Chapter 12: The Prism of Light.
We'd walked for hours—or what felt like hours in a realm
where time moved like honey through cold air. The light was deepening into a hue like amethyst and old honey when Caelan finally turned us back toward the Spire.
The light was deepening into a hue like amethyst and old honey when Caelan turned us back toward the Spire. It wasn’t a sunset—the sky here didn’t have a sun to set—but the very air seemed to exhale, softening its brilliant, demanding clarity into something more contemplative. It was a relief.
The walk back was quiet. Caelan seemed to understand my silence was not rudeness, but a necessary absorption. My body was a hollow vessel, drained by the sheer act of witnessing. My feet, clad in simple boots that seemed absurdly mundane here, moved automatically. But inside my skull, it was anything but quiet.
It was a riot of questions.
If the river remembers, what does it remember about me passing by? Does the moss feel my steps as a disturbance or a curiosity? When that fox-made-of-starlight looked at me, what did its universe-window eyes actually see—a girl, or a knot of strange, foreign energy?
The realm no longer screamed at me. Now it whispered, and each whisper was a riddle. Caelan hadn’t given me answers so much as he’d given me a new dictionary. I knew now that the impossible geometry wasn’t chaos, but a language. The singing water wasn’t just music, but a conversation. This was a place where everything was alive and aware, interacting in a symphony of existence I’d only glimpsed the sheet music for.
My initial, terrified thought—I understand nothing—had shifted. It was now: I understand that I need to learn a new way to understand.
We reached the base of the path leading up to the Spire of First Breath. I stopped and looked up.
It was different.
When I first saw it, it was an alien monument, a jagged shard of impossible crystal asserting its formidable otherness. Now, seeing it after the living, breathing wildness of the rivers and the sentient groves, I saw its purpose. The clean lines weren’t cold; they were clear. The grand scale wasn’t intimidating; it was accommodating. It wasn’t a fortress. It was… a library. A conservatory. A place where the rampant, beautiful chaos outside could be studied, measured, and perhaps understood.
Its surface, which had seemed merely shiny before, now pulsed with a very faint, slow light, in time with the moss’s heartbeat Caelan had shown me. It was connected. It was part of the same living system. It was a place of learning.
“It feels less… loud,” I murmured, not really meaning to speak aloud.
Caelan followed my gaze, his leafy hair rustling in a breeze I couldn’t feel. “The Spire is a place of First Breath,” he said. “Of beginnings. It holds its knowledge quietly, waiting for the question to be asked. The wilds outside… they are the question, constantly being asked in a thousand beautiful ways. Here, one may listen for an answer.”
He led me up the path, which now felt like an invitation, not an ascent. The great archway, which had seemed like a maw, now simply looked like a door—a vast and majestic one, but a door nonetheless.
Inside, the hall was bathed in the realm’s gentle dusk-light, filtering through the crystal walls and breaking into spectral patterns on the floor. The air was cool and smelled of rain-washed stone and something like parchment.
And there, at the far end, was the Fairy King. He was seated, a figure of impossible tranquility amidst the soft, shifting luminescence. He was waiting.
The sight of him sent a fresh, complex wave through me—not just awe, but a recognition of the daunting journey ahead. He was the answer to the wild’s question. He was the teacher in this impossible school.
My exhaustion was a weight. My racing mind was a flutter of wings against a cage. But as I stood there on the threshold of the Spire, looking from the peaceful, knowing figure of the King to the quiet, expectant space around him, one thought solidified, hard and clear as the crystal itself:
The vastness of the Spire’s main chamber should have been crushing. Instead, it held the space like a cupped hand. Walls of living crystal rose into shadows that seemed to hold whole constellations in their depths, but the light within was soft, diffuse, and kind. The air itself was still, a listening sort of quiet.
And there, at the chamber’s heart, was the Fairy King.
He was no longer in his traveler’s guise. Here, he was fully unveiled. A figure woven from the fabric of a silent nebula, his edges bleeding gently into the surrounding air. Galaxies spun slowly in the tapestry of his cloak, and his eyes were supernovae held in the serene moment before detonation—ancient, terrifying, and profoundly calm.
Yet, in this space, he did not overwhelm. The Spire seemed to meet him on his own terms. The crystal drank in his light and reflected it back, tempered. He was not a storm contained, but a mountain recognized. He felt… present. Not a distant cosmic fact, but a being seated across a room, waiting for me.
“Come forward, Elsbeth.”
His voice was the same resonant chord, but here it didn’t vibrate my bones; it seemed to harmonize with the low, ambient hum of the Spire itself. I walked across the flawless floor, my footsteps the only sound, until I stood before him.
A low, seamless table of the same crystal as the floor stood between us. Upon it rested two simple bowls, not of ceramic, but of polished, dark wood that seemed to have grown into this exact shape. Steam rose from them, carrying a scent that stopped my thoughts.
It was the smell of summer midnight—of dry hay warmed by day and cooled by stars, of honeysuckle on a still breeze, of clean, damp earth. But underneath it was a sharper, cleaner note, like the scent of air after a lightning strike, frozen into vapor.
“Sit,” he said. “You have walked the skin of my world. You must be weary in ways your mortal body does not yet have words for.”
I sank onto the cushion that lay before the table. He took the other, his motion causing stars to drift and settle within his form.
“This will help,” he said, gesturing to one of the bowls.
I wrapped my hands around it. The wood was warm, not from the liquid, but with a gentle, vital heat, as if it held sunlight in its grain. I brought it to my lips.
The taste was…
It was silver. It was coolness, not of ice, but of shadow. It was the taste of moonlight on a still lake. But as it slid down my throat, a secondary warmth bloomed—the memory of sunlight, of long grass, of a kind of peace I had only ever known in fragments. It was drinking a quiet, perfect moment. Moonlight and summer, my mind supplied, uselessly. There were no words. My exhaustion, which had been a leaden weight in my limbs and a static in my mind, didn’t vanish. It… unclenched. It became a quiet, observant tiredness, the kind that comes after hard, honest work, not frantic terror.
I took another sip, letting the impossible tea fortify something deep in my core. Over the rim of the bowl, I met his luminous gaze.
“Caelan showed me… it’s all alive,” I said, my voice small but clear in the hushed chamber. “It’s all thinking. Feeling. Remembering.”
“Yes.”
“It’s not a… a place. It’s a being. And we’re inside it.”
A slight inclination of his head. “A sufficiently advanced comprehension.”
I looked down into the shimmering liquid in my bowl, gathering my courage. The tea’s calm clarity gave me strength. I set the bowl down carefully on the wood, which echoed with a soft, musical note.
“You said I would learn why I am the way I am,” I began, my voice firmer. “Caelan showed me the ‘is.’ But I need to understand the ‘why.’ Why was I born into my world… colorless? A blank?” The old word still carried the ache of market squares and averted eyes, but here, under his gaze, it felt less like a shame and more like a question that finally deserved a real answer.
He did not move, but the light in the chamber seemed to focus, drawing in around us.
“You were not born without, Elsbeth,” he said, and his voice was the gentle, inevitable pull of gravity. “You were born before.”
He leaned forward, just slightly. A meteor shower of light cascaded silently down the sweep of his cosmic cloak.
“The colors of your world—the fire, the water, the wind, the healing gold—they are conclusions. They are the final, stable notes in a long chord. Your soul does not resonate with a single note. It resonates with the silence from which the chord is struck. It holds the potential that exists prior to form, to element, to definition. Your ‘colorless’ nature is not a lack of color. It is the prism through which all colors are waiting to be born.”
The truth of it did not crash over me. It seeped in, like the warmth of the tea, filling the hollow spaces where shame had lived. It was terrifying. It was enormous.
But here, in the Spire, with the taste of moonlight on my tongue and a being of starlight explaining my own soul to me, it was, for the very first time, a truth that fit.
The weight of his words settled into my bones. The silence from which the chord is struck. It was beautiful. It was also terrifyingly abstract. How could I be something so… fundamental? I was a girl who burned bread and flinched at shouts.
As if hearing the churn of my thoughts, the Fairy King rose. The motion was less a standing up and more a reconfiguration of light in the shape of a being ascending. He walked a few paces to where the crystal wall met the floor in a seamless curve. He did not gesture or speak a command. He simply extended a hand, and the living crystal of the Spire parted. Not with a crack, but with a soft, crystalline sigh, as if it were exhaling a long-held secret.
From within a niche that had not existed a moment before, he drew forth an object.
It was a prism, but unlike any I had ever seen. It was not glass, but something clearer, as if a tear in reality itself had been folded into a solid form. It was about the length of my forearm, multi-faceted, and it held within it not color, but a sleeping, concentrated brightness.
He returned and knelt before me, his cosmic form bringing the scent of ozone and cold stone. He did not hand it to me. He held it between us, its dormant light casting strange, pure shadows on his star-strewn hands.
“Understanding must travel from mind, to spirit, to flesh,” he said, his voice low. “Your mind hears the truth. Your spirit suspects it. Let your flesh know it.”
He leaned forward and, with an impossible gentleness, placed the prism into my hands.
The moment my skin touched it, the world changed.
It was not heavy, but it held a density of potential that made my arms tremble. It was cool, then warm, then neither, humming with a silent frequency that resonated in my teeth. It felt less like holding an object and more like holding a solidified intention.
“Look at me, Elsbeth,” he commanded softly.
I tore my gaze from the mesmerizing depths of the crystal and looked up into his eyes—into those twin supernovae.
He did nothing I could see. But from his chest, from the very core of his nebulous form, a single thread of light unraveled. It was not the blinding radiance of his full power. It was pure, undifferentiated light. The first light. The light before it became anything else.
Slowly, with infinite precision, he directed this thread of raw creation toward the prism in my hands.
It touched the first facet.
The light did not simply pass through. It was born.
As it entered the prism, the unified beam fractured, not into a simple rainbow, but into a torrent of everything. I didn’t see colors; I felt them. A cascade of heat and passion that was Fire rushed up my right arm. A stream of cool, profound adaptability that was Water flowed down my left. A surge of steadfast, patient growth that was Earth anchored itself in my spine. A whirlwind of sharp, free-moving clarity that was Air filled my lungs. I felt the piercing, merciful focus of Healing Gold and the unyielding, silent strength of Grey Stone.
They were not separate. They were one light, expressing itself in a chorus of possibilities, and I was the conduit. The prism was not doing this. I was. The prism was just a focus, a lens for my own nature.
The sensations were overwhelming—a deafening symphony of pure element and concept vibrating through every cell. A silent scream gathered in my throat. This was what had been inside me, locked away, misunderstood, labeled a blank. This terrifying, magnificent spectrum.
And then, a deeper layer. Among the torrent, I felt a sharp, structured intent—the clean lines of a blueprint, the sure stroke of a pen. Creation. Not an element, but the force that arranges them. The hand that holds the pen. The mind that imagines the blueprint.
The light show reached its peak and then, as gently as it began, the Fairy King withdrew the thread of source light. The sensations faded from a roar to a hum, then to a memory thrumming under my skin. The prism in my hands returned to its dormant state, now feeling familiar, like an extension of my own skeleton.
I was gasping, tears streaming down my face, but they were not tears of pain or fear. They were tears of devastating recognition.
“I…” The word was a croak. I clutched the prism to my chest, my body thrumming with the ghost of all that potential. “I’m not a blank.”
“No,” he said, sitting back on his heels, a quiet satisfaction in the swirling stars of his form. “You are a crucible. A source. What mortals call ‘colorless’ is the white-hot state of ore before it is forged into separate tools. It is the most powerful and most dangerous state of all.”
I looked from the prism to my own hands, the same hands that had failed to light a candle. They still looked the same. But I felt the truth. The memory of the light’s journey was etched into my nerves.
I held the prism tighter. It was no longer a strange object. It was a mirror. A confirmation.
I was not broken. I was un-forged. And now, in this Spire of First Breath, the hammer and the anvil awaited.
The King gently took the prism from my trembling hands and returned it to the wall, which sealed with a soft, crystalline sigh, as if grateful to hold such a treasure once more.
***
The air in the Spire’s practice chamber was still, holding its breath. I stood in the center, feeling utterly empty-handed. The Fairy King watched me, his starry gaze patient and implacable.
“Summon the G-Pen, Elsbeth.”
It was the first true test, and my mind went blank. I held out my hand, fingers splayed, and willed the pen to appear. I thought of its weight, its cool light, the hum it made. Nothing. My hand remained empty, a silent rebuke.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. I clenched my jaw, trying harder. I pictured it in perfect detail—the sleek shaft, the subtle glow. I strained, a small grunt of effort escaping me. A flicker of blue light sputtered above my palm, danced for a moment like a dying firefly, and winked out.
I swallowed a spike of shame. It had come so easily in the forge, in the square when my father fell… when I had no time to think.
“Again,” the King said, his voice devoid of judgment.
I took a shaky breath, closed my eyes, and tried to shut out the room, his presence, my own rising doubt. I didn’t just picture the pen this time. I tried to remember the feeling of it. The solid certainty in my grip, the way it became an extension of my fury and my grief. I reached for that feeling in my memory.
A brief, solid weight landed in my palm. My eyes flew open. The G-Pen was there, glowing softly, its familiar hum vibrating up my arm. But the connection felt thin, tentative. As my surprise broke my concentration, it flickered wildly and dissolved into motes of light that faded between my fingers.
“Three attempts,” the Fairy King observed. “The G-Pen is not an object you call from a pocket in the air. It is a manifestation of your own soul’s architecture. The potential to create, given form. To summon it, you must not picture it outside yourself. You must locate it within. Visualize it here.” He tapped his own chest, over the heart. “Feel its presence as a part of your being. Then, extend that part into the world.”
He was describing what had happened in the crises. I hadn’t called for the pen when the forge exploded. I had reached for a solution with my entire being, and the tool of my soul had answered. It had been an instinct, not a technique.
“Now you must learn the technique,” he said, as if hearing my thought. “And know this: because it is soul-bound, it answers to you alone. Should another’s hand try to take it, it will not allow the theft. It will simply cease to be in their grasp, and return to you when you are next able to summon it. It is your responsibility and your alone.”
"And if I cannot summon it? If I am unconscious, or…?" I asked.
"It will remain within you, dormant, until you are able to call it forth again. No force, no spell, no being can extract it. It is you." He replied.
The weight of that ownership settled on me. It was mine. Truly, irrevocably mine.
“Now,” he instructed. “Make it disappear. Not by losing focus, but by willing it back into that space within you. A gentle recall.”
I looked at my empty hand. I focused, not on the absence, but on the source. I imagined the pen not as a thing in my hand, but as a knot of potential energy resting in my core. I willed that knot to draw back into itself.
With a soft, sighing chime, the G-Pen materialized in the air before me, then flowed in a stream of light back toward my chest, vanishing before it touched the fabric of my tunic. It felt less like disappearance and more like… reabsorption.
“Good. Now, summon it once more. From the source. Not as a tool you need, but as a truth you are.”
I closed my eyes. This time, I didn’t think of my hand. I turned my awareness inward. Past the fear, past the memories, to the quiet, humming core of what I was. And there, I found it. Not an image, but a presence. A stable, radiant point of making. I didn’t pull it. I simply acknowledged it, and then allowed that acknowledgment to extend outward, through my arm, to the space before me.
I opened my eyes. The G-Pen was there, floating serenely at my eye level. Its light was steady. Its hum was the same frequency as my own calm heartbeat. I felt no strain. It wasn’t summoned. It was present, because I was present.
I reached out and took it. The connection was solid, deep, and effortless.
The Fairy King gave a single, slow nod. “The foundation is laid. You have called it from need, and now from knowing. Remember this difference. Everything that follows—every line, every circle, every act of creation—begins with this simple truth: the pen is not in your hand. It is in your soul. Your hand merely directs it.”
“The previous Creator,” I whispered, understanding dawning with cold, terrible clarity. “He held this… and he chose to make only one thing. Himself. A god.”
“He mistook the palette for the purpose,” the King said, his voice grave. “He saw the power to shape worlds and thought the shape should be his own likeness, vast and dominant. He did not understand that true creation is an act of service, of love for the thing being made, not for the maker.”
The weight of the prism, of my nature, was immense. But it was no longer the crushing weight of shame. It was the sobering weight of a tool finally understood—a tool that could build cathedrals or crack continents.
“I felt it,” I said, looking at him with new eyes. “At the end… not just elements. Something else. Something that… arranges.”
A nod. “The signature of the Maker. Your true affinity. Not for an element, but for the act of genesis itself. The G-Pen is not a wand to channel magic. It is a tether, a focus for that specific, rarest aspect of your soul. It allows you to draft reality.”
Draft reality. Not shape it. Not command it. Draft it—the way I used to draft panels, sketching the bones of a story before committing ink to paper. The King wasn't teaching me to be a god. He was teaching me to be an architect.
At last, the true training between Elsbeth and the Fairy King begins. What kind of trials will he impose upon her? The path of the colorless girl toward becoming a true Creator within the labyrinthine Fairy Realm—its full scope will be revealed in the next chapter. Let's meet again next week, same time, same place.
