horizon in the west

Chapter Six: Beneath the Still Sky

The sky above Zyphir Academy had not moved in two days.

No drifting clouds. No breeze. No shift in light.

It hung, flat and silent, like a painting nailed to the heavens.

Some said it was a magical phenomenon—an arcane pressure holding the atmosphere in stasis. Others whispered that time was hesitating, unsure if it wanted to continue.

Only the headmistress knew the truth.

Balance was stirring again.

Kyoko hadn't spoken of the dream. The mountain of bones. The throne of silence. The warning.

But he felt it in his chest: something in him wanted order. Something else wanted Apya.

And it wasn't sure if it could have both.

That morning, Apya dragged Kyoko toward the lower courtyard—the one lined with timebent trees and mossy stones that glowed faintly when stepped on. It was her favorite spot.

"We're playing a game," she declared.

"I don't know how to play," Kyoko replied.

"Perfect. I'll teach you," she grinned.

The game wasn't complicated. She threw a ring of twine into the air, caught it with her ears, and made Kyoko guess which direction it would land in.

She called it Hoppity-Wind.

He called it confusing.

But he played.

And as they moved, laughed, and tumbled across the glowing moss, something moved beneath the courtyard.

Something old.

Something watching.

Far below Zyphir's shifting towers was a chamber sealed since before the first war between gods. A Containment Vault, buried in forgotten stone. It pulsed with ancient runes designed to suppress celestial memory. Its walls were inscribed in the language of the first silence, a magic no longer spoken aloud.

And now—without spell, without summoning—the vault began to awaken.

Dust fell like snow.

The runes blinked once.

And whispered a name.

"Koroko... has chosen."

Apya stopped laughing first.

She stood still, ears twitching, eyes squinting upward.

Kyoko paused beside her.

"You feel that?" she asked softly.

He did.

Pressure.

Not pain. Not threat.

But weight. Like being remembered by something vast.

Apya stepped forward onto one of the moss stones.

It flashed blue.

Kyoko stepped beside her.

It turned silver.

And then the stone sank—not cracked, not moved, but descended, revealing a circular staircase spiraling downward into the dark earth.

Apya's voice was quiet. "That's not supposed to happen."

"No," Kyoko said. "It's not."

They went down.

She gripped his hand tightly, her ears brushing the narrow walls.

The air grew colder. Thicker.

And then—at the bottom—they found the vault.

A sealed circle. Dozens of layers of spells. Burning glyphs, still alive after centuries.

But the center glowed softly.

A single glyph pulsing in rhythm with Apya's heartbeat.

She stepped forward. The glyph responded.

Kyoko reached for her—but before he could speak, the vault opened.

Not like a door.

Like an eye.

Inside was a mirror.

Tall. Framed in obsidian.

The glass didn't reflect them.

It reflected another version of the world—skies made of bone, oceans of ash, and above it all, a child in a cloak of dusk sitting on a throne that bled gravity.

Koroko. Or what he had been.

But beside him, in the reflection, stood a girl.

Smaller. Rabbit-eared. Smiling.

Apya.

Not standing beside him.

Standing against him.

The mirror cracked.

Apya screamed and fell back.

Kyoko caught her.

Light exploded from the glyphs, flaring up the walls, and the vault sealed itself shut again without warning, leaving them in total blackness.

And then a voice echoed—hollow, layered, distant.

"Opposites must return. Balance is not singular.

The anchor has awakened."

They returned to the courtyard in silence.

Apya was pale, shaking.

Kyoko's hand trembled for the first time since his rebirth.

Neither of them spoke of what they'd seen.

But that night, Apya sat curled beside him on the bed in his West Spire room, her ears wrapped around both of them like a cocoon.

"Do you think we were... enemies?" she asked softly.

Kyoko didn't answer for a long time.

Then: "I think we were always meant to meet again."

"Will it change things?"

"Yes."

"Will you still be my best friend?"

He looked at her.

"I think you might be the only thing keeping me human."

Far above, the sky shuddered.

The stars blinked once. Then realigned.

And deep beneath the academy, in stone no mortal hand had touched, the Balance began to shift.

Not toward order.

Not toward chaos.

But toward something new.