Allis had learned to move through the valley like a shadow with a name: noticed if you wanted to be, invisible if you didn't. He kept his shoulders loose and his jaw tighter, the way a blade sits calm in its sheath until someone could no longer be trusted. The katana his father gave him sat at his hip, was both a promise and punctuation; when he walked the market, children pointed, and adults recalculated their courtesies to the demon prince.
Ellina walked as if the light had taught her the steps first. Her feathers made precise sounds when she laughed, and people remembered that sound longer than they remembered the color of her eyes. She regarded the world with a catalog of judgments she wore like a crown—sharp, practical, implacable. Where Allis deflected, Ellina dissected.
"Stop brooding," she laughed, slinging an arm over his shoulders as they left the training grounds. The gesture was half-sibling mockery, half genuine concern. "You look like a storm you forgot to be born into, twin."
Allis shoved her hand away with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You're the one who circles the council like she's collecting trophies."
"You think I like trophies?" Ellina snapped, stepping ahead until the afternoon sun carved her silhouette in shimmering gold. "I like order, twin. Rules make people predictable. And predictable people are manageable."
He watched her, too cautious like he's seen her bend light on command.
"You mean controllable," he said. "..... And boring."
She flicked a feather at him, the movement delicate and precise enough it might have been a salute. "And safe, twin." she corrected. "Well, at least until you decide to burn our estate on fire."
Their walk was silent, until Allis spoke. "Do you ever-" Allis began, but the sentence died because he couldn't finish it without offering a confession.
Ellina nudged him playfully. "Do I ever what? Wonder if we belong? Wonder if mother made a mistake in the first place?" Her voice smoothed, and a small vulnerability slipped through the armor of her usual sarcasm.
"Yes. Often, though. But thinking it does not make it true, brother."
He looked at her then, really looked, and for a second their differences softened into the same repeated question. Allis's anger had a root: a father's fierce protection that sometimes meant everyone else paid the price.
Ellina's certainty had a root too: light taught discipline, and she'd invested in its returns. They were mirrors that did not always reflect the same image. Mirrors that did not shine the same way.
At the training yard, Allis practiced footwork until his calves burned. He liked the rhythm; it steadied thoughts that wanted to leak through. Steadied the infinite questions spiraling in his head. His blade cut arcs the way his temper cut conversations-economical, leaving little room for second chances.
Around him, other youths sparred with steel swords or argued over different technique. Some watched from nearby ledges, whispering about what a demon-born boy could become if he let the worst of his heritage show.
"You'll lose your temper one day, Allis, and then you'll lose your advantage," a mentor warned once, "Anger is good fuel, but that alone won't save you on the battlefield."
Ellina trained with knives linked to feathers, practice that made her wings a weapon unlike any other. She could unfurl the difference between a breeze and a gale and name the part of the sky that would betray a lurker. The other angels admired the precision in her movements; a few envied the quiet authority she carried.
"Twin," she told him later, when they sat on the roof of their home eating a shared meal, tails of steam rising from the soup. "Stop pretending you're not hurt." She says, as if she could see right through her brother.
"I'm... not pretending," Allis muttered, his spoon rattling. "..... I just hate being the one people always expect to explode. Hate being the one people call... monster."
"You're always going to be the one people expect," Ellina said, blunt as ever, though not unkind. "But you're not a monster. You can either train them to love you for the right reasons, or you can keep giving them what they want and let them be right..."
Allis scraped his spoon in the bowl. "And what if I don't want to be the person who proves them right? What if I want to be more than a lesson in demon danger? I... want to be my own person."
Ellina's laugh was small but not rude. "Then be a better lesson. Or person. Be cleverer than their dumb rumors. And stop letting them, stop letting fear write us into tragedies before we've had the chance to breathe."
They argued like this often – sharp, concerned and indifferent words softened with the peculiar intimacy of siblings who had spent entire nights sharing dark secrets. Their barbs could peel away the masks either wore in public; they were armor tailored to offend, when necessary, but they were also the only people who could tell a lie and find it plausible.
The friction between them did not keep them from being allies when the day demanded it. When a gang of boys from the lower terraces decided to test the twins' mettle, Allis stepped forward with his katana drawn; Ellina leapt up and released feathers in a flurry that stung eyes and cleared a pathway. Together, they moved like a single tactic. Together, they were dangerous. Together, they were a whole.
After the scuffle, while the crowd dispersed, and mothers gathered their children like talismans. Allis and Ellina sat on the curb and watched the sky. Silence between them was comfortable in a way conversation rarely was.
"You ever wonder what father was like before all the war and politics crap?" Allis asked.
Ellina's eyes softened at the memory - rare and honest. "He laughed once," she said. "I heard him. It was loud and uneasy, and I wanted to keep it in a jar. He taught me how to sharpen a feather like he sharpens his blades. Said 'you don't make a point if it doesn't slice clean.'"
"Allis," she added, voice turning pointed. "Don't let people take the easy story about you. Be the version you want them to tell, not the one they already whispered."
Allis listened. In him, the desire to be both loved and feared warred with the knowledge that love could make people soft and weak. He wanted a story where he was not just an example of what enemies did to the world, but a man who chose power for something kind, meaningful, and true.
He wanted to answer with a clever quip, to keep the dance of deflection alive, but the truth landed between them with the slow weight of a falling star: he was tired. Tired of being watched, tired of the question that followed them—are they different? Are they dangerous?—and tired of having to be the proof either way.
Ellina pushed a stray hair behind her ear. "We make our own victories," she said. "Small ones, daily. Make a friend today. Save someone from a scornful look. It chips away at the story."
Allis nodded, not because he was convinced, but because he wanted to believe there was a path that did not end with the world choosing sides. He trusted his sister more than he trusted anyone, though trusting Ellina was sometimes like trusting a blade—useful, and risky.
He wanted to believe her. He wanted the future to be a place they could craft rather than a thing that happened to them. By dusk they were home, where the estate hummed with an uneasy civility. Daemon's shadow still stretched long in the hallway, an unspoken presence that made Allis straighten. Irene's smile, measured and bright, held the weight of someone practicing courage in public.
That night, as the twins prepared for bed in adjacent rooms separated by a thin stone wall, they both heard the same muffled sounds: council murmurs from the next district, a Tanuki's distant bark, and the soft hinge of a door closed with too much care to be ordinary. They lay awake, each in their own thoughts, their differences receding to the edge of the same anxious light.
Allis pressed his forehead to the cool windowpane and watched his reflection become a distant twin in the black. He wondered if he would ever grow into a man the world could love and fear in equal measure—not because he was born of demon and angel, but because he had chosen who to be.
Ellina folded her wings and whispered a vow into the dark—a vow to keep the balance, to sharpen herself until she could carve a future where their names were not scandal but example. Somewhere in the house, in a room lit by a single lamp, their parents held each other's hands and made the same promises in different languages. The valley slept, uneasy and tender, while two children learned to hold themselves together against the weight of a world that still measured them by inherited halves.