Alizée's Story

It was said throughout Shal’Azura that there existed no restorative sanctuary quite like Kanz Saghir. Here, with the district’s small western mountains fading into a haze of blue horizon, and Lake Haiyeti’s mist rising and swirling in ethereal veils over stone and moss, the spa perched on a promontory of serenity above all expectation. Even the approach to Kanz Saghir was a ritual of transformation: one left behind the clamor of Shal’Azura, passed through the oil-scented mists of Jamin District’s marbled little valleys and stepped into a world tempered by gentleness and grace, the cobbles giving way to polished onyx tiles radiant with geothermal warmth.   Alizée Aella Zephyr, who had endured so many days of expectation and performance—the burden of her name, the weight of her family’s unspoken hopes—found herself, in these walls, not as a scion or an apprentice or a vessel of destiny, but simply as a girl in the sunlight. Kanz Saghir’s welcoming vestibule enveloped her in fragrances of ancient cedar and honeysuckle, the air suffused with the hush of narrow waterfalls and the musical laughter of patrons at ease. Attendants, clad in flowing azure linens, glided from station to station with carafes of crystalline water and trays of delicate dried fruits, offering refreshment and comfort to all those who were allowed into this most elite of skyborn oases.   Alizée sought refuge here whenever possible, occasionally even accompanied by her mother who counted among the busiest people in the City of the Desert Rose. As a daughter of Shal'Azura's First Family, she passed through the threshold unchallenged - many an attendant might try to turn away even the most renowned creator of enchanted linens whose arcane weaving had graced the most illustrious bedchambers in the realm from this slice of heaven - yet beneath the mantle of her craft lay another title, one she had carried even longer and one everyone in this most exclusive of spas knew her by: Alizée Aella, Tamasha to the House of Zephyr.   She wandered from chamber to chamber, letting every part of the experience seep into her bones: the mosaic pools aglow with mineral deposits shimmering like starlight; the terraces alive with the soft murmur of wind through lush gardens; the private alcoves where the warmth of the stone set every muscle in her body loose and unknotted. For once she could let the day stretch and yawn before her, measured not in scheduled obligations but in the slow migration of sunlight across the spa’s glassy atriums.   If Shal’Azura was a clockwork miracle, Kanz Saghir was its winding key—a place that made the rest of life possible by offering a few precious hours of peace. The spa’s name translated to ‘Little Treasure’ from the Old Tongue, and it was a very fitting name.   The only slight shade, that fell across this most perfect of Arraday evenings, was that Aisha had not come along today. Supposedly it was because of 'an imminent and urgent shipping that was supposedly supposed to arrive for her at the Faelight Haven tonight', however Alizée just knew it was because Aisha wanted to glimpse a glance at the pretty Lieutenant of the Windwardens, the one with the slivered scar along her cheekbone and a voice like warm honey poured across black marble.   One could hardly blame her, however, it definitely was a spectacular sight to behold-even for those who had witnessed it a hundred times over. Half of Amana District’s visitors this evening consisted of dewy-eyed groupies and fans, merely there to glimpse these storied defenders of Shal’Azura at their Tempest Parade, welcoming the storm brewing on the horizon, when they soared on their giant dragonflies high above even the tallest tower-tops in an aerial show of daring, honoring the Tempestuous Founder, Salome Boethos, who established their esteemed order centuries ago, and declaring their devotion to the Storm Lord, their armors glinting until the last twinkle of the dying sun was wiped away by toiling cumulus clouds alight with crackling lightning static from within, and the light-blue flickering of ball lightnings from above.   Alizée usually loved those days of tempest, when the wind danced around her, tousling her curled cyclone horns, her hair whipping freely around her, the sweet tang of ozone filling the air, and everything tasted of endless potential and infinite possibilities. Today, however, her body craved stillness even as her mind refused to settle, propelling her through the spa's familiar corridors like a leaf caught in contrary currents. She drifted from alcove to terrace to pool, unable to anchor herself to any single place and unable to find solace in any one place.   “How very unusual”, she thought to herself, turning another corner and following her feet without plan or logic. The polished stone was dense with heat, its marble tiles gleaming even in shade, yet for the first time in her memory it made her skin prickle rather than soothe. The voices of the other guests were nothing but brief waves of white noise, erased in moments; she heard nothing but the rhythm of her own pulse and the distant, insistent sound of water falling, falling, always falling.   It was here, in the maze of side corridors, the little labyrinths of steam and shadow, that the spa felt oldest—older than Shal’Azura’s own time above ground, older than the myths people tessellated across its walls. Alizée paused. To her left, an alcove gaped: unlit, reserved perhaps for private meditation, or for secret assignations among the powerful. Only the faintest glow bled out from beyond a gauzy curtain, and the air just before it was so charged that minuscule tendrils of static caught at her fingertips.   She should have turned away. Etiquette, tradition, self-preservation—any one was reason enough to reverse her pace. But the sensation, this velvet threat, drew her closer, until she stood at the braided curtain’s edge, its filaments soft as moth wing.   Her hand was raised, stretched out, ready to brush away the gauzy curtain, when a whiff of cold humidity crawled across her neck and shoulders, raising goosebumps and causing her to flinch and turn on her heels, senses tingling and on alert.   A tall figure stood behind her, head lowered in a posture of servitude, perfectly poised and, even standing still, filled with a gentle grace that reminded her of the statues from Warda District’s Philosophers’ Promenade—those frozen arguments in marble, always one foot out of step, always just about to speak. This figure, however, wore its silence as one might a velvet coat, the hush of its presence so dense, so palpable, so stifling, it smothered her questions before they could form. The light at their back etched a faint blue corona around their shaven skull, disguising their features in a subtle cast of half-imagined shades and contrasts, and when they rose their head, the motion was slow, ceremonial, almost poetic.   They offered neither name nor greeting—the absence of social ritual between them like a blade unsheathed. Their eyes locked onto hers with such force that Alizée felt her breath catch in her throat. When they finally broke the silence, each syllable fell like a tombstone tumbling into still water: "I bring to this house," they whispered, "the words that have traveled far."   Alizée stood rooted. The room's sounds bled away to a new, deeper silence. Only the stately, watchful mosaics of Founders etched into the alcove’s arch reminded her she had not left her body behind: there, in pigment, the Paragons of history knelt before a gem-bright altar; there, the First Three were craned forward, faces annihilated by a smudge of indigo, as if even the artist dared not meet their gaze. Her own gaze, though trembling, held fast to the figure, whose eyes seemed to pulse with refracted light.   "You are Alizée Aella, Tamasha of House Zephyr," they intoned, not asked, their voice filled with strangely familiar inflections and intonations, sounds that seemed to make no sense, but bespoke of meaning beyond mere words.   She nodded, unable to break their gaze. The air felt thin. The world, which previously had the gentle hush of sanctuary, now pressed in at the edges, sharp as needles.   “The Three and the Seven and the One. They come for you in dreams, and in waking, it is you who must come to them.” The words drifted outward, curling, ever so slightly, into the spaces behind and above her as if taking root there, intent on echoing in any silence she might ever find again.   A silence followed. Not the pleasant hush of Kanz Saghir, but a brittle, mineral silence, as if the stones of the spa themselves were withholding their opinion. Alizée shivered, her heart shriveling like a paper blossom in sudden drought. The words seemed to drag her forward, inexorable as the undertow.   She tried to reply, to assert herself, but what tumbled out was a question an echo higher than intended: "Why me?"   Not heeding the question, the figure’s dark scaled claw produced a small box as if from nowhere—ebony dark as night, adorned with a crescent moon of luminous mother-of-pearl—and placed it with deliberate care atop a nearby marble plinth.   Alizée sensed the box even before she actually saw it, feeling as though it was focusing its attention on her. It possessed an unusual sense of awareness, as if a presence within it extended beyond its wooden prison, reaching out and pressing against her own from a distance.   Breath held, Alizée reached for the object, but her hand trembled, nerves singing with the aftershock of an invisible, electric jolt. She hesitated, fingers mere centimeters above the lid. The figure watched her, eyes unblinking, and Alizée understood—instinctively, irrevocably—that she could not accept what had been set before her. To accept would be to step out of step with fate, and in the City of the Desert Rose, fate was not a current to swim against.   She withdrew her hand slowly.   They gave no sign of disappointment, or even notice, that the transaction remained unfinished. They inclined their head, a fractional movement, and held her gaze as if time itself had narrowed to this point and nothing else in all Shal’Azura could proceed until she found the strength to move, to accept or to decline what already belonged to her.   Then, from within their shaded embrace, the figure produced a card—thick, cream-colored, with the unmistakable texture of handcrafted vellum. They set it beside the crescent-adorned box, fingers moving with the precision of someone who had performed this ritual countless times before. Lamplight caught the still-wet ink of elaborate script that bore the same flowing grace as Alizée’s own handwriting. At the card's bottom edge gleamed a crescent moon in midnight foil that matched the box's emblem, surrounded by intricate whorls that—when the light struck just so—formed the ghostly impression of a blindfold hovering in space.   Alizée stared at the card. No address, nor any name, just a single line:   *To You, the Named and the Nameless: The Blind Storyteller bids you join him at the Market of Melodies, Last Bell.*   Alizée's body caught like a sail in a sudden depression, as if the air was knocked out of her by a fall from a great height, heart beating so loud it reverberated in her throat and ears and skull.   Then, a sudden roaring sound washed through the corridor as if air was flooding back into an airless room where a fire had lingered, waiting to reignite and feed again. Alizée jumped, startled from the abrupt clamor, and when she turned back around to face the figure, she was alone again.   Gone. Not a trace of the figure lingered: no footprints, no vapor, no imprint in the fabric of the air, only a violet crescent fading above the plinth almost as if the box, too, had never been there at all.   She stood gasping for breath, hyperventilating and heart racing, wondering if she had happened upon a strange waking dream, lured into it by the strange nervousness of the day, staring at the fading crescent and trying to make sense of what had just occurred. However, as the violet crescent faded from her sight, so did the memory of the strange encounter. Forgotten was the figure and the box, the talk of strange numbers and the figure’s strangely familiar language.       Only one line remained in her mind, as the thick vellum card remained in her hand:     *To You, the Named and the Nameless: The Blind Storyteller bids you join him at the Market of Melodies, Last Bell.*