To the watching city she appears composed beyond reproach, her posture perfect, her face smoothed into the lines of the Sokâr’s visage. The gown she wears falls around her like poured light, white silk threaded with fine strands of gold that catch the glow of the torch lines along the avenue. A diadem rests upon her brow; its delicate rays flaring outward like frozen starlight.
She looks as if she belongs to the heavens themselves.
At the heart of Krystopolis, the Onyx Horn signals the start of the procession, the bellow shaking the ground like an earthquake. None of the Attendants or Crafters stumble. Some readjust the plugs in their ears to keep from going deaf as the Horns blare two more times. A light ward around the Procession protects those within from the sound.
Shall we?
Let us bring light to the People.
I am ready to see the sun. Is it strange that I feel such excitement? Though I suppose it is because I am here with you.
I would rather be on the Moores, laying in the grass with you beside me.
You enjoyed my stories, I see.
Always.
We turn to face one another. I lean down, pressing my lips to her cheek as the Doctrine expects. I linger longer than protocol demands, rebelling. Breathing in the scent of floral oils and parchment. Relishing this moment.
One breath.
Then another.
And when I stand tall and face the People, I am once more Resh’Agar.
The city bows as we pass, citizens of every Role and station pressing their foreheads to the ground. The chokers at their necks are dim, for now, stifling any voice that might cry out ahead of the scheduled performance.
The golden path unfolds before us like a field of wheat bending beneath a steady wind. Entire streets sink toward the ground as Auryn and I move through the districts of Krystopolis. Han first, the District of Trade in the Commons, full of rows of forges, looms, bakeries, and market stalls. Then Varrow, the Military Quarter in the Rising.
The Illiri District in the Flowe contains only laboratories and Lifegiver towers. Young girls emerge in groups dressed in bright red robes. Their Minders attend to them, letting them gasp at the sight of us and catch the falling petals from the skies.
Last is Selen, the beating heart of the Crystal City, standing proud on the highest lattice. Home to the Prismatum and all of the largest temples dedicated to the Doctrine. We wind through rows of High Priests and their apprentices, some holding candles in their hands, so enthralled they do not flinch when the wax spills and burns their hands.
Elsewhere in the city, the architecture rises from gold and obsidian, sharp-edged and martial in its design. Here, the structures soften into smoothed black marble and luminous stone; temples carved directly into the walls of the Daesa Major in ascending terraces climbing toward the cavern's roof. Thousands of prayer lamps burn within niches and balconies, their small flames mirrored endlessly in polished surfaces. The entire district glows with quiet reverence.
The Onyx Horns stand at the center of the Selen district plaza—monuments of carved black crystal rising taller than the surrounding towers.Their throats open toward the cavern sky, and as we cross each boundary, the hornkeepers draw breath through the massive instruments, releasing another below to signal our arrival.
I keep my gaze forward.
Ceremony demands stillness.
Ceremony demands perfection.
Before us rise the Mirror Shafts.
Even after centuries of seeing them, the scale of the structures still steals a fragment of breath from my lungs.
Two colossal pillars descend from the distant opening of the Surface far above us, plunging through the Daesa Major’s ceiling like spears of glass and steel. Within the shafts, thousands of mirrored plates wait in layered alignment, each one angled to capture the sunlight of the world above and carry it downward into the depths of the Endless Dark.
For months they have reflected nothing.
The Cycle of Ice required it.
Now, the city waits for their awakening.
The marble base surrounding the shafts fills with priests and mage-artificers. They gather around the great turning mechanisms, some wielding focus rods, others only prayer. The gears themselves are enormous—interlocking rings of aethersteel rising higher than a man’s head, their teeth carved with ancient sigils meant to distribute the strain of the mirrors above.
As Auryn and I approach, every priest in the plaza drops to one knee.
