The Starlit Prince
-
There are names that echo through time—not as conquerors, not as tyrants, not even as kings, but as turning points. Aelion Velanthir is one such name. Born beneath a sky set alight by the rare Crown of Stars, it was said that even the heavens marked his arrival with a reverence they reserved for only the most pivotal souls.
Heir to House Velanthir—ancient rulers of Lunarethil, protectors of the Silver Canopy, and first among the Elvish High Houses—Aelion was born into grace, legacy, and prophecy. His mother, Elyssira, was the Archmage of the Astral College; his father, Thalion, a battle-worn Highlord who carved peace from a generation of war. Aelion was their only child, forged in duty and dusted in magic older than language.
Even as an infant, his presence was... stilling. Not cold, nor aloof—but centered. As if even the chaotic world bent just slightly around him. The stars shimmered brighter above his cradle. The birds hushed when he entered the groves. The scholars took longer pauses around him, unsure whether they were teaching the boy or being taught in turn.
He was, by all accounts, everything the Elvish people expected in a prince.
And yet, he became something none could have predicted.
The Journey Beyond the Sky
When Aelion came of age, he declined the gilded ceremony prepared for his formal inheritance of the title "Crown Prince." Instead, with a sword wrapped in ceremonial cloth and no more than a hunter’s satchel, he left the high halls of Velanthir to walk the world alone.
For nearly two centuries, he vanished from the courts.
Many believed he had forsaken his birthright. Whispers of scandal and betrayal crept through the noble ranks. But in truth, Aelion did not run from duty. He ran toward understanding.
He sailed with the pearl-divers of Virelli. He broke bread with scarred, wordless monks atop the Windhorn Peaks. He crossed the shattered lands of the East where magic bled into the soil, and he learned to listen—to the griefs of mortals, to the weight of history, to the stories that did not make it into books.
In back-alley markets and broken-down fortresses, he did not call himself "Prince." To some, he was a healer. To others, a mercenary. To a dying child in a sand-swept village, he was simply Aelion, the stranger who brought water and sang the stars to sleep.
He returned home not cloaked in triumph, but in silence. Not a crown on his head, but a distant gleam in his eyes.
The boy had left.
The man who returned bore scars that no blade had made.
The Blade of Twilight
It was not long after his return that Aelion vanished once more—this time, into the forbidden edge of the known world: the Twilight Expanse.
No elf had entered it willingly in over a thousand years. A place of suspended time and broken memory, where echoes become truth and truth becomes dream. It is said that time bends there—not like a river, but like a mirror cracked.
He stayed inside for ten years.
And when he emerged, not a day older, he did not speak of what he had seen.
But something had changed.
He bore new marks—arcane runes across his right arm, sealed under silverweave. His bracer was etched with a single name: Ilrien, unknown to any record, and sacred to none... save him. He walked with a silence that was not grief, but awareness. He no longer looked for the stars in the sky. He seemed to remember them.
It was then the people began to call him The Starlit Prince.
Magic and Might
Aelion Velanthir is the last known Celestial Weaver, a rare magecraft that channels magic not from the land, nor from learned incantations, but from the heavens themselves. His connection to the constellations is both scholarly and spiritual; he bends light and gravity like a musician bends strings.
With a single word, he can draw starlight into a blade that cuts not only through flesh but through illusions and lies. He wields a spell called the Solar Mantle, a radiant barrier that has turned entire battlefields into dawn-choked plains. He is capable of glimpsing splintered timelines—brief visions of "what could be"—though each use leaves him weary, and further marked by fate.
He is no stranger to the sword. His martial form is elegant, fluid, and devastating. Trained by dwarves, honed in exile, and refined under pressure, Aelion fights like a storm trapped in ritual.
The Prince Without a Throne
To the dismay of many in his court, Aelion does not race toward his coronation. Though he remains crown prince, he delays his ascension with careful deliberation.
He speaks of a future where elves are not rulers, but stewards. Where the world is not divided by ancient borders but united by shared purpose. He proposes alliances with dwarves, humans, even dragonkin—ideas that many elders call dangerous, or even traitorous.
But the people listen.
Because Aelion does not speak in riddles. He speaks in truths few dare to voice. And his presence—unshaken, luminous—makes them believe that maybe, for once, hope is not naïve.
The Astral Circle
His closest companions are not noble-born. They are misfits, wanderers, and survivors who, like him, refused to fit into the roles written for them:
Therrin Brightbark, a gnome whose dreams predict coming storms
Serida Vel, a human paladin who abandoned her oath to follow the prince
Kaevan Duskstride, a half-drow thief who once tried to rob him—and became his most loyal shadow
Arasyl, an undead scholar bound by will, not necromancy, who holds memories even gods forget
Each of them speaks to a truth Aelion lives by: That legacy is not inherited. It is chosen.
Legacy in Motion
He is not yet king.
But his influence stretches across borders, hearts, and even across time itself. Songs are sung of him in a dozen tongues. Children whisper of the prince who glows faintly under the stars. Enemies dread his silence more than they dread most armies.
And somewhere, in the forgotten reaches of the world, the name Ilrien lingers like a breath waiting to be drawn.
Aelion Velanthir may not sit upon the throne yet. But the world is already shaping itself around him—not because he demands it.
But because he dares to understand it.
