Dawn gnawed at the Academy's gates like a starving beast, its pale, watery light struggling against the oppressive gloom. Frost, thick and glittering, crystallized on the black iron bars into a million tiny, needle like teeth, each one reflecting the weak luminescence like malevolent stars. The air itself felt brittle, stolen from the heart of a glacier; each breath Shiro drew scraped raw against the lining of his lungs, carrying the metallic tang of fear and the damp decay of autumn's final surrender. Winter wasn't just coming; it had settled into the bones of the Academy, into the stones of its walls, and into the hearts of the students shivering in ragged lines before its entrance.
Rumours, colder and more insidious than the frost, had slithered through the queues all morning, passed like contraband behind cupped hands and fur collars pulled high against the biting wind. Whispers coiled around ankles and slithered up spines.
"King Ryo ordered it," hissed a noble girl swathed in ermine trimmed velvet, her breath pluming white like dragon smoke in the frigid air. She glanced nervously towards the imposing gatehouse. "The Royal Guard doubled overnight. After… reports." The word 'sedition' lingered unspoken but potent, heavy as a stone dropped into still water. Her companion, a boy with jade cufflinks glinting dully in the grey light, Shiro recognized him as one of Koji's favoured sycophant, leaned in conspiratorially. "They say it's star charts. Real ones. Smuggled right under the Temple's nose." His voice dropped to a theatrical whisper. "From outside the sanctioned constellations."
No one dared name the source of these reports, yet Shiro felt the weight of unspoken accusations settle on his shoulders like fresh snow. It was in the way the noble eyes slid away from his patched coat, the subtle shifts in posture creating space around him and the other scholarship students from the Higaru slums. It solidified into tangible dread as the inspection began. Obsidian armoured guards moved down the lines, their movements unnervingly synchronized, like clockwork soldiers wound too tight. Their gaze, flat and assessing behind visored helms, lingered too long on slum forged trinkets , a chipped brass compass, a worn leather pouch smelling faintly of cheap tea, a pendant of river polished glass, and especially, especially on any scrap of parchment, any rolled cylinder that might resemble the forbidden cartography of the true sky.
Shiro clutched his small trunk tighter against his chest, the rough, unvarnished wood biting into his palms through his threadbare gloves. Inside lay the entirety of his world compressed: threadbare clothes smelling faintly of woodsmoke and damp stone, precious stolen scraps of hard cheese and dried fruit wrapped meticulously in waxed paper, his cherished carving knife with its bone handle worn smooth, and nestled beneath it all, wrapped in an old scrap of oak, Aki's plank. The star carved wood seemed to hum faintly against his thigh, a residual warmth radiating from its core like a banked ember. It was the warmth of last night's rooftop vigil, a silent echo of shared charcoal, tentative confidences whispered under the indifferent gaze of obscured stars, and the fragile bridge of understanding built between the prince and the slum rat. He risked a glance towards Kuro, standing further ahead in the line near the grand stone archway. The prince's posture radiated bored indifference, a carefully constructed mask of aristocratic ennui, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his indigo silk coat. But Shiro saw the telltale tension in the rigid set of his shoulders, the unnatural stillness, and the way his storm grey eyes, sharp as flint, tracked the movements of the lead inspector with the intensity of a hawk sighting prey.
Akuma Shibotsu. The name alone was a threat whispered in the dark alleys of Higaru, a curse spat by mothers to frighten disobedient children. He wasn't just a guard; he was a force of nature clad in obsidian. Built like a siege engine, his massive frame seemed to absorb the weak light rather than reflect it. His face looked like it had been carved from granite with a meat cleaver, flat, brutal planes, a nose mashed flat in some forgotten brawl, and small, deep set of broken galaxy eyes that held no spark of humanity, only a cold, calculating cruelty. His obsidian armour, polished to a malevolent gleam that seemed to ripple like oil, bore the Royal sigil subtly etched into the breastplate. It caught the dawn light not with warmth, but with a predatory glint, a dark star on a field of void. He moved with a predator's unnerving grace, his gauntleted hands, thick plates of blackened steel that looked capable of crushing skulls, methodically rifling through belongings with practiced efficiency, treating personal effects like garbage. He paused before a cowering first year student from the lower merchant quarter, snatching a crude clay star charm strung on a leather thong. "Sentimental slum garbage," he rumbled, his voice like boulders grinding together in a landslide. He crushed it effortlessly in his massive fist, letting the ochre shards rain down onto the frost rimed cobblestones. The boy flinched as if struck, tears welling but refusing to fall, a silent testament to the terror Akuma inspired. A low murmur of unease rippled through the nearby students, quickly stifled.
Then, the shadow fell. Akuma stopped before Shiro, his immense bulk blocking the feeble dawn light entirely, plunging Shiro into a pocket of frigid gloom. Those small, dark galaxy eyes, pupils unnaturally sharp points like obsidian shards in the dimness, raked over Shiro's patched coat, his worn boots caked with slum mud, finally settling with unnerving focus on the small, rough hewn trunk. "Open it, rat," Akuma commanded, the words a puff of frost laden air that smelled faintly of stale metal and something coppery, like old blood.
Shiro's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He knelt, the cold of the stones seeping instantly through his thin trousers. His fingers, numb with cold and fear, fumbled clumsily with the crude iron latch. He opened the lid, revealing the meagre contents: neatly folded but threadbare tunics, the small waxed paper bundles, his carving knife sheathed in leather, the wrapped bundle containing the plank nestled beside it. Akuma's gauntlet plunged in, disregarding the clothes and food with contemptuous sweeps, heading straight for the burlap wrapped shape. He tore the cloth away with a brutal jerk, holding Aki's carved wood aloft. In the grey light, the faint, rhythmic pulse within its grooves was startlingly visible, a captured heartbeat of violet light trapped within the grain. Cassiopeia's jagged spine, stained a deep, defiant violet with juniper berry ink, seemed to writhe under his scrutiny, the constellation a silent scream against the violation.
"Slum filth," Akuma spat, his voice thick with venomous contempt. He turned, deliberately displaying the plank to the watching nobles clustered nearby, drawing titters of nervous, complicit laughter from some, while others looked away, faces pale. "Heretical craft. Defiling the celestial order decreed by his majesty." He sneered, the expression twisting his brutal features into a grotesque mask. "The Temple's pyres have burned brighter trash than this." His voice dropped to a guttural rasp, a chillingly perfect mimicry of Priest Gin's cadence, the words echoing like a death knell in the frozen air: "'Heresy that overshadows the Temple light must be ERASED.'" His gaze, filled with malicious, anticipatory glee, locked onto Shiro. "Just like your witch mother… and those defected Polaris bastards she laboured beside."
The world stopped. The cold vanished, replaced by a white hot surge of fury and terror that stole Shiro's breath. Defected Polaris. The words slammed into him with physical force. Aki's whispered stories, shared under the cloak of darkness on the rooftops, surged back with terrifying clarity, tales of exiled starborn from Nyxarion, branded heretics by the Temple, their very eyes marked by the true light of the northern star, who had vanished into the night, hunted relentlessly. Akuma's gauntleted hand crept towards the hilt of his sword. The pommel wasn't just engraved; it was a twisted, corrupted Polaris sigil wrought in black iron, the familiar points elongated into cruel, grasping barbs, a perversion of the celestial guide. Recognition, cold and absolute, flooded Shiro. This wasn't just a brutish guard; he was Temple Inquisition, a hunter of starborn, a hound trained to track down and extinguish those like Aki's comrades. "Rewrite the sky," his mother's final, gasping plea echoed in his mind, a desperate command against the encroaching darkness that Akuma embodied.
Before Shiro could react, could even draw breath to scream his defiance or lunge for the precious plank, Akuma moved. With a grunt of effort that was almost casual, he raised the plank high and slammed it down onto the unforgiving cobblestones. The sharp, splintering crack echoed like a gunshot across the frozen courtyard, silencing every whisper, every indrawn breath. Splinters erupted, not just pale wood, but shards of violet light seemed to burst from the point of impact, flickering like dying embers before dissipating instantly into the frigid air. Akuma planted his heavy boot squarely on the centre of the plank, right where Cassiopeia's throne had been lovingly carved, and ground down with brutal, deliberate force. The groan of tortured wood filled the silence, punctuated by the sharp snaps of fracturing grain. More splinters flew, violet stained fragments skittering across the frost like drops of frozen blood. "ERASED!" he hissed, leaning his full, crushing weight into the destruction, his star pupiled eyes fixed on Shiro's face, drinking in the anguish.
"NO!" The raw, animal scream tore from Shiro's throat, shredding his vocal cords, laced with a primal anguish and fury that obliterated thought, obliterated fear. He lunged forward, a desperate, graceless movement, blind to the consequences, to the guards, to everything except the sight of Aki's legacy, his mother's echo, being ground into oblivion beneath that monstrous boot.
A blur of indigo silk and silver hair cut him off. Kuro moved with the lethal grace of a striking viper, shouldering through the ring of stunned nobles who parted before him like reeds before a storm surge. He didn't shout, didn't bellow. His voice, when it came, was lethally calm, colder than the deepest frost clinging to the gates, yet it cut through the shocked silence like a honed blade parting silk. He stopped inches from the hulking guard, his storm grey eyes fixed not on Akuma's face, but on the boot still grinding the remnants into the stone. "Touch that wood again, Akuma," Kuro stated, each word precise, glacial, and utterly devoid of fear, "and I'll feed you your own gauntlets. Slowly. Starting with the fingers."
Akuma stiffened as if struck by lightning. His grinding boot froze mid crunch. He slowly, deliberately, turned his massive head, his star pupiled eyes narrowing to venomous slits as they focused on the prince. Recognition warred with fury and ingrained hierarchy. "Prince Kuro." He inclined his head a fraction, a mockery of respect that dripped with insolence. The title felt like an insult in his mouth. "Your father's explicit orders demand we…"
"My father's orders," Kuro interrupted, his voice gaining a razor edge of contempt that could flay skin, "are as stale as his Temple's self righteous sermons and twice as hypocritical." He took another deliberate step closer, invading Akuma's personal space, an act of breathtaking defiance. The absence of the royal signet ring on Kuro's bare hand became glaringly obvious under the flickering torchlight mounted beside the gate. It was a naked rebuke. "You want to impress him? Fine. Be his faithful little hound. Tell him his precious heir sleeps in a rat infested alcove above the stables, not the royal suite. Tell him I drink cheap gutter wine stolen from the cellars, not the vintage ambrosia reserved for sycophants. Tell him I carve forbidden stars with these…" he held up his hands, calloused and stained with charcoal and wood grain, "…slum hands… on wood warmed by Higaru's so called filth." He reached down, ignoring Akuma's looming, apoplectic presence, the tension crackling like static in the air, and snatched the largest splintered remnants of the plank from under the guard's boot. Cassiopeia's fractured lines pulsed with a weak, yet stubbornly defiant violet light in his grasp. Kuro held the broken constellation aloft, meeting Akuma's furious gaze squarely. "Tell him I'm having real fun than I've ever had suffocating in that gilded cage he calls a palace. And tell him…" Kuro's smirk was a weapon honed to perfection, sharp enough to draw blood, "…he can fuck right off."
A collective gasp, sharp as shattered glass, ripped through the assembled nobles. Koji, standing nearby, dropped his expensive leather satchel with a dull thud, his face draining of colour. Lady Reina, a notorious gossip with eyes like a hawk, pressed a lace gloved hand to her mouth, her eyes wide not with fear, but with scandalized, almost giddy delight. Akuma's face purpled, veins bulging grotesquely at his temples, throbbing like poisoned worms beneath the skin. For a moment, he seemed incapable of speech, choked by apoplectic rage. When he finally roared, spittle flew from his lips, glittering in the weak light. "You DARE?! You shame the Crown that feeds you, clothes you, grants you the very breath in your ungrateful lungs?!"
"The Crown shames itself with every poisoned breath he takes!" Kuro shot back, his voice rising now, raw with a lifetime of suppressed fury and bitterness that erupted like a geyser. It wasn't just defiance; it was a dam breaking. "I never asked for this poisoned chalice! I never wanted his gilded shackles, his suffocating expectations, his Temple blessed tyranny!" He gestured contemptuously towards the shattered wood in his hand and then tossed the fragments back into Shiro's open trunk with deliberate, insulting carelessness. The violet light flickered weakly against the rough wood. "Now run back to that bastard master of yours, Akuma. Crawl to my father on your belly. Lick his boot with the 'details'." He made a dismissive, flicking shooing motion with his fingers, the universal gesture for brushing away vermin. "Go on. Fetch."
Above them, a harsh, mocking caw split the tense silence. The crow, sleek and black as a shard of the void, circled low over the courtyard. King Ryo's stolen signet ring was clutched firmly in its beak, the black iron band glinting with an unnatural, oily malice in the dawn light. It dipped sharply, flying directly over Akuma's head, the ring flashing like a malevolent, fallen star of ill omen. Akuma instinctively flinched, his hand flying up in a complex Temple warding gesture, fingers twisting into an ancient sigil against evil. His star pupiled eyes widened with superstitious dread, the calculated cruelty momentarily replaced by primal fear. He spat a thick glob of phlegm onto the frost at Shiro's feet, the sound obscene in the stillness. "Pray your slum princeling's whims outlast the king's patience, rat," he snarled, his voice thick with venom and the lingering tremor of unease. He leaned in, his breath reeking of stale meat and malice, whispering just for Shiro: "Your time bleeds faster than his defiance. Tick tock." With a final glare that promised retribution etched in pain, Akuma jerked his head, a brutal command, and the obsidian armoured guards snapped to attention, retreating in perfect, ominous formation, their heavy boots crunching on the frost like the snapping of small bones.
As the last guard vanished through the shadowed maw of the gate, Kuro's hand dipped into his pocket. He flicked a dried fig pit with unnerving accuracy. It sailed through the air, striking the back of the rearmost guard's helmet with a faint, almost musical tink. The guard didn't break stride, but the tension in his shoulders was visible even from a distance.
"Subtle," Shiro muttered, his voice raw. He knelt beside his violated trunk, his hands trembling violently as he carefully, reverently, gathered the larger splintered pieces of the plank. The violet stain felt unnervingly warm, almost alive, against his cold skin, a fading ember of defiance. Cassiopeia's throne was shattered, her form fractured, the map of their shared sky irrevocably damaged.
Kuro didn't look at him immediately. His gaze was fixed on the crow, now perched atop the Academy's highest spire, a needle of dark stone piercing the grey sky. The ring was still clearly visible in its beak. The bird seemed to stare back, its head cocked at an unnatural, almost intelligent angle. "Let them write ballads about the insolent prince," Kuro said, his voice low but carrying a new weight, a chilling certainty. "I won't be shackled again. Not by him. Not by the Temple. Not by the ghosts of expectations." He turned back to Shiro, his storm grey eyes blazing with a dangerous, exhilarating light that banished the last traces of aristocratic boredom. "Father wants heresy? Wants a spectacle? Fine. I'll give him a saga. One written not in ink, but in pure, unadulterated defiance. A saga that'll echo through generations and shake the foundations of his precious, rotten order." He nudged a large, violet streaked fragment of the plank with the toe of his boot, his gaze challenging. "Starting with putting her sky back together. Piece by broken piece."
Shiro looked down at the shattered wood in his hands, the ghost light pulsing faintly. He looked up at the crow, its dark silhouette stark against the pale sky. He looked at Kuro, standing defiant amidst the lingering shock and whispers, a prince casting off his crown. Then his gaze was drawn across the courtyard. The crow's shadow, long and distorted by the low sun, stretched like a bruise across the frost whitened stones. It pointed like an accusing finger, clinging to the ornate, stained glass window of the Celestial Navigation lecture hall, a window depicting the Temple's approved, sanitized constellations. And there, wedged firmly in the leaden frame of that very window, catching the weak sunlight with a dull, ominous gleam, was King Ryo's stolen ring. A promise thrown down. A gauntlet cast. A symbol of their nascent rebellion lodged defiantly in the heart of the Academy's celestial lies. The frost on the gates no longer felt like winter's bite; it felt like the first, sharp breath of a coming storm, vast and world shattering. The saga had begun, not with a whisper, but with the crack of breaking wood and the icy clarity of a prince's treasonous words.