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cryptidblue1 · 2 years ago

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Reversal of Fate (It is Never Easy) Pt. 3

Title: Reversal of Fate (It is Never Easy): Dark Home, Dark Promise

Chapter: 3/???

Part 1: Here

Part 2: Here

Fandom: Hollow Knight

Chapter Characters: Sealed Vessel/Pure Vessel, Mentions of: Ghost/Hollow Knight, Lord of Shades, Pale King, Various unnamed Vessels.

Chapter Warnings: Time shenanigans, mentions of death, injuries, PV being not in a good head space for most of this, mentions of certain canon events, the baby pit to be blunt. We really getting into the AU territory now. Like full stop the train is departing the station and we just going. PV is still not having a good time, he got a Moment, but it didn't last long.

Chapter Summary: The dark was safe and comforting, but the darkness of ignorance can not stop what is to come. The clock will not be ignored forever.

They had found out the dreams of events were memories of a time rewound when they had startled, and fell into the darkness that had been their first home. The free fall and sensation as their mask split wide open the last moments before something in them had lurched and cracked and they awoke once more on the ledge they had died from. They had spent two resets huddled and shaking on that ledge just out of view of the King they had tried to not love but had failed and loved appeared and waited for a smaller form of themself to rise up from void and be chosen as the Pure Vessel.

They had died in the fourth and fifth due to anguish and trying to end it when they had noticed the small figure struggling to rise up behind their younger self, before falling. That little vessel they had watched fight and die, and fight and win in some stubborn will to save them. They had not looked back, the them that was young and new, and knew not of what awaited when declared Pure Vessel. They had let their sibling fall, yet their sibling had not let them suffer more then they had. Sixth to tenth was also that of inertia, of wailing and hoping this time the smaller them would stop and look. Would turn and see, would understand what they were losing by marching forward without a second thought.

They had accepted things so easily.

The one who gave off such light was to be obeyed, and the Pale King had told them to not feel. So they tried.

They of the now, broken and beaten knew better. They were doomed to fail that order no matter what. They had always felt, and as they shook and felt a cold void leak from their mask in the closest things a vessel could make to tears, they realized they felt too much. A doomed fate, they had doomed everyone by being a lie. It was their fault for trying, for hoping they could be enough.

Eleven to fifteen, were spent in indecision. They had failed, but to let another sibling take that role hurt too much to be more than a passing thought. They did not wish for Hallownest to fall, for those they had loved but until now could not admit to such. Did not wish to see those who only saw them as a tool of salvation die once more because they were not what they had hoped for. They wished to stop what was to come, but did not want another to suffer and fail as they had failed. It felt as if there was nothing that could change the fact that someone would suffer they did not wish to suffer.

The voice that had whispered in the breaths between Her rage had gone silent. No questions to hint at what's to come, or what to do.

Sixteen had them trembling and cautiously slipping and fluttering, the half eaten wings they had never used, slowing their fall. They knew not what to expect down in the deep and dark that they yearn for and feared would not welcome them home anymore. They had stood still as they had been taught. Waiting for condemnation, for the hatred they felt they deserved.

It was silent and still, comforting in the cold darkness that they began to relax and hope softly, carefully, that the darkness would always welcome them this way when they finally were allowed to slip free of their shell and sink into the dark completely again once more.

Sixteen was the longest time since they had woken out of sync with the world and out of their prison tomb.

They had stood watch as siblings hatched or failed to hatch. Flailing and learning to move in the confines of a shell. Shook and shivered as they cooed Sibling at them and bumped into their legs as they moved and roamed in the dark. They remained a sentinel in fear and awe at these beings they had left behind to follow a light that even now they wanted to see and follow.

It was soothing to just be, another vessel among their siblings. For none questioned their differences outside of the whispery concerns of HurtSibling SiblingHurt when they patted the crack in their mask or felt for an arm long gone. The time watching them hatch and grow easing aches in soul and making them feel so certain they could not let any suffer as they had suffer. They would place themselves in the Egg again before letting one of these siblings hurt as they had been hurt. None of them were empty, none could be what their King wanted. So they sat and held siblings close, while others learned to climb and glide from the top of their head. Safer, far safer then learning such while climbing up and up and up to a light none of them understood. If they could stay like this they would have, happy and safe and able to pretend for just that much longer that nothing was changing. Nothing had to change.

It was Sixteen when they realized things had already changed and they could not ignore it forever.

It wasn’t hard to pick out the them that was small and new among the siblings that had hatched. So few had hatched or stirred once they had hatched, and it had broke them a little to know that the masks that crackled under their feet was not due to them all seeking that light, but because they had the strength to bind to the vessel and egg that was given. Those lives could not be saved as they had not been to be saved in the first place. So it was not hard to trace over familiar, if smaller horns of the them that was meant to make the climb when their King opened the door. It was even easier to see the one that would be called Ghost hover and guide the them that was new as if afraid they would be ripped away if they did not keep track of this particular sibling.

They did not have memories of such from before, but they remembered so much and so little in the many many times they had suffered the sealing and suffered death. They could not be certain this was not the way it was before, if this is why the one who would be Ghost had followed them up and fell. All they could do in this time was watch in interest as them new and small was herded by the one that was meant to be Ghost. It was painful to see but they were greedy to watch and see that someone had loved them for no other reason then they existed.

It hurt to think, so they did not think of how they had given such up for a life in light and fear of not being enough. Of wanting love from those that did not, could not know they wish such, wanting and not realizing until it was too late they had given such up without a second thought. They had been foolish when they were new to the world. So they hoped maybe now, with them here and the one that would be Ghost fiercely possessive and there would keep the them that was new and small from reaching for that light. That maybe this would keep the light from happening at all.

They did not get that wish and the light did come and even as they called and pleaded for their siblings to stay, to be safe in the dark and the deep. So many were so, so curious by this light that appeared so far above them. They just had to see for themselves even as their biggest sibling begged while holding other siblings content to stay with them, not to go. So up those tiny bodies went, as if they knew this was what they were meant to do. Was it an instinct they wondered? For even as they begged and hugged close the smallest of their siblings they felt the longing as well. The need to climb up and reach that light. The light they knew was a being they would follow again if they were to go and see. A being they know who only wanted a Vessel to be sacrificed for the safety of all.

Only one that climbed seemed to climb for another reason.

They watched the one that would be Ghost seem all but determined to keep pace with the them that was new and small. They climbed not to see the light, or race their siblings, but to keep complete pace with the sibling they had chosen to never leave the side of. They could only watch and hope, their own fear of what would happen if they climb keeping them back, keeping them from scrambling up each ledge and snatching each small body close to bring them back down into the dark and safety. They saw in a moment, a breath if they had any, as the one who would be Ghost…Changed. It was both Ghost, but that which was darker than even the darkest corners of the Abyss they nested in with far more eyes then they should have.

They felt something tug and twist and break.

The seventeenth was much like the last, this time though, they watched the one that was meant to be Ghost more closely and they began to see. This sibling was the sibling they knew who would fight a god for them, but it also was the power that had swallowed a god whole. It had frightened them at first, but then they felt the weight of that being inside of their sibling looking at them and it spoke and screamed with a million voices and no voices at all.

No one taken.

Somehow, they knew they were also included in this declaration, and something settled in a place that had shattered. It was cold and soothing, and was so, so heavy with the weight they realized was their own resolve to hold to that promise. No one would be taken to be enshrined in a crypt and a prison and plaything for Her. So in seventeen they pondered and thought how to do so, how could they stop this when all they had known was this plan, this belief in a Hollow Knight. Even the path that led to this repetition out of sync with what they knew would not work. No one taken, that means none could follow the path of gold that their sibling had followed. The path that led to them being that which can devour gods.

Unless.

There was something that clinked and shifted as they looked at their sibling that was more at the same time. An answer was there that they could use, but they did not know. It was out of grasp, but the way the circles they could see shining and twisting within them, that seemed to be what caused these repeats to happen, glimmered as they looked and thought they knew this was the right path. They needed to find it and become strong enough for it.

It was in seventeen they made a promise to be strong for all of their siblings, strong enough they could pursue the light without being hurt by it. So when they watched himself small and new reach the top where their King awaited they fell into the pull with a promise.

No one taken this time.

Eighteen to twenty two was spent testing the doors, and the walls above the cradle of their birth. Finding they could open them from this side with the battered nail that was once considered a masterpiece by all who had seen it before their entombing. They cautiously learned and followed a path hazy and clear in their memories when they had followed the King out of the dark and into Hallownest. They learned to count the clinks of the circles in their being to learn how long they had from each awakening to when their King would arrive to set them on a path they could not take again.

They would find another way, and their King could keep his kingdom and they could live without ever knowing about them and their siblings. It did not feel like the right answer, but they did not know what was, and they still loved their King and if they and their siblings never meeting him could save him and that he held dear they would do so. So they plotted and learned paths and tricks. Made themselves figure out how many siblings they could take in one trip, how to use their all but useless wings to give just a bit more height to a jump, where they could safely leave their siblings to return and take the rest up. How much time between the last sibling blinking in light from the other side of the doors to herding them away and hidden as they closed the doors again, as if they had never been opened.

Twenty Three was when the Abyssal sea was empty of all Vessels, unknowing to the King who stood atop in hopes one would arise to save them all.

Twenty Three was when a battered bug slinked and skittered into the outskirts of the city, a gaggle of thirty little ones around feet, on shoulders, and their head. Neither event would be linked. Even after a time the rumor that the king had returned from the Void Sea empty handed began to circulate along with whispers of an infection in dreams began as well.

#Blue writes #Hollow Knight #Reversal of Fate AU #RoF AU #Pure Vessel is still not having a good time #They got a moment of goodness though #that's progress #fanfiction #I will fight god for baby vessels

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