City of the Eternal Candle · Aureth

When the last light falters,
Lysora must decide what burns.

Under a seven-century flame, a quiet candlekeeper apprentice is chosen to carry the city’s final spark beyond its golden walls—into forests that whisper, mountains cut by falling stars, and the wound in the world where a sleeping serpent dreams of fire.

View Book I
A fantasy novel by Nikolaos Toussis · Book I of the Aureth Saga
The Black-Glass East · Shatterlands

Where the ground turns to glass,
the fire starts to remember.

Beyond the Golden Basin, the Shatterlands stretch in ripples of humming black glass, scarred by the Star Serpent’s first fall. Each storm that crosses those plains sings in Elion’s veins, and in the caravan clans on the crater’s rim who remember a pact the Candle tower chose to forget.

View Book II
A continuation of the Aureth Saga · Shards of the Shatterlands
The Last Candle of Lysora
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When the last ember falls, the story begins.

Map of Aureth

Map of Aureth

Click a glowing ember on the map to reveal lore from Aureth.

Lysora – City of the Eternal Candle

Heart of the Golden Basin

Lysora rises from a shallow golden basin, a circular city of stone rings wrapped around the great Candle. For seven centuries its bound fire has kept soil warm, monsters distant and nights strangely bright. Most basin folk have never seen a true star-filled sky. Now the flame thins, the air cools and shadows at the edge of the dome grow teeth.

Featured Story: The Last Candle of Lysora

The city of Lysora has survived for centuries under the glow of a single, towering Candle – a sacred flame said to hold the darkness at bay. When that Candle flickers for the first time in living memory, the light thins, the nights grow longer, and strange creatures press against the edges of its dome.

Elion, a sixteen-year-old apprentice candle keeper, never wanted more than the quiet rhythm of wax, flame, and prayer. But when the fading fire chooses him as the next Torchbearer, he is forced from the safety of the basin and sent across Aureth toward the legendary Hall of God’s Sparks.

Guided by his secretive mentor Maevra and guarded by Corren, a disillusioned soldier, Elion discovers ruins left by a last Torchbearer who never returned – and Tira, a runaway whose strange bond with fire may mark her as a Torchbearer herself. Shadow-born cults rise, ancient pacts unravel, and a buried truth begins to surface: the Candle does not merely protect the world. It imprisons something beneath Lysora that is waking.

Under an eternal flame that is starting to fail, one boy’s soul becomes the narrow bridge between a sleeping serpent and the city that built its faith on borrowed light.

World of Aureth at a Glance

  • Realm – Aureth, a land scarred and warmed by the fall of the Star Serpent
  • Magic – Divine fire bound into candles, sparks carried in human souls, forbidden arts that smother light
  • Heart of the World – The Golden Basin and the city of Lysora beneath the Eternal Candle
  • Beyond the Light – Whispering Forests, ash-burned mountains, glass-scarred Shatterlands and misty coasts
  • Saga – The Aureth stories begin with The Last Candle of Lysora and spread outward as the light fails
Torchbearers
Star Serpent
Bound Flame
Falling Gods

Characters of the Lysora Saga

Four lives braided in the Candle’s light.

Elion Saar

Apprentice candle keeper • Chosen Torchbearer
Reluctant hero Ink-stained hands

Sixteen, ink-stained and soft-spoken, Elion grew up in the shadow of the Candle, learning to tend a flame he never imagined would notice him. When the light falters and reaches for his soul, he must decide whether he was chosen for greatness or simply offered up to burn.

Every step away from Lysora peels back another layer of the stories he was raised on – and of the price the city has been paying for seven hundred years of borrowed light.

Tira Ash

Runaway experiment • Hidden spark
Streetfire Trusts no one

Quick-tongued and quicker on her feet, Tira survived in the Candlelit alleys by stealing, bluffing, and never staying anywhere long. Fire twists when she loses her temper, a gift that drew the attention of people who wanted to unmake the Candle.

Escaped and half-scarred from their experiments, she trusts no one – until she discovers that Elion’s mission may be her only chance to choose what her flame becomes.

Corren Vale

Disillusioned soldier • Reluctant guardian
Burnt conscience Hired blade

Once a decorated defender of Lysora, Corren abandoned the city watch after being ordered to burn doubters in the Candle’s name. Now he sells his sword to whoever lets him sleep at night.

Maevra hires him to keep the boy Torchbearer alive. The further they travel from the Candle’s light, the more he’s forced to confront the question he’s been avoiding: what if the thing he walked away from was the only thing keeping the world intact?

Maevra Lyr

Senior candle keeper • Keeper of secrets
Old guilt Quiet fire

Calm, precise, and wrapped in the scent of herbs and smoke, Maevra has tended the great Candle for decades. She knows exactly how much wax to add, how much story to reveal, and how much truth to bury.

Long ago she walked with those who wanted the Candle to die. Sending Elion away is both an act of duty and a penance – and she knows more than anyone what waits beneath the city if the light fails.

Varek Lyr

Shadow Extinguisher • Fanatic liberator
Unchainer Dangerous faith

Cloaked in black and silver, Varek speaks of chains and stolen fire. He believes the Candle is a shackle that keeps the world small and docile, its light fed by a god that should never have been bound.

Where Maevra chose containment, he chose awakening. To him, letting the Candle die is not an ending, but the first mercy the world has seen in centuries.