Chapter Text
There was always something to be said about soulmates in Eos, even if it changed depending on who was asked.
Some found it to be destiny, a gift from Shiva and Ifrit, lovers chosen to be together despite whatever differences they may have, one’s one-and-only. Others found it to be a comfort; that despite whatever relationships they go through, their one is guaranteed to be out there.
But there are still others who find it…difficult. Some noble families despised soulmates of more common birth, even going as far as to arrange marriages at birth and carrying them out before soulmarks could appear. And there were people of all types who disliked the concept because it felt like the loss of their autonomy, like the choice of their future wasn’t their own.
But no matter who they were or their opinion of soulmates, it was guaranteed that on one's sixteenth birthday their entire world would change. Their soulmark — a symbol of relevant shape and location to one's soulmate — would appear to them.
And it was no different for Prince Ravus of Tenebrae when he awoke on his sixteenth birthday. Said prince, still sitting on his bed and clad in pajamas, looked down in horror at the mark that had appeared across the outside of his right wrist.
Laying perfectly aligned on his wrist was a set of twenty-three lines of varying thicknesses, bracketed by a pair of diamond shapes. On either side of the lines were two sets of numbers; N-iP01357 and 06953234. Bold, cold, and eerie. Like it was meant to mark property instead of signifying a soulmate.
“This…this has to be a joke…” Ravus breathed. Panic started to rise in his veins. He’d seen soulmarks before but none had ever looked like this one. He scrambled off his bed and stumbled into his bathroom, leaving a trail of bedsheets and blankets in his wake.
When he got to the sink he cranked the water on as hot as it could go, wetting his skin briefly before he grabbed the bar of soap next to the sink and began to scrub in earnest.
‘Has to be a joke, has to be a joke, has to be a joke,’ Ravus thought. His skin ached from the scrubbing, but he kept going. A soulmark shouldn't scare him like this; a soulmark shouldn't look like that.
The panic kept rising as his skin got redder and redder from the scrubbing, yet the mark remained untouched. No flaking, no fading, no hint of it leaving his skin to prove it was some sort of sick joke.
Ravus scrubbed for what felt like hours — but was likely at most fifteen minutes — until it really set in his mind that it wasn’t changing anything. The mark was permanent.
His soulmark was a barcode. He had to ask his mother what to do. Ravus scrambled out of the bathroom, stumbled his way into putting on his clothes, and was out the door before his brain even caught up.
The thankfully empty halls he took were filled with early morning sunlight, almost mockingly so. Like the world was mocking him for his entire sense of self being turned completely on its head.
When he finally got to his mother’s study, he knocked on the door in a specific rhythm, one she’d taught him and Lunafreya specifically for this purpose. A way to easily identify that it was her children at the door and not an advisor or noble trying to slip into the Queen’s set-aside early hour to prepare for the work that the rest of the day would entail.
“Come in,” came his mother’s voice through the door. Her tone was gentle and warm, like the afternoon winds that blew through the garden full of sylleblossoms Lunafreya had started to cultivate in the previous year or so. Ravus gulped and slowly opened the door.
His mother sat at her desk, looking over papers and proposals that Ravus knew would have her in here for hours. Though not dressed in her full regalia that her public appearances required, she was still swathed in both the royal blues of their nation and the pure white of the Oracle.
“Ravus my sweet boy,” Sylva said, standing from her desk and walking over to her son as he shut the door behind him. She pressed a kiss to his forehead and gave him a hug. “Happy birthday my darling.”
“Thank you Mother,” Ravus replied. He savored the hug, as it felt like a balm his frazzled nerves desperately cried for. Sylva took a step back and looked at him with a proud smile before she asked,
“What brings you to my study at this hour, my little star?” Sylva asked as she brushed a fallen lock of hair from Ravus’s forehead.
“Mother…my…m-my soulmark…I…” Ravus held his wrist out for his mother to see. His heart rate was still at a hummingbird’s pace. Sylva’s face turned to concern as she reached out and held Ravus’s wrist, tilting it from side to side as her lips formed silent words that Ravus couldn’t hope to read. Her eyes had shifted, gaining a hardness that Ravus knew only came out when things were serious.
Ravus tried not to fidget under his mother’s scrutiny. It felt so out of character for her to be staring with such an intense look on her face. He couldn’t quite tell what she was thinking, and it was scaring him even more.
“M-Mother?” Ravus asked after a few moments as he tried not to twist or fidget in her hold. After a few more moments, Sylva placed a gentle hand over his wrist, gold light filling her palm and healing the raw and irritated skin. Within an instant it began to heal, fading from red to pale pink to finally its original pale shade.
When the skin was healed and the light faded, Sylva carefully removed her hands.
“Ravus, my dear son, listen carefully,” Sylva said as she cupped his cheeks and raised his head to look her in the eye. “You mustn't show this to anyone. I have an idea of who your soulmate may be, but until I confirm it you must not let a single soul see.”
Ravus felt the color drain from his face and his knees began to shake. His mother never used such a serious tone.
Sylva took both of his cheeks in her hands and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Regardless of who your soulmate may be, you are and will always be your own person. Your soulmate does not define you, nor do you define them. Never forget that.
Your soulmate might turn out to be a wonderful person who had been dealt a terrible start by fate but moved beyond it, but they might also have succumbed to the darkness that start entailed. But no matter which route they took, you must always strive forward with your head held high and your courage bolstered. No one in this palace will care for you any less for whoever your soulmate may end up being.”
Ravus looked up at his mother, searching her eyes simultaneously for every bit of comfort he could and fearing he’d see any disgust or hatred.
Logically he knew he shouldn’t worry; his mother was a soul that was kind to a near fault. Ravus could only think of maybe a handful of people that had ever earned her ire — mainly the Imperial Emperor and his military — but the panic his soulmark had struck in him kept whispering in his ear that there had to be something there. Some bit of disappointment or disgust for the barcode; for his soulmate; for him.
Ravus was no fool; he knew where he stood in the royal family of Tenebrae. Despite his mother and Lunafreya’s attempts to tell him otherwise, the other nobles of the court had made it quite clear over the years that he was more of a bargaining chip than anything since, as one of the few males ever born to the line of the Oracle, his position in the line of succession was nebulous at best and nonexistent at worst.
The throne would go automatically to Lunafreya, just as the position of Oracle did, no amount of him being firstborn would change that. Had he been born a girl (which was…another line of thinking in and of itself) or if another daughter had been born into the line as well, then the two would have been split. The daughter chosen as the Oracle would maintain her position while the other became Queen of Tenebrae. From there, their respective children (who would almost certainly be daughters) would be assigned their roles when one was chosen as Oracle successor.
But Ravus wasn’t a girl; there was no other sister; and he had no set place in life. His soulmate had been his last hope in having a firm place. A soulmate meant someone who could love him regardless of his position, could love him even without any desire for romance. Even if they were a commoner, a soulmate was something special, someone specifically meant to be one of the most important people in his life.
But now? With a soulmark such as his and his mother’s warning that his soulmate might be an enemy, someone who he might hate or who might hate him? Ravus felt like even that last hope had been torn away. A hollowness burned in his chest as his mind latched onto the idea that his soulmate had to have gone down the second route Mother had proposed. That his soulmate wasn’t someone kind, that they would try to use him or his family for their own needs. That he won’t be able to make his family proud because he could be tied to the enemy.
Sylva’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him close, and all Ravus could do was cry.
‘Please, to any Astral who is listening, let them be kind.’
Ravus was foolish to have believed his soulmate could be anything but terrible. The attack on Tenebrae had proven that, but the sight before him cemented it.
The dark halls and labs of the First Magitek Production facility echoed every noise, even with the din of machinery and electronics filling the air. The lab assistant next to him — the one in charge of briefing the now-eighteen-year-old on the ins and outs of Magitek — was babbling on about something or other, but Ravus was too busy hearing the sound of his blood thundering in his ears and his mother’s voice repeating platitudes his mind and heart wouldn’t heed.
Instead he glared at the…thing…in the large glass tube before him. It looked human, if a human had no hair and stood as still as a statue with its arms crossed over its chest, revealing a barcode on its wrist.
A barcode. An Astrals-damned barcode. Almost exactly the same as the one on his own wrist that he kept covered with makeup and his gloves, never to be seen by anyone but him in the dark of the night, when he could glare at it and loathe.
Ravus knew the numbers on the mark by heart at this point, could probably even say it in his sleep, and he knew they didn’t match the…things…in front of him.
The Imperial scientist claimed the thing before them was a clone; one of the thousands that were created, infected and sublimated by the Scourge, and turned into Magitek cores to power the Empire’s machines. They weren’t people, weren't meant to be people, couldn’t be people, because that would mess up the daemonification process.
Ravus knew it. His soulmate could never be a good person, it was never a person. Either it was an MT core or it was living as a Lucian which, after everything that had happened, was just as bad in Ravus’s eyes. The anger flooded his chest and up his throat, and it was only through willpower that he was able to bite his tongue, lest he derail his tenuous progress within the Empire.
His soulmark tied him to a clone of one of the most evil men on the planet, a clone who was his enemy regardless of how it lived. Whether a tool of the Empire or a Lucian fool. Ravus could never accept it.