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Darkness.
It was all the little soul knew as it wandered.
Meandering as always through the nothing, as the emptiness was all it knew.
That was strange, the soul thought to itself. It had the impression that this was not what it once began as. A formless thing, ambling through the dark nothingness of this vast empty plane. Like it once was something. A thing that had a reason to exist. Not a nothing that somehow existed regardless.
Maybe once upon a time, there were others like it. In a place that was not nothing, a large place just like the nothing, but where warmth rained down from the towering sky above, where every corner of reality sang out its grand harmony of being. The melody reverberated with pure joy as it's volume expanded to all beings, and the souls echoed back a reply as their voices joined together in harmony, though some didn't stay in tune all that well.
Perhaps that was where the little soul belonged. Ever since it could recall, it had known these things. This place, this nothing, whatever it was, was wrong, and that place, the one where it was not alone was right. It existed there once, with all the others.
But then something had happened. Something not good.
And somehow, the little soul had found itself here in the nothing.
As soon as it had arrived, things began to slip away. Darkness permeated it's very being. Memory was first-wiped clean. Its physical form was next-devoured. The darkness took and took until all that was left was the little soul alone.
The soul sensed it would not be long until it faded away as well. All this time, helpless to do anything, slowly being stripped away layer by layer. Eventually, the time would come where it would just cease to be-
That notion made the soul feel a little more hollow inside.
Despite everything, the little soul wanted to exist again. It wanted to go back. This place did not sing as beautifully, not as reality once had. It was silent. It was suffocating. It was maddening.
It missed existence. It missed the feeling of the warmth from above, the other souls like itself, but most of all it had missed the song.
But, the little soul knew it could never return. There was no way out of here. The only way that could be conceived of, would be to cleave apart the fabric of the nothing, open a gateway to one of the neighboring worlds.
Impossible.
It couldn't do anything. This place was everything, and before long, the darkness would digest it entirely as well. So it resigned itself to its fate, forever lost.
Monica was dead. Her heart ripped out of her chest by Tomas-Solon, her own ally.
Monica had been her kill.
Byleth had been so close, so close to enacting justice on her father's murderer. So close to getting that sweet vengeance that she ever so craved. When they had taken care of her soldiers and demonic beasts and Kronya ran, she had rushed ahead of her Golden Deer in the pursuit, and at last, Monica had been between a rock and a hard place. There would be no escape for her.
After that fateful day, it had surprised her how much she wanted Monica dead. All her life, from the first moment she picked up her first sword, she was the Ashen Demon. Emotionless. The mercenary with no empathy no one wanted to be on the receiving end of a blade from.
After Sothis had awakened the night of the bandit attack, something changed. All these things, joy, sorrow, envy, fear-
But then that woman had murdered her father in cold blood, with a twisted smile on her face laughing all the while the wretched act was being performed. The assassin brought about the most potent emotion Byleth had ever felt until that point, anger.
"Thanks for all your help sir!~"
Byleth still remembered the way that sickly-sweet, sing-song voice had sounded coming out of that witch's mouth. And then even as she had turned back time (over and over and over again…) She could still not save him.
"You're just a pathetic old man."
All it took was a second for Byleth's entire world to turn on its head into something completely unrecognizable. And in that instant (eternity), it was over, the horrid deed finished.
Jeralt, her father, lay dying in her arms, as the witch with the strange knife that left no visible wound and the man with the white eyes who had deflected the sword of the creator teleported away, far out of her reach.
In the weeks following Jeralt's death, her grief hardened into anger, and anger into hellbent fury. After that first time crying over her dying father, her tears seemed to dry up for good. It was that same anger that burned like a bonfire in her unbeating heart now.
Her students and the other professors had done all they could to help her. Hanneman and Manuela took over classes for her those first few days while she couldn't bring herself to leave her room. Sylvain tried to lighten the tense mood with his jokes, she had received a hug from Hilda, and the condolences she had gotten from almost everyone. She appreciated that, couldn't they see? Kind words did little to help the situation. The killer still walked free.
Only one thing could satisfy the ache in her soul. Vengeance. Claude had seen that and wanted to help her exact justice. She appreciated that the most.
She had never truly wanted a death before, not during all her time as a mercenary, and not in her short time as a professor. She would make Monica pay dearly for what she had done to her father.
And then Solon had to come and snatched that opportunity away from her.
She still had so much she needed to ask him, additional information that had not been recorded in the meager amount her father had actually written in his journal. She needed to know more. How much further through this ocean of lies would she have to wade before finally reaching the truth?
Suddenly she felt something grapple her, throwing her out of her thoughts.
The dark mist gathering at the sides of the dais that she had paid little attention to before grabbed hold of Byleth's arms, legs, anywhere the foul tentacles of miasma could wrap around. Struggling to get herself free, they refused to detach.
She heard shouting, and her attention was thrown outside of the dais as she saw the students of the Golden Deer house emerge from the forest. Her eyes widened in a panic. She had to warn them. She couldn't let them get caught in this too.
"Don't you dare come any closer! Stay where you are!" Byleth shouted her orders at the oncoming students, praying to any deity that would listen that it would be let it be loud enough to cover the distance.
As if by a miracle, they heard her. The students stopped a distance from the frothing mist of darkness. Byleth could barely see their horrified faces from where she stood. She heard Hilda cry out to her in fear, "Professor!"
"The time has finally come to unleash the forbidden spell of Zharas-"
Solon held Monica's heart aloft with one of his pale, aged arms and crushed it into a foul black gas that spiraled into the air like a cyclone.
"-upon our enemies!"
Monica's now heartless body fell to the ground and stretched out her hand towards Byleth. "Please…help me…" She begged in a pitiful voice.
And with that, the tides of darkness swelling up around the dais swarmed over both of them. A high pitched scream hit the ceiling, although she wasn't sure whose, and rang out through the air as black swallowed them and they knew the light no more.
Sothis stepped down from her throne and approached Byleth.
"Your will and mine are now as one. Both sides of time are revealed to you, and you alone. You know I am the beginning. What shall you do?"
And the air turned to gold.
Light.
There was a light in the darkness.
The little soul struggled to comprehend what it was sensing. A soul. No, Two souls. One of the souls shone brighter than the other. It was a harsh, yet warm light. The other soul was dimmer, yet it was larger than the smaller, brighter soul. Its glow was also warm, yet it was more welcoming. Both souls appeared to be bound by some sort of tether, a connection between them crafted from the song.
It heard it.
The song.
Oh, how it had missed the song! It had given up on ever experiencing it again. This song was small, quiet, but it was unmistakable.
The little soul wondered if the same bad thing that had happened to bring the souls here had happened to these souls as well. Though it noticed something odd. Though they were bound together, they only seemed to have one physical form between them. Shouldn't the other have one as well? Two souls, two physical forms. It was basic numbers.
The little soul reflected on its current state. It didn't have one, though if circumstances were normal it would. There were exceptions to every rule, right? This had to be one of them.
As the little soul was deep in thought, the smaller, brighter soul came with great speed toward the dimmer soul, the tether between them guiding its path. It dissolved into particles of light, which were drawn into the larger soul by some strange force. The lights that were once the other soul took root deep within it, and they became one.
Oh, well that solved the problem.
All was still for a time until the dim soul exploded with light in a grand display, the songs both souls sang harmonizing as both voices converged and became one. As the new powerful voice made even the nothing resonate with its song, a grand light erupted into a magnificent crescendo more radiant and intense than either soul had been as an individual!
The little soul felt the song resonate across its entire being, note after note, measure after measure. Familiarity was found in the voice's music, tugging on the place left hollow by some long-forgotten memory.
Was this soul someone important?
-/\-
Come, little wanderer, for you have been found.
-\/-
(Mother?)
Then the new soul that was once two, drew a long object that was anchored onto the side of its physical form. The object pulsed in time with the rhythm of the song radiating out of the newborn soul, adding beats of percussion to the soul's symphony and with a tremendous swing, cut through the fabric of the nothing separating it from reality.
(Don't leave me here in the dark again!)
And from the other side of the new doorway, it could feel the song of existence bleeding through!
The little soul froze.
Out.
It was possible to leave.
No more darkness, no more loneliness, no more purposelessness.
No more nothing.
The little soul sprang after the new soul (after its mother) and with all of its might grabbed hold. It felt the larger soul stop moving as the tempo of its song gained speed with its apprehension. The larger soul regained its composure and began to pry at its hold. The little soul refused to give. Not when freedom was so close. The brighter soul and it would leave together.
The song of the brighter soul echoed across the hold as it struggled. The little soul felt its own song harmonize, and then much to its surprise, something deep within the little soul awakened.
(Mother) had what the little soul needed to exist again.
It wanted it. It wanted the brighter soul's light. More than anything else it had ever felt. The little soul then overcome by the primal desire, sank the hold deeper into the larger soul, and then-
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Light flooded into the little soul through the hold it had staked into the larger soul. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. The light-filled even the cavernous achings inside of it that it hadn't realized were empty. The light combated the nothing, restoring what the little soul had once been stripped of. Nothing else would slip away.
It had it now, the little soul realized what it needed to make a physical form. The power of a God. That was what it was called. It had the ability to make forms from its own. Could this ability be edited slightly? It needed to experiment.
Oh, it didn't know how to make a body, did it? An idea struck just then. It would just use the physical form of the soul it had borrowed the light from as a template. Of course, it couldn't be the exact same, or things would get confusing for the other souls back in existence differentiating them, so some liberties had to be taken for their sakes.
Its memories were gone, and they were not coming back, but that was alright, the little soul supposed. It could always just make new ones when it returned to existence. Besides, now with the power, it had borrowed from the other soul, concepts long forgotten flooded into its mind. Body. That was the word for it. It needed a body. Language. That was what souls-people used to communicate with each other; it had forgotten. Well, it had what it needed now, might as well get to work.
To exist again. The little soul had been wandering through the nothing for so long it had forgotten what it felt like. Using the borrowed power, the little soul took the concept for a body it had also borrowed as a plan and c̸ ̶ r̶̤̄ è̵̮̘̳͜ ̸̝͓̫̫͊ ̷͕͒a̸͙͑ ̴͙͋̈́͑ͅt̶̙̹͇͗̊͂͝ e̶̢̢̯̭̍͂́͑̕͝ ̸̲̹̫͍̦̽͝͠d̸̡̩̰̜̩͐̀͒̚ͅ.̴̣̯͔̇̇̏͛͑
A form like that of the brighter soul began to form around the little soul, tethering itself to it, and then setting it in place. The form started as an amorphous shape, then appendages split from the whole to form limbs and limbs spit to form fingers. A head came with them, buds split to form hands and feet, from the head sprouted hair. The little soul wondered what to change. The hair should be different than the other souls, as should its facial markings. What was the word for those again? It searched the knowledge it had borrowed. Freckles. Yes, that was it. That would probably be enough?
The form would be female, just as the other soul's body was, albeit a much younger one. There was only so much the borrowed light could create, and an older form was a bit out of reach. The concept of gender was new to it, but it felt familiar to the little soul. The concept of female resonated most strongly with it. Perhaps before it had lost its original body it was a female?
The insides of the new body hardened to form bones to which muscles would attach. Then came the internal organs; stomach, kidneys, lungs, and too many others to name. The heart stone formed and hardened, entwining itself with the soul.
The lungs expanded, and with the new body's first breath, the little soul was welcomed into sleep. Her new body rested in the arms of the brighter soul. (Mother, thank you.)
-/\-
It is time to go home.
-\/-
Byleth found herself holding a child. She stared down in bewilderment. Something had latched onto her in the darkness and had stolen some of Sothis-her power, siphoned it right out of her, and then using the stolen power, it had made itself a body.
She looked down at the little girl in her arms. It was like she was looking into a mirror. That was her face. The little girl looked almost exactly like a younger version of herself with a few minor differences.
Byleth turned her eyes to the tear she had made out of the void. It was already starting to slowly close. She had to leave now, and she was not leaving the child behind. She had already left them alone with Solon for too long. Her students needed her.
Claude and the rest of the Golden Deer watched in amazement as the sky was cleaved in two leaving a huge glowing gash floating above the stone dais. From the tear came the unmistakable shape of the Sword of the Creator, and where that legendary blade was, it's master was sure to follow.
The Professor leaped down from the sky, sword in hand, eyes, and hair glowing an ominous bright green with the reflection of the full moon above. Since when did Teach have green hair? It was dark blue when she had disappeared minutes ago, or as Ignatz had called it once upon a time, "A lovely shade of teal."
But there was something else too, a figure curled up against Teach's chest, being held there by the arm not being used to carry the famous relic weapon. A child, what looked to be a young girl by the length of her hair; probably no older than eight by her size, sporting hair of a similar green color as his professor herself, albeit a significantly darker tone. She also wasn't wearing anything at all.
Tomas (Solon-he reminded himself) had said that Teach had been sent to a void of darkness somewhere, whatever that meant, and he was pretty sure he knew that children did not come out of big mystical tears in the sky, so that begged the question to be asked, who was the kid and how did Teach find her?
But questions could wait.
Byleth landed on the ground and stared at Solon with the most hate he had ever seen fill a person (let alone her) eyes. Her eyes were green as well now, the same bright green as her hair. Yet another question to add to the heaping pile of them. But like all the others, they could be answered at a later date, preferably when things calmed down.
"So the fell star consumes even the darkness itself," Solon stated, his eyes traveling up to meet Byleth's firm stare.
Teach did not reply. She only broke eye contact with him, shrugged off her cloak and wrapped it around the naked little girl in her arms, who was starting to visibly shiver in the cold night air. From the look of her, she was either sleeping or knocked out. Claude felt a pang of sympathy in his chest. Poor kid.
She migrated over to their location and placed the little shivering girl in the strong arms of Raphael. The rest of the students looked back up at her eyes filled with questions no one dared to speak until finally Lysithea, ever the bold one, was the one to gather her courage. "Professor, what happened out there? We were so worried when you vanished, but now you're back, and who is this child?"
"No questions now," Byleth warned, then looked back up to Raphael. "Keep her safe."
The giant of a man responded with a firm nod. "Right Professor. You can count on me."
She then turned back to face Solon.
In the end, Solon was defeated, cut down by the Sword of the Creator, and Captain Jeralt was avenged.
Byleth told Claude about the girl that called herself Sothis living in her head and was about to answer his questions regarding the little girl she had been holding when she had fainted, forcing Claude to half-drag-half-carry her back to the rest of the Golden Deer, which was not a fun experience in the slightest, his aching muscles would like to add.
Raphael and Hilda had volunteered to carry the professor back to the Monastery, so Claude was left to carry the little girl, much to his chagrin.
He hoisted the unconscious child into his arms as he traded people with Raphael, and immediately he was hit by how light the kid was in comparison to Teach, and for that, his arms were eternally grateful.
He kept a steady pace with the rest of the students as they left the Sealed Forest for Garreg Mach. As they traveled, he took note of their strange new guest. She had longish dark green hair, a shade similar to Seteth, part of his mind noted was tangled and matted, her skin too pale and sickly, veins and visible underneath her skin. The poor thing was practically skin and bones. That explained why she was so light then. A flash of anger shot through him as he remembered his own childhood in Almyra. He had seen plenty of kids just like her in the streets of the poorer cities.
Claude brushed her messy hair off of her face to get a better look at her. He tucked the loose strands behind her ear. They were weird too. They weren't like a normal human's ears at all. Pointed, angled on their tips and facing outward where they should be smooth and rounded.
Just as the trees of the Sealed Forest thinned into the Rocky hills surrounding the town of Garreg Mach proper, the too-thin girl in his grasp began to stir. Her eyes cracked open, she had to blink them a few times before they opened fully. They were the same shade of green as Teach's. Her eye shape was the same too, as was the shape of her face, albeit less mature. All in all, she looked like the new Byleth in miniature, with the exception of the darker the light freckles that dusted her cheeks, similar to Ashe of the Blue Lions if he remembered correctly.
Her eyes widened as she gazed around at her surroundings, the others, and finally to Claude himself. She reached up, hands shaking, and touched his face only to recoil at the feeling of his skin on her hand.
She stared at her hand with an expression of shock as she twisted it and turned it with morbid fascination as someone might at an injury before the full realization sank in. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. That struck Claude again as wrong. She angled her head to look down at herself, the poor kid jumped at the sight of her other arm, lifting it up to examine it the same way she had the first. She reached down to feel the rest of her body, her torso, her legs, and then finally her face. Her eyes filled with mist and tears congregated on the edges of her lashes, only for it to quickly become too much for her fragile body.
A hiccup, a sob, and then the arms of one Claude von Riegan were filled with a crying little girl.
"Claude! What did you do to that poor girl?!" Lorenz shouted at him, rushing over from his place in the front of the group. The rest of the deer had stopped walking to see what all the commotion was about.
"What-what's happening?"
"I-I don't know! She just woke up and then started bawling!" Claude tried to defend himself, but for once in his life, his silver tongue that he had prided himself in was failing him. He was stuttering. He never stuttered.
"Well, obviously you must have done something you imbecile! Just look at her!" Lorenz shot back.
"I didn't do anything for once!"
Leonie sighed and walked up to the girl in Claude's arms ignoring the two of them while he and Lorenz continued to argue. "Hey, kiddo. What's the matter? Why are you crying?" She bent down to get a better look at the girl's face.
She was only met with sobs and high pitched whines.
Leonie motioned to Claude to hand her over "Give her here." To which Claude promptly answered with an "Alright." and relinquished the young girl to Leonie. From what he heard of her childhood growing up in a village, she had to have experience with kids right?
"Can you tell me why you're crying?" Leonie asked again, this time in a lower, more tender tone Claude didn't think Leonie was capable of making.
The little girl looked up at Leonie and then turned her gaze to the rest of the students. Tears were still trailing freely down her cheeks, but her eyes were open wide and a huge grin decorated her face. Her face contorted in confusion for a moment, trying to remember something. She opened her mouth and made a few sounds as if she were testing her vocal cords.
"It's...not...dark...here." She answered eventually, slowly and simply as the grin returned to her face. The rest of the Golden deer, particularly Lysithea, looked thoroughly confused at that.
"What do you mean? It's the middle of the night." Leonie asked.
The little girl chuckled softly at the looks of confusion on their faces, the tears never once letting up. That was when he understood. She was crying tears of joy.
"I have a body again...I exist again...I can hear the song again..Nothing else will slip away." She answered again. This time more confident with her voice, but there were still pauses between sentences as she figured out what to say.
Leonie and Claude shared a look. He knew it, Leonie knew it, heck, even Lorenz knew it. This kid had been through a lot, and wherever Teach had found her, she was obviously glad to not be there anymore.
"Well if that is that, I propose we make our way back to the Monastery post-haste. We may have Professor Manuela look over the professor and the girl as soon as we arrive." Lorenz proposed. There were no complaints.
Leonie insisted on taking the little girl for the rest of the journey, saying something about it being for her training. What a hectic day and that didn't even cover a third of it.
Jeralt's death, demonic beasts, Monica and Solon, and now Teach's transformation. No one in these last few months had really had it as hard as her had they?
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts he almost didn't hear the little girl's soft voice pipe up from Leonie's arms.
"How is Mother? Is she okay?"
"Your mother?" Hilda asked from where she was next to Raphael. "Was she wherever you were when the professor found you?"
The little girl nodded. "She saved me...from the nothing."
Confusion blossomed on Hilda's face."Wait. Who are we talking about here? The professor or your mother?"
The little girl wrapped herself tighter in their professor's discarded cloak as she brought a hand out and pointed it right at the unconscious body Raphael was carrying. "Her. Mother."
Claude choked.
"Wait, whaaat? The professor is your mother?" My thoughts exactly, Hilda.
The pink-haired girl was gaping like a fish, as were a good deal of the others he would find if he bothered to look around. Not that he could at the moment, trying to free himself from a sudden coughing fit.
"But that doesn't make any sense," Raphael spoke up, apparently being the only voice of reason in the group. He looked over at the professor then glancing over at the little girl. "I might not be that good at math and stuff, but isn't the professor like around our age?"
"Woah, man. Who are we to judge our lovely professor here based on her choices?" Sylvain chose that moment to speak up, and boy was it a bad one.
Lysithea, now thoroughly out of shock, shot Sylvain a deadpan stare. "Really Sylvain? Is it really an appropriate time for such childish comments? But, that aside," She eyes the giant of a man himself, "Raphael does bring to light a good point. This girl can't be any older than eight, ten at the most. Their ages don't match up. If what she says is true, then the professor would have to have borne her exceedingly young."
A look of shocked realization crossed Leonie's face just then. "But the professor doesn't actually know her age, does she? Captain Jeralt didn't even know." And with that can of worms open, the Golden Deer erupted into a cacophony of voices, everyone talking over everyone else.
"That's simply preposterous! The professor is obviously too close in age to all of us to even consider that to be a possibility!" Lorenz shouted, heat gathering on his face.
"Lorenz, but what if that isn't true? What if the professor is actually waaay older than us and we just don't know it? Maybe she just ages well!" Hilda shot back.
"Has anyone considered that she might be adopted?" Marianne said quietly to herself, unwilling to join the argument. No one seemed to hear her but Claude.
"This kid looks too much like the Professor to be anything but her daughter," Sylvain piped up again.
"That right there is a logical fallacy. Just because she looks like the professor doesn't mean they're parent and child," Lysithea cut in, quick not to let Sylvain's reasoning off the ground.
"But-"
"What if-"
"You guys are noisy. You should be quiet. You might wake Mother. She's tired. Let her sleep," The little girl in question stated matter of factly, effectively silencing everyone. Claude stifled a laugh. Teach could silence a whole chattering classroom with just her thousand-yard stare. Maybe these two really were family.
"Miss," The little girl tugged on Leonie's shirt to get her attention. "Can you give me to Star? If Mother can't carry me, I want him to."
"Uh, who are you talking about?" Leonie raised an eyebrow.
"Him," She pointed directly at Claude. "The one with the star in his blood."
"Oh, okay?" She handed the girl to Claude, whose arms were already protesting at the additional weight she added, small as it was. Really, again?
"But why me? Claude asked no one in particular, but the girl in his arms answered regardless.
"Because," she yawned "You feel nice...like a friend..." Her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing evened. She had fallen asleep.
Claude looked bewildered as Hilda and Sylvain laughed.