Path of the Extra

Chapter 422: Heliophagy

With complete control—consciousness, intention, effort—Azriel laughed this time.

He laughed loudly, knowingly, at the sight before him.

And, creepily enough, his laughter matched those lugubrious laughs.

In the end, Azriel’s laugh was utterly depressing.

It broke apart, just as his face did, while he forced himself to take one step after another toward the long table.

When he reached the vacant chair, he sat down. Only then did he look toward the other side.

He was seated there.

Another him.

The spitting image of Azriel.

His upper body was exposed, fractured with cracks. Blood covered him from head to toe, and the wounds on his skull still hung open, leaking slowly. He stared back with a pensive, funereal expression, one leg crossed over the other, his arms folded across his chest.

Then he spoke, his voice almost lachrymose.

”He was born beneath a borrowed sky,

with sea-salt in his breath,

a boy who dreamed too often of

the blue beyond his death.

His father shaped him fragile wings

from feathers, wax, and thread,

with trembling hands that knew too well

the warnings left unsaid.

Do not fly low, the father said,

the hungry waters wait.

Do not fly high, my foolish son,

the sun has never prayed.”

Azriel blinked.

Only then did he realize what the other him was reciting.

A poem.

A poem about the boy who flew too close to the sun.

Without realizing it, Azriel settled deeper into the chair and listened.

”But Icarus heard only wind,

that sweet and silver call,

the voice that tells a lonely boy

he was not born to crawl.

He rose above the prison walls,

above the grief, the stone,

and for a breath, the world below

could claim him not its own.

His father cried, but joy is loud,

and youth is hard to save;

the sky had opened like a door,

the sea below, a grave.

He laughed because the air was kind,

because the chains were gone,

because his heart, so long held still,

had finally found the dawn.”

A sharp pain spread across Azriel’s right hand and up his arm. He glanced down and saw that the cracks had crawled farther across his skin.

His hand was trembling.

He could not make it stop.

Unaware—or perhaps simply uncaring—his other self did not stop.

”The sun looked down with golden teeth,

the wax began to weep,

and one by one, the feathers fell

like prayers too frail to keep.

His arms reached out for empty blue,

his voice broke into foam,

and all at once the sky forgot

it ever was his home.

He fell, not like a wicked thing,

not punished for his pride,

but like a child who loved the light

and flew too close inside.

His father screamed his name below,

but names cannot undo

the distance between falling boys

and hands they never knew.

The sea received him soft and cold,

as though it meant no harm,

and closed above his broken wings,

his hair, his little warmth.

No thunder spoke. No god bent down.

No lesson split the air.

Only the sun, still bright above,

pretended not to care.

And somewhere under quiet waves,

where golden feathers gleam,

a boy who loved the sky too much

sank gently from his dream.”

He finally finished.

A peaceful silence followed.

No wind howled or whispered. No screams. No shouts. No footsteps. No clatter of battle.

Azriel closed his eyes and tried to bask in that silence, because it felt...

Good.

For one brief moment, his mind felt empty.

Quiet.

Then, as softly as he could, as if afraid to disturb it, he said,

”...That was beautiful.”

Azriel smacked his lips.

”Am I Icarus?”

Because he had not opened his eyes, he could not see what expression his other self wore. Yet somehow, Azriel knew he had shaken his head.

His tone did not change.

”You were born beneath a scalded sun, that old, implacable eye, and you called it fortune until fortune began to laugh. Life gave you Death. Death gave you Life. Between them, you walked—as a pale, unlucky thing. Half-boy. Half-omen. A soul calcined clean by grief’s slow alchemy.”

Those words made Azriel open his eyes.

His other self stared back at him with pitying eyes.

A disgusting prickle of annoyance crept through Azriel as he looked into that gaze.

He did not like it.

He did not like this person.

He did not like being looked at with pity.

”Poor child. Poor king. Poor prince. Poor abattoir saint. Poor nobody. You only wanted to save what you loved. But love, too, is a conflagration. It does not ask what must be spared. It only burns, and burns, and burns—until even the sun looks away.”

Azriel clenched his hands.

He was about to speak when he suddenly choked on his own spit. He covered his mouth and coughed several times, each breath scraping painfully through his throat.

When he looked down at his blood-dried hand, still trembling, he saw something fresh and wet spread across his palm.

New blood.

His eyes dulled.

’Shit...’

Azriel looked up at his other self.

”Are you done with your poems?”

”...”

The other him simply sat there in silence.

Said nothing.

That only angered Azriel further. He almost snapped, almost let the words spill out, but swallowed them down along with the heat rising in his throat.

Then he asked, more calmly,

”...Who am I?”

”You are me,” he replied in a monotone voice.

”And I am you.”

Gritting his teeth, Azriel could not hold himself back any longer.

”You don’t fucking say? Who would have thought the person sitting right across from me—with the same hair, the same skin, the same eyes, the same damned lungs—was actually me? Wow. Fucking genius. I must be an absolute idiot for not thinking of that.”

Unlike Azriel, his other self did not react at all.

He simply said,

”They wish to break not only your mind, but your spirit as well.”

Azriel’s eyes reddened.

Then, a small crack of a smile appeared on the other him’s face.

Azriel almost missed it.

”But the unwise fool themselves by acting wise.”