Three suns hung low over Lumenia that morning, gold, green, and purple, locked together in a perfect triangle that painted the sky in colors no single sun could ever manage on its own. Beneath them, a massive city stirred to life the way it always did, streets filling with the easy, constant hum of people moving through their day, talking, trading, arguing over prices, helping strangers carry things too heavy for one pair of hands.
A merchant somewhere below was already three sentences deep into haggling over the price of a crate of star orchids, waving his hands emphatically at a customer who didn't look remotely convinced.
Around it all, the walls stood as they always had, a colossal ring encircling the entire capital, so vast they remained visible even from the city's own center, more distant landmark than actual boundary. Most people who lived their whole lives inside them barely thought about what they really were anymore, a fortification built by the third Meditation Master himself, doubling as a formation so immense it required rotating teams of Aura users just to keep it properly maintained. It had held against horrors during the Dystopian War that most citizens now only knew from old stories, and three million years later, it still stood exactly where he'd left it.
Lumenia itself dwarfed most worlds anyone here had ever heard of, a planet the size of Jupiter, its capital city alone sprawling across more surface area than the whole of Earth. Nearly two trillion people of all species called it home, only a small fraction of them Aura users, seven or eight billion at most, though that fraction still made Lumenia the densest concentration of Aura users anywhere in the entire Aura Region.
It hadn't always been this way. This kind of scale, this kind of welcome, had been built deliberately, generation by generation, and much of it traced directly back to the fourth Meditation Master, whose laws had opened Lumenia's doors wide enough that species from a dozen different worlds had settled here over the centuries, intermarrying, mingling bloodlines until hybrid faces had become simply ordinary sights on any street corner. Even those born with no Aura at all lived here freely, without the fear of exploitation that shadowed so many other corners of the region.
Nine cities made up the heart of Lumenia, each one carved out and ruled by one of the eight founding royal families, descendants of the eight Meditation Masters who'd first built this place into what it was. There should have technically been nine such families, one for each of the nine legendary founders, but the ninth Meditation Master had shared his pathway with the sixth and had never much cared for empire-building of his own, content to let his legacy blend quietly into someone else's.
None of that history mattered much to anyone walking the streets today, though. Today, every eye in the city was turned upward instead, toward something far more immediate than old wars and older laws.
Today, though, the whole city had dressed itself for something bigger than any ordinary morning. Lanterns hung from every corner, glowing warm against the daylight. Golden banners bearing the interlocked crest of the Blackbell family rippled from every spire and bridge in sight, and crystal lanterns floated in perfect rows down the main boulevards, casting soft rose-gold light across marble streets already gleaming without it. Flowers pulled from a dozen different worlds- pale snow lilies, star orchids that pulsed faintly with their own light, deep crimson moonblossoms- had been shipped in by the ton, until every balcony, every rooftop, every open square had become its own small, impossible garden.
"Move your cart, move your cart, I am not missing the veil unveiling because of your radish stand!" an elderly woman shouted, elbowing her way past a vendor who was very deliberately not moving his cart at all.
"Everyone's not missing it, madam; it covers the entire sky. You could watch it from your own bathtub," the vendor shot back, unbothered, already handing a bundle of star orchids to someone else entirely.
And still, none of it compared to what hung above the city.
A single veil stretched across the entire sky, vast enough to cover Lumenia from its outer ring all the way to the base of the great walls themselves. It wasn't cloth. It was Light and Dimension Pathway Auras woven together into something that only looked like fabric, semi-transparent, drifting gently as though it were actually breathing, its edges catching sunlight and scattering it downward in slow, drifting motes that looked, from below, uncannily like falling stardust.
A group of children had stopped dead in the middle of the street, heads craned all the way back, mouths hanging open.
"Is it going to fall on us?" one of them asked, tugging at an older sibling's sleeve.
"No, stupid, it's Aura; it's not gonna fall. It's just floating there being pretty," the older one said, though she didn't sound entirely convinced herself, one hand still hovering protectively near her little brother's shoulder just in case.
"I heard the Heisenberg family sent enough energy crystals to power a small moon just to keep that thing glowing," a man said to his companion as they crossed a bridge beneath it, both of them squinting up at the shifting gold threads. "Imagine having that kind of money just to spend on a wedding decoration."
"Imagine having that kind of money at all," his friend muttered.
Every royal family had contributed something toward it, some gladly, some only because refusing would have cost them more than the gift itself. The Romani family had sent illusionists to fill the air with drifting white doves and sakura petals that never once touched the ground, and a cluster of teenagers had already taken to running through them, laughing, trying and failing to catch petals that dissolved the instant fingers closed around them. The Heisenberg family had supplied the crystals keeping the veil's glow stable overhead. Even the notoriously private Symmetra family had loaned mirror constructs that folded the whole city into perfect, doubled reflections, making every street look twice as wide and twice as grand as it already was, prompting more than one visitor to stop mid-step, genuinely lost, unsure which direction was the real one anymore.
"This is insane," a young woman breathed, phone-shaped Aura recorder held up toward the sky, spinning in a slow circle to capture as much of it as she could. "My grandkids are never going to believe I was actually here for this."
All of it, every lantern, every flower, every fold of woven light overhead, existed for one reason.
Sasaki Blackbell Alberich was getting married.
"You hear he's marrying a Divine Punishment pathway user? A Divine Punishment user, marrying into the Blackbell line," an old man said to a small crowd gathered near a fountain, clearly enjoying being the one holding everyone's attention. "In my day, that pathway barely got invited to family dinners, let alone a Blackbell wedding."
"Times change, old man," someone called back. "Besides, have you seen what Sasaki's capable of? I'd marry a Divine Punishment user too if I could fight like that."
Laughter rippled through the small crowd.
Further down, near one of the floating lantern displays, a group of younger Aura users argued heatedly over a betting pool, voices rising over one another.
"I'm telling you, if he ever actually fought the Meditation Master again, properly, no holding back, it wouldn't be three moves this time. Maybe five."
"Five?! You're being generous. The man's a True Supernova; there's no 'maybe five moves' about it. There's zero moves; there's just Sasaki losing slightly slower."
"Say that again when Sasaki actually becomes one himself someday. You'll be eating those words."
People whispered his name the way they whispered names meant to carry weight even in casual conversation. The greatest talent Lumenia has seen in a million years, someone else murmured nearby, watching the veil shimmer overhead, and nobody around them argued the point, because by now it had simply become fact rather than praise.
He carried Blackbell blood through his birth mother, Sapphire, once a Supernova of the Alberich line herself, before she'd fallen in love with a man from some distant, ordinary world called Earth and left everything behind to be with him. She'd returned only once, years later, dying, cradling a three-year-old boy she handed over to old friends with her last remaining strength before her lifespan finally ran out.
"My mother used to tell me that story like a bedtime tale," a woman said quietly to the child beside her, both of them sitting on the edge of a fountain, watching lantern light ripple across the water. "A dying mother, one last flight home, entrusting her son to strangers. Feels like something out of an old myth."
"Did the strangers take care of him well?" the child asked.
"Better than well," the woman said, smiling faintly. "Look up. All of this exists because of how well they raised him."
A year after Sapphire's death, at just four years old, Sasaki had awakened, and the Blackbell family, recognizing what they were looking at almost instantly, had adopted him without hesitation, folding their own name into his without a second thought.
What followed had shocked the entire planet. Fed by the Blackbell family's near-limitless resources, Sasaki had broken through to Supernova at fifteen, an age so young it had made headlines across every major city in Lumenia.
"Fifteen," someone repeated, shaking their head slowly at a nearby tea stall, still sounding faintly disbelieving even all these years later. "I didn't even control my own Aura properly until I was twenty-three."
"Most of us didn't," the stall owner said, pouring tea without looking up. "That's rather the point of him, isn't it?"
For two years after that, Sasaki had thrown himself into refining his control, traveling from world to world, challenging Supernova after Supernova wherever he found them. He'd won plenty of those fights. Tied a fair number. Lost some too, occasionally badly enough to surrender outright, and every single time, he'd returned sharper than before, eventually toppling the very opponents who'd once beaten him.
Then, at the height of that momentum, he'd done something almost nobody expected.
He'd challenged the current Meditation Master. The 107th. A True Supernova.
He'd lost in three moves.
By any ordinary measure, that should have humbled him. Instead, his reputation only climbed higher, because the Meditation Master himself, standing over the boy he'd just effortlessly beaten, had said, plainly, in front of everyone watching, that Sasaki already carried the battle strength to challenge True Supernovas directly, and the talent to eventually become one himself.
That single sentence had rewritten how the entire region viewed him.
"Three moves and still walked away with more glory than most of us will earn in a lifetime," a young Aura user muttered to his friend, both of them leaning against a lantern post, watching the crowd swell thicker by the minute. "Some people just get born lucky."
"It's not luck if you keep proving it over and over," his friend replied. "That's the part everyone forgets."
Because in the Auralis Solar System, by arrangement laid down generations ago by the second Meditation Master himself, only Aura users born of Lumenia could ever ascend to True Supernova. And becoming a True Supernova meant becoming the next Meditation Master, inheriting the single highest tier of battle strength known to exist, along with political power and resource access that made every other royal family's holdings look modest by comparison.
Anyone with a real path toward that title stood so far above ordinary ambition that greed itself became almost beneath them. There was nothing left to want that such power couldn't simply hand them outright.
And today, beneath a sky wrapped in woven light and drifting petals, an entire city had gathered, buzzing and restless and thrilled, to watch that same boy walk down an aisle instead of into another battle.
...
Away from the main boulevard, in a quieter side street where the crowds thinned, and the lantern light stretched thinner between buildings, two men stood beneath a modest awning, wine glasses in hand, their formal robes marking them as guests of standing, though clearly not the kind invited to sit anywhere near the front.
"Beautiful ceremony they're throwing," one of them said, watching the veil ripple lazily overhead. He wore the deep dark blue sash of the Alberich family, though a lower-ranking cousin's shade of it, the color slightly duller than the main branch's. "Almost makes you forget what it actually means."
His companion, a stout man in the muted green of a minor branch family, snorted quietly into his glass. "You mean it almost makes you forget that in a decade, every family standing here today will be bowing a little lower than they already do."
"Careful," the Alberich cousin murmured, glancing around briefly out of habit more than real concern. "Voices carry further than people think at these things."
"Let them carry. I'm only saying what half this street is already thinking." The green-sashed man lowered his voice anyway, leaning in slightly. "The old Meditation Master's time is nearly up. Everyone knows it. And when he goes, who's standing closest to that seat? Sasaki. He is pure Blackbell blood by name now, whatever his actual birth line says."
"He's Alberich blood too," the cousin said, a faint, bitter note creeping into his tone. "My family's blood, if we're being honest about it. And what has that earned us? A wedding invitation and a seat three rows back from people who wouldn't recognize half our names."
"That's rather the whole problem, isn't it," the green-sashed man said. "The Blackbells already sit above every family in this city. Their name has been stitched into the Meditation Master's own bloodline for three generations running now. If Sasaki actually becomes the next True Supernova, that's not just one more talented boy climbing the ranks. That's the Blackbell family locking down control of Lumenia itself for another century, maybe longer."
"And the rest of us keep sending our sons and daughters to bow at their gates," the cousin muttered, swirling the wine in his glass without drinking it. "Territory, resources, the good relics, all of it filtered through Blackbell approval first. We've lived under that arrangement for generations. I don't relish the idea of my grandchildren still living under it."
"None of us do. But what exactly is anyone supposed to do about it? Challenge a boy who lost to a True Supernova in three moves and still walked away with more glory than most of us will ever earn?" The green-sashed man shook his head slowly. "There's no clean path around Sasaki. Only around the family that raised him."
The Alberich cousin didn't answer that directly, his gaze drifting instead toward the great white mansion visible above the rooftops to the north, its upper floors catching the veil's soft golden light.
"Let's just get through today," he said finally, quieter now. "Smile. Toast the happy couple. Worry about the rest of it after the wedding's done."
His companion lifted his glass slightly in reluctant agreement, and the two of them fell silent, watching the crowds drift past beneath the endless, glittering veil, while far above them, in a marble room high inside that same mansion, the reason for all their quiet unease sat in front of a mirror, entirely unaware of the conversation happening in his name.
...
In the northern district of Lumenia, a mansion of pure white marble rose above its neighbors, sprawling wide enough to swallow a small village whole. Guests of every species imaginable had already gathered across its lower gardens, dressed in fabrics that shimmered, rippled, or drifted with their own faint inner light depending on which world they called home.
On the top floor, in a quiet room far removed from the noise below, Sasaki Alberich sat in front of a full-length mirror, motionless.
His Black suit fit him with the precision of something tailored down to the last thread, black underclothes visible only at the collar and cuffs. His skin held the pale, flawless quality of undisturbed snow, and beneath dark blue hair, his eyes, ordinarily a striking Egyptian blue, sat fully black instead, half-lidded, focused on nothing in the room at all. One hand rested loosely on his knee. The other lay flat against the surface of the vanity in front of him, fingers unmoving.
The door opened without a knock.
Alia crossed the room in a few unhurried strides, dark purple suit tailored just as sharply as his own, a single peacock feather earring swaying faintly at her left ear, her face bare of any makeup and needing none. She reached him before he'd even registered the sound of her entrance, closing her fingers firmly around his right cheek and yanking it sideways with a sharp, undignified squeeze.
"Hey. Bastard." Her tone carried no real venom, only the easy, practiced irritation of someone who'd done this exact thing a hundred times before. "Stop sitting here daydreaming like some lovesick poet and get downstairs. Did you forget every tradition and etiquette lesson we sat through, or are you just choosing to ignore them today of all days?"
Sasaki's free hand shot out and caught her lightly in the abdomen, a quick, familiar jab that made her release his cheek with a small huff. He rubbed at the reddened skin, grumbling. "I know, I know, Alia. I was mentally preparing myself. A lot is riding on today, you know."
"Mentally preparing," she repeated flatly, arching one eyebrow at his reflection in the mirror. "Is that what we're calling staring blankly at your own face now?"
He didn't answer that directly, mouth curving faintly instead.
Alia moved behind him, resting both hands on his shoulders for a moment before sliding them up to cradle either side of his head, tilting it gently back until it rested against her stomach. She looked down at him upside-down in the mirror, a small, genuine smile finally breaking through the earlier irritation, and began running her fingers slowly through his dark blue hair.
His skin was ice-cold beneath her palms, a permanent consequence of the Living Corpse form he wore, and she gave no indication it bothered her in the slightest, fingers moving through his hair with the same unbothered ease as always.
"I wonder," she mused, tilting her head thoughtfully, "what Alisa would think, hearing that her papa got nervous on his own wedding day."
"She's a baby, Alia. She won't remember a single second of today." Sasaki closed his eyes, leaning further into the touch despite himself. "Besides, she's back home right now, safely far away from all this chaos."
"Mm, who knows." Alia's smile sharpened slightly, teasing. "She's got good genes running through her, from both sides. You can never fully trust a kid that talented to stay predictable for long."
She straightened, giving his hair one last affectionate ruffle before stepping back, smoothing down the front of her own jacket.
"Alright. I'll head down, make sure Sylvana and Chris are actually ready this time instead of still arguing over seating charts." She paused near the door, something briefly more serious crossing her face. "Shame Edward couldn't make it. The Paris operation really picked the worst possible timing."
Sasaki's expression shifted too, the earlier teasing warmth cooling into something more measured. "It is a shame," he agreed quietly. "But the first, second, and third ones are already in Paris handling things. We don't have to worry about losing 'it' there, at least." His gaze drifted briefly toward the window, toward the veil shimmering faintly beyond the glass. "Once the operation wraps up, all three of them will be sent here properly. I'm genuinely eager to see what they're capable of, once they've had real guidance behind them."
"Ha, with the right nurturing, they might actually give you a run for your money someday." Alia flashed him a grin over her shoulder, already lifting one hand, golden Meditation Aura beginning to gather around her fingertips. "As the seventh one, I'm already more than capable of giving you tough fights day and night, and you know it."
"You cheat," Sasaki said dryly, though something fond flickered behind the black of his eyes.
"I improvise," she corrected, and with a small, satisfied smirk, she waved her hand and vanished from the room entirely, the golden light collapsing inward and winking out behind her.
Alone now, Sasaki turned back toward the mirror, and the black slowly bled out of his eyes, giving way to their natural Egyptian blue, sharp and clear against his pale skin. He rose from his seat and crossed to the window, looking out past the sprawling gardens below toward the vast white veil suspended over the entire city, its golden threads still drifting lazily in the light.
He activated his Abyssal Eyes.
A deep blue Aura kindled across his pupils, threaded through with drifting black particles that swirled slowly inward before condensing, sharpening, taking shape. Four black scythes bloomed into existence around his irises, one settling toward each cardinal direction- north, south, east, west- their curved edges glinting faintly in the window's light.
Through them, the veil overhead thinned to nothing, its shimmering weave parting like mist beneath his gaze until only the clear, open blue of the sky remained, stretching out far beyond what any ordinary eye could have reached.
Sasaki exhaled slowly, watching the sky settle into perfect focus.
"It's time," he murmured, "to go meet the important guests."