Ashen Heart The Fifth Route
by PeasantryIsFun
is a Golden Path fancomic for Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
After going back to the start of Three Houses a fifth time, Byleth and Sothis manage to regain their memories and convince Rhea to let them to teach all three houses by having them alternate between teachers for different subjects.
The comic is also on the creator's Pixiv here
, with their Pixiv alias of turtledove.
Ashen Heart contains examples of:
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Byleth fades away in a ray of light in the ending, with only her brooch seen afterwards.
- Bittersweet Ending: The three lords and most of the cast survive; however, Byleth, Sothis and Jeralt still die in the end.
- Break Them by Talking: Ultimately, how Byleth defeats Epimenides.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Merging with the "true" Sothis inside the Sword of the Creator allows Byleth to defeat Epimenides, but comes at the cost of their own life.
- Call-Back: The final shot of the comic is the post-Timeskip versions of Claude, Dimitri and Edelgard re-creating the official artwork of all three of them standing in front of Garreg Mach as students.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Byleth manages to fuse completely with Sothis, thanks to the Chalice of Beginnings, in order to take on Epimenides.
- Face–Heel Turn: Shez is outright working with the Agarthans.
- Grave-Marking Scene: Rhea is seen leaving Byleth's brooch and some flowers at her grave in the ending.
- Mythology Gag: The mask that Byleth wears during most of the second half of the comic is the same as that of the Masked Knight from Fire Emblem Gaiden.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: Jeralt sacrifices himself by cushioning Byleth's fall when they're both knocked off the cliff.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Arguably Rhea, considering their somewhat complicated relationship, after Byleth dies.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Byleth and Sothis manage to have this after going through the events of the game four previous times.
- Secretly Dying: Byleth hides how they're dying from the lords and Rhea after defeating Epimenides.
- Take a Third Option: Byleth persuading Rhea to instead have the teachers alternate teaching the entire school, depending on subject.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: We see a large chunk of the cast after the story in a montage in the final pages.
