterious street full of dark and mysterious bookshops, in a town where no one knew who he was.

He hadn't quite made it to the first door when the shouting began.

So much for that, then.

He'd heard it so many times now that he could pinpoint the exact moment the Rune Knights caught wind of his presence – the moment when their distant, orderly march dissolved into the frantic jig of too-heavy boots battering the ground in their own personal rhythms; the moment when the routine patrol became an active search. That was the overture that had opened many of his expulsions from Fiorean towns over the past seven years.

It didn't seem to matter how hard he tried to keep his head down. Sooner or later, word always got out that there was a traveller asking the wrong kind of questions, a mage seeking knowledge of the most ancient and reviled of magics, a man who more often than not found the secrets he sought with the merchants and the guilds that operated on the wrong side of the law. Never mind that no one ever worked out who he really was; whether the Black Mage or a minor criminal, he wasn't a man they wanted in their good and righteous cities. He had been hoping that he'd get a few days in Bishop's Lace before the local law enforcement caught on, but it seemed word travelled faster than he did in this part of the kingdom.

Maybe this would be the end of it, then. Seven years he had been doing this – seven years since his own magic had killed the one he loved; seven years of wandering and reading and not getting involved with anyone; seven years of drawing closer and closer to that critical point but never quite reaching it.

Maybe this would be the day he couldn't or wouldn't run from the Knights and had to fight them, knowing that if he fought he would kill and if he killed one he would kill all, not just the Knights or the townsfolk but all; until either he or the world was spent. He should have done it seven years ago, and with every day that went by he found it harder and harder to recall why he hadn't. Yet here he was, still drifting, as if he was the one who had died that day and now existed only as a spectre, doomed to haunt the bookshops of southern Fiore for all eternity.

Maybe this would be the day that ended his attempt to just live quietly, and he would finally stop running from his fate and punish the world for what it had taken from him.

With a sigh, he let his hand fall back from the door, and turned reluctantly to face the charging Rune Knights-

Who hurtled past him without a second glance.

"He's not getting away this time!" roared their leader, a shout that was echoed vigorously by the other five Knights in his unit. Spears held high, they raced down the road and disappeared around the corner.

The sound of heavy footfalls faded with the settling of the dust.

Zeref waited politely for them to realize their mistake and come back to arrest him.

They did not.

It seemed that shopping for rare books was still on the table after all, so he shrugged and pushed open the shop door.

There was no tinkling bell to greet him – only an ominous creak. Grime-clogged windows enforced perpetual gloom upon the interior. The stubby remains of candles sprouted feeble flames at his approach, which guttered and extinguished themselves again as he passed. A thin layer of dust covered shelves and books alike (sinister bookshops being perhaps the only kind of store whose atmosphere and accounts both benefitted from not hiring a cleaner). He could sense another living presence, likely the owner, but they were remaining artfully out of sight.

It was, in a word, perfect.

As relaxed as he only ever was in a place filled with old books, Zeref ran his finger over faded spines and semi-legible gold calligraphy, searching for anything that looked interesting, or better still, that tingled with unfamiliar magic.

"Are you the one the Knights are looking for?"

The cold hiss did not break the atmosphere, but slid gracefully through it. Zeref did not so much as look up from the treatise on magical beasts he was perusing to answer. "This may be the first time in a while that I've been able to honestly answer that in the negative, but no, it seems I am not."

Silence stretched on. He knew that the shopkeeper was still scrutinizing him – she couldn't hide her magical presence well enough to fool his senses – but he continued to browse as if she wasn't.

At last, she asked, a little less cold than before, "Did your master send you, boy?"

"I am my own master," he said calmly. "I'm here because I thought it would be a more productive use of my time than ending human civilization, but that's looking less and less likely by the second… tell me, where are your interesting books?"

The shopkeeper bristled. "I do not think-"

Now he did turn around, fixing the shopkeeper with a black stare. She was younger than he'd thought, neither grey-haired nor particularly crone-like. He would have deducted the shop marks for that, if it wouldn't have been so hypocritical, coming from an immortal in a fourteen-year-old body.

"Look," he sighed. "I've done this a lot recently, and believe me, the whole 'you look too young to be a knowledgeable mage' thing really does get old after the first few hundred times. So how about we skip the part where you make a fool of yourself and I'm forced to waste time and energy proving you wrong, and go straight to the bit where you show me your rare books? We both save time, and I have a strong feeling it will reduce the chance of me getting thrown out of town prematurely."

After a moment, she took the key from the chain around her neck and unlocked a trunk sat behind the counter. "Knock yourself out. As long as you've got the money, you can buy whatever you want."

"An excellent decision," Zeref remarked, deciding there and then to use the direct approach more often.

The treasures inside the trunk were much more promising. Released from the confines of rune-bound oak, he could taste the tang of old magic as he approached, a delicious sparking along his tongue. "Got, got, got," he murmured. "Not interesting, not interesting… you're not a first edition… oh, hello."

From the bottom of the trunk he lifted out a little black book that looked more like a diary than a fancy tome, seared by raw magical energy so strong that echoes of it still trembled within the pages. An experimental diary of some sort? Likely it was written in code – and in one of the archaic magical languages beneath that – but if he could accurately date it, he could probably decrypt it-

"Go round the back!" came a shout from outside, muffled by the walls and the gloom and the atmosphere but not entirely suppressed by them. "We'll chase him towards you! Don't let him escape!"

Curious, Zeref got to his feet, book still in hand, and approached the shop window. Even the owner had turned her suspicious gaze from him to the street outside, where a swollen patrol of at least ten Rune Knights was presently dividing in two and stomping off to set their trap.

"Are you sure they're not here for you?" demanded the shopkeeper.

"Quite sure," Zeref said, amused. "It sounds like whoever they're chasing is giving them quite the workout; it's exhausting just to watch. I must say, it is nice not being the one chased, isn't it?"

Ignoring her glower, he perched on the windowsill, using what little light the window permitted to scrutinize the book he had salvaged. "Let's see… binding suggests early to mid-second century, experimental diary of some kind, looks like encrypted Loxarian, or potentially classical Amarantian."

"We thought Loxarian, but no one has managed to decrypt it yet."

"Naturally not, or it wouldn't still be here. May I try?"

When she hesitated, Zeref gave another sigh. "And there I thought we'd both agreed to skip all these time-wasting clichés and just let me get my way."

The shopkeeper handed him some scrap paper, which he spread out before him on the windowsill. Icily, she remarked, "And does sir intend to sit in my shop until he has translated the entirety of a document that has defied the greatest scholars for years?"

"It hasn't defied the greatest scholars until I've tried and failed it," he told her coolly. "I'm only going to confirm that it is what it appears to be before spending a substantial amount of money on some ancient recipe book…"

He tailed off as the thunder of boots alerted him to the fact that the Rune Knights had still not managed to catch their wayward criminal. Intrigued, he glanced out of the window, looking for whoever was kindly distracting the Knights for him.

The source of the disturbance was not, in fact, a master criminal on the run from the law.

Instead, the entire platoon of Rune Knights appeared to be hurtling down the street in pursuit of a child.

A blond-haired, grubby little boy, dressed in rags and clutching a stolen baguette tight to his chest.

Zeref looked on, bemused, as the Rune Knights proceeded to deploy their full trap against this unassuming target. Guards leapt out of hiding at the far end of the street, blocking his escape route. Skidding to a stop, the boy glanced between the enemies in front and behind with the fawn's wide-eyed fright.

"We've got you now!" the leader yelled triumphantly. "You've been plaguing our streets for long enough! You're coming with us!"

The boy gave a desperate shake of his head.

"That's not open for debate, brat."

He raised his hand and the Knights surged forwards. Some carried handcuffs and ropes in their gauntleted hands; others raised their weapons threateningly. One, not seeming to care that his opponent was a mere child, thrust his palm towards the boy and projected a roaring fireball down the street.

The boy was frozen to the spot as blazing magic hurtled towards him, not thinking to run, not thinking to hide – and then, in one last desperate measure, he screwed his tearful eyes shut and swung the baguette like a bat against the oncoming fireball.

Something streaked across Zeref's senses: a thread pulled taut; a silver sun radiant in the night; a horizon splitting into perfect light and perfect darkness. In all his years he had never felt anything quite like it, and if he had been watching the scene play out with bemusement before, then now he stared enraptured, the old diary forgotten in his lap.

The baguette connected with the fireball – and smashed it back towards the Knights.

The fireball grew in size and intensity as it flew, spitting like a miniature sun. Trained soldiers yelped and dived for cover. It struck the road in a blinding explosion. The earth tremored, windows rattled, books jumped from their shelves like flightless baby birds – and in the middle of it all, acting on pure instinct, the boy threw aside a baguette somehow unsinged by contact with the fireball and fled the scene.

Zeref watched until the boy's flight had carried him out of view, and even then, the broad grin stretched across his face did not lessen. "What was that?" he breathed.

The shopkeeper paused in her disgruntled retrieval of the displaced books to completely miss the point of his question. "A pest of a street urchin who lives round here. He's tried to sneak in here more than once; I had to chase him away with a broom before he could steal anything. I hope they finally catch him. Jail's the best place for him."

"That magic, though…" Zeref closed his eyes, trying to commit to memory every detail of what he had sensed: something connecting; something awakening; something entirely novel and yet heartrendingly familiar; impossibly paradoxical, perfectly balanced. "What? And- how?"

Outside, the Rune Knights were regrouping and setting off in pursuit of the boy. There was one wild part of Zeref tempted to do the same, just to glimpse that magic once more, to see if it really was as fascinating as it had first appeared…

But there was unusual magic everywhere, and he knew better than to get caught up in this kind of situation. That was how he'd managed to survive like this for so long. It was nothing to do with him, and it was far better if it stayed that way.

So he sat back down, opened the diary again, and put that dazzling flash of magic out of his mind.

For all of about five minutes.

That was when the prickling sense of danger became too strong for even an immortal to ignore. Zeref closed the book again, raising his head. The boy was long gone, and the Knights with him, but he could sense magic nonetheless – a power that emanated from everywhere and nowhere, bathing the town in a faint red glow.

There was tension in the atmosphere, as if all the air molecules had begun to vibrate in harmony. It was soft, at first, a faint trembling that no one but him would have been able to sense, but with every second that passed, it grew stronger… and stronger… and stronger.

This was bad. This was very bad.

With a groan, Zeref jumped to his feet and sprinted out of the door, heedless to the shopkeeper's cries as she realized he still had the diary and entirely failed to realize that it would very soon be the least of her worries, if he couldn't stop this in time.

Always, running.

Always, for as long as he could remember, and he remembered far more of his little life than most children could.

He had run from the orphanage as soon as he could survive alone. He ran from town to town, hiding, surviving – for days, for weeks, sometimes for months, but he was always chased out eventually, and then it was back to running again.

He ran from one day into the next, no constants in his life but fear, no friends but hunger, nothing to guide him except memories – some were his, but by no means all. Some he'd had from before he was born, glimpses of his parents' lives passed down through the magic he'd inherited from them. The attacks of dissociation came much less frequently now that the ever-growing bank of his own experiences had outstripped the chaotic mess of memories that weren't his, but they were just so vivid and alive next to the running and running and more running that made up his own existence…

The boy skidded to a halt in the dead-end alley, gazing up at three high walls with something akin to resignation.

Why did he run?

He ran because the Knights were after him. That seemed obvious enough. He ate when he was hungry, even if it meant stealing food to do so; he slept when he was tired, even if it was wet and cold and the rats had grown more and more aggressive until he'd been forced to flee whatever shelter he'd borrowed from them for somewhere at the mercy of the elements. He ran from the guards because he didn't want to be caught or imprisoned or killed.

But, that wasn't really an answer.

He stared up at walls too steep for him to climb, walls that made him feel so tiny. He couldn't hear the guards – he had lost them somewhere in the alleyways – but he had lost himself too and blundered into a dead end, and they never gave up that easily. If he retraced his steps, he might be able to slip by them and escape, and they were unlikely to bother pursuing him beyond the town boundaries… but it came back to that single question: why?

Running only meant more running. Struggling only meant more struggling. Surviving one day… only gave him more days to survive.

The battle never came to an end. His only reward for winning each day's fight was a rematch beginning at sunrise tomorrow. There was nothing ahead of him; nowhere he was wanted; no place where he was safe; no reason why the future would be any different.

This he knew with a certainty inherited from the memories of someone else's life. It was an adult certainty, an unequivocal truth, and as he looked up at the walls which towered over his insignificant self, the instinctive desire to survive that had carried him this far no longer seemed sufficient.

He didn't want to run any more.

In one of his other memories there was a circle of runes, and with them, someone else's intent, someone else's hope, someone else's purpose, which at long last seemed to match his own.

With that as his guide, he pulled the piece of chalk he had been saving from his pocket and began to replicate the symbols on the stone beneath him.

He didn't know what any of the runes meant, and yet at the same time, he did. The less he thought about them, the more he could read them; an understanding glimpsed only from the corner of his eye. He knew, with the precision of a master of ritual magic, the instant the circle was complete. He knew it would work perfectly.

He walked to one of those high, high walls and scraped his hand across dispassionate stone until beads of blood bubbled through his skin. Kneeling at the centre of the circle, he smeared that blood along the innermost chalk ring and closed his eyes.

It caught at once, and pure silvery light suffused the world behind his eyelids. It was hungry, the circle he'd drawn. It sucked greedily at his magic through the blood connection, like it was dragging his very soul into another dimension.

Nothing he had done before had ever used more than a sliver of the magic inside him, and this sudden weakness was new to him – but not unpleasant. The exhaustion felt like falling asleep, but without the ache of too-solid stone beneath too-thin cardboard, or the numbness stealing through his fingers, or the dread that he'd wake up soon enough and have to do this all over again.

The air thrummed in response to his power, coalescing around him like a warm embrace. Magic was the only family he had ever known; of course it was willing to take him back.

It was easy to give everything he had to it. Easy, so easy, to let go; to set the magic inside him free, and let it take him with it-

That was when a hand seized the back of his stolen shirt and yanked him out of the rune circle.

"That's quite enough of that," Zeref said.

Zeref glowered at the boy dangling in mid-air from the end of his arm. "Don't go blowing up towns with ancient ritual magic!" he scolded. "Everyone's going to think I did it, and I've been trying so hard not to draw attention to myself!"

The boy squeaked something that didn't sound like a word.

Sighing, Zeref set him back down away from the circle of runes, which, concerningly, had not stopped pouring light into the scorched and agitated air when he'd pulled its unlikely caster out. It was this which held his attention, even though his words addressed the boy: "What are you doing? You've been cornered by some guards while stealing bread, so you decided to invoke a ritual that'll kill every living creature within the town boundaries? Even I think that's an overreaction, and I once destroyed an entire kingdom for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Then, in the firm tone of a master to a student, he added, "This kind of magic is absolutely not to be used in such petty situations. Ritual magic is last resort magic – that's practically the first rule of ritual magic! How can you invoke such a complex spell and yet not know that?"

Another squeak.

"Honestly," Zeref sighed, scrutinizing the circle again. "This ritual will claim your life in exchange! That's the second rule of ritual magic: don't ever use a ritual that will cost you your life! If you're not smart enough to rework the ritual to have some other cost, you have no place using this kind of magic!"

There were no errors that he could see in the runes – the circle was working exactly as it should – and yet it still wasn't stopping. He could feel the air vibrating against his skin. It was hot, too hot; every breath seemed to burn down his throat.

"The ritual is still draining your life. Cancel it." It wasn't a request, but just for the avoidance of doubt, he ordered, "Now."

Still the circle did not dim.

Annoyed, Zeref threw a glare towards its caster, the shadow of a boy etched in silver and grey upon the wall, and received nothing but a short, terrified shake of the head in return.

"You don't know how," Zeref realized, throwing his head back with a frustrated groan. "Don't use any ritual you don't fully understand – that shouldn't have to be rule three; it's just common sense!"

He knew more about ritual magic than anyone else alive, but even he didn't go round memorizing every obscure counter-ritual he came across. Then again, it was only a three-layered circle, and in a runic system and magical style he happened to be intimately familiar with…

"Hold this," he ordered, tossing the diary he had bought – stolen – in the boy's direction, who clutched it tightly and immediately retreated back against the wall. "And don't go anywhere. I'm not done with you, not by a long way."

Zeref knelt outside the circle. Violet light, the only colour in this silver-stained world, appeared at his raised fingertip, lingering in the form of letters he sketched into the air.

He muttered to himself as his magic flowed, scanned, deconstructed the information contained in the circle. It unfurled for him with unexpected obedience, the structure drawn by this boy surprisingly pliable to his own magic. He could do this. How could he call himself a master of ritual magic if he couldn't even devise a passable counter to a child's circle?

The runes of the circle broke down into mathematical laws and metaphysical concepts. The secret of a counter-ritual was to reverse the latter while remaining within the parameters of the former – expressing the exact opposite desire in numbers and runes the magic could understand. Skimming through the key components of the boy's circle, he drew up a circle to counter it, to balance it, to close it; to quieten the raging atmosphere and sate its hunger for life.

Then, judging it complete with instinct more than mathematical rigour, he dragged his hands through the small, crude circle he had drawn in the air, and it broke down into streams of purple light which wound around his wrists. Leaning forwards, he slammed both hands onto the outer layer of the boy's circle.

Instantly, his purple light raced around the runes, dyeing the ethereal silver with its own vibrant hue. A moment later, the entire shining circle winked out. The magic vanished. The air pressure dissipated. The heat retreated back into the deep earth where it belonged.

The only sign that this street had ever been used to invoke primal magic with chalk and blood was a single trail of violet-hued smoke winding its way to the heavens.

"And that," Zeref reiterated, "is the level you should be at before you so much as think about attempting any more magic this complex. Is that understood?"

He turned to glare at the boy in the hope of driving home his point – but he was the one who froze.

The unearthly light had gone now, and the sun returned, and there, in the day's bright lucidity, they saw each other properly for the first time.

The grubby urchin looked no more impressive now than he had when fleeing from the Rune Knights, but his eyes-! They were the most beautiful shade of green Zeref had ever seen. Rich, vivid emeralds radiated life enough for a hundred children through a watery veil – for those wide, wide eyes had neither looked away nor blinked from the moment he had appeared in the alley, only stared at him and trembled and stared even more.

Zeref was staring too, and he knew it was rude, but he could no more bring himself to look away than he could speak in that moment, because in all his life he had only ever met one person with eyes so incredibly green, and not a day went by when he didn't miss her enough to tear this whole damned world apart-

The sudden arrival of the Rune Knights brought with it a bizarre kind of relief. Zeref latched onto the interruption, turning away from the Knights – and the boy – to shatter the far wall with a flick of his hand.

"Come on," he said, and when the boy just kept staring, he seized him bodily and began running as the Knights piled into the alleyway.

Through a back yard, down the road, across the town – Zeref may have spent the past seven years running in a figurative sense, but literal running wasn't his greatest strength, and it wasn't until he left the town and entered the surrounding woodland that he finally managed to lose their pursuers.

There, amidst tranquil nature, he set the boy down again and fixed him with a stern expression. He was expecting those eyes this time, and it was easier to stay in the present.

"So much for three days alone with my bookshops," he sighed. "That's another town I can't go back to for a while, and it wasn't even my fault this time. I suppose I'll have to find somewhere else to hide. And as for you…"

He jabbed the boy's chest sharply. "No more ancient magic until you fully understand what it is that you're casting, alright?"

The boy gave a frightened nod.

"Good. Oh, and since I'm the adult here, I suppose I should also tell you not to try blowing up any more towns. At least, not until I'm so far away that I can't possibly be held responsible."

With that advice – and warning – he set off into the woods.

A few seconds later, he heard the boy start to follow.

Zeref should have been surprised, given how the boy radiated all the courage of a mouse carrying a flag of surrender, but for some reason, it didn't feel strange at all. He did not stop to invite the boy to catch up, and the boy, for his part, stayed several metres behind him, but he could hear his faint, shuffling footsteps, and feel the presence of his magic.

Never had he encountered so unusual a presence. If the boy was trying hard to avoid attention, then his magic couldn't have been more different. It skipped through the forest, humming the tunes of the songbird, chatting to the brook, filling the entire woods with sound and light, afraid of nothing and beloved of everything. It resonated in harmony with the magic winding its ponderous way along the forgotten paths of the hunter-gatherers, but also with the magic of motion sparking and whirling upon the breeze; it ran with the predators and danced with the prey; it understood how life and death wove a vast tapestry of creation upon the earth and all its ages, and yet, at the same time, it recognized the subtle variations in the colour of every single leaf, and thought them every bit as important.

Perfect light and perfect darkness, together. Zeref thought there was likely not a single type of magic incompatible with it; that this boy alone, of all the mages he had met over the years, would be able to master any kind of magic he pleased.

Which explained why he was able to use that ritual without truly understanding it, but not how he knew of it in the first place.

He was so distracted thinking about it – and, despite himself, with listening to the warm and unreserved empathy shining from the magic the boy did not know how to conceal – that they'd walked quite a way before it occurred to him to stop and ask, "Why are you following me?"

Shyly, the boy offered up the experimental diary Zeref had told him to hold and then completely forgotten about.

"Oh… thank you," he said.

The boy shuffled over, handed him the book, and then shuffled straight back again, those wide, apprehensive eyes not leaving Zeref for an instant.

Zeref sighed. "You don't have to look so scared. If I wished you ill, I would have let the Rune Knights take you."

The boy looked down and said nothing.

"Who taught you that magic, anyway?"

The boy shook his head.

"You don't want to tell me?"

Another, more emphatic shake of his head.

"You can't tell me?"

Another shake.

"Talk to me, kid, or we're going to be here a while," Zeref said. "Can you talk?"

After a moment, the boy nodded.

Zeref glanced away, rubbing his temples. "I need to know who taught you. If someone is handing out the secrets of ritual magic to every child he meets-"

"No one taught me," the boy blurted out. His voice was rough from disuse, almost painful to hear, and Zeref found himself wondering how long it had been since anyone had asked of him anything that couldn't be answered by shaking his head or running away.

"Oh? Because I don't believe for a second that you figured out a ritual like that on your own."

"I… I remember things. Things that didn't happen to me."

Zeref frowned, mentally racing through the explanations that could fit the boy's ill-defined observation. Clairvoyance was possible with magic, but famously tricky; the more one could control one's visions, the less useful they would inevitably be. It wouldn't have given the boy the details of a complex ritual – and it wasn't remembering, either. The only thing he could think of that fit the boy's peculiar word choice… well, he'd once read a paper claiming that it was theoretically possible for memories to be inherited through magic. He'd run the calculations out of curiosity and dismissed it in practicality; the amount of magic it would require the parents to have was well beyond the limit of any ordinary human.

And yet there was nothing ordinary about this boy's magic, was there? "Inherited memory?" he asked, receiving a nod that was timid, but not uncertain. "I didn't know that was possible. Your parents must both have been exceptionally strong mages."

Another nod. The boy had gone back to staring at his feet, fidgeting with the bottom of his shirt.

"Where are they now?" Zeref persisted.

The boy spent a long time thinking about this… and then he shook his head.

"You're on your own, then."

A nod.

"Me too."

The boy glanced up, just a little, and Zeref caught once again that flash of brilliant green; a shard of emerald sharper than any blade.

He missed her so very much.

Zeref half-sat, half-fell onto a tree stump, slumping forwards, his head in his hands. The energy with which he had raced through the town to stop its imminent annihilation; the brilliance with which he had spontaneously crafted a counter-ritual to the boy's magic circle; even the quiet contentment with which he had settled down to decode a mysterious old diary in a tantalizingly thematic bookshop – all those things were gone from him at once. It was as if his bones had been wrenched out of his body, leaving him with an absence his immortal regeneration couldn't fix.

"I wasn't always alone," he murmured. "There was someone dear to me… I loved her so much. When she died, I wanted to rip apart the hateful world that had taken her from me. Maybe I should have done. Maybe it would have been appropriate. But I just… didn't."

He let out a long, shuddering breath. "I haven't done a single thing since she died. I had plans, big plans – my brother, Acnologia, a country of my own – and I've just let them fade. I don't know if the Eclipse Gate still stands. I don't know if the country for which I've been laying the groundwork for centuries still holds any remnant of civilization, or if the city-states have torn each other apart in my absence. All I've done is wander, seeking out knowledge I don't need, hiding from anything and everything important… as if I could fill my life with things of such little significance that I would disappear along with all mentions of my name. But I know I can't keep doing this. Sooner or later I'm just going to break… and I don't know what I'll do, if all those feelings come back."

There was a sudden movement, and the boy was right in front of him, tiny hands resting gently upon his knee and those earnest eyes gazing up at him. The boy's magic nudged against his, as oblivious to personal boundaries as a new puppy, and just as impossible to control; it overflowed with concern. Is there anything I can do? it seemed to say.

On any other day Zeref might have felt anger, or fear, but it was calmness seeping into him. That magic resonated with him just like it had with the forest, steadying him, drawing the anguish out of him. "You remind me of her," he said, without meaning to. "It was easier to be calm when she was around, too. And your eyes… they're so much like hers."

No words, only that quiet stare.

Zeref realized, then, that although the boy was afraid, it wasn't of him. The boy had never been afraid of him. There was something else worrying him – and Zeref thought, in that moment, that it might have been the exact same thing worrying him.

That their chance encounter was over now, and they'd turn around and go their separate ways.

And in doing so, they'd both go right back to how they'd been before.

"Will you show me your magic?" Zeref asked, impulsively.

The boy nodded, stepped back, and then tilted his head, waiting.

A black flame appeared upon Zeref's upturned palm, the simplest form his magic could take, and he offered it out to the boy. Gingerly, the boy scooped up the flame in his hands.

It should have burnt anyone but its caster. It didn't. Instead, at the interface between the conjured flame and the boy's cupped hands, it was breaking down to form a cushion of raw magic rather than touch him, mingling seamlessly with his own magic. Zeref was aware that his connection to the flame he himself had invoked had been superseded, and there was no way to bring it back under his control.

Tipping the black flame into one hand, the boy focussed, and his magic fell with frightening ease into the same pattern Zeref's own had taken. An exact duplicate of the flame appeared in his free hand. Then he raised both hands, slowly. The flames swelled, twisted, became twin tongues of black fire, which spiralled around the clearing like duelling dragons, darkness and heat, magic and motion.

"Sympathetic nullification," Zeref murmured, his eyes shining far brighter than they had in a lonely bookshop. "Replication, and amplification using your own power… fascinating. I've never even read about magic like that. You're really something, kid."

The flames winked out. There was silence, and it was a far deeper silence than before. The burst of fire had scared away the wildlife. Only the two of them remained.

Softly, Zeref asked, "Do you have a teacher?"

The boy shook his head.

"Do you want one?"

Zeref could pinpoint the exact moment that the boy understood what he was asking. He froze mid-nod, his automatic response no longer adequate. Commingled hope and fear spiked in his magical presence, a paradox that Zeref understood so well. The boy gazed up at him with such anxiousness, not wanting to believe in case it turned out to be another false hope…

But the boy wasn't the only one who needed his life to change.

"If you want to come with me, there are things you'll need to do," Zeref warned him. "I'm going somewhere far from here, and if you follow, you may never return to Fiore. You will have to attend school, and I will require you to be able to read and write all the languages you intend to craft magic in before I will teach you anything myself. If you try copying any more magic from your inherited memories before I tell you you're ready, I will have nothing more to do with you. And… when the time comes, you will be required to fight for me. You will have to go to war."

He wasn't surprised to find that his words were only strengthening the boy's resolve.

"But if you're willing to do all that," he conceded, "then… you need to leave this place, and so do I. Come and build an empire with me."

Zeref held out his hand – which the boy promptly ignored, finally smashing through the wall of apprehension to fling his arms around him instead. "Alright, alright, just this once," he sighed, patting the boy's head. "And no more using rituals which consume your life, okay?"

The boy nodded without letting go.

It was odd, feeling another person's arms around him for the first time in seven years, hearing another person's heartbeat beside his own. He knew he should be pushing him away – physically and figuratively – but right now, it was too unfamiliar to him to be dangerous. How much had he lost, those seven years of winter?

"What's your name?" he asked.

The boy looked up at him uncertainly and didn't speak.

Zeref sighed. "Look, I'm not going to be able to guess it, am I? You'll have to tell me. Out loud."

After a moment, the boy shook his head.

"Oh, don't give me that. Even with inherited memories, you physically could not have survived as a baby without help, and I refuse to believe that whoever looked after you – an orphanage, perhaps – didn't give you a name."

But the boy kept gazing at him, wordless but oh so very vocal, and it was clear what he wanted – though it was equally clear to Zeref that he couldn't do it, couldn't form that bond, couldn't take on that role and all that it entailed, couldn't, wouldn't, especially not for this boy, living proof that she had never loved him…

And he thought of the golden-haired girl who had run barefoot through the dark and thorny forest of his existence, and he knew that although he couldn't do it, it wouldn't stop him from trying; the last thing he could ever do for her.

"August," he decided. And then, more hesitantly: "Do you like it?"

The boy began to shake against his side. It took a moment for Zeref to realize he was crying. At first, he thought he'd done something wrong – that he'd misunderstood – but the boy's magic, that raw and uncontrolled emotion, was swirling around them both. It overflowed with something he had felt for a few short days seven years ago – something he assumed he would never feel again for as long as he lived – something he had come to realize no one would ever truly feel for him… though it seemed this boy was determined to prove him wrong.

Once he was back in his country, he would have to raise walls, establish boundaries, set down rules and ensure that they were followed. Now, though, in the first and last moment of weakness he intended to allow himself, he wrapped his arms around the boy and held him close, their lives inextricably entangling, a perfect serenity, a perfect empathy.

The Rune Knight Outpost, Bishop's Lace, The Same Day

"Enter," a crisp voice commanded.

The Rune Knight froze with his fist only half-raised to knock, swallowed, and pushed open the oaken door. His armour weighed twice as much as it had on the walk here, and four times what it did in battle; his helmet teetered clumsily, all of a sudden three sizes too big for his head. The harder he tried not to think about all the reasons why Captain Kursch – the Captain Kursch – wanted to see him, the more his thoughts drifted to the crate of books hidden under the loose floorboard in his parents' house, and he could only pray that the rumour that the most feared Rune Knight Captain could read minds really was just a rumour…

"Private Lydiatt?"

The Captain's question snapped him out of his thoughts, and he gave a sharp salute. He knew Captain Kursch by reputation, of course – there wasn't a Rune Knight alive who didn't; he was destined for command, a seat on the Council, probably even Chairman within five years – but there was no reason why he should know the name of a Knight who had barely scraped a pass in his final tests. "Yes, sir."

"Do you know why I have called you here, Private?"

He swallowed. "No, sir."

"I received an interesting report from your commanding officer concerning today's incident with the little thief. Do you know why I found it so very interesting?"

Confusion was added to the list of emotions he was trying very hard not to show. Yes, the attempt to capture the urchin had been a disaster, but surely that was the fault of the officer in charge, or the fool who had attempted to set fire to the child in the middle of the street! Still, that wasn't the sort of thing one said to Captain Kursch, irrespective of one's rank. "I can only apologize for our failure, sir. We were uncoordinated and caught unprepared, and I can assure you that it won't happen again."

"I don't care that the boy got away, Private. I'm far more interested in the magic that was very nearly unleashed within my town today. According to the report, you were able to identify it."

"…Yes, sir." He hoped the dubious tremor would be interpreted as doubt in his own abilities, rather than an unwillingness to venture into the waters towards which the Captain was steering them. "I believe it was the forbidden ritual Ars Magia, an ancient magic which uses the caster's own life to force the magic of the atmosphere into resonance. According to the legends, had it been invoked successfully, it would have superheated the air and vaporized everything within the town boundaries. It's difficult to say for sure, though, sir," he added, sweat breaking out on his brow. "I've never seen a dark ritual being enacted before. I assume they all look much the same."

"That's not what your commander reported, Private. He says you identified the magic swiftly, accurately, and with absolute certainty."

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"He also says," the Captain continued, "that you acted on it immediately. While your colleagues were blundering round in the backstreets looking for a petty thief, you were warning as many people as possible and trying to organize an urgent evacuation. Fortunately, the ritual failed, but had it not, the only reason why anyone would have survived it at all would have been as a result of your quick thinking. For your knowledge of magic and your professional behaviour in a crisis, your commanding officer has recommended you for immediate promotion."

"But- I-" The switch from dread to relief had left his head spinning; he still wasn't entirely sure where the ground was. "I've only been a Knight for three months- I couldn't possibly-"

"Correct," the Captain said. "You couldn't possibly."

"…Sir?"

"Your commanding officer, you see," Captain Kursch continued calmly, "is a well-meaning but ignorant man. Were he of higher rank himself, he would have been trained in identifying the most dangerous types of forbidden magic, and thus he would have been aware that Ars Magia is Class-I Forbidden. Not only does use of such evil magic call for the death penalty, but it is so dangerous that merely seeking knowledge of it carries a ten-year prison sentence. So, Private, would you care to tell me exactly how you were able to identify Ars Magia on sight without ever having sought knowledge of it?"

"Sir, it's not what you think, I swear! My family has some heirlooms- books that have been passed down for generations- I didn't know what they contained until I'd already started reading them-"

"At which point you stopped and handed them over to the Magic Council?" the Captain asked, with false lightness. "Or did you, perhaps, keep studying them in secret, until you were so familiar with a Class-I Forbidden ritual that you were able to recognize it at once?"

"It was a good job I did, wasn't it?" he burst out. "Otherwise, if the ritual had activated, everyone would have died! I didn't study it because I wanted to learn dark magic, sir! I would never use a ritual like that! But if having that knowledge can help people, like it would have done today, I don't see why just knowing about dark magic is a bad thing!"

In the silence, the Captain slowly steepled his fingers. "It is only because of your well-intentioned actions today that I am not arresting you, Private Lydiatt," said he. "However, there is no place for someone with such a cavalier attitude towards dark magic in the Rune Knights. We are the beacon of law and order, and you think like a dark mage. From today, you are no longer a Rune Knight."

"You can't do that! Being a Rune Knight is all I ever wanted-"

"You should have thought about that before you decided that the magic of a Rune Knight wasn't enough for you," the Captain told him coldly. "It is our duty to set an example for society, and there will be nothing but chaos if people follow your example."

"But I want to serve the kingdom! I can help-"

"Begone, before I decide I will arrest you for your crimes, after all. And if I ever catch you dabbling in such horrific magic again, you will find yourself far, far worse than merely unemployed. Do I make myself clear?"

"…Yes, sir."

A/N: In which empathy earns one man the undying loyalty of the strongest mage in the world, and the lack of it sets another on the path of villainy. August was only supposed to get one chapter, but it got a bit too long, so the other part of his story will come next week. Which, incidentally, will also explain how all this ties in with what happened *last* week.

Random fact of the day: Bishop's Lace is another name for the wild carrot, also called Queen Anne's Lace. It has the flower meaning of 'sanctuary', and was chosen for the meeting between Zeref and August, long before I knew what was going to unfold in this town later on in the story... ~CS