Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bright-eyed golden boy—barefoot and bee-stung, his soles tattooed by pine needles and river silt, a crown of sun-warm thorns woven into hair spun from summer fields.

He runs like light dappling through canopy leaves, like laughter not meant for this world. The sparrows sing in twilight tongues—dark blue lullabies of dusk, and the wind hushes to listen.

His mother, Layla—hyssop-kissed and willow-thin, her ribs like harp strings trembling beneath her skin, tells him stories old as time. Her voice is wet with honey and ruin.

She speaks of Andromeda, iron-chained, her cries echoed against the bones of the cosmos. She sings of Orion, who loved so fiercely the stars turned away.

Myths spiral from her mouth like smoke, curling into the canopy, catching fireflies mid-flight. She holds him on her hip, his golden eyes wide with curiosity. She points skyward, and the constellations tell their history.

“Celestial magic is our legacy,” she said, once, under the warm hush of evening. Her voice was soft and low.

He had been small then. Smaller than he would ever be again. Swallowed in his mother’s lap, blanket dragging behind him like a molted wing.

Stars tangled in his curls. He giggled when she bopped his nose, gold eyes squinting with joy, his laughter all breath and bell-tone.

“Heartfilias belong to the stars,” she told him. “The greatest Celestial wizards were born from our line.”

Outside, the wind howled like something ancient and grieving. But inside, the world was golden. Inside, her voice made everything feel still.

“People will try to tell you you’re weak,” she said. “That magic like ours has little power. That you’re nothing without a sword or fire. That it’s not real magic if it doesn’t cause big waves.”

Her smile had trembled then. Just a little.

“But they don’t know,” she said. “They don’t understand. Remember, this magic—” she touched his sternum, gentle, warm, “—is your birthright. It’s your soul. They don’t understand that this magic was never meant for humans.”

He remembers nodding. He remembers not fully understanding but wanting to, so desperately, because she looked at him like he held the moon.

“No one can take that from you,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Not ever. Not even if they try.”

He believed her then. Or tried to. Children often do, even when the world begins to rot at the edges.

Celestial magic coiled itself around his soul like a serpent, scales made of starlight, biting down, never letting go.

He shapes it even now, hands wrist-deep in the shimmer, as if conjuring rivers from mist, unthinking, unburdened. He casts, not calls. He commands, not pleads. It obeys him the way tides follow the moon.

Layla watches, ribs aching, heart hollowed by prophecy. There is awe there, yes, but also grief, deep and vine-wrapped.

Her son is sky-born, storm-cast. He is special even amongst a family of miracles. And she will not live to see him grow, she will not live to see him become more.

When the eclipse comes—July 7, 777—she opens the gate.

The sky splits like an old wound torn open. Light oozes in reverse. Time curls back on itself like a dying fern. The Eclipse Gate yawns open with a sound like the sea remembering its dead, and the end begins.

This is where myth rots.

This is where the golden boy becomes more than he should have been, and less than he was meant to be. He is prophet and apocalypse, flame and fall.

The starlight that once licked gently at his fingertips now devours. Magic weeps, galaxies burn beneath his skin. Time knows all, and awaits for the end, devouring of the last of the last.

And Layla, mother of the golden eyed boy, mother of ends—watches the world tilt.

What is more tragic than the divine made flesh?

The air shimmered gold, like sunlight glancing off the sea, catching in the cracks of the world. It danced through the stone corridors like something alive, shedding flecks of divinity like flower petals.

A child, barely at the cusp of seven, stood at the heart of it all, barefoot in the training hall, laughing softly to himself. His fingers twitched in small, precise patterns, and the magic obeyed like an eager pet.

Golden magic bent around him, folding into arcs and spirals, twining together into the vague shape of a whale. It swam upward mid-leap, its tail flicking galaxies behind it.

From the doorway, Layla watched. Half-shadowed, half-luminous, she was the type of beautiful that made people nervous. A gentle smile played at her lips.

His eyes had been gold from the moment he was born. She’d thought it strange, once. Now, as she watched him summon light pulled from stars, it just made sense.

There was so much power in him. So much beauty. And power—always, always—came at a cost. She worried for him, for when she is no longer here to protect him.

A crack! like water snapping off stone burst through the silence.

A glowing tentacle, still mid-shimmer, flopped unceremoniously to the ground as the summoned whale collapsed into a wheezy bubble.

“What,” a sharp voice rang out, “in all seven sunken heavens is that supposed to be?”

Luka’s head shot up, eyes alight. “Aqua!” he beamed. “Look! I made a sea-dragon! For you!”

A woman with hair like midnight kelp and a tail that could level armies loomed into the room with the grace of a ship cutting through ice.

“That,” Aquarius said, sneering at the collapsed whale with a sea-glass sandal, “looks like a drowned slug.”

“But it’s sparkly! Like you!” Luka insisted.

She made a sound that was equal parts exasperation and internal screaming. “Ugh. Don’t try, shrimp. It won’t save your sparkly slug from public execution.”

Luka grinned wider. “He’s majestic.”

“He’s floppy.”

“He has potential!”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll put you in a fishbowl and name you Sir Flopsalot the Third.”

Layla chuckled, brushing her hair behind her ear as she stepped into the room. “He is getting better. It actually has a spine this time.”

Aquarius rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. She never did when Layla spoke. Not really. Her sarcasm dialled back, just a touch. Like a tide retreating, still strong but gentler.

Luka scampered forward and tugged at Aquarius’s hand. “Aqua, Aqua, do the thing, make your hair float all scary again!”

“I’m not your circus brat,” she grumbled, but she ruffled his hair anyway. “Maybe later. If you survive the next five minutes without setting something on fire again.”

“That was one time.”

“It was two.”

Layla watched them, her smile dimming at the edges. She stepped closer, her voice softer now, holding something quiet and weighty behind the silk.

“Aquarius.”

The water goddess turned from watching Luka, who had been trying to reshape the golden tendrils of raw mana to something more solid.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.

“Don’t get all mushy on me.” Aquarius crossed her arms, but her voice dipped, lost some of its bite.

“What’s this about?”

“I chose you as his godmother for a reason.”

Layla’s words hung in the air like a bell toll. “There’s no one I trust more.”

Aquarius blinked. “Layla.”

“Promise me,” she whispered, and her voice dropped into something that did not beg, it bound.

“Promise me you’ll always be there. If I can’t be. When I can’t be.”

There it was, bare and naked between them. The terrible, inevitable truth. Layla had always lived like a dying star, blazing, beautiful and fast, not unlike her ancestors. Too fast. Even her love felt like it came with a goodbye.

Aquarius looked away, something strange and dangerous stirring in her.

“I hate when you talk like that,” she muttered.

“It doesn’t change anything.”

“I know.”

Luka was spinning in little circles now, trying to get his summoned stars to chase him. He had no idea the air had changed. That the world had, briefly, paused to mourn a future not yet passed.

“Swear it, Aquarius.”

Aquarius’s jaw worked. She never liked soft things. But her voice, when it came, was low and serious.

“I swear. I’ll protect him. He’ll never be alone.”

Layla nodded once. That was all. She trusted her.

The door opened behind them with an audible creak, sharp and neat, like everything he did. Jude walked in like he had the right to every room he entered, spine straight, eyes sharp.

He took one look at the celestial chaos and frowned.

“Lucas.”

Luka stopped spinning mid-twirl. “Uhh…”

“You were supposed to be in etiquette lessons an hour ago.”

He tried not to shrink under that gaze.

“But I was practising!” Luka said, gesturing to the last sparks of his dying sea-dragon. “Look, I made a solid thing this time!”

“A drowned thing,” Aquarius muttered.

Layla frowned. Jude’s love was built in rooms with too many windows and no curtains, where expectation walked in before you did. He was a man of contracts and calendars, a man who loved in parentheses, conditional, bracketed, always footnoted.

When Luka brought him drawings of keys he’d traced by candlelight, Jude would nod absently.

“Very good,” he’d say, without looking. “But don’t forget to revise your economic theory.”

Jude didn’t mean to be cold. He just didn’t know how to be warm without scalding. His affection came in the form of new books, more lessons, a new quill with Luka’s name carved into the shaft.

He was trying. But trying with hands too used to ledger columns and power balances to ever truly cradle a child.

Layla touched Jude’s arm, gently. “It’s all right, once in a while.”

“He must learn structure,” Jude said stiffly.

“He must be allowed to be a child,” Layla replied.

“He has to learn.”

“He has to be loved.”

“I’m doing both,” Jude replied.

That was his flaw, she thought. Jude loved like a man with a leaky bucket. Always pouring, never noticing the water lost along the way. He rarely understood the people he loved.

He knew how to provide, how to protect, how to prepare for disaster but not how to listen when love asked for softness instead of structure. And Layla, Layla had loved him all the same, because trying is its own form of devotion.

Even if she wished, more often than not, that he understood her want, no, her need, to use celestial magic. To move between stars like a dancer on a stage only she could see. To speak to the constellations, the spirits, the golden silence between summoning and being summoned. She missed it. The wildness. The wonder.

And Jude, for all his careful affection, didn’t understand why. Magic, to him, had always been a utility. A tool. But for Layla, it had been breath itself. Worship. Communion. Something sacred and devouring.

Lately, though, the devouring had turned literal.

She hadn’t gotten a professional diagnosis. Not yet. She didn’t need one. She knew. She could feel it in her lungs, how her breath now shivered like old glass. In her bones, the slow, aching depletion of mana like water receding from the shore.

In the mornings, her fingers trembled before her tea had cooled. In the evenings, her vision blackens, and the stars look blurred, like they no longer recognise her.

Magic Deficiency Disease. She'd seen it before, in other Celestial mages. It was almost a rite. A curse with a long bloodline, passed like an heirloom no one ever wanted to inherit.

Celestial magic was not meant for humans, after all.

It wasn’t only Heartfilias who suffered. But they, more than most, could resist it. That resistance was their blessing. And their downfall. Because when you can wield the power of the very constellations and vast cosmos, you forget they’re not meant to be held by moral flesh.

And Heartfilias were proud. Careless, even. Daring to push the boundaries just because they could. That was how her great-aunt died. That was how her cousin went comatose. That was how her mother died.

It was in their blood, the need to chase light even when it burned. She looked at her hands now. Pale. Bone-thin. Still trembling. The next time she opened a gate, it might not open.

The time after that, it might take her with it. Maybe it was foolish, but she wanted one more mission. Just one. Before the gods remembered she was only human.

Jude’s jaw tightened. Then loosened. A long breath. He walked over, stiff as ever, and reached out with a hand that hesitated for a fraction of a second before tousling Luka’s hair, awkward and clumsy.

“You will return to lessons after dinner.”

“Yes, sir!” Luka grinned, his hand raising to perform a mock salute. She felt her heart clench and unclench in slow, tidal grief. He looked so small, so young.

“And you will not attempt to conjure mythical aquatic wildlife indoors.”

“Really,” Luka pouted.

Aquarius slapped the back of his head lightly. “Painfully obvious boundaries, shrimp. Learn them.”

Layla laughed softly, her fingers trailing over the wall, feeling the golden dust Luka had left behind. Maybe she’d take him out camping.

One last time.

Before she was too weak to carry the keyring. Before he noticed her breath shortening.

Outside, the stars turned.

And somewhere, far ahead, the end waited like a door just beginning to open.

Natsu was sulking again.

Well, “sulking” was a generous word. More like crouched low to the ground like a pissed-off jungle cat, arms crossed, teeth bared and radiating enough heat to toast bread from five feet away.

Gildarts had him by the scruff of that too-big ragged cloak and was sporting a new bruise across his cheekbone that was already blooming purple.

"Okay, kiddo," Gildarts muttered, fingers curled tight in Natsu's collar, "gonna need you to chill for, like, five seconds. Preferably without setting another goddamn table on fire.”

Natsu growled. Actually growled.

Gildarts didn’t flinch. He just sighed. "Cool. Love this for me. Definitely not rethinking every life decision I've ever made."

In the background, some poor soul was being wheeled away on a stretcher, unconscious and smoking slightly. One of his boots had melted.

"Why—" Gildarts tilted his head back like he was asking the ceiling gods for patience. "Why are there no leash laws in this guild?”

Natsu glared again, tired yet still very so spiteful. Gildarts swung him out of reach like he was a very angry lantern.

“You fu—lizard goblin, I swear, one more person ends up in the infirmary and I’m duct taping your hands and mouth shut.”

Natsu snarled at him. Gildarts was pretty sure the only reason he wasn’t being punted with Chaos magic was because Gildarts had tired out the brat already.

“...Right. I need a drink.”

Why was he here again? Oh right, because of the first week Natsu had been here. Gray had thrown the first punch, Natsu dodged and then hit back. Gray was still in the infirmary. Nearly died.

Erza jumped in next, all righteous fury and knightly pride. She fought hard, fought smart—but lost. Not as brutally, but it wasn’t close. She’s also still in the infirmary. Then Mira stepped in. She activated Demon Soul without hesitation, power rolling off her in waves. She lost too.

That was when the shift happened, or maybe it had been there when Natsu nearly killed Gray, when the guild stopped treating Natsu like a problem and started treating him like a threat.

Now even the air around him felt heavy.

“You’re the reason we can’t have nice things,” Gildarts muttered, staring at yet another scorched table. “And I mean that literally. That oak was imported.”

Natsu hissed.

Makarov hopped up onto the table, stein in hand, ignoring the scorch marks. "He’s not that bad.”

"You’re bleeding from your left ear, old man.”

Makarov ignored that too.

Gildarts jerked a still-growling, still-smoking Natsu. “This is your defence? You kidnapped Acnologia’s brat, and this is your defence?”

"It was more of an unexpected adoption.”

"You found him gnawing on a wyvern corpse.”

"And I gave him food and a place to live.”

Gildarts blinked. "The hell is wrong with you?”

Natsu spat something low and angry that may have been a word. It was definitely a curse.

Gildarts looked down at him. "Yeah, I feel you, buddy. I didn’t want to be here either.”

Natsu glared.

"Okay, gremlin," Gildarts muttered, "if you bite me again, I swear to every god I’m building a containment unit for your demon ass.” and then, under his breath, “Thank god I don’t have kids.”

When Luka turned ten, the sky forgot how to hold its colour.

He tasted grief like frost on the tongue, like ash and something more blooming behind the ribs. Ten years old and already undone, already baptised in the cold hush of absence.

His mother’s breath came in pieces, in shivers, in tremors. The cough, a bell tolling in her lungs, rattled her like dry branches in wind.

And when she left, pale and paper-thin, a pressed flower in death’s diary, the last fragile thread tethering him to warmth snapped. It did not break. It ripped. A violence. A silence so loud it bruised.

Grief swallowed him whole, greedy as a wolf beneath the moon. It devoured, devoured, devoured. Until there was nothing left but the ache. That terrible, gnawing absence where love once lived.

He gets the key on the eve of her funeral, her last and final gift. The house smells like rotten silk, the barest hints of her hyssop lingering just out of reach.

The quiet is a grave of its own, not silence, but a hush that listens. That waits. For what, he doesn’t know. Her voice? Her ghost?

It comes in a velvet box. Black, dustless. Inside was a key that glows faintly, so very faint, as though absorbing light. It looked silver at first glance, could have passed for a lesser gate if not for the barely there sheen of warm gold humming beneath the metal. Platinum. 

He lifts it and it hums against his palm, warm as breath. Old magic. The handle is ornate, filigreed like frost on glass, yet not pretty, ancient is the word. Like Crux’s.

The eye in its centre glows silver white, calm and watchful. A constellation curls across it— Corvus. The crow. The watcher. The forgotten.

He doesn't cry. Not then. He feels dried up. Saltless. Hollow as a gourd left too long in sun. His ribs rattle when he breathes.

Still, the night after the funeral, still clothed in mourning black, heart still wet with grave-dirt, Luka walks into the garden where the moon stains the earth pale and the ivy watches like gods without names and he raises the key.

When he calls Corvus, it’s like calling something buried beneath the marrow. The air folds. The stars blink. His breath lurches. Mana claws out of his body like it doesn’t want to stay.

The gate opens in silence.

And shadow spills.

It pours like ink, like wet silk, like the smoke of burning laurels and out of it, a man emerges. Pale. Sharp. His eyes black but specked with silver like distant stars in a still pond.

His coat falls in layers, like feathers or shattered armor, collar high around his throat. The shadows still cling to his feet, licking at the ground as if reluctant to let him go. He looks twenty. He looks eternal.

He looks surprised.

Luka doesn't know why.

The air goes thin. The floor tilts. Platinum keys, he’d forgotten how much they take. Pain, sharp and sudden, blooms behind his ribs from the magic drain.

Corvus tilts his head, sharp-boned and unreadable. And then kneels, slow and deliberate. The shadows follow. Wrap around Luka’s legs, his ribs, his shoulders — not binding, but holding.

“I am Corvus,” the spirit says. His voice is low. “I thought I would meet you later.”

Luka, ten and already half a ghost, speaks in little words like birdseed. The contract is quiet and uneventful.

Corvus’s smile is softer than any of the condolences Luka’s heard all day. And when Luka asks, What days are you free?

“Anytime,” is his answer, his expression nostalgic, like sea glass on summer sand, like he's meeting an old friend.

And when Luka asks, Do you need anything else?

“Nothing,” Corvus says, his shadows warmer than the hands that patted and touched him without thought, warmer than the dull performance of comforting a grieving child. “Only honesty.”

He calls Corvus more and more after that. The drain on his mana is sharp and bruising, like pulling teeth, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t want to bother the others.

They were hers, his mother’s. And he? He is the remainder of her, the unwanted memory and burden. He is afraid they will grow to hate him, hate him like his father does.

The mansion’s stale rot pressed in too heavily.  It smelled like dust, like blood dried under fingernails. Luka wondered if this hollow ache was what it meant to break.

If grief had made him unrecognisable. If perhaps he had always been unlovable, and his mother had simply been too kind to see it.

If maybe, just maybe, her death had carved open something monstrous in him, and that was why his father hated him.

Bruises blossomed like blue roses down his throat and arms. Some nights, he counted them like constellations. In the quiet, he listened to the mansion breathe. It did not weep. It did not speak.

It watched, eyes in the walls, mechanical and cold. The silence here had teeth. It wrapped around his neck like ivy or a noose or an oath. He lay still on his bed. But inside, inside he was thrashing, clawing, sobbing without sound. He screamed with his bones. He begged with his marrow. Change. Please. Change.

But nothing changed.

The dark corners of his room blurred at the edges, as if the shadows were consuming him slowly.

He thought, Is this how a ghost is made? Not all at once, but piece by piece, until the body forgets how to be a body and the soul dissolves like sugar in water.

He was becoming absence.

The mansion hummed its silence like a hymn. Outside, the world danced in colour and breeze. Inside, he inhaled the stale air of grief, year after year, until even hope forgot his name. Magic was his only escape. His spirits, his constellation kin, his mythbound family. And yet—

Did he imagine the resentment behind Aquarius’s eyes? Did she blame him, too? Blame him for living when his mother had not.

Blame him like his father did, in slurred rage and shaking fists, eyes glazed and red-rimmed. I don’t want you, I want her back! Why did you leave, Layla?

But Corvus is different. Corvus stays. And he doesn’t hate him. Corvus teaches him the celestial tongue, his voice a quiet murmur that sounds like old wind over graves.

He corrects Luka’s pronunciation without cruelty, his fingers tapping the rhythm into Luka’s wrist like a heartbeat. Corvus never rushes him. Never berate him or treat him as something he simply tolerates.

And in those hours, it’s easier to breathe. Easier to forget the house is filled with silence and the wilted rage Jude lives in. Easier to believe the rot hasn’t set in.

Until the day Corvus sees the bruise on his arm. Faint, shaped like a hand. Already yellowing. But unmistakable.

The room turns wrong. Too quiet. Too still. Corvus doesn't speak for a long breath. His shadow stretches, ripples, fills the corners like oil. Then he kneels, slow and predatory. Reaches out, gloved fingers trailing over the bruise like he might wipe it away.

“Who.”

Luka flinches. Corvus’s expression twists into something pained. Luka makes sure not to move, not to flinch again, when Corvus gentles a hand through his hair.

“It’s nothing.”

Corvus’s eyes narrow. His voice drops.

“Little prince. Do not lie to me.”

Luka doesn’t answer. Something shifts. Sharp. Dark. The room tilts, a threat made of shadow. Corvus stands tall, terrible, and furious in a way Luka has never seen before. He looks... inhuman.

“Was it a tutor? A servant?”

“No,” Luka whispers.

“…Your father?”

His expression sharpens into something dangerous. The shadows behind him twist. Luka doesn’t look, only catches it from the corner of his eye. Eldritch movement alive and whispering.

“I don’t want you to hurt him,” Luka says, voice cracking. “I don’t want him dead.”

Corvus hums. He doesn’t move, doesn’t push Luka off when his small hands twist anxiously in his coat, gripping tight.

“He’s the only family I have left, please,” Luka pleads.

Corvus frowns, the expression predatory, far angrier and more terrifying than anything Luka has ever seen. And when Luka shrinks back ever so slightly when his hand brushes over his shoulder, tender bruises hidden by silk, the shadows drain back to his feet.

Corvus leaves. His face is twisted in equal parts fury and pain, pain at what, Luka doesn’t know. And Luka is left half-sobbing in a soulless home.

He doesn’t summon Corvus for days. Spiralling in the isolation of his own thoughts, did he drive him away? Disgust him for being so weak? But when he finally does— late, exhausted and nearly hollow— Corvus comes. Carefully restrained, like even the smallest movement might scare Luka away.

Crux is quiet in the way grief dulls life, yet he always reaches out first, a simple feeling, a question, Are you well?

Cancer, too, grieves. He does not look at Luka for long, as though he cannot bear to bring himself to. Luka doesn’t summon them, not if he can help it. Aquarius, most of all. He fears her hatred the most.

Still, one day, lonely to the point of madness, silence chewing holes in his chest, he calls her. Aquarius appears in water and rage, all stormlight and fury. She doesn’t need words to see.

The bruises speak first. And she is a tempest. But not at him. At his father. Her eyes fall upon the necklace of bruises circling Luka’s throat and something ancient cracks.

The water surges. She moves. The air fills with tension, the shape of vengeance. But Luka drops to his knees, sobbing, clutching at her wrist like a drowning boy clinging to driftwood.

Don’t. Please don’t hurt him. He’s grieving too. It’s my fault. I was bad. I was bad. Don’t leave me. Don’t take the keys again. Please—

His voice breaks apart like wet parchment. His magic flickers, a dying star inside his ribs. And for a moment, the fury in Aquarius’s eyes shifts. Not gone, but reshaped. She kneels beside him and pulls him into her arms. Her hands are water and sky. Her voice, when it comes, is tender.

And in her embrace, Luka sobs for the first time in years like a child should sob, loud and ugly and true.

In the end, his spirits are stuck, unable to do anything against his father. Luka never orders them. No, he would never do that. But he begs. And that is enough to stop them.

No matter the bruises hidden beneath silk and fine cotton. No matter the sickening, gut wrenching pain they felt from him, before he learned how to shield his emotions from their bond.

No matter that he lies, he tells them his father got better. Even if he hasn’t. Even if it’s really just Luka who learned how to stay out of the way. Who learned how not to get hit.

He lies to them, everything’s fine now, he says, and he even tries to believe it. Even when his father’s words still make him wish, sometimes, that he’d never left the warmth of his mother at all.

That he had stayed there. Silent. Unborn.

Chapter Text

The years pass. Dried blood beneath candy coloured band aids, like bruised wings beneath glittering gauze. Empty hallways hushed with memory, always forever haunted by a ghost whose face he’s forgetting.

His soul is a white daisy unbloomed. Still curled inward, pale petals trembling like frightened fingers, never opening. There’s rage, yes—there’s always rage but it comes muffled, strangled, like sobs caught behind closed doors.

Like the scent of basil wilted and rotting in a forgotten pot, buried in the backyard alongside hyssop and baby teeth.

The half summer of his childhood bleeds like syrup, golden, into the mouths of ghosts. Ghosts who breathe nostalgia like lungfuls of graveyards.

Their chests rise and fall with tombstones and willow brine. Laughter rusts on their tongues. Sunset devours the sky, dusk creeping like moss across the bones of daylight. It is always hungry, always reaching, always eating, always wanting more. It eats the stars, one by one, hoping to be left with a bare body it can burn.

Luka carves his ribs clean. Sharpens himself into thinness. He starves until he no longer tastes the bitterness of apologies, those burnt sugar lies that line his throat like whiskey.

His father mistakes Luka for Layla again. It always happens at the edge of dusk, when he forgets to hide and shadows hang too long on the walls like spilt ink, like bruises that never quite heal.

The odour of old booze and a day’s sweat trails his father, and his hands are trembling before they even reach the boy.

Sometimes he’s crying. Sometimes he’s angry. And sometimes, worst of all, he’s both.

“Layla,” he slurs. Always her name first. Like an invocation. Like a spell half spoken, mangled by grief and liquor. “Layla, why’d you leave me with all this?”

He grabs Luka too tightly, knuckles digging into the soft place above Luka’s shoulder blade.

“You never should have learned Celestial Magic,” he whispers into Luka’s hair. Or maybe it’s shouted, Luka can never tell anymore, his ears always ringing after. “Always... always loved it more.”

Luka freezes, bone still, heart a small animal thrashing in a trap. Jude’s voice breaks, spittle and sobs landing in equal measure. “It killed you! Why didn’t you stay, Layla?”

His breath is hot and sour against Luka’s temple before he kisses it, kisses like he’s kissing a ghost. Luka doesn’t move. He’s frozen and hollowed out.

And his father, father weeps into the hollow of his neck like the child he once was. Or the man he never learned to be, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry spilling in between sobs like a stream.

Apologies for whom? The woman Luka reminds him of? Or the son he failed? Luka pretends it’s for him, for the lonely days and hurting nights, for the bruising on his soul and his skin.

Later, when the stream has passed, when Jude has stumbled back into silence or rage or sleep, Luka locks his door. Crosses the room with soft steps. Pulls the blanket from the bed but crawls beneath it, under the frame, where monsters hide, and pretends.

Pretends he’s somewhere else.

In a country of forgotten fire pits, ashes cold and moonlit, grass grown wild. The forest grove where the stream always bubbled. Pretends he’s in the forest, the pines split, and deer bones in piles like offerings. Spirit wolves, their eyes lantern bright, humming hymns through the black gaps in their teeth.

He pretends she’s there. She kneels beside him in memory. Hair loose, eyes bright with forestlight. Calloused hands showing him how to stake a tent, how to forage, how to find kindling for the fire.

“Respect the woods,” she tells him. Always that first. “The woods aren’t cruel. But they’re old. Old things ask for respect.”

She told him stories. Of the constellations lighting up the sky, of the wolves who guarded paths between worlds. Who watched over travellers and lonely boys and those who whispered thank you when they entered the hungered woods.

“They only hurt people who are cruel and disrespectful to them and their inhabitants,” she said, cupping his hands around a bowl of soup. “If we’re courteous, they’ll leave us be. Keep us safe.”

Safe.

He’d believed her. Still did, a little. Still dreamed of their teeth. Their white breath in winter. The way they’d look at him and see him.

He’s not sure if he sleeps. He must, at some point. But it always feels more like falling through memory than dreaming. When the sun rises, thin and cold through the curtains, he’ll crawl out like a caged beast emerging from slumber.

But for now, in this hush between nightmares, he stays curled beneath the frame of a world that never quite loved him right, whispering to the imagined wolves:

I’m still here. Please don’t forget me.

Please let me stay a little longer. Keep me safe.

Luka is thirteen when he has learned how to break without sound. He is thirteen and his rage and sorrow sharpen in equal measure.

In the belly of a party he didn’t want to attend, hands like rot and oil linger too long, touch him in a way that makes his skin crawl and magic quiver, and Luka snaps.

Magic lashes out. The air burns. Gold pulses like a whip. Yet, when all is said and done, when the shocked whispering guests leave, when he is shaky yet so very angry—

Glass shatters. A bottle, thrown. His father, red-faced and spitting. He calls Luka filth. Calls him ungrateful. Calls him everything but son.

Luka’s not crying. He’s too tired to cry. He sits in the hallway with blood on his temple and silence in his throat, and he thinks about burning down every version of himself that ever begged.

Outside, the willows weep for him.

Luka felt it. The wrongness. Thin as frost, spreading its way along a windowpane, nearly invisible unless you knew how to look. Dinner went… relatively fine. A hollow kind of fine. For once, his father didn’t spit poison through his teeth, didn’t tear Luka apart with words so sharp they left phantom bruises.

But even in that silence, Luka felt it: something off. Something wrong. His limbs felt sluggish. Drowsy, like gravity had folded itself into his blood. He didn’t even remember falling unconscious.

Only the slow lurch into darkness. The weightless drop into nowhere.

He woke bound, on a slab.

He is thirteen when he is chained like a beast. Thirteen, when his magic is sealed away, the way they only ever seal beasts and monsters. His body is waterlogged, heavy, too soft in places and too tight in others. Nausea writhed in his gut. Panic built slowly, then fast, momentum crashing like a storm tide.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t even scream—except, no, he was screaming. His throat was raw, torn open by sound, and he didn’t even know when it started. Something was inside him, inside his magic. Violating. Crawling through muscle and mana, pressing chains deep into the reservoirs beneath his skin.

The magic in him screamed, and the world screamed back. His neck burned. Split open. The binder loomed above him, and Luka felt every inch of his soul recoil.

Something inside him, something divine and furious and older than language, howled. The man squealed like a pig on a butcher’s block when Luka’s magic fought back.

He lived for years with nothing but his spine holding him up, bone like iron, will like rust. The sky above him is blank, hollow-eyed, godless. The kind of sky that watches but does not see.

There is no heaven to bless him. There is no hell to punish him. There is no immortal, all knowing saviour waiting with open arms and mercy.

There is only him.

Only him, trembling and bound on that slab, butchered like a lamb for the slaughter. Torn open, laid bare. His neck like parted petals, red blooming through the white flesh, covering the black of the binds.

All for the sins of a man who loved potential more than his own flesh and blood, who shaped Luka’s life with the cold hands of what could’ve and should’ve been.

Darkness flickers at the edge of his vision. A blink, a breath, soft as tidewater. Luka feels it, its gentle pull, its humming drag, and he wonders: is this it?

Is this how it ends?

Not in the blaze of myth, not in the firestorm of sacrifice turned saviour, like the heroes in the old tales, no. But here, limp, blood slick, chained.

A boy on a slab.

He stops screaming. Not because it stops hurting, but because he's choking on his own blood. Mouth full of copper moons.

He is the offering and the executioner. The monster and martyr. He is the trembling hands and the blade they hold. He is divinity bleeding out into something monstrous and beautiful.

Magic surges inside him, writhing like a storm beast in a cage. It is being bound, forcefully, violently, ropes of spellwork coiling like serpents around his magic core, biting down.

It snarls, the way wolves snarl when chained. It burns, crackles, splits the air into wounded light. His magic fights. It claws with the desperate rage of instinctual survival.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

And somewhere, deep in the fog, on the other side of the veil, there is a crack. Bone, glass, something breaking like a scream, finally made manifest.

He thinks he sees the binder hurled across the room, flung by his whirlwind, snarling magic, it’s lashes worse than any whip. The sharp crack of bone breaking, head against wall, echoes.

More blood hits the ground.

And it’s not just his.

Natsu rises. A name scrawled in the ruins across battlefield after battlefield. His victories come easily, too easily.

Monster. Demon. Chaos.

He hears them. Of course, he hears them. The way their breath catches when he walks past. The way their eyes skitter away like roaches from light. They flinch, always flinch, as if his touch might melt their bones.

Let them flinch. Let them tremble. His touch can melt their bones, his hands have crushed too many bones, left too many at the cusp of dying, his roar leaving pure destruction.

He says it's fine. After all, what are the insignificant thoughts of insects to the sun? It doesn’t matter.

But the lie tangles in his throat like smoke. He tells himself he doesn’t care. He says it again and again like a spell—I’m not lonely. I’m not lonely. I’m not lonely.

But there’s no one left to believe it. Not even him.

Luka wakes.

If this is waking. If this is life. He wakes like a dream, clawing out of a grave. Feverish. Weak. Half mad and half drowned in sorrow, his grief curdled and sour in his veins.

His breath catches, chokes. His lungs are thunderstruck. His bones buzz with absence. He’s sweating, trembling, blinking through the film of too much light. No, too much emptiness.

The magic is gone. The well inside him is bone dry, hollowed out like a ribcage left under moonlight, stripped by wolves.

He reaches inward and finds only echoes, the ghost of what once shimmered in him like sunlight across a spring.

Nothing.

Nothing.

The well is dry. The sea has turned to salt.

He chokes on the stillness. On the knowing. On the terrible, thunderous absence of power. Like the sun has died behind his ribs. He drags himself across the cold floor, bones rattling like wind chimes in a haunted house. His legs fail him. He crawls.

The vanity is a coffin for memory. He opens it. Fingers shaking. Splintered breath. His hands fumble. Shake against the drawer edge.

Aquarius? He whispers her name like a prayer.

Nothing.

Corvus?

Nothing.

Cancer?

Nothing.

Crux?

Nothing.

Lupus?

Nothing.

His magic won’t come. His spirits can’t hear him. He's choking again. Panic coils like smoke in his lungs. He’s swallowing air, choking on it. Is it blood? No. No blood.

But, wait, there is blood. Soaks through the bandages wrapped around his throat like a lover’s hands. He tears at them, fingers frantic, fevered, until the bindings are bare.

And there it is.

The brand. Black as charred bone, the shackle etched into his skin like the rings of Saturn, spiralling in on themselves, a curse coiled around his throat. Inked not in ink.

The sight of it is sacred and sickening. The pain hisses up his neck like steam. It’s because he tried to force the magic. He knows that now, somewhere in the haze, the recognition blooming.

The damage spreads from within. He's laughing or choking or both. His mind can’t tell the difference anymore. He drags his nails down the brand. Down the chains. Down the lie of his own throat.

Blood. Salt. Spit.

He tries again. A whisper this time.

Aquarius?

Nothing.

Corvus?

Nothing.

He starts to laugh. No—no, wait—he’s choking. No—he’s laughing? Salt on his tongue. Blood in his mouth. Or maybe it’s only in memory.

His nails rake down the mark, over and over and over again until it weeps. He wants to tear it off. To claw the curse free. He wants to be clean, to be whole, to be heard.

He thinks he's choking on blood again. But there's no blood. He looks up. And he sees—

Brown eyes.

Not gold.

Brown. Earthbound.

His magic is gone.

And still, screaming.

There’s a scream, somewhere. It echoes down the hollows of his bones. His throat burns, molten fire, glass shards.

He realises—

It’s him.

He’s the one screaming.

And somewhere in that hollow place where his soul used to live, he is becoming something else.

And unbecoming everything he ever was.

Chapter Text

When he regains his bearings, he's not whole. He’s a fracture wearing skin and sinew.

Servants gasp like they’ve seen a corpse claw its way back up the marble floors. Luka, on the ground, wild eyed, half mad, blood falling down his neck like ink from cracked porcelain.

They try to help him, gentle hands and clean cloth, but he flinches like they’ve lit him on fire. He scuttles back like an animal, skin crawling like locusts are nesting beneath it, like wings are beating inside him, like there are eggs in his flesh.

They patch him up. But they can’t touch him. They stitch the surface but miss the rot underneath, the grief that has festered into rage, into something else. Something holy and unholy. Something that isn’t human anymore. He stops eating. Out of a hunger that isn’t hunger. Out of a need to spite his own blood.

“You killed the Binder,” Jude says, quiet, flat, like it’s not worth yelling. “Do you even understand how much of a mess you’ve made? How much I payed to cover it up?”

Luka freezes. Then laughs. Hysterical. If the Binder’s dead, he thinks, then it’s never coming off.

He hurls a vase at Jude, glass like bone shattering against the wall, it misses Jude just barely. Jude slaps him, and the crack echoes, thunder caught in a jar.

But he doesn’t hit him again. He can’t. Luka doesn’t know why.

(Luka doesn’t know he looked just like Layla then—

eyes brown with venom, spine bent like a bow string,

mouth full of curses that once tasted like hyssop rain.)

He’s losing it. He’s gone mad, trapped in human flesh, magic chained, it’s pained withering kills him slowly. The days smear together in shades of rotted meat and cracked mirrors. Time is molasses and every second hums with a madness he can’t scrub off.

He feels it, filth, coating his skin from heel to thigh, a second skin, sewn on. No bird's beak can rip it free. No god’s touch can cleanse him.

It’s permanent. Etched like scripture into his flesh, an unholy creed spoken over his body. He starts seeing things, bugs beneath his skin, jaws gnawing, phantom stings. He scratches. Scratches until blood weeps through the bandages at his neck.

His binding—the one meant for monsters. Not boys. Not sons. Not him. There are levels, degrees, and mercies. His? The worst. The kind that binds monstrous beasts, the kind fit for towering blood thirsty creatures. The kind they never expect anyone human to survive.

Except him.

And sometimes he wishes he hadn’t.

Is he choking on blood? No. Sobs. Just sobs. Dry and splitting and endless. He claws at his throat, nails over runes, over the seal that shackles his soul. The blood flows, fat red drops on lily petal skin. He grips his hair. Rocks. Back and forth. Back and forth.

A child in a broken cradle. A prince in a padded grave. He wails—

Aquarius, Corvus, anyone, where are you?

Why can’t he feel any of them?

The gods are gone. The stars have turned their faces. His magic is a grave. And Luka is their tombstone.

Time bled. Luka forgot the shape of clocks. The sun slanted across his room like a blade but it didn’t move, it stayed. Gold, gold, gold until dusk devoured it, and the night swallowed everything.

He couldn’t tell if it was the same day stretched long like sinew between teeth, or if it was new. Or old.

Time tore.

He found the marks one morning, or maybe night. Scratched into the corner of the wall, hidden where the plaster peeled like rotting fruit skin.

One, two, three—he counted them with his thumb, callused over without knowing when.

Four weeks.

Four weeks.

He had no memory of making the scratched tally marks.

Jude’s voice came through the ringing sometimes. Muffled. Clinical. Always too cold. Always too measured. Luka refuses to call him Father. He wasn’t. A father would not bind a son like an animal.

He laughs.

It breaks out of him like rot through soft fruit. Bubbling, uncontrollable. Something stings. Neck?

Ah—yes.

Red crescents carved beneath the jaw, on the black shackles. Nails broken like he clawed too much, blood crusted. Crimson under the cuticle, old and dark like rust.

When had that happened? Had there been pain? Laughter spills again. Shaky this time, hitching and wet. Salt in his throat. Tears? But he’s laughing. But it hurts. But it doesn’t. But—

Jude speaks. When did he get here? He watches Jude’s mouth move, enunciating ‘presentable’, ‘enough of this,’ he watches Jude’s mouth curl around ‘of’. His nails dig deeper.

Hate boils beneath his fingernails. Each time Jude speaks, another layer of flesh peels back. Another nerve exposed. Another rot laid bare. Hate that eats like Kronos, swallowing all the soft, pink parts. No son here. No heir. No boy. Just a scream in the shape of a human.

Let it out. Let it out.

Jude spits the word this like it’s filth, like Luka is filth. Luka laughs again, head thrown back, a jackal’s grin. Jude falters.

Buzzing. From where? There. A single, stupid insect zigzagging near his ear. Heavy in the air like guilt. It’s loud, and wrong, and alive. A twitchy fleshy thing.

He watches it spin, drone, hum in circles. Wants to crush it. Wants to snap its bones and feel the blood stain black on his fingers. Wants to feel it squish. But doesn’t. Instead, giggles bubble up.

Ribcage too tight. Too small. Not built to house the thing curled inside, too large, too hungry. A scream with bones, a howl with veins.

Crack it.

Crack it.

The way butcher’s hands crack open sternum, two fisted, firm, clean open. The sound a tree makes when it splits down the middle in a storm.

Bone against bone. White turned red. The scream inside has fangs. It gnaws on lungs. It gnaws on heart, soul and flesh. It gnaws and it waits.

He wants, no, needs, to rip himself apart. Peel back skin like paper. Tear the flesh curtain. Let the scream inside crawl out on all fours, steaming. But hands shake too much. Nails gone red. They dig into neck, collarbone, thigh, temple. Trying to get in. Trying to get in and pull something out.

His hand clutches glass and torn fabric in the remains of the room.

Wait—room?

The room is broken. Furniture upturned, torn wallpaper like peeling skin, mattress bleeding foam. Everything is chaos. When did it happen? Did he do this?

He.

Not a prince. Not a boy. Not a son.

Just a thing with glass in its hand, red fingers and ragged breath. Curled like a curse in the corner, back pressed to the wall where the marks scratch down. One, two, thirty—time carved into vinyl.

Time that bleeds at the edges. How many days? How many selves ago? The glass digs in again. Deeper this time. Skin splits like overripe fruit. But there is no pain. He is fascinated. The way it bites. The way blood pools, warm and thick, syrupy like the insides of a pomegranate. The shard glitters.

He watches it dig.

Dig.

Dig.

Hand trembles. Still won’t let go. The body doesn’t feel like his. The skin hangs wrong. Too tight. Too loose. It’s hard to breathe inside a shape that never fit. Shadow moves. A figure. Blurred at the edges. A maid? Maybe. Probably. He doesn't remember her name. Doesn’t remember names anymore.

Who is he?

She kneels. Soft hands, afraid hands. She doesn’t scream. Just takes the glass, gentle as if handling a dying animal.

Blood smears the floor. She says something. Words dissolve before they reach him. He stares past her, through her, into the wall. Into the scratch marks that keep counting even when he forgets.

When did he get on his bed? The fly returns.

Buzzing. Buzzing.

He laughs. Again.

This is the altar. This is the sacrifice. This is the child devoured. Kronos grins from the ceiling, mouth dripping red, tooth in flesh and nails imprinted on skin— teeth gnashing, tongue hanging.

And the world keeps spinning.

And the scream still won't come out.

And the ribs stay shut.

Buzzing again.

Not a fly this time. No, no, flies don’t whisper. And somewhere, something inside laughs. A dry, corpse laugh. A laugh that has no mouth but still spills.

Six months. Tally marks bleeding. The blood at the edge of the scratch makes shapes. Faces. Saints turned inside out. A spiral. A serpent. A noose.

Ouroboros chewing its tail, vomiting it back out. Eternity is a feast of the self. A god made of hunger. A god that eats what it births. A god with Luka’s face, stretched wide and smiling.

He is sure now— hell is cold. Cold like the space between breaths in a coffin. This desolation, this eternal waiting, for a knock, a door, a voice. For anything warm.

But warmth is memory. And memory is a lie told kindly. What’s left is the scream. Flesh bound and blood tasting. Clawing at the inside of the cage.

Let it out. Let it out. Let it out let it out LET IT OUT—

The glass breaks again.

Or maybe it’s the mind.

Who can tell, anymore?

Chapter Text

Lucidity comes. Like the last gulp of water before drowning. He hears her voice, soft but sure: No one can take this from you. He laughs, they already did.

Still, when lucidity comes, he sees clearly. This is not a home, it’s a mausoleum. It became his grave the moment his fate was sealed. He needs out.

So he runs. He doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t write a letter. He steals jewels, packs a bag of anything he might need.

And his hair, he cuts it. Each strand like spun sunlight. Gold sacrificed on the altar of spite. He leaves them on the vanity. A final curse. A fuck-you.

Then he climbs out the window. The glass bites. His body aches. His throat is fire. But he runs.

Because there is nothing left to lose.

And everything to burn.

Living on the streets was hard. It scraped the marrow from his bones like frostbite chewing down to sinew. It was survival, bare and ugly. And gods, it was such a change. It was a tough adjustment period.

From silk sheets, cool, crisp, soft as cloudbreath, to cardboard beds behind dumpsters, where gravel presses into skin like teeth and cold gnaws the spine from the outside in.

From velvet duvets to the stink of piss alleyways. From a room where warmth fell gentle across plush carpets, to chilled asphalt glittering with broken glass and rat piss.

From eating whenever, whatever, golden fruit cut by silver knives, hot meals that steamed in porcelain bowls, to prying open greasy fast food bags someone else threw away. A half eaten burger, not rotten if he was lucky.

From sipping chilled water in crystal glasses to licking rain off rusted gutters, to sucking at the mouth of old plastic bottles still slick with someone else’s spit. Water was water. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

Rain, when it came, was salvation. Drip. Drip. Drip. Into a reused plastic bottle. Into open palms. Into his hair. Filthy hair, matted and oily, sticking to his cheeks. Nails black with dirt and old blood.

Clothes crusted with filth. He went from perfumed baths drawn at dusk to the stench of human rot that clung to his skin like a second layer. He forgot what clean felt like.

It was tough when he was lucid. Lucid meant shame. Lucid meant knowing. Lucid meant memory.

Lucid meant smelling himself and gagging. Meant hunger that felt like knives scraping and twisting his insides. Meant thirst that made his mouth dry and his tongue crack and bleed. Meant remembering he once had a bed, once had soft hands, once had warmth.

When he wasn’t lucid?

Gods.

A miracle, really. A miracle he wasn’t dead in some alley, face down in his own blood and vomit. A miracle no one dragged him behind a dumpster and did something worse, or beat him to death for laughing too loud at things only he could see.

Miraculous, too, that his own hands hadn’t ripped himself apart.

Half-mad, he’d rock back and forth, knees to his chest, muttering to someone long gone, or never there at all. Laughing too hard. Crying without tears. Head tilted back against brick.

Nails dug deep into the seal on his neck, the chains that bound him. Gouging, gouging, like he could tear the binds out with nails. Like if he clawed hard enough, he’d be free.

Flesh is just paper, right? Maybe he could rip it open. He rocked, he laughed, he begged, he forgot.

But when he was lucid? Luka learned fast. Hunger makes a sharp tutor. He learned not to be picky with food, not when trash bins became banquet tables and crusts felt like miracles.

He learned not to sleep near certain corners unless he wanted to wake up bleeding or worse. One too many fights left his eyes swollen shut, his nose broken sideways, his ribs counting down like cracked rosary beads.

He learned to fight—not with finesse, not like a knight, but like an animal. Snarling. Rabid. Desperate.

At least he already knew how to take a hit. Courtesy of his dearest father—how lovely. The bastard had finally helped him.

Luka learned to hide. Learned to disappear in plain sight. Learned to stuff his clothes with newspaper when the wind screamed down alleys like winter being born. Learned to buy only what he needed. Well, with what's left of the jewels that weren't stolen.

And throughout it all he tried. Tried to grasp the phantom of his magic, tried to wrench it out from behind the dam of the binding. It made him more aware, more lucid. Pain bled through the floaty madness that took over him, made him awake, aware, alert.

The pain from trying, over and over, to force his magic past the bindings felt like dragging a salted vinegar needle into an open, fleshy wound. Like ripping his own soul through a keyhole.

He tried and tried and tried, every time ending with his body a graveyard, blood leaking like candlewax from his nose and mouth, madness crawling under his skin like centipedes in the dark.

He would lie there, eyes wild, mouth foaming grief, whispering the names of constellations that never answered.

All he had left was rage.

It devoured like oil over flame, eating him alive from the inside out. It was no surprise he learned to fight like that—quick, brutal, ugly.

Dirty tricks, shattered teeth. Blood on the knuckles, blood on the ground. He didn’t care. They left the fights in worse shape than him, dragging limbs, coughing blood, half way to death.

He didn’t make progress. How many weeks have passed? He has forgotten. He lost hope and life somewhere between the always-passing bruised mouth of dusk and the silver molars of dawn.

He tasted crushed blood and rust, bitterness nestled where sweetness used to sleep. How do you fall apart, really?

Is it gradual? Or all at once, like glass giving way beneath pressure, a soundless scream that no one hears?

He lived in cages and jars—steel-lined, glass-wrought, shaped like boyhood and regret. He wore them like second skin.

Look into his eyes and see the bound seas of amber wine, marrow borne, the colour of wildfires eating the bones of old gods. The pines sing with ghosts and ash, hyssop kissed and willow brine.

Hyacinth, rue—peace of peace.

But peace is never still.

He wants—no, needs—to claw out of this skin. To split himself open like a pomegranate and let the bruised seeds spill. Let the thing trapped in his ribcage slither out, teeth bared, wings dragging.

He wants to dissolve into yarrow fields and rot among the old bark of memory trees, their rings whispering a lullaby of before— of when things still made sense, before he became a ghost in living flesh.

He wants to become wandering itself, his limbs twisted into trees, his soul knotted into groves of red spider lilies. Because death, death is the only place left to go.

In death, he finds life.

In death, he finds despair.

In death, he finds freedom.

So he stands on the bridge.

Above the river, black as unspoken things, yawning like a god’s mouth waiting to be fed. The sky is opalescent, slow, watching.

And he thinks—how fucking ironic.

To die choking. To die suffocating. To leap into water for peace and find only the same silence that haunted him in life.

He takes one breath. Just enough to remember he has lungs, a body.

Then— he jumps.

And the river opens wide.

And swallows him whole.

He becomes S-Class at fourteen. Fourteen. The youngest Fairy Tail has ever seen. Natsu Dragneel. A name that crackles like burnt copper, that tastes like the back of a throat scorched from too much screaming.

Fourteen, and the world already made way for him, half the guild peeling from his path like shadows from fire. He didn’t ask them to. They just did. Some out of awe. Some out of fear.

Some because the smell of dragonfire still clung to his skin like a second soul, and you don’t get in the way of creatures with teeth like that.

The same year, Erza makes it too. She’s fifteen, sharp-eyed and steel-backed, armour hiding the soft parts. Mirajane, sixteen, made it the year before, already touched by the devil’s tongue, already carrying power like a curse.

Happy follows him around like a ghost in blue fur. A tiny kitten, wings too small for the weight of the world, but still trying. He’s been there since the day he hatched. Natsu never pushes him away.

Can’t bring himself to. Not when Happy’s the only thing in this life that came without pain. That stayed. Some loves are small enough to carry. Some are too kind to bury.

Aquarius forces herself through the gate as Luka's body sinks like a fallen star. His lungs flood with water, and his last breath is a gasping, trembling thing. His vision dims as the jaws of the river yawn wider to take him in. He’s already dying when she arrives.

The gate howls open, splitting the fabric of worlds, and there she is—waterborne and furious, storm wrapped and sea eyed. She is half mad from terror. Half mad from fury. Half mad from love. It is a kind of madness that only gods know.

“Coward,” she hisses, as she drags him to air and wakeness. “Coward, how dare you!”

But her arms are already around him. And Luka, poor Luka, sweet, aching child, he only smiles when he sees her, water bubbling from his throat, his lungs coughing out burning liquid.

His not the smile of someone who’s been saved.  It’s the smile of someone who sees something holy in the last moment before the dark.

He reaches for her with trembling fingers, clings like a child who forgot what safety felt like. Water still pours from his lungs, but it doesn’t feel like drowning, not with her here. Not with her holding him.

He sobs from longing so fierce it could split the world. Grief spills out of him in shudders and laughter, the kind of laughter that sounds like screaming if you listen too long. He presses himself to her like she’s the last warm thing in the world.

And maybe she is.

Her fingers comb through his short cropped hair—the golden strands he cut himself, the colour muddied and dull from unkept and dirt.

She remembers when it was long, like Layla’s. She remembers braiding it on rare occasions, how the hair was so golden you could think it was precious goldwork. But now it's uneven and dull.

“You give up,” she whispers. “You give up, and I will never forgive you.”

The pain from forcing a summon through the realms, from appearing in her own power is blinding. But she holds him anyway.

One hand tangled in his hair. The other pressed to his spine, his heartbeat faint beneath bruised ribs that stick out sharply and starkly through soaked cloth. Her touch is trembling. Reverent. Full of rage. He cries harder. His voice is raw, scraped thin by laughter that tastes of ruin. But he doesn’t let go. He can’t.

He clutches her like the sea itself might carry him off again if he so much as loosens his grip. And perhaps it would.

Because the sea does not love. The sea does not grieve. The sea only takes. But she is not the sea. She is the gatekeeper. She is the one who came back. She is what remains of miracles.

And in that moment, Luka is not dying.

He is held.

Chapter Text

His magic calls to him.

Calls like hunger calls—slow and wet and all teeth. It slithers behind his ribs, wraps around the knobbly, starved bones of his spine.

It wants him. Wants him the way fire wants air, the way wolves want the soft underbelly. It hates him too. Hates how he let it be caged, how he didn’t scream loud enough, fight hard enough.

It gnashes from inside the seal— rasping, growling, a starving, shackled thing.

He tries.

He fails.

He tries.

He fails.

The bindings hold tight. A noose around his throat. A shackle around his limbs. A leash that jerks his breath away if he dreams too big.

He claws at it sometimes. At the seal, at his own skin, at the air. But his magic sings, still. Magic hums to him sweet as honey, calling him beloved. And he needs it. Oh, gods, he needs it.

There are locusts in his flesh.

They flutter under his skin, loud in the hollows of his ears. He sees them sometimes—black bodies, clicking legs, fat as sin—crawling up from his collarbone, burrowing into the crooks of his elbows.

One blink, and they vanish. Just dirt. Just grime. No flies. No rot. Just skin. Filthy, flaking, still his.

At the bar, he speaks to a man. The man is real. Or at least, as real as Luka is. A trade, money for street intel. No one bothers to keep quiet around a mad child.

The man cannot see the bugs. Can’t hear the buzzing, the screaming wings trapped in his skull. Can’t smell the rot boiling under Luka’s sweat. Of course, he doesn’t. It isn’t real.

They sit in the nowhere timelessness of flickering neon and dust heavy light. Luka’s hands twitch on the table. He bites the inside of his cheek until blood floods his tongue. The itch in his brain still writhes. Holes there. Hollow pits full of insects and memory and maybe nothing at all.

Sleep hasn’t come in days. Maybe weeks. Dreams? Dreams crawl. Dreams scream. Dreams chew through his nights with teeth like Jude’s hands, gripping, clawing, binding. Always binding.

Blood gurgles in his throat in the dream. He chokes on it. Magic cries behind his teeth, gagging, stuttering in silent defiance. He wakes with his hands around his own neck.

Dreams are burrowing things. Multi legged, many eyed crawling, burrowing things. They sing, about the softness of guts. About the warmth of opened flesh. He listens too long sometimes.

He wonders if the gods, faithless they may be, would forgive him. Would they laugh? Would they pity? He bleeds into the violence he becomes. And there is such great violence.

Weeks?

Months?

Was there a before?

Everything is locked, and there is no key. Just the seal. Just the noose. Just the bleeding claw marks in him where the magic wants out.

He picks at his neck. But only on lucid days. Lucid is rare. Lucid is holy, a salvation, water for a thirsty corpse. He digs deep with his nails. Never enough to tear. Just enough pain. Sharp, sharp pain. Enough to keep the madness at bay.

He dreams. And he knows. Celestial magic chose him. He doesn’t know why but it did, and perhaps, always had.

The song grows louder, and he is so very wanting. And so very, very afraid. The seals tighten like ribs collapsing. The abyss yawns.

He pushes.

The void opens beneath him.

He jumps.

His magic answers.

And Lupus appears, Luka grins through the red in his teeth, droplets of blood seeping through the seal on his neck.

He does not know why celestial magic chose him, but it did. Perhaps it always had. From the moment he was born with gold in his eyes, it’s magic seeping past his mortal flesh, it had claimed him.

And nothing will take it away.

The song it sings is loud and beautiful, and he is so very afraid and wanting in equal measure. He is at the precipice of the beginning of something great and terrifying.

A beast, he thinks, how fitting. For what else but a beast could tear through bindings meant for great, terrible creatures?

The song is loud, and he lets it drown him as he vomits blood, choking on iron and laughter.

Natsu is always gone. On missions, over and over—anywhere but the guild hall. And when Lisanna dies, he does not return to weep with the others.

He watches, from high above, half-lost behind the beams. The guild gathers below like a bruised heart beating slow. Their mourning is loud—sobs, curses. He does not belong in it. He watches. Happy, curled and trembling in Cana’s arms, is inconsolable. The cat shivers with grief too big for his body, too raw for comfort.

Natsu stares at him and thinks, Too close. He got too close to her. Maybe it was natural—Lisanna had been the first to hold Happy. She had named him once, and names have power.

Natsu does not cry.

He thinks maybe he should. The last time he cried was a long, long time ago. When Acnologia vanished into the night, when that terrible roar faded. Since then, he has only burned.

Lisanna dies, and the guild is a hive of grief. People speak of her in hushes, in eulogies, in toasts that tremble in trembling hands. Mirajane changes. She stops fighting. Her Demon Soul slumbers beneath her grief. In its place, a gentle thing stands behind the bar. A smile always curled soft at the corners.

She floats, kind and careful, like a ghost that doesn’t want to leave but no longer knows how to stay. Grief, Natsu thinks, changes a lot more than he thought it would.

In the end, he does not cry for the girl he knew in passing, and perhaps the only guild member other than Happy that talked to him.

Yet, somewhere deep, something stirs. Something that hurts in a different way. Something that grief left behind.

Lupus stands beside Luka, teeth bared at the world. The first time, Luka vomits blood. He chokes on it, laughter bubbling up. His throat burns. His vision fades. He almost dies.

But there was progress. And for someone like him—defective, bound, useless—progress was a kind of miracle.

So he keeps going. He looks for Silver Keys; they’re the only ones he can summon for the time being.

One key becomes two. Then three. Then four, five and more.

Crater, fluid and formless, always half-cloaked in fabric that moves like water held in gravity’s final gasp. Patient with him even when he calls them mid-fight, mid-wound, because Luka fights best on the edge of collapse.

That’s how he grows—by dangling himself over death like a coin dropped into a well. The seal constricts tighter, but his magic core expands against the tight bindings.

They hate it. His spirits hate it. They hate that he’s pushing for more, hate that he uses magic, but they cannot help but support him.

Lupus tells Luka how they all watched him unravel—how Aquarius raged, how Cancer tried with everything he had to summon himself into the human world.

How Corvus and Crux cursed their own strength at times, for how much it costs them to travel from the celestial realm to the human world. If only for how much harder it is, to reach Luka from their own power.

And Luka—Luka can’t stop the grief, the longing, the fierce adoration that floods his chest. They haven’t forgotten him. They still love him. They’re still trying.

Trying to break through, to appear in the human realm by their own power—if only for him.

It gives him hope. It gives him strength.

Over time, he realises that by pushing himself, again and again, his magic core expands. Like a muscle under strain, it grows stronger with every effort. He forces enough magic through the gate once—just once—for Crater to bend gravity around the bandits who thought Luka an easy target.

They rose into the air like marionettes, bones aching, eyes wide. And Luka laughed again, high and cracked.

Vulpecula—fox-tailed and silver-tongued, all dramatic flair and overly large sighs. She acts like he’s the biggest inconvenience in the universe, but frets over every cut. Every bruise.

Every time he summons her, blood seeps slightly through the bandages—still raw, still healing from the last time.

She found it amusing at first, at how hard he tries. But after?

After they grew close. After Luka let her drag him through shops and bars, teases him just to watch him blush. After he listened—really listened—and never used her like her past summoners did.

After he smiled, soft and bright, only for his spirits. Now, every time he calls her, she frowns. She hates it, hates the toll it takes on him. But she misses him just as much. The worry and longing live side by side.

Ursa Minor clings to him, small paws gripping his coat. Shy, but brave—always standing beside him when things get ugly.

The little bear has Luka’s heart completely, always burrowing close while he mends torn clothes, patches scuffed boots, or simply reads.

Aquila hides her concern behind pride. She pretends she has somewhere better to be, but never actually leaves until she’s sure he’s alright—or at least, as alright as he ever gets.

She performs tricks and dives through the sky for him, and Luka doesn’t realise until much later that she pulls power from herself, not him. Always trying to take as little of his magic as possible.

They all do, they try to take up as little as possible. Worrying and fretting once they truly get to know him, once they bond, truly bond, more than a summoner and spirit.

Lyra hums her worry, she frets worse than Vulpecula—wringing her soft hands like she could scrub the pain from him if she just tried hard enough. Still cheeky though, always poking his cheek until he cracks a smile. Just for her.

Monoceros heals him through her own power. Always. Without question. Even when it costs her. Even when it hurts. He protests. She doesn’t care.

Whenever he gets new keys, he always, always gives them a choice. Luka never makes a contract right away.

Every time, he tells them. He lays it bare. The binding. The defect. The truth. If they don’t want him, if they want someone better—someone normal—he’ll find them a good Celestial Wizard.

He swears it.

None of them leave.

Orion laughs at him the first time. Tells him most would be dead by now. Insane. Luka just shrugs. Maybe he is insane. But he’s still breathing. Perhaps, that’s what caught his attention.

Somehow, Luka manages to grow strong enough to summon Legacy spirits. He climbs through pain and blood and binding. He claws his way from silver to legacy.

Andromeda is stern but her eyes are always warm. Always gentle. Orion is cruel, but never to Luka. Not after he gets to know him.

Luka’s seen the sharpness—the hunts, the horror—but the sadism never lands. Not since Orion truly started to care for him. Orion teaches him, teaches him of the hunt, of how to aim well and true.

Perseus is arrogant. Beautiful in the way collapsing stars are beautiful.  But he never lets Luka spiral. Always offers myths, stories, distractions.

He teaches him how to fight, shows him how not to hurt himself while learning to hurt others. Always pulls him back from the edge, even as blood slicks his own hands. Even as Luka begs him not to waste his time.

Orion had asked him once, “Why bother?” voice quiet in the stillness of the woods, "Why keep pushing? You lived past the binding. That’s a miracle on its own.”

Luka had stared past him then, eyes raw with exhaustion, blood dried like rust along the collar of his shirt. The flies buzzed. It always buzzed.

The sound lived in the back of his skull—gnawing, rasping, humming like a nest of locusts trapped beneath his skin. He thought of the dream again. The song.

And he had told Orion, voice hoarse, “What else do I have to live for?”

Orion had pursed his lips, eyes shining silver for a moment like he’d swallowed the moon. He didn’t argue. Didn’t offer comfort.

Luka thinks now, much later, that maybe Orion had understood. More than Luka had understood himself.

The buzzing never leaves. Not really.

There are days it grows so loud he swears the skin on his face is going to peel off, that something is going to rip out of him, screeching, insectile and wanting.

Days when his magic is barely there, sick and feral, trembling in his bones like a dog kept in a too small cage. Days when he cannot even summon a flicker, when all that comes is blood and a sob like laughter. The pain lives in his neck, but spreads, radiates outward.

Neck, spine, skull, teeth. On the worst days it’s like someone’s splitting his head open with a chisel. On the worst days, he vomits blood when he barely pushes. On the worst days, his hands tremble and the song and the buzzing and the ringing, is always just behind his ears, just under the skin.

He wakes up in places he doesn’t remember going to when he loses lucidity at times. An abandoned building. A gutter. A dumpster with blood on his sleeve and dirt under his nails.

Sometimes rocking, back and forth, knees hugged to chest, whispering things he doesn’t remember. The spirits keep him company when they can. When he has enough to summon. But those days—

Those days are fewer now. Now, sometimes, he can summon them without losing consciousness. Now, when he bleeds, it’s only a little.

The seal still hurts, still bites deep like a mouth full of broken glass pressed against the soul but he can fight through it, sometimes. He is alive. He is still standing. And he has something.

He never gives up trying to summon Aquarius and Cancer. He knows he cannot summon Corvus and Crux; he is nowhere near the level of strength their gates need.

He doesn’t know if he would ever summon them again. But he tries— tries to summon a gold spirit. It always ends in failure.

They send him letters, through the silver spirits, fondness and encouragement breathing through slanted letters, and for a moment, Luka imagines he’s a child again, gold eyed and free of shackles, magic run amok.

He makes a living, somehow. Missions. Errands. Information brokering. Petty theft. His fingers are quick. His footsteps are light. He wears steel-toed boots—one of his best purchases. It’s well worn, patched and scuffed.

He never stops trying to summon them.

And then, one night—he does it.

He summons her.

Aquarius. His first breakthrough with a Gold Key. It almost kills him. The blood is immediate. Bright and endless, spilling from his mouth like waterfall.

His laugh is delirious, high and messy, his teeth stained crimson, his body dancing on the edge of death. His knees buckle. His breath stutters.

And just before the black closes in, he sees her.

Aquarius.

Furious. Terrified. There.

The last thought in his head—before the dark swallows him whole—is that he’s going to get the worst earful of his entire life.

And still—he smiles.

The first thing Luka remembers after waking up is the smell of antiseptic and peppermint oil. His vision is blurry. His body aches like it’s been thrown off a cliff and stitched back together with fishhooks.

“Drink this,” a voice says, soft, bright around the edges, like it’s trying to be gentler than the world allows.

He tries to sit up. Fails. Groans instead.

“Hey, careful. You’re gonna rip something open. Again.”

He blinks. The woman standing over him looks tired but steady. She’s got a face that seems built for smiling, even though right now she looks more worried than anything.

“You’re not dead,” she adds, offering a crooked sort of smile. “Which is more than I expected when I found you choking from your own blood.”

Luka simply hums, his throat burns like liquid fire and he tilts his head as he considers her. He’s still caught in the shimmer of the fever he barely crawled out of. His thoughts are slurred, smeared.

She looks familiar. She must’ve read the question on his face as she tells him, “You saved me once, remember?” At his blank look, she clarifies, “At the bar, uh, Daichi’s bar?”

He frowns, he catches the stray thread of the memory and hums in recognition.  The bar was dim-lit, noisy. Luka had just finished talking to the owner—an old man who always offered him “leftovers” that were suspiciously hot and fresh.

In return, Luka dealt with problems. Fights. Threats. Street gossip. He saw her across the room. Tense posture. Uncomfortable smile.

A man leaning too close. And then all too grabby, hands bruising soft skin, pulling harshly in spite of the panicked rejection and feeble pushing.

“Mind if I take this?” Luka had asked, already reaching for the empty bottle on the bar.

The old man had just shrugged. “Try not to get blood on the floor this time.”

The bottle shattered easily. The man’s head hit the table with a thud that shook the glasses. Blood bloomed on wood. Luka didn’t stop.

“What was that you said?” Slam.

“Please—” The man had started to beg.

“Should’ve thought about it before asking for it, dumbass.” Slam. Again. And again. Blood dripping like a leaky faucet, warm and steady.

She’d watched with wide eyes. Shaken. Grateful. Terrified.

Back in the present, Luka sighs. “Right. That was you.” The words come out as a rasp.

She nods, like she’s not sure whether to be sheepish or amused. “So. Uh. Thanks for that.”

He shrugs. “Thanks for saving me back.”

They lapse into silence. The kind that stretches. Not uncomfortable, but taut. She breaks it.

“I don’t want to pry, but…” She fidgets, picks at the hem of her sleeve. “You have—well. You have something. Like a, uh, a seal? Your magic’s—well.”

His expression hardens. “I’m fine.”

She flinches at the sharpness, but doesn’t retreat. “I just want to help. If I can. I’m not—I’m not the best healer, I know that. But I want to try—”

Her voice falters. The words tangle. She looks like she wants to disappear.

He watches her. Says nothing for a beat too long. Then finally, “There’s nothing that can be done.” The words come out too sharp, too flinty. He wonders if he should tack on a thanks but no thanks.

“Right, but maybe— maybe I could help with the pain?” she replies, fast, too fast. Then pauses, like maybe she regrets saying it. She reaches into a bag and pulls out a small paper wrapped bundle.

“Here. Painkillers. They’re not strong, but they’ll help with the worst of it. I... made them myself. They’re safe.”

He takes them. Doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t have to come back,” she says, suddenly. Like she’s bracing for rejection. “But if you ever need something. If it gets worse. I’ll be around.”

When Luka asks her why, his voice is sharp with suspicion. She hesitates. Then, haltingly, she says, “My brother… he had something similar done. It killed him. Three days later.”

“I—” She cuts herself off, jaw tightening. Her expression hardens, sharper than Luka’s now, whose face had softened, surprise melting into something quieter. Something almost apologetic.

He doesn’t say anything, slowly, he takes the pills. She watches him a moment longer. Then stands, dusts off her coat, and starts packing up quietly. She’s almost out the door when he finally speaks.

“What’s your name?”

She pauses. Turns slightly. Smiles again, small and hopeful.

“Anna.”

He doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll come back. Eventually. When the pain’s too much. When the backlash feels like fire licking up his spine. When his throat’s too raw to speak and it’s too painful to live.

He’ll find her again.

He’ll watch her throw herself into research like it’s a war she refuses to lose. Watch her hands shake as she crafts something just for him, painkillers for the chronic ache, syrups for his ruined throat, tonics to steady his magic without splitting him in two.

She’ll become something steady in his life. Something real. And he’ll trust her in a way he hasn’t trusted anyone human since his mother.

But that’s later.

Right now, he just lies back, the painkillers warm in his palm, and lets himself breathe. He did it, he managed to summon a zodiac.

Now it’s only a matter of time before he can do it again without dying.

Chapter Text

Luka's shirt is half burned off, skin raw around the collarbone where something scorched too close to his seal. Anna’s hands hover near the wound like she wants to touch it but is waiting for permission that won’t come.

“You're quieter than usual,” she says, dabbing at blood that’s mostly dried. “Either you're brooding or you're passing out. Blink twice if it's both.”

“I’m awake.”

“Hmm, sure.”

He huffs, nearly a laugh. It hurts too much to finish the sound.

Anna slides a jar across the table. “New painkiller paste. Smells like shit, but it helps.”

He opens it. Sniffs. “You weren’t kidding.”

“You say that like I ever am.”

Luka applies the salve with a wince, then drops onto the edge of the cot, shoulders hunched. Anna watches him closely, sees the way his hands tremble when he doesn’t think she’s looking.

Then she blurts it, softly, but quickly, “You’re less angry and… insane.”

He glances at her but doesn’t deny it.

She continues, encouraged, “You’re not snapping at walls anymore. Or muttering at the ceiling. Or laughing madly at nothing.”

“That you know of.”

“Seriously,” she says. “You seem... clearer.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, I’ve been more lucid ever since I started to summon regularly.”

“I’ve been reading,” she adds, cautiously. “And I think, it might’ve been phantom-mana syndrome. Magical feedback loops, especially in people with blocked channels. Rage, hallucinations, breakdowns. Using magic correctly could be releasing that pressure.”

Luka pauses. Puts his gloves back on.

“Maybe,” he says.

“That’s not a no.” Anna doesn’t press. She knows when the door’s cracked but not open. He stares at the far wall. Speaks quietly, almost to himself.

“Could be that. Or maybe it’s just... I have my spirits back.”

Anna tilts her head. “They help?”

He looks down, in this lighting, with fondness softening his face, he looks young, like a child.  He is a child, she corrects.

“…They’re my family.” He says with a hush.

And she believes him.

Because Anna, on the rare days she’s there when Luka summons a spirit, always, always watches in awe. He changes completely.

He smiles. A big, soft, bright smile that looks like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. She only ever saw him smile around them. The first time she saw it was when he summoned Lyra.

The spirit was beautiful, unreal in the way only stars could be. And Luka… he was softer then. Cheerful. Happier. Like someone new. Or maybe someone real. Someone whole.

It’s why, when he says they’re his family, she doesn’t doubt it. Not for a second.

And for it to be true in return. She still remembers the sheer terror that crawled up her spine at Lyra’s soft, barely threatening words. Her voice had been gentle. But her eyes? Her eyes promised more than death. They promised obliteration.

Protective. Possessive.

In that distinct, terrifying way only non-humans could be.

He hasn’t made any progress with his gold keys. Not since the first violent, trembling summon of Aquarius.

Even now, fingers trace the gold keys absentmindedly, as though the magic might answer differently this time. But no, there is only silence. He feels depressed about it.

In spite of Aquarius’s scolding letters and Cancer’s gentle letters— You’ll get there one day, little prince. But not if you keep tearing at yourself like this. You won’t get there at all if you bleed out to death— The shame festers still.

Little prince. That was new. Cancer didn’t call him that before. Did he pick it up from Corvus? And gods, speaking of Corvus—

The ache strikes hard. Like a blade pressed into the marrow. He misses him. Sharply. Desperately. A white-hot longing that sears behind the ribs. He misses them all, of course. But Corvus was different. Corvus was— He doesn’t say it aloud. He can’t, won’t.

But he’s thought it, muffled against the inside of his skull. Corvus was what a father might have been. Could have been. Corvus, with his quiet presence, strong and steady as a mountain. Corvus, who read to him when the nights stretched long and unbearable.

Corvus, who didn’t scold when Luka cried, only held him, like nothing could touch Luka as long as he was in his arms.

And now—

Now there are only letters. It’s not enough. Never enough. At the rate things are going, he’ll never summon Corvus again.

He didn’t think he could, even back then, when he was still trying to summon a Silver spirit, but the enormity of what he once was able to do easily has never been larger than now.

That thought alone cleaves through the chest, grief blooming in sharp bursts, like an erupted dam. It hits so hard he stumbles. His spirits worry curls soft and warm against the edge of the bond, presses close, a soothing hush at the edge of his mind.

Luka, now lucid and awake, the world is louder. And lucidity is a double edged sword. Pain is sharper now. Memory clearer. Now there is no fog to hide behind. Now, he remembers.

What did he last say to Corvus? He doesn’t remember. The realisation is like falling. Did he ever say goodbye? He gasps—a dry, broken sound. He never said goodbye.

Never said I love you.

He presses a hand to the seal, breath hitching. It burns, there’s a knot in his throat.

Please, he thinks, please just once more.

“You haven’t eaten.”

Anna’s leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed tight, shoulders hunched like she’s bracing for a storm.

Luka doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t look at anything. Just sits on the edge of the bed, shirt half buttoned, knuckles raw and singed faintly silver.

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s not a proper answer.”

He shrugs. She exhales sharp through her nose. Paces the room once, twice. Her fingers twitch, like she wants to throw something or hug him— she can’t tell which would do more damage.

“You’ve got money,” she says finally. “I know you’ve got money. You could go down the street right now and get soup, or rice, or— I dunno— bread and shitty jam or whatever. You’re choosing not to.”

He shrugs again. A slow, deliberate shrug that feels like a door slamming shut.

Anna’s voice climbs. “You’re trying to die. That’s what this is.”

“I’m not—” Luka starts, but she cuts him off before the lie fully forms.

“Yes, you are. Look at yourself. You’re shaking. You reek of blood and you haven’t eaten in three days. Don't tell me you have, I checked the trash. You’re not sleeping, you’re forcing yourself to use magic that’s literally killing—”

“I can handle it.”

“Oh my god.” She throws up her hands. “You can’t. That’s the problem! You keep acting like this is some noble fucking thing— like you suffering in silence is a fucking favour.”

“...It’s none of your business.”

“I made it my business when I patched up your half dead ass three months ago!”

Silence. Luka’s jaw flexes, throat bobbing like he wants to say something. Anna steps forward, hands trembling. She doesn’t yell this time. Her voice goes soft— that terrifying, brittle softness that sounds like something cracking.

“I’m trying. Okay? I’m trying to help. But I can’t do anything if you’re just gonna sit there and waste away. It’s like you have a death wish!”

He flinches. 

“I’m not talking about the binding,” she adds, quieter now. “Forget the magic. Forget the seal. This— this starvation thing you’re doing? You getting into fights recklessly, throwing yourself into the first sign of danger? I see it. I’m not stupid.”

Luka finally looks at her. His eyes are dull, bottomless. Like everything inside him has been eaten up by frost.

Anna swallows. “Do you want to die?”

“No.” His voice is hoarse.

“Could’ve fooled me.” She scoffed.

There’s a pause, like the air forgot how to breathe between them.

Anna scrubs at her face, suddenly tired. “You think I like watching this? Helping you dig your own grave, just... slower? You’re killing yourself slowly and I’m just— just helping you do it.”

“It’s not your responsibility.” He says, brows slightly furrowed, mouth ever so slightly frowning.

“No,” she says, almost laughing, a strange bitterness seeping through it. “No, it’s not. But I’m here anyway.”

Another silence. Longer this time. Luka’s fingers twitch. He looks away. She sighs and steps back toward the door. Her voice is flat now, tired.

“There’s food on the table. I’m not asking you to fix everything. I’m not asking you to feel better. I’m just asking you to eat something before your body gives out.”

She hesitates. One last look over her shoulder.

“I care about you, idiot. For whatever reason, I actully care about your sucidal ass. Accept it or don’t. I’m still going to be here.”

Then she’s gone.

And Luka— Luka stares at the floor like he’s been left in the wreckage of his own body. The table waits in the next room.

The next morning, Anna finds the bowl half empty. That’s all. No note. No dramatic apology. Just a dent in the food she left. It’s enough. She doesn’t say anything when he walks in, freshly showered, a little less dead eyed. Doesn’t point it out when he throws out the trash without being told.

When he doesn’t argue about the bandage she presses to his neck, bleeding open from forcing magic through the seals.

He’s careful now. Not safe—not Luka, never Luka—but the wild recklessness softens at the corners. He starts keeping first aid tucked in his belt, rests for an hour after summoning instead of dragging himself through dust and bone like a soldier with something to prove.

He doesn’t go to the dangerous part of town. Not that night. And when he feels that familiar pull, that thrum at the edge of his seal like something whispering more, he lifts his hand — but doesn’t push. Not entirely.

His spirits pulse softly through the bond. Gentle warmth in the corners of his chest. Like phantom hands steadying his ribs. Sending out reassurance, patience, the ache of care.

Even when he thinks about it—thinks about letting go, burning again, cracking himself open to see if there’s still a soul underneath — the bond swells. Like a tide rising over the thought, drowning it.

He never asked for them to care. But they do. So fiercely it terrifies him. So he stops. Just for now. He still uses magic— Anna hates that. They hate that. He knows but if there is one thing he can never give up, and it’s that.

But he’s careful. Doesn’t bleed into the seal unless he absolutely has to. He drinks water. He eats enough not to faint. He thinks twice before getting in a fight.

Little things. Quiet things.

Anna doesn’t praise him. Doesn’t pat his head or say good job. But she pushes pain relievers into his palms. Sits to eat with him. Tells him to be back by dusk in a way that sounds like a threat but isn’t.

They don’t talk about it. But when he stumbles back late one night, bruised and singed and exhausted, she wordlessly pulls out a chair and makes tea.

And when he collapses into the rickety chair in her tiny kitchen, she pushes the mug toward him without comment. The tea is bitter but the silence is warm.

“Alright, genius, don’t explode,” Anna said, sitting crosslegged across from him. “You remember what happened last time you tried to force your core open too hard?”

“I passed out halfway through you screaming ‘I told you so’,” Luka muttered, arms crossed, slouched against the opposite wall. His shirt was already soaked in sweat and he hadn’t even started the exercise yet. “Not helpful.”

“I was supportive. I yelled at you with love.”

“You kicked me.”

“Gently.”

“In the ribs.”

Anna slurped her noodles and offered a one shouldered shrug. “Only because I needed to make sure you hadn’t died. Again.”

Luka rolled his eyes but the edge of his mouth twitched. Just barely.

“Okay,” she said, voice more serious now as she straightened out. “So. Recap. The binding is stupid and old and made for magical beasts, right?”

Luka nodded. “Which I’m not.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re worse. You’re you.”

“Says the one who literally headbutted Greggory.”

“He was being a dick,” Anna snapped. “And he’s not a beast,” She trampled over his muttered as good as one.

“Anyway. Point is, that binding was never meant for something with a growing core. Your magic refuses to shut up. So even though the seal's binding it, you're still bleeding magic. Constantly. You’ve likely been punching at it from the inside ever since it’s been placed.”

Luka sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in a breath. “So the idea is... keep my core open. Let the energy flow out instead of bottling up. Controlled leak.”

“Exactly,” Anna said, hopping down and tugging on the hem of his shirt before letting go. “Passive output. Open but not drawn on. No summoning, no casting. Just... flow. Think of it like jogging. Magic jogging.”

“I hate jogging.” He huffs as he tries to pull back to a more passive flow.

“Well I hate you, but here we are.”

He gave her a withering look. “You’re very encouraging.”

Anna grinned. “You’d cry if I was nice to you.”

“You being nice at all is unusual,” he muttered, but something lighter flickered behind his eyes. His lips twitched into a smile when she smacked his head with a pillow.

The first few weeks were hell. Not that he said anything. Luka would sit in silence for hours, legs crossed, spine ramrod straight, sweat sliding down his temple, teeth clenched against the strain.

The magic pressed against the seal like a living thing, angry, wild, desperate to be free. Some days, it refused to move at all. Others, it flooded outward, uncontrolled and searing. He passed out more times than he could count.

Anna never left the room, even if she pretended to nap or read beside him. She kept watch in case he started bleeding out.

It was slow. Agonising. But it worked. By the third month, he could hold the flow open passively for half a day without backlash.

By the fourth, he started experimenting with holding minor gates, barely ajar, just enough to feel their presence.

By the fifth month, Aquarius answered.

Not in a crash of waves and fury, but with a slow, rising pulse of water magic, like a tide coming home. She appeared in the river brook he summoned her from.

“You didn’t almost die this time,” she said. “Good. That was embarrassing.”

And yet, Aquarius pulled him into a hug. And Luka—gods, Luka—he sank into it like he’d been drowning and just now realized he’d been holding his breath for months.

He clung to her, chest heaving with shuddering exhales as he fought to keep the sobs inside, but they trembled in his throat like trapped birds.

Her hand wove through his hair gently, again and again, soothing him like she was trying to comb the madness out of his scalp.

Somewhere in the haze, he heard Anna move, soft steps and rustling leaves. Aquarius leaned down, pressing a kiss to his forehead, then another to the crown of his head.

He trembled at the touch. Her hands cupped his face, thumbs brushing along tear-tracked cheeks. Luka blinked up at her, vision blurred, throat raw. His hands found her wrists and held tight, as if she might disappear if he didn’t.

“You’re bleeding,” she murmured, brushing at the streak of blood dripping from his nose. Her voice was low, tight with fury she was trying not to unleash. “Of course you’re bleeding.”

“I’m okay,” he rasped, even though his whole body was screaming the opposite.

“No, you’re not,” she snapped, not cruel but furious with the world for what it had done to him. “You’re not.”

His breath caught again when he realised with a start, his magic is drained out fully. He tried to explain, to say you’re not supposed to be here this long, I’m not powering the gate anymore, you’ll get hurt, you’ll but all that came out was a strangled noise as panic flared in his chest.

“Shhh,” Aquarius whispered, thumbs tracing just beneath his eyes. “I’m fine. You’re not the only stubborn one, you know.”

“But I—”

“I’m not so weak. I’ll be fine, I can power myself. You focus on breathing.” She held him tighter, her voice steady even if her spirit form shimmered faintly around the edges, as though reality couldn’t quite hold her.

He sobbed once, a broken, startled thing, and leaned into her chest.

“You’re such a little idiot,” she said, brushing her fingers through his hair again, the insult softened by the way her hand never left him. “You nearly killed yourself again.”

“Didn’t... mean to...” he choked.

“I know, brat.” She sighed, exasperated and fond, her emotions leaking into the bond between them like warm rain on cracked stone. “But stop it. Stop with the guilt. It’s not your fault, it never was.”

He let out a strangled laugh. It sounded more like a sob.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

Her fingers stilled for a moment before moving again, slower. “Yeah. I know. I missed you too.”

Luka tightened his grip on her wrists. “Don’t go yet.”

“I have to.” She said it softly, but firmly. “I’ve been out too long. I’m starting to…”

He shook his head, as if he could will her to stay. But the shimmer around her edges was growing. Her hair rippled like ink in water. The celestial realm was already starting to pull her back.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Aquarius rolled her eyes but didn’t pull away.

“Brat,” she said, and he could almost hear her say it with that typical snap, the warmth behind the bite. “I do what I want. So stop feeling so fucking guilty all the time. It’s exhausting.”

He nodded, swallowing hard.

“Next time,” she said, brushing one last thumb along his cheek, “do it right. And don’t bleed so much. You’re going to give me wrinkles.”

She stared at him intensely, and he wondered, did he remind her of his mother? Or did even that fade away in his madness?

“Don’t die. I’ll… I’ll keep trying from my end. To try to be with you,” She swallows, as though there were too many things to say and too little time.

“I love you,” She presses a kiss against his forehead, and disappears in a shower of gold before he gathers his bearings to say it back.

His laugh catches on a sob, yet he is happy. His nose kept bleeding. The forest was too quiet. But through the bond, faint and flickering like candlelight behind glass, was her presence.

“I love you too,” He whispers into the key, faintly realising that this was the first time she told him she loved him.

Anna came back, peaking through the trees hesitantly and coming forward more confidently when she saw Luka is alone. “You didn’t bleed out this time!”

Luka laughed, hoarse. “Didn’t even bleed through the bandages.”

She frowns at his voice, already examining it.

“Thank you,” He tells her in a quiet rasp. She didn’t say anything in reply, but he saw the fluster his sincere gratitude caused in the roll of her eyes and content smile on her face.

They pass a bottle back and forth. Luka’s boot is half hanging off the roof edge, swaying.

Anna’s voice is light, probing. “Can I ask you something?”

He raises a brow. “Why ask? You’ll always do.”

She grins. “Celestial magic. Why’s it so rare? Like, I barely knew anything about it before meeting you.”

He sighs. “Because the world went to shit.”

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“No. I mean it. Centuries ago? It was respected. Revered. They had academies for it. Entire schools that trained celestial mages exclusively. Now? People don’t even know what a silver key is unless they’ve read some dusty old archive.”

Anna goes quiet, listening.

“It’s not that it’s weak,” Luka says. “That’s what people think. ‘Oh, you summon some cute spirit, how sweet.’ Bullshit. It’s strong. Ridiculously strong. But it’s not meant for humans.”

She blinks. “Wait, what?”

“You need so much mana just to summon one. Even a weak one. And most people can’t do it. So they say it’s impractical and weak. But that’s just because they’re not built for it.”

He’s not bragging, just stating it like it’s a truth, even though his statement implies that he’s built for it and more, for summoning despite the binding.

“Can you do more than summon?” Anna asks.

“Yeah,” Luka says, a nostalgic lilt to his voice. “You can channel their power. Use pure celestial magic. Shields, constructs, fire. You name it.”

“Can you do that?”

Luka shrugs, a bitter quality across the taught line of his shoulders. “Used to do it all the time. But after the binding…” He trails off, mouth twisted slightly in a biting smile.

Anna swallows.

“You said weak ones… are there key levels or something?” she asks, changing the subject gently.

He smirks, glancing at her. “You’re really studying this stuff?”

“Duh. I have a patient who keeps trying to die over it. Gotta stay on top of things.”

Luka exhales, not quite a laugh. Then, ticking it off with his fingers:

“Platinum keys at the top. Only five. Corvus, Crux, Draco, Phoenix, Hydra. You won’t even find mentions of them in most books. Then Gold— the Zodiacs. Then Legacy Keys—Andromeda, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Orion, Perseus, Hercules. Then Silver Keys. They get divided into types—combat, utility, travel, and environment. Stuff like that.”

Anna’s jotting notes in her head. “Which ones do you have?”

He gives her a crooked grin. “Most of them are Silver. Most of Legacy. Two Gold. And two Platinum.”

She whistles. “Show-off.”

“You asked.”

There was a lull in the conversation. The kind that wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, just quiet.  Anna didn’t reach right away. She played with the bottle in her hand, twisting it slightly by the neck like it was something she could unscrew and disappear into.

Then, a little too casually, she asked, “So, uh… what was your childhood like?”

Luka froze. Blinked once. The shift in his body language was instant, shoulders stiff, jaw tight, the earlier ease draining out of him like a popped balloon.

He didn’t look at her when he answered. Just kept his eyes on the cracked tile floor. “Normal, I guess? Would’ve been a hell more lonelier if it weren’t for my spirits,” he said flatly.

Then, before the air could even settle, he quickly tossed the ball back. “What about you?”

Anna’s brow furrowed. She leaned back in her seat, bottle still in hand, thumb running along the rim now instead of the neck. Her gaze went distant for a second.

“It was… normal? I think?” She squinted, then shook her head with a wry smile. “Could’ve been worse, honestly.”

He glanced up, sceptical. “Worse?”

“I’m not done, grumpass,” she shot back, nudging his leg with her foot. He rolled his eyes, but there was a twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Anna exhaled through her nose, smile fading a little. “My brother protected me from most of the crap. Our mom… wasn’t the best. Half the time she was doped out of her mind. Couldn’t do shit, barely remembered our names some days.”

Luka frowned. “That’s…”

“Yeah,” she said, shrugging. “Anyway, my brother took missions. He was a freelance mage. Took whatever paid well no matter the risks. He kept the lights on. Did his best to make sure I grew up well.”

He was quiet for a beat too long. Then, awkwardly, he said, “He sounds kind.”

Anna blinked, surprised. Then, slowly, she grinned.

“Yeah,” she said, voice softer. “He was.”

Luka shifted in his seat, brows furrowed as though he was wondering how to comfort her. She snorts.

“Bet you’re thinking something sappy. Like, wish I had a big brother like that, huh?” she teased, elbowing him lightly.

He scowled, but his eyes were lighter at seeing her no longer upset. “No. I was gonna say he had bad taste for not abandoning you at an orphanage.”

Anna gasped, mock-offended. “Wow. The audacity. You think you’re the first bitchy orphan I’ve had to drag out of emotional repression?”

“Are you—did you just call me a bitchy orphan?”

“What, you’re not? My bad, bitchy kid, then,” she said with a smug shrug.

Luka opened his mouth, closed it, then snorted. “You’re actually the worst.”

“I try,” she said brightly.

There was another pause, but this one was lighter.

First frost hits in the mornings, it’s windy. Dry leaves scatter around Luka’s feet. He’s sitting on a bench with Anna’s latest letter in hand. Her handwriting’s messy, fast, full of excited tangents. She asks how his magic core is. Sends a new herbal pack.

Asks if he saw the news about magical plants blooming early this year. Mentions that she’s working on a painkiller that won’t make him feel floaty.

Luka leans back and thinks back to why he’s here, on the run again. He remembers walking through the town, catching a glimpse of men in uniform, too polished to be mercenaries.

Their eyes scanned the crowd like hawks. They were looking for someone without looking for someone. Secret guards. His blood only went cold when he overheard that they’re looking for a lost Heartfillia.

His father’s dogs. Trying to drag him back without headlines. Of course, he ran. He wrote Anna that night from a half-burned tavern in some no name village. Kept it short. Said he was fine. He wasn’t.

He missed her hand checking his bandages. Her nervous, fast talking when she got excited. The way she asked questions like she didn’t want to offend but had to know.

He puts his hands in the pockets of his coat, the chill on his fingertips slightly thawing. He’d write again when he reaches Velmorin City. For now, he had a train to catch.

Chapter Text

Bosco was cold. It was a sharp, creeping kind of cold that settled under his clothes and nestled behind his collarbones. He should’ve expected it.

Cindrel had already been chilled to the bone, and Velmorin sat higher on the map, with its wind swept rooftops and glassy, silver rivers that never quite thawed.

But still. Luka hadn’t expected the kind of cold that bites.

He adjusted the collar of his too thin hoodie and tugged his gloves tighter over his fingers and wrapped his scarf more tightly. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t planning to stay long. Iceberg was next, and Iceberg would be worse. Maybe he’d find a thicker coat here before heading out.

He ducked beneath the awning of the tiny post office tucked between a bakery and what looked like an abandoned theatre, its windows fogged over and sign half fallen.

He slid his letter across the counter to the tired looking clerk who barely looked up from her ledger.

“Destination—Branbell. Private delivery.” He hesitated, then added, “Recipient’s name is Anna Solace. She’ll pick it up directly.”

The man nodded and slipped the envelope into a worn leather pouch behind the counter. The air outside had turned wet, drizzle clinging to the buildings and slicking the stone underfoot.

The wind had picked up and it carried the scent of wet stone and rusted railings. The city was loud today. People crisscrossing the streets, busy bodies with hoods pulled low.

Which was good. The more people, the better for him to disappear into. Jude’s dogs hadn’t shown face since Branbell. But that didn’t mean they weren’t sniffing around. He tugged his coat tighter around his shoulders and crossed the street to the small winter outfitter near the station.

He summoned Vulpecula, who appeared with her usual theatrical flair. Her hair was glossy and straight today. Silk sleeves shimmered as she moved, some impossible shade between lilac and dusk. Shadows flickering behind her—her tail arched from her heels, long and sly, only ever seen in her shadow.

“You better not be bleeding again,” she said instead of hello, eyes scanning him with that sharp precision she tried to hide behind a smirk. “If I see even one cracked rib, Luka, I swear—”

“I’m fine,” he said, quietly.

She narrowed her eyes, then leaned in like she didn’t believe him. She moved him, checking over to see if he had any visible injuries. He obeyed, too tired to protest.

She brushed his hair back, poked his ribs. He huffed, you hide cracked ribs one time and it’s held over you forever.

Satisfied, barely, she clicked her tongue and pulled back. “Fine. I’ll allow it. So, what’s the occasion? You need me to burn something? Seduce someone? Both?”

He gave a small huff. “I need a coat.”

Vulpecula blinked. “A coat?”

“Iceberg’s next,” he said, like that explained everything.

She made a face. “Stars save me. You really are trying to die frostbitten in a ditch.”

“Not if I find something warm enough.” He glanced at the store again. “Want to come in with me?”

Her expression softened, just a little. “You asking me on a shopping date, hun?”

“I’d appreciate the company.”

That earned him a smirk. She looped her arm through his, her hand slipping into his, warm and dry. Luka’s fingers, cold and stinging, relaxed a little in her grip.

The bell above the door gave a metallic ping, and Luka felt the sudden warmth hit him like a wave. The heat made his cheeks sting. Shelves leaned under the weight of folded thermals and fur lined cloaks. A heater near the register coughed out barely passable warmth but it warmer than outside.

The clerk didn’t look up, save for a glance. It occurred to him that he probably couldn’t see Vulpecula, she was a master of illusions and even with him only giving her just enough power to remain in the realm, she could vanish whenever she wanted.

She made a beeline for the rack in the back, dragging him with her. “Now this,” she declared, pulling out an oversized coat lined with dark fur. “This is perfect.”

“It’s... big,” Luka said, sceptical, tugging the sleeve.

“It’s warm. Bison fur, insulated lining, sturdy.” She paused. “Or you could go for this sheep fur monstrosity, but bison fur is better for keeping warm.”

He eyed the price tags. “The bison one.” He picked out two simple pairs of thermals as well.

“Practical and stylish. I’ve trained you well.” She leaned in. “But I’m still stealing a hat.”

He didn’t respond, just raised a brow.

“Look,” she whispered conspiratorially, plucking a white ushanka from the top shelf with an easeful grace, “you can’t not have a hat. Your head will freeze off, and then who will summon me?”

“At that point, probably no one,” Luka murmured, deadpan.

She beamed. “Exactly. You won’t let little old me be deprived from hot chocolate and cheesecake, would you?”

He didn’t argue, a smile lifting his lips as he walked to the counter, coat and thermals in hand. Jewels clinked on the wooden surface. He had enough left for the train to Orveig and a room.

After that—well. He’d have to go on a job fast. They stepped out into the damp grey afternoon. The stolen hat was unceremoniously placed on his head.

He pouted slightly, pushing it up so it doesn’t cover his eyes. “It’s a bit big.”

“I know.” She tugged the flap over his ear. “There. Now you’re cute and warm.”

He huffed but didn’t remove it. Instead, he leaned into her slightly. She didn’t tease him for it. Just adjusted her steps to match his.

“Walk me to the station?” he asked, quiet again.

“Only if you buy me hot chocolate.”

“I just spent most of my money.”

“Boo. You’re really broke.”

“That should’ve been obvious when you saw me eat a dumpster sandwich,” Luka deadpanned.

Vulpecula’s nose wrinkled at that memory. “Oh, yeah. I forgot your dumpster days.”

Luka shrugged. If it works, it works. He’s not dead yet, so he must be doing something right. They fell into step, boots clicking against wet cobblestones.

“I managed the entire day yesterday,” Luka said after a pause, his words slightly rushed in his restrained excitement.

She blinked. “Gate flow?”

“Yeah.”

She whistled low. “Passive flow without collapse for the entire day? Look at you, prodigy.”

“It’s... not stable,” he said. “I can hold it, but it still slips.”

“Still. Big improvement from the last time you nearly passed out past the twelve hour mark.”

He gave her a sidelong look. “That was one time.”

“That was three times.”

She grinned when he didn’t deny it.

“You hear about Cancer?” she said, stretching the words like they bored her. “Got himself in trouble again.”

Luka blinked. “What did he do this time?”

“Cut a piece of Cassiopeia’s hair off.”

He stopped walking.

“She’s furious,” Vulpecula went on, all casual. “Almost bit his head off. You know how she is about her hair—thinks every strand’s worth gold or something.”

Luka squinted at her. “Wait. Accidentally?”

She lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Depends on who you ask.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn’t elaborate. He stared ahead, thoughtful. He didn’t ask why Cancer might’ve done it on purpose. He had a feeling why.

Instead, he said, “…Did she insult me again?”

Vulpecula didn’t answer.

That was all the answer he needed. He pressed his lips into a line and said nothing. It wasn’t worth the trouble—not really. Most of the time, they weren’t even wrong. Defective. That’s what he was.

He had a binding that choked magic out of him on good days, and let madness drip in on the bad ones. Their feelings were valid, and he couldn’t even say they were wrong.

“Oh, Aquarius and Scorpio broke up. Again.”

Luka scowled. “Was it cheating?”

“Yup.”

He didn’t sigh, just made a quiet sound in the back of his throat like it exhausted him.

She watched him from the side, amused. “I know that look.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I’m going to murder a man in his sleep’ look.”

“I’m not—”

“You are,” she sang, stepping in front of him just enough to walk backwards, facing him. “Look at you, all broody. It’s adorable.”

He stared flatly at her. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

“No,” Vulpecula agreed. “She doesn’t. But she also knows exactly who she was dating.”

“Still.”

He didn’t like it. Aquarius was sharp tongued and temperamental but she cared. She cared so much, her love was like the sea. And Scorpio was—well, Scorpio. Complicated. Messy. Disloyal in ways that left scars. In ways Aquarius would never.

Vulpecula turned back around and looped her arm through his again. “You want me to punch him for you?”

Luka sighed. “That’s unnecessary.”

“But satisfying.”

“No fighting,” he said gently, though the look in his eyes told her that he more than considered it.

She clicked her tongue. “Fine. I’ll just trip him when he’s not looking.”

He laughed, quiet and soft, fluttering out like it didn’t want to exist. After a pause, Luka spoke, quietly, carelessly, the words falling from his mouth like he hadn’t noticed they were thoughts made sound.

“I don’t get why she keeps giving him chances. She’s better off alone. Or with someone else.”

“Love makes people stupid.” Vulpecula twirled a strand of her hair. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t answer that. Just looked forward again, toward the plume of smoke curling over the train station roof. The train wailed in the distance. Steel groaned and sang, and wind lifted his hair.

“Well, that’s my cue,” he said, watching as the train pulled into view, all screeching wheels and flashing lights. The station bustled, full of too many voices, too many footsteps rushing in all directions.

She hummed and then grinned, ruffling his hair.  “Don’t collapse trying to impress anyone.”

“I don’t have the energy to impress anyone,” he murmured. “Barely have enough to function.”

“Mm. My tragic, overworked little prince,” she said.

Her smile was softer. He smiled back. A pause. He hesitated, then turned to her.

“You wanna… come with me? For the ride?” His voice was low, almost sheepish. Like he already knew the answer but asked anyway.

She snorted, then flicked him right in the centre of his forehead.

“Conserve your magic, hun. I know you’re gonna step off that train and run straight into a job like a dumbass.”

He winced, rubbing the spot with a sheepish grimace.

“Fair enough.”

He pulled her into a hug, tight, lingering, a kind of silent thank you he didn’t know how to say with words. She hugged him back with the kind of warmth that came from knowing someone all the way through. And then, she pulled away, gave him a wink, and vanished—gone in a soft shimmer of gold.

He boarded the train, one hand pressed briefly to his chest, as if to keep her warmth there just a second longer.

A,

I’m alive. Bosco is cold. I liked Virelin better, to be honest. It was more alive. The air in Bosco smells weird. It’s still interesting, though, to see how places change. Cindrel wasn’t as industrial as Velmorin City, but more than Virelin. I wish I could’ve explored Bosco properly before moving on. Oh well, it’s too late now. Maybe I’ll come back someday.

I’m both excited and dreading Iceberg. Heard the sights are insane, though. I made progress with the binding. Open gate flow held for the entire day! And no nosebleeds, no fainting. At this rate, I think I’d be able to regularly summon a zodiac.

How’s Branbell? Any new drama? You’re not being harassed by idiots again, right? Don’t forget to eat something. You’re as bad as me when it comes to matters like this,  at least I don’t practically live off caffeine.

—L

The train ride was long. Three days, broken by a single stop in Helsvyr. Luka didn’t get off. He stayed curled into his coat, hood up, scarf drawn over half his face, trying to look out the window.

The frost had made a mosaic of it, white lace and opaque ice, and only slivers of the landscape slipped through. Somewhere behind him, passengers murmured about how the sun barely stayed out for six hours this far north. Luka winced. That... wasn’t encouraging.

He arrived in Orveig late morning, exhausted and already sore. He'd pulled on another thermal shirt, snug under his usual high necked shirt and coat, before stepping off the train. The cold still bit through. 

A wet kind of cold, even if the air was dry— the sort that worsened the ache. He adjusted his scarf higher, neck wrapped tight. It didn’t help much. The bindings ached, the sharpness of pain made worse by the cold. He exhaled slowly, steam rising like smoke, and made his way down the platform.

Orveig was beautiful. He’d give it that. Wide streets softened with snow, bright buildings standing like mismatched toys someone had stacked in a neat row.

Canals wove through the city, bridges spanning over them, each one different, one of them painted crimson, another carved from cracked marble.

Gondolas moved along the frozen edges, lanterns trailing behind them like will-o’-the-wisps. Snow drifted down steadily, not melting, just layering in soft hushes.

He didn’t linger. The regional board building wasn’t far, and Luka headed there with his coat drawn tight and head low.

Inside, the board was posted Norrvahl. Something about it made his chest twist with nostalgia. His mother’s voice, soft and steady, came unbidden— she’d read to him in Norrvahl before switching to Alkarin when he started learning it.

She’d do that on purpose, each morning different, flipping between tongues, from Norrvahl to Fiorean to Alkarin. He’d loved it, back then. Collected new words like charms.

He continued learning more languages after she died, picking up her habit and holding it close like it was the only untainted thing he had left of her. He stopped after the binding, too busy trying to stay lucid and survive, and then, too busy trying to regain his magic. Maybe it was time to start again.

He found a listing— 70,000 jewels for Ice Doscadon removal in Karskold. That caught his attention. The payout was solid. The name... vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t place it.

He frowned, tugged the slip free, and headed to the counter. The clerk looked up—blond-haired, grinning far too brightly for someone who’d just been rocking back and forth on a rickety chair with the kind of boredom only long shifts breed.

Luka cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Would you happen to have a map I could borrow?”

His Norrvahl came slow at first. Soft from disuse. The vowels tasted odd in his mouth.

“Oh, sure!” the clerk replied brightly, and reached under the counter. “You can keep it, if you’d like.”

“Thank you.” Luka accepted the map, unfolding it partway. “Is Karskold near?”

“Pretty close,” the clerk nodded. “Bit isolated. No direct trains— you'd have to take the Hjalder route, then trek the rest of the way. Still, doable.”

“Good to know.”

The clerk leaned on the counter. “You visiting, or…?”

“Just passing through.”

“That so? Your Norrvahl’s really good. You almost sound local.”

Luka blinked, then let out a short breath. It might’ve been a laugh. “That’s kind of you to say.”

“Seriously,” the clerk insisted. “I wouldn’t have guessed you weren’t from around here.”

“Well,” Luka said, gaze dropping to the mission slip in his hand, “I’d like to get this one approved, please.”

The clerk took it with a nod. “Ice Doscadons. Messy job. But you look like you can handle yourself.”

Luka didn’t answer. He just watched as the approval stamp clicked down, a neat red seal appearing across the parchment.

“All set,” the clerk said, sliding it back. “You sure you’re not staying long?”

Luka tucked the slip away. “Quite sure.”

The clerk gave a small shrug. “Well, in any case, welcome to Orveig. Hopefully, this won’t be the last time I see you.”

Luka blinked. “Thanks.”

Outside, the snow had picked up. Luka looked once at a café menu posted outside a stone building. 11,000 for a bowl of soup.

He turned away. Tourist pricing. Yeah, no, he’ll just finish off the rest of his rations.  He made his way to the lower station, where the small steam sledges were prepping for departure.

He boarded the one marked for Hjalder, found a window seat, and pulled his coat tight again. As the sledge pulled from the station, Luka let his head fall back and closed his eyes.

After he stepped off the train, the world felt slightly thinner. The platform was already rimmed in frost, steam still clinging to the underbellies of the carriages like ghosts reluctant to leave.

He adjusted his coat, scarf and ushanka. He thought he was dressed for this, two layers of thermal with his usual clothes layered on top, bison fur coat.

But cold is not just cold in the north. It is presence. It is a shape that sits on your chest, wedges into your bones, whispers against you like it knows exactly where to press.

The trek should’ve been simple. Thirty minutes, maybe forty. A slow incline. No wind at first, just snow, steady and unrelenting, a quiet white rhythm beneath his boots.

Luka only lived this far out of spite. He won fights for the same reason—sharp, buried anger. The kind that didn't rise to the surface but lay under everything, like sediment.

And the cold made everything worse.

The seal on his neck pulsed low and constant. Normally, he could ignore it. But here, in this wet alpine air, it was near unbearable. The pain radiated, it was clawing. Every step pulled something from him. Every breath stung. His fingers felt like they’d been submerged in a glacier. His thread bare gloves did nothing.

He kept moving anyway. The world around him was beautiful. And that was annoying. Snow covered pine stood like cathedral spires. The sky a brittle grey blue, unshaken by cloud.

The ground curved up and down like folded paper, and the path, half buried, trailed over rock and frozen brush.

But also: wet. Also: very cold.

He saw Karskold before he fully understood he was there. The place was carved from the bones of the mountain, stacked in tiers like some kind of glacier born spiral. Stone homes, heavy with snow.

Each roof was layered in compacted ice, thick enough to hold weight, layered like shell after shell. It felt older than it should. The entire place felt like something left behind. They called it the Basin and he could see why.

He stopped at a small inn before heading to the site. He was too tired and needed a quick breather. The warmth of the inn helped, it seeped into his chilled limbs, soothing the ache.

He helped a stranger named Gildarts, who was apparently from Fairy Tail. The guy was old and talked a lot. As thanks for helping him avoid a scam, he bought Luka a meal.

Luka didn't protest. He hadn’t eaten since morning, and his last ration, a protein bar, was gone the moment he crossed the village border. The guy was a bit odd, but not too bad.

It was 12:36 when he left. The sun would be gone by 3. He didn’t want to return in the dark. It wasn’t windy. Not in the village itself. The mountain curved around it like a hand.

But once he passed the last row of houses, crossing out of the lip of the Basin and toward the path marked on the flyer, the wind cut through.

Snow kept falling as he walked, quiet and fine grained. Everything muted but the sound of his breath.

The inn was warm. It was a relief against Iceberg’s kind of cold. The kind that seeps in through your boots and lingers in your bones no matter how many fires crackle in the hearth or how hot the stew is.

Gildarts blinked snow out of his lashes, shaking off frost like a dog that wandered into the wrong climate. His coat was damp at the shoulders, boots scuffed and melting onto the wooden floor.

A stubborn shiver ran through him as he leaned toward the counter, trying, badly, to string together a sentence in Norrvahl.

“Uh… hello, I… want… room. One room. Sleep. Yes?” He gave the innkeeper a hopeful thumbs up.

The innkeeper blinked slowly, unimpressed. Then said something back, fast and clipped, something that clearly didn’t sound like yes.

Gildarts frowned. “That a no?”

The inkkeeper pointed at a set of jewels laid out on the counter. Gildarts squinted. That seemed... like too many jewels.

He tried again. “No, no, that’s not—no breakfast, no girl, just a bed. Understand? Bed.” He mimed sleeping.

The innkeeper smiled like a man watching a toddler try to armwrestle a bear. Counted more jewels.

“You’re getting scammed.”

The voice was sharp. Clear, perfect Fiorean.

Gildarts turned and looked down.

Kid couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Pale cheeks ruddy from cold, his face framed by a thick halo of white fur that hugged his ears and forehead, gold glinting faintly in his brown eyes like sunlight catching on a coin.

His black coat swallowed him whole, sleeves too long, his fingers just barely peeking out, but his scowl could’ve cut through solid steel. The fur hat flopped slightly with the weight of frost clinging to it, but he didn’t seem to care. His whole expression screamed: I am Tired of Everything, Including You.

He looked like a very offended kitten.

Gildarts blinked. “Oh, thank god.”

“You’re about to pay thrice as much for a single room.”

“I figured he was overcharging. Didn't realise it was daylight robbery.”

The boy stepped up to the counter with a sigh. Spoke in smooth, clipped Norrvahl.

The innkeeper’s expression faltered. A shrug. A few words back. Eventually, the man grunted and nodded.

The boy looked back at Gildarts and told him the price of a single room. Gildarts, grateful, pulled out the exact amount and paid, taking the room key from the man.

“You’re my hero,” Gildarts said. “You ever eaten here before?” he asked. The kid stared at him, narrow eyed.

“I’ve eaten,” the kid said flatly. Which was possibly a lie, judging by the way he kept glancing toward the warm stew and bread bowls with restrained, furious longing.

“Right, right,” Gildarts said cheerfully. “But have you eaten again? You’ve earned second lunch. Lifesavers get extra rations.”

“I didn’t save your life,” the kid muttered, arms crossed tight. “I stopped you from being scammed. That doesn’t count as a heroic act. It counts as basic civic duty.”

“Same thing!” Gildarts beamed. “Life saving, wallet saving, dignity saving— all counts. Besides, if you hadn’t jumped in, I’d be sixty thousand jewels poorer.”

He led him to a table. “So,” Gildarts began, elbow propped on the table, voice already too loud and too cheerful, “what’s a midget like you doing sulking around Karsold?”

The kid scowled. “I’m not a midget.”

Gildarts grinned. “Sure you’re not.”

The kid huffed, arms crossed. “I’m just passing through.”

Then, after a pause, a little awkwardly, “…And you?”

Gildarts brightened. “I’m here on a mission. You might’ve heard of me, name’s Gildarts Clive, from Fairy Tail.”

The kid blinked slowly. Actually, he didn’t react much at all until the food arrived. Then he perked up, just slightly. Cute, Gildarts thought, watching him with growing amusement.

“What’s your name, anyway?” Gildarts asked.

The kid, midchew, held up a finger. He swallowed, then said, “Luka.”

They ate in relative peace after that. Gildarts, for his part, was way more interested in watching Luka eat than touching his own meal.

Why was the kid’s nose pink? And why—why—did his cheeks puff out like a chipmunk when he chewed? So. Squishable.

He had to physically grab his own knee under the table to stop himself from reaching over and ruffling the kid’s hair and squishing his cheeks.

“So,” Gildarts said cheerfully, mostly to fill the silence, “how’re you finding Karskold?”

Luka gave him a flat look, pausing midbite.

“You travelling with someone?” Gildarts clarified quickly. The look Luka gave him was all suspicion, like Gildarts had just asked for his blood type and home address.

In Gildarts’ defense, he only realised how weird it sounded after it came out. But still— valid question, right? What was a kid like him doing in Karskold of all places? Couldn’t be a mage, Gildarts couldn’t sense a lick of magic on him.

Luka shifted slightly. Then, quietly, “…I like to travel.”

Gildarts nodded slowly, watching him over the rim of his mug. “On your own?”

Luka shrugged. “Most of the time.”

It didn’t sit right. The kid looked barely thirteen, fourteen at most. But Gildarts knew better than to press when Luka looked one push away from hissing and running away like a feral kitten.

So Gildarts just said, “That so?” Then added, with a grin, “Bet you’ve seen more than a few interesting places, huh?”

Luka’s fork paused midair. “A few,” he said, but softer this time.

They went quiet for a bit after that. Gildarts focused on his drink. Luka went back to eating, small and quiet and careful—like someone who’d learned not to take full plates for granted.

Eventually, Gildarts asked, “So where’re you headed next?”

“Wherever the next open road is.”

That earned a chuckle. “Sounds like a wizard thing to say.”

“Well... yeah. I am one.” Luka said it casually, between bites, like he was telling someone the time.

Gildarts raised a brow. “That so?”

He managed to keep his tone light, but inside, he wasn’t convinced. The kid didn’t feel like a wizard. He could sense no magical presence, and sure, he wasn’t the best out there, but he could tell even the faintest magical signature. The kid had none.

He seemed like just a quiet kid with sharp eyes and wind burned cheeks. Looked more like a runaway than anything.

Still, he played along. “What kind of magic?”

Luka didn’t even look up this time. “Celestial Spirit.”

That made Gildarts pause. He blinked. “Huh. Really?”

“Mm.” Luka nodded, chewing slowly.

Gildarts tried not to let the scepticism show on his face but Luka glanced at him then, eyes sharp under his bangs. Like he could feel the doubt even if he couldn’t hear it.

There was something in that stare, not defensive, not offended, just quiet and tired. Gildarts cleared his throat. “So, uh—what’re you thinking, after this place? Big plans?”

Luka shrugged. “Not really. Just... moving.”

“Well,” Gildarts said, stretching back with an easy grin, “if you’re ever in Magnolia, you should stop by Fairy Tail.”

Luka tilted his head, curious.

“You don’t have to be a wizard,” Gildarts added. “Not really. We’ve got plenty of folks who just hang around. We wouldn't mind extra help in taking care of the bar fights.”

That made Luka huff, soft and almost amused. “Sounds... loud.”

“Oh, unbearably.” Gildarts grinned. “But the door’s open.”

And that was that. Somehow, Gildarts felt like he made three steps forward and two steps back with this kid.

Damn. He didn’t even put his foot in his mouth this time. Or maybe he did. It was the 'you don’t have to be a wizard' comment, wasn't it?

The plains were pale and broken— white on white, interrupted only by the dark mouths of heat vents and the low hiss of escaping steam.

The kind of place that tricked your depth perception. Sky and snow in an endless blur. Snow fell sideways now, light but constant.

Luka crouched near the edge of a fissure, exhaling through clenched teeth. The cold was getting worse. The kind of sharp that made the ache in his neck bloom, heatless and deep. He ignored it.

Reports said two people had died. One crushed under an avalanche, the other found shredded, frostbitten. He’d thought, at first, that maybe they’d just wandered too close. But the patterns weren’t random. The monsters had claimed this stretch. And they were territorial. Too territorial.

He scouted the terrain first, marking thin ice zones. He tested one with his boot, watched it crack in a soft spiderweb. Noted the pale gleam underfoot.

The geothermal vents puffed heat in lazy vertical columns, steam rising clean and straight before dissipating. He counted four, then five. There. One large fissure toward the western slope. It could be useful, he thought to himself.

They weren’t supposed to be here. Ice Doscadons preferred colder hollows, deeper caves. Luka assumed something drove them out of their original home. Something that made them carve a new nest here, as animals do when desperate. He could sympathise. But it didn’t change what he had to do.

He checked the time. 1:32 PM. He sighed. Too close to dusk. Sunlight is still strong but barely. The sky was already turning sharp and pale at the edges. He stepped back, breath misting.

His hand reached toward the key ring on his hip, fingers steady despite the cold.

“Open. Gate of the Fox— Vulpecula.”

The air pulsed. There was a shimmer, then a sound. Vulpecula appeared, smoke lined eyes and curly hair this time, fanning herself with a conjured paper fan that didn't do anything in this weather.

“Really? So soon?” Her tone was half complaint, half affection. She took one look at him and frowned. “Did you sleep at all?”

“It’s fine.” He smiled despite himself. “It’s nice to see you.”

“You’re freezing.”

“That’s expected, we are in Iceberg.”  He rubbed his gloved hands together. “We’re dealing with Ice Doscadons. Only five.”

Vulpecula blinked. Paused. “Five.”

“So I was told.”

“Oh, that makes it so much better,” she muttered, already moving beside him. “You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re very good at illusions,” Luka said, evenly, like it was a fact and not a compliment.

She sighed like she was dying, but she flashed her teeth in a grin. “What’s the plan, hun?”

He pointed toward the sunlit plain. “They’re clustered by the ridge. I need two, maybe three, lured into the light.”

“And the others?”

“I’ll improvise.”

“You always say that before bleeding all over everything.”

“Please.” He smiled faintly. “Have some faith.”

Vulpecula rolled her eyes but vanished in a streak of shimmer. Moments later, mirages bloomed across the snow. Not obvious, just enough to catch the eye: movement, visages of prey.

The Ice Doscadons noticed. Three broke off, lumbering toward false shapes cast across the sunlight. Their bodies dragged long grooves through the snow, claws digging in, tails lashing.

Their size was worse than he expected. One stood nearly three meters at the shoulder, head swaying like a siege weapon. Luka moved quickly.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, worn mirror. He looked at his reflection once, just long enough to see the wear in his own eyes, then smashed it against a nearby rock.

Glass fractured. He gathered the shards in his glove, wedging them into snowbanks, against stones, angled just right to catch the light.

Sunlight hit the broken surfaces and scattered in erratic bursts, flashing like signal fire. Vulpecula exaggerated the illusion of light, turning the reflections into bursts of white pain for the beasts.

Two Doscadons flinched. One reared back, jaws snapping. Another bellowed and slammed itself into a frozen ridge.

Luka crouched. Moved carefully.

"Open. Gate of the Cup— Crater.”

The second spirit emerged, silent, eyes glowing with slow and fabric flowing like they were underwater.

“Hey,” Luka greeted, breath visible now in short puffs. “Sorry for the rush. I need you to apply pressure. Enough to crack the ice.”

Crater, fluid and formless, trilled before floating above the marked spot.

One of the Ice Doscadons—larger, leaner, eyes yellow and narrow—was already circling back toward him.

It had noticed the deception. Its scales shimmered with frost and dirt, and its steps left deep furrows in the snow. Luka backed away, angling toward the fissure.

“Now,” he said quietly.

The air compressed. There was a creak— then a groan, then a sharp, clean shatter. The ice beneath the Ice Doscadon exploded downward, the ground giving way beneath the beast’s weight.

Steam surged up in a violent hiss as the creature plunged into the water below. It screamed once, high, guttural, and then there was nothing.

Dead. One down. Four to go. The wind was picking up now. It was colder than before. The kind of cold that settled behind the eyes and under the ribs.

Luka straightened slowly, breath ragged.

“Crater,” he said softly, “can you do another?”

The spirit trilled once.

Vulpecula reappeared beside him, flowing sleeves trailing in the air like smoke.

“You’re freezing,” she repeated once more, more quietly this time. The look in her eyes told him she caught onto the pain the cold emphasised.

“I’m aware.”

She touched his cheek with the back of one gloved hand. “You’re not done yet, are you?”

“‘fraid not,” He checked the time, 1:57 PM. The light was thinning, slanting colder. The snow had shifted, turned brittle, its texture no longer soft, but granular, like powdered glass. Wind scraped low over the plains.

The temperature was falling. Luka positioned himself near one of the larger thermal vents, steam billowed lazily around him in gauzy veils. The heat wasn’t much, but it pushed the air near the vent just above freezing. He could feel his fingertips again, barely. He moved quickly, methodically.

From his belt, he pulled a magnesium striker and flint, scraping together a small fire beneath a shallow pile of ribboned gauze and blackened rock.

It caught with a hiss, embers glowing like the last red eye of a dying god. He worked beside the flame, fingers sure despite the ache in them.

Hollowed gauze tabs, stitched shut with butterfly closures. He dripped pepper spray concentrate into each one and sealed them.

Two Ice Doscadons, scaled like frost dusted boulders, shambled forward, more cautious than before, but too late. Their jaws parted, exposing rows of irregular, saw blade teeth.

One hissed low, a sound more like a malfunctioning engine than anything living. Luka lobbed a lit capsule in an overhand, clean arc. It hit snow and ignited near their faces.

It flared, brief, bright. Then, pfft—a burst of vapour, acrid and searing. Sunlight caught the vapour, causing a bright flare. The combination was devastating.

They reared back, snarling in pain. Their eyes, already small and light sensitive, were overloaded. Mottled eyelids clamped shut. One thrashed blindly, tail sweeping arcs into the snow. The other stumbled, slid directly toward the marked gravity well.

“Now,” Luka said quietly.

Crater responded beautifully. The gravity collapsed inward. A pressure field like the hand of something old and patient closing its fist.

The snow didn’t just fall, it compressed with a sound like bones grinding together. The Ice Doscadons couldn’t move. They sank, limbs twitching, breath steaming fast from their nostrils.

Luka stepped forward quickly, push dagger in hand. He didn’t look at their faces. He knew better. The blade found the soft place behind the jaw hinge, where even scaled monsters had to move.

He made the strike fast. Clean. As gently as possible, if killing could ever be called gentle. The blade slid through scaled muscle like silk unwinding. Two more down.

The locusts in his flesh stirred. They fluttered. Invisible wings brushing bone. Blood spilled— red as garnet, as fever, as ruin. It painted the snow in vivid streaks, and something inside him recoiled.

Luka looked away too late. The nausea came as a wave. He swallowed it. His hand twitched toward his neck, toward the sealed brand.

He curled his fingers into fists. The locusts screamed louder. He pulled back his sleeve before he could stop himself—just a look, he told himself, as though that would soothe the ache.

Nothing. No insects. No swarm. Just skin. He pulled the multiple sleeves down before the cold bit harsher.

A beast, he thought. How ironic. A beast killing other beasts. He crouched there, quiet, watching blood bead and steam in the cold. He did not ask for forgiveness. He did not believe it would be given.

And in the back of his mind, the question returned like a whisper, would there come a day when someone ended him like this? Beast, he thought again. And watched the red bloom across the white.

Vulpecula shimmered into view again.

“You look grey.” Her voice startled him out of his thoughts.

“Matches the landscape,” he murmured. He started to feel the drain intensely.

“Hmph.” She narrowed her eyes. “That’s four. You’re pushing it.”

Luka shrugged slightly. “Only one more.”

“Yes. One. Singular. Which is always the one that ruins everything.”

He didn’t reply.

She exhaled dramatically. “You should rest. At least for five.”

“I can’t.”

The sun was already slouching, painting everything in that dim, pale light where the world starts to dissolve into itself. Shadow blurred into ice, the cold deepening.

Vulpecula gave him a look.  “You will sleep after this, or I’m setting Aquarius on you.”

“I always sleep eventually,” Luka murmured fondly.

She sighed, long and drawn out. “Bye, then. Love you. Try not to get your face ripped off, you’re too pretty to die.”

Luka laughed, “Love you too. And thank you, for your help.”

He closed her gate. And then it was quieter. The kind of quiet that carries too far. Ice creaked beneath the earth like old bones settling. He cursed under his breath. 2:21. Nightfall is far too close.

The final Ice Doscadon dragged its left hind leg but still moved fast enough to be dangerous. Its scales were rimmed in frost, caked in grit and blood, half mad with injury and fury.

He ran, the ground was slippery and uneven, crust thin patches and black rock plates. The wind had picked up, sharp and fast, funnelling through cracks and slopes. Luka squinted against it.

His breath came ragged. His neck ached and the cool dry air felt like hell with each inhale. He led it uphill, toward the fractured rise of a brittle overhang.

It was barely more than a crust of dirt and compressed ice suspended over a steaming vent. Dangerous footing for anyone, and lethal for something that size.

Behind him, the Ice Doscadon shrieked. A low, grinding roar that was part fury, part confusion. Crater had slowed it enough, and that bad leg did the rest.

Luka didn’t fall. His boots held. Best money he ever spent, even if he’d eaten nothing but dumpster scraps for a week after.

He sent a silent thank you to Crater, then closed the gate with a breath.

His voice cut cleanly into the freezing air. “Open! Gate of the Crab— Cancer!”

There was a shimmer, then a snap. Cancer arrived like a blade flicked open. The air around him shifted— sharpened. Chrome limbs and polished carapace gleamed under the fractured sunlight.

Razor edged arms folded like a gentleman’s bow. The sunglasses were a ridiculous touch but they caught the light perfectly.

“Hey there, ebi,” Cancer said, voice smooth, almost lazy. “You sure you’re good for this?”

Luka exhaled through his teeth. “Mostly. I’ll explain later. I need your help.”

“You always do.” A flash of white teeth behind the lenses. “Let’s dance.”

Cancer shot forward, movement liquid and brutal. Under the Ice Doscadon before it could react, he carved into its uninjured legs with quick, clean slashes.

Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to ruin balance. Luka was already moving. He circled behind, low to the ground, striking the weak points he’d marked earlier with a trauma shear.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Steam hissed from the fractures. The vent below groaned. Cancer came around again, this time slicing clean through the already torn tendon on the rear left.

The beast let out a screech, half choked, and slammed to one knee, clawing at the air. It still tried to fight. Luka crawled closer. He stayed just behind its visual arc. His breath fogged the air.

When the Ice Doscadon reared up in pain, exposing its throat—

That was when the ground cracked wide. A geyser of white hot steam burst upward, hissing loud as thunder. Luka was already moving.

He used the vent’s veil to cover his final approach. The garrote wire was already in hand, looped, precise. One step, then two.

He leapt, landed with both feet braced against its back, and pulled the wire tight. The wire caught around the beast’s jaw and throat. It bucked, nearly throwing him but he held on, grimacing.

The Ice Doscadon slipped. Front legs lost grip on melting ice. The crust beneath them gave way in sheets. It screamed as it slid down the brittle incline, half falling into the vent's opening.

Steam swallowed its lower half. And then Cancer was there, blade extended.  A single, perfect strike into the exposed neck joint, severing spine from skull.

Sharp and fast, it was the kind of kill that came from knowing exactly where to cut. The beast dropped with a final groan.

Its body slumped sideways, half submerged in the vent, steaming like a ruined machine. Luka jumped off quickly, the hot steam missing him just barely. Cold again, suddenly, now that the heat was retreating.

“...Thank you,” he said.

Cancer tilted his head. “You always say that like you’re surprised, little prince.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re bleeding,” Cancer added softly.

“Would be weirder if I wasn’t,” Luka said, blinking as he wiped at the smear trailing from his nose.

Cancer hummed. A sound like wind through pine, hard to read, harder still to misplace. Luka didn’t look up. He didn’t have to. He knew that sound and what it meant.

Cancer ruffled his hair, gently, the way you’d touch something breakable. Then pulled him into a hug, swift, bracing, warm like a hearth in a house long gone and disappeared in a shimmer of gold, gone before the ache could deepen. Always knowing when to go. Always leaving before the toll could grow too steep.

He was alone again.

The sky had started to swallow the last of the light. Not night yet but no longer day. That in between hush, where time thins like breath on glass.

Snow fell heavier now, a slow, relentless hush that covered even the sound of his own boots crunching through frostbitten soil. Luka checked the time. 2:43.

The cold had deepened, slid into the creases of his coat, his gloves, the seams of his bones. It was the kind of cold that didn’t need to bite, it simply was. A condition of existence.

The wind hissed through the snow hills and overhangs like it had teeth. The temperature was falling, steady and certain, as if the sky was exhaling one long breath that would never end.

He looked up, slowly. The sun had become a pale bruise behind distant clouds, diffused and dying. Everything shimmered faintly, glazed in blue and bloodless silver.

It was humbling.

It was terrifying.

It was beautiful.

There was something sacred in it, something that didn’t want to be understood. The old terror of gods whose names were not meant for human tongues. He found it beautiful because he feared it.

Because the cold made no promises. It would not spare him. It did not care. There is a thin line between beauty and terror. Or no line at all, perhaps they are sisters, two sides of one coin.

Perhaps beauty is the promise of terror, the allure of something that could ruin you and chooses not to.

This time. The cold did not love him. But it saw him. And that, somehow, was worse.

He turned away at last. Slowly. He would have to move soon or the cold would keep him. And it would be so easy, wouldn’t it? Just to sit. Just to stay. To let it take him.

He exhaled slowly, watching the breath bloom frostily in front of his face. A warm leather jacket settled over his shoulders. Luka startled, jerking around and his heart promptly stopped.

His breath hitched. For a moment, he wondered if he was dreaming. But no, dreams didn’t come with this kind of pain, the binding still biting beneath his skin

Standing in front of him was Corvus.

He looked exactly the same. Pale as bone, dark eyes flecked with starlight. Except his coat was gone, and the shadows around his feet stirred, slow and reluctant.

Luka was frozen still. It had been— what? Two years? More? Since he last saw Corvus?

Corvus broke the trance with a wry smile, “Well?” he said. “Are you going to keep me waiting, little prince? I can’t stay out here forever.”

Luka didn’t think. He launched forward, arms wrapping tightly around the older spirit’s middle and burying his face into his chest like he was ten years old again.

Corvus caught him instantly, arms wrapping around him just as tightly, too tightly, bruising in the way only Corvus could be when he let the worry seep through his calm.

He pressed a hand to Luka’s back, the other cradling the back of his head, and let out a low, shuddering breath against his temple.

“Missed you,” Luka mumbled, barely audible through the lump in his throat.

Corvus didn’t say anything right away. Just held him like the world might rip them apart again if he let go.

“Yeah,” Corvus finally said. “Me too, kid.”

Luka clung harder, blinking fast because gods, this wasn’t a dream. He felt the bindings biting into his skin, felt the cold seeping into his boots, but Corvus was here. Real.

Unbidden, the tears started to fall.

Hot, stinging, stupid tears— Luka tried to bite them back, tried to keep his face steady, but the ache in his throat was worse than the bindings ever were. It swelled like a bruise inside his chest, lodged there, choking.

“I’m sorry,” Corvus whispered, his grip tightening. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I should’ve—”

Luka shook his head fast. “Don’t,” he croaked.

“Don’t say that. I don’t blame you. I never did.” He hesitated, voice hitching again. “I should’ve listened to you back then. I—I’m sorry.”

The tears wouldn’t stop now and Luka’s voice crumpled beneath the weight of it.

Corvus made a small hurt noise, and pulled him closer still. It felt like he was trying to wrap his entire being around Luka, like he could protect him from the world just by holding tight enough.

He didn’t know how long they spent hugging, clinging tightly to each other, until he felt Corvus shudder, his breath hitching with pain.

Luka’s instincts, dulled as they were by exhaustion and cold and pain, still caught the flinch. Still heard the edge of pain in his breath.

Luka pushed against his chest. “You need to go,” he said, voice rasped and worn. “You’re already straining—”

“I can hold out a bit longer,” Corvus said, jaw clenched. His face was youthful still, no more than twenty but his eyes betrayed the centuries behind them. “I’m fine.”

Luka gave him a look. A soft one, tired but firm. “Don’t lie to me.”

Corvus looked away. “Go,” he said again, this time in Celestial tongue. “Please. I don’t want you hurt.”

Corvus’s shoulders slumped, the fight leaking out of him all at once. His fingers slid up gently, cradling Luka’s jaw as if he were made of glass.

He stared at him like he was trying to memorise every part, eyes flicking across his face, the bags under his eyes, the tear streaks, the small tired smile.

His thumb rubbed just beneath Luka’s eye, catching a tear. And Luka clung to his wrist like it would tether Corvus in place. Like maybe if he just held on hard enough, this wouldn’t end.

But the tug of the realm was already starting. He could feel it, see it— Corvus’s edges flickering, a devoid light shower.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and leaned in, forehead pressing against Corvus’s. The words came quietly, but certain, in the tongue of stars and spirits. “I love you.”

Corvus’s eyes widened, startled and stunned, and for one suspended breath, he looked like he might say something back.

But then he was gone.

Gone with a pulse of magic, a hush of shadows curling in on themselves, the snow swirling where he’d stood.

Luka stood still, jacket nearly slipping off one shoulder, staring at the empty air. He exhaled, his breath frosted instantly in front of him.

He gripped the jacket, pulled his arms through the sleeves, mouth quirking into a faint smile. Was this the ‘stupid jacket’ Aquarius had complained about last month?

He pulled it closer, zipping it close and closed his eyes. It smelled like Corvus, and for a moment, he could pretend it was Corvus hugging him.

At least he’d told him he loved him this time.

He turned away at last, the sun was nearly gone.

He would have to get back before the night took hold.

L,

First of all—six hours?? SIX?? I’m actually proud of you. Genuinely. You’ve come so far. I’m so proud.

And yeah, of course you didn’t like Bosco. You’re not in the right crowd. That place is famous for its club scene, which, last I checked, you are both morally and legally too young to participate in. (Not that you’d survive a club. One strobe light and you'd crumple like wet paper.)

Get some actual winter wear and don’t freeze, you cheapskate. Branbell’s the same. No idiots harassing me, I can handle them on my own, thank you very much. Drama levels are low. Boredom levels: medium. I’ve sent you a fresh medicine pack and a restocked first aid kit. You’re even more delusional than I thought if you think I’m letting you pay me for it.

If you dare send me payment again, I’m mailing back twice as many. Don’t test me. Eat something and don’t die. You absolute midget.

—A

P.S. You’d better be writing all this down somewhere. I want travel stories when you come crawling back.

P.P.S. I am not as bad as you. At least I eat something, you just starve.

Chapter Text

The Steam Sled Train wheezed and chuffed like a tired beast, short range passenger sleds hitched in crooked lines across the tracks, their exteriors crusted with frost and old soot.

Iron groaned underfoot. Steam curled at ankle height, catching the dying light and smearing it into gold ribbons across the metal floor. The scent of burning coal and rust seeped into Luka’s coat.

He slid into a bench near the rear and curled himself into the warmth of Lupus, burying his face in the thick, soft ruff of the wolf’s shoulder.

Lupus didn’t move, only exhaled, low and even, as Luka pressed closer, throat aching, blood long dried beneath his bandages.

The train lurched forward, juddering into motion with a screech and a heavy sigh of steam. The rhythm of it was rough but familiar. He fell asleep in minutes.

He briefly woke up, bleary eyed, when the train lurched forward sharply.  A man sat stiff-backed near the exit door, his shoulders tense beneath a deep blue cloak.

He wore a dark bandana and camouflage mask that obscured the bottom half of his face. He seemed…frozen. Luka didn’t blame him.

Lupus, massive and silent, huffed, cold mist curled from the wolf’s breath. Pale fur shimmered faintly in the compartment's light, like hoarfrost shifting over snow.

The stranger’s hand twitched toward his Magic Stave when he saw Luka was awake. Luka made no comment. He was too tired for social grace as sleep took hold of him once more.

He woke somewhere near Uvrael, the snowline lower now, mist crawling like a ghost across the windows. Luka slid off the bench quietly, nudging Lupus to vanish back into the celestial realm.

The man in the cloak didn’t speak. Luka didn’t either. He stepped off the train and vanished into the evening fog.

A wagon waited near the far edge of the station square, brass bolted and carrying bundles wrapped in waxed leather.

One of the merchants—a blond, broad shouldered man with a stitched leather satchel and a too charming grin—was just finishing loading it when Luka approached.

“Hello. Would you mind if I ride with you as far as Skardheim?” Luka had asked, voice polite, reserved, just loud enough to be heard.

“Sure,” the man had said. “Plenty of room, sweetheart.”

Luka blinked. He hadn’t quite processed the endearment until the bond stirred like a live wire under his skin.

His spirits did not like that.

Not the danger kind of protective. No, this was the other kind. The suffocating, twitchy kind that left people trembling, unable to look Luka in the eye afterward.

The kind that once made a man sob for three hours because he dared to wink at Luka and tried to proposition him. Luka had no desire to repeat that or the bonebreaker incident.

So he smiled and climbed into the back of the wagon without summoning anyone. Still, he could feel them. All of them. Watching. Hissing.

Blondie wasn’t even the worst of it. Didn’t touch him. Didn’t leer. Just… hovered. Spoke to him charmingly. Offered dried fruit. Luka was relieved.

He distracted himself with the shifting lands. Glacial plateaus, vast and skeletal, gave way to sloping valleys drowned in fog.

Steam rose in lazy curls from distant rivers, threading through sharp edged cliffs and lichens glowing faint blue on obsidian stone. The ice looked alive here, dreaming, maybe.

The kind of dreaming that could open its mouth and swallow you whole. He watched, quietly, entranced. It looked like the inside of a god’s throat.

By the time they reached Skardheim, the sun had sunk completely. The town glowed faintly behind a curtain of frost and smoke, orange windows like fireflies strung across the dark spine of the cliffs.

Luka hopped down from the wagon, his boots crunching over the frost laced ground. He thanked each of them with a low nod and small smile.

“Hey,” Blondie called as Luka turned to leave. “If you ever pass through again—”

“I’ll consider it,” Luka said quickly, a little too quickly. He raised a hand in a vague wave. “Take care.”

He side stepped the invitation and kept walking. He could already feel the way the bond was purring. Not pleased. But soothed.

Luka stayed in Skardheim for the night. It was a small inn with thin walls but warm blankets and a warmer cup of cider. He didn’t sleep much, though the room was quiet. His body rested, but his thoughts had teeth.

By morning, the sky had turned the colour of wet ash, clouds heavy with unshed rain. Skardheim's infamous trade market wasn't something he’d meant to visit.  He didn’t care much for it and crowds made him itch. But it was, oddly, lovely.

The market sprawled across the town square. Stalls stitched in cloth of every kind, lanterns hanging low, burning blue and amber. The air smelled of incense, leather, sharp herbs and old paper.

Fire pits smoked, their smoke curling through the air. People gathered around them, warming their hands as they talked in low voices.

People haggled in five different languages. He nearly missed the book stall. Regenerative Pharmacoalchemy: Tissue Repair and Magical Cell Stimulation. Volume I. The title gleamed on a worn spine.

Anna had been wanting it for months,  it was out of print and rare. He bought it immediately, clutching the wrapped book to his chest like he’d stolen it from the gods.

Then, deeper in the market, under a canopy of dyed crimson sailcloth, something caught his eye. A small glass case, half fogged from the cold. Inside: a gold key.

Not just any key. A Celestial Gold key, Taurus. Luka leaned down, heart thudding. The merchant didn’t know what he was holding. The price was insultingly low.

He didn’t question it, just paid, palms shaking slightly as he slid the key into his pocket. He walked out of the market in a daze.

In the frost laced clearing behind the inn, fog slithered between pine trunks. The ice slushy ground crunched beneath his boots. He stood alone, gold key in hand, the cold biting his fingertips.

He drew in a slow breath.

“Open,” Luka said quietly, “Gate of the Bull— Taurus.”

The world didn’t explode, exactly. It shifted. Like something vast turned over beneath the skin of reality.

With a sound like stone breaking, a shape surged into being— taller than the trees, broad shouldered, looming.

Seven feet of war born divinity, muscle wrapped in ceremonial etchings. Horns ringed in gold. Crimson eyes that burned like twin eclipses.

A half toga swept back behind thick armour plate, and cracked hooves dug into the soil like he belonged to the earth. He looked like a statue come to life

And he looked furious. Well not furious, but the way his jaw clenched said he wasn’t thrilled either. His eyes locked onto Luka’s, and he paused.

Luka didn’t flinch.

“Thank you,” he said, soft but steady. “For answering.”

Taurus’s voice came like an earthquake rolling through gravel. “You wish to make a contract with me?” He asked in Celestial Tongue.

Luka inclined his head. “Yes,” replied in Celestial Tongue, the words curling smoothly.

Taurus blinked.

“…You speak it?”

Luka nodded once. His seal burned, perhaps he should’ve waited for a better day to summon him.

“Well, damn. Guess they weren't lying.” The spirit muttered it more to himself than anyone else.

Luka steamrolled ahead, he tugged the high neck of his shirt down. “I just thought you should know. I’m—”

“Bound?” Taurus interrupted, tone blunt. A huffed snort that steamed in the cold. “You realise that’s old news, right? Everybody knows.”

Luka didn’t flinch at the mocking tone. He just gave a small nod. “Still. I wanted to make sure, in case you don’t want to make a contract with someone like me.”

Taurus studied him. Something unreadable passed through those burning eyes.“Alright. You’ve got guts. Little dumb, but I respect the guts.”

Luka’s mouth quirked faintly. “What days are you available?”

Taurus barked a laugh, low and gravelly, echoing like a rockslide down a canyon wall. “Anytime, kid. Knock yourself out.”

Luka raised an eyebrow. From the way Taurus was snickering, he was definitely making a joke about the many times Luka knocked himself out from overdoing it.

“Hilarious,” Luka said dryly, adjusting his collar back up. His fingers trembled, just slightly, he ignored it.

Taurus tilted his head. “You’re a weird one,” he said. Luka didn’t respond, he wasn’t sure what to say.

Taurus exhaled, more a rumble than a breath. “Alright, kid. I’ll hold you to it. Don’t go dying before I get a proper fight out of this.”

And just like that, the air cracked— and he vanished in a shimmer of gold. Luka stood alone again. Fog curling at his ankles. The gold key was warm in his palm.

A,

Skardheim is technically less cold. Still cold enough to question my life choices, but I’ve stopped actively resenting the air.

It’s known as the trader’s stop. The market here is wild. Full of vintage junk and weird trinkets. I didn’t think it would interest me, but it’s actually kinda cool.

And guess what? I got a new key. Taurus! From the Zodiacs, remember? Sending this as a quick pit stop letter to let you know I haven’t frozen to death. I’ll write again once I find a stable spot—I’ll be travelling a bit with no consistent stay for the next few days.

Boooo, what do you mean no drama.

Also, I sent you something. Not payment, don’t be dramatic. Just that medical book you kept going on about, the one about Magical Cell Stimulation? It’s Volume One. Hope it's the right edition.

Gotta go. Thanks for the meds and the first aid kit, Doc.

—L

P.S. Yes, you are. At least I’m not the one inducing full blown caffeine fuelled panic attacks.

Luka left early.

The kind of early where the sky was still inked in pre dawn grey, and the cold bit like a dog with bad manners.

He adjusted his coat, fingers already numbed stiff at the tips. Skardheim hadn’t been kind to him, not cruel, not unlivable, just sharp.

Biting alpine air, the kind that chaps lips and carves cheekbones, that seeps into bone no matter how tightly you wrap yourself.

He’d been nursing thin air headaches for three days straight, the kind that made his vision pulse at the edges. He was hoping Tsenvara might be less brutal.

The Stormline waited in a crouch of steam and low light. He boarded just as the horizon began to bleed gold behind the peaks. Morning, technically.

But the sun barely clawed above the mountains for more than six hours a day in this region during these winter months. The light was precious, which made it feel like something stolen.

The Stormline only seated four. Luka sat on one side, curling into the corner slightly, letting the thrum of the engine settle into his joints.

One other passenger, a gruff old man wrapped in weatherproof wool and layers that probably predated Luka by decades, boarded with a grunt and settled beside the exit door. He spoke Shevak.

Luka spoke it sparingly, barely enough to hold a conversation, but enough that he could understand.

“Where you from?” the man asked, squinting under thick brows.

Luka blinked, then replied in Shevak, slowly, carefully. “Fiore. East coast. Near the tradelines.”

The man hummed. “Thought so. Accent's awful.”

“I’m aware.” Luka didn’t sound offended. It came out gently amused.

And that was enough to open the floodgates. Not constant chatter, but steady, measured like snowfall.

The man told stories of wind torn pass crossings, tavern brawls that ended in lifelong friendships, a niece who married a merchant prince and now hated seafood.

Luka nodded along, offered the occasional word. The old man didn’t seem to mind the rough grammar. If anything, he looked pleased someone tried.

“Stormline’s a blessing,” he said once, tapping the side of the sled. “Used to ride cart sleighs through this region. You think this cold’s bad now?”

Luka made a sound that might’ve been agreement or politeness. Either way, he nodded. The windows frosted at the edges, then cleared, then frosted again.

He watched sleet flicker into hard ice when wind shear hit, the sky flashing silver. There was one moment, a quick, breath stealing second, when the clouds turned gold under the rising sun and the world looked painted.

Like everything had been dipped in light. He didn’t say anything. Just watched, and tried to memorise the way the gold brushed the mountains, how even the wind seemed to hush for just a breath.

By the time they arrived in Tsenvara, his headache had dulled, softened like melting snow. The sky above was clear. A crisp, crystalline blue that felt like it could crack if you exhaled too hard.

No real snowstorms here, apparently, though the air hinted at it. Occasional powder drop flurries danced around the rooftops in the late light, “snow blossom hour,” the old man had called it.

Tsenvara was beautiful in that cold, distant way some places are. Built from white veined grey stone, each building capped in green blue copper, weathered and oxidised like old jewellery.

Meltwater channels cut through the streets in thin, singing ribbons. It made the whole city feel like it was breathing softly. He walked slowly, letting himself take it in.

He stopped at a corner when the golden hour clung stubbornly to the buildings, casting the whole street in soft peach and lilac light.

Shadows were blue, like watercolour bruises. The light fell low and slow, slanting between the rooftops with a reverence that made even the worn cobblestones seem sacred. Everything softened.

The green blue copper roofs caught the light like a memory of fire, glinting at the edges where frost had begun to form.  The snow flurries seemed to wake, drifting more visibly in the honeyed light.

Even the meltwater channels running along the roads turned to liquid glass, amber and rose tinted.  He stood there for a long while, hands tucked in his sleeves, face tilted up.

The mountains in the distance, half shadowed already by the coming night, stood drenched in colour, faint violet in their crevices, the peaks washed in apricot light so faint it seemed imaginary.

Above them, clouds blushed with an embarrassed kind of pink, as though the sun had kissed them before leaving.

It was quiet.

He could feel the world cooling. The warmth of the light didn’t reach the skin but it lingered in the eyes, made the breath catch just a little.

When the light finally began to dim into something colder, Luka made his way to the inn. Checked in with a polite nod and few words. He would leave for Haevira after he finished a quick job.

The room was simple, stone walls, thick blankets, a window that caught the last of the violet sky. He set his bag down gently. Sat on the edge of the bed. Exhaled. Then again.

The night was quiet and holy in its stillness.

L,

First of all: THANK YOU!!

That is the book I was looking for, the exact one! I love it. You have my undying loyalty as long as you keep gifting me books like these. Also: holy hell, that market sounds amazing. Vintage junk and weird trinkets? I would lose my entire mind in a place like that.

So you're in Haevira now, huh? Look at you! First Iceberg, now Seven. How is it? Still cold, I assume. But better than Iceberg. Thank god you left, I don’t know what you were thinking, going to Iceberg this late in the season.

You should try the tea there. Supposedly, it’s life changing. Who knows, maybe it might actually calm your constantly fried brain.

Also, yay! New key! Did you make a contract? What are they like?

And okay, fine. Things have been weirdly calm here since you left. Like, too calm. I think I got too used to you dying half the time. Wait, actually something did happen. Remember Christie? Vales, from Linder Street? Yeah. Pretty sure she’s pregnant. They’re definitely trying to hide it. Either that, or she ran away. She hasn’t been seen since the last two months. Honestly, both feel equally likely.

Write back when you can.

—A

P.S. At least I’m not the one who doesn’t even need caffeine to have a panic attack.

Haevira held its breath after dark. It was bone cold, the kind of cold that didn’t just settle on the skin but seeped straight through bone. Luka’s breath fogged silver, rising slow, curling like incense smoke around the white marble railings of the rooftop.

The stone beneath him had long since lost its warmth but he stayed seated, legs folded beneath him, coat drawn tight. The sky above unfurled, slow, the way a sigh moves through a still room.

Auroras drifted overhead like great luminous creatures, swaying, trailing soft, pale ribbons of green and violet and the faintest kiss of rose gold. They shimmered silently above the silver pillared city.

From up here, Haevira looked unreal, like a temple suspended on the edge of the world. Nothing else moved. Not even the wind. Just light.

“You look like you’re about to start crying,” Perseus said, sitting beside him, voice low and amused.

Luka blinked out of his trance, turned to look at him. “Hm?”

Perseus had that smirk, the self satisfied one but softened at the corners. Fond, despite himself.

“You look like you’re about to cry,” he repeated.

“I’m just watching the sky.”

“You get this moved over sky things?”

“They’re not just sky things.”

Perseus muffled a laugh behind a gloved hand, head tilted back toward the auroras. “If you like them that much, you should’ve gone to Vinterhjerte while you were still in Iceberg. It’s the best place for them.”

Luka blinked. “I didn’t realise they had them.”

“Really,” Perseus said, tugging a lock of Luka’s hair. “You mean to tell me you were traipsing around Iceberg and no one told you Vinterhjerte has the best aurora shows on the continent?”

“No one mentioned it.”

“Of course they didn’t,” he muttered, then glanced sidelong. “Honestly. You wouldn’t survive it anyway, little stray. Not with your abysmal winter wear.”

Luka frowned faintly, tugging the collar of his coat up. “It’s warm enough. Vulcupula picked it.”

Perseus scoffed. “She was never human. You do realise that, yes? I don’t trust her taste in anything that involves survival.”

Luka sighed into his collar. “It’s not that bad.”

“You were shaking.”

“I was not.”

Perseus raised a brow.

“...Okay. Maybe a little.”

“Hmm.”

They lapsed into quiet again. The auroras above them swayed. Luka watched, fascinated by how green melted into violet. Then a ripple of blue.

Perseus broke the silence after a while. “You could still go to Vinterhjerte, if you want. You will still have time if you get there before early January. Prime viewing’s right now, though.”

Luka didn’t answer immediately. His breath left him in a soft cloud. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “Also the coldest time though.”

“Mm.” Perseus hummed. “You’d need better gear. Especially something for your neck.”

It was said so casually, so offhandedly, that it took Luka a few seconds too long to realise what it meant.

He blinked, then exhaled, resigned. “So Cancer told you all?”

Perseus glanced at him, as if Luka had just asked whether water was wet. “Is that even a question?”

Luka made a face. “I was hoping for some discretion.”

“Luka,” Perseus said, tone half fond, half irritable. “Some of us despised each other before you came along. Now we barely tolerate one another for your sake. Of course, we talk about you.”

Luka cracked a smile at that, small and wry. “You and Orion.” Perseus and Orion had never been contracted to the same summoner, mostly because they couldn’t stand each other.

“We would’ve torn each other’s throats out months ago.” Perseus said, rolling his eyes.

The auroras shifted again, a sudden arc of green blue like the sky exhaling. Luka looked up, watched it quietly.

Perseus was still carding his fingers through Luka’s hair. He didn’t seem to realise he was doing it; his movements were slow and absent. Like he was calming something down.

Or keeping something from slipping. Luka didn’t mind. He leaned a little closer without thinking. His hand stilled. Only for a second. Then it moved again, slower. A little tighter. Like he hadn’t noticed until the space between them disappeared, and now he didn’t want to let it widen again.

“You should sleep,” Perseus said eventually. “You’ve got to leave early.”

Luka didn’t move. Just watched the last of the auroras, tendrils of colour fading into black. The sky above Haevira was clear now. Starred. Cold as the edge of a blade.

Tomorrow, he would leave.

But for now, he stayed. Perseus at his side, warm in the way fire is when you’ve forgotten what it feels like. The marble beneath him was freezing. His throat still ached faintly.

Still, he didn’t say anything, he leaned in closer and let the moment be.

It took an entire day to descend from Haevira.

The shuttle wheezed its slow spiral down the mountainside, metal ribs groaning with frostbite and age. Luka sat hunched near the window, his coat drawn tight, his breath a ghost on the glass.

The world outside unfurled like a sleeping giant’s dream. Below them, the forests began. Not sharp or violent like northern boreal woods, but slow and soulful. Lush even in the frost.

Pines, dense and towering, folded into one another like secrets. Their needles shimmered with crusted snow, branches swaying in slow rhythm.

A forest that felt—not merely seen, but felt— like a place that remembered sorrow. And welcomed it. A place more than human, yet not godlike. Earthful and grounding.

Something about it filled the moment up. There was no space for thoughts to echo hollowly. No space to get lost in the worn halls of his own mind.

He dozed in pieces. Woke to mist. Slept again to the low, comforting hum of the shuttle’s heating vent and the drone of tires over old tracks. By the time he reached Altarin Pass, the sun had already dipped beneath the mountains. He stepped out into a snow drenched valley.

The terraced pools were a luminous silver blue under the dim sky, springs frozen, rimmed with snow along the stone. Snow clung to the ground in uneven patches, stubborn and thick. Everything glowed faintly. He checked the time. Four o’clock. The sky was black.

Luka trudged to the station, asked the clerk about lodging. The man blinked, then laughed, a sharp bark that echoed oddly in the empty terminal.

“No hotels?” Luka asked, mildly.

“Not this time of year,” the man said. “You’re off season. Pass’s usually open from spring through early autumn. Winter, it’s…” He made a vague gesture. “Risky. We don’t keep places running. No point.”

Luka didn’t answer. Just nodded slowly, like he’d always planned to sleep outside.

He hadn’t.

The ticket price made more sense now. Scarcity tax. He hadn’t noticed.  Snow had begun to fall again, a heavy curtain drifting down like ash. Luka adjusted his hat and started walking.

Tall black firs watched him pass, their spindly arms raised high, as if praying or pleading. Spruces loomed like stone silent sentinels.

Crooked pines leaned over the path, burdened with snow like bowed monks. The undergrowth was dense in places, and barren in others, roots twisting like pale fingers reaching out of the frost bitten soil.

The silence was immense. Even his footsteps didn’t echo. Just the muffled crunch of snow and the occasional groan of shifting ice beneath him. Somewhere, far off, an owl cried once. Then nothing.

He stopped beside a hollowed out log and pressed a gloved hand to his neck. His bindings had started to ache. Not just ache, burn, a kind of cold-bite deep.

But it was better than what lay beneath. The cold had its own gifts, it silenced the crawling, quieted the phantom itch of infestation. The forest did not love him. But it allowed him through.

It was dark, truly dark, in a way Luka had not known darkness could be. A kind of dark that seemed to seep from the bark of the trees, not merely fall from the sky.

The kind of dark that made bones remember they had once belonged to the earth. He had never feared it before. But now it felt like something alive, like a mouth slowly closing.

Through the brittle lattice of trees, he saw stars, his only light in the terrible darkness of the forest. His eyes adjusted. The stars did not soften the dark; they sharpened it.

Made it something vast, something holy. He drifted, slow, toward a clearing, a wound in the forest’s body where the sky was allowed to be seen.

And he stood there, still, as snow gathered on his shoulders like hands that didn’t know they were cold.

He stood beneath the sky, where there was no moon, no clouds, only the vast mouth of the cosmos yawning open above him. It was beautiful. A divine kind of beauty.

Orion stalked the southern sky, bow drawn in silence. His stars burned like open mouths, Betelgeuse a dying heart on fire, Rigel too bright to look at for long. Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka—his belt—slashed across the sky with the finality of a blade. Bright, shining, look at me, he seemed to say.

West of him, Taurus curled into view, horns tipped with frost. The Pleiades cluster glittered, sister stars trembling at the edge of vision.

And following, always following, was Canis Major, Sirius at its throat like a howl caught in crystal. Below Orion’s feet flowed the river Eridanus, winding into the horizon.

And Monoceros, dim yet flashed brightly when he laid eyes, a horned beast made of light.

The wind gnawed at him like an animal without a face. Still, Luka stood there, hands buried in his pockets, shoulders hunched beneath fur and leather. His breath came in soft white offerings. He felt comfort.  

He felt sleepy. Not the kind of sleep that calls from a warm bed, but that thin, dangerous sleep that coils beneath frostbitten fingers. The sleep that beckons you to lie down and disappear, softly. Distantly, he could feel the bond he had between his spirits flare. Leave, they seemed to urge.

He turned. The clearing blurred behind him, and the forest swallowed the starlight whole. Here, beneath the canopy, the light did not reach, only glinted, here and there.

He walked. Then paused. Then turned again. And knew, with that low and curling dread, that he did not know where he was. A chill swept through him.

He was lost. Truly. Entirely. Lost in a night that felt like splinters beneath the skin, like an angel’s mouth stitched shut with exile. This night, this heavy, collapsing thing, hung over him like an overturned bowl of blood.

He stood very still, and then he himself as one might gather torn fabric. He picked his bones up off the ground and sewed them back into something that could resemble a body.

That is what life is, isn’t it? The quiet reassembly of the self after each shattering. Wind howled behind him like grief without language, grasping, clawing fingers that tried to hold him. His body didn't feel like his, everything felt distant— his emotions, the bond, even the cold and pain.

He stepped back into the forest, feeling the enormity of it close around him. It was old, far older than him. The trees watched with no eyes. The snow breathed with no lungs.

Either the dark concealed something, or it revealed nothing.

And Luka could not decide which was worse.

The shadows folded over him, seamless. And he, dulled now, half dreaming, not frightened but not unfrightened either, pressed forward.

And somewhere in the hush, in the weight of the cold pressing through each layer of cloth and flesh and thought, he began looking, again, for a place to rest. A hollow in this unholy cathedral of firs.

A corner to survive the terrible, terrible night.

Luka woke slowly, blinking up at the dim morning light leaking through. His throat ached, limbs sore from the pain that radiated from the binding. The sky is low, clouds brushing the peaks like breath on glass.

Lupus was still there, curled heavy and warm against his side, fur dusted with frost, eyes already watching him like he’d been awake for hours.

"Thanks," Luka murmured, voice hoarse. "Sorry for keeping you here so long.”

Lupus huffed, then butted his head gently against Luka’s shoulder, a low rumble vibrating in his chest.

"Alright. I’ll stop apologising," Luka said, managing a small smile.

As Luka sat up, his hand brushed the side of his throat. He winced, barely. But Lupus’s ears twitched.  That low rumble returned, deeper this time.

Luka blinked, then offered a weary laugh. “I’m fine. Just tired from keeping your gate open all night.”

Lupus huffed and nudged his head against Luka’s. Luka gently cradled the wolf’s head between both hands, pressing his forehead to Lupus’s. Luka allowed the gate to close, drained beyond belief.

Lupus vanished with a shower of light, the air around Luka immediately colder. The toll hit him fast—head heavy, limbs aching. Not terrible. Just a bone-deep tired. At least he wasn’t bleeding.

He pulled out a protein bar from his pack, teeth chattering slightly as he bit into the half-frozen thing.

“Delicious,” he muttered without a hint of sincerity, chewing anyway.

Snow crunched beneath his boots as he climbed out of the trench and adjusted his pack. The sky above was pale grey, thin light bleeding through the clouds. Light made it easy for him to find his way back to the trail.

He followed the ice breathed trail, heading east, where the path curved around the white dusted pines. Rosebane Way stretched ahead in brittle silence.

He spent his second night in a similar way, huddled in a sheltered corner against the warmth of Lupus and a sickly fire.

It was on his second day walking along the path that he spotted figures on the ridge, two of them, moving steadily.

He tensed for a moment, but then the shapes became clearer. Coats trimmed with silver. But barely dressed for the weather.

Ice mages?

One waved as they drew closer. “Oh HI!”

Luka blinked. The speaker was the younger of the two—dark hair, messy, face wind bitten but cheerful. The older one just gave Luka a slow once over, jaw set.

“We thought we were the only ones on this road,” the younger said. “I’m Dren. That’s Keal. Don’t mind his sourface, he’s just grumpy in the morning.”

Keal grunted. “Don’t talk to strangers.”

Dren ignored him. “What’s your name?”

“Luka. Nice to meet you.”

“You an ice mage too?” Dren asked, adjusting his pack with a sharp tug.

“No,” Luka said. “Celestial spirit mage.”

That made them both pause. Even Keal’s eyebrows rose slightly.

Dren whistled. “Seriously? Out here? Alone?”

Luka gave a half-shrug. “Didn’t exactly plan on it.”

Keal exhaled through his nose. “Avalanches hit this region every other week. You’re lucky.”

Luka winced, internally thanking the stars nothing had happened to him.

"Where are you headed?" Dren asked.

Luka said hesitantly, “Sarevein."

Dren brightened. "Oh, that's on our way! We're going to Veliscar. Wanna walk together?”

Luka hesitated, then nodded. "Sure."

They started walking. The snow crunched, wind scraping through branches. The trees stood brittle and silent.

“Wait, what are you even doing out here?” Dren asked suddenly, twisting around mid-step to face Luka, walking backward. “Rosebane’s not exactly… y’know, a tourist destination right now.”

“I like to travel,” Luka said simply. “I didn’t realise the inns close down during this part of the season.”

Dren laughed. “Yeah, they do. Everyone holes up by first frost. Guess they forgot to tell you that.”

“Apparently,” Luka said dryly, tucking his gloved hands deeper into his coat sleeves. “And you?”

“We’re coming down from Mount Thalvren,” Dren said with a shrug. “Training there’s brutal. You spend a week in a shit hole with nothing but ice, snow, and one pissy instructor who thinks you're weak for blinking too much.”

Luka glanced over. “Do harsh environments even help? I hear a lot about Ice mages learning in extreme cold but it seems…” He trails off, unsure how to word his thoughts.

Dren’s eyes lit up, “ It’s cause Ice magic’s full body. You gotta acclimate the body to absorb magic through survival instincts. The more cold your body endures, the more it opens up channels to magic tied to it. Like, your cells get used to housing the frost. That kinda thing.”

Luka tilted his head, intrigued.

“I mean, I didn’t die,” Dren continued cheerfully. “But only if you have potential for ice magic. The cold judges you, if you’re found unfit, well…” He made a vague gesture, “You die.”

“Sounds hard,” Luka finally said, unsure of what else to say.

“Yeah, but I can do this now—” Dren flexed his fingers, a thin arc of frost forming in his palm, forming something that was almost a flower; half a flower, really, and half something else entirely. Possibly a snowman, mostly an undefined slush.

Still, it was beautiful in the way half formed things sometimes are. Luka blinked when Dren handed it to him.

He held it in his palm. Despite its odd, lopsided shape, the ice gleamed like glass spun from moonlight.

“Thanks,” Luka said, quietly.

Dren, who had expected more mocking and less gratitude, rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s not… y’know, the prettiest. Teacher can do way better—oh hey, Teach, can you—?”

“No,” said Kael, before the sentence had the chance to become a mistake. “Stop fooling around.”

He said this in the tone of someone who had absolutely thrown a student off a cliff before and wouldn’t mind doing it again.

Luka, perhaps sensing the imminent threat of defenestration by mountain, cut in before Dren could test Kael’s patience any further. “Thank you for the flower. It’s pretty.”

Dren stuttered, caught off guard by the sincerity.

“Will it melt?” Luka asked, still holding the not-quite-flower like it might disappear.

“Oh—no,” Dren said, recovering. “Don’t worry. It won’t.”

The sun was bruising the horizon—thin red light smearing through clouds, more shadow than warmth. Luka noted it.

“Sun’s going down less early.”

Dren blinked up at the sun, squinting. “Huh. I suppose. Definitely sets later than it does higher up the region.”

He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, kicking at a chunk of ice-crusted dirt.

“Where were you coming from again?”

Luka, watching the clouds drift over the treeline, answered quietly, “Haevira.”

Dren turned to him, eyebrows up. “Oh, damn. Really? What’s it like? I’ve never been.”

Luka gave a small shrug. “It’s nice. Pretty, I suppose. Bit loud sometimes.”

“That checks out. Capital city stuff.” Dren hummed, tapping his fingers against his thigh. “I’d probably get mugged.”

Kael grunted. “You don’t need to get mugged. You’d lose your shit on your own in under ten minutes.”

“I wouldn’t lose them, I’d misplace them. Temporarily.”

Luka gave a small, amused breath through his nose but didn’t comment.

Dren talked. A lot. About the weird snow hare they passed, about a time he accidentally froze his boots to the ground. About what he ate yesterday. Luka didn’t mind. It was background noise, but not unpleasant.

Rosebane stretched out in endless white, the trees thinning now into lower scrub and rock as the terrain sloped downward, snow was waning the more they walked and the ground had become more ice slush than snow blankets.

Dren had taken to walking ahead, then behind, then beside, never in one place long. His coat, that he removed but draped upon his shoulders, flared with every exaggerated step, hands clasped lazily behind his head.

“I’ve never been to Sarevein,” he said, turning to walk backwards, grinning at them. “Heard it’s got some wild stuff. Big on informant guilds, right? Secret rooms behind tavern walls, that sort of thing?”

Keal exhaled sharply through his nose but didn’t rise to the bait. He looked tired, as always. Like the very idea gave him a headache.

“There’s a Gate Market too,” Dren went on, “I heard the whole thing wraps the outer edge of the city. AND you can buy anything there.”

Dren dropped his hands, fell in beside Luka and leaned closer towards him. “I heard you can get fake IDs there. Like real ones. Isn’t that cool?”

Keal’s head snapped around like he’d been summoned by divine intervention. “What did you say?”

Dren squeaked, visibly flinching. “They have incense! Great incense! I heard. Saffron! Sandalwood! Resin!”

Luka snorted.

Keal narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You’re not buying anything illegal.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dren said too quickly. “Just love me a good resin.”

Luka shook his head, still smiling faintly as the wind picked up again, sweeping their footprints behind them.

They walked like that for hours, the trail tightening around them, trees clustering close. Low, beaten down lanterns lined the path—frosted glass, burning dim with flickering yellow light, barely enough to cast a proper shadow.

By the time the sun fully fell—more of a slow fade than a dramatic set, bleeding gold into pale. They veered off the road toward a dense copse of bare trees. Broken branches, snow packed ground.

Sarevein’s silhouette rose by the end of the second day, its rooftops low and wide against a flatter horizon. At the city gates, Luka adjusted the straps of his bag.

“Well,” Dren said, scratching the back of his head. “Guess this is goodbye?”

“Seems so,” Luka said.

“Maybe we’ll see you again,” Dren added, waving with his whole arm. His sleeve nearly clipped Keal in the face.

Keal leaned away with a tired sigh. “Watch it.”

“Sorry!”

Keal looked at Luka and nodded slightly. “Take care, kid.”

Luka smiled. “You too.”

“Seriously, don’t die!” Dren called.

“No promises,” Luka called back over his shoulder. He turned then, toward the road leading into Sarevein proper, scarf pulled up, coat buttoned tight.

For once, the silence behind him wasn’t heavy. Simply still.

Sarevein unfolded in levels, carved into the mountain like the ribs of something ancient and dreaming.

Stone steps twisted upward in switchbacks, catching the pale gleam of moonlight where lanterns didn’t reach. The ramparts wrapped the lower city in a sloped embrace, cliffs yawning on one side, the mountain’s incline pressing from the other.

Everywhere, rooftops breathed with life, cloth lines and flags flapping in the wind, stray cats curled on terracotta tiles.

White stone alleys wound tight between buildings, each turn smelling of old wood, drying herbs, and snow damp stone.

The wider plazas spilled out like sudden silence, mosaic tiled fountains burbling beneath frost slicked basins. Smoke curled around the ankles of the city, a blend of firewood and incense, perfuming the air like an offering.

The snow was slush now. It clung to the edges of boots and the bottoms of long coats. Streets glittered with thaw refreeze ice.

Locals wore grip chains on their shoes, moved in expert strides. Above, lanterns hung on nets of wire strung from building to building, some flickering, some burnt out entirely.

Crows perched like punctuation on the power lines. The Gate Market pressed into the outer wall of the city like a second skin. Tarps and silks sagged with meltwater, stained and wind worn. Even at night, it hummed, murmurs and low laughter and the rustle of goods changing hands.

The first inn he found wasn’t much. But the door was unlocked and the woman at the counter spoke Vellantique, if haltingly. Most of Sarevein’s people spoke Haedranic.

Luka understood pieces of it, its rhythm was like Vellantique’s older cousin, distant but recognisably blood bound.

The room was small, but not unkind. A single bed with worn linens. A narrow desk, a chair made for short conversations. The window looked out over rooftops draped in slushy snow.

The shower was the first thing he did. He peeled everything off the layers of clothes he had worn, turned the hot water on, and stood under it like he was rinsing off a second skin.

The heat sank into him like absolution. He exhaled, forehead pressed to the cool tile, letting his hands go slack against the wall.

He didn’t move for a while. His throat ached. His shoulders burned in the good way, like the cold was slowly abandoning him.

Afterwards, towel slung around his shoulders, catching water droplets dripping from his hair, he looked at the clothes he’d peeled off and left in a heap.

He hadn’t sweated in them. Not much. It should be fine. The inn offered laundry, and the price wasn’t awful.

But he figured he could stretch it another day or two. It wasn’t as cold now anyway. Not down here.  They were low enough that the worst of the wind didn’t reach.

Typical border city weather—caught between Seven and Minstrel. He sat on the edge of the bed. Shirt sticking damp to his arms. Hair wet. Fingers aching from how long he’d kept them cold.

He lay back, eyes open, listening to crows cry somewhere out past the rooftops. Sleep comes quickly.

Chapter Text

Vellantique was a language he used to speak like breath. He’d lost fluency from disuse. Languages had been one of the few things Jude had encouraged; he always said it was useful.

It made sense, Jude came from merchant stock after all. Luka could picture the fading memory like something intensely vibrant yet fuzzy in the way all dreams are— breakfast served alongside conjugations, his mother and father switching languages like jackets, while Luka learned to keep up.

The memory should’ve been charming. Instead, it sat bitter on his tongue. Where Norrvahl and Alkarin had been languages he associated with his mother, Vellantique had always belonged to his father.

It made sense, then, that he’d be more fluent in Norrvahl and Alkarin when he tried to forgot anything associated with his someone he now referred to, half-joking, half-spiteful, as his sperm donor.

He chewed slowly on his onion flatbread, letting the warmth soak through his fingers. The bread was thin, crisp edged. His spiced hot chocolate steamed faintly in the cold, heavy with cardamom and something unfamiliar yet burning, like crushed chilli.

He spent most of yesterday sleeping. A full day collapsed under heavy quilts, body catching up with exhaustion it refused to name. Now, awake and fed, he stepped into the breath of Sarevein.

Even under winter’s half sun, the Gate Market bloomed with life— all too much and all at once. Voices blurred like birdsong in every direction.

Vellantique was more common here than on the streets, tossed casually between vendors and travellers. Shevak, too. And Fiorean. Others flitted past him, recognisably foreign but unplaceable.

He walked without aim. The market offered too much, jewellery and scrolls, fabrics of all kinds, charms, meat buns steaming under woven lids, scented oils and incense, services and more.

Those were the few he reconsigned. It overwhelmed him at first.

He stopped at a jewellery stall, the light caught on silver, catching his eye.

A dangling earring, delicate and nearly skeletal. A four pointed star suspended from a thin chain, vertical line slightly longer than the horizontal. It was quietly lovely.

He bought it. Along with two tight helix ear cuffs, metal, dark and cool to the touch. The dangling earring was an enhancement item, the cuffs' resistance. It was an in the moment kind of purchase but he didn't regret it.

He doesn’t have any piercings, but today is better than any day. The stall vendor wrapped them in soft cloth, took his jewel, and offered a wink Luka didn’t quite know what to do with.

He walked on, adjusting his scarf. The cold wasn’t too bad today, his coat was enough. He passed beneath faded silks that hung like prayer flags, past a stall selling dried plums, past a girl with blue hair tied back under a vibrant bandana, arguing heatedly with a vendor.

Two boys stood behind her—one orange haired and narrow, the other taller and grim faced. Luka squinted. Damn. Was everyone tall? Come to think of it, Dren and Kael had towered over him too.

He stepped around the crowd and stumbled on something else entirely. A tray tucked to the edge of a cluttered stall, almost hidden beneath trinkets and chalk drawn sigils. Three keys.

He recognised them immediately. Silver, their teeth strange and star bent. Celestial Spirit Gate Keys. His breath caught. Horologium. Leo Minor. Antlia.

He hovered before them, barely hearing the shuffle of people behind. His eyes traced the strange lettering etched at the base of each handle, the symbol that named their constellation.

“Something of interest to you?” A voice broke in, cheerful and smooth in Vellantique.

Luka blinked. The stall owner was a portly man with a polished customer service smile. Luka recognised the look.

He wore it often, once. Anna too, back when she worked the bar—charming, composed and a little more than exhausted around the eyes.

He offered his own version in return. “Yes, actually. These three Celestial Spirit Gate Keys.” He leaned in, just enough to seem friendly. Softened his smile by habit. Made it warm and accessible.

Anna had said once that he looked too perfect when he didn’t smile like a person. “You’re too pretty in a way that looks inhuman,” she’d said. “Try softening your face or something.”

He tried now. It worked. Mostly. The vendor responded with a small tilt of his head. “Rare to see someone who knows what they’re looking at.”

“I read a lot,” Luka said mildly.

The price was too high at first. Of course it was. The man was practised. No amount of careful smiles or lean ins would cut the difference. But Luka haggled, not well, but stubbornly.

He pressed without raising his voice, phrased things politely and deflected when the vendor teased. And in the end, he paid less than expected. Still more than ideal, but enough to leave a margin.

He walked away with his pouch lighter and his key ring heavier. He turned them over in his palm as he walked, the way one might test a memory for shape. The cool metal warmed slowly.

Horologium. Leo Minor. Antlia. His boots clicked over the cobbles. The slush had melted some. The sky overhead had gone pale. He had enough money left for a week, maybe less.

He should do a quick job before he leaves.

Luka sat in the luggage car of the Royal Aria Line, legs drawn up loosely, back braced against a crate marked “fragile” in four languages. The crate had clearly been dropped at least twice.

The train itself, if you were in the proper part of it, was excessively ornate, in the way that suggested a long line of aristocrats had argued over which shade of gold looked richer.

The velvet on the dining seats was plush enough to suffocate small animals and the windows were trimmed with gilded filigree so fine it could have been mistaken for pastry.

But Luka wasn’t in the proper part.

The luggage car was minimal and dusty. A few streaks of frost still clung to the corners of the windows, and something smelled faintly like old leather and cheese that had once had dreams.

But the rhythm of the tracks was soothing and lulling. He hadn’t paid for a ticket, naturally. Slipping in had been embarrassingly easy, just a matter of timing the crowd and walking with the calm assurance of someone who absolutely belonged there.

(People rarely questioned someone who looked mildly murderous and confident.)

He’d spent a week in Sarevein. Enough time to sleep off the frostbite of travel, take on a few small but well paying missions—mostly local disputes and an infestation of small, magically inclined rodents—to earn back the money he’d spent on the keys.

Luka cracked open a book he’d been given as part of a mission reward. The cover was red and embossed with a title so long it needed a subtitle to explain itself.

It started off boring. A countryside, a boy, a weather related metaphor. He read anyway.

Midway through, it veered into something unhinged. Characters died, then undied. Someone turned into a whale. A betrayal happened every ten pages.

The prose was inconsistent but passionately committed to chaos. Luka found himself smirking against his better judgment.

He finished off the last of his rations by the second day on the train; two protein bars and dried plums. He made a note to buy more.

The train lurched. With a long hiss, a shrug of brakes, and the low, final exhale of a mechanical sigh. Luka waited for a moment, then slipped out the side of the car.

The station was bustling. Opulent, exceedingly so for a train station. A ceiling dome made of painted glass and the floor tiles were polished to an absurd degree.

It was noon, the sun overhead like a cautious eye. The weather was chilly but not cold. Brisk, Luka thought.

He shrugged off the bison fur coat, it was too heavy and too warm, and folded it carefully into his bag. Then pulled on his leather jacket.

He adjusted the strap of his satchel and glanced once at the clock mounted high above the station entrance. It was carved with winged horses and golden cherubs, announcing the time—1:22.

He stepped into the throng.

Vellmure was a city made to be admired from a distance, like a stage set. It gleamed, a symphony of copper domes and sugar dusted facades, stacked terraces spilling down toward the sea like a lavish bouquet someone had forgotten to water.

Terraces perched like opera balconies, ornamented in gold leaf and curling iron. Casinos glittered in obsidian and ruby, made of velvet and gleaming marble.

Narrower streets below the towers wore older skins, peeling cream walls, pinkwashed plaster, sun warped shutters, but still, the gold clung. Even in decay, there was a sort of performance.

The air was dry, cool enough to sting if he didn’t move. Everyone moved. Fast, clipped Vellantique ricocheted between passersby, and knotted around Luka’s ears.

Voices overlapping, footfalls sharp on cobblestones, heels and dress shoes and polished boots. The music, jazz, swing, a scraping violin, bled from somewhere, perhaps everywhere. He couldn’t tell.

It was loud, all of it. Alive in a way that felt slightly unreal. Luka kept his head down, clutched his satchel closer. Zipped his jacket over it, careful not to look like he was being careful.

Bosco had already taught him a life long lesson about pickpocketing. As did the streets of Branbell.

The first two inns he passed were too grand. The kind that charged you for the breathing and called it a service fee.

The third had cracked tile steps, a flickering light above the door, and a name written in chipped enamel. It would do.

He checked in. The room was ridiculously overpriced for how sketchy the inn looked, peeling paint, flickering light in the hallway, and a mysterious stain that could either be tomato soup or blood.

The room itself was clean enough. Not good, not great, but not the worst he'd ever stayed in. It was small, with the faint scent of mildew clinging to the curtains and paint peeling from the walls like old scabs.

The bathroom, thankfully, was actually clean. He thought about dropping off his bag, even set it down halfway to the bed… then picked it right back up. It was too risky.

Instead, he took a quick shower and headed back down to reception, bag firmly over his shoulder.

The clerk was young. Sharp smile, one dimple. Hair curled too perfectly to be natural. They leaned over the counter, elbow propped, watching him with a look somewhere between curious and entertained.

“New to the city?” they asked in Vellantique. Luka responded in kind, hesitantly. He could still speak it. Not well. But enough.

“I’m looking for the regional board,” he added, after the formalities. “A map, if you have one.”

“Ah. You’re here for work.”

They didn’t say it with disdain. More like they’d just solved a riddle. Luka nodded, offered a polite smile.

“I thought maybe fashion,” the clerk went on, eyes flicking over his face. “Or maybe gambling  away heartbreak.” they said with a wink.

Luka blinked. “Not recently, no.”

The map was handed over with a smirk. Luka thanked them and left quickly. Not flustered, exactly, just confused.

He spent the next forty minutes tracing his way through streets that looped like cursive. The map was poorly scaled and charmingly vague, no street names, only illustrations of key landmarks and a compass rose that pointed slightly wrong.

Still, he found the building. Ornate in the way everything here was. Pillars, burnished plaques, a chandelier even in the reception hall.

He took a posting without much fanfare. Guard duty at a casino. Simple enough. 170,000 Jewels for three nights. Good pay. Odd price for such a simple mission, but not unheard of.

The approval clerk, with another overly bright smile, nodded him through.

He walked out into the sun dappled street with the job slip in hand, unsure if he’d just agreed to protect someone from an assassination attempt or got hired as eye candy.

Either way, the pay was good. He figured he’d find out soon enough.

Vellmure, he found, was a city of beautiful distractions and slow suffocations. People smiled the way a mask is worn, polished but hollow beneath.  The crowds pressed close. Bodies, perfume, the static hum of too many lives lived too fast. It made his skin itch.

The seal burned low in his throat, quiet but insistent, like a mouth pressed just behind his ribs, teeth digging into his throat with a burning that only comes from too tight chains.

His fingers twitched to check his sleeves. Just to be sure. Just to see. There were no locusts under his skin. He knew that, even when as he feels the crawling scrape against his bones.

The job was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. He’d have to meet with his client tomorrow. That left tonight free. He needed food. Preferably something cheap.

Street stalls cluttered the edge of a plaza near the older part of the city, past the opera house and a square filled with a fountain shaped like a crying horse.

There, Luka bought skewers wrapped in paper, steam leaking from the folds, the meat charred and oily, but undeniably hot. He didn’t buy anything with liquids, not unless they’re boiling hot.

He’d eaten worse before. Rotten things dug from dumpster trash but he didn’t want to take any chances on a job.

He leaned against a wall and chewed slowly, eyes flicking to the people as they passed. Even here, they dressed loud. Velvet coats. Patterned tights. Excessive jewellery.

By nightfall, the city transformed. It shifted into something gaudier, meaner. The skyline pulsed with light, neon in jagged fonts, holograms flickering above casinos. Everything glowed too much. Even the shadows had backlighting. 

Tourist zones screamed with excess, gilded signs blinking so fast they blurred, streets lit like carnivals, windows promising every kind of thrill.

The light came in golds, in purples, in ocean deep blues. Overstimulated was too kind a word for it. It was as if the night sky had cracked open and bled neon.

He went down two streets away, and everything changed. It was so sudden to the point it felt like a fever dream. The wealth faded like a dream too quickly woken from. The gold peeled. The signs short circuited. Bars clung to life behind dented metal doors and price signs written in marker.

Graffiti crept up walls like ivy. People here moved faster but said less. Luka passed through it quietly, his jacket zipped, hands in pockets. A wind picked up, tugging loose a few flyers from a wall.

He reached the inn just past midnight. The light in the hallway flickered in a slow, sickly rhythm, the kind that made your head hurt if you stared too long.

The receptionist from earlier was gone, replaced by silence and a cat sleeping on the lobby chair. Inside his room, he breathed easier.

The walls were stained and the mattress dipped in the middle, but there was no noise. No flashing lights. Just the dim buzz of a small table lamp and the thrum of the pipes behind the walls.

He’d write to Anna, he thought. Tomorrow, let her know where he was. How long he might be here.

He sat by the window and looked out at the city. From here, he could still see the skyline flickering like a wound trying to cauterise itself.

He didn’t quite know how to feel.

But then again, he wasn’t sure feeling was the point.

The room was all white marble veined in rose gold. Glass walls. Terraced orchids in mirrored pots. It looked less like a meeting area and more like a salon for the vainly divine. The air was perfumed, something with vanilla and crushed citrus peel.

Cerise Calrowe.

He recognises the name the moment she says it, though he doesn't let it show. Just gives a polite nod, his expression neutral. She speaks with the sort of ease that comes from never having to earn her place in a room. Elegant and overconfident.

She was, of course, a Calrowe. Heiress to one of Minstrel’s wealthiest families. Luka knew the name not from personal association, but from the drift of gossip that rose from high society parties.

Lucien Calrowe, pharmaceutical mogul, philanthropist on paper, quiet investor in vice behind the curtain. His wife, Sophia, had famously eloped with a lover.

After that, stories followed. About Lucien’s frequent presence in places that offered velvet curtained discretion. About his tendency to fund pleasure in all its messy, moneyed forms.

Luka hadn’t followed the full web of it. And normally, he wouldn’t have known it very well, Heartfillias didn’t deal much with Minestrel. But it had grown big enough that it had reached Fiore.

Cerise, for her part, filled the room like a perfume that didn’t quite settle. Loud in tone but not volume.

She was talking about boredom, about how stifling house arrest was, about how dreadfully long it had been since she did anything even mildly exciting.

Her hands moved when she spoke. Delicate fingers tipped with manicured nails, gesturing like she was painting the air.

He half listened, nodded in the right places. Six months ago, someone tried to kill her. The attempt left enough of a scar to warrant this job: three nights of protection at one of Vellmure’s largest casinos, the Aureum.

His instructions were clear: guard her but only intervene in the case of explicit danger. Do not cause any disruption and scenes.

She looked him over once, eyes skimming his jacket, the scuffed edges of his boots and wrinkled her nose like he smelled of alleyways and wet dogs. Then she smiled sweetly and told him she’d be providing his attire.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll look... serviceable.”

He gave a low hum of acknowledgement. He left feeling like someone had slowly wrung out his thoughts and left them drying on a line. Later, he summoned Vulpecula. She swept in like a misplaced opera character, draped in satin gloves and fur shawls, eyes rimmed in kohl, voice low and dramatic like everything she said should come with its own spotlight. She would belong here far too well.

“Darling,” she said, upon seeing him. “You look like you’ve been mauled by wealth.”

“Close,” he said, dry. “Just spoke to it for a while.”

She laughed and threaded her arm through his. Her perfume smelled like violets crushed under a bootheel but it was strangely comforting. She watched him closely, noticing the way he twitched, the way he blinked slower, like fending off something he wouldn’t name.

They moved through the city slowly. This part of Vellmure glowed softer than the others—still gold, still too much, but dulled at the edges. Luka let himself be led. Let her chatter fill the space.

She fretted, of course. Over nothing, over everything. The cut on his palm. The tiredness in his eyes. The subtle wince he made when turning his neck.

She hid it all behind dramatics but he’d known her long enough to see through them. Worry and longing, sitting side by side like twin moons.

He didn’t say much, just let her talk as the city blur behind them.

And later, when they parted, she kissed his cheek in that extravagant way she always did, like a stage bow before curtains fell, and said:

“Please don’t die on me. It’d be very inconvenient.”

He smiled faintly. “I’ll do my best.”

The Veranda Hotel sits on a slope of the eastern quarter, half clinging to the cliff like a spider perched at the edge of its web.

The façade is a dream in rose marble and bronze filigree, glass walls gleaming under the soft glow of amber chandeliers suspended like caught suns. The lobby hums with the low purr of a string quartet playing something indulgent and slow. 

Cerise’s aide led Luka into the suite without a word. Inside, he handed him the suit, black and silver threaded, and perfectly tailored. He also handed him the pager. A small and unassuming device.

“This,” the aide said, “is for communication.” He tapped it once. “One tap for threat.” Another tap. “Two for threat subdued and ready for retrieval.”

Luka nods, takes the clothes and device without a word and heads into the bathroom to change.

He fits his knives where he can. The vest’s seams are tight, and the pants leave little room but he manages. Daggers hidden at his spine and shoes, the key ring at his wrist.

The fabric felt too familiar, with its expensive wool and he quiet heaviness of tailoring that knew its worth. It had been a while since he’d worn anything like it, years, maybe but his body remembered.

He had once lived in halls like this. He’d forgotten how it felt. Vellmure, beneath its flash and falseness, held ghosts of that life. He hated that he almost missed it.

He summons Vulpecula with a quiet murmur. She emerged with a sigh that didn’t match the space, her voice warm velvet in the sterile luxury.

“You could’ve warned me I’d be expected to redress you,” she drawled, running a finger along the seam of his collar. “You look like a butler in mourning.”

“Exactly the goal,” he murmured. “I need to disappear.”

“Mm. You already do that far too well.”

She swept her hands through the air around him, her magic brushing like smoke along his skin. His hair darkened, twisted into something less golden, more brown.

His face shifted, softened, dulled, made mundane. He caught his reflection for half a second and didn’t recognise the man looking back.

“Better?” she asked.

He nodded. “Thank you.”

“Try not to die, would you?” She lingered, lips pressed briefly to his cheek before he half closed the gate. She vanished with a flicker.

Her illusion clung like a second skin, powered by the connection he kept open, just enough to sustain the mask without draining himself dry.

He finds Cerise in her suite’s sitting room. It’s the sort of room designed to make people feel small: high ceilings, vaulted windows, couches that look more sculpted than stitched.

Cerise is all red silk and skin like porcelain left too long in the sun. Her dress spills off her shoulders, clings like it’s in love with her, and her legs are crossed in that deliberate way that says she knows what she’s doing.

Cerise started visibly, eyes wide once she saw him, fingers halfway to her clutch.

“It’s me,” he said softly. “Just under an illusion.”

She blinked, then tilted her head like a cat reevaluating a stranger. “Oh, is that your magic?" and then, without waiting for a reply, "You look so boring.”

No shit, that was the point, he thought, but didn’t say. He just hummed in reply instead. The ride to the Aureum was silent only in theory. Cerise filled it with a monologue dressed as conversation.

Her voice rose and fell with false casualness, laced with that particular tone used when performing boredom. Luka let her talk. Occasionally nodded. Said “hm,” or “I see,” when she paused for breath.

The questions she asked weren’t meant for answers. She moved on quickly right as she asked a question. He didn’t mind. Much. But the sound of her was like the taste of overripe fruit, too sweet and far too much.

They arrived in front of the Aureum just past nine. It rose like a monument to excess, taller than anything nearby, its façade a golden curve that caught every light and threw it back.

Crystal chandeliers hung even outside, encased in glass domes, and the doors shimmered with some glamour that made them always appear open, always welcoming. The inside was worse.

Brighter than the moon. And twice as fake.

The main hall of the Aureum was cathedral high, vaulting overhead with an arrogance born from too much gold.

Gilded ribs arched along the ceiling like the bones, every surface burnished to mirror sheen. Crystal chandeliers glittered like frost caught in spiderwebs, and the walls shimmered with waterfall silk.

Dealers wore velvet waistcoats and dead eyes. The carpets were a blurb of gold thread and crimson filigree, designed to keep gamblers from ever noticing the hour.

Cerise was offered champagne on a tray shaped like a crescent moon as soon as they entered. Luka moved three paces behind Cerise.

He summoned Vulpecula again, quick and no more than a whisper behind his teeth. She arrived without words, a blur in his peripheral vision, her silhouette indistinct but familiar.

He counted guards. Noted blind corners. Marked security gaps behind ornamental columns. There were two cameras hidden behind a pair of sculpted cherubs.  A few more, nearly thirty across the room.

A trap door under the west roulette table, likely an escape hatch for high rollers who lost more than they meant to.

Cerise flitted through the hall like a bird that had never seen a net, exchanging idle conversation with people who clearly recognised her. Some nodded. Others lingered longer.

The House Table dominated the center of the room—a low stage sunk into the floor, lined with velvet railing. The wagers here were heavier than coin. Luka’s gaze skimmed past a woman laying down a signet ring beside a memory token. A man, solemn, signing over a deed.

They climbed the grand stairs to the private lounge—platinum access only. The music changed. Downstairs had been orchestral; here, the jazz hummed low and sensual, all brass and breath.

Lighting dimmed to an amber haze. The place smelled like aged wine, leather, and whatever expensive cologne was in fashion this season.

Cerise headed straight for the Venus Table.

She laughed too loudly. Already on her third glass. Her lipstick had begun to fade, and her earrings glittered every time she tossed her head to look interested in someone’s story.

Luka positioned himself just far enough away not to intrude. Just close enough to act. The night had passed without incident.

It was 2:03 AM when Cerise finally leaned her head back and sighed with exaggerated drama.

“All this gold and not a single thing to keep me awake,” she declared, standing in a single motion. “Come. I’m bored.”

Luka nodded once. Stepped beside her now, no longer trailing, but guiding.

They left through a side exit, tucked behind an emerald curtain that looked like part of the décor. The hallway beyond was narrow.

He let out a slow breath. Closed Vulpecula’s Gate with a quiet thought, Thank you. Five hours. Not too bad. No backlash. No bleeding. Not yet.

Cerise, already halfway to the elevator, glanced back at him. “You’re very quiet, you know.”

“Occupational habit,” Luka replied mildly.

“You’re so boring,” She pouted. Luka’s brow twitched. He chose not to reply.

This whole job reminded Luka too much of his childhood. He’d been younger than Cerise when he was first marched into parties and the like, taught to smile and charm.

Every word calculated and every move scrutinised. He shook the thought loose. He wasn’t the Hearfillia heir anymore. Not to anyone who mattered.

The second night passed in a similar fashion, though longer. It dragged on until nearly four in the morning, and Luka’s muscles ached from standing so long with his hands folded behind him.

Edward Aire had shown up too. Of all people. Luka had nearly choked when he saw him, tall and gleaming in some awful diamond studded waistcoat.

If not for Vulpecula’s illusion magic, Edward would’ve recognised him. No question. He was glad for the illusion. So glad. Gods, it had been too close.

But the third night, it was the third night that nearly went to hell.

It was past midnight. The Venus VIP Room hummed with the softened murmur of tired gamblers and half hearted jazz.

Champagne towers glittered under low light, their reflections dancing on the lacquered black marble floors.

Cerise leaned forward over the table, attention fixed on the dealer’s slow movements. Her fourth glass sat half full, condensation trailing down the stem.

Behind her, Luka kept his usual two pace distance. A man, in dark suit with clean lines, the kind of face that doesn’t stay in memory, stepped into place across the table.

He moved with too much purpose. Not enough interest in the cards. Luka noticed the blade thin glint first. A gilded card, too pristine and too deliberately placed.

Its edge caught a sliver of overhead light as it slid toward Cerise’s chip stack. He also felt it. A small sound that wasn’t quite a sound, a silent hiss.

Vulpecula sent a visual click that confirmed his suspension. Luka shifted his weight, adjusting his stance so Cerise’s sightline moved off the card.

She leaned right instead of left, unknowing. Saved her fingers by inches. With his left hand, Luka slipped inside his coat.

He found the Crater key, and summoned them silently. The drain was all mental. Just that pressure at the back of the skull. Like holding your breath underwater and thinking too loudly.

His mother had trained him in silent summons, it wasn’t too hard or unusual for him. Behind the assassin, the air rippled, Crater’s partial Gate opening with the slow whirl of folding cloth, a fabric mirage barely seen by anyone not attuned to it.

Luka’s focus zeroed in on the floor beneath the man’s feet. Crater answered. A localised gravity sink formed. The ground beneath became soft but firm like wet clay.

The man’s step caught mid stride—subtle, not enough to trip, just enough to stick. His weight resisted motion. The blade-card jammed. Its edge twisted upward, harmless now. Trapped beneath invisible pressure. The assassin blinked and then frowned.

He looked down. Then back. His eyes caught the shimmer behind him but it was too late. Luka moved. One smooth step in from Cerise’s right.

In a breath, he unsheathed his dagger, swept it along the assassin’s wrist. Not deep but just enough to sever muscle control. The card dropped with a soft chime.

The other hand struck pressure points, temple, collar, wrist. The man sagged in Luka’s arms.

Before anyone could glance up, Vulpecula cloaked them both, a shimmer around Luka, the assassin, and the floor between. Sound dampened and vision warped. 

Luka dropped Crater’s gate. He lifted the unconscious body like a sack of grain and walked through the service corridor.

The walls here were utilitarian grey, lined with wire crates and mop sinks. In a supply closet past the ice machine, he dumped the assassin behind three stacked boxes of velvet lined tokens.

Bound him tight with zip ties and tape. He tapped the small pager he’d been given the first night twice. It was a pre arranged signal for a threat that had been subdued and needed retrieval.

Three minutes later, Cerise’s personal aide arrived. Luka met him outside the closet. Luka exhaled, straightened his cuffs. When he returned to the lounge, the dealer had already reset Cerise’s chips. Her drink was untouched.

She didn’t look up. “Where’d you go?”

“Dealt with a slight issue,” Luka murmured, tone flat.

“You didn’t miss much,” she said, lifting her cards. “They’re all cowards tonight.”

He said nothing. Only one more hour. And then he was done with this.

One more hour. 

Chapter Text

He doesn’t stay long in Vellmure. The mission ends before New Years Eve. His train leaves before dawn.

He slips into the luggage cart when no one’s watching, crouched between crates of linen and polished wood.

It’s funny, he thinks, in the way things are funny when you’re too tired to laugh. His first New Year’s away from the estate, and he spent it pressed between crates of citrus cargo and moths in the corners, with only his spirits for company.

The air in the cart was musty with velvet dust and old wood, and he’d cracked the door just slightly enough to feel the cold whip in, to see the blur of winter branches flickering past like old film reels.

He toasted the new year with a bottle of cider that Vulpecula handed him, something purloined from the conductor’s pantry. It tasted like spoiled apples and copper.

He remembered the galas, of course—rosewood floors that echoed under patent shoes, chandeliers sharp as frostlight, people laughing with teeth too white and hands too still.

At midnight, flutes lifted. Sparklers flared and firecrackers alighted the sky. But he also remembered this:

Ten minutes to midnight—sometimes more, sometimes less—his mother would steal him away. They'd find some quiet hall, some corner no one looked at, where the walls didn’t listen.

She’d bring out half a cupcake wrapped in a silk napkin, white frosting melting a little where her fingers held it.

“Make a wish,” she’d whisper. And he would. Every year, quietly. They’d split the cupcake. She’d kiss his forehead.

Then she’d leave—always before the hour struck—so she could be at his father’s side for the performance of it all.

After the fireworks died and the guests began to thin, she’d return. She’d tuck him in herself if he hadn’t already curled up and drifted off, and her hands would be cool but gentle, brushing through his hair like wind through tall grass.

When he was little, too little to attend late night galas, he’d sometimes stir at the sound of her steps. Not awake, not really. Just enough to feel her kiss his cheek, smell her perfume.

He missed her. Only her. After she died, he hated every New Years that came after. Compared to what remained, a cold cart and a stolen bottle with his spirits was better. Infinitely better.

The train rolls northeast. Two days, half slept and cramped, and then Esthara. He arrived sleep deprived, his body vibrating with the rhythm of train tracks still echoing in his bones.

The station was little more than stone arches and steam, soft with the scent of morning bread and burnt sugar. He walked from the station with a slow, steady pace. His bag slung over one shoulder.

The trek was long enough to count as grounding. Past shuttered vineyards and dew touched terraces that glittered under early sun.

It’s cooler than Vellmure. More reserved. Like a place that remembers silence. There are still tourists, but they seem quieter too, people who come to drink wine and watch the hills shift colour in the light.

He likes it here.

The mission was simple. In and out by noon. Just a simple retrieval. The house was pale pink stone with blue shutters.

He sent a letter to Anna after that. A short quick note, of where he was now and how long he’d be staying.

And then he slept.

The bed in his inn was stiff, but clean. The walls whitewashed. The floor cool stone.

Five days passed in Esthara like water slipping through fingers.

The city sat in layers, terraces stacked like vertebrae, each one sloping lazily toward the sea. Vineyards clung to the hillsides, green and silver in the wind.

Olive trees lined the walks like old sentries, their trunks twisted into shapes that looked almost human at dusk.

Mornings were blue gold mist, and afternoons came with a soft drizzle that never lasted long enough to inconvenience. The people moved slower here. Not lazy, just unhurried. As though time had different rules.

Tourists came, sure. But not like in Vellmure. There was no gambling pit, no dripping jewel rot glitz. Just wine. Wine and sun. Despite the cold weather, the sun was high and bright.

Music drifted from windows and dissolved before it reached his ears. He liked it here. Not enough to stay but enough to remember.

He tried the local wine once. Fruity, dry. Notes of black plum and something bitter at the end. He didn’t love it but didn’t hate it either.

It tasted better with the cheese, sharp and crumbly, and best of all with the olives. The tart, too, helped. Berry and cream, with a sugared crust that stuck slightly to the tongue.

For a brief moment, it almost felt like indulgence.

He sat quietly, overlooking the vineyards, mist curling the edges of the view like a breath held too long. Ursa Minor, warm, small, and impossibly soft, slept curled in his arms. Her fur was the softest thing he had ever touched.

The sky was a haze of blue and gold, the kind of light that didn’t commit to clarity. A fine drizzle hung in the air, not quite rain, not quite nothing. It touched his cheeks like fingers unsure if they were allowed to stay.

His spirits hadn’t spoken. Not out loud. But through the bond, there was worry, like someone pacing just out of sight. Luka didn’t know why. He wasn’t unravelling.

He hadn’t vomited blood in weeks, hadn’t had a nosebleed either. His pain was the normal amount. He was eating. Mostly. And he slept a lot.

He wasn’t breaking.

He wasn’t sure what he felt.

He wasn’t unhappy. That much he knew. The old clawing grief had quieted to something more manageable. A dullness, not an absence.

But he couldn’t say he was happy, either. What he felt was something in between. Not waiting. Not wanting. Perhaps that was enough. No, not perhaps. It was enough.

Contentment was a rare thing. He would not insult it by asking for more.

L,

Are you okay? You sound weird. Not bad weird, just distant. Or tired. Or both. Which, I guess, is your default setting. Still, glad you're alive. Always a win.

So, Vellmure! It’s somehow exactly like the stories and also not at all. Also: Happy New Year. Another year and you didn’t die, congratulations. Truly a feat.

You’re in Ethara now, right? That’s the vineyard place, yeah? Famous for their wine, something about sunset grapes and ancient oak barrels or whatever. I hope you at least try going out and explore the place. Let me live vicariously.

Yes, yes, I know. Don’t over cram. Don’t fry my brain. You nag worse than Granny Lib. Still, thanks for the encouragement. I’m holding on by sheer force of caffeine and desperation, so let’s hope that’s enough. I really do need to ace this one.

But enough about me—what about you? Has the pain gotten worse? How much progress have you made? And where’s your next stable stop? I need to know so I can send more supplies—don’t argue. You’ll need them. I know how you are. You’ll try to power through with nothing and that’ll just land you flat on a hospital bed again.

So please, don’t be dumb. Be careful. You push too hard and the seal will push back harder. You know that.

Write to me soon, okay?

— A

He left for Cindebelle. He didn’t need to. Not really. The missions behind him had been enough—enough for the quarter, enough for his wallet, enough for a boy who asked for little.

But he went anyway. It was a retrieval job. Middling pay and low risk. The coach to Cindebelle was a third class general line: overstuffed and under maintained, but cheap.

The sort of thing where the wood groaned when the wheels dipped into ruts, and every bolt in the frame sounded like it had one breath left.

He sat second row from the back, tightly curled against the window seat to avoid physical touch with others.

He watched the world bleed past the fogged glass, first hills glazed with frost, then lowlands where the snow melted into sleepy marshes, and then, finally, the distant glint of sea.

By the time they reached Cindebelle, it was noon. Pale light and drizzle. The sky like milky porcelain just beginning to crack.

His bones creaked as he got off, stretching after being in one place for too long a time.

Cindebelle was more of a breath than a city. A sliver of land where pastel painted houses tilted toward the water, stacked like spilled candy along the shore.

The sea was always in reach, always in sound. Wind pressed in from the coast like fingers through lace, and every alley carried the smell of salt and old nets and smoke pots left burning near doorways.

Everything here was damp. Walls. Breath. Streets. Colourful banners crossed the narrow streets, fluttering as though trying to shake free. There were stalls everywhere. Fish strung up like garlands.

Salted sardines in neat rows. Bowls of mussels steaming in cracked ceramic. Seaweed salads served with sharp, citrus wine.

The people moved fast. Quick, friendly, but with the efficiency of those used to their own time being precious. No one lingered and no one pried.

The inn was small. Starchy bedding and thin walls. He wrote a letter to Anna before anything else. A simple, short one. Tucked into an envelope, sealed neatly and dropped off at the post office.

The job was straightforward. One locked box, a family heirloom apparently. Caught in a feud between two brothers. He handed it off in a teahouse with peeling wallpaper. It was all done by dusk.

The next six days passed like steam over glass.

He stayed. Not for any reason except that he could. The ocean pressed in on every side, and he let the salt fill his lungs like a prayer. He didn’t do much.

He trained. Mana stores expanding, flexing, pulling. Stretching the weight of it like a muscle half healed. It hurt. Every time he reached, it hurt worse.

The soreness was familiar, but the kind that grew sharper as he gained more ground. A warning that screamed. He kept going anyway.

On the sixth day, Anna’s letter arrived with the morning rain. It was wrapped with care. She’d included more of the good pain relievers, first aid, and a note written in looping, impatient script.

He tucked it all into his satchel. Unspoken thanks held in the gesture. That evening, he made his way to the ferry dock.

The sky had bruised itself into violet by the time he boarded. The sea breathed steadily below, dark as ink.

His room on the ship was just passable—slightly damp, brine soaked corners, a single lantern swinging faintly overhead. The sheets smelled faintly of salt and lemon soap.

The ferry groaned to life with a low whine and pushed out into the bay, slow and sure. The coast of Cindebelle slipped away behind him like a painting getting wet.

Luka lay down, one hand resting on his chest, the other curled near the edge of the thin mattress. The ship rocked a slow, watery lullaby.

He fell asleep easily, without ceremony.

And the sea kept moving.

A,

I think I made some actual progress. You’ll be happy to know I haven’t coughed up blood. Nosebleed free for two weeks, too.

You’ll be fine for your exams. Just don’t cram the night before, alright? Your brain needs to be in working order to actually use all that knowledge.

I don’t know how long I’ll be in the next place. It’s probably going to be a short stop. Sorry this letter’s a bit brief, I just wanted to thank you for the supplies and let you know I’m still alive and mostly functional. Don’t panic if you don’t hear from me for a while. I don’t have a clear route lined up yet.

Might head back to Fiore. Or not. Honestly? I’ll go wherever the wind takes me.

Anyway—take care of yourself. You’re going to pass your bar exam, and in no time, you’ll have your own clinic. Don’t stress too much. Save some brain cells for post-exam celebration.

—L

Chapter Text

The ferry moves as if it, too, is uncertain. Two days, two nights. Not quite sea, not quite sleep— a breath held between coasts.

The water is grey, like metal worn soft. Wind presses gently at the windows, and the ship’s quiet groan rocks against his bones like a lullaby sung by something ancient and indifferent.

He reads. He doesn’t finish the book. He doesn't feel the need to. He writes something, then nothing. He sleeps easily and wakes without urgency.

At dawn, the ferry sighs into Wrenharbor, docks slick with sea spray and rust, gulls wheeling like they’re begging to be remembered in the brittle sky. The air is sharp but not cruel.

His breath fogs faintly, fading just as quickly. The scent is brine and coal and damp rope, and the smell of it lingers on his tongue.

He disembarks. The harbour feels like the in between of things, where arrivals and departures blur, and nothing quite stays.

He doesn’t stay.

The freight depot yawns quiet. Long rusted tracks reach out into the land like veins too weary to carry blood. There are no signs, no voice announcements.

Only a clerk behind fogged glass, half asleep, the kind that looks as though they’ve forgotten the sound of their own name. There are others. But no one speaks.

The train arrives with a shuddering groan and Luka finds a cabin near the front. It’s older but not unfriendly. The window is laced with condensation, a faint ghost hand pressed against the glass.

The seat is stiff and cold, but warms quickly as he settles into it.  Outside, the scenery unfolds with unhurried grace.

Terraced hills, once green, now muted. Vineyards in hibernation. Fig trees bare as bones, limbs reaching skyward as if in soft supplication.

Then further inland, roads ribboning through sleepy fields, stone walls breaking the land into quiet thoughts.

Cobbled bridges pass beneath them, small frozen rivers stitched into the earth. In the higher reaches, snow appears, patches clinging to shadowed slopes, stubborn still in the aftermath of winter’s breath.

He reads. A book picked from a kiosk with faded covers and curled edges. The story is about a man who cannot name his yearning, drifting through a winter town and a woman he neither understands nor truly loves.

Nothing changes and nothing resolves. The beauty is in its stillness. Luka reads until the words blur and he falls into a slumber, the rocking of the moving train lulling him.

He wakes to light breaking through frost rimmed glass. The trees are sparser now, fewer pines, more bare limbed birches swaying as if in slow conversation.

The train rises, briefly, into highland country, jagged rocks, scrubland, the occasional far flung farmhouse nestled like a thought someone almost forgot to finish.

Snow appears, and then does not. By noon, Clover Town’s plains open up, an expanse of mottled green edged in thin and sparse frost.

The land is low and open, buildings squat and stubborn against the wind. The train huffs its way into the station, a long exhalation of breath and engine. The platform bustles.

Steam curls around his ankles, warm as it slips under his jacket and brushes his skin. It smells of ash and iron.

Somewhere between here and wherever he’s going, the quiet will shift again.

But for now, this is enough.

Clover Town is quiet in the way old photographs are—edges softened, sound held at the edges. Luka does not take up a mission. Not yet. The town is inexpensive, and he can afford, for now, the luxury of doing nothing.

The library is housed in what must’ve once been a family home, wooden beams, windows with clouded glass, the smell of old paper and rain damp wool.

He finds a map curled at the corners, yellowed, but the most recent edition they have. The kind that’s been unfolded too many times, the creases worn thin like the spine of a loved book.

Bosco. Iceberg. Seven. Minstrel. He’s been to these places. He thinks of Fiore. Perhaps he’ll go to Haregeon next. Before that, Crocus. There’s a direct bullet train.

He sits for a while, the map spread before him like a question he doesn't quite have the words for. He isn’t really thinking. But he’s not not thinking either.

Outside, the light fades behind clouds. He leaves when the stillness inside him begins to ache, eating lunch without appetite.

He books a room. A cheap, but clean room. The bathroom smells of lemon soap. The bedsheets are stiff, slightly scratchy, the kind that cling to the skin in patches.

He sleeps until noon the next day, waking not from rest but from the absence of dreams. There is something about this kind of idleness that feels like floating just beneath the surface of water.

Neither drowning nor swimming. Just suspended. He reads in bed, spine curled like a cat, golden hair splayed out on white pillows. His eyes skim over paragraphs, and yet he remembers each word.

He thinks of his mother. Her grave that he hasn’t seen in such a long time. This was the first New Years he spent away from her, away from her grave, away from a cupcake still halved and a candle blown by wind instead of him.

He wishes he could see her again. Just once. He can’t. He knows that. And when the light begins to dim, when the golden hush of the sun folds itself into the velvet hush of night, Luka rises, a tiredness persisting despite the hours of sleep.

The sky outside his window is the kind of fading blue that makes you feel very far away from everything. He takes out paper and pen and begins to write.

It starts simply with a greeting. But then the words continue. One page. Two. Four. More. He tells her of the years since. Of the places. The people.

The moments too small for anyone else to care about but which he carries like smooth stones in the pockets of his coat. He tells her that he misses her, of empty halls and aurora lights.

She used to say that ghosts weren’t phantoms or shadows but memories kept alive in the hearts that still beat. Grief, she’d said once, is just love that doesn’t know where to go.

He understands that now. To grieve is to love in absence. To regret is to remember. And remembrance, too, is love.

He does not try to be eloquent, does not try to spell everything properly. He only tries to be honest. And when it is time to end the letter, there’s no signature.

Only this:

With all my love,
your son.
I’ll write again soon.

He folds the letter carefully and sets it aside on the nightstand. He doesn’t cry. He can’t sleep either. He ends up simply sitting, the room dim with a tiny light.

Outside, the wind stirred the old trees, and the scent of hyssop drifted in with the breeze.

Chapter Text

The letter folds with the soft sound of creased paper. Luka tucks it carefully into the inner pocket of his jacket, close to the pulse at his ribs.

The scent of dried herbs and antiseptic ointment clings, still lingering from the package. He adjusts the strap of his bag and steps out into the wind.

Clover Town is quiet in its noise. The chatter of morning floats up from somewhere near the lower streets.

The air is crisp with the bite of January, not sharp but insistent, more wind than chill, a breeze that exhales through jacket openings and pulls softly at hair.  Above, the sky is an endless grey blue stretch, too pale to be brooding, too cold to be soft.

The station sits wide and low against the open plains, bleached stone stained with time and soot. A rusted clock tower ticks steadily above, the hour hand hovering just before noon. 11:25.

The crowd is big, layered in coats and mission gear. Mages mostly. Guild crests on skin. The air tastes of old steam, an iron tang that sits at the back of the throat.

A long, low whistle announces the train’s presence, trailing smoke like a silk scarf unravelling into the sky. The train is an old model, coal burning, dark red lacquer dulled by decades of wind and dust.

The engine hisses with heat, steam curling around the wheels. Luka steps back instinctively, warmth brushing over him like breath.

He passes a black-haired man shedding his shirt, bare arms stretched in the winter air. Luka pauses only long enough to blink, decides he doesn't want to know, and moves on.

Exhibitionist or eccentric, either way, not his problem. As long as the man keeps his underwear on. The train door grinds open with a mechanical groan. Luka boards.

Inside, it smells of oil and rust, of pressed velvet cushions long past their prime, of windows that haven’t opened properly in years.

His cabin is narrow, the seat stiff but clean enough. He slides into it, tugging his bag close, and pulls out the book he’s been meaning to finish.

He doesn’t read it. The words blur, swimming lazily on the page as the train lurches forward. The motion is slow, rhythmic.

Click. Clack. Click.

A gentle rocking, enough to make his head tap lightly against the cold glass of the window with every bump.

Outside, the landscape trickles past, a smear of flat fields, soft patches of frozen soil, dry winter grass pressed flat by the wind. In the far distance, hills begin to rise, hazy outlines against a pale sky.

He closes the book, fingers still curled around the spine.

He doesn't sleep. It does not come easily. Instead, he sits, knees drawn up slightly, head tilted against the window. The train rocks him in and out of half thoughts.

Scenery stretches, unchanging, as it blurs. He closes his eyes.

Inhale.

His magic stirs, reluctant and stiff like a muscle waking from soreness. He expands it slowly.

Five seconds. The seals on his throat respond immediately, sharp like gravel scraping the inside of his neck, like swallowing shattered glass but he holds the expansion.

Exhale. He allows his magic to withdraw, curling back into the hollows of his body.

Inhale. This time, the pain is sharper. It always is on each try. He doesn’t flinch as he holds. The pills from this morning dull the edge, but the burn still flares like a warning.

Exhale. He stops, breath caught against the sting, eyes half lidded and unfocused.

Outside, a bird startles from a fence post, wings flashing silver before vanishing again into the slow-moving distance.

Brambleford station is quiet in a way that feels intentional, like the silence is being kept, not simply occurring. The train slows to a lull, then halts with a sigh.

Luka steps off, bag slung back onto his shoulder, boots clacking softly against the stone platform. The air here is thinner, less heavy with city heat, touched by altitude.

It’s 2:52. The clock above the station ticks gently, gold paint worn thin over the numbers. A few other travellers step down behind him, their voices low and their footsteps scattered.

Brambleford isn’t deserted, but it doesn’t demand attention either. Just a waystation the world forgot to hurry through.

The steam tram hisses as it pulls up alongside the road. Old, iron riveted, the paint faded into an almost pink rust. The benches are chipped wood, backless and exposed.

There are no doors, just a narrow running step and iron poles to hold onto. The engine wheezes faintly as passengers climb aboard.

Luka tucks himself into the farthest edge, shoulder brushing the cold brass of the frame. He leans close to the window rail, so he won’t brush against anyone.

The tram lurches forward with a judder. The air is full of smoke and cold. Puffs of steam rise in little sighs with every chuff of the engine, blending into the breath of the hills.

The rhythm is steady—chuff, chuff, chuff—echoing across the open countryside like a memory half remembered.

The landscape begins to shift. The hills come in slow, wide curves, their flanks dusted in silvered grass and the knotted, low brush of winter vineyards. Dry stone walls break the land into pieces.

The roads are narrow and unused, winding alongside shallow streams, now little more than glinting lines in the fading light. Four hours pass slow. 

When the tram hisses to a final halt, Luka’s legs are numb. His spine protests as he stands. He rolls his shoulder once, then again. A low ache runs down the length of his back.

Helmvale greets him with quiet.

The sun is setting, turning the vineyards gold, then peach, then violet. The fields slope away in neat rows, the shadows long and clean, like ink poured from the feet of the hills.

The town itself is not large, but it unfolds unobtrusively, stone houses with crooked roofs, painted shutters, one or two shop signs swinging gently in the breeze.

The inn he finds is tucked into a narrow lane. A worn sign swings above the door, its paint long since flaked to bare wood.

The clerk at the front desk smiles with a tired kind of warmth, hands him a brass key and a folded map of the surrounding hills when he asks.

The room is small. The bed creaks and the wallpaper is peeling in one corner, curling like old bark. The ceiling fan clicks faintly as it turns, blades darkened with dust at the edges, though someone clearly tried to clean it.

Luka drops his bag beside the dresser and falls onto the bed without ceremony. He stretches, joints crackling, limbs heavy and slow. His cheek brushes against the stiff and roughened sheets.

He stares up at the ceiling, eyes half lidded. The light filtering in from the window is a soft bronze. Tomorrow he’ll scout the eastern ridge. The mission isn’t complicated. A simple extermination of Hill Vulcans.

He peels off his jacket and slides out of his boots. The leather is still cold from the tram’s wind. He curls on his side, pulling the jacket with him, pressing his face into it.

At his hip, the keys begin to stir, a little warmth, a quiet hum, the kind of presence that feels like someone knocking once at a closed door. He exhales tiredly.

He lies there for a while. Then sits up, slowly.

“I’ll eat,” he murmurs aloud, mostly for them. “Just a little. Stop fussing.”

He goes downstairs and buys a sandwich from the inn’s small canteen. It’s not good but not the worst either. He eats it without thinking, chewing mechanically.

He decides to recon the area, he might as well since he’s out anyways. The path winds upward, not steep, but persistent. The air has that thin, rinsed clarity dusk sometimes brings in high places.

The old shepherd’s hut sits just below the ridge, roof sagging, stones worn smooth by time and wind. It leans slightly eastward, as if bowing to the hills.

Below, the burrow mouths dot the slope like wounds half healed. He waits and watches. Two, no, three, Hill Vulcans at the edge of the clearing, silhouettes shifting against the bluing light.

The others move closer to the root cellars, ungainly in motion, but quick when they need to be. The soft patch of earth where several tunnels meet is fragile, if pressed right. He marks them.

By the time he returns to the inn the sky had darkened. The sun had said its quiet goodbye, and left nothing behind but a slow fade into grey.

The room was unlit. Only the stray spill of light from distant buildings cut through the window slats, casting long shadows on the bare floor.

The only sound left in the stillness was the fan creaking, slow and uneven, like it had forgotten how to spin properly, and the muffled conversation heard through thin walls.

Luka curled into the jacket, the leather cool against the warmth of his face. Corvus’s scent was gone now, faded from time and use.

The letters were already written, tucked into the lining of his bag, folded carefully. Tomorrow, he’d send them; one to Corvus, one to Crux.

His hands curled around the worn edges of the jacket, holding it the way one holds something that once mattered greatly. He didn’t cry. There was nothing sharp enough left for that.

Sleep arrived without warning, like a carriage moving across snow. He dreamed of nothing, but felt everything.

The sky was the colour of smoke, navy blue leeching into the last of night’s charcoal. Luka’s boots thudded softly against the uneven path leading toward the old shepherd’s hut.

The world around him was still, save for the wind running through bare branches and the faint, distant clank of a metal pail being moved by someone unseen.

He chewed absently on a few pieces of dried apricot as he walked. The sweetness was dulled by the cold, but it was enough to keep the edge off.

By the time he reached the hut, it was 4:52. A worn, squatting thing, the hut leaned into the slope like it had finally accepted it would never stand straight again.

Luka crouched low, breath fogging. He pressed his hand briefly to the ground, palm skimming over dry stone and soil, then quietly stacked a few pebbles into rough cairns, two markers, just in front of the main burrow mouths.

The scent, faint but unmistakable. Mouldy earth soaked in animal sweat. Something like damp fur and a rotting root cellar, clinging to the throat, to the back of the teeth. Hill Vulcuns.

He exhaled and stepped back, ducking into the shadowed hollow near a low wall. The burrow was waking. He straightened. Closed his eyes for a beat, then said, quietly but clearly.

“Open, gate of the Little Lion—Leo Minor.”

There was a burst of gold light, small, warm, effervescent.

“Luka!” Leona barreled into him, arms wrapped tight around his middle. She’s small, black haired and golden eyed, like a flame trying to be a person. She smelled like sunshine and old summer days, like cracked citrus and burned sugar.

“Hello, Leona,” he murmured, arms wrapping around her with a small smile. She practically buzzed with energy.

“Are we killing beasts today?”

He huffed a soft laugh. “Yup, Hill Vulcuns.”

Leona pulled back, golden eyes sharp. “You sure you’re up for it?” she asked bluntly, cocking her head like a street brawler sizing up a mark.

Luka raised a brow. “I’m not fragile. Don’t worry.”

“Sure,” she grinned. “Alright. What’s the plan?”

He glanced to the cairns. “I need you to use your solar flares when I give the signal.”

“Got it.” She gave him a crooked salute.

He nodded once, then shifted his stance. The cold bit harder now, down past his sleeves. He barely felt it.

“Open, gate of the Fox—Vulpecula.”

“Oh, darling,” Vulpecula’s voice drawled, appearing with one hand already at her hip and an expression that fell somewhere between mild irritation and fond exhaustion.

“You sure know how to pick your hours.” Her hair was curly this time, defined and artfully messy curls, the colour of nightfall blossoming. 

“Good morning,” Luka said, smiling despite himself.

She stepped closer, gaze flicking over his face like she was reading the lines of a weathered map.

“You’re pale,” she said.

“I’m always pale.”

“Hm.” She frowned.

“Hi Vulpe!” Leona piped up from beside him.

Vulpecula softened at once. “Leona, sweet starling.” She bent down, ruffling her hair.

“We’re fighting hill Vulcans,” Leona chirps.

Vulpecula raises a brow at Luka.

He offers a faint smile. “Yeah. We are. We need your help.”

A pause, “I need an illusion. A dying goat bleating, by the upper tunnel. Can you do it?”

Vulpecula huffs, just a touch theatrical, draping her arms over his shoulders. “You have me at your disposal,” she declares, “and you ask for a dying goat?”

A beat.

“Ugh, fine. Dying goat it is.”

She reached out and ruffled his hair in retaliation. He huffed, face twisting slightly at the flare of mana drawn up and out.

The sound was immediate and painfully convincing. Ragged bleats echoed from the ridge, scrabbling hooves, a wet, low thump.

Four smaller hill vulcuns burst from the burrow, snouts lifted, black glass eyes glinting at the sound of prey. Their forms lumbered, gorilla wide torsos hunched over long limbs, mottled fur patchy and damp.

The air reeked suddenly, like soil gone sour.

Luka gave the signal. Leona nodded, face drawn with focus. A pulse of blinding white exploded over the rise, hot as a nova, searing.

The vulcuns staggered immediately, eyes clutched with clawed hands, howling in fury and confusion. They flailed, knocking into each other, tusks clashing.

Luka didn't hesitate.

“Open, gate of the Cup—Crater.”

A grinding rumble answered. Crater rose, faceless and elegant. “Center trench. Collapse the top tunnel,” Luka said. “Pull the floor.”

Crater nodded. The earth groaned. In a moment, the ridge gave way. The weakened soil beneath the tunnel crumbled into a gaping depression, a crude sinkhole blooming open.

The vulcuns screamed, scrambling against the shifting dirt but claws found no hold. They were trapped.

Luka felt the pull of overextending, like something inside him was being hauled down. His throat flared, the seals burning against the cold. He winced.

He checked the time.

5:22 a.m.

Dawn was only a shade lighter than night, pearl grey clouds drifted low, the kind that promised drizzle but hadn’t yet committed.

The scent of the burrow still lingered, curling in the back of his sinuses like old decay and unwashed fur. His breath didn’t plume so much as fade.

Three more vulcun come up from the lower tunnel, leaner and more alert. Not the same panicked burst as the others. They moved with intent. Ears twitching, tusks flecked with fresh soil.

The pack was split and it caused them immense disorientation.

“Crater, thank you,” Luka murmured, before closing their gate. The spirit inclined their head, then dissipated.

“Leona,” he said, without looking. “Flare, please.”

A beat later, a burst of light cracked across the slope, hot, clean, sudden. It spilled over the ridgeline like spilled oil ablaze. The three vulcuns shrieked, staggering. They clawed at the light, eyes screwed shut, snouts lifted like startled cattle.

Luka was already moving, dropping low and silent into the brush, fifteen meters down the incline. The moss was damp. It muffled his steps.

Leaves stuck to the cuffs of his trousers as the world narrowed to a crawl. A pale branch snapped under his heel. Quietly, he stilled.

Leona trailed behind him, mimicking his every crouch and sidestep. She looked almost absurd, black hair bouncing as she padded like a cub in oversized paws. She met his glance and grinned. He smiled back.

“Watch the alpha,” he whispered. She nodded, suddenly all soldier.

“Vulpecula,” Luka murmured next, “I’ll need another.”

She sighed deep and long, like someone wronged in an opera.

“You are relentless.”

He didn’t answer. Just looked up, quiet and expectant. He bit back a smile as Leona turned to look at Vulpecula, too, peering around him. Her eyes were wide, just as expectant.

“Fine,” she muttered, and the next sound illusion bloomed from the opposite ridge, quieter this time.

A bleat, half choked and broken. Like something small and wounded dragging itself through underbrush. He winced as the seal burned, the drain from auditory illusions were always worse than visual ones.

The effect was immediate. Two of the vulcuns turned, jerkily, pulled toward the new sound. Their massive shoulders hunched forward, paws tearing into loose rock. Heads swiveling like vultures catching scent.

The third, the alpha, didn’t move. It sniffed the air, slow. A deep inhale through wet nostrils. It took one step forward, toward the tunnel.

Luka didn’t wait. He moved. First bound, ten meters. He slipped beneath a broken ledge, crouched low. Rock above, ridge line to his left. It covered him like a folded wing.

Second bound was six meters. He ducked behind a gnarled root system. The alpha twitched its snout. Luka stilled.

He followed the fall of a collapsed wall, using its shadow to draw nearer. Only the last outcrop separated him from the distracted beasts.

He paused, then, moved. He reached the leftmost vulcun. He looped the wire clean, tightened with a sharp quick jerk. The beast spasmed once, then stilled.

The second turned, but it was too slow. Luka was already in motion. He ducked low, dagger flashing. A clean stab behind the knee, soft tissue and tendon cutting clean. The vulcun buckled with a gurgling roar.

He followed it down, angled the blade, and cut sharp at the neck. A burst of heat as blood pooled in a fast, dark smear against the moss.

The alpha wheeled around at last, eyes wide, nostrils flaring but Luka was already rising, breathing slightly uneven.

He met the creature’s gaze. Pale blue skin shimmered under its fur, ribs shifting with each breath. They stared at one another.

Stillness settled and then the moment cracked. The alpha bellowed, tusks bared and Luka moved again.

He closes the remaining open gates with mental thanks to Leona and Vulpecula. Luka moves without thinking. He feints left, lets the dagger catch the early light, just enough to distract.

The beast swings wide. He ducks under its arm, close enough to feel the wind of it pass overhead. He slashes the tendon behind its opposite leg.

The vulcun bellows, claws swiping. One catches him. Just a nick on his side, but it burns. He exhales through his nose. He sidesteps, keeps his footing steady. The alpha’s slower now, its stance wide, wounded, bleeding into the soil. Luka waits for the opening.

When it comes, he takes it, one upward jab beneath the chin, the blade piercing soft tissue cleanly. The creature jerks once, then stills.

He staggers back into cover, presses a gloved hand to his side, gathering the warmth of blood onto his sleeve rather than the ground.

The land around him is soft with mist and new light, cold vines clinging to split stone, the faint hiss of wind moving through brittle grass. He checks his watch. 5:37.

He’d relied more on hearing than sight, in the predawn dark but Perseus had trained him for this, first blindfolded, then with his ears muffled, then both.

The memory of bruises along his ribs and the ache in his knees surfaces briefly. He hadn’t appreciated it then. He does now.

He kneels and begins bandaging his side. He’ll clean it properly later, once he’s back at the inn. It doesn’t hurt much nor is it deep. Luka makes his way to the pit, footsteps hushed against damp soil.

The four trapped vulcuns snort and pace, confused, heads twitching toward the crumbled slope. He kneels at the lip, uses his multitool to nudge loose rocks and dirt into a casual spill.

Then he lowers himself down, careful not to slip. He lands beside the first. It jerks toward him too late.

The thumb loop garrote slides into place. With a tug, it slumps. He pulls his dagger out and makes a quick slash across the neck.

He circles clockwise through the pit. Second. Third. Fourth. One after the other. They’re too stunned to fight. Half blinded from flares, disoriented by the collapse.

When he’s finished, he lets out a slow breath and climbs out, soil scraping his gloves, the edge crumbling slightly under his boots.

The sun has risen fully now, casting a golden hush across the ridgeline. The dew’s already beginning to evaporate, leaving the earth darker where he walked.

Helmvale lies down the slope, still quiet. He rolls his shoulder, checks his bandage once more, and starts the slow walk back to town.

It felt like gold seeped through cold fog.

The sun rose pale over the frost-laced vineyards, filtering through cedar woods so thin the trunks looked like held breath. Light sliced the mist in ribbons. The air clung to him, still damp.

By the time he reached the inn, the hush of morning had blanketed into stillness. He washed the dried blood from his side, cleaned the wound properly this time. Disinfectant bit the skin.

The bed creaked under his weight. He exhaled and let his eyelids fall. Sleep came in fits, shallow, but restful.

When he woke, it was already late noon. He made his way downstairs and ate in near silence. Something warm. Eggs and cheese. A little stale but filling.

The sun slanted in through the windows, catching on the silver in his spoon. He read for a while. A book he’d brought but never finished.

Later, he decided on Cindalein. He purchased an early tram ticket from the small counter near the bakery. The woman who sold it recognised him.

“Oh—wait, you were the one who handled the Vulcans, weren’t you?” A pause. Her voice softens. “Thank you. Truly. My cousin’s goats were in that gully. She was worried sick.”

Luka blinks, then nods slightly. “I’m glad they’re safe now.”

“We’ve been hoping someone would do something for months! I’m glad they finally sent someone.” She smiled, her teeth were slightly crooked but her smile was that of sunshine on snow as she handed him his ticket.

Luka nods, unsure what to say in reply. That evening, he summoned Aquarius. The wind shifted a little when she arrived. The air took on a strange clarity.

She scolded him immediately. “You absolute idiot,” Aquarius said, her voice low but fond, she pulled him into a hug too tight. Her presence was like cold water cupped in the hands.

His head came to rest lightly against her shoulder, breath caught somewhere between laughter and apology.

“You should be more careful,” she muttered into his hair. “Foolish boy.”

He smiled into the crook of her neck, barely a twitch of his mouth. “Sorry.”

Her hand cupped the back of his head. She held him like that a while, listening to his rambling about what happened the past week, things he saw, something new he learned, about everything and nothing in particular.

When his nose began to bleed, just a slow trickle, red against pale skin, she pulled back. She didn’t stay for too long. Couldn’t, with how drained he was. He saw the frown in her brow before she vanished.

She took the letters with her, folded neatly for Crux and Corvus, tied in twine. In her absence, he sat for a while.

The quiet returned.

He woke before dawn. The tram came slow and low, its lamps hazed in fog. Inside, the light turned thin and saffron as the sky began to pale.

Luka took a window seat and folded into it, his jacket pulled close, his satchel hugged to his ribs. The window was cold. He leaned his head against it anyway.

The glass thudded gently with each turn of the wheels, rhythm dull and familiar. His temple ached. By the time he disembarked, the sun had climbed behind a veil of white cloud.

The regional train to Cindalein stood waiting, an older model, paint faded around the edges. Steam curled from beneath it like breath through clenched teeth.

He boarded near the back, where the seats were cracked but empty. The train moved slow at first, then faster, slipping into the rhythm of its long bones.

A low, clattering gait, metal over metal, steady and unchanging. Outside, the hills passed in long undulations, ash trees in clusters, fields left to winter sleep.

The smoke from the engine trailed like a tether, pulling them all forward through the hush.

Chapter Text

He arrives in Cindalein by mid noon, eyes half lidded against the sharp white steam rolling off the train’s underbelly. It clings to him like damp cloth, curling into the collar of his jacket. The air smells of scorched coal and iron shavings. He wrinkles his nose.

The platform buzzes with loose conversation, distant clatter, hawkers calling out food carts along the station’s edge. Luka steps down quietly, boots clicking against worn stone, and moves through the crowd with the sort of purpose that makes people unconsciously get out of the way.

He heads to the ticket window first. The clerk doesn’t look up until Luka clears his throat politely.

“Excuse me,” Luka says. “Would you happen to have a map of the city?”

The clerk, a young man with a fading undercut, blinks at him like he’s woken from a dream. He slides a folded square of paper through the gap without a word. Luka nods in thanks, already scanning it.

Cindalein is built across a wide, low valley where fog likes to settle. It clings in gutters and cobblestone seams, coils in alley mouths. The city’s bones are gothic, stone walls cold and gray with age, ornamented with curling copper filigree and little insets of coloured glass but it’s been modified, with steel piping vines beneath arched cornices.

Brass valves gleam like polished eyes from the shadows of narrow streets. He notes the giant clockwork tower marked near the centre, some local attraction. The gears are visible from blocks away, ticking in slow revolutions behind a stained glass face.

A thin river splits Cindalein down the middle. Stone bridges span it in loops and straight crossings, and low canals snake through the inner boroughs. There’s green here, too, but it’s tired, ferns curled brown on balconies, planters with limp grey edged herbs. Only the moss seems to thrive, clinging in bright emerald to the rooftops, stubborn life refusing to retreat.

It takes him forty minutes of walking to find the regional board. The office is sun dulled limestone with old paint marks along the doorframe. Inside, the light is too yellow, buzzing faintly from a ceiling fixture that flickers every twenty seconds. He steps toward the mission board. One reads:

Barn Infestation – Giant Rats, outskirts of Brancill Town – 6,000j.

Too far, not worth the travel for something that small. He shifts his gaze.

Wyverling Nest – Upper Eaves, Cindalein – 21,000j.

That’s more like it. Local and doable. He’s already reaching for the mission stub when a tired voice behind the desk jolts awake.

“Oh—uh. You taking that one?”

The approval clerk, a gaunt, balding man in his fifties, blinks as if Luka manifested from the wall. His posture slumps even as he motions Luka over with a half hearted wave.

Luka offers the paper over. “Yes, please. Luka Solace. I’ve got registration on file.”

“Yeah, yeah… I’ll pull it up. Just a sec.” The clerk stares at the monitor like it’s speaking a foreign language, then punches in a few keys with visible effort.

Luka leaves with the mission flyer tucked into his jacket pocket. He walks until the streets start to thin, until the buildings become more worn and the people look away faster.

The inn he finds is pressed between a laundry shop and a teahouse that might also be a brothel. The sign above the door is cracked ceramic that could be once read Thistlewood House but now just says T__stle Ho_se.

Inside, it’s rough but not unfriendly. The front desk is unmanned. There is a bell. He rings it. An old woman appears with a limp and a single gold tooth. She eyes him once, decides he isn’t trouble, and hands over a key for a room on the second floor for the very modest price of 350 jewels a night.

The room is narrow with exposed beams. A low, clean bed with sun bleached linens and one shuttered window. He showers, lukewarm, but he doesn’t complain. The grime from the travel washes away.

Under the water, he peels off the bandage. Blood has crusted along the edges. He cleans the wound carefully, without flinching, rewraps it with antiseptic gauze from the kit Anna had sent him.

Then takes a pill from the bottle, the painkillers smell like something dead was ground into powder. He swallows it dry. He doesn’t gag. Time on the street had burned the reflex out of him.

He scouts the place after a late lunch, a bowl of spiced lentils and rice, oversalted but warm. The heat had steamed the edges of his jacket by the time he left, leaving a faint scent of spices clinging to it. 

It’s still light out, but not for long. The sky’s begun to soften, edges tinged lavender, the sun slipping like a yolk through gauze. He makes haste.

Wyverlings are nocturnal, and he doesn't want to be on the wrong end of their waking. Southwind Tenements, 6th Spire District. The map had made it seem closer. It isn’t.

It takes longer than it should. The trams are slow, and the alleys twist back on themselves like knotted rope. By the time he arrives, it’s 6:08.

The district is a crooked row of overstacked homes, tall and narrow, their roofs sloped and patched with tin and wood. Wires and pipes snake over the buildings like vines, some carrying steam, others just humming quietly. The streets are uneven, wet in the cracks, puddled from some recent rain.

Moss crawls up drainpipes. Someone’s hung laundry between two upper levels, fluttering like pale flags in the wind.

Graffiti on the walls here is in layers: old slogans scrawled over with newer tags. THE STREETS ARE WATCHING in chipped blue paint. Below that, YOUR GOD IS A RAT in orange. Then, under, a crude sketch of a rat with wings and a halo.

He passes between two bakeries. The air smells of bread and burnt sugar. One shop window is fogged from the inside, gold crusted rolls stacked like treasure. The other is shut tight, a faint trail of blackened acid down the bricks above it. He doesn’t need to ask which had the incident.

Roosting above, nestled in the exposed beams and eaves, are the wyverlings. Three nests. Two over the bakeries’ chimneys. He can see the faint glint of hoarded things: shiny aluminium, broken spoons, even what looks like a cracked watch face.

The third nest crouches above the woodmaker’s skylight, shingled with soot and mucus hard resin. He watches their movements. They are twitchy, restless things. They don’t rest long, hopping from one perch to another, wings folding and unfolding like broken umbrellas.

From what he remembers, they hate sharp and sudden sounds. They can’t thermoregulate well and they hoard bright things obsessively.

He hears someone clear their throat behind him. It’s an old woman, hunched but tall, wrapped in layers of mismatched wool. Her eyes are sharp and Luka knows that look well.

Women like her ran the underways. He remembers, back in the streets of Branbell, they ran soup lines and smuggling rings with the same hands.

They kept knives tucked in their sleeves and knew the names of every child sleeping rough. Half folk hero, half warning. They were the kind of woman who always knew more than what they said.

“You here for the pests?” she asks.

He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Hmph.” She leans on her cane and eyes the rooftops like they’ve personally offended her.

“One of them things spat on my niece’s hat. Poor girl screamed bloody murder, thought it was raining acid.”

She continues, as if the words have been waiting for days. “It started two weeks ago, but no one believed me. Said it was birds.” She scoffs, “Birds, my ass.”

He glances up again. One of the wyverlings shifts, wings flexing.

“They like shiny bits, you know,” the old woman mutters. “Like magpies, but worse. Bastards, the lot of them. You’d think they were collecting to pay rent.”

He smiles. “I'll try not to disturb your evening too much.”

She squints at him like she’s trying to decide if he’s making fun of her, then nods. “Don’t die.”

“I’ll try, ma’am.” he says softly, already moving on.

Luka maps the nest positions with quick sketches on a folded slip of paper. He notes when they shift, how often, and how far. They move in a sort of loose rhythm, roost, twitch, hop, return.

One circles out, then back, gliding low across the rooftop shadows. Probably the scout. The rest seem younger, more uncertain. He notes that there are five adults, and two juvies in total.

The sun’s dipped now. The sky above the tenements is dull and heavy. Luka gets up from his crouch against a wall, adjusting the weight of his bag. He’s got maybe half an hour before full dark.

He returns to the inn.

He wakes at five. Outside, the city exhales. It hasn’t slept, not really. Streetlights flicker in grids, casting long amber shadows on the damp cobblestones.

The trams rattle like old bones in steel skins. People pass with hunched shoulders, faces pale in the glow of lamps and storefronts, dressed in the weary uniforms of early shifts and obligation.

He walks, eating a protein bar with half hearted chewing. It tastes like pressed oats and faint lemon.  Southwind stirs slowly as he approaches, windows alight with light, water tanks sighing as they heat.

The sky is the colour of tarnished pewter. Not quite night, not quite morning.  The wyverlings will be sluggish now. Between their nocturnal hunt and dawn’s descent into stillness.

He checks the date, third Thursday of the month. Good. He finds what he needs in the alley behind the woodmaker’s shop, shards of broken glass glittering dully in a puddle, a handful of river-worn rocks scattered by runoff.

He draws a slow breath.

“Open,” he murmurs, low and steady, fingers splayed to the ground. “Gate of the Fox— Vulpecula.”

The air bends inward. The world gives a small exhale and then she appears in a shower of gold.

“Ugh,” Vulpecula sighs grandly, brushing imagined dust off her flowly silken robes. “Again? What seven hells job am I being dragged into this time?”

“Morning to you, too,” Luka says. A corner of his mouth twitches. “I wanted your help with illusions.” A pause, “The last mission wasn’t bad.”

“Right, yet you still got injured.” She steps closer, eyes narrowing as she scans him. “You didn’t wrap too tightly, right? You’ll bruise your circulation again. And you didn’t disinfect this graze, did you?”

She said, tapping his jaw, he winced slightly as it stung. “I didn’t know it was even there.”

“You never notice. Honestly. Am I your nurse or your spirit?” She says with an exasperated flair.

“It was one time.” He pouts.

She scoffs, lips curving into a sly smile. “It was more than one time. But fine, I’ll help. You owe me dinner.”

Luka hums. “We should invite Lyra. And Andromedea, too.”

Vulpecula smiles softly this time, a fond sort that tells him she’s pleased. She waves her hand with a flourish, and the broken glass and rocks shimmer, twisting in place.

Illusion slides over them, smooth and seamless. It glints like fireflies blinking in and out of reality. She casts a delicate scatter of false moonlight over the skylight.

Moments later, Luka hears claws scrape tile. Two wyverlings drop from the roof’s edge, clicking and grumbling in their throats. A third follows, clumsy, wings sagging.

He takes a breath.

“Open. Gate of the Lyre— Lyra.”

Lyra bursts through with all the enthusiasm of a stage performer midentrance. Her hair’s a halo of light, eyes wide and glittering. She nearly bowls into him with a hug.

“Luka! Finally! You never summon me much, did you miss me?”

“Yes,” he says quietly, accepting the hug. “But— sorry, bit in a rush right now. I need your help.”

She pouts. “You only love me for my music.”

“Not true. I also love your brownie fudge.”

She gasps, mock wounded. “I see how it is, you only love me for my food and talents!”

“Lyra.” He spies the wyverlings moving quicker.

“Fine,” she sighs dramatically, but already her fingers are alight with sound. “How sharp?”

“Sharp enough to hurt.”

She nods, and fingers poised on her lyre. The air sings, a note so high it’s almost physical. Windows tremble and the wyverlings shriek, panicked, grounded, their equilibrium thrown.

They flap and stumble, snarling with gurgled disorientation. Luka moves under them. A burst of pepper spray catches one full in the face. It rears back, choking.

Acid bile hisses from its jaw, but hits the concrete. He sidesteps quickly, loops a wire around the creature’s back leg, and jerks hard. It hits the ground with a thump. He pins it fast, ziptie around the mouth before it can scream. It flails, then goes still.

Vulpecula fans her fingers and tosses another handful of false glinting across the chimneys. Lyra’s note still keens overhead, a razor sharp sound that scrapes through bone.

The wyverlings falter, all stuttered wingbeats and low, confused snarls. Their thin, angular frames jerk in agitation, like emaciated dragons wrenched out of nightmares. Crowsized wings beat in staccato bursts. Their grey brown scales suck in the light, giving them a half formed look, as if still growing from shadow.

The closest one, an adult, screeches too late. He drives the knife up beneath its jaw. The wyverling convulses, barbed tail flailing uselessly before going limp. Acid bile sprays in a wide arc. A few drops land on his sleeve. He braces for pain but nothing comes. The leather darkens, hisses faintly, but doesn’t smoke.

Strange but he doesn’t have time to question it. Behind him, the ziptied juvenile still lies unconscious. Not dead, simply knocked unconscious by Lyra, who gives him a thumbs up.

Above, the nest is now hidden under illusions. The adults are angry. One hurls itself down from a beam, missing him by inches. Another hisses, pupils narrowing to gold slits.

Four adults and one juvie left.

“Shade me,” he murmurs.

Vulpecula turns sharply. “Luka.”

“Please.”

She sighs, something brittle in the sound. Still, she steps forward, touches two fingers to his chest. The world sways. Her power floods him like iced mercury. His limbs chill and his breath shortens.

The world bleeds at its edges. The air thickens like syrup. He vanishes. Scent and sound are also dulled. He pushes through it, steady, even as the drain pulses sharp behind his eyes and his seal burns.

Two more wyverlings stalk the roofline. Twitching and still disoriented from the ringing, sharp sound. He slits the first one’s throat before it can scream.

The second wheels toward him. He wraps his wire around its leg, yanks.  It slams into the roof hard. A fast knife to the spine. The last two are already turning.

Even cloaked, they know. Their heads cock. Their nostrils flare. Heat. They see it, he realises. He moves, but they’re faster. One lashes out with its tail, barbed tip cutting the air. He ducks, barely. He asks Vulpecula to drop the shading, and she does so gladly. The burn from his seal doesn't diminish. 

The other charges, claws slicing at where he just was. A gout of acid spatters, some of it lands on his thigh. It’s a sharp burn but not deep.

“Lyra,” he calls, strained. “Again.”

“Yes, on it!” she grins, spinning on her heel.

Her second note slices the air like a scream through glass. The wyverlings reel. One shrieks, rearing back; the other stumbles, flailing its tail uselessly.

Luka closes in. Wire again, he slips it under the feet of the first, pulling tight. It hits the ground hard. Before it can get back up, he’s on it. One clean slash across the throat.

Its screech dies mid choke. The last one lunges, he sidesteps, fast, but not fast enough. Teeth clamp into his calf. A spike of whitehot pain. He grits his teeth.

Knife in his other hand, he brings it down hard. The creature shudders and goes limp. Blood from the bite wells, hot and fast. He stands slowly, breath caught somewhere in his throat.

“...Still alive?” Vulpecula asks dryly, appearing beside him with her arms folded. Her voice tries for flippant but doesn’t quite make it.

“Barely,” Luka murmurs.

“You look like scorched rat hair.”

“Charming.”

“Don’t faint,” Lyra chirps, from below him. “Because I’m not catching you.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” He says, a bit drily.

Luka scans the area, and finds the last juvenile quickly. It jerks weakly in the eaves, claws scraping uselessly at wood. Luka’s hand doesn’t shake as he lifts the pepper spray.

A quick hiss, sharp, bitter, and the creature shrieks, curls in on itself. He climbs up just enough to loop a zip tie around its narrow jaws, another binding its limbs.

He frowns at it, and wonders how Lyra knocked out the other one. Did she just wack it’s head? "Hey, Lyra," He calls out, "How did you knock them out?"

The others drift closer now, feet scuffing over loose shingles and beams. Lyra’s heels click dramatically against the wooden lip of the roof. She tuts, hands on her hips as she points at the bite mark and acid burn on Luka’s leg. Vulpecula is just behind her, arms crossed, expression unreadable except for the subtle tension around her mouth.

“You’re bleading,” Lyra says, frowning.

“It’s not bad,” Luka replies. “Grazed me, mostly.”

“Still. Blood. Is. Blood,” she huffs, as if personally offended. Then she perks up. “Oh! You wanna know how I knocked that one out, right?”

He nods. She skips a little in place, just once, like she’s trying to hold in a whole performance.

“Nerve strike,” she announces proudly. “Right at the base of the neck. See, wyverlings have these really sensitive clusters there, something about their underdeveloped somatic system. Or maybe it's evolutionary carryover from their ancestral cousins. Either way—” she jabs it at its neck and it drops unconscious, “—lights out!”

“I see.” Luka offers a faint smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yeah, see, it's cause,” she says, already drifting toward a spiral. “So, yknow the original wyverlings? They come from Tlahcoya, right? That’s like, waaay south, mostly desert and salt flats now, but it used to be wetland, and they're descended from wyverns. Anyway, the tribes there worshipped them. They had temples and bone altars! But then during the Third Migration Age, some trader brought eggs north, and—”

“Alright,” Vulpecula cuts in smoothly, her voice dry. “Let’s not right now.”

Lyra pouts but Vulpecula glances at Luka. “We should go.”

He doesn’t argue. He feels it more now without the thrill of the fight, that low, lingering ache behind the eyes and intense burning of the seal. His limbs still move but there’s an unsteady hum beneath his skin.

Upper lip tacky from a nose blood he hadn’t realised happened until Vulpecula swipes at it, finger brushing blood away.

“I’m fine,” he says anyway. “I’m not throwing up blood. And it’s just a nosebleed.”

“Congratulations,” Vulpecula says with a slight eye roll. “Let’s aim a bit higher than not vomiting blood next time.”

Luka gives her a look. The kind of look that says, I know, and I know you know I know. Still, he doesn’t pull away when she steps closer to fuss, fingers brushing over his arm, checking the bite on his leg with a faint wince of her own.

Lyra, undeterred, floats in beside them, arms circling his waist in a too tight hug.

“You will wrap that properly,” Vulpecula says.

“Yes.”

“And you’ll disinfect.”

“Of course.”

Lyra leans back enough to look him in the eyes. “Don’t summon us if you’re too tired. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Even if it’s not technically fatal?” she adds, narrowing her eyes.

Luka sighs, exasperated but fond. “Even then.”

“Also,” Lyra says brightly, “you owe me dinner. You said we’d go. You even said Andromedea could come, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Next time?”

“If you’re free.” He pauses, then perks up, “We can still do tonight—“

“No,” she huffs. “Next time. I’m still annoyed about last month. I cleared the second Wednesday and everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

Vulpecula gives him a sidelong glance, something gentler in it now. “Bye, hun. Take care, ok?”

He inclines his head. “Thank you. Both of you.”

They vanish together, Lyra first, Vulpecula second. They disappear into a shower of gold and Luka is left alone on the roof.

The sky is pale now, low clouds pulling apart like wet gauze. He breathes in, steady as cool air fills his lungs. The bite burns, but the seal burns even more.

The painkiller scrapes down his throat, dry and bitter. Luka winces, exhales through his nose. The rooftop’s cold beneath his boots, dew slick, the kind that clings even after sunrise. 

The tied up juvies twitch now and then, but are still unconscious.  He watches them for a moment. Then, he murmurs, “Open, gate of the Clock—Horologium.”

A shimmer and then a chime. Horologium materialises with a low tick. The tall grandfather clock stands rigid, dark wood gleaming faintly in the half light. His glass casing is immaculate, the curled moustache above the tiny mouth already twitching with anticipation. The old clock’s slit eyes blink once, slowly.

“Hello, Horologium. Can you hold them?” Luka asks, nodding toward the bound wyverlings.

“Yes, yes. I can hold them in stasis,” Horologium confirms. 

“Thanks.” Luka’s voice is quiet. He kneels beside the nearest one, careful with his hands. “Can you open up?”

A side panel unfolds. Luka places the juvies in, one by one, gentle as setting down sleeping cats. Their tails twitch once. Horologium hums.

Horologium’s slit eyes narrow slightly. “And what of you? That wound on your thigh is bleeding and unclean. I would advise rest.”

“I’ve had worse,” Luka replies. “I’ll clean it once I get back.”

A long pause. A slow tick… tick… tick.

“Very well, take care.”

Luka smiles. “Thank you, you too.”

Horologium vanishes without a word, the sound of his departure a distant chime that fades into the rustle of morning wind.

The days blur together after that. Grey skies and light rain with too much walking, not enough sleeping. Luka works quietly, he checks maps and asks a few people. Cross references forests with old magical ley lines, looking for anywhere the wyverlings wouldn’t be hunted, but also wouldn’t wreck the local balance.

By the fourth day, he finds it, a gash of forest swallowed by a deep ravine. It is too steep for easy access. Rich in cliffside dens and wild thickets and no settlements nearby. Magical saturation is low but present, enough for survival, not enough to attract attention.

He waits until nightfall. The ravine breathes around him, damp, dark and quiet. Trees lean overhead like skeletal arms. Moss climbs rock faces.

“Open, gate of the Clock—Horologium.” The clock returns with a click and a faint bell toll. The panel opens again.

Inside, the two juvenile wyverlings remain curled and still, like twisted branches carved from stone. Luka lifts them gently. They stir, sluggish and confused. One growls weakly. The other coughs up a small hiss but doesn’t fight him.  He sets them down in a patch of thick underbrush, far from the trail.

Sprinkles their shiny hoard, glass pebbles, bottle caps, shiny knick knacks.  He cuts the zip ties. Then he backs away, leaving them in the dark.

Let the wild take them back.

When he left, the wound had closed. A week was all it took. It scarred over neat and pale. He boarded the bullet train bound for Crocus. The platform was still damp with morning.

He leaned his forehead to the glass. The seal burned faintly against his throat. The crawling sense beneath his skin, the phantom skittering of things that were not there.

He knew this pattern by now. Still, his fingers moved. He rolled up his sleeves and checked. Nothing. Still, he scratched, not dragging, just pressing down. Nails into the soft underside of his arm.

Just enough to leave small crescents, just enough to feel it. He exhaled, a slow breath let out carefully. His skin crawled. He closed his eyes and let the train carry him forward.