Before anything was broken, the First Realm breathed with a kind of quiet joy.

Light was not light as humans know it — it did not glare or judge or wound.

After the vision, Aelynn did not sleep.

She stood beneath the Harmonic Tree until the realm’s dawn slipped into midday, until midday softened to dusk, and still she could not make her hands stop trembling.

There was no dawn on the day the war began.

Light rose, yes — it always did — but it rose thin, strained, as if the First Realm itself hesitated to lift its head.