Chapter 51 – The One Who Waits
He had never danced in his life.
Not as a child, not as a young noble at court, not even when the Empire's ministers whispered that it was time—time for the heir of House Ross to charm the ballroom, not just the battlefield.
But Sirius von Ross did not dance.
He had not once stepped onto a ballroom floor.
And tonight would be no exception.
He stood beneath the high arches of the Imperial Palace's Great Hall, where golden chandeliers spilled light across thousands of glittering gowns and jewel-laced uniforms. Music stirred the floor to life. Daughters of lords, princesses from allied nations, even foreign envoys—all waited for him to extend a hand.
He did not.
The room hushed when he entered, as it always did now.
The youngest of the Ten Pillars. The only 9th-class magician. Grand Sword Master. The Demon of the Western Front.
But Sirius moved past them like mist through mountains.
Unbothered. Silent. Untouched.
A wine glass was pressed into his hand. He didn't drink it.
He stood beside a marble column and watched the night unfold around him—a prince among mortals, but with eyes searching for a face that could never appear.
The silver hair.
The stillness like moonlight on water.
He saw her in flickers. In candlelight. In shadows. In the way silence pooled in the corners of the palace gardens.
But she was not here.
She had never been here.
And far beyond the reach of this world, she sat cross-legged in a temple of stillness.
Abylay.
The Moon.
She was healing.
Wrapped in a cocoon of silver light, her body remained still, but the energy around her shuddered like a heartbeat. Each breath stirred cosmic tides. Each second—an eternity of silence.
Her soul had been nearly lost. She had poured everything into finding him, freeing him, saving him.
And when her strength shattered, when even the stars turned their eyes away from her pain, it was her parents who intervened.
Ra, the Sun God, placed half his flame in her fading soul.
Cyra, Queen of the Ran race, gave her the light of stardust and ocean.
Now, their daughter was not only healing—she was changing.
Stronger than she had ever been.
Soon, she would open her eyes again.
Back in the ballroom, Sirius did not speak to the ladies who approached him. He offered no excuses, only silence. And when asked why he didn't dance, he answered simply:
"I was never taught."
They laughed, thinking it dry wit.
But it was the truth.
No one had ever taken his hand, guided his steps, taught him the rhythm of human joy.
No one, except her.
And she hadn't needed to teach him—not in this life, not with words.
Because her presence had made even the silence feel like a song.
The world did not know her.
Not by name. Not by face. Not by gender.
They only knew the Moon—one of the Five Gods. The second strongest, just beneath the Sun God. A divine being shrouded in myth and contradiction. Some said the Moon was male, cold and distant. Others claimed she was a goddess, silent and sorrowful.
None of them were right.
None of them were wrong.
Because the Moon did not answer.
And Sirius never corrected them.
He alone knew the truth.
He alone remembered the warmth of her fingers in his, when the rest of the world saw only a celestial symbol.
Later that night, in the solitude of his room, Sirius lit a single lantern.
He did not sleep.
Instead, he sat at the edge of his bed, his fingers brushing against the silver scarf still folded beside his pillow.
And though no one had ever danced with him, he imagined—for a moment—that he rose to meet her in the shadows.
Not in a palace.
Not in a hall of kings.
But under a moonlit tree, where no one watched and no titles mattered.
Where he was not a magician.
Not a prince.
Not a sword.
Just a man.
And she—the girl who had taught him how to feel again.
He whispered to the silence:
"You were always more than divine."