The moment they crossed the threshold, reality fractured.
Outside, the tower had loomed as a slender stone relic—ivy-clad, its windows reminiscent of forgotten prayers, and utterly devoid of a door. But once inside...
Inside was impossible.
The circular chamber unfurled into vaulted space that swirled upward in a spiral of ethereal light—as though the very moon had lent its glow to a ceiling too distant to claim. Walls of ancient, impossibly smooth stone stretched beyond reason, etched faintly with silver runes that wound like living vines, pulsing softly as if imbued with breath and secret purpose. The stones bore the weight of untold centuries, yet there was not a speck of dust, no hint of decay or age—only a cool, crystalline clarity, as though the place had waited, silently and expectantly, for a long-forgotten guest.
In that hallowed stillness, the air itself seemed to hold its breath, not in emptiness but in a state of rapt attention. The tower, it appeared, was listening.
Then Shiro shattered the quiet.
"Yo! Is this place even real?" His voice bounced off the gleaming floor as he darted forward, his boots echoing hollowly across the polished tile. "Did the whole tower just gaslight us?"
He slid with the playful ease of a trickster on the slick surface, laughing as he performed a brief, theatrical tumble onto a nearby bench hewn from moonstone and intricately spiraled wood. "I call this bed," he declared, as if the absurdity of it all were the very point.
Airi blinked, her senses still struggling to anchor her in a reality that now felt more like someone else's half-remembered dream. She stood transfixed, caught between wonder and a subtle grief—a notion that, perhaps, she was adrift in another's memory.
Stalin, in his silent way, offered no retort. He strode deeper into the vast room, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, his eyes scanning every detail as if he distrusted even the air he breathed, or if he were consulting an invisible map known only to him. He circled the main chamber with a measured, cautious grace, pausing briefly to rest a hand upon a stone pillar etched with ancient sigils. Then, without a word, he turned and began his exit through the open archway—the doorless portal that, like an ever-hollow rectangle, gaped into nothingness, unwavering and eternal.
Airi's gaze lingered on him as he vanished. A quiet tug stirred within her chest—a faint, insistent pull. She did not know why she cared. Yet, as her fingers curled in subtle defiance at her side, a soft whisper urged, Go after him.
She quickly smothered the thought. Too sharp, too insistent. Resolute, she turned away from the threshold and began to wander deeper into the tower's labyrinthine heart.
Overhead, narrow bridges arched across levels as though spun from the threads of thought itself, delicate and unsupported. Each floor revealed its own peculiar character—one encircled by spiraling shelves laden with arcane tomes; another bathed in a tender blue light reminiscent of a crystalline interior. A hollow, forlorn echo of wind whispered through unseen corridors, leaving only the impression that the tower exhaled dreams.
At the foot of a staircase whose steps shimmered with half-imagined light, Airi paused. In the polished stone, her reflection appeared strangely out of sync—a spectral double that was not darker, nor flawed, but achingly distant, as if she were glimpsing a version of herself from a world half-remembered.
Somewhere above, Shiro's voice rang out once more, irreverent and carefree: "This place has no toilets! It's magic and majestic and all that, but c'mon!"
A faint smile tugged at Airi's lips in reply, though her eyes soon wandered back to the doorless threshold, where Stalin had vanished into the swirling mountain air.
This tower, with all its sumptuous, impossible beauty, had become a sanctuary—a resting place that whispered of solitude and hidden promises. Yet for reasons she could neither articulate nor fully understand, it felt inexplicably lonelier without him in its midst.
And so, in that suspended moment between wonder and longing, Airi realized that though the tower's silence might cradle her in its enigmatic embrace, its secrets—and the echoes of those who had passed through it—would continue to haunt every step she took in its otherworldly corridors.
—
Shiro sprang to life from the moonstone bench, as if struck by a sudden jolt of lightning—a burst of kinetic purpose only he could comprehend.
"I smell potential," he murmured, his eyes glinting with mischief as he veered off toward one of the arched alcoves lining the tower's first level. There, wedged between the curving outer wall and the base of a slender, spiraling staircase, lay an inconspicuous niche. An ancient oaken shelf, steeped in secrecy, stood silently within the recess. Its surface bore runic engravings that shimmered with a faint, otherworldly light when his hand neared. Shiro arched a brow in amusement.
"Okay... secret pantry vibes. Let's see what you're hiding, tower," he whispered.
At his touch, the central rune clicked softly. With the gentle sigh of displaced air, the wooden facade slid inward, revealing a treasure trove that defied the ravages of time: shelves lined with glimmering jars filled with mysterious nectars, cured meats delicately wrapped in enchanted leaf-foil, vibrant vegetables preserved in an enchantment that defied decay, and bundles of herbs still gleaming with a dew that seemed to capture the essence of morning. Each item, miraculously untouched by time's relentless march, exuded a quiet promise of divine hospitality.
A grin blossomed on his face. "This," he intoned reverently, "is divine hospitality."
Without a word to anyone, Shiro moved with an effortless grace toward a recessed stone hearth along the tower's western curve. At first glance, the hearth appeared dormant—cold and ancient—but as he uttered a few words in a dialect long since muted by time, flintstone runes sparked into life at its base. Hollow iron vents exhaled slow, steady flames into the cooking basin, transforming the hearth into a forge that had become unexpectedly friendly.
Ingredients appeared in his deft hands, and, as if conjured by some domestic magic rather than necessity, a set of impeccably maintained knives emerged from within his coat. With a practiced ease born of a life lived between the chaos of battlefields and clandestine affairs, Shiro began to chop, sear, and season. His motions were as fluid and graceful as a dance—a quiet symphony of culinary mastery in the midst of a strange and ancient sanctuary.
Above, on the middle floor—a realm that might once have been a scriptorium or a repository of arcane lore—glassless windows bathed the room in surreal mountain light, casting soft, indigo rays upon the stone. And then, unexpectedly, a scent rose to greet Airi.
Warm spices mingled with the caramelized sweetness of onions, roasted garlic folded into the rich aroma of sweet roots, and the savory tang of pan-seared venison—scents that did more than fill the air; they embraced it wholly, weaving themselves into every fiber of the room.
Her stomach gave a quiet protest—a low, familiar growl that betrayed the reverence she felt. Stunned, Airi blinked. How could a man as unrestrained and, in her eyes, as lunatic as Shiro wield such gastronomic magic?
She moved to the edge of the spiral and peered down, watching him with a mixture of awe and exasperation. There, amid the gentle chaos of the kitchen, Shiro hummed a tune slightly off-key, his focus unwavering as he flambéed a pan with the finesse of a royal chef mid-ceremony.
This was no mere sustenance—it was an art form that transcended even the hallowed halls of palace kitchens, where chefs trained for fifteen long years to master the royal culinary academies. Here, Shiro was both artist and warrior, his humming a gentle counterpoint to the passion with which he turned simple ingredients into an unforgettable banquet. He was carefree, utterly engrossed in his craft, and, for all her scorn, there was a spark of genuine happiness in his expression.
Airi leaned back against a carved stone pillar, crossing her arms as she observed the curling tendrils of smoke rising like incense into the lofty air. Her thoughts slowed, growing measured and cautious—a quiet vigilance that masked something tender beneath. Yet she could not help but think: He's insane, she reminded herself, even if that very madness was laced with genius.
Her eyes drifted back to the hollow door frame—a silent sentinel where Stalin had vanished into the mountain air. The absence of his presence was palpable, like the stillness of a sword laid carelessly in the grass, unmoving yet ever watchful. And, for reasons she struggled to define, a surge of something indefinable welled up within her.
She shook the thought away. "I'm not here to catch feelings," she murmured under her breath, her footsteps echoing softly against the immaculate stone. And yet, the heady aroma of Shiro's cooking pursued her relentlessly down the corridor—a memory, vivid and unyielding, that refused to fade into oblivion.
From the lower floor, Shiro's voice drifted upward as casually as smoke curling from a hearth.
"Catch feelings for who? Stalin?"
The words struck Airi like an arrow of embarrassment. Her spine stiffened. She leaned over the stairwell's edge and hissed down, "How much did you hear?"
"All of it," he replied, unfazed, flipping a strip of roasted duck in the pan. "These tower acoustics are brutal. Don't mumble if you're going to monologue, Princess."
Airi's cheeks flamed, bright as dawn's first blush. "It's not like that," she snapped, voice tight with indignation.
Shiro didn't even look up. He ladled honey‑wine glaze over the duck, the glaze catching the flicker of flame like liquid amber. "Relax," he said, arranging the meat beside a pan of buttered root medley and a heap of emerald‑green leaves that smelled of danger and delight in equal measure. "Can't blame you."
He set a silver fork on polished obsidian plates—plates that must have slipped out of legend's grasp to lie hidden in a dusty cupboard. Then, in a tone as off‑hand as if he were discussing the weather, he added, "If I were a girl, I'd have pounced on him the moment our eyes met."
Airi stared, half‑outraged, half‑astonished. "How can you say something like that so easily?"
He shrugged one shoulder, as effortless as a breeze stirring candlelight. "Practice," he said. "And zero shame. Try it sometime—you might enjoy the freedom."
She said nothing more. With arms folded, she turned her back to him, leaning against the stone archway as if bracing against a winter gale, though her ears still burned.
Below, Shiro bore dish after decadent dish to the circular table at the room's heart—the table carved from a single slab of nightwood, black as a moonless sky. He laid out glistening ribbons of venison, glazed with herb‑kissed oils; wild rice steeped in spiced bone broth; roasted garlic flatcakes steaming beside bowls of thick, savory stew; chilled fruit slices drowned in sweetwine; and a wheel of smoked cheese so pristine it might have been born yesterday rather than ages ago.
When at last he sat, he glanced over his shoulder, catching Airi's reflection in a glassless window—her silhouette poised against the mountain light, still awaiting an answer the world might never offer.
"Come eat," he called between bites, his tone gentle as a summer breeze. "Your boyfriend'll come back. Don't worry."
That was the spark.
Airi spun on her heel and swept down the stairs in a flurry of skirts, each rustle a declaration of royal dignity. "He's not—!" she began, but Shiro merely smirked into his fork, eyes dancing with amusement.
She arrived at the table with measured grace, seating herself as if stepping onto a stage. Every motion—lifting her fork, cutting a slice of venison—was precise, statuesque. Even her chewing carried the crisp refinement of her lineage.
For a heartbeat, only the soft symphony of contented dining echoed through the chamber.
Then Shiro, mouth half‑full and eyes alight with mischief, tilted his head. "You know," he said, voice low and teasing, "you didn't disagree about calling him your boyfriend."
Airi froze, her fork suspended mid‑air. She leveled him a glare sharp enough to cleave stone.
Shiro only grinned, that roguish curve of lips that promised both trouble and delight.
Beyond the tower walls, the silent wind shifted—like Stalin himself drawing a slow, deliberate breath and turning back toward them.
The hush had barely settled when—
crash—clang—
Shiro moved.
There was no warning, no flourish of words—only the sudden, fluid violence of a gale tearing through still air. In a heartbeat he was gone from his seat and back again in the center of the chamber, arms sweeping in graceful arcs. One by one, the heavy chairs flew free of their loyalties, spinning end over end until they clattered against stone walls or tumbled into dark corners like stage props no longer needed. Only two remained: his own, and a single seat placed deliberately at Airi's right.
Shiro simply leaned back, arms crossed, eyes glinting with dare.
Airi blinked, her breath catching as the echoes faded. She hardly had time to wonder what had possessed him before the imposing doorway—unyielding and doorless—was filled by a new shadow.
Stalin crossed the threshold as though he owned the very shape of the room. He did not glance at the feast, did not pause for questions or surprise. With a composure wrought of cold certainty, he strode to the lone remaining chair beside Airi and seated himself.
She felt his presence settle next to her—an unspoken weight that bent the air around them. The faint musk of snow-dusted pine and iron clung to his coat, and she became aware of a quiet heat radiating from him, like embers deep within a mountain hearth. It was not an invitation, but it reached her all the same.
He lifted a fork and began to eat. No ceremony. No flourish. Just the steady click of cutlery against obsidian plate.
And that was her undoing.
Airi sat rigid, the daughter of a throne trained in every art of poise and guile. She wore her crown of composure like armor—diplomatic in word, unyielding in posture. She had disarmed assassins with a smile, waltzed with dukes under crystal chandeliers, and never once allowed her heartbeat to betray her intent.
Yet—even now—her mind raced:
Shiro, that scheming whirlwind of insolence, delighted in every shift of her restraint. She gripped the edge of the table, knuckles paling, as if physical defiance could shut down the storm in her chest.
Princess—the title weighed upon her like a gilded cage. She was meant to be unflappable, impervious to the whims of emotion. And still…
Stalin—his calm was a current she could not fight. The way his silence seemed to include her, as though the empty chair had been carved in anticipation of his arrival. The soft rhythm his presence lent to the room, as if her own heart had always known this symmetry. The way her breath stilled in his orbit, without permission, against every lesson she had ever learned.
Damn Shiro's theatrics. Damn this chair. Damn the entire, enchanted absurdity of this tower.
She lifted the crystal glass he had poured for her, the water trembling at her lips, and drank with queenly restraint.
Beside her, Stalin chewed in thoughtful silence. Then, without turning, his voice drifted—low and even, a murmur that sounded like distant thunder.
"…The duck's good."
Not praise. Not flattery. A simple statement of fact.
And yet, in that single, hushed admission, the chamber seemed to hold its breath again—caught between the gravity of royalty and the uncharted territory of the human heart.
CHAPTER 11
The Tower Without a Door
Part IV
Shiro leaned back in his carved nightwood chair, arms crossed, chin tipped skyward like a triumphant child.
"So the duck's good, huh? Might cry," he teased, grin wide as a crescent moon.
Stalin, unmoved, chewed once. Swallowed. His fork slid across the obsidian plate in a whisper of sound—so soft it might have been imagined.
Silence settled, thick and natural, never awkward in their company, merely present.
Then, with the soundless grace of death changing course, both men finished. No ceremony—just two empty plates where feasts had lived.
And as if choreographed by Shiro's invisible hand, the plates vanished in an instant, leaving the table as hollow as the tower's doorway.
Airi didn't see him move—she never did—but Shiro sprang to his feet in a blur of mischief and silent speed. One by one, the heavy chairs soared away, clattering into walls and tumbling into shadowed corners, until only two remained: his own and the single seat to Airi's right. He stretched with a theatrical sigh and turned.
Across the polished floor, Stalin rose and walked—no pause, no glance—directly toward the light‑filled arch. A single step, and he occupied that lone chair beside her. Then Shiro followed, like a shadow finally remembered, and together they vanished beyond the threshold into the sunlit courtyard.
Airi sat motionless, fork halfway to her lips. She hadn't realized she was still eating—still… flustered… still perched in the only seat the tower had left for her. She laid the fork down with careful grace, fingertips brushing the silver rim. Her heart thundered, shouting its secrets in her chest, and the heat of earlier banter burned on her cheeks. In the cathedral hush of the great room, those echoes rang louder than any voice.
Yet beneath it all, the tower felt—improbably—safe.
She hadn't known safety since… before.
Before the truth of Hollowing.
Before the Dungeon.
Before the plague.
Her chest tightened around one memory: her mother.
The plague had cleaved through their kingdom like a blade beneath armor—fields of bodies, palace halls turned makeshift infirmaries. And her mother—once luminous with ancient elven grace—lay grey‑skinned and fragile, wrapped in silk and whispered prayers, coughing blood, her voice a tremor as she called Airi's name.
And the Dungeon had mocked that loss—its false Elven Forest had paraded her mother's echo before her, a specter carved from her own grief.
Airi pressed her palms to the table, clenching the cloth napkin. It wasn't her mother—it was artifice, a merciless trick of a godless maze. The Dungeon feasted on sorrow and wove it into its walls. She had hated it then. Now… she loathed it.
She rose, brushing crumbs from her skirts, determined not to break in this impossible sanctuary of vanishing plates and silent gods.
She wandered.
The middle floor opened before her like a rediscovered cathedral. Ivy spiraled through the stones in living arabesques, yet the air carried no dust. Bookshelves—towering, immaculate—lined the walls as quiet witnesses. Not a cobweb stirred. Not a single page lay out of place. Golden‑blue light filtered through stone‑set windows, as if twilight had paused to rest.
Drawn by a gentle hum, she approached the open library. Hundreds of tomes waited—spines etched with glyphs that whispered when she passed, languages of memory older than her kingdom itself.
She paused before one volume that glowed warmer than its neighbors. Her fingertips brushed its leather cover, and she did not open it. Not yet.
Because, for the first time in weeks, she wasn't merely surviving.
She was simply breathing.
And though part of her rebelled at the comfort she felt, she could not deny it: for now, this tower—this impossible haven—felt like a place the Dungeon had forgotten to ruin.
And perhaps… that was enough.
—
She hadn't meant to lose track of time.
But time here didn't so much flow as unravel, fraying at the edges like a half-forgotten tapestry.
The books had not helped. Their pages brimmed with impossible visions—half-formed runes that bent the eye, sentences that whispered secrets just beneath the threshold of comprehension. She had tried to read them, truly she had, but the words slid sideways in her mind, like dreams dissolving upon waking.
So she lingered on the illustrations instead.
Angels ensnared in gilded agony, their wings bound with golden thread.
Primal things—ancient watchers whose eyes followed you beyond the page.
Amorphous horrors—teeth spiraling into infinity, shapes that hinted at nightmares too vast for language.
Each image was beautiful, haunting, lonely—like someone's desperate attempt to remember a world that had never existed.
When she finally looked up, the sky beyond the upper windows had drained to blue‑black velvet. Stars blinked lazily overhead, and she could not tell if they were real or the fractured remnants of other realities. The tower lay hushed, save for the faint whisper of wind gliding through stone slits far above.
Airi blinked, rising from the library floor as though waking from a trance. Her legs tingled, her heart ached—not with pain, but with the echo of those borrowed memories. They felt like her own.
She descended into the great hall.
In the hush of the long dining chamber, Shiro lay slumped in a chair as if he had paused his life mid‑moment. His coat hung half‑draped over one shoulder, one booted leg propped against the stump of a fallen stool. He slept like he owned the world beyond its reach, unconcerned by its cares. Unconscious, he seemed younger—innocent, almost, as though this tower could cradle him in unbroken grace.
Airi's gaze drifted past him to where Stalin stood by the open arch, surveying the void-drenched courtyard in silence. The dying light etched his profile in jagged relief—someone only half‑returned from a distant place.
Then—without warning, without sound—he turned.
Graceful as a blade drawn beneath water.
Airi froze.
His eyes found hers: storm‑white irises rimmed with ice, empty yet brimming with untold depths—like trying to peer through a glacier and finding a thousand trapped reflections staring back.
He walked toward her.
Each footfall a heartbeat she nearly forgot to count.
And then, as though guided by some ancient ritual, he raised a hand.
A pulse of shimmering not‑light flickered between his fingers, and a necklace—or the echo of one—materialized in mid‑air. Its chain was wrought of black‑silver filigree, inscribed with spiraling glyphs that danced on the edge of vision. At its center hung a crystal unlike any she'd ever beheld: a deep violet shard spiked and faceted, pulsing with starlight and time, as though it were trying to recall its own hue.
Her breath caught.
She recognized it—not by memory, but by instinct, by the silent scream woven into her blood.
The Echo Shard of the Unwritten.
A weapon. A relic. A curse.
Stalin's voice, low and deliberate, cut the silence. "This is a shard of the Unwritten. Should not exist. Wasn't meant to."
She opened her mouth—words fled before they formed.
He stepped closer, into her private gravity. Then, with the care one might devote to straightening a fallen crown, he lifted the chain and draped the shard around her throat.
She flinched—not at his touch, but at its intimacy. The ease of it. As though he had placed this relic against her skin a thousand times before.
Her heart thundered; her breath trembled. Her fingers itched to wrench the crystal free, and yet they remained still.
Stalin withdrew, voice softer still. "The Echo Shard allows stillborn realities to flicker into being—broken spells, forgotten time, lost grief. Everything unspoken, undefeated."
He tilted his head, half‑lidded. "It once required Hollowing to awaken—Fraybound or higher. But I modified it."
A pause, with unspoken weight.
"It will activate automatically now. If anything ever threatens you—near or distant. Even if you do not notice."
She could feel the necklace humming, not in sound but in her bones, resonating in a secret chamber of her soul.
She wanted to ask him why. To demand answers. To unleash a scream that would crack these ancient stones.
But instead, she stood—worn and wondrous—in the hollow heart of the tower, adorned with a fragment of fractured eternity, and tried to recall who she had been before he crossed the threshold.
Wait..
Airi's fingers trembled as they brushed the shard against her chest—cold to the bone, yet pulsing with the faint echo of cosmic flame. In its silent glow, a memory awoke.
No—
Not a memory.
A scar with teeth.
She remembered Hollowing.
Not the cautious whispers of trembling scholars, nor the ink‑blotted warnings of abandoned grimoires. She recalled the true Hollowing: the land, the presence, the unrelenting price.
It was never mere sorcery.
Never simply power.
It was a broken continent folded into itself, swallowed by realities that buckled and rewrote at dawn's first light. A realm of screaming echoes and shifting landscapes, a place that should have been buried beneath time—yet endured, because people like him carried its fragments in their blood.
She could still breathe its scent.
Not rot—something far darker.
The stench of unmaking.
She had glimpsed it once—terrifyingly brief—when Stray had slithered into their path. Stray, the aberration born of Hollowing's darkest core. No one knew who—or what—he had been; perhaps he had forgotten himself, a sacrifice exacted by unholy currency.
He had spoken the Old Tongue, that cursed syllables that bent light and shattered the names of distant stars. Words that cost him everything: his birth, his mother's name, his first dawn—all erased in exchange for a single purpose.
To fight.
To protect.
To annihilate.
Airi closed her eyes and saw it all replay: Stray's voice unraveling into voidscript as the world convulsed. Stalin, already wounded, bending causality around his will to counter the warping tide. Each footfall shattered the ground beneath them—one moment stone, the next snow, then shattered glass, then a year stolen from someone's life. Reality peeled away like age‑worn paint.
When Stray finally fell, his flesh dissolving into fractured memories that clung to the air like desperate phantoms, Stalin did not pause. With a whispered incantation, he summoned a weapon not of steel, but of pure impossibility—an echoing blade slick with the futures it would forever deny. It did not merely cut: it cleaved that frozen dimension in two, collapsing the cursed realm into a silent, shattered ruin.
Yet even that was not the end.
From the ashes rose Stray's remnants—echoes, not ghosts nor memories, but might‑have‑beens clawing their way back from the void. Limbs multiplied and vanished, faces twisted in wordless pleas for a mercy they no longer understood.
And Stalin—his face a mask of calm—whispered words she could never recall. Once more, the world buckled; the echoes screamed and then, at last, were silenced.
Hollowing demanded its due from every soul who wielded it. Memories, futures, names, even the reflection in the mirror—each user paid the toll in pieces of their very self.
And yet Stalin bore that burden as if it were a familiar sword—cost irrelevant, or perhaps already spent. Perhaps he had paid too much.
Now, as Airi's fingertips lingered on the Echo Shard's faceted heart, she understood with a cold certainty that this fragment around her throat was born of the same terrible power. A sliver of unreality, forged in the crucible of the Unraveling itself—binding her, inescapably, to the continent of echoes and the man who carried its scars.
The necklace lay against her collarbone—no longer mere cold metal, but unmoving, as though it breathed in some ancient stillness, preserved in a single heartbeat that would never fade. A presence, not an object—something that might blink if she watched long enough.
Airi parted her lips. Words unspoke trembled at the brink of breath.
"Stal—"
Before she could frame the question, he moved.
With the same silent precision that rends continents and rewrites reality, Stalin lifted his other hand. Between thumb and forefinger he held something small and gleaming: a ring.
It was unadorned—no filigree, no flourish—yet heartbreakingly familiar. At its heart sat a shard identical to hers, cut smaller, its violet glow softer, more personal, as if it had been born to suffer in silence. Without hesitation, he slid it onto his finger.
And then, as though he'd answered a question she had not yet voiced, he spoke.
"Yes," he said, voice distant and hollow, untouched by the sacrifice he'd just enacted. "It has consequences."
Airi froze. The question, unformed on her lips, hovered between them, answered before it could take shape. She opened her mouth again, but he did not look at her—his gaze remained fixed on the ring's muted pulse.
"This," he murmured, lifting the hand so the gem caught the lamplight, "will absorb what the necklace rejects."
He spoke as if reading from some ledger of fate. "The Echo Shard disperses the burden of reality‑bending through temporal inversion. Its wearer should age, forget, be rewritten." He paused, voice softer still. "The ring takes it instead."
A weight coiled in Airi's chest—not born of magic, but of something far rarer:
someone else choosing to bear your cost.
Her fingers twitched toward the clasp at her throat, as though she must free herself of this dreadful gift.
But Stalin was faster than sight. One hand closed gently around hers—firm, resolute, unyielding as bedrock—while the other pressed the shard's chain flat against her skin.
"No," he said simply. "You wear it."
"But the consequences—" she began, voice trembling.
"They're not severe."
Airi looked up. His face was unreadable: neither cruel nor noble, empty as a storm's wake. That blank calm chilled her more than any cursed artifact could. He had just declared his willingness to shoulder her suffering, then spoke of it as if it were of no account—no sacrifice remarkable enough to merit a second glance.
What could she say to a man who wore damnation like a trinket?
Her fingers fell away from the clasp. She let go.
Stalin released her hand and stepped back.
In the hush that followed, the Echo Shard against her heart began to hum—not in sound, but in the hidden corridors of her soul, a lullaby played in reverse, a whisper of a thousand unrealized tomorrows converging into this single, trembling moment.
And Airi stood, caught between the weight of an impossible gift and the boy who gave it—struggling to remember who she was before the shard, before the cost, before he chose to bear the burden for her.
Shiro materialized behind her in a flicker of motion so sudden that Airi's pulse tripped over itself. He leaned in, voice teasing like a knife's edge.
"Damn, already marrying her, Stalin? Calm down, dude—we're still ten…"
Airi whirled, scowling as she squared her shoulders. In any other moment, his insanity would have grated on her nerves—but tonight, even his madness felt warmer than the cold logic of the tower's stones. She opened her mouth to retort that marriage was no jest, only to find her anger wading through a haze of bewilderment.
Shiro straightened with a flourish, as if dusting off propriety. "Back where I was born, in a land called India…" He paused, lifting an eyebrow. "Of course you wouldn't know that country. Anyway their conserts bind the bride with a thread of promise around her neck—sounds familiar, doesn't it?" He ticked his head toward the Echo Shard pulsing at her throat, and then to the slender ring that now circled Stalin's finger.
Airi's gaze flickered between the two artifacts, her mind racing against a tide of half‑remembered echoes. India… the word hovered in her thoughts like a half‑heard lullaby from another life. She drew a slow breath, trying to dredge the memory of that name from some deep, uncharted current. But the tower's hush swallowed her summons, leaving only the murmur of wind through distant arches.
She glanced at Stalin, seated with unimpeachable calm, the ring catching stray lamplight like a solitary star. The echo shard's violet glow pulsed once, then again, in time with her heartbeat—an unspoken vow tethered across continents she had never seen.
Airi swallowed. "I… I've never heard of India," she murmured, voice soft as woven silk. And yet the name tugged at something buried beneath duty and despair—a fragile thread unspooling toward forgotten landscapes and lives lived in the sun's embrace.
"You know," Shiro's voice slipped into the quiet behind her, soft as a knife's whisper, "if you keep staring at him like that, someone's going to think you've caught feelings."
Airi's jaw snapped shut. Her shoulders squared, and in that heartbeat her fist coiled, knuckles whitening in practiced reflex. But before her arm could arc through the air, Shiro dissolved into nothingness—a gust of mischief where wind itself held its breath.
"Damn it!" she spat into the empty corridor, the echo clattering after her like loose stones.
A smug laugh trailed along the stone wall, distant and feather‑light, and she nearly snarled at the silence that followed. "This isn't our custom!" she shouted, voice brittle enough to crack the polished floor beneath her boots. "You don't tease royalty, you idiot!"
Her heels clicked in rapid rhythm as she stormed forward, skirts whipping around her ankles. She poured herself into the middle floor—the heart of the tower's silent cathedral—where arching doorways stood sentinel beside the grand library, their curved ribs etched with centuries of patient stonework. Light pooled in soft, forgiving pools from unseen sources, gilding each shelf and corridor in a gentle halo. Here, time bowed in reverence: no dust, no decay, only the hush of secrets waiting to be heard.
She stumbled into the nearest chamber without thought and stopped short. Before her stood a bed fit for dreams: a deep mattress hewn from midnight‑black oak, crowned with plump snow‑white pillows and sheets so pristine they glowed in the muted twilight. The headboard arched in a crescent of dark wood, carved with symbols older than any tongue she knew, their meaning half‑remembered like the edge of a fading lullaby.
Her spine curved, and with a sigh that felt like release, she collapsed face‑first into that sea of comfort. The pillow swallowed her in a hush, and she clutched it to her, desperate for absolution, though it offered only the scent of clean linen and old hopes.
"Dumb… idiot…" she mumbled into the downy fold. "Dumb, smug idiot with his impossible speed and his infuriating grin…"
But her words stumbled into silence, because it wasn't Shiro curling her thoughts—it was the other one. The man who moved like a god through broken time, whose face seldom betrayed a flicker of feeling, whose gaze was a blade honed by countless battles. Stalin, whose silence cut deeper than any shout.
Airi pressed her cheek into the pillow, her breath catching as she wrestled with the truth her heart refused to obey. "I'm not… feeling anything," she whispered to the empty room. "I'm not. I won't."
Her eyes fluttered shut against the weight of remembered war, of fractured realities, of a man who'd borne the world's unmaking on shoulders of stone. "I won't fall for monsters."
And though the tower remained utterly still—its ancient stones neither judge nor comfort—her pulse thundered in her ears, betraying her with every stubborn beat.
The bed cradled her, soft and unyielding both, but sleep remained a distant shore. Not yet.
Airi lay still, her arms wound tight around the pillow as if it might quell the quiet tempest beneath her skin. Then the memories came. They always did. First as whispers, gentle as ash falling on snow. Then stronger, with the clarity of struck crystal.
The corridor before the forest level.
Waking against him. Stalin.
His shoulder beneath her cheek—firm as old oak, warm as embers. Only later did she understand the rarity of that moment's peace, how the churning of her thoughts had stilled to silence. No nightmares had found her there. No fevered glimpses of false systems unspooling. Only warmth existed in that moment. Only him.
She remembered his stance between her and the Stray, a silent bulwark against a creature that rendered reality to ribbons with each breath. He had sheltered her—not from obligation. Not for her bloodline. But because he had chosen it to be so.
When truth had fractured her thoughts—when she faced the counterfeit divinity that had supposedly governed her path—he had been there. Each time her mind threatened to crumble beneath forbidden knowledge, his hand would find her shoulder. Cool. Steady. Real as the earth.
He had mended her.
Not through arcane craft or healing balms.
Through presence.
And when the Refracted Will sought her out—when her own arcana served as beacon to that nameless horror—it was his intervention that saved her. Not Shiro. Not destiny's weave. Him.
And now?
Now a necklace hung at her throat, placed there by his hands. Not ornamentation. Not vanity.
A shard.
The Echo Shard of the Unwritten.
It did not merely defy time—it consumed it. Negated causality itself. It was mercy's antithesis. The sort of relic wise rulers would seal beneath mountains, guarded by riddles older than their kingdoms.
And he had entrusted it to her.
To keep her safe.
He told her it would stir only in danger's presence. That comprehension of Hollowing was unnecessary for the protection it offered.
A lie.
She was no fool. She recognized the cost. Every Hollowing exacted payment.
She had witnessed the Stray—his tongue shaping that cursed language, tearing wounds in sequence itself, surrendering memories of his birth and mother as toll. She had seen how even after victory, echoes pursued him, seeking to drag him back through dimensions where he no longer belonged.
Always, there was a price.
Stalin claimed the ring he wore would absorb the consequences in her stead. He spoke it plainly, as though offering her safety at his expense was unremarkable. Expected. As natural as breathing.
But she knew better.
He had diminished the severity. It must be worse than admitted.
And yet...
He had chosen this deception.
For her.
Her fingers tensed in the sheets. She wanted to despise him for it. For deciding what burden she should bear. For shouldering weight she never requested of him.
But when she tried—truly tried—the anger would not come.
Instead... she remembered how familiar he felt.
Why?
Why should someone like him echo in her soul like a half-remembered song?
A question without answer. A perfect circle in her mind.
Airi had always been Valeria Nacthel, Crown Princess of the Astral Courts. Yet for the first time, her thoughts were not a princess's thoughts.
They were Airi's thoughts.
Just Airi.
The girl curled beneath blankets in a haunted tower, clutching a pillow she would never confess carried the scent of ancient winds and forgotten tomorrows. The girl wearing a time-warping relic no mortal had right to wield. The girl watched over by a silent god who wore a man's shape and lied only that she might live.
Not as duty demanded. Not as weapon-keeper. But perhaps... just perhaps... as something else entirely.
She did not notice when her breathing slowed.
Did not recognize the warmth blooming across her cheeks—not from embarrassment, but from the quiet horror of falling without awareness of the descent.
—I will not fall for monsters like him—, she had sworn.
But that oath... it unraveled thread by thread.
Monsters do not shield you from time's teeth.
Monsters do not bear your madness without complaint.
Her final thought before sleep claimed her was neither of kingdoms, nor systems, nor consequences.
It was a truth she dared not voice:
–He feels like someone I was meant to find–
Then her eyes closed.
And the tower held her silence, patient as only ancient things can be.