đ± The Legacy of the Dravaris Line
The Dravaris Monarchy is ancient but not unkind. The current ruler, Queen Avenya Dravaris, is wise beyond her years â though some say her line has long carried a curse passed down from the time of the Shattering. Her court includes alchemists, historians, and royal dreamweavers, yet there are rumors that she consults with entities who speak in forgotten tongues.
What few know is this:Kael, the boy awakening to his truth, lives in Tier Two, in the shadows of Mithralin's Maker's Quarter.A quiet boy in a loud city.But the city watches him back.Just as the stars do.
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The city didn't sleep that night.
The moons had barely crossed the spine of Mithralin when orders went out from the Crown Ring:
"Initiate the Watchglass Protocol. Begin aura-sensitivity sweeps across all five tiers."
Whispers spread before dawn.Fear followed.
The Dravaris Queen â elegant, unreachable, veiled in old prophecy â had begun the decadal rite: The search for ten gifted souls to send into the Sector Battle, a trial of fate older than even the monarchy. But this year felt different. There was tension in the air. As if even the winds of Nianzeel were holding their breath.
Kael woke late. His dreams were sharper now â no longer abstract. Raygon's presence still clung to his bones. When he stepped into the market that morning, the glow returned â dimmer, more stable. He saw auras again. Faint, but real. He couldn't unsee them anymore.
And then he saw them.
Three black-cloaked Seers, moving through the crowd. Their eyes were covered in thin bands of obsidian silk. They didn't see with eyes. They saw through threadlines â cosmic echoes that danced off the aura-sensitive. Kael stepped back. His own aura pulsed once â weak but present. Green with flashes of gold.
One of the Seers paused.
Then⊠kept walking. Kael exhaled. But only just.
Mithralin was loud. Dirty. Alive.
It wasn't what El was used to. She'd stepped off the Planetary Hawk not to be noticed â but because for once, she didn't care if she was.
At 135 years old, she had fought through wars that ended before this city even built its first sky gate. She had trained in echo realms, bathed in starfire, whispered with the dead and broken. Her cultivation, a rare harmony of Sight and Mind, had preserved her youth. Her face, no older than twenty, held the same expression she had worn since she was twelve: silent, bored, unreadable.
But inside? She was exhausted. She had come to Mithralin not for conquest, not for politics, not to interfere â but to remember what it was like to breathe.
To wander.To feel anonymous.To just⊠exist.
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Born from the Decon line â a ruling family that commanded three galaxies and struck alliances with memory-born beings from before the Fold â El was expected to be perfect. To lead. To destroy. To awaken the Shards and harness their legacy before they fell into the hands of the "less worthy."
But none of that was her choice. And that's what brought her here. The Queen of Mithralin did not know she had arrived. Not officially.
El had cloaked her aura behind a Sorrow Loop, a rare technique that flattened her energy signature and wrapped her in the aura of melancholy. Anyone scanning her would see only loneliness, not divinity.
She rented a rooftop room in Tier Three, above a dried herb shop.She told no one her name.She wandered the Veil Market without guards.And on the fifth day, she saw Kael.