CHAPTER 71: THE ISLAND OF ILTHARIM

The shard pulsed once, violet light whispering into the void.

Far away, across leagues of ocean no chart dared mark, the pulse found its way to an island hidden not in the sea... but in the sky above.

Shrouded in a mantle of cloud, the island drifted unseen, its cliffs sheathed in waterfalls that tumbled into mist before vanishing into nothing.

The torrents birthed storms, feeding whirlwinds that had lashed sailors for millennia.

To those below, the thunderclouds were curses of the deep sea.

Few imagined that above them, veiled in light and shadow, an entire world hung suspended.

It was not what the world expected of the Iltharim, the "dark elves" whispered off as heretics and shadow-dwellers.

No cavern labyrinths stretched here.

No choking gloom lit by fungus.

Instead, the island was paradise.

Mountains encircled the isle like ancient guardians, their peaks crowned with snow.

Meltwater spilled into a vast glacial lake at the heart of the land.

From that lake, rivers as broad as the Amazon wound through jungles and fertile plains, their crystalline waters tumbling over cliffs in endless curtains.

The air shimmered with warmth, but without the swarms of parasites that plagued earthly tropics.

Clouds rolled across the valleys, silver in dawn and rose-gold at dusk, but never brought blight.

The soil was black and rich, heavy with promise.

Villages nestled along riverbanks, houses woven of timber, stone, and living vine.

Fields stretched in terraced steps where golden grain rose high, bending beneath winds scented of fruit blossoms.

Herds of scaled beasts grazed the plains, reptilian titans with hides patterned like crocodiles and temperaments as placid as oxen.

They pulled plows, bore riders, and lumbered into the jungles carrying loads of timber, their slow bellows echoing against the cliffs.

And above all, the Iltharim themselves.

They bore the same grace as their highborn cousins in Selanor, but their skin was bronzed or coppery, touched by sun.

Veins traced faint violet glow across their bodies at night, constellations living beneath flesh.

Gold and silver hair gleamed like starlight against their darker skin.

Their eyes held no arrogance, no hauteur of towers.

Only the sharpness of hunters and the calm of farmers who knew balance.

Where the High Elves built spires of crystal and proclaimed themselves the pinnacle of magical order, the Iltharim lived with the land.

Magic here was necessity: rivers guided by runes etched into stone embankments, huts cooled by bound air-spirits, reptiles led not with whips but with songs that bent their instincts.

They were not savages.

They were not monsters.

They were simply apart.

In a hall of carved obsidian and woven reed, the Council gathered.

The chamber was open to the warm breeze, its walls painted with scenes of rivers, hunts, and harvests.

Elders sat cross-legged on mats, their robes simple, embroidered with faint runic glow.

At the center lay a shallow bowl of water, smooth as glass. Tonight, it rippled.

The eldest among them, a woman whose eyes gleamed violet, leaned forward. Her hand trembled above the bowl.

"The shard stirs," she whispered. Her voice carried the weight of centuries. "The bond we cast away long ago has been touched."

Murmurs rippled through the council.

"Impossible. The Selanorians swore to silence it."

"They would rather burn their spires than speak to us again."

"Unless..." a younger magus said, narrowing his eyes. "Unless desperation drives them."

The bowl rippled again. A voice whispered through the water, faint, strained, but undeniable:

"Iltharim... the tide rises. Alone, we will drown. Together, perhaps we may yet stand. Will you hear me?"

The voice of Elorath.

The elders stared. One, his arms tattooed with coiling runes, snorted.

"So. At last the proud towers remember we exist. They mocked us, exiled us, damned our path as heresy. And now they beg at our door?"

A younger woman spat into the bowl.

"Let them drown. Let their spires crumble. For ten thousand years they have called us traitors. Why should we bleed for them now?"

Others nodded, mutters sharp as blades.

Yet the eldest only watched the ripples fade.

Beyond the hall, children splashed in river shallows, beasts lowed as they were led into pens, the air smelled of roasted fish and fruit wine.

To the people outside, distant wars were only stories carried on wind.

And yet, for the first time in millennia, the outside world pressed at their door.

At last the eldest raised her voice. "The High Elves fear something. And if they fear, we must listen."

Her gaze swept the others, hard as obsidian.

"Do not forget: though we chose the sky, though we chose balance, we are still of their blood. If a tide rises that can drown Selanor, do you think it will spare us? Our island may be paradise, but the sea surrounds us still. The storms we send to the world below may not protect us forever."

The chamber fell into silence, each elder weighed by the truth in her words.

That night, after the council dispersed in discord, the eldest remained.

She traced the ripples with her finger, voice barely more than breath.

"Elorath of Selanor. You dare reach across the gulf at last. Perhaps it is time."

The shard pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat echoing across oceans and sky alike.

And for the first time in ages, the Iltharim considered stepping back into the affairs of the world.

The chamber was silent long after the council had dispersed.

Eladria Voiddancer remained, her form a silhouette against the violet shimmer of the shard.

At nearly five thousand years of age she was not the eldest of her people, but her years stretched longer than the histories of most nations.

Few alive remembered the exodus of the Iltharim from the High Elves’ empire.

Fewer still carried the words of those who had seen it with their own eyes.

She was among the last.

Her hand hovered above the shard, its glow reflecting across skin lined with centuries of memory. Where the others saw danger, Eladria saw inevitability.

"The void stirs..." she murmured. "And so too must we."

The elders told their children stories of the great schism, when the Elven Empire had been forged in the aftermath of the Exodus.

And how after five thousand years of prosperity it had torn itself apart.

Selanor’s towers, hungry for certainty, had bound themselves to the Eidolon of Light, raising laws and taboos to keep order.

The Iltharim had turned elsewhere.

"Heretics," the High Elves had called them. "Voidsworn. Apostates."

But the Iltharim had not worshiped destruction, as the insult implied.

They had sought balance, not only the building and the binding, but also the breaking, the spaces in between. F

or in the void there was not only absence. There was possibility.

That was their crime.

They were cast out, hunted, driven across the seas until storms swallowed them.

And yet when the lightning cleared, they had found themselves borne upon this island above the clouds, lifted by powers their enemies feared to name.

The Iltharim had survived.

And they had endured not by conquering, but by remaining apart.

Eladria’s gaze drifted out to the rivers gleaming below the hall.

She remembered the first time her ancestors had seen them, water untainted, soil rich, beasts docile under sung commands.

It had been paradise when all else crumbled.

Here they had built villages of wood and stone instead of spires of crystal.

They had sung runes into riverbanks rather than walls of marble.

They had grown food and raised beasts, lived with the land rather than upon it.

And they had listened to the whispers of the void, not destruction, but guidance.

It was the void that had cloaked them in storms so no ship might find them.

It was the void that had veiled their island in cloud, so no eye might seek them.

The Selanorians spat on them for it.

But it was that heresy that had saved them.

Now, centuries later, the shard stirred once more.

Eladria bent close, her fingers brushing the water’s edge in the bowl.

The ripples bent around her touch, pulsing with a faint violet resonance that matched the glow in her veins.

She closed her eyes. Memories pressed heavy: flames licking across Iltharim banners, High Elven voices calling them oath-breakers, children screaming as ships fled into storms.

And yet.

And yet the void whispered.

Eladria drew a long breath, her chest aching with the weight of choice.

The elders of the council would debate until stars turned cold.

Some would demand silence, some vengeance, some reconciliation.

The Iltharim had lived thousands of years without Selanor, they could live ten thousand more.

But Eladria was old enough to remember a truth the younger ones ignored.

The world was not still. It never had been.

The sea shifted, the storms changed, the stars themselves wheeled overhead.

To pretend the Iltharim could remain apart forever was vanity.

Sooner or later, war would come to their shores.

Someone would find the way to breach the void between them.

And when that day came, the Iltharim would stand alone.

No matter what ancient grudges my lie between them and the Synod. Eladria knew this first contact in millennia could not be ignored.