Later, in her room, Ellowyn sat huddled by the small window, gazing at Yal Elunore's sparkling lights. They had looked so lovely once. They were flickering now, like dying stars.
The door opened with a creak.
"Aeryn," she inhaled as she recognized her brother's shape from her window's reflection.
Quietly, he walked inside and shut the door. "I assumed you would be awake."
Ellowyn didn't turn from the window. Ellowyn pressed a quivering hand to the glass and whispered, "Do you ever wonder if this is all there is? gathering ether, bending lessons... keeping a Dome alive, for what?" "They say we protect Skyland, but how? We just... exist."
Aeryn approached and took a seat next to her. At first, he remained silent. Simply allow the silence to last.
"It's not our place to question," he said at the end.
"But Talanar did," she remarked sourly looking him straight in the eye. "And he's gone now."
Aeryn's mouth clenched. He turned his head away.
"You know something," Ellowyn insisted. "You understand the true meaning of re-education."
Her voice was urgent and low as she leaned closer. "Aeryn... what is it, really?"
His jaw was clenched as he gazed at her. "I..." he stammered, then closed his eyes for a moment, smothering the words within.
"Just forget it," he said in a raspy voice. "It's best not to discuss it."
"Aeryn!" Ellowyn said firmly.
He interrupted her by shaking his head. He grew into a strained whisperer. "All you need to know... is you never come back the same." he said with a sharp exhale that split the room in two.
With a sudden sense of smallness against the vastness, Ellowyn hugged herself as a cold pit blossomed in her chest, revealing a truth her brother was afraid to mention.
She muttered angrily, "There must be more. Records. Truths. Something more than the lessons they teach us."
As though the night itself were listening, Aeryn turned and looked out the window. "Ellie... This conversation is dangerous. You have no idea how profound it is."
"More than you think," she said abruptly, her voice shaking.
"Look," she whispered, grabbing his sleeve and pointing through the window.
The city below moved in a precise, well-practiced rhythm, with guardians on patrol, merchants cleaning their wares, scholars crossing bridges, polite nods, measured steps, and serene, completely empty faces.
"They follow the same patterns every day," Ellowyn said thickly. "Is this our sole purpose in life?"
Desperate, she turned to him and asked, "Aeryn, does it feel right? Really? To wake up and work to maintain the Dome while we have no idea what's going on in Skyland?"
He remained silent, but for the first time in a long time, Ellowyn noticed the tension in his jaw and the slight pause in his speech.
"I listened to every lecture," she continued, "and I read the scrolls." They discuss maintaining equilibrium and safeguarding Sylvanmyr. However, have you ever witnessed them taking any action to help? Have you ever seen evidence that the Dome or anything we do benefits anyone other than ourselves or Skyland?"
He remained silent, but his prideful, stiff stance cracked.
With a raw voice, Ellowyn moved closer and said, "If we don't say anything, Aeryn... If we act as though nothing is amiss... We're already dead on the inside."
His hands shook at his sides, and for a long, agonizing moment, he struggled with the indisputable truth, duty, and fear.
At last he let out a sharp sigh and ran a hand through his hair.
"There's a place," he muttered, exhaling sharply and running a hand through his hair. "It's beneath the Council Hall." A lesser-level archive... concealed. Protected. Inside, only council members are permitted."
"Take me there," Ellowyn pleaded, her heart leaping as she grabbed his hands.
"Ellie no!" Aeryn said, flinching slightly as horror flashed across his face. "That would mean exile. Prison for life or Worse."
"Please," she said in a trembling voice, "if we don't look for the truth right away... What exactly are we protecting?"
Aeryn looked at her, conflicted, wanting to protect her, wanting to tell her to forget, but knowing deep down that it was too late.
"Tonight" he said hoarsely. "After the third chime to the Council's south courtyard. I'll light a spark with two flicker. That's your cue."
Ellowyn nodded, her eyes gleaming with fierce resolve.
"Be careful, Ellie," Aeryn said in a barely audible whisper after he hesitated. "Some doors... once you open them... you can never shut again."
Then he got up and walked out of her room, leaving her standing there by herself, her heart pounding with fear and a horrible, unchangeable hope.
-break-
Above it all, the Ether continued to pulse faintly, distantly, like watchful veins of silver across the sky, while the city slept, shrouded in dense mist that muddled the lanterns into soft, shivering halos.
Every creak and every gust of wind made Ellowyn's nerves jangle as she walked across the rooftops like a shadow, the damp tiles slick under her boots.
She finally saw it from a high balcony across the courtyard: A tiny spark flickering once, then twice—Aeryn's signal! Knowing that there would be no turning back made her breath catch painfully in her throat.
The mist thickened, clinging to her skin and swallowing her footsteps as she slipped down the side of a building, holding on to the twisted ivy vines that clung stubbornly to the building's stones.
Aeryn was waiting, huddled between two columns at the base entrance of the south courtyard. "This way," he muttered, barely breathing.
The air smelled of earth and old dust, and above, the faint thrum of the Dome pressed down like a heartbeat muffled by stone. He led her through a narrow servant's passage, a corridor so tight they had to stoop, the walls cold and damp against their shoulders.
The temperature dropped as they went down a spiral stairwell, the steps slippery with curling roots and moss, and Ellowyn pulled her cloak tighter, the ruined scarf tucked away near her chest like a grief amulet.
After a long descent of the stairs, they arrived at the bottom, where the passage ended at a heavy ironwood door that had been smoothed by time. Carved across it were flowing glyphs, the ancient language of the Eldians, now barely taught except in the oldest lessons. The markings shimmered under the Ether light, pulsing faintly, as if alive.
The glyphs flared cold, silvery-blue, and the door shuddered open with a low, reluctant groan as Aeryn flattened his palm against the wood with a shaky hand.
Aeryn's face was grim as he turned to Ellowyn.
His voice was tight as he said, "You'll have minutes at most." "I will knock three times if someone is approaching." Ellie, you run. No questions. Promise me."
With her heart thumping so violently that she thought it might shatter her ribs, Ellowyn nodded and glanced at her brother, noticing the fear he was trying so hard to conceal.
"Thank you," she muttered.
With a final, gentle thud, the door closed behind her, enclosing her in the forbidden place where the truth had been buried, and before he could respond, she slipped through the opening into the waiting darkness.
-break-
The air inside hit her like a wall, cold, dense, humming with a strange pressure, as if the stones themselves held their breath. t smelled of metal and parchment, damp stone and old Ether. The weight was so heavy she almost staggered, her chest tightening as she inhaled the age of the place.
Darkness smothered the archive. Ellowyn closed her eyes and pressed her palms together, fingers trembling, and whispered a chant, words she knew from herchildhood. The Ether between her hands stirred, glinting like stardust, weaving into a fragile orb of light. It hovered over her palms, casting a dim glow through the thick dark.
With the light shelves rose around her, endless rows of scrolls and tomes. Some were bound in cracked leather, others in silk. Some looked ready to crumble at a touch.
She stepped quietly, as she moved between the towering shelves, brushing her fingers along titles written in the old Eldian tongue. Most were indecipherable.
— Treatise on Kosmic Flows, Chronicles of Ether Weaving, The Constellations of Sylvanmyr —
but none held what she sought.
Nothing about Skyland, nor about the lands beyond the Dome. Only endless treatises on Ether, council edicts, histories scrubbed clean.
Despair starting to flow to her throat as she pushed deeper with her the Ether light flickered, dimming, dancing arround her.
Then, something glowed in the corner of her eye, a faint pulse of gold in the darkness.
She turned, breath catching.
A single scroll rested atop a lone pedestal, half-swallowed by the gloom.
Unlike the others, it was pristine, bound between plates of hammered gold, etched with twin sigils of sun and moon, their lines himmering softly, like starlight.
It pulsed softly.
A slow, rhythmic thrum.
not heard, but felt deep in her bones, like the ghost of a whale's song trembling through stone.
It called to her.
Ellowyn moved forward, barely aware of her own steps, with every step the air thickened, specks of Ether gathering around her in a soft halo.
When her fingertips brushed the golden casing, the pulsing deepened.
Thrum - Thrum
A low, resonant chime filling the vault like a held breath released while Her Ether light flared wildly and the scroll rose from its pedestal, floating with a gentle grace, as if recognizing her.
Hands trembling, Ellowyn guided it to a central lectern worn smooth by countless years, carved with faded spirals of old energy. The scroll settled with a sound like a sigh through ancient leaves.
Heart pounding, Ellowyn leaned in and unfastened the clasps.
The golden plates slid apart with a reluctant groan.
The scroll unfurled beneath her hands, revealing…
A blank, velvety parchment, glowing faintly under the flickering Ether light.
The scroll's soft thrum faded, leaving only the hollow echo of her own breathing.
Ellowyn blinked in confusion and discouragement to find nothing after such an intense event. Then, almost without thinking, her hand found the Rikuin's scarf tied close to her chest.
She closed her eyes, sighed, and whispered.
"I wish...I wish I could have seen your village. Just once."
The words barely left her lips when the scroll stirred as if answering.
A pulse of golden light burst from the parchment, so sudden and fierce she leaned back.
The blank surface rippled like disturbed water, and then, like rivers flooding across dry land, lines of glowing blue ink blossomed into view.
The room filled with a warm hum, low and resonant, a sound like a distant whale's cry, vibrating in her bones. The scent of wild rain and deep forests wrapped around her, as if the scroll was breathing life into the room itself.
Then the images came:
A hidden village, deep beneath the forest floor, nestled in a secret fold between the roots of ancient Ether Trees.Soft tunnels carved by time and care, their walls glowing with veins of living light.Small, cozy dwellings tucked into the roots, their doorways framed by moss and crystal blossoms that pulsed faintly with Ether.Kinitu children darting between luminous pools, laughing with ethereal animals — deer with vine-like antlers, foxes with feathered tails.Elders weaving protective wards into the roots, whispering ancient songs into the soil to strengthen the Blue Forest above.
Lines of script shimmered between the images, each word a breathing against her skin:
"Guardians of the Deep Roots.
Weavers of Preservation.
They who cradle the wounded heart of Skyland."
Ellowyn pressed a hand over her chest as she whispered
"All this time, we thought we were protecting what was precious… But it was them."
She kept on thinking, why?
Why were they never told?
Why the lies that the Kinitus were more than just wanderers?
With this truth, Ellowyn realized that the Kinitus were actually caretakers, guardians who supported the balance and nurtured the land, the Ether, the Blue Forest.
On that she thought bitterly
"Instead of helping them, instead of protect them, we closed our doors"
Ellowyn feeling the rush of her emotions of this discovery, she felt the hunger to know more. She searched inside her cloak and pulled the blue feather Rikuin gaver her.
"If this works..." she whispered, voice trembling, "Show me where this came from." she requested with a firm voice while holding the feather toward the scrol.
A soft pulse answered her as the scroll brightened, rebuilding the new images and lettering as if of blue ribbons.
The scent changed, sharper now, colder, mountain rain and wind off stone.
Then new images appeared:
Misty hills rolling endlessly beneath a storm-lit sky. Great, lumbering shapes, creatures feathered and vast, moving with silent grace through silver grasses. Their plumes shimmered like starlight, and their solemn golden eyes seemed to gaze into eternity.
New scripts woven on the scroll:
"Aelariths[1].
Ether-Bears found on the high mountains of Glimmerthund.
Who keep the balance from other endemic life to overgrow"
Ellowyn gasped, clutching a feather to her chest. As if putting the dots together she understood now. These creatures did not belong to Sylvanmyr. Could it be? Did they leave their home and travel to Sylvanmyr? why? a sign, a warning.
Just as Rikuin had feared.
Ellowyn stood there trembling, the last images of the Aelariths fading into the mist around her.
The scroll's golden pulse dimmed slightly, as if waiting.
Ellowyng felt that there was something off, and this could be her chance to look for further answers. Slowly, she whispered into the silence - "What dangers threaten Skyland?"
But this time nothing happened. Ellowyn blicked in confusion and wondering. Did she asked wrong? Was her question too broad? How would she re-phrase it better?
Her heart sank the longer she was thinking and The scroll remained still, no pulse, no answer. Feeling as if time is running out.
Then she thought
Maybe... maybe it wasn't about asking the right fear. but … Perhaps about a truth?
She closed her eyes, pressing her forehead lightly against the edge of the lectern, desperate, aching with hopes to finally get some answers. And her thoughts kept on asking.
What am I not seeing?... What do I need to know? What do I want to know?
Then, a memory of an old lessons came unbidden:
The Eldians, guardians of balance, protectors of peace withing the dome of Sylvanmyr...
Her breath caught. Very slowly, she lifted her head, voice shaking she whispered next.
"What is the duty of the Eldians?"
She bareilly completed her question when the scroll ignited with blinding brilliance. Her Ether orb extinguished at once as symbols exploded from the scroll, swirling into a roaring storm, blue and silver letters weaving around her in dizzying spirals arround her.
The air thickened, heavy with the scent of ancient rains, charred earth, and the sharpness of Ether raw from the veins of the world. Her hair lifted in the current as the ether wrapped her in a cocoon of shimmering light.
And then the vision struck as her eyes were transported into a realm for her to see.
First came the Ether Tree, towering beyond mountains, its roots burrowed deep into the bones of Skyland, its branches a cathedral of living light. Each root pulsed with life, sending rivers of Ether through the land, nourishing forests, seas, skies, and all living thing.
Ellowyn gasped, tears springing to her eyes for the beautiful sight.
Beneath its massive boughs, figures appeared, radiant and proud. The Eldians in flowing robes of silver and deep blue, kneeling with hands pressed to the roots.
Above them, a luminous towering being of silver and stormlight was present, this was Shiruba U Windo, the First Guardian, blessing them with purposed as he spoke to them:
"Protect, Nurture and Preserve.
The Ether Tree is the heart.
The heart sustains Skyland.
Skyland sustains us all."
But then.
The light darkened.
A jagged tear ripped across the vision, and from the sundered skies poured blackness, a horrific howling dark shape with ten black long tails lingered as letters appeared in front of Ellowyn's eyes.
Drako
A beast of seething shadows, crowned in broken light with roar of pure corruption for the land and Ether.
Ellowyn staggered back as waves of darkness flooded the world below.
She saw it all unfold in a blur of horror:
-Shiruba swallowed by shadow, vanishing into a spiral of black and crimson.
-The Ether Tree's glow lowly dimming, its roots shriveling as corruption gnawed at its core.
-Cities crumbling. Fields rotting into ash.
Then
-The Adanels building stone cities in Firya, raising walls high against the growing night.
-The Turocs retreating to the volcanic strongholds of Mogger, forging weapons not for conquest, but for survival.
-Glimmerthund falling to ruin, claimed by the dragonkin and the beasts of broken Ether.
And the Eldians.
Her people.
Ellowyn choked on a sob as she saw them not fighting. Not protecting. But Fleeing.
Building vast towers of crystal.
Shaping the Kosmic Dome an enormous shimmering barrier, encasing themselves away from the world they had been meant to serve.
Lines of ancient script carved themselves into the storm of visions:
"Abandonment.
Fear.
Pride.
Shelter bought at the price of silence."
The storm of scripts slowing down, placing Ellowyn down where she crumbled on her knees. Understanding now the dark truths of their people.
"We left the Ether Tree alone.
We left Skyland to rot to… to that monster…
We chose to hide"
Just when it seemed the scroll had finished, it revealed more truths not yet recorded in history. Ellowyn's eyes widened as new, harrowing images flared to life.
-Skyland withering under the slow, inevitable march of shadows consuming it all.
-The Ether Tree dying, its final glow fading as Skyland rots.
-The Dome shattering like broken glass as Ether drained away, leaving nothing to shield the proud, empty towers.
And then the final warning appeared, scrawled in letters so large they filled the air, burning like fire:
"When the heart falls, the silent heavens fall with it.
None shall escape.
None shall endure."
The swirling letters began to slow, retreating back toward the scroll's surface. The light dimmed. The scent of rain and burned wood lingered.
Ellowyn knelt there, trembling. Silent tears streaked her face, dripping onto the cold stone floor.
Her whole life, every lesson, every tradition, had been built on a lie of fear and pride.
As she struggled to steady her breath, a sound stirred the silence. Light, hurried footsteps. Aeryn burst through the door, his face pale with terror.
"Ellie!" he hissed. "They're moving. Someone's awake. We have to go, now!"
Aeryn froze when he saw her, still kneeling in the glow's fading warmth, her face blank with horror. He rushed to her side, gripping her shoulders. "What did you see?" he whispered.
Ellowyn clutched the scarf and feather, her entire body shaking. She looked up, and the words spilled from her, raw and broken:
"Terrible things are coming.
And if we don't act...
Not just us. All of Skyland will be lost."
Aeryn's expression hardened with fear, but beneath it, something shifted. A crack, the first crack, in his perfect loyalty. He pulled her up, squeezing her hand.
"We'll talk later," he said. "Now, run!"
Together, they slipped into the misty corridors, leaving behind the silent archive... and the truth that would never again stay buried.
[1] Field Notes: Aelariths
Ethereal Lifeform – Native to the Glimmerthund (now Drakelands) Range
Aelariths are majestic Etherian mammals native to the peaks and rocky valleys of the Glimmerthund Mountains. Bearing traits of both bear and bird, they have powerful bodies covered in dense, shimmering blue feathers that blend into stone-gray terrain, granting them near-invisibility against cliffs.
Living in close-knit packs, Aelariths play a crucial ecological role by selectively hunting small mammals and vermin, preserving balance without overhunting. Their strong claws allow them to scale cliffs easily, nesting where Ether flows are strongest.
Despite their size, Aelariths are calm and avoid conflict, revered by early mountain peoples as silent guardians of longevity and balance.
— Excerpt from the Glimmerthund Ethereal Bestiary, Vol. IV