A trade with Lady Bonajade. Freedom.

Yet, freedom was a strange thing. It was not weightless. It came with questions, with uncertainty, with a price he had yet to fully understand.

He had left Penacony behind—left behind the neon dreams, the suffocating stage, the gilded cage that had once defined his existence. He had bid farewell to Robin, to the past that clung to him like an old melody, to the version of himself that might have been. And in the wake of all those goodbyes, he had turned toward something new.

He had asked to join the Astral Express. And, in the way of the Nameless, they had accepted without hesitation, as though he had always belonged.

But belonging… that was the strangest part of all.

Sunday was no stranger to hard work—he had performed, endured, clawed his way through expectations for as long as he could remember. But here, things were different. The Astral Express was a machine that ran not on duty or contracts, but on something far less tangible.

Familiarity.

Warmth.

A closeness he had never known—not in the way he had been taught to understand "family."

And yet, to his quiet surprise, he did not find it unbearable. He did not find himself longing to leave.

He found, strangely enough… that he didn’t dislike it.

“The traveler whose wings were clipped… whereto shall his footsteps lead?”