Two weeks bled into a relentless rhythm of public scorn and clandestine corrections. Shiro existed in a state of hyper awareness, dodging tripping feet in crowded corridors, enduring Harken's barbed questions designed to make him fail, deciphering Kuro's smudged charts left under his pillow or tucked into his borrowed astronomy texts. The berry stained feather remained hidden in his pocket, a cryptic talisman he found himself touching for reassurance. He saw Kuro often, aloof, disdainful, surrounded by nobles, his silver streak a banner of cold nobility. Yet Shiro also saw the almost imperceptible flicker of tension in Kuro's shoulders when Harken mocked him, the way his storm grey eyes would sometimes dart towards Shiro's corner with an intensity that contradicted his bored expression before quickly looking away. The duality was exhausting.
One afternoon, seeking refuge from the stifling atmosphere of judgment, Shiro found himself in the Academy's neglected garden. It was a tangle of overgrown hedges and crumbling statuary, dominated by a large, ancient sundial. Moss devoured its base, and its face was stained and pitted, the carved markings faded almost to oblivion. Seeking solace in the familiar act, seeking a connection to something real, Shiro took out his knife and a small pot of stolen berry dye, the deep violet matching the crow's feather. He began re carving Cassiopeia onto the sundial's weathered surface, the rhythmic scrape of metal on stone a small defiance against the Academy's polished lies. The deep violet pigment stained his fingertips, a tangible mark of his presence in this place that rejected him.
As he worked, focused on aligning the throne's angle precisely to Kuro's correction, hushed voices drifted from behind a thick, untrimmed laurel hedge nearby:
"...worse, Kenji. Prince Oji's cruelty festers like a wound. Executions without trial, entire villages taxed into starvation for failing celestial tithes... The Black Prince lives up to his name." The voice was tight with suppressed anger. Shiro recognized it, Kenji Raiden, a senior student known for quiet competence, not gossip. He froze, knife poised.
"It's King Ryo Oji's orders, whispered down the chain," another voice replied, lower, more cautious. Takeo Sudo, another senior. "He wants the Temple's influence crushed, their 'star lies' stamped out root and branch. The Academy purge is just the start. Gin's faction is being… encouraged. Paid handsomely to root out 'heretical' star lore. They call it renovation." A bitter laugh. "Renovating with silver and fear."
Shiro's knife slipped. The blade nicked the pad of his thumb. A bead of crimson welled, bright against the stone, falling onto the cool surface of the sundial beside the wet berry dye. The two fluids mingled, creating a small, dark purple black puddle that seemed to absorb the weak sunlight.
A harsh caw shattered the garden's quiet. The large crow Shiro had seen before, the one with unnaturally prismatic eyes, dropped from the gable of a nearby ruin and landed heavily on the sundial's edge, right beside the blood and dye. Its head cocked, too many joints in its neck seeming to flex unnaturally, its galaxy eyes fixed not on Shiro, but on the droplet of mingled fluids. Not scavenging. Watching. It dipped its beak, not towards the blood, but towards the mixed stain of blood and berry dye, its tongue, black and forked, flicking out for a brief, grotesque taste.
Shiro stumbled back, a chill unrelated to the air crawling up his spine, his heart hammering against his ribs. The crow's gaze lifted from the stain to meet Shiro's. Its eyes… they seemed to dilate, the prisms deepening into an unnatural void that held a spark of something disturbingly akin to… pleasure? As Shiro watched, frozen, the carvings of Cassiopeia he'd just etched flared with a sudden, brief pulse of white light, as if in retaliation against the dark omen. Shiro shook his head, dismissing it as a trick of the fading light, but the dread remained, cold and heavy. The crow let out another ghastly caw, a sound that scraped the nerves. Its beak opened… and then opened further. A second, smaller mouth seemed to split the lower mandible, lined with needle like teeth. It hissed, a sound like rusted hinges grating and glass shattering, a wave of putrid, carrion tinged breath washing over Shiro. Then, with a powerful flap of its wings, violet glinting where berry dye clung to its primary feathers, it launched into the air and vanished over the garden wall.
The caw lingered in Shiro's ears long after the garden fell silent, the taste of decay clinging to the back of his throat. He stared at the sundial. The mixed stain was already drying, a dark, ugly scar on the stone. Cassiopeia's throne, tilted at 22.5°, seemed to mock him.
The incident haunted him. For days, he scrubbed obsessively at the berry stains on his hands, but the violet dye clung stubbornly to his cuticles and the whorls of his fingerprints, like an unwanted brand, a constant reminder of the crow and the whispered secrets. By the third week, even the harsh, acrid scent of the Academy's juniper soap couldn't mask another odour clinging to the corridors, particularly near the old observatory: a cloying, jade scented grease, layered over a sharper, medicinal tang, wafting from the rusted hinges of the massive telescope mounts. The smell felt like decay disguised as perfume.
Midnight lessons focused on Lunar Tides. The observatory was a cavern of shadows and groaning metal. The great telescopes, once instruments of discovery, now resembled arthritic giants, their movements stiff and painful. Jade scented grease oozed from their seized hinges, a futile attempt to mask the deeper scent of metallic rot beneath. The air was cold, thick with dust and the oppressive weight of neglected knowledge.
Shiro carefully mounted his assigned lens onto the observation platform. The glass was cold, impersonal. As he tightened the final screw, a sickening crack sounded. The lens fractured cleanly across its centre. Sabotage. The edges of the break were smeared with a faint, unmistakable residue of the jade scented grease. His stomach lurched. Failure here wasn't just embarrassment; it meant expulsion. Expulsion meant Gin's wrath, the guards "remembering" the silver, Aki losing her medicine. Panic threatened to choke him.
Thinking fast, desperation lending him a fierce clarity, Shiro yanked the star carving knife from his belt. Using his belt carvings, familiar grooves and angles, as improvised markers, he scanned the cluttered observatory floor. Spying discarded scrap metal rods in a shadowed corner, he snatched them. Sighting along Polaris gleaming coldly through the observatory's open dome, he cobbled together a crude sextant, aligning it with desperate, trembling precision, his violet stained fingers working swiftly. He ignored the stifled snickers from nearby students.
Professor Harken materialized beside him like a vengeful spectre, peering through his brass telescope cane at Shiro's makeshift instrument. "Barbaric methods," he spat, his voice dripping with contempt, "earn barbaric grades, rat. Fail." He made a note on his ledger with a flourish, the scratch of his quill sounding like a death knell.
Before Shiro could protest, another voice cut through the gloom. "His calculation is adequate." Kuro stepped forward from the shadows near the door, adjusting the cuffs of his uniform jacket. His silver streak flared under the observatory's dim lantern light, a lie, Shiro realized with sudden, gut wrenching certainty, as blatant as the grease on the lens. He knows. "For a rat," Kuro added, his tone dismissive, bored. He walked towards Harken's desk, pulling a perfectly drafted calculation chart from his own portfolio. Shiro saw it, Kuro's gloved hand trembled almost imperceptibly as he slid the chart across the desk towards Harken. And the berry stains Shiro had noticed before on Kuro's fingertips? They seemed to darken, pulsing faintly against the white silk as Kuro spoke the lie. "Flawless in fact," Kuro stated, meeting Harken's glare, "save a tiny… distraction." He gestured negligently towards the margin of his own chart. There, doodled with sharp, precise lines, was Polaris, perfectly aligned, a silent correction, a hidden truth.
"Generous today, Lord Kuro," Harken spat, suspicion warring with the need to defer to nobility.
"Hardly," Kuro retorted, turning away. He walked past Shiro's station and, without breaking stride, delivered a sharp, contemptuous kick to Shiro's rickety stool, sending it clattering. "I just hate wasted time." He strode out of the observatory, leaving Shiro staring after him, the reprieve feeling like another form of assault, another layer of confusing contradiction. As Kuro passed under a lantern near the door, Shiro's eyes locked onto his hands. The white silk gloves… they were faintly stained with smudges of deep violet berry dye, seeping through like poisoned blood. Liar, Shiro thought, the word burning. But why save me?
The acrid tang of the juniper soap still clung to Shiro's skin the next dawn as he prowled the silent Academy corridors, the burn of humiliation and the sting of Kuro's "gift" warring within him. Kuro's parting words, "I just hate wasted time," echoed with the same grating rhythm as the observatory's rusted telescopes. Outside, crows mobbed the rooftops, their usual black feathers glinting with unnatural violet highlights where the early sun caught the remnants of berry dye. One swooped low over a cloistered walkway, scattering a trail of melted frost and… violet smudges.
Shiro crouched, examining the stone floor. Flecks of deep violet dye, unmistakable, the same shade that stained his hands and Kuro's gloves. He touched one; it was slightly tacky, fresh. He looked up. The trail led away from the main buildings, towards the oldest, most neglected wing, the one perpetually draped in shadows and silence. He followed it, a constellation of violet flecks guiding him through decaying grandeur, past doorways choked with cobwebs, to a heavy oak door half eaten by rot and shrouded in dust. The forgotten library.
Inside, dust motes danced in the single shaft of light piercing a high, grimy window. They swirled like the phantom of Cassiopeia's crooked smirk, finally settling on a large, leather bound ledger lying open on a table thick with grime. The ledger itself reeked, not of dust, but of something sharper, more cloying. Betrayal. The jade scented grease? Or the weight of the secret it held?
Shiro approached, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The open page was illuminated by the dusty beam. The entry was stark, the ink faded but clear:
Disbursement: 500 Silver Crowns.
Date: 22/04/7223
Recipient: Temple Inquisitor Gin.
Purpose: Academy Renovations (Stellar Alignment Wing - Sect. Gamma).
Authorization: His Majesty, King Ryo Oji.
The King's signature sprawled beneath, a flamboyant, arrogant scrawl that curled back on itself like a serpent devouring its own tail. Beside it, stamped deep into the parchment, was the Royal Seal, a stylized crown crushing a cluster of stars beneath its weight. The words burned Shiro's eyes hotter than any brazier. His throat tightened, breath catching. Kuro's father. The King. He hadn't just tolerated the Temple; he'd paid them. Bought their deceit. Funded Gin's purge of the very stars the Academy was supposed to study. And Kuro… Kuro knew. He'd lied in the observatory, protected the secret, protected his father. The prince who mocked the stars, who whispered of betrayal, was complicit in their silencing. The thought was a physical blow, a sucker punch to the gut. Pathetic. The word echoed in the dusty silence. A puppet prince.
Footsteps, sharp and precise on the stone flags outside, silenced the crows' distant cries. Shiro whirled around. Kuro filled the rotting doorway, his silhouette blocking the light. His storm grey eyes were colder than the void between stars, his face an impassive mask. "Curiosity killed the cat, Ghost," he stated, his voice dangerously soft, probing. "Found something… enlightening?"
But Shiro was already moving, galvanized by fury and disillusionment. He snatched up the heavy ledger, its pages crackling like dry bones in his grip. He brandished it towards Kuro, the damning entry facing him like an accusation. "Your father!" Shiro's voice was raw, trembling with fury. "He buys the Temple's deceit! He pays Gin to silence the stars! To renovate lies!" He took a step forward, the weight of the ledger, the weight of the betrayal, driving him. "And you… you let him! You stood there and lied for him!" The words tore out of him, fuelled by the soup, the humiliation, the cryptic charts, the dye stained gloves.
For a single, fractured heartbeat, the mask shattered. Kuro's storm grey eyes flickered. Not with anger, but with something raw, pained, a flash of anguish, almost pleading. It was gone in an instant, replaced by a glacial fury colder than anything Shiro had ever seen. His gloved hands darted out, not towards Shiro, but towards the ledger. He snatched it with surprising, desperate strength.
"Lies," Kuro hissed, the word laced with a venom that startled Shiro, "are all we have" Before Shiro could react, Kuro pivoted and hurled the heavy ledger with all his strength into the large, cast iron brazier burning low in the corner. Parchment met flame with a violent whoosh. Hungry orange tongues devoured the page, twisting the King's arrogant signature into black, fragile ash. The Royal Seal bubbled and blackened, the stars beneath the crown vanishing in the conflagration, consumed by the symbol of the power that crushed them.
Kuro stood watching the flames, his back to Shiro, rigid. His silver streak, usually so bright, seemed dull, lifeless, like a dead star extinguished. The berry dye stains on his white silk gloves, visible even in the firelight, seemed to pulse with a deeper, more ominous violet hue, as if the dye itself was alive with the truth it represented, bleeding through the lies. "Lies are all we have," he repeated, his voice flat, final, devoid of the earlier venom, filled only with a hollow resignation. The crackle of the burning ledger was the only other sound in the dusty library. The air stank of charred parchment, jade scented grease, and something far more bitter: despair.
The ledger's ashes seemed to smoulder within Shiro's mind long after the physical embers died. The encounter left him hollow, adrift in a sea of confusion thicker than Higaru's fog. Seeking air, escape, anything that wasn't the suffocating weight of secrets and lies, he climbed the worn stone steps to the Academy's highest accessible roof that night. Kuro's words, "Lies are all we have," clung to him like the pervasive scent of char, offering no comfort, only a deeper chill. The sky, usually a source of distant wonder, offered no solace. Meteors tore through the black velvet, their fiery trails mirroring the jagged cracks he'd carved into the sundial. Cassiopeia loomed directly overhead, her familiar W shape twisted by atmospheric distortion and his own turmoil into what looked like a jagged, mocking sneer. Traitor in the sky, Kuro had said. Was the prince the traitor? Or was it the King? Or the stars themselves?
A shadow detached itself from the deeper gloom near the parapet. Kuro materialized with that unnerving silence, his silhouette sharp and jagged against the meteor scarred sky. He didn't speak immediately. Instead, he lobbed something small and wrapped in cloth towards Shiro. It hit Shiro's chest with a soft thud. Warmth seeped through the fabric, a meat bun, fresh from the kitchens. The simple kindness, so at odds with Kuro's ice edged voice and the burning ledger, was jarring, another contradiction in a prince made of them.
"Eat," Kuro commanded, his voice rough, devoid of its usual polished detachment. "Starving princes make poor enemies. Starving ghosts are just… pathetic." He turned away, gazing out over the sleeping city, the lights of the palace district glittering coldly in the distance.
Shiro's fingers closed around the warm bundle. He looked down, then back at Kuro. The prince stood near the edge, his profile stark against the city lights. Shiro noticed Kuro's gloves. Once pristine, the white silk was now visibly cracked along the seams, worn thin. And seeping through those cracks, staining the fabric beneath, was the deep, unmistakable violet of berry dye. Like poison bleeding from a wound, a visible manifestation of the lies festering beneath the surface.
"Prince," Shiro echoed, the word hanging heavy in the cold air, charged with the weight of the ledger, the dye, the crow's unnatural eyes, the whispered secrets of Kenji and Takeo. He gripped the small star carving on his belt, its familiar shape offering a sliver of anchor in the chaos. He felt a faint, answering pulse from the wood, syncing with his own rapid heartbeat. What are you? he thought, not for the first time, the question directed at both the carving and the boy prince.
Kuro's silver streak flickered faintly in the erratic light of a dying meteor. A dying ember of… honesty? He didn't turn fully. "A title," he muttered, the words barely audible over the wind whipping around the roof. "Not a choice." He finally glanced sideways, his gaze landing not on Shiro, but on the faintly glowing carving in Shiro's grip. A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. "You'd hate it. Crowns are cages, rat. Just cages with prettier bars." A bleak, humourless smile touched his lips, devoid of any warmth. "You'd gnaw your own limbs off to escape." The raw, unvarnished truth in his voice, the utter weariness, was more shocking than any lie or act of cruelty. It was a glimpse behind the gilded mask, into a gilded prison.
When Kuro finally left, melting back into the shadows as silently as he'd arrived, Shiro stood alone for a long time, the warm bun forgotten in his hand, the prince's confession echoing in the wind. Eventually, driven by a morbid curiosity, a need to understand the depths of the contradiction, he pried the bun open. Nestled inside the soft bread, curled like a spider's leg, was a small scrap of parchment. Unfolding it with cold fingers, he saw precise, familiar handwriting:
Cassiopeia's declination: 22.5°
Signed,
The Puppet Prince.
The exact angle. The truth he'd carved, the truth Kuro had corrected in secret, the truth that had drawn blood from his thumb. Proof the prince saw the real stars, even as he served the lies that crushed them. Shiro looked up, towards the edge of the roof. Perched on a crumbling gable just beyond the Academy wall, silhouetted against the moon, sat the crow. Berry dye, thick and dark as royal blood, dripped slowly from its beak onto the ancient stones below. Its eyes, catching the moonlight, were no longer simple galaxies. They were prismatic, fractured, holding a thousand unnatural colours that seemed to shift and swirl. And they were locked, unblinking, onto Shiro. The Puppet Prince's truth, signed in starlight, watched by a creature steeped in poisoned dye. The game, Shiro realized, cold dread coiling in his stomach, was far more dangerous than he'd imagined. Cassiopeia's sneer in the sky felt like a warning.