Soleil woke with the dream clinging to her skin like mist thin, cold, and impossible to shake.
She sat up slowly, heart still beating too hard for the stillness around her. The room was quiet, lit by pale morning light seeping through a narrow window cut high in the stone wall. She hadn't remembered falling asleep. She barely remembered being led to this room small, undecorated, with a cot and a chipped washbasin. A world away from the divine chamber she'd first opened her eyes in.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to hold on to the fragments before they dissolved.
A blank sky. A woman reaching. A split.
And those eyes.
Green. Vivid. Watching her.
They didn't feel like a dream.
"Who are you?" she whispered to the ceiling.
There was no answer, but a shiver crawled over her arms anyway.
The door creaked open a minute later.
A woman stepped in stern-faced, middle-aged, dressed in layered linens of soft brown and grey. Not cruel, but tired in a way Soleil recognized too well.
"You're up," the woman said, looking her over with faint suspicion. "Come. There's work to be done."
Soleil hesitated, but only for a moment. "Where… exactly is this?"
The woman blinked. Looking at her like she has lost her mind and ignored her questions.
"Name's Martha, I manage the lower servants. You listen to me, and we should be good".
The palace in daylight was different from the ethereal gold-and-shadow monument she'd glimpsed during her brief moments as "Divine Artisan." It was still beautiful but now that she walked its service halls, she could see the edges, the cracks. The polished corridors where nobles passed looked like storybook illustrations. But behind those, in the back corridors and servant passages, the walls were plainer, worn smooth by decades of footsteps and cart wheels.
Everything was divided.
There were people who walked with heads high and robes that whispered. And there were people who walked fast, eyes down, hands full.
She was now firmly among the second.
Her first task was sweeping the East Gallery an elegant hall filled with portraits of long-dead rulers and sketches of relics and saints. The floors gleamed with marble so polished she could see her reflection, distorted and unfamiliar.
She swept carefully, the repetitive motion helping her think.
This place… it wasn't just another world. It was built on rules. Hierarchies. Beliefs.
And she had no place in it.
Or rather she had someone else's place, and now that place had been ripped away.
She overheard it in the whispers behind her. "That's the Artisan… or was." "They say the gods abandoned her." "She lost the gift, cursed maybe."
She clenched the broom a little tighter.
They didn't know who she really was.
But even if she told them who would believe her?
By midday, her arms ached, and her eyes stung with the palace's soft, spiced air. But she kept her ears open.
Bits of information came in pieces, scattered among the gossip and routine. A high priestess had petitioned the Emperor for another divine relic. A visiting duke brought gifts for the Sanctum. The Hollow Flame flared two nights ago. Someone saw it light the sky above the northern tower.
But one thing came up again and again:
The Sanctum was sealed.
"No one's allowed in since the Artisan failed," a kitchen girl said with a grimace. "Not even the stewards. Not after what happened."
"What did happen?" Soleil asked softly.
The girl narrowed her eyes, not recognizing her. "They don't tell us much. Just that she touched the canvas and everything went wrong. Something split. Maybe the gods took offense. Maybe it was her."
Soleil said nothing. But her pulse thudded like a warning.
She had touched the canvas. At the same time as Azeriah. Was that the moment everything fractured? Was that what drew her here?
If so maybe the answer was to undo it. To finish what Azeriah started.
To paint with the divine brush again.
But getting near the Sanctum wouldn't be easy.
She tried once already to return to its doors, feigning a wrong turn. The guards stopped her before she got five steps close.
"Restricted wing," one said with a bored tone. "You don't belong there."
"I-i thought I heard a summons," she lied.
"No summons would come for you."
The dismissal was sharp. Absolute.
All she could do for now was watch and gather informations.
The palace had patterns, people moving at regular times, bells marking the hours. She noticed the guards changed shift just after second bell. A linen cart passed the Sanctum wing every afternoon, stacked tall enough to hide someone bending low.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
Then there was him.
She saw him first by the back stairs, young, maybe her age or a bit younger, with ash-blond hair and quick hands. He moved like he didn't quite belong, and didn't care. No uniform, no rush, yet the other servants didn't question him. A scroll in one hand, a tray in the other, he weaved through people like he knew their steps before they took them.
"Auren," someone called.
He didn't turn around.
She kept her eye on him all afternoon.
Later that night, in the dim safety of her room, Soleil sat on her cot and stared at her hands. Callused now. Smudged with dust and oil.
These weren't an artist's hands anymore.
But deep in her chest, something remained some thread of stubborn light.
She would get into the Sanctum. She would find the divine brush.
And if Auren had a way in—she'd make him help her.