Serenya's longing had deep roots, nourished by the memories of her homeland. Here, in the northern peaks, she felt a prisoner of silence. It was a cold and merciless landscape that stifled her. The snow‑covered mountains towering above her, with their rugged beauty, were constant reminders of the harsh realities of a life with no indulgence.
Six years earlier she had chosen this fate of her own will, marrying Taelthorn moved by the love and fierce devotion Elyra had stirred in her. He was handsome, powerful, admired by all: a man whose mere presence commanded respect. In private, he was gentle; in public, a firm ruler whose authority was never in doubt.
In those first winters, Serenya had truly believed she could carve out a place for herself in the northern range much as she had, as a child, stacked stones by the river to build impossible towers. With Taelthorn at her side and the promise of a citadel that would answer to her vision, the North seemed a worthy challenge, not a sentence. Over time, however, her footsteps in the corridors began sounding hollower, and the laughter of the early months unravelled, replaced by measured conversations and ever-lengthening silences.
The northern range harboured its own shadows. A dark history lingered in the halls like a spectral presence. Taelthorn's first queen, Elvaria Draemveil, had died under mysterious circumstances. The cause of her death was the subject of whispers and speculation. Her chambers remained sealed like a tomb. No one spoke of Elvaria. The silence surrounding her memory was oppressive, a constant weight upon the peaks, like snow that never melts.
People's glances, exchanged behind Serenya's back, inevitably linked her name to the former queens, and Serenya quickly learned to recognise them. At first, she thought it was a simple comparison, the natural curiosity of those who weighed the new sovereign against the shadow of the old. As the years passed and the silence persisted, her feeling became denser, as if the entire citadel breathed a secret she never had the right to know.
Serenya's thoughts returned to Elvaria, wondering what had truly happened, what secrets lay hidden behind the citadel's stone walls. The more she pondered it, the more her unease grew, a vague certainty that there was much more than anyone dared to say.
That unease intensified that night as she walked alone down the corridor leading to the eastern tower. The torches cast wavering light over ancient tapestries where forgotten battles replayed in silence. The sound of her footsteps echoed over the stone floor, steady, almost like a ritual. Yet during that controlled rhythm, a sense of someone watching her slid under her skin like a chill.
Her eyes drifted, almost against her will, toward the sealed door she knew belonged to Elvaria's former chambers. The iron of the dull bolts seemed to absorb the torchlight, and the dark wood was so polished by time that it reflected a distorted shadow of her own face. No one approached that threshold without concrete reasons, and even then, they did so hastily, as though afraid of waking something that slept behind it.
She stopped before the door. The silence in that stretch of corridor was deeper, as if sound itself avoided lingering there. She extended her hand, without touching the wood, then drew it back a moment later, not allowing her skin to contact the door.
Elyra had taught her that doors existed to be crossed, but also that some demanded respect, even when one longed to rip them from their hinges.
"Elvaria," she murmured, barely above a whisper, testing the texture of the name on her tongue as if it were a spell. "What befell you in these mountains that now claim my breath as well?"
No answer came, but the air seemed to grow a few degrees colder, an air draft that came from neither ceiling cracks nor distant windows creased across her. Serenya stepped back, her heart racing without knowing why. She did not believe in spectres, at least not in the way elders muttered by the fire; but she believed in the marks lives left on walls and their echoes that refused to die.
She forced herself to move away and continue, climbing the spiral stairs up to the covered gallery that faced east. From there, the Northern Peaks spread out like an endless rampart, and beyond, unseen yet present, lay the lands where she had been born. As she gazed at the line of darkness hiding the south, Elvaria's figure returned to her mind, superimposed upon her own like two silhouettes carved into the same rock.
What had Elvaria thought the first time she looked out these same windows? Had she also felt that blend of fascination and suffocation, of power and confinement? Had she, like Serenya was she too tempted to turn toward other horizons?
The decision to travel to Aelestara, which hours earlier had seemed a spark of hope, took on a darker shade as her mind wove unavoidable parallels. If the first queen had vanished shrouded in mystery, what kind of fate awaited the second when she walked among distant wonders and unresolved secrets at home?
The wind beat against the panes, and the sound made her step back. On the glass surface she saw, for an instant, her reflection doubled: Serenya of the Northern Peaks, queen among glaciers, and Serenya of the valleys, daughter of golden mountains, friend of Elyra. Two lives overlaid in a single body, like two rivers crossing the same gorge, eroding rock with opposing forces.
"I will not let these shadows define me," she whispered, closing her eyes. "Not Elvaria's, not Taelthorn's, not those of these frozen walls."
When she opened them, the image of the floating city returned with renewed strength. Aelestara was not only a place of wonders; it could also be a mirror in which to confront what she was becoming. A place where the light, if it was as intense as Eryndor described, would not allow shadows to hide as easily as they did in the citadel's recesses.
And yet, as she left the gallery and retraced her steps along the silent corridor, Elvaria's closed door seemed to follow her with its gaze. The absurd thought made her quicken her pace. Because, although she repeated to herself that she did not believe in ghosts, she could not shake the feeling that, before she departed for the city of light, someone—or something—within those sealed chambers was waiting for the exact moment to demand her attention.