Chapter Text
“I will say this one last time..” Illhan said whilst looking at Illuga. “ You walk out of here with enough of yourself left to keep breathing, fighting, and finding your way home. But the Illuga who leaves will not be the same one who fell.” He lifted one gloved hand, flexing his fingers once.
“And you?” Illuga asked quietly. “What happens to you?” Illhan’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I was already a ghost when I got here,” he said.
“This is not exactly a soft retirement plan.” Illhan took a step closer, close enough that Illuga could see the old exhaustion buried under the sarcasm. “The merge will not erase me completely. It will make us one vessel, one soul-thread. We both keep whatever stubbornness is left. I said this before like a broken clock, but I'm emphasizing here.”
Illuga let out a rough breath that sounded dangerously close to a laugh. “That sounds awful.” Illuga says grimacing
“It is,” Illhan said. “That is why it will work.” Illhan shrugged at the grimace on Illuga’s face.
The silence that followed was not empty; it was heavy, packed with all the things Illuga was already losing and all the things he could not afford to lose. He thought of Lohen again—of his voice, his reckless warmth, the way he stood too close and spoke too sharply, as though affection had to be fought for with teeth.
Illuga’s eyes burned, though he refused to let the tears fall. “I already agreed but…,” he said, “I need one thing from you.”
Illhan raised a brow. “You are in no position to negotiate.”
“I know.” Illuga’s grip on the spear steadied. “But I am asking anyway.” He took a breath.
“Do not let me forget why I chose this. Even if I lose the details, even if his name slips away, do not let me become someone who stopped wanting to go home.”
For once, Illhan did not mock him. His expression turned unreadable, almost solemn. “That,” Illhan said, “I can do.” Illhan gave a tired smile.
Illuga nodded once, sharp and decisive, as though any hesitation might tear him apart before the Abyss could.
“Then let us be done with it.” Illhan held out his hand. “No second thoughts?”
Illuga looked at the offered hand, then at the dark world around them, then beyond it toward a home he could barely see anymore but refused to surrender. “I have had enough of dying here,” he said. “If I must become something else to leave, then so be it.” Illhan’s fingers closed around his with a grip like iron.
“Good,” Illhan said softly. “Because once we begin, there is no politely stepping out halfway through.”
The moment their hands touched, the Abyss reacted like a wounded animal. Light snapped through the darkness in jagged veins, and a pressure like a collapsing sky slammed into Illuga’s chest. He gasped as heat flooded through him—hotter than fire, brighter than blood, sharper than pain—while Illhan’s presence surged forward like a blade driven home.
Then the two souls collided. Illuga’s vision fractured into shards of memory and instinct, flashing with чужд winter-scarlet flame, a wolf’s howl, the recoil of a weapon in gloved hands, and the brutal certainty of surviving because survival itself was the only vow that mattered.
He heard Illhan’s voice inside his skull, rough and low and somehow steadier than his own trembling thoughts. Hold on, it said. Do not fight the current. You will drown faster if you panic.
The Abyss did not release him gently.
It split apart with a violent, shrieking bloom of light, and the next thing Illuga knew, the world was turning inside out around him. Wind tore past his ears. Salt hit his face before he could even draw a breath. Then the darkness gave way to open air, and both bodies—no, one body, one soul now—were hurled through a jagged portal and spat hard onto the seashore beyond Nasha Town’s outer border.
Illuga struck the sand on one shoulder, rolled once, and came to a shuddering stop half-buried in damp grit while the portal behind him convulsed like a dying wound. Waves crashed nearby in a steady, indifferent rhythm, and the cold sea mist clung to his skin as if trying to pull the Abyss off him by force.
For one stunned second, he did not move.
Then Illuga coughed violently, his lungs seizing as if they had forgotten how to work in air that did not taste of rot and blood. His body shook under the weight of the merge, heat and pain and чужд power still knotting under his ribs, and beside the edge of his awareness Illhan’s presence flickered like a flame trapped behind glass.
The wolf’s distant, spectral outline pressed close to him through the haze, and somewhere deeper, the new weight of the Pyro Vision and the borrowed curse sat against his chest like an iron brand. He tried to push himself upright, failed, and dropped one trembling hand into the wet sand.
“Lohen,” he rasped, the name torn out of him like a prayer and a wound all at once. His mouth barely shaped it before his eyelids fluttered, the sound falling quieter the second time, softer and more helpless. “L..l..Lohen…I’m..s..so..sorry..”
The name lingered on his lips as if it had nowhere to go now but out of him. Illuga’s fingers curled once in the sand, and then all the strength drained from his body at once, as though the Abyss had waited until he was home-adjacent before finally taking its final toll. His breathing stuttered, his head tipped forward, and he collapsed fully into the shoreline with a faint exhale that disappeared into the sea wind.
The surf kept coming. The sky stayed bright. Nasha Town, with all its iron rails and scrap-built towers, waited beyond the border as if nothing had happened at all. And there, half-conscious in the salt-stung quiet, Illuga passed out with the name on his tongue, as though even in unconsciousness some part of him was still reaching for home.
The shoreline beyond Nasha Town’s outer border was usually empty—just wind, salt, and the endless grind of waves against scrap-littered rock. Jahoda had expected nothing more than another dead end when the Curatorium of Secrets assigned her the retrieval task. Another confirmation of loss. Another name to strike from a list that had already grown too long in Nod-Krai’s unstable frontier.
Instead, she found him.
At first, he looked like debris—half-buried in damp sand, cloak twisted wrong beneath his body, dark hair clinging to his face in wet strands. The sea mist made everything blur at the edges, and for a brief, disbelieving second, Jahoda thought the Abyss had started mocking her with illusions. Then she saw the faint rise and fall of his chest.
“…No way,” she breathed.
Her datapad slipped from her fingers and hit the sand without a sound she registered. She was already running before she fully understood she had started moving.
“Hey—hey, hey!” Jahoda dropped to her knees beside him, hands hovering for half a heartbeat before she forced herself to touch him. His skin was cold, damp, and wrong in the way survivors of the Abyss always were—like reality hadn’t fully agreed to keep them anymore. “Captain Illuga—can you hear me?!” Her voice cracked on the title, sharp with disbelief and rising panic.
Illuga did not respond.
His lips moved faintly, though, barely more than a breath shaped into sound. Jahoda leaned closer instinctively, trying to catch it over the wind.
“…Lo—hen…”
The name was broken, slurred, like it had been dragged through something sharp before it ever reached the air.
Jahoda froze.
“Lohen?” she echoed under her breath, confusion flickering through her shock. “Who—”
A sudden shift in Illuga’s body cut her thought short. His fingers twitched against the sand, curling weakly as if grasping at something invisible. His brows tightened, a faint crease of pain crossing his face even in unconsciousness. Something about him felt heavier than before—like there were two presences layered beneath his skin, one barely holding the other in place.
Jahoda swallowed hard. “This is bad,” she muttered, voice tightening as she reached for her communicator. “This is very bad.”
She pressed two fingers against his pulse again, then exhaled sharply when she found it—weak, but real. Alive.
“He’s alive,” she said into the comm, urgency snapping into place as her composure broke into action. “Repeat, Captain Illuga is alive. I need immediate extraction at the outer shoreline—border sector seven. He’s been exposed to the Abyss for an extended period and shows signs of severe corruption and collapse.”
A pause crackled through the line.
Jahoda didn’t wait for approval.
She slipped one arm carefully under Illuga’s shoulders, bracing him as gently as she could despite the tremor in her hands. His weight shifted limply against her, unresponsive but undeniably present. His head tilted slightly as she moved him, and for a brief moment his lips parted again.
“…Lo…” he murmured faintly, the word dissolving before it could become whole.
Jahoda hesitated, then tightened her grip just slightly.
“I don’t know who that is,” she whispered under her breath, more to herself than to him. “But you’re not dying on this beach.”
The wind howled louder over the shoreline, dragging salt and mist across them as she began to drag him carefully toward higher ground. Illuga’s fingers left faint trails in the sand as they moved, as if even unconscious, some part of him still refused to let go of whatever name he was chasing.
The shoreline beyond Nasha Town’s outer border was usually empty—just wind, salt, and the endless grind of waves against scrap-littered rock. Jahoda had expected nothing more than another dead end when the Curatorium of Secrets assigned her the retrieval task. Another confirmation of loss. Another name to strike from a list that had already grown too long in Nod-Krai’s unstable frontier.
And well lets say; Jahoda stared at Illuga for one long, disbelieving moment, then looked back toward the shore as though someone might suddenly appear to explain why a presumed-dead captain was lying half-conscious in the sand wearing armor that looked like it had been assembled by a furious blacksmith with excellent taste and no mercy.
When no rescue team emerged, she made a noise of pure irritation and slid both arms under his shoulders with the exhausted determination of someone who had already decided this entire day was a personal insult.
“Of all the dramatic, impossible things,” she muttered, grunting as she hauled him upright, “you could have at least come back in your old clothes. What is this? You look like you robbed a war shrine and then got into a fight with the wardrobe of a very angry general.”
Illuga’s head lolled heavily against her shoulder, his damp hair falling across one ember-bright eye as she dragged him in a stumbling line toward the border path. The scythe at his side knocked against the sand with every step, far too large and far too sharp to be ignored, and the heavy cloak shifted behind him with each jolt like a shadow that had learned how to follow.
“And this weapon,” Jahoda went on, glaring at the black-and-silver blade as if it had personally offended her, “why is it so big, and why does it look like it enjoys threatening people? Your old spear was bad enough. This thing looks like it has opinions.”
Illuga gave the smallest, most miserable sound at the edge of consciousness, but it was too weak to become a proper protest. Jahoda sniffed, adjusted her grip, and kept dragging him anyway, muttering under her breath that if the Curatorium wanted a miracle, they could have at least sent better shoes.
She did not notice the Pyro Vision tucked against him at all. Her attention was fixed on the familiar Geo Vision he still carried, and she gave it a sour glance as if it were the only suspicious thing about his entire situation.
“At least this part makes sense,” she said grimly, the authority of her frustration making the words sound like a verdict. Jahoda is talking to herself. “Geo, still alive, still stubborn, still inconveniently heavy—yes, yes, I get it.”
Illuga’s breathing remained faint and uneven, but there was a strange warmth under his armor, a heat that had nothing to do with the winter air and everything to do with the impossible second power now resting against him, unseen and unremarked.
Jahoda, too busy glaring at his new half-cloak as it snagged on a rock, merely tightened her hold and kept going, her irritation slowly giving way to a worried kind of relief each time she felt the steady weakness of his pulse beneath her fingers.
By the time the border path finally opened toward Nasha Town, she was muttering less about his clothes and more about how she was going to personally insult whatever idiot had made him disappear in the first place, all while dragging him home like a stubborn disaster that had decided, at the very last possible moment, not to stay dead.
By the time Jahoda dragged Illuga through the outer industrial district of Nasha Town, the sky had already begun dimming into a rust-colored evening. Cargo rails thundered overhead in shrieking bursts of sparks while kuuvahki-powered engines groaned from every direction, the entire city alive with its usual chaos of merchants, smugglers, mercenaries, and workers pretending not to notice one another’s crimes.
Yet even in a place like Nasha Town, people still stared. They stared because Jahoda looked furious enough to stab someone. They stared because the unconscious man she was dragging looked like he had crawled out of hell itself. And they stared because anyone connected to the Curatorium of Secrets moving that quickly usually meant something terrible had happened.
“Move,” Jahoda snapped at one particularly slow dockworker. “Unless you want me to test whether your skull cracks louder than these rails.”
The man immediately stepped aside.
Illuga remained barely conscious through all of it, boots scraping weakly against the metal walkways as Jahoda half-carried, half-dragged him toward the Curatorium district. His new half-cloak hung in torn folds behind him, stained black with dried blood and seawater, while the brutal scythe resting against his back drew frightened looks from nearly everyone they passed. Every now and then his breathing hitched sharply, as though his body still had not decided whether it belonged in this world or the Abyss.
Then came the wolf.
A low growl suddenly echoed behind Jahoda.
She nearly screamed.
Spinning violently, one hand already reaching for a weapon, she found herself face-to-face with an enormous white wolf standing silently in the middle of the street. Its pale fur shimmered faintly beneath the industrial lights, massive paws silent against the metal ground despite its size. Its eyes glowed a deep ember-red.
Jahoda stared.
The wolf stared back.
“…Absolutely not,” she whispered.
The wolf blinked once, Then calmly continued following them. “Oh, no, no, no—Illuga, what in the dead gods’ names did you bring back with you?” Illuga only made a faint sound of discomfort against her shoulder.
The wolf remained.
Jahoda considered running, Unfortunately, she was already carrying one supernatural disaster.
The Curatorium of Secrets erupted into chaos the moment Jahoda forced open the doors.
“He’s alive!”The shout rang through the lower halls hard enough to silence conversations instantly. For one suspended moment, nobody moved.
Then chairs scraped violently across the floor, footsteps thundered from every direction. Nikita arrived first. He looked like a man who had stopped sleeping months ago. The older Lightkeeper shoved past two stunned attendants so quickly one nearly fell over, his expression sharp with disbelief before it cracked entirely at the sight before him.
Illuga.
Alive.
“…No,” Nikita whispered. Jahoda barely managed, “I found him outside the bor—”
Nikita crossed the room in three strides and grabbed Illuga carefully by the face as if terrified he might disappear again. “Illuga,” he said sharply, voice rougher than anyone there had ever heard it. “Illuga, look at me.”
Illuga’s eyelids twitched faintly, groaning in pain as he slowly, unevenly, his eyes opened.
Gold and red.
Anleifr stopped dead near the doorway and Rhein's expression went visibly pale.
Valdis stared openly in shock or relief but also fear, it is because those were not Illuga’s eyes.
“What…” Rhein said quietly.
Nikita’s grip tightened slightly. “Boy,” he said, softer now, almost desperate. “Do you know who I am?”
Illuga stared at him blankly.
Illuga’s brows furrowed faintly as if he were trying to force recognition through pain. His gaze moved slowly across Nikita’s face, searching carefully, almost politely, but nothing surfaced. Beneath the exhaustion and corruption lingering in his expression, there was only frustration.
“…I…” His voice cracked violently from disuse. “Who are you?? Should I know you?.”
Nikita’s tears threatening to fall from his eyes, seeing Illuga again made him happy yet…looking at his own son, he could not bear but look at him with pity…
Illuga swallowed hard. “I know that I should.” His breathing grew uneven. “But I don’t.” The words landed harder than any weapon.
“I’m sorry,” Illuga whispered weakly. His voice came apart around the edges, rough and frayed from exhaustion, as though even speaking cost him more strength than he had left. His fingers curled faintly against the blanket draped over him, an unconscious motion that looked painfully uncertain, like someone reaching for familiarity and finding nothing. The apology sounded instinctive rather than rehearsed, spoken with the quiet devastation of someone who understood they had broken something important without even knowing how.
Anleifr’s jaw tightened visibly as he dragged one hand down his face, frustration and grief mixing into something ugly and helpless..
Valdis looked away immediately. His expression shuttered too quickly, eyes lowering toward the floor as though staring too long might somehow make the situation more real.
Rhein’s face tightened with visible horror. He took half a step backward before stopping himself abruptly, fingers curling at his side as disbelief flickered openly across his expression.
Nikita did not move at all. He simply stood there with both hands still resting against Illuga’s face, his expression frozen in a terrible stillness that felt far more frightening than shouting ever could. The silence around him deepened, grief settling heavily into every sharp line of his posture as if months of mourning had suddenly become meaningless and unbearable at once. Because Illuga was here—alive, breathing, warm enough to touch—and yet the boy he had raised looked into his eyes with quiet guilt instead of recognition.
For one terrible second, the older man simply stared at him as though refusing to understand what he had heard. His hands trembled faintly where they rested against Illuga’s face, and the grief in his expression was so raw it became difficult to look at directly.
Nikita then abruptly pulled him forward into a crushing embrace.
The movement startled everyone in the room.
“You idiot boy,” Nikita choked out roughly, his voice breaking entirely halfway through the sentence. “You absolute idiot son of mine!?.”
Illuga stiffened immediately in his arms, clearly caught off guard by the contact. For a moment he did not return it, too disoriented to understand what was happening. Then, slowly, trembling slightly, his hands lifted weakly and gripped the back of Nikita’s coat like someone holding onto the edge of a collapsing world.
Behind them, Rhein suddenly covered his face with one hand. His shoulders rose sharply with one uneven breath before he forced himself still again, fingers pressing hard against his eyes as though trying to stop the emotion before it surfaced.
He had seen Illuga return from missions bloodied, half-frozen, furious, exhausted—but never broken like this, never sitting there apologizing for not remembering the people who had spent months mourning him.
The horror of it settled heavily into his chest, sharp and suffocating, because some selfish part of him almost wished they had found a body instead; at least then the grief would have stayed simple.
Valdis looked seconds away from crying himself. His lips parted once as if he wanted to say something comforting, something grounding, but no words came out in the end. Instead, he stared at Illuga with reddening eyes and a strained expression that kept wavering between relief and heartbreak, unable to decide which feeling hurt more.
Seeing their captain alive should have felt triumphant, miraculous even, yet the blank confusion in Illuga’s gaze turned the reunion into something painfully fragile, like one wrong word might make the entire moment collapse.
Even Anleifr turned sharply away toward the wall with a muttered curse. He dragged a rough hand through his hair, shoulders tense beneath his coat as irritation became the only thing keeping the grief from showing too openly on his face. “Bloody Abyss,” he spat quietly, voice thick with restrained anger.
The wall in front of him suddenly became very interesting to stare at, because looking directly at Illuga—at the exhausted apology in his eyes and the unfamiliar red-gold glow beneath them—felt too much like watching someone survive a war only to come home missing pieces nobody could ever give back.
And through the silence that followed, the massive white wolf quietly entered the room behind them all and laid itself beside Illuga’s chair like it already belonged there. Nobody had the energy left to question it.
Not after hearing the captain they buried months ago apologize because he could no longer remember their names and their history together as friends and as family he came to find.
((p.s the abyss messes with his brain it will give him nightmares and corrupted dreams, basically his mind is the only thing that will suffer mostly, some of his body will but its fine…))
((p.s Lohens Pov is next))