Series Content Advisory
Scriptures of Nokternum is a dark fantasy story involving grief, trauma, violence, death, coercive control, forced experimentation, and bodily alteration. Some chapters address past suicide, abuse, blood, severe injury, and psychological manipulation. Additional chapter-specific warnings are provided when necessary.
Chapter 6: “Not Mine to Touch”
Event Date: May 8th, 2010 - 10:41 PM PDT, Earth
Kaostar found three wars before midnight. None of them held his attention. The first burned across a dead moon circling a planet with red oceans. Armored machines moved through fields of shattered glass, firing blue lances into trenches already full of bodies. The commanders on both sides had names too long to matter and banners too bright to survive the smoke.
Kaostar watched from a ridge of black stone while the moon’s thin atmosphere trembled around him. A week ago, he might have descended. A month ago: he would have chosen a side at random, torn through the other, then corrected the survivors when they mistook survival for victory. Tonight, he only listened.
Metal screamed. Orders cracked through static. Someone prayed in a language whose god did not arrive. Kaostar opened his scarred hand and felt nothing in response.
No hunger. No curiosity. Nothing in the room gave his anger a useful target. He left before either army knew a worse thing than war had considered them and decided they were boring.
The second conflict waited on a city-ship drifting above a blue giant star. Mutineers had taken the engine cathedral. Loyalists held the upper decks. Artificial gravity flickered every nine seconds, turning blood into floating beads before dragging it back across polished floors.
Kaostar stepped through a service corridor, saw sealed doors, armed guards, one terrified engineer, and an argument about command legitimacy. Legitimacy. The universe loved building cages out of prettier words. He passed through without being seen.
The third was not a war yet. Only the beginning of one.
A temple world under violet snow. Priests with knives under their robes. A royal heir hidden beneath an altar. Assassins on the roof. A crowd outside chanting for mercy because they still believed mercy could be summoned by repetition.
Kaostar stood in the rafters and watched the first assassin draw his blade. He could have dropped into the center of it. He could have made every choice in the room irrelevant. Instead, he saw Silas Veyr setting a cup of tea halfway between them in the sand.
Not close enough to force acceptance. Available. Kaostar’s claws tightened around the beam. The wood split.
The assassin below looked up too late to understand the sound. Kaostar opened a threshold and left. The blade never fell. He told himself that did not count as mercy.
He told himself several things. Most of them had started sounding less obedient lately.
———
He did not return to Moonleaf. He repeated the denial until it sounded like an argument.
Kaostar Nokternum did not let quiet tigercoons with cyan markings, careful voices, and irritatingly competent boundaries decide where he went. He did not return because Silas had said he would probably be there tomorrow night. He did not return because Silas had not asked him to. He did not return because the absence of a demand had followed him harder than pleading would have.
He did not return because someone had looked at him and said familiar did not mean safe, then stayed ten yards away. He did not return. The threshold opened in an alley two blocks from the tea place. Kaostar stepped out beneath a broken streetlamp and hated Los Angeles for being exactly where he had aimed.
Rain had not fallen, but the pavement smelled faintly damp from ocean air. Neon gathered in shallow puddles left by cleaning drones. A delivery vehicle hummed past the alley mouth. Two humans laughed under an awning while a fox in a green jacket adjusted the settings on a floating camera.
No one looked into the alley. No one saw the seven-foot-two Lupyena stand there with battlefield ash on his coat and old blood beneath his claws glaring at the street as if the street had personally betrayed him. His palm scar pulsed once. Violet.
Gone.
“Shut up,” he told it.
The scar did not answer. Across the road, Moonleaf glowed under its soft sign, crescent curled around a steaming cup. The front window had been repaired with a temporary panel where someone had cracked it months before. The bookstore beside it was closed, violet lamps still glowing in the upper windows. The vintage clothing shop had placed a headless mannequin in a silver jacket near the display glass, which Kaostar disliked on principle.
Inside the tea place, several patrons sat scattered beneath dim amber lights. The panther still worked behind the counter. Near the back, in the same corner booth, Silas Veyr sat with his back to the wall with his faded charcoal hooded jacket open over a fitted black sleeveless shirt, and his hands occupied. Kaostar remained in the alley for almost a full minute.
Then he crossed the street. The bell above the door rang once. Conversations softened. The panther looked up.
For a moment, his professional smile failed to assemble. Then it did.
“Good evening.”
Kaostar looked at him. The panther glanced toward Silas’s corner booth, then back.
“Black tea?”
Kaostar narrowed his eyes.
“Do you want points for memory?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“Large?”
Kaostar placed money on the counter.
“The one that makes this conversation end fastest.”
The panther’s mouth twitched.
“Large.”
Silas did not look up immediately. He sat in the corner with the cracked table between his hands. Someone had braced the underside with a temporary metal strip and three screws that did not match. Silas had a small toolkit open beside his cup, along with a folded sketch, two replacement brackets, the broken charm from the previous night, and a tiny blue glass bead.
His tail curled loosely around one leg. Not tight tonight. Not relaxed either. Controlled.
His ears shifted when Kaostar approached. Only then did he tip his face up to him. He did not seem surprised. Kaostar found Silas’s lack of surprise more irritating than surprise would have been.
Silas’s cyan eyes moved briefly over him. Coat. Hands. Face.
No visible new wounds. No question asked. “Table’s still cracked,” Silas said. Kaostar stopped beside the booth.
“You came back to tell me furniture news?”
“No.”
Silas looked down at the uneven brace.
“You looked like you might want to check your work.”
The panther behind the counter made a sound that might have been a cough if everyone involved felt like lying. Kaostar slowly turned his head toward him. The panther became very interested in the tea. Silas picked up a tiny screwdriver.
“Too much?”
Kaostar looked back at him.
“Unfortunately, no.”
Silas nodded as if accepting a technical note. Kaostar sat across from him. The booth creaked. Silas did not flinch this time.
He did, however move the sharpest tool farther from Kaostar’s side of the table. Kaostar noticed. Silas noticed him noticing.
“Habit,” Silas said.
“Fear?”
“Consideration.”
“Same thing wearing cleaner fur.”
“Sometimes.”
The panther arrived with the tea and placed it on the table. Not in Kaostar’s hand. Kaostar’s gaze flicked to Silas. Silas had not told him to do that.
Probably. The panther retreated before being invited into the shape of anyone else’s problem. Kaostar took the cup. Black tea.
Plain. No cinnamon. Steam curled between them. Silas returned to adjusting the brace beneath the cracked table. He did not start talking or ask why Kaostar had returned.
He simply worked, slow and precise; tightening the mismatched screws until the table stopped wobbling under his hands. Kaostar watched him for too long.
“You repair things people should replace.”
Silas did not look up.
“Sometimes replacing is just admitting you didn’t want to understand the break.”
“Sometimes broken things are broken.”
“Yeah.”
Silas tested the table with two fingers. The repaired leg stayed firm.
“Still useful though.”
Kaostar leaned back.
“Is that your entire philosophy?”
“No.”
“What’s the rest?”
Silas picked up the cracked charm.
“Don’t make jokes about it in front of people who might turn it into a metaphor.”
Kaostar stared at him. Silas’s mouth barely moved. There and gone. A smile small enough to deny in court.
Kaostar hated that he saw it. He took a drink of tea. The heat burned less than yesterday. That was disappointing.
The silence settled. Outside, Los Angeles moved under neon and ocean mist. Moonleaf hummed softly with low voices, spoons against ceramic, warm machinery, and the faint hiss of water being brought near boiling but not quite. Silas repaired the charm.
Kaostar drank tea. No one demanded that the quiet become anything else. That was how Silas made the first mistake of the night. He made the room tolerable.
Kaostar set the cup down.
“You’re not going to ask?”
Silas angled one ear toward him.
“About?”
“Where I went.”
“No.”
“Why.”
“No.”
“If I killed anyone.”
Silas’s fingers stopped around the charm. There it was. Not fear. Not quite.
Attention.
“Do you want me to ask?”
Kaostar smiled.
“I want to know what kind of idiot leaves the question alone.”
Silas looked at the blue glass bead in his palm.
“The kind who knows answers can become weapons if someone is cornered into giving them.”
Kaostar’s expression tightened. Silas placed the bead into the charm’s broken setting.
“Also the kind who thinks if you wanted me to know, you would make sure I did.”
“That sounds like trust.”
“No.”
Silas pressed the charm closed gently.
“It sounds like not grabbing.”
The word passed between them with too many teeth. Kaostar’s scarred palm flexed beneath the table. Metatronas’s hand closing around his. Access becoming ownership.
An offered hand becoming a lock. Silas looked down as though he had felt the shift without meaning to. He set the charm aside.
“I’m not reaching toward it,” he said.
Kaostar went still.
“What?”
“Your aura.”
Silas’s voice remained soft.
“I can still sense that it’s there. I can’t stop having the sense entirely. But I’m not reaching toward it.”
Kaostar’s eyes narrowed.
“You expect applause?”
“No.”
“Forgiveness?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
Silas rubbed his thumb against one claw.
“To say the boundary clearly before you have to guess where it is.”
Kaostar stared. Silas kept his gaze on the table. His ears were back, but not flat.
“Last night, I followed the feeling without asking whether that feeling gave me the right to approach. It didn’t.”
“You came anyway.”
“I know.”
“And tonight?”
Silas lifted his gaze to Kaostar’s face.
“You came in.”
The answer was quiet. The absence of triumph made the answer land harder. Kaostar leaned forward slightly.
“So now the monster has consented to tea.”
Silas’s eyes cooled.
“I didn’t call you a monster.”
“Most people get there eventually.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No,” Kaostar said. “You’re stupid.”
“Possibly.”
“Curious.”
“Yes.”
“Afraid.”
“Yes.”
“Lonely.”
Silas’s fingers closed around the screwdriver. Kaostar saw the word land.
Good.
Cruel. Accurate. Silas breathed in.
“Yes.”
The answer stripped some of the fun out of the cut. Kaostar leaned back.
“You should lie more.”
“I’m bad at it.”
“Try.”
Silas looked at him.
“No.”
Kaostar smiled despite himself. There it was again. The irritating little resistance. Not defiance loud enough to strike.
Not submission soft enough to crush. A door closed politely. Kaostar looked toward the repaired table brace.
“I left someone alive recently.”
Silas’s posture changed. Barely. But Kaostar saw it. The tea place continued around them, unaware that a confession had just entered the booth wearing a knife under its tongue.
“A brother,” Kaostar said. “His younger brother died because of me.”
Silas did not interrupt.
“I left him alive so he would hate me properly. So he would gather what was left. Train. Curse my name. Find me someday.”
Kaostar’s pale eyes fixed on him.
“I told him grief might make something useful out of him.”
Silas’s jaw tightened. There. Judgment.
Good.
Kaostar almost relaxed.
“That was cruel,” Silas said.
Flat. No tremor. No performance. Kaostar’s smile sharpened.
“You leaving?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing?”
Silas placed the screwdriver down. Careful. Deliberate.
“Not making cruelty smaller.”
The booth felt suddenly too narrow. Kaostar’s claws pressed against his cup. Silas looked at them, then back at his face.
“You wanted me to recoil.”
Kaostar’s voice lowered.
“Careful.”
“You did.”
“Maybe I wanted honesty.”
“You got it.”
Silas’s eyes held his for one second longer than comfort allowed.
“That was cruel. And you chose it. So don’t bury it under what was done to you.”
The tea in Kaostar’s cup trembled. A thin ripple crossed its surface. The panther behind the counter looked over. Silas did not signal him this time.
He watched Kaostar. Kaostar’s lips drew back enough to show teeth.
“You think this is where you become my conscience?”
“No.”
“Good. I killed the last world that tried to assign me one.”
“I think conscience assigned itself before I got here.”
Kaostar moved. Only his hand. Fast enough that Silas could not stop it. The cup cracked between Kaostar’s fingers.
Tea leaked hot over his knuckles. Silas flinched. Kaostar watched him. Silas did not apologize for flinching.
Better. Worse. Kaostar released the cup before it fully collapsed. Silas reached toward his napkins.
Stopped.
His hand hovered for half a breath. Then lowered. Silas drew the hand fully back and placed both palms flat against his thighs. The worn edge of his single fingerless glove visible on one hand and a simple wrist wrap on the other against the dark utility cloth of his trousers. Kaostar noticed.
His voice came out colder.
“Changed your mind?”
Silas looked at the leaking cup.
“No.”
“Then why stop?”
Silas’s gaze moved to Kaostar’s scarred hand. Not touching. Not staring. Acknowledging and withdrawing in the same motion.
“Not mine to touch.”
The words emptied the room of sound. Kaostar’s fingers twitched. For one impossible second, he was back in the arena with Metatronas’s mechanical hand around his palm. Containment was never located only in the room.
Then he was in the cave with Harrow setting cloth between them. Then on the beach with Silas placing tea halfway across the sand. Not mine to touch. Kaostar stood so abruptly the booth scraped backward.
Silas did not move. His pupils had narrowed. His body knew danger. His voice did not chase it.
Kaostar looked down at him.
“You say things like you want to survive and die at the same time.”
Silas swallowed.
“I usually prefer surviving.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I almost fooled myself.”
A laugh escaped Kaostar. Sharp. Brief. Unwanted.
Several patrons looked over. Kaostar ignored them. Silas’s ears lifted a fraction. The faintest satisfaction touched his expression, then vanished.
Kaostar pointed at him with one claw.
“Do not look pleased with yourself.”
“I’ll try internally.”
“Silas.”
The full name landed heavier this time. Silas went still. Kaostar leaned closer.
“You are not safe with me.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
Silas’s voice softened.
“Probably not.”
“I have torn cities open for less than what you just said.”
“I believe you.”
“I am not wounded furniture.”
Silas’s eyes sharpened.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You implied damaged things still have use.”
“I was talking about the table.”
“Liar.”
Silas held his gaze.
“Yes.”
The honesty again. Kaostar stopped. Silas breathed through the fear and continued. “I was also talking about me.”
The anger in Kaostar did not vanish. It miss stepped. Silas looked away first not in retreat but because the admission had cost him.
“I repair things because sometimes I need proof that a break isn’t the end of function.”
His thumb pressed against one claw.
“Because I’ve been treated like something assembled wrong. Because if something damaged can still hold, maybe I can too.”
Kaostar said nothing. Silas’s voice lowered.
“I know you’re not a table.”
“Brilliant.”
“And I know repair is not the same as ownership.”
Kaostar’s scar pulsed once. Silas saw the violet flicker beneath blackened lines. He looked away before curiosity could become trespass.
“Whatever happened to your hand,” Silas said, “It taught you something about people taking access and calling it permission.”
Kaostar’s eyes went pale and bright. The rust-red bands around his forearms began to glow. Silas’s shoulders tightened, but he did not retreat.
“I’m not asking to know,” Silas said quickly. “I’m saying I noticed the door. I’m not opening it.”
The air around Kaostar folded. A seam appeared beside his shoulder. Thin. Dark.
Hungry. The tea shop lights dimmed at the edges. The panther stepped from behind the counter. Silas lifted one hand again.
Not yet.
The panther stopped. Kaostar’s gaze flicked toward the signal.
“You trust him.”
Silas did not look away.
“He owns the tea place. I crack less furniture than you.”
“Funny.”
“A little.”
The seam closed. The lights steadied. Kaostar sat back down. Slowly.
The booth creaked under him as if it had opinions and very poor survival instincts. Silas exhaled without making it obvious. Kaostar noticed anyway. The cracked cup leaked onto the table.
Silas slid a napkin toward the spill. Halfway. Kaostar looked at it. Silas removed his hand.
Available. Not forced. Kaostar took it. Their fingers did not touch.
———
The second cup arrived in ceramic. The panther placed it farther from Kaostar’s hand than strictly necessary. Kaostar noticed.
“You learning too?”
The panther smiled carefully.
“I’m deeply committed to professional development.”
Silas looked down very hard. Kaostar turned his head toward him.
“Are you laughing?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“Badly.”
The panther left. Kaostar took the ceramic cup and did not break it. The cup stayed whole. That small success irritated him.
Silas returned to the charm, but his hands had become less steady. Kaostar watched.
“You said leaving before rejection overlaps with smart.”
Silas paused.
“I said leaving would be smart or familiar.”
“Answer the question I almost asked.”
Silas’s mouth tightened. Kaostar waited. The tigercoon turned the charm over.
“When I was younger, I thought if I left first, it meant I chose it.”
Kaostar said nothing. Silas kept his gaze down.
“Tiger families. Raccoon groups. School rooms. Clubs. Work crews. People who liked the idea of knowing me until knowing me meant defending me when someone else got ugly.”
His voice remained even. Too even.
“So I got good at leaving before the room changed its mind.”
Kaostar’s eyes moved over him. Cyan markings. Navy fur. Purple claws.
A body that had been forced to explain itself until silence became easier than language.
“Did it work?” Kaostar asked.
Silas’s mouth lifted faintly.
“Sometimes.”
He looked toward the window.
“Mostly it just meant I got lonely with better timing.”
The sentence sat between them with its hands folded. Kaostar did not touch it. He looked away. Outside, a bus passed scattering blue light across the glass.
For one second, the window reflected another place. Not Moonleaf. Not Los Angeles. A cave wall.
A dead flashlight. Three questions carved crookedly into stone.
CAN THE DEAD RETURN?
WHERE DOES POWER COME FROM?
WHAT MUST I BECOME?
Then the reflection shifted. The tea machine hissed. Water under pressure. Almost rain.
Almost creek. Almost the first breath before a storm that never arrived. The smell came again. Rain that had not fallen.
Kaostar’s grip tightened around the ceramic cup, but he did not break it. Somewhere too deep to hear clearly, a voice almost asked.
Weather?
No.
Memory. Only memory. His jaw locked. Silas went very still.
“You just went somewhere,” he said.
Kaostar’s gaze snapped to him.
“No.”
Silas nodded once.
“Okay.”
Kaostar would have preferred the question. Kaostar leaned forward.
“You do that on purpose?”
“Do what?”
“Let people keep their lies.”
Silas considered.
“Sometimes a lie is holding something up until someone can stand without it.”
The words struck wrong. Holding something up. Load-bearing. Then build around it.
Make instability load-bearing. Metatronas’s lab. Lightstorm preserved as anchor. The creek stone refusing the map.
Kaostar’s eyes brightened. Silas saw the effect and immediately looked regretful.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t.”
Silas closed his mouth. Kaostar breathed through his teeth. The rain-scent faded. The tea shop returned.
Amber lights. Low voices. Panther pretending not to watch. Silas in the corner booth, hands folded now because even he seemed to know fixing the charm had become too small an excuse.
Kaostar’s voice went quiet.
“You notice too much.”
“Yes.”
“That has consequences.”
“I know.”
“No. You have suspicions.”
Silas accepted that with a slight nod.
“Then I have suspicions.”
Kaostar stared at him.
“You are exhausting.”
“I’ve heard ‘distant.’”
“They were being generous.”
Silas’s tail flicked once. For the first time that night, something like amusement warmed his eyes without immediately hiding. Kaostar felt the edge of his own expression almost answer. He killed it.
Mostly. Silas saw that too. Of course he did.
———
An hour passed.
No one called it that. The tea cooled. The repaired table held.
Silas finished setting the blue glass bead back into the cracked charm. The repair was visible. A thin line crossed the metal where the break had been. The bead sat slightly off-center.
Silas seemed satisfied. Kaostar looked at it.
“Ugly.”
“Stable.”
“Barely.”
“That counts.”
“According to who?”
“Me.”
Silas slipped the charm into one of the hidden pockets of his jacket. Kaostar looked toward the front window.
The city had thinned outside. Fewer pedestrians. More reflections. Cars moving like glowing insects through damp-dark streets.
He should have left forty minutes ago. Maybe more. He did not know exactly when the failure had begun. The uncertainty unsettled him.
Kaostar opened his hand beneath the table. A threshold formed beside the booth. Small. Silent.
Dark. Silas noticed the pressure, but did not look at it. Kaostar watched him. The opening waited.
Silas returned his attention to his cup.
“You’re not going to ask?” Kaostar said.
Silas’s eyes remained on the tea.
“No.”
“You did not ask last time.”
“I remember.”
“Repetition suggests strategy.”
“Or respect.”
“Dangerous word.”
“Yes.”
Kaostar looked at the threshold. Then at Silas.
“You want me to stay.”
Silas breathed in slowly.
“Yes.”
The honesty landed without hook or chain. Kaostar’s fingers twitched. Silas continued before the word could become a trap. “But wanting something doesn’t make it mine to demand.”
The threshold wavered. The booth sat between them. The table was cracked and braced. The napkin lay used near Kaostar’s cup.
The ceramic remained whole. Silas looked up.
“I don’t want to be another reason you feel cornered.”
Kaostar’s mouth tightened.
“That again.”
“It’s still true.”
“You repeat yourself when afraid.”
“Sometimes.”
“You are afraid now.”
“Yes.”
“Of me leaving?”
Silas thought about it.
“No.”
The answer irritated him. It steadied him too. Silas looked toward the threshold.
“I’m afraid of what happens if you think staying means surrender.”
Kaostar did not answer. Silas’s voice stayed quiet.
“Think somewhere quieter.”
The words were not an order. Not a plea. Not a hand reaching. A suggestion placed halfway across the table.
Available. Kaostar laughed softly. No humor. No anger.
Something more tired than both.
“Don’t pretend you know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t.”
Silas met his eyes.
“That’s why I said think.”
The threshold widened. Kaostar stood. Silas did not. The panther behind the counter looked up but said nothing.
Moonleaf held its breath. Kaostar looked down at the tigercoon in the corner booth. Midnight navy fur. Cyan geometric markings.
Purple claws. Bright eyes that did not confuse fear with rejection. A hybrid who sensed familiar ruin and still kept his hands to himself. Kaostar’s voice came low.
“You should stop making doors sound like choices.”
Silas’s ears angled back.
“Are they not?”
Kaostar stepped into the threshold.
“Not usually.”
Silas nodded once.
“Then maybe this one can be.”
That followed him through. The threshold trembled around Kaostar’s shoulders. He could have let it close there. He should have.
Instead, his jaw worked once as though the word had teeth.
“Silas.”
The tigercoon looked up. Kaostar hated that the name came easier the second time.
“Goodbye.”
Silas did not reach for the word. He only nodded.
“Think somewhere quieter.”
The threshold closed before Kaostar could decide whether that was permission, farewell, or both.
———
For a while after, Silas did not watch the door. He returned to the cracked table and tightened one screw that was already tight. The panther glanced over.
“You okay?”
Silas held the screwdriver still.
“No.”
The panther waited. Silas tested the table with two fingers. The repair remained solid.
“Better than yesterday.”
The panther sighed.
“That is a terrible answer.”
Silas’s mouth lifted faintly.
“I know.”
He looked toward the corner where Kaostar had sat. The ceramic cup remained whole. The intact cup should have meant nothing. Silas let it matter anyway.
———
Kaostar emerged on a rooftop above Los Angeles. Not far. Not another planet. Not a battlefield.
Not the cave. A high building with a garden built into its upper ledge. Serax design again, full of wind-shaped shrubs and silver grass trembling under the night air. The city stretched below him in glittering contradictions: old streets, new towers, coastal haze, moving lights, lives continuing without permission from his grief. Moonleaf was visible from here only as one warm square among thousands.
Small. Easy to erase. Impossible to ignore. Kaostar stood near the edge.
The wind moved through his black fur and rust-red mane crest. His coat shifted around him. The straps of his pants snapped softly against his legs. He opened his scarred palm.
The blackened route remained. Old access. Burned ownership. A place where touch had once become command.
Not mine to touch. Kaostar closed his hand. He told himself he had left. That was true.
He told himself leaving meant the same thing as not caring. The city lights kept their opinion to themselves. He looked toward the ocean. The Pacific moved under moonlight, vast and unreadable.
Somewhere below, Silas Veyr probably returned to repairing the table. Or the charm, or some other damaged thing that had not asked to become a lesson. Somewhere farther than distance, Harrow had once stayed awake in a cave and not called it forgiveness. Somewhere deeper than either, a memory kept smelling like rain that had never fallen. Kaostar breathed in.
No blood. No smoke. No battlefield metal. Tea leaves.
Ocean air. Neon-warmed pavement. A trace of something almost like weather. He looked for another war.
There were always wars. Always doors. Always places willing to confuse his arrival with meaning. He felt them faintly along the edges of perception: Pressure points in the dark, conflicts opening like mouths across the universe.
He could choose any of them. He did not. Kaostar stood above Los Angeles and let the failure remain visible. He had returned.
He had stayed. He had left. And nothing had been destroyed to make any of those things simpler. The thought made his chest ache around the unreadable stone.
His first instinct was to mock it. His second was to find something breakable. His third did not know what it was yet. That frightened him more than the first two.
Below, Moonleaf’s warm square stayed lit. Kaostar watched it until the light became only light. Until the city became only city. Until leaving stopped feeling like erasure and started feeling, dangerously, like distance.
Chosen. Temporary. His scarred hand loosened. For once, Kaostar did not look for another war.
He stayed above Los Angeles and thought.
~ To be continued ~
