⚠️ This article contains spoilers for Wingless in the Sky (Book 1), including Act 3.
"Someone had to rebuild after all the ruin. Might as well be me."
— Atraeis
Title: Ambassador of Tross to Aeloria
Origin: Tross
Wings: Four, silver — enormous, pristine, catching light like polished metal
Background: Born Celestial in Tross; officer in the city guard; refused orders during the civil uprising; stayed to help rebuild
Four silver wings, enormous and perfect — the kind that appear in paintings, in legends. Every feather aligned, every movement graceful. When she enters the diplomatic chamber, Kyrian stands. For half a heartbeat Lia catches something flicker across his face: admiration, longing, envy. His own wings are beautiful but marked by the brown taint. Hers are flawless. He hides it quickly. Lia has already seen it.
Otherwise Atraeis is described through presence rather than features: calm, composed, warm when she smiles. She is the calmest person in any room where things have gone wrong, which is a quality born of long practice.
Born Celestial in Tross. Officer in the city guard. Four wings that marked her as elite, full privileges, full respect — everything the hierarchy promised its highest-born.
Then the civil uprising came. Two-wings demanding equality, traditionalists refusing, violence in the streets. Her commander ordered her to fire on protesters. Her own neighbours. People she had grown up alongside.
"I refused. I'm not shooting my own people."
Her family fled to Zelos when the fighting intensified. Called her a traitor. Her mother died in exile believing her daughter would eventually come home.
She never did.
She stayed. Worked with the new government through the chaos and near-famine of the early years. Came to believe in what they were building — not from birth, not from ideology, but from watching it work. From being present for it.
"Someone had to rebuild after all the ruin. Might as well be me."
Atraeis requests Lia be present at the diplomatic meeting — political theatre, demonstrating that Tross respects all races. She greets Lia directly, warmly, as a person worth greeting. In Aeloria this is unusual enough that Lia notices it immediately.
She tells her story at the meeting matter-of-factly, without self-pity. Kyrian's response is genuine — not court performance:
"You had everything. Four wings, rank, your family's respect. And you gave it up — not for glory. For neighbors. That is not a small thing, Ambassador."
The moment shifts something in how Lia reads him. There is more to him than the arrogance. Maybe.
Immediately after the diplomatic meeting, a Celestial noble steps forward in the street:
"Such perfect silver wings — and such a rotten soul!"
Atraeis does not react. Does not look at him. She has heard worse, probably from her own family.
Kyrian shuts it down quietly — one sentence, a threat of arrest for insulting an official ambassador. Then a ground mob surges: a distraction, Lia realises a half-second before anyone else, because her eyes have already found the figures crouching on the rooftop above.
"COVER! ARCHERS!"
She pulls Atraeis under the stone archway. Arrows strike where they had been standing. Kyrian launches upward. Beros holds the ground. When it is over:
"I've survived worse. And thanks to Lady Lia's quick thinking, we're all unharmed."
The calmest person in the aftermath, as she was during it.
Atraeis is the novel's living counterargument to Thalis's worldview — not argued but embodied. Thalis explains at length that Tross is dangerous lunacy, that the civil uprising was bloody madness, that hierarchy is the natural order. The reader absorbs all of this, and then Atraeis walks into the room: a Celestial who chose her community over her privilege, who gave up everything for it, who built something from the ruin. She is Tross, and she is clearly not a lunatic.
She is also the reader's first real window into what Tross actually is before Zephyros appears. Everything about Zephyros's city is filtered through her first — his ideology made human, made warm, made comprehensible without being argued for.
When the coup comes, the Tross embassy is the only building in Aeloria that Zelos cannot attack. Tross is the largest military power in the sky, and Zelos — drunk on conquest — knows better than to violate their territory. Yet.
Atraeis has already sent her staff away. Has already arranged a hidden skyship in a private dock below the embassy. She opens the side door before they can knock.
She leads them through basement corridors, hands them papers and maps, explains the route to Tross.
"Because Tross welcomes those who believe in equality. In bonds between any folk. In choosing love over hierarchy. And because what's happening in Aeloria is horrible. Zelos doesn't purify. They destroy. Anyone who opposes them must be preserved."
When Lia asks if she will be safe:
"Eventually they'll come for me. But diplomatic immunity buys time. I'll hold here as long as I can. Delay. Confuse. Give you hours."
Her last words are to Kyrian. She looks at him with something complicated in her expression:
"Your father was a hard man. Uncompromising. Sometimes cruel. But he loved Aeloria. Loved his family." A pause. "Don't let his sacrifice be wasted."
Kyrian cannot speak. He nods. They move to the ship.
This article is about a Character — Supporting Character
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