Aurelia Astravere was born into a world arranged for her—polished marble floors, tutors with perfect posture, and conversations where every word was weighed like coin on a scale. Her parents never meant for it to feel suffocating. They loved her, in their own disciplined way. They simply believed she was destined to inherit a responsibility larger than her own desires.

She tried to live up to it. She learned to read faces, to negotiate subtly, to smile in ways that meant something entirely different than the smile itself. But even as she excelled, a small ache grew inside her—an ache for honesty, for air, for freedom from rooms where truth could never sit alone.

Her father sensed this long before she ever spoke it aloud.

One evening he invited her to the solar that overlooked the gardens, the setting sun casting warm gold over everything inside. He studied her for a moment—her posture, her tired eyes, the faint crease in her brow.

“You’ve gone quiet lately,” he said gently. “Withdrawn.”

“I’m just tired,” she replied. “The councils go late.”

He gave a soft, knowing sigh. “You’re avoiding the truth. You always were a poor liar—thank the heavens for that.”

Aurelia looked down.

He set aside his papers and moved closer. “I know the politics feel hollow sometimes. I know you’d rather be practicing in the training yard,” he added, a faint smile touching his lips. “But what we do is necessary.”

She raised her eyes. “Necessary for whom?”

“For everyone,” he said. “Power will always be claimed by someone. If House Astravere doesn’t hold influence, a less careful hand will. Someone reckless. Someone eager to turn the Concordat toward war or ruin.”

Her father reached out and covered her hand with his own, warm and steady. “Influence allows us to protect stability. To keep the nation from fracturing. I grow our reach so that when the time comes, the Concordat is guided by people who understand responsibility—not ambition.”

Aurelia swallowed. “But what if the direction we’re guiding it toward… isn’t right?”

His expression flickered with hurt, not anger. “Then it is our duty to correct it. That is why families like ours matter. We don’t decide whether influence exists—we simply ensure it is used wisely.”

He brushed her knuckles with his thumb, the gesture unexpectedly soft. “And you, Aurelia… my shining star… you will help us keep this nation steady.”

His words wrapped around her like a warm cloak that somehow felt too heavy to carry. She loved him. She truly did. But she couldn’t share his faith in the machine he served.

_
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That night, after leaving the solar, she slipped into the training yard—her true refuge. She drew her bow again and again, the arcane shimmer of her arrows leaving faint streaks in the dusk. She had practiced in this yard since childhood, hands growing more calloused each year despite her tutors’ protests. Her magic flowed through each shot with an honesty politics never allowed.

She hit the far target dead center. Then the next. Then the next.

In that yard, she felt alive.
In the council chambers, she felt like a ghost wearing someone else’s skin.

Still, she smiled and nodded and tried to believe in a future she didn’t want—while the one she did want slipped further and further from her grasp.

_

Weeks later, carrying a message from her mother, she entered her father’s study. He was gone for the evening, likely drowning in council debates. The room was dimmer than usual, lit only by the last breaths of daylight through tall windows.

She placed the message on his desk. And then she noticed it.

A folio, Leather-bound, a single document protruding just enough to see Its title in stark lettering:

Strategic Prospects: Dominion Conflict Expansion

She shouldn’t have opened it.
But she couldn’t stop herself.

Inside lay maps marked for “liberation,” resource forecasts tied to occupied land, Concordat expansion plans dressed in rhetoric. House Astravere’s crest appeared again and again. And deeper in the folder:

Psionic Asset Development
Clinical reports. Abbreviated names. Trials. Failures.

Her stomach twisted.

This wasn’t protection.
This wasn’t stewardship.
This was exploitation disguised as strategy.

Her father’s words echoed painfully:
Someone must hold influence.
Better it be us.

But this wasn’t influence.
This was ambition sharpened to a blade.

Aurelia stood frozen in the fading light, the future she’d been handed unraveling before her.

She still loved him.
She always would.
But she could not follow him down this path.

Before dawn the next morning, she packed practical clothes, travel rations, her bow, and one keepsake she couldn’t bear to leave behind. She wrote a brief note assuring her family she was safe, though she doubted they’d believe it.

Then she slipped out the servant’s gate and into the unknown.

On the road beyond the city, heading anywhere away from the palaces she grew up in, she chose a new name for herself—one unadorned, unpolished, untouched by the weight of legacy:

Aster.

A simple start, free of the weight of gold.