Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Snow sifted through the towers of Vraetis, neon glare fracturing in its fall before the flakes found seams along ledges and rails. The metropolis exhaled in circuitry and alloy: a low hum underfoot, a reverberation overhead, the hiss of a skyrail stitching its magnetic line like a needle through glass. Night pressed early against the arcologies, but it never dimmed the city—only widened the canvas for its lights to multiply.

Holo-billboards rippled over high-rise facades, pigments collapsing before new visages crystallized in their place. Steam rose savory from food carts, while delivery drones traced bright vectors down the avenues. Beneath the overpasses, vehicles slid in calibrated procession, ion engines steady, casting hard planes of light across the darkened streets.

Restaurants and kiosks spilled warmth into the chill, menus unfurling over shifting screens. Projection lanterns swept arcs amid the flurries, heaters sighing, turning frost to shallow rivulets. Signs erupted in torrents of hue, peeling themselves from surfaces like restless ghosts. Farther off, automated barges churned against the current, their hulls rendering ice into glittering shards.

Winter kept its tempo. Icefall thickened and thinned as though the clouds had memorized the city's rhythm. Vapors rolled from vents to fuse with the fall, drifting low and unbroken along the alleys. Out of that haze, the crossings gleamed, chimes slicing through the air until the crowd pressed forward as one. Pale holograms flickered above wrists and fingers—brief maps, messages, icons—vanishing at a touch. Each projection blinked out, quiet as static fading.

From that hush rose the rumble of an engine. A street bike idled at the edge of the crossing, its frame matte and sleek, icicles trembling along its shell before the vibration shook them loose. Behind the visor, a figure sat motionless, one boot braced to the pavement, the other poised to launch. Fingers flexed once against the throttle—tension coiled beneath calm.

The signal changed. The engine deepened, vibration rattling along the pavement like a warning. He held—one breath, two—letting the tension wind tighter. Then the bike launched—uncoiled, unbound—cutting past the crowd in a sweep of sound. A moment suspended between buildings, gravity briefly forgotten, before he plunged back into the maze of steel and glass.

Electric haze burst across the wet pavement, flaring upward in jagged prisms as he broke into traffic. Vehicles and trams loomed like barriers, but he threaded through them with ruthless precision, slipping past gaps too narrow to invite hesitation. Frozen glaze shattered in his wake, scattering like sparks across the asphalt, streetlamps glaring down like sentinels.

Light and clamor closed in as he descended toward the city's pulse. Music spilled from doorways where clubs emptied their patrons into the cold, laughter piercing through the night. Beneath a canopy of holo-roses, a woman stilled with her hand at her throat, eyes catching on the rider even as others flowed past. A block ahead, a knot of students stumbled into the street, shoulders squared in false defiance, only to falter, their voices frayed as the bike forced a path into their hesitation.

He accelerated, the engine tightening into a low growl, driving him faster, harder, beyond the neon's reach. Towers thinned as the avenues climbed, trading color for a colder blaze of floodlights. Behind him the noise shattered to fragments—laughter, music, shouts—until nothing but memory pressed at the hum of his machine. Ahead, the city refined itself: brighter in its precision, sharper in its silence, drawing him toward the heights where power lived.

Highridge unfolded in hard geometry. Buildings rose without ornament, faces of mirrored glass catching no warmth, only reflection. Patrol drones traced quiet orbits overhead, their beams combing the boulevards in disciplined intervals. Traffic thinned to the chosen few—sleek vehicles finished in obsidian glass and liquid chrome, engines tuned to a silence that spoke of wealth, not mercy. Even the air felt honed here, stripped of the grit below.

His bike climbed the skybridge ramp, its low snarl dragging against the hush. Vibration shuddered through rails meant for stillness, breaking the district's veneer of composure. Wind stung sharper the higher he rose, carrying the faint electric tang of floodlights. Beneath him the city bled restless color, a fever dream blurred but never silenced. Up here, the quiet pressed back—not absence, but a chill that hollowed sound before it could take shape.

At the summit, the machine slid into a reserved bay. The rider dismounted in one fluid motion, boots striking the polished floor with finality. One hand rose to the helmet, unclasping it with a sharp click before drawing it free. Snow-flecked air raked his hair as it fell loose, dark strands shadowing his features. Storm-grey eyes glinted beneath—hard, restrained, edged with something that waited.

Without pause, he set the helmet to his hip and crossed the bay, every step sharp as a blade, carrying him straight to the lift. The doors parted with a mechanical hiss, sensors seizing on the thorn sigil carved into his ring. Recognition flared, harsh and immediate, before the chamber closed around him, severing the night behind steel.

Polished titanium confined the chamber, every surface fractured into jagged fragments that tore his reflection apart. A tremor pressed upward through his boots, steady and merciless, bearing him toward the tier where power loomed—unsheathed, inevitable, and near.

Then—a flicker. Text ghosted against the paneled walls, Veyra notices blooming like afterimages:

[Helios University: Cyber Ops seminar rescheduled – 0900 hours, Hall C.]
[Signal ███–█–███: Authentication required. Decrypt on arrival.]

The first notice dissolved, routine and meaningless. The second stayed—one bar of red burning against sterile glare—before collapsing into a pulse that gnawed at the edge of vision. His jaw ticked once, brief, sharp enough to fracture the mask he wore. He neither acknowledged nor dismissed it, yet the hard set of his mouth betrayed what silence refused.

White arcs seared across his face as the lift climbed, carving him into bands of glow and shadow. Beyond the glass, the city unraveled—streets splintering into glowing veins, towers dissolving into restless blurs—until the metropolis was no more than a smear of luminescence far below. Higher still, until even that chaos bled away, leaving only Highridge's cold austerity to crown the night.

The chamber slowed. A hollow chime cracked the hush as the doors parted. Beyond lay a space more command deck than home, its panes towering from floor to ceiling, the skyline scattered in sparks. Flakes streaking faint rivers down the glass, but the neon beyond seemed caged by steel. Inside, the air was still, held in place by the low thrum of systems—and the muted imprint of cedar and musk that lingered like a signature no filter could erase.

The interior awaited with surgical precision. Obsidian stone and alloy sealed the walls and floor, bound by pale seams of recessed light. A single low sofa faced the view, its surface untouched, unwelcoming. Shelves bore no books, no photographs—only shards of metal and crystal, displayed like trophies stripped of meaning. Nothing here spoke of life, only dominion.

Rime clung briefly to his boots before the polished floor muffled the sound of his footsteps. He set the helmet on the console; its surface pulsed once in recognition, then dimmed again. The faintest remnant of warmth lingered—coffee left cooling in a cup on the counter, the sole detail that suggested the room was ever lived in at all, in a space designed to contain, not comfort.

Weight pressed down, heavy as tempered stone, muting noise until the silence felt deliberate. His movements fused with the architecture, as though the penthouse allowed his presence but withheld acknowledgment. He shrugged off his coat and cast it onto the sofa's arm, the fabric collapsing into stillness. The penthouse stirred at once—not welcoming, but archiving him like evidence.

He stood by the window, surveying the expanse below. From this height the city seemed brittle, phosphor veining through a carcass of stone and steel. Hovercraft blinked, patrol beams swept—brief fissures in the glow that revealed the machinery grinding beneath.

A single breath left him—measured, controlled—yet even restraint cut deep, shadowed by the pressure of a blade too long unsheathed. Vraetis lay below, a constellation tethered to lives he could end with a word. The thought should have satisfied him—power absolute, fear earned—but tonight it rang hollow. His reflection met him, grey eyes cold against the pane, before he turned away.

The console woke at his approach, its surface unspooling into motion. He drew a line across the panel, and the penthouse unraveled—grids crumbling, neon bleeding into shadow—until nothing remained but the pulse dragging him inward. Gravity faltered. Clarity sharpened. Radiance engulfed him. The city below splintered, then rebuilt in phosphor and code.

The shift came not with a jolt but a single, drawn breath. Cold metal dissolved beneath his fingertips as flesh became data, weight became light. Darkness sheared away layer by layer until the virtual enclosed him. Streets of fluorescence and sky without end stretched outward, alive with thousands unseen, their voices reduced to whispers sealed behind masks and names.

He was no longer the figure bound by Highridge's glass and silence.

His avatar coalesced—form hardening, darker, taller, carved from shadow and flame. Crimson eyes seared against the neon weave, a detail carried by inevitability. The jacket flickered into place, seams glowing once before locking to matte black. Denim followed in static haze, boots landing hard enough to ripple the grid. Eidolon absorbed him, seamless and absolute.

[System Notice: Welcome back, KS.]

The words pulsed once before sinking into the endless sprawl of the grid. He struck forward, each stride carving through the mesh as though the city itself yielded. Others stirred in the distance, but they were irrelevant. Tonight, the currents of this world pulled towards a single collision.

Somewhere beyond the masquerade of avatars and masks, stardust gathering into the shape of lilies.

Chapter Text

Twilight unfurled across Eidolon, the horizon painted in hushed strokes of green and violet. Waterfalls poured from fractured cliffs into the waiting void, scattering into motes that drifted downward like the echoes of forgotten lullabies. Constellations whispered their glow into the distance, trailing ribbons of light that shimmered, wavered, then stilled.

Suspended serenely amidst the vast canvas, a floating island drifted, its edges haloed in starlight as though held aloft by the heavens themselves. Blossoms glimmered along winding paths, petals pulsing with a soft, inward glow—night made tangible, rooted in soil. Within its heart, a crystalline dome lay, each facet casting the gathered radiance outward into a diadem of frozen hues.

There, a figure moved. Snow-white hair spilled like silk, catching the threads of aurora as it lifted in an unseen breeze. The air hummed with murmurs of falling water, long fluffy ears turning gently toward the sound. Her hands shaped a rhythm so tender it seemed to still the garden itself. With each step, her presence wove deeper into the sanctuary, until even the twilight bent closer, listening.

Lily.

The name rose above her crown in delicate light, a glyph whispered into the sky by Eidolon itself. It lingered just long enough to be remembered, then dissolved into air.

She tilted an iridescent watering can, droplets arcing in slow descent, each one catching aurora hues before slipping free. They hovered for a breath, trembling with refracted color, then sank at last into the petals below. Where they touched, the blossoms sang—a lucid chime that cooled the air, leaving the garden quivering like a sigh half-remembered.

Other blooms answered in kind, their radiance swelling and dimming in soft succession, mirroring constellations kindling across a private sky. Beyond them, the fountain whispered in its spiral flow, its currents laced with drifting dust that gleamed as though the water bore fragments of memory within its veins, a relic caught and kept.

Nestled at the fountain's base, a small cluster of wisps slept, their bunny-shaped forms pressed close to stone. One stirred at the patter of droplets—ears pricking, body bobbing like a lantern-flame—before hopping after her watering can. It squeaked at a stray splash, then darted back to its cradle, glow unraveling behind like a dream reluctant to fade.

Along the borders of the flowerbeds, vines arched in quiet spans, their veins flickering with quicksilver sparks that raced through delicate tendrils before fading, only to kindle again moments later. Even the ground seemed to breathe, sigils etched in stone, their lines stitched with light whenever the aurora leaned low enough to touch them.

Nothing here declared itself. Everything simply was—woven into the garden's fabric as naturally as the hush of piano drifting through the night. She passed through with unhurried grace, fingers trailing along a vine, sleeves catching auroral sheen as she coaxed the dome's glow to listen.

Crystalline frames materialized at her gesture, gossamer interfaces dancing above her wrist, each command reshaping the density of stars overhead—thinning the celestial curtains before breathing them back to brilliance with the sweep of her fingers. Lunar radiance caressed her skin, sifting silver through her white tresses before disappearing into the ether.

A faint green pulse blinked at the edge of her display—momentary, subtle, slipping past her notice. She tilted the can once more, droplets trembling before release, each strike against the petals releasing a clear chime. Around her, the garden seemed to steady, vast and tranquil, as though holding its own breath.

[System Notice: A visitor has entered your sanctuary.]

The silence fractured. A low hum stirred at the far edge of the island, rippling the air as light peeled outward in concentric rings. Blossoms wavered in their drift; even the aurora thinned, bending faintly away as though the intrusion carried weight. From the widening shimmer, a tall figure stepped through—darkness drawn into shape, his outline cutting sharper lines against the sanctuary's softness.

KS.

His name carved itself into the space above him, edges burning with a hard light that fractured into falling shards.

Droplets glistened on the rim of her iridescent can, suspended in stillness as her hand faltered. She inhaled quietly, pressed the tremor from her fingers, and resumed pouring with deliberate care. Water cascaded into the waiting soil, though her grip remained tight on the handle, knuckles white against the glow.

He hadn't moved—hadn't needed to. His silhouette remained etched against the starlight, yet his presence bled outward like spilled ink across her celestial garden, seeping into the constellations she had so carefully tended. Words unfurled in the air between them, pale script blooming with languid arrogance into the fragile silence of her sanctuary.

[General] KS: All this space, and this is what you do with it.

She did not answer at once. The steady stream of water from her can went on as though his words had never been spoken. He moved first, slow and deliberate, steps carving a measured circuit that tightened the garden with every pass. She tracked him only in flickers, gaze lowered, veiled by her lashes, while her ears betrayed her restraint, twitching at each shift of his stride.

Where he walked, the air warped. Stardrift motes unraveled from their spirals, tugged briefly towards him before breaking apart too soon. Their cadence fell into silence. Petals shuddered at the disturbance, glow faltering like candles in a restless wind before guttering into shadow.

His path drew him onto the opaline bridge spanning across the garden. The mirror-pool caught his reflection only to fracture it, the surface fissuring into jagged lines before clouding over. The water darkened in protest; luminous fish dimmed like falling stars and vanished into the depths, leaving the glassy skin unbroken.

Still, she watered with deliberate care, each motion precise, though tension thrummed just under the surface. Her head lifted—lavender eyes bright with star-flecks found his. For a heartbeat the garden seemed to pause, silence taut as their gazes held. His smirk edged sharper then, and in the next breath, script carved itself into the air—clean, abrupt, cutting through the hush.

[General] KS: Fairy gardens aren't usually secured behind private locks. Wonder why.
[General] Lily: And dens aren't usually this nosy. Wonder why.

He did not linger on her reply. Instead, KS moved with unhurried certainty, his orbit collapsing into a single line as he crossed toward the crystalline dome by the bridge. It was not aggression, not even curiosity—only dismissal, as though her words and presence had already been measured, filed away, irrelevant beside whatever called him forward.

Her gaze followed—and in that instant, recognition flared, shattering the calm. The iridescent can slipped from her hand, dissolving into motes before it struck the ground. Starlight surged around her in the same breath, a sudden bloom that wrenched her from the flowerbeds and set her before the dome's threshold, heart thrumming.

The air rippled where she reappeared, her petite frame poised against the looming shadow advancing toward her. Snow-white waves cascaded around flattened ears, her stance rooted in quiet defiance. One palm lifted, fingers splayed as though calling barriers from the stars themselves. Silver radiance kindled beneath her skin, unfurling in luminous rings that caught the auroral haze.

From that light her staff took shape—slender, moonlit, its length etched with faint brilliance that gleamed softly. A crescent unfurled at its crown, cradling a suspended fragment of amethyst that pulsed with the rhythm of her heart. Filaments drifted outward in threads of light, veiling her in gauze-like shimmer before fading into a halo that framed her silhouette in steady resolve.

Wreathed in astral glow, she stood—defiance crystallized into form. Her staff tipped forward—not a weapon raised, but a boundary carved in silver. He halted a breath away, gaze sliding down the length of the shaft to the girl who held it. His smirk lingered, deep crimson eyes unreadable. Silence stretched—too long, too sharp—until it broke against him.

[General] Lily: Back off. Dome's off-limits.
[General] KS: Oh. So the bunny does bite.

The exchange hung in the air, pale and insubstantial, but heavier than stone. Her grip tightened on the shaft, silver veins along its length answering with a muted shimmer. Heat crept unbidden across her cheeks despite herself, her ears betrayed the smallest flicks of agitation. Still, she refused to lower her gaze.

He did not move. Not a step, not even a shift of weight. The stillness itself became pressure—worse than if he had pressed forward. His presence seeped into the pause, saturating it until the air seemed suspended. Motes froze mid-fall; the fountain's spiral held one beat too long before resuming. Even the blooms along the beds slowed their gentle sway, caught between silence and motion.

Her pulse thundered, loud against her ribs. She told herself it was anger, not fear—that the silver line she had drawn would hold. And when his crimson eyes fixed on hers, gleaming with that unhurried, entertained patience, something inside her coiled tight. The faint curl of his mouth deepened once more, a smirk carved deliberately into persistence.

[General] KS: Try harder if you don't want company next time.

Her breath caught, indignant, ready to strike back—but the chance never came.

Behind him, the air split down its center like a seam torn through glass. Darkness slicked its edges, too clean, too precise. He stepped back into it without turning away, smirk lingering as though etched onto her sanctuary itself. Then the seam closed with a sharp click, and warped starlight shivered where he had stood.

For a long moment, she held her stance, the crescent head of her staff still leveled against empty air. The glow frayed, threads loosening, softening. Only when the motes resumed their drift, petals carried once more by unseen currents and the fountain's rhythm restored, did she lower the weapon. Her breath slipped free, a tremor she had refused until now.

With a flick of her wrist, the staff dissolved, silver collapsing into light that sank softly into her palm. Another gesture summoned the interface, panes blooming like glass petals at her side. She brushed them aside in a single sweep. Public dimmed to black, Private reclaiming its quiet hold; the toggle sealed with a muted chime, a faint lock-glyph glimmering once before vanishing into air.

She lingered only a heartbeat longer. One final motion, precise yet gentle, and her avatar unraveled in silken seams, her form drawn inward until nothing remained. Around her, the sanctuary obeyed: auroras hushed into silence, blossoms dimmed mid-glow, the crystalline dome dissolving piece by piece until only afterglow remained.

Darkness folded in, seamless, soundless—like a dream exhaled into nothing.

In place of Lily, a girl not so different lay tangled in fleece and shadows. Dark brown strands spilled across her face, catching faint threads of fairy-light glow strung along the wall. Here she was no avatar, only Azalyea Zvezdina, sixteen, still tangled in the night's irritation—and with it, the intruder who had managed to follow her out of a world she should have been able to shut away.

She groaned, pressing her face into the plush rabbit nestled at her side, arms tightening as if the smirk she carried back might dissolve there. But it didn't. If anything, it burned sharper. The arrogance of it, the unshaken confidence, lingered like a weight that refused to lift. And though she told herself he was nothing, some part of her refused to believe it.

This was far from over.

Chapter Text

Morning light filtered through sheer curtains in soft ribbons, blurring across frost that clung stubbornly to the windowpanes. The room still held the hush of night, warmed only by the fleece cocoon she had left behind. From the kitchen down the hall came the familiar cadence of her home—the clatter of dishes as her mother set out bowls for breakfast, the low humming of her father beneath the whistle of a kettle, cut short as it left the flame.

The apartment moved with its own rhythm—steady, unchanging—yet her attention lingered only on the mirror before her. Water traced faint trails down her cheeks, dark strands of hair sticking damply, smudging her skin like wet paint. The new haircut looked no kinder in daylight. Blunt in some places, uneven in others, it bore the hurried mark of hands that did not understand softness.

Azalyea lifted one side, tucking it behind her ear, then let it fall again with a quiet groan. It wasn't the kind of flaw that could be easily ignored, not when her reflection offered reminders with every glance. Her gaze dropped to the vanity, where a pair of fluffy clips lay waiting—a gift pressed into her hand days ago with laughter and the insistence that anything looks better when it's cute.

Pastel tufts, one lavender and one cream, caught the unruly strands between her fingertips. She worked with careful precision, sliding each clip into place, watching as the jagged edges disappeared beneath soft fluff. Leaning back, she tilted her head slightly, studying her reflection. The damage remained, but now transformed—harsh lines softened into something that whispered instead of shouted. Not perfection, but a compromise she could live with.

She exhaled, breath fogging briefly on the glass, and turned away.

On her desk, her Veyra pulsed with its morning sync, sending ripples of light dancing along the silver chain before melting back into stillness. The bracelet slipped onto her wrist with practiced ease, the metal cool where it kissed her skin. Her fingers then sought the final piece—her Accoria; the white choker with its silver heart charm.

The clasp clicked shut around her throat, its weight settling like a promise against her skin. More than an ornament; it was a shield, a quiet barrier between herself and the instincts of others. The charm caught the light once—bright as a heartbeat—before disappearing beneath the folds of her scarf.

Outside, Hearthvale stirred awake. Snow crowned the rooftops in soft white, gathered into quiet banks where children nudged and tumbled, their laughter trailing in scattered bootprints. The air was sweet with the warmth of fresh bread drifting from a corner bakery, while drones hummed gently overhead, their whir threading softly through the stillness of the street.

She passed a trio at the crosswalk—two young men and a girl leaning close to one, her smile angled upward, posture leaning in subtle deference. The boy she favored carried himself with a certainty that asked for no permission; the other laughed more softly, content at the edge of their orbit. No labels were needed—the roles were as plain as the tram sweeping overhead.

The tram carried her deeper into the district, its windows fogging where passengers pressed shoulder to shoulder in the cold. Somewhere near the doors, a burst of laughter rippled among a cluster of students; on the opposite side of the aisle, a man scrolled through holo-text flowing over his ring, light sliding across his knuckles before he dismissed it. Conversations rose and fell in waves, woven with the steady thrum of the engine.

School gates loomed ahead by the time she arrived, their arches dusted in frost where lanterns swung faintly in the wind. The salted steps glistened beneath students' shoes, squeaking as they filed upward in groups. Voices spilled in scattered bursts: friends calling across the courtyard, coats shaking free of snow before being bundled into lockers, the occasional scolding reminder from a teacher carried on the cold air.

The branches of the courtyard trees were rimed in white, each limb etched in delicate frost, clear against the pale morning sky. A pair of first-years huddled by a heater grate, palms outstretched; near the bike rack, two seniors exchanged a look that sent their small circle shuffling without a word. She hung her coat neatly, stepping into the hallway's warmth.

Her uniform carried its own quiet signature: an oversized cardigan in place of the blazer, ribbon knotted in a deliberate bow, and a skirt grazing shorter than regulations allowed. Thigh-high socks traced the length of her legs; at her wrist, a loose scrunchie brushed against the silver chain of her Veyra bracelet. Subtle enough to pass, but distinctly hers.

"Lyeaaa~"

The voice reached before the girl did. Her best friend Chloe burst through the corridor like a spark catching tinder—curls sprayed into loud perfection, uniform bent into audacious disarray. Bracelets clinked at her wrist, nails glittered with tiny stars, her cardigan shrugged carelessly off one shoulder in complete disregard for rules.

She collided into Azalyea with a tight hug. Citrus perfume clung to her sleeves. She stiffened at first, then relaxed, the corner of her mouth curving despite herself. Chloe had always made an entrance, and she always filled the space around her with enough warmth to force the day into motion.

"You're late," she murmured, no real scolding in her tone.

"And those clips? Knew I was right," Chloe fired back, tugging one lightly before looping their arms. "Can't say I didn't warn you."

Together they moved through the hallway, the tide of students parting and folding around them. Chloe's friends drifted close in a shimmer of chatter and glitter polish, their compliments sparking and fading as quickly as they came, until the current let them slip free again. Chloe carried the noise like a flame; Azalyea steadied it, her presence gentle enough to hold balance between them.

Classes blurred into routine; holo-interfaces clicking open, lessons shimmering from Veyra projections, lectures droning under whispered trades of notes. Mid-morning announcements chimed, fading into quiet. A teacher's shadow crossed the windows; across the aisle, data flickered from one wristband to another, exchanged without pause.

By midday, she found herself slipping into the courtyard, coat pulled snugly as she traced her way along the hushed fringe of the benches. Chloe had darted off to chase another group of friends, promising to return with snacks, leaving her a rare pocket of solitude. Still, the awareness of her Accoria lingered, a weight both quiet and insistent.

Snow fell softer now, gathering at the edges of stone paths. Students packed and unmade snowballs, laughter ghosting away. Upperclassmen angled subtly toward one another, posture speaking louder than words. A teacher passed steady and upright, and the courtyard bent unconsciously into neater order.

Somewhere near the gym doors, a burst of music flared and was gone again as quickly as it came. She lifted her wrist, Veyra shimmering as it synced briefly, light flickering in time with her pulse. For a moment she considered opening the interface—just to check, just to see if her sanctuary in Eidolon still held that faint trace of him.

Her hand stilled before she did.

The memory of his smirk was sharper than she wanted to admit. Irritating—the way someone could intrude on something so carefully hers and leave behind an imprint even her blossoms could not erase. She touched the charm at her throat instead, grounding herself, and closed the interface before it bloomed.

Evening found her on the tram again, leaned against the window as the city slipped toward dusk. Hearthvale's lights flickered to life one by one, warm golds and muted whites glowing against the frost-lined streets. Her reflection surfaced in the glass—dark brown hair catching the dim light, honey-brown eyes carrying faint flecks of gold that caught as the tram passed another neon sign.

For a moment, the girl looking back at her was not only Azalyea but Lily too, the boundary blurring until she couldn't quite tell where one ended and the other began. She looked away first, tugging her scarf higher as if to sever the thought. But the pull remained, threaded low and undeniable beneath the silence of falling snow.

Chapter Text

That same evening, in another district, a lone figure stood before a condemned loading bay. Steam curled from hidden vents, carrying the faint hiss of machinery still humming within the hollow structure. Snow dusted the shoulders of his black coat, the fabric swallowing what little light remained, leaving his face obscured.

To anyone passing, it was another relic. Forsaken. A mouth stitched shut in concrete. But to him, it was a door, a threshold into a world hidden behind the city's facades. Cold air bit his exposed skin as the scanner strip whirred to life. His fingers shifted, the glove cut at his knuckles to bare what the device sought most—his Aureus; a blacksteel ring etched with thorns.

Polished edges caught the scanner's glow—stark, simple, heavy with weight. The light crawled across him—lingering on the ring, sweeping his face, his coat, his boots. Resonance thickened, steel and iron humming as though the warehouse itself listened. The strip hovered on the ring once more, pulsed once, then delivered its verdict.

[System Notice: Decryption complete. Verified Identity – Kyrillus Silverthorn (Alpha). Node access unlocked.]

The bay doors groaned with a screech, rusted hinges parting under reluctant strain. Frost cracked along their seams as the gap widened. Two guards flanked the entrance, eyes on him—recognition sharpened with hostility. One sneered openly. The other muttered his name under his breath, words nearly drowned by the grind of metal.

Kyrillus stepped forward without a word, his silence cutting sharper than any reply. He had long since grown accustomed to the resentment that followed him through these halls. His presence carried the gravity of the syndicate's reach, and in Duskrow, that was always a double-edged blade—fear demanded respect, and allegiance demanded a price.

Inside, the air changed. Warmer by a few degrees, thick with oil and old smoke. Beyond the threshold stretched a floor scarred with years of work—black swirls where boots had dragged, and slick patches where chemical spills had dulled to a permanent sheen. Crates stood in tight stacks along the wall, their lids rough-cut and banded.

One man leaned against a stack, cigarette half-lip, half-ash. Another ran a handheld across a shipping tag until the reader chirped, its hum folding into the room's low mechanical thrum. They watched him pass and did nothing more. No salute. No shift to clear the way. Eyes followed, then slid away.

He slipped into a narrow corridor. Strip lights buzzed like gnats. Machinery breathed inside the walls—compressors, conveyors, the patient lungs of the depot. Doors lined the passage, their paint scabbed and peeling. A magnetic latch clanged shut farther down; a muffled voice cursed at something that wouldn't align.

Halfway along, an alcove gaped to his right. Two younger thugs crouched over an overturned crate, dice tapping in quick bursts. One laughed too loud. The other hissed for silence. Their game ebbed like smoke pulled through a vent—not from within, but by something larger drawing it out. He didn't look. He didn't need to. Silence gathered, dice pinned under a palm.

The corridor funneled him towards the main chamber with the shove of a heavy door. The smell thickened here—old iron, cigarette bite, and cheap liquor. Metal tables sprawled under maps with worn creases, ledgers stamped with dog-eared markers beside data pads. Weapons lay dismantled and half-cleaned along a rag that had seen better decades.

Three, maybe four lieutenants had taken the central table for themselves—men whose faces had settled into hard lines long before Kyrillus had been tall enough to see over the counter of his father's office. One ran figures with the side of a thumb on a pad, while another kept a finger at a ledger line. Noise dipped when he stepped in and then rose again, deliberately louder.

"Depot chatter again," one of them grunted, irritation thick in his voice. "Third time this month."

"Rats," another snorted, dealing out cards to no one in particular, just for the habit of it. "Always rats. Barely worth sending a boy with a stick."

"Or leave it," a third remarked, not bothering to glance up, ink-stained finger sliding down the ledger. "Let them choke on rust instead."

Their voices swelled again, louder than the subject deserved, laughter pitched rough as if to prove they hadn't noticed him. But he gave them nothing in return. He crossed to the table, claimed a corner without permission, and set his hand flat against the wood as though he had already grown tired of waiting.

"If rats worked this tidy," he quipped, arrogance laced through every word. "They'd be running your ledgers."

Silence fell with a dull, total weight. The card froze mid-air, then slapped the table harder than it needed to. Smoke leaked from a mouth in a straight line before its owner remembered to breathe it out. The lieutenant with the ledger shut it harder than the paper deserved, as if force could take the sting out of a line. Another shifted his chair back an inch, the scrape deliberate, measuring.

"Careful, boy," one of them warned, leaning forward on his elbows. "Tongues cut quicker than rats breed."

"So the boss's boy fancies himself an investigator," the other sneered, scattering his hand across the table. "Fine, take a crew. Prove it's more than rats."

"Jarek goes too," the third added, already waving at him dismissively. "Better than wasting one of our own."

Kyrillus gave them nothing—no protest, no flicker of reaction. Only the cold silence of someone who had heard this refrain far too many times to waste breath on. Dismissal had long ago become the shape of his shadow in these halls. He wore it like a second skin, and even if the sting still lingered, it never reached his face.

The lieutenants leaned back into their smoke and drinks, mutters scraping like the shuffle of cards. Conversation rolled on, louder, deliberate, as though to bury the boy's presence under noise. He turned from the table without waiting for dismissal, boots thudding once against the concrete before he vanished back into the corridor.

Ahead, a crew of five waited—thugs with eyes that followed, and one presence heavier than the rest. They stood scattered along the wall, boots spread, shoulders loose with the indifference of men used to waiting. One spat into the corner, another flicked a knife open and shut with restless clicks. Their murmurs faltered when he approached, replaced by the hush of appraisal.

And then there was Jarek.

He didn't need to be announced. Taller by a head, broad and heavy with stillness, he carried it like a sheathed blade — quiet until it wasn't. A scar cut clean through one brow, another across the ridge of his knuckles; marks that spoke louder than introductions. The others measured him in sidelong looks, the way men gauged the center of gravity in a room.

Their eyes met. Neither flinched. Neither blinked. The others flicked their eyes between them, uneasy in the quiet that fell, dice and laughter from the corridor already a world behind. Not challenge. Not concession. Just the quiet recognition of two men measuring the other. Then, someone drawled—low, derisive, pointed enough to be heard: "Babysitting the boss's boy."

Kyrillus didn't look their way. His stare stayed locked where it mattered, on the presence that had tilted the weight of the room without speaking. Jarek gave nothing in return, only silence, as though acknowledgement itself was a currency too costly to spend. The tension settled, unspoken but alive, as the crew began to move. The night pressed closer, heavy, toward the waiting depot.

Duskrow offered no welcome. Streets narrowed into iron arteries, the air sour with smoke that scratched the throat. Freight rails shivered somewhere overhead, their grind reverberating through hollow canyons of steel. Neon stammered against oil-slick puddles, their boots scattering reflections into restless fragments

No one spoke. Their mutters had drowned at the safehouse door, leaving only the rhythm of knives sliding home, shoulders rolling loose with the arrogance of an easy sweep. At the heart of the line, he kept silent, eyes watching how shadows stretched too long, how frost etched itself into rusted metal.

The depot surfaced at the end of a service lane—a condemned husk hunched in rust and dark. Corrugated walls wept with water stains, graffiti bleached to pale ghosts. A single lamp swung above the shutter, buzzing with the jaundiced pulse of failing power. Snowmelt pooled at the threshold, black water trembling under their boots.

The shutter groaned when they forced it up, steel shrieking in protest. Cold air breathed out, stale with iron and damp concrete. Inside, the dark pressed heavy, lit only by the weak spill from the lamp outside. Shadows sprawled across the floor in broken slashes, caught on crates stacked two, three high along the walls.

Locks dangled loose, edges too clean—sliced by steady hands, not the ragged haste of thieves in flight. A crate near the entrance yawned just wide enough to show its hollow belly. Others had been nudged aside, their disorder deliberate, careless in a way that wanted to be seen. Tools lay scattered across the concrete—a crowbar, a cutter, a length of cord. Not discarded. Displayed.

"Sloppy bastards," one of the crew snorted, boot striking a half-open crate. "Hardly worth the night."

Their voices rang brash against the emptiness, too loud for the weight of still air. He said nothing, only marking where they didn't—up, to the catwalk where dust had been disturbed, a scuff fresh against the iron rail. To the side, where a drip fell from a cracked pipe, its rhythm broken, as though something had shifted its arc.

One of the crew dropped without warning. One moment he leaned careless against a stack of crates, the next he was gone—hauled from the catwalk by unseen hands. His scream split the air, jagged and short, before it broke on steel. For a heartbeat the depot held still, silence clinging like frost. Then it shattered.

Chaos erupted. Shadows lurched with sudden movement—boots pounding, steel flashing, voices spiking in panic. Weapons came up too fast, too loud, every sound feeding the echo. The shutters slammed with a brutal clang, metal jaws locking shut. Lights flickered once, twice, then died—the chamber collapsing into suffocating dark.

Breath rasped too close. Someone cursed, another shouted for sight. Blades scraped on concrete. Kyrillus stayed still, storm-grey eyes cutting through the thin glow of a rival's torch. Shapes moved at the edges—eleven, maybe more—closing like wolves. His crew brayed panic, their noise painting targets on their backs.

A figure lunged then. Sparks cut briefly through black as steel met steel. He shifted with ruthless precision, blade sliding home between ribs. The rival folded instantly, choking wet against his shoulder, discarded before his body hit the floor. Storm-grey eyes never lingered; he was already moving, reading the room.

Crates loomed stacked high, brittle wood banded in rusted iron. He slammed his shoulder into one. Timber shrieked. Cargo toppled, crashing in a spray of dust and splinters. Rivals reeled, their charge narrowing to a single lane. Shouts rose—confusion, rage—but they had no choice but to drive through the gap he had made.

Another crate thundered across the floor, dragged by his boot and momentum, sealing a second lane. The funnel was built. Numbers bled from advantage to trap, eleven compressed into jagged waves of three and four. Jarek was there—silent, sudden, a blade in the blind spot he didn't need to check.

They did not speak. Their movement became a brutal rhythm—cutting, turning, striking again—two predators circling the same wound. Rivals broke on them, steel shrieking, bone crunching under fists and boots. The rest of the crew bayed with savage laughter, knives flashing wild, but the center of the fight had narrowed, colder. Calculated.

It was then that a rival's blade slipped past his guard. Pain tore fire across Kyrillus's side, shallow but biting. He exhaled, not flinching, only angling his stance tighter. The wound burned clarity into his blood. He barked a single command—sharp, final.

"Hold the choke."

The crew obeyed, panic snuffed out by the cold instinct he imposed. Alpha or not, it bent them all the same. For a moment the fight bent toward order. Rivals crashed against the line, blades clanging, boots hammering against crates and flesh. Then he saw it—chains swaying overhead, suspending a load of scrap. He forced their rivals there, step by step, until the weight hung above their heads.

One last slash, one shove, and his blade severed the groaning chain. Metal shrieked. The load dropped like judgment, tearing through the air before it crushed men to paste. Bone splintered, sparks spat as steel struck steel. Dust roared upward, choking the chamber. A scream, then nothing.

Kyrillus staggered once, blood warm under his coat, hand pressed to his side. But his eyes were fixed, unflinching. His crew dragged breath in ragged bursts. Two bodies of their own lay broken behind them—one still, one moaning wet into the floor. But they were alive. Alive because he had seen through the dark, because he had cut chaos into order.

The rivals wavered. Three bolted into the dark, scrambling over steel and slipping in blood to reach the shutters they'd sealed. Four lay dead where they had fallen, bodies broken under chain and blade. Five more crawled or choked on the floor, weapons forgotten, hands pressed to wounds that would not close. Silence settled heavy, broken only by the groan of a dying man and the slow sift of dust from the rafters.

Then, from the shadows at his side, Jarek dragged a bloodied blade slow across his sleeve, smearing the edge clean before resting it against his shoulder. He stopped near, bulk looming through the settling haze.

"Not bad," he muttered, voice carrying enough for all to hear. "For the boss's boy."

Kyrillus didn't answer. He cinched leather tight around his side, blood soaking slow through the fabric, and rose with unhurried precision. The crew watched him from the edges of the wreckage — wide-eyed, unsettled, as if something had shifted and they weren't sure whether to fear it or follow. He left them in their silence, boots echoing against concrete as he stepped through the settling dust.

Outside, Duskrow did not change. Neon flickered against snowmelt, smoke bled from unseen chimneys, and the air carried the acrid bite of oil and frost. The city gave no sign of what had been bled for within its walls. No recognition. No victory. Only indifference.

He walked into it anyway, heir in name and nothing more, the taste of blood sharp on his tongue.

Chapter Text

Condensation blurred the café's glass front the next morning, softening the view of walkways beyond. Frost streaked faint against the panes, but inside the air pressed warm, thick with steam curling upward from chrome wands and grinders rattling in steady rhythm. Cups clinked onto trays, the hiss of milk frothing cut sharp through laughter that rose and fell in uneven tides. The smell was dense and sweet—roasted beans, caramel syrup, bread turning golden in ovens stacked behind.

Students crowded the queue, shifting forward with the impatience of the rush. Coats shrugged loose over layered knits, boots squeaked against tiles still slick from snow. Veyras flickered in their hands, menus rising and collapsing in pale glimmer. One screen looped above the counter—a projection of Eidolon's auction boards, cycling through high-value listings, numbers flickering as bids rose and fell in real time.

Kyrillus stood in the line's center, motionless where everyone else shuffled. Tall frame folded into a plain jacket, his presence carved a pocket of quiet through the bustle. He didn't scroll, didn't fidget. His sleeve tugged low, wound beneath a dull ache against fabric that rubbed whenever the line inched forward. He ignored it, jaw set, gaze loosely ahead.

Around him, the café moved as though he weren't there. Students groaned about schedules, ducked under trays as names overlaid themselves on the holo-counter in bright glyphs. Someone swiped their wrist in irritation, dismissing a countdown glowing faint on their Veyra. He caught the motion, then let it pass. Color, sound, bodies in flux—all background hum. His silence stayed intact, unbroken.

In his mind, the depot replayed. Not the chaos, but the order he had cut from it—the choke forced into place, the chain brought down like a verdict, rivals broken under steel and weight. Detached. Methodical. A soldier's debrief. He searched for flaws and found none that mattered. Yet memory bent as it always did, lavender light slipping through where iron should have held; a girl's defiance carved in silver flare, staff lifted like a boundary that refused to break.

The thought needled more than he would admit. Sky sanctuaries were rare—the kind owned by ranking board elites, veteran users, and faction heads. Hers had appeared out of nowhere, refined and whole, in defiance of pattern. Worse, she had stood her ground, refusing to yield when he pressed. It unsettled him, not because of what it was, but because it fit nowhere in the order he kept of the world.

Voices rose ahead in line then, careless and clipped between the clatter of cups:

"...mystic-tier, can you believe it—"
"...already doubled, plaza's a madhouse..."

Laughter followed, folding back into the café's clamor. To everyone else, it was nothing more than chatter. He didn't look up, didn't shift, but he catalogued the words all the same. His name pulsed across the counter, the machine's voice flat. A cup slid forward, steam curling from the lid.

He stepped from the line, motion clean, hand closing around the warmth as though it weighed nothing. The crowd shuffled aside, chatter spilling without pause as the door's hiss opened into the wider hum of the campus. The café's glow fell away behind him, replaced by biting air. He drew a breath, the taste of coffee faint on the rim, and made for the lecture hall.

Rows of light spilled across seamless desks, holo-panels thrumming at the edges. Displays idled pale along the front wall while the room filled in slow rhythm—the faint hiss of chairs adjusting, voices pitched low with fatigue, outerwear releasing its chill into the air. The trace of old coffee lingered beneath the sharper glow of holo-screens flickering awake one by one.

Kyrillus cut toward his usual seat near the back, a vantage point with no eyes behind. Coffee warm in his hand, sleeve tugged low, he dropped into the chair. Around him, students flicked data-sheets across light-screens or minimized them altogether, Veyras pulsing faint against their wrists. One boy had already slumped into his arms, a holo-display still hovering dim above his cheek.

The seat beside him scraped without warning then, followed by a voice leaning close enough to brush his shoulder.

"And here I thought you'd ghost class again," the drawl came, smooth with amusement. "Turns out you just prefer an audience."

He didn't need to look to know who it was. The same voice that always carried the same grin—lazy, confident, entirely at ease where others tread lighter. Still, he turned anyway, storm-grey eyes sliding across the familiar smirk.

"Lucian," he replied, flat but not unwelcoming.

"Don't sound so thrilled." Lucian slouched deep into the chair as if it were his by right, one arm slung careless along the backrest. His coat carried the crisp edge of cologne, clean against the faint damp darkening his cuffs. He tossed a smile towards the row ahead, and as always, laughter returned before he even leaned back.

Kyrillus sipped his coffee, gaze forward. "Still making yourself useful, I see."

"Useful?" Lucian arched a brow, grin sharpening. "I make this room tolerable. Without me, you'd sulk yourself into the ground."

At the front, the professor cleared his throat and tapped his Veyra. Slides flared to life. A hush fell, only to fray again in whispers. Pale interfaces rippled awake, business and cybernetics sprawling in dry lines across the wall. The lecture pressed forward, steady and seamless, until words thinned into little more than background drone.

Time blurred. Then the scrape of chairs and shuffle of coats broke the spell. He rose with the tide, though never at its pace. Lucian fell in step without asking as the hall spilled into sharper air outside. Walkways bristled with clamor—trams gliding past, brakes shrieking soft, footsteps scattering across salted stone.

Students clustered in knots, voices tangling over deadlines, weekend plans, clipped mentions of the auction before drifting into gossip and laughter. Lucian wore it like a stage. His stride easy, coat swinging, grin tilted toward anyone who looked. Compliments landed, names remembered, laughter caught as if it belonged to him by instinct.

But Kyrillus saw the edge beneath. The way Lucian's eyes narrowed when gazes lingered too long on him. The way a single joke or deft redirection pulled the attention off, invisible to everyone else. A smile for cover, keen as glass beneath. Their rhythm held without effort—Lucian filling silence, him answering with clipped replies that would have ended anyone else.

By evening, the sky above Highridge burned cold against the dusk, towers folding themselves into glass and neon. Their reflections stitched across the windows of his penthouse, a panorama drawn wide and silent. Inside, the hush pressed heavier than the city—wide rooms of steel and glass carrying little sound but the faint whirr of the system's circulation.

He set the empty cup down, its last trace of warmth long gone. Shrugging free of his jacket, he unwound the sleeve from his arm. The graze stung under the brush of air, shallow but stubborn, more reminder than wound. He cleaned it with practiced ease, methodical and unhurried, the motions ritual as sharp as memory.

His Veyra buzzed once against the counter then, a notification sliding across the display.

[Message from Lucian: You better not be brooding in that glass box of yours. Eidolon or I'm dragging you out myself.]

A faint twitch at his mouth—quick, sharp—before it vanished. He dismissed the message, though the aftertaste of it lingered longer than it should. The quiet closed heavier after. Outside, neon burned steady; inside, darkness stretched long across glass and steel. He flicked his wrist, and light unfurled across the panes until the skyline fractured, dissolving into digital clarity.

[System Notice: Welcome back, KS.]

The words flared and faded, giving way to the vaulted sprawl of Eidolon's major city. Light broke first—then sound. Color crashed like surf against the senses, rolling through the vast square where avatars streamed in layered tides. The air itself shimmered faintly, carrying warmth without source, the scent of data-sweet ozone threaded with phantom incense from stalls coded to allure.

Cobblestones rippled like glass beneath his boots, tracing his movement in faint white trails that faded as soon as they formed. Spires rose at the plaza’s rim—living towers of metal and light, their surfaces folding in slow rhythm. Between them, banners of firelight streamed and broke, scattering projections of auction data and guild insignias that painted the sky in shifting golds and crimsons.

Laughter burst and splintered through the din—voices layered in a thousand registers, distorted by distance, overlapping until speech became pulse. Traders barked from beneath holo-awnings, code-ink glowing on their arms; avatars hovered near the boards like moths circling heat. Fountains suspended midair sent pixel-water cascading in ribbons, vanishing before it hit the ground.

And through it all, he moved—unhurried, unbending, a dark silhouette cut clean through the light. Where others shimmered, he absorbed; where sound peaked, he dulled it to background hum. Neon glanced off him and slid away, unable to hold. His presence bent the noise without effort, like gravity reclaiming the chaos.

He stopped beneath the auction boards. Above, numbers climbed and collapsed in relentless flux, rare tiers flaring like beacons before vanishing into new bids. Glare carved harsh edges across his features; the glow painted the line of his jaw, caught on his lashes, but never softened him. He wasn’t watching the spectacle—he was listening for the rhythm beneath it, the pulse that refused to falter.

The crowd continue to surge around him. Brokers shouted, banners screamed, the air itself seemed to thrum with competing frequencies—but he stood as if outside its current. Still. Solid. A figure made of something the world couldn’t quite render. And in that stillness, amid color and motion, he found again what the day had stolen; order, stripped clean of noise.

Chapter Text

Not far from the auction boards, where numbers burned bright against the air, sunlight spilled in coded ribbons that bent across stone paths etched with faint gold runes. Towers of pale stone and glass rose in layered arcs, their spires veiled with streaming banners and canopies of light. Hanging terraces overflowed with digital flora—violet blooms and golden vines trailed like woven flame.

Avatars filled every tier of the plaza, their movement folding into one vast current of color. Armored knights brushed shoulders with winged couriers; cloaked mages threaded between merchants displaying their wares in arcs of gleam. Some avatars shimmered with mechanical grace, others glided with animal poise—the place alive with every shape and texture Eidolon had to offer.

Through that cascade of sound and motion, a petite figure entered into the flow. Long white ears flicked once at the din, rising above hair that fell in loose, silken waves—each strand catching the wash of neon from the shifting banners overhead. The crowd shifted like a tide, avatars streaming past in glittering rhythm.

Lily moved along them all with unhurried grace. Her lilac knit slouched off one shoulder, fabric brushing the pleats of her white skirt whenever she angled aside from another rushing body. Boots climbed high past her knees, each step even in rhythm, the tap of her soles calling up faint light from tiles alive with drifting holo-signs.

Beside her, a silver fox padded along—pelt dusted with constellation specks, its tail tipped in iridescent prism glow. Quick and restless, it nosed at every stall they passed—batting at bundles of dried herbs, sniffing vials of glittering resin, nearly toppling a rack of trinkets before she coaxed it back with a sigh of exasperated patience.

Most saw only a decorative familiar—charming enough to draw a fleeting smile before attention drifted elsewhere. A few lingered longer, eyes narrowing in faint recognition, but soon dismissed the sight as indulgence; too much effort for too little gain. None looked twice. The fox slipped into the river of movement, a flicker of silver swallowed by the crowd.

She paused near a vendor's stall where rarities gleamed in glass and light. Spools of star-silk shimmered like captive rain, cages rustled with glow-winged insects, and bottles of ink breathed faint luminescence. She leaned closer, lavender eyes caught on a suspended vial of crystalline light—unaware her fox had already drifted off again, lost to the current.

Glass-winged insects drifted loose from a nearby stall, coded in azure and gold flickers. Their light trembled across the fox's muzzle, pulsing on a soft rhythm like a dare before scattering toward the higher air. For a heartbeat, it froze, tail tipping once like a question, then sprang after them—paws skimming the tiles, leaving thin ribbons of silver that faded as soon as they formed.

It darted beneath a banner's sweep and wove through the forest of legs and cloaks. Mounts shifted their weight; other familiars hissed or chirred as the silver flare slid past. Someone laughed and reached down, fingers closing on nothing. Someone else swore when a pack of jars rattled on a tray. The auction's hum pressed heavier from above, numbers flaring gold and crimson, bleeding color into the crowd.

Lily stilled, breath caught on a thread of silence.

The place where warmth should've pressed against her heel was gone. She turned—just a fraction—scanning through bodies and banners, the brightness of the day warping into blur around edges. A flicker of silver ahead, then gone. Her pulse quickened. And she cut into the current, slipping between gaps before they closed, following the faint trace her companion left behind where it could.

The fox burst free of the stream at the plaza's edge and ran headlong into a pair of dark boots. It stumbled, claws scraping gold runes before finding purchase. A sharp growl rippled up from its small chest, static catching at the sound. Light flared along its spine, stars pricking bright in warning. The figure before it did not move.

KS stood beneath a luminous arch that ringed the auction square, the boards' reflected numbers sliding over the black planes of his coat and dying there. Around him, the crowd flowed without touching, the world's motion bending as though guided by a pressure the system couldn't name. He shifted once—half a step, nothing more—and drew a line across the fox's escape.

The fox's hackles bristled high. Then, as if the air itself had thickened around him, something in its coding faltered. The tremor wasn't fear so much as recognition—the kind animals are born with and worlds try to teach out of them. The prism glow at its tail dimmed to a thin thread. It took one hesitant step back, ears flattened.

He denied the path with the smallest adjustment of a boot, angling to close the gap the retreat would have opened. His gaze dropped, slow and unblinking. Gloved fingers found the scruff, precise, unhurried. The fox twisted once, tail lashing bright—then a soft whimper bled into the crowd's hum. The flare along its fur guttered to a muted scatter of points, constellation pressed beneath a hand held steady.

Light trembled against his palm—familiar. That same defiant pulse from a sky that shouldn't have existed, from a dome that had refused to break. Irritation rose, clean and immediate, as though the memory had a weight of its own. The auction's drone dulled to a pressure in his ears; color thinned to a narrow band. He exhaled through his teeth, measured, returning the world to its frame by degrees.

Far down the flow, motion parted for a breath; a petite figure cutting through, lilac knit and white hair flashing between shoulders and banners. The focus pulled closer of its own accord. Gold brightened along the runes, reflections sliding as the distance thinned. KS didn't look up. His attention stayed on the residual starry dust smoldering against his glove.

Lily broke from the press, light fracturing along her hair as she stepped into the brief stillness beneath the arch. The silver fox still held lazy and precise from his gloved hand—an unbothered angle that read less like restraint than possession. Its paws churned air, prism tail flickering unevenly; thumb traced idly through its luminous fur as if considering it for a catalog, not a heartbeat.

She reached for it at once—fast, reflexive. Fingertips grazed the prism tip of its tail before he pivoted the smallest degree, tilting the fox out of reach as though adjusting the light to examine a facet. Her ears flicked back. Heat rose—anger more than embarrassment. She reached again, higher this time, the top of her boots whispering against the runes as she pushed onto her toes.

KS lifted his arm, easy and infuriating, studying the creature as though she were an inconvenience at the edge of a frame. The fox gave another choked growl, paws scrabbling against his sleeve. Her hands closed on nothing but air. She let it fall. Chin tipped, spine straightened, the refusal to jump a third time locking into place like armor.

[General] Lily: You really don't know when to quit, do you?
[General] Lily: First you break into someone's place—
[General] Lily: Now you grab their companion by the neck. What's next?
[General] KS: Companion? That thing nearly bit me.

The words hung like cut glass between them, catching every shard of light. Her gaze sharpened until it felt physical; her hands balled, then released, fingers flexing to keep from reaching again. His eyes flicked from the text to her, then to the fox—an almost-smile threatening the corner of his mouth, restrained more out of preference than effort.

Around them, curiosity gathered. Avatars slowed, then faced in, forming an unintentional crescent. He shifted his weight, slight and deliberate, adjusting his grip as if he might check the fox's teeth next. The gesture pulled another tremor from the small body; a thin sound caught and vanished into the plaza's thrum.

[General] Lily: Pity. Should've gone for the throat.
[General] KS: Still sore about it, huh?
[General] Lily: Still cocky enough to think I'm not?

The feed stuttered with laughter and bright glyphs. Her words landed quick as the snap of a latch. He breathed out through his nose—soundless in text, but visible in the slight ease of his shoulders—as if the edge of her words had skimmed him in a way he found more interesting than inconvenient. Then, at last he crouched, lowering the fox until its paws touched the tile.

Silver shot toward her like a dropped line finding a hand. She caught it cleanly, the motion a single, fluid scoop born of practice rather than panic. Fingers smoothed trembling fur in a rhythm kept just short of tenderness. The glow steadied; prism tail curled instinctively around her wrist, a soft ring of light she could feel more than see.

She looked up through it all and glared, lavender bright under wash-light. He didn't meet the heat with heat. His gaze settled like weight instead of flame—appraisal, cool and deliberate, the annoyance of moments ago sliding back behind the plane of his composure. Above them, the auction boards flared; bands of crimson and gold paced across their faces in alternating breaths.

The fox's pulse cast faint constellations against her skin. Underfoot, the runes answered in a hushed gold. The air thickened—code distortion shimmering at the edges of their boots as if Eidolon itself were trying to resolve two overlapping centers of gravity. The crowd felt it, collective breath hitched to spectacle, but the system's hum kept its steady drone, a bass note under the theater.

[General] KS: Nice to know I left an impression.
[General] Lily: Hard not to. Noise tends to stick.

His mouth lost the sharper edge of the smile; what remained was quieter, the kind of curve that read as a promise to himself rather than anything he meant to share. He rubbed his thumb across the back of his glove where faint starlight dust still clung from the fox's coat; the motes lifted, refused to go, settled again. Her attention flicked to the gesture—fast, involuntary—then held still again.

The chat around them popped and skimmed, humor breaking like spray against a rock; fox emotes, little flame bursts, someone spamming a gif of a rabbit batting a wolf on the nose. The ring pressed closer in half-steps, then froze, as if some line had been drawn none of them wanted to cross. The air near them was thicker now. Not hot. Not cold. Just denser—code warped by proximity.

[General] KS: You always this mouthy?
[General] Lily: Only when someone deserves it.
[General] KS: I'll take the compliment.

He leaned back a fraction, not retreat so much as repose—irritation sanded down into amusement that sat easily on him. Her exhale was small and measured; the only betrayal of tension was the almost imperceptible lift and fall of her shoulders. The fox nuzzled against her wrist, matching her pulse; its tail's loop brightened once, a slow band of silver that faded with the next breath. Heat shimmered along the runes for a heartbeat, like an afterimage of firelight where there was none.

She turned away. No final line, no glance. Hair swept a pale arc as the motion cut the thread between them. The fox clung instinctively for a beat, then relaxed into the cradle of her arms as she walked off. The circle of onlookers broke apart, the plaza's sound rushing back in with the ease of water reclaiming space.

KS remained where she had left him—still as cut obsidian in gold wash—until the path she'd cleaved through bodies closed again and the crowd became crowd once more. His gaze lingered on the gap that had been there. A slow breath slid out of him—half amusement, half something he declined to assess. Then he turned, stride smooth, dissolving into the current once more, as if the plaza had been waiting to reabsorb the line of him all along.

Later that night in Eidolon, light fractured open as the portal shimmered, carrying Lily back into her sanctuary's quiet glow. The auroras hung low across the twilight sky, ribbons of green and violet bending close as though to greet her. The noise of the plaza fell away the instant she stepped through—sound peeling back into silence that seemed to breathe with her, close and listening.

The fox bounded forward the instant the shimmer sealed shut, paws scattering motes of starlight across the stones. Where it passed, the lilies swayed as though stirred by unseen wind, their glow blooming brighter in its wake. It skittered toward the fountain's edge, tail pulsing in soft rhythm—steady now, but threaded with some hidden restlessness. The glow's cadence matched the breath she was forcing herself to keep even.

Lily followed slower. Irritation still clung to her like static—fine, invisible, impossible to shake. A flick of her wrist brought translucent panes spiraling into being beside her; glass petals unfurled in a slow bloom, releasing the items she'd gathered earlier. They drifted downward in measured arcs, settling onto a low crystal table near the path. Jars caught the spill of aurora light, herbs gleaming dim within their seals.

The sanctuary adjusted around her, as it always did—cushions drawing closer to the fountain, lilies folding inward to a softer cluster, a crystalline perch forming like frost given shape. The fox nosed through it all with bright curiosity, sparks flaring faint at its tail as it leapt onto the perch and turned twice before curling as if it had always belonged there.

She unsealed the jars, scattering herbs into shallow bowls. Powders fell in delicate spirals, catching the air like muted constellations. The fox lowered its head, fur silvered and still faintly luminescent, motes lifting with every slow breath. A bloom beside the perch unfurled wider, answering the soft glow. Heat from the small body bled into her ribs until the last edge of the plaza's noise and light finally dulled.

"Arrogant bastard..." she murmured, smoothing the dust from its coat. "Someone should shove you off a cliff."

The fox purred, warmth seeping into her side as it pressed close. For all its smallness, it carried a steady light—soft, persistent, unwilling to fade. Her hand lingered against its fur, each stroke slower than the last. The tension ebbed, but not entirely. His smirk stayed with her—an imprint more than a memory, like a bruise under skin or the echo of thunder long after the sky had cleared.

Chapter Text

Morning came quicker than expected, tugging her out of Eidolon and back into the cadence of routine. Beyond the classroom windows, artificial snow drifted in slow spirals, each flake coded to glimmer prettier than reality ever could. Inside, warmth pressed close, the air humming with chatter—the restless buzz of students counting the minutes to winter break.

Azalyea sat with her chin propped in her palm, gaze unfocused on the pale glow of her own display. A loose scrunchie brushed the silver chain of her Veyra bracelet every time her fingers twitched across the interface. Words and equations blurred into static, meaningless against the weight of something still haunting her.

The echo of his words lingered—sharp and insistent, typed with that maddening certainty as though he'd already claimed the last line. And that smirk—arrogant, unshakable—kept surfacing no matter how often she tried to shove it aside. She hated that it did, hated how it circled back each time, uninvited and unyielding.

Warmth folded over her from behind, familiar without needing a name. Chloe's arms cinched her into a playful squeeze, bracelets knocking against the silver heart of her Accoria and tugging her cardigan askew. A chin dropped to her shoulder, strawberry blonde curls spilling forward until they brushed her cheek.

"You've been zoning out all morning," Chloe murmured, her voice wrapped in a grin she never bothered to hide. "Who's got you so distracted?"

"Yeah, right." she huffed back, honey brown eyes flicking toward the still-glowing display. "Like I've got time for that."

Their voices earned a few sidelong glances. One girl rolled her eyes in fond exasperation, another boy at the back muffled a laugh against his sleeve. Chloe, of course, noticed and flashed another shameless grin, while the teacher's monotone faded into the tide of chatter.

"Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that," she continued, tapping one glittering nail against the edge of her display. "Totally math problems, right? Definitely not something juicier."

She groaned softly, wriggling out of her grip. Heat crept up her neck as she snapped the display shut, the glow vanishing too fast to seem casual. She muttered something under her breath, refusing Chloe the satisfaction of a reply. Around them, the room was already shifting, chairs squeaking and voices mounting, straining for the freedom of the bell.

Then it struck—sharp and metallic, splitting the air. Desks screeched back, bags slammed shut, voices breaking loose all at once. Chloe's arm hooked tighter through hers, tugging her toward the doorway as friends from other classes barreled in, calling their names, already tossing plans over one another.

Within seconds, the quiet she had clung to was gone, drowned in laughter. Footsteps thundered down the stairwell, shouts bouncing against chipped paint and peeling posters. Cold air rushed them as the doors flung wide, breath fogging into neon light.

Students scattered across the avenue—some drawn toward steaming food stalls, others hollering plans down the street. Their circle was loudest of them all—someone groaning theatrically about finals, another swinging his bag like a weapon until Chloe smacked it back with a laugh. One boy tried sneaking a vape, only to yelp when Chloe snatched it and tossed it into the snow.

Their laughter that followed rose too sharp for the weary commuters threading past. Azalyea let herself be pulled along, Chloe's arm warm against hers, their voices clashing and spilling over each other until her head hummed with them.

The closer they pressed toward the skyrail, the narrower the street became, funneling bodies up the steps. Neon fractured in puddles of half-melted snow, rippling underfoot. Then the doors swallowed them into heavy, stale heat—damp coats pressing close, roasted spice clinging thick, ozone stinging from the tracks.

Announcements crackled overhead in three clipped languages. Commuters surged forward with mechanical impatience, while Chloe's friends filled the gap with too-loud arguments, laughter peaking as they jostled for the door. Azalyea scrolled her Veyra without thought, thumb flicking light across her wrist, her mind already drifting.

The hum reached her first—low, steady, crawling beneath her leather shoes. It swelled into vibration, rattling faintly through the platform as light streaked along tunnel walls. A gust pressed forward, cool air rushing into warmth, before the skyrail slid into view, brakes grinding sparks against metal.

The line shifted as one, bodies edging toward the yellow strip. Doors hissed open, stale warmth spilling outward. Commuters pressed forward in sharp, practiced steps, while students shoved, laughter riding over the crackle of static announcements.

She moved with the tide, thumb still flicking idly across her Veyra. Chloe's bracelets chimed behind her, her voice carrying bright over talk of holiday markets. Everything blurred—voices, fractured neon on wet concrete, the constant press of shoulders—until the line carried her forward, one step from the open cabin.

She lifted her foot—then froze.

The jolt hit hard. Breath halved. Chest pulled tight, clean through. The platform sank into muffled thrum, sound collapsing sudden, like a dream torn open. Heat bloomed sudden and low, nerves straining taut toward something unseen. Her throat closed around a swallow that refused to move. She almost turned—she had to—but her body locked, caught on that invisible tether.

"Lyea!"

Chloe's voice burst bright against the fog. Her arm looped tight, yanking her forward, and the crowd surged behind. The tether snapped in an instant. She stumbled into the cabin, the pull vanishing as if it had never existed. The doors slid shut, sealing the space she had left behind—yet for a breath, a hush lingered in her chest, fading too quickly to name.

The train's roar bled into silence, sparks fading against the dark. The press of bodies surged to close the gap it left—footsteps striking sharp, bags knocking, voices spilling over one another. Amid the restless tide, one figure had gone still. Kyrillus stood just beyond the doorway she had vanished through, stride broken where instinct had rooted him.

It hit—clean and brutal. His chest cinched as if a hand had closed around it; a single heavy pulse cracked through his ribs. Heat surged under his skin, a fast, unbidden flood. He found himself leaning a fraction toward the departing carriage before thought caught up, every fiber drawn taut, reaching for a distance already gone.

The jolt of that—of moving before permission—jarred him. He had never faltered. Not in Duskrow's alleys. Not under a blade. Not even beneath his father's gaze. Control had always come first, as automatic as breath. Yet here, instinct had moved and discipline lagged behind, leaving a raw seam open inside him.

Omega. Unmistakable—his.

Not a whisper, not a guess. His body knew before thought could name it, marrow-deep and absolute. Too sharp to be coincidental, too final to mistake. And yet the very certainty staggered him. Beneath it coiled something rarer still, darker—mate. Perhaps even true. A truth his instincts claimed without pause, even as his mind fought to refuse it.

Around him the platform pressed on, indifferent. A shoulder clipped his sleeve; a mutter sparked and died, no one daring to meet his eye. Another body veered wide at the last second, unsettled by a shift in the air he hadn't meant to loose. Pheromones edged the heat—faint, metallic-sweet—then he forced them down, the current bending around the space he refused to give.

Still, he didn't move. Jaw set. Shoulders tight. The black curve of his Aureus caught the neon when his hand curled once, tendons standing out across the back of it. Every nerve lit with the urge to follow, to hunt the thread to its source. Each breath cut against restraint. Suppression wasn't calm. It wasn't control. It was violence folded into stillness.

By then the skyrail was gone, windows flicking out of sight like a sequence of closing lids. The last of its noise thinned into the tunnel.

Then silence claimed it. His Veyra cut through with a frost of static, encrypted text crawling sharp across his skin. Syndicate directives marched in neat lines, indifferent to the thing that had just split him open. He let them pull focus because that was what remained to do. A clipped exhale cut through his teeth—more snarl than sigh, bitten down to something smaller.

He rolled his shoulders back, composure sliding into place, and stepped off, stride resettled to its exacting cadence. Two shadows slipped into place a pace behind him, silent as ever, matching the narrow of his path as the crowd sealed over it. The echo did not. It stayed, a live wire under his skin, whispering of a thread that would not be cut—only drawn tighter, no matter how far he walked.

Chapter Text

The city did not slow for him. Hearthvale moved in its own quiet rhythm—trams chiming steady along the rails, bells unbothered. Garlands hung pale from frostlit lampposts, bulbs flickering faint. Overhead, holo-banners faltered, stuttering washed-out greetings into the damp. Footsteps pressed thick around him, shoes striking puddles that splintered light into glare.

Kyrillus cut through it all with exact cadence. Shoulders squared. Coat falling heavy with deliberate ease. Storm-grey eyes forward, unreadable. Beneath his ribs the tether still burned—a live wire drawn taut, gnawing in silence. Every sound came sharpened, every breath too near. Restraint bit deep, worn like armor.

Two shadows matched his pace, steps falling to the rhythm of his boots.

They had been there longer than memory could hold—since before his voice had settled, before his hands had carried their first blade. Pulled from a program meant to erase them, spared by his words alone, they had walked behind his shoulders ever since. Two halves of a silence, bound not by leash but by something older, unbroken.

Riven kept to his right, every motion stripped to efficiency. Gloves flexed once, seams creasing, blue-grey eyes charting angles in the crowd. Every shift of a shoulder entered the ledger behind his gaze. He spoke nothing, but the silence he bore was a sheathed blade—coiled so tight it could cut loose in a heartbeat.

Beside him, Rhea was the counterweight. Her stride seemed looser only in appearance, each step mirroring her brother's—exact, precise. Her gaze flicked to the mirrored pane of a tram, catching the faint reflection of strangers behind them. The tilt of her head was all it took to show she had read the street, every face weighted, then discarded.

Glass and light gave way to brick and shadow as their path narrowed, the hum of the city peeling back. Neon bled across the haze, thinning to a dim wash where garlands no longer reached. Damp brick swallowed warmth, cold pooling low in an unassuming alleyway. Powerlines hummed overhead. Steam hissed sputtered ragged from vents—brief warmth, then nothing.

Kyrillus leaned into the wall, coat hanging open—not careless, but a kind of ease that carried weight. A cigarette balanced between his fingers, smoke lifting in thin veils. He drew slow, exhaled slower, as though even air bent to his measure. Storm-grey eyes fixed forward, deliberate, flat—the gaze of a man who already knew how the night would end.

Opposite, the twins held rigid postures, their stillness cutting against his loosened frame. Riven angled a fraction deeper into the alley, shoulders squared, eyes mapping every seam of brick and shadow. Two fingers lifted briefly at his side—an old signal, habitual as breath—enough to tell him the space was clear.

Rhea's posture mirrored her brother's discipline, but her gaze flicked across the space to him. Just long enough to settle, sharp enough to press. The crease at her brow carried more than reproach—it was the same look she had given him countless times, scolding without words, protective in its severity. Business, not leisure.

He let it pass. Another drag, another veil of smoke. His mouth twitched—half smirk, half dismissal. Acknowledgment folded into refusal. Rhea's jaw tightened, then stilled. Riven's silence pressed heavier, exact as ever. Together they framed him in steel, while he waited as though even time itself bent to his pace.

Footsteps broke the hush then, scraping soft against hard concrete. A figure slipped into the alley, shoulders hunched against the cold, coat cinched too tight over a frame gone thin. Stubble shadowed his jaw, eyes restless beneath the weak spill of light. He searched the narrow stretch as though expecting another—who he had meant to meet.

Then he saw them.

Color drained from his face. His stride faltered, breath snagging sharp in his chest. For a beat he froze, eyes wide on the three waiting forms. The weight of it landed clean and merciless. Not chance, not mistake. A trap. Already sprung. Instinct jolted him into motion, boots splintering slush as he pivoted for the street.

Riven was already there. One step forward—precise, silent—and the mouth of the alley shut. A gloved hand caught his collar, dragging him back into the alley's depth with a single efficient pull. The man stumbled, coughing, shoes skidding across frost-slick stone until Riven released him without ceremony.

No shove. No flourish. Just absence. Left unsteady, the man stood alone in the press of shadows. Smoke hung between them, gauzed and slow. His breath tore ragged from his throat, misting fast in the cold. Eyes darted from one face to the next, never finding purchase. Somewhere above, a wire hummed faint like a tuning fork.

"I-I didn't have a choice," he blurted, words tumbling fast. "They—they came to me, you understand? I had no way out."

He gave no answer. He shifted the cigarette between his fingers, watching it burn down grain by grain, as though the man's pleas were nothing but background noise. His stillness pressed heavier than any blade; each second of silence forced the man further into desperation. Only then did his eyes lift—flat, unblinking, pinning him in place.

"I didn't want to, I swear it," the man pressed, desperation fraying every edge. "I kept my head down, I—there was nothing else I could do—"

The man's hand twitched, half-reaching toward his coat pocket, then stilled. His gaze skittered sideways—first to Rhea, then to Riven—as though mercy might live in either. All he found was steel; one gaze narrowed, the other steady, unyielding. Ash hissed faint against the snow.

"You—" his laugh cracked brittle, hollow. "You don't believe me, do you?"

Silence stretched. Only the hum of powerlines and the vent's broken hiss kept time. Kyrillus's gaze dropped, tracing the man from boots to trembling hands before rising again with surgical precision. He tilted his head—not pity, not curiosity, only the dismissal of a man closing a ledger already written.

"No," he replied simply, voice stripped of humanity. "It's done."

The verdict landed, and something in the man snapped. Panic surged through him raw, ugly, louder than thought. His hand tore for the inside of his coat, jerking fabric, metal scraping loud as he dragged a pistol free in a motion too frantic, too desperate to carry any aim. Not a soldier's draw. Not even a fighter's. Just a cornered animal thrashing for survival.

He didn't get the chance.

Riven's grip clamped his wrist mid-swing, iron on bone. One twist, violent and exact, and the joint gave way with a wet crack that split the air. The man's scream ripped raw and high, knees collapsing as the pistol clattered against slush. His ruined wrist dangled at a wrong angle, flesh already swelling dark.

Rhea's blade whispered the next beat. One stroke across the throat, so clean it seemed almost unreal—until the blood erupted. A hot, pulsing spray burst forward, arcing against brick and pooling down the wall. The man staggered back, gurgling, clutching his throat with his remaining hand as scarlet pumped hot and fast between his fingers.

Blood steamed where it struck the cold. Each spatter pattered uneven against stone. He coughed, choking, eyes wide in animal terror. His body gave—knees buckling, slipping sideways through his own blood. Crimson spread quick, steam rising thin from the pool. The gurgling ebbed. Twitching slowed. Then silence. Only the drip of blood remained, steady in the slush.

Kyrillus exhaled slow, flicked ash from his glove as though violence were punctuation. He stepped forward at last, crouched beside the body without hesitation. Gloved fingers slipped into the man's inner pocket and drew out the chip-case slick with blood. He sealed it into his coat, expression unshaken. The tether inside him finally slackened—not gone, but eased.

From the far end of the alley, a gate creaked open. Two figures in plain coats slipped through, unremarkable but for the tarps and solvent they carried. They spoke nothing. Their steps were steady, practiced, the weight of routine in every motion. One gave him a brief nod—acknowledgment of hierarchy—before both knelt to their work.

Canvas unfurled. Bleach hissed sharp against stone, its sting cutting into the night air. He drew one final drag before crushing the stub into the slush. He turned, shoulders squaring beneath the fall of his coat. Riven and Rhea fell in behind him without a sound. Their footsteps receded into the mouth of the alley, absorbed into the city beyond.

Hearthvale folded back around them, seamless. Tram bells chimed steady down the rails, children's laughter spilled bright across frost. Lanterns swung above shopfronts, scattering soft gold over windows fogged with heat and steam. Restaurants breathed warmth into the street—soup ladled, glasses raised, voices breaking high with cheer.

Behind them, the alley was already gone—its blood erased beneath bleach and shadow, buried by the city's indifference.

To Hearthvale, nothing had happened. To him, nothing ever did.

Chapter Text

Days slipped by, folding one into another, carrying her in quiet ease—less like the march of time, more like the lull of a dream. She surrendered to it willingly, sinking deeper into her sanctuary while the city's clamor softened to a half-forgotten song. A blanket lay tangled around her legs, holding her in its gentle warmth.

Azalyea drifted within that cocoon, bathed in the drowsy spill of late-afternoon light. Her breath rose in feather-soft rhythm, stirring the loose strands of chestnut hair that caught faint gold at their tips. Beyond her walls, the world moved on. Hearthvale lay hushed beneath heavy snowfall, rooftops and branches wrapped in a pale veil.

Footsteps whispered over salted stone, as steady as a heartbeat. Somewhere below, a wheel strained against slush, its groan swallowed by the hush, while laughter flared and vanished before it could reach her window. Every sound blurred at the edges, as though the air itself had drawn a velvet curtain around her.

And in that stillness, something lingered. Not sound, not thought—only a presence curled beneath her chest. She had felt it once before, sudden and sharp on the platform, a pull so fierce it had stolen her breath. Now it returned in fragments, glimmering like echoes across water, dissolving each time she leaned toward them.

The hush fractured at last—broken by the first flicker of her Veyra.

Pale holographic glow unfurled from the charm, scattering delicate light over her pillow. She groaned softly, small and instinctive, deeper into her plush as though the blanket itself might conspire to keep her hidden. For a breath longer, she clung to the illusion—pretending her cocoon could still hold the world away.

Then the light gathered, folding inward until a silhouette steadied above the table. Color washed through the radiance, blooming into strawberry-blonde curls and a grin tugging at familiar lips. Chloe spun lazily in her chair, elbows propped, chin cradled in her palms—like she had been waiting there all along.

"Lyea, seriously?" she sing-song, every syllable dipped in mock disbelief. "You're still in bed? It's practically night already."

"...No it's not." came the muffled reply, drifting somewhere between a sigh and a pout. "You're lying."

Still, she did not stir. Only her shoulders gave her away, twitching faintly as the comforter rose and fell with her breath. She rolled onto her side instead, cheek sinking deeper into the pillow, her back a silent wall between them. Chloe's laughter spilled within the projection, her curls scattering gleam as she tossed them back with deliberate flair.

"Close enough. You've been in hibernation for hours." Chloe's voice tipped slyly toward the plush tucked under her chin. "So what, you planning to merge with that rabbit now?"

A low noise rumbled against the pillow, too soft to shape into words. One hand drifted lazily to poke absently at the rabbit's paw, nudging it forward like it could answer in her stead. Chloe's grin lingered, lazy and amused—until she jolted upright in sudden, theatrical revelation.

"Oh my god, look at you," Chloe declared, her voice pitched high with exaggerated awe. "You're literally a blanket burrito. Don't move—I need a screenshot."

Azalyea peeked from the cocoon's edge, lashes parting with reluctant heaviness. With a sluggish roll, she fumbled for a pillow and lobbed it across the hologram with all the grace of a falling star. Chloe let out a shriek of mock horror, clutching her chest like she'd been mortally struck, then broke into a breathless giggle.

"You're impossible." She murmured into the bedding, too languid to care. "...Delete it."

But Chloe only leaned in, curls bouncing as her grin widened, golden light crowning her with playful mischief. For a beat, she pantomimed raising a holo-device, angling it dramatically like a photographer hunting for the perfect shot. Her finger tapping the air with deliberate flourish before flicking her wrist smugly.

"Nope, too late. Immortalized forever. In fact—" Chloe tilted forward, voice dropping to a secretive murmur.. "—I'm dropping it in squad chat. Let them see how adorable you are."

The covers rustled sharply, betraying the stiffness that overtook her. She buried her face in the rabbit plush, the soft ear crushed to her cheek like a shield. Her protest tumbled out muffled and incoherent, a blend of despair and indignation, shoulders puffing up like a cornered animal daring anyone to laugh.

"Traitor," she breathed at last, smothered in cotton and fur.

Chloe gave a satisfied hum, fingertip sketching lazy hearts and crooked spirals along the projection's rim. Each fizzled out in a blink, leaving behind a glittery taunt that lingered half a beat before vanishing. Propped on one palm, she tilted her cheek into her hand, amber eyes alive with mischief—as though every doodle was another jab meant to tease the cocoon on the bed.

"Anyway," she drawled, her voice dipped in syrupy sweetness. "Rise and shine, starlight. It's event day, and the squad's already queueing. You're not ditching us again."

Silence answered at first—then a groan rolled out, loud and deliberate, crafted solely for Chloe's ears. She flopped harder into the mattress, limbs heavy, hair spilling messily across the pillow. She didn't bother opening her eyes, didn't bother to move at all—playing dead with the stubbornness of someone determined to resist resurrection.

She let out a slow, exaggerated sigh then before letting words spill with no real effort. "...Tell them I'm sick."

"Oh, sure," Chloe fired back instantly, voice bright with mock outrage. "I'll just inform them that our celestial queen's been struck by terminal laziness. Maybe they'll send flowers."

Azalyea puffed a faint breath against the rabbit plush still tucked under her chin, unimpressed. Her eyes stayed closed as she gave it a lazy toss upward, catching it clumsily back to her chest before rolling the ear between her fingers in slow, restless circles—proof enough she was listening, even if she pretended otherwise.

"Five more minutes," she murmured stubbornly. "No less."

Chloe let out a scandalized gasp, spinning her chair half around before collapsing sideways in the projection with the extravagance of a stage actress mid-tragedy. Her head lolled back, curls spilling as though the sheer audacity of the request had ended her very life.

"Five more minutes?!" she shrieked, eyes wide with exaggerated betrayal. "You've had five hours!"

She pried one eye open, feigning effort just to watch the ridiculous performance unravel before her. Her lashes drooped again almost immediately, but the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth gave her away. Chloe caught it instantly, the shift punctuated by a sharp clap that cracked through the quiet, as though she had just won a match point.

"Aha! I saw that!" Chloe crowed, lunging forward until the projection flared. "Don't you dare play dead now. Come on—just one run I'll carry."

That did it. The fight to keep her mask slipped in an instant. A laugh sputtered through her lips, fragile at first, then spilling into something helpless and bright. It shook her shoulders until she had to clutch the plush to her chest, as though it could muffle the sound she no longer had the strength to swallow.

"...You?" Her voice rasped, hoarse but teasing. "Carry me?"

She tilted her head, watching Chloe as if to confirm the audacity of what she had just heard. Chloe jabbed a finger at her through the projection, sharp and certain, the kind of gesture that came with a grin already daring her to argue. She held it there for a beat, then let the motion unravel into a dramatic flick of her curls, smugness radiating from every angle.

"Yes. Obviously." Chloe's tone rang with unshakable confidence. "Now stop being dramatic and get in before I spam your Veyra until it explodes."

Azalyea blinked at her, caught between a grumble and a laugh. The sound that left her was something in between—half surrender, half warmth reserved only for her. The covers sagged to her waist, no longer a barricade but a lazy comfort. Slowly, her hand crept toward the bedside table, betrayal and affection tangled in the same reluctant motion.

"...Fine." Her reply carried more indulgence than defeat. "One run."

Her fingers found the silver charm at last, cool against her skin as she lifted it from the table. For a moment she turned it idly in her palm, watching the luminescence gather faintly across her hand. Then she clasped it to her wrist; the bracelet settled with a muted click, its glow pulsing once in time with her heart.

"Atta girl." Chloe's grin widened, amber eyes bright with mischief. "See you at the atrium."

She flashed a jaunty peace sign near her cheek, tilting her head with exaggerated flourish before her image folded inward and dissolved. The shimmer scattered like dust, vanishing into the dim. Quiet rushed back where her laughter had been, settling soft against the walls, heavier for its absence.

Azalyea exhaled, a sigh barely shaped, and stretched until her spine ached with the last remnants of drowsiness. Her head tipped back against the wall, eyes half-lidded, the faintest smile ghosting her lips. The glow at her wrist pulsed patiently. She turned it lazily, thumb brushing the charm with a flick that carried no urgency, only the inevitability of giving in.

Light answered, unfurling in fragile threads that curled up her arm and spilled across the dim. The edges of her world blurred—the curtain's glow dissolving into haze, snowlight bleeding into radiance. Gravity softened. Breath loosened. The hush that had cocooned her gave way as the glow folded over her, gentle and complete.

[System Notice: Welcome back, Lily.]

The words glimmered once before fading, carrying her adrift into the gentle unfolding of Eidolon.