The wall was thick, almost thirty steps wide, and rose roughly fifty meters into the sky. It was built from polished blocks of green graphite, cut and fitted with a precision the first wall hadn't bothered with. None of the moss or creeping growth that covered the outer layer was present here. The entrance was just as grand as the scale demanded. Two metal gates stood open, each door roughly the size of the church in Velthoria.
Stepping from the first layer into the second was stepping between two different worlds.
The most successful mortals lived here and it showed at a glance. Apartment buildings had all but disappeared, replaced by single family homes set back from the road with gardens and open grass. A strip of forest perhaps a hundred steps wide lined the inner edge of the second layer, and birds moved between the trees with no particular urgency, their song carrying easily through air that felt noticeably cleaner than what he had left behind.
In the eyes of other mortals this was the upper class. Lawyers, business owners, people whose professions were impressive enough to earn them distance from the noise below.
If Kael hadn't awakened as a Luminaire, he might have been content living his life out here in peace.
He almost laughed.
"How simple I was back then."
Though even now, with his ambitions aimed at a peak so far away he couldn't see it, he understood the mind of his younger self. He had spent those years knocking on door after door asking for leftovers, anything to feed himself and Cassandra. He never got enough for both of them. So he would make what he had, go to sleep immediately after so she couldn't protest, and travel to the library the next morning on an empty stomach to sit and teach himself to read.
Thinking back, it felt like neglect. He knew it wasn't. The feeling remained regardless.
Kael had never received the education he deserved. How was a nine year old supposed to teach a seven year old? He had to learn first. That was the reasoning he had given himself. But the truth underneath it was simpler and harder to look at. It pained him to see her so underprivileged. In some part of himself he had always blamed what happened to their parents on his own failures, and Cassandra reminded him of their mother, of the future she would never see. Watching her grow older without improving, only made the weight of it settle heavier.
He had to read more. So he could teach her.
Kael walked through a garden arch covered in thorned roses.
A hedge enclosed grass covered hills, making the space feel more like a room than a park. Carefully kept trees and gardens dotted the grounds, and mortals rested on blankets, reading and picnicking in the afternoon light.
Kael walked to a statue at the center. A woman in a long dress, suspended mid-air, a massive pillar rising behind her. Her hair was long and weightless, drifting as though caught in a current rather than carved from stone, her fingertips pressed together in what might have been contemplation or the opening of a fighting stance. The hair cascaded far below her waist, and the dress with it.
It had been carved from white and gold marble with such care that it wouldn't have surprised him to find organs inside it.
He circled it slowly, his arm folded behind his back, looking for a signature or a mark of any kind. There was nothing. It had been made to honour the woman, not the artist.
Kael straightened and looked around.
The mortals all appeared occupied. Laughing, reading, entirely at ease. But as his gaze moved across the space he could see it. Bodies stiffening. Voices dropping. Eyes sliding to anything but him.
The second layer wasn't freedom for mortals. It was simply a more comfortable place to pretend.
His eyes settled on a teenage girl with golden hair who was clearly trying not to look at him and failing. He raised a hand.
Her friend leaned over and whispered something. The girl set her book down and walked over, wearing sandals and a simple flower dress.
"H— How can I be of help to you, sir?"
Her voice was soft. The calm in it was forced.
"What's your name?"
"Sylvia." She managed.
Her eyes moved uncertainly around him before landing on the Eireindaile crest on his shoulder. Her breath caught. She straightened and tried to put on a more serious expression than she was really capable of.
"Sylvia Alesto. Daughter of Elsa and Aundrey Alesto." She introduced herself again, this time with more intention behind it.
Kael nodded approvingly.
"Valerian, of the family Eireindaile." Kael said, turning toward the statue. "I only just arrived in the city, and while history interests me, I can't put a finger on who this woman is for the life of me. Would you happen to know it?"
Sylvia blinked. What kind of Luminaire behaved like this?
For a moment she said nothing, her mind apparently blank. Then she smoothed her dress with both hands and turned toward the statue the way someone turns toward a school project they have actually prepared for.
"We don't actually know her name. They teach us that her name would be wasted on us." She paused. "All we really know are the legends."
She was trying to control her breathing and not quite managing it, painfully aware of how attentively the noble was listening. A single wrong word could mean anything.
Kael laughed softly and gave her a pat on the back. "Gods, stop being so stiff. Tell me about the legends."
Behind them, Sylvia's friend nearly lost her footing at the gesture.
Sylvia swallowed and began.
"She's known as the Pilaster of Eventide. Hundreds, if not thousands of years before any of us were born." She caught herself. "Before I was born." She corrected quietly, then pressed on. "Her father owned the Olea mountain chain in the northern part of the western continent. They say he was a powerful Luminaire from the Rule pathway. Carel, I think his name was."
She fiddled with the hem of her dress.
"As time passed her father only grew stronger, and with strength came hunger for more. He gathered his two brothers, awakened them as Luminaires, and taught them himself. A few decades later the three of them had brought half the western continent to its knees. That's when the noble families began appearing, combining their strength and forming alliances just to stand against them."
Kael's full attention was on her. She didn't seem to notice the tension anymore, carried along by her own story.
"That's when the Pilaster of Eventide was born. Carel's daughter. The woman in the statue." She continued. "But as she grew older something changed in him. The hunger started to fade. He began treasuring her more than anything else, and eventually he stopped entirely. His brothers had screamed at him to come back to fight the remaining families of the west, but he refused every time."
Sylvia had begun using her hands now, gesturing as the story pulled her forward.
"Even through all of it, the three brothers remained on good standing. Carel had made them who they were, after all. They loved the Pilaster of Eventide too, or so it's told. Until one of them overheard a conversation between Carel and his daughter. Carel had promised her that when everything was finished, he would hand all of their power into her hands."
She let that land for a moment.
"On that blood moon they came for him together. Both of them. The only words he is said to have spoken were, 'Not you too, brothers.'"
She paused.
"Eventually she found her father's body hanging from a tree. Not a single sign of struggle. Perhaps they had promised not to harm her, in exchange for that. The Pilaster of Eventide collapsed to her knees and held him. It's said she held him for weeks, until his neck finally gave way from the rope."
Sylvia's voice had gone quieter without her noticing.
"That's when she turned her grief outward. Toward herself first, then toward the heavens. For years she simply sat beside her father's decomposing body, cursing the sky for letting her be born so that he could die. And when the heavens refused to answer, when they simply stayed silent, she went there herself."
She paused again, longer this time.
"Then there's a gap in the story. A large one. Only years later did anyone record seeing her again, descending from the heavens completely changed. Her hair fairer, her skin paler, her expression worn in a way it hadn't been before. And behind her, a pillar that hadn't ever existed before."
Sylvia was smiling by the end of it, lost in the telling.
Then she caught herself. Her cheeks flushed and she straightened, remembering precisely who she had been talking to.
"Anyway. That's how the story goes." She cleared her throat. "I've always found it strange how much emphasis they put on teaching it, and making her known, when we don't even know her name."
Her nerves returned when Kael said nothing.
Eventually she bowed.
"Em. Sir Valerian, would it be alright if I left?" She pointed back over her shoulder. Her friend had collapsed onto the blanket, apparently undone by the experience of watching someone be so stupidly careless in front of a noble and survive it.
"Of course, of course. I'm sure she'll recover." Kael laughed and smiled warmly. "Thank you for telling me this. If you see me around again, don't be shy."
Unwilling to meet his eyes, she turned with a faint smile and excused herself.
Kael looked at the statue with a deep expression.
He recognised the pillar.
He recognised that woman.