Minato's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Minato stood on the pale stone and studied the carvings under his boots. Swirls, stars, and long curved lines spread out across the floor. He pulled the glowing sphere from his pocket and held it up. The lines on the sphere matched the lines on the stone, mark for mark. The whole realm was built around the thing in his hand. He turned, looking for the pink creature, but it had drifted off to one side and gone still. He followed the carvings with his eyes. They led outward, then up. Minato tilted his head back. The low sky of stars shifted. Some pulled sideways, out of place, as if an unseen hand had nudged them. One star split into two, then snapped back into one. He had never seen a sky move like that. Then the air above him darkened. A shape lowered from the stars. It was huge, wrapped in a long white robe stitched with silver designs. No hands showed. No feet. It floated, and its robe trailed below it into nothing. Where a face should be, Minato saw only black shadow and two yellow dots burning like far-off suns. Minato's breath caught. For six years he had searched for the star gods. He had told people they were real and watched them turn away. Now one hung in the air above him, and he could not make his legs move. The yellow dots fixed on the sphere in his hand. The sphere pulled free of Minato's grip. It rose on its own, drifting up through the air. He grabbed for it and missed. The sphere floated into the shadow where the god's hand should be and stopped there, held by nothing he could see. "This should not exist twice," the god said. His voice was flat and even. "One event. Two marks. I came to find the second." Minato swallowed. "I don't understand. The creature gave it to me." "The creature brought you to me." The yellow dots did not blink. "You carry a copy of a thing already counted. That is why the stars pull wrong." "Are you one of them?" Minato asked. "A star god?" "I watch the stars. I count every death." The god turned the sphere in the dark where his hand hid. "You are the wrong question. Ask how this came to be two." Minato opened his mouth, but no answer came. He had chased the creature to find the star gods. He had found one. And the one thing he had carried the whole way, the sphere, was not his to keep. It floated far above his reach now, held by a being he could not read. The pink creature bobbed once and went quiet. Minato stood with empty hands. He had reached the star gods at last. But he had arrived as a problem to be solved, not a guest, and the only object that proved his journey was gone.