Mists of Celeste - an Ateez Fanfic

act four ➻ part eight

Five people in the room. Dark walls, wood panels laid over bricks at haphazard and awkward angles, quiet voices muttering off to the side, three cots smashed together as closely as possible on one side of the room, body splayed out on the two cots on your left whilst you lie on the third. Every muscle in your body aches and burns like it's been sitting over a fire for the better part of a day. There's a slight itch to your throat, but you can't even bring yourself to cough. You don't move; you aren't sure you could if you wanted to, so you don't push it quite yet and instead settle for lying down and listening to the hushed whispers around you.

Seonghwa's voice is the first to drift to your ears, and just the sound of it lets a bit of comfort sink into your heavy bones. You wish he was at your side and not across the room, and the small cravings for his hand in yours swell up in chest. Jongho speaks up after that with his deep timbre that rumbles against the soft sound of the air conditioner. And lastly, Yunho. His voice grates hard on your mind, and you wish you could fall asleep just so that you wouldn't have to listen to it any longer. One quick glance to your left tells you that Yeosang is sprawled on the cot beside yours, and just past the steady rise and fall of his chest, you catch sight of Hongjoong's blue head of hair.

Five people in the room, and San isn't one of them.

Rest is out of the question at this point, especially with the swirling memories of the dream you woke up from not too long ago.

"Ah, Tsukio. There you are."

"Tsukio?" You question, head falling to the side as confusion waves over you. Water continues to lap at your feet and pushes between your bare toes. "That's — you've never called me that before."

"Yes, I have, child. Ever since the first time you visited me."

Daichi turns back to the pebbles under him. He nudges them some more with the end of his twisted branch, then lets the stick splash against the surface of the lake. He pushes himself up to his full height, yet something about it doesn't feel quite right. He isn't as tall as you remember him to be. Not only that, but your body doesn't feel the way it usually does. You feel heavier, like something is wrapped tight around you and pulling your shoulders down with its weight, but you can't bring your hands up to look at them any longer.

"She is too close to you," Daichi utters without sparing you another glance.

"She?"

"You were foolish enough to let the fire come in and scald you. The water will drown you in her embrace."

"Wh-What?" You stammer through your endless confusion. You hardly have the mental capacity to be thinking about the meaning behind his riddles might be, but that added to the strange foreign sensation running through your system doesn't help to ease your panic one bit.

"How often must I remind you of the prophecy before it sinks in through that skull of yours, Tsukio?"

You grit your teeth together to keep from snapping at the old man and telling him off. You want nothing more than to tell him that you are not Tsukio, you are not Umiko, you are just Y/N and nothing else. He has never even mentioned any sort of fucking prophecy to you in all the time you've been meeting with the damn man.

"The moon will meet the sea in fire, and guided by the earth, they will seek the sun. As the sun rises out of the east, so the moon will set in the west with waters crashing out of the south and the earth climbing in the north, and fires will blaze at the center of it all. Blood spilled over pale sands and misted skies."

You find it in you to pull away from the man, although it takes far too much effort to do so, and you slide back across the mud. The sensation is strange between your toes, and you certainly don't welcome it, but it carries you away from Daichi and his odd mutterings. That's good enough for you. You don't manage to pull that far away before your legs fail. Black waters splash around you when your knees sink into the mud. That's the position you remain in for quite some time too; unable to pull yourself up and incapable of doing anything other than stare down at the swirling waters. It's only when they still that your senses return. Because the reflection in the water is not your own.