The staff was heavier than Ilias expected—and lighter than fear. When Kojo placed it in his hands, it thrummed beneath his palms like a second heartbeat finding its rhythm. It wasn't just a weapon. It was something alive, something that wanted to be understood—patient, mischievous, a teacher with a temper. The Osh'Kora woke under his touch, a warm vibration crawling up his arms and settling somewhere deep behind his sternum.
Ilias tasted metal and rain on the back of his tongue. He breathed in slow, then let out a laugh—half nervous, half thrilled.
"Don't look at it like that," Kojo said, clapping him on the shoulder. "It'll bite if you stare too hard."
Reverb had his rig set up in the corner, lenses capturing every angle, recording in slow motion. "We're streaming this, by the way. but Not to the public—to our own records. If you become a god or a cautionary tale, we'll have footage either way."
Seraph stayed back on the mezzanine, arms folded, jaw working beneath the shadow of her high collar. She watched Ilias hold the staff—watched the way his knuckles whitened, the way he inhaled rhythm instead of air. She'd trained soldiers to kill for less power than this. This was different. This was bigger. It made a cold knot gather beneath her ribs.
Ilias tested the weight, rolling the staff between his hands. The batons settled into his grip like extensions of his arms. He spun one experimentally with his right hand, and the left automatically followed. The magnetic hinge clicked, and the two pieces fused—smooth, smart, living.
The room answered. A low note threaded through the generator's rumble, harmonizing. Even the rats in the rafters went still.
Kojo's grin stretched wide. "Alright. Show me you're not useless."
Ilias flexed his wrists, feeling the staff vibrate. He moved—awkward at first, two quick jabs and a swing that should've been clumsy. Instead, the swing cut the air with a clean, bell-clear tone that made the skin along Seraph's neck prickle.
The staff redirected his motion. It pushed, then corrected. Pointed. Coaxed. Every time Ilias tried to force it, the Osh'Kora resisted like a temperamental horse. Every time he eased, the staff moved with him, extrapolating grace from raw strength.
He spent the first hour learning to listen. Not to music. Not to the city's noise. To the staff. To his heartbeat. To the tiny after-sounds the staff left in the air like fingerprints.
Kojo barked commands. Reverb tracked patterns. A few gang kids circled with beer bottles, faces lit by curiosity.
"Think in beats," Kojo said. "Not words. Not anger. Breathe. Count one-two. One-two. Let the staff fill the space between."
Ilias did. He counted. The first swings staggered. The second paired with a breath. The third flowed. A move he'd only seen in old fight vids—a spinning sweep into a vertical snap—fit him like geometry finding its proof.
When he found the rhythm, movement dissolved into motion. Footwork sharpened. He pushed into the staff; it pushed back, then remembered to follow. Each strike left a thin trail of sound lingering in the air—a visible ripple, like dust caught in a sunbeam.
"You're learning fast," Kojo said, half-proud, half-alarmed. "Faster than I thought."
Ilias didn't say it, but he felt the same small shock. The staff didn't just accept his input—it taught. When he misstepped, the Osh'Kora pulsed a corrective note—not harsh, just a nudge—and his muscles rearranged themselves, remembering the right position before his brain commanded them.
By the end of the evening, his arms burned. He leaned against a crate, laughing, breath hitching.
Kojo tossed him a cloth. "Don't go soft on me now."
They tried flight next because staying earthbound felt stupid after all that noise. Kojo set down an amp and a ring of broken speakers. "Listen—you convert pulse to lift. You know the old rig at Kuro Pier? The one that used harmonic lift? Same idea. Make the air pressure work for you."
Ilias rolled his eyes. "You talk like you read manuals for angels."
Kojo shrugged. "I steal manuals for angels. Same thing."
Ilias planted the staff point-first, gripped it with both hands, and pushed. The staff hummed. The floor beneath his boots rounded like a tide. It didn't simply lift him—it made the air obedient, bending pressure in a tiny, controlled pocket beneath the staff. An updraft a human brain couldn't engineer with muscle alone.
When Ilias jumped, the staff held him. It wasn't flying at first. Just a float. A slow upward drift, like being lifted into warm water. Then he pushed off with his legs, and the staff answered with a clean, white-note tone that tightened the pocket—And the world slid sideways.
Neon blurs became streaks. The generator's rumble shrank to a heartbeat. Below him, the gang looked like moving toys. The city smelled different from up here—ozone and fried circuits and something like freedom that tasted of metal.
He laughed—a sharp, giddy bark—and the lift doubled. Balance followed. Then control. He spun, hovering, then eased down with the staff like a cane guiding a drunk.
Reverb whooped and recorded everything, grin jagged and proud.
Seraph's mouth was a line. She hadn't allowed herself to stand until now. Seeing him above the ground—alive, grinning, weightless—something in her chest twisted.
From the mezzanine, Seraph watched Lira step smooth through the crowd. Lira was always dangerous. Beautiful in a way that felt like a dare. She moved like a memory walking through a room full of strangers.
Ilias came down and landed light, boots thudding, staff humming like a cat purring. Lira was there, smiling with a softness that made the room tilt. She reached out and placed her hand on the staff. The connection sparked—not like Orun-Fela's visions, but something private, intimate. She closed her eyes for a second, like remembering a song.
When she opened them, she stepped closer to Ilias. She pressed her hand to his cheek—too familiar, too knowing—and kissed him. Not a movie kiss. A searching thing. A claim. Long enough for Seraph to see.
Seraph's breath sucked in hard. The grip she had on her disruptor tightened until her knuckles went white. She tore her eyes away and walked out into the night without a sound.
Ilias felt everything—the kiss, the way the room's air shifted like a held note—and he felt the sudden absence of Seraph like a drumbeat gone missing. He understood, in a way, why people made mistakes when they were tired, when the world was too loud and the heart needed quiet to fill.
He also didn't mean for Seraph's face to fold into that hurt. Lira slid off his chest with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "You fly well," she said, voice soft, teasing. "I always knew you would."
"About time," he answered, dizzy with the lift and with embarrassment. "You look like trouble."
"Only the good kind," she said, and her hand lingered on his arm. The room's laughter felt brittle.
Reverb noticed Seraph's absence but didn't call it out. Kojo watched the two of them, brows knitted in a way that meant trouble and protectiveness.
Later, after the laughter died and the kids drifted back to their games, Lira slipped away into an alley. She met a shape in the dark—a silhouette wrapped in a coat that seemed to drink light.
"You did it?" the figure asked, voice flat as stone.
Lira's fingers were cold. "He touched it," she said. "And it answered."
The figure stepped forward—not fully revealed. The Silence liked its faces in half-light.
"Good." The voice was soft, patient. "Keep him close. When he trusts you, the shatter will be cleaner."
Lira's jaw clenched. She glanced back at the hideout where Ilias practiced spins with Kojo. "And Seraph?"
"She will learn what fear looks like," the figure said. "And she will step aside."
They parted with a quiet click—the sound a lock makes when the wrong key has been found.
While Ilias learned to move like air, the city's gilded cages were closing. Deep inside a house of glass and marble above Elyria, a table sat long and polished—long enough to swallow secrets.
The patriarchs of three Major Families gathered. The room was lit by suspended globes humming at a precise pitch. The air smelled of citrus and old money.
Lady Verris leaned forward, elbows on the table, nails short and sharp as a blade's edge. "We can't allow the Morrows to dictate the narrative."
Lord Ferroline's fingers drummed a nervous rhythm on the table, metal jewelry clicking. "They already do. The Sanctum's embarrassment is on our ledger. If the boy becomes a symbol, we lose markets. Influence. We need control."
Vaen's envoy—the Church's figurehead in these talks—had his face in low light, the edges of his robes sharp as a conductor's baton. "Control or containment. The Archon favors containment. Yet… if the boy joins under our patronage—"
A murmur ran through the room like a tremor. The idea of a marketable, promotable resonant hero thrilled the mercantile minds and chilled the purists.
"Our houses will send envoys," Lady Verris said. "Discreet retrieval squads. Favored teams. No massacres. Too messy."
"Also," said an elder among them—the head of House Luma—"public narratives must shift. Make him a myth the people can buy into. Songs that soothe. Merchandise. Faith as brand."
They laughed—small, predatory. Plans made on polished wood have teeth.
Outside that room, in a lower hall covered in frescoes of old gods, Sister Nira sat against a pillar, sliding down until she rested on cold stone. Two voices argued inside her head.
Lyra whispered about inevitability. About righteous erasure. Nira clutched the fabric of her collar and thought of a child in a market who'd once looked up at a street musician as if he'd conjured light.
"I'm doing the right thing," she told herself—out loud, small. "If I find the spy—if I find the Cult link—if I purge it—the city will be safe."
Lyra smelled blood where Nira smelled melody.
"Or you will be the one to let the song out," Lyra said. "Which is it?"
The answer didn't come neat. It jangled inside her ribs, an echo in a corridor that used to be quiet. She rose, smoothing the front of her robe.
The Archon's orders are simple. We silence when necessary. We do not listen to curiosity.
Dawn crept up thin and cautious. Seraph left the hideout before anyone else woke. She walked without direction, letting the city's first light slice the neon residue from her eyes. A sting of cold caught in her throat—not from the air, but from the memory of the kiss she'd seen.
In the morning, Kojo made coffee like a man making amends. He watched Ilias shuffle into the kitchen, hair matted, staff tucked at his side like a cane. Reverb teased. The gang teased. No one dared mention Seraph's absence.
It was Kojo who finally broke the silence. He leaned across the table, voice like a drum. "You saw her last night, yeah? The way she looked when Lira kissed you?"
Ilias blinked. "She—Lira kissed me."
Kojo thumped the table. "Not the point. You saw Seraph look. She left. She looked like someone who's not used to being left behind. That look—it matters."
Ilias shrugged, reaching for a cup. "She's a soldier. She'll grit her teeth and do the job."
Kojo's face let go of the teasing and settled into something serious. "Kid, highborn or not, people fall. Women. Men. Doesn't matter what your badge says. Don't be an idiot."
Reverb snorted. "Says the man who once tried to punch out his own wedding."
Kojo grinned. "We learn from our mistakes."
They ate. Ilias felt the sting of confusion and warmth both. He thought of Seraph alone in the cold. The way the staff hummed against his ribs. The kiss that had been soft and sharp like a stolen memory.
He didn't know where any of it would lead. He only knew he didn't want to cause Seraph pain. He walked out onto the street to clear his head.
The city smelled like someone had rearranged the future overnight—fried street food, wet pavement, and the faint metallic tang of the Osh'Kora still singing beneath his shirt.
Above the skyline, somewhere behind glass towers and choir halls, the houses were choosing sides. The Church was composing its counterpoint. The Silence smiled in alleys and recruited pain into its chorus.
And Ilias—still a kid who fixed speakers with his fists—tightened his grip on the staff and took the first step toward being more than that.