Chapter Text
“…to share this gift across Eos. You may find that the world is now different, and common sense that we’ve long established is now broken. Our fingertips glow with magic. The line of Lucis no longer holds the only magic in the world, and while this might come as a terrifyingly new thing to imagine, magic now rests in our blood and the very breath that rests in our lungs. This is what Solheim tried to achieve but failed, and this gift is what the Gods have granted us for passing their trials. Know that you are not alone, and the Night will not last. We have grown stronger, and stronger still we will grow. For all the people who showed courage, you have been seen. Your voices have been heard. You all have my blessing.”
An excerpt from M.E. 767 King Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV’s speech in the Festival of Light.
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Bahamut had miscalculated.
Awful, broken and breaking prophecies.
He has let himself be unshaken by any such attempts to thwart his plans, yet when the Crystal wakes, his feels himself hope for the last time. This prophecy he has written, has been hung in the stars for two millennia, yet this stubborn little light persists even in Reflection. Reflection to break this mortal’s will and sever all attachments to any worldly matters was required to make sure the King of Stone would fulfill his role. Yet, this outcome…
“You have lost your sense of mercy, my bladekeeper.”
It is not the worst that could happen.
“The lights of this star, they cannot withstand a night this long.”
(If this is the outcome, then his mission has been fulfilled.)
Noctis speaks, yet it is not his lungs that give breath to the words, not his meaning behind these sounds. Time doesn’t feel real at all, he is here, in the past, the present and the future all at once. It has only been minutes since he entered the crystal, and it has also been millennia. He remembers when the first light of Sol draped upon the crested waterline of Lucis, he also remembers the multitude of Kings that anchored themselves to this Chrysalis. He remembers the journey from their old fallen planet, the last of Eos’ Light separating itself from its physical vessel and travelling across the stars to find a new home. Yet he also remembers Ignis dropping puns with a straight face, Gladio’s eyes shining at a cup of noodles and Prompto grinning brightly under the sunlight. He also remembers falling into an occupied planet, his light condensing to preserve itself into a chrysalis, the energy spent and no longer able to move.
(He has slept for millennia.)
What will have been done is only what has been ordained.
“I have never asked for this.” Eos, Noctis, an amalgamation of both can only say quietly. “Do not huff at me, you menace.”
To find our new home… No price was too big to pay.
“To speak of prices to pay,” Noctis breathes, eons of knowledge, of the life of thousands of individuals, pour out of his pores. “You need not have done this, Bahamut.”
Eos belongs to us. Not these foolhardy creatures that walk this planet.
Eos glimmers. He does not protest. He also wants to live, but this fledgling star has been almost devoured.
This was never the intention.
Eos could wait an eternity for the planet to have died on its own, and he could harvest the remains to find yet another Star, yet…
“Yet I am awake, without completing your plan of genocide.” Eos smiles and Noctis feels a wellspring of sadness force its way up his throat. An ancient grief settles under his skin so heavy. “Yet I am woken by this foolhardy little wrench in your plans.”
Noctis also remembers Bahamut, in all his foolishness repressing the magic of this planet, this dying planet, back into itself and corrupting the energy that should have given life to its people.
The Scourge, the last remnants of this world’s Soul.
Bahamut is silent. Noctis sees him struggle with his words, like when Noctis, all of twelve, had warped out a window on the Citadel’s thirtieth floor and Regis had looked at him with so much disappointment that he could only shuffle his feet in shame.
“Bahamut.” Noctis chides him, Eos’s eyes glittering.
There was nothing else… except this path.
(And in this moment, Noctis understands. He sees Bahamut’s desperation, and his utter loneliness in the face of an eternity without end.)
(Yet he also couldn’t find it in himself to forgive the Astral.)
Noctis shakes his head. “No.”
“This wayward Star of yours… He only needs to wake up.”
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“… five more minutes.” Noctis grumps as he turns to the side.
Pryna noses at his neck wetly and he pushes her away.
“… go away. ‘m sleeping…”
Pryna huffs and licks a long strip up his cheek.
“!!!”
“Pryna, nooo… ugh fine. Fine! I’m awake. Ugh.”
“… where am I?”
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After he’s shaken off his drowsiness, he finally lets himself sit up from the cold steel floor.
He’s in Gralea.
Zegnautus Keep.
(His skin itches. He feels like he’s overflowing, there’s too much to contain in this single physical body.)
Noctis sighs.
The crumbling Ring of the Lucii blinks at him from his open palm.
Pryna looks at him innocently.
“I better start walking, then.” Noctis sighs to himself and tosses the remains of the Ring into the Armiger.
It’s a long, long trip to Insomnia.
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The first daemon that Noctis encounters is a small group of Snagas. It eats at his heart because he knows this type of daemon is born from extremely young souls who experienced excruciating pain in their early lives. He remembers a shifty green-haired runemaster that spoke to the Crystal of his research, as if the Crystal was a living breathing human being. That man, from early Solheim, with the same passion and drive for his craft that Cindy has exhibited.
The Snagas flinch from him and runs as if Ifrit himself was nipping at their toes.
Noctis comes across a mutated Iron Giant on his way out, and it cowers. Folding into itself and smoke coming out of its skin like it was being burnt.
It goes for the next daemon too. And the next, and the next. He simply walks out of the Keep and no daemon stops him.
An Iseultalon crosses his path and it merely froze in place, as if waiting for death. Noctis doesn’t pay it any mind. He doesn’t need to waste energy defeating daemons in his path, because, sooner or later, they will all burn anyway.
The moment he steps out of the keep, a sheet of rainbows paints the skies and a familiar song rings in his ears.
He walks through the broken roads, and slowly learns to rein the light into his skin.
To utter futility when the Aurora fades from the sky and light flows out of his skin anyway. It kept pouring out, almost endlessly and Noctis could not control it at all.
“What the hell is with this magic.” Noctis frowns. Eos hums in delight.
Slowly, he understands. The light slowly goes back into his skin and he remembers and sees memories that aren’t his, a multitude of deaths into a summation of peace. A fountain of emotions and voices that lets warmth rise up his shoulder blades. His lips form upturn into a simple smile, and realizes that Eos has never been so alive. His senses are celebrating as he feels the anchors of Eos settle into the land. The Scourge of the Star feels so small in the face of such life.
(There is also the overshadowed feeling of guilt, of the fact that this Star will die so he can live.)
Noctis continues walking.
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Once the light has settled, he manages to keep the magic leashed inside his body. The innumerable daemons no longer flinch from him, but at the same time they do not acknowledge his presence at all.
Noctis’ old scars no longer ache. His knee hasn’t even began protesting yet.
His throat doesn’t feel parched, and stomach doesn’t rumble in hunger. It was pure magic that sustained him.
It was really fucking trippy, in all honesty. Noctis knows that he’s pretty much carrying the magical equivalent of a whole fucking planet, but hell and high heaven, it’s so fucking trippy. He’s like a damn eldritch horror that’s climbed out of the pits of hell, only the divine equivalent, because he’s pretty damn sure that he’s stronger than the Sun now. Pfft, Bahamut really has miscalculated with this Providence of his, huh.
Eos waking up was like the crystal finally finished metamorphosis and the cocoon suddenly had a nuclear fuckton of Light magic that it wanted to dig its claws into the core of the planet itself.
All this magic is really not good for his sanity, and he really wanted nothing to do with it. Eos could have it back after everything is said and done.
He hears them more than sees them. Several grimy hunters protecting a small truck tossed on the side of a road, its wheels spinning pitifully in the air
“The Amnis Lucis is finished, Vago! Let’s just leave the truck!”
“We can’t! The supplies won’t last if we don’t get back in time. If we go back without the mushrooms… Bessa, I won’t be able to look them in the eye.”
“Um.”
How eloquent, Noctis.
“Er, do you guys need help?” Noctis says, and cringes.
It’s been ages since he last talked to someone, alright!?
“Or, um. I’m looking for life. People not dead? Er… People?”
A red giant roars in the distance.
“You a hunter?”
“Yeah.” Noctis shrugs and walks over to the truck, lets his fingers crackle a little and set the truck upright with a push. “Come on. Get in.”
“… You are way stronger than you look.” Vago gapes. “What the hell.”
The red giant starts running in their direction, bringing a couple of thunderbombs with it.
“Yeah, some bullshit happened.” Noctis shrugs and gets in the truck too. Because yeah, everything that’s happened is sheer and pure bullshit he can’t even.
He picks up a rock and throws it to the red giant, letting his magic explode into a brilliant blinding light on contact.
Hopefully it looked enough like a flashbang.
“Damn, kid. That was some damn cool bullshit.” Bessa grins at him.
(The red giants burn under the intense light.)
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Tessiana honestly has had a long day.
Or a long night. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
She’s just a hunter manning one of the few outposts in the western continent that stands as people’s gateway to Lestallum.
If Lucis had Lestallum as their last city, then the Tenebrean Settlement is the last stand for Niflheim. Very few of the people are still in the Western Continent, but the Lower Quarters of Tenebrae had been converted into a small settlement for those who couldn’t travel to Lestallum. In exchange for manpower and their mushroom yield, the Lestallum settlement lets them have enough meteor shards to maintain their lights.
The population slowly dwindled until there were only a few thousand people left.
An entire continent, and only several thousand people, and the numbers just kept dropping each year.
“Tessie! Cargo’s here!”
“Right! Opening the doors, make sure to put the light up at max!”
Noctis is Eos, and Eos is Noctis, but they are not one and the same. A human body cannot store the memories of an entire planet, nor can a planet perceive the world in a singular way that humans do.
Yet crouching in front of a small campfire, eating out of a small can of meaty rations is a singular experience that both Noctis and Eos could most definitely without.
Bessa sits beside him, eyes a tad grim, but with enough hope in them. She’s an old lady with a strong constitution still going outside the settlements to help with delivering their rations. It’s like she forgot that she was old, lived her life to the fullest, has nothing else to lose and no longer afraid of death.
“How are you holding up, Mister Hunter?”
“Not really digging the slop,” Noctis grins. “You want some?”
He really doesn’t need to eat though, so that’s something.
Bessa grins back at him, all toothy.
“Probably for the best that you just choke it down, lad. We could probably spare a mushroom or two if you could cook it with the meat.”
“Nah, I’ve never been good with cooking.” He’s spoiled, he knows. Ignis would be horrified seeing him chomping down on this cold canned meat of questionable origins. Like he does when he finds Noctis on his fifth bag of potato chips.
“I’m Bessa by the way.”
“Noctis.” It’s not like he’s hiding. If anything he just pretty much wants to talk to someone so that he could hire a boat or a ship or something to help him cross to the eastern continent.
“Like the Oracle’s fiancé?”
“Mm.” Noctis yawns, his jaw feels like splitting. “Yea, that guy.”
The amount of magic in his skin raises his energy levels, but he wants to sleep. He’s been walking for days now at this point.
The fire really banishes some of the grime of the scourge, especially the smell. The leashed magic in his skin dispels any lingering maladies that hang in the air
“Prince Noctis?” Bessa says hesitantly.
“Yea.” Noctis shrugs and retrieves a canteen of water from the armiger and takes a swig at it. “That guy.”
Bessa suddenly stands. “Your Highness! I apologize--!”
“Don’t worry about it. Really. I’ll deal with stuff tomorrow after I sleep.”
Bessa watches in familiar horror as Noctis scarfs down the remainder of the cold meat. As if him eating something like that was such an alien thing to do. Ha, alien. Yes, he’s basically an alien now, isn’t he. He feels the food dissolve into energy in his stomach. Well. At least it wouldn’t give him stomach problems later. He could probably even chew on some loose rock or gemstone and his stomach would just melt it into oblivion.
Hmm. That’s something to try.
“Your Highness, I insist! We could clear an apartment or at least a sleeping bag—”
“I’ll take a sleeping bag.” Noctis interrupts.
“Right away!”
He wonders how they’ll start treating him once they know about Eos.
Well.
They don’t have to know.
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“…inconsistently, and the Marshal Cor Leonis had stopped his search for the King of Light in the first year of the Long Night. It bred resentment in those who believed in the Cosmogony, and a cult started to gain traction with the citizens of Lestallum. Several uprisings were firmly put down by the staff in EXINERIS, saying that if they had complaints, then they should be helping out and not causing chaos just for more people to die. A formal announcement was never made regarding the King of Light until the first Aurora’s Chorus had happened. After the last light of the Amnis faded, the Crownsguard finally broke their silence about the whereabouts of King Noctis at the time. Due to this, several plans for pilgrimage had been drafted for the next possible occurrence of…”
An Excerpt from A Neverending Night by Sylvestra Leonis
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When he wakes up again, it isn’t Pryna who greet him. It’s Umbra.
In his mouth was the letter from the guys.
“Be waiting in Hammerhead.” Noctis read aloud. “Sounds about right.”
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After three days, much fumbling and stiff formalities, Noctis finally finds who he’s looking for.
“Hey. Aranea.”
“Heard you got stuck in the crystal for Six knows how long?”
“Mm, yeah. Got some hell of a boost.”
“Was it worth the ten year wait?”
“… nope.”
“Bummer, that.”
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“So what’s your grand plan, highness?” Aranea asks as they take off in her dropship. Which is still powered by plasmodia.
The magiteknology was pretty eerie to feel, especially with the light in his blood threatening to burn it to cinders.
No. Bad magic.
We’re going to go through an ocean. Behave or we’ll die.
“There’s not much of a plan, really.” Noctis says quietly.
Aranea looks mighty curious.
“I could probably banish the Scourge with maybe a week or so worth of magic. Gotta kill Ardyn first though.”
“So, kill the Chancellor. Then do your magic thing?”
Noctis hums. “Yea. I hear you guys started calling it the Amnis Lucis? We should get the word out about what’s going to happen though, or everyone will panic.”
“… what do you mean?”
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Eos recognizes Ardyn as the Core of the Scourge. However, defeating him wouldn’t really just purify every other source corruption with him. Everything still needs to be cleansed. The easiest way would be to sweep everyone still alive into the Astral Realm for safekeeping. Then blasting the entire planet with a bunch of Light Magic and essentially ejecting the corpse of the previous Omnia that resided in Eos.
“Are you crazy?” Aranea almost shouts. “Isn’t that essentially killing everyone!?”
When she put it like that. It sounded kinda bad.
“Just the Sun won’t be able to remove the roots of the Scourge, Aranea. It has to be this specific magic. If I blasted it without sweeping everyone up into the Astral Realm, then they will die, because that’s like tossing humans into the sun, you know? Besides. I’ve been to the Astral Realm and back. Nobody’s gonna die.”
“…”
“Probably.”
“… Let’s talk about it more when we find your buddies.”
“… seconded.”
Nobody would be able to stop him anyway, if he thinks it’s the right way to do things.
Noctis definitely needs more opinions other than just Eos’.
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When Eos calls to Ardyn, it is with a name long forgotten in time.
It is the core of this juvenile Star, this casualty of circumstance and a heavy hand.
“⬛⬛… Forgive me…”
A shrieking cry shakes the very foundations of the world.
“Ĕ̶͚ ̵͇̳̊ ̸̙̆ ̵̩͐̓Ȯ̵̖͜ ̶̺̪̄ ̶̟͓̋ ̶̭̓Ș̷͆̀!̷̥̽͒!̷̹̍!̷͓̆!̷̟͈͊”
When Noctis thinks about this Omnia, he feels sympathy. It is a painful experience to be driven out of your own home. To lose all that is precious to you, to be forgotten…
“…records found in the old Steyliff mines had shown a startling revelation for those loyal to the Crown. There they found records in old Solheim’s language of research regarding the creation of the Ring of the Lucii. Based on the analysis of this research, it was initially created as a weapon to harvest magical energy, through nature or the souls of living things. Ignis Scientia, Hand to the King of Light, deduced that the King of Solheim had wanted to take ifrit’s power for his own, resulting in the Infernian’s subsequent rage that started the War of the Astrals. A particularly curious detail was that the ring itself refits its size to any who wears it, and Prompto Argentum, Marshall of the Crown, reports remembering a blackened scorch around the finger of the Infernian during their battle.
[Argentum]: It’s stuck in my mind, because his body became intangible at some point and only magic could hit him, but somehow, at that one location, for that one finger, there were no flames at all. I was going to hit it, but then Shiva appeared, and I didn’t need to do it anymore.”
An excerpt from “The Rise of Light: A Collection of Journals” by Talcott Hester
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“To explain in simple terms, the Planet is alive. Each living organism in this planet is a part of a larger system.” Noctis explains. “The old Solheim teknists gave these species the name Omnia Amnis Terraria, ‘All life on Earth’, or simply the Omnia. Each living creature is just smaller part of the Omnia. Like the cells in our body. They’re individual cells with specific tasks, but they’re also us. Everything alive on this planet is a part of Omnia Amnis Terraria.”
“A very young Omnia inhabited this planet some three millennia ago. The Omnia gains life through the little other beings on a planet. It usually starts small with the tiniest things, and when these accumulates enough, a seed of an Omnia forms, and through time, the energy from the sun, and some constant cosmic energy, it blooms and starts to encompass the whole planet. It connects all life and it’s essentially a mass of sentient energy hosted in a rock in space. The Crystal was a remnant of a foreign Omnia that dropped itself onto this star. An alien invader several millions of years older than this Star landed here and only wanted to rest until it could go on its way.”
An Omnia, by its nature, is a sedentary species. It’s also an assimilative one, greedy and grabbing onto any form of life and connecting to itself by nature. A separation of the physical from the sentient energy can also happen when a threat like an exploding supernova, or some form of internal error happens and the physical planet is no longer safe. In this manner due to a threat, Eos was travelling through space, looking for the next planet to live in. It probably lasted tens of thousands of years just drifting across space. Of course, it isn’t the only Omnia that’s in space. Eos was chased through time and was severely weakened by some dark creature, it lost so much energy and just wanted to rest. Then this young Omnia, introducing itself as ⬛⬛, shines at Eos, young and trusting, and Eos… descended.
It was supposed to just be a short period of rest, and Eos was supposed to slumber in this bright young one’s protection while ⬛⬛ flourished. Eos crystallized into the stone and separated eleven parts of itself to help ⬛⬛ to learn how to safeguard itself and to teach ⬛⬛ how to grow. These Astrals were sworn to protect the world, to protect Eos, even from each other. ⬛⬛ then mimics this manifestation and creates the humans in the image of these Astrals.
And Gentiana, Shiva, smiles solemnly.
“Then Solheim happened.”
Ifrit befriended the humans, giving them knowledge from a previous civilization, more advanced than anything on this young planet. He gave them fire, and the advancements they got from that made them want even more. The King of Solheim wanted to harvest Ifrit’s magic for power and more knowledge, because if Ifrit gave them all these things, then he could give them even more.
Then the Astral War. Ifrit wanted to burn all of humanity to cinders, and every other Astral protested this, turning the war. Five Astrals fell and were lost to history. Six were left in the wake of the conflict.
Bahamut, the strongest of his siblings lamented and shouted to the heavens for a hundred and eight years.
Eos! This conflict, is this your ordinance? We have fallen on this young planet with no way to return home.
What use is a blade without a master!?
Who are we to safeguard?
What use is a knight with no lord!?
Tell me!
To our home and land, to the seas and the distant light, I pray, our goddess. Let my blades stand for you once more.
We have traveled so far, only to suffer!
To you I have devoted my essence, to you I have surrendered my home.
What use is an acolyte with no god to serve!?
To this manner, as Eos slumbered, Bahamut raged to deaf ears.
He, who has fallen, stopped by his siblings from decimating the world…
He raves to himself, wanting no more than to wake Eos.
⬛⬛ speaks to him in pity, the only one who could hear his lamentation, and asks him if he wants to have ⬛⬛ as his new home and—
Y O U D A R E ! ! ! !
Bahamut chokes ⬛⬛ in a mighty outrage, placing his blades in the leylines of this world, obstructing the flow of ⬛⬛’s energy. It pollutes the once pure life the creatures residing in this planet had ⬛⬛ screaming and shrieking as its limbs are sliced apart pieces of itself curling in pain and despair.
(It is then that the lifeblood of the Omnia stagnates and rots, under the force of the Draconian.)
A plan is made, two millennia into its making, that will force a human into hosting ⬛⬛’s Core, uprooting the Omnia anchored into this planet.
It will force Eos to bloom from its slumber when it senses an empty shell of a planet, guided by a human sacrifice.
Bahamut will be able to go home.
He steals the Ring of Harvest from Ifrit’s dying clutches and burns a seal of his blood into it.
A mimicry of his sleeping family.
Bahamut gives this ring to the Lucis Caelums—the family descended from the first humans created in his image.
To use the Ring of Harvest, designed by Solheim to kill an Astral, to gather all of the purer essence of ⬛⬛ and use it to burn the rotted parts of it… It’s a justice he will not rest until reached.
This will make sure that nothing of this Omnia will be left behind. This Omnia who created these sinful beings wishing for more than they are. Who twisted his siblings until he can no longer recognize them. Kin turning against kin for these lowly empty clay dolls. The sheer hubris of these imitations makes Bahamut shake in his fury.
⬛⬛ has breached her promise. Bahamut will break his oath before even more of them are killed. More of their souls who this greedy Omnia swallows whole, not even returning to Eos where they can meet again.
He will not let this Omnia take more from him.
Bahamut bleeds his skin dry, casts promises upon stone and sand.
He tells Shiva that this Star needs to be cleansed.
“The name of this Star is Eos.”
He tells Leviathan how a future can be reached.
(And a name is forgotten, cast into the wind)
He tells Ramuh that a strange evil has taken its root.
This is the only way.
He tells Titan the world will fall into darkness.
And so it has been ordained.
= = =
What surprises Noctis the most is that nothing hurts.
There are no spikes of pain that jolt up his spine when he stretches his back too much. There is no heaviness in his every breath and that his lungs are light enough without a heavy shroud. There aren’t the stinging sensations when he puts his weight on his left knee for too long. There isn’t the ever present exhaustion he has felt since the first time he touched the crystal.
None of that.
He wakes to a familiar cascading crystal chorus, and a prismatic light show up in the dark sky.
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“… fascinating, for those who remember the Aurora’s Chorus. Every year, on the day that the King of Light started his communion with the Crystal, a long span of prismatic aurora would sit upon the thick plasmodia that layered Eos’ atmosphere. The Aurora is heralded by a crystalline chorus. The echoes of old voices singing an ancient melody, that people have started calling Noctis’ March. In a window of an hour, the Aurora will dance in the skies. After the Aurora, the Amnis Lucis, the River of Light will sweep upon Eos, claiming all the dead and bringing them to the spiritual realm. Those who have seen the phenomenon describes this as the physical bodies of the people turning into a soft golden glow, slowly fading once Amnis Lucis passes through them. The origin of this phenomenon has never been fully understood. The King of Light had never given any explanation when asked.”
An excerpt from A Neverending Night by Sylvestra Leonis