Centuries passed.
The sea of light hardened into rivers, mountains rose from the ruins of old stars, and the air filled with the hum of new creation. A world was born again—lush, unfamiliar, full of colors that had never existed before.
But deep beneath its beauty, something ancient still breathed. Something that remembered.
They called this new world Elarion the Second Dawn, though no one alive knew what the first had been. Songs were sung of a goddess who once bled starlight and a queen who defied death itself. Their names had been lost, worn down by time, reshaped by the mouths of poets. But their story lingered in the bones of the earth, and in the dreams of those who could still hear the quiet pulse of eternity.
Among those dreamers was a young woman named Arenne.
She lived in a city built on the edge of a glass sea, where the moonlight turned the water white and the nights smelled of rain. She was a historian by trade, a dreamer by nature—known for the strange paintings she made while half asleep. They were always the same: a woman with silver eyes and wings of light, standing beside another cloaked in shadow.
Arenne never remembered painting them.
One evening, as twilight settled over the sea, she stood in her study, staring at the newest canvas. The paint was still wet, shimmering faintly in the dying light. The figure of the goddess seemed alive, her hand reaching out of the frame as if asking to be remembered.
Arenne's chest tightened. She reached out and brushed her fingers over the paint. It was warm.
A whisper touched her mind, soft as breath.
"You found me."
Arenne stumbled back. The room had gone cold, though no window was open. The moon outside had turned crimson.
Then, faintly, she saw it—her reflection in the window. Only it wasn't hers. It was another's—a pale woman, regal, sorrowful, her eyes silver like moonlight on the sea.
Arenne couldn't breathe. "Who… who are you?"
The reflection smiled, small and knowing. "You once called me Seraphyne."
The air rippled. The painting's colours shifted. The second figure—cloaked, human—seemed to stir, her head turning slightly toward the goddess.
The reflection's voice was fading now, distant but tender. "The world remembers through you. And she will find me again through your hands."
The window darkened. The warmth vanished.
Arenne sank to her knees, her heart pounding, her mind awash in fragments of lives she had never lived: a moonlit balcony, a storm that broke the heavens, a love that refused to die.
Her tears fell on the wooden floor, leaving faint traces of light.
When she looked up again, the painting had changed.
Two figures now stood hand in hand beneath a crimson sky.
And in the distance, the sea shimmered with the first breath of dawn.