Eldanare's light

From the books

In Astarion's telling, Eldanarë is a place where elves still live as they did "when our people walked alone beneath the stars", its luminarite never dimmed by human breath. The appeal is to purity of blood as much as of light, and Aurelion answers in those terms: pure, untainted, with no human filth and no broken lines. The priests' supposed belief that the luminarite's song could quiet his mind ties the first light to the same crystal that powers Luna's Spire.

Aurelion's obsession with purity runs through The Outcast Knight. At the King's Tournament he hears a whispered second melody beneath the elven choir urging him to restore purity, and in a moment of clarity wonders whether the taint on his kingdom is his own hatred rather than the presence of humans, and whether the purity he sought should have been of spirit rather than of blood. Aboard the ship that carries him toward the Haven, though, he returns to the old refrain of a pure beginning untouched by human hands.

The first light also survives as an invocation within the Luminarite faith. Alesund Moonspear is announced at the tournament as a Templar of the First Light, sworn shield of Luna. Among Balorin Dawnbringer's prayers is a personal high-elven ward, "Lumière première, garde mon âme" ("First Light, guard my soul"), which he uses to reinforce his protection when facing the possessed Eamon. The book's notes on language describe High Elvish as the Creed's newer holy tongue, devised by the elven theocracy to replace Old Speak and designed to sound elevated and untouchable.