Chapter Text
Abram is eleven when he runs for the first time. He is eleven and terrified, and he has no idea where he is running to, but any place is better than where he is running from. That palace, his father, the lessons the man thought to teach Abram. It is too much. He does not like the blood, and he does not like the bruises, and he especially does not like it when he must bruise and bleed others.
His father likes it, though.
He wants Abram to be just like him. Cold, and merciless, and capable of killing without thought or mind. To take on his family’s legacy and serve the empire as he must. It is his duty as his father’s sole heir.
Abram does not like that, does not want that.
But he shouldn’t have said that to his father.
The cuts on his back hurt, but not as much as the burns. Nothing ever hurts as much as the burns. They are a raking, aching pain that lingers and lingers until they turn into ugly scars.
The area he runs through is a dark woodland, situated at the edge of his family’s property, and hugs the base of one of the taller mountains found in this country. His father’s family has lorded over this piece of land for centuries. Since ancient times. Long before the Morriyama’s claimed rule of the empire through twisted words and blood-stained knives the Wesninski’s controlled this land, and Abram doubts there will ever be a time they don’t.
Not if his father gets his way.
Abram takes another stumbling step, the twisting gnarled tree roots seeming to catch and pull at his feet, as if wanting to capture him. To trap him there until his father finds him. Abram rips his foot away and scurries on, not wanting to linger too long in one place.
The trees surrounding him are old. Their age reflected in the size and width of their trunks, how their branches seem as vast as oceans, so all-encompassing they hide the night sky and plunge Abram’s world into shadow. If one were to look up, they’d never see the full moon that shone brightly over the land, only darkness with a few brave beams of light that made it through the thick foliage overhead.
Abram has never been this far into the forest, not even when his father would take him out on his hunting trips. They always stayed away from the deep woods. It is dangerous this far out, he’d been told.
His mother says these woods are cursed, bathed in the blood of a god long dead. From a time even before his family claimed them as their own. Abram sometimes wonders if it was his ancestors that killed the god, if they won the land through slaughter. That is what they’re known for, bloodshed.
His foot catches on something else, and Abram can’t think of that anymore as he spends the next few minutes trying to extract it from the tangle of vines he got stuck in. Once it’s out he turns to move on, but his movements stop as his eyes catch on something glinting dimly in the undergrowth.
Against his better judgment, and the part of his brain that tells him his father has surely realized he’s gone by now, he bends down and reaches out to move aside some of the vines blocking his view.
He squints in the dimness, then blinks and moves more of the undergrowth out of the way. What stares back up at him is an amulet, intricate in design and glowing duly with an internal light all its own. After a long moment of contemplation Abram reaches down and plucks it from the tangle of vines to get a better look at it.
It’s warm under his touch, and shaped like a crescent moon, complex runes carved delicately into its surface. Abram cradles it gently in cupped palms, wondering who might have left it. It doesn’t seem too old. Someone is surely missing it.
As if sensing his thoughts, the amulet pulses once, letting out a bright light that illuminates Abram’s surroundings, and makes him flinch back in surprise. It dims again a moment later, still lighter than when he originally found it, but not blinding.
Abram’s eyes adjust to the faint light slowly, and when he can finally see again he realizes he might have ventured too far into the forest.
Around him are the desolate ruins of what once might have been a temple. Tall spires of white stone surround him, crumbling in some places, and in others still mimicking the skeleton of a truly huge building. It spans the mountain side, and Abram can just imagine what it had once been. A place of worship dedicated to a powerful deity with countless followers. Abram has heard stories of this place. Of powerful priests gifted with the magic of the moon, able to heal as easily as they were able to kill. People feared them, and the god who’d gifted them their powers. The blessings they had were too great, and people set out to end them for it. That is how the god died, Abram remembers being told. He was trying to protect his people.
A breeze flows through the branches overhead, and for a moment the silver light of the moon grazes the elegant arches and pillars that dot the overgrown forest floor.
“What are you doing here?” A vacant voice says behind him, and Abram jerks around eyes wildly searching the trees until they land on the owner of the voice. A pale faced youth stares back at him, light hair almost white in the dull light coming from the amulet. A thin eyebrow arches delicately over two endless pits of shadow where his eyes should be. “Well?”
Abram can’t respond, mouth clamped shut over a fearful scream that threatens to bubble out of his throat. The person isn’t one of his father’s men, he looks too young, but Abram doesn’t think that fact made the situation any better. He takes a step back, and turns swiftly, legs already running before his mind can fully process what he is doing.
He slams into something hard and falls gracelessly to the ground, his back screaming in pain as he lands amidst the rock and rubble.
The boy stands over him, eyes still cast in shadow even as the light from the amulet directly hits his face. “You’re hurt.”
Abram sneers at that. “Now I am.”
The person standing over him doesn’t say anything to that, simply leaning down and studying Abram’s face. Abram shifts, but the wounds on his back stretch and he lets slip a hiss of pain. The boy looks unimpressed. “I didn’t give you those.”
Abram frowns, there’s no way he could have seen his wounds, they are completely covered by Abram’s shirt.
The boy tilts his head, the strange shadow of his eyes seems to linger in the air a moment to long before it follows suit. “You smell like blood.”
Abram flinches back, a shiver racing up his spine. “What are you?”
“Who did this to you?” The boy asks without answering, and Abram is sure whatever this thing in front of him might be it isn’t human.
Perhaps it’s a spirit, hopefully it’s not something worse. “Why should I tell you?”
The boy gives him a long look that Abram feels, like fingers raking over his soul. “You’re the one who called me here. Was it not to seek vengeance?”
The amulet still clutched in his palm heats up at the boy’s words, and Abram thinks he might have messed up in grabbing the thing. Magic isn’t to be messed with. Realizing he can’t get away, Abram decides to do the opposite and leans forward with a glare. “I don’t need your help.”
There is silence for a second, and Abram hopes that is the last of it, but then his hope is crushed like usual. “What’s your name?”
Abram narrows his eyes. “Why would I tell some woodland ghost that?”
“Woodland ghost…” the boy mutters to himself, but he doesn’t sound offended, which pisses Abram off in a way.
“If you want my name then tell me yours,” Abram says carelessly, trying to get any sort of reaction from the ghost. Could spirits even feel? This one doesn’t really act like it.
The boy watches him for a moment, and there is almost something there in the darkness of his eyes. A glint of silver, maybe, like the slimmest thread of a new moon. “You can call me Andrew.”
‘Andrew’ stares at him while Abram remains silent, waiting for his response. Abram supposes he shouldn’t go back on his word, not with a spirit at least. “...I’m Abram.”
“Abram.” The name rolls off of Andrew’s tongue with the sound of bells as it fills the empty forest. “Who did this to you?”
Abram shakes his head and keeps his mouth shut, he’s already said too much.
Andrew seems to expect this and pushes on. “I saw you running through the woods like a scared little rabbit.”
Bristling Abram grits his teeth. “I’m not a rabbit.”
“Could have fooled me.” Andrew shifts back, settling on the ground. “But who’s hunting you?”
Abram snaps his mouth shut again. “What do you want spirit?”
“Nothing.” The answer seems almost automatic coming from Andrew’s lips. “I can heal you, though.”
“And what would you want in return?”
Sharp laughter breaks through the darkness, and it takes Abram a moment to realize it’s Andrew’s. “You’ve already given me your name Abram.”
Magic pulses through the ground with the words, sending a shock up Abram’s spine. He weighs his options. “Can you make it so they don’t scar?”
Andrew nods slowly, and after a pause Abram turns his back to the spirit before him. “Then do it.”
A cool hand touches the center of his spine, but instead of inflicting the pain Abram expects a wave of numbness washes over his wounds as they slowly stitch themselves back together.
The hand is gone a breath later, and Abram turns back around to find Andrew still sitting where he had been. Abram stretches and twists but finds no pain from the cuts and burns his father had inflicted on him. It is a relief. “Thank you.”
Andrew’s eyes widen slightly as if he’s never heard the words before, but he says nothing and lets the silence settle between them.
Abram doesn’t say anything either, and his legs have long gone numb before he breaks their quiet. “I need to go home.”
The moon has lowered itself to the horizon, its soft light falling between the gaps in the trees and mixing with that of the amulet. Hours must have passed since he’d run from his father, but to Abram it feels like only minutes have gone by. Andrew is still sitting across from him on the overgrown grass. Fingers fiddling with a piece of what once might have been a statue, Abram isn’t sure.
“You want to go back?”
Abram looks to him at that, and just barely there he can hear a faint trace of something in the other boy’s voice. It might be anger. “I need to, it’ll only be worse if I don’t.”
“You could leave.”
Abram shakes his head at that impossibility and stands up, dusting off his breeches and straightening his shirt. Andrew’s eerie eyes trace his movements, but Abram isn’t as off put by them as he had been. There’s something to be said in spending a night in silence with another, Abram felt a familiarity with the spirit that he hadn’t before. “There’s nowhere for me to go.”
Andrew’s head dips at that.
Abram reaches out, the amulet he’d been holding dangling from the tips of his fingers. Its light seems to reflect off of Andrew’s hair, making it glow as if a halo of white surrounds him, but the light doesn’t reach his eyes. They instead eat away at it until nothing remains. Abram wonders why that is. “Here, this is yours, right?”
Andrew studies the amulet, a slight furrow appearing between his brows. “No.”
“No?” It wasn’t? But hadn’t that been how he’d summoned Andrew? It only made since that the spirit before him had once owned the amulet, how else would he be here now?
Andrew shakes his head again. “No, keep it. It is something meant to protect, something I don’t need.”
The ‘anymore’ went unsaid.
Andrew stands and takes a step forward, hands loosely wrapping around the amulet’s chain and pulling it from Abram’s loose grip, contradicting the words he’d just spoke. There is a second as it hangs in the air between them where the runes creeping up the sides of the crescent moon shine a wispy blue, but when Abram blinks its back to how it had been, glowing a simple faint silver. Andrew nods to himself slightly, then gently places the chain over Abram’s head and around his neck, never once touching his skin.
Abram looks down, feeling a warmth settling in his chest, like a pool of magic had been placed above his heart. “What did you do?”
Andrew steps back and turns away, beginning to walk deeper into the ruins without looking back. “Made it so you can find this place again, if you want to.”
Abram blinks in surprise, and the boy disappears. Leaving the temple as empty as it had first been when Abram found it. Tracing a palm over the amulet’s curved surface Abram takes a breath, steels himself, and starts the long walk back home, all the while wondering about a certain spirit and his mysterious eyes.