The battlefield was a sea of false light.
Celia stood frozen, eyes closed, tears streaming down her face. Navia had dropped her archflinger, her fingers trembling as she reached out toward the empty air. Even Cid, the most chaotic among them, had a look of profound, agonizing peace on his face.
They weren't fighting anymore. They were dreaming.
Lucas shifted his grip on his light dagger. To his left, Alina's eyes were narrow, the Clarity Shroud of her master flickering like a dying candle around her.
"They're gone," Alina whispered.
"She's pulled them all in."
Lucas looked ahead. Where his companions saw a grieving mother holding a child, he saw the truth. A rotting corpse, skin like parchment stretched over old bone, clutching a heap of grey ash. The Mother of Despair wasn't a goddess; she was a false hope.
A parasitic tragedy.
Can she truly deserve to go against nature and have another chance?
The thought wasn't his. It was a resonance from the Blood Sea, a question asked by the world itself. Nature demanded death for the dead.
The Mother demanded a haven.
The world blurred. The grey ash began to take color. The rot began to heal.
We were going back.
***Date: December 25, 1833 | Time: 12:11 AM | Location: Forest Orion
Perspective: Lana***
ARRRRR I HATE SOLAN!
I wanted to play war today but he ran away! My own general just... ran away! He is such a meanie. Once I find him, he is finished! He's going to get the biggest timeout in history.
The forest was tall and scary, but it was also pretty. The trees were old, with moss that looked like blankets. Above, the sky was clear, and the moonlight was so bright it made the leaves look like they were made of silver.
"Solan! Where are you!"
I screamed as loud as my lungs could go. It echoed, bouncing off the trunks.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
I waited. Nothing. Just the sound of the forest.
Meanie.
I walked deeper, my boots crunching on the dirt. The grassbuds were making their night-noises—a soft, tinkling sound like bells being shaken underwater. It was so peaceful and pretty. I couldn't help but smile, walking playfully and swinging my arms.
The air smelled like wet pine and magic.
I came across a big puddle. It was like a mirror on the ground. I stopped and leaned down, looking at myself.
My dark hair was a mess, sticking out in pigtails that Solan tried to tie (he's bad at it). My eyes were dark and sparkly, like the stars Solan is always talking about. I was wearing my favorite light-blue dress—the one with the white lace that Mama says I shouldn't wear in the dirt—and my skin was slightly tan from playing outside all day.
I made a mean face at the puddle. I look like a commander, I thought.
Then, I saw it.
In the reflection of the tree branch above me, something was moving. Something with too many legs. A big, hairy spider was lowering itself down on a string, right toward my head.
"AAAAAAAAA!"
I didn't think. I just ran.
My legs moved so fast I felt like I was flying. The trees blurred. I wasn't looking where I was going, I just wanted to get away from the leggy-monster.
Suddenly, the ground wasn't there anymore.
I tumbled, rolling down a small ledge, leaves and dirt getting in my hair. I hit something soft and heavy with a loud thump.
"OWWHH! Who is that!?"
The voice was muffled and surprised. I blinked, shaking the dirt off my face. I was sitting right on top of him. He was hiding behind a bush with a little wooden telescope in his hand.
"I FOUND YOU!"
I pointed a finger right at his nose, my heart still thumping from the spider.
He looked at me, his eyes wide, and then he started to laugh.
It wasn't a mean laugh. It was his "I-got-caught" laugh.
I scrambled up, grabbing him by the collar of his oversized sweater. I was small, but I was strong. I hauled him forward until our noses were almost touching.
"What are you doiing here, Solan! You dummy! You left me mid-match!"
"Hey, hey! Calm down!" Solan's hands went up, his little wooden telescope dangling from a string. "I ummm... I was just!! Lost!!"
"Lost? In the forest we play in every day?" I tightened my grip, giving him a little shake. "Liar! You're a deserter! I should have you court-marshaled!"
"I'm not a deserter!" Solan squeaked, his hazel and blue-gray eyes darting around. "I just saw... the sky was getting really dark and... and the stars are the best tonight!"
"The stars are always there, you spacey nerd! The flag was right there! We almost had it!"
"It's not just a flag, Lana, it's a strategic asset," he muttered, trying to look serious but failing as his face turned red.
I let go of his collar with a huff and sat down in the grass right next to him. The dirt on my dress didn't matter. I looked up.
The sky was huge. It felt like it was going to swallow us.
"See?" Solan whispered, sitting back down and pointing up. "It's December. The stars are the clearest here in this month because the air is crisp and the clouds go to sleep."
He opened his little notebook. It was full of messy drawings and dots connected by lines.
"What's that one?" I pointed to a group of stars that looked like a wiggly line.
"That's the Silver River," he said, his voice losing its stutter. He sounded like a teacher now. "And that one there, the one that looks like a shield? That's the Aegis. It protects the smaller stars from the void."
"Rocks," I said, sticking my chin out. "They're just shiny rocks floating in the black. Nothing is out there except big, boring rocks."
Solan's face went from red to bright pink. He looked triggered.
"They are NOT just rocks, Lana! There are Nebulae—they're like giant clouds of colored fire! I mean, baby stars! And there are Galaxies, which are like whole worlds spiraling around each other! It's more than just rocks!"
I laid back on the grass, my hands behind my head. "Whatever. You still left the war."
"I told you," Solan said, using his telescope to peek at the Aegis. "You're too bossy. You make me do all the 'dirty moves' like attacking the base while you just sit on the 'Command Hill' and yell at me."
"I'm the Commander!" I shouted back. "Commanders don't crawl in the mud, Solan! They manage the big picture!"
Our "war" was everything to us. A group of kids from the village would split into teams, using rocks and painted sticks as resources. The goal was to steal the "Legacy Stone" from the other team's base without getting tagged. It was all about strategy, and I was the best at it.
"You're a war fanatic," Solan muttered, scribbling in his book.
"And you're a space nerd," I replied, sitting up and sticking my tongue out at him.
He stuck his tongue out back.
We sat in silence for a moment.
I stared looking for the brightest stars, even so I didn't really care about them.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out something heavy. It was a medal—a small, silver star with a ribbon that smelled like old leather and smoke.
"Papa," I whispered.
Solan stopped scribbling. He looked at the medal, then at me. He knew. Everyone in the village knew about the "Shifting Tides" and the soldiers who didn't come back.
"He's not just in the medal, Lana," Solan said softly. He pointed high into the sky, past the Aegis, to the brightest star I'd ever seen. It was shimmering with a warm, steady light.
"That one. I call it Aethelra. It means 'Eternal Light' in the old books."
"Aethelra?"
"Yeah. The One Above All puts the bravest souls there so they can watch over us. It's the clearest star because it's the closest to Heaven. Your Papa is right there. He's watching you right now to make sure you're the best Commander ever."
I looked at the star. It didn't look like a rock anymore. It looked... warm.
"Really? That's what it means?!"
"I'm certain," Solan said, his voice steady for once.
I didn't think before I did it. I just lunged forward and hugged him, burying my face in his scratchy sweater.
"Thank you for telling me, Solan!!"
Solan went stiff as a board. He turned so red I thought his head might pop. He stuttered, his hands hovering in the air before he awkwardly patted my back.
"It's... it's okay! Okay! I-I'm just state... stating facts!"
"Thankieee :3"
I let go, smiling wider.
Solan sat back, coughing a little to fix his voice. He looked calmer, but his eyes were still on the grass.
"Lana?"
"Yes?" I smiled at him.
"You... you shouldn't force yourself to bring me to play with the other kids."
"No! It's not like that—!"
"It is." Solan cut me off, his voice small. "It's hard for the other kids to accept a weird kid like me. After all... one of my eyes is soulless."
I felt my face get hot. "No they aren't!"
"When I play with you guys, it feels like you're the only one reaching out. Inviting me. The weird orphan with a brown and silver eye."
I didn't wait for him to finish. I lunged forward, grabbing him by the neck of his sweater, and gave him a quick slap on the cheek.
"What was that forrtr?!" He yelped, clutching his face.
"You're a meanie! Dummy! Sicking! Scrapy! Pants!"
"That didn't even make sense!"
"I don't care!" I shouted, still holding onto him. "You're my friend! I want you to join because I want you there! I don't want you to be alone or feel lon-ly because I see you as my friend! Not an outcast! So stop thinking of yourself like that!"
"Lana?" He could only ask once I was breathless and panting.
I turned my head away, pouting hard. "Hmhp!"
"Hey... hey, Lana. I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"
I just squeezed my eyes shut. "Hmhp!"
Solan sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Okay... let me think of a way to bring your attention back. Hmmm."
I didn't move.
"How about... I finally tell you about the One Above All?"
I snapped my fingers and turned my head so fast I felt a pop. "Really? You mean it?"
Solan nodded, a small, tired smile on his face. "I want to thank you."
The One Above All.
My Papa used to tell me that Solan's father was a high-ranking scientist—an astrophysh... astrophycisist. His mother loved the stars too. Together, they worked with the elves to find the mysteries of space. I heard they'd been researching for over 10 years. That's insane.
Last year, the war broke out. Demon Lord Malphas and Elven Queen Asora Aeralurea... they started fighting for Celestine. It's still happening, but Mama says there will be peace soon. Everyone says so.
I looked at Solan's eyes. His parents spent their entire lives just to propose one name: One Above All.
Solan pulled a large, heavy book from his bag. It looked ancient, with leather that was peeling at the edges.
"Come take a look, Lana."
I scooted closer. The pages were covered in math that looked like spiders crawling on the paper. There were diagrams of spheres and lines showing the "Gravity Shift" between the moons.
"My mother spent her research on identifying the proof of an almighty being's existence," Solan said, pointing to a string of symbols at the bottom of a page. "She got the idea from this 6900-year-old writing from an abandoned war location."
I squinted at the letters: E-V-S-R-H-Y-M-A-G-N-E
"What does it mean? It looks like gibberish."
Solan traced the letters with his finger, shifting them in his mind. "It's a linguistic shift based on the alignment of the Polaris cluster. If you remove the 'gibberish' from the stellar frequency..."
He scribbled on the side of the page. The letters rearranged into words.
Every Story Has a Meaning.
"That appeared after the Peace of the Ancient Races," Solan explained. "Thousands of years ago, when every race went to war for world domination. It was a cruel world back then. Much worse than now."
He turned the page, his movements careful.
"My mother took each letter and matched them to the secret names of the Forbidden Stars. Cygnord, Lyranis, Hydrella, Deltaic, Orbibar, Meroone, Silvvis, Zetaeis, Altaair, Polalis, Belllis... when you combine all eleven star names in the Puzzling System, the math collapses into a single coordinate in the center of the universe."
"What's there?"
Solan lowered his voice. "Nothing. Just a void. But it's not empty. The stars all compile to say the void itself is the beginning of all stories. The 'One' isn't a person... it's the space where everything starts."
"Solan, you're a genius!" I shouted, hugging his arm.
He shook his head, looking down at his book. "I didn't do anything. I'm just restating my mother's research."
"What about your Papa?"
Solan nodded slowly, his expression shifting to something more serious. He reached for the corner of the next page.
"He found... the other side of the story."
"The other side?" I asked, leaning in so close I could smell the old paper of the book.
Solan pointed to the map of the stars closest to the central void. "My Papa named these the Sentinels. There are eleven of them. He realized that if you take the names of the stars in the order of their brightness and look at the fourth letter of each... it's not a coincidence anymore."
He spoke the names softly, like he was reciting a prayer. "Cygnord, Lyranis, Hydrella, Deltaic, Orbibar, Meroone, Silvvis, Zetaeis, Altaair, Polalis, Belllis."
He wrote the fourth letters one by one on the margin of the page.
O-N-E-A-B-O-V-E-A-L-L
One Above All.
"Papa said a puzzle like that is too meticulous," Solan said, his eyes bright with a strange fire. "It's like it was given to us to solve. A way to make our lives more engaging. A reason to keep looking up."
"But what is the void, Solan?"
"It's where we are, Lana. We don't exist around it. We exist inside it. Everything that is real—the trees, the forest, you, me—it's all written on the empty void. My mother wrote something really complicated about it."
He cleared his throat and read a line from the messy handwriting: "A true void cannot exist in nature because for 'nothing' to occupy space, it must be contained within 'something.' By occupying space, the 'nothing' gains a property of existence, thus becoming 'something.' Therefore, the nothing is the something."
"My brain hurts," I whispered, rubbing my temples. "What does that even mean?"
"It means the Void is the paper," Solan explained in simple words. "And we are the ink. You can't have a story without the paper, but the paper doesn't care what you write. It just holds it."
He turned to the next page. It was a drawing of a single, towering eye surrounded by infinite circles.
"My Papa called the source the One Above All. An entity that created the paper so our stories could exist. It created the Void. The supreme authority of everything and nothing. And then..."
He stopped. I saw the edge of the next page. It was jagged and white.
"It's torn," I said, reaching out to touch the paper. "Where did the rest go?"
Solan shook his head, his face falling. "I don't know. Her research just stops here. There was something about a 'Final Quill' and the 'Depth of the Writer,' but it's gone."
He closed the book with a heavy thud and looked back up at the stars. I looked with him, but the silver lights didn't feel so pretty anymore. They felt like eyes.
The One Above All is responsible for us? Because of it, we exist? How can that even be true? It doesn't even make...
"Wait, Solan!" I shouted, turning to him. "Is the One Above All a god?"
Solan shook his head slowly. "No. I don't think so. It's simply the Creator and the Eraser."
"But Papa says gods are all-knowing and all-powerful," I argued, trying to remember the stories. "They have a will! They have a consciousness! They're present everywhere! The One Above All matches that, right?"
"Not really," Solan said, sounding older than five. "The One Above All is unknown. It hides its identity. My mom said it was 'teasing its creations' by leaving puzzles. It can't be a god because it doesn't want us to bow down. It doesn't seek reverence or worship. It just wants us to live a story."
"A god that doesn't want worship?!" I asked, confused. "Don't all gods want that from the people they made?"
"A god seeks power and ego," Solan said, looking back at the brightest star. "They want to be the center of the story. But the One Above All... it sees its creations as equals. It doesn't want to be the hero or savior. It wants us to be the heroes."
I looked at the stars for a long, quiet minute. One Above All.
"AHAHAHAHHA! HAHAHAHA!"
I started laughing so hard I had to clutch my stomach.
"Solan? You cannot be serious!"
"That's the One Above All?!" I wiped a tear from my eye, gasping for air. "I knew you weren't sounding serious, Solan! You dummy!"
"But it's true!" Solan said, his face getting flustered again. "The math proves it!"
"Nothing like that exists!" I said, still giggling. "If it did, it would've visited us already. The idea that it wants us to live 'stories' is nonsense! You're saying he isn't a god, but something even beyond that? Like a... a Writer? AHAHHAH!"
"It is true, Lana! The puzzle spells it out!"
"Yes, yes!" I stood up, brushing the grass off my lace dress. "It's true in fiction! In the storybooks Mama reads me! But out here? In the war?"
I looked at my Papa's medal again.
"In the real world, Solan, you have to write your own ending. Nobody is doing it for you."
"Nobody is going to save you."