Event Horizon

The clouds parted like curtains before them.

"Kyaaaaaaaaaah"

Virelle was screaming so hard her face was slightly bloated between the gushes of air and the mix of excitement and panic.

"Um... Vi?" he said calmly, "It's all right, we're almost there."

She snapped back, her eyes blinked, and then they opened wide.

Virelle had never seen the sky this way before—not from below, looking up—but from within it, above it, the world small and weightless beneath her. She pressed closer to the boy holding her, her heartbeat loud enough in her ears that she wondered if he could hear it too.

She didn’t ask how he was doing it—how they floated with no wings, no wind. There was no surge of magic or gust of power. No runes or glowing circles.

There was only him, and the slow, steady pull of something deep and invisible that held them aloft. Like the air itself was obeying his will.

Timothy Taranis was not even looking at her. His eyes scanned the horizon with cold calm, reading something she couldn't. A terrain of thought and design only he could chart.

But she was looking at him.

The sun lit the edges of his hair in pale gold. He didn’t wear armor. No sigil marked him noble. But when he held her—one arm under her legs, the other around her back—he felt more stable than any castle stone.

Below them, the Parcatia Pass stretched like a wound across the earth. But above… above, the sky was clear. A blue so clean it felt impossible. Clouds spread out like a soft ocean beneath their feet.

“...It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

He said nothing.

But something in his jaw softened.

A gust caught her loose braid and brushed it against his chest. She adjusted herself instinctively—just slightly—and looked up at him.

His eyes finally met hers.

“You’re not afraid?” he asked.

“No,” she said, surprised to hear how honest it sounded. “Should I be?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked away again, toward the sun. Toward whatever plan, whatever secret trail he was chasing.

But Virelle remained focused on one thing.

Not the clouds. Not the plan. Not even the weightless wonder of flight.

Just him—the boy who moved through the world like it was all tilted toward him, who crushed monsters with invisible force and gave her a new name to whisper in the dark.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t giggle. But in that still, impossible air, with the wind brushing her skin and her body in his arms, her heart fluttered.

Not because he was handsome. Or noble. Or powerful.

But because, for the first time in her life, someone lifted her—not to impress, not to humiliate, not to save—but simply because they could.

"We're here."

"Eh?"

They landed not with a crash, nor even a gust, but with the stillness of a falling feather. Timothy set her down gently atop the highest peak of the Parcatia Mountains, where the snow turned silver in the rising light, and the clouds beneath them drifted like oceans unbound by land.

Virelle stepped forward slowly, her boots crunching faintly over frost-glazed stone. For the first time, she was above everything—nobles, expectations, failures, pretenses. Even Prince Lucien was just a fading name below the mist.

Here, the world felt quiet enough to be rewritten.

Timothy stood behind her, arms folded, his cloak snapping softly in the breeze. His presence wasn’t loud—but it pressed against the silence like gravity on glass.

“You feel it now, don’t you?” he said, his voice low, clear.

She didn’t turn to him. Her eyes stayed fixed on the vastness before them. “I’ve never seen this far,” she murmured. “It’s like the kingdom’s… small. Like I could touch it all.”

“You will,” he replied. “If you choose to.”

"Choose?" she said.

She stared at the vast expanse beneath her.

Virelle swallowed. “I’ve tried. I’ve followed the rules. Flattered princes. Studied history. Magic. Law. None of it mattered. They don't see me. They just see a role I’m meant to play—”

She pressed her hand to her lips as if she had spoken out of place.

He stepped beside her now, speaking not like a boy, but a force of nature shaped into one.

“There are people in this world who don’t want to see. Truth frightens them. Power that isn’t theirs terrifies them. That’s why real change never begins in the courts or the halls. It begins here—on the edge of things. On the border between silence and defiance.”

She looked at him now—fully.

“What are you asking of me?”

Timothy turned toward her, the sun rising behind him in golden flame.

“Not obedience,” he said. “Not loyalty. I want your will. Your mind. Your fire. I want you to see the world as it is—and help me reshape it.”

A pause.

Then, with the faintest trace of a smile: “You said you wanted to make a difference, Vi.”

Her heart stuttered at the sound of her name on his lips—Vi. No title. No formality. Just her.

“I do,” she breathed.

“Then become what they never let you be,” he said, raising a hand. “Let them call you what they will. But up here, above their noise, I name you…”

He touched two fingers to her shoulder, solemn as a knight bestowing honor, gentle as a secret shared.

“Lady Gaia.”

The wind curled around them like a whisper of the world listening.

“Earth answers you, out of fear, but respect,” he said. “And from this day forward, you are my apprentice. My partner. My counterweight. The criminal world, the noble world, the light, so to speak, will tremble before that name.”

Virelle blinked once. And then smiled.

Not the careful court smile she had worn a thousand times.

This was new—bright with quiet awe, burning with purpose.

"I am Lady Gaia, and you are Lord Gravitax, my master," she said.

He stepped to the cliff’s edge, looking out over the sea of clouds.

“Our force must remain hidden,” he said. “We will not seek glory, only results. When others chase power, we’ll chase truth.”

He turned his gaze down to the land below, his voice soft, absolute.

“Event Horizon.”

"Master?" she said.

"Event Horizon."

Virelle tilted her head. “Why that name?”

He looked at her, eyes glinting like stormlight.

“Because once the truth crosses our path,” he said, “it is forever ours—and no one else's.”

"L-lord Gravitax, I don't understand."

"You will."

She nodded, unsure yet fully understanding the boy in front of him was just... incomprehensible...

Beneath his composed gaze and smile, however, he cursed.

Of course, she wouldn't know a thing about gravity... about black holes.

But it was too late to back down. He had been winning so many aura points up until that moment.

From that point forward, he would have to operate under that name.

Event Horizon.