[Evening, 6:30 PM]
[House of Delaney, South of the walls of Piresulas...]
Leonard Blackwell Delaney... was ready to scratch the walls of his private chambers.
His room was a mess, a result of his recent outrage.
Broken pieces of objects and antiques were strewn about on the dark wooden floor—some so expensive they could fund a small estate.
Important papers and missives were ripped to shreds, still fluttering through the air like feathers from a fallen bird.
Bottles of alcohol lay shattered, the glinting shards a reminder of his indulgence. The scent of cedar lingered heavily in the air, the sting of whiskey still burning his throat, a cruel whisper of his irresponsibility.
Leonard's blood left drying trails across the carpet, and some had seeped into the wooden floorboards beneath his aching feet.
The panic and anger that had consumed him earlier still simmered under his skin, an unbearable tension clawing at his mind. His fingers trembled, raw and aching from scratching at his scalp for hours in a futile attempt to quell the rising storm of his anxiety.
He sat slouched at the corner of his bed, his head resting in his hands. His breathing was shallow, his raspy voice breaking the suffocating silence.
"Everything is going wrong. So abhorrently wrong..."
How had he let himself sink this low? He had been drinking like some desperate commoner drowning in misery at a dingy tavern.
Disgraceful. Unforgivable.
He was Leonard Blackwell Delaney, a noble of perfection. The esteemed heir of the Delaney name, renowned for its wealth and the finest wines in Piresulas. And yet, here he was, unraveling over... him.
That bull, Klaus Bullshen Thornlee, had seized not only his territory but also his pride. That brute had insulted his very bloodline, defiling his name with his vile presence. And Leonard? He had allowed it.
Allowed that damn pig to humiliate him in his own territory, in front of his very followers. Shame. Shame!
This weakness, this failure, was unacceptable. It was a blemish upon his house—a stain upon the Delaney legacy. A stain!
"N-no," Leonard whispered, straightening his back, his trembling hands clenching into fists. "No, I am not a man who cowers. I am a Delaney. We... we are lions, not sheep."
He forced himself to stand, though his legs wavered under the weight of his shame and exhaustion. The world around him spun briefly, his drunken stupor still clinging to him like a second skin. He braced himself against the bedpost, his breathing labored but steadying.
"I am the son of Goodwin Blackwell Delaney," he murmured, as though the words were a lifeline. "A-a warrior. A lion. And, and I will not let some... some boar trample over my house!"
With each word, his confidence grew—an illusion he clung to desperately, like a man drowning in deep waters. He inhaled deeply, his chest rising and falling in rhythm, his mind desperately clinging to order.
Leonard turned toward the shattered remains of his desk. His eyes scanned the wreckage until they landed on the velvet pouch lying miraculously untouched amidst the chaos.
His salvation.
The letter.
Leonard stumbled toward it, his movements unsteady but driven by purpose. He hesitated, before he snatched the pouch from the debris, its weight in his hands grounding him. Slowly, he untied the delicate golden string and retrieved the folded parchment within.
The wax seal had long been broken, its distinct imprint—a crescent moon cradling a crow—sending a shiver down his spine.
Q.
The name, no, the symbol alone was enough to make Leonard's knees weak. Even now, years later, he could still hear the infamous assassin's laughter—a maddeningly cheerful sound that didn't match the carnage left in their wake.
But Q was gone. Retired, or so it was said a few weeks ago. And in their place...
Leonard's stomach churned as he recalled the earlier meeting.
———
It had been sudden, unnervingly so.
One moment, Leonard had been sitting in his private study, reviewing his last correspondence with Klaus. The next, he'd felt a shift in the air, a sudden weight pressing down on him. A predator's presence.
And then, he was there.
Tall, cloaked in shadows, with piercing grey eyes bordering on silver that seemed to strip Leonard down to his very soul. Dressed in a style that was neither ostentatious nor plain, but entirely alien, classy yet subdued. Forgettable, yet unforgettable. Strange.
The protégé, Leonard had realized with a sinking feeling.
He'd expected someone... else. Someone more ordinary. Or more like a crazed bandit. More in line with the stories he'd heard of Q's recruits. Not this enigmatic figure who spoke in clipped, stoic tones and exuded an unnerving calm.
But this was the apprentice, the successor to Q. Not a recruit.
Leonard had tried to maintain his composure during the conversation, but the air in the room had felt suffocating. Every time those grey eyes bore into him, he'd felt his resolve falter, and a shiver would run down his spine. He felt like those eyes could see right through any attempt at deception.
And when the contract was finally laid out, terms that offered no room for negotiation—he'd realized, with growing dread, that he was utterly powerless in this exchange. All the conditions were easy for him to meet; information, description, and then money once the deed was done.
But there was only a catch, simply put; no money? Death will await him, or worse. "My conditions are conditional," Leonard recalled the assassin saying. Such simple words, such easy terms, but with so many implications that it made his head spin.
Leonard had made a tiny comment, he couldn't help himself. The tension was so oppressive, he had to say something, do something. Anything to lessen the suffocating aura from Q's assassin, from a person he couldn't quite read.
"You are... not quite... what I expected from Q." Leonard had said in just, as he quirked a thin smile. A lump was in his throat, his fingers were tapping on his knee beneath the desk.
"You're right. I'm the conventional choice," The apprentice hums. "But as you've noticed, I'm not all there myself. So who am I to judge my master's choices?" He said, calmly.
Those dull silver eyes, didn't shift. They hadn't shone anything at all, even with that response—they felt cold and indifferent to Leonard's little quip.
Leonard didn't know whether to interpret that as some light humor, some tiny show of playfulness. Or a hint to something deeper, dangerous. All he knew, was that it sounded mildly threatening, and he'd rather not find out what made the apprentice "not all there".
And then, just as silently as he had appeared, the assassin had vanished, leaving Leonard to question whether the entire encounter had been real or not.
What made it all the more unsettling, all the more gripping on Leonard's mind, was that none of his guards, stealth and fighters, picked up the assassin's presence—not when he appeared, or when he vanished.
They had only reported a sense of being watched a few hours before the assassin's arrival, and then nothing else afterwards.
It was as if he never existed.
———
Leonard's hands trembled as he held the letter, his reflection staring back at him from the shattered glass of a nearby frame.
"What have I done?" he muttered, the weight of his desperation sinking in. "What am I doing?"
The answer was simple.
He was reclaiming his pride. His name. His legacy.
Even if it meant dealing with monsters. Even if it meant making a deal with the devil himself.
Leonard swallowed hard, steeling his nerves. He would see this through. He had no other choice.
Leonard turns to the windows of his chambers, watching the stars flicker. His gaze then turned to a lonely painting of a dying lion, forgotten, as it was right underneath the windowsill. It made him gulp.
He did not want that, to be his fate. Never again.
———
[Later that Night]
[House of Delaney, Balcony Overlooking Piresulas...]
"So these... are stars?"
N tilted her head upward, her breath caught somewhere between disbelief and awe. The words felt foreign on her tongue, like speaking the name of some forgotten god.
N leaned against the cold iron railing, invisible and unseen by anyone, her gloved fingers curling around its ornate patterns. She decided to stay a little longer by sneaking onto this balcony, because of this...
Above her stretched a vast, infinite sky—a tapestry of lights. Some flickered softly like shy whispers, others burned brighter and more daring, demanding attention.
This wasn't Earthan's sky.
Earthan didn't have stars.
There was no room for stars in a place like that. The skies had been long abandoned by light, barely fed with any. Filled only with dark gray or black clouds and the faint, bitter glow of the occasional industrial flare. Heavy, as heavy as an endless blanket of black—a void that swallowed everything. No colors. No light. Just nothingness.
But here? In this world?
Here, in Calais? The heavens were alive. Breathing. Thrumming with hues she couldn't name and couldn't stop staring at. Dotted with shimmering silver, painted with streaks of color she still couldn't name. Scattered with stars that gleamed like shards of broken glass. Her eyes traced constellations she didn't recognize, shapes and stories she'd never know.
Even the sunset earlier had burned with hues so vivid they hurt her eyes. A fiery canvas that seemed almost alive, still lingering faintly on the horizon like the final breath of a dying ember.
And then her gaze shifted to the moons. Three of them.
Two shone brightly—one white, its glow soft and pure, like fresh snowfall. The other blue, sharp and icy, like the edge of a blade, yet ethereal and calm. But the third...
The third hung low, a crescent shape, its surface fractured and lifeless. A ghost of a moon. Forgotten, eclipsed by the brilliance of its companions.
Her grip on the railing tightened.
Will I be like that?
"Forgotten, like you?" she wondered. A broken thing, dead and without light?
The question cut deeper than she wanted to admit. She was already dead, after all. Back on Earthan, no one would remember her. Not the people she'd worked with, not the nameless clients who had sent her to kill, and certainly not the world itself. To them, she had been as transient as smoke—there one moment, gone the next.
The thought lingered, heavy and bitter. She was a ghost haunting a world that never truly wanted her. If she disappeared from this one too, how long before she was erased entirely? How long before even her name was forgotten? Probably not long.
She closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe, to think past the weight pressing down on her. Her other hand tightened around the brim of her hat, pulling it lower as her gaze drifted when the wind blew softly to the west.
Drifted toward the western horizon, where the sun's last embers still clung stubbornly to the edge of the world. Those warm looking colors blending with the cold, dark blues.
No...
Someone would remember.
Not because she was special. Not because she deserved it. But because of her.
The sun.
N's lips twitched into the faintest semblance of a smile, though it didn't reach her eyes.
The image came to her, unbidden—a pair of laughing green eyes, the smell of gunpowder and warm metal, rough hands that burned like fire and yet never hurt her.
A reckless gambler, a gunsmith with too much bravado and far too little caution. She would remember. She always had.
The one person who had refused to let go, no matter how much N had pushed her away.
Her sun.
But the sun was still a dangerous thing, wasn't it? It burned too brightly, too fiercely. If you got too close, it consumed you, no?
It was too dangerous for N, too close for her. And yet, no matter how far away you drifted, it was always there. Unwavering. It didn't forget, not the way moons did.
Which was why N can't help but gravitate right back to her, into that fire she feared getting closer to. No matter how many times she pushed the sun away.
N sigh, tearing her eyes from the horizon, tapping a finger onto the intricate carvings of the railing. Why is she indulging in these fantastical thoughts? What did she know about astronomy, anyway? The old knowledge was gone, swept away with the ashes of the Six Nukes and the wars that had wiped her world clean of history.
Everything she thought she understood about stars and moons and suns came from fragments of forgotten books, their pages yellowed and brittle, tucked away in the corners of dusty libraries she'd once visited to escape the rain.
But these were still poetic thoughts, ones that reminded her of the dusty old romances, or was it fanfiction? She didn't know the difference. They had amused her once, those tales of suns and moons personified, chasing each other across the heavens. She'd chuckle at their melodrama, their overt declarations of devotion and tragedy. None of it was real, it didn't matter.
And yet now, standing beneath this alien sky, she found herself wondering if there was some truth in them. How silly.
Would her sun remember her? She asks herself again.
Would she burn forever, refusing to let N drift into the void? Yes, of course she would, you dumbass. Why would you doubt her? What a ridiculous thought.
N shook her head, a faint smirk tugging at her lips. "Ridiculous," she muttered, but her voice lacked its usual sharpness.
She shouldn't dwell on the past life. It was painful to think about what she lost. But in this moment, under this alien sky and with these thoughts, she couldn't help herself.
Would you laugh at me now? she thought. Seeing me like this? Awestruck by something as simple as a sunset? As stars? Thinking about you being the "sun" to my "moon"?
Her eyes flicked back to the setting sun.
The memory of a crooked grin flashed through her mind, followed by the faintest echo of laughter. Wild, reckless, and so alive it made her throat tighten.
You'd laugh, she decided, her grip loosening on the railing. You'd laugh like no tomorrow.
A gust of wind swept past her, cool and bracing, carrying the faint scent of pine and the distant hum of the city below. She tilted her head back, letting the cold bite at her cheeks, her mask pushed down just far enough to feel the air on her skin.
This world was strange, vibrant, alive and breathing in ways she'd never known. The colors, the stars, the moons—it was all alien. And yet, somehow, it felt... real.
More real than Earthan ever had.
Enough about all these astrological, fantastical romances and philosophies. It's getting ridiculous.
"Ridiculous," she repeated, though this time, there was a hint of warmth in her tone.
Her grip on the railing loosened, and she stepped back, pulling her mask up again. The stars continued to twinkle, indifferent to her presence, to her thoughts. But that was fine. She doesn't need to be noticed, or to be acknowledged.
She had a job to do.
Broken moons don't fade. Not unless they choose to.