The raw stars carved into their palms throbbed with the fading pulse of the night, twin constellations etched in pain and resolve beneath the bruised canvas of the pre dawn sky. Each beat echoed the vow made on the windswept roof, Rewrite the sky. Burn the cage. Laughter, sharp and brittle as the hoarfrost crusting the academy's rooftops, still crackled in the frigid air between them, a fragile counterpoint to the gravity humming beneath their skin. But the crow, ever the herald of colder currents, was already moving. A shard of animate darkness against the paling indigo, it swept low over the courtyard below, King Ryo's stolen signet ring, a captured sunbeam wrested from gilded authority, flashing defiantly in its obsidian beak. It banked eastward, a silent arrow, guiding them past the lingering, greasy stench of the pyre where inconvenient whispers turned to ash, past the patrols of guards whose snarling hounds strained at leashes like chained comets desperate to flee gravity's pull. Its path led unerringly to a place where lofty ambition withered as sweetly and inevitably as overripe figs forgotten in the sunless, deepening cold.
The greenhouse awaited, a skeletal leviathan slumbering under centuries of suffocating ivy and glacial ice. Its once proud curved ribs, forged iron now cancerous with rust, bowed under the crushing weight of neglect and the relentless siege of winter, groaning softly in the wind like a dying star. Shiro pressed his forehead against a pane of cracked glass, fog blooming with each exhale like a miniature nebula condensing against the chill. He smoothed the stolen star chart against the icy wall, the damp stone leaching cold through the parchment into his fingertips. The berry dye lines, Cassiopeia's jagged throne transformed into a noose drawn tight around the proud, stylized Oji crest, seemed to pulse with a life of their own under his touch, a celestial assassination plotted in stolen ink. Behind him, the rhythmic clatter of Kuro's fig pits striking the crow's perch on a rusted astrolabe echoed like mocking applause in the cavernous silence. Each toss was a calculated insult, a tiny defiance flung at the Temple's gnawing, insatiable hunger for control, a microcosm of their larger rebellion.
"Still think it's just watching?" Shiro murmured, his thumb instinctively finding the raised, stinging lines of the Polaris star on his palm. The scar felt like a brand, a cold ember burning beneath his skin, a constant, visceral reminder of their northward vow and the blood shed to seal it. The crow's presence was an itch he couldn't scratch; an enigma wrapped in feathers and frost.
Kuro's grin flashed, sharp and dangerous as the shards of glass teeth hanging precariously from the shattered roof above, catching the weak lantern light. "Watching? Absolutely. Judging our interior decor choices? Probably. Borrowing?" He lobbed another pit with casual disdain, the motion fluid, practiced. The crow, perched like a sentinel carved from frozen shadow atop the astrolabe, snapped it mid air with a metallic clack of its beak, its prismatic eyes narrowing with unnerving intelligence, fixed intently on Kuro. "Relax, Ghost. Thieves recognize thieves. And this one," he nodded at the bird, a flicker of something like kinship in his storm grey eyes, "has impeccable taste in loot and terrible taste in landlords. Seems to share our distaste for royal baubles." He gestured vaguely towards the ring in its beak.
A low, mournful wind moaned through the greenhouse's myriad wounds, cracked panes, gaps where glass had surrendered entirely to time or vandalism. It carried not just the biting kiss of the outer cold, sharp enough to make teeth ache, but the faint, echoing resonance of their rooftop pledge: Burn the sky. Underlying it, sharper and more ancient, was the pervasive tang of frozen earth and decaying vegetation, the scent of endings, and perhaps, of beginnings forced violently through ice. Somewhere, deep within the permafrost beneath their boots, beneath the layers of forgotten seeds and strangled roots, the whispered prophecy stirred, a serpent uncoiling in the glacial dark, its presence a subtle vibration in the very air they breathed.
The abandoned greenhouse was a cathedral of decay and stolen ambition, its former grandeur slumped under the crushing weight of frostbitten ivy, thick as arteries, and the ghosts of exotic blooms long perished in Astralon's unrelenting chill. Moonlight, cold and merciless, sliced through the shattered glass ceiling overhead, casting jagged, shifting shadows that danced like spectral dancers over walls papered haphazardly with defaced star charts and Shiro's intricate, defiant carvings, intricate whorls of Higaru tenements, stylized fireflies, fragments of faces scavenged from the slum's refuse, all testaments to a world the academy preferred to ignore. Shiro pinned the last chart, a particularly inflammatory Temple map depicting celestial hierarchies as rigid as caste lines, firmly to the damp stone wall. He'd transformed Cassiopeia; her throne now throttled the Oji crest, its jagged spine etched in stolen berry dye still glistening wetly, like fresh, vital blood against the faded parchment constellations. Kuro lounged like a disgraced deity on a broken terracotta planter, legs dangling over the edge into the abyss of frozen ferns below, the pose deliberately careless. He idly tossed fig pits towards the crow, now perched atop a rusted astrolabe like a dark, watchful jewel. The bird's galaxy eyes captured the feeble, dancing glow of Shiro's lone lantern, reflecting fractured starlight and an unnerving depth of understanding.
"Vayne's lectures are drier than Father's sermons after a three day theological fast," Kuro drawled, his voice slicing through the tomb like silence, rich with contempt. He fiddled with a complex pulley system rigged from stolen kitchen twine, surprisingly strong, and a heavy shipyard pulley smuggled piece by piece over weeks. The contraption dangled precariously from the frost rimed rafters, thick cobwebs trembling with each adjustment, a net bulging with pilfered meat buns swaying gently like the fragmented debris field of a shattered comet caught in orbit. "Thought we'd liven things up. Give him a celestial event to remember. A meteor shower, perhaps? Something… dynamic."
Shiro snorted, the sound sharp in the stillness. He dipped a raven's quill, liberated from the Temple scribe's suspiciously empty desk the night Gin interrogated the kitchen staff , into a small jar of ink mixed pungently with crushed juniper berries. The scent, sharp and piney, warred with the underlying rot. "If by 'meteor,' you mean greasy pigeon shit rigged to the ceiling fan mechanism… then yes, a shower indeed. Though Vayne might consider it an improvement over his usual delivery."
"Art, Shiro! We're artists, not rats! Oh, wait…" Kuro interrupted, snatching the quill from Shiro's fingers with surprising speed, a playful challenge in his eyes. He leaned over the chart, adding a crude but unmistakable stick figure prince lounging insolently atop Cassiopeia's repurposed throne. The figure held a fig in one hand and a wickedly pointed dagger in the other, its posture radiating contempt. "Call this one 'Lord Kuro's Celestial Ego'. Objectively the brightest constellation in this dreary, sanctioned firmament, wouldn't you agree?" He smirked, the lantern light catching the silver streak in his hair, turning it molten against the surrounding gloom. The light also caught the faint, silvery scar on Shiro's cheekbone, a stark souvenir from their last rooftop skirmish with Temple guards over a pilfered astrolabe lens intended for Vayne's projector.
Shiro rolled his eyes, but a reluctant grin touched his lips. "Vayne's going to spontaneously combust. A fitting end, really. Reduced to ashes by sheer exasperation."
"Optimist," Kuro retorted, flicking another fig pit expertly towards the crow. The bird snapped it mid air with that unnerving metallic clink, its head tilting almost imperceptibly as Kuro continued, "I'm aiming for a full scale, spontaneous human eruption. Preferably coating Koji Raiden in noble viscera. A Jackson Pollock in gore, if you will. Much more… expressive." His gaze flickered momentarily northward, beyond the broken panes, drawn by the invisible pull of their shared scar, the compass point etched in blood. "Besides," he added, his voice dropping slightly, "Father would flay me alive if he knew his precious ring was being used as crow bait. This feels… independent. Aligned, perhaps, but not owned. Like us." He tapped the star on his own palm.
The crow let out a soft, guttural caw, then dropped a single, frost glazed fig stem directly into Shiro's lap. Shiro picked it up; the cold bit deep, searing his fingertips with an unnatural intensity that seemed to leach the warmth from his very bones, a cold that felt less like winter and more like the land itself exhaling its frozen breath. He turned the crystalline stem over, marvelling at the intricate, fractal patterns of frost. "This thing," he muttered, the unnatural chill seeping into his palm, mirroring the throb of his scar, "is unnervingly obsessed with you. Or perhaps it just enjoys delivering frozen messages."
"Jealous?" Kuro struck a match against the rough edge of the planter, the sudden flare illuminating his sharp features and the storm grey eyes that held a galaxy of calculated mischief, momentarily banishing the deep shadows. He lit a pipe stuffed with dried nettles and fragrant Temple incense, a stolen blend meant for purification rituals, now repurposed for rebellion. The smoke coiled into the frigid air, twisting like a miniature, malevolent nebula, the sweet, cloying scent of incense battling the earthy decay. He held the match's dying flame to a half burned scroll they'd scavenged from the greenhouse floor days earlier. The parchment curled and blackened at the edges, revealing fragmented lines of ornate script previously obscured by grime and frost: "…the smudge breath shall thaw Nyxara's frost… the Twin Stars bleed upon the Ice…"
Shiro squinted, leaning closer as the smoke swirled, the words seeming to writhe in the flickering light. "What's that? More celestial drivel? Another bedtime story for paranoid priests?"
"Temple fanfiction," Kuro exhaled, a plume of fragrant smoke momentarily obscuring the ominous words, the scent thick in Shiro's nostrils. "Plot's terrible. No explosions, no satisfying defenestration of pompous windbags, just endless frost and cryptic prophecies. Utterly lacking in dramatic flair." He tossed the smouldering scroll aside with disdain; it landed in a shallow puddle of melted snow near his boots, the precious ink bleeding into oblivion, the words Nyxara's frost dissolving first, as if consumed by the water. Shiro watched the dark tendrils of ink swirl and vanish, a coldness unrelated to the temperature settling deep in his gut, the prophecy's echo mingling with the memory of Mira's map and the impossible cold of the shard.
"Sounds specifically designed to induce night terrors in the devoutly gullible," Shiro observed, his voice tight.
"Precisely. Now…" Kuro hopped down from the planter, boots crunching loudly on a layer of broken glass that glittered like fallen stars underfoot, the sound sharp and final. He strode to the complex pulley system, examining the knots and angles with the critical eye of a master star navigator plotting a course through treacherous nebulae. "Let's talk trajectories. If we angle the anchor ropes here…" He yanked a specific knot loose with a sharp tug, sending the net of buns swinging in a sudden, wide arc that nearly clipped a dangling shard of glass, reflecting the lantern light in a dizzying streak. "…the 'meteors' will follow Orion's belt straight to Vayne's sanctimonious forehead. Poetic justice, wouldn't you say? A cosmic alignment of comeuppance. Divine retribution, Temple style."
Shiro smirked, unspooling more of the sturdy twine to secure the swinging net, the rough fibre biting slightly into his calloused fingers. "Orion's belt? Looks more like Vayne's noose being tightened. Slowly. Strangulation by gravy."
"Terrible joke, rat. Leave the celestial wit to me, okay rat?" Kuro shot back, feigning offense.
"Okay, princeling," Shiro retorted, tying off a knot with practiced efficiency, the banter a familiar, grounding rhythm.
"I'm just going to gracefully ignore that pathetic attempt at an insult," Kuro declared, turning his attention to a pulley wheel that squealed in protest as he adjusted it, the sound grating in the quiet.
They worked in seamless tandem, a constellation of chaos orbiting a shared purpose. Shiro's calloused hands, scarred from carving wood and surviving Higaru's crucible, knotted ropes with the strength of gravitational binding, each pull tightening their design. Kuro adjusted the pulley's tension with micro precision, his fingers moving like celestial mechanics calibrating an orrery, his brow furrowed in concentration that momentarily erased his usual smirk. The crow, seemingly bored with fig pits, hopped closer along a frost laden beam, its talons scraping lightly on the wood. It pecked curiously at a frozen fig stem lodged deep within the ancient ivy, its head cocking at an angle as if listening.
" The crow that stole my ring I have something I'd like to share call it a prognosis "
"Go on"
"I don't think its with Mira its eyes too fixed not like an animal this is more calculated more refined like a spy undercover"
"You think"
"Yes classic. Pure, unadulterated anarchy. This one," he gestured with his chin towards their prismatic eyed companion, his voice dropping conspiratorially, "is operating on a whole different magnitude of audacity. It's hoarding Father's signet ring like a miniature dragon guarding the crown jewels of a fallen empire. Strategic larceny. Professional." He paused, his gaze drifting back to the bird. "That is true"
"Anyways I Heard Father ranting once about House Isamu agents using 'creatures of the air'. Wonder if they train them, or just find the smart ones." The crow, as if hearing, stopped pecking and turned its head fully towards Kuro, one prismatic eye fixing on him intently, a silent, unnerving acknowledgment. True North, Kuro had called them on the roof. Did the bird understand?
Shiro glanced at the crow, its obsidian talons indeed clenched tightly around something metallic that glinted dully in the lantern light – the captured sunbeam of Ryo's ring. "You think it's Gin's eyes and ears? Reporting our every defaced constellation and stolen bun?"
"Watching? Undoubtedly. Reporting?" Kuro shrugged, finally tightening a final knot with a decisive pull, the rope groaning in protest. "Doubtful. Even crows have standards. And Gin? He's about as inspiring as a supernova's fading embers. Cold, dull, and ultimately irrelevant to the grand design." He paused, his gaze drifting momentarily northward, beyond the broken glass, as if drawn by the magnetic pull of their shared scar, the compass point etched in blood. The smirk faded for a heartbeat, replaced by a fleeting shadow in his storm grey eyes, the weight of the unknown, the sheer scale of the Ice Wall, the reality of walking towards the demon Gin feared. Shiro saw it, the uncharacteristic flicker of vulnerability, but said nothing, just passed him another length of twine. "Besides," Kuro continued, the mask snapping back into place, though his voice held a new edge, "Father would flay Gin alive if he knew his precious ring was being used as crow bait. This feels… independent. Aligned, perhaps, but not owned. Like us." He tapped the star on his own palm again, the gesture firmer now.
As Shiro secured the final knot, anchoring the entire apparatus to a sturdy, if rusted, roof beam, he paused. His gaze fixed on the defaced star chart, on Cassiopeia's throne noose, on the berry dye rivers flowing into the Oji constellation. A sliver of unease, cold and sharp as the frost on the glass, pricked him. The unnatural cold of the fig stem in his pocket seemed to resonate with the throb in his palm. "What if Gin does connect this to us? Specifically? The berry dye is rare, restricted to Temple scribes… the carvings bear my hand… my signature's all over this like stardust on Vayne's ego."
Kuro stepped back, wiping grime and frost from his hands onto his already stained trousers, leaving smears of dark earth. He moved to the chart, his finger tracing not the defacement, but the chart's lower edge, near a corner stained with dirt and time. "Then we blame the ghosts, Slum rat. Specifically, her ghost." His finger rested near a faded, almost invisible charcoal scrawl Shiro knew by heart, the lines worn thin but indelible: Rewrite the sky. His mother's desperate plea, etched years ago when this place was merely a refuge from prying eyes, not a war room for celestial insurrection. "Nobles adore a good haunting. Especially one that leaves inconvenient stains on their precious silks and their even more precious illusions. Hauntings absolve them of culpability. Provide a convenient scapegoat drawn from the shadows they fear. Perfect alibi." He tapped the words again. "Let her defiance be our shield."
The crow let out a resonant caw, sharp and sudden, cutting through their planning. It launched itself from the beam, wings beating the cold air into a miniature blizzard of swirling frost motes that glittered like diamond dust in the lantern light. It circled their heads twice, its prismatic gaze seeming to linger on Shiro's star scarred palm, then on Kuro's matching mark, a silent acknowledgment of the twin beacons. Then it darted upwards, vanishing through a jagged hole in the broken ceiling, leaving the frozen air vibrating. It left behind a single, inky black primary feather, drifting down slowly, lazily, its vane glazed with a rime of impossibly white, crystalline frost that sparkled with an inner light.
Shiro caught it. The cold bit through his threadbare gloves instantly, a shockwave of unnatural chill that travelled up his arm, making his muscles tense. It felt like holding a shard of the void itself. He pocketed it, the feather like a sliver of frozen night against his thigh, a tangible piece of the enigma. "Let's finish this. Dawn's cracking the sky's shell. Vayne's celestial tedium awaits its interruption."
They worked for hours more, the weak grey light of morning slowly leaching the starkness from the shadows, turning the frost from glittering diamonds to dull, lifeless ash. The cold deepened, settling into their bones despite their movements, a persistent ache that mirrored the throb of their palm scars. The scent of juniper dye, sharp and astringent, mingled with the loamy odour of frozen earth and the faint, metallic tang of the pulley's rust, creating a unique greenhouse perfume of rebellion. Their breath plumed thickly in the air, visible galaxies forming and dissipating with each exhalation. Finally, Kuro stepped back, hands on hips, surveying their creation, the pulley system taut and ready, a coiled spring of chaos; the net of buns positioned like a Damoclean sword over the projected lecture area; the defaced charts glaring their silent, vibrant defiance from the walls, Cassiopeia's noose stark and bold.
"Beautiful," Kuro declared, his breath pluming in the frigid air like dragon's smoke. "A masterpiece of calculated chaos. A supernova delivered via pastry. Vayne won't know what constellation hit him."
Shiro wiped a smear of sticky, violet berry dye on his already ruined trousers, adding another layer of battle stain. "Just don't miss the release lever in the heat of Vayne's inevitable apoplectic supernova. Timing is celestial."
"Please," Kuro scoffed, pulling a plump, slightly frost wrinkled fig from his seemingly bottomless pocket and tossing it to Shiro. "I've navigated Father's state banquets stone cold sober while nobles tried to poison my wine and marry me off to their simpering daughters. This?" He gestured at the lever, a simple, well oiled mechanism of salvaged wood and metal cunningly hidden behind a loose, moss covered brick. "This is child's play in the nursery of cosmic mischief. Eat. You'll need the stamina for the grand finale's inevitable sprint through corridors of outraged privilege."
Shiro bit into the fig. The burst of cloying sweetness clashed violently with the greenhouse's underlying stench of decay and frozen rot, a discordant note on the palate, a taste of stolen normalcy amidst the brewing storm. As he chewed, the crow returned. Not through the roof this time but gliding silently in through a broken side pane crusted with ice, landing lightly on the dusty, leaf littered floor near Kuro's boots with barely a whisper. This time, it didn't offer a fig stem. It dropped a small, tightly rolled shard of parchment, no larger than Shiro's thumb, encrusted with brittle, milky white frost that seemed to glow with a faint, internal luminescence, pulsing like a captured star in miniature.
Kuro picked it up, the unnatural cold biting his fingers even through his worn leather gloves, a shock that made him hiss softly. He carefully unrolled the fragile scrap. The frost crackled, falling away like shattered crystal, revealing spidery, ancient script that seemed etched into the paper itself, the ink a deep, unsettling blue black:
"…Twin Stars bleed…"
The words hung in the air, stark and ominous. Kuro stared at them, his usual flippancy momentarily frozen. His gaze flickered to Shiro's scarred palm, then to his own. Twin Stars. The compass they'd carved. The blood vow. The prophecy wasn't abstract; it was them. The crow watched, utterly still, its prismatic galaxy eyes fixed on Kuro, waiting. Then, a shadow crossed Kuro's face, not fear, but the grim weight of confirmation. He crushed the icy parchment under his heel, grinding it into the frozen dirt with a finality that echoed in the silent greenhouse. "Bad reviews already?" he said, forcing his voice into its usual sardonic cadence, though it lacked its usual effortless edge. "Critics these days. No patience for the rising action. No appreciation for dramatic tension." He avoided Shiro's questioning gaze, focusing instead on scuffing the last remnants of the glowing frost into the earth.
High above, glimpsed through the shattered ceiling, the real stars of Astralon's fading night blinked once, cold and indifferent, before being swallowed whole by the relentless, grey tide of dawn and the encroaching storm from the north. The true north they were bound to seek felt suddenly colder, heavier, written not just in blood, but in ice and prophecy.