Impossible.
She should not have been able to see me in the mists of Nyxarra. No one could—unless they bore the rare blessing of Eryndis, Veiled Keeper of Thresholds and Secrets. Her favor had once been reserved for those she found worthy to walk the thin line between shadow and light—gifting sight that could unravel the unseen.
Her power had been in knowing. She walked through dreams, slipping between realms, threading herself through the spaces between words, gathering truths the world wished buried.
Long before altars were carved or marks were given, magic lived in the bodies of gods alone.
In the beginning, the Nightmother walked with Atrox, and creation lived in the balance between them. But she fell in love with a mortal life that could end, with a world that could be touched and changed. To dwell nearer that fragile beauty—to shape it without unmaking it—she broke herself apart.
From her came four goddesses, each carrying an aspectof what had once been whole. They were not made to rule, but to tend—to keep balance among the lands and the mortals who lived upon them.
Through them, mortals were given small pieces of creation. From Nerissa, the mercy of tides and the certainty of reckoning. From Sylvara, growth and decay, bloom bound to rot. From Kaerani, flame and renewal, fury that cleared the way for what came next. From Eryndis, passage—sight across thresholds, truth carried between worlds. These offerings became the first patron blessings.
But balance demands restraint. And three of the goddesses grew hungry. They no longer wished to tend what was, but toshapeit—to press creation into forms of their own choosing. Power that had once flowed was gathered, tightened, bent toward control.
Eryndis stood against them. She knew what power taken too tightly became. She had seen it—in gods, in mortals, in every story that ended in ruin. So they cast her out, silencing the one voice that still remembered how the world was meant to breathe.
What had once been given freely hardened into vows. Blessings became bargains. Gifts became leashes—and the goddesses called it order.
Vampyres came from a different wound entirely—born of grief, untouched by divine law, immortal through hunger instead of grace.
Somewhere between those two ancient fractures walk the Moirae—their origin forgotten, their allegiance never agreed upon.
History has a way of smoothing over the things it would rather forget.
But since Eryndis’s banishment, those with her gifts had vanished entirely. Or so we believed.
For the first time in a long time, I felt something unexpected. Curiosity.
I had been Nyxarra’s Keeper for centuries—long before the four goddesses became three. Before Eryndis was banished to the void, her name struck from temples and scrubbed from sacred text. Her whispers went silent, her sisters severing her from the world she had shaped in shadow and truth.
It was a title I had earned in blood, sealed the day I made the bargain with King Talon to end the Purge. I had traded my freedom for Nyxarra’s survival—for my people’s survival. Since then, I had guarded the last remnants of something forbidden, bound to the city and to the Veil itself.
Prince Kaelith had tasked me with guarding Nyxarra’s borders, rooting out threats or curiosities before they reached the gates. He claimed it was to keep Nyxarra safe, but I knew better. He stationed me where the Veil thinned—where anything that pressed against it would answer to me first.
Kaelith saw borders only as lines to be redrawn. To him, the Veil was not a boundary, but a prison wall. Breaking it would free Nyxarra to reach the other realms.
I had been walking the outer edge of the fog, seeking the silence the fringes alone could offer, when I saw her—a lone figure cut sharp against the white. I waited for the mist to close over her. It should have swallowed her whole.
It did not.
It drew close… then withdrew, like a predator scenting something it dared not bite.
Frowning, I stepped forward, summoning a shadow from the space between. The darkness peeled from my form, stretching into the shape of a man. A guard. My will made flesh.
The projection reached her first. I sent the questionthrough the fog. The gloved hand closed over her jaw, and the question moved like a thread through the mist.
Her answer reached me a breath later.
Moirae.
A Moirae walking unclaimed through Nyxarra’s mist was unthinkable. That bloodline was meant to be ash. And yet here she stood—unbound, untouched, and staring straight into me.
That was when I truly looked at her.
The pale ivory of her skin, made starker by the night-dark curls spilling down her back. The cut of her jaw, the curve of her lips—marred by a scar that ran from the base of her neck, across her mouth, and over her brow—a story etched into her skin.
Small, but not fragile. Compact. Strong. Even beneath layers of leather and fur, she carried the stance of someone built for endurance. The cloak hid much, but her balance, the economy of her movement—those spoke of training.