UP IN THE GALAXY Chapter 1

 CHAPTER 1 “Where The Rainbow Whispers to The Sand”

The children gathered at the edge of Whispering Sand Bay, where the black mirror sea kissed the obsidian coast and the sky above burned with diamond-dust stars so furious they seemed to scream. They came in ones and twos, their moss-fiber tunics catching the phosphorescent glow of the singing sand, their bare feet leaving prints that filled with liquid light before the cellular hum of the beach erased them.

They were the Children of the Shore—the Listeners, the ones who sat at the edge of everything and waited for the cosmos to speak. They had come from huts woven from cured river-grass, from sleeping mats still warm with their bodies, from dreams they could not remember but whose shapes still pressed against their eyelids like pressed flowers.

The oldest among them, a girl named Lune, was the first to reach the fire. She was twelve, with hair like braided night and eyes that had already learned to ask questions that made elders pause. Tonight, those eyes held a question so large it seemed to push against the very air between her and the flame.

"Is it true?" she asked the old man by the fire. "What they say about up there? In the galaxy?"

The old man smiled. He was carved from obsidian, his skin so dark it seemed to swallow the firelight and hold it prisoner in its depths. His robes were treated hide, etched with ancient star-maps so worn that only his fingers could still trace their meaning. Around his neck hung a pendant of fossilized wood—a fragment of a tree that had grown before the stars had learned their dance.

"Ah, Lune," Elder Chike said, his voice like the grinding of continental plates, slow and terrible and patient. "You ask the question that has woken me from sleep for a thousand nights. You ask the question that the singing sand has been humming since before your grandmother's grandmother drew her first breath."

A boy named Beni scoffed from the shadows. He was fourteen, the kind of boy who pretended to know everything because he was terrified of knowing nothing. "We already know the story. The king story. He wins."

"He wins," Chike repeated, and the words seemed to hang in the air like smoke. "You know the name of the destination. You do not know the price of the voyage."

The children settled onto the sand, their legs crossed, their hands resting on their knees in the ancient listening posture. The cellular hum of the beach vibrated through their bones, a frequency so low it was felt rather than heard—the song of the planet itself, singing in a language older than any tongue that had ever shaped a word.

Lune did not sit. She stood at the edge of the firelight, her shadow stretching long behind her, reaching toward the black mirror sea like a dark finger pointing at the furious stars.

"Tell us anyway," she said. "Tell us the price."

Chike looked at her, and something in his ancient eyes shifted. He had seen empires rise and fall. He had watched stars be born and die. He had stood at the edge of the crack in the universe and watched the cold press in. And still, the question in this girl's eyes made him remember why he had lived so long—why he had endured.

"Very well," he said. "I will tell you a history written in scar-tissue. I will tell you about the crack in the universe, and the boy who was chosen to be the glue. I will tell you about Kito, the most alone creature in existence—and how he became the unity that binds the stars."

He reached into the fire and pulled out a burning log. The flames did not burn him. The fire was his friend, as it had been for centuries. He held the log up, and the shadows danced across his face, making him look like something carved from nightmare and starlight.

"Before the Ivory Throne," he began, "—there was only the Word. And the Word was Biban."

•••

"In the beginning," Chike said, "there was only the dreaming. And the dreamer was Biban, the sleeping god."

The children leaned forward. The singing sand beneath them hummed a different frequency now—something deeper, something that resonated in their bones like a memory they had never lived.

"Biban dreamed the spiral arms into existence. He set the stars to their dance, painting them across the dark with colors that did not yet have names. He taught the planets how to spin, the comets how to weep their tails of ice and light, the nebulae how to give birth to new suns."

Chike's hand moved through the air, and the sparks from the fire followed his gesture, forming a galaxy of tiny flames that spun slowly above the children's heads.

"Biban created everything you see when you look up at the furious stars," he continued. "But creation is exhausting work. So Biban laid himself down at the galaxy's gravitational heart, where the gravity is so strong that even light must bend to pass. And there he sleeps."

Lune's eyes were wide. "He sleeps? The god sleeps?"

"He sleeps," Chike confirmed. "And his dreams become physics. His breath becomes solar winds. His heartbeat is the rhythm that keeps the galaxy turning. Every time you feel the warmth of a sun on your face, you are feeling Biban's fevered thoughts. Every time you hear the wind whisper through the trees, you are hearing Biban's slow, steady dreaming."

"But if he sleeps," Beni interrupted, "then who—"

"Who guards the dream?" Chike finished. "The Rainbow Serpent."

The fire crackled. The sparks that had formed the tiny galaxy collapsed back into embers, falling like dying stars into the wood.

"The Rainbow Serpent is not a beast of flesh," Chike explained. "It is a current of pure causality, flowing from Biban's sleeping mind into the fabric of reality itself. It is the thread that connects all things—the glue that binds the universe together. And when the time is right, the Rainbow Serpent chooses a vessel. A human child who can carry Biban's power and wake the sleeping god."

"What child?" Lune asked. "Who was chosen?"

Chike's eyes grew distant. "The least of us," he said quietly. "A boy who was so alone that the galaxy itself seemed to forget he existed. A boy named Kito."

•••

"But before Kito could rise," Chike said, "before the Rainbow Serpent could choose him—the cold came."

The fire guttered, as if the flame itself had grown afraid. Chike gestured, and the children felt the temperature drop. Not in the air around them—but somewhere deeper, somewhere in the marrow of their bones.

"From the void between galaxies, a pressure pushed inward. A silence that wanted to swallow all sound. A cold that hated Biban's warmth. And at the heart of that cold was Xaranthos, the Serpent from the Void—the King of Cold."

"He's the bad one," Beni said. "The villain."

Chike smiled, but there was something sorrowful in the expression. "Oh, child. If only it were so simple. Xaranthos is not all bad. He is... what happens when loneliness curdles into hunger. He looked at Biban's creation—the warmth, the sound, the color—and he felt a need so vast that it became a kind of love. The wrong kind of love. The kind that wants to possess what it cannot understand."

"So he steals," Lune said softly. "He takes things."

"He takes," Chike agreed. "First, the warmth of dying stars. Then, the sound of singing planets. And then—" His voice dropped to a whisper. "The color."

The children looked at each other. They had seen it, of course. Everyone had. The slow draining of the galaxy from living color to dead monochrome. The way the rainbow had faded from the nebulae. The way the sky had become less blue, less deep, less anything.

"You must understand," Chike said, "what it means to lose color. Color is not just pigment. Color is emotion. Color is memory. Color is the soul's signature on the world. When Xaranthos steals color, he steals the very thing that makes existence worth experiencing. He turns the galaxy into a prison of black and white, and he calls it salvation."

"But Kito stopped him," Beni said. "The story says he stopped him."

Chike was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled. The sand hummed. The furious stars burned overhead, indifferent to the small drama unfolding below them.

"Kito stopped him," Chike finally said. "But not before the price was paid. Not before the color was nearly gone. Not before Abdi—" He stopped, and the children saw something flicker in his ancient eyes. Grief, perhaps. Or memory. "But I am getting ahead of myself."

•••

"Kito's first sign of the crack came in a dream," Chike said. "A dream of riding the Rainbow Serpent through a sky full of colors that did not yet exist. A dream of a galaxy under siege, of cities reduced to 'broken teeth against a smoky sky.' A dream of the Seething Rim, where people's homes were being blown up by the King of Cold's forces."

The children sat in silence. The singing sand seemed to have stopped humming. Even the fire seemed to be holding its breath.

"Kito did not know what the dream meant. He only knew that something was wrong."

"What did he do?" Lune whispered.

"What could he do?" Chike asked. "He was fourteen. He was alone. He had no one to trust. His father was a king who had given up on him. His brother was a soldier fighting a war he was not allowed to know about. His uncle was a traitor who pretended to care. And the girl he was supposed to marry could not look him in the eye."

Chike stood, his ancient bones creaking. He walked to the edge of the firelight and looked up at the furious stars.

"But Kito had something they did not have," he said. "He had the witness in his blood. The deep, listening silence of the cosmos. He had been chosen by the Rainbow Serpent—not because he was strong, but because he was empty. Because there was a crack in him that matched the crack in the universe. Because he was the only one who could understand what it meant to be broken and still hold together."

He turned back to the children.

"All true power," he said, "is first a phantom, then a prayer, then a weapon.”

He walked to the edge of the black mirror sea, where the water kissed the obsidian sand. The furious stars reflected in its surface, a million diamonds scattered across a field of night.

"The rainbow whispers to the sand," he said. "And the sand whispers back. The story is not over. It is never over. It is a history written in scar-tissue, and you must learn to read its language."

He turned back to them, his ancient face lit by the fire and the stars.

"You know the name of the destination," he said. "You have not heard the story of the boy who became the king."

•••

The fire crackled. The sand hummed. The stars burned overhead, indifferent and furious.

Chike reached into the fire one last time. He pulled out a burning log, and the flames wrapped around his ancient fingers, leaving no marks, no scars, no evidence of their passage.

"Remember," he said, "all true power is first a phantom, then a prayer, then a weapon. The phantom is the vision of what could be. The prayer is the asking for help. The weapon is the action taken—not perfectly, but finally."

He held the log up, and the shadows danced across his face, making him look like something carved from nightmare and starlight.

"Kito began as a phantom," he said. "A boy who imagined himself as King before he became one. He became a prayer—a boy who asked for help, who reached out to the Rainbow Serpent, who trusted in the wisdom of those who came before. And finally, he became a weapon—a boy who acted, who fought, who held the universe together even when it seemed impossible."

He threw the log back into the fire, and the flames leaped up, licking at the dark sky.

"Now," he said, "it is your turn. You have heard the story. You have learned the lesson. You must become the phantoms, the prayers, the weapons. You must be the glue for the world you share."

The children nodded. They had heard the story. They understood.

They turned to walk back to their huts, but before they left, Lune paused at the edge of the firelight.

"Thank you," she said. "For telling us the story. For warning us of the price."

Chike smiled. It was a tired smile, but a warm one.

"You are welcome," he said. "Now go. Sleep. Dream. And when you wake, remember that you are not alone. You are part of the story. You are the witnesses. You are the inheritors. And the story will continue—as it always has, as it always will."

•••

That night, the Children of the Shore dreamed of a boy who rode a rainbow serpent through a sky full of colors that did not yet exist —and of the price that he would pay, over and over again, until the universe itself was made whole.

•••

The chime came at 5:47 Zuberi Standard Time, exactly as it had for the past 4,383 mornings of Kito's life.

He didn't need to open his eyes to know what was coming. He'd mapped the rhythm of his captivity down to the microsecond. First, the chime—a crystalline note that vibrated through the fossilized ivory walls of his chambers like a tuning fork striking the soul of the planet itself. Then, the three-second pause, during which he was supposed to rise gracefully from his bed of moon-moth silk and begin his morning ablutions. Then—

"Good morning, little prince! Good morning, little sun! The galaxy is spinning and the day's begun!"

Kito shoved his head under his pillow. The pillow was stuffed with cloud-floss harvested from the upper atmosphere of Zuberi Prime's third moon, and it was the only thing in his life that had never disappointed him. It didn't care that he was the most alone creature in existence. It didn't sigh at him with quiet disappointment. It didn't offer him bribes disguised as kindness. It just sat there, being soft and forgiving, exactly as a pillow should.

"Rise and shine, little star! Your destiny awaits! Don't make the universe wait too long—it's got terrible patience!"

The singing continued from somewhere near the foot of his bed. Kito's hand emerged from beneath the cloud-floss fortress, waving blindly in the direction of the sound.

"Bonti," he said, his voice muffled by pillow and despair. "Bonti, I swear to every god in every dimension—if you don't stop singing, I will personally inform the kitchen that you have developed a sudden and unquenchable craving for nutrient-paste."

The singing stopped.

There was a moment of silence, punctuated only by the distant hum of the palace's living crystal infrastructure and the whisper of the purple sky against the window's force-field. Then, a small, furry head appeared at the edge of Kito's bed. Bonti the Puku was roughly the size of a Terran cat, with enormous luminous eyes that took up half his face, fur the color of twilight, and a long prehensile tail that curled into question marks whenever he was confused. Right now, it was curling into approximately seventeen question marks simultaneously.

"You wouldn't," Bonti said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "You know what they do to Pukus who develop nutrient-paste cravings?"

"I know," Kito said, still not emerging from the pillow. "They give them nutrient-paste. For a year. Every meal. No exceptions. No treats. Just paste."

"Monster," Bonti breathed. "Absolute monster. I sang for you. I sang the good songs. The ancient songs. The ones my grandmother taught me that she learned from the singing sand itself. And this is my reward? Paste?"

"Your reward is that I'm not telling them you also have a secret obsession with fermented moon-fruit."

The Puku gasped, his tail straightening into an exclamation point. “Prince Kito—you're going to be late. Again! And your father will do that thing with his face. The thing where his mouth goes all small and his eyes go all far away and you can practically hear him thinking about what your brother would do in this situation!"

Kito finally emerged from his pillow. His hair, as usual, was a disaster. It stuck up in seventeen different directions, defying gravity, common sense, and the combined efforts of three royal stylists who had been assigned to tame it. They'd failed. Everyone failed. Kito's hair was the one thing in the galaxy that refused to bend to anyone's will but its own.

"My brother," Kito said flatly, "would have been awake before the chime. He'd have already completed his morning meditations, run fourteen kilometers, and composed a poem about the beauty of duty. He'd probably be smiling right now. Smiling and sweating and being generally insufferable."

Bonti's ears drooped. "That's not very nice. Your brother is kind. He's always kind to me. He gives me treats and tells me I'm doing a good job guarding you."

"He's a soldier," Kito said. "He's trained to be charming to everyone. It's a tactical advantage."

"You're grumpy," Bonti observed. "It's the sleep. You never sleep properly. You stay up reading those scary reports about the Seething Rim, and then you have nightmares about the void, and then you wake up grumpy and take it out on the only creature in existence who loves you unconditionally."

"I don't have nightmares," Kito said automatically. "I don't dream at all. I just—"

He stopped. The words caught in his throat like a fishbone. Because he did dream. He'd been dreaming the same dream for the past three weeks, and it was starting to bleed into his waking hours.

A rainbow serpent, riding through a sky so saturated with color it hurt to look at. A voice calling his name from somewhere impossibly far away. A feeling of falling and flying at the same time, like he was being pulled apart and put back together by forces he couldn't understand.

It was just dreams. It had to be dreams. Because the alternative—that something was actually calling to him, that something in the universe actually needed him—was too ridiculous to contemplate. He was the spare heir. The disappointing prince. The boy who'd gone viral for dropping his datapad in the school hall while half the galaxy watched and laughed.

The most alone creature in existence. That's what the palace historians called him, in their carefully worded records. "The crown prince occupies a position of unique isolation, being the sole successor to the Ivory Throne." They meant it as a warning, a reminder to the court of his importance. But Kito knew what they really meant. They meant he had no one.

•••

His room was too big.

That was the first thing Kito noticed every morning, after Bonti's singing and before the despair set in. It was too big. It had always been too big. The ceiling arched so high that the living crystal formations that grew from the fossilized ivory walls disappeared into shadows so deep they might have been the void itself. The bed, massive as it was, felt like a raft adrift in an ocean of polished floor. The windows stretched from floor to ceiling, offering a panoramic view of Zuberi Prime's purple sky, the impossible beauty of the botanical gardens below, and, in the distance, the glittering spires of the city where everyone else lived.

Everyone else. The people who had friends. Who had someone to sit with at lunch. Who didn't spend their meals alone at a table of moon-ivory long enough for a thousand, because the court protocol insisted that the crown prince must "maintain appropriate presence" even when no one wanted to be present with him.

Kito swung his legs out of bed. His feet hit the floor with a soft thump that echoed through the vast chamber like a gunshot. Bonti chittered nervously, his tail curling into a question mark.

"Are you going to do the thing?" the Puku asked. "The thing where you stare at the wall for twenty minutes and pretend you're not crying?"

"I don't cry," Kito said.

"Last week—"

"I was allergic to the cloud-floss. There was an outbreak. It's been resolved."

Bonti made a sound that was remarkably close to a human snort. "You're allergic to nothing. You're allergic to emotions. It's a known condition among royal heirs. It's called being emotionally constipated."

"If I wanted to be insulted by a three-foot-tall rodent—"

"I am not a rodent. I'm a Puku. We're a distinguished and ancient species with a proud history of—"

"Of being the universe's most annoying alarm clocks." Kito stood, stretching his arms above his head. The white sleeping robe he wore—standard issue for Zuberian royalty, designed to be comfortable and modest and entirely forgettable—fell loose around his round frame. He'd never been built like his brother. He'd never been built like anyone. He was all angles and elbows, a boy who looked like he was still growing into himself, which he was, but also like he might never actually grow into anything at all.

A chime sounded from the bathroom, this one softer and more melodious. The water was ready. The nanites in the shower would clean him efficiently, gently, without ever making him feel like he'd actually washed himself. Because that was how things worked in the palace. Everything was done for you. Everything was handed to you. Everything except the one thing you actually wanted—which was to be left alone.

"I'll be in the bathroom," Kito said. "Don't sing."

"I won't sing," Bonti said. "I'll just hum. Very quietly. In a way that's respectful of your emotional needs."

"If you hum, I'm telling the kitchen about the moon-fruit."

The Puku fell silent, his enormous eyes going wide with outrage. Kito almost smiled. Almost. But smiling required effort, and he'd learned long ago that effort was wasted on a universe that didn't care whether he existed or not.

•••

The bathroom was a masterpiece of Zuberian engineering—a circular chamber of living crystal that pulsed with a soft, internal light. The shower was not a shower in the conventional sense. It was a series of sonic emitters and steam projectors that could clean a body without the indignity of actual water. Kito stepped into the center of the room and let the nanosonic field wash over him. It was efficient. It was sterile. It was utterly devoid of humanity.

He watched himself in the mirror as the cleaning cycle completed. His reflection stared back at him—a boy with skin the color of burnt honey, eyes too large for his round face, and hair that had somehow gotten worse during the night. He looked like a startled bird that had been through a war. He looked like someone who'd been told his whole life that he was important, but had never actually felt it.

The mirror flickered. For a moment—just a fraction of a second—Kito could have sworn he saw something in his reflection. Something that wasn't there. A shimmer of color that shouldn't exist in a galaxy slowly draining to black and white. A rainbow serpent, twisting behind his eyes.

Then it was gone. The mirror showed only his own tired dark-grey face, nothing else. No color like in the dreams.

"Stop it," he told himself. "Stop imagining things. You're stressed. You're sleep-deprived. You're the most alone creature in existence, and your brain is trying to compensate by inventing hallucinations."

But even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. The dream was real. The colorful serpent was real. Something was calling to him from somewhere impossibly far away, and he had no idea what to do about it.

The entire wall was a holographic display, set to its default: black waves crashing against obsidian rocks in slow motion. Steam rose in billowing clouds, refracting the image into a churning dreamscape of white and grey.

Kito stood under the mist, watching the news feeds scroll across the stormy backdrop.

Clip #1 was all glitter. "THE GRAND ORRERY GALA TONIGHT!" The feed showed Zali, an influencer with iridescent braids, twirling in a dress made of shifting light. She and her friends did zero-g backflips in the grand ballroom. It was beautiful. It was empty.

The invitation sat on his desk. He could see it in his mind's eye—the ornate scroll, the elegant script. He wouldn't go. He never went.

Clip #2 was the war. Helmet-cam footage. A soldier running through a city that was no longer a city. Buildings sheared off, the skyline a row of "broken teeth against a smoky sky." The news anchor's voice was grave. The Seething Rim. People's homes. People's lives.

The war his uncle said was "under control."

And then, the message overlay appeared. From his uncle.

Pre-order confirmed: Star-Reaver IV. Delivery in three cycles. A little more fun than those dusty old reports, don't you think?

Kito stared at it. The bribe. Every time, the same thing. Have some fun, boy. Don't worry about the hard stuff. Leave that to the adults.

But the adults were the ones letting it happen. The adults were the ones who treated him like a child while the galaxy bled.

Clip #3 was the humiliation. Him. The school hall. The datapad slipping from his clumsy fingers. The slow-motion fall. The crack. The laughter. Nia's face—a flash of something that might have been pity, might have been disgust. The caption: "@Jelani_Prime: Future of the Galaxy, everyone."

Fire emojis. A cascade of flames.

And Nia. A simple heart. Worse than the fire. Because the fire was strangers. Nia was supposed to be his future. His bride. And she couldn't even look at him.

Kito's fist slammed into the water.

The sonic field shorted. The steam erupted. The holographic ocean shattered into a thousand shimmering shards.

He stood in the wreckage, chest heaving. The dream of the rainbow serpent pulsed at the edge of his vision—colors so vivid they burned. It was getting closer. More urgent. The bleeding was starting.

And he was trapped. Trapped between a party full of people who hated him and a war full of people who were dying. Trapped between his uncle's games and his father's silence. Trapped in a cage made of gold and lies, with everyone around him conspiring to keep him quiet, stupid, and safe.

But the dream didn't care about safe. The dream wanted him to see.

And somewhere, in the wreckage of the shower, Kito began to realize that being quiet and stupid was no longer an option.

•••

The robes were stupid.

Kito had been thinking this for approximately 4,383 mornings, and the thought had never lost its sharp edge. The ceremonial robes of the Zuberian crown prince were a masterpiece of fashion engineering—fossilized ivory plates inlaid with living crystal emblems of a lion’s head, trimmed with the feathers of extinct birds, heavy with the weight of ten thousand years of tradition. They were also ridiculously impractical. They weighed nearly as much as Kito did. They clanked when he walked. They made him look like a small child playing dress-up in his ancestors' closet.

He'd tried, once, to ask if he could wear something simpler. Something lighter. Something that didn't make him feel like a walking museum exhibit. His father had looked at him with that expression—the one that said, "I've given up on you, but I'm too polite to say it aloud." His mother had pressed a kiss to his forehead and said, "My darling, you must learn to carry the weight of your heritage. It's what makes you strong."

Strong. Right. Kito felt about as strong as a wet piece of paper.

The dressing process was a production. Three servants—all of them carefully trained to never make eye contact with the crown prince—spent three minutes psychically layering the robes onto his frame. They did it with practiced efficiency, never speaking, never acknowledging his presence. He was an object to be dressed. A mannequin. A symbol.

When they were done, Kito looked at himself in the full-length mirror. The boy who stared back was almost unrecognizable. The robes gave him presence. They gave him stature. They gave him the illusion of being someone important.

But beneath the illusion, he was still just Kito. Still the boy who'd dropped his datapad in the school hall while the galaxy watched and laughed. Still the crown prince who couldn't get anyone to sit with him at lunch. Still the sole successor to the Ivory Throne, the most alone creature in existence.

"Thank you," he said to the servants. "You may go."

They bowed and vanished into thin air, leaving him alone with the mirror and his thoughts.

Bonti appeared at his feet, his tail curled into a question mark. "You look very regal," the Puku offered. "Very impressive. If I were a subject of the Zuberian crown, I would definitely be impressed."

"You're a subject of the Zuberian crown."

"That's different. I'm immune to propaganda. It's a Puku thing."

Kito didn't reply. He was staring at the door. The door that led to the corridor. The corridor that led to the dining hall. The dining hall where he would eat breakfast alone at a table of moon-ivory long enough for a thousand, because the court had decided that was appropriate.

The door that led to the world where everyone hated him.

"Do I have to?" he asked, and his voice was small. Smaller than he'd intended. Smaller than a crown prince's voice should ever be.

Bonti's ears drooped. "You're the crown prince," he said gently. "You have to do things. It's the whole point of being crown prince."

"No," Kito said. "The whole point of being crown prince is that you have to do things you don't want to do, and everyone expects you to be grateful for it."

He walked to the door. The fossilized ivory panels slid open with a whisper that had cost more than most planets' annual GDP. He stepped into the corridor.

And there, as always, was Abdi.

•••

Kito's personal bodyguard was a monument to the art of looking like you'd just woken up while secretly being aware of everything within a ten-kilometer radius. His turban was a masterpiece of fabric whose colors were lost in time, wrapped with the kind of casual precision that could only be achieved through decades of practice. His beard was a wild explosion of black and silver that seemed to have a life of its own. His eyes, dark and ancient, saw everything without appearing to see anything at all.

"Good morning, little prince," Abdi said. His voice was a low rumble, like thunder from a distant storm. "You slept poorly again."

It wasn't a question. It was never a question with Abdi. The man knew everything. He'd been Kito's bodyguard since the day he was born, and he had the kind of sixth sense that defied all rational explanation. He knew when Kito was hiding something. He knew when Kito was pretending to be fine when he wasn't. He knew when Kito had been dreaming of rainbow serpents in saturated color realms that shouldn't exist.

"I slept fine," Kito said.

Abdi's eyebrow arched. Just slightly. Just enough to convey a universe of skepticism.

"Fine," he repeated. "That's why you look like you've been wrestling a star-eater for the past twelve hours."

"I'm fine," Kito insisted. "I'm just tired. I've been staying up reading."

"Reading."

"Yes. Reading. It's a thing people do."

Abdi made a noncommittal sound that somehow managed to pack more disapproval than a formal censure from the royal council. "You've been having the dreams again. The ones about the serpent. About the colors.”

Kito froze. His heart did a strange little skip in his chest, and he had to fight to keep his face neutral. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The rainbow serpent." Abdi's voice was matter-of-fact, as if he were commenting on the weather. "The one that calls to you in the night. The one that shows you the realm of saturated color, where the black-and-white hasn't yet reached."

"I don't—"

"Don't lie to me, little prince. It's not becoming. And it's not effective." Abdi stepped closer, his ancient eyes boring into Kito's. "I've been guarding you since before you could walk. I know the cadence of your breath when you're sleeping. I know the way your heart rate spikes when the dream begins. I know everything about you, Kito. Everything. Including the fact that something is calling to you from somewhere the rest of us can't see."

Kito swallowed. His throat was dry. "Is it... is it real? The dream? The serpent?"

Abdi was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was softer. Gentler. "I don't know, little prince. But I know you're not imagining it. And I know—" He paused. "I know that the color in the galaxy is fading faster than anyone wants to admit. And I know that you, of all people, might be the only one who can do something about it."

Kito's head snapped up. "Me? What can I do? I'm just—I'm just the crown prince. I'm nothing. I'm no one. I'm the most alone creature in existence."

Abdi's face shifted. Something flickered in his ancient eyes—something that might have been sadness, or might have been determination. "You're not nothing. You're the sole successor to the Ivory Throne. You're the boy who asked the question no one else would ask. You're the one who dreamed the dream that no one else can dream."

"The dream of a rainbow serpent in a world of color?" Kito shook his head. "That's not a destiny. That's a fever. That's a delusion. That's my brain trying to cope with the fact that I have no friends and no purpose and no—"

"Stop," Abdi said sharply. "Stop talking about yourself like that. It's not true. It's never been true." His voice softened again. "You have purpose, little prince. You just don't know it yet. You have value. You just haven't discovered it." He reached out, placing a gnarled hand on Kito's shoulder. "The galaxy is sick, Kito. It's getting sicker. The cold is spreading. The color is fading. And the people who should be doing something about it are too busy playing politics and pretending everything is fine."

He squeezed Kito's shoulder. "But you're different. You see the truth. You feel the crack in the universe. You dream the dream that no one else can dream. That means something. It means everything. And when the time comes—when you're ready—you'll be the one who makes a difference."

Kito stared at his bodyguard. For a moment, something flickered in his chest. Something that might have been hope.

Then the moment passed, and the weight of his robes settled back onto his shoulders, and he remembered who he was.

"You're just saying that," he said quietly. "Because you're paid to say that. Because you have to make me feel better about being the most alone creature in existence."

Abdi's expression didn't change. "I'm paid to protect you. I'm not paid to lie to you. There's a difference, little prince. There's always a difference." He stepped back, falling into position behind Kito. "Now. Shall we go to breakfast?"

Kito didn't answer. He just started walking.

The first sign of trouble was the pressure.

Kito felt it as a subtle shift in the air, a density that crept into the corridor like a held breath. The living crystal walls, which usually pulsed with a soft, internal luminescence, seemed to dim, their light withdrawing. It was a wrongness that pricked at the back of his neck, a sensation he'd learned to distrust in the palace.

Abdi, walking a half-step behind him, had gone still. His hand rested on the hilt of his ceremonial dagger. His eyes scanned the fossilized ivory walls.

Kito followed his gaze. The corridor was lined with statues, but one was different. A Noru, a mythical scavenger creature with a hooked beak and three eyes. The air around it was moving. A shimmer distorted the space around the stone. A flicker of color—an impossible, saturated red—rippled across its surface, then bled away.

Abdi raised a hand and pulled at the air. The flicker of color returned, swirling around the statue's base. The stone began to dissolve, its form deconstructing into shimmering particles that blew away like dust.

In its place stood Mbeja.

Kito knew him immediately. His cousin. Second cousin, once removed, on his mother's side. He was tall and lean, dressed in the sharp dark grey uniform of the King's Guard. His hair was locks tied with plaques of the Royal Crest— a lion’s head,  jaw clean-shaven. He had a thin, patrician nose and eyes that always seemed to be assessing something—assessing him.

His smile was practiced. Perfect. The same smile Kito had seen a hundred times at family dinners, always accompanied by some comment about "the little prince" and how "he's growing up so fast."

"Cousin Kito," Mbeja said, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve. "I was hoping to catch you before you left for school."

"Mbeja." Kito's voice was flat. "You're supposed to be on border patrol. Father mentioned it at the last council meeting."

"Ah, well." Mbeja waved a hand dismissively. "Your father's information is sometimes... outdated. I was reassigned. Temporary duty at the palace." His smile widened. "Your uncle thought I might be useful here. You know how he is—always thinking ahead."

Your uncle. Kito's stomach tightened. Mbeja's father. The King's brother. The man who always had a fake-nice smile and a new game to offer. The man who told Kito to "have some fun" while the galaxy burned.

"Useful for what?" Kito asked.

Mbeja's laugh was light, musical. "Oh, you know. Administrative things. Liaison work. Your father has been so busy with the war effort that he needs extra hands." He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Speaking of which, your uncle asked me to give you this."

He produced a small datachip from his pocket and held it out.

"What is it?"

"A pre-order code for Star-Reaver IV. The new one. Your uncle wanted you to have it. He said—" Mbeja's smile became almost paternal, condescending in a way that made Kito's skin crawl. "—'A little more fun than those dusty old reports. The boy needs to enjoy his youth.'"

Kito stared at the chip. His uncle's voice echoed in his mind, the same words he'd heard a dozen times. Don't worry about the reports, my boy. You're young. Have some fun.

"What about the Seething Rim?" Kito said. "The reports say—"

"The reports say what the reports say." Mbeja's tone was breezy, dismissive. "And you're the crown prince. You don't need to worry about those things. That's what your father and your uncle are for. You just focus on your studies. On being a boy." He pressed the chip into Kito's hand. "Your uncle wanted you to have this. He cares about you, you know. He wants you to be happy."

Happy. Kito looked at the chip. It felt cold. Useless. A shiny distraction.

"I don't want—"

"Shh." Mbeja held up a finger. "Don't be difficult, cousin. It's a gift. Accept it graciously. That's what your father would want, isn't it?" His smile was saccharine. "Now, I should go. I have a meeting with your uncle. We have much to discuss." He paused at the door. "And Kito? If anyone asks, you didn't see me here. Our little conversation? It never happened. Understood?"

He was gone before Kito could respond, dissolving back into the shadows.

The corridor felt colder. Kito stared at the chip in his palm. A game. His uncle was buying him off with a game. And Mbeja—his cousin, his family—was the delivery boy.

"Abdi," Kito said quietly. "They think I'm stupid."

Abdi didn't answer. But his hand, resting on Kito's shoulder, squeezed gently.

And then, from the shadows, Shujaa's voice boomed. "Little brother! I thought I heard you!"

Shujaa stepped into the light, grinning, still in his training gear. He wrapped an arm around Kito's shoulder—warm, solid, real.

"GOOD MORNING, BROTHER! Did I just see Mbeja leaving? What did he want?"

Kito held up the chip. "He gave me this. From Uncle. A pre-order for Star-Reaver IV."

Shujaa's grin didn't falter, but something flickered in his eyes. "Ah. Uncle's gifts. Always thoughtful, isn't he?" He squeezed Kito's shoulder. "Well, you enjoy it, little brother. You deserve some fun. Now—I've got training. Don't let the reports get you down, okay?"

He was gone before Kito could respond, leaving him alone with Abdi and the cold chip in his hand.

•••

The corridor stretched ahead of him, lined with fossils of ancient trees and towering statues of his ancestors. The living crystal that grew from the walls pulsed with a soft, internal light, casting long shadows across the polished floor. Everywhere Kito looked, there was beauty. Impossible, crushing beauty. The kind of beauty that made you feel small and insignificant and utterly powerless.

The palace was a cage. A cage of fossilized ivory and living crystal. A cage perfumed with the scent of extinct flowers, their genetic material painstakingly recovered and cultivated by the royal botanists. A cage so beautiful that you almost forgot you were trapped inside it. Almost.

Kito walked through the halls, and the servants bowed as he passed. They didn't look at him. They never did. They knew the protocol. They knew that the crown prince was a symbol, not a person. That he was untouchable. Unapproachable. Unknowable.

They also knew that he was the most alone creature in existence. That was common knowledge. That was a fact so self-evident that it didn't need to be spoken aloud.

The dining hall loomed ahead of him—a vast chamber of moon-ivory and living crystal, dominated by a table so long that it seemed to stretch into infinity. Kito had measured it once, when he was seven. He'd been bored, and he'd needed something to do, and he'd counted every single step it took to walk from one end to the other. It took one hundred and forty-two steps. He'd counted.

One hundred and forty-two steps of loneliness.

His place was at the head of the table. Not the very end—that was his father's seat. But the second seat. The heir's seat. The seat that meant you were important, but only because you were the designated backup. The spare. The one who would step up if the king died, but no one really wanted to think about that.

Kito sat down. The chair was too large for him. It had been built for his father's father's father's father, and it had never been resized. He looked like a child playing dress-up, and he hated it.

The servants brought him food. They always brought him food. He could ask for anything, and they would bring it, and he would eat it alone, at a table meant for a thousand, while the shadows lengthened around him and the purple sky beyond the windows seemed to mock him with its beauty.

He ate in silence. No conversation. No laughter. Just the clink of his fork against the moon-ivory plate and the soft hum of the palace's living crystal infrastructure.

Bonti appeared at his feet, his tail curling into a question mark. "You're not eating," the Puku observed. "You're just moving food around your plate. It's very inefficient. If you're going to waste food, at least do it with style."

"I'm not hungry," Kito said.

"You're never hungry. You're always 'not hungry.' It's a pattern. It's almost like you're depressed, but I'm just a humble Puku, so what do I know?"

"Shut up, Bonti."

"Rude. Extremely rude. If I had the emotional capacity for embarrassment, I would be extremely embarrassed on your behalf."

Kito pushed his plate away. The food was delicious—it always was—but he couldn't taste it. He couldn't taste anything. Everything in his life had a strange, flat quality, like the galaxy was slowly draining to black and white, and he was the only one who could see it happening.

Because it was happening. The chromatic crisis. The gradual loss of color, warmth, and sound. He'd read about it in the reports he wasn't supposed to read. The ones his uncle sent him to keep him occupied. The ones his father thought he'd find boring. The ones that told the truth about what was really happening in the galaxy.

The cold was spreading.

And no one was doing anything about it.

•••

"Kito, darling."

He looked up from his untouched plate. His mother stood in the doorway, her robes a cascade of living silk that flowed around her like water. She was beautiful—everyone said so. She had the kind of beauty that made you stop breathing for a second. The kind of beauty that belonged in paintings and poems and dreams.

She was also, Kito knew, a complete mystery to him. He loved her. Of course he loved her. But he didn't know her. He'd never known her. She was always moving, always dancing, always composing poetry or playing music or doing something artistic and spiritual that he couldn't understand.

His three sisters materialized behind her. They were the same way—artistic, poetic, musical. They observed and recounted everything. They were the family chroniclers, the ones who would remember the stories and pass them down. And they were also, for some reason, always around when Kito was trying to be alone.

"Good morning, Mother," Kito said. "Sisters."

"Good morning, little prince," his mother said, gliding toward him. She pressed a kiss to his forehead. "You look tired. Did you sleep well?"

"Fine," Kito said. "I slept fine."

His sisters exchanged glances. They were triplets, identical in every way, and they communicated entirely through expressions and gestures. Right now, they were clearly having a conversation about how he was lying, and it was very obvious, and they were going to talk about it later.

"Are you going to school today?" his mother asked. "You look like you might need a day of rest. A day of contemplation. A day of—"

"I'm going to school," Kito said. "I'm fine. I'm not going to let a bad night's sleep stop me from being educated."

His mother smiled. It was a beautiful smile, full of warmth and love and everything a mother's smile should be. It also, Kito noticed, had a slightly sharp edge. The edge of someone who knew he was hiding something and was choosing not to push.

"Very well," she said. "But if you need me—"

"I'll call. I know. Thank you, Mother."

She kissed his forehead again, and then she was gone, her sisters trailing behind her like brightly colored shadows. The dining hall was empty again. Just Kito, his untouched food, and a Puku who was giving him the most judgmental look in the history of galactic civilization.

"Your mother loves you," Bonti observed. "It's very obvious. She just doesn't understand you. It's a common problem among mothers of teenage boys."

"Shut up, Bonti."

"Rude. Extremely rude. I'm trying to provide emotional support. It's a very taxing job, and I'm not appreciated."

Kito stood. His robes clanked. He was done with breakfast. He was done with everything.

"I'm going to school," he said. "Don't follow me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bonti said. "I have very important things to do. Important Puku things. Things that don't involve being yelled at by a moody teenager."

Kito left the dining hall without looking back.

ATILA