History remembers Mirael as a tyrant.
It does not remember the little girl kneeling in mud beside her father's body, trying to push his blood back into a wound that would not close.
It does not remember the way her mother screamed until her voice was gone, or how the soldiers of Vaelor stood unmoved, their fire-forged armor reflecting the burning home behind them.
Tyrants are not born.
They are made.
Before Miren ever whispered to a sword, before the Star-Bound Blade slept inside her blood, the world was already dying. It was just dying slowly, politely—under treaties, trade routes, and quiet genocides no one bothered to count.
Five great realms ruled existence.
Each claimed to be necessary.
Each claimed to be righteous.
Each believed the world would fall without them.
And each was wrong.
The World That Raised Mirael
The ancient world did not run on laws.
It ran on power.
Not the kind written in books—the kind taken in blood, secrets, and who was allowed to sleep without fear.
Astraea ruled the sky and pretended it was enlightened. Its floating cities were beautiful and merciless, drifting above the suffering they caused.
Vaelor ruled fire and called it strength. They built machines of war and burned anything that did not kneel.
Thyren claimed nature and called it balance, even as they culled entire populations in the name of "harmony."
Obsidra ruled death and called it eternity, turning souls into resources.
And Elyndra ruled the stars.
That made it different.
That made it dangerous.
At the center of Elyndra stood the Star Throne—a jagged fragment of fallen heaven embedded in reality like a wound that never healed. It whispered possible futures. It bent fate around itself. And the sword forged from it—Arkel—could cut destiny itself.
Elyndra did not rule because it was kind.
It ruled because it was feared.
The Girl Before the Crown
Mirael was born to refugees.
Her parents fled Vaelor when her father refused to build weapons meant to erase entire cities. He believed some lines should never be crossed.
Vaelor disagreed.
They found the family years later on Elyndra's border.
They killed him.
They made her mother watch.
Mirael was eight years old when she learned the most important truth of the world:
If you are powerless, no one will save you.
The priests of Elyndra arrived afterward—not to offer comfort, not to bring justice.
They collected her.
Because the Star Throne reacted to her blood.
That was the second lesson she learned:
When the powerful call you chosen, it only means they want to own you.
They raised her in white halls and crystal towers. They taught her to read the sky, to interpret star-patterns, to speak in the formal language of fate.
They called it training.
Mirael called it a cage.
Other children were brought there too—star-touched, gifted, cursed. They ate together. Studied together. Sometimes laughed together.
Most of them did not survive.
When the Throne rejected someone, it didn't simply kill them.
It hollowed them.
Mirael watched children she had shared secrets with collapse into empty-eyed husks, screaming at nothing.
So she learned to close herself.
To feel less.
To survive.
The Throne's Mistake
When she was sixteen, they brought her before the Star Throne.
The priests expected fear.
They expected obedience.
Mirael gave them neither.
She stood before the jagged fragment of heaven and demanded it recognize her.
Not because she wanted power.
But because she refused to be disposable.
The Throne answered.
The stars bent.
Reality shifted.
And Elyndra gained its Sovereign.
But the priests had made a mistake.
They wanted a weapon.
They crowned a woman.
A Ruler Forged in Silence
Mirael ruled with precision.
Not kindness.
She dismantled noble houses that had funded the priesthood's experiments. She stripped power from anyone who tried to control her. She turned secret councils into public trials.
She did not hesitate.
Because hesitation had killed her father.
People called her cruel.
They did not understand that mercy was a language she had never been taught.
Fear kept Elyndra stable.
Fear kept its enemies at bay.
Fear kept her alive.
Until one man changed everything.
Seren Valeth
Seren was assigned to guard her.
He was disciplined, controlled, loyal to a fault.
And he was the first person who looked at her without wanting something.
Not prophecy.
Not power.
Not her throne.
Just her.
Their conversations were careful at first. Then sharp. Then intimate in ways neither of them meant.
Mirael challenged him.
He stood his ground.
Somewhere between duty and defiance, something dangerous grew.
Not lust.
Not fantasy.
But something far more terrifying:
Trust.
The kind that makes you vulnerable.
The kind the world waits to exploit.
The Lie That Started a War
The other realms watched Elyndra grow stronger and saw not stability—but a threat.
A woman who did not bow to prophecy.
A ruler who could cut fate itself.
So they lied.
They said she planned to conquer them.
That she was hoarding star-power.
That she meant to make herself immortal.
None of it was true.
But truth has never been required for war.
Only fear.
And Mirael had made herself terrifying.
The world sharpened its knives.
And history prepared to break her.