The snow fell relentlessly outside the academy windows, a silent, suffocating blanket muffling the world. Its pristine whiteness was a stark counterpoint to the turbulent cacophony raging within Shiro's mind. Sleep was a phantom, chased away by the visceral memory imprinted behind his eyelids: Kuro's berry stained gloves, that lurid, unnatural violet blooming like poisoned flowers against the stark white silk. It wasn't just the colour; it was the tremor he'd glimpsed in Kuro's fingers as he'd deliberately tipped the scalding soup, the flicker of something trapped behind the ice in his storm grey eyes that Shiro couldn't decipher, guilt? Calculation? And beneath it all, the afterimage of the crow's prismatic gaze, watching from the gable, its eyes holding fractured galaxies of malice that seemed to mock his confusion.
Restless energy thrummed through Shiro, a caged frustration. He rose from his thin pallet in the cold alcove, the rough blanket offering no comfort, only the phantom itch of healing burns beneath his trousers. The academy halls at this pre dawn hour were tombs of polished stone and shadows, lit only by the intermittent glow of mage light sconces casting long, dancing demons on the walls. He wandered aimlessly, drawn against his better judgment by the faint, insistent tick tick tick echoing from the Grand Hall. The grandfather clock. Its relentless rhythm mirrored the restless drumming in his chest, a metronome counting down moments of suffocating stillness in a life suddenly choked with unreadable gestures and public cruelty.
Moonlight, pale and cold as the soup that had soaked his lap, streamed through a high arched window, pooling like liquid silver on the corridor floor. It guided him, an ethereal path he didn't choose, towards the arched doorway leading to the academy kitchens. The scent hit him before he crossed the threshold, the lingering ghost of roasted meats, the tang of yeast from yesterday's bread, and beneath it, the acrid bite of cooled ashes and something faintly sweet, like burnt sugar. Inside, the vast kitchen was a cathedral of shadows and dying warmth. The massive hearths, cold giants now, still held embers that pulsed with a sullen, red orange glow, crackling faintly like the static of unspoken truths Shiro felt choking the air, truths about princes, stars, and brands seared onto skin.
Kuro stood framed in the doorway, a silhouette cut from the night itself, his back unnervingly straight. His shadow stretched long and sharp across the flagstones, a dagger pointed directly at the largest hearth. He didn't move, didn't acknowledge Shiro's presence, his gaze fixed on the embers as if deciphering their dying secrets or perhaps fortifying himself. Shiro moved past him, the memory of Kuro's polished boot stepping over his mud stained charts flashing vividly, a fresh sting of humiliation layered over the soup burns. He crouched by the hearth's mouth, finding a discarded iron rod. He poked at the embers, sending up a shower of sparks that danced briefly like dying fireflies before winking out. Their brittle crackle harmonized eerily with the distant, unwavering tick tick tick of the clock, a discordant symphony of his own turmoil.
"Father's master chefs would faint dead away if they saw us polluting this sanctum with our presence," Kuro's voice cut through the quiet, smooth and detached, yet carrying an undercurrent Shiro couldn't name, weariness? Defiance? The prince stepped fully into the kitchen, his polished boots silent on the marble floor that gleamed like polished bone in the moonlight. He drifted towards a large, ornate bowl overflowing with figs. They were impossibly plump, purple black orbs imported from sun drenched lands far beyond Higaru's fog, their skins smooth and perfect as royalty's lacquered nails, a luxury as alien to Shiro as Kuro's motives. Kuro's fingertips grazed one, a gesture almost reverent, yet tinged with a disdain that seemed directed inward. As he reached, his sleeve hitched up slightly.
Shiro's breath caught, the iron rod freezing mid poke. Etched onto Kuro's inner wrist, stark against the pale skin in the moonlight, was a raw, circular mark. It wasn't a bruise; it was an imprint, deep and half scabbed, the unmistakable ridges and central sigil of the Royal Seal. A brand. Fresh and angry, a violent claim etched into flesh. The sight was a physical blow, momentarily eclipsing Shiro's anger with a wave of horrified understanding. What kind of father…?
Shiro split a fig open with his thumb, the action sharp, a release of tension. Dark, viscous juice welled up, dribbling down his own wrist. It looked unnervingly like the berry dye that had stained Kuro's gloves during the soup incident – a dark, accusing purple. "They'd faint harder if they tasted this," Shiro countered, his voice rough, deliberately ignoring the branded wrist, clinging to his resentment. He nodded towards the hearth stones where Kuro had arranged several small cakes. But these weren't the Academy's mandated, bland crescent moons. They were sharp angled, unmistakably constellations, Cassiopeia's jagged throne, Orion's belt, Ursa Minor's curve. Their edges, exposed to the residual heat, had already begun to curl upwards, blackening into brittle claws, a visual echo of Kuro's words in the slum about stars betraying.
Kuro's laugh was a brittle, discordant melody in the cavernous room. "Caramelised lies," he murmured, a ghost of a smile touching his lips as he watched the faintest lick of flame from a stubborn ember catch the edge of a pastry Cassiopeia. "Father's favourite recipe." He carefully lifted one of the cakes. It crumbled instantly in his grasp, ash falling between his fingers like the facade of his princely demeanour. The centre was raw, cold, and doughy. "Burnt outside," he observed, his voice devoid of inflection, yet laden with a bitterness Shiro felt resonate deep within his own chest. "Unfinished within. Poetic, isn't it?" He paused, his free thumb unconsciously brushing against the raw seal imprint on his wrist, a gesture of pain or remembrance. "A king's legacy. All show, no substance." The words hung heavy, an indictment Shiro couldn't ignore, yet couldn't reconcile with the boy who made his academy life hell.
Shiro bit into the fig. The burst of cloying sweetness clashed violently with a core of unexpected bitterness. He grimaced, the taste mirroring his confusion about the prince before him. "Tastes like hypocrisy," he spat, the word aimed at the Crown, at the Academy, at the impossible contradiction Kuro represented.
"Hypocrisy is the Academy's lingua franca," Kuro stated flatly, tossing the fig pit into the embers. It landed with a sharp hiss, sending up a thin, twisting wisp of smoke. For a fleeting second, the smoke coiled into the unmistakable shape of a crown before dissolving into nothingness, consumed by the air like a forgotten promise. Kuro watched it vanish, his expression unreadable, then deliberately ground the ashes beneath his heel into the soot stained stone, a small act of rebellion against the symbol. "But even lingua franca," he added, his storm grey eyes lifting to meet Shiro's in the dim light, holding a spark that hadn't been there moments before, a challenge, or perhaps a plea for understanding, "can be rewritten. Word by painful word." The statement hung between them, an enigmatic offering Shiro wasn't sure he wanted to accept, not after the soup, not after the public disdain. Could the boy who spoke of rewriting lies be the same one who enforced them with such cold precision?
The hearth's embers had long cooled into grey dust, but the phantom tastes lingered, burnt sugar coating the roof of Kuro's mouth, the cloying sweetness and underlying bitterness of the fig pulp. They felt like a vow, sour and unresolved, a taste Shiro couldn't shake as he navigated the next few days. Dawn crept in, grey and reluctant, the grandfather clock's insistent tick tick tick seamlessly sharpening into the rhythmic, grating metronome of Professor Harken's voice as he entered the Celestial Navigation hall.
"Class begins! Parchment! Quills! Silence!" Harken's reedy command cut through the murmur of nobles taking their seats. His skeletal frame seemed to vibrate with barely contained malice, his telescope cane tapping a staccato rhythm of impending doom on the dais. His eyes, magnified behind thick spectacles, scanned the room like a predator, lingering with particular venom on Shiro.
Kuro slid into his seat near the front, the polished wood cold beneath him. His wrist itched fiercely beneath the fine linen of his sleeve, the scabbed royal seal imprint throbbing in time with Harken's droning voice and the phantom pain of the branding. It felt like a brand, a constant, burning reminder of his gilded cage. He picked up his quill, a finely crafted instrument of raven feather and silver nib, a tool of the establishment he seemed to both embody and despise. It hovered over the pristine parchment, trembling minutely. His gaze lifted, inevitably drawn to the massive oil portrait dominating the front wall: King Ryo Oji, resplendent in royal regalia, his eyes, cold, calculating chips of obsidian, seemed to bore directly into Kuro's soul. The same eyes that had watched him burn the star shaped cakes to ash last night, filled with icy disapproval. "Burnt outside, unfinished within." The king's unspoken judgment echoed in Kuro's mind, a relentless pressure. Shiro, watching from two rows back, saw the tremor in the quill, the tension in the set of Kuro's shoulders. The berry dye stains on Kuro's fingertips, visible even from here, seemed darker this morning, almost bruised, like fingerprints of his internal conflict.
Professor Harken paced the dais, his voice a whetstone grinding against the room's brittle atmosphere. "The Sovereign's Star!" he sneered, his contempt palpable as he jabbed a bony finger towards a diagram labelled 'Polaris, The Loyal Guide'. "A pretty fable! A myth peddled by slum mystics, gutter rats, and poets drunk on cheap wine!" His gaze swept the room, lingering with particular, gloating disdain on Shiro, a clear attempt to reassert dominance after Kuro's previous check. "True power," he hissed, leaning forward conspiratorially, his breath smelling of stale tea and vindictiveness, "lies not in chasing celestial phantoms, but in obedience! Obedience to the established order! To the Crown!" He gestured grandly, almost reverently, towards the King's portrait, his gaze flicking to Kuro, seeking approval or perhaps testing his resolve.
CRAAAACKKKKKKKK.
The sound was shockingly loud, like dry bones snapping underfoot in the tense silence. Kuro's quill had shattered in his grip, the delicate raven feather splintered, the silver nib bent and useless. A gout of thick, black ink erupted, splattering across the pristine parchment like spilled blood, but Kuro's hand, propelled by a surge of violent frustration that seemed to erupt from the branded wrist itself, didn't stop. It arced upwards, deliberately, flinging the broken quill and its payload of ink towards the front wall.
Thick, deliberate arcs of ink struck King Ryo Oji's painted face. Black rivulets streamed down the regal cheek, pooled grotesquely in the carefully rendered smirk, and dripped onto the gilded frame below like tears of tar. The room plunged into absolute, frozen silence, thick enough to choke on. Reina Kimora, a noble girl in shimmering silk brocade, let out a stifled gasp, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with scandalized horror. Others simply stared, frozen in their seats.
Kuro slowly lowered his ink stained hand. His knuckles were bone white around the broken quill shaft, the tendons standing out like cords. "A mishap," he stated, his voice unnervingly steady, though a muscle ticked violently beneath his eye, betraying the storm within. As he placed the broken quill fragments deliberately on his desk, his sleeve rode up, revealing the raw, scabbed circle of the royal seal imprint on his wrist, a raw, defiant brand against the black ink stains, a silent scream etched onto his skin for all to see. Shiro's breath hitched. It was an act of breathtaking, dangerous defiance, aimed squarely at the painted symbol of his father's crushing authority.
Professor Harken descended the dais like an avenging spirit, his polished boots clicking with the finality of an executioner's axe on the marble floor. He stopped inches from Kuro's desk, looming over the prince, his thin frame radiating outrage. "A mishap?" he echoed, his voice a venomous whisper that carried to every corner of the room, dripping with disbelief and thinly veiled triumph at catching the heir in transgression. His nostrils flared at the ink staining Kuro's pristine cuffs, the black smears a shocking violation of royal decorum. His thin lips curled into a sneer. "Your father's portrait, Lord Kuro, is not parchment for your… artistry." His cold, magnified eyes behind thick spectacles flickered past Kuro, locking onto Shiro's worn, patched coat with undisguised contempt, seizing the opportunity to link them again, to taint the prince by association. "Or," he added, the insinuation dripping like poison, "is this slum theatrics finally rubbing off on you? Have you learned gutter carelessness from our resident slum rat?"
A wave of tension, thick and suffocating, rolled through the nobles. Heads swivelled between Kuro, Harken, and Shiro. Whispers began, sharp and sibilant. Shiro felt the familiar heat of humiliation rise in his cheeks, the "slum rat" moniker a fresh slap. But beneath it, anger simmered, anger at Harken, at the game, at Kuro for dragging him into this again. He didn't flinch. He leaned back further in his chair, forcing an image of insolent ease. His fingers, stained faintly violet from the rooftop berry dye days before, began drumming a slow, deliberate rhythm on the crude crown he'd carved into his desk surface, a crown of thorns, not jewels. The grooves were still damp with the dye. He met Harken's glare with a level, challenging stare, refusing to be the easy scapegoat.
"Careful, Professor," Shiro drawled, his voice cutting through the whispers like a knife. The drumming stopped abruptly. He tilted his head slightly, his amber eyes glinting with dangerous amusement that masked his fury. "Call the King's son a slum rat," he paused, letting the lethal implication hang heavy in the air, the threat implicit in linking Kuro to Higaru's lowest, "and you might just find your portrait looking a little… defaced next." He gestured negligibly with his stained fingers towards Harken's own stern, self import visage in a smaller portrait hanging beside the King's, a mirror reflecting the professor's own vanity and fear.
A louder ripple of shocked whispers surged through the nobles, morphing into scandalized murmurs.
"He dares ally with that gutter rat against Harken? Against the Crown's image?"
"Father would disown him for such insolence! Does he court banishment?"
"Why defend that rat unless… unless the rumours are true? That they conspire? That the prince is tainted?"
Kuro stood up abruptly. His chair screeched violently against the floor, a sound that silenced the whispers instantly, choked off by the sheer, icy authority radiating from him. He didn't look at Shiro, didn't acknowledge the defence. His storm grey eyes were fixed solely on Professor Harken, cold as glacial ice, promising depths of retribution Shiro could only imagine. "My artistry," Kuro enunciated each word with chilling, deliberate precision, "is none of your concern." He picked up the largest fragment of the broken, ink soaked quill, holding it like a weapon. With deliberate, contemptuous slowness, he tossed it onto Harken's lectern. It landed with a wet splat, ink splattering across the Professor's meticulously prepared lesson plans, desecrating his precious order. "But," Kuro continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous purr that resonated with lethal promise, "if you'd prefer… I could report your… concerns about my conduct, and your fascinating theories about slum influence…" he paused, letting the threat solidify, thick and cloying as the ink on the King's face, "…directly to my father. In person. I'm certain he would… value… your critique of his heir's character. And his choice of associates." He emphasized the last word, making it clear Harken's attack on Shiro was included in the indictment.
Harken paled. The blood drained from his face so rapidly it was as if an unseen hand had wrung it out, leaving his skin the colour of spoiled parchment, almost grey. His thin lips parted, but no sound emerged, only a faint, dry rasp, like King Ryo's phantom fingers were already tightening inexorably around his throat. The room seemed to tilt; Harken's skeletal hand shot out, grasping blindly for support. It landed heavily on Kuro's ink stained desk, sinking into the pooling black liquid. The viscous ink crept across his palm, a grotesque, accidental parody of the royal seal freshly branded on Kuro's wrist, staining him with the very defiance he sought to punish.
Every student knew the stories. Harken's own cousin, a minor tax official, had vanished last winter after questioning the Crown's excessive tithes on a famine struck village. He'd returned weeks later, a hollowed out shell of a man, vacant eyed, a permanent tremor in his hand that made him spill tea over a page of the King's personal ledger during a humiliating audience. "A regrettable accident, Professor," King Ryo had said, smiling that thin, terrifying smile that held no warmth, only a promise of oblivion, as he confiscated the man's ancestral lands. "Age, perhaps. Or nerves. We must all be… careful."
Now Harken's adam's apple bobbed convulsively. Sweat beaded and glistened at his temples, tracing greasy paths through the powder on his skin, betraying his abject terror. His voice, when it finally clawed its way out, was stripped of its usual venom, reduced to a dry, papery rustle, the sound of dead leaves skittering on stone. "There's…" he swallowed hard, the sound loud in the silence, "…no need. No need at all for His Majesty's involvement in such… trivialities." The word trivialities cracked like thin ice underfoot, utterly unconvincing, revealing the depth of his fear. He gestured weakly at the defaced portrait, the ink on his hand, his own trembling. See? Nothing to report. Just accidents.
Kuro leaned in, close enough that Harken flinched visibly at the unexpected scent of burnt sugar clinging faintly to the prince's uniform, a remnant of the kitchen's caramelised lies, a smell that now seemed like evidence of conspiracy. "Then we are in agreement, Professor," Kuro said softly, the words carrying the weight of a death sentence commuted at the last second. "Some… accidents…" he glanced meaningfully at the defaced portrait, then at the ink smeared on Harken's own hand, making the connection explicit, "…are best forgotten. Buried. As if they never occurred." He flicked a speck of dried ink from his own cuff. It landed with a tiny, mocking tick on Harken's polished boot, a period on the sentence. "Isn't that right Professor?"
Harken's nod was the jerky, involuntary movement of a marionette whose strings had been savagely yanked. "Quite," he managed, the single syllable strangled, devoid of any authority. He looked broken, shrivelled, the vindictive predator reduced to a terrified mouse.
Shiro allowed himself a slow, deliberate smirk, a small victory wrested from the tension. His gaze found Kuro's. For a fleeting instant, their eyes locked across the space. It wasn't camaraderie, not quite trust, the memory of the soup was too fresh, the public humiliations too raw. It was the barest acknowledgment of a shared enemy momentarily cowed, a spark of grim understanding flashing across the vast gulf between prince and slum rat. Kuro's lips twitched, an almost imperceptible movement that might have been the ghost of a reciprocal smirk, or perhaps just a tic of released tension, before he turned, the moment broken.
Kuro strode from the lecture hall, his back straight, his pace measured. He didn't smile. His expression remained a carefully reconstructed mask of cold arrogance, the Prince resuming his role. But as he walked, his polished boots left behind faint, almost imperceptible smudges on the pristine marble, not mud, but a deep, telltale berry red, like diluted blood or the ghost of the dye on his gloves. A trail only Shiro, with his slum honed eyes for detail and deception, noticed. And it didn't lead towards the royal quarters, the seat of the power he'd just defied. It led towards the narrow, dusty stairwell accessing the windswept, isolating rooftop. A path of cryptic colour leading away from the gilded cage, towards the cold, open sky. Shiro stared at the fading smudges, the taste of fig and hypocrisy still on his tongue, the branded wrist etched in his mind, the conflicting images of the cruel prince and the defiant son warring within him. The path was laid, but Shiro remained rooted, the ashes of betrayal still too warm to trust the embers of defiance.