1. Kael
KAEL
Light is not gentle. Not on the days it chooses to be seen.
On the morning of the Festival of Radiance, it spills through Auria’s streets like a living thing—hot, blinding, and impossible to ignore.
Gilded thoroughfares lined with sigils illuminate like stars on a sea of white silk, as if Solan himself had paused to admire his own reflection.
The air thrums with a sweet metallic scent that fuses with the heavy pull of incense—a promise of the resonance that will unfold when the true light of day finally falls.
Mother cried the day my brother was chosen to march with the Guild. Tears of joy, she said, though they looked more like fear to me.
The Festival swallows the streets in gold and heat, the Luminary Guards moving through the crowd like a living flame. I watch the way people part for them, reverent and small, and the first flicker of envy catches light in my chest.
This is what it means to matter—to be seen. To belong to something that powerful. I want to shine so brightly that no one can look away.
I see him now: my brother, Samson. He stands at the front of the procession, a flaming torch in one hand and Solan’s sun sigil in the other, its white fabric swaying in time with his stride. I teeter on the edge of the kerb, neck craning for a better view.
His face is obscured by a gold-embellished helmet, but I know his gait. Shoulders back, chest out, head held high—he is the epitome of everything the Luminary desires: obedience, order, and power.
Father always said they were the purest vessels of our god, but to me, they look like walking constellations—stars carved into men.
My gaze shifts from Samson to the balcony of the Lampas Cathedral, where the three ornate masks of the Triarch look down.
Their white robes, adorned with miniature suns, whisper in the wind.
Their masks shine like beacons: a blazing sun, a winged bird and a crescent circled in fire.
They judge us in silence, their impassive stance speaking for the gods.
If not for this annual spectacle, one might mistake them for figures of myth—silent idols of purity at a height no mortal could reach, yet every mortal aspires to.
Tears gather on the edge of Mother’s eyes.
Happiness for her middle son; sadness for her eldest. Cyrus was the strength of our family—he took up Father’s mantle without question.
His death was a routine training exercise; sudden and unceremonious, leaving nothing behind but a silence and guilt that never loosened its grip.
His loss hit us all hard, like a silent scream echoing in an empty room.
Mother’s grief spiralled into a stillness that even the Festival’s radiance cannot touch.
For years, Samson and I have tried to lead her out of that labyrinth of ghosts, but the things she’s lost always find a way to pull her back in.
It’s a triumph of will that she is here, wearing a smile as fragile as spun glass.
When Samson left for training, Mother gave him her prayers—and left me with the ghosts.
This is no life for a young man. It’s an existence shaped in the cracks.
My place is no longer in the shadows; I must set foot into the light and uphold the standards Solan fought to protect. Duty. Honour. Power.
I tell myself I will wait. That duty begins at home.
But as Samson disappears into the blaze of gold, something sharp and traitorous coils in my chest. If this is the light Solan rewards, then I am tired of standing in the shade.