"Your brother isn't with us."
Celestia manifested as she always did—light without source, form without substance, currently shaped like a disappointed Renaissance painting. She floated beside me as I approached the house, her presence warming my sternum.
"Don't tell me you have a crush on him too."
Her light flickered—embarrassment, or approximation of it. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, little vessel."
"Deflection doesn't suit you, cosmic horror."
The door gaped. Darkness inside, wrong somehow—thicker than it should be, intentional.
I pressed against the brick wall, creeping closer. Celestia dimmed herself, becoming ghost-whisper and instinct. Through the gap, I saw a silhouette at our kitchen table. Back turned. Wine glass catching streetlight.
"I don't—" Celestia's voice strained. "I cannot see him. Nero, I cannot see him."
Fear. From a goddess. It crawled up my spine.
I reached for a weapon I didn't carry. Took another step. The floorboard creaked—
"So you finally came." The voice stopped me. Deep. Raspy. Familiar in a way that made my teeth ache. "I've been waiting, Nero Blackwood."
"What—" Celestia's presence shuddered. "What is he?"
The figure stood. Turned.
Top hat. Black wool. Scar catching the light like a second smile.
The man from the party. The man with ancient eyes. Standing in my kitchen, drinking my brother's wine, wearing the space around him like a tailored coat.
"Who—" My voice broke. Reset. "How do you know my name?"
He set down the glass. Precise. Deliberate. Every movement chosen.
"I know considerably more than that." He smiled, and the scar moved, and I realized it wasn't a scar at all but something wearing his face imperfectly. "Shall I tell you about the war that's coming? Or would you prefer to hear how you'll die?"
Celestia screamed inside my skull.
I reached for power I didn't understand, felt her reach back, and together we—
"Easy." The man raised one gloved hand. "If I wanted you dead, little vessel, you'd have never been born." He tilted his head, bird-curious. "I'm not your enemy. Not yet. That particular honour belongs to someone you trust."
He stepped toward the door. Past me. Close enough that I smelled ozone and old books and something underneath—absence. Like standing near a void wearing human shape.
At the threshold, he paused.
"Your brother's gift," he said without turning. "Time manipulation. Useful. Limited. He sees threads and follows them." A breath. A secret preparing to hatch. "But some things exist between seconds, Nero. In the spaces where time doesn't reach." He looked back, and his eyes had changed—no longer blue but absent, windows opening onto nothing. "Ask yourself why an S-grade Hunter needs to marry into money. Ask why he was so eager to keep you from this house tonight."
Then he was gone. Not walking. Not fading. Simply absent, as if the world had edited him out between frames.
I stood in my kitchen, rain dripping from my clothes, while Celestia whispered danger danger danger like a heartbeat.
The wine glass remained. Empty now. On its rim, in condensation, someone had drawn a symbol I almost recognized—a circle bisected by a jagged line, the universal shorthand for broken.
I picked it up. Turned it.
On the bottom, scratched into crystal with something sharper than glass should allow: