As Kael was leaving, Nolan watched him go, like a final option he had already lost.
He thought about the button.
He was nine years old when he took it from his mother. It was the last thing he ever took from her. She had died of a violent fever shortly after.
Nolan was tired now. The word promise echoed in his mind—the promise he had made to his mother. Protect Nora. No matter what. His sister. He thought of her face, the way she laughed. The last time he had seen her was as he walked toward the academy.
Time passed, heavy with old regrets. Then a guard came to his cell.
"It's time for you to be taken to the lower halls," the guard said. "The sanctum is waiting for you. The elder is pleased. After a long time, we have an Awakener with a rare constellation."
The guard grabbed Nolan and began moving him toward the lower cells.
Then—a sound.
A guard came running from inside, shouting: "We are under invasion! The compound's been found!"
They left Nolan. He knelt in the corridor, still bound, watching them scatter.
This is the opening.
He climbed the stairs. Above ground, the compound was burning. The flames moved as if they were alive. A man stood at the center of a circle, burning everyone around him.
Must be Theron.
Nolan saw two groups—the usual guards, and another group with shields marked with the southern emblem.
A brief, sharp relief cut through him.
Kael made it.
Nolan quickly hid and watched as the guards circled Theron. He thought about stepping forward, but then he began to feel dizzy. Lack of energy. No air to breathe. His balance slipped. The world tilted. Then nothing.
Voices blurred. Movement without shape. Hands lifting him.
They didn't hesitate. Not even once.
Still, even if I die, I never told them about my kingdom's weaknesses. I fought against them. Even if I die, I will be—
No. I am not dying yet.
His consciousness returned.
He leaned forward, trying to get a clear view. He was in a carriage. He knew this feeling—a warmth he had known his entire life. He turned back.
Nolan's heart and mind eased into calm.
It was his father.
Nolan leaned against him, holding him. "I knew you would come. I held on. I was really fighting. Not breaking. And really believing."
His voice broke before he could stop it.
His father patted Nolan's head and said, "You are really strong. I know that."
They reached the train. Nolan climbed aboard, his movements slow, mechanical. Even with his father beside him, even after the warmth of that embrace, the fear hadn't left. It had only changed shape—less sharp now, but deeper. Settled into his bones like a cold he could not shake.
He had seen what the outside world truly was.
Guards left in disorder. No command structure. That meant the attack was effective.
People hunted and broke others without hesitation. It was routine.
He sat close to his father, close enough to feel the solid weight of him through the fabric of his coat. But he did not speak. He could not. The words were there, somewhere beneath his ribs, but they would not rise.
In his mind, he uttered the same plea over and over, like a prayer he had forgotten the ending to.
I want to protect my kingdom.
But I couldn't even protect myself.
I am not allowed to fail.
The train lurched forward. The landscape outside the window blurred into smears of green and gray. Nolan stared at it without seeing. His hands rested on his knees, palms up, empty.
He was still there. Still hearing those voices.
Three nights of train travel passed. Nolan ate on the first day just due to his lack of appetite in the cell, but over the next two days he avoided food, consuming only a bare minimum. His father watched him with growing worry.
Then the castle of Great Alanoria came back into view.
Nolan stepped outside. People surrounded them, murmuring as he entered the castle and walked slowly toward the stairs, searching for a familiar face.
Before he could reach them, he heard a voice.
Nora came running toward him, crying, desperate, hugging him with the fierce need of someone clinging to the last thread of connection.
"You disappeared all of a sudden without saying anything! You always returned from the academy every two months, but this time—you were gone for nearly a year!"
Nolan patted her head. He held her close and said, "Something happened. I'm back now."
Nolan forced a smile. Flattened. Hollow. The kind that hid everything beneath a surface too thin to last.
"Go on," he said gently. "I need to rest."
Nora looked at him—really looked—and for a moment her eyes searched his face for something he would not give her. Then she nodded, wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, and walked away. He followed her with his eyes until she turned the corner and disappeared.
Nolan continued climbing the stairs. His room was in the left corner of the hall, positioned so the very first glaze of sunlight fell upon him.
He entered and locked his room, then fell onto his bed abruptly.
His mind went quiet. Not peace. Just absence.
He stayed there without thinking of much until dusk.
When Nora knocked on Nolan's door to call him for dinner, he woke up and sat on his bed. There was still a small gap—something felt broken in his way of thinking, even now.
He opened the door, said he would join her soon, and asked, "Where is dad? I need to speak with him."
Nora replied that he was in a meeting in the common war room hall. With that, Nolan entered the hall as the meeting was going on.
His father looked at him and asked, "What happened, Nolan? I will join you soon, as soon as this meeting ends."
Nolan's mind returned to its usual state. He asked him what had happened to all the other children.
His father replied that all of them were safe, and that it was only a matter of time before we locate their families and safely sent them home. A sad look crossed his face. "Asterfalls being a clan present in the eastern province—I don't know what backlash we will face."
Nolan hesitated. "There was a boy… younger. Blue eyes."
His father shook his head. "Most of the Asterfalls people were killed in the crossfire when we entered."
Nolan's heart felt uneasy. Yet he asked about the network system—what had happened to the trader and the merchant.
His father, with a hint of anger, replied, "They were the reason you—" He stopped. "They sell anything. Loyalty included."
Nolan understood. Despite the betrayal, he was still thinking about Kael.
He nodded to his father and walked toward the dining hall. Too many officers. Too quiet. They were still uncertain.
He couldn't shake the image of those blue eyes—alive, or already ash.
As he entered the dining hall, he saw Nora sitting at the table. He realized he hadn't spoken normally to her since returning. A small conversation, then. Nothing heavy. Just enough to close the distance.
They talked. The minutes passed.
Then their father entered and sat with them. He looked at Nolan. "You're back to normal, I guess."
Nolan gave a single nod. A brief silence settled between them.
His father's face remained calm, but his voice carried weight. "We're going to war with the southern kingdom. They've seized a pretext—claiming Alanoira was behind the missing children. Now they march."
Nolan stood, shock flashing across his face. "How did it come to this? We've had peace for twelve years. Why now?"
"Things can't stay the same, Nolan." His father paused. "And the reason I'm telling you this—because we are at war with the Unraveled Demon of Resolve. You both need to be ready to survive without me."
Nolan straightened. "I'm coming too. I can't just sit and wait."
His father shook his head. "You can't even enter the pre-war state. You need to be sixteen. Training or not."
He held Nolan's gaze.
"And I won't stop you, Nolan. But rules are rules."
Nolan's jaw tightened. "Then change the rules. Or make an exception. You're the king."
"I am the king," his father said quietly. "That means I follow the laws I swore to uphold. Even when it costs me."
"Then it costs you a son on the battlefield while I rot behind walls."
"Rotting is still breathing."
Nolan turned away, fists clenched. Returned to his room. He felt like he had just returned from hell. But again and again.
He thought of his mother. This incident. And now—
His face went still. Too still. A dark edge crept into his voice—soft, almost gentle. "If something happens to him, I won't just burn the southern kingdom. I'll make them see it coming. I'll make them beg for it to end faster."
The door creaked.
Nora stood in the hallway. She always knocked. This time she hadn't. Now she wished she had.
Her face was pale. Not from what she had heard—she had not heard. She had walked in at the wrong moment, seen the wrong expression, and something in her older brother's face had made her blood run cold.
"Nolan?"
He looked at her. The dark edge in his voice had already bled back into something softer, but the damage was done. She had seen it.
"Nothing to worry about," he said.
"You're lying." She stepped closer. Her voice was small, but her feet kept moving. "I've never seen you like that. Like you weren't even—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Like you weren't even you."
Nolan said nothing.
Then Nora's eyes narrowed. She tilted her head. "Your eyes."
"What about them?"
"Something's there." She moved closer still, close enough to see the gray of his irises. "A small sharp thing. Almost invisible."
He turned to the drawer. Pulled it open. The mirror was small, old, the silver backing worn thin at the edges. He raised it to his face.
There it was. In his left iris—a single point of light. Gray. Sharp. Small enough to miss if you weren't looking. But it was there.
He remembered the guard's words, spoken in the chaos of the burning compound: After a long time, we have an Awakener with a rare constellation.
Nolan remembered there were five different colors of constellation. Gray was something rarer.
He lowered the mirror. His mind was already moving. The star was real. It had been waiting inside him all along, through every hour of captivity, through every moment he thought he was nothing but a hostage.
He looked at his own eyes again.
What are you? he whispered to himself.
My constellation might be known, he thought. Or it might be something no one has recorded. Either way, I need to find out. Quickly.
"I'm fine," he said. "Just tired."
She didn't believe him. But she nodded.
While leaving, she said, "You made me worry, big brother. Now I'll be stalking you for sure."
Nolan's expression shifted—unsure how to respond to that. Yet now he thought: going to war without knowing what his constellation was would be entering a nightmare with no advantage.
The War Begins
Nolan stood on the eastern ramparts, the wind cold against his face. Below, the fields were blackened. The roads were choked with refugees. Smoke rose from three villages, a cart lay overturned in the road below, still loaded with grain no one had time to take. The horses were gone. The driver was not. none of which had existed on any map a month ago.
The southern kingdom had not waited. They had marched the day after the declaration, their iron legions cutting through the border forts like a blade through wet paper. Alanoria's eastern army had held—barely. But holding was not winning.
The reports came every morning. Casualties. Retreats. Fortresses abandoned.
By the end of the first week, the eastern kingdom had suffered great damage. The king—Nolan's father—had taken a wound at the Battle of Thornwood. Not fatal. But bad enough.
Nolan sat beside his father's bed in the healing hall. The king's face was pale, his bandages fresh. A healer from the Order of the Silent Chime—the church that served Alanoria—stood nearby.
Nolan's father had a deeply depressed expression.
Nolan asked him, looking at his father.
His father replied that the entire war felt like a hidden maze. Their king and his commander were not present. This entire war felt like something indifferent. Like something that doesn't care who wins.
Hearing his father's words, Nolan stood. His legs felt hollow, as if the bones had been replaced with something lighter and less reliable.
Less time. The words echoed in his skull. Not days. Not even weeks. The war was bled through the border forts like water through a cracked dam. And he was still here. Still useless. Still untested.
He walked toward the chamber below the hallway.
He reached the iron door. It was older than the castle itself—dark, pitted, its surface scarred by centuries of use. The guards stationed there were not the young soldiers from the upper halls. These were old men. Their eyes had the flat look of those who had seen too much to be surprised by anything.
Nolan nodded. They nodded back. No words exchanged.
Hinata of Alanoira.