Long before the age of reason, before the world knew mercy or justice, there was only the endless sky, torn between sun and shadow. And from that divide came she.
Lucia was born beneath a blood eclipse.
The stars whispered omens the night she drew her first breath, and the earth trembled under the weight of her cry. Her mother died in childbirth; her father vanished into madness. The midwives called her cursed, wrapped her in silk, and left her at the altar of the Mirror Temple—the sacred place where light was trapped and fractured into visions.
But the mirror did not shatter when it beheld her. It bowed.
The high priestess of the Coven of Mirrors took the infant in, raising her in silence, in ritual, in solitude. Lucia learned early that power was not given—it was taken. And so, she took.
She studied the mirrors. Learned their secrets. She bled for them. The ancient rituals asked for a sacrifice of light—and Lucia was light incarnate. She gave willingly. And from that self-offering, power grew like thorns around her heart.
By the time she came of age, her eyes glowed with a golden fire, and her voice could bend shadows. The temple called her the Light of the Mirror. The people called her Queen.
But the kingdom she inherited was not a throne of gold. It was ash.
Once, Solaria had been a realm of sun-drenched valleys and citadels carved in crystal. But years of war and famine had broken it. The old kings were gone—devoured by their own greed. And so the crown fell to the cursed child of the mirror.
She ruled without mercy.
Her enemies called her the Sun Queen, though they spat the title like venom. They feared her glowing eyes, her unaging face, the way she walked barefoot through fields of corpses, untouched by blood or sorrow. Her advisors whispered that no man dared love her. That her heart had been buried with her mother. That the throne had made her cold.
They were all wrong.
Lucia was not cold.
There was a time when the world basked in the warmth of the sun without fear. When kingdoms rose and fell under the gentle gaze of daylight, and men believed themselves gods upon their thrones. But that time passed, scorched away by a single name spoken in hushed reverence and terror alike—Lucia.
Her legend began not with a crown, but with a curse.
Long ago, in a forgotten valley where even the moon dared not tread, a child was born beneath a bleeding eclipse. Her cries echoed into the void, silencing the stars above. The midwives who delivered her fled, their eyes burned with visions they could not comprehend. For the child's eyes glowed gold, her skin warm as if lit from within. They called her a divine omen—or a harbinger of ruin. Her mother named her Lucia, which meant light, though she would never feel warmth again.
Raised by a reclusive healer who lived on the edge of mortal lands, Lucia's powers manifested early. Fire danced at her fingertips. The sun followed her even into darkness. Crops flourished around her, yet birds dropped dead from the sky. She was revered, feared, isolated.
On her sixteenth birthday, the truth unraveled. The healer, dying from an unseen wound, whispered the tale of a bargain made before Lucia's birth. Her mother had prayed to an ancient mirror god, offering her own soul in exchange for a daughter who would burn brighter than any sun. The god had accepted—but added its own price.
Lucia's light came with a curse. Wherever she walked, shadows thickened. People would worship her but never love her. She would reign, but she would be alone. Her destiny was sealed not by choice, but by prophecy.
And still, she rose.
The kingdoms of men crumbled as war raged across the continent. Kings fought over a crown of thorns, tearing their empires apart. In the chaos, Lucia walked into battle without an army—cloaked in fire, eyes glowing like twin dawns—and bent nations to her will.
They called her the Queen of Embers.
Her palace rose from the ashes of a fallen empire. Obsidian towers pierced the heavens, and her throne room shimmered with molten gold veins running through polished black stone. Her crown, forged from star-metal and sunstone, sat heavy on her brow. She ruled with wisdom sharpened by sorrow, her voice soft but absolute.
No one disobeyed the Queen of Embers.
But power had its price. Her people feared her touch. Her guards bowed without ever looking into her eyes. Servants whispered of her wandering the halls at night, speaking to the walls as if they answered back.
And perhaps they did.
For Lucia was never truly alone. Not with the mirror.
It hung in a forgotten wing of the palace—tall as a man, framed in ancient runes. She had found it after her coronation, hidden behind a crumbling tapestry. No one else could see their reflection in it. Only her. And in its surface, she sometimes saw… him.
A man with pale skin and a blindfold of silver silk. Muscles rippled across his chest, scars old and new marking him like constellations. His mouth never moved, but she felt his voice echo inside her.
"You are not meant to rule alone."
She returned to the mirror night after night, each time more drawn to him. When she reached out, the glass pulsed warm. When she whispered, the air thickened around her.
And then one night, he answered.
His name was Damien. A warrior once cursed by the same mirror god that had doomed her. He had challenged the god, lost, and was bound within the mirror's realm—a shadow realm, reflection of her own. They were tethered. Fated. And now, the god stirred once more, seeking to merge their worlds in fire and ruin.
Lucia stood at a precipice. The power she held was unmatched, but the loneliness hollowed her from within. Damien's voice had become her solace, his presence a balm to centuries of solitude. Her curse, his prison—their bond.
And so she made her choice.
One night, she summoned her court and dismissed them. Alone in the throne room, with only the flickering light of enchanted torches and the towering mirror at her side, Lucia whispered a forbidden incantation.
Golden light spiraled from her hands, symbols burning into the floor. The mirror shuddered. Cracks spidered across its surface, not of breaking—but of release.
Damien stepped through.
His blindfold slipped from his eyes, revealing irises like storms—silver with a touch of flame. He knelt before her, bare-chested, skin steaming from the shift between worlds.
"You summoned me," he said, voice deeper than any mortal's.
Lucia's breath caught. She had seen him a hundred times in dreams, but here, he was more. Real. Solid. Dangerous.
"I did."
Their gazes locked, an unspoken storm swirling between them. She, the Queen of Embers. He, the prisoner of shadows. Together, they were light and night, curse and cure.
The throne room trembled with the weight of their union.
As Damien stood behind her throne, muscles taut, his breath warming the nape of her neck, Lucia sat tall, radiant in her burning grace. Her eyes glowed brighter than ever, reflecting not only power—but hope.
And for the first time in centuries, the Queen of Embers allowed herself to feel something dangerously close to love.
When darkness meets light, the world trembles.
And the gods, watching from beyond the veil, remembered fear.