Liss Hoshino was not supposed to exist.
She was born on a rainy day the stars refused to witness.
No priest came to bless her.
No spell lit the air in celebration.
The sky simply shuddered—and moved on.
Her name was scribbled in the orphanage records with smudged ink.
No surname. No blessing. Just a mistake in the corner of a registry no one remembered writing.
"She doesn't cry," the midwife whispered, wrapping the pale infant in threadbare cloth.
"She doesn't breathe," said another.
"Then why is she still here?" murmured the third.
No one had an answer.
Not the temple.
Not the scholars.
Not even the gods.
Because Liss Hoshino should not have been born.
She grew in the shadows of others—never aging, never falling ill, never fitting in.
While other children learned to cast flame or levitate a quill, Liss touched a mirror once... and the reflection never came back.
They called her "curseborn."
They whispered that her shadow had teeth.
They dared not say her name twice.
And yet... she remained.
At ten, she walked through fire to save a stray dog. The flames parted for her like a bow. The dog fled.
At twelve, she tripped on stone and fell from a cliff.
When the nuns climbed down to find her bones... she was already back in bed, reading.
Dry. Untouched.
Smiling faintly.
There were nights Liss stood in the chapel of the orphanage, eyes fixed on the stained glass windows that depicted the Twelve Holy Gods. Her fingers always stopped at the empty thirteenth frame—
the god no one spoke of, the one erased from doctrine.
She didn't know why.
She just felt something missing.
A sound that never finished.
A sentence that wanted to become a scream.
And somewhere deep inside her ribs—
something else breathed.
Not lungs.
Not a soul.
Just... a presence.
A waiting.
By fifteen, she'd stopped trying to be "normal."
She didn't bleed.
Didn't sleep.
Didn't forget.
The teachers at Argent Academy—the elite magic school for blessed bloodlines—tried to test her divinity level.
The crystal turned black, then cracked.
"What even are you?" one instructor demanded.
Liss tilted her head.
"Still figuring that out," she said, "but I know what I'm not."
Not chosen.
Not claimed.
Not contained.
Not a child of this world.
Not a servant of the heavens.
Not a demon of the deep.
Just... Liss Hoshino.
The girl who never aged.
The girl whose name even the gods struggled to remember.
The misfit, in form.
But inside?
Inside her chest beat a heart made of void.
The Neverness of Concept.
The thought before existence.
The unwritten girl.
The paradox with a pulse.
They will try to name her.
They will try to kill her.
They will try to use her.
But first, they'll have to understand her.
And nothing understands Liss Hoshino.
Not even herself.