Ink and Light
Somewhere between silence and song, two women stood on the threshold of understanding.
The library within the Wizard Tower breathed like a living thing—shelves groaning with ancient tomes, air thick with the smell of ink and old parchment, and light slanting through stained-glass windows in reverent beams of blue and gold. There was a hush here, but not of fear or reverence—rather the stillness of minds in motion, of magic woven through thought.
Nyssarra moved softly through the rows, her fingers tracing the edge of a book bound in deep blue leather. She had come not for answers, but for questions—for understanding. Her time among druids and monks had taught her that faith did not always wear the same face, nor did truth always sing in the same tongue. But still, something within her had pulled her here, to the Tower where Saradomin's will was studied through spells and scripture alike.
She paused beside a circular table, eyes scanning the scrolls laid open—hymns to healing, wards of protection, theoretical diagrams on the nature of divine will as channeled through mortal vessels.
And then she felt her presence before she heard her voice.
“Not many read those,” said a woman across the room, her voice quiet but melodic—like bells muffled by velvet. “They’re considered... philosophical distractions by some. Too abstract. Too risky.”
Nyssarra turned, and saw her.
Thalyria.
She stood near one of the taller windows, a shaft of blue light painting her robes in deeper shades of the divine. Her skin was a rich, dark brown with warm undertones, her long, dark hair threaded with streaks of Saradomin blue that shimmered as she moved. She held a tome cradled in one arm, the other resting lightly on a staff that hummed with gentle power—an extension of herself more than a weapon.
“I’ve found,” Nyssarra replied slowly, “that risk often reveals what safety hides.”
The two women regarded one another in the charged silence that sometimes falls when similar souls unexpectedly meet. Not mirrors—no, not reflections. But constellations in the same sky, distant and distinct, yet drawn together by something ancient and unseen.
“I know who you are,” Thalyria said, closing the tome. “You’re the half-elf. The crystal singer’s daughter. The one Jahn speaks of.”
Nyssarra’s brow arched faintly. “And you’re the one he trusts to challenge him.”
Thalyria smiled—not in pride, but in amusement. “He still sees the world in lines of duty. I see it more in... spirals. Questions leading to questions.”
“Then we are alike,” Nyssarra murmured. “I followed a spiral here.”
(Part II – Of Songs, Stars, and Soft Shadows)
Thalyria moved closer, her robes whispering against the smooth stone floor like turning pages. She set her tome down upon the table between them, revealing the embossed symbol of Saradomin’s eye surrounded by glyphs of clarity and healing. Her hand rested gently on the cover, as though it were a sacred thing—but not fragile. Revered, yet well-used.
“Do you believe,” she asked, “that gods speak only through power?”
Nyssarra tilted her head, crystal-tipped braid catching a strand of the sunlight. “No. Power is only the loudest voice. I’ve learned that truth often comes in whispers.”
Thalyria nodded, as if confirming her own unspoken thoughts. “Then we’ve both lived in contradiction. Saradomin speaks through the brilliant, the bold—the miracle made manifest. But I often wonder if his truest essence lies in the soft work of healing, in the quiet mending of wounds others never see.”
Nyssarra's gaze drifted to the open scrolls. “Like tending a tree no one will live long enough to see bloom.”
A slow breath left Thalyria’s lips. “Exactly.”
They stood like that for a time—two women from different worlds, bound by threads of introspection. Outside, the ocean wind whispered against the high windows, and within the Tower, knowledge pressed in around them like a tide waiting to be dared.
“Jahn,” Nyssarra said at last, “carries Saradomin’s flame like a torch. He lights the way, yes—but he sometimes forgets the light also casts shadow.”
“He burns bright,” Thalyria agreed. “But I worry he doesn’t always know what he’s setting alight. He sees justice as a sword. I’ve tried to show him it can be a balm. Or a question.”
Nyssarra gave a small, knowing smile. “I think he listens. But he listens better to you than to me.”
There was no jealousy in the words—only observation. If anything, a quiet curiosity.
“And yet,” Thalyria said, studying Nyssarra’s face, “you see what I cannot. You see through him. I read his heart in ink and law. You read it in silence.”
The compliment struck gently but deeply, as true words often do.
Before more could be said, a flicker of pale light shimmered across the table. The tome Thalyria had placed down trembled slightly, the glyphs glowing faintly.
Nyssarra’s hand hovered just above it. “Is it enchanted?”
“Not intentionally,” Thalyria murmured. “But the lower levels of the Tower sometimes...respond.”
Nyssarra met her gaze. “You’ve been down there.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I’ve felt down there,” Thalyria answered, her voice hushed but certain. “There’s something beneath us—not evil, but old. Something the upper floors pretend doesn’t exist.”
Nyssarra placed her hand on the tome, palm flat.
The light pulsed once beneath her touch.
A crystal resonance trembled in the air, barely audible. Nyssarra didn’t pull back. “It knows I’m here.”
Thalyria’s eyes sharpened. “Perhaps that’s why it stirred. It hasn’t reacted like this before.”
Nyssarra’s presence, part-elven and attuned to deeper rhythms, may have brushed a forgotten circuit—something dormant, something watching. The tower, ever a monument to order and knowledge, had bones laid over ancient root and ruin.
“Come,” Thalyria said softly. “There’s a meditation alcove above the south wing. It’s quiet, shielded. We can talk there—away from the scrolls, away from the light that listens.”
Nyssarra nodded. “Lead the way.”
The meditation chamber was simple—a circular room with cushions and low-burning lanterns. Arcane sigils on the stone walls pulsed faintly, not warding but soothing. Here, words did not feel like weapons or spells. They were simply offerings.
They sat across from one another, the air between them charged not with magic, but mutual invitation.
“You were born of two songs,” Thalyria said. “One elven, one human. I imagine your heart beats in a rhythm most never hear.”
Nyssarra looked down, fingers brushing a crystal shard tied to her bracer. “I used to think the songs clashed. Now I think they create harmony only I can understand.”
Thalyria exhaled through her nose, a soft chuckle. “You speak like a poet.”
“I listen like a singer,” Nyssarra said. “There is no other way.”
“And yet you chose to learn from us,” Thalyria said. “To walk among Saradomin’s stewards. Why?”
Nyssarra paused.
“Because I wanted to see what your silence sounded like.”
Thalyria blinked.
“I know the silence of druids. Of wolves. Of the sea. I know the silence of crystal caves where even breath must bow. But here… your silence is different. It’s built on law and thought. I needed to hear it.”
“And what do you hear?” Thalyria asked, softer now.
Nyssarra smiled, but there was a melancholy to it. “Stillness. But under it, yearning. A people reaching for certainty, even as they question their own truths.”
Thalyria’s breath caught. “That’s not what we teach.”
“But it is what you feel.”
The Tower groaned faintly in the distance—a sound like settling stone or shifting thought. Neither woman moved.
“I think,” Thalyria said, “you and I were meant to meet.”
Nyssarra tilted her head. “Fate?”
“Not fate,” Thalyria said. “Convergence. A light bending through a lens.”
Nyssarra studied her—this healer-mage cloaked in robes of sky and star, with blue in her hair and questions in her soul.
“You shine,” she said. “But not like Jahn. Your light heals instead of burns.”
Thalyria lowered her eyes, a flush rising on her cheeks that she quickly masked with a change of subject. “Will you return here?”
“I will,” Nyssarra replied. “The stars don’t always pass once.”
A small, genuine smile bloomed between them—one not of certainty, but invitation.
They would meet again.
And when they did, it would not be as strangers to faith, or even allies of convenience.
It would be as kindreds.
As ink and light.