Clyde sensed that something was wrong before he could name what it was.
The feeling sat quietly in his chest — not sharp enough to alarm him, but persistent enough that it kept tugging at his attention through the morning. He walked the Academy's corridors running the same question over and over without landing anywhere useful.
Did my ichor mutate? Or is this an ascension? Or is it something else nobody's bothered to write down yet.
The Hollow Star felt different. It's like a familiar rhythm played at a slightly different tempo, close enough to recognize and far enough off that he kept noticing the gap every time he stopped thinking about something else.
He reached headquarters still turning it over.
The place felt the same as always — orderly, restrained, its sigils humming along at their usual steady frequency. If something had genuinely shifted inside him, the building gave no sign of caring one way or another.
He opened his Hollow Eyes to check.
His vision sharpened the way it always did — flow lines, pressure gradients, the faint residue of recent technique use drifting in the corners of rooms where people had passed through recently. Nothing looked foreign. His perception worked exactly the way it always had.
Except the strain that usually followed didn't show up.
He held the state longer than he meant to, almost daring it to tire him out the way it normally did, and it just kept going. Clean. No drag behind his eyes. No pressure building at his temples.
He let it drop, more bothered by that than he wanted to admit.
Soren was up ahead near one of the inner halls, going through a stack of reports with the focused look of someone who had a lot to get through before lunch. Clyde started toward him.
He didn't get the chance to say anything.
Something moved in behind him — fast, light, there and then suddenly just there, a person where a moment ago there had been nothing. Not hidden the way Noxar hid himself. Just quick enough that his whole body reacted before his brain caught up.
He turned around.
A man stood a few feet away — mid-twenties by his face, though something in the way he carried himself read older, the particular weight of someone who'd lived through more than his face let on. Blue suit, matching tie, black trousers pressed with obvious care. Dark blue hair, long, falling with an effortless elegance Clyde immediately suspected took more effort than it looked like. His posture was relaxed without being sloppy — straight, easy, the posture of someone comfortable in his own skin.
Behind him stood a girl.
Her presence hit differently — heavier somehow, in a way Clyde felt before he understood why. Her shadow stretched along the floor at an angle that didn't match the lantern light overhead, longer than it should've been, curving where shadows weren't supposed to curve. Black-and-purple dress, a white bowtie at her collar, long black socks. Straight black hair past her shoulders. Purple eyes fixed on him, giving away absolutely nothing.
The man smiled — bright, easy, like running into Clyde was a genuinely good thing that had just happened to his day.
"I'm the bearer of the Gale Ichor," he said. "Aurelian Nox Voss." He gestured back toward the girl with an open hand. "This is my partner. Shroud Ichor."
His voice had a kind of buoyancy to it, almost too much energy for the hour.
Clyde tilted his head. "Partner. Like — you two are married?"
Nobody laughed.
Nobody said anything for a beat.
"No," Aurelian said, after the silence had gone on slightly too long. "Not — no."
The girl stepped forward, expression unmoved by any of it. "Eira Nox Noctis," she said, flat and even. "I wield Shroud."
Clyde glanced at Soren. "I thought there were only four Divine Ichor cards available right now. How do they have theirs?"
"They didn't get them from us," Soren said, adjusting his glasses. "Ichor cards can be forged. It's possible — fragments from a Howling, the right materials. People do it." He said it like a fact rather than an endorsement. "It's dangerous. But it's done."
Aurelian leaned in, genuinely curious now. "Marlowe mentioned you. Said you're Ichorborn too." He looked Clyde over. "What's your name?"
"Clyde Nox Pvolae. Hollow Star."
"Hollow Star?" Aurelian's whole face lit up. "Which phase?"
Clyde hesitated.
"Recently awakened," Soren said smoothly, before Clyde had to answer himself. "New Moon."
Aldric stepped in before the conversation could keep going.
"That's all for today," he said. "Go home, rest. Six tomorrow morning."
Clyde didn't argue. He left with his payment already in hand, his thoughts deliberately drifting toward small, mundane things on the walk home, the way he'd learned to do when his head needed somewhere quieter to sit.