Six years into his solitary reign, Emperor Vaelorian was managing the Lumina Empire with near-flawless efficiency. Under his steady hand, the Crown Initiative had transformed the nation, and the public saw a ruler of courage and grace. But inside the private wings of the Palace, the Prince and the Princess were growing at magnificent, terrifying rates.
The core family unit, though fractured by Riven's disappearance, was tightly woven by loyalty and shared pain. Willow and Barron, having solidified their bond through the chaos of war and the secrecy of the twins' birth, were now married. Their daughter, born three years after the twins, often joined the royal children in their chaotic nursery, supervised by the ever-vigilant Anya.
While the twins were the public face of hope, in the private hours of the night, they were the source of Vaelorian's deepest heartache.
The nightmares began shortly after the twins turned three, coinciding tragically with the development of their latent Gifts. They seemed to have an unbreakable, synchronized connection to the trauma of Riven's vanishing. Every night, Vaelorian would hear the simultaneous, desperate cries emanating from their interconnected royal nursery. He would rush in to find both Adonis and Aaliyah-Lavelle tossing and turning, their small bodies rigid with fear, tears streaming down their faces.
Adonis would thrash with such force that his tiny limbs bent the soft metal bars of his bed railing—a violent echo of Riven's strength. Aaliyah-Lavelle would cry silently, her eyes clenched, projecting a raw, frantic wave of fear that momentarily overwhelmed Vaelorian's own senses—a terrifying echo of Riven's second gift.
The dreams were always the same. Though the children could rarely articulate them beyond fragmented terror, they spoke of darkness, a sensation of falling, and the sight of someone being taken by the shadows—a description that perfectly matched the General's frantic report of Riven's capture by the black mist.
Vaelorian felt tragically useless in these moments. He knew Riven would have instantly stabilized the children with his mind control, soothing the jagged edges of their subconscious.
Ineed Riven's mind control, Vaelorian thought, looking at his son as he straightened another bent railing. But Riven is gone. I have to wait for Aaliyah-Lavelle's Gift to ripen, just enough for me to tap into it, to understand what they are seeing.
Vaelorian tried to activate his own Gift, desperate to bridge the gap to his daughter's mind, hoping to use her power to calm her brother. But it was always the same: the fear would spike, the energy would flare, and as he reached out... there was nothing stable to grasp. Aaliyah-Lavelle's Gift was still too chaotic, like trying to catch smoke with his bare hands. He was shut out of their minds, a father isolated from the only remaining connection to his husband.
On a particularly grueling morning, Vaelorian summoned Anya and Duke Ashbourne to the nursery. The room smelled of lavender and cold iron.
"I need solutions. The nightmares are getting worse," Vaelorian said, his voice tight. "They are too powerful to simply be bad dreams; they feel... shared. Synchronized. It's almost as if they are experiencing a memory. They're in pain and I can't help them."
"Your Majesty, if their nightmares are as you said... maybe they're experiencing Riven's disappearance," Duke Ashbourne suggested with a thoughtful look. "The twin bond, combined with their latent Gifts, is acting like an antenna, picking up the psychic residue of that traumatic moment."
"His Grace might be right," Anya chimed in, adjusting a bio-monitor. "The biological stress is manageable, Your Majesty, but the emotional damage is not. I can give them calming agents, but that only dulls the symptoms. We need to solve the root cause."
"The root cause," Vaelorian repeated, sounding defeated. "That might or might not be that my missing husband is now haunting the subconscious of our children. I can rule an Empire, but how can I protect my own children from a recurring terror I can't even see?"
He turned to his father-in-law, his silver eyes flashing with a new, desperate resolve. "Your Grace, I need you to focus your investigation. Stop searching for physical traces of Riven's disappearance. Start searching for knowledge of the black mist. What power could create it? What dimension could absorb a man of Riven's strength without leaving a trace?"
"Your Majesty, I have spent six years tracing every atmospheric anomaly in the Northern Holds," Duke Ashbourne replied solemnly. "I will intensify the search for cults or extra-dimensional energy signatures. We will find the source of the mist sooner or later. For the sake of the children."
The political challenge of governing Lumina was now secondary. The true battle was being fought in the minds of two five-year-olds—against a shadow that might just be the last remaining link to the man Vaelorian refused to stop loving.