[Antithesis — The Realm of Frost and Flame]
She played in the twilight, waiting—until a voice from another world began whispering stories in the quiet, and the nameless longing within her crystallized.
It returned without fail. To her, the voice—of a man, as he had introduced himself—became her entire world: a storyteller she clung to while she waited, alone, for her sisters to return.
Aurenya completed her daily ritual as usual, finishing her seventeenth jump while gazing at the horizon.
Suddenly, the horizon transformed into a breathtaking shade of gold, shimmering like specks of dust—golden wings.
Her heels sank into the golden mud as she propelled herself upward, her wings snapping wide. She raced toward them.
Her sisters had finally returned, their wings battered and some flying unsteadily, causing them to occasionally fall.
She slowed, fearing her pounding heart and their lengthening flight would worsen their pain. She flew down and waited.
The drops falling from them caught the twilight as they fell — that color, that specific golden — their blood.
Aurenya looked at the drops hitting the grass far below and felt the weight of that previous silence settle across her chest.
'They have returned, but they are hurt,' she thought.
The cold shape of Miku pressed against her arms. She kept one hand flat over it, gently picking it up. 'They can talk to the trees. The trees listen to them. They will then heal Miku,' she thought.
Syralis landed first, her feet sinking into the moss. She was already moving, not toward Aurenya, but toward Nhalrien. Her depleted wings folded tightly against her back, but her frost eyes never left Aurenya’s face, her brows knitted.
The other Saelaris followed the same pull, one by one peeling away from formation and pressing their palms to golden barks. The groves filled with the quiet hum of essence returning to empty vessels, a sound Aurenya felt in her back teeth.
They had returned to draw essence from the trees, which meant they would depart immediately.
Kaelira landed last. She stared at Aurenya's face, then walked directly to Virelya, her gauntlet scraping across the burning bark as her blood — still flowing from the gashes along her forearms — lifted from the wounds in pale mist and dissolved. The gashes sealed themselves in the same breath.
Aurenya's free hand found her arm. She pressed her fingers down on the faint ridge of her own wound, an old scar that had never been blessed by Virelya's healing touch.
She smiled, watching the last thread of Kaelira's wound vanish without even a scar, then pulled her hand away before anyone could follow the gesture. They would be hurt if they knew. So Aurenya just smiled.
Kaelira finally turned towards her, and kneeled before her without hesitation. "We can't stay." She hesitated, the exhaustion evident in her voice. "The border isn't holding well. We only came to collect essence, so—"
"It's fine." Aurenya gave them the brightest smile she could muster before looking down at her hands, the mud puddle now smaller than before.
She stepped forward, holding out her palms. The cold mud of Miku sat in them, cupped carefully.
"Kaelira, please ask Virelya to heal my Miku."
Kaelira glanced down at the mud. "What's that, Aurenya?"
"It's Miku," Aurenya answered impatiently, shifting her weight. "I tried to find one in the grove. I couldn't, so I made one." She tilted her palms forward slightly. "She touched a flame-leaf. It was very fast. Now she won't move."
Kaelira stood and looked at the mud for a moment longer than necessary before moving closer and giving her a tight hug. "Aurenya... I can't fix this."
Aurenya stared at her with wide eyes, unable to understand anything she was saying. "Why? The trees can heal, no?"
"That..." Kaelira paused for a bit, before extending her hand. She took the mud from Aurenya's hand, then whispered softly, "We are tied to the grove. The realm keeps us breathing because it needs us to fight."
Aurenya nodded enthusiastically. She had heard this story before; she knew what her sisters were. Kaelira added, “However, other things, fragile ones, they only have one spark. Once it goes out, they don't come back to the trees.”
Aurenya tilted her head. "Where do they go, then?"
Kaelira shook her head. "I don't know."
She knelt beside Virelya's roots, digging a small hollow in the moss. "But we can give her back to the earth." She gently took the mud and buried it. "Let her go, Aurenya."
Aurenya opened her mouth to ask more. But Kaelira interrupted, "You ask questions none of us know how to answer."
She then turned toward the golden forest, whispering, "It is time."
The familiar resonant thrumming vibrated up through the soles of Aurenya’s feet. She held her breath, her gaze flickering towards the small mud hill.
The golden trees raised their branches high and, in unison, showered the moss with snapping boughs and blinding liquid light. The swirling debris knitted into bone and armor of gold — whole, breathing, returned.
Lirika's body reformed near a golden tree. She shook her head, golden hair flying, and was immediately pulled into an embrace by her nearest kin.
Aurenya looked around her; the newly reborn shook golden hair from their eyes and reached for each other. The golden legion was already turning back toward the trees, wings folding, one by one leaning into their trees — to absorb the essence. Hands pressing to bark. Heads bowing. The quiet gravity of borrowed strength being replenished.
Aurenya curled her fingers slowly back around the mudstain and tucked it against her ribs. Then she ran toward the newly reborn anyway, darting from one to another, arms open.
“Welcome back, Lirika! Welcome back, Cirelle!” she chirped, enveloping them in her warm embrace. They returned her hug with lowered heads and open arms.
After the reunions had settled, only Kaelira and Syralis remained on the soft moss beside her. Their gazes flickered between each other, only to return to Aurenya.
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Aurenya rushed back to Kaelira. There were too many things and she did not know which to release first — they had been building for so long, all the words she had no one to ask.
"What is a cat?" The question came out first.
Syralis and Kaelira exchanged a glance from opposite sides of the lake above her.
"A... cat?" Kaelira asked carefully.
"A cat," Aurenya repeated, as if saying it slower would help. "Small. It makes a sound like this—" She pressed her lips together and emitted a sound that her beetle cat had made, but it sounded different. "He described it to me. I tried to find one in the grove. Then I made one." She pointed at the small mound near Virelya's root.
Aurenya's lava-like wings shifted from steady gold to a pulsing, vibrant red as she fluttered around them. "What does taste mean? Have you ever worn cloth that wasn't leaves? Have you ever seen a moon?"
She flew across the lake and stopped in front of Syralis, grasping both of the ice warrior’s icy hands.
“Syralis, my sister, teach me.” Aurenya fixed Syralis with unwavering eyes, adding, “I want to learn how to be a woman.”
Syralis pulled her hands back slightly, her eyes darting around. The frost on her fingertips crackled as she managed a small whisper, “Aurenya—“
"Is it difficult?" Aurenya pressed, tilting her head, waiting for an answer. "He described it as though it were simply what you are. But you have to learn it somehow, don't you? Everything here I had to learn. Look, I made my wings red."
Syralis looked at her as if she had forgotten how to speak.
Aurenya spun around, startled by a hand grasping her back. Kaelira stood there, her eyes burning red as her flame hair swayed.
"Where," Kaelira said, very quietly, "did you hear that word."
Not a question. Her voice was shaking. But Aurenya beamed, happy to finally share her secret.
"The creature — no, a man," she corrected herself, her eyes shining. "He tells me. He comes after some time. He speaks of his world, a place called Leonhelm. He talks about time that moves, about frost that melts, and bakeries with honey bread."
Excitement coursed through her in waves, as words flowed out unbidden. "He told me that in his world, there are men and women. And they marry. They belong to each other forever." She looked between their faces, expecting the wonder to spread. "I want to know how to be a woman. Can I go to Leonhelm?"
Kaelira and Syralis had gone silent, their replies absent. Aurenya couldn’t comprehend why her beloved sisters, who always smiled at her words, were now looking terrified.
Kaelira's hands had stilled at her sides, fingers slightly curled. Syralis was not looking at Aurenya anymore. She was looking at Kaelira. They were having a conversation without speaking, and Aurenya was not in it.
She knew they could, but in this moment, standing before her like this, they had never spoken to each other this way while she was near, never excluding her.
Aurenya fluttered her wings rapidly, her mind racing with questions. They were about to depart, and she had little time to ask them all.
"Why are you two not answering me? Can I—"
“Aurenya,” Kaelira’s voice was cautious, as if she was trying to avoid startling her. “Where exactly is this voice coming from? Is it in the trees? Can you point in its direction, sister?”
"No, no." Aurenya stepped forward, eager to ease the sudden chill in the air. "It's inside. In the still hours. He just speaks to me."
Beside her, Syralis gritted her teeth. But her right hand had shifted — fingers fusing, elongating into a blade of pale ice that crackled in the silence.
"It speaks directly to Her," Syralis said, low, aimed at Kaelira. "The boundary."
"Hush," Kaelira commanded, though her burning fingers trembled as she raised her hands to grip Aurenya's shoulders. "Aurenya. Look at me. This voice — does it ask anything of you? Does it tell you to step toward the purple border? Does it ask for your essence?"
“No!” Aurenya shook her head, strands of light flying from her. She searched their faces for the easing she had learned signified correctness. Kaelira’s jaw was tighter than before she had spoken.
"He only tells stories," she insisted.
"What stories?" Kaelira asked. Flat on top, moving underneath.
"Stories. About his world. About—" Aurenya pressed her free hand to her chest. "—about Miku, and bread, and moonlight, and children who skip stones across somewhere called rivers."
She didn't stop at that. More words came to her one after another.
"About a village. And flowers that bloom only at night — no, he calls it night; it means the realm goes dim, his realm does that—" She stopped, aware she was losing the thread. "And a boy named Finn who—"
"And what does he ask in return?" Kaelira snapped.
Aurenya blinked. "Nothing."
"Nothing," Kaelira repeated.
"Nothing," Aurenya confirmed, confused by the echo.
The silence that followed did not feel like being believed. She looked from Kaelira's face to Syralis's. She tried to find what she had said wrong. 'Was it him they were afraid of? Or was it me, for listening?'
She couldn't finish the second thought.
"Please," she tried. "Believe me—"
"Aurenya." Kaelira placed both hands on her shoulders, her grip warm but shaking. "Promise me you will tell us everything the creature says. Every word. Every story."
Aurenya's wings brightened. "You want to hear? Oh — I'll start from the beginning. He told me about a place called Leonhelm where the—"
"Also." The grip tightened. Kaelira closed her eyes for a breath. When she opened them, the softness was gone. "Find a way to stop. The voice, the story... aren't meant for you."
The brightness left Aurenya's wings so quickly she felt cold.
"Stop? Why—"
"You must." Kaelira's voice shook with something Aurenya had never heard from her on the battlefield. Her burning fingers pressed slightly deeper. "Promise me."
Aurenya looked at her sister's face — the fear and the warmth sitting in it together, she could taste it. She had seen that face directed at the purple boundary. At corrupted essence. At things the golden legion flew toward with weapons raised. She glanced down at the grip on her shoulder and then back up.
"Why?" she asked. "I... don't want to. He—"
She shook her head violently and then turned back to Kaelira, her brows furrowed in confusion. “He… is the only one—“ she stammered, unable to complete her sentence. Kaelira’s impatient gaze fixed on her.
Aurenya’s entire body went completely still.
Kaelira's earlier words kept echoing in her mind. 'No. It didn't matter who those stories were for. I can't give them up.'
A quiet worry sparked deep within her. Should she share the way her heart raced when the voice spoke of frost melting at a touch? The way she whispered his birth month — Helmra — to herself in the still hours, like a name she was keeping safe? The terrifying, beautiful desire she had felt — the wish to marry, to be chosen, to become someone's who wouldn't leave?
Her gaze drifted towards the Flame Tree, then back at Kaelira.
'Would Kaelira feel the same if she knew?'
Aurenya looked at her sister's terrified, loving face, and understood. Kaelira would not understand. She would treat it the way she treated all things she feared — with her hands already moving, her flame already raised.
Aurenya also understood something deeper. She didn’t want to share her longing or her storyteller’s secrets.
“I’ll tell you the stories,” she whispered.
She lied.
It was Kaelira whose head turned first.
Slowly, without a word, toward the far edge of the realm.
The horizon was changing. Where the gold of Antithesis usually held its steady, suspended light, a bruised color was bleeding in from the edges.
Kaelira looked at the purple stain spreading across the distant sky, her jaw set harder.
Then she turned back to Aurenya. Just for a moment.
Pressing her hand briefly against the side of Aurenya’s face, she whispered, “That’s enough for now. Tell me everything when we return.” Her palm radiated the warmth of flame.
She turned back toward the golden trees. "Legion. Prepare."
The grove answered. Wings snapped open.
The ones who had been pressed against the bark — filled now, replenished with what they had come back for — peeled away and fell into formation. The hum of the trees faded as the last borrowed essence was taken. Within moments, the grove was loud with the readying of armor and the spreading of hundreds of wings, the sound of a tide pulling back from shore.
Syralis remained motionless. Her mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but as always, no words emerged. She stood at the edge of the formation, her back to the assembling legion.
"Syralis." Kaelira's voice, sharp, from above.
Syralis spread her wings in a painfully slow motion before rising to join the line. Her unwilling frost-eyes kept turning towards Aurenya.
Kaelira looked back once more — brief, burning — then spread her wings and launched skyward.
"Take off!"
They left.
Aurenya stood on the shore.
The grove breathed around her. The lake lay still. The golden light held steady, the same it always was, the same on every side.
She gazed at the empty sky where the golden specks had once been. Attempting to count the sky-round, she reached four before losing track of the number.
She pressed her hand flat against her chest, feeling a weight that had not been there before her sisters landed. She pressed harder, trying to locate it properly.
It did not move. It did not sharpen into anything she could name. She held the quiet longing carefully. It felt right. It felt like the correct thing to believe.
She sat at the edge of the golden lake with her wings folded around her, and cradled her empty palm against her chest, waiting for the still hours to pass.
