Work Text:
The city of Belobog stood still beneath its crust of frost and light — a fortress of survival buried in endless winter.
Even the wind seemed tired here. It scraped along the walls of the Silvermane Guard posts and whispered through the market square, scattering snow like ash.
Their boots crunched against the frozen cobblestones as they walked — three travelers from a distant star, out of place in a world that no longer believed in warmth.
Dan Heng kept to the back.
It wasn’t distrust — not entirely — but distance born of habit. Observation before engagement. Record before reaction.
He listened to March 7th’s chatter fade against the static hum of the wind.
Stelle said little. Her eyes tracked the buildings as though memorizing them, one by one, like someone trying to reassemble a past life from broken mirrors.
They were supposed to be searching for the city’s leader, for clues about the Stellaron buried in Belobog’s heart — but the rhythm of progress broke suddenly with a dull, metallic clang.
Dan Heng turned, scanning instinctively.
Stelle was kneeling beside a trash can.
March blinked. “Uh… are you okay?”
No response.
Stelle had taken off one glove and was reaching inside — slow, deliberate, as if afraid she might scare something away. Her reflection shimmered faintly against the metal lid. She looked strange like that: foreign, yet eerily familiar.
“…What are you doing?” Dan Heng asked, his tone low and controlled.
She didn’t look up. “Looking.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
March made a face. “Please tell me you didn’t just stick your hand in there.”
Stelle’s fingers brushed against a scrap of paper; she pulled it out carefully, like extracting evidence.
“People hide things in what they throw away,” she said quietly. “It tells you what they’ve stopped caring about.”
March crossed her arms. “It’s garbage. Not secrets.”
“Secrets are what people want to forget,” Stelle murmured. “That’s why they end up here.”
Dan Heng watched her longer than he meant to. Her movements were methodical, not whimsical — not curiosity, but purpose.
Then, without warning, she dropped to the ground and crawled toward another trash can across the square, ignoring the pedestrians weaving around her. She muttered under her breath, almost gleefully: “Two, three… where do you hide the truth, huh?”
March’s eyes widened. “She’s… crawling in the snow.”
Dan Heng’s brow tightened, his gaze sharpening. This was no longer merely investigative; it was unrestrained, impulsive, unpredictable.
Stelle suddenly stood, spun on her heels, and kicked a discarded board against the wall, as if testing the echoes for secrets. Her breath came in sharp huffs.
“I’ll find it! You can’t hide your lies!” she whispered, eyes darting, hands brushing frantically over snow-covered debris.
Dan Heng’s expression remained unreadable, but inside, his mind raced. This wasn’t chaos without meaning — it was controlled madness, and he couldn’t categorize it. He scanned her posture, her tone, the odd spark in her eyes — all signs of something deeper, something he couldn’t yet measure.
When she finally straightened, snow dusted her hair and coat. In her hand was a torn photograph — half a face and a child’s smile, both faded to near white.
March stepped back. “That’s… kind of creepy, Stelle.”
“It’s a memory,” she said softly. “Someone tried to forget it.”
Her breath clouded in the air, pale and ghostly.
Dan Heng’s brow furrowed slightly. “You believe this has meaning?”
“Everything has meaning,” she said, slipping the photo into her pocket. “Even what people throw away.”
Her voice carried a strange calm — not the naïve optimism March was used to, but something colder, older. A certainty born from emptiness.
Dan Heng didn’t reply right away.
He was used to measuring anomalies — variables, data points, threats — but this was different. Stelle wasn’t erratic, yet she wasn’t predictable either. One moment methodical, the next unhinged, crawling through filth and shouting at shadows — there was something about her composure that made him uneasy. As if she was aware of something even he wasn’t.
March tugged on his sleeve. “Should we stop her? People are staring…”
He shook his head. “No. Let her finish.”
His tone was quiet, unreadable. He wasn’t encouraging her — only observing, storing the pattern away for later. Yet beneath that stillness, a thin thread of recognition began to form.
He knew what it meant to search for identity in silence.
To dissect the world just to find proof that you were real.
When Stelle finally turned back to them, she caught him watching.
“What?” she asked. “You look like you’re analyzing me.”
“I am,” he said simply.
March rolled her eyes. “Seriously? At least pretend to be normal.”
But Stelle only tilted her head. “And what do you see?”
For a moment, his composure faltered — just barely.
His voice came quieter, more thoughtful.
“…An anomaly.”
She smiled faintly — not offended, not flattered — just aware. Then she brushed the snow from her coat and started walking again, boots crunching softly in the cold, muttering to herself about numbers, patterns, and “truths hidden under lids.”
March fell into step beside her, muttering something about “weird geniuses” and “trash can logic.”
Dan Heng lingered for a few seconds longer, eyes fixed on the faint dents in the snow where she’d knelt, crawled, and spun.
He only noted it in silence, the way an archivist might mark a page for later study.
A small anomaly.
A variable that refused to be measured.
…Logged.