Isaac and Ivanna were two little Bastion children with blonde hair and golden eyes who had lost their parents to the Zethra. With no family left to return to, they were taken in by the beautiful coastal village they called home.

Aurelia did what Aurelia usually did.

The village kept them.

They lived near the western coastline where white houses climbed above bright water and dragons crossed the horizon on clear mornings. One family fed them when they forgot to come home for supper. Another repaired their clothes. An old Bastion warrior taught Isaac how to plant his feet properly when he swung the little wooden sword he carried almost everywhere, while Ivanna followed behind him complaining that he always got the first turn. They were not adopted by one person. They were simply absorbed into the life around them until the question of who was responsible for the children stopped needing an answer.

Everyone was.

Then a foreign kingdom crossed the western sea into Aurelia.

The attack reached their village before the nearest major Aurelian force could. By the time word reached the Vanguard, buildings were burning along the coast. Foreign soldiers moved through the streets behind armored dragons bred and trained for war, and villagers who had never expected their home to become a battlefield were fighting wherever they could.

Isaac found Ivanna and stayed with her.

By the time the largest dragon descended into the ruined square, the little boy was already badly wounded. He still had his wooden sword. Foreign soldiers surrounded the two children while the dragon lowered its enormous head above them, scales armored in black iron and heat rolling between its teeth.

Isaac stood in front of his sister.

Then the square turned gold.

There was no warning. The dragon's head snapped sideways beneath a Bastion strike powerful enough to break the armored skull beneath its scales. Golden force crossed the square again before its body had finished falling, tearing through the soldiers nearest the children and throwing others through shattered walls. Another rider turned toward the light and never completed the movement. A second dragon tried to take flight and was struck before it cleared the rooftops.

Within seconds, the square was silent.

A man stood between the children and everything that had come to kill them, his black cloak cracking in the coastal wind. Dark-brown hair had been thrown loose around a handsome face, and the eyes looking through the smoke burned brilliant gold.

Isaac knew him immediately. Every Aurelian child did. “King Aurelian.”

The little boy tried to straighten and nearly fell. Aurelian was beside him before he touched the ground, catching Isaac carefully and lowering himself onto one knee as he gathered the child into his arms. His golden eyes moved once over the wound. There was no healer close enough. Aurelian knew, and Isaac knew too.

Still, the boy smiled. It was faint and frightened and terribly proud. “I knew you'd come.”

Aurelian held him a little closer. “I'm here.”

Isaac looked past him toward Ivanna, who was kneeling several steps away, crying now that there was finally someone else strong enough to stand between her and the world. “I didn't let them take her.”

Aurelian followed his gaze. “No,” he said softly. “You kept your sister with us.”

His eyes returned to the child in his arms. “What’s your name?”

The little boy swallowed. “Isaac.”

Aurelian held his gaze. “Thank you, Isaac. For protecting our kingdom.”

Isaac stared at him for a moment, as though he had not expected the King of Aurelia to thank him for anything. Then his golden eyes moved over Aurelian’s face and settled upon the matching light in his. “We have the same Arc.”

Something warm touched Aurelian’s expression. “Lucky me.”

Isaac smiled.

It was small and tired, but this time there was no fear in it.

Aurelian smiled back.

Isaac’s fingers loosened around the wooden sword, and Aurelian caught it before it slipped from his hand. The boy’s gaze drifted toward Ivanna again. “You’ll look after her?”

There was no king in Aurelian’s expression now, and none of the warrior who had just killed everything in the square. Only a man making a promise to a dying child. “For as long as she needs me.”

Isaac breathed out, and the last of the fear left his face. His golden eyes found his sister one final time before slowly closing.

Aurelian held him close for another heartbeat. “Rest easy, son of Aurelia.”

Ivanna made a broken sound and crawled toward them. Aurelian gathered her against his side without putting Isaac down.

The first Aurelian ships appeared over the coastline minutes later, followed by another formation and then another. Galleons filled the sky beyond the burning village. Dragons flew between them. Vanguard troops descended through gold-lit air while Terran healers rushed toward the wounded below.

Aurelian remained with the children until his people reached him. When he finally stood, Isaac was carried away with the care given to any fallen Aurelian.

The wooden sword stayed in the king's hand.

Aurelian looked toward the western sea.

Then Aurelia crossed it.

The kingdom responsible had spent generations perfecting what it called the Culling. Its young warriors trained beneath a simple rule: survive.

Students were permitted to kill one another during trials. Those who died were remembered mainly as proof that they had not deserved to continue. Riders were thrown against dragons before they were ready. Dragons themselves were broken through pain and deprivation until obedience was mistaken for loyalty. Every death removed weakness.

At least, that was what they told themselves.

They had spent generations cutting away everyone they considered unworthy.

Then Aurelia arrived.

It turned out they had missed quite a lot.

The first Vanguard formations reached their shores beneath walls of gold. Towering Bastion warriors moved at the front in heavy armor, each carrying enough force to break defensive lines that had survived wars elsewhere. Behind them came scholars moving through captured maps and old construction plans while the fighting continued around them. One group identified the load-bearing points beneath a fortress wall and marked them for the Vanguard. Minutes later, Bastion struck those exact places and the wall folded.

Another team studied the flight patterns around one of the kingdom's great dragon towers and discovered that its defenders could not turn cleanly through the narrow western approach. Aurelian dragons entered through it. The tower fell before noon.

Healers moved behind the Vanguard and returned wounded soldiers to battle. Flow wielders changed the approaches around fortresses. Arc specialists turned roads, bridges and valleys against the armies attempting to hold them. The towering figures in golden armor were simply the easiest Aurelians to notice. By the time one of those warriors reached an enemy line, somebody behind him had often already worked out exactly where it was going to break.

The enemy had spent generations deciding which of its people deserved to survive.

Aurelia had brought all of theirs.

At one captured training ground, a Vanguard warrior stood beneath golden armor and looked across the pits where generations of young fighters had been forced to prove themselves. Someone beside him explained what the place had been used for.

The warrior stared at it for several seconds. “If they had really been committed to culling the weak, they might have started with themselves.”

Then he put his helmet back on and continued toward the capital.

The kingdom's greatest warriors met the Vanguard and fell. Its famous riders rose with dragons trained from birth for war, and Aurelia's dragons tore through them. Its fortresses closed their gates, and the gates came down. Everything the kingdom had built around the worship of survival was finally tested against something stronger than itself.

It did not survive the test.

At the capital, their ruler released the greatest dragon his kingdom possessed. The creature rose above the palace with wings broad enough to darken whole courtyards beneath it, armored from head to tail and carrying generations of breeding, training and cruelty in every movement.

Aurelian stood upon the forward deck of a Vanguard skyship as the dragon climbed toward him.

He did not move.

The creature opened its jaws.

Aurelian raised one hand, golden Bastion gathering around his palm until the light became almost impossible to look at. His cloak snapped behind him as he watched the colossal dragon bear down upon the ship. “Dragons were never the strongest thing under our skies.”

Gold erupted from his hand.

The Bastion strike crossed the distance in an instant and punched straight through the dragon's chest. Armor, scale and bone burst outward as golden force drove through its heart and tore from the other side in a blazing column of light.

The dragon's wings stopped.

For one enormous heartbeat, the creature simply hung above the capital.

Then it fell, crashing through the palace grounds hard enough to shake the surrounding towers.

The Vanguard continued forward.

The capital broke around them. Its remaining defenders fell, the palace was breached, and the Vanguard reached the ruler who had sent his soldiers into Aurelia.

Aurelian entered the ruined hall with Isaac’s wooden sword still in his hand. He looked at the man who had spent his life teaching children that death simply revealed who had never been strong enough to deserve survival.

Aurelian wrapped the little wooden blade in Bastion gold.

Then he drove it through his chest.

When Aurelia left the hall, a child’s wooden sword remained buried through the ruler.

It had belonged to a little boy who had never reached that place.

Aurelia had carried his sword the rest of the way.

Aurelian returned to the coast without it.

The village was already rebuilding. Fresh timber crossed damaged roofs, Terran light moved among the last wounded, and Vanguard soldiers remained throughout the streets, some helping repair homes while others watched the horizon.

Ivanna sat near the water with several of them. The Bastion warriors looked enormous around her in their golden armor. One had removed his helmet and placed it beside him in the grass. Another sat cross-legged in full armor, listening while Ivanna explained something with both hands.

Then the king approached.

The soldiers rose, but Aurelian motioned them back down and sat beside Ivanna. For a little while they watched the ocean.

Then Aurelian looked at her. “Tell me about Isaac.”

Ivanna stared at him.

Not how he died.

Not what happened during the attack.

Isaac.

So she told him.

She told the King of Aurelia that Isaac always ran ahead of her down the coastal steps, then stopped at the bottom to wait for her and pretended he had only paused to look at the sea. She told him that he hated carrots unless someone roasted them in honey, and that he slept with the wooden sword beside his bed because he said somebody had to protect the house at night. One of the Vanguard warriors lowered his head and smiled as Ivanna told Aurelian that Isaac wanted a real sword one day, that he wanted to see the capital, and that he thought Vanguard armor made everyone look ten feet tall.

Aurelian listened to every word.

Years passed, and Ivanna grew.

The Vanguard remembered the promise their king had made beside her brother. Ivanna was given somewhere beautiful to live, good food, exceptional teachers and years of Bastion training. She returned to the training halls day after day, growing stronger until one day she earned her place among the Aurelian Vanguard.

A young woman with blonde hair and brilliant golden eyes stood among their ranks with a sword resting in her hand.

This one was not made of wood.

Ivanna served for years beneath the same banners that had crossed the border for her brother. Whenever she returned to the capital, there was one place she visited.

The Vanguard kept a vast memorial there, an immense golden wall carrying the names of Aurelians whose courage had become part of its history. The names of Generals stood there beside Knights, soldiers and riders, alongside people who had carried others home and people who had simply stood when somebody needed them to stand.

Ivanna found her brother's name in the same place every time.

Isaac.

Cut into gold among them.

Sometimes she placed her hand over the letters and remembered him exactly as he had been: blonde hair, golden eyes, a wooden sword beside his bed, and absolute certainty that his little sister was worth protecting.

Isaac had once stood in front of Ivanna with a wooden sword in his hands.

Now his name stood forever among Aurelia’s heroes.

Dolores was one of the young initiates of Aurora Arc Academy, a sweet little Hollow wielder with short dark hair, dark eyes, and scars across her face and arms.

Charlotte first found her after a Zethra attack on an Aurelian village. She had arrived with a group of Aurora’s Ascendants to help save the settlement, but there had already been terrible casualties by the time they reached it. Dolores had survived, though she had been badly injured. Normally, a Terran healer reaching someone in time could restore even terrible wounds completely, but the healer who reached Dolores had been too late. The damage had already gone beyond what could be perfectly restored, and the little girl was left heavily scarred across parts of her face and arms. She was still adorable, with those dark eyes beneath her short hair, but what she had survived had changed her. She had lost everything in the attack, and Dolores never spoke.

Charlotte brought her back to Aurora.

Dolores was still very young, only an initiate, and for a long time she remained nervous around the enormous Academy and the people inside it. Charlotte would try to coax words from her, and others tried as well, but Dolores never answered them with her voice. Instead, she found another way to express herself. She loved charcoal, and she loved to draw.

Very quickly, Charlotte became the person Dolores drew most.

She drew Charlotte teaching students. She drew her demonstrating the Seven Arcs. She drew her walking through Aurora, standing among the Academy’s towers, speaking before classes, or simply existing somewhere Dolores had seen her that day. Almost every day there was another picture. When Dolores could find Charlotte, she would run up and place the newest drawing directly into her hands. When she could not find her, Charlotte would eventually return to the Headmistress’s chambers and discover a new piece of charcoal artwork slipped beneath her door.

Charlotte kept them all.

At first the drawings were almost entirely charcoal, and Charlotte eventually asked Dolores why she never added any color. She told the little girl that the pictures were beautiful and encouraged her to experiment with it if she wanted to. Dolores took the suggestion in a way Charlotte had not expected. She did not begin filling the pages with color. She kept the charcoal and started adding color only to certain things.

The eyes and the Arcs.

A student might be drawn almost entirely in charcoal while the color of their eyes stood brightly from the page. Bastion appeared in gold. Flow carried sapphire. Terran shone emerald. Umbra carried violet. Specter burned white. Dolores began doing the same with the students she drew around Charlotte, and as she became more talented, the combination of charcoal, colored eyes and Arc power became recognizably hers.

Charlotte loved them.

Over time, Dolores stopped drawing only Charlotte and began drawing more of Aurora itself. Students training together. People moving through the Academy. Moments she had watched from the edge of a classroom or a terrace. Charlotte teaching. The Arcs appearing around the people Dolores had come to recognize. Page after page slowly accumulated inside the Headmistress’s chambers, recording Aurora through the eyes of a little girl who never said a word about what she saw.

Dolores was learning more than art. Her Hollow abilities were developing as well. She was still only an initiate, nowhere near the level of the older Cadets, but she became surprisingly good for her age. She learned the basic combat techniques she was being taught and worked hard at controlling her Hollow Resonance.

Whenever she learned something new, she wanted Charlotte to see it.

If Dolores spotted Charlotte somewhere across the massive Academy, she would run toward her. Sometimes she arrived carrying another drawing. Other times she planted herself in front of the Headmistress and demonstrated whatever new Hollow technique she had learned. She would look up afterward, waiting for Charlotte’s reaction, and Charlotte would praise her when she had done well.

And Dolores hugged her.

She would run to Charlotte, wrap her arms around her, and hold on. Charlotte always returned the embrace.

Seeing Dolores became one of the things Charlotte looked forward to most. There was something wonderfully simple about never knowing when the little dark-haired initiate might suddenly appear carrying another piece of charcoal-covered paper, eager to show her something she had made or something new she had learned.

Aurora had been created to train Aurelia’s defenders, and Dolores was learning to become one of them. But her life at the Academy became about far more than what she might someday be capable of in battle. She was drawing. She was learning. She was becoming more confident with Hollow. She had people around her. She had somewhere she wanted to be.

She had Aurora.

The Journey

Eventually, a group of Aurora’s younger students was chosen to travel through Aurelia under the guidance of several Cadets. It was an opportunity to leave the Academy for a while, see more of the kingdom, and experience places beyond the familiar towers and floating islands of Aurora.

Dolores was nervous about going. The world outside Aurora was still connected to what had happened to her village, and leaving the place she had learned to trust was difficult. But she was encouraged to go with the others, and eventually she agreed.

Before she left, Dolores found Charlotte one last time.

She had made another picture.

This one showed Aurora itself, with Dolores and Charlotte sitting together beneath a tree.

Dolores gave it to her.

Then she left with the other students.

The group was captured by a foreign kingdom.

The students were taken alive, but Dolores fought back. She was still only a little girl and still only an initiate, but when she saw what was happening to the others, she used her Hollow abilities against their captors. She tried to break the students free. She even tried to protect some of the older students travelling with her.

Dolores pushed her Hollow farther than she knew how to control.

Her captors killed her.

When word of the captured students reached Aurelia, the kingdom began preparing for war. Fleets gathered, dragons were armed, and soldiers prepared to cross the border and recover Aurora’s children.

Charlotte did not wait for them.

She went herself.

By the time Aurelia’s main force reached the kingdom responsible, Charlotte had already recovered the surviving students. The leadership responsible for taking them was dead. Its greatest defenders were gone. Its fleet had been broken. The power that had believed it could take students from Aurora and use them against Aurelia had been destroyed.

Charlotte brought her students home.

Dolores was among them.

But Charlotte carried her.

The Picture Beneath the Tree

Charlotte returned to Aurora with the little girl she had once rescued from the ruins of another attack.

There were already so many pieces of Dolores waiting there.

Drawings of Charlotte teaching. Drawings of students learning their Arcs. Charcoal figures with bright eyes. Hollow, Bastion, Flow, Specter, Terran, Blaze and Umbra appearing in color across pages that otherwise remained beautifully dark. Images Dolores had handed Charlotte personally and others Charlotte had found waiting beneath her door.

Charlotte kept every one.

But the last picture was different.

Aurora.

A tree.

Charlotte sitting beneath it.

Dolores beside her.

Charlotte had it framed.

It remains inside the Headmistress’s chambers with the other drawings Dolores made during her life at Aurora: an entire collection left behind by a little girl with short dark hair, dark eyes, scars across her face and arms, charcoal on her fingers, and a Hollow Resonance she had been so proud to show Charlotte whenever she learned something new.

Dolores never became a Cadet.

She never became a Knight, a Chosen, or an Ascendant.

She was an initiate.

She drew beautiful pictures.

She ran through Aurora whenever she saw Charlotte.

She showed her the magic she had learned.

She hugged her.

And when other students were taken beside her, the little girl who had once survived a Zethra attack fought for them with everything she knew how to use.

Charlotte could not reach Dolores in time.

So she brought her home.

And inside the room where the immortal Headmistress has watched generations of Aurora pass through her life, Dolores is still there beneath that tree, sitting beside Charlotte in charcoal and color.

Beneath the Tree

Charlotte had chosen the tree because Dolores had chosen it first.

It stood on one of Aurora’s quieter terraces, beyond the main training courts where the Academy opened toward gardens and distant sky. Its branches spread wide above the grass, old enough that generations of students had sat beneath them, and somewhere inside the Headmistress’s chambers there was already a charcoal drawing of this exact place.

Aurora in the distance.

Charlotte beneath the tree.

Dolores beside her.

Now Charlotte sat against the trunk with Dolores in her arms.

The little girl’s head rested against her chest. Short dark hair had fallen across one side of her face, hiding some of the scars that crossed her cheek and disappeared beneath the collar of her Nightweave. Her hands lay still between them. Those same small hands had once been stained with charcoal almost every day, always carrying another page, another drawing, another attempt to show Charlotte something she had noticed.

Charlotte held them against herself.

She had not stopped crying.

There was no restraint left in it now. Tears slipped continually down her face and disappeared against Dolores’s dark hair while Charlotte held the child with both arms, one hand pressed protectively against the back of her head as though some part of her still believed that if she held tightly enough, nothing else could take her.

Aurora had gone almost completely quiet around them.

Students filled the terraces at a distance. Initiates stood beside Cadets who normally could not remain still for ten breaths. Knights had removed their helmets. Several of Charlotte’s Ascendants remained farther back, their armor still marked from the kingdom they had just returned from, standing silently among the others.

One young student had both hands over her mouth.

Another was crying openly.

Nobody approached.

They had all seen their Headmistress return.

They had seen the surviving students come home around her.

And they had seen the little girl Charlotte carried herself.

Charlotte lowered her face into Dolores’s hair and squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, though there was nobody left in her arms who could answer. Her voice broke anyway. “I’m so sorry, little shadow.”

The wind moved softly through the branches.

Then something enormous passed over Aurora.

Students looked up.

Gold crossed the sky.

A dragon descended through the clouds, vast enough that its wings cast moving shadow across the terraces. It was made entirely from brilliant Bastion light, every scale burning gold, its enormous head crowned in radiant horns while its wings carried sunlight through them. The dragon circled once above the Academy and descended toward the gardens.

Nobody needed to be told who had come.

The Golden Dragon touched down beyond the terrace without disturbing a single stone.

Its immense body dissolved.

Gold broke from its wings first, flowing away in thousands of bright fragments. The great neck and shoulders followed, then the enormous head lowered and disappeared into radiant dust until only one man remained standing where the dragon had been.

King Aurelian.

Dark brown hair moved softly in the wind around his face. Golden eyes looked across the gathered students, and a black cloak fell from the broad frame that had carried Aurelia through the years when there had barely been an Aurelia to save.

The reaction moved through the Academy immediately.

Knights straightened.

Students bowed.

Even several Ascendants lowered their heads.

Aurelian barely seemed to notice.

His eyes had already found his daughter beneath the tree.

Charlotte looked up at him. For one heartbeat she simply stared, and then her face broke. “Dad.”

The word came out like she had been holding it inside herself since the moment she found Dolores.

Aurelian crossed the terrace.

There was no king in the way he moved toward her then. No ceremony. No distance. He walked through the students, beneath the branches, and lowered himself into the grass beside his daughter.

Charlotte tried to speak and failed. She pulled Dolores closer instead, tears spilling harder now that her father was there.

Aurelian reached for her immediately, one large hand settling against the back of Charlotte’s head.

She leaned into him.

Aurelian held his daughter while she cried.

For a long time, he said nothing.

His golden eyes moved down to Dolores.

Recognition came quietly across his face.

He remembered the little dark-haired initiate who followed Charlotte through Aurora.

He remembered seeing her near classrooms and gardens, always close enough to watch but never trying to draw attention to herself. He remembered the scarred little face that became brighter whenever Charlotte noticed her.

Charlotte swallowed against another sob. “She drew you once.”

Aurelian looked at her.

Charlotte managed the smallest, broken smile through the tears. “She heard you were coming to Aurora. She spent almost the whole day on it. Everything was charcoal except your eyes.” Her fingers tightened around Dolores’s hand. “Gold. She used so much gold.”

Aurelian’s expression softened. “I remember.”

Charlotte looked at him sharply.

Aurelian glanced down at Dolores again. “She showed it to me before she gave it to you. She stood there holding it against herself for nearly a minute before she worked up the courage.”

Another tear slipped from Charlotte’s chin. “She was proud of it.”

“She should have been.”

Charlotte looked down at the little girl in her arms. “She was getting so good.”

“I know.”

“She kept drawing everything.” Charlotte brushed her thumb across Dolores’s knuckles. “The students. The Arcs. The towers. She would find me every day. Sometimes I’d be trying to cross the Academy and suddenly she’d just be there.” A trembling breath escaped her. “She would run at me.”

Aurelian listened.

Charlotte pressed Dolores’s hand more tightly between her own. “She never said anything. Not once. But I always knew what she wanted. She’d show me what she learned, or give me another picture, and then she would hug me.” Charlotte pressed her mouth against Dolores’s hair for a moment. “She was happy here, Dad.”

Aurelian looked at the child in her arms, then at the tree above them. “Yes,” he said softly. “She was.”

Charlotte shook her head. “It wasn’t enough.”

Aurelian did not tell her she was wrong.

He let the words exist.

Charlotte’s shoulders trembled. “She had already lost everything once. I brought her here. She trusted me. She finally had somewhere she wasn’t frightened all the time, and then she went out into the kingdom because we told her she should see it, and I..” Her breath caught painfully. “I should have gone.”

Aurelian’s hand remained against the back of her head. “Charlotte.”

“I would have reached them.”

“I know.”

“I would have.”

“I know you would have.”

That stopped her.

There was no argument in his voice. No attempt to tell her that she could not have known. He knew his daughter. If Charlotte had been there, she would have torn the world apart before allowing someone to touch one of her children.

That was not what had happened.

And pretending otherwise would not help her.

Charlotte stared down at Dolores. “Then what am I supposed to do with this?”

Aurelian was quiet for a moment. “You grieve her.”

Charlotte’s eyes closed.

Aurelian kept his hand against her hair. “You let it hurt. You do not make yourself smaller because you are the Headmistress. You do not make her smaller because there are others watching. She mattered to you. So this hurts.”

Charlotte’s face twisted, and Aurelian drew her closer.

“But do not let this moment become the whole of her life,” he said.

Charlotte opened her eyes.

Aurelian looked toward the Academy beyond the branches. “Grief has a cruel habit of doing that. It takes the worst moment and makes it so large that everything before it becomes difficult to see.”

His gaze returned to Dolores. “That is not the only truth about this little girl.”

Charlotte’s lower lip trembled.

Aurelian looked at the small scarred hands folded between Charlotte’s. “She survived. She came here. She learned Hollow. She filled your chambers with charcoal. She discovered exactly how much gold it takes to draw a king’s eyes.” His thumb moved gently against Charlotte’s hair. “She found people she wanted to run toward.”

Charlotte began crying again.

Aurelian let her. “She was loved here. She knew she was loved here. You cannot measure the worth of that love by whether you were allowed to keep her forever.”

Charlotte bowed her head over Dolores.

Aurelian’s voice remained gentle. “If we only loved what we could never lose, Charlotte, we would love nothing at all.”

The branches shifted above them.

Aurelian looked toward the students standing across the terraces. Some were crying. Some had their heads bowed. Some simply watched their Headmistress hold one of their own. “She belonged to all of this. Not because of what she might have become. Not because of how powerful her Hollow could have grown. Not because she might someday have earned another rank.”

His golden eyes settled on his daughter. “She belonged because she was here.”

Charlotte pressed Dolores closer.

Aurelian looked beyond them toward Aurora. “The point was never that you could promise her an endless life. The point was that after the world taught her there was nowhere safe to go, she found a place she wanted to stay.”

Charlotte followed his gaze toward the Academy through her tears.

Aurelian looked back at her. “And she found you.”

A broken sound escaped Charlotte. Aurelian pulled his daughter against his shoulder, and Charlotte cried there with Dolores held between them.

Charlotte clung to him. “I wanted more for her.”

“I know.”

“She deserved more.”

“Yes she did.”

There was something almost unbearable about hearing him agree.

Aurelian did not turn the child’s death into a lesson. He did not tell Charlotte that everything happened for a reason. He did not ask her to find gratitude inside something cruel.

He simply remained with her.

After a while, Charlotte’s breathing steadied enough for her to look down again.

A strand of Dolores’s dark hair had fallen across her eyes.

Aurelian reached toward her.

His enormous hand moved with extraordinary gentleness. He brushed the hair away from Dolores’s face, careful around the scars crossing her cheek, and let his fingers rest for a moment against her temple.

The King of Aurelia looked at the little girl his daughter had brought home. “Rest easy, daughter of Aurelia.”

Charlotte closed her eyes.

Aurelian stayed beside her for several breaths before speaking again. “She should have her passing.”

Charlotte’s arms tightened instinctively. “I know.”

“You can take as long as you need.”

Charlotte shook her head against Dolores’s hair. “If I wait, I’ll keep finding reasons not to.”

Aurelian understood.

Charlotte stared down at the little girl. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Aurelian’s hand covered hers. “You can. I’m right here.”

Charlotte looked at him.

There was no expectation in his face. No king commanding a ritual. Only her father. “You don’t have to let go before you’re ready.”

Charlotte nodded once.

She shifted Dolores carefully in her arms until the little girl’s head rested beneath her chin. One hand cradled the back of her head. The other settled against her small back.

For the final time, Charlotte hugged her.

The students across Aurora seemed to understand what was happening.

Heads lowered.

Hands found one another.

The Ascendants bowed.

Charlotte drew a breath.

Blaze answered.

A single ember appeared between Charlotte’s fingers where they rested against Dolores’s back.

It was tiny.

Warm.

Steady.

Charlotte looked at it through tears.

Her control over the Seven Arcs could reshape battlefields, but she treated that one ember as though nothing she had ever held required greater care.

The flame spread.

It moved slowly around Dolores without touching Charlotte, slipping across the child’s Nightweave in gentle lines of fire. There was no roar. No violent heat. The grass beneath them did not burn, and the old tree did not blacken.

The fire simply gathered around the little girl like warmth returning for one final moment.

Charlotte began to cry again. “I love you, little shadow.”

The flame brightened.

Dolores softened against her.

Not burned.

Not consumed.

Light began appearing where the little girl’s body had been.

Gold.

Rose.

Tiny sparks lifted from her sleeves and hair, drifting upward around Charlotte’s arms.

Charlotte held tighter.

For one impossible heartbeat, she could still feel Dolores there.

Then there was less weight in her arms.

More light.

The scars across Dolores’s hands became gold beneath Charlotte’s fingers before breaking gently into sparks. Her dark hair loosened into glowing strands. The small body Charlotte had carried home became thousands of warm motes rising through the space between them.

Charlotte kept her arms around her for as long as there was anything left to hold.

Then the weight disappeared completely.

Her hands closed against empty warmth.

The wind found the sparks.

Gold and rose lifted through the branches of the tree Dolores had once drawn, swirling between the leaves before rising into the open sky above Aurora.

Charlotte looked up.

Every student did.

The light climbed higher.

Some of the sparks passed through the sunlight and vanished immediately. Others remained visible for several long seconds, little pieces of gold and rose moving through the blue until the wind carried them beyond the Academy.

Charlotte watched until there was only one left.

A tiny golden point above the highest branch.

Then that disappeared too.

Her empty arms folded against her chest.

Aurelian moved closer.

Charlotte turned into her father and broke again. “She’s gone.”

Aurelian caught her immediately, one arm closing around his daughter while his other hand settled against the back of her head. He looked toward the sky where the final sparks had disappeared. “Yes.”

Charlotte cried harder.

Aurelian closed his eyes and held her. “But she was here.”

For a while, neither of them moved.

The students remained beneath the trees and across the terraces, Aurora silent around them. Above the Academy, there was no trace of the gold and rose that had carried Dolores into the sky.

Aurelian opened his eyes.

His voice was quiet when he began. “Love, though fragile and often lost, is an indomitable force that endures beyond death, guiding us through darkness.”

Charlotte’s eyes closed against his chest.

She knew the words.

She had known them almost her entire life.

Her voice trembled when she joined him. “Our deepest connections, however brief or painful, are the heartbeat of our humanity…”

Aurelian held her a little tighter, and father and daughter continued together.

“…urging us to love fiercely, honor those we’ve lost, and fight for a world where hope and love can flourish, even in the face of unimaginable sacrifice.”

The final words disappeared into the wind.

Charlotte stayed against him, crying quietly now.

Aurelian lowered his cheek against the top of his daughter’s red hair and looked once more toward the branches above them. “She was one of our little lights, Charlotte.”

Charlotte’s fingers tightened in his cloak.

Aurelian smiled through the grief in his eyes. “And Aurelia is brighter because Dolores was here.”

Charlotte wrapped both arms around her father.

This time, Aurelian simply held her.

The Girl Aurora Drew

Charlotte did not know what her father asked of Aurora after Dolores’s passing.

Aurelian waited until his daughter had left the tree before gathering several of the Academy’s Ascendants and instructors. He asked them for charcoal, paper, and one week. Then he gave them a simple instruction.

Every student at Aurora was to draw Dolores.

Not the day they lost her.

The days they had her.

The request spread quietly through the Academy. Initiates received charcoal beside their normal lessons. Cadets carried sheets of paper onto the terraces. Knights who had not drawn anything since childhood sat awkwardly beneath trees trying to remember how hands were supposed to look, while Ascendants who could reshape battlefields found themselves hunched over desks, rubbing charcoal between their fingers as younger students laughed at some of their first attempts.

Then the pictures began.

One showed Dolores sitting on a grassy rise overlooking a training court. Two Cadets were sparring below her, one surrounded by Specter lightning and the other shaping a Flow construct through the air. Dolores sat cross-legged with charcoal in one hand and paper balanced against her knees, smiling while she tried to capture them.

The Cadets remembered noticing her drawing. Without saying anything, they had slowed down. The Specter held the charge, white lightning branching around his arm without releasing it, while the Flow wielder kept a curling ribbon of water suspended above the court far longer than the technique required. Neither wanted to ruin her picture.

Another drawing came from one of Aurora’s senior Knights. Dolores sat at a crowded table in the dining hall with a plate in front of her, while across from her was the enormous armored Knight who had drawn the memory. He remembered looking up from his meal and finding Dolores staring very seriously at something on his plate. She looked at the food, then at him, then back at the food.

The Knight had sighed, cut what remained in half, and moved the larger piece onto Dolores’s plate.

Her entire face had lit up.

The charcoal drawing captured the moment afterward, Dolores eating happily while the Knight pretended not to notice that she had won.

More pictures arrived.

One of the older girls drew herself sitting beside Dolores at a washbasin before supper. Dolores’s fingers were black with charcoal, as they so often were, and the older student had caught both of her little hands and was carefully cleaning them with a cloth while Dolores watched with patient resignation. The girl remembered finishing one hand only for Dolores to immediately reach toward the charcoal again.

So she had cleaned them twice.

Another student remembered finding Dolores lost in one of Aurora’s enormous upper corridors. She had been standing beneath an archway with several pieces of paper held against her chest, looking from one bridge to another without any idea which one led home.

Two Cadets stopped and walked with her. Dolores did not need to explain where she belonged. One of them recognized one of Charlotte’s towers in the drawing she was carrying, and together they worked out where she had been trying to go.

The picture showed the three of them crossing one of Aurora’s high bridges. Dolores walked between them while one Cadet carried her charcoal and the other held her drawings safely against the wind.

Another picture showed a dragon.

Dolores had been sitting near one of Aurora’s landing terraces, trying desperately to sketch an enormous Academy dragon before it moved again. Every time the creature shifted its head or folded a wing, her dark eyes widened a little more as she hurried to correct the charcoal lines.

The dragon noticed.

It went completely still, then lifted its head with almost ridiculous dignity, squared its wings, and posed.

Dolores stared up at it while the dragon held perfectly still. Her face slowly broke into a huge smile before she bent over the page and began drawing as fast as she could.

There were quieter memories too.

Dolores sometimes took her food somewhere away from the dining halls and sat alone beneath the open sky. She liked quiet places, and Aurora learned that about her. People checked on her, not because she was in trouble or because they expected anything from her, but simply because Dolores had gone somewhere by herself and somebody always noticed.

Sometimes a Knight would pass the terrace, see her eating there, and continue on after making sure she was all right. Sometimes an older student would sit several steps away with a book. Sometimes someone brought her something sweet from the dining hall and left it beside her without disturbing the picture taking shape beneath her fingers.

Dolores had believed she spent much of her life quietly watching Aurora.

The drawings revealed how often Aurora had been watching her back.

Students remembered the way she ran when she spotted Charlotte, charcoal on her cheeks and another picture clutched against her chest. They remembered her sitting at the edge of training courts with her legs tucked beneath herself, her pride whenever she learned a new Hollow technique, and the little smile she gave people when they moved aside for her on a crowded bridge. They remembered seeing Charlotte walking across Aurora with Dolores following several steps behind, carrying something she desperately wanted the Headmistress to see.

By the end of the week, there were hundreds.

Some were extraordinarily beautiful. Some were crooked. Some had hands that looked nothing like hands. Some came from Initiates who had written Dolores’s name across the bottom because they were afraid nobody would know who they had tried to draw.

Charlotte loved every one.

The drawings filled her chambers. They rested against walls and covered tables, stacked carefully beside the charcoal pictures Dolores herself had made. Several younger students had even slipped theirs beneath Charlotte’s door exactly as Dolores once had.

For days, Charlotte moved through them slowly and discovered pieces of Dolores’s life she had never known existed.

A meal shared with a Knight.

A bridge crossed with two Cadets.

A dragon meeting its charcoal likeness.

A little girl on a hill watching students spar.

Charcoal-stained fingers being cleaned before supper.

Dolores smiling. Dolores learning. Dolores eating. Dolores watching.

Dolores being watched over.

Dolores being loved.

Eventually Charlotte reached the final picture.

It had been placed carefully upon her desk, and she knew immediately that it was different. The charcoal work was flawless. Aurora stretched across the background in extraordinary detail, its towers and bridges rising beneath an open sky while students filled the terraces behind two figures at the center of the page.

Every rank was there. Initiates, Cadets, Knights, Chosen and Ascendants surrounded Dolores and Charlotte as the little girl wrapped both arms tightly around her Headmistress and Charlotte hugged her back.

Everything had been rendered in charcoal except the Arcs.

Bastion gold burned among the students. Specter shone white. Terran glowed emerald. Flow moved in sapphire. Umbra carried violet through the page. Blaze burned warmly among the figures, while Hollow gathered darkly around the little girl at the center.

Dozens of powers surrounded Dolores.

Not as weapons.

As light.

Charlotte stared at the picture for a long time before noticing the writing beneath it.

Her father’s handwriting.

She spent so long drawing Aurelia.

I thought Aurelia should draw her back.

She was loved here, Charlotte.

Love, Dad.

Charlotte covered her mouth as tears filled her eyes, but this time a smile came with them.

She looked around at the hundreds of pieces of charcoal-covered paper filling her chambers. Dolores had spent her life recording the kingdom she had learned to love.

Now the kingdom had recorded her.

Not the little girl Charlotte carried home. Not the body beneath the tree.

Dolores.

The girl with charcoal on her fingers. The girl who loved dragons. The girl who could steal half a Knight’s meal with nothing more than a hopeful stare. The girl who got lost in enormous corridors and always found someone willing to walk beside her. The girl who sat on hillsides drawing warriors who secretly slowed down so she could finish.

The girl who ran toward Charlotte.

The girl who hugged her.

Charlotte touched two fingers gently to the charcoal figure at the center of her father’s drawing.

For the first time since Dolores’s passing, the memory that came first was not the weight disappearing from her arms.

It was a little girl running across Aurora with another picture held proudly against her chest.

Charlotte smiled through her tears.

Dolores had spent years showing Charlotte how she saw Aurelia.

Now Charlotte could finally see how Aurelia had seen her.

Glimmer is one of the little lights of Aurelia, a young Flow wielder with brown hair, large blue eyes, and a quiet sweetness that survived far more than any child should have been asked to endure.

When she first entered Leon Tempest’s life, Glimmer owned very little. Almost everything important to her could fit inside one small patched cloth bag: a threadbare blanket, a little dragon stitched from soft cloth and silver thread, and a smooth river stone she sometimes rubbed for luck.

What Glimmer wanted was even simpler.

A home.

Friends.

A place to learn magic.

And somewhere she could wake up tomorrow without being afraid it would all be gone.

The Little Girl in Dragontear

Before Glimmer reached Dragontear, the Blood Legion destroyed the orphanage where she lived.

She was the only survivor.

By the time she arrived in the village, Glimmer barely ate and barely slept. She had already learned one of the cruelest lessons a child could learn: places that were supposed to be safe could disappear, and the people inside them could disappear too.

Leon first noticed her sitting alone in the corner of a Dragontear tavern. Brown hair fell around her face as she sat with her knees drawn against her chest, tiny against the wooden bench.

After learning what had happened to her, Leon ordered creamy mushroom soup, fresh bread, and warm honeyed milk. He carried the food across the tavern himself and lowered himself enough that he would not tower over her. “Hey, little one. You don’t have to be alone right now. Eat something. It’ll help, I promise.”

Glimmer eventually finished everything.

Later, she found Leon sitting outside overlooking Dragontear’s turquoise water. She climbed onto the bench beside him and began asking questions about Aurora Arc Academy.

Did students get their own rooms?

Was the food nice?

Did they learn real magic every day?

Leon told her about warm bread, spiced cider, bowls of soup, rooms of their own, and the magic lessons waiting for every student.

Glimmer’s face filled with wonder, and her legs began swinging beneath the bench. “That sounds like a dream.”

Longing softened her voice as she asked the question she was almost afraid to ask. “I really want to go there one day. Do you think… they’d let someone like me in?”

Leon looked at her properly.

A little girl who had already been given too many reasons to expect the answer to be no.

Glimmer shifted nervously and decided to prove that she belonged. She pressed her palms together and concentrated until a tiny ribbon of water curled through the air between them. Glimmer looked up at Leon with pure pride. “You see? I can do magic.”

As a Chosen Captain of Aurora, Leon was allowed to award one Academy invitation each year. The privilege was normally reserved for exceptional knights, promising recruits, or students from other Spires.

Leon had never used his.

Until Glimmer.

He reached inside his cloak and removed a sealed envelope edged in silver and gold, Aurora’s emblem pressed into deep blue wax beneath a sapphire ribbon. Leon held it toward her. “Glimmer, this is for you.”

Glimmer stared at the envelope without understanding what it meant. Leon kept his voice gentle as he explained it to her. “It’s an Academy letter. It means that if you want to go to Aurora Spire, they have to let you in.”

Leon told her exactly what waited there. “You’ll have a room, teachers, friends, and you’ll learn magic every day. This one is mine to give.”

He placed the letter carefully into her hands. “And I’m giving it to you.”

For one silent moment, Glimmer could only stare at the envelope. Then her entire face lit with overwhelming joy. “Really?” Her voice cracked with excitement. “For me? I get to go? I get my own room? And nice food? And… and friends?” She clutched the letter against her chest as tears spilled down her cheeks. “This is the best day ever! I’m gonna be like you. I’m going to be an Academy knight!”

Glimmer squealed and threw both arms around Leon’s waist, pressing the letter between them. “Are you gonna take me there?” Her voice came muffled against his cloak. “When everything’s okay again?”

Leon rested one hand upon the back of her head. “I will. I’ll take you there myself.”

There was still something they needed to finish in Dragontear first. Leon lowered his gaze to Glimmer and told her where she was going when it was over. “I’ll bring you home.”

The Girl With the Academy Letter

Before Leon could fulfill that promise, the war reached Dragontear.

Glimmer stood alone on a small stone terrace with Leon’s Academy invitation clutched against her chest. She had read the letter again and again, imagining marble towers, kind teachers, friends, and a place where a girl like her could finally belong.

For the first time in her life, tomorrow had begun to feel real.

Then the crimson tide appeared beyond the water.

Knights rushed toward battle. Sky-skiffs turned across the village. The blue beyond Dragontear began disappearing beneath red.

Glimmer held the Academy letter tighter as the future it promised seemed to vanish in front of her. “I just wanted to learn magic… and make friends…”

The fear quickly became more personal as her fingers trembled around the crumpled paper. “I don’t understand… Did I do something bad again? Is it coming because of me?”

A soft, helpless sob slipped out as Glimmer pressed her fists against her eyes. “I’m scared…” The red continued moving closer as the future she had imagined seemed to disappear with it. “I thought today was going to be different… but it never is.”

Somewhere beyond Dragontear, Leon was already trying to reach her.

Scarlett stood between him and the village and eventually realized something almost unbelievable.

Leon did not have a plan.

The approaching crimson tide was larger than anything he could simply cut apart with a greatsword. He did not know how he was going to stop it.

Scarlett asked why he was still heading toward Dragontear. Leon kept his gaze on the distant village. “No plan,” he said simply. “Just a little girl in Dragontear who still believes tomorrow is coming. That’s enough for me.”

Scarlett told him that Glimmer’s tomorrow would die that day. Leon lowered the greatsword an inch, his voice low and absolute. “She won’t die wondering if anyone came for her. I’m already on my way.”

He Came

Back in Dragontear, Glimmer waited.

The courtyard around her emptied as the crimson tide moved closer. Knights fought elsewhere. Strange lights crossed the distant village, but nobody appeared in the courtyard.

Glimmer began to believe she was alone again. Tears spilled over as she looked across the empty space around her. “I’m alone again…”

Her thoughts returned to the man who had promised he would come if she needed him. “Leon said… he said he’d come if I needed him. Did he forget? Or… or did I do something wrong?”

Glimmer tightened her arms around the patched cloth bag containing almost everything she owned and eventually squeezed her eyes shut.

Then the world flashed white.

Leon reached Dragontear in a streak of Specter lightning and stopped in the center of the courtyard. He knelt before Glimmer and gathered the shaking little girl into his arms. “I’m here, Glimmer. I’m here.”

Glimmer locked both arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder. “I thought… I thought I was gonna be alone again.”

Leon held her closer and drew his cloak up to gently brush the tears from her cheeks. “Hey,” he said low, thumb lingering under one eye. “You’re never gonna be alone again. Not while I’m breathing.”

He held her gaze and reminded her of the future still waiting beyond the battle. “You’re my little Academy knight, remember?”

Glimmer’s tears slowed enough for a small, real smile to return. “Okay,” she whispered, voice still thick. “Thank you for coming… I was really, really scared.”

Leon stood with Glimmer held securely against his chest and turned to face the crimson tide.

He still did not know how he was going to save her.

He only knew that he was there.

And Glimmer was no longer facing it alone.

I’ll Bring You Home

Dragontear survived.

The Crimson Sleep broke.

The Vein Weaver fell.

And after everything was finished, Leon kept the promise he had made on that quiet bench overlooking the water.

The Cloud Breaker returned to Aurora Arc Academy with Glimmer tucked safely against Leon’s chest.

Below them, the Academy was already celebrating. Students filled the marble courtyards and terraces as the returning warriors descended from the ship.

Leon walked directly toward Charlotte. He was returning from one of the greatest battles of his life, but the first person he presented to the Headmistress was the little girl in his arms. “Headmistress… I brought someone who really wants to see the Academy.”

Glimmer peeked out shyly and gave Charlotte a small wave. “Hi… I’m Glimmer. Leon said I could come learn magic here.”

Charlotte’s expression softened immediately. The immortal Headmistress of Aurora Arc Academy knelt until she was at Glimmer’s height. “Welcome home, Glimmer. We’ve been waiting for you.”

For Glimmer, one question still mattered. She tugged gently upon Leon’s Nightweave and looked up with wide, hopeful eyes. “Do I get a room here?”

Charlotte laughed lightly. “Absolutely. Leon, take her to the east wing. There’s a bright little room with the best view of the arches waiting just for her.”

Leon carried her there himself.

A Room of Her Own

Leon carried Glimmer through Aurora and up the winding terrace stairs until they reached the room that had been prepared for her.

He set her down inside.

Glimmer stood in the middle of the room with her patched bag clutched against her chest. Gentle sapphire clouds drifted across the high vaulted ceiling, and beyond the wide crystal window, Aurora’s floating islands sparkled beneath the afternoon sun.

Glimmer slowly turned in a circle as she took everything in. “Is this… really for me?”

She took one careful step, then another, as though part of her still expected the world beneath her feet to disappear. “I can sleep here? And wake up here? And it won’t go away?”

For most children at Aurora, a room was simply a room.

For Glimmer, it was something she had never been able to trust before.

A place that intended to remain.

Glimmer opened the patched bag and removed the threadbare blanket first. It had followed her through the years when sleeping meant cold ground and temporary places. She carried it to the bed, laid it across the covers with immense care, and gently smoothed it beneath her hands. “My blanket gets a real bed now… no more cold ground.”

Then Glimmer reached into the bag again and brought out the little dragon stitched from soft cloth and silver thread. Its tiny wings were worn from years spent inside her hands and hidden safely among the few possessions she could carry with her.

Glimmer walked to the crystal window and placed the little dragon carefully upon the windowsill, facing outward across Aurora’s floating islands and open sky. “Mr. Dragon, you get to watch the sky every day. No more hiding in the bag.”

For the first time, Glimmer did not need to keep everything she loved packed beside her.

Mr. Dragon could stay on the windowsill.

Because there would be a windowsill tomorrow.

Her blanket could stay on the bed.

Because there would be a bed tomorrow.

Glimmer reached into the bag one final time and removed the smooth river stone she sometimes rubbed for luck. She placed it upon the desk, rubbed it once, and whispered to herself. “This is my lucky stone… so I remember today is real.”

The patched bag was empty.

Everything Glimmer owned now had somewhere to belong.

So did she.

Glimmer turned toward Leon with happy tears shining in her eyes. “I thought kids like me didn’t get homes.”

For a moment, some of the old fear returned. Glimmer looked around the room that seemed almost too beautiful to trust. “Leon… is this real?” Her voice shook as she tried to believe what was around her. “Is this really my home? I’m so scared I’ll close my eyes and wake up somewhere bad again… like always…”

Leon crossed the room and rested one hand gently upon her head. His smile remained warm and certain. “It’s real, kiddo. This is your home now. You’re safe.”

Glimmer climbed onto her new bed and curled into herself.

Leon took the threadbare blanket that had once protected her from the cold ground and laid it carefully over her.

When he looked back from the doorway, Glimmer was already asleep.

The room remained around her.

The lucky stone remained upon the desk.

Mr. Dragon remained on the windowsill, looking out across Aurora.

And when Glimmer opened her eyes again, none of it would be gone.

She was home.

We’re Really Flying

Later, after Glimmer had slept inside her room and Aurora had filled with reunions, music, laughter, and returning friends, she found Leon again.

By then the little girl who had arrived carrying almost everything she owned in a patched bag had something else she wanted.

Leon had promised to show her the Academy from his Storm Chaser.

Glimmer bounced excitedly within Leon’s arms as she reminded him of the promise. “Leon promised to show me the Academy on the Storm Chaser! Can we? Please?”

Soon they were climbing above Aurora together.

The terraces, gardens, bridges, and glowing Spires spread beneath them.

Wind rushed past.

Glimmer looked out across the Academy that was now her home, and her face broke into pure delight. “Leon! We’re flying! We’re really flying!”

Leon smiled and held her close while the terraces, gardens, and glowing Spires spread beneath them like a living dream. “Yeah…” he said, his voice filled with quiet joy. “We’re flying.”

The little girl who had once stood alone beneath a changing sky was now laughing inside it.

The laughter that had been taken from her had returned.

For the first time, Glimmer was not surviving.

She was simply happy.

In the end, this was what they had always been fighting for.

Little Light of Aurelia

Glimmer’s story is one of Aurelia’s smallest victories.

And one of its most important.

The kingdom could not give her back the people the Blood Legion took from her. It could not make the years before Dragontear disappear.

What it could give her was a future.

A room where she could sleep without preparing to leave. A bed for the blanket that had once kept her warm on cold ground. A desk for the stone she carried for luck.

Teachers who would show her how far that tiny ribbon of Flow could someday reach. Friends she had not met yet. A home that would still exist when she opened her eyes in the morning.

Glimmer did not need to defeat a Devastator, command an army, or become one of Aurelia’s legendary warriors for her life to matter.

Her happiness was already worth fighting for.

That is why Leon came.

That is why Aurora opened its doors.

That is why the heroes kept standing beneath fractured skies.

So a little girl could unpack her bag.

So tomorrow could finally arrive.

And so somewhere high above Aurelia, on the windowsill of a room that belonged to Glimmer, a tiny cloth dragon could watch the sky every day.

No more hiding in the bag.