The shrine woke up with him.
When Alaudi opened his eyes, mist still clung to the ground and the trees were silhouettes against a pale-blue sky. His Cloud Flames pulsed once, in sync with the land, then sank quiet beneath his skin.
Hibird was already awake, tiny head turning, tracking something unseen.
Roll sat on the top step like a gargoyle, ember-spines half-lit.
"You two didn't leave," Alaudi muttered.
Hibird chirped like, obviously.
He stood, stretched, and let a thin layer of Cloud Flames slide out over the stones and the slope below—habit now. Territory check. The shrine's boundary pressed back, then relaxed as it recognized him.
Nothing hostile.
Something… else.
A thread of energy at the very edge of his awareness, wrong for youkai, wrong for devils, too sharp for average human.
Alaudi frowned.
"Stay," he told Hibird and Roll.
Naturally, they did not.
He followed the thread down an overgrown path that spilled out into a narrow lane, then another, until the city proper brushed up against old forest.
It felt like finding a radio signal in static: thin, confused, but stubbornly present.
He turned a corner and saw it.
A kid.
Maybe ten? Black hair, hospital-issue shirt too big on his frame, bare feet on cold stone. Standing in front of a vending machine like he'd never seen one before. Eyes—off. Old and young at the same time. Empty, but listening.
No escort. No wards around him.
That energy leaking off him in uneven pulses.
Alaudi did a slow check.
Human shape. Soul density wrong for "just human." Youkai weren't claiming him. No visible leash.
A stray.
The kid finally noticed him and stiffened. Noticed Hibird next. Then the faint violet shimmer around Alaudi's boots.
"You're… loud," the boy said. Voice small but very clear.
"Says the anomaly bleeding spirit energy on a sidewalk," Alaudi replied.
The boy blinked. "Anomaly?"
Alaudi stepped closer, Cloud Flames feeling for the edges of whatever the hell this was. He didn't touch the kid physically. The flame did that for him—tasting.
No curse.
No immediate trap.
Something half-born, half-forgotten, latched to this body.
"Where are your parents?" Alaudi asked.
A shrug. Slow. "Don't know."
"Name?"
The boy hesitated too long. "…Don't know."
Hibird hopped from Alaudi's shoulder to the kid's, stared him dead in the eye, then chirped once.
The kid flinched but didn't swat him away.
Roll poked his head out from Alaudi's shadow, sniffed the kid's ankle, then retreated without hostility.
Kyoto's spirits weren't screaming.
Interesting.
Alaudi could walk away. This wasn't his job. Strays were common enough in the supernatural world, and most ended badly.
He watched the boy scratch absently at his forearm, fingers passing right through a faint shimmer of energy only someone like Alaudi would see.
Alive, but not anchored.
"You remember anything?" Alaudi asked.
"Cold," the boy said. "Then… voices. Then here."
Somewhere in Kyoto, wards hummed. Yasaka's network had to have noticed this, but nobody was here yet.
He could leave the kid and wait for foxes.
Instead, he heard his own voice in his own head, thirteen and kneeling in a circle, listening to people discuss his fate like he wasn't there.
Tch.
"Come on," Alaudi said, turning away.
The boy blinked. "Where?"
"Shrine," Alaudi said. "If you're going to leak power, do it somewhere that won't panic."
The kid stared down the empty street, then at Alaudi's back, then hurried to catch up.
"You're not going to… sell me?" he asked.
"No," Alaudi said.
"Use me?"
"If I wanted to use you, I wouldn't answer that."
The kid thought about that. "So… why?"
Alaudi let a sliver of Cloud Flames coil out along the street as they walked—just enough to keep other things from getting curious.
"Because I don't like garbage disposal rituals," he said.
The boy didn't understand the reference, but he understood the tone.
He followed.
Back at the shrine, the land pressed harder when the boy stepped onto the first stone.
Alaudi felt it like a low, dangerous chord. Instinctive rejection.
"Easy," he murmured.
He let his Cloud Flames surge, not outward but around: bracketing the boy's presence, smoothing it, offering the shrine a filter.
"I brought him," Alaudi said quietly, to the old wood and buried wards. "If he's a problem, you take it up with me first."
The pressure shifted.
Paused.
Then thinned, like a grudging "…fine."
The boy let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and crossed fully into the courtyard.
Hibird reclaimed Alaudi's shoulder.
Roll waddled over to sniff the kid's foot again, then settled beside him like he'd accepted a second idiot to supervise.
"What's your name?" Alaudi asked.
"I told you, I don't—"
"I'm not calling you 'kid' forever," Alaudi said. "Pick one or I'll pick for you."
Silence. The boy's gaze drifted to the trees, the shrine, Hibird, the faint violet traces in the air.
"…Ren," he said finally. "I think. It feels right."
"Ren, then," Alaudi said. "Sit."
Ren sat on the worn step beside him, still watching everything like it might dissolve.
"Here's how this works," Alaudi said. "This shrine is under Kyoto's eyes. Kyoto is under Yasaka. I'm a guest. You're now my problem. No wandering into the city alone. No flaring power to impress anyone. You breathe, you listen, you learn control."
"Control what?" Ren asked.
Alaudi flicked a finger, and a tiny strand of the kid's loose energy plucked like a harp string.
"That," he said.
Ren shivered, staring at the place Alaudi had just touched without touching.
"…Can I learn?" Ren asked.
"Don't ask stupid questions," Alaudi said. "Everyone can learn. Most won't."
Ren's shoulders squared the tiniest bit. "I'll learn."
"Good. Basic rule one: feel first, act after. Close your eyes."
Ren did.
"Slow breath," Alaudi said. "In. Out. Don't chase anything. Just notice."
He watched the kid's aura twitch, stutter, then start to settle, like silt in water.
The shrine watched too. Alaudi could feel it now, the old structure's attention pricked, curious about this second stray under its roof.
"You're good at this," Ren whispered after a minute.
"No," Alaudi said. "I'm relentless. You will be too, if you want to stay alive."
Ren opened his eyes, the faintest spark of determination nestled under the exhaustion. "Okay."
Alaudi leaned back against the pillar.
He hadn't expected to pick up a… whatever Ren was. Student. Anchor project. Stray ghost wearing a boy's outline. But Kyoto hadn't rejected him, and Yasaka hadn't appeared to object.
That was as close to permission as anyone got in this city.
Hibird hopped down onto Ren's shoulder, preening one of his bangs into a better angle.
Ren went very still. "…He likes me?"
"Or he's checking if you're edible," Alaudi said.
Ren blanched.
Hibird pecked Alaudi's fingers, offended.
Roll made a crackling sound that might've been a laugh.
Alaudi almost smiled.
Almost.
Night settled again.
When the lanterns in the distance began to glow, Alaudi felt another familiar presence brush the perimeter.
Yasaka didn't step fully inside the shrine this time. She stopped at the edge, foxfire haloing her silhouette.
"You've collected someone," she observed.
Alaudi didn't bother pretending otherwise. "He was leaking power in your streets."
"Mm." Her eyes drifted to Ren, who'd fallen asleep against one of the pillars, Hibird tucked under his chin, Roll curled by his feet.
"Spirit-touched," Yasaka said. "Unfinished. Dangerous if left alone."
"I know," Alaudi said.
"Will you take responsibility?" she asked.
It wasn't a threat. It was policy.
"Yes," he said simply.
She studied him for another few beats, then inclined her head.
"Very well, Guardian-candidate," she said. The title was light, half-teasing, but it landed. "Kyoto will hold you to your word."
"I'd be disappointed if it didn't," Alaudi replied.
When she left, the shrine felt steadier.
Ren shifted in his sleep, leaning unconsciously closer to Alaudi's leg.
Alaudi sighed and didn't move.
Cloud Flames hummed along the stones, a quiet, possessive circle wrapping shrine, boy, bird, hedgehog, and himself in one continuous line.
His.
Not in the way the clans meant when they said it.
In the way you claimed the things you refused to see discarded.
"Don't make me regret this, Ren," he said softly.
Ren, half-asleep, mumbled, "Won't."
Hibird chirped agreement.
Roll sparked once.
Kyoto listened.
And for the first time in a long time, Alaudi wasn't the only stray in the frame.