[b]YET AGAIN[/b], a woman who could not bother to get the name right of the child she tried to befriend exposed the minor to a level of fright surpassing even their last fiasco less than twenty-four hours ago. As they plummeted hundreds of feet, Victoria's scream, no doubt, at its current decibels, reached the most sensitive ears on the asteroid.

Only when struck by the breathtaking views of the hidden wonder that was this golden city did the girl take a break from desperately trying to pry herself free from her abductor. It happened slowly, and before they'd hit the ground, the girl Ryouko held fainted, now limp like a towel on a rack.

She had debilitating fear in her spirit. So much, Victoria could not hold consciousness. There was no longer a sensation of falling. No sound of wind, nor crash of arrival. Only the bloom of short-lived silence. Like a flower in bloom, the light emerging from the darkness peeled open senses one after another. 

The sky had a tinge of gold encountered in the brief moments of each dawn. Ones veined in the memories of every being fortunate to see daily, yearly, or even once in a lifetime. Clouds glided in reverse, casting shadows over the young girl's body, but she felt hot. Beneath her feet, there was no floor. There were only beams of amber light spiraling upward like static-charged strands of hair. She stood—or rather, hovered…in a place that felt as though it had been waiting for her.

[b][i]“Sun-born child,”[/i][/b]

A voice came as a susurrant tide, sifting into her. Victoria's body felt crystalline, wavering warmth passing directly through her.

[b][i]“So pure... so radiant. Immaculate—beyond the weaving of my own design. Not wrought by my hand. Not even…touched.”[/i][/b]

Each word brushed new folds into the young girl’s mind with the reverence of something ancient, learning to be gentle.

[b][i]“Why do you fear the drop?”[/i][/b]
[i][b]“You were born to fall upward.”[/b][/i]

In a trance, Victoria was lulled out of her state of hysteria. She stopped fidgeting around, absorbing her surroundings. No weight, no fear, bearing only the innocence of her questions. The spirit heard it all but responded with its own.

[i][b]“You are a daughter of no crown. But your blood has always turned toward the sun—do you feel it?”[/b][/i]

Hesitant to speak, it was out of character for her to talk to this strange voice, but she did. [i]“I have…I feel a tingly feeling…”[/i]

It was the light cradling her like a newborn, slowly enveloping her, tightening like a fist. As an easily frightened girl, this should have alarmed her, but it didn't. Though she couldn't articulate it, she felt…stronger. 

A shape amalgamated at the edge of her vision. Something impossibly vast, serpent-like, its scales like tightly woven stars of a galaxy, yet she could see it all. An otherwise incomprehensible Wyrm was before her, yet every movement felt intimate, motherly even. Its two eclipses for pupils gleamed into the nine-year-old's, too bright to stare at, too hypnotic to turn away from.

Victoria couldn’t describe it, but she felt something. It was radiant, reassuring her soul, yet for the time being, it masqueraded as no more than a dream she was sure to forget soon after waking up. The only proof? The glowing sigil on her left arm: a single coiled spiral, already beginning to fade beneath the heiress's regenerating tissue. Unconscious in Ryouko’s arms, it was gone before landing…

A secret sealed by the sun itself. The mark of the Dawncoil.