WRAITH IN THE WINDOW | FE3H

he wears my friend's corpse and walks among us

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That day, night had fallen upon the sky like a wrathful god.

The heavens blackened to pitch, the clouds greyed into smoke; he had watched as the sun slipped down under the horizon, leaving dusk behind, and remained gazing out the window until all he could see was his reflection. He had stared for stars, looked for the moon to watch as the carriage rolled onwards for miles where the moon hung forever in place - but it was not there.

There was only himself, the large watery blue eyes of his younger self becoming somehow disquieting the longer he stared.

...

That was the last memory that he could freely recall from that day; without everything being marred with the stains of congealing blood and raging fire, cremating the corpses before they were even fully dead. There had been the shaking of the carriage, his father's breathing beside him as he flicked through papers, and the cold of the glass window beneath his fingers.

Truth be told, Dimitri found that there were gaps in his memory afterwards. Not of the tragedy itself - the failures and ghosts had burned themselves into his mind for good, of course - but it had become impossible to recall his father without blood streaming down his neck and staining his hair, to think of Glenn without his jaw hanging off his skull, flesh ever withering from miasma.

Each time he thought back, tried to remember his father for whatever reason, he would stand there with his glittering ruby crown and royal livery and the scorched, withered burn marks of spells and a permanent stain of blood emblazoned across his body. It only got worse as Dimitri grew older - he did his best to not gaze into the mirror for too long, as with each passing day he could swear that it was not himself that looked back, but his father's hard gaze along with the wounds that he had both adopted after death.

Nonetheless, it wasn't as though he wouldn't see his father even if he didn't look into the mirror. Dimitri did not miss his father, nor Glenn; as they stood by him each day, along with his stepmother.

You could not miss nor yearn for someone who was still present.

But that was part of his goal - no, his reason for living and going on. He would kill them, he would kill whoever was responsible whether it be man, king or god, so that he could miss his family in peace, mourn for them the way everyone else did, and quell their anger and sorrows; finally quench his and their truly satiable thirst for revenge.

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He saw Glenn in Felix.

He knew Felix knew this. There was no way he couldn't. It was the same as when he looked into a mirror and saw his father's bloodied face - though Felix's features now carried a hatred and loathing that Dimitri was aware, in his heart of hearts, that Glenn had never bore in life - it was not difficult for him to suddenly see scarlet in his peripheral vision and Glenn would be stood there, cold dead eyes glaring into his soul, skin scarred and rotting; challenging him to a spar where they could exchange only blows and never words.

Whenever Glenn and Felix spoke simultaneously, Dimitri could not tell them apart either.

He would sometimes slip and answer Glenn as Felix, Felix as Glenn, a lapse and trip in the conversation that only intensified the glares he got. Both Glenn and Felix addressed him as boar now, both had golden eyes that held only hatred, and on his worst days, both had fatal wounds of spells and weapons.

But on good days, he could see the differences between them.

No blood, no wounds, for one - and for another, in even rarer times, he could catch Felix looking at him with something other than a look of disdain. If his memory served him right (which it didn't often care to do), that was an expression of someone who was looking at a corpse.

Someone long dead.

He had seen many of those faces at the funerals he stood and spoke at, a sea of them not looking at him but the closed coffin in which the empty body of his father lay. Was it mourning? It wasn't pity, surely, but possibly the face of someone who was missing someone who was not present.

Dimitri supposed that in the few times they had talked, Felix did sometimes mention that the Dimitri he knew had died at Duscur. Perhaps that is why he looked at him as though he was but a walking corpse that played at eating and drinking and talking.

He wondered what Felix would have expressed if he had died at Duscur, had his body been impaled on a lance or his throat slit by one of the dark masked assailants. Would he be angrier, to hide even deeper feelings that he didn't wish to reveal? Or would it slake some of the sharp irritation off his face, that was only exacerbated when Dimitri came into view?

Dimitri had never seen Felix glare nor curse at the grave of his brother - but that was because he knew Felix did not go to the grave of his brother at all.

...

Perhaps a large part of him was glad he had not died at Duscur; Felix would not make effort to remember him, but merely walk on as though even his memory had vanished along with his breath, and somehow that was more painful than the sparring as though to punish, with cutting remarks and hurtful words.

But more importantly, had he died, there would be no one to carry on for them, stepmother, father, Glenn, no one to act as their vessel and deliver on their final wishes. No one to enact their will and their souls would never rest, as no one else seemed to see how they suffered so.

But a small part of him wished he had truly breathed his last there, as Felix said.

He could not help but to think that it would be so much easier being a vengeful ghost than a vengeful man.

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wraith
/rāTH/

noun

a ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death.