Gilded Ashes Chapter 77: Disposable Lives

Ichiro’s mouth moved once – his jaw almost clenching, but not quite - and relaxed back.

"They had rooms" he said. "Dark ones. Warm when they wanted you calm. Cold when you were alone. They never said please. They wore gloves..."

Lynea’s fingers curled against her knee. Her nails pressed half-moons into the skin.

"Dozens of us" Ichiro continued. He paused on the word dozens, as if counting again, checking the number against mories he didn’t want to rember. "They put stones in us. Or tried. I don’t rember the day they did mine. I rember the week after. The light went wrong - everything had a bright edge around it, like looking through water."

"Do you still see like that...?" Feris asked, lifting her face from the plushie whale for a few seconds.

Ichiro shook his head. "No. Thankfully, it only lasted a year."

The stone in his shoulder pulsed. A slow spread of brown-gold under the skin, visible where his cloak had been pulled aside. Keahi flinched.

"Most of them died" he said. No nas. No details about how it sounded or what the rooms looked like after, even if he rembered. Just the sentence, plainly. "We were test subjects. Disposable lives. Like... Like rats."

Arashi’s hands lay open on his thighs, palms up. He swallowed hard enough that the sound reached Raizen’s ears.

"I was the only one who didn’t - " Ichiro stopped. Then started again. "The only one who could carry the stone and keep breathing. They were excited about that. They said it like I should be grateful. Like being a vessel that didn’t break was sothing to be proud of." He looked at his hands. "I thought about doors a lot. How many there were. Whether any of them opened from the inside."

He flexed his fingers. The knuckles went white, then flushed. "I didn’t sleep much. The stone kept digging."

"Digging?" Hikari asked. Her voice was small. She hated that she’d asked, but she just couldn’t stop herself.

He nodded. "It feels like a wire under your skin that wants to go deeper. It wants more and more every day. If I don’t use it, it eats. Slowly. Quietly. It just takes."

"Can’t you just- " Feris started, then stopped, because the next words were "take it out" and she could see where the stone sat and how the veins ran from it toward his chest.

"It’s too close to the heart" Ichiro said. "And it spread over ti. The veins you can see - those go deeper than skin shows. You can’t pull roots without tearing up everything around them." He paused. "It is a curse unless you point it at sothing. Then it’s a weapon."

Esen was still. Watching. His rings were silent against his fingers. "Who in their right mind-"

"I rember one face" Ichiro mumbled under his breath.

His voice changed when he said it. Not louder. Not softer either. Flatter. Like he’d pressed every emotion out of the words except their shape.

"The lead scientist. He wore the sa white coat as the rest of them, but his was always clean. Even when the room’s walls weren’t. He had thin hands. Wire-fra glasses. He smiled at once - after the surgery, when they checked the readings and the stone hadn’t killed ."

He looked at the grass between his feet and frowned, clenching his teeth.

"His na was Alan."

Nobody moved.

"He wrote things down about . asurents. How long I stayed conscious. How far the veins spread each week. He had a clipboard with a tal edge and he’d tap it against his thigh when he was thinking. Fifteen taps, usually. Sotis twenty." Ichiro’s hand drifted toward his shoulder, stopped, pulled back. "He never raised his voice. He was the only one that touched any of us without gloves on. He called us by numbers. I was the only one without one." He paused for a second. "He was the one that gave a na..."

"Ichiro..." Arashi completed.

Raizen’s chest hurt. He thought about Ichiro’s na... Ichiro – If the books were right, it ant "First-born son". He frowned. First born son? How could they even call him son!?

"He’s still out there" Ichiro pulled his cloak closer. "I’d know his face across a stadium. That’s the one I rember clearly. Everything else blurred. His didn’t."

The park was very quiet. The lamp beside the bench flicked awake as Neoshima’s petals slowly started to close up.

"I found the right door" Ichiro said. His voice was steady. "Or the right door was unlocked at the right ti. Doesn’t matter which. I figured out that stone obeyed . So I brought the whole place down. It was loud." His jaw tightened. "But I was very unstable... And couldn’t get anyone else out."

Lynea’s hand moved to the bench. She almost stood. She didn’t.

"I walked until I couldn’t" Ichiro said. "I mostly hid inside the walls. The Wardens or Moirai couldn’t find there."

"And... Your parents?" Keahi asked. Gently. As gentle as she possibly could. Ichiro never ntioned them before.

"I learned about them later" Ichiro said. He tilted his head back and looked at the sky through the gap between the Lighthouse’s petals. "My mother was a Vanguard. She fought at Velarion. The Phalanx ca and people survived because she held the line. But she wasn’t one of them."

His jaw trembled. He let it.

"I never t her. But everything I’ve heard - the reports, the people who were there - she was good. Not just strong. Good." He swallowed. "I’m proud of her. Kids don’t usually say that about their parents. But she earned it."

"And your father?" Esen asked. Quiet.

"A Graver" Ichiro said. "The kind of person who fights Nyxes without anyone asking him to. Without a uniform." He shook his head. "The details didn’t hold with ti. They both died before I could rember anything."

Feris pressed her face against her whale again. Held it there. When she pulled them away, her eyes were red. "They put stones in kids...?" she whispered, as if she was still in disbelief.

"They put a stone in " Ichiro corrected. "And tried with the others. I was the only one it didn’t kill."

The shoulder pulsed again beneath his collarbone. His hand twitched toward it – a quick scratch - then dropped.

"When I use it, the pain slows down. When I don’t, it reminds it’s there. Gets louder. Hungrier." The corner of his mouth pulled tight. Almost a smile, if it could look normal. "So I like training. When I’m fighting, it’s quiet inside."

He looked up.

Raizen t his eyes. Arashi’s gaze lifted from the grass. Keahi’s arms uncrossed. Hikari’s hand, which had been hovering near the space between them on the bench, ca to rest - close to his arm, not touching, but present. Feris blinked, and her eyes were still wet.

"I’m not asking you to fix this-" Ichiro started, but wasn’t really sure where to take the sentence next.

"Nobody’s asking you to-" Esen said. Probably the first thing he said in a while.

Everyone looked at him. They expected the start of a joke. They waited for the punchline.

None ca. His face was still. "We’re not engineers" he said.

"I am" Arashi said.

"taphor, Arashi." Lynea frowned.

"Ah."

Raizen said nothing. But Takeshi’s words were there - sitting in his chest where they’d been since the grave room. The Moirai took kids nobody would miss. Stitched stones into their bones. Called it research until sothing scread like a weapon.

Hikari’s hand moved the last few centiters. She touched Ichiro’s sleeve, just above his wrist. The fabric. The ordinary part of him.

"Then we’ll be close" she said. Her voice was careful and deliberate. "If it starts eating - you tell us. And we’ll find a way to make it stop."

Esen stood up, stepped across the grass in two steps. Put his palm on Ichiro’s left shoulder - the good side, the one that was still just bone, muscle and skin.

"You’re with us" he said. "We fight Nyxes. That gives the stone sothing to chew on. Nothin wrong with that!"

Ichiro’s face didn’t change all at once. But sothing in his eyes loosened - a tension held so long he’d forgotten it was there, easing by a fraction.

Another lamp clicked on beside the path. Then another. The light passing through the shrinking space from between the petals was thinning; the park was dark and warm now, the last light settling nearby.

They sat with it. Not as soldiers. Not as students. Seven people who’d heard sothing heavy from the eighth and chosen not to pretend they didn’t care.

When they finally stood up, in the middle of new jokes and soft banter, it was because the air had cooled more than they liked and the lamps had taken over for the sky. They walked back toward the east side of the Academy. Sowhere far behind, Kori had a paper bag in her hand and a monocular she was pretending not to use.

Ichiro walked with them. Not a step behind. Not apart, like he always used to. With them, the way he hadn’t been before. The gold beneath his skin was quiet. The na Alan still sat in his mind.

He’d rember it for as long as he needed to.

...But now, he had seven people who wouldn’t see him as a weapon.