The crystal-lit halls of Moniyan shimmered with divine elegance—
but all Amiya felt were shadows.
Each day she walked the palace with Matt—sometimes in her arms, sometimes trailing silently behind—she bore the weight of every sacred law she'd broken to keep him breathing.
To the other Eternals, he was a rescued orphan.
To the High Tribunal, a warborn refugee.
But to her?
He was the last ember of a world reduced to cinders.
He was her son.
---
The first years passed in quiet exile.
Amiya raised him in the palace's western wing—abandoned since the First Balance War, steeped in divine echoes no one dared disturb.
A forgotten place.
The perfect sanctuary.
And Matt… was different.
He laughed before most children could speak.
He walked early. Slept restlessly—fighting shadows in his dreams.
At three, he summoned a storm when startled.
At six, he shaped raw celestial light without instruction.
The gods began to whisper.
Not since the Age of Binding had such a child been born.
Amiya silenced the murmurs with a smile that bent truth like gravity.
She blurred records, rewrote memory sigils, and pulled strings across dimensions—all to protect one truth:
Matt had to stay hidden.
---
One evening, she found him alone in the ancient library, staring up at the statue of Pailance, the All-Mother of the Eternals.
He didn't turn as she entered.
"Why does everyone look at me like I'm… a crack in the wall?"
She paused.
"Because cracks let in light, Matt."
He frowned. "I don't want to be light. I just want to belong."
Her heart splintered.
She reached out—but he pulled away.
"You're not like me," he whispered. "You're a god. I'm… not."
She knelt beside him.
"No," she said. "You're something more."
That night, Amiya didn't sleep.
She stared at the stars carved into her ceiling, asking herself the question she'd feared most:
Was she protecting him…
or caging him?
---
A year later...
The Council summoned her.
She entered a chamber carved from divine flame, the silence thick as judgment.
At its heart stood the Five Imperial Paladins—immovable, radiant, merciless.
Monshin spoke first.
"We believe a forbidden bloodline hides within these walls."
Amiya didn't blink.
"You believe many things. Truth, however, requires proof."
Analice offered a smile, cool and certain.
"We will find it. You can't hide him forever."
---
That night, back in her sealed quarters, Amiya kissed Matt's forehead.
She cast one final ward over their chamber—woven from stardust and soul, bound to her breath and heartbeat.
She whispered:
"If they come… wake me. No matter the price."
The ward shimmered. It listened.
And that night, Matt's dreams changed.
He dreamed of fire.
Of Nyuga, burning.
Of voices screaming.
Of a blade forged from living shadow.
The past was buried.
But the future had begun to whisper.