> In my reign, as I burn over land, sea, and sky, I choose to be the Sun that fosters life, seeds stories and harvests the perpetual pursuit of happiness. I do not wish to scorch such world. However, I am power! And power is power, and it is neither good nor evil, it is what it is-power! — the Summerqueen, quote of the coronation official speech. XXXXIV Winter - XXII Summer

In the vastness of the throne room, where opulent columns kissed the heights, Jaer's gaze roved uneasily over the assembly. The diverse menagerie of creatures, each species with its own mark of status or power, unsettled him with their morbid eagerness for the spectacle to come.

He stood there, a lone tiefling among the crowd, concerned with his Commander and but mostly friend. He hadn't spoken to Yeso since their arrival.

Without warning, Jaer was startled by a hand alighted on his shoulder, feather-light yet laden with intent. His pulse quickened already before he turned to face the owner of those discerning emerald eyes and ash-hued skin.

There stood the Elven King, Finnegan Berdorf, a vision that could arrest the hearts of women and men who beheld him. He embodied an allure that transcended the stark boundaries between fear and desire.

"Your Highness," Jaer managed, his voice a strained murmur as he fought the urge to drown in the depths of Finnegan's gaze.

The Elven king leaned in close, his breath a whisper that caressed Jaer's ear. "Why didn't you come to my chambers last night?"

The words, dipped in honeyed tones, soured within Jaer's mouth. He turned to meet the elf's scrutinizing stare. "I came to accompany my Commander, and as you can see, my mind is preoccupied with other priorities," he stated with a stoic firmness.

Finnegan's eyes sparkled with mischief, a silent laughter at some private jest. "Well, perhaps later then. I heard he is not returning as early as you might think."

Jaer's brow furrowed, "What do you mean?"

"Oh, you'll see. Who am I to spoil the fun?" Finnegan's words were a veiled omen wrapped in velvet. With a promise as enigmatic as it was unsettling, he added, "I'll console you tonight. I'll be gentle, I promise."

And with the grace of autumn leaves, the Elven king departed from Jaer's side. The court's whispers died as a hush blanketed the throng, and a regality seemed to carve through the thick air.

The Fallqueen claimed her throne, her black tunic trailing like the shadows of twilight. Her crown, a halo of crafted autumn leaves, rested upon her dark locks, framing her face with a symbolic echo of her dominion.

The twins followed her and sat by her side—Fiorna, the Spring on the left and Fiona, the Winter on the right.

Silence commanded the court as a white-robed officer, golden embroidery catching the eyes of all, stepped forward with a scroll that seemed a mere prop in his hands. His voice boomed.

"On this day, in the court of Herbstdame Veilla Mageschstea, we convene to sentence Yeso Sternacht for conspiracy and disobedience against the Herbstdame. His sentence: to bear the shame of shorn hair."

A collective gasp rippled through the assemblage, punctuated by murmurs. Hair, the pride of any Menschen lineage, symbolized their standing and power. The longer the hair, the more respect they had in their ranks. For a Magi who couldn't braid its hair, it was a humiliation without words.

Jaer's gaze pierced through the crowd, landing on the forlorn sight of his friend Yeso. He watched, heart, lurching, as the servant's shears mangled what once was a mane of starlit threads. Each snip and rip echoed like a verdict in Jaer's ears. The finality of the falling lock, glinting with as starlight even in its severed state, was brandished before the crowd—a triumph in their eyes, a grievous wound in his.

But the depths of indignity had yet to be plumbed.

The officer's voice rose again, slicing through the murmurs. "For the murder of one hundred and two spiders, the cherished fragments of the Spider of the Shadows, beloved Spirit of our Herbstdame Veilla Mageschstea, Yeso Sternacht will be sentenced to a lashing for each life taken."

As if on cue, a sickening cheer spilt from the onlookers, their thirst for retribution unsated. It was clear they wanted blood. Jaer's stomach knotted, bile climbing his throat as he witnessed the unfurling of the punishment.

Yeso's once-proud wings lay defeated, sprawled on the cold floor. His body, stripped, now primed for the cruelty of the lash. The executioner's grim task began—one—each crack of the whip tolling like a bell for the spirits lost.

Each lash of the executioner's whip cut through the air, its sound reverberating pain in the room—twelve.

With every strike, droplets of blue blood arced through the air—thirty-four.

The executioner moved with mechanical precision.

Sixty-eight.

The sound of his efforts, the almost musical rhythm of the whip and his laboured breathing intertwined with the subdued murmurs and gasps of the crowd—ninety-five.

Yeso's eyes were hidden through the blindfold, but not his resolve. No cry escaped his lips, and no flinch marred his bearing—ninety-eight.

Jaer knew his friend clung to composure not just for his own sake but for all present. A lesser creature might have unleashed a solar fury in vengeance, scorching the onlookers with the sun's wrath. But Yeso, even in his pain, remained the epitome of grace under duress—embodying a nobility that transcended his physical form—ninety-nine.

Jaer's fists clenched with pride for his friend's strength and a seething rage against the injustice. The lashing continued. Each whip sounded louder than the previous until it finally ended at one hundred and one.

The final tally of the whip cracked through the air, the one hundred and second lash reverberated a harsh punctuation to the grim theatre that had unfolded. As the crowd erupted in a cacophony of cheers, Jaer's body tensed, his every instinct screaming to rush forward, to be the solace in the wake of his friend's agony.

But then, a grip, unexpected and firm, seized his shoulder.

"Don't," Finnegan's voice was a low murmur in his ear, a thread of caution amongst the clamour, "it's not over yet."

Jaer's eyes, burning with anguish and fury, sought his friend again. The officer's voice, cold and detached, delivered the next sentence: "For the crime of stealing the sun for forty-four days, Yeso Sternacht will be confined in solitude for the same duration, to partake in the darkness he so heedlessly bestowed upon us."

"This is madness," Jaer breathed out the words like a curse, feeling the injustice slice into him as keenly as the lash had bitten into Yeso's flesh.

Finnegan's voice was a dismissive breeze as he said, "It's politics. Just a moon. Your Commander will endure."

Jaer watched, powerless, as two guards hoisted Yeso's battered form. Yeso's wings trailed pitifully on the floor, his knees buckling, but not from the pain alone. It was the weight of betrayal, of justice perverted, that seemed to press down upon him the most.

While Yeso was dragged out of Jaer's sight, the cold marble of the palace was stained with blue blood under his bare foot. Yeso's battered form moved with the shuffling pace of agony that rippled across his lacerated back. The guards at his flanks offered no support. They just gripped his arms with an impersonal force, ushering him forward, climbing each stair of Whitestone until the last floor, where they'd meet the tower, which was never habilitated.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The journey was a blur of pain and ghostly echoes until they reached their final destination. Yeso's fogged senses sharpened at the sight that greeted him through his blindfold.

Before him loomed a door, not of wood or stone, but of dark, polished steel, carved into the likeness of a full moon, resting ominously in the wall. Its surface drank in the light of the torches. The door was a monolith, dwarfing them all.

With a coordinated dance of keys and levers, the guards unlocked the secrets of the metal moon. A heavy, metallic clunk vibrated through the air, making the giant wheel of a lever bow, and the bolts relented after what seemed an age of resistance.

The door's rotation was reluctant, groaning in its arc, releasing a cloud of dust motes that danced in the beam of light like tiny spectres. From the vault escaped an exhalation of emptiness.

"Get in there, scum," grunted one of the guards.

Yesos stumbled over the threshold. The heavy door swung back, metal scraping against stone, and closed with a thunderous clunk that seemed to swallow the last vestige of light. A metallic grind of keys and bolts sealed.

As the echo faded, so did the light. Yeso slumped to the cold floor, his consciousness ebbing away like water seeping into the parched earth. The darkness, now complete, cradled him in its embrace as he surrendered to oblivion.

Uncountable days passed in darkness. Yeso opened his eyes again; his tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. He had lost count of the days or maybe weeks since he had been locked in his confinement in a chamber—a space laughably small compared to the grandeur of the palace. It was marked by the contradiction of the door: an imposing moon made of iron and steel for the tiniest room of all Whitestone Capitol.

The room offered the barest nods to necessity: a narrow bed upon which he'd tossed and turned, a functional toilet, a basic shower, and a sink that had delivered water in reluctant drips. The window, a miserly sliver near the ceiling, taunted him with glimpses of a sky he could not touch.

Taking a meagre two steps that the room allowed, Yeso felt the stretch in his cramped muscles, a dull ache that spoke of days spent in inertia. The walls soared above him, their expanse as blank and featureless as his days had become, save for the silent beckoning for something more—stories, colour, life. He didn't understand why.

With a wince, he removed the blindfold, carefully concealing the shared bond with his Hexe that had now become both a blessing and curse. The absence of the fabric was a relief, albeit a brief one, as the air kissed the tender skin it had concealed.

But since the pain in his back was mere stings, there was no reason for him to sever ties with the one he promised his forever.

Approaching the small, steel-framed mirror, Yeso's reflection was a ghost of his former self. His eyes had receded into darkened hollows. His lips were parched, cracked from dehydration and disuse, and his once-diamond hair now lay in uneven, jagged strands—a mockery of the mane that had been his pride.

Running a hand over his head, the unfamiliar texture of his cropped hair brought a grimace to his face. But it was swiftly replaced by surprise at the sight of a small figure reflected over his shoulder.

Turning, he found a young girl sitting on the bed, her silhouette small and hunched, her hair a patchwork of jagged cuts and troubling wounds that marred her scalp. Blue blood, stark against the faded linens, seeped from the cuts. Each drop was a scream of the torture she had endured—a torture that, it seemed, made his experience look like child's play.

She traced with her fingers over the walls, which now were filled with scratches, words from different tongues, some in Menschen, others in Human, and some chillingly inscribed like the blue blood that dripped from her wounds. Her voice was halting as she read the wall, her pronunciation stumbling over the foreign term, "I... Yeso... Com-ah-Dre...Coma-dre."

Yeso's instinct was to offer correction, to teach as he had always done. Still, the moment was shattered by the heavy door wheel grinding into motion. The final clang reverberated through the tiny chamber, sealing the fate of the moment.

The girl's head snapped towards the door, her pain momentarily forgotten, her voice ringing out with a hopeful, "Ja-Ja!"

Yeso felt a primal urge to shrink away, to become a wraith within these walls, and as Jaer entered, it seemed as though his wish was granted. He was unseen, unfelt, a spectre in his own cell. Yeso wondered, was he dreaming again?

Jaer, with his mane greying at the temples, betraying the march of time, had also a strange golden infinity time carved between his eyebrow. He approached with a warmth in his voice that belied the coldness of the room. "Hey, my little sunbeam, how are you?"

The girl's response came readily, a lie delivered with a smile so genuine it masked the ocean of pain behind it. "I'm fine," she said. Her pride swelled as she reported her wins, "She failed one hundred and two counts."

"One hundred and two counts over?" Jaer probed, his curiosity tinged with a darker edge.

"Over one thousand and two hundred," she replied, her voice almost buoyant with a tragic sort of pride.

The smile that had briefly danced on Jaer's lips vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and he sat heavily beside her. The weight of what those numbers represented—a tally of resilience against a backdrop of suffering—seemed to press upon him, bending his posture as he settled next to the child on the bed that was her arena of pain.

At that moment, Yeso felt a surge of protectiveness for the young girl. Her strength was remarkable, her spirit unbroken despite the cruel trials she had been subjected to. But who was she?

"Show me," Jaer demanded.

The young girl's smile faltered. "I'm fine, Ja-Ja!"

"Show me, please."

"I'm fine, there is no need…"

"Don't talk back," Jaer's rebuke was stern, yet when she turned her back gently toward him, his tone softened, tinged with paternal care. "Pull up your shirt."

The girl complied, her slender fingers trembling as she lifted the fabric. Jaer's face, along with Yeso's unseen gaze, was stricken by the sight. It was not just the fresh, angry wounds that gripped their hearts with horror but the grotesque, sprawling scars that traversed her back. Someone had cruelly stripped and cut her of her Menschen wings, the birthright of her kind. Who would dare to do such?

"I will send a healer to check on those," he said as if the words could somehow undo the tapestry of scars that adorned the girl's back.

"I'm fine," the girl repeated.

"You are not fine, Eura! You need a healer. Otherwise, you can get an infection or…"

"I'm fine, I'm used to it."

In the corner of the cell, unseen, Yeso felt a twinge in his heart, a sympathetic pang that resonated with Jaer's visible heartache. The notion that any being, let alone a young girl, should grow accustomed to such brutality was anathema to him.

How long had she been held captive in this forsaken place? What was the crime, the circumstance, or the cruel whim that led to her imprisonment? Questions spiralled in Yeso's mind, each more poignant than the last. Why was Jaer here in Whitestone? And what of his own people?

Jaer drew her close, turning her face to his. Tears traced lines down his weathered cheeks. Yeso, from his spectral vantage point, was moved by the sight—never before had he seen his friend allow such vulnerability to surface.

"I'm fine, Ja-Ja, I promise." She cradled his face, her forehead pressed against his. "She will not break me. She will never enslave me! The pain is my blade! I am the sun who burns over land, sea, and sky!"

A kiss was placed gently upon her brow, a tender blessing. Then, Jaer revealed a hidden book from within his robe. "I do have something for you..."

Her eyes lit up with anticipation, a spark of joy amidst the gloom. "Oh boy! Oh boy! Is that? Is it?"

"Between Lore and Legacy: The Mystifying Histories of the Menschen Volume Two by..." Jaer teased, drawing out the moment.

"Professor Edgar Duvencrune!" she exclaimed, unable to contain her excitement.

"That's the one!"

He opened the book to reveal passages marked with deliberate lines. "It's not censored! You can even see the real name of the author here."

"Orlo Yeso Sternacht!" The girl's voice held reverence and awe as she read out the name. Her eyes, wide with realization, then lifted to meet Yeso's own. "Orlo…"

Yeso's return to consciousness was abrupt, his senses assaulted by the harsh light coming from the ceiling and the relentless throbbing in his back. Wincing, he pushed himself upright, his hand instinctively going to his head, finding his hair still oddly short, the tactile memory a dissonant echo of his dreamscape encounter.

The bed upon which he had been lying was stained with the evidence of his wounds. His gaze swept across the room. The walls were barren—none of the desperate etchings or blue blood remained, just the cold, unforgiving surfaces of his cell.

Dropping to his knees, Yeso searched the floor, fingers seeking the hidden crevice he remembered. His hand brushed against a broken fragment of stone beneath the bed—a small victory.

With painstaking care, he wedged the shard of stone from its resting place. Stripping off his shirt, he revealed his back, a landscape of dried blood and the shadows of healed wounds. The act of unfurling his wings was an agony.

But Yeso endured, his wings stretching to span the limited space, touching each wall with the tips. Despite the pain, he rose into the air and ascended to the ceiling, his wings beating with a laboured grace.

The window, a weak point in his prison, would have been an obvious escape—but escape was not his intent. He had a different purpose.

Yeso, with the stone in hand, approached the blank wall. He scratched the surface: "I am Yeso, I am the Commander..." he etched deeply, envisioning her tracing these same letters with small, blood-stained fingers. "You are not forgotten." The wall seemed to whisper back, an echo of his silent promise to a young girl who was yet to be born. "…Eura."

> Occasionally, I must pause in my writing, leaning back in my chair to ponder the lives and beings that inhabit my pages. My words are born from testimonies whispered in confidence or inked on the letters that journey across the Great Continent to reach my desk. They paint a picture of a world vibrant with magic and shadow, a world I navigate through narrative, not experience.

>

> My parents are two such phantoms—figures I know only through the stories told and retold by others. I often find myself contemplating whether I am the son they had hoped for. Have I grown into a man who honours their legacy, or have I strayed from their envisioned path? In striving to be my best self, I hope that my words, the stories I weave, might serve as a testament to my efforts. Yet, it's an odd sentiment, this aching sense of loss for two souls I never had the chance to know. Can one truly miss those one who doesn’t remember? It's a question that lingers in the quiet moments between my lines, unanswered. ——Between Lore and Legacy: The Mystifying Histories of the Menschen Vol. II by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune