IC Date: 07/02/2025

The façade of the palace complex felt miles taller than it had in her previous visits. She couldn’t discount the possibility that it had taken it upon itself to restore itself further in her absence, but that didn’t account for the profound smallness she felt in its presence. The pointed arch that housed the palace’s monumental bronze doors no longer stood obstructed by debris, instead offering almost entirely clear passage into the palace’s colossal entrance hall.

Unlike the doors of the Tower of the Winds these bronzes depicted no figures recognizable as humanoid, instead blooming with a thousand nameless flowers intertwining and winding around a tiered, tapering tower set against a starry sky. At least that confirmed that she was in the right place. It also reinforced just how much these people loved their bloody towers. The palace above and around the doors rose in turrets and glass, resplendent and melancholy in equal measure, its beauty tempered by crumbled stone and the hollow eyes of pointed arch window frames that spanned beyond her sight from the ground. Tempesti’s stomach turned as she allowed her gaze to follow it upward. Had these structures belonged to any lifetime she’d never lived she would have found them entrancing in their poignant loveliness, but each stone crescendo resounded through the pit in her chest. Partially dismembered statues flanked the doors; a headless, one-winged woman held a sword aloft while her companion stood armless, marble face staring blindly but defiantly forward, her gaze imperious through the centuries. Tempesti recognized her, a face she’d seen dimly lit in the deepest reaches of a crypt. She didn’t know the woman’s given name, only that Tempestine history credited her with ending Sotiria’s reign of terror. Unsurprising then, that she would stand guard at the entrance to the palace she claimed for her own dynasty.

There was no resentment in the observation, Sotiria’s memories were nowhere to be found in her own starseed. She had to imagine that the old Basileia would have more pressing concerns about her killer than her decorative choices. Giving the stone warrior a final passing glance, Tempesti strode through the palace doors. Sotiria’s problems weren’t hers. Elysia’s were more immediate, closer to the surface by the day and eager to press their way into her conscious mind. A cold tremor ran its fingers up the back of her neck as though to reinforce the idea that one dead version of her was always ready to chime in with some unpleasant reminiscence given the right cue. It remained difficult to think of Elysia as part of herself. The gulf between them was more than time and space, but as much as she wanted to believe that she could never become some fragile being who broke under the weight of freedom, she couldn’t deny that the sheer isolation of her life would wreak havoc on her mind. A quick shake of the head exorcised the ghost. For now at least. She had too much to do and too much at stake to get bogged down in hypotheticals about insanity transcending lifetimes. With another tug on her rucksack’s shoulder straps she stepped through the doors and into the sun-dappled darkness within.