In Aethelburg, where the Mirror holds the sky and the Crest kisses the wind, there walks a knight who has never seen a flat horizon. Born in the Hearth to a light-weaver and a funicular mechanic, Aldric was a wiry child, all elbows and knees, scrambling up spiral staircases with more courage than sense. He fell often. He learned to fall well. At twelve, his father took him to the rim, where the Silent Sentinels stood watching a world the city had long turned its back on. The horizon terrified him. It also called to him. He joined the Aerie at sixteen—the youngest in a generation. He learned the sword and the shield, yes, but also negotiation, structural integrity, resource mathematics. He learned that a knight of Aethelburg was not a hero; a hero was a failure of prevention. He learned to read unrest in a crowded Verge, to sense a failing bridge before it cracked, to speak softly to a panicked crowd and guide them home. He was twenty-four when the Hearth nearly fell. A single flawed gear in the eastern funicular. Thirty-seven souls trapped in a swaying glass car. Aldric climbed the basalt face with bleeding fingers, pried open the hatch, and carried them out one by one—the last an old woman, too terrified to move. When the cable snapped, he swung her to safety and fell. He woke in the Mirror, his leg shattered, his hand ruined. Custodian Maera sat beside him and asked why he had done it. "Because the balance was broken," he said. "And someone had to fix it." He could not serve as a knight anymore. But he would serve. He would teach the recruits. Advise the Custodians. Stand on the rim and watch the horizon, reminding them all why the Sentinels faced outward. In Balance, We Endure.
