"You have to bring it back."
The voice tore through the girl's mind like a blade pressed behind the eyes.
Ouch~ah~what is this?
So loud. So vague. It hurts.
Runia Rodstad stirred.
Seventeen years old, half-conscious, she forced her eyelids open while leaning against the cold stone of a cliff. She was sitting on a jagged rock overlooking the sea. Not blue. Not black.
Red.
Broad, gleaming, unnaturally red, as though the ocean itself had bled out beneath the dying sky.
The setting sun stabbed into her vision. She winced.
The sky looks like it's burning. She mummered. Ruby-colored.
Wrong.
Her eyes throbbed. Everything looked distorted, soaked in shades of blood and shadow.
A phrase surfaced in her mind, uninvited, spoken in a tongue that felt old against her thoughts.
"Aka.."
"Laes evila blood on thine vessel."
In her pale hands lay a ruby, cracked and smeared with dried blood. It lifted on its own, trembling in the cold sea breeze. Then it shattered.
Fine crimson dust scattered, sinking into the blood staining Runia's hands, her satin-red cloak, her skin.
The dried blood came alive.
It flowed.
Strands of it lifted from her body, from the fabric, from the ground itself, rising like threads pulled by an unseen force. All of it rushed together, spiraling into a small glass bottle Runia pulled from her brown leather bag.
The dust scattered~then halted.
Each fragment reversed its fall, spiraling inward, pulling itself together as though time itself recoiled. Slowly, deliberately, the ruby reformed, smooth and whole once more, hovering just above her hands.
She sealed the bottle without hesitation.
Then she stood.
Her leg screamed in protest as she limped forward, dragging herself toward a body lying nearby.
A corpse.
She collapsed beside the body and took the cold hand in hers. A tear slid down her cheek, tracing the thin cut along her skin. She pressed the hand to her face, desperate to feel warmth that was already gone.
"Shunia," she murmured. "I promised."
The death of Shunia Rodstad, head of the kin, had shattered her beyond repair.
That evening, an entire civilization had been erased. A lineage that had clung to longevity and sovereignty was washed away from that cliff in a day. What remained was silence so vast Runia could barely breathe.
The ruby that should have rested in Shunia's forehead was gone. Not only hers but everyone's in the ruby kingdom.
"You slaughtered them," a voice sneered. "What are you shedding tears for?"
Runia's head snapped up.
The voice kept dragging memories back into her skull. The chase. The blood.
Her vision went black.
Three nights passed.
In the eastern lands of the Sapphirites, the news spread quickly.
"The Rubinites were wiped out?" "No sovereigns left?" "Huh. Who even bothered? They were practically extinct already."
Runia lay on her back, lightheaded, listening.
She woke with a sharp inhale.
A blue cape partially covered her face. Her wounds no longer burned. Beside her, in the confined space of a wheeled, horse-drawn cart, lay a boy~unconscious, dark magnetic hair falling across his face.
Who is this? she thought to herself.
My head feels like it's splitting.
The voice returned, quieter now.
Bring it back, Runia.
Runia…?
Runia who?
Her name slipped away the moment she reached for it.
Panic threatened to rise, but she swallowed it down. Stay composed. Stay quiet.
She peeked through the white curtains as the cart rolled forward.
Outside, the street was crowded with people. Humans, all of them, gemstones embedded in their foreheads. Blue. Yellow. Green. Each one gleaming faintly under daylight.
Wait. Do I have one too?
Runia touched her forehead.
There was a gem.
What kind…? The shape-
No. They're all the same shape.
The cart slowed to a stop.
The driver leaned in, his gaze flicking to her forehead.
"It's a sapphire, miss."
Runia said nothing.
"You don't need to pretend you remember," he continued calmly. "I know everything you wish to know. I'll drop you off here. But you will come find me again."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"The Floating Ring Islands."
The cart door opened.
The boy remained inside, still unconscious.
Runia stepped down onto the street, her leather bag heavy at her side. The cart rolled away, turning right at the corner.
She stood there alone.
Two steps away was a bookstore. At the edge of the footpath stood a glass-cased street lamp, inside which a blue crystal floated, slowly rotating.
She looked towards the store.
'Rubinites : Slaughtered or Sacrificed?'
Runia read the headline from the notice beside which a tall, dark-toned man was leaning against the bookstore's doorframe, standing diagonally to her right. His white-trimmed hair contrasted sharply with the kite-shaped opal embedded in his forehead.
She felt his eyes on her.
She looked away, quickly, pretending to rummage through her bag, reaching for anything that might make it seem like she hadn't been staring. When she lifted her gaze again, the man was gone.
Gone.
Runia sprinted to the corner and glanced right. Empty street. No retreating footsteps. No fading silhouette. He had dissolved into thin air.
He knew something, she thought.
…Whatever.
She looked back into her bag.
Rubies??
"Your hands are stained, Runia. The spilt blood won't leave you alone."
The voice again. Sharp. Invasive. It pierced straight through her thoughts.
Runia shoved open the bookstore door. The bell rang as it shut behind her, and the voice retreated, distant but not gone. She scanned the room. The owner stared at her.
"Looking for something ?, miss."
She nodded, then asked quietly, "Sir… what is it about rubinites that I must know?"
The old sapphirite's eyes hardened. "It's better to remain naive," he said. "It was the aether they tried to obtain."
"Aether?" Runia echoed.
"The kind obtained by genocide."
Before she could respond, the door opened again. Customers filtered in, murmuring. Runia nodded and moved deeper into the store.
Shelves lined the left wall, forming narrow corridors. A table sat between successive rows, surrounded by a few stools. She took a seat at the far end, beside a glass wall that looked out onto the street. A sapphire lamp hung nearby, glowing faintly.
She looked up. An amethyst holder sat across the table, at the far end. No one else around. She placed her bag on the table.
Let's see what you left me, she thought.
Three rubies. None shaped like the gemstones embedded in foreheads.
A bottle. Filled with blood ?
There's many more but i can't see it without bringing it out.
And there~a diary.
'Runia Rodstad.'
The voice before, that called out to Runia ..
She opened it.
'19th September, 1835 '
Written in blood..
'Me, Runia, turned ten today.
I was gifted an utility gemstone.
I named it Aka.'
She turned the page.
Blank.
Another page.
Blank.
Had she never written again?
The last page wasn't empty.
'The Seven Gemstones (Utility and Birth):
•Ruby – The Sovereign
Utility: Authority Resonance
(Runia's kin)
•Sapphire – The Mystic
Utility: Forecast Nodes
•Emerald – The Catalyst
Utility: Stabilization
•Onyx – The Sentinel
Utility: Nullification
•Amber – The Accumulator
Utility: Deferred Storage
•Amethyst – The Navigator
Utility: Path Resolution
•Opal – The Trickster
Utility: Context Shifting'
At the bottom, a final line:
'Runia seeks the Aether.'
"What??" she whispered.
The blood dissolved the moment she finished reading. New words bled onto the page.
'You are Runia.'
~ Info Fragment: Sapphire Lamps
Artificial sapphire storage gemstones rotate continuously within the lamp. These are psuedo- utility gems, working for a transient moment of time. Invented by the unit commander Siphiye Shardfarx in 1809 in kingdom of sapphire.
They detect future probabilities of threatening incidents within their range.
Upon detection, the sapphire knocks on the glass casing in the direction of the incident, also allowing nearby sapphirites to foresight the coming incidence.