Editing Shattered Sun (section)

====''The Innerlight''====
It is widely known that the Light from the Shards has mystical properties which are harnessed by many: Astronomers who track the Shards and form a bond with them through their study; Alchemists who harness the power of the Light into mechanical form; Brandishers who create a permanent bond between person and Shard with Stardust-imbued tattoos. Being under a constant state of dusk gave some Twilighters, those in a culture already abound with stories of its many travelers full of mystery, intrigue, and magic, a fresh perspective on the Light not known by those basking under the Shardstreams’ glow. When these special villagers focus their eyes in just the right way, they see a faint glow that overlaps the person they are looking at. Depending on the circumstances, this “Innerlight” may simply be residual, or flaring up in various colors and directions.

Some villagers have used this ability as a sort of aural reading to better understand those they meet. Others can determine the subject’s desires and wishes to a degree. Even others have protracted such predictive ability to tell the subject’s future in general terms. But there are some who are somehow able to draw forth the Innerlight itself into the physical realm, conjuring powerful effects even when out of the immaculate shine of the Shards themselves. While there is no one being who can fully extract another’s Innerlight – too much of it removed and it literally saps the life out of the subject – there are those who can reconfigure the Innerlight within someone to make them stronger, more resilient, more able than they ever imagined. There are stories of small groups of villagers fending off an entire army only with a profound mastery over their Innerlight. Spears buckled upon them. Swords dulled on their skin. And woe is the unsuspecting infantryman who got caught in the gaze of one of these villagers for too long.

While Copesa is known to be the first to discover this ability in some of its villagers, many of the other villages in the Twilight are known for their own that are gifted in the Innerlight. For the most part though, this ability seems to reside only within those born and raised in the Twilight, although there has been the odd case of someone from either the Shardstreams or the Strobelands who have picked up the ability in their travels through these villages.