The documents were signed at nine in the morning.
By nine fifteen, the Renmei family lawyer was already gone.
Kai stood outside the civil affairs building with two marriage certificates in his hand and looked at the grey sky above Creston City. Around him, people moved in and out of the building — couples registering births, families filing paperwork, ordinary people doing ordinary things.
Nobody looked at the three of them twice.
’That’s how fast it happens,’ Kai thought. ’Four families. Three people. One morning. Done.’
He folded both certificates carefully and tucked them into his jacket’s inner pocket.
Then he turned around.
=========
Shira Voss sat in her wheelchair at the bottom of the building steps.
She had not asked anyone to bring her down the steps. Kai had done it without asking, the moment they came out of the registration office. She had not thanked him. She had not said anything at all since they left the building.
She sat perfectly straight in the chair, arms braced across her lap, dark red hair pulled back from her face. Her amber eyes were fixed on the middle distance like she was looking at something only she could see.
She had been the number one ranked hero student at Vanguard Academy eighteen months ago.
Everyone in the city had known her name.
Now her own family had handed her to a stranger with a signature and left before the ink dried.
Kai did not stare at her. He turned to his left.
Mira Elys stood three steps away with one hand resting flat against the building wall. Her silver-white hair fell across her shoulders. Her pale violet eyes were open and aimed slightly upward at nothing — the way eyes rest when they have no light to chase anymore.
Her whiteboard hung from a strap around her wrist. The marker was capped. She had not written anything since this morning.
She had been the top support hero student in the entire district. Her Gift had been famous — a voice that could heal the dying or shatter reinforced steel.
She hadn’t spoken a word in six months.
Her family had not even come to the ceremony. They’d sent a representative.
Kai looked at both of them.
Two women who had been at the absolute top of their world. Now standing outside a civil affairs building in a city that had already moved on without them.
And him — Kai Renmei. Twenty years old. No Gift. No rank. No future according to everyone who shared his blood. The only Renmei in three generations who had never awakened, quietly cut from the family register this morning along with both wives like three lines edited out of a document.
’Alright,’ Kai thought.
He picked up the two bags at his feet — everything the three of them had been allowed to take.
"The apartment is twenty minutes from here," Kai said to both of them, keeping his voice level. "I’ll get us a cab."
Shira said nothing.
Mira said nothing.
Kai raised his hand and flagged a cab.
The apartment was on the third floor of a building that had seen better decades.
Faded yellow paint. A front door that required a specific combination of pulling and twisting to open. A staircase with a banister that wobbled on the second landing.
No elevator.
Kai looked at the stairs. He looked at Shira’s wheelchair. He looked at Mira standing just inside the entrance with her hand on the wall, waiting.
He did the math.
He carried Shira up first.
"I’m going to lift you," Kai said, crouching in front of her wheelchair. "I’ll be quick."
Shira’s jaw set. Her eyes stayed forward. The line of her mouth went flat and hard.
She said nothing.
Kai slid one arm beneath her knees and one behind her back and stood in one smooth motion. Shira’s arms stayed folded against her chest. Her body held itself rigid — every muscle that still responded to her pulled carefully away from him, not violently, just precisely. Like she was drawing a boundary with her own bones.
She did not look at him once on the way up.
Third floor. He carried her through the apartment door, set her gently back into the wheelchair he’d brought up on a first trip, and braked it carefully.
Shira stared at the apartment wall.
Kai went back downstairs.
Mira was exactly where he’d left her — one hand on the wall, posture composed, face empty. She had not moved. She was not going to attempt a staircase she had never seen in a building she had never been in while blind. But she was also not going to ask.
She would stand there all evening before she asked.
Kai stopped beside her.
"Twelve steps up, one landing, then twelve more," Kai said quietly. "I’ll carry you the same way. I’ll tell you when we reach each landing."
Mira’s chin lifted by a fraction.
Nothing else.
He lifted her. She was lighter than he expected. One hand stayed in her lap. The other pressed flat against her own sternum, very still, like she was holding something in place.
"Landing," Kai said at the halfway point.
He felt the hand against her sternum press slightly harder.
Then it relaxed.
"Top of the stairs," he said when they reached the third floor.
He carried her through the apartment door and set her on her feet just inside, positioning her so her right hand found the wall naturally. She stood. She oriented herself by touch — fingertips moving along the wall in one quiet sweep to understand the space.
She said nothing.
Kai went back down for the bags.
He made three trips total.
On the last trip up he stopped in the apartment doorway and looked at what they had.
Two small bedrooms. One bathroom. A kitchen barely large enough for two people to stand in at the same time. A living room with a couch that had given up on its own cushions years ago and a table with one leg shorter than the others.