When the copied banner reached Sylvaria, Elyndra treated it like evidence and ordered that every report be stripped of fear before it was allowed to travel further.
She did not ask for opinions. She asked for sequence, distance, angle, light, and time. Witnesses were told to describe what they saw first, then what they believed after, and to keep the two separate. Any account that arrived wrapped in certainty was set aside until it could be retold without it.
The rule was simple. If fear shaped the words, fear would shape the conclusion. Sylvaria would not meet the unknown with a story it invented for comfort.
Understanding the banner became the first priority, because it was the first thing that looked intentional. Its meaning remained out of reach, but intent could be measured. A banner could be a warning, a claim, a challenge, or a request to be recognized. Elyndra refused to choose the most frightening answer simply because it was the easiest to believe.
Either way, it mattered. If it was a declaration of war, Sylvaria needed time to prepare. If it was a declaration of existence, Sylvaria needed discipline, because the wrong response could turn a symbol into a signal.
As days turned into weeks, Elyndra received enough matching reports to separate invention from pattern. The cloth was not a traveler's exaggeration. It appeared in multiple places, described by people who had never met, drawn by hands that disagreed on everything except the parts that mattered. Three bands: black, yellow, and white. A geometric diamond, circled by a ring that cut across it as if it were part of the design rather than an ornament.
That was the answer she needed, not an origin, not a name, but intent. A banner was not a natural thing. It was a signal made to be copied, meant to survive distance and poor memory. Whatever moved above Keros had chosen a shape simple enough for strangers to repeat and precise enough to remain itself even when sketched in haste.
Sylvaria did not celebrate the clarity. Elyndra treated it as a warning of structure, and structure meant capability. People on the frontier still called the shapes in the sky beasts, because no other word fit. Some swore they were the size of whales, and Elyndra did not correct the scale in public; she only corrected the conclusion. Size alone did not decide intent, but it decided risk. If something that large could cross the sky without effort, then any mistake made on the ground would carry consequences that Keros could not control.
So she refined the royal protocol again. Reports would travel faster, not louder. Witnesses would be sorted by reliability, not passion. Any mention of omens would be recorded, then removed from the summary. The banner would be treated as evidence of a nation, even if no one knew where that nation stood or what it wanted, and Sylvaria would respond the only way it safely could.
With discipline first and answers second.
The protocol held. Rumors still arrived at Sylvaria's borders, but they arrived thinner, stripped down to what could be repeated without heat. The banner became a shape in ink instead of a story in mouths. The ringed diamond became a line drawing instead of an omen.
Then something arrived that did not pass through any border gate.
It was found at dusk in an outer grove where the wardens kept their routes quiet. No tracks led to it. No messenger claimed it. The grass around it lay as it had that morning.
A small case sat in the clearing, squared like a book but built with corners too exact for carpentry. A band of cloth was wrapped around it: black, yellow, and white. Pressed into the seal was the same insignia, a diamond with a ring crossing it, clean enough that even a careless hand could not mistake the design.
The wardens did not touch it. They sent word upward through the palace without adding their own fears, because the protocol demanded that much.
Elyndra came alone.
She did not speak until she had walked a full circle around the case. Her eye tracked the seal, the cloth, the placement, the absence of disturbance.
"This was meant to be found," she said.
A warden, voice careful, asked the question everyone else kept behind their teeth. "Is it meant for Sylvaria, or for you?"
Elyndra did not answer immediately. She extended her magic into the space around the object, not to pry it open, but to read what kind of hand had placed it. The grove did not answer her with any familiar residue. The air felt organized, the way a room feels after it has been cleaned, even if you never saw the cleaning happen.
"It is meant for a mind, not a nation," she said.
She broke the seal.
Inside was a single sheet, thin, pale, and unnervingly smooth. The writing did not resemble any local script. It carried familiar shapes in unfamiliar combinations, some symbols joined by dashes as if they were instructions rather than words. At the bottom was the insignia again, then a name written with the same controlled hand.
Вулрік Eтχос. (Wulric Ethos)
Elyndra read it slowly. There were no greetings. No flattery. No explanation. The message did not ask whether she was willing. It assumed that she would understand why the offer existed.
It stated that Keros required one representative to prevent uncontrolled signaling and prevent conflict built from misinterpretation. It stated that she had been selected because she separated fear from reporting. It stated a time, a location, and a method of transport.
It also included a single word that did not belong to Keros at all. A place name, written as if it were obvious.
Ріаа'. (Riaa')
Elyndra folded the paper once, then again, and placed it back into the case. She did not let the wardens see the page.
"No one speaks of this," she said. "No one copies the seal, the cloth, or the writing. The protocol applies to us first."
The warden stiffened. "If it is a trap, we can set guards; we can bring mages; we can bring steel."
"You will do none of that," Elyndra replied. "If this is a test, crowding it will fail it. If this is contact, crowding it will distort it."
She returned to the palace and sealed the case in her private chambers. She wrote one short instruction for the archive, procedural, plain, and meant to be useful if she did not return. Then she did the one thing she had forbidden everyone else from doing.
She chose a response without a crowd to shape it.
Before dawn, Elyndra walked to the marked ridge alone.
The sky was still dark enough for stars. The moon's rings held their perfect spacing. The forest below her was quiet, waiting.
At first, there was only wind.
Then the wind behaved differently.
Leaves trembled without a gust. The air thickened with a steady pulse that pressed downward in clean intervals. Far off, beyond the tree line, a shape rose into view and held position with a precision that no living thing ever chose.
Even at a distance, the three bands were visible on its underside, black, yellow, and white, and beside them was the ringed diamond, sharp as a stamp.
Elyndra did not move.
The craft began to descend.