Iuno

Iuno awakens as if pulled from the deep water.

Air fills her lungs little by little. The stone steps beneath her feet are cold and solid. Every growing trace of sensation surprises her. Too vivid, too real. To disappear means nothing remains. The past, the present, and all that might have been... nothing but silence. She has already accepted that cost and her vanishing. So why, like some sunken, waterlogged remnant, is she still here?

In fact, she doesn't even know where she is. Everything around her looks normal, yet carries a heavy and sluggish pull, as if time might stand still at any second. Only the path beneath her continues. It's damp, cracked, yet stubborn. So she walks. Each step feels like treading on cooled bones, carrying her deeper into the unknown.

Keep walking.

That was what Iuno did most as a child. She walked over stone, moss, petals, even across bubbling springs. She never needed a reason, never chased meaning. She simply couldn't sit still. Just the thought of unseen places and untried things filled her with joy. She wanted to feel everything.

Her mother, Sibylla, was perhaps the only one who truly knew how to raise a child like that—free-spirited, wild, yet never arrogant. Sibylla bound her with no noble rules. She let Iuno run wild and embrace her longing. There was never just one path. Whichever one Iuno chose, her mother waited at the end.

That day began like any other. Young Iuno darted up the stairs, running straight into her mother's arms. Sibylla bent down to pull her close, her hand on the back of her head, her voice warm. "My Iuno did wonderfully as usual." Of course she did. Iuno blinked proudly. That Grandmother Lillibet had said she'd be the most gifted Priestess Septimont had ever seen. But... why just Priestess? Why couldn't she be gifted in something else?

Back then, Iuno still held a pure, innocent curiosity toward prophecies. She was too young to realize that to be favored by fate was a cost in itself.

But fate was tired of waiting.

Iuno's smile froze. She saw her mother coming apart, unraveling. Flesh sloughed off like melting wax. Blackness gnawed at her, but what spilled wasn't blood. It was darker and thicker than night, surging forward as if it would flood into Iuno's eyes the next second.

She stumbled back, then shut her eyes tight. It was too dark, too cold, too close. She clung to her mother's sleeve, trembling. Then, she forced her eyes open again, and everything was normal. The tide of fate had swept over her, sudden and unannounced. And just as swiftly, it had receded, leaving behind only the faintest touch.

She would speak of what she never truly saw that day, again and again. And her mother would only smile and smooth her hair. "It's alright, my dear. You've seen enough."

And then, in a support operation, her mother was taken by the Dark Tide, drowned in the endless filth. Those comforting words sank with her and never rose again. Iuno replayed that ordinary day countless times. When had the gray calcified matter begun to creep across her mother's body? When did the blackness first start to flow? Was that the key?

"If I had known… could I have saved her?"

"What if... I hadn't closed my eyes?"

Young Iuno stands once more on the stone steps and looks back. She opens her eyes wide, trying to etch the missing part into her gaze. But even now, in the realm devoid of reality, she sees nothing.

"One more chance."

Her voice is barely a whisper, like it wants to dissolve in the damp air. Maybe she speaks to herself. Maybe to something else entirely.

"Just give me one more chance… Let me see it."

But fate never looks back. Only the path below remains, layered like bones, pulling a shadowed figure closer with every step.

That is Iuno herself. She comes forward, step by step, passing the spot where her mother always stands waiting, toward the younger version of herself. The pull is nearly paralyzing. Soon, everything might return to silence. But it is alright. There is still enough time for one response.

She has been pulled from the depths. And in this brief breath, she chooses to pull something up in return.

Iuno kneels. The child before her has tear-bright eyes, lashes trembling, as if they might shut again. She reaches out and gently taps those small eyelids.

"Then, just don't close them."

"No matter how dark, how cold, how close… Don't close them."

Suddenly, the wind rises. It blows from nowhere, across the tallest spires, through the low trees, and stops, just there, upon the layered steps. Just enough to dry the corner of Iuno's eyes.

Once again, Iuno awakens as if pulled from the deep water.

Ever since the moment she first met her younger self and answered her, Iuno has begun to relive more and more of these strange awakenings.

Sometimes, she sees the past. Sometimes, she sees herself. But more often, she is simply made to bear it all again as she is, reliving memory as if it were the present, again and again, until everything slows, until silence swallows her whole, until the next awakening comes.

She grows used to the cycle. It begins to feel almost normal. But still, a quiet absurdity lingers. No one else remembers these moments stripped of meaning. Yet they cling to her, the one who chose to disappear. She alone is made to carry them in endless cycles. Is this fate's cruel trick? Or punishment for vanishing?

But there are no answers. She is awake again, and that means another fragment of the past has caught up to her.

That day, the rain was heavy and cold, but it didn't stop the crowd from gathering inside the Tetragon Temple. They had come to witness the arrival of the long-foretold prodigy, soon to join the ranks of the Priestesses. That day, Iuno heard more about the Priestesses than ever before: awe, reverence, and fantastical rumors. Some claimed that Priestesses could glimpse the ultimate truth and discover perfection buried within despair in their final moments.

After all, Priestesses stood closer than anyone to fate, to the future, to the unknown, and to the right path. That alone was enough to stir envy. But to Iuno, half of those claims were lies. And the other half, delusion. Because the night before that very day, while resting in the garden with the others, she had witnessed a Priestess's death.

A white dove had landed beneath the ancient laurel tree, its wings fluttering, barely covering the sound of weakening sighs. The dying Priestess turned to her, voice faint, and whispered:

"You... you're not like us. You were born able to see. So go. See it for us."

"I will," Iuno replied, almost inaudibly.

It was something she could do. But the one who heard her promise would never live to see it fulfilled. So yes, even those who walk beside fate, future, and the unknown in between aren't always stronger than others. They can't always see how it ends for themselves. And they, too, long for an answer.

Prophecy is both a chain and a key. Iuno wants to hold the key. But if she can, she also wants to break the chain. That was why she chose to become a Priestess, yet was unbound by others' expectations or ideals.

That day, she wore not the ceremonial robe, but an ancient garment adorned with satin and gold. Not as a supplicant of fate, but as someone who dares to meet its gaze. She stepped forward, candelabrum in hand.

Whispers stirred through the crowd. An Elder, rigid with tradition, muttered with disdain,

"Insolence... How can she be so lacking in humility?"

Iuno heard him. And for the first and last time, she answered:

"One who sees needs not kneel."

She raised her head. Her grey-blue eyes, with the light shining down from the Temple's high dome in them, were sharp as blades, gleaming as if eager to cut something open.

After that day, she began her long, unending dredge through the tide of chaos, reaching into the unknown for clarity. She saw more of the future. They were fragmented, frightening, and inescapable. She passed these visions on. Those who received them treated her words as scripture, a hope to clutch at. But Iuno knew better. They were only glimpses, fleeting slivers of fate slipping through the cracks.

And the more she saw, the more she realized that these visions were just like blades. If one wielded them without cutting something open, they themselves would be cut instead.

Since then, Iuno has never closed her eyes again. But deep inside, she begins to feel something tearing at her too.

Maybe it's memory.

Maybe it's the name people call her by.

Maybe it's just a piece of herself that fades a little more each time she looks too closely at the world.

Still, she is not afraid.

She stands in the wind of Septimont, rain clinging to her lashes like silver threads.

Grandmother Lillibet once told her she was born to see it all. And she has. But now, she wants to see something else:

Whether she can walk away from the blade and live to reach somewhere further.

Before the High Tide truly surged, Iuno was the first to foresee the devastating future.

The ominous creatures spawned by the tide were as dark as a moonless night. Gladiators fought with everything they had, but it was no use. Every time their weapons were about to pierce the Dark Tide creatures' bodies, those things would scatter and melt back into the tide, only to merge and be reborn. All they left behind was a trail of sneering, glistening sludge at the Gladiators' feet.

Some things in this world won't bend to your will simply because you see them coming with perfect clarity.

That night, Iuno barely slept. In her dream, it wasn't the creatures drowning in the Dark Tide. It was her. The tide swallowed her mouth and nose, drawing her down inch by inch. She had never known how deep it went. When her feet finally touched the bottom, her eye caught a colder, sharper version of herself standing on the other side.

"You really believe that to see is to save?"

The other Iuno smiled. In her eyes were countless shattered versions of Septimont—burned, sunken, rebuilt, and collapsed again.

"You can see everyone… except yourself."

Iuno tried to reply, but no sound came.

The Dark Tide still churned across the Plateaus. Gladiators charged time and again, always to little avail. More and more people gathered in the Tetragon Temple, waiting for her and the other Priestesses to offer some prophecy, something useful. They spoke of finding the end by tracing the beginning, of altering outcomes by understanding causes. They wanted to shape a better fate, but Iuno found herself speechless. She saw her mother's figure before buried by the Dark Tide. She saw buildings collapse, crowds scatter, and arrow after arrow loosed from her bow, each one engulfed in darkness before it could land.

Nothing had changed. She could see. But that was the only thing fate had ever allowed.

Another white night. Iuno sat again at her divination table. Ripples spread across the water. In the silence, she thought she heard a whisper:

"You can see it all… but if you only watch, what does that make you?"

For a moment, every piece of foretold future in the past rose in her mind once more. Stone walls etched with insight stood still. Scrolls spilling over with prophecies unfolded. Threads of fate's light twisted around her. And she looked up, toward where it all converged. She saw the moon reflected overhead, the only thing that ever gave her direction. Perhaps that was the closest thing to the deep, unfathomable fate itself.

It never gave her answers. But this time, she didn't need one.

"If I can't change what I see… then let me shatter it."

So she raised her hand and severed it all. Drawing every line of power she could wield, with a reckless, defiant smile, she plunged the arrow downward.

The arrow struck without fanfare, but in that moment, it pinned the once hidden path of the Dark Tide, and nailed it between Septimont and destiny. For the first time, the monsters didn't slip away unseen but were torn apart, inch by inch, by the crackling blue-white light.

But the cost? After the battle, at a camp in the Plateaus, people raised their glasses in relief. The fire crackled, voices overlapped, and the celebration swelled on its own. Iuno stood at the edge of it all, away from the brightest flames.

Someone noticed her.

"...Who's that?"

"Are you stupid or what? She's that Priestess… Wait, what's her name again? Iuno?"

"Iuno the Priestess? You mean that prodigy everyone talked about?"

"Weird. How could I've never heard of such a household name?"

A young Gladiator approached hesitantly. He raised a glass with polite care, his voice unsure. "You… you were with us earlier, right? Anyway, just come join the celebration."

Iuno raised her eyebrows and said nothing. She just lifted her glass and clinked it against his.

Later, outside the lantern light, she sat alone by the lakeside, chin resting on her knees, laughter hidden in the crook of her arm. She looked back at the path she had taken and the shadows that had followed her. Some were blurring, others had already cracked. She heard people calling behind her, but none of them used her name. She saw the eyes that had once met hers, now drifting away in confusion and unfamiliarity. Just not long ago, they had called her "Iuno" with such certainty when she gave her prophecy. They had stood with her before the arrows flew. And yet, everything they'd been through and survived was fading.

By the lake, she traced the surface with her fingertip, ripples breaking the reflections. She saw herself in the water. The outline was clear, but always veiled. She reached into the water, trying to touch the face. The moment her finger brushed it, the reflection shuddered, as if trying to flee.

"Don't run," Iuno laughed at the water. "Even you can't recognize me now?"

The surface rippled again, as if the reflection whispered back:

"Do you want to be remembered?"

Iuno said nothing. She just brushed the water again, trying to make the image clearer. But her finger only shattered the surface, scattering the reflection with it.

"…Doesn't matter."

After a long silence, she muttered softly, then tilted her head back, glaring at the moon. It hung above like a silver coin, bitten at the edge. A symbol of imperfection.

Iuno smiled at it, like greeting an old rival at last.

"…Even if you're the only one left who knows me… that's enough."

Stillness. Submersion. Solitude. Waking.

Within this endless cycle, Iuno sometimes finds herself in moments that don't belong to her past.

That starless night, the moon hung lower than ever, so close it looked ready to fall into her open palm as she sat atop the roof. She didn't remember how she fell asleep. Or maybe she hadn't slept at all, just drifted, carried by moonlight into a gentle illusion she never dreamt of. A quiet retaliation, perhaps, for the arrow she once loosed into the sky… and the defiance she once dared to speak aloud.

In that place, there was no Dark Tide. No doomsday. Only a strange yet familiar field. Children ran barefoot beneath the morning sun. Smokes spiraled up in the dusk. A girl, about her age, lounged on a bough of a fruit-laden tree, legs dangling lazily, expression soft, free like fish drifting in a sunlit sea. Iuno could almost see her smile, rippling out like circles across still water.

"You see?" the moon spoke, its voice warm and honeyed. "This, too, is a way to live."

Iuno didn't answer. She simply watched as that other version of herself waved at someone in the distance, then swung lightly down from the tree and gave her skirt a playful shake.

"That is you," the voice whispered. "Such is the magic of illusion. You can glimpse snow and seas you never knew… lives you never lived."

She turned and saw the moon behind her. No longer just a quiet ornament of the sky, but more like a vast hollowed eye, always watching.

"There's nothing left for you to hold onto," it said again, voice gentle and ancient, like the way firelight once carried prophecy to her bones. "So why not stay? It isn't real, no. But what harm is there in a little joy? Why be so cruel to yourself?"

And then, everything began to rewind.

The final ending. The thousandth. The hundredth… The tenth… The first.

When one moves far enough backwards, crosses every threshold back to the starting point, the in-between becomes just numbers, easy to rewrite.

The other her laughed, running through the field, a basket of fruit spilling at her feet. Sunlight wrapped around her arms like a ribbon. Her companion stepped toward her now, smiling. "Want to go to the seaside today?" she asked, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Have you ever considered," the moon murmured, "that everything you have become is because you were bound by prophecy from the start? That you never truly had a choice? But… what if you did?"

"You know this isn't real," Iuno said quietly, her gaze lifting to the moon, strangely present now in the blue daylight sky.

"And you know you can never go back," it replied. Not cruel, just softly persuasive.

"Everything you had is buried. This is where you belong now, and every day forward," the moon paused. "Even now, in illusion, you still refuse to forget yourself. You won't let go of your past and embrace a new, possible life. Such infuriating stubbornness."

Iuno said nothing.

She looked down at her palm. No bow. Only a bundle of unbloomed wildflowers.

After a long pause, she gave a small, lopsided smile. "And you're just like me," she whispered. "Stubborn."

She looked again at her other self. That girl was now wandering a lively street, pausing in front of a glass storefront, laughing freely.

"Are you lonely?" the moon asked.

Iuno tilted her head. "Maybe… a little," she admitted.

"Don't you want someone to hear that loneliness?"

"That would make me look fragile."

"Then would you deny it?"

"That's just another kind of fragility."

"So?"

She whispered back, "So I embrace it. I'll carry it through the nights only I remember."

She stepped into the shop and saw the other Iuno adjusting her hair in front of a mirror.

Moving closer, she reached out and gently tucked the loose strands behind the other Iuno's ears, just the way their mother used to do. After a moment's pause, she placed the flowers into the other Iuno's arms.

"You're wonderful," she spoke gently. "But I could never be you. Not since a long time ago."

And with that, she turned and left, leaving behind the shop and the illusion the moon had woven. Moonlight stretched her shadow across the ground, trying one last time to pull her back. But Iuno kept walking. Slowly. Steadily. Without turning. Behind her, the moon made one final attempt.

"You know," it said, "sometimes… I truly pity you. You're so stubborn. So unwilling to bend."

Let it pity her, then. She doesn't care. Life, after all, is but a game. No matter who is sitting beyond the table, she intends to win. Every time.

She has come this far, and she will not surrender. Not even to herself.

After countless times, Iuno wakes again as if pulled from deep water.

She is weary of the hollow, bitter cycle. Numb to her past. But she cannot stop, because now, at last, she understands where she is: adrift in the chaos between existence and vanishment. In the world she once came from, her name has long since peeled away. For every creature of the Dark Tide she Anchored, a piece of "Iuno" was taken. She chose this ending, one with no way back.

So she continues.

Drifting from one shattered cycle to the next, cycling through borrowed selves in a haze, until one moment, she reaches out her hand. And for the first time, someone else's warmth meets her own.

The Unwritten One. The first being in this chaos that is not her echoes.

{Male=He;Female=She} sees her as she is, suspended between moonlight and the Dark Tide.

"…Iuno."

Everything changes the moment {Male=he;Female=she} speaks her name. {Male=He;Female=She} remembers. And because of that, so does she. Two exceptions, in a place where memory should not exist. And suddenly, the chaos no longer feels endless.

"Where are you taking me?" The Unwritten One walks beside her, voice soft, like a stone gently touching water.

Iuno smiles faintly. "To finish something. Or maybe... to start again."

They part ways, only to meet again at the battlefield where it all began. There, beneath a broken moon, lies the mark of her sacrifice. A proof fate could not erase. A narrow seam left for her to step through.

"If you go through, you will return to that moment. With {Male=him;Female=her}, you will Anchor your forgotten self. But everything you have Anchored before, everything you wanted to Anchor, even fate itself, will need to be Anchored again. Do you understand what that heralds?"

She hears herself. It sounds like a warning, or a persuasion.

Iuno lifts her face and looks straight at the moon.

"…I do."

She speaks almost casually. Her expression still carries that familiar, proud curve.

"I used to think that if I saw more, predicted more, I could change something. That knowledge would give me power. But the more I saw, the more I was trapped by it."

The Unwritten One stays silent, only watching her.

Iuno raises her hand. The lingering traces of her past gather into a single form, revealing another Moon Arrow. Its fletching glows with silver and soft blue, like the hush before dawn.

"This time, let's change the order," she says, drawing the bowstring tight. Her eyes hold no grief, no resentment. "I'll Anchor myself first. Then everything that tries to run. And after that... I'll go see something new."

She draws her bow.

The Moon Arrow gleams, suspended like a full moon before the ruined wall. Wind sweeps past, tangling her hair, but her breath stays steady. The Unwritten One sees her silhouette cast upon the wall, and for a heartbeat, it looks like the moon completing itself.

When the arrow flies, there's no sound. Light pours from the broken moon, rushing backward like a reversed tide. It washes over her, drowning and lifting her at once. The names once lost and the shadows once swallowed by fate return to her, Anchored again by a single shot.

Time passes.

When she finally steps out of that void of infinite possibility and returns to the world of celebration, flower petals fall from the sky like rain.

By the firelight, someone lifts a wine glass and catches her eye. He blinks in confusion.

"You're, um… How strange. I don't think we've met, but… do I know you?"

Iuno raises her eyebrow and says nothing, just as before. She lifts her glass and clinks it against his.

After that night, no one remembers the girl who shot an arrow through fate. But from then on, Iuno's moon is no longer one of simple waxing and waning. It turns again and again, not in repetition, but in renewal.

She has written her own meaning into the cycle. And now, it continues, always changing, always hers.