Somnia.
The world is drenched in a soft silky shadow, the pure, untainted darkness of the Daybreak Solstice. The moon is hidden away in the clouds like a precious stone in a box, the stars have dwindled into nothingness, and all is still….
ll is still. All is silent. The world is waiting…
Waiting….
And then– There… in the black… a glimmer of light…. Then another. And another…
Time seems to stop.
For a fourth time, light is seen. The sparks, the seeds of the light, have burst into a steady glow….. a small, frail, flickering thing… but spirited, all the same, and beautiful. Still, it grows, smoldering, breeding illumination. Soon, it has gone from candle to torch, burning with the deep red of the heart, throbbing, pulsating, planting luminescence in the depths of the darkness. Houses, many sleepy houses and shops, loom into vision, solemn and silent in the shadowy streets of the city. With the earth, they seem to wait… still waiting… and watching, alert in their anticipation…
For that timeless moment, when the shadows weaken and fade, passing into oblivion like souls, and the glow, that numinous glow, grows in intensity, slowly… slowly, deepening, ever-deepening….
And then, in that moment…. blooming! Blooming into a magnificent radiance of shimmering light, crippling the darkness into surrender, unveiling The Great City of Peralyth in all its glory, breathing life into the mystical lands beyond!
From the great Lighthouse of Time, a thunderous sound detonates, sweeping through the stone streets, shaking the people into life. It is like the sound of thundering horses and crashing hammers of an armory… Like that of beating faerie wings and whispering oceans…. Like many other things too powerfully wonderful to describe, all bound together with the tolling of the Clock-tower; Ethriel’s call to the light…
All who hear it leapt to their feet immediately. River Folk, Tree Dwellers, even Byzarians and Halfim… no one can slumber while the King calls. All awaken, and all rejoice.
Soon, the clocktower’s reverberation fades back unto itself, and the city comes alive with a thousand other sounds, the sounds of a city, of a kingdom, of a whole world teeming with vitality, and the sequence of the Daybreak Solstice is complete. Shard… has dawned.
“Dawn, oh, sweet dawn,” A poet breathes, scratching words into the parchment with his quill. He has been observing the whole thing since the very beginning, as one the few Shardians able to wake before first light, and writing since the glow began. With a dramatic swish of the pen, he inscribes his name at the bottom, rolls his work up into a scroll-like cylinder, and places it in his satchel. Swinging to his feet, he opens the triangular door, taking a moment to run his hand along the smooth, runic wood, and heads out of the observatory. He hurries down a few crooked corridors, through the living room, and out the front door. And he sets out for the palace.
The palace, the clocktower, the lighthouse, the epicenter of the world… the place where destinies are born, where his destiny would be born, and all would fall into place just as planned. The palace. He smiles.
“I’m coming”, he says.
And, nearby, in an alley, something, something sinister, lurks, watching all of this taking place, shivering, grinning hideously.
In Shard, nothing is as it seems.
-M.E.
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