The city of Aeonis Prime shone like a dream sculpted from glass and dawnlight.
Sprawling towers reached so high they disappeared into silver mist, and below them, bridges of light threaded through the clouds like veins of living marble. The air itself hummed softly — a rhythm of energy that only those attuned to it could feel.
To the ordinary eye, Aeonis was perfect. Eternal.
But to Shinraion, it was too perfect — the kind of stillness that made you wonder what it was hiding.
He stood atop the steps of the Archivum Eternis, the great library of the divine scholars, and watched as sunlight fractured against its mirrored surface. It was said the library contained every truth ever spoken — and every lie worth remembering.
"Still here, Shinraion?" a familiar voice teased.
He turned to see Lyra, her copper hair tied messily behind her and her eyes bright despite the dark circles beneath them. She wore the scholar's robe loosely, her sleeves rolled up, fingers ink-stained from hours of study.
"You said you'd join the others for the festival," she said, smiling. "You've missed the opening parade again."
"I don't like crowds," Shinraion replied quietly, turning a page of the heavy tome in his hands. "And the festival isn't going anywhere."
Lyra sighed, sitting beside him on the marble steps. "You'll die buried under a pile of books one day."
"Better than dying ignorant."
She laughed softly, then fell silent as the tower bells tolled across the city — twelve chimes, sharp and resonant. Each tone echoed a different emotion, woven by the Soundwrights of Aeonis. Joy. Memory. Fear. Desire.
Lyra's smile faded. "They say one of the bells rang wrong this morning. The Bell of Origins."
Shinraion looked up. "Wrong?"
"It sang off-key," she said, lowering her voice. "Some say it's an omen."
He didn't reply, but a faint shiver ran through him. The Bell of Origins had only ever faltered twice in recorded history — both times before calamity.
Later that night, Shinraion sat alone within the west archives, a dim hall lined with spiral shelves that wound upward like a staircase of stars. Dust hung in the air like glittering fog, disturbed only by his slow footsteps.
He was searching for a particular codex — one he wasn't supposed to touch.
The Codex of Dusk.
According to myth, it wasn't written by man or god but by the "First Witness" — a being who watched creation and wrote of its undoing. The book had been sealed in the restricted vaults for centuries. But tonight, the vault door was open.
Shinraion hesitated.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
And yet something in his chest — a whisper that wasn't his own — urged him forward.
The Codex lay on a pedestal, bound in leather black as moonless night. No title. No marks. But when he touched it, the sigil on his palm — one he had hidden since birth — flared faintly beneath his skin.
The book shuddered.
Words bled across the page in inky threads, forming sentences that spoke themselves in his mind:
"When the skies blink, and silence devours song, the Child of the Shattered Sky shall rise.
His truth will unmake the world."
The room dimmed. The shelves trembled.
And then, faintly — a whisper, directly behind him:
"Do you seek truth… or comfort?"
Shinraion spun around. No one was there.
Only the Codex, its pages fluttering soundlessly despite the still air.
He shut the book and stepped back, pulse hammering. The whispers faded. The air stilled.
But something in him had changed.
As he left the archive, he didn't notice that the mirrors lining the hall no longer reflected him quite right — in each one, his reflection's eyes glowed faintly with golden light, watching him leave.
Outside, the city's night festival had begun. Lanterns floated through the air, drifting like stars reborn. Laughter filled the streets, music twined through the night — the illusion of peace.
Shinraion stood at the edge of the crowd, watching in silence.
The Bell of Origins rang again.
Once.
Twice.
And then — a crack. Barely audible, but real.
He looked up. The sky above Aeonis rippled, as though something enormous pressed against the veil of reality from the other side.
A single star blinked out.
Then another.
And for the briefest moment, he heard it — the same whisper from the library, carried on the wind, soft but certain:
"The balance breaks… and so, it begins."