The letter from the Northern Territories arrived half-reduced to sludge, corners singed and ink blurred by the passage's inattention to weather or respect. Ardan presented it during breakfast, holding the envelope away from the scrambled eggs as if the Voss family's legendary correspondences might bite. Kairen slit it open with a butter knife. The cold metallic tang on the blade felt precisely like victory.
"Progress in the north!" the first line read. He held the page at arm's length, scanning for the juicy bits. Mother's hand, black and angular as always, crowded the margins with news: rogue Thunderbird, F-rank with delusions of grandeur, blocking the pass and leaving Ashenhold's winter supply lines down to frost and gristle. Kairen grinned. The rest was war stories and parental advice, which he'd file away for his next strategic violation of house rules.
Across the table, Tali gnawed a heel of bread, watching him and the parchment both with the narrowed gaze of a predator weighing the aerodynamics of leap versus lunge. Kairen considered reading it aloud for her—"You're not supposed to know until you're ten," Mother had decreed—but Tali had always been five going on anarchist.
"Weather's bloody as ever," he said, improvising. "But they've mastered the local dialect for beer."
Tali smirked, a flake of crust clinging daggerlike to her lip. "Is that all?"
He looked to Ardan, who was already lurking near the pantry, back turned but the ears pointed and alert. Kairen flicked the letter toward Tali; she caught it with one hand. "Don't spill," he said, mostly for tradition's sake.
Breakfast continued: jams, preserves, and the ever-slight taste of ozone whenever Kairen's elbow brushed the table edge. The household running on minimum staff this week, which made the air heavy with the threat of unscheduled boredom. Usually, Mother sent puzzles or training routines. Today, the envelope disgorged only the letter and a loose, wax-sealed medallion. Guild crest. Real silver. It rang faintly when he spun it on the plate.
"Is that for you?" Tali asked.
He shrugged, which meant Yes. The tutors would want a report before lunch, but he twisted the medal into his pocket and resolved to let it burn a hole there.
After breakfast, he idled up the west staircase, planting each foot on the creakiest step. The house responded with its usual groans. Second-floor landing: sunlight leaking through diamond-paned windows, catching the fine dust in the air and making it fizz. He could see his mother's portrait at the end of the hall. Lyra Voss, painted in full Guild regalia, eyes impossible to meet for more than half a second at a time.
He saluted it, mock-formal, and ducked into the study, where the morning's assignment awaited: "Discuss prevailing adventurer rank structure and the social merits of such systems." Legible, in Min's blocky script, on a slate. Kairen rapped his knuckle against the desk, considering.
He'd never met an adventurer who cared about "social merits," only those obsessed with hierarchy and loot. Still, the curriculum demanded. He inked a quick table:
F-Rank: Dead first.
E-Rank: Sometimes gets a nickname.
D-Rank: Repeats last year's mistake, but with better swords.
C-Rank: Can name at least two poisons but drinks them anyway.
B-Rank: Battle-scarred, secretly gentle, or the reverse.
A-Rank: Smiles with all teeth.
S-Rank: See: parents.
He added a footnote: "Rumor says SSS-Rank exists, but only if you kill a god."
Then he sat back, staring out the window at the hard blue sky and the flicker of sprites in the garden. Breakfast churning, he wanted—needed—something less hypothetical. Hands-on. Tali was probably scaling the greenhouse or dismantling clockworks. Kairen envied her freedom; the expectations on eldest heirs stuck like pitch.
He fetched the old practice sword from the umbrella stand, a real one, not the training wood, and stepped outside before Ardan could catch the motion. The fog had burned off, leaving grass slick with dew and the pond glittering like mercury. Kairen swung the blade wide, left arm for balance, rehearsing movements learned in the months before his parents left.
First sequence: block, pivot, thrust. He liked the click of the blade meeting wet air. He repeated it, this time letting the smoke trick bleed across his knuckles—a faint hiss, the memory of a spark.
A flock of crows scattered from the fence at his approach. He didn't chase. Instead, he walked the perimeter, past the orchard, to the edge of estate where the stones turned dark and the air hung close with old magic. Here, the boundary sigils embedded in the wall shivered when he passed. Kairen exhaled, staring at the mark on his palm. Still there: the subtle ghost of the "Starborn" scales, blue on blue, iridescent only under a certain angle.
The day passed like most: chores, study, a quick lunch, the afternoon spent not quite breaking any rules but never precisely following them. Tali appeared mid-afternoon, arms full of stolen apples and teeth stained green.
"There's kobolds in the south field," she said, as if it were the most ordinary thing.
Kairen considered. "Raiders?"
"Small ones. Tunnels, I think." Tali flicked a piece of stem at him, bored with the whole invasion already.
He stashed the practice sword on his bedroom wall and returned to the study, intent on the slate. Instead, he found a thin envelope with his name—only his—scrawled on it. Inside: one sheet, unsigned.
*"The lines will blur. Prepare."* No context, no seal.
He folded it and slid it under the Astral Records volume just as Min's footsteps approached. The housekeeper looked at him, then at the window, then back.
"Report."
"My report is: security's good, but I'd add a rotated schedule," Kairen said, voice flat. "Maybe double up at the auxiliary east entrance."
Min nodded, once. She never asked how he knew, which meant she knew. She left him to the rest.
At dusk, he lay in bed, unable to sleep, the taste of ozone stronger than ever. The mark on his palm stopped tingling only when he flexed the hand hard enough to ache.
The night crawled, filled with shadows and the steady breath of the old house. He let himself hang loose in the dark, waiting for the next sign, the next spark.
Kairen wasn't scared of the dark. He only ever worried about what it might wake inside him.
#
The next day stalks in with bruised-purple dawn, every window blind with condensation. Kairen swims up through petals of dreamless sleep, sits. The bottle's on his desk—no, not a bottle, a vial, a tool, a fuse. The mark on his palm glows faint, like heat beneath skin from a fever just starting. He pulls back his sleeve, half-expecting the scales to have retreated or changed color. They haven't. The iridescence is brighter in the morning, and for a moment, Kairen wants to show someone—anyone—but the memory of the note ("the lines will blur") clamps down hard.
Instead, he dresses, fast and careless, and heads for the pond, hoping to find Tali or maybe a hole in the silence. She's not there. The yard is empty, sprites huddled under rosebushes as if they, too, had a drinking problem. Kairen tries a puff of cold air, just to see if a blue thread follows. Nothing yet. He shakes his hands, puts them in his pockets.
Breakfast is a hive. Ardan acts like he's forgotten about the letter, but the rest of the staff keep glancing at the medallion sweating silver on the table. Kairen pockets it again, refusing the implied narrative: prodigy, heir, next in line for something monstrous.
He watches the house from outside himself, a chessboard of grudges and rituals. The day's schedule comes up hard and angular: etiquette, a half-hour of magic theory, then a "practical" session with the estate's oldest guard—a retired C-rank, whose stories repeat every month, each time with more missing fingers.
More stories about adventurer ranks today, and not one of them sounds like an upgrade over being a bored child with tentatively functional magic. The old guard crushes walnuts in his fist to show "what would happen to your head, lad" if you missed a parry. Kairen nods through it, timing the gaps in the lesson for when Tali might appear from under the table or behind a hedge, as if she would explode out and drag him to a better use of their time.
When noon bells ring, Kairen is first out. He detours to the kitchens, fishes a wedge of cheese from the cooling shelf, and barely notices the raw edge on the cook's voice. The staff are different when there's no adult Voss in the house—less formal, more quick to gossip under their breath. Kairen listens with one ear, mostly phrases like "north's a meat-grinder" or "won't be long till the crows turn on each other." Old anxieties, salted and left to dry.
He finds Tali at last, up a tree by the south wall, black slick of juice around her mouth. Her feet are muddy, nails darkened with something that looks like blood. She's got a crow's feather braided into her hair, also bloody.
"They're fighting," she says, before he asks. "Sprites against the crows. Crows are losing."
Kairen sits at the base of the tree, legs splayed. "What'd you do?"
Tali smears a line of berry pulp across her arm. "Helped. Sprites are better." She grins, showing off a gap where a tooth used to be.
He rests his head back, eyes to sky. "I think I got a weird message. Not a threat. Not—not advice either."
She slides down a branch, landing hard, bumping his shoulder with hers. "Magic lesson again?"
"Always." He absently rubs the mark on his palm, feeling the way it aches differently now. Not hunger. Not thirst. A pressure, like static building before a lightning crack.
They walk the property, two steps apart at all times, never in formation, never in sync. Kairen explains the morning's lesson, spiking his retelling with jabs at the old guard ("He says there's no S-rank left, but I think he just forgot the names"). Tali counters with sprite gossip, rituals they've invented to keep the crows away, a new one where she ties willow branches into knots and throws them in the pond. Kairen feigns skepticism but likes the sound of it.
"Do you think Mother and Father will come back if I get too strong?" Tali asks, sudden and sharp. She doesn't slow her steps.
"I think they'll come back when the north doesn't need them more," Kairen wants to say, but it feels wrong, so he settles for: "They'd like you whether you got strong or not."
Tali makes a noise—half-laugh, half-growl. "That's not what the staff says." But she drops it, as if voicing the thing is enough to kill its power.
Afternoon: more drills, more theory. The mark on Kairen's palm throbs hot whenever he's near the old library. He tries the door, finds it unlocked, and slips into the must. He sits at his usual table, hauls down a battered copy of the Astral Records, and opens to the middle.
There are new notes in the margins. Ones he didn't write:
_Breathe deep, let it root._
_The next will be the last to fail._
He flips pages, checks against his own scrawl, pulse inching up every time a strange hand's annotation appears. They're usually brief, sometimes in a faint walloping blue, sometimes scratched brown. He reads them all, every subtle dig, every odd maxim. The words dig hooks in his brain: *Last to fail.* *Starborn.* *Lines will blur.*
He closes the book, thumb lingering on the spine, and lets himself think with no distractions. No hunger, no cold. Just the steady drum of whatever the vial awakened.
Back in his room: the vial waits. He brings it to the window, unstoppering just a hair, enough to catch the sharp cut of its magic. It smells of burnt sugar and iron. He dabs a drop on his wrist. The tingle is instant, deep as a nerve strike. The mark there pulses up, each beat edging the pattern wider.
He clamps the vial shut. No visible change, but a blooming inside, as if the ache had roots and had finally found soil.
That night, he doesn't sleep but lets the hours roll over him like water. The house creaks and settles, as houses do in old stories before the murder. Kairen waits. When the blue glow finally cracks the dark, he is ready, muscles tight, senses peeled razor-sharp.
He doesn't see the interface at first, but he feels it: an outline in the air, like someone has pressed a cool palm to the inside of his skull.
**Celestial Bond System: Dormant.**
Dormant, but not asleep. Not anymore.
He reaches, barely thinking, running a finger across the mark on his palm. The words in his head snap into focus:
**Primary Condition: Awakened**
**Celestial Bonds Available: 0/3**
He stares, afraid to blink. Three what? Three bonds? The bottle? His family?
He isn't sure what triggers it, but the words shift, a sub-menu:
**Bond Candidates: Tali Voss (Dormant), Lyra Voss (Unavailable), Darien Voss (Unavailable)**
Kairen's heart hitches in his ribs. He tries to touch one, tries to invoke it. Nothing. But the menu slides away, replaced by something worse.
**Warning: Host Manifestation Unstable. Continued progression will accelerate divergence.**
What the hell. He presses harder on the mark, ignoring the way his wrist jitters. He wants divergence. He wants to see what's next.
Instead, the interface fades, leaving only a single afterimage:
**Survive until Integration.**
A dare, maybe. Or a test.
He spends the next day half-alive, mind gnawing at what "integration" could mean. Scales tighten around his forearm, easy to hide but impossible not to notice. Tali throws apples at him, shouts at sprites, insists on walking the boundary three times before dusk.
At supper, Ardan sets the plates but leaves early. The medallion sits in the center of the table, and Kairen realizes he's meant to wear it, not hide it: the symbol of the house, chain stamped with the sigil of the Guild.
He loops it around his neck, hiding it under the collar. Tali grins at him, eyes shining like a match about to catch.
The night lurches toward morning, and again the house refuses to rest. Kairen feels the pull of the basement, the iron door, the spiral stairs. The vial thrums in his desk: come and open, pour and see.
He sits, cross-legged, on the floor of his room, palms up, breathing through the pain and the want. For the first time, he thinks he understands where the monster stories come from. For the first time, he feels like the darkness worth fearing is the one you make, not the one that goes bump.
He closes his hand around the mark, feeling it burn to the bone.
When dawn comes, Kairen is still there, pulse steady, watching the blue above the window as if it belongs to him.