Mornings at the shrine settled into a rhythm: sweep the steps, check the ward knots, bully Ren's stance into something that wouldn't fold in a crosswind. Hibird set the tempo. Roll patrolled like a ping-pong ball with opinions.
Word had spread. Which meant knocks.
The first was a pair of tanuki with a map and an argument about property lines. The second was an old onmyōji's apprentice who'd over-inked a seal and glued a hungry thing to a storage shed. The third was a crow youkai with a broken wing who refused to admit it was broken.
None of it was glamorous. All of it was work.
"Again," Alaudi said, tapping Ren's ankle with a tonfa until it stopped cheating toward comfort. "Knees soft. Weight forward. Breathe like you're not trying to impress the mountain."
"I'm not—" Ren started, realized he was, and shut up.
Hibird chirped in time. Roll sparked at the edge of the courtyard, drawing lazy violet lines that faded behind him.
They'd just found a groove when the wards at the base of the hill brushed his senses—a ripple, curious rather than hostile.
A small shape stepped through the torii.
No escorts. No parade.
Just a child with sunlight hair, two fox tails, and the posture of someone who knew exactly where she was allowed to be.
Kunou.
Ren nearly tripped over his own feet bowing. Hibird puffed up like a pompous button. Roll squeaked and tried to look dignified.
"Good morning," Kunou said, hands folded neatly, eyes roaming like a cat in a new room. "Mother is busy. I'm not."
"That sounds like a confession," Alaudi said.
"An opportunity," she countered, perfectly serious. "May I watch your training?"
"Watch," he said. "Not interrupt."
Kunou nodded, then very deliberately did not interrupt—just sat on the step with the kind of stillness children are not supposed to have, tails curled around her ankles, gaze bright.
Ren pretended this was fine. It was not fine.
"Stance," Alaudi said. "Lower."
Ren sank. "Lower? My legs are screaming."
"Tell them to file a complaint."
They worked until Ren's thighs trembled and his breath lined up with the metronome of Hibird's chirps. The city's pulse slid past in the background, an old river that had decided—for now—that he was a rock worth flowing around.
Kunou watched it all, saying nothing, seeing more than she should.
When he finally clapped Ren out of the stance, Kunou stood.
"May I ask a question now?"
"One."
"What does it feel like?" She pointed toward his sternum, where the faint shape of the Sky Crown lived in a space no one else could see. "When the city answers you back."
Ren's head snapped toward him. He'd felt it once—the brush of linked wards—but to him it had been a draft under a door. For Kunou, born to Kyoto, it was a language.
Alaudi considered lying. Then didn't.
"Like someone put a map on my ribs," he said. "Lines. Pressure points. The places that complain if you ignore them."
Kunou's mouth tugged into a pleased line. "Mother said you'd say something unromantic and correct."
"Your mother collects compliments she can use as weapons," Alaudi said.
Kunou's eyes sparkled. "Yes."
The wards rippled again—this time a burr. Not an attack. A snag.
Alaudi angled his head slightly. "Field trip."
Ren straightened despite his shaking legs. Kunou perked up.
"Observation only," Alaudi told her.
"Observation," she agreed. Which could mean anything, but he'd take it.
They followed the itch down the moss path and around a bend where shrine steps met city stone. Someone had tucked a strip of paper under a root—cheap paper, cheaper ink, a charm pasted together from forum advice and wishful thinking.
It hummed the way a wrong note hums when you're already tired.
"Spike," Alaudi said.
"Hero Faction?" Ren whispered.
"Amateur hour," Alaudi said, kneeling. "But if you let sand gnats bite long enough, you get sick."
He didn't burn it. He brushed Cloud across it—just enough to taste for a signature. The charm hissed, tried to jump, and found itself in a jar of violet light.
"Please do not teach the city to eat litter," Kunou said primly.
"I'm teaching the city to spit it out," he said, flicking the jar toward Ren. "Dispel it without touching my flame."
Ren swallowed. "Right. Uh—right."
He crouched, hands steadying like they had a drawstring connected to his breath. Mist answered him first—thin, shy, an echo of Alaudi's. It wrapped the jar. Ren coaxed, not pushed, and the scrap of charm came apart into harmless ink and bad intentions.
It fell like ash.
Ren blinked. "I did it?"
"You didn't embarrass us," Alaudi said, which in their dialect meant: good.
Kunou clapped once, sincere. "Again?"
The wards answered before Alaudi could. Another burr. Then two.
Someone had decided the wild slope near the old tea grove was a perfect place to test five more charms and a smear of something angrier.
No escorts. No fanfare—just a folded map and a city quietly testing the man who said yes.
They followed the trail. Roll ranged ahead, nose down, leaving ghost-prints. Hibird took the high branches, chirping breadcrumbs.
At the grove's edge, the air had a metallic taste. The paper here wasn't cheap; the ink was real; the hand that drew the lines knew how to copy, not create. The smear was the problem—a little packet of curdled malice pinned under a stone.
"Don't touch that," Alaudi said to Ren, who had very much not planned on touching it.
Kunou tilted her head. "It's not ours."
"Correct," Alaudi said. "Which means we either throw it back or make it trivial."
He rolled his wrist. Cloud spilled and flattened, a thin dome over the grove. Sky sat in his lungs, widening his sense until each twig settled into place.
He didn't rip the smear out. He unstitched it, thread by thread, while Ren watched his hands and Kunou watched his face.
"Why not just burn it?" Ren asked.
"Because then the person who set it learns something," he said. "If they never get a clean cause-and-effect, they never calibrate."
Ren nodded, memorizing that like it was a rule of grammar.
Kunou was quiet. When he glanced up, she was looking not at his hands but at the space just off his shoulder—where the Sky Crown's lines traced the boundary of his patience.
"You feel too much," she said softly. Not a judgment. A weather report.
"It keeps me from stepping on the wrong neck," he said.
"And from sleeping," she countered.
"Sometimes."
They cleared the grove. He left a marker in the pattern—nothing anyone else would see, everything the right eyes would understand: I saw this. I am watching. Do better. Or don't.
On the way back, they took the long route along the back lanes. Kyoto breathed in laundry and tea steam. A cat pretended not to be a spirit. Ren's legs finally stopped shaking.
At the shrine gate, Kunou paused.
"May I ask one more?" she said.
"Two total," Alaudi said. "You already asked one."
She considered, then spent it wisely. "Does being a Guardian feel like being owned?"
"No," he said. "It feels like agreeing not to lie to yourself about which way you're already walking."
Kunou's mouth did the pleased line again. "Mother will like that. Thank you for not making a speech."
"I don't do speeches," he said.
"You do sentences that make other people have speeches," she said, perfectly solemn, and bowed. "I will come again—observation."
"Observation," he said.
She left the way she came: light, quiet, leaving the wards more amused than wary.
Ren let out a breath he'd been holding for an hour. "I thought she'd test me."
"She did," Alaudi said. "You didn't notice."
Ren blinked. "When?"
"When you dispelled the jar," Alaudi said, heading for the courtyard. "She wanted to see if you looked at me or at the thing in front of you."
"I looked at the thing," Ren said slowly.
"Good habit," Alaudi said. "Keep it."
They reset to drills. Ren's stances were better. His complaints were quieter. The city's line on his ribs was calmer.
Evening pushed long shadows into the courtyard. Hibird switched from metronome to lullaby. Roll curled by the offertory box, tiny sparks lighting and dying like thoughts.
Ren finally flopped on the steps, breathing hard, content in the way bones are when they know they've done enough for the day and will be asked for more tomorrow.
"Is it always going to be like this?" he asked the sky. "Small things that are actually big things and big things hiding in small corners?"
"Yes," Alaudi said. "And also worse."
Ren groaned. "You're terrible at comfort."
"I'm accurate," Alaudi said.
Silence settled—the good kind.
The wards gave one last, lazy brush across his senses like a cat head-butting a knee: Present. Fine. Keep doing the dishes.
He almost smiled.
Not a ceremony. Not a crown. Just the work. And the work, as it turned out, was exactly what he'd promised.
He picked up the broom.
"Again tomorrow," he said.
Ren sat up with a tired salute. "Again."
Hibird agreed. Roll sparked.
Kyoto breathed.
And the Guardian kept sweeping.