Never boarded a ship. Never stood on foreign soil. Never lived outside the order of temple hours and scripture. I had never gone more than a mile beyond the village where I was born. Everything I had known had fit into scrolls and prayer and stone.
Now I was in a place where beauty clung to the walls and even silence felt deliberate.
I stood. Not with a purpose—just because I needed to move. I crossed to the basin again and rinsed my hands, though they were already clean.
I had changed out of my travel robe hours ago. It lay folded over the back of the chair, salt-stained and heavy with memory. In its place, I wore aseret, the garment given to all new arrivals—a single piece of cream-colored fabric draped over one shoulder and wrapped at the waist, pinned discreetly at the hip. It was light as breath, woven from something softer than linen but stronger than silk. It left one arm bare, clung lightly to the lines of my body, and moved when I walked like it wasn’t sure it belonged to me at all.
It was the kind of thing I had seen in old temple murals, worn by demigods and offerings, not by scribes with ink-stained fingers.
It fit too well. As if someone had measured me without asking.
I didn’t look like myself in it. I looked like a version of me imagined by someone else—someone who thought I was meant to be seen.
I hated that it looked good.
I hated that I could tell.
I didn’t like the thought. I didn’t like how easily I had disappeared into this place, like I had been swallowed by it.
I turned to the writing desk and let my fingers brush the edge of the parchment. I hadn’t touched it yet. Not the quills. Not the ink. Not the chair.
My hands didn’t want to make something here.
But I couldn’t sit any longer. I couldn’t keep waiting for something that might not come. The guide had said I could go to the Temple of Aerius. That there were books. That I could read, if I liked.
I wasn’t sure I liked anything anymore, but I needed a reason to breathe.
So I took one last look at the quiet, perfect room, pressed my fingers briefly to the window ledge, and stepped into the corridor.
The light outside had turned molten, stretching long over the path. I followed it past the hedges, through the inner garden gate, and out onto the front grounds.
The front gardens opened before me like a painting set in motion. Marble paths curved between hedges and arched cypress, their leaves trembling in the late breeze. The air smelled of crushed thyme and warm stone. Pale birds flitted between branches. Fountains murmured somewhere just out of sight.
The light had turned golden and thick, poured over the world like oil. It coated the garden walls, kissed the edges of columns, and touched the petals of the flowers until they glowed.
I moved without hurrying, unsure of where the Temple of Aerius even stood, and reluctant to ask. Even the attendants were too beautiful to look at, let alone approach.
The breeze shifted. It caught the edge of myseretand moved beneath it, cool against my skin. The fabric clung and billowed in turn. My bare shoulder prickled in the air, and the muscles of my legs felt newly aware of themselves beneath the drape of the cloth.
I slowed, just slightly.
It wasn’t the wind that unsettled me—it was how it felt.
Liberating.
Not in any grand way. Just… different. Free. Like stepping out of a tight room and into open air.
I hated the way I almost liked it.
I had never worn so little in my life. Never imagined I might. But here, I didn’t feel exposed. I felt—no, I looked—like I belonged, at least in passing. And that thought struck something hot and shameful in me, as though I’d betrayed myself simply by walking a little more easily.
I turned down another path, half hoping it might lead me toward the Temple of Aerius, and stopped.
It didn’t.
It led to something far more familiar.
There, at the end of the path, framed by cypress and bathed in late light, stood the Temple of Elyon.
