POV: Elanor Sunshine
He never looked behind him.
Not once in the ten years I've watched him from hallways, shadows, and doorframes too wide for a girl with no blood claim. Not even when his name echoed through the garden, or when glass shattered behind him during fencing lessons. Not even when I said his name once—quiet, scared, foolish—on the marble stairs between class chambers.
Arthur walked like time only moved forward.
He stood at the edge of the Sky Garden again today. Hands behind his back. Boots polished, gloves pristine, hair catching the light like spun moon-thread. That same long coat—gray as storm mist, trimmed with gold. Unwrinkled. Untouched. Unhuman.
He didn't belong to anyone here. Not the royal court. Not the priests. Not even the father whose orders echo through every hall.
Especially not his father.
I stepped forward, one breath too close. Close enough for the scent of copper starlilies to vanish beneath the strange cold in the air around him.
He spoke first.
"You shouldn't watch people who don't speak to you."
His voice wasn't cruel. Just tired. Like someone quoting a rule they didn't believe in.
"I wasn't watching," I lied. "I was… trying to see."
He turned his head slightly—just slightly. His red eye twitched. The gold one didn't even blink.
"What are you trying to see?"
"You."
He didn't laugh.
I think he doesn't know how.
Instead, he looked out toward the horizon again, past the mirrored dome that reflected clouds and firelight from the sun above. "There's nothing to see," he said.
"You lie worse than I do," I muttered, then looked away.
Silence again.
But not empty. Never empty with him. Being near Arthur is like standing near something just beyond understanding—like a god that forgot what language was, or a book written in a dream you haven't woken from yet.
He stepped forward. Just once. A slow movement. The air rippled around him.
For the first time, I saw it—not his coat or hair or crown-shadow.
I saw the weight of him.
Not in body. Not in power. But in pull. Like the world leaned toward him.
Like I did.
Why does he feel like gravity?
"You don't have to follow me," he said quietly. "No one does."
I almost said, "Then why haven't you told me to stop?"
But I didn't. Because I think… he doesn't know either.
Instead, I said: "I don't follow you. I walk near you. It's different."
He didn't answer.
But for just a breath—just one—
He looked back.
POV: Arthur Starlight
Two days have passed since that day
The garden was too quiet today.
Not the absence-of-noise kind of quiet. It was the kind that listened. Every step I took across the mosaic stone felt like it echoed longer than it should have, like the path itself was waiting for something I hadn't said yet.
I didn't belong to this place. Not really.
I had memorized every color in this garden—the violet-blues of frost lilies, the glass-bright reds of flameleaf vines, the way light refracted through the dome overhead in fractured beams. They called it the Sky Garden, but it felt more like a cage. A beautiful one. One made to contain something they didn't understand.
I wasn't sure I understood it either.
My footsteps stopped near the center fountain. Its silver surface rippled from a breeze that didn't exist. My reflection stared back: a boy with white and gold hair that shimmered like dust in sunlight, one eye glowing faint gold, the other a restless red.
The red eye always twitched first when something was coming.
I didn't know what that meant.
But I felt it—under the skin, beneath thought. Like there was a second self, wrapped tight inside my bones, whispering back whenever I dreamed too hard or stood too still.
Sometimes I woke up with memories that weren't mine. Names. Weapons. Stories. Places that shouldn't exist, but felt true.
I didn't tell anyone.
Not Kezess. Not the butler, Balthen. Not the priests. Not the scholars.
Especially not her.
Elanor.
I knew she was there—again. She always came when she thought I didn't notice. But I noticed. Every time. The way her footsteps hesitated, then followed. The way her breath held just before she spoke.
She smelled like mint and pine ash.
She was kind. Too kind. That made her dangerous.
Kind people want to understand things that should stay locked away.
I turned slightly, just enough to see her out of the corner of my eye—half in sunlight, half in shadow, like the garden hadn't decided whether to let her in.
She didn't speak this time. That was better. Words made things real. And I wasn't ready for real yet.
Not when I could feel it waking.
The symbol on my chest wasn't glowing now. But it had last night. In the dark, under the blankets, after I thought the castle was asleep—I saw it pulsing. Like ink, shifting between shapes.
I had summoned a sword I'd only read about in a myth. And it hadn't disappeared. It had stayed. Real. Heavy. Cold.
I didn't know how.
But something inside me whispered that this was only the beginning.
I could still feel the weight of that sword in my hands.
Not just the steel. The story it carried. The name of a blade forged in a forgotten myth, never real, never touched—and yet I had touched it. Felt its hilt burn like memory. Felt its edge hum with words that didn't belong to this world.
It hadn't faded when I let go.
It still rested beneath my bed, wrapped in linen I tore from the sheets, humming softly when the moonlight found it.
What am I?
The thought didn't frighten me as much as it should have. It echoed through my mind like an echo I was used to hearing. Like it wasn't mine, but someone else's—someone older. Someone watching.
Elanor took another step, slow, soft. I didn't move. But I heard her stop.
The silence between us wasn't awkward. It was precise. Like the garden itself wanted the distance to stay.
I finally spoke, just loud enough for the words to reach her.
"You shouldn't follow me here."
She didn't respond right away.
"I don't follow," she said eventually. "I just… never see you anywhere else."
I closed my eyes. Breathed in.
The scent of frost lilies. The faint hum of the arcane vents buried in the dome. The distant sound of a world too far away to care.
"I like the silence," I said.
She took that as an invitation.
I could hear her boots on the marble path now, measured and hesitant. Not reckless. Never reckless. She was smarter than that.
"You feel it too, don't you?" she asked.
I turned. Not fully. Just enough that my gold eye met hers.
She didn't flinch.
"Elanor," I said quietly, "some things aren't meant to be understood."
"I'm not trying to understand. I'm trying to not be afraid of you."
That almost made me smile. Almost.
"You should be."
She tilted her head. "Then why aren't you?"
I didn't answer. Because I wasn't sure either.
There were no lessons for this. No scrolls or tutors that could explain why sometimes I dreamed of places that never existed, or why the sky bent wrong when I got angry.
Or why last night, the garden itself had whispered back to me.
I stared down at my hands. No glow. No mark.
But I knew it was there.
Noctivox.
The word had come to me in a whisper during a sleepless night. Not a name I'd read. Not one spoke aloud.
Just the truth. Crawling up from somewhere deep inside.
I didn't know what it meant yet.
But I knew this:
Whatever's inside me… it's not asleep anymore.
I didn't move for a long time.
Elanor was behind me—I could feel her presence like a soft echo. But she didn't speak. She knew better than to ask questions I didn't want to answer.
The fountain beside me rippled again, though no wind stirred the garden. I stared into it. My reflection stared back, fractured by the shifting surface: white and gold hair, pale skin, a flicker of red in one eye like a glitch in a memory.
I touched my chest, beneath the layers of cloth. The mark—if it was one—wasn't visible now. But I could still feel it. Faintly warm. Like a heartbeat that didn't belong to me.
I didn't know what it was.
Evolvanth. That's what the scholars called it. A power born not from training or blessing—but from adaptation. Humanity's answer to a world collapsing under its own infinity. Every person awakened their own response to survive. No two were the same.
But no one had ever seen mine.
Not even me.
Not until last night.
The sword I summoned—it wasn't a dream. I could still feel the phantom weight of it in my hand. Ornate. Black steel with molten symbols along the blade, a weapon that had only existed in myth. A weapon from a story I barely remembered… yet wielded as if it had been written into my bones.
That's what scared me.
It hadn't just appeared.
It obeyed.
Like fiction bent around me and asked what it should become.
I turned slightly. Elanor hadn't moved. She stood just outside the golden light, her hands clasped behind her back, pretending not to watch too closely.
She was always pretending.
I wondered if she ever remembered the girl she used to be, before the Riftbeast destroyed her village. Before the noble house adopted her. Before she started watching me like I was the last puzzle worth solving.
I opened my mouth.
Then shut it.
Not yet.
Because if I said it aloud—if I admitted something was changing—then I'd have to face it. Define it. And once you name a thing in this world, it starts writing back.
And I wasn't ready to be rewritten.
Not yet.
I walked away from the fountain, past the flowering tree with silver leaves. The petals moved as I passed—not from wind, but from recognition.
Everything here responded to me. The marble didn't echo if I didn't want it to. The shadows tilted subtly when I glanced at them. Once, a statue bowed when I looked at it too long.
I hadn't told anyone.
Because deep down…
I was afraid I wasn't real.
Not in the way others were.
I moved quietly through the garden's outer edge, where the glass dome curved lower and the light broke apart into fractured beams. My fingers brushed the bark of a dreamwood tree—its surface buzzed under my skin like it recognized me. Like it was trying to speak.
But I didn't want to listen.
Not yet.
Every day, the signs became harder to ignore. The world—the garden, the castle, the people—acted like I mattered in a way that went beyond blood or rank.
It wasn't respect.
It was fear wearing the mask of reverence.
I hated it.
A part of me wanted to tear it all down—burn the silence, scream something just to see who would flinch. But I didn't. I stayed quiet. Still. Unreadable.
That made them fear me more.
Behind me, I heard Elanor shift slightly—just a shift of her boots against moss. She didn't follow. Not this time. Maybe she knew I needed space. Or maybe she was afraid of what I'd become if I turned around.
I didn't blame her.
Even I wasn't sure who I was anymore.
The word Evolvanth echoed in my mind again, hollow and cold. They said it was humanity's gift—the instinctive power to survive the impossible. A reflex made divine. But what kind of survival was this?
Mine didn't feel like protection.
It felt like rewriting.
And I didn't know what I was rewriting into.
I stopped beneath the shadow of a tall crystal tree. Its branches were bare, as they always were in summer. But today, a single black blossom had bloomed at its center. I hadn't noticed it before.
Neither had the garden.
And in this place… nothing changed unless I allowed it.
I stared up at it, silent.
Then, beneath my breath, I whispered—not to the tree, not to the world, but to the thing inside me:
"What are you trying to make me?"
No answer came.
Just a flicker of warmth beneath my ribs.
And for a moment, I swore I heard the echo of a pen scratching across paper—
—as if somewhere, somehow, my story was still being written.