Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The mission was over. At least, her part of it was.

Stelle leaned against the edge of a lantern post, letting the weight of her weapon rest against her shoulder. Blade was only a few steps ahead, but he might as well have been on another planet. He never lingered after a job — his gaze always chasing ghosts no one else could see.

“Don’t wait for me,” he muttered, voice rough with exhaustion, or maybe Mara. It was always hard to tell with him.

Stelle rolled her eyes. “Not like you’re much of a company anyway.”

He didn’t answer, drifting into the shadows of the crowded street. His shoulders were taut, his stride uneven. She recognized the signs; Mara clung to him like chains, dragging him somewhere she couldn’t follow.

“Not my problem,” she told herself. He’d vanish into the dark, return eventually, and the cycle would repeat. It always did.

Her phone buzzed, a sharp, insistent tone. Stelle fished it from her pocket and swiped the screen. A single message from the group chat blinked back at her, timestamped only seconds ago:

Kafka: Bladie’s unravelling, Stelle. Off-script. Stop him before he kills a future asset.

Another ping followed, Silver Wolf’s typing bubble chasing Kafka’s words.

Silver Wolf: Yeah, he’s about to Mara-out real bad.

Silver Wolf: Asset’s ID flagged: DH.

Silver Wolf: Don’t ask. Just handle it.

Silver Wolf:  (￢_￢)

Stelle froze, thumb hovering over the device. “DH?”

She looked toward the direction Blade had gone. His figure had already melted into the night.

“Future asset,” she muttered. “Right. Like that explains anything.”

But she didn’t ignore orders. Not from Kafka. Not from Elio’s script.

Sliding her communicator back into her coat, Stelle pushed away from the post and started walking, faster with each step. If Blade really was about to lose control, then whoever this “asset” was didn’t stand a chance.

And if the script wanted them alive… then it was her job to make sure Blade didn’t get in the way.

The clang of steel echoed in his ears, loud enough to drown out his own heartbeat. Dan Heng darted through the narrow street, every step matched by the heavy, relentless rhythm of pursuit. Blade didn’t tire. He never did.

Dan Heng’s lungs burned, each breath scraping like fire against his throat, but the man behind him was as steady as shadow. The faint clang of a weapon being drawn snapped him into motion again, twisting sharply into an alley. Too slow.

Steel cut the air, forcing him back. Dan Heng’s spear came up instinctively, sparks flashing where their weapons met. The impact rattled up his arm, the pain traveling all the way to his spine. He staggered. Blade pressed forward, eyes blazing with something between hatred and inevitability.

“You have nowhere to run,” Blade growled. “Not from me.”

Dan Heng’s grip tightened. He knew he couldn’t keep this up — not against someone who fought like a storm given flesh. His body screamed for retreat, but they had reached the end of the alley, leaving him nowhere to go.

Cornered.

Blade lifted his weapon for the final strike. Dan Heng raised his spear in reflex, bracing for the blow—

—but the world cracked with sudden force.

A sharp hum filled the alley, low and resonant, vibrating through the stone beneath his feet. Another figure crashed in, seemingly tall with silver hair peeking out from beneath her hood, intercepting Blade’s strike with impossible precision. Sparks flew, steel clashing against steel—and Dan Heng froze.

The woman was… different.

A faint light pulsed just beneath her collarbone, soft as moonlight but insistent, tracing the rhythm of her heartbeat. Her eyes glimmered like twin stars, catching the dim alley light and reflecting it back in streaks of gold and violet. And there was the hum — almost like the alley itself resonated with her presence.

Dan Heng blinked, startled. He’d faced warriors, assassins, monsters during his journey… but never someone who felt like a living constellation.

“Does she have… a star inside of her? Just who is this stranger?”

She moved like water, fluid and unerring, forcing Blade back with relentless efficiency. One step, another, until finally, a sharp twist of her blade sent him staggering to the ground, crimson staining his mouth — but Blade’s chest still moved, indicating he was breathing.

Dan Heng’s eyes widened. He wanted to act, to intervene, to run before it's too late, anything — but the woman’s calm radiance and the hum from her chest kept him rooted in place.

She knelt beside Blade, her expression softening, almost bittersweet.

“I’m sorry, but it's necessary,” she whispered, voice barely above the hum of her presence. The glow in her chest pulsed faster, almost as if it's mirroring her internal conflict. She drove the finishing blow with precision, without unnecessary movement… but enough to ensure his death, at least temporarily.

Blade’s eyes fluttered briefly, a faint recognition in them, before he finally relaxed into unconsciousness.

The woman exhaled, a faint glow lingering in the dim alley, the hum fading like a receding tide. She didn’t look at Dan Heng immediately. When she did, her eyes — a pair of gold, still faintly radiant — met his.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

Finally, Dan Heng’s voice came, hoarse. “…Why?”

Her gaze was unreadable. “Not supposed to keel over just yet. The script needs you alive, apparently.” She said simply.

He narrowed his eyes, gripping his spear tighter. Script? What script?

She rose, the hum from her chest tapering off, stretched her arms above her head and finally turned toward him.

“You should go,” she said. “He won’t stay down long.”

Dan Heng’s voice was quiet but sharp. “And what about you?”

She tilted her head, almost casual. “I’ll manage.” Then, from a pocket, she produced a small wrapped bun and tossed it toward him.

He caught it on reflex, bewildered. Warm. “Food?”

“Runaways gotta eat too, don’t they?” Her voice carried the faintest vibration, the pulse from her chest matching her words in rhythm, subtle but uncanny.

“I don’t take charity,” he said.

“Good thing it isn’t charity,” she replied, shrugging. “Just making sure you’re not dead before we cross paths again.”

Her eyes glowed faintly in the shadows, and the hum throbbed softly, like a promise.

Before he could speak, she crouched back down to Blade and lifted him effortlessly onto her shoulders, the glow of her chest lighting the alley in soft, warm pulses.

Dan Heng’s eyes widened, jaw dropping.

“What—what are you doing?”

“I’m taking him with me,” she said simply. Her calm, otherworldly presence radiated authority. “He’s neutralized. He won’t wake up mid-carry. Trust me.”

Dan Heng’s mind raced. “Trust? In her? She’s glowing… that humming is familiar… She's carrying his pursuer like he weighs nothing…”

She gave him a final, almost imperceptible nod before striding into the shadows. The hum from her presence faded gradually, leaving only the glow in her chest seared into his memory and the uneasy certainty that she was not a person like any he had met before.

Dan Heng held the bun, stared at the empty alley, and felt a chill of certainty.

This won’t be the last time they meet. Not by far.

The weight across her shoulders wasn’t unfamiliar. Blade’s body was lean but deceptively heavy, every step dragging at muscles that had long since stopped complaining. He smelled of iron and ash — always did, when Mara chewed him hollow.

She adjusted her grip, the motion automatic.

The glow in her chest faltered, dimming to a flicker before swelling again in steady rhythm. Not pain exactly, but enough to remind her it was there, constant and alien. A part of her, yet never hers.

Her fingers brushed briefly over the light, through the fabric of her coat. What are you turning me into?

Blade stirred faintly, or maybe she only imagined it. She pressed her lips together and kept walking.

“You owe me for this one, Bladie,” she muttered, her tone flat but carrying a softness beneath. A softness she shouldn’t have. The words faded into the night, lost in the hum of the Stellaron.

She didn’t look back. Not at the man staring at the bun before throwing it away, eyes sharp enough to cut through her casual mask. Not at the alley that reeked of steel and blood.

The script would unravel eventually — it always did — but Stelle already knew one truth that needed no confirmation.

The glow in her chest wasn’t a gift. It was a chain. And no matter how far she walked, she could still hear it murmuring, binding her to a story she hadn’t chosen.

For now, the threads pulled her forward.

And she followed, carrying both her burden… and the quiet, gnawing fear that someday, she might not recognize herself at all.

Chapter Text

The next time he saw her, it wasn’t fate that called — it was fire.

The outpost was under siege, flames chewing through wooden beams, screams tearing through the smoke. Dan Heng’s spear gleamed as he cut a path through the chaos, dragging civilians toward safety. The attackers were efficient, brutal — mercenaries, maybe — but his focus shattered when he heard the hum.

It rolled over the battlefield like a breath between heartbeats. Not loud, not intrusive, but undeniable. His chest tightened.

And then he saw her.

The same figure from that night stood in the center of it all, the glow beneath her coat flashing with each pulse of her weapon. She moved differently here, less precise than in the alley, more like a storm caught mid-dance. Every strike turned firelight into starlight, her presence bending the chaos into strange, fragile order.

When their eyes met across the smoke, he almost faltered. She only tilted her head, as if to say: Well, you’re alive. That’s good enough.

But words had no place here.

Dan Heng leapt into the fray, his spear weaving alongside her blade. For a brief, breathless stretch of time, they fought as though they had always fought together. Her hum set the rhythm; his movements filled the spaces between.

A mercenary lunged for his blind spot. Before he could react, Stelle’s blade intercepted, sparks spraying inches from his face.

“Careful,” she muttered, her glow flaring as she shoved the attacker back.

He exhaled sharply, steadied himself. “…Thank you.”

Her lips quirked faintly. “Guess we’re even now,” she said before winking at him, then she lunged further into the chaos.

Later, when the smoke had thinned and the civilians were safe, he found her sitting alone at the edge of the ruins. The glow in her chest flickered faintly, dimmer than before, as though the fight had drained it.

“You shouldn’t linger,” Dan Heng said quietly, approaching. “If they circle back—”

“I know.” She plucked a piece of ash from her sleeve, flicked it away. Her gaze was distant, fixed on the stars just beginning to pierce the smoke. “But sometimes it feels like the script wants me exactly where I shouldn’t be.”

Dan Heng frowned. That word again. Script.

He lowered himself onto the broken stone beside her. “…What do you mean by that?”

Her eyes slid toward him, unreadable. “You’ll figure it out eventually. Or maybe you won’t. Doesn’t matter.”

But the faintest tremor in her voice betrayed her.

For a long moment, silence stretched between them. Then she pulled something from her pocket and held it out. Another bun, still warm, steam rising into the night.

“Here.”

Dan Heng stared at it, almost incredulous. “…Again?”

“You didn’t eat the first one, did you?” Her tone was light, but her gaze sharpened, as if she already knew the answer.

He hesitated — then took it. This time, he didn’t refuse.

Her glow pulsed once, faint and steady, like the rhythm of a heartbeat.

And Dan Heng realized, with a mix of unease and reluctant clarity, that he wasn’t the only one carrying something he didn’t ask for.

They might have parted then, but fate tugged again.

Dan Heng was scouting the outskirts of the settlement when the ambush struck — arrows whistling from the cliffs, a ring of Fragmentum Monsters tightening around him. He fought with precision, his spear keeping the closest at bay, but there were too many.

An arrow cut past his cheek. Another lodged in the earth where he’d stood a heartbeat earlier. His lungs burned, movements slowing.

Then the hum returned.

It cascaded through the air like the low note of an unseen instrument, rattling his bones before it cut through the ring of attackers. The same woman from before landed between him and the enemies, her blade drawing a line of starlight across the dirt.

“Didn’t I tell you to be careful?” she said, exasperation laced with something softer.

Dan Heng exhaled, his grip tightening on his spear. “…And yet you’re here again.”

Her glow flared, pulsing outward. The monsters staggered, disoriented, long enough for her to strike — her blade weaving arcs of light that drove them back into the shadows.

When the last fell, she stood still for a moment, chest heaving faintly, the glow beneath her collarbone blazing brighter than before. She wordlessly walked over, and handed him yet another wrapped bun.

Dan Heng’s eyes narrowed. He couldn’t look away. “…That light. That sound. It isn’t natural.”

She froze, then glanced down at the faint star-shape shimmering against her chest. Her expression flickered, unreadable, before she answered.

“It’s a Stellaron.”

The words dropped like a blade into silence.

Dan Heng felt the world tilt. His hand twitched toward his weapon, instincts screaming at him. A Stellaron — alive, inside her? His mind raced, parsing what he knew: corruption, disaster, destruction. Stellaron were not people. They were calamities given form.

“You’re—” his voice cracked, hoarse with disbelief. “You’re carrying a Stellaron inside you?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Yeah. Shocking, I know. Doesn’t mean I bite.”

“Doesn’t—” His voice rose before he caught it, breath stuttering in his chest. “That’s not— You should be—”

“Dead? A monster? A walking apocalypse?” She shrugged, though her tone carried more weight than nonchalance. “Take your pick. I’ve heard them all.”

Dan Heng stared, dumbfounded, every fragment of his careful composure slipping. The biologist in him demanded answers, data, explanation. The fugitive in him screamed to run. But the man — the man remembered how her glow had guided civilians through fire, how her blade had saved him twice before this.

The hum softened, steady, pulsing like a heartbeat.

He realized his knuckles were white against his spear, tension trembling in his arms.

And the silver-haired woman, luminous even in stillness, only watched him with eyes that seemed impossibly tired.

“…You’re not what I expected,” he admitted finally, voice low.

Her faint smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Good. Scripts get boring when everyone plays their parts too perfectly.”

She turned, already walking back toward the ruins. “Eat the bun this time, Dan Heng. Tomorrow’s meal isn’t promised after all.”

“Wait!” he scrambled.

The woman stopped but didn’t turn around, glancing at him over her shoulder instead.

“…What’s your name?”

Long, excruciating silence, then—

“Stelle. My name is Stelle. Fitting, isn’t it?” She chuckled, then continued to walk away.

The hum lingered after she was gone, threading into the silence like a chain around his ribs.

And he wondered, not for the first time, if he had just stepped into someone else’s story.

Stelle’s footsteps whispered against the rubble as she slipped further from the outpost. The glow beneath her collarbone pulsed faintly, a heartbeat she carried alone.

Her phone buzzed — probably another reprimand from Kafka and Silver Wolf — but she ignored it, letting the hum and light guide her instead.

The night air carried the faint scent of smoke and ash, still warm from the chaos behind her. She paused for a heartbeat, letting the glow of the Stellaron trace the rhythm of her pulse, steadying herself.

Even as the settlement faded into the distance, she felt the thread tugging, pulling her toward a story she hadn’t chosen, toward someone who would meet her again, and toward a future she had no map for. A thread of fate that Elio hadn’t woven himself.

The hum whispered, and she followed, carrying both her burden… and the fragile hope that, for once, she could step lightly through someone else’s chaos without shattering it completely.

“Let’s meet again under better circumstances… Dan Heng.”

Chapter Text

The air stank of rust and scorched ozone. Dan Heng moved carefully, a grey cloak concealing his figure, the haft of his spear steady in his grip. This planet had no shortage of predators, but the sound ahead wasn’t beast-like. Too precise. Too deliberate.

He rounded the bend just as a flare of light burst — not natural, but familiar. That pulse. That hum.

Stelle.

She stood with her back to the cliff wall, blade raised. Three enemies closed in, weapons gleaming. One already lay crumpled at her feet, but blood slicked her sleeve, trailing crimson down her wrist. The glow beneath her collarbone flickered, weaker than he’d seen before.

For a moment he thought she would hold her own. Then her knees bent, buckling ever so slightly.

Dan Heng didn’t think. His spear cut through the air, knocking one opponent back. By the time the second turned, Dan Heng had already pivoted, steel colliding against steel. Sparks rained, shouts echoed. The third lunged, only to crumple under the arc of Dan Heng’s counter.

The silence after was sudden, almost deafening.

Stelle slid down the wall, landing with a hiss of breath. She pressed a hand against her side, blood seeping hot between her fingers.

“You…” Her tone was dry, but her lips twitched. “We gotta stop meeting like this.”

Dan Heng approached warily, eyes scanning her wound. He expected… something alien. Silver ichor. Starlight. Instead, he saw red. Human red.

“You bleed,” he murmured, almost to himself.

Her eyes lifted to his, steady despite the pallor in her face. “What were you expecting?”

He didn’t answer. His grip on the spear tightened, but he crouched beside her, tearing a strip from his cloak.

“Careful,” she teased softly, though her voice lacked the strength to make it sharp. “Keep this up and someone will think you care.”

The canyon wind howled through the silence after battle, carrying the metallic tang of blood and the acrid sting of ozone. Stelle tilted her head back against the wall, hand still clamped over her side. She was pale, but the way her eyes tracked him — steady, unreadable — reminded Dan Heng she wasn’t fragile.

Still, she was bleeding.

Dan Heng leaned closer without asking, and pressed the fabric against the gash along her ribs. She hissed at the pressure but didn’t push him away.

“You could’ve waited,” she muttered, trying for wry. “Let me finish the last two myself.”

“You would’ve collapsed before then,” he said flatly.

“Details.”

The cloth darkened quickly with red. Red — nothing else. Dan Heng stared at it longer than he should have. “…You’re not different.”

“Mm?”

“You bleed like anyone else.”

For a heartbeat, something flickered in her expression — surprise, maybe, or something sharper. Then she smirked faintly. “Good. Maybe that’ll stop you from staring at me like I’m a ghost.”

Dan Heng stiffened, looking away. “I wasn’t.”

She didn’t call him out on the lie.

The silence stretched until she dug into her pocket with her free hand. “Here.”

She pulled out a small pendant, strung on a thin leather cord — a piece of jade, smoothed and etched faintly with swirls. In the fractured light, it caught a green so deep it almost seemed alive.

Dan Heng blinked, caught off guard. “…What is this?”

“A souvenir.” Her tone was light, though the words landed heavy. “I found it in a market two stops back. Reminded me of you, so I bought it. Yes, I bought it,” she added quickly, narrowing her eyes before he could speak. “I don’t steal. I have money. Shocking, I know.”

His fingers hovered but didn’t take it. “…You carried this. For me?”

“Not exactly for you,” she corrected, though her lips twitched. “Just in case we crossed paths again. And behold, here we are. Script’s funny like that.”

Reluctantly, he accepted it. The jade was cool against his palm, heavier than it looked. He threaded it into his belt, where it disappeared beneath the folds of his cloak.

“…You didn’t have to.”

“I know,” she said simply. “But I did.”

They stayed there a while longer, sitting against the canyon wall. The hum beneath her collarbone was softer now, like a lull instead of a warning.

Dan Heng’s gaze drifted toward her bandaged side. “You shouldn’t move for a while. The wound will reopen.”

She leaned her head back, eyes half-lidded. “Guess I’ll just have to trust you to keep the monsters away, then.”

He didn’t respond, but his hand brushed the pendant absently, as though making a silent promise.

For the first time since they’d met, the silence between them wasn’t hostile or wary. It was just… quiet.

The silence held until Stelle shifted, testing her side with a wince. She reached for her weapon out of habit but let it fall back against the stone.

“You know…” she began, voice quieter now, “you weren’t supposed to be here.”

Dan Heng’s brow furrowed. “Supposed?”

“According to the Script,” she said, the word weighted, almost bitter. “This whole canyon detour? Not part of it. There wasn’t supposed to be this many monsters, me getting separated from the others wasn’t meant to happen. And neither was us meeting again. So, if you’re smart, you’ll be long gone before the next page turns.”

His gaze sharpened. “…Someone else is coming.”

“Sam. Or Kafka.” Her hand ghosted over the glow beneath her collarbone, pulse quickening with the Stellaron’s faint hum. “If they find you with me, you won’t walk away a second time… or at least not with everything intact. You’re needed alive in the future and all that.”

Dan Heng studied her for a long, unreadable moment. Then, simply; “You’re with the Stellaron Hunters.”

The words weren’t an accusation, just fact.

Stelle blinked, caught off guard. “You’re… not surprised.”

“I suspected.” His voice carried no heat, only precision. “Your presence with Blade. The way you spoke about the Script, as if it were doctrine. The glow in your chest.” He paused, eyes narrowing faintly. “And the way you carried him away from there, when you had no pressing reason to.”

Her smirk was thin, almost nervous. “You sound like you’ve been keeping notes.”

“Observation is key for survival.”

“Cute,” she muttered, shaking her head. “But knowing doesn’t make you safer. It just paints a bigger target on your back.”

The pendant at his belt shifted with the wind, tapping softly against the steel of his spear. Dan Heng’s hand brushed it once, deliberate.

“I’ll take my chances.”

For the first time that night, something like genuine surprise flickered across her face. Not fear, not irritation — just surprise.

“You’re a strange one,” she said softly.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a sharp, insistent note. She flinched, fingers twitching toward it, then shoved it deeper inside.

“…That’s my cue.” She pushed herself up, biting back a hiss when her side protested. Her balance faltered a step, and without thinking, Dan Heng steadied her arm.

Stelle froze, then glanced down at his hand before lifting her eyes to his. “…You should really stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Acting like I’m not dangerous.” Her tone was almost playful, but it couldn’t hide the tremor in her words.

Dan Heng’s grip eased, though he didn’t let go until she was steady. “Dangerous doesn’t mean undeserving.”

Her mouth opened, then shut again. For once, no witty retort.

The glow beneath her collarbone flared, pulling her gaze away. “…Guess this is goodbye. Again.”

“Until the next page,” Dan Heng murmured.

Stelle gave a sharp little laugh, already stepping back into the canyon's shadows. “Careful. Keep saying things like that, and you’ll start sounding like one of us.”

She vanished into the dark, leaving only the faint hum of the Stellaron and the weight of jade against his side.

Dan Heng stared after her, unsettled by how easily the Script had drawn him in… and by how much he wanted to resist it.

He stood in the canyon long after her presence faded, the night wind tugging at his coat. The hum she carried lingered in his bones, faint but insistent, as if the air itself hadn’t yet forgotten her.

He touched the small weight at his belt, the pendant, cool against his palm. A gift, she had said. Something that “reminded her of him.”

The thought unsettled him. They had met thrice — no, four times now — and already she was mapping him into her strange constellation of fated encounters.

And worse, he had let her.

His grip tightened around the pendant. Stellaron Hunters. A woman carrying a Stellaron in her chest, speaking of scripts and inevitability, saving him as though she had known she would.

Logic demanded distance. Instinct warned of danger. Bonds meant trust, and trust is something that can be easily broken. Something that shouldn’t be given or taken lightly.

And yet, when she spoke of leaving, he hadn’t wanted her to.

The silence pressed heavier the longer he stood there. Somewhere in the cliffs, a fragmentum beast’s cry echoed — too far to be a threat, but close enough to remind him the world was not a safe ground.

Dan Heng tilted his head towards the sky, searching gaze looking at the stars, forcing his thoughts into order. It was just a trinket. Just a reminder. Nothing more.

And yet the image of her glow, her half-smile, the way she had flinched at his touch like someone unaccustomed to gentleness, remained burned into his memory.

He brushed his thumb over the pendant again, frowning. A gift, from someone who should have been an enemy. Someone who carried a Cancer of All Worlds in her chest, yet had treated him like…

Like a person.

Dan Heng froze at the thought, startled by its simplicity. He had met many faces in his flight across the stars — mercenaries, monsters, bystanders who wanted nothing to do with him. But none of them had reached for him like she did.

A stranger. A Stellaron Hunter.

And yet, somehow… his first friend.

The word felt foreign, too fragile to speak aloud. He tucked it away with the pendant, hidden but kept.

Her boots scuffed against the dust, her glow steadying. The other Hunters wouldn’t understand. To them, he was an asset, a thread, a part to be played when Elio needed him.

But to her?

Her chest tightened. She thought of the way he hadn’t flinched when he saw her glow. The way his eyes had softened, only barely, when she pressed the pendant into his hand.

No one had looked at her like that before. Not since—

She cut off the thought, jaw tightening. Too dangerous. Too vulnerable.

Still, the truth whispered in the hum of the Stellaron. Dan Heng wasn’t just a name in the script.

He was her first friend.

And that… terrified her more than the Hunters ever could.

Stelle leaned against the shadow of a jagged rock outcrop, her phone buzzing again. She finally pulled it free.

Kafka: You’re straying further than you should, Stelle. Elio didn’t write this path for you.

Silver Wolf: Yeah, running into DH twice in a row? (¬‿¬) That’s not “coincidence,” that’s “bad RNG.”

Kafka: This isn’t a joke, Silver Wolf. Stelle, every step you take outside the script puts us all at risk. Pre-existing bonds are dangerous.

You: Oh, please. I covered my tracks better than Silver Wolf covers her kill/death ratio.

Silver Wolf: EXCUSE me?? (╬ Ò﹏Ó) My K/D is flawless, tyvm.

You: Uh-huh. Sure. Must’ve been lag then.

Kafka: Stop deflecting. Do you think I won’t notice when you start protecting variables you were never meant to touch?

Silver Wolf: lol. Translation: “Behave, or mom’s gonna ground you.”

Kafka: Silver Wolf.

Silver Wolf: What? It’s true. (¬ᴗ¬)

Silver Wolf: Also, wow. Stelle’s growing up. Making her first friend and everything. (✿◠‿◠)

You:  Shut up.

Kafka: I mean it, Stelle. Bonds make you hesitate. And hesitation gets people killed. Don’t test me on this.

Stelle stared at the screen until it dimmed and turned off in her palm. The glow beneath her collarbone pulsed once, twice, like an answer she didn’t want to hear.

First friend, huh?

She almost laughed. Because it felt true — and that was the most dangerous part of all.

Chapter Text

It had been two years since the canyon. Two years since ash and silence and the gift of a jade pendant. Two years since Dan Heng had joined the Astral Express Crew, two years since Dan Heng had last seen her face. Though there had been traces: a paper bag left on a bench on the Herta Space Station’s dock, holding a neatly wrapped bun; a small satchel tucked beside his unattended luggage on a quiet planet, always where he would notice it.

No notes. No name. Only the offerings themselves — warm, fragrant, impossible to mistake.

She was still out there, and she wanted him to know it.

It had begun as accident. Or so he told himself, the first time.

A long day, the kind that pressed exhaustion into his bones and dulled the edge of thought. The Express crew had checked into an inn on a backwater planet — routine, safe enough. By the time he reached his room, the others were already asleep.

Something waited by the door.

A paper packet, faintly warm. Inside it was a bun. The wrapper bore a scrawl of ink, lines looping into what could only generously be called a maple leaf. Beneath it, in hurried script: Eat well.

Suspicion prickled, but he carried it inside. He ate the bun.

The second time, there was no mistaking intent. Another bun, another doodle — this one a spear, badly bent. Bet yours is straighter, the wrapper mocked.

Dan Heng saved that one. Folded it flat. Tucked it into the back of his journal, though he never said why.

By the fourth time, he had stopped questioning it. The others would fall asleep, the inn’s lanterns gutter low, and there it would be, waiting outside his door like a ritual. Always planetside. Never on the Express. Never anywhere the others might notice.

And one evening, he left something in return.

He had bartered for the wood in a crowded market, drawn by its pale grain. He carved two small stars into its surface with careful hands. One was crooked, but he left it. Strung on a cord, the charm was modest, practical, easy to tuck away.

He placed it beside the spot the buns are usually waiting at his door, his fingers lingering longer than he intended. No note. No words. Just the charm.

By the next night, the charm was gone.

In its place, a wrapped bun sat folded neat. The doodle this time; a dragon with wings far too large for its body, fire curling from its mouth in uneven spirals. Beside it, scrawled with triumphant force: Finally.

Dan Heng pressed the paper flat, slid it into his journal with the others, and paused over it longer than he should have.

Somewhere, unseen, someone was laughing.

And for reasons he refused to examine, he didn’t mind.

He had said nothing of it to the others. Not to Himeko, who had all but dragged him onto the Astral Express in the first place, gently insistent that he did not have to wander alone. Not to Welt, whose quiet perception rarely missed a thing. And not to March, who had joined just five weeks ago, eyes bright with wonder at every star they passed.

The buns were his secret, and hers.

Stelle shouldn’t have done it. She knew that.

The Script left no room for detours, no room for whims. But the buns had been her rebellion, a harmless tether to the quiet man she had once stumbled across in an alley. A way to say I see you, when the world insisted she shouldn’t.

The second time, she’d drawn the spear. She’d grinned to herself as she left it, imagining the flat line of his mouth when he read the words.

Every wrapper after that became a message. One-sided, yes, but hers. Teasing. Familiar. A way to carve her own lines into the Script where none existed.

And then one night, when she brought a bun and prepared to slip away into shadow, something else was waiting on the floor.

A charm. Small, carved wood, strung on a cord. Two stars etched into its surface, one lopsided.

Her breath caught.

She turned it over and over in her hand, the bun forgotten for once. It was nothing elaborate. Nothing grand. But it was his. His answer.

Her grin bloomed so wide it hurt. She pressed the charm to her chest, hiding it from the glow beneath her collarbone, hiding it from the Script that whispered she shouldn’t keep it.

Too dangerous, it said. Too personal.

She wore it anyway.

And when she left her doodle that night — dragon spewing fire, wings ridiculous, scrawl triumphant — she wrote one word with ink smudged from her excitement.

Finally.

No one would ever know. Not Kafka, not Elio. Not even him.

But alone in the dark, Stelle laughed, soft and breathless, her fingers brushing the stars he had carved for her.

For once, she had something the Script couldn’t take.

This tradition of theirs went on for years, all of them without meeting face to face with each other. Doodles upon doodles, each one holding more meaning than the other. Undisturbed, unchanging. Up until now.

The call came while he was in the Parlor Car.

Static shuddered through the comm line, jolting Pom-Pom out of their seat with a squeak.

“Eeeeh?! Emergency?! Again?!” Their round face scrunched in alarm, tiny arms waving as though to ward off the sound. “Why is it always when I finally polish the tea set—!”

Welt adjusted his glasses, calm despite the distortion. “Focus, Pom-Pom. Put it through.”

The signal sharpened just enough to let a strained voice break through:

“…Stellaron surges—the Harmony wards are collapsing—please, if anyone can hear us, we need help before the city falls—”

The feed snapped off in a burst of static.

“…Harmony Pathstriders,” Welt murmured, expression tightening. “They would not send a call unless the situation was dire.”

Pom-Pom’s pom flared like a candle. “S-Should I make tea? No, wait, evacuation protocols — what if the whole train shakes apart?!”

“Pom-Pom.” Himeko’s voice, gentle but firm, could be heard from the couch. “Breathe. We’ll handle it.”

March leaned forward in her seat, hair getting in her face. “Wait, those were actual Harmony Pathstriders, right? As in, people who keep entire civilizations from breaking apart? I thought they were… y’know… basically unshakable.”

Welt inclined his head gravely. “Exactly. Which is why this is no ordinary Stellaron disaster.”

Dan Heng had already closed his book, the jade pendant cool against his chest. His silence said enough.

The planet was beautiful still, though unravelling at the seams.

Great temples of pale stone loomed over the city, each etched with Harmony glyphs that should have glowed like stars in rhythm. Now the glow flickered out of time, jagged where Stellaron fissures split the ground.

Smoke choked the air, but through it civilians fled — clothes torn, relics clutched, some faintly shining with Harmony blessings that sputtered like dying lanterns.

The Express crew scattered with purpose: Welt using his gravity to keep the streets from collapsing entirely; Himeko calling triage orders over the chaos; March darting through smoke, pink and blue coat bright as she pulled children free from rubble, her bow trembling just slightly in her hands.

Dan Heng worked wordlessly, spear braced against falling beams, cloak thrown over a pilgrim as they scrambled for safety. His movements were precise, practiced, until he saw something that had his feet rooted to the ground.

A figure cutting through smoke, deliberate, blade flashing.

She moved like a shield, keeping a wide arc around panicked civilians. At her side clung a teenager, who looked no older than March, who looked seconds from fainting.

Her glow pulsed — deeper than Harmony. Steady. Familiar.

Stelle.

Dan Heng’s breath caught, sharp. It’s been years since the canyon. Years of buns left behind like shadows. Years of silence. And now here she was, standing in firelight with a stranger at her side, saving lives where she probably should not have been.

Beside him, Welt’s cane lifted, gravity humming like a storm. “That is no Harmony Pathstrider. That light—”

Dan Heng cut in, calm but firm. “She’s helping.”

“She carries a Stellaron,” Welt said, voice heavy. “You understand what that means.”

Dan Heng’s gaze did not move from her, even as dust swirled between them. “I understand what I see. And she is saving them.”

The archway above her cracked, stone splitting. The teenager screamed.

Dan Heng moved before thought. His spear braced against the collapse, redirecting the debris in a single, shuddering impact. Dust bloomed in the air, grit catching on his skin—

—and when it cleared, she was there.

Her hand still steady on the boy’s shoulder. Ash streaked across her cheek. Her sleeve was torn. And her eyes, bright and sharp, met his with something like inevitability.

And then her lips twitched, even now.

“…We really gotta stop meeting like this.”

Dan Heng lowered his spear slowly, the weight of the past years hanging between them. Dust curled in the air, sharp with heat and static, but his voice was steady.

“…You’re here.”

Stelle brushed rubble from her sleeve with the back of her hand, unimpressed as ever.

“Sharp as ever.” Her gaze dropped to the teenager still clinging to her arm. “Don’t suppose you’re in the habit of rescuing strangers and old acquaintances these days?”

The boy’s wide eyes darted between Dan Heng and the broken street. She gave him a gentle push. “Go on. Safe zone’s that way.”

He hesitated only a second before bolting toward the square, where March’s voice carried faintly above the chaos: “This way, you’re almost there—keep moving!” Bright and reassuring, though distant enough not to hear or see who had sent him running.

Dan Heng’s eyes lingered until the boy was gone. Only then did they return to Stelle.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“And yet,” she said dryly, “here I am.”

The crunch of gravel underfoot signalled Welt’s arrival. His cane tapped once, then settled, the faint pull of his gravity field prickling against the air like a storm waiting to break.

“She carries it,” he said flatly, eyes narrowing. “The Stellaron.”

Stelle tensed — barely, but enough. Her hand twitched near her weapon.

Dan Heng moved without hesitation, stepping between them, spear angled just low enough to look like caution instead of threat. “Mr. Yang.” His voice was calm but firm. “She’s not our enemy.”

“You cannot know that,” Welt answered, sharp but precise. “That energy is unmistakable. Do you understand what you’re standing in front of?”

“I saw her save that boy,” Dan Heng said evenly. “She’s been saving all of them. You saw it, too.”

Welt’s frown deepened, though his cane eased by a fraction.

Stelle let the silence stretch before sighing, crouching briefly to rummage through a satchel she’d dropped near the wall. “Suppose I owe you some explanation.”

She pulled out a small paper-wrapped bundle and tossed it without ceremony toward Dan Heng.

He caught it easily, fingers brushing the faint warmth inside. There was a more detailed drawing on it this time; three maple leaves getting swept up by a gust of wind, with glowing fireflies in the background.

“You’re getting more artsy I see,” he murmured. She responded with a soft chuckle and a subtle grin.

 When he unfolded the paper, the smell hit him first — sweet, familiar.

“Do you have an infinite supply of buns, or what?” His voice betrayed a rare crack before it steadied.

Her mouth twitched. “Don’t underestimate me, Dan Heng.”

Something flickered in his eyes, something unguarded, quickly shuttered. The pendant at his chest weighed heavy all of a sudden.

“As for why I’m here…” Stelle’s tone shifted, quieter now. “Couple months back, a local kid pulled me out of a scam. Spent his last coin protecting a stranger. I couldn’t just stand by and watch him die when things went south.”

Her gaze followed the boy’s path into the distance. “That wasn’t in the Script. But Elio doesn’t get to decide everything.”

Welt caught the word immediately. “…Script?”

She shrugged, sharp but casual. “Big picture. Don’t worry about it.”

Dan Heng studied her for a long moment. His voice, when it came, was softer. “…You haven’t changed.”

Her eyes flicked back, sharp and unreadable. “Neither have you. Still in the business of wood carving? I’d like to commission something.”

The faintest ghost of a smile touched his lips. He let the silence say what he wouldn’t.

Welt’s cane struck lightly against the ground, anchoring the moment. His eyes remained fixed on Stelle, heavy with suspicion. “This conversation isn’t finished. Once the civilians are safe, we will have answers.”

Dan Heng inclined his head slightly — acknowledgment, not agreement. His gaze found Stelle’s once more, steady and searching.

She tilted her head, lips quirking despite the tension. “Guess we’re overdue for a real chat, huh?”

The smoke had cleared enough to reveal scorched ruins, and the wail of sirens faded into the distance. Civilians moved in scattered lines toward makeshift shelters, guided by emergency protocols and March’s distant shouts.

Stelle stood just beyond the main crowd, hood pulled low, blade sheathed at her side. The faint hum of the Stellaron beneath her collarbone pulsed softly, like a heartbeat she alone could hear.

Dan Heng approached, keeping his distance but attentive. His eyes flicked between her and Welt, who remained tense, upright, every movement deliberate. The weight of suspicion pressed down like gravity.

“You need to explain yourself,” Welt said flatly, cane tapping against the ground. Each strike carried authority, but also an edge, his patience thinning. “That energy… I recognize it. You cannot simply walk among civilians and hope it goes unnoticed.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Stelle said lightly, though her gaze never left him. “But if I had left, that boy back there… he wouldn’t have made it.”

Dan Heng stepped closer, voice calm but firm. “Mr. Yang. Look at what she did. She risked herself to save them. That’s what matters.”

Welt’s eyes narrowed. “Actions do not erase danger. That energy is volatile. Even if she is… helpful, she carries something that could end lives, unintentionally or otherwise.”

“She didn’t end anyone’s life,” Dan Heng countered. “…Not this time. And I trust her to do what’s right.”

“She’s telling the truth,” he continued, lifting his pleading gaze at Welt, desperate for understanding. “She’s not straying for herself. She’s straying for them — for the innocent. That’s why I believe her.”

Welt’s jaw tightened. “Still… intentions don’t negate consequences.”

Something sharp flared in Stelle’s eyes at that, and she let out a breath.

“You think I don’t know that?” She touched the wooden pendant at her chest, almost absently. “Elio never lets me forget it. Every step I take, written before it’s even mine.”

“…Elio?” Dan Heng’s brows lifted slightly. He briefly caught Welt tensing beside him.

Her laugh was soft, bitter. “The one who writes the Script. The one who insists that deviation leads only to death. I disagreed. I told him there’s proof that straying doesn’t always end in disaster — that sometimes, something good comes of it. That sometimes…” her voice faltered, “…sometimes you save someone.”

Her eyes flicked toward Dan Heng for just a heartbeat. Enough.

Welt caught the shift, his suspicion sharpening, but Dan Heng’s gaze softened instead. “…That’s why you’re here.”

“Yes.” Stelle’s hand clenched at her side. “To prove them wrong. To prove her wrong.”

As if summoned by the word, a faint ripple passed through the air — subtle, sinister, inescapable. The Stellaron’s hum faltered for half a beat.

Stelle recoiled instantly, her shoulders stiffening, a tremor running through her arm before she forced it still.

Dan Heng noticed. He stepped closer, voice low, urgent. “…What is it?”

Her lips pressed into a line. “It’s Kafka.”

The name alone chilled the air between them. Welt’s grip tightened on his cane; Dan Heng’s eyes sharpened with quiet alarm.

“She’s close,” Stelle murmured, her tone quieter now, almost resigned. “And if she’s here, then so are her tricks.”

Welt’s gaze darkened with understanding. “Spirit Whisper.”

Stelle’s throat bobbed. “…She’ll take the memory of this meeting from you. All of this. She doesn’t like loose threads.”

Dan Heng’s fists clenched. “And you’ll let her?”

Her laugh cracked on its edges. “You think I get a choice?” A flicker of bitterness laced her words. “She doesn’t even have to do it herself. One whisper, and a rouge Remembrance-lackey bends to her will… and everything’s gone. I’ve seen it happen before.”

The tremor returned, sharper this time. Dan Heng stepped in front of her without thinking, as though shielding her from an unseen threat. “Then fight it. Fight her.”

“Dan Heng—” her voice broke against his name. She forced herself steady. “You don’t understand. If I resist, it won’t just be your memories she takes. It’ll be worse. For both of you.”

He stared at her, breathing hard, as though memorizing her face before it could vanish from him. She exhaled shakily and reached into her satchel, producing a yellow pendant.

“…I brought one for you this time,” she said softly, pressing it into his hand. “Proof that I was here. Proof that I chose to be here. Even if you won’t remember why.”

His hand tightened around it, knuckles pale. “I’ll remember,” he whispered. “Somehow.”

She smiled faintly, sad and defiant all at once. “…Then maybe you’ll prove me right after all.”

The ripple in the air thickened into a presence, honey-sweet and suffocating. Kafka’s voice drifted faintly on the breeze, velvet and inevitable.

“Time to sleep, my little rebels.”

Stelle flinched. Dan Heng surged forward. Welt raised his cane—

—the threads closed in, and the world went black.

When the threads dissolved, only Kafka and Stelle remained in the hollowed square.

Kafka stepped closer, brushing imaginary dust from Stelle’s shoulder. “You played your part well enough. But don’t mistake kindness for freedom.”

Stelle didn’t look at her. Her gaze lingered instead on the spot where Dan Heng had stood, the pendant still clutched in fading memory.

“…We’ll see,” she whispered.

Kafka’s smile sharpened. The threads coiled back into her shadow, and the ruin was quiet once more.

Dan Heng sat at his desk, the faint hum of the Astral Express’ engine  vibrating through the walls. His journal lay open before him, but the words refused to come.

Instead, his eyes lingered on the wrappers he had carefully flattened and tucked between its pages. Each one bore a doodle; dragons, crooked stars, a maple leaf, swaying with imaginary wind. The ink had smudged in places, faded in others, but he traced them anyway, fingers moving over paper as though memorizing each uneven line. Beside them on the table was a yellow pendant, looking so out of place he began to wonder where he even got it.

There was a gap, though. A space his mind insisted should be filled, though he could not say with what. He felt it like a tug in his chest, hollow and insistent. Something… missing.

With a frustrated exhale, he pulled a blank page toward him. His pencil hovered, waiting for a line he couldn’t place. And then, almost without thinking, he began to sketch.

The lines came rough, halting — circles overlapping, wings crooked, scales uneven. By the time he stopped, a dragon stared back at him, lopsided and ridiculous. It looked nothing like his usual precise diagrams.

He stared at it for a long time, heart tight with something he couldn’t name.

Welt’s voice interrupted from the doorway. “You’ve been at that for hours.”

Dan Heng shut the book with measured calm, though his grip lingered too tightly on its cover. “Couldn’t sleep.”

Welt studied him, gaze thoughtful. His charge was many things — disciplined, quiet, withdrawn, but distracted was rare. “You don’t remember either, do you?”

“Huh?” Startled, he stared cluelessly at the older man.

“That day, when we were helping out those Harmony Pathstriders. Some of my memories are blurred in certain moments.” He took a deep breath, then sighed, “Yours are too, aren’t they?”

Dan Heng froze, staring at the floor. Now that he narrows it down, indeed some of his memories—

“Yeah, I can’t seem to remember some details either.” He looked positively uncomfortable at the thought. Welt hummed, letting the information sink in.

“Sometimes,” he said carefully after a moment, “memories leave traces, even when we don’t hold onto the whole of them.”

Dan Heng’s breath caught, just faintly. He looked down at his hand, still smudged with graphite. “Traces?”

Welt didn’t press further. “Don’t lose sleep over them. What’s important will find its way back.”

Dan Heng nodded, though the ache in his chest remained. When Welt left, he reopened the journal and slipped the crude dragon sketch between the wrappers, as if it belonged there. He couldn’t explain why. He only knew it did.

The city lights blurred beneath her, fractured into long ribbons as if the world itself had been smeared by careless hands. Stelle sat on the edge of a rooftop, knees pulled close, phone dark in her palm.

For a long time she didn’t move. The hum of the Stellaron beneath her collarbone beat in a rhythm she couldn’t ignore, slow, inexorable. It had always been there — an anchor, a weight, a chain.

Tonight it felt like a noose.

Her breath caught as the thought sharpened, clear in her chest: it had been waiting for her all along, the way a rope waits for the neck it was tied for. Tightening. Drawing closer. One step, one word, one bond at a time.

She closed her eyes. For a moment she could almost feel it, threads ghosting along her throat, invisible fingers tugging until she had no air left.

Elio’s Script. Kafka’s voice. The inevitability of forgetting.

All she had ever done was delay the moment it cinched shut.

Stelle dragged a hand through her hair, pressing the heel of her palm hard against her eyes until sparks bloomed. For a moment she tried not to think. Not to remember.

But memory never asked permission.

“Stelle, you’re drawing that upside down again.”

She froze. The voice was faint — too faint. But it was there, sharp with teasing and warm underneath.

Her mind supplied the rest: Caelus sprawled on the floor beside her, a mess of pencils and paper scattered between them. He’d always pretend to groan at her terrible doodles; dragons with five legs, stars bent in on themselves, but he never threw them away. Sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t looking, he’d tuck them carefully into his jacket.

She remembered the way he had leaned against her shoulder that night, grumbling about boredom but never moving away. The way he had looked at her when he said, “You’ll figure it out, you always do.”

It had been the last time anyone had looked at her with that kind of gentleness. The kind that didn’t demand or fear. The kind that saw her, rope and all, and didn’t flinch.

Her chest tightened, breath catching on something raw.

Her twin brother was gone. Swallowed by the Script, or torn away by something darker, she would never know. All she knew was that when he vanished, the noose had begun to tighten. And it hadn’t stopped since.

Stelle pressed her hands to her eyes more firmly until sparks danced. If she let herself think too long, she could almost feel the rope already cutting off her air, Kafka’s threads pulling it taut.

She wanted to scream. Instead, she reached for the little wooden charm at her belt, rough edges pressing into her palm.

Dan Heng’s.

Her breath trembled. She thought of the way his voice had steadied, low and unyielding, when he told her: “Dangerous doesn’t mean undeserving.”

The rope didn’t fall away. But it shivered, just faintly, as though some hidden hand had hesitated on the knot.

She turned the charm over and over, wood warm from her grip.

Gentleness had been taken from her once. The Script promised it would happen again.

And still, she clung to it.

Because if she didn’t, then the noose had already won.

The air shifted. A faint vibration, threads against stone.

Magenta glinted in the corner of her eye. Fine as spider silk, strands of it shimmered in the dark, catching starlight where no starlight should reach.

Stelle held still, though every instinct screamed to step back, run, fight.

She didn’t. What good would fighting do against someone who had already claimed the script of her life?

“Kafka…” Her voice came rough, uneven. “Don’t. Not yet.”

The woman sighed, the kind of sigh one might give a child begging for a few more minutes before bedtime. “You’re clinging again. That’s all this is.”

“It isn’t clinging.” Stelle’s nails bit into her palm where the charm rested, hidden. “It’s proof. Proof that I’m not just your lines. Proof that I can choose something different.”

Kafka’s smile curved, sharp and pitying all at once. “And what exactly did you choose?”

Stelle’s throat tightened. “To help. To… to keep something.”

“Mm.” Kafka’s gaze flicked toward the stars, thoughtful. “Is that what you think Dan Heng was? Welt Yang?”

The words struck like glass under her skin. Stelle froze. “…What?”

Kafka stepped closer, threads swaying with her. “It was exceptionally difficult to untangle their memories of you. Do you know what that means?” She tilted her head, lashes lowering. “It means they wanted to keep you.”

The breath left Stelle in a shaky rush.

“Welt’s mind is usually so… disciplined,” Kafka went on, fingers brushing a strand of silk until it sang like a string. “But he resisted. And Dan Heng— ah, Dan Heng. Stoic as he is, even he clung. Their minds fought my whispers. Harder than most.”

The rope in Stelle’s chest cinched, merciless. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.

Kafka’s smile softened, and that was somehow worse. “You should feel flattered. People so rarely cling to things they were never meant to have.”

“You erased them,” Stelle whispered, the words breaking on her tongue. “And you’ll erase me, too.”

“I’ll set you free.” Kafka corrected gently. “You’ll walk out of Herta’s station unburdened. You’ll find your role, as written. And when you meet them again, they’ll look at you with clean eyes. No weight. No rope.”

“But I’ll know,” Stelle rasped.

Kafka’s expression didn’t flicker. “Not for long.”

The threads surged, sliding around her wrists, her throat, her mind. Cold silk brushing skin that had only just begun to feel warm again. Stelle jerked back, but Kafka only tilted her head, and the bindings tightened.

“Listen: You’ll forget,” she murmured, as though tucking a child into bed. “You’ll dream of nothing. And when you wake… you’ll be exactly where you need to be.”

The last thing Stelle felt was the wooden charm in her palm, digging deep enough to hurt. She clung to it until the darkness closed in.

And then it was gone.

Chapter Text

The familiar hum in her chest greeted her first when she regained consciousness. It rattled in her ears and pressed against her ribcage.

The second thing she noticed was a slim thread sneakily coiling around her, the sensation disturbing, but felt strangely familiar. Not tight, not cruel — only a suggestion, a promise waiting to be fulfilled. The contact was so faint she might have imagined it, except that her pulse stumbled against it. Then, a voice:

“Wake up, Stelle.”

Her eyes fluttered open.

White light bled across her vision, too sharp, too clean. The ceiling above her was steel plated, unfamiliar. She could feel the chilling floor underneath her, the smooth surface of the wall behind her supporting her body.

And standing over her — the silhouette of a woman.

Wine colored hair spilled over her shoulders. Her smile was patient, but in the way one waits for a child to catch up, not for an equal.

“Where… am I?” Stelle asked, voice breathless.

“A space station, but that’s not important,” the woman wasted no seconds to answer, as if she already knew she was going to ask this very question. The way of her speech was familiar, almost as if…

“Kafka?”

“Great, so you remember me,” she exhaled, satisfied. Stelle had the faint urge to wipe that smile off her face.

“Listen: You are in a daze right now. You don't know who you are, why you're here, or what you're going to do next. You think I look familiar, but you're not sure if you should trust me—"

The words pressed into Stelle’s mind with terrifying ease. Her thoughts felt as though someone had already set them in neat rows, waiting for her to follow.

“...None of that matters. All you need to know is that I’m leaving, and you will be left all alone on this space station. From now on, you needn’t think about your past or doubt yourself.”

Her lips parted in protest, but Kafka’s voice pressed over it like velvet.

“Listen: In the near future, you will encounter all kinds of perils and hardships, but you will also have many wonderful experiences. You’ll meet companions who treat you like family, and embark on surreal adventures with them...”

Stelle’s chest clenched. Family. The word burned through her emptiness like a spark. She could not remember faces, names, voices — but she wanted to. She wanted so badly it ached.

Kafka’s smile didn’t waver. “At the end of your journey, all that perplexes you and troubles you will resolve. This is your future that Elio has foreseen. Do you like it?”

The hum thrummed deeper, threads weaving across the surface of her mind. Stelle clawed inward, searching for something to hold. Her fingers found wood — a pendant hanging at her belt, small and ordinary. Two stars carved into its face, one crooked. She pressed her thumb into the crooked one until her skin hurt.

“No… I don’t want it.” The protest cracked, fragile.

Kafka tilted her head, eyes soft, almost fond. “Listen: Elio can foresee the future, but he can’t make decisions for you. Use that will of yours to reach the end of your story. That’s the you I like.”

“Where are you going...?”

“The next stop, to pave the way for the future that is written. It's like weaving brocade — you and I can only add one gold thread each time, but eventually, we will make a gorgeous pattern.”

The thread at her wrist tugged. The hum inside her echoed. She felt her self unraveling, stitch by stitch.

Then the moment broke. Someone she hadn’t noticed before, a petite girl’s voice behind Kafka — Silver Wolf? — echoed through the room, sharp and impatient. Kafka straightened, the shadow of departure already falling over her.

“How long do you think you need? According to the script, the Astral Express Crew is arriving soon. We should avoid being seen by them.” The girl’s voice was brisk with anxious humour.

“I know, Silver Wolf. Just give me another minute.” Kafka’s ease did not falter; she turned back to Stelle with almost a mother’s gentleness.

“I must leave now. Listen: Don’t worry. Someone will come and find you very soon, just go with them. You won’t remember a thing except me.”

“No...” The word slipped into the space between them like a plea.

Kafka bent once, a hair’s breadth of closeness, and brushed her shoulder almost like a benediction. “When you have a chance to make a choice, make one that you know you won't regret.”

The words settled into her like seeds — small, quiet, but impossible to forget.

Then she stepped back and the room seemed to tilt. Threads light as breath slid along the edges of Stelle’s mind, knitting over and under the places that had been, smoothing them into indistinction. The hum rose, then thinned, and the chain at her ribcage quieted to a purr as Kafka exited and the station’s doors sealed with a whisper.

Silence flooded back in.

The hum in her chest steadied, quieter now, almost lulling. The only proof that anything had been real was the crooked star pendant pressed hard into her palm.

And then the world turned black.

The first thing she noticed about the Astral Express was the warmth.

The train glowed with soft light, not harsh and sterile like the space station’s ceilings, but golden — like lamplight shining through old glass. She particularly likes the one in the Parlor Car — is that a whale? —, the air carried the scent of books, wood polish, and something stronger that made her pause: coffee.

Himeko’s coffee.

It curled through the room, rich and grounding, already more welcoming than any voice could have been.

Stelle hesitated on the threshold. The floor beneath her boots gleamed, the couches looked impossibly soft, and the stars outside the wide windows stretched on forever. It was too much, too safe, too alive, and she didn’t know if she belonged here.

March noticed first. Of course she did.

“Don’t just stand there!” March bounded toward her in a whirl of pink scarf and energy, grabbing her hand as if it had always been hers to take. “C’mon, you’re officially a passenger now!”

Stelle blinked. “Officially?”

“Uh-huh! New passenger equals new family member. That’s how it works here.” March tugged her toward the center of the car without hesitation, her grin radiant enough to burn away the lingering shadows of the station.

Pom-Pom gasped, scandalized. “March! Don’t drag our new guest like a suitcase!” The conductor waddled forward, ears bouncing with indignation, and circled Stelle’s boots. “Look at this dust — and scuff marks! Honestly, do you know how hard it is to keep a train this clean between stops?” Pom-Pom brushed at the floor fussily, muttering about “guest etiquette” under their breath.

Himeko approached with a steaming mug in hand, crimson hair glowing under the lights. She smiled, warm and unhurried, even as she balanced a data pad in the crook of her arm. “Welcome aboard. I’d offer tea, but around here we run on coffee.” She lifted the mug slightly, amused. “You’ll get used to the scent.”

The strong aroma made Stelle tense. She wasn’t even holding the mug, but the heat of it seemed to reach her. Some void-black liquid could be seen in the mug, looking positively life-threatening.

March nervously chuckled behind her, “Heh-eh… Himeko, a-are you sure that’s a good idea? Stelle just got here!”

“Nonsense, March! I’m sure she will like it,” she pressed her free hand to her chest, an all-too-happy smile splitting her face. March gulped in the background. Stelle suddenly feared for her life.

And then there was the man who had been waiting silently at the far end of the car. Welt Yang, cane resting against his chair, spectacles glinting faintly in the lamplight. He looked at her not with March’s exuberance, nor Pom-Pom’s fussing, nor Himeko’s quiet cheerfulness, but with an assessing gaze that somehow wasn’t unkind. Thoughtful, like he was weighing not her worth, but her place.

“Every journey begins somewhere,” Welt said, his voice calm, deep, unshakable. “This can be yours, if you’d like.”

March flopped onto the couch, patting the spot beside her. “Come on! Sit, sit. Trust me, it feels like heaven after running around a space station with the Antimatter Legion snapping at your heels.”

Himeko set the mug down on the table beside Stelle and perched elegantly in an armchair, already sipping her own coffee. Pom-Pom finally seemed satisfied once Stelle sat, fussing one last time with the cushions. Welt remained where he was, steady as a star at the horizon.

It was too much, too sudden. But as Stelle sat with the warmth of the car wrapping around her, the hum in her chest steadied. The crooked star pendant pressed against her palm, reminding her she still had proof she was someone.

For the first time since waking to Kafka’s voice, she thought: maybe I can breathe here.

Stelle lifted the mug, contemplating, before taking a tentative sip—

—only to promptly spit it out.

The Astral Express settled into its rhythm as the station shrank to a pinprick of light.

Most of the crew had retired: March tucked into her bed, Pom-Pom satisfied after a final round of fussing, Himeko somewhere in the control room with her coffee still steaming, Welt lost in his thoughts behind the steady tap of his cane.

Stelle could not sleep.

The train hummed softly, but the hum beneath her ribs was louder still — that other rhythm, alien yet constant, pressing against her bones. It was not painful, not now, only present. Awake. As if reminding her that she carried something more than herself.

So she wandered.

Her steps carried her past doors that whispered shut, past panels that glowed faintly with starlight. She followed instinct, not direction, until she reached the room closest to the Parlor Car. The air before the door smelled faintly of ink and dust.

She opened the door and found herself in the archive.

But it was not empty.

Dan Heng — the dark-haired man with jade eyes that tried to resuscitate her with CPR the first time they met, the man who she felt a tug towards from the moment she opened her eyes — sat at a desk beneath a halo of lamplight. His posture was calm, precise, yet his focus bent over a small spread of objects. A pendant of burnished yellow metal, flattened wrappers tucked into a journal, and an open sketchbook where a dragon’s outline sprawled half-finished.

“Hi,” he said without looking up.

“Hi.”

He did not look surprised to see her. He slowly turned and lifted his gaze, cool and quiet. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Stelle hovered at the threshold, fingers brushing the spines of books on the nearest shelf. “No. The train is quiet, but…” She touched her chest lightly. “I’m not.”

Dan Heng studied her for a breath, then inclined his head. “The archives are open. If reading helps, you’re welcome here.”

She stepped inside. The shelves towered above her, their order both intimidating and comforting. Each book felt like a secret that already belonged to someone else. Her gaze strayed back to the desk, to the odd assortment of trinkets spread across it.

“Do you always keep those?” she asked, nodding toward the wrappers pressed into the journal.

Dan Heng’s lips curved, not a smile exactly, but a soft acknowledgement. “I suppose I do. Small things. Proof that moments happened, no matter how blurred the past may be.”

Stelle’s fingers curled around the crooked wooden star at her belt. Proof. That word made her chest tighten.

“I don’t have anything like that,” she admitted, voice low. “Just this pendant. I don’t even know where it came from.” She held it up, letting the lamplight catch on the crude carvings; two stars, one crooked.

Dan Heng’s eyes lingered on it, something unreadable flickering across his expression. His own hand moved unconsciously toward the yellow pendant at his desk.

“Strange,” he murmured. “It feels… familiar.”

The hum inside her pulsed once, sharp as if in agreement.

“You said you can’t sleep because of… that,” he said at last, eyes flicking to her hand at her chest. “The hum.”

Stelle froze. “You hear it?”

“No.” He shook his head. “But I noticed. In battle, against the Doomsday Beast… when the Stellaron stirred, it resonated with you.” His voice was even, analytical, but there was a faint edge beneath it — not fear, not accusation, but something like unease.

“I felt it too,” Stelle admitted. She pressed her palm flat against her ribs, as if to cage the sound. “Like something inside me wanted to answer the chaos outside. As if… I belonged to it.”

Dan Heng leaned back slightly, studying her like one might study a text in an unfamiliar language. “That’s not an easy burden.”

Her laugh was thin, a brittle attempt at humour. “You think?”

The silence that followed wasn’t cold. It was careful.

Stelle moved closer, curiosity dragging her toward the desk. Her eyes roamed over the wrappers pressed into his journal, the scrawled sketches of dragons, the yellow pendant heavy on the corner. “And what about these? Are they your… burdens?”

He hesitated. Then; “No. They’re… anchors.” His fingers brushed the edge of the sketchbook. “A record of things worth keeping.”

“Proof,” she echoed.

He glanced up, met her eyes. The jade pendant on his clothes glinted in the artificial light. “Exactly.”

Her thumb rubbed across the crooked star until it ached. “Then this is my proof,” she whispered. “Even if I don’t know what it means.”

They stood like that for a long moment, silence thick but not uncomfortable. The Express hummed softly around them; the Stellaron hummed within her; and between the two, something steadier began to weave.

Dan Heng cleared his throat, almost awkwardly, and gestured toward the shelves. “Do you want me to show you something?”

She nodded.

He rose, the movement fluid but unhurried, and pulled a volume from a high shelf. The leather was cracked, its spine worn from use. He handed it to her. “Star maps. Old ones. Before the Express charted them properly. They’re inaccurate, but… beautiful in their own way.”

Stelle opened the book. The pages bloomed with constellations drawn in faded ink, lines that didn’t quite match the sky outside but still captured the wonder of it. She traced one star with her finger, then looked up.

“They’re crooked,” she said softly.

Dan Heng blinked. “Crooked?”

“Like my pendant.” She held it up beside the page, comparing the lopsided star carved into the wood with the wobbly point of ink on the chart. A smile tugged at her mouth, fragile but real. “Maybe perfection isn’t the point.”

His lips pressed into the barest shape of agreement. “…Maybe not.”

Stelle lingered with the book in her lap, tracing constellations that didn’t quite align with the stars she’d glimpsed outside the train’s windows. The ink bled in crooked lines, as if the cartographer’s hand had trembled, but still the sky took shape on paper.

She swallowed. “It’s strange. Looking at these… I almost feel like I should remember them. But it’s like reaching for smoke.” Her voice thinned. “Everything before waking up at the station is just… gone. Scrubbed clean.”

Dan Heng studied her quietly, hands folded against the desk. His shadow stretched long under the lamplight. “Memories can be unreliable,” he said at last. “Sometimes they blur. Sometimes they’re taken.”

The words landed like stones dropped into water. Stelle’s gaze sharpened on him. “Taken. You say that like you’d know.”

He didn’t flinch, but something in his posture shifted — a stillness that wasn’t calm, but controlled. “There are things in my past I can’t recall clearly. Faces. Names. I know they mattered once, but when I reach for them… they slip.” His fingers brushed the yellow pendant on his desk, almost unconsciously. “What’s left is the weight.”

Stelle’s hand closed around her wooden star. “Weight.” The hum under her ribs vibrated in agreement. “Yes. Like carrying something you don’t understand, but can’t set down.”

Their eyes met — not in revelation, but recognition. Two lives hollowed out in different ways, still carrying burdens they could not abandon.

Stelle broke the silence first, her voice small but steady. “Do you ever wonder… if those missing pieces would make you someone else entirely?”

Dan Heng’s jaw tightened, but his reply was quiet. “Sometimes.”

Her throat ached. She looked down at the crooked star again, pressing her thumb into its rough groove until the wood bit back. “If that’s true, maybe it’s better I don’t remember. At least this way, I can decide who I’ll be now.”

His expression softened. Not a smile, not even approval, but the faintest flicker of respect. “That choice is yours to make.”

“And yours?” she asked.

Dan Heng looked at the wrappers tucked into his journal, the sketch of the dragon half-done, the pendant catching lamplight. “I… haven’t decided yet.”

The silence stretched, almost comfortable now. Stelle’s gaze wandered back to the desk — to the dragon sprawled across the page in half-formed lines, wings too large, scales suggested but not finished.

Her lips twitched. “Is that supposed to be a dragon? Or… a lizard with aspirations?”

Dan Heng stilled. For a moment she thought she’d overstepped, but then his ears flushed faintly red, the smallest betrayal against his calm. “It’s unfinished.”

She leaned over the desk, cupping her chin in her hand. “Unfinished, huh? I can still tell it has ambition. Look at those wings.”

He slid the sketchbook half-closed, protective. “It’s for reference.”

“For what, a bedtime story?” she teased, the smile on her lips softening the jab. “You don’t seem like the type.”

Dan Heng gave her a long look, exasperation so quiet it almost passed for patience. “You talk too much when you’re tired.”

“And you don’t talk enough,” she countered, the warmth of her grin surprising even herself.

For the briefest moment, the corners of his mouth curved — not a full smile, but enough to catch her breath. Then he turned back to the desk, sliding the sketchbook aside. “If you want a book, pick one. I doubt you’ll find much entertainment in mocking my notes.”

Stelle rose and wandered the shelves, gaze wandering across spines worn smooth by use. Her chest felt lighter, her lips still curved in the shadow of her grin. The hum inside her no longer rattled like a chain — it pulsed like a rhythm she could almost follow.

Her eyes snapped back to the edge of the desk again — the journal with its pressed wrappers. Flattened carefully, almost reverently, as if even the smallest scraps deserved saving.

“Proof,” she echoed softly, recalling his earlier words. Then, tilting her head, she asked: “Were those… for buns?”

Dan Heng stilled. For the first time, his composure cracked. “You noticed.”

“They smelled faintly sweet,” she admitted, a smile tugging at her lips. “Like someone was hoarding snacks instead of books.”

His eyes lowered, lashes shadowing his cheeks. “They were… shared. Once. I think.” The hesitation in his voice told her he couldn’t remember with whom — only that it mattered.

Stelle’s pendant pressed heavy into her palm. Something inside her answered, the hum quickening like recognition. It was a strange feeling, but not unwelcome.

Stelle traced the crooked star pendant one last time, then closed the book of star maps. She replaced it on the shelf carefully, almost reverently, as if it had become hers to guard too.

From the hallway beyond, she caught March’s voice drifting closer — bright, impatient, alive:

“Stelle! There you are! Come on, you’ve got to see the Parlor Car when there’s a meteor shower — it’s looks so cool! Hurry!”

Her grin was audible in every word, her footsteps pattering away as quickly as they’d come.

Stelle lingered, hand still on the spine of the book. She felt Dan Heng’s gaze on her. Not pressing, not expectant, simply present.

When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet but certain. “I think… I want to stay. On the Astral Express.”

Dan Heng’s reply was simple. “Then stay.”

The train hummed around them, steady as breath. The hum within her ribs answered, not as a chain this time, but as a rhythm. A heartbeat.

She stepped toward the doorway, the crooked star swinging against her chest.

Behind her, Dan Heng turned back to his desk, to his trinkets and unfinished sketches. Yet when she glanced over her shoulder, she caught the faintest curve of his mouth, there and gone like starlight.

For the first time since waking to Kafka’s voice, Stelle felt the future open instead of closing.

Threads blurred, memories stolen, burdens heavy — but here, surrounded by the warmth of the Astral Express and the Crew, she could breathe.