The crow's shadow, elongated and grasping, stretched like a knife cut silhouette across the stained glass depiction of Orion inside the Celestial Navigation lecture hall. The stolen iron ring, King Ryo's stolen authority, was wedged deep in the ancient leaden frame of the window, catching the weak afternoon light with a dull, malignant gleam, a constant, watchful eye upon the proceedings within. Inside, the air wasn't just thick with tension; it was suffocating. It tasted of melted candle wax turned rancid, cloying noble perfumes layered over sweat and fear, and the pervasive metallic tang of dread. Professor Vayne stood rigidly at the dais, his arrival a fortnight prior having plunged the Academy into a perpetual winter far colder than the frost outside. He wasn't a replacement; he was an occupying force. The chill he radiated wasn't metaphorical; students swore the temperature dropped several degrees whenever his shadow fell upon them. Rumours, thick as dungeon fog, choked the halls: Old Harken hadn't retired. He languished in the lightless sub levels of the Temple's Star Spire archives, his meticulous star charts replaced by instruments of persuasion, his brilliant mind shattered by whatever Vayne, in his previous role as an Inquisitorial adept, had deemed necessary. Harken was a ghost story now, a whispered warning etched in terror for failing to curb Prince Kuro's burgeoning rebellion. Vayne was the embodiment of the Temple's mailed fist, chosen for his efficiency in extracting truths (or crafting them) in the Spire's infamous interrogation chambers, not for any scholarly merit. He wore his cruelty not just like a badge, but like a second skin, taut over sharp cheekbones. His gaunt face seemed permanently clenched in a sneer of contempt, his eyes twin shards of flint black obsidian that scanned the room, missing nothing, cataloguing every flinch, every whisper, every potential deviation.
With a snap that echoed like a whip crack, Vayne unfurled a massive parchment scroll across the lectern. It wasn't just a chart; it was a declaration of war upon the heavens. King Ryo's newly revised celestial order. Constellations, once flowing and majestic, were now twisted into rigid, militaristic formations. Orion's belt was straightened into a brutal crossbeam, his raised club transformed into a bludgeon. Polaris, the guiding star, was grotesquely enlarged, depicted not as a point of light, but as a crushing, spiked fist dominating the northern sky. Worst of all, Cassiopeia's defiant, jagged throne, the very symbol Shiro and Kuro had tried to preserve on Aki's plank, had been forcibly straightened, stripped of its wild beauty and asymmetry, reduced to a bland, soulless geometric shape. "Behold," Vayne intoned, his voice a dry rasp like sandpaper on bone, devoid of any wonder, only cold command, "the Celestial Order as mandated by His Majesty, King Ryo Oji. Pure. Undiluted. Sanctioned. Free of the chaotic, degenerate scribbles of mystics and heretics who seek to undermine the divine harmony." His obsidian gaze swept over the students like a physical blow, lingering with unnerving, predatory interest on Shiro. The message was clear: You are next.
The noble boy beside Shiro, Koji, heir to the Silk Baron fortune, his jade cufflinks glinting with a smug, reptilian sheen, practically vibrated with malicious glee. As Vayne's assistants distributed smaller copies of the sterile chart, Koji snatched Shiro's the moment it touched his desk. His lip curled into a triumphant sneer as he examined it. Unlike the others, Shiro's copy bore subtle, dangerous corrections: Cassiopeia tilted defiantly westward as Aki had taught him, Polaris aligned with its true celestial neighbours, not dominating them. And in the lower margin, a small, vibrant firefly, drawn with stolen berry dye, pulsed with a life utterly absent from Vayne's sanctioned void.
"Look at this!" Koji crowed, his voice artificially loud, cutting through the oppressive silence. He waved Shiro's chart like a captured trophy of war. "Gutter scribbles! Defiling the King's own sanctioned sky!" He thrust it towards the nearest nobles, ensuring maximum visibility. "Did your witch sister teach you this treason, slum rat? Or was it your traitor mother, burning bright in the Temple's cleansing fire?" He laughed, a harsh, braying sound devoid of humour, filled only with venomous delight. "Defiling royal property with your filthy slum artistry! It's an insult!"
Memories detonated behind Shiro's eyes like shrapnel: The crash of Temple guards, led by the skeletal Priest Gin, kicking over Aki's precious herb jars. The acrid, choking smoke of burning starwort and moonpetal filling their cramped Higaru shack, stinging his eyes. Aki, blood streaking her chin from a guard's blow, grinning fiercely even as she coughed, pressing the plank into his small hands with surprising strength. "They'll never burn the true sky, Shiro," she'd gasped, her voice raw. "Remember it. Draw it. Rewrite it for me." Now, Koji, embodying the same vicious, blind obedience that had shattered his world, crumpled her carefully annotated chart, her defiance, her legacy, her final charge , into a tight ball. With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he tossed it towards the iron brazier glowing malevolently at the front of the hall.
Time fractured. The crumpled parchment arced through the heavy air, a white bird with broken wings. It landed on the glowing coals with a soft whump. Fire, hungry and eager, leaped up with serpentine tongues. It swallowed Aki's defiant correction of Polaris first, the ink curling black before vanishing. The berry dye Algol, the Demon Star she'd whispered portended upheaval, the fall of tyrants, dissolved into ephemeral, wispy ash. Shiro's fists clenched so tight the bones in his knuckles ground together, a sickening sound lost in the sudden intake of breath from the class. Hot, sticky blood welled where his ragged nails carved deep crescent moons into his palms. Rewrite the sky. Rewrite the sky. Rewrite the sky. The mantra was a drumbeat of pure, incandescent rage, drowning out Vayne's droning justification, Koji's smug laughter, the very beat of his own heart.
Across the aisle, the sharp SNAP! of Kuro's charcoal breaking in his grip cut through the haze like a physical blade. He didn't look up at Koji's triumph or the dying embers of Aki's sky. Instead, his gaze fixed on the grain of his own expensive oak desk. He pressed the broken charcoal stub hard into the wood, carving not a constellation, but a single, frantic firefly. Its wings were lopsided, jagged, beating against an invisible prison. Its body was a smudge of deep violet berry dye, stolen from the same source as Shiro's, that seemed to seep into the wood like fresh blood, staining it irrevocably. It was a silent scream, a shared act of rebellion etched in violence and stolen pigment.
"Careful, Lord Kuro," sneered Akuma's voice, a low growl from the back of the hall. The hulking enforcer leaned against the stone doorframe like a malevolent statue, his obsidian armour seeming to absorb the very light, creating a pool of deeper shadow around him. His star pupiled eyes, unnaturally sharp pinpricks of violet in the gloom, glinted with icy, predatory amusement as they fixed on Kuro's frantic carving. "Your infantile tantrums weary His Majesty. Save your… primitive artistry for the gutters where it festers." His gauntleted hand rested casually, threateningly, on the pommel of his longsword, the twisted, barbed Polaris sigil seeming to throb with a faint, dark light.
Kuro didn't glance up. His voice was deceptively light, each word dipped in acid. "Tell my father his spies are as dull as his sermons. Truly, Akuma. Do they drill you on boot licking technique in the Kings barracks, or does the taste of polished leather come naturally to faithful hounds?"
A nervous, stifled titter ran through a few nobles, quickly choked off. Akuma's expression remained impassive granite, but a thick vein pulsed dangerously at his temple. His star pupils seemed to constrict, sharpening into even finer, more lethal points. "I am here," he stated, his voice dropping to a menacing rumble, "to ensure the Crown's heir doesn't further befoul his lineage with… undesirable associations. To maintain the King's order within these walls."
"Order?" Kuro finally looked up, his storm grey eyes meeting Akuma's star pierced gaze across the crowded room. He gestured flippantly, dismissively, at Vayne's sterile, lifeless chart dominating the front wall. "That 'order' is a noose woven from Temple lies and royal paranoia. Feel free to hang yourself with it, Akuma. The view from the gallows might finally afford you a glimpse of a real star. If you can bear the light."
Akuma's star pupiled eyes narrowed to venomous slits. A low, guttural growl rumbled deep in his chest, audible even over the tense silence. His gauntlet creaked ominously as his grip tightened on the hilt of the dagger sheathed at his hip. Thick veins bulged along his corded neck like engorged, dark serpents coiling beneath the skin. "You think your insolent tongue makes you clever, princeling?" he snarled, pushing off the doorframe with deliberate slowness. He took two heavy, deliberate steps forward, his massive, armoured boots thudding on the flagstones like the beats of a funeral drum. "Your father's patience hangs by a thread thinner than a spider's silk. Snap it…" He slammed a fist down on Kuro's desk with terrifying force, inches from the violet berry firefly. The solid oak splintered with a sickening crack, the frantic insect carving obliterated instantly into a smear of violet pulp and jagged wood fragments. "…and I'll drag you back to that gilded cage by that pretty silver streak in your hair. Personally. And you won't enjoy the journey."
Kuro leaned back slowly, deliberately, a predator uncoiling. He didn't flinch from the shower of wood chips. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face, devoid of warmth, filled with lethal promise. "Careful, Akuma," he purred, the sound like ice cracking over deep water. "Your Royal leash is choking you. Does my father let you off it often? Or only when he needs a rabid dog unleashed to terrorize children?"
Akuma's iron control shattered. A guttural, bestial roar erupted from him, raw and primal, shaking dust from the rafters. He lunged across the intervening row of desks like a siege engine unleashed, scattering expensive parchment, overturning inkwells that bled black across the floor. Students screamed, scrambling backwards in a panicked tangle of limbs and furniture. Akuma's massive gauntleted hand seized the front of Kuro's indigo silk tunic, hauling him bodily from his chair with terrifying ease, bringing their faces nose to nose. Spittle flecked Kuro's pale cheek. "You spoiled, treacherous STAIN!" Akuma hissed, his breath hot and reeking of stale meat and violence. "I've broken seasoned heretics twice your size for lesser insults! Pray I don't lose patience and carve that lying tongue from your…"
"ENOUGH!"
Vayne's heavy ebony cane cracked down like a thunderclap, not on Akuma, but with shocking force across the enforcer's armoured shoulder plate. The sound was sharp, final, a reassertion of brittle authority. "The King's son," Vayne rasped, his obsidian eyes cold and calculating, devoid of concern for Kuro, only protocol, "is not yours to discipline. Not yet." The final word hung heavy in the air, a chilling promise of sanctioned future violence.
Akuma froze, a statue of armoured fury. His star pupils dilated into swirling, furious galaxies of deepest black and violent violet light. He held Kuro suspended for another agonizing heartbeat, pure, undiluted murder radiating from him in palpable waves. Then, with a sound like tearing metal, he released Kuro with a contemptuous shove. Kuro landed lightly on his feet, a dancer's grace belying the violence, smoothing his rumpled tunic with deliberate nonchalance. His expression was a mask, though a livid red mark bloomed on his cheek where Akuma's gauntlet had pressed, the imprint of the twisted Polaris sigil faintly visible.
Akuma turned his blazing, star pierced gaze away from Kuro, the object of his impotent rage. Instead, he fixed it with terrifying precision on Shiro. His voice dropped to a venomous, carrying whisper that slithered through the silent room, freezing the blood in Shiro's veins. "Mark my words, princeling. The next time your insolence mocks the Crown's justice…" He pointed a thick, armoured finger directly at Shiro, a death sentence delivered with a gesture. "…I'll peel your little slum pet's skin off inch by agonizing inch… and make you wear it as a cloak… while I flay what's left of him alive right before your eyes." The image was horrifyingly vivid, painted with words soaked in sadistic promise and Temple sanctioned cruelty.
Shiro's vision swam, blurring red at the edges. The phantom scent of smoke and burning herbs filled his nostrils, overlaying the stench of fear and ink. The dark pool spreading from Koji's overturned inkwell looked like Aki's blood drying on the rough floorboards of their shack. The last shreds of her chart, her stolen sky, fluttered weakly like dying moths in the brazier's updraft before vanishing into ash. Rewrite the sky. Rewrite the…
Koji, emboldened by Akuma's horrific threat and Vayne's implicit sanction, saw his opening. He leaned in close, his breath, sour with expensive spiced wine and arrogance, washing over Shiro's face. "Your precious sister," he sneered, his voice a venomous whisper meant only for Shiro, dripping with malicious glee, "rotting in the shack she habitats like an infection. Just like the rest of the Polaris defectives your star whore mother tended. Filthy traitors, the lot. Scum who thought they could defy the King and the Temple. Want to join her, rat? I hear the Temple's purification furnaces are always hungry for heretical meat. They burn hot and slow screams can be heard for hours."
Something inside Shiro, something strained to breaking point by loss, humiliation, and the constant, suffocating pressure of the Academy's gilded cage, finally shattered. Lady Reina's tittering giggle cut through the haze, "Filth makes decent rags, I suppose!" , as she reached out with delicate, perfumed fingers and ripped a long strip from Shiro's already torn sleeve. She dabbed her powdered nose with mocking delicacy, a performance of aristocratic disdain.
But Shiro didn't hear her. He heard only the crash of their shack door. He heard his mothers choked, defiant laughter as Temple guards in obsidian plate pinned her thin frame down, their heavy boots crushing her precious, hand drawn star charts underfoot. He saw Gin's skeletal hand, like bleached bone, clamping around her throat. He heard her final, gasping words, thick with blood, "Rewrite the sky, Shiro… Promise me… Burn their lies…" as the light faded from her eyes.
Shiro's vision tunnelled. The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of rage and grief, painted in shades of blood and fire.
With a roar that tore from the very core of his being, a sound raw and primal, Shiro wrenched his wrist free from Koji's grip with berserk strength. Koji stumbled back, surprise flashing across his face before being replaced by fury. Shiro didn't hesitate. His fist, knuckles white, pistoled forward. Not for the dagger yet, but for Koji's sneering face. It smashed full force into the bridge of Koji's nose. Cartilage crunched like dry twigs under a boot. Blood erupted, a hot, shocking fountain that sprayed Shiro's face, his tunic, the stone floor around them in a gruesome constellation. Koji shrieked, a high pitched, ululating sound of pure, unadulterated agony, clutching his ruined face. Only then, as Koji reeled, blood gushing through his fingers, did Shiro's hand shoot out and snatch the ornate dagger from Koji's hip, pulling it free of its jewelled sheath with a rasp of steel.
Shiro lunged, a feral predator, tackling the staggering Koji around the waist. They crashed to the cold, unforgiving stone floor in a tangle of limbs, Shiro landing heavily on top. Koji's head struck the flagstones with a sickening, hollow crack. His scream died in a wet, gurgling choke as Shiro straddled his chest, pinning him, the dagger's wicked point digging into the soft flesh just beneath Koji's jaw.
"You fucking parasite!" Shiro snarled, spit flecking Koji's ashen, terror stricken, blood smeared face. Koji's precious jade cufflinks swung wildly, catching the light like panicked, green eyes. "You think your silks and your stolen titles make you better? Make you a god?!" Shiro pressed the blade harder; fresh crimson welled and traced a path down Koji's throat, mingling with the blood from his broken nose. "I'll carve out your lying tongue and shove it down your own shit stained throat! SAY THEIR NAMES AGAIN! SAY AKI'S NAME!"
Koji whimpered, a high pitched, animal sound of pure terror. His eyes bulged, tears mixing with snot and blood. A dark, spreading stain bloomed across the front of his expensive brocade trousers. "P-Please… I b-beg you… Mercy…!" he choked out, his voice thick with snot, blood, and terror.
Mercy. A word never spoken in the Higaru slums. A concept utterly alien to the Temple guards who took his mother. Shiro drew the dagger back, its point now aimed at Koji's bloodied face, poised to carve truth or retribution into his flesh. "SAY IT!"
Kuro moved like shadow given lethal purpose. He intercepted Akuma's charge not with brute strength, but with the terrifying precision of a viper. His own dagger, slim, wickedly sharp, seemingly materializing in his hand, pricked the vulnerable spot beneath Akuma's jaw, right where the rim of his helmet met the gorget protecting his throat.
"Touch him," Kuro hissed, his voice colder than the depths of the Black Vaults, his storm grey eyes locked unblinkingly on Akuma's star pierced gaze, "and I'll carve those precious Temple stars from your skull before your next breath. Choose."
Akuma froze, a mountain of armoured fury brought to an abrupt, trembling halt. His raised gauntlet hovered inches from Kuro's face, the twisted Polaris sigil seeming to pulse with dark energy. A thin trickle of blood welled around Kuro's blade point where it pressed into Akuma's skin. Rage warred with the primal instinct for survival in his star pupiled eyes, swirling galaxies of black and violent purple.
"Lucky for you the King's orders bind my hands, princeling," Akuma choked out, the words thick with suppressed violence. "Were it not for his command to drag you back whole..." He leaned infinitesimally closer, the dagger point biting deeper, the trickle becoming a steady rivulet. "I'd crack your skull open like a hammer on oak, carve those insolent grey eyes from your sockets, and wear your pampered skin as a trophy cloak while I fed your guts to the crows!"
"But you'll be dead long before you get the chance," Kuro pressed the blade infinitesimally deeper. The trickle became a steady rivulet. "Your move, royal dog."
Shiro, momentarily distracted by the standoff, felt Koji buck weakly beneath him. The movement, the pathetic mewling, refocused his rage like a lens. He hauled Koji up by his blood splattered collar, ignoring the noble's choked sobs and the ruin of his face. He pressed the dagger back against Koji's throat, the blade now smeared with crimson and mucus. "You wanted to play, Koji?" Shiro growled, his voice a raw scrape. "You wanted to mock? Huh? week by week I endured what you've done NOW" He hauled Koji towards the main aisle. "LETS FINISH THIS OUTSIDE LIKE REAL FUCKING MEN, Under the open sky your kind has stolen. I'll peel your skin off slow and hang it from the Temple gates as a banner for all the real rats to see! FUCKING TRY ME!"
Vayne's ebony cane whistled through the air with the sound of a striking viper. It cracked across Shiro's lower spine with brutal, calculated force. Agony lanced through him, white hot and paralyzing, driving the breath from his lungs. "ENOUGH!" Vayne shrieked, his voice cracking with fury, his thin face purple with rage. "Detention! The Black Vaults! For both insolent wretches! Indefinitely! Guards!"
The pain was blinding, a white nova in Shiro's spine, but his rage was the supernova that consumed it. He whirled, his movements fuelled by adrenaline, fury, and the sudden, absolute certainty that this cage was breaking. He saw Vayne's thin lips twisted in vindictive triumph, the cane already raised high for another crippling strike. Shiro's hand shot out, not for the blade still pressed to Koji, but for the cane itself. He grabbed it mid swing, just below the heavy silver handle, his grip like iron born of desperation and hate. With a guttural roar that echoed Koji's earlier whimpers, Shiro wrenched.
The cane, a symbol of Vayne's borrowed, brittle authority, snapped in half with a sharp, satisfying SNAPPPP! that echoed like a gunshot in the stunned silence. Shiro hurled the splintered pieces of dark wood at Vayne's polished boots. They clattered on the stone like broken bones. "BURN in the HELL you preach about, you Temple puppet," Shiro spat, every word dripping with pure, unadulterated venom. He swept his gaze across the stunned, terrified faces of the nobles, Lady Reina clutching her stolen rag like a talisman, others pale as the marble statues lining the hall, mouths agape. "And the rest of you pampered fucks… you can choke on your gilded lies, I WILL NEVER ENDURE WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME NOW IF YOU DARE ILL KILL YOU, PEEL YOUR SKIN, SMASH YOUR SKULL, I WILL BE YOUR END!" The words hung in the air, jagged and raw, a declaration of war on everything the Academy represented. Without a backward glance at Kuro, at Koji writhing on the floor, or at the murderous Akuma held at bay, Shiro shoved past a petrified student near the door and stormed into the cold, echoing corridor. He left behind the wreckage of Vayne's order, Koji's pathetic whimpers, the coppery stench of blood, the acrid smell of fear, and the suffocating weight of the Academy itself.