Night in Vanhart manor did not sleep.
It only learned to hold its breath.
Reina realized that as she walked down the corridor from Kel's room, the hem of her dark cloak whispering faintly against the stone floor. Lamps along the wall burned low, their flames shrinking into thin needles of amber, barely holding back the tide of darkness pressing in from all sides.
It felt like walking through the inside of a held inhale.
Every step she took seemed louder than it should have been.
We're moving tomorrow.
Northwest.
Her fingers twitched once at her side, then stilled.
Landon had ridden south that morning under a sky of pale iron. She had watched him go, arm raised in quiet farewell, expression composed. No tremor in voice. No shaking breath.
He had looked back only once.
Now, the South waited for him.
And the Northwest…
She clenched her hand into a fist, nails digging lightly into her palm.
The Northwest waited for them.
Her room was small compared to the wider noble chambers, yet the space felt honest—stone walls, a single bed, a narrow lacquered wardrobe, and a simple wooden chair beside the window.
She shut the door gently.
The sound of the latch closing echoed softly in the quiet.
The oil lamp on her desk stretched her shadow across the wall—long, thin, curved like a drawn sword.
She unfastened her cloak and hung it slowly.
Her tunic stretched with the movement, fabric pulling snug along shoulders honed by constant training. The light caught faint scars along her knuckles, pale traces of impact that never quite faded.
She flexed her fingers out, letting the tension bleed from them.
She did not sit immediately.
Instead, she walked to the window and pushed the shutters open slightly.
A gust of cold air breathed into the room.
Snow fell in slow, drifting fragments, the world outside painted in soft grays and fading whites. Distant torches lit the inner walls of the manor. Beyond that, the land stretched briefly, then disappeared into mist.
Tomorrow, she thought, that horizon won't be the same.
She rested her forearms on the stone sill, letting the cold bite into the skin through the cloth.
Her reflection in the glass was faint—two dark eyes set in a steady, unremarkably pale face, framed by loose strands of black hair that had slipped free from her braid.
Those eyes…
They had seen too much for someone her age.
Not in grand wars.
In endings.
Of people.
Of places.
Of the self she used to be.
She closed her eyes.
The memory rose easily now, no longer barbed with uncontrolled pain:
The altar circle.
Cold stone beneath her boots.
Eighty-eight sigils burning like silent mouths waiting to speak.
The sudden, suffocating presence of the constellations in her mind—each a weight, a pressure, a whisper of:
"Choose me."
"I will make you sharp."
"I will make you unstoppable."
Stars that promised power.
Glory.
Names written in histories she would never live to read.
And then, among them—
The quiet one.
Not brightest.
Not loudest.
The one that simply waited.
Watched.
Astra Noctis.
The constellation of the silent blade.
She had reached for it without fully understanding why.
Only that it felt right.
Like the hilt of a sword fitted perfectly into her palm.
"You are the star of those who wait," she whispered now, barely audible, breath frosting the glass. "And strike only when it matters."
Her hand drifted unconsciously to her chest, fingertips pressing against the place where the sigil had appeared in light before fading.
It left no visible mark.
But she could still feel it.
A slight coolness beneath skin and bone.
Her star.
Her choice.
Her path.
And then…
His voice.
"Reina should awaken her star."
"You are a blade I chose to stand beside me."
Heat rose in her throat.
Not the pleasant kind.
The type that stung, like a wound healing faster than the mind could accept.
She tilted her head back against the stone, closing her eyes again.
What did she feel?
She tried to answer the question honestly.
About Landon?
Landon, who had always been silent, steady, uncomplaining. The mountain boy who didn't know his own worth until someone else placed a mission in his hands.
Her chest tightened faintly.
She was not sad he was gone.
Sadness implied a kind of fragility she could not afford.
But she felt—
Lighter on one side.
As if the formation they had held—Kel at the center, Landon solid to the right, she herself to the left—had compressed. Become sharper.
Narrower.
More focused.
Landon would build the South.
She would walk with Kel into the Northwest.
None of them would walk an easy road.
But none of them had ever asked for that.
About Kel?
Her fingers curled.
Kel, who walked like someone who had already died once and then decided breathing was merely a useful habit.
Kel, who spoke of overturning the sky with the same tone others used to ask for tea.
Kel, whose eyes had met hers in the hall earlier and said, quietly:
"I expect you to walk beside me. Not behind."
That had done something to her.
She hadn't shown it.
On the outside, she had only bowed her head, only spoken the predictable vow:
"Then I will do so."
Inside?
Something had sharpened.
Tightened.
Aligned.
She had followed nobles before.
But none had ever looked at her like that.
As if she were not just a weapon.
Not just a convenient sword arm.
But a chosen blade—something with edge, with will, with direction.
She whispered into the still air:
"I am yours."
The words came out quiet.
Heavy.
Not in the way a servant spoke to a master.
In the way a sword chose whose hand it trusted.
She finally moved away from the window and sat on the chair by the bed. The wood creaked softly beneath her weight.
Her reflection in the small metal mirror beside the lamp stared back at her.
Dark eyes, steady.
Her face was not gentle.
Not harsh.
Simply…
Still.
She tilted her head.
"What am I?" she asked the reflected girl.
Her reflection did not answer.
She answered for it.
"I am a blade," she said quietly. "I am not the one who changes the world."
That would be Kel.
She had no illusions about that.
"I am the one who makes sure he survives while doing it."
She looked down at her hands.
They no longer trembled.
Memories flickered like candleflame:
Kel collapsing under his curse in his room, yet still forcing aura into unnatural paths.
Kel standing in the barbarian feast, reciting words that turned survival into defiance.
Kel talking to the lake guardian as if negotiating with a lonely god.
Kel reading Rodrik's letters without flinching, then handing them over and letting the man break properly.
Kel, tonight, saying—
"Choose your star for yourself. Not for my name."
He was terrifying.
But not in the way monsters were.
He was terrifying in the way inevitability was.
In the way that the tide did not ask before breaking against the shore.
She leaned her elbows onto her thighs, interlocking her fingers.
"…You're going to tear this world apart, aren't you?" she murmured, not as accusation, but as quiet fact.
"And I…"
Her lips curved, barely.
"…will be there when you do."
Fear?
Was she afraid?
Of the Northwest?
Of gates and unknown powers and constellations that had long ago decided who was worthy of what?
Yes.
She was.
Reina did not lie to herself.
The Northwest held academies that manufactured nobles like weapons. Old bloodlines. Territories carved by claws sharper than anything she had seen so far.
They would look at Kel.
And try to break him.
And if they could not—
They would come for those at his side.
Her fingers tightened.
"If they come," she whispered, "they'll have to go through me first."
The thought did not bring comfort.
But it brought certainty.
And that was enough.
Soft footsteps passed outside her door.
Unhurried.
Measured.
She recognized them without needing to see.
Kel, returning from wherever he walked when the estate slept.
She stared at the door.
He did not pause.
Did not knock.
Simply passed by.
Her shoulders relaxed.
It was good.
She did not need him to rely on her yet.
It was enough that he did not push her away.
The lamp's light flickered.
She reached over and lowered the wick slightly, letting the shadows in the room thicken, losing the sharp edges of furniture, rounding everything in dark soft blur.
She lay back on the bed, staring up at the stone ceiling.
Tomorrow.
Teleportation gate.
Northwest.
A new field.
A new battlefield.
A new sky.
Her hand drifted once more to her chest.
Her heartbeat thudded beneath it, steady.
Not calm.
Not racing.
Ready.
"You are Astra Noctis," she whispered to the star sealed inside her.
"I am Reina Asheville."
Her lips curved subtly.
"And we follow a boy who intends to make the sky regret existing."
She closed her eyes.
The darkness that greeted her no longer felt empty.
It felt like the space before a bowstring snapped forward.
The world outside the walls of Vanhart Estate remained frozen beneath its winter shell.
But within the quiet of her chest, within the cold clarity of her decision—
A blade slept.
Waiting.
Watching.
Already aligned toward the direction of his back.
Not behind.
Beside.