The Puppetry Institute

Aurum of Atheria

High above the churning winds and stone-choked cities of men, beyond the reach of towers and turbines, there lies a hidden realm in the sky Atheria.

Atheria floats where the clouds are thickest and the stars feel close enough to whisper to. Its waterfalls spill into the void and never touch ground. Its trees are silver-barked and sing in the breeze. And its skies are filled with wings thousands of them, in every shape and hue for Atheria is sanctuary.

It is home to all who were driven from theirs.

The Phoenixes of Embervale, whose nests were burned by oil rigs.
The Roc tribes of the Northern Cliffs, whose hunting grounds became concrete runways.
The Wind Stags, the Sky Serpents, the last Cloud Mantas, all came to Atheria, broken, exiled, hunted.

And over them all, watched Aurum, the Golden Gryphon.

Aurum was old, not in years, but in memory. His feathers shone with the luster of dawn, his eyes deep as twilight. Born in a high crag long lost to mining blasts, he was the last of the sun-born gryphons. But Aurum had not chosen bitterness. He had chosen guardianship.

He had built Atheria, stone by stone, with magic from the forgotten winds and promises whispered by the moons. He opened the skies to the outcast, gave perch to the displaced, and forged treaties between creatures who had once fled one another in fear. In Atheria, no talon was raised in violence. No wing beat in fear.

Every year, the gathering was held, Feathermeet. From the smallest humming fae-drake to the great Zephyr Whales, all came to the high spire to offer thanks, share stories, and renew their pact: Atheria would remain hidden. Safe. Sacred.

But this year, the winds carried unease.

Aurum stood upon the Pinnacle Perch, eyes scanning the horizon. Below, the creatures murmured, something shimmered on the edges of the sky. Something sharp and wrong.

“It’s smoke,” said Vetra, a silver harpy scout, landing beside him. “From machines. A dirigible. Far below, but… it climbs. Toward us.”

Aurum’s talons clenched the stone. He had known this day would come.

Man had reached further than ever before. A research vessel, likely, chasing storms, or legends. Perhaps a camera would catch the tip of Atheria’s cliffs, the curve of a skybridge. And then… they would come. With drones. With nets. With lies about preservation.

Atheria would be caged. Or worse, catalogued.

But Aurum did not tremble. He turned to the gathered flock, his voice as vast and clear as thunder across calm seas.

“We do not run. We do not strike. We shield.”

He raised his wings, gold flashing like a newborn sun, and the skies themselves stirred.

The great spell he had forged long ago, hidden in song and feather and flight, reawakened. The Cloud Mantas spiraled outward, spinning a mist so dense it danced between reality and dream. The Zephyr Whales sang deep harmonies, shifting wind patterns to veil the realm. And Aurum, center of it all, rose higher than he had in centuries.

He flew until he found the sky-thief ship, brass, blinking, hungry, and with one look, one great beat of his wings, the spell passed through it.

To the crew below, the sky fractured. Time skipped. Instruments whirled. And Atheria became a memory too beautiful to believe, too strange to share. The vessel turned back.

And Atheria remained, untouched.

Later, as twilight draped across the realm, Aurum landed at the spire once more. The creatures gathered in silence, some bowing, others weeping.

“They will return,” he said. “One day, they will reach even here. But we will remain. Not in fear. Not in hiding. But in harmony. And if the day comes that the world below remembers wonder we will welcome them.”

And the skies of Atheria shimmered, not with gold or flame or fury…

But with hope.