Heavenly body
The Sun
“It was not born. It woke up.”
Solaris is the name that the books of the Ancients gave the Sun. It has no body, and no one knows whether it was his name or only the one they gave him. During the Equinox he was a dark disc with a ring of fire around it; in Auren he stood high and motionless and gave a brown and golden light, as if the world were being seen through old honey. Awake, he is a naked white disc, alone in the sky for the first time in a thousand years, and he wounds whoever looks straight at him.
He wants order, clarity and growth. His excess is the fire that purifies everything, including what ought to be kept. The Order of Dawn worships him and the Church of the Zenith calls him “the light that sleeps”, though he serves neither, and is hardly aware that they exist. Since the Breaking he rises in the west and sets in the east, and he is hungry.
His land is the highlands in the east: the Zenith Crown, and Auren, the white marble city that thought itself honey-coloured. Choose one of its places to continue.
Places
Auren
A staircase of white marble on a spur of pale rock, high above the forests: the city where the Order of Dawn swears its oaths and where the sky broke.
The Temple of the Zenith
The golden-domed Temple that crowns Auren, built around a hall older than itself: the Meridian Hall, where oaths are sworn.
The Cloister of Auren
Three terraces of whitewashed stone on the north slope of Auren: church, squires’ dormitory, infirmary and orphanage. Teo’s and Sera’s home.
The Zenith Crown
The highest inhabited plateau of Lumen, and the low battlemented wall around Auren where thirty-six statues watch the sky.