It was Avelyn who first broke the stillness, the edge of her robe brushing the floor softly as she rose and stepped forward. “It’s quiet,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. Her voice wasn’t calm, though she tried to make it so.

“Quiet doesn’t mean safe,” one of the Elders muttered. It might have been Tiran—his voice always carried a tremor when he was unsure, though he’d never admit it. He stood near the far edge of the semicircle, his shoulders stiff, his eyes locked on the Orb.

Nirion let out a slow breath. He turned to face them, though he kept half an eye on the crystal as if he, too, wasn’t ready to trust it. “It is as it should be,” he said. “The Orb is stable. It’s listening. Learning.”

“Learning what?” Avelyn pressed, her gaze never leaving the crystal.

The glow from the Orb had faded to something gentler, but it hadn’t gone. It was still there, like a distant fire that had banked but refused to die. Its faint pulse was slower now, almost restful, but it wasn’t comforting. It was too alive for that. Too aware.

No one answered her question. Perhaps no one knew how.

“We’ve touched something we don’t understand,” Avelyn said finally. She turned to Nirion then, her expression sharp, her voice low enough that it didn’t carry far. “You felt it too. Don’t deny it.”

Nirion didn’t deny it. Not outright. Instead, he turned back toward the Orb, his face unreadable. “Understanding comes in time,” he said, almost to himself. “This is only the beginning.”

The words didn’t settle the way he might have hoped. The Elders shifted uneasily, exchanging glances that held too many unspoken words. No one wanted to say it, whatever it was that needed saying. Even those who had stood so firmly at Nirion’s side—who had nodded at every declaration, who had leaned toward him with quiet, unshakable faith—seemed uneasy now. They didn’t challenge him, not openly. But you could see the doubt creeping in, in the way their hands twitched, or their gazes darted too quickly to the ground.

One by one, they stepped back. First Tiran, then the others, as though distance might give them answers that proximity could not. Only Nirion and Avelyn stayed where they were, standing on opposite sides of the crystal. She watched it like a hawk, her hands curled into loose fists at her sides. Nirion, though—he looked at it differently. He wasn’t watching it. He was seeing it.

Nirion finally turned, his movements slow, deliberate. He didn’t meet Avelyn’s eyes. Instead, his gaze swept over the others. “We’ve taken the first step. That’s all this is. A beginning. What comes next will reveal itself in time.” He paused, letting the words hang there, waiting for them to settle. “The stars have not led us astray.”

But the reassurance settled awkwardly in the room. It didn’t seem to reach them. Even Nirion, for all his composure, seemed diminished in that moment, his certainty dimmed just enough to leave a whisper of doubt lingering in the air. You couldn’t help but wonder if he believed his own words—or if he, too, felt the ground shifting beneath him.

The Chamber emptied slowly, though no one seemed in any particular hurry to leave. The Shamuraks were the first to go, gathering their tools with hands that moved on instinct, their faces unreadable. Some glanced back at the crystal as they passed, shoulders hunched slightly, as if trying to make themselves smaller. As if the thing they had helped create might notice them.

Nirion stood watching the crystal as though it might reveal something more. He didn’t speak, didn’t move. It was hard to say if he was pleased. His face held nothing but stillness, his eyes fixed on the way the carved runes seemed to pulse with the faintest light.

When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, the words meant for no one but the Orb itself.

“Now we begin.”

The first sign was the light. A flicker, faint and quick enough that anyone not watching closely might have missed it. But the Council noticed. They were already looking, already holding their breath as though something in the air had warned them before it even began.

It started small, just a shimmer across the Orb’s surface. The ripples of color stilled for a moment, pooling into something quiet and dark. And then the glow came back—not soft this time, not like water catching sunlight. It was sharper, harder. A thin seam of brilliance ran along the crystal’s curves. The light gathered itself slowly, coiling just beneath the surface. And then, without warning, the Orb rose.

It didn’t lurch or stumble; there was no tremor in the stone beneath it. It lifted as though gravity had forgotten its claim on it, spinning slowly as it floated free of the pedestal. The light it held spilled out now, casting faint, fractured patterns across the polished floor. Above it, the mirrored dome caught every shimmer and sent them spiraling back down, turning the air into something alive, as though the Chamber had been filled with starlight and set to motion.

The hum started then—low, deep, a vibration that moved through your chest, through the walls, through the floor beneath your feet. It wasn’t loud, not at first, but it was there. A song and a scream, someone would call it later. A melody of creation and destruction intertwined, impossible to separate.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The Council stood frozen, suspended in the same air that seemed to hold the Orb aloft. Their faces caught the fractured light, deepening the furrows and lines in their skin until they looked carved, resembling statues watching something far older than themselves. Avelyn stepped back, though it was barely noticeable, just a half-shift of her weight, as though she was trying not to flinch. Her eyes never left the Orb.

Nirion, of course, stepped closer. He stopped just shy of the floating crystal, his hands at his sides, his face calm, but his eyes—his eyes held something that was hard to name. Not awe. Not fear. Recognition, maybe.

“The bridge is open,” he said softly.

The words hung there, more a breath than a statement. The kind of thing you might mutter when you’ve glimpsed something you weren’t sure was meant for you.

The hum grew heavier, its rhythm shifting in a way that felt deliberate. The Orb spun faster—not by much, but enough to make the air around it feel alive, as if it was gathering itself. Its glow sharpened, spilling outward in thin, restless lines of light that darted across the chamber. Light stretched into thin, dancing lines, flickering across the walls, the ceiling, the faces of the Council. Patterns appeared again, strange and shifting—lines that hinted they might be letters in a language no one remembered. They lingered, just long enough to vanish.

Some of the Elders moved now—subtle, uneasy movements. A hand lifted to shield an eye. A glance exchanged, quick and nervous. The hum pressed into them, into everything. It wasn’t violent, not yet, but it was relentless, tugging at the edges of things in ways no one dared to address.

Nirion lifted a hand. Not to touch the Orb—no one would dare that—but to reach toward it, just barely. The movement was slow, reverent, as though he wasn’t sure if it would allow him to come any closer.

The Orb spun faster still, its glow pouring light in all directions now, brighter and colder, until the mirrored dome above seemed to disappear entirely. For a moment, there was nothing but the Orb, nothing but the light, and the hum that had grown into something vast and hungry.

And then, just as suddenly, it stilled.

The light dimmed. The hum softened. The Orb hung there, suspended, quiet. Its surface pulsed faintly now, like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to anything human.

The Council let out their breaths in uneven shudders, the sound of it filling the space.

Avelyn was the first to speak, though her voice was softer this time. “What have we made?”

Nirion didn’t look at her. He just kept his eyes on the Orb. But for the first time, something flickered in his gaze—a hesitation, a quiet understanding of something he couldn’t yet explain.

“The future,” he said.

Above them, unnoticed, the stars began their slow drift away from perfect alignment.

Eventually, the Council began to leave, one by one. No one spoke to Nirion as they passed him, and he did not turn to acknowledge them. Avelyn was the last to move, lingering longer than the others. She watched him for a moment, something unreadable crossing her face, before she finally turned and stepped out into the shadows of the corridor.

Outside, the city had changed.

It’s odd, the way people can feel something shifting before they even know what it is. How they’ll freeze mid-sentence, or pause halfway through a step, or a breath—and look up as though expecting to see something that isn’t there yet. The towers still gleamed, their smooth, strange surfaces reflecting the faintest hints of starlight. The streets were still there, still patterned in their perfect lines that pointed toward the heavens. The gardens still bloomed. But something had shifted.

In the streets, vendors stilled behind their stalls, their hands frozen above scales and coin boxes. The fruit in their baskets—bruised oranges, deep green figs, pale apples—seemed brighter under the strange light that settled over the city, as though it, too, had felt the shift. The air didn’t move. Even the smoke from the lanterns in the square curled upward, thin and uncertain, before going still.

Somewhere, a child started crying. Not loudly—not loudly, just a soft, broken sound. The kind a parent hushes quickly because it feels like the wrong kind of noise for the moment. And maybe it was. The streets, always so full of voices, had hushed down to nearly nothing—just the sound of sandals scuffing along, the faint creak of cart wheels, and the occasional distant clang of metal that didn’t seem to belong to anyone.

People looked at each other the way they do when a storm is coming—heads tilted just slightly, brows drawn, as though someone else might have the answer they didn’t. No one said anything. Not yet. Words would’ve felt out of place, too clumsy for the strange quiet threading its way through Elurinda.

At the edge of the plateau, a woman named Mira stood on a balcony high above the valley, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She had lived in Elurinda her whole life, and in all those years, she’d never seen the stars this bright. They didn’t just shine—they burned, sharp and deliberate, as if they were closer than they’d ever been.

She didn’t like it.

Her husband found her there an hour later, his voice breaking the stillness. “You’re cold. Come inside.”

She didn’t answer him right away. Her eyes stayed fixed on the stars, her fingers twisting the hem of her shawl. “Do you feel it?” she asked finally.

He frowned. “Feel what?”

“The air.” She hesitated. “It’s changed.”

Her husband laughed softly, shaking his head as he stepped up beside her. “You’ve been listening to too many stories. It’s only the alignment. The sages knew it was coming.”

Mira didn’t argue, but her eyes didn’t leave the sky. The hum was there too, faint but insistent, threading through the stillness—a quiet question without words. She wrapped her arms around herself and turned away.

Below them, the city slept—or tried to. Some houses stayed lit far longer than they usually did. People sat at tables with hands curled around cups of cooling tea, listening for a sound they couldn’t name. Others lay in their beds with eyes open to the dark, counting breaths until the morning came.

The Orb had awoken. And whether they knew it or not, the city was awake with it.

They say it was Avelyn who spoke first after that night. Not in the Hall, not in front of the Council, but later, in the dark corners of the Great Library where the air carried the dry scent of parchment and dust. She didn’t say much, only a handful of words to one of her trusted sages. But those who overheard never forgot them.

“The crystal is listening to us,” she said. “And I think it’s waiting.”

It’s strange to think of something as vast as the sky being contained in such a small thing—a single fragment, a vessel carved by mortal hands. But when people talked about the Orb in the days that followed, that’s how it felt. As though it held far more than it was ever meant to contain. As if something had been caught and pressed into its core, something that didn’t belong on this side of the stars.