Evening deepened across Selun'Thael, and the golden sky of the Continent dimmed into hues of pearl and deep violet. Ethereal lanterns floated into the heavens like drifting spirits, each inscribed with rune-scripts of minor wishes—love, safety, remembrance. The Festival of Memory was beginning.
Children ran with polished masks carved from spiritwood, their laughter echoing between crystalline towers. Floating crafts drifted by above—some shaped like phoenixes of old flame, others like great lotus barges trailing petals of light. Yet amidst the light and joy, something older stirred.
At the steps of the amphitheater, the boy stood in silence, Imius beside him. His dark eyes, glinting with ancient starlight, gazed skyward—not at the lanterns, but past them, toward a void only he could sense.
Imius, noticing the boy's distant stare, asked, "You're always looking past the sky. What do you see, really?"
The boy hesitated. "I… don't know. But something calls. Not with voice, but with feeling. Like I've forgotten a promise."
Imius frowned. "You dream things that feel more real than this place?"
The boy nodded. "Every night."
From afar, a man in silver-white robes watched them—his eyes bore the sigil of the Mhaerun bloodline, one of the highest vassal branches to the ruling Celestial Dynasty of Vael'Serine. His name was Lord Enmer, head of the local tribunal of Selun'Thael, and he had noticed the boy too.
"Bring him," he whispered to his attendant. "That child carries the weight of something old. I would know what."
---
Elsewhere, within the House of Vael'Serine's floating capital—Aerendyl:
In the palace built atop a floating mountain-wreath of glowing blue crystal, the ruling family convened. Seven scions of the bloodline stood in counsel. Their family was said to descend from the Skyshard Titans, able to shape matter and light into weapons, vessels, and even temporary realms.
The ruling lady, Aethra Vael'Serine, elegant and terrifying, held a relic forged long ago: the Auracrown, which glowed only in the presence of those with latent laws within them. It had not glowed for over four generations.
But that night, it flickered once, pulsed like a heartbeat—and dimmed.
They knew someone had arrived.
---
Back in Selun'Thael:
The amphitheater crowd had dispersed, yet the pondium remained radiant. The boy, after a long silence, walked through the now-empty stage, his hand brushing the runes still glowing faintly.
One rune sparked.
His dream the night before had been different.
He had seen a being without a name, sitting at the edge of a void, weeping not with sorrow but with memory. The boy had approached it in the dream and asked:
"Why do you cry?"
The being replied: "Because I once dreamed everything… and now none remember me."
The boy, waking with tears dried to his cheeks, whispered only, "Who am I?"
As he wandered past the edge of the stage, something followed him unseen—threads of light, so faint no eye but his could perceive. They danced like silver echoes, murmuring in a tongue only dreams remembered.