Elandor stood on the balcony of his bedchamber, hands resting on the balustrade, watching Caelanthor awaken. This morning, a shimmer lay over the streets that made even the river appear brighter. A sign the sun was favorably disposed today. Below on the water, the first ships glided between the bridges, their figureheads—lions with pricked ears or sun emblems—cutting through the golden reflections. Vendors called their prices, children laughed, music echoed between the stone bridges, and people sang and danced happily in the open streets.
There was even a competition where children participated to see who could faster feel and remove fish bones with their small tongues and mouths. The Kaelonians proudly claimed they mastered this faster than the tiger-folk from Baiteng.
He knew all these sounds. He had heard them every morning of his life. But since Lysandra and his daughters Elenya and Lyrielle now dreamed in their beds, they sounded different. Not louder. More fragile. As if a single wrong breath could silence them.
"Solanar, excita cor meum."
He did not speak the prayer aloud. It was no longer a plea, but a habit his lips formed while his gaze wandered over the rooftops. The golden lion statues. The white bridges. The canals that threaded through everything like veins beneath skin. Order, they had taught him. Order creates safety. Safety creates peace.
He still believed it. Almost.
A scent rose to him. Fried fish, mixed with something sharp—perhaps the new merchant from the south who had arrived with his spices. Elandor smiled involuntarily. Lysandra would tease him for supervising the kitchen from the balcony.
He turned around. She lay on her side, the blanket pulled up to her shoulders, her hair spread across the pillow like something that refused to be tamed.
This was how he had met her.
Meanwhile, Somewhere in a Tent
An old fortune-teller tossed in her round bed, virtually savoring her beautiful dream.
In the dream, she dreamed of a magnificent and glorious realm with giant lion statues and rivers as far as the eye could see. A king and queen walked hand in hand, joyfully strolling down the market streets. The king pulled his queen to him and embraced her, to give her a kiss thereafter. The queen let it happen, and so they kissed, both of them, intimately fused together.
But then dark clouds rose in the sky, and the entire city was enveloped by the sinister clouds. It rained ash. The townspeople ran for their lives.
The king and queen did not run; they embraced each other to speak a final shared prayer. Until the darkness completely enveloped them and everything vanished within it.
Back on Elandor's Balcony
Elandor stepped back from the balcony into the bedroom. Lysandra stirred, opened her eyes, and he saw that moment of recognition—the uncertainty that lasted only a second before her smile came.
"You're standing on the balcony again," she said, her voice still drowsy with sleep.
"Someone has to supervise the city."
"The city or the cooks?" Lysandra smiled.
He smiled, sat on the edge of the bed, took her hand. "Both."
She pulled him back into bed, and he let it happen, though the day had begun, though there were things that needed doing. For a moment, he laid his head on her chest, heard her heartbeat, didn't count it.
Arrived at the Market Stall
The market was already full when they reached it. Lysandra held the girls by their hands—Elenya on the right, Lyrielle on the left—and both tugged in different directions. Elenya, nine years old, wanted to go to the silk merchants because she believed she was old enough for her own sun ribbon. Lyrielle, six, wanted to go to the fish stands because she was firmly convinced the merchant with the eyepatch was a pirate hiding treasure.
"Pirates don't have eyepatches," Elenya said condescendingly. "They have wooden legs."
"He has a wooden leg too," Lyrielle insisted.
"That's a chair leg," Elenya retorted.
"He's just hiding it," Lyrielle said, offended.
Elandor walked behind them, close enough to intervene, far enough to let them believe they were alone. Lysandra glanced at him over her shoulder, and he saw the warning in it. Not too close. Not too anxious. He nodded, though he didn't promise he could manage it.
Of course, the people noticed them. The fisherman whose taxes he had remitted. The woman with the carnations whose sister had attended the girls' births. They knew him. Not as a symbol. As the man who sometimes forgot that kings didn't stop on public bridges to watch children remove fish bones.
"Look," Lyrielle suddenly said, pointing to the river. "The sun is dancing."
And indeed it was. The light fractured on the water in a thousand movements, and for a moment Elandor forgot the counting of breaths, the tension in his shoulders, the voice of his father whispering: Order. Order. Order.
He lifted Lyrielle up, though she was really too heavy for it now, and set her on his shoulders. She shrieked with joy. Elenya complained that she wanted to too, and he promised she would be next. Lysandra laughed, and the sound mingled with the vendors' calls, the clatter of oars, the distant ringing of a bell.
He should have known.
Later, he would blame himself for having known—that happiness was so loud it drowned out the other sounds. That he hadn't noticed the silence spreading between the laughter like a stain on fabric.
But in that moment, with Lyrielle's ankles against his chin and Lysandra's hand briefly nestling into his, he noticed nothing.
The sun danced.
He and Lysandra reminisced about how they had danced together at their wedding. Elenya and Lyrielle eavesdropped and giggled.
The Eye of Providence
Rumors reached Elandor on a storm-laden autumn day. A seer was said to be wandering the land—one of those whose words could cripple kings or raise them to godhood. Without hesitation, he tore Lysandra from her duties and drove his horses through mud-choked roads until the dark tent loomed before them.
Inside, the air reeked of myrrh and stale smoke. The seer received them with a smile too wide for her hollow cheeks.
"Your reputation precedes you, my king." Her voice rustled like dead leaves in the wind. "The deeds at Kaelon—even beyond your borders, they whisper of them."
Elandor laughed, but the sound died in the heavy air. "I hope I prove worthy of it. I have come so that the Sun might show me the way—for me and my family."
"An honor." The seer spread the cards, her fingers trembling almost imperceptibly. "To reveal the future for you and yours... how many glad tidings shall I deliver, I wonder?"
Lysandra drew the first card. But before her fingers could touch it, the old woman lunged forward. Her bony hand slammed the card flat against the table—hidden, unseen, forbidden.
Silence descended upon the tent.
"What does this mean?" Elandor's voice hardened like forged steel.
The seer did not answer. Her eyes searched for something in the void, and found nothing.
When Elandor reached for his own card, she tried to stop him. Elandor, stubborn as only a king could be, drew it nonetheless. He moved to turn it over, but the seer pressed his card against the table as well, muttering something he could not understand.
The seer paused for several heartbeats.
"Let us try something else," she murmured at last. She reached for a pouch that rattled at her touch like a sack of broken teeth. The bones danced across the table, forming patterns she regarded for but a single heartbeat.
Then she swept them aside. Too quickly.
"Not precise enough," she said.
"The orb of truth—it alone shows the pure truth."
Yet her gaze betrayed that it would be nothing good.
Lysandra was visibly troubled, but held her tongue.
The cloth fell. The orb blazed in colors no language could name—blue as the world's first breath, pink as fresh heartsblood, violet as the sky before the storm.
But as their hands touched the glass, blackness devoured the light. Not gradually—explosively, greedily. The orb became void, and the seer's eyes with it.
She tried to let go. Could not.
Her body convulsed as if hanged, a flesh marionette in invisible hands. When the orb finally released her, she stared at something standing behind Elandor—something only she could see. Her face was a mask of sweat and something older than fear.
Lysandra seized the moment. Her fingers darted to her card, turned it over.
Death.
The card slipped from her hand, sailed soundlessly to the floor. Elandor saw it. For one heartbeat, the world ceased to exist—no breath, no blood, only the black figure with its scythe that seemed to smile at him from parchment and pigment.
"I must go." The seer gasped as if throttled. "Do not trouble yourself, my king. It will... it will all be well." Her smile trembled at its edges. "Only a bad day. A bad day."
She fled. The carriage rattled away, throwing dust like ash, and Elandor stood there knowing: She would never divine again. Not after what she had seen.
In the nights that followed, he did not sleep. He bound Lysandra to him—literally, with silk cords he knotted himself around her wrists and his own. When she moved, he woke. When she breathed, he listened.
He tripled the Sunswarrior. Then the Sundaughters. And finally the Sunhealers. Fourfold. Fivefold. It was never enough. He created the Shadowwatch—not a guard, but eyes in the walls, whispers in the corridors. The baker who once gifted Lysandra a warm loaf vanished overnight. The cook who knew her favorite soup was reassigned. Every touch, every smile from strangers became a threat he extinguished.
Lysandra endured it. She stroked his hair when he trembled, and whispered: "Forever, Elandor. In this life and every other. No matter what comes—I choose you. Always."
"In virtute et fide te semper eligam."
He answered as always, the words imprinted since childhood: "In light I know you. Sun of Kaelon, guide me..."
But this time, he faltered. Outside, twilight crept in, and he wondered whether the Sun truly listened—or whether it had long fallen silent, faced with what approached.
** A flashback into Elandor's Memories - Optional **
Nine Years Earlier
The market had been loud. Not the orderly murmur Elandor was accustomed to, but a surging sea of voices from which he had wanted to withdraw. His father had died three weeks ago. The crown lay heavy on his head, heavier than the procession had suggested. He was nineteen and felt as though he could read nothing but expectation in every face.
Then he had seen her.
She wore a simple blue kaelonic dress, balancing a basket of oranges on her hip, haggling with a merchant whose prices she obviously found ridiculous. Her voice was not loud, but it carried. Her hands gestured as she spoke, and the merchant stepped back as if from something he dared not touch.
Elandor had stopped in his tracks.
He had tried to explain it later—to himself, to Lysandra, sometimes in the silence before sleep. It hadn't been her beauty. Not alone. It was the way she existed amidst the crowd, as if she belonged and yet was something else. Something he did not yet know.
Their gazes met in the market like magnets and could no longer be pried apart.
Normally, a woman would never have dared to look so deeply into a man's eyes—let alone the king's. But all rules, norms, and taboos seemed forgotten. Time seemed to stand still, the world around them fading.
He knew instantly that she would be his wife. In his vision, he already saw her playing happily and together in the castle with their two future daughters. He didn't care that Lysandra—whose name meant "The Liberator"—was not a noblewoman, but a simple townswoman.
He had approached her, not knowing what he would say. She looked at him. Not as others looked at him—with that mixture of awe and calculation he had grown so accustomed to that he no longer noticed it. She looked at him as if he were a man. Just a man standing in the way.
He still just stood there.
Only a few centimeters between them. He could smell oranges, something sweeter beneath. He opened his mouth, and no sound came out. She smiled. Not politely. Dreamily. As if she were just as lost as he was.
Time seemed to stand still.
A storm broke. Only as the storm grew stronger did he notice that he was still standing, that she was still smiling. He placed his jacket around her shoulders without asking, and she allowed it. In the tavern where they sought shelter, they talked late into the night. He walked her home. He forgot to ask her name.
He met her again. And again. Until one morning he awoke with the morning prayer on his lips and knew: Not tomorrow. Today.
He already had the rings and the silver lion pendants. He held them tight in his fist, opened it briefly to glance at them, then closed it again. Lysandra's ring was adorned with a sun emblem. His bore a lion's head with wide-open jaws.
He found her at the river. She stood in the water, her clothes left on the bank, washing herself. When she turned around, she didn't freeze. She only smiled, as if she had been expecting him.
He knelt down. In the water. His boots grew wet, his trousers too; he didn't care.
He pulled the rings and lion pendants from his jacket pocket and spoke:
"Fortis mea tibi est."
His voice did not tremble. It surprised him.
"In virtute et fide te eligo."
She reached for the rings. Accidentally pulled him into the river with her. They both laughed, and he kissed her, the water around them, the sun above them, and for a moment he thought not of crown, duty, or realm.
Only that he could never lose her.
The Wedding
They had stood beneath the golden canopy while the Sun-Speaker wrapped the sun-ribbon around their hands and spoke the blessing:
"Honora invicem, sicut sol diem."
The words had hung in the air, heavier than smoke, lighter than snow.
They both spoke their vows:
"In lumine te agnosco."
"In virtute et fide te eligo."
When the ribbon was untied, they had kissed, and the people had called out:
"Solanar, leon'cor -- mar'cor veshai."
Each for themselves, without counterpart, yet united in sound.
A many-voiced prayer rose, borne by sun, river, and lionhearted courage.
Then the dance.
Kaelon's folk song sounded, and the Sun-River Lion Reigen began.
The Kaelonians began their kaelonic folk song, first quiet, almost like a murmur, then stronger, carried by the rhythm of drums. Voices wove together, feet joined in, and soon the people moved like a single living body around the bridal couple.
The king and queen danced as well.
Elandor and Lysandra joined in, hand in hand with their people, not raised above them, but right among them.
The dance pairs arranged themselves into two wide arcs. Still open, facing each other, like two breaths seeking one another. The steps bounced lightly, barely audible on the stone, and with every movement, arms swung in gentle waves. They recalled the river Kaelons—and simultaneously the heavy, living sway of the lion's mane in the wind.
Then arms rose upward, calm and powerful. The sun was honored—and with it, the pricked ears of the lion, vigilant, proud. The arcs set themselves in motion, drew closer and came together. The semicircles became a circle, tight and closed: the head of the lion, the mane made of people and movements.
Some dancers broke from the circle, glided into the center. Their steps were deliberate. Three formed one eye, three the other, calm, collected. Six more arranged themselves into the muzzle, deep and firm. The lion's gaze.
The lateral dancers stretched their arms wide, as if grasping the wind. The mane lived. In the center, more arms rose toward the sun—ears and light simultaneously.
Then came the breath.
The lower dancers took half a step forward. The circle expanded as if the lion's chest were filling. A collective inhale.
Half a step back—the chest lowered. Exhale.
Once more.
And again.
For a heartbeat, it seemed as if the lion itself stood in the circle, breathing, alive, awake.
Elandor looked within—and for a fleeting moment wondered what would happen if this circle ever turned against him.
He pushed the thought aside.
He could not doubt.
The singing continued, the movement flowed on, about a minute—until the rhythm slowly faded. The dancers came to a standstill. Silence settled over the square, warm and tense.
The Birth
When Elenya was born, his love did not only grow.
But also his fear.
And the love and the fear grew all the more when Lyrielle beheld the sun.
He loved his family above all. He was ready to do anything for his beloved family—anything!
Elandor's mother had died very early from a rare illness. This triggered in Elandor his fears of losing his loved ones and thus that his daughters might also grow up without a mother.
He watched over Lysandra with Argus eyes. He doubled the number of Sun-Warriors for her protection, doubled the number of Sun-Maids to ease the queen's burden, and doubled the number of Sun-Healers for her health. He consulted seers who always assured him nothing would happen to the queen.
In difficult moments, Lysandra placed her warm hands on his and said gently: "Darling, have no fear."
"'Nothing will happen to me.'"
"In lumine te agnosco."
"In virtute et fide te semper eligam."
"Fortis mea tibi est."
Elandor smiled—and the next morning did more than would have been necessary.
For he had already lost a mother once.
And he swore to himself that this mistake would never repeat itself.
Not while he could prevent it.