Time did not move within House Veyrahl; it crystallized.
Lyria was thirteen when she realized that the days no longer separated themselves.
The same light fell through the same panes, catching the same dust in the same golden lines.
Her brother, now twenty, had perfected serenity.
He moved through the halls like a thought, deliberate and without remainder, a man who had replaced breath with logic.
No one dared speak to him without invitation.
Even the servants' whispers dissolved when he passed.
Lady Elaria spent her mornings in the east conservatory, surrounded by pale flowers bred to never wilt.
She spoke to them in murmurs that resembled prayer.
Her beauty, once immaculate, had thinned into translucence.
When Lyria tried to sit beside her, she only smiled faintly and said,
"Your brother's shadow is growing long, child. Do not stand beneath it too long."
Lyria didn't know how to answer.
She had forgotten the sound of her mother's voice.
---
Lyria
She still lived in orbit around Iblis, though now the orbit was quiet.
He no longer tested her, at least not visibly.
But his presence was a gravity that shaped everything she did.
Each morning, she awaited the soft knock on her door that never came.
Each evening, she waited for the measured sound of his boots along the marble corridor.
When silence arrived instead, she accepted it as her due.
Sometimes she dreamt that she was glass, thin, clear, perfect, and he was the light that passed through her.
Sometimes she awoke crying, unable to remember why.
Her notebooks were filled with fragmented thoughts:
- "I am learning to think as he does."
"He says the world bends for those who do not bend."
"Perhaps I am bending perfectly."
She believed this was what love was meant to feel like — clean, sharp, merciless.
---
Iblis
By twenty, Iblis had stopped keeping written records.
There was no longer a need.
His mind had become an index of its own design.
Lyria was stable, conditioned, wholly aligned.
The manor was quiet.
His father's political ambitions had grown, his influence reaching beyond the Aether provinces.
And yet, when Kaelith spoke to him, it was always with the same measured tone:
"You have your mother's stillness, Iblis. Use it well."
He had never known whether it was praise or warning.
That evening, Kaelith summoned him to the Great Hall.
There were envoys present, their cloaks trimmed in the sigil of Aetherion Academy, a citadel where the heirs of noble houses honed their resonance with Khthonia's ley veins.
Kaelith's words were simple: "You will attend Aetherion. You will represent House Veyrahl."
He paused. "Do not embarrass me with sentiment."
Iblis inclined his head. "I have none left to offer."
---
Lyria
She overheard the news before he told her himself.
Her mother mentioned it between sips of pale wine:
"Your brother will be leaving soon. The Academy has use for him."
The words fell like ash.
That night, Lyria went to his room.
He was at the window again, watching the shimmer of distant ley-lines against the sky, veins of pale light threading the horizon.
She hesitated in the doorway, her voice small.
"You're leaving."
He did not turn.
"Leaving is a human term," he said. "I am relocating."
She stepped closer.
"Will you come back?"
He glanced at her, his gaze neither cruel nor kind — simply exact.
"If necessity allows."
The answer broke something small and invisible inside her.
But she smiled, as she had been trained to, and said,
"Then I will wait."
He did not reply.
---
Elaria
In the days that followed, the manor grew even quieter.
Lady Elaria continued tending to her flowers — orchids without scent, roses bred of pale Aether light.
Once, as Iblis passed her in the corridor, she looked up and said softly:
"You've made your sister into glass."
He stopped, faintly intrigued.
"Glass is resilient when properly tempered."
She smiled without warmth.
"And when it breaks?"
He did not answer.
---
The Departure
The morning he left, the sky above Veyrahl was silver with rain.
Carriages waited by the lower gates; the sigil of Aetherion shimmered faintly on their banners — a spiral of intersecting lines, like veins converging toward a singularity.
Kaelith stood on the steps, motionless, while servants loaded the trunks.
Lyria lingered at the threshold, thin hands clasped, her face composed with practiced serenity.
Iblis turned to her briefly.
"Maintain the pattern," he said.
She nodded. "Always."
He almost said something else, almost.
But the word died in his throat before it could form shape.
Instead, he boarded the carriage.
As it rolled away, Lyria remained where she stood, her reflection caught in the rain-slick stone.
For a moment, it looked as though the world itself was weeping for her.
Then the carriage vanished into the horizon, and the reflection faded.
---
- Zha'thik, patient and unspeaking, stirred in the dark geometry of the world. The experiment had not ended. It had only changed its scale.
And far away, in the distance between storms, the Aetherion Academy shone like a wound of light across the continent, a citadel where divinity and madness were taught side by side.
---