Dawn in Vaelith never arrived with a jarring jolt. In the capital of Verdia, the morning unfolded like a slow, deliberate brushstroke of light, gradually painting the gargantuan branches of the World Tree in a shifting gradient of liquid gold and ethereal silver. Dayat woke up on a bed that felt like floating on a cloud—a masterpiece of elven textile woven from the ultra-soft silk of forest spiders.
There were no sounds of blaring bus horns, no roar of modified motorcycle exhausts, and none of the chaotic urban cacophony that typically greeted him back in Jakarta. Instead, the soundtrack of his morning was the rhythmic, low-frequency hiss of steam escaping from the tree's massive vascular ducts and the melodic, crystalline chirping of tiny birds with translucent wings that flitted between the light-bloom clusters outside his window.
