Mithralin – Kingdom of Living Stone
Nestled within the western spine of the continent Seryndor, the city of Mithralin is the largest and oldest of its three nations — a capital that feels less like a city and more like a living entity, grown from the bones of the mountain it was built upon.
Ruled for forty-seven generations by the Dravaris Monarchy, Mithralin stands as a beacon of culture, complexity, and quiet control. Though the royal family no longer rules with an iron hand, their presence is inescapable — carved into statues, engraved in coins, and whispered in oaths.
The city is divided into five tiers, spiraling upward along the slopes of Mount Selinor:
The Depths – Where ancient ruins lie buried, half-excavated and half-feared.
The Maker's Quarter – Home to craftsmen, engineers, and dreamsmiths.
The Veil Market – A vibrant, colorful district of trade, secrets, and black scrolls.
The Scholar's Reach – Towering spires, libraries, and schools bound in starlight ink.
The Crown Ring – A golden ring-shaped district at the summit where the monarchy resides, half temple, half throne.
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Alive by dawn.
The air always carried the scent of melted steel, damp clay, and burning herbs. Smoke curled from rooftop forges. Stonecarvers hammered rhythm into the day. Artificers argued in tight alleyways over the difference between craft and creation.
But Kael — he slipped through it all like a shadow no one questioned.
He lived in a narrow room above Mira's Gear & Tether, a half-functioning shop filled with spare parts for tools and pulley systems used to lift goods up Mithralin's tiers. Mira, the shopkeeper and a gruff widow with soot-stained fingers, had taken Kael in when he was ten. She never asked about his past. He never offered it.
Each morning, Kael would rise before the bells.
He'd sweep the forge ash. Feed Mira's cat, Rask. Organize scraps of copper thread and magnesium flakes into trays. Then, when no one was watching, he'd watch the world. Not just with his eyes — but with a strange stillness that unsettled even seasoned blacksmiths.
He noticed the way hammer strikes echoed differently when someone was angry.He counted how long it took light to creep down the alleyways from the upper tiers.He tracked the flight paths of blackbirds as if they meant something — as if they were tracing unseen patterns.
Kael had moments — just flashes — where the world seemed to pause.Where a single droplet from a leaking pipe would hang in the air for half a heartbeat too long. Where someone's words would slow down, and he'd feel like he'd heard them before — not in memory, but in some parallel thread of time.
He told no one.Not even Mira.
She thought him odd, but harmless. Quiet boys with haunted eyes weren't uncommon in a city like Mithralin. So she let him be. Let him watch.
And Kael?He felt like a watcher, too. Not of the people. But of the moments between moments.As if he were waiting for something to whisper:
"It's time."
At night, Kael would climb to the rooftops.
From there, the moons Aurel and Threx would rise in their dance — silver and blood-red — and he would sit under the soft hum of lanterns and spinning gears, eyes wide open, listening to a world no one else could hear.
Sometimes, he'd scribble what he saw in an old, half-burned journal.
"Threx was full tonight. Aurel flickered.Someone lied on Tier Three, and I felt it." – Entry, 6th Cycle of Flamewake
He didn't know what it meant. Only that it meant something. And that knowing — that pull — was the first crack in the shell he'd lived in for years.
Kael was not yet awake.But the world around him was beginning to lean in. Even the wind carried his name in fragments. And far below Tier Five, in the sealed vaults of the ancient city,an old clock — long forgotten — began to tick again.