Yours Till Ruin

Pfffft. That was the first thing. Not light, not sound, not some dramatic gasp back into consciousness — just gas, hissing out of a seal that had been holding its breath for longer than most civilizations had existed. Centuries. And it announces itself with a pfffft. Honestly? That's kind of insulting. Then came the light — thin, reluctant, sneaking in through whatever c***k the gas had just abandoned. It landed right across my face like it had been waiting for permission. I opened my eyes. No gasping. No clawing at stone. No dramatic where-am-I. I've never understood beings who wake up like they're being reborn through trauma. I just... blinked. Twice. Sat up like a man who'd overslept an alarm, not one who'd slept through several empires rising and collapsing. Everywhere was dusty. Fair enough. Nobody dusts a tomb. I rolled my shoulders — walked toward a mirror that hung on the wall, my short black hair and gold eyes reflected back at me. I relaxed my muscles and unfurled that which I usually kept hidden. I felt the familiar drag of my wings shifting against my back, still there, still black as the day I closed my eyes — and glanced up out of pure habit. My halo. Still floating right where I left it, doing its quiet, smug little glow. Huh. Still both, then. I let out a breath through my nose. Not quite a laugh. Close enough. I sat there a moment longer than I needed to, just — listening. No wind. No footsteps but the ones I hadn't taken yet. Whatever this place had been to someone, once, it had long since stopped being anything at all. Just stone and dust and quiet, holding a shape nobody remembered the reason for. The chamber hadn't changed, which — considering how long I'd been in it — felt like it should've been more surprising than it was. There, on the far wall, half worn away by time: an old ward, barely legible now, and beneath it, a symbol I recognized without wanting to. My father's mark. ...Right. Not thinking about that today. I got up, brushed centuries of dust off myself like it was lint, and walked out into the world like a man leaving a hotel room, not a tomb. Took me about thirty seconds of standing there, blinking, to understand that everything — and I do mean everything — had changed. I'd expected dirt roads. Torches. Little huddled villages clinging to the dark like it might eat them. What I got instead was glass. Towers of it, stacked so high they vanished into cloud, throwing back a sky that didn't look like any sky I remembered. Machines slid past in smooth, orderly lines — too fast to be animals, too quiet to be anything I had a word for yet. And the people? Heads down. All of them. Staring into little glowing rectangles like the things were confessing secrets straight into their palms. One woman walked past muttering to herself. No one around her. I almost felt bad for her — until I noticed the thin wire running from her ear into her pocket. Huh. Clever, actually. Somewhere above me, something roared — I flinched before I could stop myself, tracked the sound up, up, up, and found a shape cutting clean across the sky, trailing white behind it like a wound that wouldn't close. I stared at it long enough that a passerby actually slowed down to squint at me. Right. Apparently that was normal too. I could learn all this the slow way. Stumble around, embarrass myself, get laughed at by a species that apparently communicates through glowing rectangles and rides inside the sky like it owed them nothing. Or. I could just ask. Faster method, obviously. I caught the eye of some unfortunate man walking a little too close, murmured three words that hadn't left my mouth in longer than his entire bloodline had existed, and pressed two fingers to his temple before he even registered being touched. For a second, it all poured in at once — noisy, disorganized, half of it nonsense. Numbers on little screens that made people happy or miserable depending on which way they moved. A box in every home that showed moving pictures of strangers. Something called rent, said with the particular exhaustion of a man who hated the word. Machines that talked back when you asked them questions, badly. There were some memories that made me subconsciously feel a sense of warmth? No, I highly doubt I can get such a feeling from memories of a man with his family. And there were some that left a sour taste in my mouth. That man... is a terrible husband. I let go before it got any louder in my skull. He blinked. Shook his head like he'd walked through a cobweb, then kept walking. No worse for it. Mostly. But I now understood currency. Phones. Companies. The general shape of a few centuries, compressed down into something I could actually use. Not everything — minds hand you impressions, not full libraries — but enough. Enough to walk around this world without looking like I'd just crawled out of a tomb. Which — again — technically I had. First order of business: money. The ring on my finger was old even by my standards. Thin, dark metal, nothing flashy — unless you knew exactly what it was, which, lucky for me, someone in this era still did. The shop owner turned it over twice under a little lamp, went very quiet, then very talkative, and made me an offer with hands that weren't quite steady. I let him think he'd gotten the better end of it. Walked out considerably richer. Fifty million in this era's currency, give or take. Deposited into an account I opened twenty minutes later, in a building full of glass and hushed voices, with an ease that honestly offended me a little. I'd expected more resistance from a species this obsessed with paperwork. A woman behind a desk asked me three questions, then she asked for an ID that I didn't exactly have. Well... I did have it, but it's from an era she probably never knew existed. I stared into her eyes for a bit, my eyes letting out a light golden glow. I guess the ID issue was one gaze away from completion. After compelling her with my very persuasive gaze, she typed for a while, and handed me a card. That was it. That was the whole ceremony. Anticlimactic, I thought. But I'll take it. Clothes next — I stood in front of a mirror in something called a fitting room and decided, with some satisfaction, that whatever centuries had done to the world, they hadn't done anything to ruin how I looked in black. Then a phone, which I hated for a solid four minutes before grudgingly admitting it was useful, mostly because it seemed to know where I was going before I did. Then — the actual mission — finding somewhere to live that didn't have my father's name carved into the wall. I was mid-scroll through some building directory, phone in one hand, shopping bags looped over the other arm, half-watching the street, half-watching the numbers climb absurdly high the closer I got to the center of the city, when I turned a corner a little too fast and nearly walked straight into someone going the opposite way at twice my speed. She stumbled back, one hand flying up to catch a trilby that was one bad step away from hitting the pavement. Caught it just in time. "Sorry — sorry, I wasn't—" she started, already breathless, already halfway past me. I didn't move. Not rudeness. Just — surprise, I think. Something about her hit like a held note. A small, persistent hum, right underneath hearing. Couldn't place it. Wasn't sure I was supposed to. Not yet, anyway. "No harm done," I said. And that was strange too — hearing my own voice out loud. Strange, even after all the talking I'd done today already. But steady. Amusing, even. At least no one could tell I hadn't spoken a word in centuries before today. She was already moving again, throwing one quick, apologetic glance back at me, trilby back in place, heels clicking fast toward the glass tower behind me — the one with a company crest over the door that my borrowed knowledge helpfully supplied a name for, unasked. I watched her disappear through the revolving doors. Then I looked up at the building myself. Didn't know her name yet. But I had a feeling I would.