A vast black palace of obsidian rose from the plain like a swallowed star. Its walls drank the light; its spires cut the sky. A polished obsidian shield encircled the estate like a crown of night, and within that dark ring lay gardens whose hedges held the palace's silence close as a secret.
Sion rode through the gate first, the roar of her red Ducati cutting the hush. Behind her, a gunmetal gray Bugatti purred—Elizabeth's car—and a golden Modified motorcycle followed, sleek and low, ridden by Tishara. The three machines swept over the courtyard stones and into the underground garage as if the palace itself expected them.
Sion's hair was the color of burnished chestnut with coppered tips, her eyes a deep reddish-brown that caught light like embers. She wore clothes that dared the world—tight, audacious, half-mocking the palace's solemnity. Her Ducati bore the silver R of the Rotchy house: a stylized crown above the letter, a small crescent halo encircling the emblem. The bike had been altered, tuned, and loved like a living thing.
Tishara's motorcycle was golden, its chrome glinting even in the garage's dim warmth. Her hair fell like spun gold down her back, and her emerald eyes flashed with a color so clear it seemed polished. She wore a thin necklace of beaten gold that framed the soft hollow at her throat; she wore her arrogance like a pendant.
Elizabeth was driving her the Bugatti with the kind of grace that belonged to a woman used to patrons, ceremonies, and the hush of court. Her platinum hair flowed silver and heavy along her shoulders; her eyes were Warm grey, distant in the way of someone always half elsewhere. An innocent smile hovered at her lips—gentle as a mother's—and she did not notice the bickering that trailed the other two like sparrows after storm clouds. She existed in her own orbit, blissfully unaware of sharper edges.
The garage doors sighed open and the three vehicles glided out into the palace gardens. The moon dropped its pale coin of light over hedges trimmed with exacting care. Sion killed her engine and laughed—an unhinged, triumphant sound that echoed off the obsidian and startled the night.
"Hahahaha!" she cried, head thrown back, voice raw with victory. "I beat you, Tishara. I beat you fair and square."
Tishara stopped, removed her helmet with a slow, precise motion, and tossed it aside. Her golden hair spilled out and caught the moonlight. She stepped toward Sion with a predator's poise—calm, measured, every movement sharpened by indignation.
"What do you mean 'you beat me'?" Tishara hissed, eyes narrowing. "You cheated, you—whore. You didn't win."
Sion's laughter doubled, tears of mirth at her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, then shrugged theatrically.
"Cheated? Baby, I didn't cheat. My foot slipped. It's called an accident. Your bike slid, that's all." She preened, the motion half a taunt, half performance. "Besides, who could resist pushing you a little? It's sport."
Tishara's face hardened. Under the moon's thin wash her mouth drew small and precise, like someone folding a paper crane. She approached Sion and grabbed a fistful of her hair; the move was quick and violent, a claim.
Sion screeched, the sound raw as glass. "Aaaah—let go, you—whore!"
Tishara's reply was a low, hot spit. "You are the whore, dog."
The world narrowed to the braid of hair between them. Sion grabbed back—clumsy, eager—and the two girls struggled, tangle and shove and curse. The fight was not elegant. It was messy and immediate and adolescent and utterly dangerous given the brittle quiet of the palace.
Sion twisted free and, with a sudden, theatrical flourish, swung an arm back and lashed Tishara across the face with something sharp as leather—a reckless, loud slap. The sound cut like a bell.
Tishara's hand flew to her cheek, then down, then clenched around the ache near her hip where Sion had struck. She cried out—surprised more by the sting than the shame.
"Aaaah—my beautiful—my ass! That hurts!" she yelped, half-laughing through the shock.
Sion straightened, smoothing her hair like a queen arranging a crown, and grinned. "Well? Come to my room. I'll give you a proper massage for that ruin of yours." She licked her lips theatrically. "I'll—"
Tishara looked at Sion with a disgust that burned colder than the night. She stepped back and hissed, "You—"
Sion laughed again, a sound sharp and free. Tishara's expression twisted into a scowl, and for a heartbeat the two were locked in that precarious, childish war.
Elizabeth, oblivious until then, finally descended from the Bugatti. The hem of her violet dress whispered along the courtyard stones. She paused, smiling, that soft maternal smile, and watched the two girls for a moment as if seeing children at play.
"How lovely," Elizabeth said, voice warm as summer milk. "Do Play but don't get hurt please. I don't want to see either of you get hurt, okay"
She moved toward the palace entrance, her steps light and unhurried. Though she walked like a woman in a dream, she was no fool. Her gaze passed like a soft hand over the obsidian columns, over the runic emblems etched into stone. The air tasted faintly of mana—thick and charged—and the chill came as if from the palace's bones. The place smelled faintly of incense and something floral, precisely curated. Not a mote of dust dared rest within those walls.
Inside, the hall breathed cold and deliberate. Towering pillars stood like guardians, carved with Rotchy runes and crescents. The mana in the air hummed, and Elizabeth felt it as one might feel a heartbeat under a pillow—persistent, undeniable.
She walked on, toward a cluster of low sofas in the great reception hall. There, poised like a statue of frost and silver, sat Naoko.
Naoko's hair gleamed like moon-forged silver, long and luminous to her waist. Her eyes were the same metal—silver and empty, reflecting rather than seeing. Her lashes, delicate as silver threads, shrouded eyes that held no warmth; her lips were pink and striking against the porcelain of her skin. When she lifted the tiny porcelain cup and drank her tea, Elizabeth expected some flicker of recognition, some motherly thaw.
Instead, Naoko looked at Elizabeth with a blankness that seared. Elizabeth's smile widened with a mother's hopeful impulse; she crossed the room in a single, eager stride and threw herself at her daughter, arms open wide.
Naoko's tea trembled and spilled. Foreseeing the embrace, she pushed Elizabeth away—not violently, but with an implacable, precise shove that left no room for misreading. Her voice was cold and measured.
"Stay away. Do not touch me. I do not want your embrace."
Elizabeth paused, breath gone for a second, then drew back like someone who had misstepped into a pool of winter. She had known Naoko had grown distant—had expected it, perhaps—but the reality still split her in half.
For a moment a strange countercurrent moved through the hall; Elizabeth's senses sharpened. Some pulse of life thrummed through the palace's veins, and Elizabeth felt it as a mother might feel the first flutter of a child inside her—insistent, growing, impossible to ignore.
She turned, calling softly, a question threaded with something like fear and something like awe. "Naoko… my dear. Who is the boy in your room? I know you do not let people into this house—this private place. Who is he? Tell me—"
Naoko's eyes, silver and calm, fixed on Elizabeth as if measuring something inside of her. Her voice was the sound of ice sliding.
"He is my son," she said. "His name is Jin. He is your grandson."
The words dropped into Elizabeth like stones. Her smile froze; her breath halted. For a moment the great hall held its breath with her. It was as if someone had stolen the light from the chandeliers and left her pinned under a sudden, cold moon.
"What—" Elizabeth managed, then laughed once, a brittle sound. "Your son? That means you… you married? You had a husband? How—no—this is impossible. My daughter—how could you—? Congratulations, child, congratulations… but why did you not tell me? Sion, did you not tell me I have a grandson when I met her ?"
Naoko's voice did not warm; the edges of her sentences were flat and distant. "Yes. I married. I conceived with the aid of mana infusion and bore two children—my daughter Estelle, and my son Jin. Afterward I divorced. I married for his unique energy; I intended my children to be instruments. Estelle Demons killed her she was twelve—killed in front of Jin when Jin was eleven. That happened five and a half years ago. Jin is now alive. And he has married— now to a girl of the Amberhart family, who bears the Phoenix blessing."
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The words tumbled from Naoko in a single, steady line; they landed on Elizabeth like a rain of knives. Elizabeth stood very still. Her mind tried to stitch the fragments together and failed—there were too many seams, too many impossibilities packed into a single truth. Joy, confusion, fury, grief—all collided inside her chest and out of them a heavy silence spread across the hall.
Outside, the night tightened. Somewhere in the gardens Sion's laughter had died, and the metallic purr of the Bugatti idled like a contented beast. Tishara's anger simmered into a cold, wound-up stillness. In the great hall, Naoko folded her hands over the empty cup as if embracing a posture she had learned long ago. Elizabeth's hands trembled at her sides. For a long beat none of them moved.
Finally Elizabeth spoke, voice small now, brittle as spun glass. "Estelle… dead? In front of Jin? Five and a half years ago?" Her fingers found the carved stone of a pillar and gripped it as if to steady herself. "Jin married into Amberhart? A political knot… Is this—are you telling me that my family ties have become a war table?"
Naoko's face remained still. "I used them," she said simply. "I used what I could. I was not a mother then in any tender sense. I was—an architect. I raised them to be blades. Estelle's death broke something. Jin… became something else."
Elizabeth sat then, as if her legs no longer obeyed. The great hall's silence swelled heavy around them. Questions — too many to name — crowded the air: Who was Jin, really? What manner of being did he become when he watched his sister die? What had become of Naoko to make her describe her children as instruments? And how had that marriage with Amberhart come to pass without the palace or its matron learning of it?
Sion and Tishara had edged closer, curiosity overtaking their feud for the moment. Elizabeth's eyes, wide and wet, searched Naoko's face for any sign of the girl who had once been her child. She found only a statue of composure, a woman honed into a blade of silver.
For the first time since she had stepped into the palace, Elizabeth's warm mother-light flickered with a shadow of fear. She had wanted to find her daughter and fold her into arms she had kept safe for eighteen years. Instead she had been told of marriage, of births, of a daughter killed by demons, and of a grandson whose existence now tightened political strings between ancient houses.
The silence in the hall stretched long, filled with the weight of things that could not be easily unmade. Outside, the crescent emblem above the palace gate watched like an eye. Inside, the mana in the pillars pulsed like a slow, deliberate breath.
When Elizabeth finally spoke again, her voice was soft, wounded, and full of a thousand small demands that could not yet be formed into words.
"Naoko… tell me everything. From the beginning. Tell me how you came to this, tell me about them—Astelle, Jin—tell me why you used mana in such a way. Tell me how you could bear such a sculpting of children into weapons."
Naoko's silver eyes did not soften. She looked at her mother as one might look at raw marble—seeing potential, not the flesh that trembled beneath.
"As you wish," Naoko said. "But know this: once you know, there is no unknowing. Once you hear what blood has made, you will be changed. You will decide then whether you will accept what I have wrought—or whether you will turn away."
Elizabeth swallowed. She had waited eighteen years for this meeting. The words that came next would carve the path that lay ahead for all of them.
In the silent hall the first stories began to uncoil—stories of calculated unions, mana-infused births, a child lost to demons, and a son shaped by grief into something both human and not. Outside, in the obsidian night, a distant motorbike coughed, as if the world itself were holding its breath for the unfolding.
For now, the palace listened. And though the moon shed its pale light upon the obsidian like a blessing and a curse at once, nobody in that hall could tell which it would be.
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heat: Thank you very much for reading, my friend