He didn't like the way memories hung thick in the air, like the ashes that must have settled over everything after the palace burned. After...everything burned.
He didn't like how empty it was, a graveyard rather than a home, when it had once been everything he ever knew.
He didn't like its terrible distorted sky, the eclipsed star hanging dark, the unchanging red casting everything sinister in a way it had never felt until he'd seen a sky that changed.
Other Senshi loved their worlds. He'd seen it, seen the heart they put into them, had heard Murikabushi and Elsa and Daedalus and Kua'kua and so many others speak so fondly of the places that they somehow still seemed to consider home, even though some of them hadn't been born there and the others had watched those worlds die.
Those whose worlds were new to them--Senshi like Murikabushi and Elsa, born on Earth, who only discovered their planets later--maybe their enthusiasm made sense. To them, it had to be so exciting, to be able to touch the stars and find a whole new place that was theirs. A place their souls were intimately tied to, and that they got to watch rebuild. Something beautiful and delightful and exciting. Something...fun, in its way. Even if they found their worlds dead, they got to watch them come back to life. He'd heard Murikabushi talk about animals coming back, painting the picture in Tianyi's mind of a world that lived and breathed and changed--it honestly felt sort of sweet, to put it in that perspective. To see the idea of space through eyes that saw it as something hopeful and wonderful.
And the others--the Senshi like him--so many of them were not like him at all. They'd lived their lives on their worlds, seen them alive and thriving, had grown up not in isolation but as part of communities. They knew what their worlds were like at their height, bright and vibrant, before they'd become something...different. Something else, something dying slowly as Chaos strangled them out. Those places, it seemed, were still home to them, places they loved and wanted to see live again, because they had loved once.
He was not like them. His world was not like theirs.
He had never known it thriving. That was the curse, wasn't it? That the very day he'd been born, something evil had come. Their star had been eclipsed, and the eclipse never ended, and the world had begun to die. He understood the science better, now; the lack of light from the star had likely started starving out all the agriculture, and there was no way to get help from outside, with the world being cut off. And that wasn't even accounting for whatever Chaos's pernicious magical influence might have done.
He wondered, sometimes, if it had gotten to his family. If it was, even in the smallest way, the Chaos that had made them lie to him, conceal the truth of his world, keep him protected from all the nastier truths that had suddenly been forced on him all at once, violently.
He wondered it about his captors, too. If Chaos had eroded them, made them do...all the things they'd done, to take their vengeance on him for his family's actions. He didn't think it worked that way--the Chaos he'd encountered on Earth was so potently different, truly infecting peoples' very starseed, and it hadn't turned Jet or Ilmari or even Cryuptomelane (as objectionable as Tianyi found him) into slavering monsters or great decievers or...anything else. Ilmari and Jet had even helped him, protected him when he'd been in danger. Jet had stepped in to stop the strange monstrous chicken, and Ilmari had found him sleeping and vulnerable and chosen to look out for him. And that was Chaos that truly changed people, that shifted their uniforms black and put holes in Senshi chests and foreheads, not like whatever had been on his world.
So perhaps he gave too much grace, to think that something external had turned the people of his own world against him. But he didn't know. He would never know the extent of what had happened, because he had grown up on a world onto which the blight had already descended.
And that was the core of it, wasn't it? Unlike the newly-reincarnated Senshi, he wasn't coming to a blank canvas that just needed love, care, and time to restore. Unlike the other long survivors, he wasn't coming to a place that had once been home, alive and vital, before falling to a darkness from beyond its borders.
He was too different. He'd seen it so many times. There were so many things about his story that made him...wrong. Separate from everyone else on Earth. At least, everyone he had met so far.
Maybe there were others out there like him, born on dying worlds. But he hadn't found any. It was an isolating thought, that he was so broken, so cursed as to be unique. Even Fang, who had primarily grown up after the fall, still had some memories of before. And certainly he hadn't been isolate,d lied to, and prevented from learning what was going on with his own world. He might not have fully understood--he was a child, after all--but he knew something was wrong.
At least, Tianyi assumed he did. Tianyi knew that perhaps he couldn't be certain; he wasn't exactly willing to tell people too much about what had happened to him, for...so many reasons.
They didn't need to know. He didn't want to tell them.
Certainly he had happy memories to reminisce over, days spent with his family and laughter and joy, warmth and gentleness and love. All of htose things were still precious to him.
And perhaps that was the problem. Even knowing that they'd lied to him, kept him ignorant, kept him carefully within the gilded cage of the Tianyian palace...
Tianyi still loved his family. Tianyi still wanted him back. Tianyi still felt so much anger, so much pain, so much hatred for the people that had killed them. It still felt unfair that he hadn't died with them. That he had to go on, separated from everyone who had ever really loved him, and carry the burden of being the last of their people.
Sometimes, he wished he had stayed behind. Had died with them. That some new Tianyi had the burden of being the Senshi, that some new Senshi had to clean up after him. But that…wouldn’t be fair, would it? He would just be abandoning responsibility the way he had so many times before, the way he wanted to stop doing because running away had only made him miserable.
Of course, it was easy to say that; easy to think it to himself, to determine that he did not want to run away anymore. Harder to implement it. Harder to remind himself, every time, that he had a choice and he was obligated to make it. That not choosing, too, was choosing, but it was choosing to run away. That he couldn’t just…hope that someone would save him every time.
That he couldn’t keep on leaving his fate in other people’s hands.
It was that thought, that and the sight of Tempesti so full of life, that had him contemplating visiting his own world again. He wasn’t Eternal yet, but that didn’t mean the obligation wasn’t on his shoulders—if he ever wanted to see his home as it had been, he had to fix it, somehow. Had to go back and investigate and find…whatever might be there.
He had to go into the archives, if anything remained. Dig through Hongyun’s and his fathers’ papers, see if they had any research on what was breaking their world, like Hongyun had little bits of information on the Calamitous Hollow. Surely, if he’d had that, he must have researched what was cutting them off, even if no one had ever told Xiulan.
He’d been too stupid to tell, then. Too sheltered and perfect, too important to allow to be anything but ignorant. But things were different now. He was the only one left. There was no one else to take on this responsibility, and that meant that he had to do it.
He had to honor every sacrifice that had kept him alive. If he kept wallowing, kept hiding, he would dishonor that.
His family wanted him to live. Therefore, he had to fight. It was as simple as that. He just had to figure out the right way to do it.
It had been another long, sleepless night of pondering when he finally decided to go. A few nights after the festival on Tempesti, Xiulan slipped outside and found that it was lightly misting rain. He enjoyed the sensation; rain had been rare on Tianyi, likely another symptom of the world’s atmosphere being distorted by Chaos, and when it came it tended towards the torrential.
And it had been a terribly stormy night when he fled his captors. He’d counted on the storm to cover his tracks. Perhaps it had, so they never found the little grove where he’d slept for centuries. A little bit of protection to keep them from pulling him from the safety he’d found.
Perhaps the world itself had protected him, too. Tianyi supposed he owed it for that, for keeping him alive for so long. That was another reason to visit, to start figuring out exactly what was wrong.
So he let the rain mist on his shoulders, and he walked for a few blocks, until he was sure it was safe, and then Xiulan became Tianyi and vanished into space.
It was quiet, in the palace gardens. He’d spoken of them so many times, so fondly, and there were so many beautiful memories here—for a moment, he swore he could hear laughter and chatter and the sound of strings carefully plucked.
But he was not like Murikabushi or Elsa, not able to be swept away by memories of his past like they were by memories of their previous lives. His family lived only within his own mind, and he could not fill the empty space around him with the life that had once inhabited it.
And empty and lifeless it was.
The whole garden was dark. The ill red cast of the sky made it seem even darker, without any additional light, and there were no vibrantly colored plants to break it up and bring in even the smallest sense of joy. Instead, it was death, spiraling out around him. Wilted flowers, cracked retaining walls, collapsing gazebos, dried empty holes where decorative ponds and streams used to be. The pavers for pathways were damaged, the little bridges over pretty, empty streams collapsed into the places the water had left behind. As he walked closer, he could see scorch marks left behind, as if someone had lit parts of the garden aflame, or at the very least as if a large fire had burned there.
Worse, he swore he could see…red stains. Splatter, on the stones, dark and ominous. For a moment, he thought he might be hallucinating it, but when he turned away and looked back, it was still there. And he could only think of one source that might have left it.
Someone—perhaps many someones—had bled and died here, in this place that had once been so peaceful. The revolutionaries had destroyed the quiet and harmony of this place in their fury at the royal family.
It made Tianyi’s heart break. So much was lost, so much destroyed. And though his heart wavered on which direction the blame went, tonight, as he walked through the destroyed garden with a heavy heart, he thought of everyone who had bled here for the crime of working for the royal family, and he felt a stirring of hate in his heart.
Perhaps others would disagree. They might see the rebellion that toppled the royal family as righteous. Necessary. A base violence required for change. But Tianyi could never see it that way.
He’d avoided the main hall the first time he visited, too afraid of what he might find there. Too afraid to face the evidence of slaughter. But the shortest route from this particular garden to the offices and archives was straight through it, and so Tianyi took a breath. His steps were careful, avoiding cracks and damage to the stone pathways, and he could feel his heart hammering in his chest as he approached the great palace doors that would take him inside. But he had to do this. He had to continue forward. Had to find whatever was there, accept it, and move on.
If he ever wanted to be something more than a scared, delicate little flower, he needed to reconcile with his past. And that meant stepping through the door before him.
His fingers rested lightly on the wood. He had walked through these doors a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times in the past. Laughing with his fathers, teasing his brothers, chattering at the garden servants and asking them about this or the other technique or why such a flower was planted in such a place. There were so many memories here—in the soil, in the air, seeped into the very wood of the palace.
All of them weighed like lead on Tianyi’s shoulders.
He was the last one to carry them. Everyone else was gone.
(Sometimes, he wished he did not bear the weight. But such wishes were futile. It was on him, and he would simply have to accept it.)
He rested his forehead against the door for a long, silent moment.
He did not know how long it had been, objectively, since he had walked these halls. About a thousand years, he supposed was the fair guess, given every other piece of evidence available to him. But to him, it had been barely two years, and yet somehow it was also two entire lifetimes ago. The awful one that he had suffered through on Tianyi, months and months of abuse and deprivation and punishment for his family’s crimes (but not the punishment that would have let him see them again, for that would have let him off “too lightly”), and then and again his time on Earth. Just over a year, now, he had been free.
Just under a year, he had been trapped.
And with a deep breath, Tianyi pushed open the door and came home.
The inside of the palace was…dark. Although some light came in through the windows, it was awful and red, leaving long shadows that hid what had once been a vibrantly lively place.
There should have bene people. Servants, running to and fro, laughing and talking. His fellow royals. Other nobles, politicians, soldiers, so many people mixing together because this was the center of the Empire of Tianyi.
But just like that empire, all that remained of the life that had once filled the hall was ash, dust, and bloodstains.
Even in the eerie red light through the window, Tianyi could make out the difference between an ashy smudge and what had once been a splat of blood. He hated looking at either for long; the fighting here had clearly been fierce, and the fires had been allowed to run rampant enough to peel the paint and crack some of the columns, but the roof somehow still held. The palace had been built to last, after all; it had served centuries of Tianyian royalty, and it should have served centuries more.
But it was all but a crematorium now.
Tianyi was quick, but deliberate, watching his steps for debris that scattered across the floor. There was much of it; pieces of ceiling beams and stonework and pottery and every other thing that might be destroyed in the sacking of a palace. And Tianyi couldn’t afford to trip and fall and make a complete fool of himself.
The hallway led into what had once been the royal audience chambers, and here the evidence of destruction was even starker. The thrones had been cast down from their pedestals and shattered, and only charred pieces remained. Evidence of a great battle was everywhere—furniture upturned, weapons abandoned, blood on the walls and floors that had never been cleaned away—and yet there were still seats, turned towards the burned remains of the thrones, like an audience had gathered to watch what happened here.
He wondered if this was where they had executed the royal family. A show of force. Bring them low where they had once reigned.
It seemed like the sort of thing the scum that had slaughtered his family might do.
He moved towards the pile of charred furniture, and froze.
Among the remains was something forgotten. A little, pretty hairpin, three kerria flowers made from silver and yellow stone dangling off the end.
It had been his. A gift from Hongyun. Bailian had delicately pulled it out of his hair and used it in his own, the day they sent Xiulan away to live while the rest of them died.
The last piece of his family.
Tianyi’s hand shook around the little memento.
He stood in that hall, looking at what was before him, and felt an aching in his chest. He glanced outward, at the eclipsed sky, and considered, for a moment.
The ache was loss and grief, yes, but it was something else, too.
It was not pain that made his hands tremble.
It was rage.
This world, this place—this was where his family had bled and died because their own people turned on them. This was where everyone he loved had been lost. This world—this place—its people—
Everything that had ever made it home was long gone.
And maybe, Tianyi did not care to give it any more than it had already taken from him.
[wc: 3017 words]
