Scene 1 — Broadcasts and Teeth
(Huginn POV)
"Breaking News! Poland's top Explorers have banded together to build their own Super Guild, officially leaving from under the EU. Tensions have escalated after the Odin Trial in America, with EU officials blaming Odin for the younger generation of Travelers becoming turncoats."
The broadcaster spoke like he was reading a eulogy and selling ads at the same time.
"Mass riots and violence have been reported across Europe. Native-born Explorers and Travelers attached to Oceanus—leader of Olympus—have weaponized his knowledge. Poland has seen the largest increase in violence. But compared to other European nations—infighting between migrant Travelers and native Travelers—the Polish government has taken a strict stance: protect citizens first."
The screen cut to footage: streets burning under gray skies, border checkpoints turned into fortresses.
"They've placed SS-ranked Travelers across the full border line. Any attempt at illegal entry has been blocked by force—escalating into borderline war between multiple groups."
Behind me, the private room remained quiet—warded glass, thick curtains, the faint smell of old money and newer paranoia. A place built for people who thought violence was something that happened to other classes.
Baldur sat in the corner, posture relaxed, presence heavy. He looked calm the way an ocean looked calm—right before it decided to swallow ships.
Crystal stood near the window with her arms folded, eyes fixed on the screen without really watching it. She'd been like that since the Trial ended—still upright, still functioning, but with something inside her quietly refusing to heal.
The broadcast shifted.
"Death cults have also been reported across multiple African regions. Several civilian groups report coordinated attacks by separate cult cells. Establishments burned. Dozens injured. Zodiac sources indicate seated members have been deployed to support local Travelers—"
Then the anchor smiled like he'd been waiting for dessert.
"And in the Americas, following the recent public split between Baldur and the American governing body—sources claim he has 'crowned himself Emperor of America.' Reports suggest he has deployed hit squads into El Salvador, clashing with state military forces. The UN is pressing for answers, as Canadian migrant communities fear they may be next—"
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was cute.
I leaned back, watching the slander pour like wine.
"So. Still enjoying the perks of being a headline, Baldur?"
He didn't look up.
"Tired."
Crystal's mouth twitched once—almost a smile, then gone.
I rolled my cup between my fingers.
"The British love painting Poland as a monster. The UN loves painting you as a tyrant. Funny how the people who never bleed always speak the loudest."
Crystal turned slightly, her voice controlled—too controlled.
"It's not just noise anymore."
Baldur finally looked at her.
"Then say it clean."
She did.
"It keeps coming back to the same question. Do we let them break us from the inside while we argue over optics?"
Silence.
On the TV, the anchor re-ran a clip from the Trial—polished courtroom lighting, flags behind a proxy's shoulders, his gaze cutting upward toward the student section like a threat disguised as civic concern.
Crystal's fingers tightened unconsciously.
I set the cup down.
"So what do you want from me?"
She looked at me. Really looked.
"Go aid Tance."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Tance is government."
"He's a leash," she replied. "He can walk into rooms we can't without starting a war."
I scoffed.
"And why would I help the government? We both know who's at fault for resources bleeding. This isn't exactly a well-guarded secret—especially when our parents and non-astral migrants forget the internet exists."
Crystal didn't flinch.
"Then stop letting the secret kill people."
Baldur's voice came low.
"If we wait too long, it won't be the UN we're fighting. It'll be our own communities. Our own kids. Our own."
Crystal's gaze cut back to the screen, where Europe burned in polite language.
"If optics are your problem, put the Romanian you wasted effort retrieving from NYC to work. Let one of them be the one telling the other opportunists to get out. They can't call it racist if it's one of theirs saying it."
I laughed once—short.
"Cold."
Crystal's eyes stayed hard.
"Accurate."
Baldur skimmed the folder Crystal had brought, then closed it.
"And Tance?"
Crystal's voice dropped.
"Tance is a owner for now. The bite has to be ours."
I leaned forward.
"Fine. But I'm not sending one of our kids into a cult nest blind."
Crystal's eyes flicked to the door.
"We're not."
Her tone softened by exactly one degree—just enough to prove she still remembered how.
"Crow's already geared."
Scene 2 — Hornless Reaper
(Crow POV)
"Come on, Crow," Huginn said. "We've got work."
He stepped out first—mask on, black combat gear fitted like it grew there. A sword at his hip. A staff in hand stamped with Zodiac markings.
He looked like someone who'd stopped pretending this world was civilized.
I followed him into the night and took to the rooftops out of habit.
"I figured," I said, springing a gap. "They don't drag Explorer kids into a circus unless something's about to bite. Who are we hitting?"
Huginn watched me land and rebound, then hummed.
"Nice control."
We cleared another building.
"We're hunting the Followers of the Hornless Reaper," he said.
My stomach tightened.
"Because of me?"
"Because of your circumstance," he corrected. "You secure the taboo material they've been moving. Book pages. Fragments. Anything written."
"Odin Diary-level bad?"
"That's the nightmare scenario," he said, not missing a step. "If they've written even half a page of real death taboos, we could be looking at an authentic Death influence pushing through Earth."
"The skeleton hand?" I asked.
A small laugh escaped him.
"That was a God-King's pawn. Do you really think a king ruins his investments for jokes?"
We landed on the roof above a warehouse that looked abandoned—except the air around it felt wrong. A residue clung to everything like invisible smoke.
Huginn crouched at the ledge.
"Remember your mission," he said. "Find the taboo. If it's not death-related, retreat. I'll take the rest."
"And comms?"
"Dead the moment I light up." He glanced at me. "When you see my signal, you move."
He lifted his staff.
Thunder answered like it had been waiting.
Huginn dropped into the street, and the world changed.
A barrier snapped outward—his domain sealing the area like a lid. Heat rose. Rain clouds gathered unnaturally fast, the air thickening under pressure.
The storm didn't feel like weather.
It felt like law.
Then the first bolt hit.
The warehouse roof split open.
Anyone inside died so cleanly my senses couldn't even mourn them.
Robed figures poured out—panicked, armed, carrying guns and rockets like it mattered. Some wore a European gang symbol stitched into their sleeves, imported violence pretending it could bargain with gods.
Huginn fell from the sky in his rooster mask, staff turning into a lightning rod that left afterimages. Travelers were sent flying like toys.
The staff didn't look like it moved.
My head tried to track the motion and failed.
I forced myself to refocus.
This wasn't my fight.
I pulled shadow over my body—thin, imperfect camouflage. I couldn't manifest laws like Huginn.
But astral energy was still energy.
With enough control, it could pretend.
I lowered my output, balancing intake and release until my presence blurred into the chaos. Huginn's storm made the perfect cover.
In a frenzy like this, even a mistake looked like background noise.
I slipped through a side entrance—splintered door, smoke, the taste of ash sticking to my tongue.
Inside, the warehouse was a grave pretending to be a building.
Astral residue clung to the floor like mildew.
I sent a pulse through the shadows—an echo-locator, crude but effective—listening for anything that didn't belong to Huginn's storm.
Death energy was different.
It didn't roar.
It waited.
I followed the thinnest thread into the deeper hallways.
Then I saw the pages.
Half-burned. Scattered. Still humming.
Like they'd panicked mid-transport and dropped a door on the ground.
I crouched, careful.
The ink on the nearest scrap crawled—not physically.
Meaning-crawl.
Words that wanted a mouth.
And then the chant hit my ears—faint at first, like it was coming through a bad speaker:
"The Black Sun. Hornless Reaper."
On repeat.
A loop.
A prayer trying to become a title.
My vision fuzzed.
Not dizziness—capture.
Like someone had hooked a wire into the back of my skull and started switching channels.
The warehouse walls peeled away.
Reality turned into a screen.
And captions slammed into place, clean and centered, repeating like a forced command:
[THE BLACK SUN. HORNLESS REAPER.]
[THE BLACK SUN. HORNLESS REAPER.]
[THE BLACK SUN. HORNLESS REAPER.]
The words weren't on the paper.
They were on the world.
The loop accelerated until it blurred.
Then it glitched.
Letters smeared like wet ink. The phrase stuttered mid-claim:
[THE BLACK SUN. HORNLESS—]
[THE BLACK SUN. HOR—]
[THE BLACK SUN—]
A second channel tried to form beneath it.
Faint. Unauthorized.
Then it arrived—older, closer, final:
[NO.]
The cult line slammed back in, desperate:
[THE BLACK SUN. HORNLESS REAPER.]
And the second channel answered, like a holder stepping in and cancelling a theft before it could root:
[ASURA KING.]
[THE CRIMSON SUN.]
The cult caption didn't fade.
It burned away—letters blackening at the edges, curling inward, erased.
Sound collapsed into a single long note.
And I fell—not down, but through.
The tunnel opened: layered wars, worlds breaking, crowns shattering, armies kneeling to things too vast to name.
Then it stabilized.
My mind tried to be kind.
It gave me an archetype.
A robe.
A scythe.
A void where a face should be.
A standard Grim Reaper—clean, symbolic, survivable.
And above it, the cult line tried to reassert itself one last time:
[THE BLACK SUN. HORNLESS REAPER.]
The second channel didn't argue.
It responded.
The void behind the Reaper split open and a Crimson Sun bled into the space—massive, alive—its red light infected, bleeding black from its corona in thin strands that didn't fall so much as erase whatever they touched.
The second channel steadied into the only truth it allowed:
[ASURA KING.]
[THE CRIMSON SUN.]
The "Hornless Reaper" appeared—not the archetype, but the pretender behind the name.
Smaller than it should've been.
Real enough to panic.
It lifted its scythe like a shield.
The Crimson Sun turned like a predator noticing a fly.
Heat—divine heat—washed over the void, and the Hornless Reaper ignited like paper. The scythe warped.
The scream had no sound.
Only tearing.
Only charring.
Only the violent sensation of a concept being burned out of the story.
And I realized I wasn't only watching.
I was being pulled.
Something upright began to form ahead—an impossible structure in the dark, a scar standing vertical—growing larger the closer I drifted, like gravity had decided the only direction was toward it.
The Crimson Sun's attention grazed me.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
The captions jittered like reality hesitated to label me:
[—NAME REJECTED—]
[—CYCLE MISMATCH—]
A voice surged inside me, furious and startled—
"QUIT FU—"
It didn't finish.
A cold, womanly hand brushed my cheek.
Another pressed against my chest, firm and absolute—like a lock clicking shut.
Her whisper slid into my ear like a verdict wrapped in velvet:
"Same name. Wrong cycle."
The upright scar stuttered.
The Crimson Sun's pressure snapped back like a chain yanked tight.
And both channels went dead at once.
I lurched—
Waking in the warehouse hallway, still holding the pages, fingers numb.
The paper's edges were burning black again—ordinary, physical, pretending it hadn't just tried to overwrite the universe.
Outside, Huginn's thunder boomed—storm still chewing the night.
I didn't speak.
I didn't ask questions.
I buried the memory so deep it couldn't echo.
Then I pocketed what remained and moved—fast, quiet, alive—
because next time those hands weren't there…
the upright scar might finish forming.
Scene 3 — Hand-Off
(Crow POV)
The storm was still chewing the night when I reached the rendezvous.
Rain didn't fall so much as flinch—every drop trembling like it was afraid of landing wrong under Huginn's domain.
He stood in the alley's mouth like a posted omen.
Rooster mask on.
Staff planted.
Lightning crawling lazily around the metal as if it wanted permission to misbehave.
I landed without a sound.
He didn't turn. Didn't need to.
"Did you get it?" he asked.
I slid my hand inside my jacket and pulled the bundle free.
The pages looked normal for half a second—just paper, torn and scorched—
then the edges curled inward and burned black again, like the universe was trying to delete its own handwriting.
Huginn finally faced me.
He didn't reach for it.
His head tilted, listening—not to me, but to the pressure coming off the ink.
"Talk," he said.
My throat tightened.
"They were chanting."
"Say it."
"'The Black Sun. Hornless Reaper.' On repeat," I said. "Like they were trying to assign a name."
Huginn's fingers tightened around the staff.
"And?"
"And it got overwritten," I said, forcing the words out clean. "Like captions switched channels. The air itself said 'No.' Then: 'Asura King. The Crimson Sun.'"
Huginn went still.
Not fear.
Recognition—the moment a professional realizes the problem isn't bigger than expected, it's a different category.
I held the pages out anyway.
"Take them."
He produced a thin containment wrap—white cloth threaded with faint astral script—and only then did he accept the bundle, pinching it like it could bite through skin.
The black burn twitched once against the cloth, then settled, sulking.
"Is it death?" he asked.
I hesitated.
Half a breath, half a lifetime.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But it isn't normal."
Huginn nodded once, like that answer was worse than a yes.
"Did you see anything else?" he asked.
I stared at the sealed bundle.
"I saw the Hornless Reaper. Not the symbol. The thing behind it."
The storm above us growled like it disliked the sentence.
"It got roasted," I said. "Like it stepped onto a battlefield it had no right to witness. The Crimson Sun didn't fight it—just ended it. Like burning a lie out of the world."
Huginn said nothing.
I forced the last part out.
"And I saw something upright. A scar. Like a structure trying to form. It felt like it knew me."
Huginn's head angled slightly, as if he'd just heard a name spoken somewhere far away.
"Tower?" he asked, casually—too casually.
My blood went cold.
"I didn't say that."
"I did," he replied.
I swallowed.
"Before it finished forming… a woman's hands pulled me back."
He paused.
"Hands."
"Cold," I said. "Calm. Like she'd done it before."
"And she said—"
"Same name. Wrong cycle."
That sentence hung between us like a blade.
Huginn looked down at the bundle.
The black burn licked once at the edge of the cloth, then stopped again—as if it was listening too.
I stepped closer, voice low and urgent.
"We should burn them. If that's even possible."
Huginn exhaled slowly.
"Burning is only safe when you understand what you're burning," he said. "Otherwise you turn evidence into smoke and pray the smoke doesn't learn to breathe."
"I don't care," I snapped, sharper than I meant. "That thing tried to pull me toward it. The pages aren't paper, Huginn. They're a door. Burn the door."
For a moment, Huginn's silence was heavier than thunder.
Then he nodded—once.
"Good instinct," he said. "Wrong execution."
He tightened the wrap and sealed it with a small metal clasp stamped with a Zodiac mark.
"First we quarantine," he continued. "Then we confirm whether this can be destroyed without spreading the meaning."
I stared.
"Meaning spreads?"
Huginn finally looked at me like I was a kid again.
"Names spread," he said. "And some Names don't die—they move."
My jaw tightened.
"So what now?"
Huginn tucked the sealed bundle into an inner compartment of his coat like it weighed more than gold.
"Now you go back to Crystal," he said.
I stiffened.
"And you tell her," Huginn added, voice like a quiet threat, "that if she wants to play politics with the UN and Poland, she can."
He stepped closer, the storm bending around him.
"But this—" he tapped the sealed bundle once "—this is not politics."
He paused.
"This is someone trying to rewrite a Sun."