The bells of Virelia sang in the twilight, their silvered echoes rippling through the floating city. Beneath the Great Spire, the streets blossomed with life—vendors shouting over fragrant stalls, dancers weaving patterns of light through the air, and children darting between the hem of robed dignitaries.
Andrea moved through the crowd like a ghost in silk, her silver cloak drawn tightly around her. She wasn't supposed to be here. The High Chancellor's daughter belonged in the Marble Pavilion, sipping spiced wine and entertaining suitors she would never choose. But the masked music from below had called her—wild, reckless notes that no Virelian composer would dare write.
Curious, she slipped down to the lower tiers of the city, where the visitors from the Deeplands had been allowed to set up their colorful tents and stalls.
And there, between a seller of dream-spun glass and a fortune-teller whose cards bled ink into the wind, she saw him.
Carlos.
He was arguing with an old woman over the price of some herbs, a woven satchel slung across his broad shoulder. His skin glowed faintly under the lantern light, those strange markings alive with hidden energy. When he laughed—low and rough—it struck Andrea like a physical thing.
She should have turned away. Everything in her upbringing demanded it.
Instead, their eyes locked—and neither of them moved.
The sounds of the festival dimmed into a heavy silence between them. In that moment, Andrea saw not the enemy she had been warned about, but something else entirely: a freedom she had never tasted, a world she had never dared imagine.
Carlos's smile was slow, careful.
Andrea lifted her chin, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs, and took a step toward him.
The tides of fate shifted.
And nothing would ever be the same.
____
Their meetings became a secret religion.
In the abandoned gardens behind the Celestial Archive, Andrea would slip away from her chaperones, her cloak darkened with soot to hide the shimmer of her station. Carlos would be waiting, always patient, always a little wary, hidden in the mist like a storybook hero.
They spoke in whispers at first—half-sentences, careful smiles. But the barrier between them crumbled faster than either expected.
Andrea showed him the charts of the night sky, tracing constellations with her gloved fingers. She told him how each star had a name, a meaning, a destiny etched into the firmament.
Carlos, in turn, showed her how to listen to the ground—to feel the breathing of the earth, the old pulse that carried forgotten songs. He taught her the Duskborn tongue, a liquid language full of music and longing.
They traded pieces of themselves in the shadowed corners of the city, weaving a tapestry of dreams too fragile to survive the light.
And all the while, unseen eyes watched.