"If ever something was lost...Zuri Ayim was the one who could recover it."
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Twelve years ago, a meteorite fell among the seven city-states of Kiro, and birthed a new legend. They are calle...
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Aldric was in a different world.
Though his body recognized it—the cold barely penetrating his skin, his eyes unperturbed by the gelid winds—it took a moment for his mind to make sense of it. He was back in Meathe, really, the jagged, fog-covered mountaintops and the steep snowy hills the same ones he'd traversed as a child. Everything was the same. Only he had changed.
It was a brief, ten-minute trek from the train station to downtown Meathe, but Aldric took his time. Dually because he wanted to take it all in, to breathe in the crisp, verdant air, and because fear kept him from walking much faster. He kept glancing over his shoulder, pausing to locate the source of a sudden rustle or voice. It was almost as if he expected Aurora's letter to be a fake; that it wasn't she who waited for him at the address scribbled on the paper clutched in his fist, but his parents, their faces dark with scorn.
He reached downtown as the sun was setting, painting over the gray sky in subtle peach-tinted hues. The roads were narrow, unpaved gravel and topsy-turvy cobblestone, dark brick townhouses and pubs and boutiques all squished together like plants clamoring for sunlight. At the apex of the hill, sitting atop a grand staircase that led up to a courtyard and a marble fountain, was the university. Meathe's heart, his father's old workplace, and, once upon a time, Aldric's own dream.
He rarely let his mind wander there nowadays—what student life would've been like, what he would've studied, who he would've been. These were simply not his to have; though he didn't know the reason, the god Kiro or whoever ran things up there had cut a different path for him.
Aldric walked through the soft yellow light of the streetlights with his head down. He was different now, of course, but was he different enough? Would the elders not recognize him, call out to him, even, if he showed his face? He couldn't risk it.
He was close to the address now. He passed the art district, which would have been obvious enough even if he didn't know it so intrinsically. A child played a piano suite outside a library, a newsboy cap flipped up on the ground beside him. An older woman dug a fiddle from its case and joined in, much to the delight of the gathering crowd. Across the street, a painter propped his easel on a vacant set of stairs and set to work. The square was filled with the buoyant sounds of music and laughter, Aldric's nostrils tingling with sweet scents like caramelized sugar and vanilla and savory ones like pepper and cardamom.
The ache came on suddenly and painfully. Oh, how he'd missed this place.
He turned right, brushing past the painter and climbing the narrow set of stairs until the art district's festive noise was nothing but a subtle harmony. Snow gathered in small white piles in the step's cracks and crevices; a gray-eyed dog slumbered on one of the landings.
Finally, he stopped before a wooden door the color of a winter rose, its knob an ornate work of black iron. Aldric checked the address, glanced at the door. He stopped and prayed, something he'd stopped doing a long time ago. It felt strange, but it felt right.
