EMPYREUS

They taught us to read the world by banners: twelve silver stars stitched into a single cloth, a map and a law, a hymn and a ledger. In the beginning the stars were not stars at all but names and promises, voices that argued in the dark about how men should bind one another. Some said with spears; some said with ledgers; some said with oaths. All of them wanted the same thing, an end to the small, private wars that hollowed the continent, yet none could agree on the shape of peace.

This is a story of two lights. One is a sun that rides the dust of triumph, a man who learned to measure worth by the heat he could make. He calls himself by the old words of empire: virtus, pietas, gloria. He believes a single hand must hold the banner if the stars are to stay in line. The other is a moon that remembers lullabies older than law, a woman whose voice cools fever and whose touch stitches memory back into torn hems. She is soft as tidewater and fierce as a mother's grief. He names her Europe as a jest; the name will become a wound and a key.

* Cover picture character is derived from Sunday in Honkai Star Rail. This story IS NOT a Fanfiction of Sunday, or anyway related to Honkai Star Rail.