Chapter One: Kyoko of Dreven Hollow
Dreven Hollow wasn't even a town on most maps.
A sleepy cluster of homes wrapped in the ragged arms of pine forests, too far from the city to matter and too stubborn to vanish. The locals clung to their routines like prayer—morning firewood, boiled tea, quiet nods in passing, and eyes that never lingered too long on anything strange.
Strangeness, after all, had a way of looking back.
In a creaky wooden house at the end of Hollow Creek Road, wrapped in ivy and fog, a child was born. The mother, Aerin Kess, was a simple woman—quiet, serious, not the kind to believe in fairy tales. She had worked the orchard before it went dry and had stitched coats for passing travelers when she could.
Her husband, Tellen, was softer, always humming songs he never remembered learning. He carved toys from bark and believed the world still held mysteries worth listening to.
Kyoko was their first child.
And their last.
He came screaming into the world during the Wolf Moon, a time the elders called "thin-blooded," when the walls between realms softened. Aerin bled too long. The midwife—a crooked-backed woman named Maela, who smelled of ash and herbs—refused to touch the child at first. She only stared at him.
"He's... listening," she muttered.
To what, no one knew.
Kyoko didn't cry much after that.
He wasn't a difficult baby. Just... different. His gaze lingered too long on shadows. He'd stop mid-crawl and stare at cracks in the floorboards like they whispered things. He never looked surprised—only curious, like someone seeing familiar things after a long absence.
By the end of the second month, he was standing.By the third, walking.By the fourth, forming strange syllables that didn't belong to any language Aerin or Tellen knew.
At five months, he spoke to the fire.
Not in metaphor. Literally.
One evening, as Aerin stirred stew over the hearth, Kyoko sat nearby, his head tilted. The fire flickered unnaturally, bending toward him, crackling in rhythms that felt intentional. He whispered to it—soft, cooing tones—then laughed. The flame dimmed. Then blazed. Then danced in the shape of a spiral.
Aerin dropped her ladle. Tellen clutched his chest. And the stew boiled dry.
By six months, Kyoko looked like a two-year-old child. Tall, lean, not clumsy like others his apparent age. He moved with an eerie grace—never bumping into things, never falling. When he ran, it was quiet. Controlled. As if gravity negotiated with him rather than demanded.
He called his mother "Aerin" and his father "Tellen."
Not "Mama." Not "Papa."
It unsettled them both.
They began to speak in whispers around him. Closed doors when they could. Tellen tried to take him to the village herbalist for "a check," but halfway there Kyoko pointed at a flock of birds overhead and whispered:
"They fly differently when death watches."
They turned back without a word.
The seventh month came quickly. So did the letter.
It wasn't delivered. It appeared. One morning, laid neatly on the doorstep, sealed with a sigil no one recognized: a silver ring surrounding a black sun, etched into paper that felt too smooth to be made by human hands.
Aerin read it once. Then again.
By the time Tellen rose from bed, she had already packed Kyoko's things into a small satchel.
"You're sending him away?" he asked, voice cracking.
She didn't answer. Just looked at her son, who now stood by the door, calm, silent, watching the morning fog swirl like old memories.
"I think," Aerin whispered, "he was never ours to begin with."
Tellen dropped to his knees, clutching the child's satchel like it might pull the boy back into their arms. Kyoko stepped forward and gently placed a hand on his father's head.
"It's okay, Tellen," he said softly, as if he were the parent. "You loved me more than most."
And then the fog thickened.
By the time it cleared, Kyoko was gone.
From the edge of town, high on a hill where no path existed, stood a gate made of obsidian and light. It shimmered in and out of sight like a dream—real only for those it called.
Zyphir Academy awaited.
Behind its doors stood the most dangerous children in the world, and some that were no longer entirely children. Cursed bloodlines, dormant gods, fragment souls, forgotten monsters—Zyphir was where the unplaceable were placed.
And now Kyoko walked among them, his silver eyes reflecting more than just the sky.
He carried no memories. Only instincts. Echoes. Pressure.
But far, far within, something stirred.
Not yet awake.
But waiting.
Watching.
And the world, as always, turned blindly toward the horizon.