People stared at his ears and tail. Some whispered. Others pointed at him without the slightest shame.

  Momoru walked on calmly, as if none of it affected him. He had learned to keep moving forward. Not to lower his head. Or rather… someone had taught him how.

  He had gone out to buy a few unimportant things—vegetables, rice, some meat—just enough to cook. A simple errand.

  He kept walking until something made him stop.

  In a small shop window, almost hidden between a clothing store and a bakery, a pair of feather-shaped earrings gleamed.

  Momoru stepped closer. There was something about them that felt painfully familiar.

  “I’ll take him as my assistant.”

  That was what Misaha had said.

  He remembered that moment with perfect clarity. Heliora, the queen, had been unable to refuse the request of the Dawnbringer.

  Misaha used to wear earrings like those in the window: small, discreet feathers that swayed gently every time she turned her head.

  The memory hurt. And at the same time, it was comforting.

  Because Misaha had never asked him to hide.

  Kitsune had always been inconvenient creatures in the world. Too human for demons. Too different for humans. Too wild for the lumens. Never fully welcome.

  His parents had not hesitated to sell him to the lumens for a handful of coins. It was a fair deal, they said. The lumens gained someone to do the dirty work. His parents gained money and protection.

  For years, Momoru obeyed. He created spells and illusions to weaken powerful demons. He attended to the needs of nobles. He made sure the palace remained clean and orderly.

  He hated his parents for never loving him.

  He hated the lumens for taking his freedom away.

  And yet, it was those wings that gave it back to him.

  Misaha, standing between him and Queen Heliora with her wings spread wide, saved him with a single sentence.

  “I’ll take him as my assistant.”

  At first, Momoru didn’t trust her. He agreed to stay because he had no other choice.

  Misaha offered him food, a place to sleep, and clear tasks—without shouted orders or condescending looks. Even so, he kept his distance. He waited for the moment her kindness would run out.

  That moment never came.

  Misaha talked to him about herself, and she always found a way to include him in everyday things. She asked what he preferred to eat. She asked for his opinion on things that didn’t require it. Sometimes she sat beside him without saying a word. That unsettled him more than any punishment ever could.

  Over time, Momoru began to wait for her without realizing it. To notice her absence when she wasn’t there.

  But there was something he didn’t understand. Why would someone as kind as Misaha follow Queen Heliora’s orders?

  “I don’t agree with Heliora’s methods,”

  she said in her usual calm voice while organizing a stack of scrolls.

  “However… I owe her a debt.”

  Momoru froze, the cloth he was using to clean clenched between his fingers. He turned toward her.

  “Do you know about the seraphi, Momo?”

  The nickname caught him off guard, making his long orange ears perk up instantly. Then he shook his head.

  Misaha smiled, but it wasn’t a joyful smile.

  “We all lived together,” she explained. “In peace and harmony. We’re sensitive beings. Peaceful. We don’t fight. In fact, the only thing that makes us special—aside from our wings—is our healing power, which we always kept hidden.”

  Her gaze drifted toward the window, where the first rays of dawn slipped between the clouds.

  “Some even described us as angels.”

  She let out a small laugh as she said the word.

  Momoru felt a strange knot tighten in his chest. Angels. Without realizing it, he found himself staring at Misaha’s wings—the ones she always hid in public.

  “But that day…” she continued, lowering her voice slightly, “the demons massacred us.”

  She set the scroll down on the table, still half-folded. It was the first time Momoru had ever seen her like this. Accustomed to her strength and optimism, that flicker of sadness in her eyes deeply unsettled him.

  “I was the only survivor. Heliora saved me,” she added. “But she was too late to save the others.”

  Momoru tightened his grip on the cloth. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if he should say anything at all. So he didn’t.

  Misaha looked at him as if she understood exactly what was going through his mind.

  “I’m not telling you this to justify her,” she said. “Or to ask you to forgive her. Just… so you understand why I’m still here.”

  Momoru looked away from her wings and down at the cloth in his hands. Misaha had never been a lumen, no matter how much they had made him—and everyone else—believe it.

  Why would the queen save her, only to hide her true nature? Protection… or prejudice?

  Misaha fell in love with a lumen. His name was Aelion.

  At first, she didn’t say it out loud. Not even to Momoru. The relationship was a secret from the very beginning. Heliora would never have allowed it.

  Misaha was a seraphi. Aelion was a lumen.

  When Misaha discovered she was pregnant, there was no celebration. No laughter. No plans.

  When Heliora learned of it, she called it an aberration. A hybrid. An existence that went against the natural balance.

  Aelion was banished from Elyndra that very week. No trial. No goodbyes. As if he had never existed. Misaha was forbidden from following him. Forbidden even from asking about him.

  Officially, the exile was mercy.

  But Momoru knew the truth. The human world was a place where deaths could be disguised as accidents. Where no one would ask questions. Where an exile was nothing more than an inconvenience, easy to erase.

  She remained strong before others. She walked upright. She spoke with a calm voice. She fulfilled her duty. She protected humanity. She smiled.

  But at night… Momoru heard her. She cried in silence, stifling her sobs against the pillow, as if even pain had to follow rules. As if she had no right to break.

  Momoru stayed still in the darkness, fists clenched, tail rigid, feeling useless. Too small. Too insignificant to do anything.

  He couldn’t save Aelion. He couldn’t promise her everything would be alright.

  So he did the only thing he could.

  He stayed.

  And in silence, without grand words or heroic vows, he decided that he would never abandon Misaha. Nor the child who had yet to be born.

  The birth was nothing like Misaha had imagined.

  When the first cry filled the room, she barely had time to react before the second followed. For a moment, she could only blink—exhausted, disbelieving.

  “Two…?” she murmured, her voice breaking. “There are… two?”

  The midwife nodded with a surprised smile. From a corner of the room, Momoru stood completely still.

  Twins.

  Misaha laughed. It was a soft, trembling, incredulous laugh. She gently took their tiny hands.

  “Then…” she whispered, “then they’ll never be alone.”

  She held them to her chest and, tenderly, gave them their names.

  “Lyciah…” she said first, kissing her forehead. “Because I want your light to never fade.”

  Then she looked at the second, quieter one, eyes open and alert.

  “And you will be Sorian. Because even in darkness… you will endure.”

  Momoru stepped forward without realizing it. He watched them in silence.

  “They will be happy,” he finally said, his voice low but firm. “And they will be free.”

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  Misaha looked up at him. She smiled, tired.

  “They will be loved,” Momoru added, as if it were a promise he needed to say out loud.

  He didn’t speak as a father. For him, taking that place would have been a betrayal. To Aelion. To his memory. To what never could be.

  So Momoru became something else.

  He was there when Misaha needed him. When exhaustion overwhelmed her. When fear returned at night. He cared for the children when she couldn’t, and disappeared when he felt his presence was no longer needed.

  He knew something no one else did. Those children had saved Misaha.

  The years passed.

  Lyciah and Sorian grew up. Both inherited the white hair of the seraphi and the blue eyes of the lumens. They had wings. They had healing power. And they had the lumens’ power to stand against demons.

  They had too much.

  Heliora watched them coldly from the very beginning. She neither touched nor punished them. But she never acknowledged them either.

  When they were still too young to understand what it meant to lose something, the queen sealed their wings with an ancient spell. The wings vanished as if they had never existed, leaving a white mark on their backs.

  Misaha protested. Begged. Screamed. But it was useless.

  “It is kindness,” Heliora said. “They will live as lumens. Without discrimination. Without danger.”

  And then, without even looking at him, she added:

  “And if anyone attempts to break the seal… the kitsune will return to what he was.”

  Momoru understood the threat without another word.

  Lyciah didn’t understand. She looked at her back reflected in the water, touched the mark with her small fingers, and looked up at her mother.

  “Why do I have to hide my wings?” she asked innocently. “Won’t I be able to fly through the sky again?”

  Misaha smiled. A perfectly practiced smile.

  “Of course you will,” she lied gently. “But right now… the sky is very far away. When you’re older, you’ll fly again.”

  Lyciah nodded, satisfied with the simple explanation.

  Sorian said nothing. But that night, when his sister was already asleep, he went to find his mother.

  “It’s because we’re hybrids, right?” he asked quietly. “That’s why our wings are wrong.”

  Misaha didn’t answer. She only held him.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  From the hallway shadows, Momoru watched the scene with clenched teeth and a burning heart.

  He said nothing.

  But in that moment, he decided something more dangerous than any spell.

  No matter what happened… he would never allow them to be alone.

  Days before the twins’ eighth birthday, Misaha began to feel uneasy.

  The nights filled with nightmares, always the same: endless sand, a mirror, and eyes watching from within. Every dawn she woke with a knot in her chest, breath ragged, heart racing.

  For her, the world began to feel… wrong. Nothing visible—no earthquakes, no shattered skies. But the Dawnbringer felt it.

  When she confessed it to Queen Heliora, she understood immediately: the Omen was stirring on the other side of the mirror, and it was the new Dawnbringer’s duty to seal it once more.

  Eresha, the first Dawnbringer—who had kept the Omen contained for millennia with the help of the Seven Ancestrals—had died centuries earlier. Now, that burden fell upon the heir to her power: Misaha. However, Heliora was unwilling to ask the Seven for help.

  Momoru wanted to protest. But when he looked at Misaha and saw her calm, resigned expression, he understood the decision had already been made. There was nothing he could do.

  “Mom… do you have to go?”

  That was what Sorian asked, his voice trembling.

  Behind him, Momoru watched in silence. He could see the pain in Misaha’s eyes. She knew she would likely not return. But she had to fulfill her mission if she wanted to protect the world her children lived in.

  The temple stood in the desert, half-buried by sand. Broken columns, symbols erased by time, and at the center… the mirror.

  It didn’t reflect the world. It reflected something that should not exist.

  When the Omen awoke, the air grew heavy, as if the entire desert were holding its breath.

  It had no clear form, and that was the most disturbing part. Its body seemed made of remains: blackened bones, overlapping ribs, limbs that followed no human logic. Other figures emerged from its torso, as if several creatures had been crudely stitched together, trapped in a single mass of ancient hatred. Skulls embedded in its flesh opened their jaws, and from between them came a low, constant murmur—impossible to understand.

  It was enormous. Not just tall, but vast. It didn’t walk; it dragged its presence forward, claiming everything around it.

  Fear drove itself into Momoru’s chest.

  Misaha stepped forward. Blue flames—the Dawnbringer’s flames—rose around her, wrapping her like a sacred mantle. They did not burn; they purified.

  “Stay back, Momo,” she said without looking at him.

  The battle was hell.

  Momoru’s illusions shattered the moment they touched the Omen. His spells barely managed to slow it down.

  Misaha attacked with the sacred flames, hurling them like spears of light that tore fragments from the Omen, purifying everything they touched. The monster roared—a deep sound that came not from a throat, but from something far deeper.

  But it did not fall.

  One of its claws came down violently and tore one of Misaha’s wings away. Her scream ripped through the temple.

  “MISAHA!”

  Momoru ran toward her, but the Omen turned with a single movement and hurled him through the air as if he weighed nothing. His body struck the ground. The air left his lungs.

  Misaha fell… but she rose again. She was bleeding. The light of the flames flickered. Still, she advanced.

  The Omen struck her again and again. Each blow forced her back.

  “STOP!” Momoru screamed, dragging himself forward. “Please, stop!”

  And when she no longer had the strength to attack, Misaha stopped trying.

  She raised her arm—not to wound, but to seal.

  The blue flames around her concentrated all at once, turning almost white. The mirror trembled. Ancient symbols began to reactivate one by one, engraving themselves into its surface.

  The Omen resisted. It was not weakened.

  Misaha clenched her jaw. She knew what she was doing. Her predecessor had always fought alongside the Seven, who had weakened the creature enough to allow an effective sealing.

  She did not have that advantage.

  She forced the ritual, pouring everything she had left into the seal—her power, her essence, her own life.

  The sacred flames enveloped the Omen completely, as an invisible force dragged it back toward the mirror.

  The monster let out a scream—not of pain, but of eternal rage—before the mirror closed with it inside.

  Silence fell over the temple.

  Momoru ran to her. He caught her before she fell, holding her in his arms.

  “No… no…” he murmured, pressing her to his chest.

  The blue flames around her faded. Misaha was breathing with difficulty. Each breath seemed to cost her everything.

  Momoru cupped her face with trembling hands. Her face was smeared with sand and blood. Still, when she opened her eyes and looked at him, she smiled.

  “We did it… didn’t we?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied, his voice breaking. “Yes, you did. You won. Now rest. I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

  Misaha slowly shook her head. Momoru knew what it meant.

  “I’m sorry…” he sobbed. “I couldn’t help you. I wasn’t enough. I—”

  “No,” she interrupted, lifting a hand to touch his cheek. “You were everything.”

  Her weak thumb traced a line beneath his eye.

  “You were always there,” she continued. “Even when I was a mess… you were there.”

  Her finger loosened.

  “Take care of Lyciah,” she asked. “And Sorian. Don’t let Heliora turn them into tools… like she did with me.”

  Momoru nodded, unable to speak. Misaha took one last deep breath.

  “And you…” she added, closing her eyes slightly. “Don’t live carrying this. I did it because I wanted to protect my children. And you.”

  Momoru couldn’t respond. Tears fell freely.

  “Don’t cry,” Misaha said gently. “I’m just… going to sleep. When I wake up… I’ll see him again. Aelion.”

  Her hand slipped slowly down his cheek. Momoru caught it before it fell, clinging to it as if he could stop her from leaving.

  “Momo…” she murmured faintly. “Tha… nk…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. Her breath faded in his arms. Momoru held her for a long time.

  The desert, relentless, remained silent—broken only by Momoru’s desperate sobs.

  Momoru returned to Elyndra carrying Misaha’s body in his arms, wrapped in the only wing she had left.

  The memory faded there. Momoru stood motionless before the shop window.

  He didn’t hesitate any longer. He entered the shop, bought the earrings without negotiating the price, and left with the small bag between his fingers.

  When he got home, the first thing he heard was the sound of the television. Soft laughter. Murmurs.

  Seliane and Elric were sitting on the living room floor on scattered cushions, surrounded by plush toys and blankets, leaning toward each other as they played something Momoru didn’t quite see. They didn’t speak loudly. Their gestures were natural, synchronized, as if they had shared that space for years.

  Momoru smiled but said nothing. He left the groceries in the kitchen and went upstairs quietly.

  He stopped in front of Lyciah’s door. Knocked softly. It opened almost immediately.

  “Momo!”

  Lyciah appeared with an immediate, genuine smile. Before he could say anything, she was already hugging him. Momoru rested a hand on her back, returning the gesture carefully.

  “I’m glad to see you in such good spirits,” he said in his usual calm tone.

  Lyciah pulled back slightly, still smiling. Momoru smiled back.

  “I… brought something for you.”

  He reached into his coat pocket and took out a small box. Lyciah blinked, surprised, before taking it carefully. When she opened it, her eyes lit up.

  “Earrings…?” she murmured.

  Small, delicate feathers.

  “They’re beautiful…” she whispered. “I think… I think Mom wore some like these.”

  Momoru nodded slowly.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. “I’m sure she would’ve loved seeing you wear them.”

  Lyciah looked up at him.

  “You’ve grown into a beautiful girl,” he added. “And a brave one.”

  Lyciah smiled, this time with a hint of nostalgia.

  “Thank you, Momo. I wish she could see it.”

  She tightened her grip on the box, and after a few seconds of silence, spoke again, her voice lower.

  “Momo… I actually wanted to tell you something.”

  He tilted his head slightly, attentive.

  “I’m scared,” she confessed. “I know it’s the Dawnbringer’s duty to seal the Omen. And… if the time comes… it means I’ll have to do it. And mom died because of that.”

  Momoru raised his hand and rested his fingers on her head, stroking her hair slowly and reassuringly. As always.

  “Listen to me, Lyciah,” he said gently. “Heliora was the only one who knew the truth about Eresha. She knew that for millennia she contained the Omen with the help of the Seven Ancestrals. When she died and the power was inherited, she sought out your mother… and told her about her mission.”

  Lyciah held her breath.

  “Misaha told me,” he continued. “No one else. The world never knew that the Dawnbringer was never alone.”

  He lowered his voice slightly.

  “But Heliora hates demons. She refused their help. For the first time in millennia, the Dawnbringer faced the Omen alone… and that’s how she died.”

  Lyciah pressed her lips together, fighting back tears.

  “But you’re not her,” Momoru added. “You’re free. You don’t have to follow Heliora’s methods.”

  He gave her a small, sideways smile.

  “And besides, even if you wanted to go alone…” he said, with a teasing lilt, “the universe would’ve already sent that knight of yours ahead of you. Just in case.”

  Lyciah let out a small laugh—choked, but real.

  Momoru ruffled her hair affectionately.

  “Everything will be fine,” he finally said. “I promise.”

  Lyciah nodded in silence. She said nothing more. Momoru always managed to calm her.

  She walked to her mirror. Carefully took the earrings and put them on. The feathers swayed gently.

  Momoru watched her from the doorway as she smiled shyly.

  And then he understood.

  Lyciah was not just Misaha’s daughter. She was her reflection. The silent proof that, even after her loss, something of her still lived on.