The Mountain of Transcendence ushered in its quiet morning pulse, a slow, shimmering wave of soft light drifting across the crystalline structures and settling over the summit like a blessing spoken too quietly for mortal ears to register, and Aevor stepped back into the home Lyxaria had prepared for them, the echo of ancient inscriptions still lingering faintly in the recesses of his awareness. Behind him, deeper within the chamber, Lyxaria slept curled into her bedding of prismatic threads, her nine tails gathered loosely around her with their glow dimmed into tranquility, while Luna slept in the adjacent room, wings curled gently inward, peaceful in a way only a child of divine lineage could manage.
Aevor moved forward soundlessly, fully prepared to stand alone on the balcony until the mountain's next pulse, yet the instant he stepped into the living room he noticed the faint displacement of air, the soft scent of foxfire fragrance, and the silhouette of a woman already sitting upon the balcony's edge. She did not look back, but her presence was unmistakably familiar—the same woman who had bowed to him during the rites last night, Lyxaria's mother, whose eyes held a quiet depth that eclipsed even the older Vyxari elders.
Her long hair, shining like a pale aurora, drifted with the faint breeze that only existed on this mountain, and her nine tails lay folded elegantly behind her, each one dim but steady, as though conserving strength rather than resting. She sat with a posture too still for someone awake for only moments, yet too heavy for someone merely enjoying the morning. There was a weight behind her, an old sorrow that darkened the air just by sitting within it.
"You move more quietly than I expected," she said softly without turning, her voice carrying a gentle weariness so profound Aevor instinctively slowed his breathing out of respect, "but even quiet steps are loud to a mother who has forgotten how to sleep."
Aevor joined her on the balcony, settling beside her without intrusion.
"You were awake," he said.
"I was," she replied. "Sleep is a friend I abandoned long ago. It did not leave me; I was the one who could no longer accept its comfort."
Her voice carried no bitterness. Only exhaustion.
Aevor stood silently beside her, allowing the mountain's glow to wash over them. Her hands rested upon the railing, scarred faintly with thin white marks, the kind earned not in battle but through desperate protection, frantic nights, and years of tension. The scars were not the hardened marks of a warrior but the trembling remnants of someone who had held onto something fragile for far too long.
She followed his gaze, then breathed out a thin, trembling sigh.
"I imagine," she murmured, "that you are curious about the world my daughter was born into. And perhaps you deserve to know. You treat her gently. She smiles because of you."
Aevor listened without a word.
Vyralis lowered her eyes, and something in her posture cracked, just slightly, like a long-frozen river beginning to thaw.
"Lyxaria's life has not been the serene legend the mountain tells outsiders," she whispered, voice tightening as though each syllable were a shard of glass scraping her throat. "In truth, she was not merely stalked. It was far worse. Far, far worse."
The breeze around them stilled.
The morning pulse dimmed.
And Vyralis began to speak of the past.
"When Lyxaria was born," she said, "the world did not rejoice. It recoiled."
Her hands clenched faintly.
"Nine tails from birth. A sign of potential so overwhelming that even our own people feared it. Children like her are prophesied to reshape eras, to rewrite the breath of fate itself, and such beings attract not only reverence, but obsession."
Her voice softened unbearably.
"The man who stalked her did not simply follow her, Aevor. He claimed her. In his mind, she was never a child. She was a vessel. A catalyst. A thing."
Aevor's expression darkened almost imperceptibly, the shift quiet but razor-sharp.
Vyralis continued, breath trembling.
"He first appeared when she was three. A scholar, he called himself. A traveler. A seeker of divine anomalies. He spoke kindly. Too kindly. Lyxaria trusted him because she was still learning what trust even meant. Children do not know how cruelty wears a smile."
Her voice strained, breaking.
"By the time she was five, he would leave gifts outside our home each morning. Dolls carved in her likeness. Drawings. Notes filled with praise she could not understand. She thought it was generosity. I realized it was obsession."
Aevor said nothing, but the mountain air tightened, responding to the fury beneath his composed exterior.
Vyralis's tails curled inward.
"He followed her everywhere. Outside the settlements. Into the forests. Into the learning halls. And whenever she looked over her shoulder, he smiled as though he had every right to be there."
She swallowed.
"When she was six, she came home trembling. Not from fear of him. But from fear of the realization that she no longer felt safe anywhere. Not in the village. Not in daylight. Not even in her own room."
The mother's breath hitched.
"One night, she awoke screaming. I ran to her room and found the window open. She said she saw him standing there, inside the room, watching her sleep. Watching her breathe. Watching her dream. She said he whispered that dreams belonged to him now too."
Aevor's fingers curled faintly over the railing.
Vyralis closed her eyes.
"So we fled," she whispered. "We fled our home. Our friends. Our lives. Everything. We ran to the secondary peaks, thinking we could outrun him."
Her voice grew hollow.
"But obsession is patient. It waits. It festers. It follows."
She looked at Aevor then, her eyes glistening.
"He found us again when she was seven. This time he did not bring gifts. He brought chains."
Aevor's breath slowed to a chilling stillness.
Vyralis continued.
"He attacked at dusk. Silent. Precise. As though he had rehearsed the moment every night. He bound me first, not with rope, but with talismans that paralyzed even Vyxari blood. Then he reached for her, telling her that 'a being like you belongs nowhere but beside me, where destiny wills it.' She screamed. Gods, she screamed."
Her voice broke entirely.
"I have never forgotten that sound."
She wiped her eyes.
"I broke free. I don't remember how. I don't remember what I tore or what bones I shattered. I only remember grabbing her and running until my legs nearly gave out. We reached the mountain only because the mountain allowed us to. It hid us. Cloaked us. Protected us."
She inhaled shakily.
"And yet even here, even after all this time, she has never truly escaped what he did to her mind."
The mother's voice softened, not in weakness, but in dread.
"You've noticed it. The way she checks doorways. The way she freezes when someone stands behind her unexpectedly. The way she clings to strength because she never had enough of her own as a child. She is powerful, yes, but she is also afraid. Afraid of being taken. Afraid of being watched. Afraid that love is just the first step toward ownership."
Vyralis placed her hand over her heart.
"And yet you… you are the first person she has ever looked at without flinching inside. The first person she trusts without terror. The first person who makes her forget the fear."
She looked at him with eyes full of quiet desperation.
"So I ask you only this, Aevor. Do not become another shadow in her story. She rebuilt herself once. Barely. If she were broken again…"
Her voice fell to a whisper.
"…I do not think she would survive it."
Aevor's response came softly, but with a certainty that settled into the air like truth manifest.
"I will not break her."
Vyralis closed her eyes and exhaled, a long, trembling breath as though a decade of anxiety had loosened its grip on her chest.
Footsteps stirred softly inside the house, the gentle rustle of a shifting tail and the faint flutter of sleepy wings.
Lyxaria was waking.
Luna too.
But for a single, fragile moment, the balcony held only a mother who had spent years drowning in fear and a man whose presence finally let her breathe.
The morning pulse brightened.
And Lyxaria's sleepy voice drifted from inside the home.
"Aevor…? Where did you go…?"
Her voice drifted like a half-formed melody caught between sleep and instinct, soft, fragile, and threaded with that familiar yearning that lived in all her mornings, a yearning that sought him before it even sought breath, and Aevor turned from the balcony just in time to see Lyxaria stepping into the room with the hesitant grace of someone who had been asleep only seconds ago, her nine tails swaying behind her in a slow, disoriented arc, their glow dimmed but already brightening simply because she had found him in her line of sight.
She did not walk toward him.
She launched.
One heartbeat she stood there blinking sleep from her eyes, and in the next she had crossed the room in a fluid leap, tails swirling behind her in a warm eruption of light as she wrapped herself around him with the instinctive certainty of someone who had spent her whole life searching for a place to feel safe and had finally found one worth clinging to with every part of her being. Her arms looped around his neck, her forehead pressed against his chest, and her tails curled around him in layers of shimmering softness, as though she feared that if even a fraction of her touch were missing, he might slip away into the quiet morning air.
"You left…" she murmured, her voice thick with lingering dreams and the faint tremor of someone who had known too many mornings without warmth. "You weren't beside me…"
Aevor rested a hand atop her head, his thumb brushing gently along the base of her right fox ear, and the instant he did, Lyxaria melted—her entire posture folding into him like a creature made of silk and starlight, leaning into his touch with such vulnerable relief that even the mountain breeze seemed to hush itself out of respect.
"I didn't go far," Aevor murmured, fingers moving slowly, rhythmically behind her ear, drawing from her a trembling exhale that carried both contentment and something deeper—a wordless plea that he never stop. "You were sleeping. I didn't want to wake you."
She nuzzled closer, practically draping herself across his lap as he sat back, curling up with the silent urgency of someone whose instinct was not affection alone but reassurance, grounding, safety she had rarely known. Her tails wrapped around his waist and legs, warm, soft, protective without being possessive, as though clinging to him was simply her way of breathing properly.
Her mother watched with a faint, bittersweet smile.
From the hallway, small footsteps echoed—Luna, woken by movement, rubbing her eyes as she appeared in the doorway, wings drooping sleepily before rising in sharp alertness the moment she saw Lyxaria so firmly settled on Aevor's lap. Luna blinked once, then twice, her expression shifting from drowsy innocence to a barely concealed glare of pure childish jealousy as she drifted nearer in stiff, indignant steps.
Lyxaria didn't even notice.
She was too busy curling deeper into Aevor's touch, pressing her cheek against his chest as if trying to imprint the feeling into her very soul.
Lyxaria's mother—Vyralis—cleared her throat softly before speaking, folding her hands in her lap with practiced composure.
Lyxaria lifted her head slightly, though she refused to loosen her hold on Aevor, her ears twitching with interest—her left ear in particular angling directly into Aevor's palm, silently demanding he continue scratching.
He obliged.
She nearly purred.
Vyralis continued, her voice soft, steady, but carrying the weight of truths older than the surrounding peaks.
"I was telling him," she said, "that this mountain is not merely stone, crystal, and myth. Everything on it—from the dust beneath our feet to the thin threads of air drifting through the chambers—holds layers upon layers of structure that cannot be compared in any numerical manner. They are arranged by nature, by essence, by the depth of what they inherently are, not by size or count or measurable strength."
Lyxaria nodded, though her cheek remained firmly pressed to Aevor.
"It's why even a single breath of air here," Vyralis said softly, "would crush the lungs of those living below. Not because it is heavier. Not because it is stronger. But because its very nature surpasses what their bodies, their spirits, their reality can interact with."
Aevor listened quietly, his hand never stopping its slow rhythm behind Lyxaria's ear. When he shifted the angle of his touch slightly, her tails fluttered, and she let out a soft, involuntary sound before clinging to him even tighter, burying her face in his shoulder.
Luna's wings twitched in annoyance.
"And," Vyralis continued, "the mountains above this one stand in the same relation to us. What we call strength is not truly strength here. What we call power is only a shadow compared to the deeper nature that defines the higher peaks. Each level of existence has its own center of substance and identity. None of them can be measured against another in any ordinary sense."
Lyxaria lifted her head just enough to speak, her voice muffled against Aevor's collarbone.
"That is why Eryndal… and all the universes bound to it… feel like paper drifting beneath an ocean when compared to the mountain," she murmured. "They are real, but they exist at a nature so far removed that they cannot understand this place. They cannot even sense it without collapsing under the difference."
Vyralis nodded.
"Exactly. This mountain is not superior because it is higher. It is not dominant because it is larger. It surpasses because its very essence, its inner makeup, the truth of what it is—these things are woven from a fabric that lower realms cannot even perceive without unraveling."
Aevor glanced at her, thoughtful.
"It's not comparison," he said quietly. "It's divergence."
Vyralis smiled faintly. "Yes. Precisely."
Lyxaria's ears twitched, clearly pleased he understood it instinctively, and she leaned up enough to brush her cheek against his jaw before settling back into his lap again, curling up as though she had reverted to a state of childlike safety she had not felt in years.
Aevor resumed scratching her ear.
She melted again.
Luna finally stomped forward in small, stubborn steps, glaring at Lyxaria with a puffed-up expression of wounded pride.
"Hmph… Aevor… I was going to sit with you first…" she muttered under her breath, but quietly enough that a less perceptive person might have missed it. She folded her wings, then shuffled close and sat beside Aevor with exaggerated dignity, her tiny hand reaching for the hem of his sleeve, gripping it possessively in a display of silent, territorial frustration.
Lyxaria didn't even look at her.
She was too deeply lost in Aevor's warmth—the kind of warmth that smoothed every old fear, quieted every trembling memory, and replaced every lingering shadow in her mind with the single, comforting truth that she was safe.
Aevor's hand moved gently through her hair, between her ears, and down to the back of her neck, and Lyxaria's breath left her in a soft, contented sigh that fogged faintly in the cool mountain air.
Vyralis watched them both with quiet understanding.
"Do you see, Aevor?" she said softly. "This mountain… the hierarchy it follows… is not built on dominance or conquest. It is built on nature. On truth. On the essence of what things are. And Lyxaria has climbed it not through strength, but through survival."
Lyxaria shifted just enough to look up at him, her eyes still half-lidded from the overwhelming comfort of his touch.
"And now," she whispered, her voice soft but steady, "I climb because you're here."
Aevor brushed his thumb along her cheek—slow, gentle, steady.
"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured.
Lyxaria curled deeper into his lap, her nine tails circling them like a cocoon of shimmering light, and Luna leaned against his side with a jealous pout that slowly softened the longer she remained beside him.
Outside, the Mountain of Transcendence pulsed again, brighter this time, as though acknowledging them—acknowledging what this moment meant.
And for a long, quiet stretch of time, the three of them simply remained there: Lyxaria clinging to the first warmth she had ever trusted, Luna gripping Aevor's sleeve with quiet jealousy but deep affection, and Aevor holding them both with the calm certainty of someone who understood the weight of their trust.
The morning deepened.
The mountain breathed.
And the past, for once, loosened its claws from Lyxaria's heart.