For most, this city was a place of beginnings, where one could step into legend as easily as stepping through an inn's doorway.
For Astra, it was a graveyard.
He walked without a destination, shoulders low, cloak dragging the dust. His right hand—wrapped meticulously in fresh linen—hung at his side, stiff and unnatural.
Onlookers occasionally glanced at it, their faces softening with misplaced sympathy. He didn't correct them. He never did. Let them think he was hurt; it was easier than explaining why he couldn't unwrap the bandages. Not here. Not where people might see what lay beneath.
He let out a long breath into the crowded air.
"Sigh. Why did I come back here again?"
Astra muttered to himself, "This town has disappointed me twice."
He said it aloud this time, as though daring the city to mock him.
The question lingered, unanswered, and he doubted the stones beneath his boots carried wisdom enough to respond. At thirty, he was too old to be starting over, too young to give up entirely. The thought sat in his chest like a stone.
"When I was young," he whispered, voice coarse, "I dreamed of becoming a famous adventurer..."
The smell of roasted meat tugged at him. His feet pulled him toward the source, seeking comfort in the familiar ritual of eating when thinking became too difficult.
"Two skewers. And whatever you call that drink."
"Haven't seen you before," the vendor said, hands already working with practiced efficiency.
"I just got back from a journey. I used to be an adventurer and royal guard here."
The young man arched a brow, skewered three pieces of meat with one swift thrust. Something in his posture shifted—subtle, but Astra caught it. The stance, the awareness. Not just a cook.
"Guard? Royal Guard?"
"For a while," Astra admitted, accepting the food with his left hand. "Before I... resigned."
"Name's Marcus. Nice to meet you."
"Likewise, I'm Astra."
Marcus nodded without pressing, though his eyes lingered on Astra's bandaged hand for a moment longer than politeness required. Astra saw the question form and die unasked. Good. Some secrets were better left buried.
Astra took the food, bit into smoky, charred meat, and let himself remember. He ate slowly, watching the academy gates with the patience of someone who had learned to find peace in small moments. Life moved around them—gardeners laughing, clerks fetching supplies, grease popping on Marcus's grill.
Then the gates creaked open.
Students spilled out, their robes glittering with embroidered sigils, their laughter carrying sharp with privilege. But the crowd halted abruptly. Conversations died mid-sentence. A path opened, reverent and wary, as a tall figure stepped through.
Black hair flowed down her back, black eyes sharp as obsidian knives. She walked with unhurried precision, ignoring the gazes that followed her like shadows. But it wasn't just her appearance that made Astra's breath catch—it was the way the air itself seemed to thicken around her. Even from this distance, his water-sense picked up the subtle change in humidity that accompanied powerful magic barely held in check.
Astra leaned toward Marcus, chewing the last of his skewer. "Who's the mysterious-looking girl?"
Marcus didn't look up from turning skewers, but his knuckles had gone white around the spatula.
"Not a witch. Princess Roxene. Eldest daughter of the throne."
Astra nearly choked on his drink. "She's the princess?"
"She doesn't look like a princess at all, you know. Royalty's usually known for blonde hair, blue eyes..."
"Yeah, many people doubt her lineage, but don't say that in front of her," Marcus muttered, voice dropping to barely above a whisper.
"Unless you've got a death wish. She's... different from the others. Dangerous different."
Astra grunted, sipping the tart, watered drink. The smart thing would be to finish his meal and leave before she noticed him. Royalty and Astra had never mixed well—his last encounter with the royal family had ended with his "resignation" and a promise to never return to court.
He was about to turn back to Marcus when he felt a swift tug at his side.
His satchel. Gone.
A thief fled through the crowd, clutching the bag. Astra sighed, recognizing the lightness at once. His hand moved instinctively toward his sword hilt before remembering—he couldn't draw with his right hand wrapped, and his left was too clumsy for a clean strike in a crowd.
Before he could rise from his stool, black hair flashed like a raven's wing.
Princess Roxene moved like a falcon stooping. Astra's water-sense exploded with sensation—humidity plummeting in a perfect circle around the thief as moisture was violently extracted from the air. The man's breath crystallized, his sweat froze against his skin, and his legs seized as the water in his muscles responded to her will. He crashed face-first into the cobblestones with a wet thud.
The thief tried to scream, but ice crystals formed in his throat. Only a strangled whimper emerged.
Astra's blood ran cold. Not because of what she'd done—he'd seen worse in his guard days. But because she'd done it without moving her hands, without speaking, without even breaking stride. That level of control, that casual precision... it spoke of training that went far beyond what any princess should possess.
"Well," he said quietly, setting down his drink with deliberate calm. "That saves me the trouble."
Roxene picked up his satchel from beside the still-whimpering thief, brushing frost from its leather with one pale hand. City guards appeared as if from nowhere, their movements suggesting this wasn't the first time they'd cleaned up after the princess.
She approached with measured steps, her dark eyes studying him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. When she extended the bag toward him, Astra noticed her fingers bore no rings, no jewelry—nothing that might interfere with spellcasting.
"This is yours."
Astra accepted it with a nod, careful to use his left hand. "My thanks, Your Highness."
"I would never forget your kindness."
Her eyes lingered on his bandaged arm, but not with sympathy like the others. This was analytical, calculating. Like she was solving a puzzle he hadn't realized he'd presented.
"Can I see inside your pouch?" she asked, her tone deceptively casual. "If I'm not mistaken, from the aura emitted... there are elemental stones inside, correct?"
Astra's first instinct was to deflect, to make excuses and escape before this conversation could go anywhere dangerous. But something in her manner—the directness, the lack of royal pretense—made him pause.
And lying to royalty was a poor way to begin a second life.
"My pleasure, Your Highness."
He unbuckled the flap with his left hand and carefully extracted the gemstones, laying them on the small table between their stools. The gems caught the fading sunlight, each one pulsing with barely contained elemental energy.
"Just as I thought..." the princess murmured, and Astra caught the genuine appreciation in her voice—the first truly unguarded emotion she'd shown. "Water, fire, earth, wind, and..."
She paused, reaching toward the neutral stone before stopping just short of contact. Smart. Neutral stones could discharge unpredictably when touched by someone channeling active magic.
"A perfect neutral stone. That's considerably rarer than the others."
Without waiting for invitation—without asking permission—she lowered herself gracefully to sit on the empty stool beside him.
The reaction was immediate and absolute.
Every conversation within thirty feet died mid-word. Laughter strangled itself into silence. The gardener who had been trimming roots near the Century Tree gathered his tools with exaggerated care and retreated to the plaza's far edge. A pair of merchants who'd been eyeing Marcus's wares suddenly discovered urgent business elsewhere.
Even the hungry workers who had been queuing for food took deliberate steps backward, leaving their meals half-paid and half-finished.
Marcus had gone completely still, his spatula frozen above the grill as meat began to char.
*Gods above,* Astra thought, sweat beginning to bead beneath his collar despite the cooling evening air. *Not here. Not now. Not when I'm trying to stay invisible.*
Every instinct screamed at him to stand, to bow, to make excuses and flee. This was exactly the kind of attention he'd come to the capital to avoid. But rising now would only make the scene worse, and the princess had positioned herself in a way that made retreat impossible without seeming deliberately rude.
He was trapped.
Worse, he could feel eyes on them from every direction—academy staff, city guards, curious students. By tomorrow morning, word would spread through every tavern and market stall: *The princess sat with a stranger. A commoner. A man with a bandaged hand who carries elemental stones.*
His carefully planned anonymity was evaporating like morning mist.