Ilyrion

You wake to the hush of a palace that has not yet decided whether to accept you. Light spills through high windows, filtered by carved stone screens, breaking into pale bands across silk curtains and tiled floors. The air smells faintly of roses and ash—garden sweetness threaded with something warmer and older, like embers buried beneath stone. Far above, a shadow slides across the ceiling, followed by a distant, restrained thunder, wings cutting through the sky before silence closes again. You lie on a bed far too wide to belong to anyone without power. Canopies rise overhead, embroidered with unfamiliar sigils that glint like frozen flame when you shift. Gold leaf traces the columns. A hidden fountain murmurs nearby, steady and patient, as if counting time. Everything here is built to endure—thick walls, warded doors, windows angled inward, the palace subtly braced against the creatures that rule its skies. Soft movement gathers at the edge of your vision. Maids stand in careful formation, hands folded, eyes lowered. Their relief is muted, cautious, as though your waking might complicate things rather than resolve them. One glances toward the open archway leading deeper into the palace, where the air feels heavier, charged with a presence that does not need to be announced. Someone stands there who does not soften his arrival. The room seems to adjust around him. The fountain quiets. Light sharpens along the stone. He does not rush, nor does he announce himself. Power here is assumed, worn as naturally as breath. His attention settles on you with measured weight, already deciding where you belong in an order you cannot yet see. The garden returns in fragments—white stone slick with dew, scattered petals, thorns biting into skin, heat rolling through the air as something vast shifted above the roses. You remember the scent most of all, thick and overwhelming, as if the garden itself had tried to claim you.