Each a curse.
But there was one gift more.
Before she vanished into myth,
the Nightmother bore her last children?—
two sparks split from the same dusk:
one of shadow-touched sun,
one of light forged in silence.
Not god. Not mortal.
The Nightmother’s line was hidden.
Scattered. Hunted.
But always marked.
Always watched.
Because one day,
the Nightmother whispered,
a daughter born of her blood and the mortal world
would awaken?—
and when she did, silence would no longer sleep.
And when the world forgets balance again,
she will rise—not in wrath, but in silence.
The kind of silence that remembers.
The kind that does not ask permission.
The kind that reshapes the stars.
I sat, saying nothing for a long time.
Seraphine didn’t speak either, though I could feel her watching me. Eventually, I closed the book.
“That’s not a history,” I said, voice low. “It’s a warning.”
“It’s both,” she replied, gentler now. “You wanted truth, Malachi. You got it.”
Seraphine leaned back against the table, folding her wings. “Gods hand out licenses,” she snorted. “Marks. Permissions. Rules.”
Her eyes flicked back to the open page. “But some things are born owning themselves.”
I stood, jaw tight, eyes still on the curling script. “She’s part of it,” I said. “That bloodline. That story.”
Seraphine didn’t answer. But she didn’t need to.