To understand the fire that burned in Kyoto, one has to understand the frost that came before it.
Before I was the Oracle, before I was the woman in the glowing silk dress, I was a "Total Loss." That was the medical term stamped on my file at the orphanage. I was found in a trash can behind a data center in Neo-Tokyo, wrapped in a thin, discarded circuit-board blanket, my skin a terrifying shade of blue. My heart was a broken machine from the start an Atrial Septal Defect so severe the doctors said I wouldn't see my fifth birthday. I was a discard, a glitch in the human system, left to die in the literal refuse of the digital age.
But the digital age was exactly what saved me.
While other children played with dolls, I played with code. By the age of ten, I had hacked the hospital's cooling system to keep my own room at the perfect temperature for my fragile lungs. By fourteen, I had created a prototype of Astraea back then, she was just a simple script that reminded me to take my heart medication. By eighteen, I had won a full-ride scholarship to MIT. I was the girl in the oversized hoodies, hiding a chest monitor beneath my clothes and silver hair that marked me as an outsider.
That was where I met the Lion.
THE ENCOUNTER AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Julian Vane was the sun around which the entire university orbited. He was the heir to the Vane throne, a man born with a titanium spoon in his mouth and the weight of a multi-billion dollar empire on his shoulders. He was arrogant, untouchable, and surrounded by a phalanx of sycophants.
We met in the basement of the robotics lab at 3:00 AM. I was fainted on the floor, my heart having short-circuited after forty-eight hours of straight coding.
I woke up to the smell of expensive sandalwood and the feeling of a very warm, very expensive wool coat being draped over me. I looked up, my vision blurry, into eyes that were the color of a midnight storm.
"You're the ghost," he said. His voice was a low vibration that seemed to stabilize my erratic pulse. "The one they say lives in the servers."
"I'm the one who's going to outcompute you, Vane," I whispered, my voice thinned by exhaustion. "Move. You're blocking my light."
He didn't move. He sat on the grimy floor next to me, ignoring the grease and the dust. He looked at the monitor on my wrist—the crude, early version of the device I would later wear in Kyoto.
"It's failing," he said, pointing to the red light. "The algorithm is too slow. It's not predicting your spikes; it's only reacting to them."
"I know," I snapped, trying to sit up. "I don't have the processing power to run a predictive model."
"I do," he replied.
That was the beginning. Not a romance of flowers and poetry, but a romance of logic and late-night coffee. Julian didn't pity me for my broken heart; he challenged me to fix it. He brought me into the Vane labs under the cover of night. We built Astraea together fusing my soul with his resources. He watched me code until my fingers bled, and I watched him handle the board of directors with a ruthlessness that terrified everyone but me.
I was the only one who saw the boy behind the billionaire the boy who felt like a prisoner in his own legacy. And he was the only one who saw the woman behind the "Total Loss."
THE SECRET VOWS
By our senior year, the Vane family Julian's parents, Marcus and Eleanor had already begun scouting for a "suitable" wife. They wanted a political alliance, a woman with a pristine bloodline and a massive dowry. They wanted Isabella the daughter of a shipping magnate, a woman who was as beautiful as she was hollow.
They didn't want a "trash-can orphan" with a ticking time bomb in her chest.
"They'll never accept you, Mia," Julian whispered one night in our shared apartment, his face buried in the crook of my neck. We were surrounded by monitors and half-finished circuit boards. "They see people as assets. And they see your heart as a liability."
"I am a liability," I said, tracing the line of his jaw. "You should marry Isabella. She can give you the heirs they want. She can give you the stability the board demands."
Julian pulled back, his eyes flashing with a terrifying intensity. "I don't want stability. I want you. I want the only person who actually knows how to reboot my soul."
On a rainy Tuesday in November, we disappeared. We didn't go to a cathedral; we went to a tiny, high-tech chapel in the heart of the city that Julian had bought under a shell company. There were no guests. There were no parents. There was only Astraea, witnessing the ceremony through the security cameras.
Julian had drafted the contract himself. It wasn't a standard pre-nuptial agreement. It was a Monogamous Blood Covenant.
"This is unhackable," Julian said, his voice steady as he took my hand. "It's encrypted with our biometric data. It's stored in a decentralized vault that requires both our heartbeats to open. In the eyes of the law, Mia, you are my wife. Forever. No matter what they try to do, no matter what lies they tell the world... you are the only Mrs. Vane."
We exchanged rings—not diamonds, but bands of smart-carbon that pulsed in time with each other.
"I, Julian Vane, take the Oracle to be my only truth. In sickness, until I fix the heart that beats for me."
"I, Mia, take the Lion to be my only pride. Until the code ends."
We were happy. For six months, we lived in a secret paradise. We were the most powerful couple in the world, and no one even knew we existed. I was pregnant with Kaito, my heart was stable, and Julian was preparing to take the CEO chair.
Then came the night of the gala. The night the parents decided to play God.
THE TRAP OF THE LIONS
It was supposed to be Julian's coronation. The night he officially took control of Vane Industries. His parents had insisted on a massive celebration at the family estate.
"Just one night, Mia," Julian had told me, kissing my forehead. I was three months pregnant, my morning sickness making me feel even more fragile than usual. "We play the game for four hours. I announce my leadership. And tomorrow, we tell them about us. We tell them about the baby."
"I don't like it, Julian," I said, my heart monitor giving a nervous chirp. "Isabella is going to be there. Your mother has been whispering to the press."
"Let them whisper. They're whispering to a ghost. I have the marriage vault codes in my pocket."
But Marcus and Eleanor Vane had been playing the game for forty years. They didn't use logic; they used chemistry.
During the private family toast before the gala, Eleanor had hugged me. She had smelled of lilies and something sharp, something medicinal. She had pressed a glass of "celebratory" sparkling water into my hand.
"To the future of the Vane name," she had said, her eyes as cold as a serpent's.
I drank. Within ten minutes, the room began to spin. My heart monitor didn't just chirp; it screamed. [Astraea: TOXIN DETECTED. NEURO-SEDATIVE IN BLOODSTREAM. MIA, SHUT DOWN]
I looked across the room at Julian. He was swaying. His glass was empty. Isabella was standing next to him, her hand on his arm, her smile like a blade. Julian tried to reach for me, his hand outstretched, his eyes wide with a sudden, horrifying realization.
"Mia..." he choked out.
"Take her to the car," I heard Marcus Vane say, his voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of an ocean. "The 'Total Loss' is having an episode. Send her to the Kyoto facility. Tell the staff she is a psychiatric ward of the state."
"No..." I tried to scream, but my lungs felt like they were filled with lead.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Isabella leading Julian ,my husband, my Lion away into a private room, while his own mother held me down as the sedative took hold.
"You were a mistake, little fairy," Eleanor whispered in my ear. "And tonight, we erase the mistake."
[ASTRAEA: MEMORY BLOCK]
> *"The trauma of the separation is deep-coded. To proceed, we must look at the five years of silence.
> LOADING ARCHIVE: THE BIRTH OF KAITO AND THE ISABELLA YEARS."*