A Memory, Ten Years Past
The air in the Baron's solar was thick with the scent of beeswax and old parchment. Lord Theron, a man whose face was just beginning to show the etchings of responsibility, traced a line on a sprawling map with a calloused finger. The city of Budavasta, rendered in vibrant inks, glowed under the lamplight.
"The Feast of the Full Moon," he declared, a smile touching his lips. "Not just a festival. A symbol. A new beginning for our trade routes. We'll light bonfires in the merchant square, not just in the noble district. Let the light touch everyone."
His council, three older men with faces like folded leather, nodded thoughtfully. "The budget, my Lord," one cautioned gently. "The grain silos need reinforcing before winter."
"And they shall have it, Alaric," Theron said, his voice firm but warm. "But a people's spirit is their greatest granary. We must fill it. We will fund the feast from my own personal coffins if we must. I want the music to be so loud it drowns out the memory of last year's hardships. I want the wine to flow until even the most cynical beggar feels like a king for a night."
He was a man who believed in light, in the tangible power of hope. He leaned over the map, his finger resting on the market district. "We'll start the procession here. Let the heart of our commerce be the heart of our celebration—"
The heavy oak door to the solar creaked open. A young maid, her face flushed, stood trembling on the threshold, wringing her apron in her hands. It was a breach of protocol so severe the councilmen gasped.
"My Lord! Forgive me!" the maid stammered, her eyes wide with a panic that was not born of fear, but of overwhelming news.
"Elara? What is the meaning of this?" Theron asked, his brow furrowed not in anger, but in concern.
"It's the Madam, my Lord! The midwife sent me! She… she couldn't wait!" The maid took a gasping breath, her words tumbling out in a joyous torrent. "In the market! Just as you were speaking of it! Your lady wife… she has given birth! A healthy girl!"
The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the crackling of the fire. Then, a slow, wondrous smile spread across Baron Theron's face. The councilmen, their stern demeanors shattered, broke into broad grins.
"A daughter…" Theron whispered. He looked from the map of his city to the flushed, excited face of the maid. The abstract plans for a new beginning had just been made gloriously, messily real. He laughed, a sound of pure, unburdened joy that echoed in the stone room. "The Full Moon Feast! It is a sign! Her name will be Sahra! For she is the new dawn of Budavasta!"
Present Day
The house had once been noble. Faded velvet drapes, moth-eaten and grey with dust, hung from broken rods. A shattered chandelier, its crystals now just jagged teeth, lay in a heap in the center of a room where a fine rug had long since rotted into the floorboards. The air was a cocktail of mildew, old urine, and something sweetly chemical that clawed at the back of the throat.
Uriel stepped through the splintered doorway, his silver armour a stark, alien presence in the decay. His gaze swept the room, past the overturned furniture, and settled on the lone figure seated on a crumbling divan.
A young girl. She couldn't have been more than fifteen. Her frame was painfully thin, swallowed by a dress that might once have been expensive. Her hair, the colour of dirty straw, hung lank around a face that was both childlike and ancient. Her eyes, wide and unnervingly calm, were fixed on an object in her lap. She was slowly, methodically stroking a tarnished silver locket.
She did not startle as the massive, armoured knight filled the space before her. She simply looked up, her gaze meeting his intense, grey stare.
"Your name," Uriel's voice was not loud, but it cut through the silence like a blade.
The girl's stroking of the locket did not cease. "Sahra," she said. Her voice was a hollow reed, devoid of inflection.
Uriel took a step closer, the floorboard groaning under his weight. "Sahra. Daughter of Baron Theron." It was not a question. The reports had mentioned the Baron's family was lost, presumed dead in the coup. "Then you can explain this. You can stand as witness to your people's suffering. You can tell me of the darkness that has consumed your city."
A faint, ghost of a smile touched Sahra's bloodless lips. "Darkness?" she murmured, her eyes drifting back to the locket. "It's not darkness, Sir Knight. It's just… a lost love. A love my father had for this place. For me. It was too heavy. It broke." She finally looked up at him, and her calm was more terrifying than any scream. "You should just do it. I am beyond saving anyway. The Siren's Kiss is in my veins. There is too much of it now. It doesn't hurt anymore."
Uriel's expression did not change, but the air around him seemed to grow colder. "Not everyone can be saved? Is that the wisdom you have gleaned from your father's palace?"
"It is the truth of this city," she replied, her voice gaining a sliver of strength, a final, defiant ember. "If my father had known that… if he had loved a little less and ruled a little harder… perhaps the city could have been saved. But not me. Not now."
Uriel's hand went to the hilt of his broadsword. The sound of steel sliding from leather was deafening in the dead room. He walked towards her, each step a deliberate, final toll of a bell.
"You say I should not save you," he said, his voice low and relentless. He was close enough now to see the fine tremors running through her thin shoulders, the way her breath hitched despite her words. "Yet you shake. You do not crave death, child. You are simply too weary to refuse it. You mistake surrender for peace."
He raised the Sun Sword, the runes beginning to glow with a faint, hungry light.
"You are wrong," Uriel said, his grey eyes holding hers, offering no comfort, only a terrible, unwavering truth. "Your saviour is not death. It is justice. And it has come."
Sahra's eyes widened, not in fear, but in a final, profound understanding. She clutched the locket to her chest.
"Sun Sword."
The command was absolute. The blade erupted into a silent, white conflagration. There was no time for a scream. Uriel's swing was a single, fluid motion of pure, incinerating light. Where the flame touched her neck, there was no blood, no severing. There was only a flash, and then Sahra, daughter of Baron Theron, was gone. Not even ash remained, just a momentary, shimmering heat haze and the faint, sweet scent of ozone and burnt chemicals.
The white flame died. Uriel stood alone in the silence. On the divan, where the girl had been, the tarnished silver locket lay. It had fallen open. He bent, picking it up. Inside was a tiny, smudged portrait. A man with a hopeful face, a woman with a gentle smile, and between them, a little girl with bright eyes. It was a memory of joy, now rendered incomprehensible by the horror that had followed. He could barely make out their features.
He closed the locket with a sharp snap and let it fall to the dusty floor. He turned and walked out of the room, his armour scraping against the doorframe.
In the filth-choked street, under a sky the colour of bruised flesh, his knights looked at him. He did not meet their eyes.
"This world is so sad," Uriel said, his voice barely a whisper, yet it carried in the oppressive quiet. "It is not bright."
He led them deeper into the city, a bringer of a light that left only emptiness in its wake.