Ashardio sat in stillness.
The wind tugged at the strands of his cloak as dusk bled into the horizon, painting the sky with bruised violets and ember-washed gold. The tactical field — now quiet and shadow-drenched — stretched out behind him, a place where blades had sung and dummies had crumbled under his precision. But here, beneath the hollow hush of twilight, his thoughts drifted not to combat, nor council, nor celestial riddles.
They drifted to her.
His mother.
He couldn't remember the exact timbre of her voice — not anymore. Time had worn it down like the sea erodes stone. But he remembered the way her fingers moved through his hair when he was a child. The way her eyes glowed when the sun touched them just right, reflecting not light — but hope. A gentle kind of strength. The kind that never needed to speak to be heard.
He remembered her stories. Not the ones from books — those he devoured on his own. No, she told the older ones. The whispered myths. The forbidden fables. Stories about thrones that never made it into the archives. About gatekeepers with hearts of starlight. About gods who cried when mortals fell.
And always, before she ended, she'd pause — just long enough to look at him. "Promise me you'll remember," she'd whisper, "not what they teach you… but what you feel. That's where the truth hides."
At the time, he thought she meant instinct. But now… now, with every truth unraveling before him — with Kaelith's familiar touch, with the forbidden records pulsing beneath his skin — he wondered if she had known. If she had seen something in him even then. Something he was never meant to understand.
Something dangerous.
A memory surfaced — sudden, sharp. He was eight. The day of the celestial eclipse. He had found her in the temple ruins at the edge of the city, speaking not to him, but to the stones. Carving symbols into the floor in blood. Her own. Her eyes glowed with tears she never let fall.
"You'll see the thrones one day," she had said, not realizing he was there. "And when you do, they'll try to unmake you."
He'd run. He'd never told anyone.
And two weeks later, she vanished.
They said it was an accident. That she had wandered into a Void fissure.
But there had been no body.
Only a scrap of cloth embroidered with a symbol he now recognized — a broken ring inside a sun. The same symbol etched beneath the tactical field. The one that led him to the forbidden chamber.
Ashardio stood slowly, as if the air had thickened with something unseen.
She had been warning him all along.
The lullabies… the stories… they weren't tales to comfort a child.
They were keys.
He looked up toward the stars, blinking away the sudden burn in his eyes.
"Mother," he whispered, "what did you give up… to keep me blind?"
Behind him, the wind shifted — not naturally.
A shadow passed through the field. Silent. Watching.
The weave had not forgotten her.
And neither would he.