Disclaimer: I do not own Golden Sun or any of its characters. All rights belong to Camelot and other developers of the game.

If I did own Golden Sun, I would've made a whole anime series of it by now purely for my own enjoyment!

*Please note there are many spoilers for Dark Dawn within this story*

Chapter I

Darkness fell upon the cold city of Ayuthay. Now that the Alchemy Machines across the Ei-Jei region had been fixed, winters now befell the kingdom. It was a blessing, and the people of Ayuthay thoroughly enjoyed it. Only now they found themselves scrambling to hurry and make warmer clothing than their normal summer apparel that they had become accustomed to due to the high temperatures that they experienced all year long.

Amiti sat alone in the darkened chamber, with only the light of a single candle illuminating the room around him. A celebration was going on outside, but he felt no desire to partake in it. The day just prior had been the burial of his beloved Uncle Paithos, the former king of Ayuthay, and the very next night was the coronation ceremony in which Amiti would have to take the throne. Before it had all seemed glorious to Amiti to become king, but now as the event was taking place, and at the cost of losing his uncle, he no longer desired it.

During the Grave Eclipse, Paithos had fallen terribly ill. Amiti had very much wanted to be with him, but he knew his place belonged with the other Adepts in stopping the Eclipse. They needed him, and while he couldn't turn his back on his uncle, he found it to be much more detrimental if he didn't join the Adepts in their quest. As soon as they had ended the Eclipse, he'd hurried back to Ayuthay without a moment's delay, but arrived only with an hour to spare before his uncle's parting from the physical world as they knew it. Little did they speak, little were they able to. There was no time left – that they both knew. They only sat there holding hands, silently giving their goodbyes. Only moments before his death, Paithos had left Amiti with the most peculiar message: "In your mother's tomb… In the place where it's hidden… Your answers are there…"

He then died shortly after relaying this message to him, without giving his nephew the opportunity to ask what place and where. For days, Amiti had dwelt on what his uncle had said, pondering over what it could all have meant. But as time wore on, after many thorough explorations of his mother's tomb, he slowly began to wonder if it had indeed meant nothing – that perhaps his uncle had only speaking gibberish before he passed.

Amiti sat in the corner of the room with his back against the wall, contemplating what he should do, and life in general. He felt quite lost after his uncle died, and really didn't want to have the responsibility of the kingdom on his shoulders. He wasn't ready to be king, his uncle had left him far too soon with such a responsibility at hand. There was so much that Amiti wanted to tell him, so much that he wanted to ask.

"… In the place where it's hidden… Your answers are there."

These words haunted his soul every night when he'd go to bed, and all of the hours when he was awake. He'd taken many trips into his mother's tomb, searching for any place where something could hide, but each time came back unsuccessful. He had found no place, not that he was very surprised. A hiding place wouldn't well be out in the obvious, would it?

He was in a melancholy mood, feeling too overburdened by having to go out in a crowd of people, having to put on a cheery persona and play the role that was expected of him. For once, for once he just felt like being the child that he still was deep inside and cry. Ever since his uncle's passing, all the talk in the kingdom was about Amiti becoming the new king and he was well tired of it now. No one seemed to truly remember that Paithos had been his uncle, and that up until then he'd only been raised within the palace walls, treated like the young prince of Ayuthay, with no real experience of the outside world. Though he was nineteen, he found that he wasn't entirely a mature one. He doubted that he'd be able to make a good king, even if he was enthusiastic about the position. No one seemed to understand, no one seemed to care.

He had sat alone in that darkened chamber for the past three hours, and no one had yet come looking for him. Not that he wanted them to, but it surprised him all the same about their lack of concern. It was during these days before a coronation that people liked to make their assassination attempts.

His thoughts drifted off to the other Adepts, and wondered if they had all gotten back home okay. It was hard for him to imagine that just a week ago they had all been traveling together. It had seemed as though that were at least a lifetime ago. Just one week ago, they had fought the Tuaparang atop the Apollo Sanctum, and had ended the devastating Eclipse that ruined the lives of many. Just a week ago Sveta lost her brother, Volechek, who proved himself to be quite a heroic king. Amiti cringed as the scene replayed through his mind. It all seemed so real as it happened, and now looking back on it, it didn't seem as if it ever happened at all. Being back in the castle walls, Amiti felt as though he had never left them. Even though their situation had been so dire, he had the time of his life traveling with the other Adepts, getting to see new parts of the world that he'd never anticipated traveling to. After he'd gotten back in Ayuthay, he'd secretly had high hopes of being able to sneak off to visit them now and again – But now everything had changed. His freedom would be taken away for good, under the responsibility of looking after his kingdom and his people.

Even more strangely, he kept finding himself wondering what had happened to Alex, though he wasn't sure why it really mattered to him. Last they had seen of him, he was helping them out in the Apollo Sanctum, fighting off his own comrades to buy the Adepts time to start up the Apollo Lens. Amiti wasn't sure why he found his mind traveling to Alex during times like these, but something about the man just seemed – familiar. He couldn't begin to explain why, but deep down he felt like he knew him, as though he were an old friend. No one knew what happened to him after the Apollo Lens had been used. It almost seemed as though he just disappeared – which Amiti reminded himself that he technically could. He knew better than to believe that Alex died, he honestly didn't think that he was mortal enough to be able to. It still remained a mystery to him as to what possessed Alex to fight against them for so long, being so desperate to start the Grave Eclipse as he had been, for in the next instant wanting to end it and helping the Adepts to do so in any way that he could. He was a hard man to figure out, and Amiti thought perhaps it'd be wisest on his part to stop trying.

Amiti stood up. He knew stalling out would help nothing – one way or another he'd have to go through with the coronation, and soon they really would send people looking for him. Thinking that would look rather bad that the ceremony would have to be postponed due to the new king not wanting to attend it, he decided to simply take a deep breath and just get it over with.

As he walked down the hall, his mind drifted back to his uncle, thinking on how disappointed his uncle might've been that they had forgotten him so shortly after his death. Then that cursed phrase went through his mind once more:

"In your mother's tomb… In the place where it's hidden… Your answers are there."

He was over half way to his room, and it was only thirty minutes until the coronation ceremony began. He barely had enough time to change clothes, comb his hair, and try to figure out how to get the ridiculously large and heavy headdress to stay on while bending over, yet he found himself contemplating searching his mother's tomb one last time. He told himself it was useless, he'd already searched it top to bottom. But he felt that it must've been important if his uncle chose those to be his final words to his nephew. It surely meant there indeed had to be something there, it was only a matter of Amiti just not looking in the right place. He very much needed guidance and answers right now, and thought his best bet would be to find whatever his uncle had hidden for him.

Looking up the hall towards his room, he tore off in the opposite direction down to his mother's tomb site. He knew the people would be looking for him. And yes, he knew that he'd stall out the ceremony, but well, he was the one becoming king wasn't he? They could be flexible with their schedule for him.

Upon entering, Amiti grabbed one of the torches on the wall and descended down the steps into the tomb. It was damp and cold, the earth being soft and moist under his feet. He held the torch up high, surveying the site carefully. In the center rested a headstone, and at its feet lay the body of his mother. He had never known her as she had passed away shortly after he was born, with barely having the time to name him. Yet despite all of this, he couldn't help but feel sorrow that she was dead.

He crouched down beside her grave, rubbing a hand across the soft, damp soil of her grave, then across the smooth stone slab engraved with his mother's name and date of her death, the date of which he was born. He got up and walked around the room quickly, then moved through it slower. It was the same as he had always seen it, and still no sign lay of anything that could be hidden. His heart began to sink with despair. All of the questions he desired to ask would have to remain a mystery to him forever.

As Amiti circled around the back of the grave, he noticed ridges in the back of the headstone that he'd never noticed before. He rubbed a finger across it, and noticed a symbol of some kind engraved. It wasn't the Ayuthayan symbol, for he would've recognized that. But this one was odd, and seemed quite familiar. He then recalled where he had seen it; back in their Alchemy Well. Excitement coursed through him, and without giving it much thought he used douse upon the stone. Inheriting his abilities from his father, Amiti was a Mercury Adept, gifted with the abilities of the water element. As the water washed over the smooth marbled-stone, it then began to glow as the place where the symbol had been simply vanished, leaving an opening in the headstone itself.

Amiti blinked. This was rather odd, who would hide something in a headstone with Psynergy to protect it? It then occurred to him that perhaps this was done on purpose – Amiti was the only Water Adept in Ayuthay, therefore the contents would be safe for him and him alone, throughout wars and enemy invasions. It was probably all well thought out by his uncle and perhaps… His mother.

Slowly, he put his hand inside the hole and felt around, at first finding nothing, until he felt his hand run across a smooth leather bound book. He pulled it out and was quite surprised, and slightly disappointed to see how small it was, no larger than his hand. He felt around some more but nothing else was there. Leaning back against the headstone, Amiti carefully opened the leather bound book. He was surprised to see it was a journal of sorts, finding many pages to have been torn out, with the first page remaining written in the familiar handwriting of his uncle.

"To my dear Amiti,

If you are reading this now, I have passed away before being given the opportunity to tell you all that you needed to know. Even I myself know not everything that your mother knew about you and your father. However, I can only hope and pray that she included all of those things in her journal, and hope that you may find the answers to who you truly are, and who your parents were. To be quite honest, I never had the courage enough to read it and find out all of those things myself.

May you find the strength that you need to rule Ayuthay, and to be the wise, courageous king I always knew you'd be. Your mother and I are so proud of you.

~ Paithos"

Amiti reread the message from his uncle a few times before flipping through the pages of the journal. They were all filled with the thin, slanted handwriting of his mothers. Excitement and despaired coursed through the young Adept all at once. He didn't know what he was expecting to find, but he had been hoping something greater than this. With the urgency that his uncle had told him in, he figured he'd find something spectacular and very important, not something so insignificant such as his mother's journal. He'd always been told not everything is what it seemed, so perhaps this were one of them. He very much wanted to get started reading, but knew that the ceremony was about to start quite soon, and felt a pang of guilt to be so selfish as to make them wait on him.

He quickly tucked the journal away in his pocket and rushed out of the tomb, feeling slightly more uplifted then when he had arrived there. Even if the journal didn't solve his problems or answer his many questions, and least he'd feel as if he were getting to know his mother through reading her thoughts and her life. And maybe at last, after many months of endless wondering, he'd know the truth of his father's identity.

Author's Note:

I LOVED Golden Sun Dark Dawn but was so irritated with the ending. So many things were left hanging and unanswered… Then I began thinking what if this happened, and this and that, and soon, I came up with this story! Probably once the sequel to dark dawn is released this story will be completely invalid, but I'm trying to follow the events of the 3 previous games fairly accurately. Amiti is my favorite character, and so this story will be mainly revolving around him, but it is a sequel to dark dawn and will consist of all of the characters overtime.

Please read and review, I'd love to hear what you think! This is my first fanfic in the Golden Sun region. Thank you for reading :)