The dawn stretched like a blade over the golden tents of the advancing army. Sunlight shimmered on steel, and the air thrummed with divine tension as the legions of the Dawn Realm prepared to move.
At the heart of the camp, beneath a canopy of silk and fireglass, the Sun Queen sat upon a throne of carved solarstone. She wore no crown only a circlet of gold braided into her flame-colored hair, her robes embroidered with the runes of the First Flame.
Before her knelt three of her generals, heads bowed.
"Virestone has fallen," said General Aelia, rising. "Our phoenix riders await your command. We've pushed them from the eastern peaks. Their border is crumbling."
"Not fast enough," the Sun Queen murmured, fingers tightening on the arm of her throne. "They delay. They buy time. And time favors shadows."
Another figure stepped from the side, a tall woman with eyes like burning coals and robes laced with prophecy-sigils.
"The child is born," the Oracle whispered. "She lives. The balance has already shifted."
The tent quieted.
The Sun Queen exhaled. "Then Mira did it after all. The Night's last heir…"
"And it is she who may undo you," the Oracle warned. "Not in this war. Not by sword. But by bond blood to blood. Shadow to shadow."
"She is but a babe," scoffed General Kyrion.
"Yet she bears the mark of a queen," the Oracle replied. "And in her veins, the line of the First Dusk lives again."
The Sun Queen stood.
"Then we end this now," she declared. "No more border skirmishes. No more siege. We take the Black Citadel, and if Mira hides the child then she will burn to ash with her secrets."
When the generals withdrew, only the Oracle remained. The silk flaps of the war tent drifted closed behind them, casting flickering shadows across the walls as the morning sun climbed higher.
The Sun Queen turned her back to the empty throne, her expression unreadable as she faced the rising light.
"She is the key, isn't she?" she said quietly.
The Oracle inclined her head. "Yes, Your Radiance. Nyx is not just heir to the Night. She is its rebirth. Its reckoning."
The Sun Queen's voice was brittle. "I have ruled unchallenged for three centuries. The eclipse was broken. The cycle undone. I brought order. Light. Civilization."
"By breaking the weave of balance," the Oracle said gently. "By silencing the Night, you unraveled the very harmony that kept the realms from turning to ash."
"Don't lecture me on harmony," the Queen hissed, whirling. "The Night bred monsters. Wraiths and whispers that fed on fear. I burned them out. I gave my people peace."
The Oracle's eyes glowed like twin embers in the gloom. "And now peace withers into tyranny. Crops wilt under ceaseless sun. Rivers run dry. The people tire, even if they dare not speak it. They crave the return of dusk, even if they do not know why."
The Queen turned away again, as if the Oracle's words left a taste in her mouth she could not swallow.
"I will not share my crown with the dark," she said at last.
"She is a child."
"She is a seed and seeds grow." Her voice trembled, whether with rage or something deeper, it was hard to say. "If she lives, my reign ends not by fire, but by fading away. They will look to her when the sun scorches too hot. They will call her mercy. They will call her their queen."
The Oracle stepped closer. "Then why do you hesitate?"
A long silence followed.
Then, quietly..."Because I remember her mother."
The tent pulsed with stillness.
"I remember the night Mira knelt beside my throne and begged for peace," the Sun Queen said. "How her eyes held no hatred, even after I killed her kin. I remember her voice, not cursing me but pleading for one last chance to preserve what little remained."
"She did not beg for vengeance," said the Oracle. "She begged for balance."
The Sun Queen's jaw clenched.
"She should have known," she said coldly, "that the sun does not share the sky."
She turned, her gaze like burning glass.
"Find the child," she ordered. "And when you do, bring me her heart."
The Oracle bowed, though her expression was unreadable and as she slipped into the light beyond the tent, the Sun Queen stood alone beneath a sun that no longer warmed her.