The first days of Eletha Valeris's life passed in suffocating silence. It was not a silence of peace, nor of comfort, but a silence charged, heavy, like the still air before a volcano bursts.
By order of the Emperor, the most luxurious wing of the palace was given to the third princess — a suite overlooking the withering winter gardens. Yet its splendor was nothing more than a hollow gilded cage.
The walls were covered in silver silk, the floors draped with rare white wool carpets, and the small crib where she slept was carved from pale elmwood, lined with the finest cotton.
Everything in the room was blinding white, a desperate attempt to resist the shadow she had brought with her.
But nothing could dispel the unnatural cold that settled there.
The servants were afraid. Not the ordinary fear of royal wrath or punishment, but a primal, instinctive fear — the kind one feels in absolute darkness when hearing scratching behind a wall.
Four maids were assigned to care for the infant, and every morning they drew short straws to decide who would face the terrifying duty first.
The chosen one entered the chamber pale as the dead, her hands trembling as she performed her tasks.
She would feed the baby milk from a silver bottle, careful never to look directly into those crimson eyes. She would change her swaddling in frantic haste, her care going beyond mere cleanliness — as though she feared the curse itself might seep into her through touch.
No gentle words. No lullabies. No warm whispers.
The child was treated as a cursed relic, a dangerous artifact that must be kept clean and fed, but never approached with affection.
The maids whispered in the back corridors.
One of them, Lina, confessed one night — her hands still shaking — that when she had carried the baby, a deep cold had seeped into her bones, a cold that never left her even after she built a great fire in her chamber.
Another swore she had seen the infant's shadow twist unnaturally upon the wall, moving apart from her body for a fleeting moment, bending into a horrifying shape before snapping back to normal.
But the most terrifying phenomenon was the mirrors.
The imperial palace was filled with vast golden-framed mirrors, reflecting its grandeur and light.
And yet, something strange began to occur in any mirror that fell under the princess's gaze — even from afar.
On the third day, one maid carried Eletha through a long corridor lined with mirrors. Out of habit, she glanced at her reflection… and froze, horror flooding her veins.
Her own reflection was as expected, but the infant in her arms was not a pale-haired child. She was a blot of absolute darkness, a void shaped like a baby, sucking in all light.
The maid squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. The reflection had returned to normal.
But that first image never left her mind. It haunted her in her dreams.
Word spread like wildfire.
Servants and guards avoided corridors with mirrors near the princess's wing. Some covered them with cloth whenever they passed.
They whispered that mirrors, meant to reflect truth, could not bear hers.
They said they revealed her essence: void, curse, an echo of something not belonging to this world.
From afar, Emperor Caius watched.
Daily reports no longer concerned only his daughter's health, but the rising tide of fear within his palace. He saw terror in the eyes of his guards, he heard the unsettling silence in corridors once lively.
He had spared her life, but her existence was poisoning his court.
He was not a man of superstition, but he was a man of fear. And fear was a weapon that could turn against its wielder.
After a week of silence and observation, he decided he needed answers his own eyes could not provide.
It was time to summon the one person in the Empire who could see beyond the veil of the material world.
He gave a single order, only two words:
"Bring the Seer."
The royal seer, Lady Morwena, was a woman who seemed to have transcended time itself.
No one knew her true age. She had served the Emperor's grandfather, and rumors claimed she had served his great-grandfather as well.
She was not a wrinkled crone, but her skin was taut and pale like ancient parchment, her long white hair braided thick down her back.
Her eyes, however, were her true mark — milky white orbs with no iris or pupil. Blind to the physical world, yet able to see threads of fate, echoes of the past, and shadows of what was yet to come.
She lived in the highest tower of the palace, the forgotten Tower of Astrologers, surrounded by star maps of suns long dead, shelves of skulls etched with runes, and glass jars filled with strange herbs and colored dust.
The air there was thick with ozone, marjoram, and the scent of time itself.
When the imperial guards arrived, she did not appear surprised. She sat at the center of her chamber, hands upon her knees, as though she had been waiting.
"The Emperor summons you, Lady Morwena," the captain of the guard announced gruffly.
She nodded slowly.
"The thread born on the Night of Blood… it has begun to tremble. I know."
They led her through the silent palace halls, her black wooden staff tapping against marble, the only sound breaking the stillness.
Servants and soldiers made way, bowing not only in respect but in fear of those blank white eyes that seemed to stare directly into their souls.
At last, they reached the sealed wing. The Emperor stood waiting at the door, alone — a black mountain of a man, his presence dwarfing everything else. He gestured for the guards to leave.
"Morwena," he said, voice deep, stripped of all emotion.
"Your Majesty," she replied with a slight bow.
"The air here is cold. Cold as the space between stars."
"I want you to look," the Emperor said simply, opening the chamber door.
"Look at my daughter. Tell me what you see."
Morwena entered the white room. She stopped at its center, turning her head slowly, her pale eyes roaming in ways that surpassed sight. She inhaled deeply.
"There is an echo here… vast, overwhelming. Like the resonance of a great bell struck once a million years ago, still trembling now."
She moved toward the crib.
The Emperor stood in the corner, silent as stone, watching every move.
Morwena stood over the infant. Eletha lay calm, breathing slow and steady.
"What are you doing?" the Emperor asked as the Seer raised her trembling hands.
"I must open my vision fully, my liege. Her eyes… they are the gate. She must look at me."
Morwena whispered, then gently placed her cold, dry fingertips on the infant's eyelids.
In that instant, Eletha opened her crimson eyes.
She stared directly into the Seer's face — into those blank, white orbs.
For a moment, it seemed the child was the one seeing, and the Seer the one being seen.
Morwena gasped sharply. Her frail body shook violently. She leaned closer, her pale eyes locked with the crimson, and suddenly — she screamed.
It was not a scream of pain, nor even fear. It was a scream of absolute existential terror.
She collapsed to her knees, clutching her face, her body convulsing.
Morwena was no longer in the palace chamber.
The white silk, the scent of milk, the Emperor's looming presence — all had vanished.
She had fallen through the infant's gaze into an abyss of pure perception.
This was no ordinary vision of mist and symbols. It was real — more real than the world she had left behind.
She floated beneath a violet sky studded with silver suns and emerald stars. Below stretched a city that defied sanity.
Not ruins of stone and clay. Ruins of the impossible.
Towering spires of black crystal woven with light rose for miles, piercing the atmosphere into the void of space. Their geometry was agonizingly complex, impossible, shifting and alive. They seemed not built, but grown from the fabric of reality itself.
Bridges of pure light stretched between them, upon which glowing geometric figures moved faster than thought.
Below, rivers of liquid energy flowed through channels of singing metal. Enormous spheres drifted in the air, each holding miniature galaxies within, spinning in cosmic harmony.
This was not technology, nor magic as known. The city itself was a living machine — a planetary mind. Symbols formed in the air, carrying libraries of knowledge in an instant before fading.
She heard, not with ears but her mind, the hum of trillions of thoughts, voices, data flowing like blood through radiant veins.
It was greater than any civilization, greater than demons' dreams, dragons' legends, angels' designs.
They treated physics as suggestion, spacetime as cloth.
And yet, despite its grandeur, it was dead.
She saw the wounds.
A colossal fracture split one of the crystalline towers as if struck by a planet. Tiny black holes flickered in and out across the "streets" of energy, devouring all nearby.
Whole districts lay silent and dark, their mental hum reduced to faint screams of pain.
There were no corpses, no ruin as mortals knew. It was as if the soul of the city had been ripped out, leaving its godlike body to wither.
Morwena felt not only awe, but utter smallness.
She was an ant trying to grasp the mind of a man. All her knowledge, all her visions, every secret she thought she held — less than a letter in this city's infinite library.
Then, in its heart, she saw a throne. Empty.
A throne forged from a collapsed star, still pulsing with crushing darkness.
Around it lingered the echo of one presence — the ruler of this place. A power that made kings into insects.
This was Orphean. The lost city. Not legend.
Truth. A terrifying truth, now slumbering behind an infant's eyes.
Another scream tore from Morwena's throat — this time real, raw.
She was hurled back into her body. She collapsed onto the palace floor, gasping, blood streaming from her nose and her blank eyes.
"What did you see?" the Emperor's voice cut like stone, sharp and cold.
The Seer lifted her head, her face a mask of pure horror.
"Not… not a curse… it is far worse," she stammered, broken.
"She is not a child… she is… a key… an echo… a remnant!"
"Speak plainly!" the Emperor commanded, stepping toward her.
She looked at him, though she barely saw him. The impossible towers still burned in her vision.
"I saw… I saw the city of rulers… a city that breathes stars… a city built of thought and light… now dead." Her voice trembled.
"The child… her blood, her soul, is bound to it. Her eyes are not eyes. They are the keyhole… to the gate of Orphean!"
A long silence filled the room.
Eletha had already closed her eyes again, sleeping peacefully, as if nothing had happened.
The Emperor stood, staring first at the broken Seer, then at his slumbering daughter.
His face remained unchanged, but in the blackness of his eyes something shifted — deepened.
He no longer looked upon a problem to contain.
He looked upon the greatest weapon, the most dangerous secret in the history of existence, lying in a cradle within his palace.
The question was no longer "Is she dangerous?"
The question that would decide the world's fate was:
"How can such power be tamed?"