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🄴🄸🅁🄰 🄻🅄🄽🄴🅃🄷[/color]
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Eira kept to the air like a held breath.

The winds around her were gentle here—too gentle. Sunspire’s boundary shimmered below like a golden veil, a warmth she did not trust, a warmth that felt wrong against the frost‑etched runes beneath her skin. Crytharion hovered, wings beating in slow, controlled strokes, his great body coiled with restrained vigilance. He obeyed her command to stop, but every scale along his spine glimmered with tension.

She dared not cross the invisible line. Not when she could feel the storm inside her shift uneasily, as though the very sunlight below was a foreign tongue it could not speak.

She kept to--

She kept to the air like a trespasser before a sacred tomb, suspended between retreat and ruin.

Below, Sunspire stretched in impossible radiance. Ivory towers pierced the clouds like spears forged from dawn itself, their gilded surfaces bleeding molten light across the heavens. Rivers of gold ran through the city’s veins, and banners of white silk drifted from parapets untouched by decay. It was beautiful in the cruelest way possible—untouched, unmarred, alive.

Eira hated it instantly.

The storm within her recoiled harder the longer she stared. Frost crept unconsciously across her fingertips, thin crystals crawling over the leather wrappings around her hands before dissolving again beneath the oppressive warmth. Even the air tasted wrong here. Too clean. Too bright. It carried none of the iron scent of snowstorms, none of the comforting bitterness of pine and distant ash she had known all her life.

Beneath her, Crytharion released a low rumble deep within his throat.

Not aggression.

Warning.

Eira’s eyes narrowed.

Far beneath them, the boundary shimmered again.

Not a wall.

A pulse.

Golden threads spread across the sky for the briefest moment, forming vast geometric sigils hidden within the sunlight itself. Ancient wardcraft. Old enough that even the wind seemed to fear touching it. The magic brushed against her senses like burning needles, and for one terrible heartbeat she felt something notice her.

Not someone.

Something.

The warmth sharpened.

Crytharion’s wings faltered once before steadying, his claws flexing against empty air. A growl rippled from him now, deeper than thunder trapped beneath mountains. The dragon’s icy hued eyes fixed upon the city below with naked distrust.

Eira slowly tightened her grip on the scales behind his neck.

[color=f49ac2]“Easy, boy.”[/color] she murmured, though her own voice sounded distant beneath the pounding of her heart.

The feeling did not leave.

It lingered against her skin, probing carefully, as though Sunspire itself stood at the threshold watching the frostborn stranger who dared hover at its gates.

She remained perfectly still.

One movement.
One step forward.
One breath too close--

--and she knew the city would awaken.

[color=f49ac2]"As you wish, Sir, command understood."[/color] she said, replying to her rider leader. The one known as Jinan.[color=f49ac2] "Ready to follow the task at hand." [/color]