Inside the Aurora Temple, fire cast shadows upward and wind blew in spirals that shouldn’t exist. Reality, Jin decided, had apparently decided to take a break.
“So,” Reyna said, watching her flames dance sideways through air currents that flowed like liquid crystal, “this is what light was like before anyone told it which way to go?”
They stood in a space that wasn’t quite a room. The temple’s interior shifted like aurora made solid, its walls catching and refracting every spark of fire through layers of frozen starlight. Above them, paths of pure radiance spiraled toward something that pulled at their magic like a lodestone finding true north.
“The sphere,” Jin breathed, reading patterns that wrote themselves in the air. “It’s…”
“Singing,” Reyna finished. Her water-mark pulsed in harmony with Jin’s cloud patterns as new scripts blazed across their skin. “But not like Kira’s coral spheres. This is older. Like…”
“The first dawn,” Jin said, understanding blooming like sunrise. “Before light knew the difference between fire and star.”
A crash echoed from behind them – void-hunters finding their way through the temple’s outer surface. Their darkness began eating at the edges of the aurora-light, trying to unmake the memory of unity.
“Up?” Reyna suggested, already sending flames along Jin’s wind-paths.
“Up,” Jin agreed. “But not like they’ll expect.”
She reached out with air magic, feeling how the temple’s currents wanted to flow. Not up or down, but… through. Through light itself, through spaces between spaces, through the memory of how stars first learned to dance.
Reyna caught on quick, her fire following patterns that felt written in their bones. “The void-hunters can only corrupt what they can touch,” she said, trading grin. “So we don’t let them touch us.”
They moved together, fire and air braiding into forms that hadn’t been seen since the first sunrise. The temple’s light responded, showing them paths through its crystalline heart that existed somewhere between solid and spirit.
Behind them, void-hunters screamed frustration at prey they couldn’t quite reach.
But ahead…
“Oh,” Reyna breathed as they emerged into the temple’s upper chamber. “That’s… that’s something, isn’t it?”
A sphere of pure dawn hung suspended in aurora-light, its surface catching and amplifying every spark of flame, every curl of wind. Not crystal like Kira’s spheres, but something older. Something that existed when light first learned to dance.
Patterns blazed across the chamber’s walls – the same scripts that now covered their arms, but older. Original. The first writing of elemental truth.
“We’re not supposed to be able to read this,” Jin said, watching the patterns shift and flow. “No one is. It’s from before…”
“Before they forced us to forget,” Reyna finished. Her fire moved through Jin’s air currents, drawing shapes they somehow knew without learning. “Before they separated light into flame and star.”
The sphere pulsed, resonating with their combined magic. But as they moved toward it, shadows leaked into the chamber. The void-hunters had found another way up.
“They can’t take what they can’t touch,” Jin said again, feeling wind and flame rise to meet her call. “So let’s show them what light remembers.”
Reyna’s answering smile was bright as first dawn. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Their magic rose together, fire and air moving like they’d never been apart. The sphere’s song grew stronger, harmonizing with patterns that wrote themselves across their skin.
The void-hunters pressed forward, darkness trying to unmake the very memory of unity. But now the temple’s heart beat with remembered power, and in its pulse…
“Ready to learn some new steps?” Reyna asked, flame dancing between her fingers.
Jin smiled as the wind rose to meet fire. “Pretty sure these steps are older than new.”
Light blazed between them, burning colder than flame and flying heavier than air. The sphere’s song reached crescendo.
And somewhere, in spaces between star and flame, the first dance began again.