The morning of the funeral arrived without fanfare. No bell. No trumpet. No formal announcement.
Down the guest corridors moved the elven lords and ladies of the house in ceremonial attire, their footsteps regal, their gestures elegant and spare.
They knocked once, bowed, and gestured without a word.
No one needed to ask what it meant. The time had come.
Vell was already awake. He sat by the tall window of his chamber, staring out with an empty head.
He hadn't slept since the night he allowed himself to slip into the palace's halls.
He hadn't wanted to. Not until something finally happened.
And now, at last, it had.
Beyond the chambers, the walkways filled slowly with a quiet procession. Guests emerged from their quarters, each wrapped in their finest silks and robes, adorned with heirloom jewelry and understated sigils of office.
Even the kings came without their guards.
The warriors were without weapons.
The envoys, for once, said nothing at all.
Sonder stood beside Vell, dressed in a gown of deep and dark violets and blue, folded with golden thread, stitched by Vell's own hand and made with materials no other seamstress could buy.
Even Vell had left behind his usual black robe. He wore a black, silver-lined suit with a high collar and sharp cuffs. It was the sort of formal attire that wouldn't turn any heads because it fit so neatly into noble fashion.
The elves led the guests in lines through the palace grounds, down the long marble paths that now shimmered subtly beneath each step.
At the edge of the grounds, a crystal platform waited.
The same ones that had first brought them to the palace, though now, many new ones were added.
Each platform glowed with pale light, large enough to carry dozens at a time.
Delegates were not sorted by status or race, but with deliberate care, balancing cultures, mixing languages, and rivalries. A deliberate choice made by the elves.
No one objected.
One by one, the platforms lit. Then pulsed. Then vanished, leaving nothing behind.
Sonder and Vell stepped onto theirs with a dozen others. The surface of the crystal thrummed softly underfoot.
In the space of a breath, the light bent inward, and the world around them folded and then unfolded again.
They stood in a valley of living glass.
It was not the kind that you could shatter.
The cliffs were smooth and curved, translucent and faintly tinted like the inside of a pearl.
Trees with crystal trunks and silver leaves grew along the ridges, glowing as if lit from within.
At the valley's center was the place of mourning.
A vast, flower-shaped platform opened in full bloom.
Its wide petals forming seats and tiers for hundreds of guests. At the heart of it all was a single space, plain, raised, and waiting, hosting a single coffin.
The guests arrived in flares of light, one platform at a time. Each group stepped into this impossible place with quiet awe.
They were guided gently to their seats by elves who offered no speech, only silence.
No one asked where they were. No one wondered how it was made or where it could be found.
This place had never and would never be on any map. It existed because the elves had chosen it.
Because this was where the high queen would be laid to rest.