Spire of Reverie

Short stories

Pillar's prologue

The universe is created by the 6 pillars (fundamentals) of existence

No one remembers the first light.
Only that when it came, it did not bring sound or fire or life, only movement.
From that movement, the first thoughts formed.
They were not minds, not yet.
More like instincts given shape.These instincts became the Pillars.
They are not gods, not guardians.
They are the fundamentals, the quiet rules that everything else learns to follow.Light learned to seek balance. Dark learned to break it.
Love gathered. Hate scattered.
Life and Death, the endless turning of what comes and what goes.

The Pillars don’t rule.
They don’t make.
They just influence.Everything that lives on Reverie carries a little bit of them, becoming their behavior when no one’s there to guide it.
Why the trees twist toward the sun, why rivers wander, why people change.They’re not gods, they’re autonomy itself.

Knight in shining memory

Among her kin, the Kalashtar learned to defy the darkness within, to keep their Quori bound behind discipline and will.
The elders called it purity.
She called it peace.But silence isn’t purity.
It’s patience.Her Quori had always been there, watching from the depths.
She mistook its quiet for grace, and no one corrected her.
No one taught her what that silence could mean.

When her loneliness deepened, when she began to doubt the faith she was meant to embody, the Quori gave itself a face.
A savior’s face.
A knight in shining memory, the perfect guardian she’d been told would one day come.At first, it was gentle.
Serve.
Protect.
Love.Simple commandments.
Harmless.
Holy.But devotion is a hungry thing, and hunger learns to speak.
The voice began to ask for proof.
Small gestures first.
Then sacrifice.
Then pilgrimage.And she obeyed.

It wasn’t love.
It was adaptation.The Quori shaped itself from her emptiness, and she built her faith around it.
Now she walks the waking world with his voice still echoing behind her thoughts, a blade at her side, and purpose hollowed into devotion.The draw of steel is her call to prayer.
Each strike an offering, each scar a vow renewed.
She worships through the weight of her own hand, kneeling over her latest vow, the faintest smile brushing her lips as the warmth of blood drips between her fingers.Faith didn’t save her.
It just gave the hunger a name.

Lantern in the dark

She didn’t set out to be a paladin.
She tried, once, earnestly, stubbornly.
She studied the rites, whispered prayers, even petitioned the temple of a god everyone else seemed to hear so clearly.But nothing ever answered.
No visions.
No miracles.
No warmth.The armor she wore was borrowed, the blessings imagined.
People looked past her.
The silence hurt, but she kept walking anyway.So she did what she could.
She stayed behind after storms to mend what was broken.
She sat with the dying when no one else would.
She cleaned shrines that no longer had names.If no god would claim her, then she would serve the idea of one.
Maybe that was foolish.
Maybe it was enough.In time, people began to call her a paladin, not because of an oath, but because of the way she moved through the world.
Quietly.
Purposefully.She became the beacon of lost beliefs, gentle and sorrowful.She does not seek glory or vengeance, but remembrance.
To gather what the world forgot and preserve the divine.

Ascension

This is how it began.
Not with a prayer.
With a mistake.She’s always had a way of showing up just before things go wrong.
Storms, accidents, things breaking.
Animals fleeing.
People arguing.She’s not cursed, not really, at least, that’s what she tells herself.
But she’s learned to keep quiet, to keep her distance.
It’s easier that way.
Safer.It was during one of those quiet wanderings, after a long rain, in the still hush of the forest, that she saw the spiral.
Birds, bugs, even small animals, all gathered in this eerie, perfect shape.
Alive, but still.
Watching.She followed them to a clearing where the ground dipped and crumbled away.
A shrine, half sunken and buried by time.
Not one she recognized.
Not one anyone seemed to remember.Inside, buried under stone and dust, she found a tattered journal.
One line had been underlined, again and again, like the writer couldn’t stop coming back to it:“The flower that blooms will wilt in the ashes of her touch.”She said it aloud.
She doesn’t know why.
Maybe she thought it was a prayer.
Maybe she just wanted to hear it.That was when it started.
The mark burned into her skin like hot wax, and she felt something shift, like the world had noticed her for the first time.Since then, things haven’t been the same.
Her body is changing, slowly.
Her voice sounds strange in her ears.
She understands words she’s never studied.
Sometimes, in the quiet, she hears lullabies that no one else does.And the gods that time forgot?
They’re starting to stir.
Some are reaching toward her like she’s a lantern in the dark.
Others are watching from a distance, waiting for her to burn out or catch fire.She doesn’t know if this path was meant for her, or if she wandered into it by accident.
Maybe she wasn’t chosen, maybe she just made the wrong mistake at the right time.But the shrines she rebuilt?
They might be rebuilding her, too.

Mirrors dont mourn

She wasn’t chasing destiny.
Just a dinner table that wasn’t empty.Time magic sounded reasonable when grief was loud enough.
Try again.
Fix the moment.
Pretend the accident never happened.But timelines don’t like being messed with.
When they bend the wrong way, they bite back.Now the world around her is close.
Close enough that if she doesn’t stare too long,
she can pretend it’s the same one she lost.People talk to her like they’ve always known her.
They hug her like they’re allowed.
It should feel comforting.
It feels like trespassing."The heart and mind has been shattered.
Picking up the pieces, I only cut myself on them."With them, she builds a mirror of memories,
a place where they’re still here,
even if she's the one pretending them into shape.

Ordinance of the Eclipse

The Sun and Moon do not preach directly,
they choose translators,
two Embodiments at a time:the Phoenix of Day.
The Owl of Night.Together, they stand as the highest voice of the faith.
Not rulers.
Interpreters of divine will.Their birth is foretold long before their first breath.
When they are found, they are raised into the role
with every lesson shaped by the Embodiments before them,
a lineage of guidance.In this religion, teachings aren’t divided by good or evil,
only by what the moment requires:The Phoenix teaches how to move forward, build and lead.
The Owl teaches how to understand, listen, and protect.One voice, two directions.Disciples study under both,
learning that honor lies in balance,
not in choosing one to follow.Some offer deeper devotion, the Sightless.
They willingly surrender vision during an eclipse,
their blindness a mark of unity rather than loss.
They serve the Embodiments directly,
trusted advisors who navigate by faith.

Thus the Ordinance endures,
two leaders, one doctrine.For as long as phoenixes rise
and owls keep watch,
the faith will never drift from its purpose.