The city's reflection danced across the lake.
Its architecture rose in elegant curves and narrow spires — a fusion of southern warmth and northern precision. Balconies with wrought-iron railings leaned over cobbled streets. Tall shuttered windows framed buildings of pale stone and faded ochre. Slender towers pierced the sky like watchful needles.
It felt like a marriage between old Italy and old France.
People moved beneath it in layered Victorian clothing. Long coats. Corseted dresses. Lace gloves. Polished boots striking stone. Even those with little money maintained appearances — worn fabric carefully stitched, old hats brushed clean, pride preserved in posture if not in wealth.
Boots struck cobblestone. Cart wheels groaned beneath sacks of grain. Merchants shouted prices into the warm air, their voices dissolving beneath the strange blue sun.
But the lake did not breathe.
Its surface lay still — too still — as though it were not water at all, but polished glass stretched over something waiting beneath.
Sora crouched at its edge.
Blue hair. Hollow eyes.
The reflection mimicked him perfectly. Too perfectly. When he tilted his head, it tilted. When he leaned closer, it leaned closer.
But something was wrong.
It did not look like a reflection.
It looked like something wearing him.
For a fleeting second, he felt as if his own skin — the thin membrane of his epidermis — were only loosely attached. As though it could be peeled away like damp paper. As though the boy kneeling by the water was merely a surface stretched over something else.
A tremor slipped down his spine.
He had survived this long because no one had ever wanted him.
Abandoned at birth, he grew among alley shadows and rotting crates, feeding on scraps, moving between blind corners and forgotten stairwells. His hollow gaze and unnatural hair unsettled people.
Children cried.
Adults crossed the street.
Fear fed him more reliably than kindness ever could.
He was never taken as a slave.
Slavery required investment — food, training, supervision. No one wished to risk resources on a hollow-eyed orphan whose stare swallowed light.
Better to leave him in the cracks of the city.
So he survived like a rat.
Unseen.
Unwanted.
Alive.
He should not have survived.
Yet he did.
How? No one knew.
Who fed him in those earliest years? No one asked.
And no one wanted the answer.
Then came Vincent.
A brown-haired man with a slim frame, green eyes, and a thin French mustache. His posture was polite, his smile controlled. But his presence coiled — patient, calculated, serpent-like.
He was comfortable. Not wealthy, but comfortable enough to indulge his wife's boredom.
Johanna was beautiful. Golden hair. Pale skin. Grey eyes sharp as frost. She wanted a servant — someone silent, obedient, disposable.
Vincent found one in the gutters.
A blue-haired street rat with hollow eyes.
Perfect.
If he killed him, the Solar Laws would not intervene. Sora was not a slave. Not a citizen. Not a visitor.
He was nothing.
The day Vincent gave him a name, he smiled.
"You'll be Sora," he said, swirling wine in a wooden cup. "It suits a rat like you."
The name was not a gift.
It was a leash.
And it tightened.
On his first week in the house, Sora was ordered to scrub the staircase.
"You missed this step yesterday," Vincent said.
"I didn't," Sora replied quietly.
Truth had no weight in that house.
The wooden cup flew before Sora finished blinking.
It struck his shoulder and shattered against stone.
Red wine splashed across his hair and face, soaking into his shirt, dripping down his neck in cold rivulets. It smelled sharp and bitter.
Vincent recoiled slightly, as though even proximity to the boy disturbed him.
"Clean it."
Sora did.
Survival required silence.
Outwardly.
But in his mind—
What if I take his skin?
Would it fit me better?
Maybe I should stab his eyes first.
No… I don't want him to scream. That would be annoying.
The tongue first, then.
Would he still be able to scream without it?
He paused.
Perhaps.
Better to test it later.
For now… survive.
Back at the lake, Sora watched his reflection again.
The world above him was blue.
The sun was blue.
The sky was blue.
Even the light touching the water felt filtered through some unseen ocean.
He had once seen drawings of the sea in one of Vincent's books — endless blue swallowing everything.
Are we living beneath it?
The thought did not frighten him.
It almost comforted him.
"Rat!" Vincent's voice shattered the moment. "Take this bag to the gate. Give it to the guards. Do not open it. Understood?"
Sora nodded.
Vincent stepped closer, then hesitated. His hand twitched as if to strike him again — but the sight of those hollow sockets made him recoil.
Even men who believed black eyes were powerless did not like staring into nothing.
"Go."
He spat near Sora's feet.
The bag was heavy, but not impossibly so. Large against his narrow frame, it stretched from his shoulders to his calves when slung over his back. It forced him forward, spine curved, arms wrapped around it to keep it from sliding.
When he failed to hold it steady, he dragged it instead.
Within minutes, sweat dampened his collar.
In his imagination, he pictured a rat dragging a wheel of cheese twice its size — stubborn, triumphant, absurdly proud.
In reality, he was a pale sixteen-year-old boy hauling merchandise through streets that did not want him.
Step.
Step.
Step.
The sack scraped against stone, the sound sharp and persistent.
He did not like crowded streets.
Too many eyes.
Eyes defined existence.
The darker the iris, the denser the energy within. The lighter the color, the thinner the current it carried. It was not a matter of strength — but of expression. Of reach.
Red eyes were considered the most balanced — feared and respected.
Yellow eyes guided and reinforced.
Black eyes were dense, heavy — difficult to refine.
But Sora did not possess black eyes.
He possessed absence.
Where eyes should have been were two hollow voids. Not reflective. Not glossy.
Empty.
As though something had never been placed there at all.
Above that emptiness rested the true mark of condemnation:
Blue hair.
The color of the First Betrayer.
The one who, according to whispered legend, killed the Light.
The whispers began before he reached the center of the market.
"Look at him."
"That street rat…"
A small voice cut through the noise.
"Mother, why is he like that? Why doesn't he have eyes? And why do they call him a rat? Isn't that rude?"
The little girl had white hair and bright orange eyes.
Her mother pulled her closer.
"Listen, Liza," she said quietly — though not quietly enough. "Long ago, a cursed man extinguished the Light. That is why the world is blue. That is why we do not walk after nightfall. After him came others marked the same way."
Her gaze lingered on Sora.
"They bring nothing but misfortune."
Sora did not slow.
Did not react.
Did not turn.
The bag scraped louder behind him.
Survival required silence.
But deep within the hollow dark of him—
He smiled.
If killing the Light turned the world blue…
Perhaps the Betrayer had improved it.