The frozen fig stem Kuro had contemptuously tossed lay forgotten, buried ever deeper under the relentless cascade of snow near the sundial's skeletal corpse, a relic of simpler, almost innocent defiance. Above, the crow bearing the inked feather signature circled one last, deliberate loop. Its prismatic eyes, swirling galaxies of unnerving intelligence, locked onto Shiro's for a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, carrying the weight of unspoken messages and frozen promises. Then, with a final, resonant caw that sounded less like a bird's cry and more like a gauntlet thrown down upon the icy stones of Astralon, it banked sharply northwards. It became a dark arrow, unwavering, aimed with lethal precision at the forbidding, snow shrouded peaks of the Nyxion Spine. Its companion, a mere silhouette now, carrying the shard of impossible, soul numbing cold, was already a dwindling speck against the brooding, bruised clouds gathering over the mountains, clouds that seemed less like weather and more like the continent itself exhaling its ancient, frozen breath, a warning sigh before the storm.
Kuro watched them vanish, the ghost of his habitual smirk replaced by a grim intensity that carved new lines around his storm grey eyes. "Friendly neighbourhood spy," he murmured again, the words hanging in the frigid air like crystallized breath, sharp and fragile. "Sending reports via crow. And ice." He nudged the spot where the crystalline shard had vanished into the snow with the toe of his worn boot. A faint, localized patch of frost, unnaturally white and brittle, leaching all colour and life from the surrounding stone, had already formed, radiating an aura of deep cold that prickled the skin even from a distance. "Efficient. Brutally so. And chillingly expensive. That ice… it doesn't feel like anything from this side of the Wall. Feels like stolen breath."
Shiro's gaze remained welded to the northern horizon, where the jagged peaks clawed like broken teeth at the leaden, suffocating sky. The pieces clicked with cold, hard certainty: Mira's deliberate spill, the impossible map of Nyxarion unfurling like a forbidden dream, the stark, unmistakable sigil scratched with deliberate force into the ancient stone, the silhouette of the legendary axe head, Star Breaker. It wasn't clumsiness. It wasn't happenstance. It was a calculated beacon. An invitation etched in frost and defiance. A summons whispered on the wind from Nyxara. "House Isamu," he said, the name feeling foreign yet potent, dangerous, on his tongue, like tasting forbidden metal. "Polaris agents. Spies weaving webs within the gilded cage. Why us?"
"Because, Ghost," Kuro said, turning abruptly away from the hypnotic pull of the north, his storm grey eyes scanning the courtyard below. It was filling with students shuffling towards morning lectures like sleepwalkers draped in wool and privilege, their faces pale smudges against the grey stone. "We're the only spectacularly stupid souls audacious enough to carve a guillotine onto the King's sacred star chart and then have the breathtaking gall to taunt his chief flayer about the thread count of his cushions." He started walking, not towards the stifling warmth of the lecture halls, but towards the academy's oldest, most neglected wing, a place of crumbling stone and whispered secrets, housing the rusted, treacherous access ladder to the central roof, their secret sanctuary. "We're a walking, talking spectacle. A magnificent, treasonous mess radiating chaos like a cracked reactor core. And House Isamu… they thrive on chaos. They need eyes inside this gilded cage looking out, stirring the pot, drawing the guards' gaze. We're the perfect, glorious distraction while their real, shadowed agents work unseen in the deeper corridors of power." He paused, a flicker of something akin to grudging, almost unwilling respect momentarily lighting his eyes. "Or maybe," he conceded, a touch of dark wonder in his voice, "whoever wields Star Breaker just appreciates our… aesthetic. Smashing celestial globes has a certain undeniable… Polaris flair. A signature of controlled demolition."
The climb to the roof was a silent, arduous battle against decay and the deepening cold. Rust flaked off the iron rungs like diseased skin under their gloves, staining the leather ochre and blood brown. Rotten wood groaned treacherously under their weight. The cold wasn't just in the air; it seeped into the very marrow of the iron, radiating a bone deep ache that made their fingers clumsy. Each pull upward was a defiance against gravity and entropy. Finally, hauling themselves onto the snow dusted, uneven slate tiles of the rooftop, they entered a desolate monument to their shared history of rebellion. This was their archive of defiance, written in shattered glass and fire.
Shattered wooden pieces glittered like frozen, multifaceted tears amongst the grime pigeon droppings. Faded smears of violet berry dye, painstakingly shaped like defiant, glowing fireflies, stained the cracked slate, remnants of a midnight manifesto sprayed during a protest against tuition hikes for commoners. Charred fragments of star charts, victims of smaller, more impulsive acts of fiery rebellion against particularly egregious lessons in royal propaganda, poked through the encroaching snow like the blackened bones of dead birds. The skeletal remains of the portrait Kuro defaced weeks ago, their very first shared act of coordinated vandalism, a declaration of nascent partnership, lay half buried near the parapet. Its face, once gleaming, now reflected the weak, anaemic morning sun with a dull, mournful gleam, like the eye of a fallen giant.
The air here tasted of endings, of finality. It carried the lingering ghost of burnt juniper from illicit rooftop fires where they'd huddled, sharing stolen wine and whispered dreams, and the metallic tang of futures abandoned, paths not taken. The wind, sharper, keener, more vicious at this exposed height, knifed through their cloaks with malicious intent. It carried more than cold; it carried whispers, faint but insistent, of the vast, frozen, living expanse beyond the mountains. It was Nyxara's breath, sighing across the miles, promising secrets and oblivion.
Kuro leaned heavily against the crumbling parapet, its stone rough and cold even through his layers. He gazed not down at the academy's ordered chaos, but relentlessly north, towards the myth shrouded spine of the world. "Father's 'Ice Wall'," he spat the name like a curse, venom dripping from each syllable. "A thousand miles of quarried stone and frozen corpses, built not on bedrock, but on a foundation of lies thicker than the mortar binding its bloody blocks. 'Protection from the Star Eater'. 'Shield against the Blight'." He scooped up a handful of the pristine, deceptive snow, letting it trickle through his stained, calloused fingers like sand through an hourglass. "Protection from what? A spectral queen whispered to turn bountiful harvests to barren ash? Ryo's honeyed sermons, dripping from his pulpit like poisoned syrup, claim she breathes a frost that devours souls, leaving only hollow ice statues. Vayne's meticulously crafted charts, displayed with pomp, show her realm as a sucking void, a cosmic drain swallowing the very light of Polaris." He crushed the remaining snow in his fist, the crystals biting into his palm. "But Mira's map…" His voice dropped, low and intense. "It showed mountains. Jagged, real, piercing the sky. Rivers, frozen serpentines but marked, named. Cities, not ruins, not voids, but settlements etched in that intricate cipher. Not a void. A place. A cold place, undoubtedly. A harsh one, sculpted by wind and ice. But a place where people live. Where harvests were once fair, bountiful even, before the poison of fear, cultivated here, turned them to ash in our collective imagination." He quoted the burning fragment from the cellar repository; the words etched in fire on his memory: "The only blight is the fear we cultivate. What if the only true 'Blight' is the one my father meticulously paints with Temple gold and the wilful ignorance of nobles who profit from the lie?"
Shiro moved to stand beside him at the parapet, the stolen, defaced chart a cold, accusing weight against his ribs, a physical manifestation of their trespass. He pulled it out, unrolling it carefully on the frost rimed stone. The vandalized constellations, Cassiopeia violently tilted west, Polaris defiantly realigned from the King's imposed position, the crude guillotine hovering over the proud Oji crest, the defiant firefly seemingly devouring the royal crown, seemed smaller now, almost childish scribbles against the vast, terrifyingly blank expanse hinted at beyond the chart's eastern edge. The edge Mira's impossible map had filled with names, contours, life. "Aki believed the stars witnessed," he said quietly, his voice rough with memory and cold. He traced the jagged line he'd carved into the repository wall, a mirror to the one on the chart. "She didn't believe in monsters under the bed conjured by priests. Just… people. Powerful people. Greedy people." The faces flashed before his inner eye: Gin's pulsating pendant, a diseased heart glowing beneath his robes; Akuma's star pupiled eyes, flat and predatory, promising exquisite pain; Koji's sneering face, his petty cruelty a weapon honed by unearned privilege. "Ryo's the monster here," Shiro stated, the conviction cold and hard. "Gin's the blight. Cultivating fear, harvesting power from it."
Kuro nodded, a sharp, decisive movement that sent snow flurries dancing from his shoulders. "And we've been swatting at flies buzzing around the dung heap," he growled, "while the spider weaves its intricate, poisonous web in the shadows beyond the north." He turned fully from the hypnotic view, his storm grey eyes locking onto Shiro's with an intensity that momentarily banished the pervasive cold, radiating a heat born of furious resolve. "This ends. The scratching at lies on parchment. The defacing of symbols in the dark. It's not enough. It's child's play." His hand dipped into the inner pocket of his worn coat, emerging not with a knife, but with a small, wickedly honed fish hook, liberated from the cellar's forgotten detritus, its point gleaming with cold, sharp purpose in the weak light. "We need a compass. Not one spun from lies and ink. A true north. Carved in something real." He held Shiro's gaze, the unspoken demand hanging heavy in the frozen air. "Hold out your hand."
Shiro didn't hesitate. He extended his right palm, calloused and scarred, a map of survival etched in wood grain, knife fights in Higaru's alleys, and the hard labour of existing beneath notice. The biting cold turned his skin parchment pale, highlighting the network of old wounds. "A compass?" he asked, his voice roughened by the wind and the weight of the moment.
"For when the lies get too thick to breathe," Kuro confirmed, his own voice dropping to a low, grave timbre Shiro had rarely heard, stripped of its usual mocking edge. "For when the path vanishes in the blizzard of their deceit. For when you get lost." He gripped Shiro's wrist, not with violence, but with an unyielding firmness. His fingers were icy, but the grip was steady as bedrock. "Hold still. My metaphors might be terrible," he added, a flicker of his old self surfacing briefly, "but my needlework's passable. Probably."
The bite of the hook was sharp, immediate, a bright lance of pain cutting through the numbness. Shiro hissed, his muscles tensing involuntarily, cords standing out in his neck, but he held his ground, arm rigid. Kuro's focus narrowed to a laser point. His storm grey eyes, usually alive with mocking wit or blazing defiance, became chips of glacial flint, reflecting the bleak, uncaring sky as he worked with meticulous, almost reverent precision. A bead of dark blood welled instantly, stark and vital against Shiro's pallid skin, tracing the deliberate path of the hook as Kuro etched a small, sharp, four pointed star, the true Polaris, as it blazed in the heavens, not the distorted fist Ryo claimed, into the fleshy base of Shiro's thumb. The pain was a bright, cleansing fire, searing through the numbness of the cold and the gnawing dread that had taken root. Each deliberate scratch of the hook wasn't just marking skin; it was etching a vow in blood: No more hiding in shadows. No more half measures. Rewrite the fucking sky.
"You're terrible at metaphors," Shiro managed through gritted teeth, his jaw clenched, watching the dark crimson bloom and trickle down the side of his hand. "But your stabbing… admirably precise."
Kuro didn't crack a smile. His concentration was fierce, absolute. "Says the prince who thinks sarcasm is a substitute for an actual personality trait." With surprising gentleness, he wiped the excess blood away with a clean scrap of linen torn from his own sleeve. The raw star stood out starkly, a beacon of pain and resolve carved into living flesh. "Now," he said, releasing Shiro's wrist and thrusting the bloody hook towards him, handle first, the point glistening red. "Your turn. Make it match. Don't flinch," he warned, a ghost of his smirk returning, "or I'll add a squiggle and tell everyone it's Cassiopeia's wobbly throne. Ruins the symmetry."
Shiro took the hook. It felt alien and deadly in his hand, cold metal slick with his own blood. He reached for Kuro's left palm. The prince's hand was finer, paler, a testament to a different kind of survival, but the calluses were undeniable, from gripping reins during state processions he despised, from holding knives during secret training sessions, from the constant, exhausting tension of a life lived behind gilded masks. Shiro gripped Kuro's wrist, mirroring the earlier hold, feeling the steady pulse beneath the skin. He met Kuro's gaze. The prince's carefully constructed mask of arrogance and indifference was gone, stripped away by the raw significance of this act. In its place was a vulnerability Shiro had only glimpsed in fleeting moments, the terrified boy locked in the suffocating observatory after his mother's disappearance, the desperate prince who'd tossed his symbolic crown to a carrion bird. There was fear there, yes, a primal tremor beneath the surface, but beneath that, shining through like steel beneath silk, was a terrifying, exhilarating resolve. The resolve to burn it all down.
Shiro pressed the cold, blood tipped point of the hook to the base of Kuro's thumb. The prince didn't flinch. His storm grey eyes held Shiro's, unwavering, a silent challenge and a profound trust. "Make it hurt, slum rat," Kuro murmured, the ghost of his smirk now edged with something darker, fiercer. "Pain's an excellent fucking reminder not to trust silk cushions… or the smiles of kings."
Shiro carved. The hook bit deep, tracing the same four sharp, uncompromising points. Kuro's breath hitched audibly, a sharp, involuntary intake, but his body remained perfectly still, a statue carved from ice and willpower. His gaze never wavered from Shiro's, a tether holding them both in this moment of brutal intimacy. Blood welled, twin to Shiro's own, a vivid crimson against Kuro's moon pale skin. Shiro worked with the same focused, almost trance like intensity he used when carving wood, pouring his will into the act, etching the symbol of the true, guiding star into Kuro's flesh. It was a counterpoint, a defiance, to the faded, intricate royal seal branded higher on Kuro's wrist. This wasn't a brand of ownership imposed from above; it was a map to freedom chosen from below. A shared direction forged in blood and pain. When the final point was etched, Shiro carefully wiped the welling blood away with his thumb, revealing the stark, raw, mirrored star, a twin beacon now ignited on both their palms.
Kuro flexed his hand, wincing slightly at the fresh sting but grinning fiercely, the adrenaline and raw emotion burning in his eyes. The raw star seemed to throb in time with his pulse, a physical manifestation of their combined will. "Now," he declared, his voice thick with the cocktail of pain, adrenaline, and a fierce, liberating joy, "we're both gloriously lost. Adrift in the sea of their bullshit. But," he held up his bleeding palm, the star catching the weak light, "at least we've got the same damn star to steer by. The real one." He looked down at the bleeding symbol, the fierce grin softening momentarily into a thoughtful frown. "Polaris…" he mused, the word heavy with history. "Highest rank the King bestows. Supposedly unbreakable loyalty. The pinnacle." He snorted, the sound sharp and derisive. "My father's always had a particular genius for twisting honorable things into instruments of control. Heard him rant once, years ago, during one of his… darker moods. About a soldier. One who earned that rank through genuine deeds, not sycophancy. Came from one of the Five Great Houses… House Veyne." He paused, his gaze distant, sifting through fragmented memories. "Father called him a traitor in waiting, a viper coiled in the heart of the royal guard. Dangerous. Too popular. Too independent." A flicker of something softer, infinitely sadder, crossed Kuro's face. "Mother… Mother argued with him. Vehemently. Said the man was the truest soldier she'd ever known. Loyal to the realm, to its people, not just the crown perched on Ryo's head. She was… fond of him. Respectful. Admiring, even. Said he fought like a force of nature. With an axe…" Kuro's eyes snapped back to Shiro's, the intensity returning, magnified. "Part of some legendary unit. 'The True North', they called them? Five soldiers, stories said, who could shatter battalions like glass. Their leader… he carried Star Breaker." He looked from his stinging palm to the northern peaks, then back to Shiro. "Just stories spat out in Father's paranoia. Suspicions. Nothing concrete ever proven. But…" He flexed his hand again, feeling the bite of the wound. "The axe sigil. The Polaris rank. House Veyne, standing against Oji's shadow. It fits the puzzle Mira left us, doesn't it? Like a key finding its lock."
The crow that had lingered on a nearby gargoyle, perhaps the one that delivered the feather, perhaps a silent observer, let out a soft, guttural croak, low in its throat. It hopped closer across the snow dusted tiles, its prismatic eyes fixed intently, unnervingly, on their bloodied palms. In its beak, it held not the ring, but the familiar, frostbitten fig stem, the one Kuro had thrown earlier, now retrieved from the snow below like a morbid trophy. It extended its head slightly, the stem held loosely, not as food, but as an offering, a dark mirror to the bloody pact just sealed.
Shiro looked from his own stinging palm, the pain a grounding counterpoint to the vastness unfolding, to Kuro's matching wound, then back to the northern peaks. The mountains were now almost entirely shrouded in the advancing storm front, colossal shapes withdrawing behind veils of driven snow and howling wind. Yet, the raw compass stars on their palms seemed to pulse with an internal heat, pointing unerringly, magnetically north. Towards the monolithic lie of the Ice Wall. Towards the terrifying unknown. Towards Nyxara and the truths frozen beneath Ryo's mountain of deceit. The shattered sky over Astralon wasn't just broken; it was a cage they'd finally outgrown, its bars meaningless against the call of the true north. Rewrite the sky. The command echoed, but it wasn't Aki's whisper or his mother's fading memory anymore. It was theirs. Forged in shared blood and shared purpose.
Kuro followed his gaze, the fierce grin solidifying into something harder, colder, more dangerous. He took the gnawed fig stem from the crow's beak. The bird didn't resist, watching them with unnerving, ancient intelligence before flapping silently to a higher perch on a crumbling chimney stack, a sentinel against the darkening sky. "Honesty's overrated," Kuro said, echoing Shiro's words from the repository depths, his voice low, resonant, and filled with a terrible finality. "But it's cheaper than silence. And silence… silence gets you frozen solid in a ditch, or flayed alive in Gin's chambers, or simply… forgotten. Erased." He held the stem aloft, a pathetic, frozen twig against the gathering might of the storm. Then, with a surge of fierce, defiant energy, he hurled it not down into the safe, predictable courtyard, but in a high, soaring arc towards the northern horizon, directly into the heart of the maelstrom gathering over the Nyxion peaks. The crow tracked its trajectory, head cocked.
"Now," Kuro declared, his voice cutting through the rising wind like a blade honed on ice, cold, sharp, and utterly final, "we stop hiding in dusty cellars. We stop defacing charts like petulant children." He turned, the wind catching his silver streak, whipping it into a frenzied comet's tail against the bruised and darkening sky. His star scarred hand lifted, the raw mark stark and undeniable against his skin, and pointed like an accusing lance towards the roiling storm. "Now, we find the source of the lies poisoning this realm. Now, we find the one who wields Star Breaker. Now, we walk deliberately, eyes wide open, into the teeth of the winter they've taught us to fear…" He locked eyes with Shiro, the shared star on their palms throbbing in perfect, painful unison, a silent signal only they could feel, a bond stronger than blood alone. "Now, we burn the fucking sky that cages us."
The words weren't just a promise whispered on the wind; they were a declaration of war carved into the frigid air itself. A challenge hurled at the dying, corrupted stars of Astralon, at the creeping, insidious blight of Temple lies, at the glacial, waiting silence of Nyxarion beyond the Wall. The crow let out a final, echoing CAAAAW that resonated like a cracked, ancient battle horn across the desolate rooftop, vibrating in their bones. It launched itself from the chimney, a bolt of black lightning, chasing the insignificant fig stem into the roiling grey maw of the storm. It vanished instantly, swallowed by the blizzard's birth pangs.
Shiro looked down at his blood compass, the sting a vital anchor in the face of the abyss, then back at the apocalyptic storm swallowing the north whole. The cold no longer felt like an enemy to flee; it felt like the raw material they would shape, the forge in which their resolve would be tempered. The path ahead was written not in fugitive ink or fading berry dye, but in shared blood, iron purpose, and the echoing fragments of Kuro's story, a tale of a Polaris ranked titan from House Veyne, a leader of legendary prowess whispered to command the True North, wielding an axe named Star Breaker against the encroaching night. The simple saga of the slum rat and the shitty prince was over, its final chapter consumed in the purifying fire of this rooftop pact. The war for the true sky, against the tyrant who choked Astralon and the queen demonized beyond its frozen walls, had irrevocably begun. They descended the rusted ladder, its groans lost in the rising, shrieking wind, not as students bound by curriculum, not as vandals defined by petty rebellion, but as living compass points, calibrated to true north, irrevocably set on a course into the storm's furious heart. The darkness beyond the academy walls wasn't just looming anymore; it was the only path remaining, and it beckoned with the fierce, frozen clarity of a star carved in blood and the rumoured, earth shattering strength of a forgotten soldier waiting with an axe named for breaking heavens.