Chapter — The Tapestry of the Bound
The air in the Hanazawa mansion was not merely still; it was expectant. Luke stood in the center of the grand drawing room, the moonlight cutting across the polished floorboards like a silver blade. The previous day's failed practice weighed on him, but it was the dream—the blurred voice, the crimson field, and Marin's hauntingly final gaze—that truly anchored his soul in unease.
He could feel the house watching him. It was a sensation he remembered from his teenage years, the last time he had fled here in a fit of adolescent confusion. Back then, he had walked in a boy burdened by questions and walked out a man who seemed to have read the answers in the very grain of the wood.
"There is a lock here, Auru," Luke whispered, his voice barely a breath. "And I am the key, but I don't know which door I'm supposed to fit into. The people in the village... their hatred isn't just spite. It's a reaction to something. Something the Hanazawas did, or something we represent."
Auru floated near a dusty bookshelf, her light illuminating titles written in a script so old it predated the current Formulation. "You feel it too, then? The secret isn't just in the basement or behind a hidden panel. It's in the history of your blood."
Across the miles, in the neon-soaked outskirts of Tokyo, the members of Aurafiest were discovering the reality of a world without its anchor.
The battle inside the B-Rank dungeon had been a chaotic mess. Usually, a monster of this caliber would be neutralized in minutes, but today, every synchronization was off.
"Luke! Cover me!" Liod shouted habitually, dashing toward the towering, obsidian-skinned beast.
"Fool! Luke isn't here!" Uno roared, clashing his shield against the monster's claws to create a desperate opening.
Liod skidded to a halt, realizing the gap in their formation was a yawning void. Marin threw a massive aura sphere, her blue energy erupting with a frantic intensity that lacked its usual surgical precision. The monster staggered back, but instead of being pinned down by Luke's tactical interference, it found a small gap in their perimeter.
"It's escaping!" Kael shouted, his hands glowing with a failed binding spell.
They eventually brought the creature down, but only after a grueling hour of uncoordinated struggle. As they emerged from the rift, the team collapsed on the concrete, gasping for air. Chika wiped a streak of grime from her forehead.
"Phew... that took twice as long as it should have," she panted.
Uno leaned against his shield, his expression grim. "Now I truly feel it. Luke isn't just a combatant. He's the glue. He knows exactly when to cover, when to attack, and how to make us look better than we are."
"He knows his role better than he knows himself," Liod added, looking at Shuri. "Shuri, you said he went to the Hanazawa Estate? The old mansion?"
Shuri nodded, her eyes distant. "My Aunt calls it the sanctuary of silence."
Liod's eyes widened slightly as a memory was triggered. "Hanazawa Estate... wait. I remember that name. Years ago, before the Formulation became what it is now, Luke vanished for a few months. When he came back, it was like magic. He was like an open book that had solved all its own riddles. He was calm, focused... he was the Luke we know today."
"What are you saying, Liod?" Marin asked, her voice sharp with sudden interest.
Liod sat on a stone bench, the rest of the group gathering around him. "My father told me once—he knew Luke's father before we were even born. He meet Mr. Hanazawa when he got newly married to Ms.Hanazawa.He said Mr. Hanazawa was a man in deep despair when Luke Older Sister was about to be born. He couldn't find a stable job, he was lost. He left Luke's mother for months to me, that time ,i also married to your mom recently that time,he was searching for something. My father asked her why she wasn't worried, and she just said, 'I believe in him. He will come back before the birth. He has to go to the mansion to find the way.'"
"And did he?" Chika asked.
"As soon as the day of birth arrived, Mr. Hanazawa appeared," Liod continued. "He was a changed man. He got a high-paying job, his despair was gone, and he acted like he knew exactly what the future held. My father asked him how he did it, and Mr. Hanazawa told him: 'Our mansion holds every question and every problem we will ever face. We just need the right person at the right time to unlock it. My wife and daughter were the keys—I saw them in a dream, and the mansion guided me out of the darkness.'"
The group sat in stunned silence. The idea that Luke's family held a prophetic connection to their ancestral home was something out of an old legend.
"But wait," Shuri interrupted,
"Why i dont know all?"
Liod said" Are you Luke relative?"
Shuri brow furrowed. "I'm a relative, but only from the mother's side. And if what you're saying is true, then... I remember another story. My mother's family has a myth called the Kotoki."
"The Kotoki?" Uno asked.
"In our lineage, for generations, no girls were ever born," Shuri explained. "Luke's mother was the first girl child in over a century. The legend says that the man who breaks the Kotoki 'curse' and marries the girl must possess a unique, ancient bloodline. And the Kotoki girls themselves are unique—their firstborn is always a girl, and they are said to be 'Dream-Seers.' My mother told me she saw Luke's father in a dream long before they ever met. She even spoke to him."
Uno's eyes narrowed as he connected the final dot. "Luke once told me... he said the Hanazawas are 'Destiny Bonded.' They get dreams of the people they are bonded to, especially when those people are facing a crisis."
The words hit Marin like a physical blow. The sounds of the city faded into a dull roar as the sentence repeated in her mind: Destiny Bonded... Dreams of the people they are bonded to.
Did Luke dream of someone other than me? she wondered, her heart racing. Is that why he looked so terrified? Is he running because he saw his destiny, or because he's trying to fight it?
"It can't be true," Marin whispered, her voice trembling. "It's just a myth."
Without another word, she turned and began to run.
"Marin! Where are you going?" Kael shouted, but she didn't stop.
She ran through the twilight streets, her breath hitching in her throat. The sky was turning a bruised purple, and the first stars were peeking through the smog. Say I am special, she thought desperately. Say I am the one he is bonded to, even if it hurts.
She arrived at her home, bursting through the door to find her mother in the kitchen. Her Mom usually greet her"Marin,You are late today."
Marin asked,
"Mom! Tell me! Is there a myth in our family? Am I special? Is there something about when I was born?"
Her mother looked at her in shock. "Marin? You're late, and you're talking nonsense. What's happened to you?"
Before Marin could answer, Shuri and Chika arrived, breathless. They caught Marin just as her knees buckled from the sheer emotional exhaustion of the day.
"Auntie, she's just tired," Chika lied, helping Marin toward her bedroom. "We had a very hard battle today. She needs sleep."
In her fitful slumber, Marin's lips moved, a silent plea escaping: "Tell me I'm the one... tell me it was me in the dream."
Shuri said,"I think that that had made bad effect on Marin.
Chika said,"If all the tale are true then Marin should have something special in it."
Back at the mansion, Luke was moving through the darkened library, his fingers tracing the spines of leather-bound journals.
"It's been a whole day, Luke," Auru said. "What are we actually looking for? You said you got your answer last time you were here."
"Last time, the answer was about my career—about the path of the study," Luke said, pulling down a heavy tome embossed with the Hanazawa crest. "But this time, I'm finding out about our history. I need to know why the Formulation chose me. And I need to know why Marin... why she was in that dream."
"You're still thinking about the dream," Auru teased, though her voice held a note of concern. "You think you're going through your father's 'magic' process?"
"If the mansion acts as a guide for those in despair," Luke said, opening the book to a page detailing the Taurus Constellation, "then the people who appear in our dreams aren't just coincidences. They are the anchors. If Marin is my anchor, then every move I make—the shield, the nodes, the war—it all revolves around her. And that scares me more than any devil."
In Marin's house, her father returned late from his work at the Tokyo Ministry. He noticed the quietness of the home and asked about his daughter.
"She's sleeping," her mother said, setting a plate of food before him. "But she was acting strange, asking about family myths and if she was special."
Marin's father paused, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Myths? Well, there is that old story our grandmother used to tell. She said that any girl born in our family under the Taurus Constellation would possess a spirit that could only be tamed by a 'Unique King.' She said they would have a future that would change the world."
He laughed, taking a bite of his meal. "I never put much stock in it, but Marin was born exactly under that constellation. I wonder what brought that up?"
In the silence of the mansion, Luke found a passage in the ancestral journal. It spoke of a "Binding of the Heavens," a rare event where two lineages—one of the Shield and one of the Star—would collide during a time of great darkness.
Luke looked out the window at the constellation of Taurus hanging high in the winter sky.
"The person who comes in our dream is the solution,also as per binding of two lineages, Taurus constellation" Luke whispered, repeating his father's words.
He didn't know yet that back in Tokyo, Marin was that girl.
And he didn't know that the "afterlife threads" he had seen in his own dream were beginning to tighten. The mansion was no longer just a house; it was a machine of destiny, and as the 7-month countdown ticked away, the "Unique Auramaster" and the "Taurus Girl" were being pulled toward a center they could no longer avoid.
"I'm not running anymore, Auru," Luke said, closing the book. "I'm going to find the heart of this house. And then, I'm going to find my way back to her."
End of Chapter.