The white-out was not an absence of light, but an excess of it. It burned away the Cathedral, the smell of incense, and the sound of Aris's panicked shouting. For a heartbeat, Asteria felt like a piece of glass being shattered and reformed, her consciousness stretched thin across a horizon she couldn't see.
Then, the white bled into colour. A sea of colour and of stars.
***
Asteria stood on a cliffside, but the air was different – it was sweet, untainted by the cruel hum of the bell.
Below her, Aethelgard was not a subterranean cage of glass, but a sprawling, sun-drenched valley of white stone and verdant greenery.
She saw a younger Halesia, her radiance not yet a blinding armour, but a soft, genuine glow. Beside her stood a man – someone with the same sharp, knowing eyes. They were laying the first stone of the spire. The people below were laughing, their voices a messy, beautiful tangle of sound. There was no "order," no synchronized bowing. There was only life, chaotic and vibrant.
Asteria was more like a ghost or a spirit in this memory – vision? The people around her didn't seem to notice her, nor could she interact with the surroundings or speak aloud.
The harrowing cacophony of a thousand whispers and a thousand prayers echoed within her mind. "This, was the promise of a wonderful paradise. A kingdom built of the sun, for the sun. Before she grew afraid of the sunset – before she was a tyrant."
Moving closer to the figures – Halesia and the unnamed man – she overheard their conversation, albeit the end of it.
"Halesia, my daughter," The voice began, a calm yet eerily cold voice. "Build castles from the sand, and protect them from washing away by the waves on the shore."
"Are you leaving?" She mumbled, the most emotion Asteria has ever seen from the then-young Queen.
"I am – for a long and arduous journey, most likely." He said, gazing at the structures hoisted from the scorching sand below. "I'd like to meet that closed-off Prince of the Underworld."
"Why?" Asteria could see small droplets coursing their way over her cheeks.
"Fate. It's a cruel thing, isn't it, my daughter?"
Halesia didn't respond, instead wiping her tears with her hand – something not befitting a future Queen of a prosperous kingdom.
A voice called from behind them: "My lord – Aemedon, we've prepared for your departure." The voice turned to the girl next to him, "My lady, you have things to attend to and not enough time to be sat up here I'm afraid."
Asteria observed for a while, floating in the air around the figures going opposite ways. One towards the expansive desert and the other towards the making of a kingdom.
Halesia descended down the stone stairs, her gaze focused on the rising skyline of a kingdom-to-be and sighed.
The descent seemed to take an eternity. As the younger Halesia walked, the world around Asteria began to warp and blur, time flowing like spilled ink across a canvas. Buildings rose and fell in a heartbeat; the verdant greenery of the valley was slowly choked out by towering walls of white stone that reached for a sun that was beginning to grow pale and sickly.
Asteria drifted alongside the future Queen, a silent passenger to the slow erosion of a soul.
The laughter of the people below transformed. It lost its chaotic, messy vibrance, sharpening into something rehearsed, something rhythmic. The messy tangle of sound was being pruned, one voice at a time, until the air began to hum with that low-frequency dread that Asteria knew all too well.
Halesia was no longer a girl. She stood atop the finished balcony of the Palace, her hair no longer a natural gold but a shimmering, incandescent white that seemed to bleed light into the very stone beneath her feet. She looked older, though her face remained unlined – frozen by the very divinity she was cultivating.
"He hasn't returned," Halesia whispered to the empty air.
Asteria flinched. The Queen's voice was different now; the warmth had been replaced by a crystalline edge that sounded like it could shatter if she spoke too loudly.
"The Prince of the Underworld... We don't know why he went for him." a voice replied from the shadows of the balcony.
Asteria turned, her ghostly form flickering. Emerging from the darkness was a man she recognized instantly. It was Valerius – or a version of him. He looked nearly identical, though his eyes lacked the cynical spark she knew. They were filled with a terrifying, absolute devotion.
"He was my father," Halesia said, her gaze fixed on the horizon where the sun was dipping dangerously low.
"He asked me to protect the castles built from sand. Now the sand is rising, Valerius. The heat is dying. If the sun goes out, my people will freeze in the dark."
Valerius stepped forward, his boots clicking on the stone with a sound that echoed like a countdown. "Then we move the kingdom. If the surface will not have us, we go beneath. We build a sun that never sets. A sun that does not rely on the whims of the heavens."
"A sun..." Halesia murmured, her fingers tracing the railing. "A sun that requires a heart to burn..."
Asteria felt a cold chill wash over her spirit. She was witnessing the birth of the nightmare. This wasn't just a kingdom; it was a desperate, panicked reaction to the fear of loss. Halesia wasn't born a tyrant – she was simply terrified of the sunset – of a father never coming home.
The vision shifted again. The valley was gone, replaced by the cavernous depths where Aethelgard now sat. The air was thick with the dust of construction and the smell of grime.
Halesia stood before a massive, unformed mass of golden energy – the primordial state of the Sovereign's Spark. It pulsed with a raw, violent power that made Asteria's ghostly form vibrate with pain.
"It is too much," Halesia gasped, her hands hovering near the energy. "It is not a sun. It'll kill them if I give it to them like this..."
"Then we must filter it," the younger Valerius said, his face illuminated by the golden glow. "We give them a gorgeous melody so they do not have to hear the cruel sounds of the world."
Halesia looked at the Spark, then at the thousands of workers below, their faces covered in the soot of the mines, their eyes wide with a hope that broke Asteria's heart. They believed she was saving them. They believed they were building a paradise.
"And what of the cost?" Halesia asked.
"The cost is the truth," Valerius replied. "But a happy lie is better than a cold death, is it not?"
Halesia reached out. Her fingers touched the Spark.
The moment of contact was a physical blow. The golden light flared, turning blindingly white, and for a second, Asteria saw the Queen's face reflected in the energy. It wasn't the face of a Goddess. It was the face of the girl on the cliffside, weeping for a father who had left her to hold back the tide with nothing but sand and dreams.
"Let there be light," Halesia's voice boomed, overlapping with the thousands of prayers Asteria had heard in the Cathedral. "Let there be hope. Let there be dreams for those who dreamt of rope."
The prayer – the one Valerius had whispered in Asteria's ear – wasn't a religious rite. It was a funeral dirge for the truth.
As the light became unbearable, Asteria saw the first faithful workers fall to their knees. They didn't bow out of respect. They bowed because the illumination had literally buckled their knees. Their smiles weren't expressions of joy; they were the first symptoms of the glass taking hold
Thus, a sun was created in Aethelgard.
And the man who suggested it was the one now staging a rebellion against his Queen.