Ivronics

Ivronics was once a rice farmer in a distant dynasty. After losing his wife, he lived for his sick daughter. The collapse of his homeland, a fire and the intervention of an Allay left him alive—but emptied of the grief that had defined him.

The burning dynasty

When the emperor’s selfish rule and the realm’s crushing debt became impossible to hide, the dynasty turned on itself. Buildings burned, civilians fought over food and the streets filled with the dead. As survivors fled the city, Ivronics ran the other way after seeing the hospital where his daughter lay catch fire.

He climbed through smoke and heat until he found her beneath fallen rubble. She was already dead. Ivronics held her, surrendered to the smoke and expected to die beside her.

The Allay’s gift

A captured Allay escaped from a broken jar somewhere within the ruin. Drawn to the faint heartbeat beneath the smoke, it circled Ivronics and descended toward his chest. Days later, he woke among a pile of bodies without the burns and injuries that should have killed him.

His heart beat and his lungs worked, but his grief had become strangely silent. He fled the dead kingdom and sold his wedding ring to pay for passage across the sea.

The voyage with no purpose

At a distant port, Ivronics met a travelling merchant carrying a newborn child. They crossed roads, continents and seas together, two survivors held together by loss. When illness later killed the merchant, Ivronics kept his promise that the child would not be abandoned. He adopted the infant and settled on a quiet, forested island.

The forest’s call

For several years the farm by the sea gave him something close to peace. Then a call began in the forest—a pull that grew from a whisper into torment. Following it beneath the trees, Ivronics found the blue light of the Allays. They welcomed him as though he belonged among them.

The visits became longer. The Allays softened his memories, eased the pain around them and filled the emptiness in his chest. By the time he returned for good, the farmer and refugee had begun to disappear beneath a gentler story. Ivronics came to believe that he was a king who had saved his daughter, protected his people and merely forgotten the location of his throne.

He now greets strangers as citizens of a kingdom that no recognised map contains.