The day the second princess of Solhara was born, the kingdom bloomed.
From the queen’s chamber, where her cries first rang out, vines of flowering plants unfurled with unnatural speed, their blossoms bursting into impossible hues—lavender-tinged gold, glowing blue, pure white edged in crimson. The earth itself seemed to hum with approval. It was as if the world recognized something ancient stirring once more.
Her father, King Thalan—renowned across the continent for his rare mastery of both wind and fire—lifted the infant in his arms with reverence. Her mother, Queen Elowen, whose magic could coax life into a dying forest or mend shattered bone with a mere breath, wept with joy. And Kaeyla, the older sister by five years, clung to the bedframe, promising the sleeping babe she would be her sword and shield for life.
“She is…” the Queen whispered, holding her newborn against her chest, her voice dazed and reverent, “…a gift from the gods.”
The King stood beside her, his broad hand trembling as he brushed the baby’s cheek. “She’ll be named Aelira,” he said, his voice thick with wonder. “Light of the dawn.”
Beside them, Kaeyla, peered over the blankets with gleaming eyes. She touched her baby sister’s tiny hand with cautious fingers and swore, “I’ll protect her forever.”
The court rejoiced. A festival was declared across the kingdom. Musicians played, poets wept, nobles and commoners alike raised glasses in celebration of the second princess—the miracle child.
But joy does not last unchallenged.
During the welcome feast in the Grand Hall, where banners waved and laughter echoed, a sudden hush fell over the gathering. The clack of a cane on marble shattered the revelry. All turned as a solitary figure entered—the Queen’s estranged brother, Vaelen.
He had not stepped foot in the palace since her wedding. A figure cloaked in silence and suspicion, he was known only through tales whispered between scholars and soldiers. The astrologist. The seer. The exile.
His cane struck once more.
“Stop the music,” he said quietly. Yet it carried across the hall like thunder.
The Queen, still cradling Aelira, stood slowly, disbelief on her face. “Vaelen? What… what are you doing here?”
He did not answer. He ascended the stairs, step by deliberate step, and gazed at the newborn child.
His voice cracked like dry parchment. “That child should not be allowed to live.”
Gasps erupted.
“You dare—!” the King roared, stepping forward.
Vaelen raised his cane and pointed directly at Aelira. “She is not just a child. She is a fragment of something far older—an ego of the god of flame reborn in flesh. I’ve seen it. The palace will burn. The Queen will die. You will die. And the throne will crumble beneath ash.”
The Queen’s face hardened. “Enough.”
“Listen to me, Elowen. I don’t come to threaten—I come to warn. I’ve lived apart from the world to see it more clearly. You call her a blessing, but she’s a faultline wrapped in silk.”
The King placed a hand protectively around Elowen’s shoulder. “We would sooner fall than forsake our daughter. Leave, Vaelen, and do not return.”
But Elowen hesitated. “Brother… you’ve never lied to me.”
Vaelen looked at her, pain flickering behind his steady gaze. “And I don’t now.”
A silence hung heavy between them.
“Brother, you are tired from your travel with your old age. You seen confused. Let us speak alone,” the Queen said quietly, and they retreated behind guarded doors.
⸻
In the Royal Chambers
“She’s mine, Vaelen,” Elowen said, her voice lower now, laced with grief. “Born of my body, held in my arms. How do you expect me to believe she is doom itself?”
“She carries power no infant should bear,” Vaelen insisted. This child carries the essence of Vaelyr—the god whose fire can cleanse or consume. Such power is no mere blessing. It is a tempest that threatens to unmake all you hold dear. “You know what happened to the last avatar. The god of flame has never once returned without chaos in his wake.”
Thalan’s fist slammed into the table. “We did not ask for a god to choose our child. We will not throw her to the wolves for it.”
“You won’t have to,” Vaelen said. “The wolves will come to her. Or she to them.”
Elowen stared at the fire in the hearth. “So what do we do? Kill her?”
Vaelen’s face twisted. “I… I would never raise a hand to your child.”
“But you would have others do it.” Thalan scream.
“I would have her protected. Sealed. Hidden.”
“No,” Thalan growled. “We will not build a prison for our daughter before she learns to walk.”
Vaelen: “You speak as a father, not a king. But even fathers must choose kingdom over child, when one threatens the other.”
Elowen: “Do not speak to us of choices you do not bear. You who walked away from us all. You who feared love.”
Vaelen looked between them and saw it—there would be no changing their hearts.
Then let the stars decide, he thought bitterly. And he vanished into the wind.
⸻
Three Years of Peace — Then the Fire
Time passed. Aelira grew into a radiant child, joyful and bright. Her laughter filled the halls, and Kaeyla remained faithfully by her side, now a fierce and clever girl who had begun training under their father’s watch. She wielded fire and wind both, a tiger cub in her own right.
Elowen would gather them under the flowering vines each afternoon for tea and stories, her hands sometimes glowing softly with healing magic. Aelira would tug at the petals, giggling, Kaeyla reciting tales of hero-kings and flying beasts.
“I don’t want to be a queen,” Kaeyla once said. “I want to be a general.”
Thalan had laughed. “And what of you, little ember?” he asked Aelira.
“I want…” Aelira had frowned, “to fly.”
That night, Elowen whispered to Thalan in bed, “Vaelen’s vision hasn’t come. Perhaps he was wrong.”
But fate rarely forgets its course.
One afternoon, during a quiet moment, a servant brought tea that tasted slightly strange. No one noticed the faint shimmer in Aelira’s eyes. Her body began to tremble.
The fire surged from her, pure divine energy, mixed with raw, terrified instinct. The ground split. Trees disintegrated into ash. The air became a storm of heat and light. The girl screamed as the power poured out of her—uncontrolled, endless.
“Get behind me, Kaeyla!” the King shouted trying to shield her.
Kaeyla tried to reach her sister, but flames lashed out.
“No—!”
The Queen ran forward and wrapped Aelira in her arms, eyes glowing with emerald light. “I’ve got you, my little one—shhh—shhh—”
She called every ounce of her restoration magic. She suppress and bind the magic, while using healing to heal her baby’s little body and soul.
The fire burned her skin. The nature magic warped under pressure. The spell ruptured.
A light like no other burst from the Queen’s body, covering the palace grounds.
And then—silence.
The Queen collapsed. Her body—twisted and lifeless.
The King, bloodied and burned, tried to rise. “Elowen… Elowen…”
Kaeyla was screaming. Her arms and legs scorched. Her voice hoarse.
The blast reduced half the palace to molten ruin.
Aelira, unharmed, blinked in confusion, unable to speak.
—
Vaelen arrived seconds too late, the stars did not warned him fast enough.
The sight of Elowen’s death shattered something in him. He cradled her scorched cloak. Then he saw Aelira, still glowing faintly with unspent power, standing in the wreckage with wide, hollow eyes.
“I should’ve stopped this…” he whispered. “You’ve taken her from me.”
Vaelen’s heart was a battleground.
He loved his sister — the queen — with all the fierce devotion of a brother sworn to protect.
But when Aelira was born, the little girl bearing the god’s fire in her blood, Vaelen’s world fractured.
She is the calamity I feared, he thought bitterly.
He blamed her for the death of his sister and brother-in-law, for the ruin that had shattered their family.
Yet, in the same breath, he could not hate her. She was his niece — a child — a fragment of the woman he loved more than life itself.
His failure haunted him.
He had come too late.
Too late to save his sister. Too late to save the kingdom.
—
Confused and scared, Aelira opened her eyes, then start to call out.
A voice, low and sharp as a blade, cut through the air.
Vaelen, the queen’s estranged brother — a man cloaked in shadows and burdened by prophecy — the one that Aelira met once when she was a baby now standing in front of her.
His gaze, heavy with pain and regret, fixed on the trembling child.
Vaelen:
“Princess Aelira, come. You must come with me now.”
His voice was firm, but not unkind.
Aelira hesitated, reluctantly, unable to comprehend what has happened she let Vaelen take her small hand.
At three years old, Aelira was taken from the warmth of family she barely knew.
Locked away in a guarded chamber, under Vaelen’s watchful eye, she was trained to control the wild power she barely understood.
She was alone.
Unaware of her parents’ deaths.
Separated from Kaelya.
Her only constant —are Vaelen’s stern voice, his discipline, and the shadows of regret that lingered in his presence.
As for Kaeyla, from the day of the incident, Vaelen made her queen. He crushed rebellion, rewrote history, altered records. He told the kingdom that a failed assassination took the King and Queen. The second princess? The unfortunate incident take her from her young age.
In the years that followed, Vaelen showed Kaeyla endless love, guiding her through a throne made of grief. And Aelira—he trained in secret, taught to control her power, but never loved. He was cold, distant, exacting.
She called him Master, never Uncle.
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