All things lose their color when the light goes out. 

The gray takes over everything. That which was bright during the day is dim and dark at night. Beauty dulls, color fades, and things grow uncertain. Morals act the same in similar losses of light. And only when the light returns are things revealed to be either beautiful or grim.

Though even in some gray areas have immense beauty and color been fabricated, been born into the world. 

Some beautiful and bright things are born in the dark.

Such as a beautiful, yet blasphemous birth of an innocent and sweet little girl, born into the dark, the gray. A slippage of morals during the gray hours, a beautiful love between a near divinity and a common woman gave way to a new life deemed sacrilege. 

Pride would seek to destroy this happenstance, but Fate would strive to save it. For this little girl was far more than the product of forbidden love, but also held the key to preparing their world for more, preparing them all for a grander fate among the Vines. 

That Fate found this girl to safety was luck is absurd to suggest, but the product of a determined mind and heart to protect someone that didn’t deserve to be the target of religious and political intrigue. 

That dark night, fires raged in the palace. Swords gleamed in the firelight, shouts and blasts of gunfire echoed through the dark halls and out across the city lights. The Capital was still asleep, and many would not even know of this attack until the morrow, but only very few or the very tired in the palace were still. A commotion brewed, the likes of which has not happened since during the Great Conquers. 

A woman scurried through the servant halls, panicked yet meticulously moving through corridors occasionally bathed in red and orange light. She opened one wood door in said corridor and slid in, turning the handle gently to not make much noise. She switched the electric lights on and a harsh white light flickered on, but barely. The light needed to get fixed, its long bulb nearing its eventual death. 

“Hello?” A male voice called, followed by shifting sheets and blankets. “Oh, it’s you. What are–” he stopped when he noticed what she carried. 

“Peace, Yor.” The woman said. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about this.”

Yor stared at her arms. “Where did you get that?” The bundle moved slightly, quiet, and mostly asleep, which is remarkable considering the evening’s events. 

“Life should be preserved, especially by us. God does not give life wantonly. We should not also take it so easily.” The woman said. 

“Dear,” Yor began. “Where did you get this child?”

She ignored him, instead gently laying the child on the table while she fetched a piece of paper to write a note and tore a thin strip off the top. She took out a pen and wrote one sentence along it. 

Yor stood in his thin sleeping robe and walked over to the table. His eyes grew fearful as his eyes quickly darted across the note. 

“Dear…this child–”

“Will live.” She said. “When others like her have not. They seek her. This way, they will think she has passed this dark evening.” 

“But considering who she is,” Yor said. “Wouldn’t she be spared?”

The woman turned and looked into Yor’s pale red eyes, reflecting in her own brown eyes. She held his gaze, a conversation taking place deep in their eyes. 

“You’re right, of course.” Yor said. “She wouldn’t survive the night. By the way, what’s happening out there? I had just finished my rounds and laid to sleep. The Fifth was particularly hungry tonight.”

“I don’t have time to talk, my love.” The woman said, then smiled.

Yor nodded. “Of course. Go.”

She tied the note to the cloth that wrapped the child, then placed her into a basket, and with a nod to Yor, slipped back out into the corridor. 

The woman clutched the basket, trying to make it seem like a load of laundry. A few groups of soldiers ran passed her in the opposite direction holding hand torches and waving forward. Other servant quarters had awoken and a few poked heads outside doors to try and see what was going on. But this woman was determined to make things right this evening, even when the supposed divine Emperor could not. 

Fate carved a path out of the palace proper for the two, like mice slipping away from a barn fire. 

At the base of the palace grounds that rose high into the sky, a taxi waited to take a new customer. 

“Where ya headed, ma’am?” The man in the front seat asked. 

“Riverside, please.” She said. The driver nodded, then pulled away from the lower curb of the servants entrance to the palace. The people in the Capital were stirring now, some lights turning on nearest to the palace as the loudness of the night began to pervade the city. It was like a slow wave of light that slowly reached up to the top of the crater walls of the city, some other faction manor lights at the edge shifting on as well. The light wave seemed to follow the taxi as it climbed the crater slowly, following a few switchback roads as it traversed the urban tiers that jutted out from the crater’s edge.

The river ran along the top edge of the crater to the west, not spilling into the crater because of some extensive duct work to divert the water farther away, while keeping its natural course. 

The taxi’s winding switchback drive ended a short distance outside the crater. The west side of the crater was relatively clear, a few entrances to the river where boats would dock as well as a small beach that was intended for recreation, but had grown to be a dirty trash heap in most spots along the artificial outcropping. The taxi stopped at this same beach, often called riverside.

The woman exited the taxi and walked a short distance to the river’s edge, occasionally stepping over trash and broken bottles. 

“I am sorry I could not do more, little one.” She said. “I must not perish tonight to keep your memory. May you be brought before the light and spared.” She hugged the child, then placed her back in the basket, lined with rubber to better float. 

Then, she gently pushed the basket into the river. It was a calm river, fortunately, and was largely slowed by the alterations done to it this close to the crater’s edge. 

“May fate find you home.” The woman said, then stood there for a while watching the basket drift away, a seed finding a place to be planted. 

The sun finally peaked over the crater’s edge onto the city, bathing the buildings in a beautiful morning, yellow light. The light shone on the woman’s face, a few tears inching down. A part of her screamed to let the child go, no guarantee she would survive, but somehow, she knew it would be alright, that Fate had all in hands now.

Feeling at peace with what she had done, the woman turned and walked away, determined to walk the long way back to the palace, breathing in the morning air knowing that her actions had purpose, had meaning.