Minato's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

Minato stared up at the orb floating in the god's shadow. His hands were still empty. Six years of searching, and the one thing he had carried was gone. The pink creature bobbed near the stone, silent. Minato's chest tightened. "Why take it from me?" he asked. "I came all this way for it." The yellow dots held on him. "You came for answers," Asteron Nova said. "The orb is the question." "Then let me see it," Minato said. His voice shook, but he held the god's gaze. The god was still for a long moment. Then the orb turned slowly in the dark where his hand should be. "I can open it," the god said, flat and even. "Then you will have your answer." Minato's breath stopped. He had held the orb for days and never found a seam, never found a catch. He had pressed and twisted and found nothing. Now the god simply tilted it. A thin line of light split the orb's surface. The star-shaped patterns on its shell pulled apart. Gold ran along the crack and widened. Minato stepped closer without meaning to. Inside the orb, small lights floated in the dark. Stars. A whole sky folded into the size of his two hands. One star hung lower than the rest, pale and steady. "That one," Minato said. He pointed. "I know that one. It's the pale star. The one near my library window." The yellow dots shifted to the small sky, then back to Minato. "You know this star." "I watched it for six years." Minato's words came fast now. "The creature always looked toward it. I wrote down where it sat." The god went very still. The orb's lights turned, and the pale star split into two, then snapped back to one. The same break Minato had seen in the sky above him. "The copy began at your star," Asteron Nova said. "Not here. There." Minato's stomach dropped. The problem was not in this stone realm at all. It had started at home, at the window where he had first seen the creature. "Someone made a second star," he said slowly. "At my library." "A thing was counted twice." The orb closed in the god's shadow. The light vanished. "Go back to where you first watched. Find what doubled the star." The pink creature drifted to Minato's side. It looked up at him with its dark eyes. "How do I get back?" Minato asked. But the god was already rising. The robe trailed up into the star-filled sky, and the orb went with him. The yellow dots grew small and distant. Minato stood on the cold stone with the creature beside him. He had his answer now, and it pointed one direction. Home. The pale star he had chased for six years was the source of everything wrong. And he had to face it with empty hands.