Olivia was living her nightmares.

Over and over, she watched the dark and the light that had haunted her dreams ever since the festival. She was cracked and broken by the choice she'd never had and never could have hoped to grasp, even if she'd known. She felt the fear and the terror and the pain as she couldn't contain it--she wasn't enough, she wasn't strong enough, she couldn't save him or anyone else because she was weak.

And yet, none of that mattered, not once she felt him die.

It hit her like someone had blown a hole in her chest every. single. time. It knocked more than just the breath out of her. It split her spirit. It stole her tenuous grip on reality, and it stole her tears and left her harsh and dry.

Once, these nightmares would have had her waking up, gasping for breath. They would have haunted the back of her mind with such a sense of overwhelming dread that she couldn't let it go. Yet now, as she watched them replay over and over, Olivia was left with a morbid sense of fascination.

Because these weren't her nightmares--they were Aurora's.

Somewhere nearby, Olivia sensed a presence. Small, yet it radiated power far past its shell, like a star casting its light far beyond the reaches of its celestial body.

Such power in such a fragile shell.

Eventually, Olivia found her voice. Not words, but something else that resonated on the same plane as this silver mist swirling about her body.

"Let me help you," Olivia said. "I want to help."

Aurora's figure stepped forward. Her starlight halo of hair floated around her, immaculate and graceful as the Song around them changed, becoming deeper and more insistent. Aurora stepped forward while making elegant gestures with her hands, ones that Olivia might have expected from the Speakers about the temple as they gave a lesson on history.

Unlike the Speakers, however, Aurora's gestures weren't accompanied by words. They wove a Song around her, stirring the mist into shapes and swirls of a language Olivia couldn't read.

Olivia narrowed her eyes at them, frowning on concentration, straining to find words among the notes. She glanced around, searching the mist, wondering if perhaps there were some merit to the methods of the High Speakers and how they liked to wander around when the Auroras were out. Could they read whatever language Aurora was trying to communicate in? Had Ariel ever said anything about--

Aurora paused, the Song stretching out with her waiting hands, and Olivia realised she was waiting for a response.

"I don't understand," said Olivia with a shake of her head. "I don't speak, um, Song?"

Aurora scowled at that, a strange mark of imperfection on such an ethereal being.

Olivia pointed a finger at Aurora. "Don't look at me like that. What, you just expected that you could drag me in here and just expect me to be a perfect little Songstress thing?"

Aurora's continued scowl indicated that, yes, actually, she had expected exactly that.

Olivia rolled her eyes and folded her arms. "I'm not dealing with this right now. I've spent the last week being tortured and honestly, I think that alone deserves a break, let alone all the other crap you've been dumping on me ever since the festival. Go force your nightmares on someone else."

With that, Olivia turned her back on Aurora and sat down.

She placed her head in her hands and shut her eyes. Starlight, she was exhausted. She was spent mentally and physically and spiritually and by the peak of Skypillar she just wanted a break for like, two hours. Two hours where something of dire importance wasn't screaming in her ear and forcing her to stand up and move.

Behind her, Olivia felt Aurora's presence shift. She tensed, wondering if Aurora would try to help her like before, if she'd try and take away all these feelings that were drowning her because she kept gulping them in.

Instead, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

Olivia looked up to find Aurora kneeling beside her, a shimmering hand resting lightly on Olivia. Aurora's silvery eyes glistened as they lifted and held Olivia's gaze.

The Song around them became filled with sorrow, with regret.

I wouldn't ask this of you if there were another option.

This wasn't what Olivia had wanted at all. From the beginning, she'd never really wanted to be special. She'd just wanted the freedom to make her own decisions, to breathe and swim and dance without worrying everyone she cared about. She wasn't a deity, wasn't a saviour, and she definitely wasn't some immortal spirit of a mountain who had covered up the mouth of evil itself so many eons ago.

But there was something lurking in her gut. Some feeling of curled trepidation that suspected she might be the difference between ensuring that Aurora's nightmares didn't become her own.

Then she felt him die again, and this time, it wasn't just Aurora's spirit that she felt crack.

Olivia's breath caught heavy in her chest for a long moment before she spoke.

"Teach me," said Olivia. "Teach me how to be a Songstress."

*+*+*+*

Instead of following his initial impulse to investigate Gwen's lead, Jason heeded her warning and spent the next few hours inside the temple's library.

He pulled out book after book, carefully searching through each one despite the confused inquiries of the scribes. He wasn't sure how to ask them about ancient dealings while still ensuring their safety if his actions caught the Serpent's interest. And so, alone, tucked into a desk well hidden from any curious gazes, he delved the pages for any sign of something useful.

Still, every so often, his gaze would lift from the pages, and he'd catch himself staring out the window at the Celestial's Eye Falls with the urge to find the entrance.

It wasn't until after he'd left that he'd realised Gwen hadn't told him how to enter the ruins. He wasn't sure whether it'd been intentional on her part, but it certainly made it significantly harder for him to follow the lead without consulting her a second time.

Because somewhere within those ruins was the next piece of the puzzle, the next piece in solving this game he'd found himself drawn into. Ruins that were hidden within the mountain he'd spent his life under. Ruins that were swarmed with dark, evolving creatures, hostile to all Luminaries who entered. A heart chamber that could be the solution to healing Nereid's Ascended--and possibly Banshee's.

If the legends are true, if Skypillar truly sealed the Other's chasm, what does that mean?

What happened to the first civilisation that brought it to such an end, if their Luminaries were so powerful?

What can we hope to do if they couldn't stop their own doom?

Jason dragged his gaze from the window for the hundredth time with a small sigh. He closed the book in his hands and placed it flat on the desk in front of him before lifting his hands to massage his forehead.

So many words. So much information. He liked study, he found significant comfort in words that were patient on the pages, words that didn't mind if he read them over multiple times to completely grasp their meaning, but this? This was borderline masochism. The chances of stumbling across information that ancient within these books was near impossibly. It was like trying to complete a picture-faded puzzle while lacking the majority of the pieces by simply guessing how they were supposed to connect.

Jason's ear bent down as Sae morphed back into his bird-like form and perched on it.

Jason screwed one eye shut in mild irritation. "What are you doing?"

"Nothin'!" Sae said with a beakful of Jason's hair. He quickly used it to pull his claws off Jason's ear and dangle off the side of Jason's head, holding onto the hair like a rope. "Any luck?"

"Your hints are as vague as ever," grumbled Jason. "I can't find anything about the districts, or our friend in this library. The only place I'd find information that old is in the archives."

Sae swung around to look Jason in the eye, creating a rather uncomfortably close distance. "Seems like a good plan to me."

"How?" said Jason. "It takes days for anything in the archives to be translated from the code the first civilisation used to store their data. Given that I'd effectively be guessing, the chances of me selecting something useful to be translated would be nearly impossible."

Sae turned his beak around, his eye glancing casually around the room. "As impossible as, say... you not only crossing paths with Olivia, but being stuck with her, too?"

Jason paused, frowned and slid his gaze to Sae. "What are you saying?"

"I'm just saying that sometimes destiny has to be led into the Starlight Hall half-blind by a small little Ascended that may or may not resemble Banshee's transformation."

"What are you talking about? My mother caught Olivia in the Starlight Hall. She'd clearly just dimmed and with her glasses broken, accidentally..." Jason covered his face with his hands as he realised exactly who Olivia might have been relying on to guide her. "You two didn't."

"So!" continued Sae like he hadn't just dropped that one on Jason. "To the archives!"

"Tomorrow," said Jason, nudging Sae back onto his ear. "I still need to check in on Olivia tonight, and I want to be ready if anything happens during the Auroras."

Sae shifted back into the ear cuff without another word as down the corridor, one of the scribes began their patrol route towards where Jason sat. Upon realising the scribe had noticed his attention, Jason inclined his head towards them. They returned the gesture, continuing their casual stroll down the corridor, inspecting various elements of the room as they passed.

From that distance, Jason wasn't overly concerned that the scribe had heard or seen anything. He stood from the chair, ensuring Olivia's pouch was still safely tucked away before calmly sliding the chair back under the desk and stacking the books neatly in his arms. The scribes preferred it when you simply returned the books to the front desk and allowed them to return them to ensure no mistakes would be made, but today, Jason personally returned each to their place, just to be certain that no additional information could be gleaned from his selection.

Jason left the library after a short, polite conversation with the scribe at the front desk to explain his lack of books.

He straightened his coat as he stepped out into the temple grounds and got his bearings. Despite being late afternoon, there were still a significant amount of people about. Most ignored him, but others--particularly those in temple robes he recognised--directed multiple glances his way, usually at his scar-covered arms or his growing ponytail.

It seemed almost funny to him that they received the same attention when he'd been so concerned with the scars, yet barely given his hair a second thought.

Jason simply inclined his head towards them and continued across the golden starstone.

He wasn't sure if it was simply his perspective, or if the temple grounds seemed more... sombre. Six months ago, it would have been hard to find a place on golden starstone out of earshot of some Speaker preaching of Skypillar's majesty. Now, it was hard to find a place where doubt didn't whisper in the gazes of those around him. Many of the temple staff were yet to recover the zeal they'd lost when Harpy and Wyvern had gone Dark, and recent events had struck while their faith was still recovering.

He knew he was a large part of why their faith was being tested, but as he passed by a small group of Grovespeakers accompanied by a Mistpillar in high spirits, he was reminded that he could move past it. That even when something came to an end--whether it be a Luminary's ascension, or a temple's faith in their Cryophoenix--the world was not about endings. It was about the journey, and it would continue whether you were standing up and walking or being dragged along behind.

Jason crossed the bridge over the temple canal into Cevinari.

The faint rose glow of the starstone was of little comfort as he headed towards the hospital. Outside the temple grounds, the sombre atmosphere only grew heavier. There weren't as many people as he'd have expected for a warm afternoon. Those that were about were quiet and kept to themselves. No one swam in the nearby canals. The entire City felt like it was holding its breath. It was tense, tight, and anxious, waiting for the next blow to land.

They're scared, he realised. They've lost Harpy and Wyvern. DragonFae is injured. Banshee was either taken or rampaging through the City. Cryophoenix hadn't been seen since his near-lethal hunt through the City. Pegasus and Nereid are too fresh to be protecting anyone, even if Nereid were able to harness her full range of abilities.

There was so much. So much to fix, to solve, to understand, and the sheer weight of it hit him all at once.

He felt the anxiety creeping up his throat and forced himself to breathe. He spared a glance for the small, flowered bushes that lined the streets, taking a deep inhale of the scent they left in the air. He tuned out the hum of nervous conversations for the rippling water flowing through the canals.

No endings, he reminded himself with each step. Just the journey.

*+*+*+*

Not for the first time, Olivia pushed her way back into the realm of swirling silver.

The effort alone was enormous. Unable to verbalise, to sing the way she could in reality, the push was entirely mental. It wasn't just imagining that she could hear the aurorasong--it was believing it. It was believing with every fibre of her being that the Song stuck in her head was more than just a simple line of melody, flowing over and over through her mind and her heart and her blood.

Because that was all she had. A few bars of the aurorasong that she could barely hold onto, that did nothing but repeat the same piece of blurred memory, over and over again.

Yet she did. She did it time and time again, each time hoping that she'd find something else. Each time she could have stopped, could have drifted back into the cradling darkness of unconsciousness. All she knew was that there was something direly important looming on the horizon--and that somehow, it had something to do with Jason.

As the Song spat her out once more in the same place she'd been fifty times already, she saw it again.

The girl--Aurora, but grown. She was a teenager, perhaps Olivia's own age. Her hair was still golden, though there were now streaks of silver woven through the strands, like a shooting star had become tangled within. She stood among the swirling silver mist, her gaze lying broken on the horizon.

Olivia had been here enough times to somewhat grasp the flickers of memory as they shot by. She understood the silver-covered sky, the barrier stretching over the City with its broken starstone walls. She understood the ruined districts, the empty streets, the panic immediately followed by the hollow feeling that echoed off the walls, even if it rubbed her anxiety bare.

What she didn't understand was what came next.

Like always, the golden-haired Aurora's eyes fixated directly on Olivia's. Fear lanced through her. The same fear Olivia had felt after every nightmare she'd woken from--the nightmares where she woke up and she knew he was gone.

Aurora--had her nightmares always been Aurora, trying to communicate? Trying to warn her, to tell her that something wanted him? That something was coming for him?

I thought I could stop it, Aurora would always whisper next. Her eyes would always turn back to the horizon, fragmented by a loss so deep it'd cracked her in two. I thought that with this power, I could save him, but it wasn't enough. There was never a choice.

"Stop what?" said Olivia, desperation creeping in as the final few notes of the melody approached. There were other things, other scenes and emotions, but all of them were buried too far beneath the fear for her to grasp. "Why are you showing me this?"

She never got an answer.

The silver would always fade to an icy swirl, blinding her and stinging her face as she raised her arms to protect herself from the blast. When she lowered them again, there was nothing but a harsh, frozen landscape around her, glinting like a knife in the cold light of day.

And just like every other time, Olivia was left standing there on the ice, feeling not only her own frustrations, but the flicker of someone else's.

"Look, I'm trying," said Olivia, turning around to find Aurora's silvery outline standing behind her, arms folded. The flickers of Aurora's frustration manifested into agitations within the mist around her, something that was starting to bug Olivia. She could manipulate the mist, but not figure out how to speak a few words? "But it's a little hard to get a grasp on the idea when all you can do is let me guess and nudge my feelings in the right direction afterwards!"

Aurora just continued to stand there, staring at Olivia. She lifted one hand from her arms and spun her finger around in a circle, indicating that Olivia should try again--or at least that's what Olivia had come to interpret it as.

Aurora was trying to teach her. Olivia understood that much.

The problem was understanding absolutely anything else. Aurora spoke in nothing but Song and seemed completely unable to hear Olivia. Aside from vague hand gestures and very-gentle-and-with-permission nudges on Olivia's feeling, they had no way to communicate.

She didn't know if she was supposed to simply use these bars of Song as a training exercise, or if she were supposed to be learning something from the events contained within. It'd taken her forever to simply learn to dive into the Song, let alone begin to understand it.

Aurora simply made the finger-swirling hand gesture again, and Olivia just sighed.

"Starlight, this would be so much easier if we both knew sign language or something," grumbled Olivia as she braced herself to attempt the dive again.

Just like all the previous attempts, she had to fight her way through Aurora's nightmare first.

Only this time, it wasn't just a blurred mess of memories bound together with taut threads of emotions

She had a strange view of everything, the sense that she could watch the entire City at once, though she was focused on one particular place--no, one person. He was featureless, created of nothing but wavelengths of light and sound, but she knew it was him, the one she'd felt die over and over and over again like she knew her name was Olivia.

He moved like he was entranced. Head lifted, arms relaxed, steps even. There was no hesitation, no caution, no consideration for the danger that lay ahead of him. He walked into the desolated districts calmly, an unwitting sacrifice.

Olivia barely dared to breathe. If she could get closer, if she could figure out where he was going, what he was doing, who he was, then maybe this would hold the answers. Maybe this could--

Somewhere, a spike of dread cleaved the clarity of the scene and washed Olivia away.

It dissolved into nothing more than a darkened sky, into whispers of claws and talons as they scraped against starstone. Panted breaths and a muttered plea to anyone who was listening as he was led towards his doom like a moth to the raging flames. Because her voice had been stolen, because this light was blinding her thoughts, and all she could do was Sing. Singing his Song, praying to the stars that he'd hear her before--

Olivia staggered back out of the nightmare, gasping for air like she'd been drowning.

In front of her, Aurora was on her knees, clutching her head, her Song a shrill scream around her. Olivia stumbled over to her, watching her hand pass straight through Aurora's shoulder when she reached for her. The notes of her scream continued to pierce the mist, splitting it, shredding it, until all around them, reality began to unravel.

Olivia's foot slipped through first. The rest of her slammed into the ice-covered ground as her fingers scrabbled against the frost. She brought her legs up with a curse, curling her midsection around the apparently very thin plane of ice they'd been sitting on, but the edge was rapidly receding, the hole growing with every second Aurora's shrill note continued.

Even though she was pretty sure this reality wasn't vital to her existence, Olivia still wasn't ready to let it go. She'd absolutely had enough of being pushed around to whatever reality was convenient for whichever immortal deity currently had their interests on her, and more to the point, Aurora was very clearly not okay.

Having no idea how to fix it, Olivia just started to Sing.

She Sang the only thing that came to mind, and was surprised to find it was the Song she'd first heard Jason play upon his violin. The one she'd danced a harmony to, lost in the swirling, frozen currents of the melody he wove. Cold was safe, cold could be soft and comforting, but cold was silent death. It could lure you in with a breath and keep you forever. It was unforgiving, but it could be pushed back together. Alone was dangerous, but together--

Aurora's scream fell silent, and Olivia found herself staring back into those silvered eyes, pale human fingers twined among those of silver mist and starlight.

And on the final, dying notes of the Frostsong, Olivia heard her.

She will take him too, if you don't stop her.

Him--Jason.

With her stomach in knots, Olivia found her voice. "Stop her from doing what?"

But it was no longer Song coming out of her mouth. It was words, simple, human words, and Aurora's silver stare was the perfect mirror for Olivia's feelings about that.

So she did the only thing she could.

Olivia dove in again.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Is this a chapter? ON A WEDNESDAY? H e c k i n lookout world, I'm not full potato anymore. 

P.S: I'm still reading every single comment about three times, I'm just not quite full interactive potato mode yet so replies are a little sketchy <3