An Aurelian can be difficult to understand until you have watched one come home.

They arrive beneath shining sails with blood still drying upon their clothes, step from a dragon or sky-chaser, find the people waiting for them, and become someone entirely familiar again. A warrior capable of breaking a Zethra apart may spend the evening carrying a sleepy child through the house. A woman who held a street against monsters may sit beside a friend and repair a torn dress. A man whose Arc shook the sky may be late to supper because somebody’s little girl asked him to show her how he made the light around his hands.

This is ordinary in Aurelia.

More than two centuries ago, the first Fracture broke the sky and changed the people beneath it. Arc Energy entered their bodies and, across the generations that followed, became part of their inheritance. Golden Bastion, white Specter lightning, red Blaze, emerald Terran, sapphire Flow, violet Umbra, and black Hollow became as recognizable in Aurelia as the colors of its cities.

The Fractures never stopped opening. Neither did Aurelia.

Children therefore grow up knowing that the beautiful sky above them can become a battlefield. They learn their Arcs. They learn their Veils. Those who choose the warrior’s path train their bodies until strength, speed, endurance, and violence answer them as naturally as movement. Aurelia’s Academies produce people expected to stand in front of creatures capable of tearing dragons from the air and kill them before those creatures reach everyone behind them.

That training does not disappear when the battle ends.

Aurelians spar for pleasure. Friends throw one another through flowers beneath flashing Veils and come up laughing. Children learn to hold a shield while somebody they trust gives them something worth blocking. Brothers test one another, lovers challenge one another, and parents teach the first stance, the first controlled spark, and the first clean strike.

Their Arcs belong everywhere. Blaze warms kitchens. Flow moves through gardens and family homes. Terran closes the cut somebody acquired doing something foolish. Specter flashes between laughing children, while Bastion glows around hands showing a younger fighter where to place their feet.

Aurelians enjoy what they are.

They are proud of beautiful bodies made strong through years of use. They wear magnificent clothing, armor, and cloaks because beauty belongs in the world they are fighting to preserve. They fill their cities with gardens, food, music, dragons, ships, markets, festivals, and people they love. The same civilization that trains living weapons builds tavern ships so laughter can drift through the clouds.

They are extraordinarily welcoming people. Arrive peacefully in an Aurelian town and someone will tell you where to eat. A child may want to know where you came from. A merchant will argue happily over which street has the better bakery.

If danger arrives while you are standing among them, you are now one of the people beside them, and Aurelians will put themselves between you and whatever came through the sky. They cross borders to help people who are not theirs, carry strangers from ruins, and send healers where people are dying. They have built generations of heroes around the simple instinct to reach somebody before it is too late.

Then hurt one of them.

The change is immediate. Arc light fills their eyes, and the smile disappears. The person standing before you may still be the baker who sold you bread, the woman arranging flowers outside her shop, the young cadet laughing with his friends, or the father who had a child upon his shoulders a moment before.

Now you are facing an Aurelian.

If you strike one of their own, nobody gathers to debate what should happen to you. You do not receive a warning and an escort to the border. The nearest capable Aurelian kills you.

It may be a soldier. It may be a knight. It may be the flower seller.

Aurelians have lived for centuries beneath an existential war. They know what hesitation costs. A creature dropping toward a crowded street does not receive a speech. A murderer does not receive an explanation of why murder is wrong. A dragon coming through the sky to kill their people becomes something falling dead into the street.

Their heroes speak accordingly.

Three young Aurora cadets once sensed one small Aurelian still alive in ruined Seabright and turned their cloud-chasers back for her. By the time they reached Hope, the Blood Legion had already killed the people she loved, including the guardian who had been trying to keep her alive, and three fighters had finally cornered her in the street. One had kicked her to the ground. Another had lifted her by the head while she clung to her little bear.

Before the Legionnaire could tighten his grip any further, white lightning punched straight through his skull.

Leon lowered his hand while white current still crawled around his glove. “I barely had to aim.”

Enzo’s hands caught fire as he looked toward the two women still standing. “Two left.”

Solace glanced between them while Hollow gathered around his boots. “One each.”

The boys killed them.

Solace drove one through a wall and sent his shadow dragon after her, tearing through the building with enough force to kill her inside it. Enzo’s fire dragon caught the other in its jaws.

Leon went to Hope.

He found her curled around Squishy, trembling on the broken stone, and gently pushed the bear securely back into her arms. Then he wrapped himself around her, turned her face away from the street, and covered the side of her head with one gloved hand while Enzo finished the woman who had hurt her.

When it was over, they stayed with Hope. 

Solace crouched beside her rather than crowding closer. 

Enzo kept watch over the ruined street while Leon asked whether she was hurt.

They learned her name. They learned Squishy’s name. Leon straightened the bear’s folded ear and carefully asked whether Squishy had been hurt too, because he understood that to the frightened little girl in front of him, that mattered.

Then a Blood Dragon came down through the smoke.

Hope flinched behind Leon. He rose immediately and stepped in front of her as white lightning began crawling around his gloves. Enzo moved to one side with fire climbing both arms, while Solace took the other and his shadow dragon rose behind them.

The Blood Legion assassin landed before the three boys and looked over their little black cloaks. “You’re from Aurora Arc Academy.”

Enzo’s fire brightened around both hands. “Oh, you recognize the cloak. Good. Then you know how this ends.”

Solace’s darkness rolled heavier around his boots. “With you dead.”

Lightning broke outward from Leon in blinding forks, and Phantoms began stepping into the ruined street until the Blood Legion assassin was completely surrounded. Leon clenched both fists, his emerald eyes flooding pure white as the storm brightened around him. “Welcome to Aurelia. Try not to bleed on the gold.”

That is Aurelian mercy toward someone who has come to hurt an Aurelian. 

There is none.

Their affection is just as absolute.

When the killing is finished, those same people go looking for one another. They count who came home. They embrace, kiss, sit beside beds, mend toys, share food, and tease the frightened until the laughter comes back. They tell their children they are proud of them and their friends that they love them.

Then they wake beneath the same fractured sky and do it again.

An Aurelian is a person raised to believe that life should be magnificent and that anything attempting to destroy that life should meet someone strong enough to stop it.

Their homes are crowded. Their cities are beautiful. Their love is obvious, and their power is lethal.

If you hurt one of their people, the nearest Aurelian will kill you. Then they will go home to the life you failed to take from them. 

Two women linger on a training terrace after their morning spar, discussing where to eat.

A greatsword rests against the railing beside them, nearly as tall as its owner. She reaches for it with one hand and settles it across her back while her friend recommends the tavern they visited yesterday. This starts another argument about the food.

The weight of the weapon barely interrupts her.

Years of training have made that strength familiar.

Every Aurelian possesses one of the Seven Arcs: Bastion, Specter, Blaze, Terran, Flow, Umbra, or Hollow. Some discover an Arc Resonance of their own, giving their power a form another wielder of the same Arc may never produce. Academies and military training programs across the kingdom help Aurelians develop that power, refine their abilities, and discover what they can become.

That training reaches through the whole body.

Arc Energy strengthens muscle and bone. Reflexes sharpen. Movement becomes faster, endurance greater, and an Aurelian learns to cross extraordinary distances in the time someone calling for help takes to draw another breath.

Their strongest warriors can wipe out kingdoms, cleave mountains, destroy armies, bring colossal creatures down, and fight through skies filled with enough destructive power to change the landscape beneath them.

They learn how much force to put behind a weapon, how quickly to cross the space before an enemy, and how gently to catch someone who cannot survive the landing alone. The power grows alongside their ability to use it, until extraordinary strength becomes part of the way they move through the world.

The woman with the greatsword knows exactly how dangerous she is.

At the moment, she would like something to eat.

The Veil

Laughter carries across Aurelia’s training grounds between the blows.

A fist connects. Gold flashes across someone’s ribs, and the impact sends them hurtling across the grass. Their friend waits for them to get up, already smiling because both of them know the return blow is going to be personal.

The light caught the strike.

That protective layer of Arc Energy is called a Veil. It surrounds the body, meeting blades, blasts, and tremendous physical force before they reach the person beneath. A powerful Veil may hold through an attack that leaves very little standing nearby.

Aurelians learn to trust it. They also learn to recognize when it is failing.

Fractures spread beneath repeated blows. A sufficiently powerful strike can pierce the protection or shatter it entirely. Rebuilding it costs Arc Energy, and a warrior deep into a difficult battle may already be struggling to gather enough for the next attack.

That is when another blow becomes considerably more dangerous.

It is also when an enemy may discover that breaking the light was only part of the work.

Arc Fortitude

The Strength Beneath the Veil

Sometimes a Veil shatters and a warrior disappears into the wreckage.

Then something moves.

The Aurelian rises with blood running from their mouth, finds the enemy through the settling dust, and lifts their weapon again.

Arc Energy is still moving through their body.

It strengthens flesh and bone, giving the arm swinging an enormous weapon the strength to wield it and helping the body endure the violence that comes back. As an Aurelian develops, that resilience can become extraordinary.

This is Arc Fortitude.

A blast that tears a mountainside open may strike a powerful Aurelian and leave them wounded, furious, and very much alive. Even an attack that penetrates their body may fail to kill them. The damage matters, but so does the person receiving it.

The mountain may be easier to break.

There are enormous differences between Aurelians. A blow that kills one may leave another wounded and a third still standing. Natural power, training, and the condition of the body all matter. Exhaustion and accumulated wounds can bring down someone who would have survived the same attack earlier in the battle.

Aurelia still needs its healers. Friends still carry one another home. There are wounds even its strongest people cannot survive.

But a broken Veil does not leave an ordinary body behind.

The warrior who crossed the battlefield, struck the creature, and stood between it and everyone else is still there.

A Veil can shatter before the warrior does.

Arc Resonance

Sometimes it begins with a little girl asking her mother to come outside.

Golden wolf pups are tumbling across the terrace. One has caught a ribbon. Another is attempting to climb a step considerably larger than its legs. The girl watches her mother’s face while the little creatures gather around their feet.

She made them herself.

Her mother kneels, holds her close, and tells her they are beautiful.

An Arc Resonance can begin that gently.

It is an Aurelian’s power becoming something personal. Two people may carry the same Arc, train beside one another, and eventually discover abilities that have almost nothing in common. One summons creatures that fight with purpose beside them. Another opens a path through space, transforms their own body, or discovers that their lightning can make matter disappear.

Some Resonances become armies. Others spread protection across fleets or carry healing through thousands of wounded. At their greatest, they can decide wars, destroy kingdoms, and become the reason an enemy fears one particular Aurelian.

Yet the first person to see that power may simply have been a proud mother.

Resonance can awaken in childhood or take years to emerge. It can also change. A warrior might fight beside familiar Phantoms for much of their life before those guardians take a form they have never seen. Training, discovery, love, grief, and the experiences that change a person can reach the power growing within them.

There is always the possibility of becoming something more.

Aurelians discover that possibility in gardens, training grounds, desperate battles, and moments they will spend the rest of their lives remembering.

Then they bring it home.

A mother may use her water serpent to drag a monster away from the people behind her. On another afternoon, a much smaller version follows her laughing daughter around the sitting room because the child has decided that having a bath is entirely unnecessary.

The serpent looks behind the sofa.

The girl shrieks with laughter and runs.

Her mother follows with a towel.

This, too, is Arc Resonance.