Page 1 of The Last Remaining Light

PART I

“The old abbeys became lighthouses for a world that no longer trusted the stars to guide them.”

— From Histories After the Dimming

Chapter One

“Count the stars and shut the door, leave the empty one no more. If it shines where none should be, do not let it look at me.”

— A Child’s Rhyme

Duskfall, 742 A.V.

The bells of Lumenshire Abbey sounded nothing like the bells of Astermere Hold; Elowynn noticed that before anything else. The bells of Astermere had once rung clear and silver-bright across the northern mountains, their tones pitched high enough to echo from cliffside to cliffside beneath the stars. The bells in the abbey sounded older, softer. They were dulled, but their voices rolled through the rain and sea fog like distant waves breaking against stone.

They frightened Elowynn. Made her shiver. Made the ache in her chest feel like a wound that would remain open and raw with no chance to heal.

Nothing about Lumenshire Abbey resembled the world Elowynn had been raised in. Astermere Hold had towers and observatories that had stretched proudly atop the mountains, reaching toward the stars. The old abbey seemed built into the cliffs rather than upon them, its weathered stone stretching low across the southern coast overlooking a violent black sea. It was as though Lumenshire had surrendered itself to the earth.

Ivy crept across archways while towering stained-glass windows glowed dimly behind drifting curtains of rain. Thin currents of astrylite shimmered beneath the walls and pathways, but unlike the brilliant crystal veins woven through Astermere’s observatories, the resonance here remained soft and subdued.

Elowynn hated it.

Not because it was ugly or dull. Lumenshire was beautiful in its own way. But beauty was not the same thing as home.

She stood beneath the covered archway overlooking the abbey courtyard with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her dark wool cloak, while cold mist curled through the southern air. Around her, the abbey Sisters in their silver robes moved gracefully between the halls with lowered lanterns glowing pale gold against the haze. Somewhere nearby, cedarwood burned within one of the prayer chambers, its scent coiling through the damp evening air.

Nothing about Lumenshire felt familiar except that single scent.

It smelled of her father, and it transported her back to that last time she would ever be held by him. A time she felt safe. Secure. As if nothing in the world could ever hurt her.

Elowynn closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the scent fill her lungs, begging it to heal that wound in her chest. But all it did was make it open wider and forced a silent sob to rip out from her. She brought both hands up to clasp over her mouth, her knees buckling as she fell to the ground and curled into herself.

It took time to come back from that. Time that she had no real concept of, for every sun had begun to bleed into the next.

Nearly an entire moon had passed since the fall of Astermere Hold. Even now, the memory refused to fit neatly inside her mind. Sometimes the memory felt real enough to steal the breath from her lungs, and other times it seemed impossible that her home could truly be gone at all.

People didn't simply lose mountains!

Houses didn't vanish overnight!

These were things she knew to be true. She had read the stories. She knew! Yet Astermere had fallen, the proof of it lying in ruins to the far north.

Residents of Lumenshire had tried to be kind from the moment she and her mother emerged through the starway. It had lain dormant for so long that when it had awakened unexpectedly, the abbey knew without a doubt that war had arrived on their heels.

The Sisters spoke softly around Elowynn, offering meals she rarely touched and blankets she reluctantly accepted against the chill. But no amount of food or wool seemed capable of driving the cold from her bones.

Elowynn hated the pity in their eyes almost as much as she hated the bells. She didn't want their comfort. She didn't want their support. She only wanted her papa. Her home.

News of the war spread constantly through the abbey halls, carried in conversations whispered between alcoves and traveling scholars. Weary merchants and frightened refugees seeking shelter along the southern coast would bring more and more information from the north.

With every new whisper Elowynn overheard, something inside her seemed to fracture a little further.

Did you hear? Another northern trade route was abandoned after Starless outbreaks near the border towns.

They say an entire observatory city vanished beneath the mountains after the Aethercurrents ruptured. Nothing remains but ash and crystal shards.

Despite the destruction of her house and the growing fear creeping across Aetheris, the Sisters of the abbey still called her Lady. They still bowed their heads respectfully whenever she passed, their expressions softening with the same gentle sorrow.