Four years later.
At the crown of a dead, desolate tree—its trunk twisted and blackened, as though it had once been struck by something the heavens themselves refused to claim—a boy sat in perfect stillness.
Below him, the city endured.
Lantern-light bled into narrow streets. Markets whispered even at night. Patrols moved with weary discipline, armor dulled by years of unrest. War had not killed the city; it had taught it how to breathe quietly, how to survive beneath an unending shadow.
Life persisted.
Ignorant of the thing watching from above.
The boy did not shift.
Did not blink.
His hair was blue—unnatural, unmistakable. It flowed past his shoulders, stirred faintly by the wind, each strand carrying a dim, ethereal sheen, as if light itself hesitated to abandon it. Against the dead bark and the star-starved sky, the color felt obscene. A violation of the world's order.
So was his presence.
His eyes mirrored that same blue.
Cold. Vacant. Utterly detached.
They did not reflect the glow of the city below. They did not linger on human movement or signs of life. They observed with the indifference of something that did not belong to the same hierarchy of existence.
As though the world beneath him were merely… passing through.
The air around him was wrong.
Not heavy enough to suffocate. Not sharp enough to wound. Yet unmistakably altered—like a pressure embedded beneath reality itself. Anyone who approached would feel it crawling along their spine, a quiet, instinctive warning carried by the soul rather than the mind.
Do not come closer.
Do not be noticed.
"Seraphim."
The boy spoke.
His voice was calm. Flat. Lacking inflection.
Yet the night responded.
Space behind him warped—subtly, briefly—before settling again.
A woman manifested soundlessly upon the branch, dropping to one knee the instant she appeared, her balance flawless despite the narrow footing.
Golden hair, bound with discipline rather than ornament. Dark eyes, sharp and assessing, missing none of their surroundings even as her head bowed. She was beautiful in the way weapons forged by master hands were beautiful—precise, lethal, stripped of excess.
She wore no insignia of rank, no armor to announce authority.
She did not need to.
A Seneschal.
Not an attendant.
Not a guard.
A will given form—meant to act where her master would not bother to move.
"You summoned me, Young Master."
Her voice was composed, respectful, and entirely void of emotion. Not obedience born of loyalty—but of function. Of purpose ingrained too deeply to require thought.
The boy did not turn.
His gaze remained on the city, on the fragile illusion of order below.
"Tell me," he said, tone unchanged, "the whereabouts of my father."
For the first time—
Seraphim hesitated.
Only for a breath.
Only for the smallest fracture in her control.
But it existed.
Her fingers tightened against her knee. Not in fear of the boy before her—but at the name he had chosen to summon from the depths of memory.
This was the first time.
In four years.
The child—no, the aberration wearing the shape of a child—had never once asked about his father. Not in curiosity. Not in resentment. Not even as a passing thought.
That silence had been far more terrifying.
A chill traced its way down her spine.
Fragments surfaced against her will.
A presence that bent battlefields by existing.
A shadow that rendered courage meaningless.
A calamity the world had labeled, catalogued, and failed to erase.
Her lips parted.
Then closed again.