The dusk came as it always did, heavy and choking, but the rhythm of boots was no longer alien. Shiro didn't flinch when Kuro pushed open the door, Valeria steady at his side. Tonight, Aki didn't retreat into silence. She sat upright, her mask of frailty still in place for show, but her eyes were sharper, more alive.
Kuro and Shiro were already bickering over Cygnus's crooked wings when Aki's voice cut in, dry and teasing. "Shiro, you carve like a drunk sailor. Even Kuro's crooked stars look straighter than yours."
Shiro gaped, betrayed. "You're supposed to be on my side!"
Valeria laughed, tugging Kuro's cheek when he muttered a curse. "See? Even your sister knows you're hopeless."
For the first time, Aki joined the rhythm of their teasing, weaving herself into the banter. It was small, but it was real.
The candlelight wavered, casting their shadows huge and wavering on the walls. Shiro and Kuro were hunched over a fresh plank, chisels in hand. Kuro's brow was furrowed in a way Shiro had come to recognize, not anger, but a kind of desperate focus.
"Your Cygnus is still a plucked chicken," Kuro muttered, not looking up.
"Yours looks like it's trying to swim through rock," Shiro shot back, but he was smiling. He'd never had someone to trade insults with who didn't mean them. In the slums, an insult was a promise of a fight. With Kuro, it was... a game. A weird, sharp edged game.
Kuro set his chisel down with a soft click. "Why do you even care?" he asked, his voice losing its edge. "Why carve them at all? They don't feed you. They don't keep you warm."
Shiro shrugged, running a thumb over the grooves of his latest attempt, Aquila, the Eagle. "They're... mine. Out there," he jerked his chin toward the door, "nothing's mine. The air's borrowed. The ground's borrowed. Even the hunger feels like it belongs to the city first." He looked at the crooked constellation. "But these? I made these wrong. That's mine. My mistake."
Kuro was silent for a long moment. "A mistake," he echoed, the word strange in his mouth. "You own your mistakes. That's... a kind of freedom." He picked up his own carving, a stark, severe Lyra. "Everything I make has to be perfect. Or it's destroyed. If I carve a star wrong, it's not a mistake. It's a failure. A flaw in the... the material." He didn't specify what material.
"That sounds exhausting," Shiro said, honestly.
A ghost of Kuro's brittle smirk returned. "It is. It's like holding your breath forever. You come here and I watch you and you're just... breathing. Loudly. Wrongly. And it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen." He caught Shiro's confused look and shook his head. "Forget it. Just... keep carving wrong. Please."
Shiro studied him, the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes kept flicking to the door even when he was most absorbed. "You're always waiting for something," Shiro observed quietly.
Kuro's storm grey eyes snapped to his, sharp and startled. Then the mask slammed down. "Aren't we all?" he deflected, his tone going light and mocking. "You're waiting for your sister to get better. I'm waiting for my next meal. Same thing."
But it wasn't the same thing. Shiro knew that now. Kuro's waiting was a different kind of hunger. It wasn't for food. It was for an end to something Shiro couldn't see.
"Anyway," Kuro said, picking up his chisel again, "your Eagle's neck is too thick. It looks constipated. Let me show you." And just like that, the moment passed. But Shiro stored it away, the raw, envious ache in Kuro's voice when he'd said freedom. It was a clue to a mystery he wasn't supposed to solve, but couldn't help turning over in his mind.
Later, Shiro leaned forward, eyes bright. "Tell us about Nyxarion, Aki. You always said the stars there are the people and the sky."
Valeria's calm composure sharpened, her interest piqued. Kuro scoffed, storm grey eyes narrowing. "Nyxarion? A barren wasteland. The King says so. A dead land. Their herald, the demon Queen Nyxara, with her multi hued eyes. Propaganda." His voice softened, almost reluctant. "It has to be propaganda."
Aki's lips curved faintly. "Of course it is. Nyxarion isn't dead. It's alive in ways the King fears." She spoke then, her voice weaving stories like threads of starlight. Of the Starborn clans, their politics and rivalries, their constellations etched into flesh. Of Nyxara, demon queen or saviour depending on who told the tale, her eyes shimmering with every hue of the heavens. Of the way the stars there weren't just guides, but laws, binding and breaking lives with their alignments.
Shiro listened, rapt, his chisel forgotten. Kuro leaned forward, fascinated like a child, his brittle mask gone. Valeria sat still, but inside she reeled. How could Aki know so much?
A comfortable quiet had settled after Aki's tales, the shack feeling larger, as if filled with the ghostly constellations she'd described. It was Valeria who broke it, her calm voice laced with amusement. "Look at them," she said to Aki, nodding toward the boys. They were back to carving, but now they were each trying to replicate the Cygnus constellation Aki had described, the great celestial swan. "Two scholars, deep in study. Or two kittens, trying to catch the same dust mote."
Aki followed her gaze. Shiro's tongue was poking out in concentration. Kuro's brow was furrowed so deep it looked painful. "Scholars?" Aki rasped, a dry chuckle escaping. "They look like they're trying to solve a puzzle with their foreheads."
"Your brother's swan has a broken neck," Kuro announced, not looking up.
"Yours has no wings," Shiro retorted. "It's a fat, starry slug."
Valeria leaned toward Aki, her voice a stage whisper. "Such eloquent debates. The great philosophers of Higaru."
Aki's eyes glittered with rare, genuine mirth. "The slums finest minds. Arguing over the posture of a bird that doesn't exist." She raised her voice slightly. "Shiro, if you make the neck any longer, it'll be a goose, not a swan. And a sad one at that."
Shiro glared at her, betrayed. "You're helping him?"
"I'm helping the art," Aki deadpanned.
Kuro smirked, triumphant. "See? Even your sister admits my superior eye."
"She admitted nothing," Valeria cut in smoothly, pinching Kuro's cheek. "She just pointed out that your rival has no grasp of avian anatomy. Your slug swan is still a slug."
Kuro's smirk vanished. "It's not a slug! It's... stylized!"
"It's a blob with a star on it," Shiro said, grinning now.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
"A majestic blob!"
"A constipated majestic blob," Aki added, sending Valeria into a soft, snorting laugh that was so unguarded it made both boys stare.
For a moment, the shack was filled not with the weight of secrets or the chill of the outside world, but with the warm, tangled sound of four people laughing at a stupid, carved piece of wood. It was fragile. It was foolish. It was, Shiro thought, the closest thing to a family he'd ever known. Kuro looked from Valeria's laughing face to Aki's faint smile to Shiro's grin, and for a second, his own mask of sharp angles and stormy eyes melted into something softer, younger. Hopeful even.
Then Valeria wiped her eye, the moment receding like a tide. "Alright, enough mocking the artists. Let's see if we can't make this swan look at least a little less like it's been stepped on."
When the stories ended, Valeria waited until the boys were distracted, then asked quietly, "Your second name?"
Aki hesitated, her mask slipping for a heartbeat. "Aratani," she said at last, reluctant but felt it was necessary.
Valeria didn't move, but her stillness was a new kind of intensity. She held Aki's gaze, the air between them thick with things unsaid. "Aratani," Valeria repeated, the name a breath, not a question.
Aki's expression closed off, but something in her eyes flickered, not fear, but a deep, old frustration. "It's just a name," she said, her voice trailing into a sigh.
"You didn't learn those stories in a market square," Valeria pressed gently, her voice low. "You spoke of the Luminis salve as if you'd felt its chill. You described the Falak talon grip as if you'd seen it break bone. That isn't lore. That's memory."
Aki was silent for a long moment, her eyes losing focus, staring past Valeria at the damp wall as if it were a window. When she spoke, her voice softened, touched by a wistfulness that seemed to cleanse some of the sickness from her tone. "I remember the smell," she whispered. "Not just night blooms. Metal. Ozone. Like the air after a lightning strike, but constant. The Corona Regis hummed with it. A vibration in your teeth that felt like life." She blinked slowly. "And the light... it didn't just fall. It moved. It pooled in corridors like liquid. Nyxara's eyes... they say they shifted with her mood. I only ever saw her from a distance, in procession. Her light was the colour of a dying violet and a new bruise. It hurt to look at. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
She coughed, the sound pulling her back to the grim present. "I remember the silence before a Conclave. A thousand Starborn holding their breath. The weight of their collective will wasn't a threat, it was a promise. And the songs... Lyrathiel's hymns... they didn't just comfort. They arranged things. They could make your heart beat in time with a star's pulse. Sound as a tapestry. Sound as a home."
Valeria listened, her own posture softening slightly. "You were there?"
"I was a child," Aki said, and now her voice sharpened with a clean, pointed irritation. "A child in a place of wonder. And I was taken from it. Dragged across the continent to this." Her gesture took in the shack, the slums, the relentless, grimy dark beyond the door. "From a palace that sang to a ditch that rots. For what? A mother's error her mistake?" She shook her head, the bitterness not aimed at Nyxarion, but at the journey away from it. "I didn't leave to escape. I was removed. And I've been angry about it every day since."
She looked at Shiro, her expression complex, not the fierce protection of someone who'd fled a monster, but the sad resignation of someone who'd lost a treasure. "He was born here. He knows nothing of that light. Sometimes I think that's the greatest crime. Not that I was brought here to die... but that he was born here never knowing there was more." The admission hung in the air, less a confession of danger than of profound, personal loss.
Valeria absorbed it, her eyes knowing.
Aki's expression closed off, a wall coming undone by the warmth of family. "Aratani... It's a placeholder," she said, her voice low and final. "A name my mother stitched from whole cloth. A fiction for ledgers and street corners. It means nothing."
Valeria's eyes narrowed slightly, her focus absolute. "And the name it holds the place for?"
Aki was silent for a long moment. The candle guttered. When she spoke, it was barely a whisper, a sound meant for Valeria alone.
"Lumina."
The reaction was instantaneous, yet entirely internal. Valeria's breath caught, her eyes widening not with confusion, but with a devastating, instantaneous comprehension. It wasn't shock at an unknown name; it was the shock of a puzzle piece snapping into a forbidden picture. Her gaze flicked, for a fraction of a second, to Shiro, to his white hair, his serious amber eyes, his unknowing face, then back to Aki. The pieces the stories connected with a silent, terrifying click. She said nothing. No exclamation. No question. The name was its own explanation, its own history, its own death sentence.
"You understand," Aki stated, watching the understanding solidify in Valeria's eyes. "So you understand why it's a ghost. Why my mother buried it and built 'Aratani' over the grave."
Valeria finally let out a slow, controlled breath. The soldier in her was already categorizing the threat, mapping the implications. "A placeholder," she echoed, her voice low and gravelly. "To protect a child from a legacy that would get him killed for his blood alone."
"Yes."
"And you tell me now."
"Because you looked like you already knew," Aki said, a flicker of her old sharpness returning. "And because your boy is pulling mine into a current that might wash the grave dirt away. You needed to know what's buried. So you can help me keep it buried."
Valeria's gaze was unflinching. The warmth she showed Kuro was gone, replaced by a cold, strategic clarity. "Then 'Aratani' stays. On your lips, on his, on any record that exists. 'Lumina' is a word that dies in this room. Between us. It is not a name. It is a secret. And we will keep it." It wasn't a request. It was a pact, forged in the absolute understanding of the danger that single word carried.
Aki gave a single, sharp nod. "For them."
"For them," Valeria confirmed. She looked toward the boys, Kuro laughing, Shiro smiling, and the weight of the unspoken name hung between the women, a shared burden and a shared shield. The past was a ghost, but some ghosts could get people killed. Now, they would guard it together.
The teasing resumed. Aki jabbed at Kuro's crooked constellations, weaving herself into the boys' bickering. Valeria leaned in, her calm voice cutting through with a smile. "Shiro has real skill," she said, her tone warm, almost proud. "Unlike you, Kuro."
Kuro bristled, storm grey eyes flashing, irritation sharp as a blade. The words stung more than Aki's teasing ever could, because Valeria's praise carried weight maternal weight. Shiro sat taller, pride warming his chest, the rare feeling of being seen by someone other than Aki.
The night had worn thin. The candle was a stub drowning in its own wax. Valeria had begun to pack her satchel with the gentle finality that signalled the end of their visit. Kuro, however, seemed unwilling to let go. He was carving furiously, his chisel moving with a new, frantic energy. Shiro watched him, puzzled.
"What are you doing?"
"Finishing," Kuro muttered, not looking up.
"Finishing what? It's a mess of lines."
"It's a gift. Shut up."
Shiro fell silent. He watched as Kuro's hands, usually so precise and controlled, worked with almost violent purpose. He wasn't carving a known constellation. He was making something new, a tangle of intersecting lines, sharp angles, and one, single, deep cut star at the centre. Finally, Kuro blew the wood dust away and held it out. It was a small, rough hewn medallion of scrap wood, no larger than a coin. The pattern was chaotic, but purposeful. It looked like a cage. Or a net. And at its heart, the one deep star.
"Here," Kuro said, thrusting it at Shiro. His storm grey eyes were fierce, almost challenging. "So you don't forget."
"Forget what?" Shiro took it. The wood was warm from his hands.
"That you're a wrong star," Kuro said, his voice rough. "That you're uncorrected. That you're free." He looked at the carving in Shiro's palm, and for a terrifying second, Shiro saw not a noble boy playing at friendship, but someone drowning. "Keep it. Hide it. When they... when everything tries to tell you what you are, look at that. And remember you carved a swan with a broken neck and called it a masterpiece. Because you could."
Shiro closed his fist around the rough wood. It felt like holding a secret. Or a spark. "Kuro..."
"Don't," Kuro cut him off, standing abruptly. The mask was back, smooth and unreadable. "It's just a piece of trash. Like everything else here." But the way he looked at Shiro's clenched fist betrayed his words.
Valeria placed a hand on Kuro's shoulder, her signal to leave. She glanced at the fist holding the carving, then at Aki. Her gaze was unreadable, but it held a warning, and a promise.
As they slipped into the hungry dark of the alley, Shiro uncurled his fingers. The chaotic, caged star stared back at him, a tiny rebellion carved in pine. Aki said nothing, but her eyes were on the token, and in their depths, Shiro saw a reflection of his own dawning realization: this was no game. This was a pledge. And pledges, in Higaru, were written in blood, not wood.
The candle guttered.
The night pressed in. Valeria's secret knowledge of Aki's name, the truth she kept, and the question that hung unspoken.
But what was Aki hiding from Shiro?
Will this new found family for Shiro Last?
