ace of spades | genshin impact

♤ before ♤

IT HAD BEEN A TUMULTUOUS winter's evening in the village. Although the locals were no stranger to the brisk weather, the frostbite nipping a little too rough on everyone's fingers was irksome, to say the least. Families of eleven were crowded near fires while widows and recluses struggled to keep the frost away. Wind pounded at the front doors with a sense of urgency like it wanted a place by the heat as well.

Everyone was home, fighting the winter like it was a damn war. Everyone except the peculiar child.

His own father had given in to his guilty weaknesses after barely seeing a meter ahead of him on his search. The snow was too furious, and his son was too mad to understand the perils of normal people. To ask him to return was futile. Bring him home, and you welcomed the devil to your doorstep.

The boy towed an aura with him like a dog. His siblings cared little about the gossip around town. Perhaps one or two of the eldest would object against such badmouthing, but it seemed their admiration for their brother couldn't shake away the layer of venom the boy had worn. It left his mother in hysterics and his father as a failure, but he had hardly the humanity to notice.

What he found, a mere child in the cold, all those months ago, made everyone agitated. He had changed. Grown. He came out with the eyes a 14-year-old shouldn't have.

"On a damn rebellious streak," his father scowled. "He doesn't understand the situation he puts us in."

"Did you find him?" Anthon asked through a frigid jaw.

The man sighed, knocking the snow from the inside of his boots. "I'll check when the weather calms down. It's suicide out there."

The brother faced the fire again tentatively, feeling the heat of the flames tickle his skin. Ajax always did this. He would leave nights longer than he'd be back. Often on lonely nights missing an extra body in the heaps of fur blankets, a cry would hang in the wood cabin from one of the younger ones. And whenever Ajax returned, he would shed that smile of blithe and a bit of something else that always made everything better. But the feeling of uneasiness each day he came back never left Anthon's shoulder. Ever since he went missing, his brother wasn't so sure how much of him came back.

Deep in the snow-capped mountains, far from his shivering and worrisome family, the ginger found himself a cave to take homage. The torrent of hale and snow raced over the side of the cliff, closing the cave off with a frosty door. Ajax rubbed his nose, warming his fingers with his breath, blowing clouds of heat into the arctic air. He started a small fire further into the cavern using stone and some loose wood he packed. The boy was a light packer, but he knew not to be stupid enough to travel the mountains without the essentials. Especially considering the place he was planning on heading.

He made a torch and decided to venture deeper into the shadows. The stone danced with the warm light cast across the surface like they were partners. The air grew sticky with the smell of earth. The boy sighed when he reached the end, grazing his gloved fingers against the uneven ground. He had been searching for the place for months now, unable to return. He had gone countless times, recounted every step he took, but the hellish gates to the place he knew more than home had completely vanished. His entire village must've been convinced he had gone insane. Maybe they were right. But Ajax wasn't done with his search. He was known for his stubbornness and pride. He promised himself.

There was a demon just over the horizon, calling his name like a lullaby and a taunt twisted into a knot. He grew restless at the thought of it simply there but comforted all the same. Some nights, it left him clawing at his throat with a passion so deep, he was scared his skin had reached its last layer. The obsession, the intoxicating yet bewitching dream of finding his missing realm, was destroying him. Slowly. Painfully. He was far too self-aware. And the demon in him made sure of it. But he couldn't stop. What a worse fate than to lose purpose?

Ajax took a step back, waving his torch in the air carefully. In the shadows of the cave, drawings from thousands of years before seemed to animate before his eyes. A soft, gentle smile crept onto his lips as he watched the stories unfold on the stone.

Perhaps Ajax did leave a part of himself in that ominous abyss. It was like a cold that could never go away. The one that ate at you from the inside out, but maybe that was what made it so infatuating.

Deep in the cold heights of Snezhnaya, the sleeping beast hibernated, waiting for the day he would face that same exhilaration just out of reach. And he waited. And grew hungry.