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a king reborn

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At nights, when the moon is ancient and yellow like ageing paper, Ryou quietly steps up a thin iron ladder and goes up to the terrace.

The terrace, no one uses it much. There's clothes, tamely swaying with the wind, and there's a couple of chipped old beach chairs piled against a chimney. Then an expanse of roof, a small step, and then nothing, void space and below, many meters below, the city.

Ryou likes it because the drying clothes look like ghosts in the moonlight, and he always liked ghosts... at least the ones he pictures in his mind. He has the mind of a creator, you know, but, if life were a paper, he's having the most dreadful writer's block one can ever have. He knows the cause- it's because it's all so quiet.

He always promises himself he will not sulk, he will not brood; but he sometimes finds himself unable to keep his word. Coming up to the terrace helps because the wind is unbound, and the moon has always shone the same upon the Earth, and Ryou can indulge in a craving he has recently developed:

he closes his eyes to the colorful city below and the neon signs that shine like a carnival, and always, always, painfully liberatingly always, he sees the desert.

Glittering silver under pristine moonlight, cool, still.

Dead? No- undead; swarming with lost souls and sorcerers and charms, and not just any desert either.

Engraved with fire and pain and sweat, he can tell from the blue horizon the outline of ruins, and he's never actually been there, in that daze-daydream, but he doesn't need to, because he knows what that place is.

Once, it also was a city... a village, more accurately.

He might have even loved the people who lived there, but that's a vision or a memory he doesn't have. The Spirit may have had it, not Ryou. Ryou gets most things second-hand (and he can name so many things, like love or information, protection, friends.) But he doesn't complain because that's how it's always been.

Also it's happened to him, once or twice (he hopes it hasn't been more times already), he's woken up there on the terrace with a cheerful morning sun showering him in a warmth he never welcomes; light comes with that horrible sensation of vertigo he's had since he was a kid, as he looks at the city below, and it unnerves him, sort of, why doesn't he feel that when it's night and the fall looks even steeper...?

Right.

Because it's not the city he sees, but the most wonderful, unexplained mirage of them all: one in which he is tall and tan and muscular and bitter, and he isn't himself; but, in a way, deep down there where his core isn't rotting, he is himself.

Raw, weathered, free.

If he could hear the Spirit, oh, if he only could, he knows he could tell beforehand his lines. He would look at him with that scorn he hated like the plague, smirk-smile at him like he was an idiot little child (which he wasn't, which he knew), and bask in his power when he thought Ryou did not sense him, and tell him, part endearingly part like a warning,

In a past life, you were me...

And Ryou, he's a pale teenager who lives on the sixth floor like anyone could... but on nights like those, the moon ancient and yellow like papyrus, he feels the pull at his soul inviting him to roam the desert once more, lawless, fearless, King.

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A/N: This chapter is a personal favorite: I do believe Ryou is the reencarnation of the Thief King!

IMPORTANT QUESTION: Would you rather have me put the names of the main character/s of the chapter before it begins? Would it make it clearer; or would it make it less... suspense-ful? Your opinion is everything!

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Big shoutout to Scaevola, Cadens Stella and Hana Liatris! And to everyone else who reads/reviews! Love you guys ;_;

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Surprise character next chapter! Stay tuned ;)