The school bell’s scream was a distant thing, swallowed by the wind. Up here, on the rooftop, the only sounds that mattered were the rustle of her own clothes and the whisper that wasn't the wind at all.
Cynthia leaned against the warm concrete of the ledge, letting the sun bake into her shoulders. Below, the courtyard was a mosaic of students, their laughter and shouts rising like heat haze. Normal. So painfully normal. She closed her eyes, trying to absorb the simple warmth, to let it sink past her skin and quiet the chill within.
So predictable, running up here again.
The voice, smooth as silk and sharp as shattered glass, slithered into her thoughts. Cynthia’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t open her eyes.
Go away.
A dry, mirthless chuckle echoed in her mind, a sound only she could hear.
And miss the melodrama? Never. You should be down there, you know. Pretending to care about trigonometry. Pretending you're one of them.
"I'm tired," she murmured aloud, her voice stolen by the breeze.
You're weak, the voice corrected. They'd all run screaming if they saw it. The real you. The real ‘us’.
Cynthia finally opened her eyes, pulling a small, smooth stone from her pocket. It was a piece of polished obsidian, its surface a pool of perfect, glassy darkness. She stared into her fractured reflection within it. A gust of wind whipped a lock of thistle-pink hair across her face. She saw a stranger with a sharp chin and pale skin, a girl cornered by her own image.
And the eyes.
Her right was a calm, placid sky blue, a colour that spoke of sunny days and gentle promises. It was her mother’s eye, Aunt Xiah always said. A piece of the grace she’d inherited. But her left... her left was a smouldering crimson coal, a deep, unsettling red that pulsed with a faint, inner light. Her father's legacy. The source of the voice. The curse.
Our curse, the voice purred, seeming to delight in the word. And our blessing. Think of the power we could have, if you'd just stop—
The rooftop door creaked open, then slammed shut with a bang that echoed across the concrete. The voice in Cynthia's head vanished. Not faded, not silenced. It was simply gone, as if a switch had been flipped, leaving behind a ringing, profound emptiness that was almost as jarring as its presence.
Cynthia's heart hammered against her ribs. For a wild second, she was exposed, the raw anger from the voice’s last words still vibrating through her. She spun around, her body tense and ready for a fight.
But it wasn't a threat. It was Rin.
Her stepsister stood by the door, hands on her hips, her long seafoam-green hair whipping in the wind and she wasn’t even out of breath.
"I swear, one of these days you're going to turn into a gargoyle, hiding up here all the time."
The panic in Cynthia’s chest receded, expertly shoved down into the pit of her stomach. She forced her shoulders to relax, leaning back against the ledge with a casual air she didn't feel. "And you'd still climb all the way up here to lecture me. What's the point, then?"
Rin rolled her eyes, but a genuine smile broke through her mock-annoyance. "Someone has to. Mom was asking where you went. You, okay?" She walked closer, her gaze softening with the familiar concern that always made Cynthia feel both safe and intensely guilty.
"Just needed some air," Cynthia said, turning her face back towards the sun, hoping the bright light would hide the lingering flicker in her crimson eye. "You know how it is."
Rin stopped a few feet away, her smile fading. The playful energy was gone, replaced by a cautious seriousness that Cynthia knew all too well. "That's what you always say. Look, Mom's been worried ever since... you know. For two years now. She asked me to watch out for you." Rin’s voice dropped to a near whisper. "Is it... is it his power making a scene again?"
The air crackled. The name, unspoken but hanging between them, was a lit match. Cynthia’s carefully constructed calm shattered. She pushed herself off the ledge, turning to face Rin fully. The sunlight caught her crimson eye, making it blaze with a cold fire.
"My father ?" The word was venom. "I don't have a father. I have a curse. A bogeyman from a story your mother tells you. Don't you ever, ever talk about him."
Rin flinched, taking a half-step back as if struck. The hurt in her eyes was immediate and sharp. "Nana... I'm sorry. I just—"
"Just leave it alone, Rin," Cynthia snapped, her voice cutting and final. She turned her back on her stepsister, staring out over the city, a wall of anger and denial rising around her.
The silence that followed was thick and heavy. The anger drained from Cynthia as quickly as it had come, leaving behind the familiar, hollow ache of exhaustion. Her gaze drifted over the sprawling city below—a world rebuilt, a world saved. A world she felt utterly disconnected from.
Her own voice was a ghost on the wind, a whisper so quiet she barely realized she’d spoken aloud. "What was it like before? This world we have now."
Rin remained silent, the hurt on her face slowly being replaced by confusion.
"Aunt Xiah's stories... are they true?" Cynthia continued, her eyes tracing the lines of the distant skyscrapers. "Did a Creator really come down and claim... everything? Everyone?" She hugged her arms to her chest, a shiver running through her despite the sun's warmth. "Is it true my mother gave her life for all this peace?"
The questions hung in the air, vast and unanswerable. They weren't meant for Rin, but for the uncaring sky. Yet, Rin heard them, and in that moment, she wasn't just looking at her angry, secretive stepsister. She was seeing a girl crushed under the weight of a legacy she never asked for.
Rin stared for a long moment, the sharpness of Cynthia’s outburst fading into a soft, aching pity. Deciding the heavy mood had lingered long enough, she switched tactics. A playful grin spread across her face.
"Okay, pity party's over, history nerd," Rin declared, lunging forward and grabbing Cynthia's wrist. "We're going to be late for calculus. Let's go!" She gave a firm tug, expecting her sister to stumble along.
Cynthia didn't move. She didn't even tense up. She simply looked from Rin's hand on her wrist to her stepsister's face, her expression unreadable. "No."
The word was quiet, but it dropped the temperature on the rooftop by ten degrees. A faint, silvery mist coiled from Cynthia's fingers and snaked around Rin's arm. Rin's tugging stopped. Her arm froze mid-pull. Her eyes widened as the strange, magical frost spread with impossible speed, encasing her limbs in a thin, shimmering layer of ice, rooting her to the spot. She could still see, still hear, but she was a statue, her playful grin now a frozen mask of shock.
Cynthia gently pulled her wrist free from Rin’s immobile grasp. She took a step back, her gaze clinical, almost cold. The crimson of her left eye seemed to deepen.
"You really need to practice your resistance to basic spells, Rin," Cynthia said, her voice devoid of its earlier emotion. "One day, I might not be here. You need to be able to protect yourself."
Rin didn't panic. Trapped inside the icy shell, her first thought wasn't fear, but a wave of profound, familiar annoyance.
This stupid spell again!
She strained against the invisible bonds, her muscles screaming in protest, but it was useless. It was the same trick Cynthia had been pulling since she was eleven, a cheap shot to win an argument or escape being dragged home after wandering off.
Cynthia was a free soul, an orphan masking a universe of secrets in a world of so-called Neo-Humans. Rin knew, on some level, that her stepsister's existence was fragile, protected only by the unseen comrades her parents had left behind. But right now, all she could think about was how much she hated being on the receiving end of a lecture while paralyzed.
The cold lecture hung in the air for a moment before Cynthia's hard expression softened, the icy demeanour melting away to reveal something tired and vulnerable. She sighed, a puff of white mist in the air.
"I'll be home after school," she said, her voice quiet again, losing its sharp edge. "I promise. I just... need some time alone first. To deal with some things."
She met Rin's frozen, frustrated gaze. A flicker of a genuine, small smile touched her lips. "Tell your mom to make something good for dinner, okay? Tonight, I'll be an obedient kid. I'll come home and we can have a normal night."
With a flick of her wrist, the shimmering ice casing around Rin cracked, shattering into a thousand motes of light that vanished before they hit the ground. Rin stumbled forward, gasping as feeling rushed back into her limbs, rubbing her arms vigorously.
When she looked up to complain, Cynthia was already gone. The rooftop door was swinging silently shut, leaving Rin alone with the wind and the lingering chill of her sister's strange, sad warning.