Wingheart: Luminous Rock

Chapter 1: MorningStar

Chapter 1 - MorningStar

Sunset burned away the sky like flames set to a canvas of blue silk. The autumn air was crisp and still, disturbed only by the occasional drone of a passing vehicle or the fleeting whip of the wind. One young man, Magnus Wingheart, trod along the empty sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and a beaten messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

Inattentively, he surveyed the familiar, tranquil setting. The roadside was lined with a variety of quaint storefronts, most of which were base to an upper level of apartments. As if swathed in translucent gold silk, the rooftops caught the glow of the sun in the final minutes of its descent below the horizon.

Magnus turned a corner and made his way down a crescent road. He didn't need to travel far from the mouth of the street before arriving beneath the forest-green awning of his brother's bookshop. After a clumsy struggle with his bag, he fished his keys out of his jeans pocket and unlocked the door, rattling the entrance bell. He lobbed the empty bag onto the floor as he stepped in, locking the shop door behind him.

Magnus scanned the soundless bookstore for his brother. Row upon row of wooden shelves filled his view, brimming with antique tomes. With no sign of his brother, Magnus presumed him to be out, or upstairs in their apartment. He noticed a scrap of paper taped to the cash register on the front desk and tore it off to read it—a note left for him by his brother. Bored disappointment trickled over his face.

I've gone out to run a few errands. Please check the notebook in the top right drawer for another list of book orders.

Thanks,
Drake

Magnus forced a dry smirk. While he was always willing to assist his brother, he often tired of the repetitious chores. One of the tasks he commonly assumed was sending out deliveries through a shipping depot a few blocks down the road—from where he had just returned after completing what he had hoped to be his last errand of the day. The shop frequently received orders, mainly for the rarity of the books that it sold; many dated back more than a century.

He wrenched the drawer open and extracted his brother's notebook. Glancing at the scrawled column of book titles, he dragged an empty cardboard box out from underneath the desk and hauled it to the nearest aisle of shelves.

Tackling the task with little enthusiasm, Magnus found himself placing more attention on the haunting orange glow that loomed over the street outside the shop window than on locating the books that his brother had marked for him. He idled as he became gripped by his musings, his mind cast adrift as clouds carried by wind.

Magnus had been helping his brother in the shop for some five years now, since he was eleven. Drake had started the business when he was nineteen, with the support of their then-guardian, Cecil Handel. Having raised the brothers for nearly a decade, Cecil was the closest that Magnus ever had to a father—his true parents, Brendan and Myra, had drowned in a sinking tour boat shortly after Magnus' birth. At least that was what Cecil and Drake had always told him. For Magnus, his parents' past was so vague that they would, at times, seem no less than imaginary. He had never seen as much as a photograph of them, and each time Magnus tried to press his brother for answers about their parents' tragic demise, the issue was brushed aside for the reason that it was too dreadful to discuss.

Magnus was jarred from his daydream by the obnoxious roar of a motorbike streaking past the bookshop. His lackluster stare trailed the bike down the road and into the fading sunset before falling back on the crate beside him, reminding him of his task.

Since Magnus was intimately familiar with the stock of the shop, it didn't take him long to gather up the books on Drake's list and pile them neatly inside the box. Seeing his work complete, Magnus scraped his brown locks out of his face and easily heaved the heavy crate up to his chest. He lumbered toward the back of the store, to the open doorway of the shop basement, where his brother stowed the books for delivery. Steadying his balance with the load in his arms, he began his descent down the basement's steep flight of stairs.