Isabelle Reiner. 48. Short. Stout. Snooty from head to boot.

Her nails dug into his shoulder blades. Tearing at the tweed. Digging for dear life. She breathed hard against his neck, gasping like a fish out of water. The pungent smell of sour cheesecake filled his nostrils. The inside of her thighs, wrapped tightly around his torso, took on the gelatinous form of the pastry itself. After throwing him at everyone the entire night with the desire to parade around the best dog in show, she now tightened the leash. 

“Save me, you ungrateful brat.”

This is who Luhan risked his life for.

Free hand swiftly reaching up, he covered his mouth with his recently discarded mask, trapping a handful of smoke against his lips. His lungs filled to the brim with the burning air, one gagging exhale expelling it out with a forward lurch of his body. Ms. Riener knocked her ankles into his stomach, mushing him onwards. 

Others ran, limped, or crawled past him. He persevered as they did, ducking beneath fallen ceiling beams. Stepping over broken glass. Admonishing the frivolous attempts of those seeking to salvage the melting golden ornaments and scorched oil paintings. 

“Run.” He remembers saying. “Just run.” Like it was easy. “Please.” As though they’d be doing him a favor if they listened.

These are the people Luhan was responsible for.

It took approximately twenty-four minutes to evacuate the building following the explosion. After helping Ms. Isabelle Reiner to a set of emergency vehicles responding to the incident, Luhan went back inside to help more out. He saw Kris, Xiumin, and Chen doing the same. He didn’t see Tao and Lay until later that evening. 

When ash fell in a layer as thick and packed as snow around them, Victoria came through the lobby doors of the tall, crumbling building, dragging Lay along with her. He wasn’t saying anything. He only cried. 

He just sobbed like a neglected infant.

Luhan felt Ms. Reiner’s nails digging again. Into his neck. Choking him. Sour cheesecake. Thick fat. Stomach bile. Black snow. Luhan struggled to keep breathing through it.

The truth of the situation was reported on every planet news station by the time the day was through. The Seeress of Exo had been murdered as part of a military operation, led by the highest ranking officials within the Council, called “Lullaby.” The impact of the tragedy caused dissent from one city, one town, one village, to the next. 

Rioters filled the streets. A call for vengeance rang out until it was snuffed out by lack of interest. No one paid attention to the way the planet mourned for its 70th Seeress of Exo. 

How it stripped its blessings from the twelve Guardians chosen at birth. How wave after wave of unforgiving sandstorms hit Dunai’s vibrant landscape. How Flior’s abandoned flowerbeds and empty sweet shops were laid to waste by numerous forest fires. How an unexpected earthquake sent a great fault forming from North to South, from the Capital to Jingxi.

An earthquake rocked this same glass city in the coming days, shattering its beauty with a single jolt of life. Of anger. Of righteous punishment to the evildoers who had killed the Tree of Life’s greatest creation.

Drowned, the 70th Seeress of Exo was. Body left upon a fresh patch of grass in a haste to escape her same fate. Flames the air above her head. Her death wasn’t expected — a death in vain at its finest. Clearly, inflicting such sudden tragedy wasn’t a part of the original plan. The Tree of Life has always been fond of its plans. 

Destiny. Fate. Red strings and handcuffs. Bonds not made to be broken.

While Lay just cried and cried, Luhan began to think of ways to strengthen the bonds between his brethren. Unhealthy optimism replaced his short-lived grief. 

Ten years ago, they didn’t need a Seeress of Exo. Surely, they could do without now.

Even as everything went up in flames all around them in the months that followed, this thought kept Luhan breathing.

But, before that, hundreds of miles away, his sentiment went unfelt.

In the Capital, a collective hush fell over the Hall of the Guardians. From the high-ceilings of the training room to the quaint circular table sitting alone in the dining room. Down the gleaming gold and purple hallways. Through each ornately carved wooden door. The whirring of the Calling Stones in the Main Hall slowly faded away. Blue, glowing cores dimmed until black as though finally giving into the blissful temptation of sleep after months of being set to overdrive. 

Kai was the first to notice. 

Thirst striking him suddenly, he sat up in bed and blinked. Once. Twice. A third time to fight away the weariness that made his eyelids heavy. One second, he was in his room. The next, he was in the hallway. Not what he was going for. He tried again. Nothing happened.

Had he been anyone else, he would have walked there, blaming his inability to do what came naturally on his sleep-clouded mind. Not being anyone else, he quickly turned to D.O’s bedroom door. Entering without knocking, he found his brother wide awake. Sitting at the edge of his bed. Palms facing up in his lap.

“What happened to her?”

Kai demanded, a mixture of confusion and shock pumping adrenaline through his veins. Making him more disagreeable than usual. Causing him to yell his question as though entitled to an answer everyone else already knew.

A small crystal pebble slipped from between D.O’s fingertips. It bounced twice before rolling beneath the legs of a tall wardrobe. Lost without anyone moving to look for it. D.O didn’t respond, the loud scream ringing out from across the hall answer enough. The sound of wood slamming and glass crashing against marble sung out in harmony with an agonizing howl that shook at the centuries-old walls. Characterized by a gut-wrenching pain at a loss too great to be found again, Chanyeol’s moans filled the air. 

Ghostly, inhuman sounds that echoed throughout the hall. Giving sound to Baekhyun’s noiseless cry, feet bringing the Guardian to a kneel before the Seeress's door. Enough tears streaming down his face to make up for Sehun’s lack thereof as he stood above him, expressionless. Suho frantically called Luhan’s cell from the Main Hall, the odds of it being traced no longer seeming to matter. It didn’t connect. Nothing did.

When Luhan answered hours later, all twelve prepared themselves for the fate of their predecessors. Wondering which Guardian would be born first, they had a laugh or two. Kai claimed first, as usual. The following order was discussed over breakfast; a handful of smiles thrown across that familiar rectangular table. Before any of them knew it, two years passed. 

There was no denying her beauty. Golden tresses falling in glimmering waves. Constantly disturbed by a graceful gust of wind. Covering her figure like a wedding veil. Her mane alone set her apart. The face, a thin oval covered in early morning dew, beneath it distinguished her further.

But her title is what made her one of a kind.

The 68th Seeress of Exo, Ela Nektor. 

There were rumors her skin was so pale it was almost translucent. In the right light, many claimed to see her heart beating in her chest. Others imagined her a faerie: a denizen of the lush forests surrounding Flior. Even more suggested the inevitability of an affair taking place. What kind of man, Guardian or not, could resist such beauty for long?

Duty to an entire race and culture? Responsibilities generations old to uphold? All social constructs deemed insignificant and uninteresting. The fantasies of the common Exotian? They imagined her a goddess stuck in the wrong end of an hourglass. Due to be buried any day, any hour, any second, without anyone noticing.

Morbidity was a fad of the times. 

The democratic government was failing. Cities and Towns were struck by long periods of depression. Value held no value anymore. Rebellions set fire to concrete. Nature turned rivers into fountains not large enough to supply a heard of passing camels. The missing pieces of the puzzle never seemed to stare the planet harder in the face.

Nothing so beautiful ever lasts forever. If anything, despite everything, Ela Nektor taught Exotians the meaning behind the word “mortality."

It all ends, sooner or later. 

“Ela?”

Xi was a Moon Guardian. A telekinetic with the sarcastic humor of an angsty teenager. Of average height and lean build, he was always teased by his fellow brethren. That’s what he gets for not drinking his milk and eating his vegetables. What else did he expect when all he does is stay inside and read comic books all day? Prince Charming? What kind of prince’s default posture is a twenty-degree slouch of the shoulders? 

Hands in his pockets, a boyish smile on his twenty-three year old face, he nudged her sitting frame with his knee. “Sneaking out, again?”

With a single series of familiar motions, her hands answered his question. It wasn’t the one he wanted, but it was the one he expected. 

The Tree of Life rarely gave Ela time to think for herself. Every night, without fail, it would call her to the garden in the Hall of the Guardians. Talk to her for hours. Leave her eyes sunken in their sockets the next morning. When was the last time she slept?

“It’s been five days, El.” 

Xi was good at keeping count of things. He also had a talent for making things complicated and simple at the same time. El: the shortened version of her already short name. A nickname endearingly used only by him. This made it special. Special things were precious things to Xi.

“What’d you see this time?”

Ela answered quickly, unfazed by the content she related to him. There was one gesture in particular that had his eyebrows raising. Holding out her hands, thumbs out, one palm up, the other palm down, she flipped them. Death.

“Spooky.”

Xi settled down next to her, lush grass bending beneath him. He never liked this garden. Not knowing exactly why, he blamed it on the fragile, ephemeral vegetation that inhabited it. He always got the feeling he was imposing upon it somehow. Like it didn’t like him. So, he didn’t like it back.

“What do you mean you’ll fix it?”

He asked after she tugged on his sleeve, a smile on her face, hands moving excitedly. Enthused by the idea she conveyed much more so than he. Again, she flipped her hands. Death. It was always about death with her.

“Would you just stop, El?” Xi refused to look at her. “I can’t take this anymore.”

She tugged his sleeve a second time, asking him to look. To read her signs. Understanding her was simple. Accepting her choices, which tended to be of the martyr-ing nature, was much harder for him than it was for her. Then again, everything about her was hard on him.

He turned to her, eyes closed. “I can’t see it now. So stop. Just, stop.”

And he repeated his last word over and over and over again. All the while, her hands tugged on his. On his face. On his eyelids. Lips parted, no words rolled off her lips. Tears silently fell from her eyes.

Ela Nektor herself died at the hands of the tree she obeyed. A lonely child. A beautiful girl born with the inability to speak. A mute guarded by a prepubescent boy who never wanted to grow up.

Death. 

Ela Nektor knew, for as long as she could remember, exactly how she would die. She willingly ran towards this fate. The Tree of Life always gets what it wants.

And the seeds of its influence spread farther than anyone could have possibly imagined.

A/N: You're all probably wondering why it took me so long to update. Honestly, I've rewritten, deleted, included, and rewritten (again) scenes for this chapter so many times over the past few months it's ridiculous. And to answer your question, yes. Yes, the 70th Seeress of Exo is dead. We now all have permission to sit silently for a few seconds as that blows over. Or more, because everyone who's read this knows exactly why I haven't been updating. Thank you for sticking by me anyway! You're comments fill my busy days with smiles.

Sidenote: This chapter's title "Skipping Seven" refers to the seven stages of grief.