Mist blanketed the city at dawn.
Elarion's towers pierced through it like forgotten monuments, their spires veiled in a pale hush. Arenne stood upon her balcony, the hem of her robe catching the wind, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the mist thickened into a storm of colourless light.
She could feel it again—something old, coiling through the air. A resonance that was not hers, not Elyndra's, but something colder, jagged.
The dark echoes had awakened.
By the time she reached the lower districts, the mist had turned black at its heart. The air tasted of iron and rain. People knelt in the streets, whispering prayers they did not understand, while from the shadows between the houses came a sound like breathing—slow, deep, inhuman.
Arenne drew the light into her palm. It gathered without effort now, silver threaded with gold from Elyndra's dawn, forming a faint halo around her hand.
"Come," she said softly to the darkness.
It moved.
A figure stepped forward, clothed in smoke, eyes like coals buried in ash. Its voice scraped the silence.
"Do you remember me, queen of light? Do you remember what we were before you remade the world?"
Arenne's breath caught. The voice was familiar—a resonance from Seraphyne's memories, a fragment of the god who had once ruled night itself.
"Kael," she whispered. "You survived."
"Survived?" His laughter was low, bitter. "No, queen. I linger. You scattered our realm, silenced our names, and now you return, draped in light and love, pretending you do not carry our ruin."
His form rippled, the mist around him writhing. The mortals nearby began to weep without knowing why.
Arenne stepped closer. "The world burned because we forgot balance. It was not light that killed the night—it was pride."
"Then what are you now?" Kael asked. "Balance? Or denial wrapped in silver?"
She raised her hand. The air shimmered. "Something new."
The light flared, not to destroy but to reveal. Kael's shadow faltered, showing the faint outline of the god he once was—beautiful, tragic, bearing constellations across his skin. For a moment, he looked almost human.
He staggered, pain etched in his voice. "You still remember me."
"I remember everything," Arenne said. "And that is why I will not fight you. You are part of what I am."
Kael's eyes softened, then darkened again. "Mercy will doom you, queen. Darkness does not yield—it consumes."
The mist around him collapsed inward, drawing into his chest before he vanished, leaving only the echo of his laughter on the wind.
When the silence returned, Arenne knelt where he had stood. Her power hummed through the ground, sealing the wound the shadow had left behind. Around her, the mortals stirred, uncertain of what they had seen.
Above, the sun broke through the mist. Its light was softer now, tinged with red—neither full day nor full night.
In that moment, Seraphyne's voice brushed against her mind, warm as breath against skin.
You cannot heal the world without touching its scars.
Arenne closed her eyes. "Then I will touch them all."
And as she rose, the mist parted completely, revealing Elarion gleaming in twilight hues—a city between day and night, like its queen.