Chapter 6: Disquiet

Garreg Mach Monastery, The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, Fódlan

Imperial Year 1187

White light enveloped Byleth's hand.

He waved a healing spell over a young soldier. The boy was sprawled out on the ground, staring at the sky with glassy eyes, as the magic mended the gashes covering his body. Byleth recognized that look. It was the same expression some of his students had worn after their first mission for the church so many years ago, their first time facing an enemy that wanted to see them dead.

A tinge of pity prodded at him. War was frightening enough for even the most battle-hardened of warriors, but having to fight against an army of glowing dead soldiers and monsters as your first experience in combat? The kid didn't deserve that.

Byleth called for the nearest battalion. The soldiers hurried to the boy's side and helped him stand, holding him upright until his legs could bear his own weight. Byleth watched as they limped together towards the monastery's gates, then turned to search for another person in need of healing.

He didn't need to go far. A group of soldiers sat huddled together just a few paces away from him, their bodies battered and bloodied. The green-haired man was there as well, kneeling next to a swordswoman and pressing a leather flask to her lips.

Magic curled around Byleth's fingers once more. Without a word he cast Recover on the soldiers, earning a yelp from the men and women who hadn't noticed his approach. Their surprise quickly turned into relief as the spell healed their wounds.

The green-haired man—Alm, he reminded himself—stood and capped his flask, turning to Byleth with a grateful smile.

"Thanks, Professor. I've been doing what I can to help, but I'm afraid I'm no cleric."

Byleth only gave a short nod as a reply.

Alm stepped forward once the spell was complete and offered his hand to the swordswoman, helping her slowly rise from the ground. Byleth followed suit, pulling the other soldiers to their feet, but kept Alm in the corner of his eye, studying his every move.

Could the man be trusted? Alm had fought for them, sure, and he seemed nice enough, but all he knew about the man was his name and that he was related to Marianne. Byleth had learned long ago to never trust strangers so readily, even when they offered to aid your cause. His father and Lord Rodrigue were dead because of that mistake.

Byleth wasn't about to make the same mistake again.

"That should be the last of them," Alm said. "We're lucky the casualties were minimal. Things could have gone a lot worse."

Byleth nodded again but narrowed his eyes. He still couldn't shake the familiarity of the man's voice—why was that? Alm had introduced himself as though it was the first time they had ever encountered each other, yet he had known Byleth's name and former professorship before Byleth had spoken a word to him. It was possible that Marianne had simply talked about him to her family, but… something told him there was more to it than that.

"I'll help get the rest of the soldiers back to the monastery." Alm tied the flask to his belt and began to step away. "Once everyone is safe behind the walls we can—"

"Who are you?"

Alm stopped mid-stride. He looked over his shoulder at Byleth, lips turned into a frown. "Like I said before, my name is—"

"Not your name." Byleth crossed his arms. "Why are you helping us?"

The frown deepened. "Because I want to help. Is there something wrong with that?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"Your motivations. Who you are." Byleth looked Alm over again, taking in his weathered blue armor, the golden sword at his hip, the intricate emblem embroidered into his cape. This was someone of import, someone not to be underestimated. "It's strange you just so happened to show up at the same time these invisible soldiers did, with a person who's been missing for almost six years now, no less. Am I supposed to believe this is all a coincidence?"

"No," Alm said, turning around to face him fully, "because it's not a coincidence. I followed them here."

Byleth blinked. He hadn't expected a straightforward answer. "You followed them? From where?"

Alm hesitated. "It's…difficult to explain without sounding mad."

"Try me." They had passed the point of madness a long time ago.

"…All right, then." Alm sighed and rested his palm against the hilt of his sword. "You know that strange mist with the glowing lights that appeared in the field? Where the enemy's reinforcements kept coming from?"

Byleth nodded. It had been hard to miss.

"It seems to function as a portal of sorts, for both magic and people. I was able to travel through one of them myself, from…" Alm took a breath and straightened himself up, looking him straight in the eyes. "From my world to yours. I guess you could call it another realm or plane of existence, one that runs parallel to your world but with completely different people and places than the ones you know."

"Okay," Byleth said simply. "And?"

"…'Okay'?" Alm gave him a bewildered look. "That's it? I thought for sure you'd be calling me crazy by now—"

Byleth cut him off with a shrug. "You're not the first person to tell me you're from another world."

This all aligned with Sophie's claims about her and her family. He had honestly had his doubts about her story but, given everything they had experienced in the past few hours and the—seemingly—sincere words coming from Alm, he had no choice but to accept it all as fact for now.

Alm ran a hand through his hair, relaxing his posture. "Well, that was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I had a whole speech prepared and everything—"

"You still haven't explained why you came here in the first place," Byleth said, growing a bit impatient. "You said you followed them here, but why take that risk?"

"I needed to find out more about them, to protect my people." A serious expression spread across the man's face. "My homeland, Valentia, was in the process of recovering from war and a food shortage when those things started to show up. For weeks, that mist would appear randomly across the continent, summoning large hordes of soldiers at a time. Some of them seemed to be from other worlds themselves, since I couldn't recognize their faces or uniforms, but others were…"

"Fallen allies and enemies from a past conflict, right?" The ghastly forms of Edelgard, Dorothea, and Caspar flashed across Byleth's mind.

Alm drew a shaky breath and nodded. "People I knew well, people I didn't. It didn't matter if we had once fought beside or against each other. They were all thralls to whatever the source of this dark magic is."

Or whoever, Byleth noted to himself. Perhaps someone like that mystery rider.

"But something strange happened a few days ago," Alm continued, tightening his grip on his sword's handle. "An army of them were marching towards the resting place of our gods, Mila and Duma, but when we arrived to fight them off, they just…retreated. Within a matter of minutes, their entire army disappeared without a trace. All of their mist-portals vanished too, all except for one."

He pointed to the west, towards one of the valleys nestled deep into the Oghma Mountains. "One that connects my world to Fódlan, out there in…the Red Canyon, I think Marianne called it?"

Byleth nodded absently, finger tapping against his chin as his mind tried to process everything Alm was telling him. The Red Canyon…

"When I saw where the portal led, I was afraid they were planning to target your people next. Marianne was worried about everyone here, too." Alm glanced back to the monastery's entrance, where Marianne was chatting with Sylvain and Annette. Her eyes, underset by dark circles, were cast down towards the ground, while her fingers fiddled with her sleeves. "We traveled here together to warn you but…the battle had already started by the time we got to the monastery."

"Wait," Byleth said, eyes narrowing, "Marianne traveled through the portal with you? From your world?"

"Yes—"

"That doesn't make sense. Why was she in another world with you, when she should have already been…here…" Byleth trailed off, the pieces beginning to fit together in his mind. "Unless…she's not originally from Fódlan either?"

"Yeah." Alm stared at his feet, a frown forming on his lips. "She's my cousin's daughter. She was kidnapped when she was a baby, taken by terrible people who wanted to drive her father to madness. They…succeeded." Grief flitted across his face. "I made a promise to him that I would protect her in his place. She's…the only blood family I have left…"

There was a long, heavy silence. Alm slowly lifted his head, watching Marianne with distant eyes.

"After a long time searching," he continued slowly, "I discovered that she was brought here. With the help of my friends, I was able to travel here myself, to find her and bring her home."

"So today isn't your first time in Fódlan."

Alm shook his head. "I spent a good amount of time here, asking anyone I saw about her. That led me to Margrave Edmund, who said he had found her as a baby at the edge of a nearby forest, being watched over by a strange beast."

Byleth cocked his head. "A strange beast?"

"The margrave didn't really elaborate on that. I'm not sure why, but maybe it helped rescue her from her captors." He let out a soft chuckle. "What really threw me for a loop was when he told me that had happened several years ago. She was already a teenager, he said, attending the Officer's Academy at Garreg Mach. Yet in my world, it had barely been a year since her birth—I nearly passed out from shock!"

Ah, that would explain their age difference. Or rather, the lack thereof.

"I enlisted as a soldier at the academy so I could watch over her without drawing too much attention to myself, at least until I could figure out how to explain everything to her." He glanced over to Byleth with a slight grin. "I was usually stationed at the main entrance near the marketplace. I actually greeted you every morning, but things were always pretty quiet during my shifts, so I didn't usually have anything to report to you."

Everything finally clicked. "I thought I recognized your voice," Byleth said. "You were that overly enthusiastic gatekeeper."

Alm's grin grew ever so slightly. "Overly enthusiastic, huh? Yeah, that was—"

"Archbishop!"

A soldier ran over to them, face red and chest heaving. "Th-the cathedral," the man said, panting between words, "it was attacked during the battle."

Byleth stiffened. That was impossible! No one should have been able to get into the monastery, their defensive line had successfully blocked off the entrance.

…Hadn't it?

"Were there any casualties?" he asked, throat tight.

"Many of the soldiers inside were killed in the skirmish, but some managed to survive the assault. Lord Ashe and Lady Lysithea were both injured—"

Byleth dashed towards the main gate before the man could finish. He had to get to the cathedral; he had to get to his students. If they succumbed to their wounds, he would only have so much time to use a pulse to save them before it would be too late.

"Wait, Profe—Archbishop!" Alm called out. "What about—"

"Stay with the guard until I return! We'll continue this talk later!" Byleth spared a glance over his shoulder to the soldier. "Don't let him out of your sight!"

The man saluted. Alm looked like he was going to protest but Byleth continued forward, feet pounding against the dirt. He didn't have time to sort through everything Alm had told him, he didn't have time to decide whether the man could be trusted. That could be done later.

His students came first.

A gory scene greeted him at the cathedral's bridge.

Several bodies were strewn across the stone. Some of the soldiers lay face down in a pool of red, backs riddled with arrows, while others were slumped against the parapet, hands futilely clutching at their stomachs. The blood staining their fingers had already begun to dry.

Byleth forced himself to look away. It wasn't his first time seeing so many corpses— and he doubted it would be the last—but the fact that they were dead because of a flaw in his strategy made his stomach churn. Damn it, how had he let the enemy slip inside so easily?

He ground his teeth and ran across the bridge. The only thing he could do for them now was to help the living, to ensure that their sacrifices weren't in vain.

As he climbed the steps to the cathedral's entrance, he was relieved to see mages tending to the survivors of the attack. Manuela worked alongside them, casting a white light over Lysithea's side with one hand and pressing a bag of ice to the back of Sophie's head with the other. Byleth let out a short sigh. They were injured, but alive. That's all that mattered.

He spotted Ashe leaning against a nearby wall. His blue coat was missing, exposing multiple bruises and scars littering his pale arms. Blood ran from his misshapen nose down to the base of his neck and, although his gaze was trained on the ground, Byleth could tell his eyes were red and puffy.

Ashe straightened as Byleth approached. He quickly scrubbed at his eyes, wincing at the touch.

"Professor, I…" His voice was quiet and hoarse. He cleared his throat before trying again. "I'm sorry—"

"Don't. This isn't your fault." Byleth held out his hand, using the last of his faith magic to heal what he could of Ashe's wounds. "What happened?"

"We were ambushed. They slaughtered the soldiers guarding the bridge, then came for Kana. I tried to run with him and Sophie like you ordered, but Lon—"

Ashe's voice caught. He lowered his head, clenching his fists, before continuing. "Th-their leader anticipated that and cut off our escape route. Sophie was hurt while we were trying to fight them, and that triggered Kana's…abilities."

"He transformed again?"

"Not all the way. He grew a tail, along with some horns and a pair of wings, but he looked mostly human otherwise." Ashe's wet eyes flicked to the cathedral's thick doors. "But he became really violent. He went on a rampage and destroyed the invisible soldiers by turning his arms into spears."

One of Byleth's eyebrows raised slightly. Arms turning into spears? Somehow, that wasn't the craziest thing that had happened in the past few hours, but the idea of a boy as small as Kana mowing down the enemy with just his arms was a difficult thing to visualize.

"Once he was finished with them, he tried attacking us too. We had to lock him in the main chamber to keep him from hurting anyone else."

He followed Ashe's gaze to the doors, hand instinctively moving towards the Sword of the Creator. "He's still in there?"

Ashe nodded. "He's been quiet for a while, but…no one has been willing to open the doors yet."

"I'll check on him. Clean yourself up and get something to eat." Byleth patted his shoulder. "Good job today."

That earned a frown from Ashe. "Thanks, but—"

"But nothing. You held your own and kept Kana out of their grasp, you did your part." He turned towards the cathedral's entrance with a short wave. "I'll see you in the council room in an hour for debriefing."

Ashe pushed himself off the wall and flashed a smile, but it lacked its usual vitality. "Sure thing, Professor."

The corners of Byleth's lips twitched down as he watched Ashe slowly make his leave. Seeing his students in pain, both physically and emotionally, stirred up a rage inside him like nothing else. He wanted nothing more than to destroy the person or thing threatening their well-being, but this problem wasn't going to be solved by his usual strategy of swinging around his magical sword until the enemy dropped dead.

No, they were dealing with something dangerous, something that was capable of transcending the barriers between worlds, raising the dead, and using some form of future sight that countered even the Goddess's power.

He ran a hand over his face, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. They were at a disadvantage in terms of raw power, numbers, and information, but they had at least one thing that the enemy did not.

Kana.

The boy was important enough to the invaders that they had attempted to capture him twice now. Byleth wasn't sure if they wanted him for his strange draconic powers, or for another reason entirely, but having Kana on their side meant they had a slight edge over the enemy.

As long as they could keep him under control, that is.

Byleth walked up to the cathedral's entrance and peered through the thin gap between the door slabs. No sign of Kana, or much of anything at this angle. He knocked on the cool steel and called out the boy's name. No response.

He tried again. Silence.

He lifted the lock out of place. His muscles tensed, waiting for an angry dragon to come charging through the doors. A few beats passed. No rampaging dragon.

Only one thing left to do.

After a quick breath to steady himself, Byleth pulled the doors open and entered the cathedral.

Several rows of benches had been reduced to splinters. The jagged remains were scattered around the chamber, intermixed with chunks of stone that had been blasted from the room's central pillars—likely from Lysithea's magic, if the charred edges of the debris were anything to go by.

The scene wasn't pretty, but at least it wasn't as bad as the damage the cathedral had suffered during the war. The roof hadn't collapsed, so that was something.

"Kana?" Byleth's voice echoed off the walls of the large chamber. Still no response. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword as he searched for the boy. Where could he have—

His boot snagged on a deep crack in the floor. He caught himself against a nearby pillar before he could fall completely, then turned to glare at the ground for its attempt to trip him.

His brows furrowed slightly. The "crack" was more of a deep dent, shaped like a small foot that had stomped through the tile. Byleth cleared away the debris around it, revealing a trail of several footprints that traveled across the room. He followed the path to a pile of broken pews and loose stone…

And there, curled up within the rubble, was Kana. Fully human, no horns or wings or tails in sight.

The boy was singing softly to himself, clutching a small object close to his chest that glimmered with a faint blue light. His eyes were closed off to the wreckage surrounding him, his consciousness lost in the quiet tune he was creating.

Byleth climbed over the rubble and crouched by his side. With a gentle hand he tried to shake Kana out of his daze, but the boy just kept humming. Worry creeping through him, Byleth leaned in closer to inspect the boy for any hidden injuries.

That's when he heard it: a woman's voice singing along with Kana.

The melody she sang flowed through the air, slow and soft, washing over Byleth like a gentle stream. His body relaxed under the pleasant sound, the aches and pains from the morning's battle drifting away with every note.

"…flowing…like…GAH!" Kana's eyes shot open and he bolted upright, nearly knocking heads with Byleth. The light emanating from the object in his hands quickly faded away, as did the woman's voice. "What…where…huh?"

"You're in the cathedral," Byleth said, gesturing to all the damage around them. "It looks like you passed out in here after fighting off the invisible soldiers."

Kana glanced around, taking in the destruction of the chamber, then flushed bright red. "D-did I do that? I'm sorry, A-Archbishop sir, I didn't—"

"It's not your fault." He tried giving Kana a reassuring smile, but all he could manage was a slight twitch of his lips. He settled for just helping the boy off the ground instead. "Are you okay?"

"Um, I think so…" Kana shook the dust from his hair and shuffled his feet. His bare feet, without so much as a scratch on them after walking through all this debris and stomping through the tile floor. Just how much strength did the boy possess?

"Where's Sophie? And Ashe, and the white-haired lady?" Panic filled Kana's face. "Are they—"

"They're fine." Byleth nodded to the side entrance. "Your sister is getting healed outside."

"Oh, thank goodness." Kana exhaled a long sigh of relief. "I need to see her and make sure she's okay. I, um…" He turned to Byleth with a sheepish grin. "Thank you, sir. I really am sorry about causing all this trouble. I'll do whatever I can to make up for it, like cleaning dishes or—"

"Don't worry about it."

"I-if you say so…" Kana patted away the remaining dust and splinters on his clothes, then

made his way to the exit. He had recovered a lot quicker than Byleth had expected, given how long he had passed out for after his transformation in Gaspard. Maybe his body was getting used to the changes? Or perhaps it was…

"Wait, Kana?" Byleth called out. The boy stopped in front of the doorway and twisted around to face him. "Who was that singing to you? Through that pendant."

Kana shrugged. "I dunno. I've never heard her before today..." He rested his hand against the pendant hanging around his neck and frowned. "It's never done this before…"

Byleth eyed the jewelry. "Would you mind if I borrowed it for a little bit? Some of our experts in magic might be able to figure out what's going on with it."

"Um…okay…" The boy hesitantly removed the pendant from his person and stepped forward to hand it to Byleth. "Just…please be careful. Mama said it belonged to a really close friend and I don't want to lose it."

"Of course."

As Kana bounded out the doors, Byleth flexed his fingers. Every muscle felt light, energized, almost as if he hadn't spent the last few hours in battle. Whatever the magic behind that voice, or this pendent, or both, it had completely reinvigorated him, and likely had calmed Kana down from his draconic rampage as well. But how? And why?

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He had a lot to think about before that strategy meeting.

Character Bios:

Alm: Conqueror

-The first king of the One Kingdom of Valentia and a prophesied "Child of Destiny." A determined man who was raised in Ram Village under the protection and tutelage of the renowned knight, Mycen, until he joined the Deliverance to fight against the Rigelian invasion of his homeland. His travels led him to discover his true lineage as the only son of the Rigelian emperor and to fulfill his ultimate destiny: to put an end to the madness of the gods. He is also fond of puns, cats, and oranges.

-Wielder of Falchion and bearer of Duma's Brand.

-Relations: Son of Rudolf (deceased). Grandson of Mycen (adoptive). Cousin of Berkut (deceased). Uncle of Marianne. Husband of Celica.

I have now caught up with the chapters that have been posted on AO3. The next chapter will be uploaded on both platforms on Sunday, and updates will continue once a week after that point.

Next chapter: The Blue Lions plan their next steps.