The silence that followed Frics's confession was profound, broken only by the rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the vast, dark chamber. The small candle flame wavered, casting their shadows long and dancing against the hull of the dead boiler. In its flickering light, he saw Zaneraya's expression soften from surprise into a deep, contemplative stillness. She had asked a question expecting a mortal's answer—greed, perhaps, or a foolish lust for power—and he had given her a piece of his own lonely heart instead.
The fragile bridge of understanding built between them felt strong enough to bear more weight. He needed to know. Not just out of curiosity, but out of a desperate need to understand the enemy whose thunder had shaken his world.
"You said you failed," Frics began, his voice barely a whisper, afraid to break the delicate truce. "That you lost everything. This… House Thunderborn… and your family… what is the story? Why are they so desperate to find you?"
Zaneraya's whiskers twitched. A flicker of her old, instinctual pride surfaced, the ingrained reluctance to share the sacred histories of the divine with a mortal boy from a world of soot and decay. She looked away from him, her gaze fixed on the dancing flame, and for a long moment, Frics thought she would retreat back into her fortress of secrets. But when she finally spoke, her voice was low and resonant, like a cello playing in a forgotten hall.
"My story is not a simple one, Frics. It is a symphony with too many movements." She took a steadying breath. "To understand it, you must first understand my home. Do not picture your world of rust and brick. Imagine a realm built not from the ground up, but from the sky down. A kingdom of floating continents adrift in a sea of starlight. Imagine cities where the towers are carved from crystallized sound, and the rivers run with liquid moonlight. That is the Crowniz Kingdom."
Frics listened, mesmerized. His mind struggled to paint the picture, so alien and grand it defied his imagination. The grimy boiler room, with its smells of damp and oil, seemed to fade into a distant dream.
"My family, House Illumine, are one of the Great Houses," she continued. "Our power… our purpose… is to conduct what we call the Great Symphony. We believe the entire cosmos is a song, a complex harmony of creation and destruction. We do not wield magic as a tool; we are its instruments. We can compose a melody to heal the sick, a chord to raise a crystalline fortress, or a single, devastating note to turn our enemies to dust. Our House values purity, harmony, and above all, tradition."
Her tone was flat, factual, but Frics could hear the undercurrent of bitterness when she said the last word.
"And House Thunderborn?" he prompted gently.
A faint hiss escaped her. "The Thunderborn are… different. If we are the symphony, they are the percussion. Their power is raw, chaotic, primal. They command the storm, not as conductors, but as tyrants. They value strength, conquest, and the blunt application of force. For centuries, our Houses were bitter rivals. Our artful control against their brutish power. Our philosophies were… dissonant."
"So you were at war?"
"A cold war," she corrected. "A rivalry of ideology and influence. But the Elders grew tired. They feared our constant friction would one day shatter the realm. So, they proposed a solution. A union. A way to bind our Houses together so tightly they could never again be torn apart." She paused, and the bitterness in her voice sharpened into a blade. "An arranged marriage."
Frics's heart sank. He was beginning to understand.
"It was to be the ultimate political masterstroke," she said with a sneer. "The Symphony of Thunder and Light. A new dynasty that would wield both the sublime control of music and the raw power of the storm. They chose me, the most gifted composer of my generation in House Illumine, to be bound to their heir."
"Knner," she spat the name like a curse. "Knner Thunderborn. He was the perfect embodiment of his House. Arrogant, loud, impatient. He saw power as a hammer and my music as just another nail. He did not wish to harmonize with my song; he wished to drown it out with his thunder. The Elders saw a powerful alliance. I saw a cage of noise and violence."
"So… they just decided for you?" Frics asked, his voice filled with a simple, honest indignation. "You didn't get a choice?"
The question, so straightforward from his mortal perspective, seemed to strike her. She looked at him, and he saw a flicker of surprise, as if the concept of her deserving a choice was a foreign one.
"Choice is a luxury the Great Houses do not afford their heirs," she said quietly. "Duty is our god. Tradition is our king. I was to be a sacrifice for peace, a broodmare for a new age of power. And I was expected to be grateful for the honor."
"So you said no." It wasn't a question. It was a conclusion.
"I refused," she confirmed, a spark of the defiant fire returning to her eyes. "In the Great Hall, before the Elders and the patriarchs of both our Houses, I refused him. The scandal was… apocalyptic. I had not just insulted Knner; I had shattered a treaty, spat on a century of tradition, and shamed my own House beyond measure."
Her voice grew quieter, colder. "My punishment was severe. For my defiance, I was sentenced to a century of solitude. They placed me in a cell of pure silence, woven from magic that absorbed every sound. For a being of music, it was the ultimate torture. An eternity of deafness, where I could not even hear my own heartbeat. They thought it would break my will. That I would recant, beg for the marriage, and accept my duty."
"But you didn't," Frics whispered, his awe for her growing with every word.
"One hundred years I sat in that silence," she said, her voice a thread of steel. "And my will did not break. When they saw that their prison had failed, their rage turned to cruelty. They decided that if I would not serve the divine order, then I would be cast out from it entirely. They laid upon me a final curse. They stripped me of my form, my voice, my connection to the Great Symphony. They banished me, casting me into the outer realm they considered the most chaotic, the most… musically offensive. A world of grinding gears, screaming metal, and filth." She looked around the boiler room, at their grimy tomb. "They sent me here. In this… humiliating form. A stray, to live and die, forgotten."
The story hung in the air, heavy with the weight of centuries of pride and pain. Frics looked at her—this tiny white cat—and saw the unbreakable goddess within. He saw the lonely prisoner in the silent cell, the defiant rebel in the great hall. He saw it all.
The candle on the floor gave a final, desperate flicker, the flame consuming the last of its wax.
"So you weren't just refusing a marriage," Frics said, his voice soft in the dying light. He finally understood. "You were fighting for the right to choose your own song."
Zaneraya's head lifted, her sapphire eyes locking with his. In them, he saw a universe of shock and a dawning, profound understanding. He had not just heard her story. He had listened.
The candle flame sputtered and died, plunging the vast chamber into absolute, unconditional darkness. The silence of the tomb rushed back in, but it was different now. It was filled with the echoes of her history, a story of rebellion and loss that now bound them together, two specks of dust against a universe of power.