POV: Ismerel Aureventis
The high windows of the observatory tower had been opened by the servants this morning. It was opened without her permission by them.
Why without her permission???
It because no one dared to talk and ask her permission. There was an unbelievable high pressure radiates from her. The air carried the scent of old stone, early rain, and the quiet warning of divine pressure.
Princess Ismerel Aureventis sat alone on a cushioned bench beneath the arched glass dome. Her shoes were off, tucked neatly beside her, and her toes barely brushed the sun-warmed tiles. She finger tightly held the scroll in her lap with both hands
She had read it enough times to memorize every golden curl of the scroll.
She already read it countless time since she got engaged.
Her thumb traced one of the wax seals, the one from the palace, Her Father.
The heat of her touch made it shimmer faintly.
Ezrel Dormir.
The Serene Heir.
Her fiance...
She blinked once. Slowly. Her face betrayed her calm aura. Her frown faces clearly indicate she is angry.
The edge of the scroll was crushed where her fingers had held too long.
She leaned her head back, eyes half-lidded, watching the dust motes rise in the shaft of morning light. A silence stretched around her ot fragile, but deliberate, like the quiet before divine storms.
She did not scream. She did not shout. She just bottled her feeling.
Yes, at first she doesn't care and calmly accept this engagement but now she furious.
Why???.
It because her fiance never meet her and not even once sent a letter to her.
----
Across from her, a maid stood frozen near the tea tray. The silver spoon had already begun to hum from residual heat. The room warmed not from the sun, but from something deeper .
It radiates from the blessings that Ismerel's received.
Ismerel reached forward and touched the teacup. It cooled at once. It even cooled her feeling.
Now, she was simply... calculating.
---
Why him?
She begins to question why he was a myth. Why he need someone to balance his myth.
Ezrel Dormir. A boy spoken of in cathedral halls and whispered in court rumors. A child who wept a divine tear, sat unmoving through miracles, and was offered to the crown like a holy offering.
Like a statue in a cloak. There nothing that truly show he deserves all those reputation.
And now she was bound to him by decree.
A holy match. An ordained pairing.
She still remember what her father told her.
"Creation needed to balance myth. You are that answer."
---
She stood at last, graceful and barefoot, and walked to the center of the room .
A vast circle of polished marble etched with the imperial symbol.
It was a circle that create by one of her ancestor that been blessed by god of formation.
Twelve radiant lines branched outward from a center node. Most glowed faintly.
But one… one line pulsed in pale silver.
She stepped onto it, weightless.
That line did not resist.
---
She sat on the glass floor, legs crossed, hands flat on the diagram, and closed her eyes.
Let me see him, she thought.
She didn't pray. She didn't speak. She simply allowed.
And the world shifted.
Bringing her to him.
---
In her dream, the sky was colorless. The ground stretched gray and endless, like an unfinished canvas that even gods had forgotten.
He was there.
Ezrel Dormir stood at the center of the world.
He just standing there without any movement and sound.
As if even in dreams, he chose peace.
Or perhaps… peace chose him.
She approached slowly, her bare feet making no sound.
He did not turn.
Not out of defiance.
Out of disinterest.
Like there nothing in the world attracted him.
Behind him, there a shadow gathered like water, a shape loomed .
vast and eternal.
A clock without hands.
Suspended in the void.
Its gears turned slowly, as if measuring centuries with every breath.
She stopped walking.
Her breath caught.
Each cog clicked into place with a sound that echoed across the field of nothing.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Above the clock, a half-formed sign spun not of this world. Something alien. Something sacred. Something wrong. Its was similar to Ezrel eternal sign.
She raised one hand and hovered it near Ezrel's chest.
The thread between them trembled. Not violently.
Just… awake.
As if acknowledging her existence but offering no welcome.
She frowned.
"You sleep while the world burns," she whispered.
"Do you even dream?"
From behind him, the clock ticked once and a ripple passed through the gray ground.
Not a crack. Not a quake.
Just reminder that time moved... even here.
---
When she woke, it was not with a start.
She opened her eyes calmly, sitting upright in bed. Her silk sheets were undisturbed, her braid still perfectly pinned. Only her pillow held evidence of anything strange.
A faint glow shimmered where her cheek had rested.
A tear.
Not hers.
She touched it, then flicked her fingers clean.
---
Later that morning, she stood at the balcony of the east wing. The city of Aurellos spread below towers, spires, courtyards soaked in gold light.
Her youngest sister, barely eleven, tugged on her sleeve and asked her again for the hundreds times.
"Is he handsome?"
Ismerel didn't answer.
She still doesn't want to answer.
She stared into the distance where the clouds curved low like the edge of the world.
Then said softly,
"It still doesn't matter."
" Cause i already told you that strength matters the most."