The Eclipse Queen's Bargain
The obsidian towers of the Eclipse Court stood sentinel in the unnatural stillness of that fateful night, their jagged spires clawing at a starless sky like the fingers of the damned. The air hung thick with the cloying scent of burnt roses and the metallic tang of spilled blood—lingering remnants of the cataclysmic Battle of Dusk's End, where the Eclipse King had fallen to a Radiant blade through his shadow-cloaked heart.
Queen Nyxaria knelt upon the cold onyx floor of the Chamber of Hollowed Moons, her regal posture fractured by grief and ambition. Her fingers, still stained with the fading essence of her fallen husband, trembled—not with remorse, but with the weight of the decision she was about to make. Before her, nestled in a cradle carved from a single piece of midnight basalt, lay her newborn son, Prince Kaelith. His tiny chest rose and fell with fragile breaths, his skin pale as moonlit frost, too delicate for a child of the Eclipse bloodline.
"You are too soft," she murmured, her voice like the whisper of a dagger being drawn from its sheath. "Too much of your father's weakness lingers in you."
With a flick of her wrist, she summoned the ancient incantation, the words slithering from her lips like serpents made of smoke. The chamber's shadows convulsed, twisting into grotesque shapes as the very air grew heavy with the promise of forbidden power. The torches lining the walls guttered and died one by one, their flames snuffed out as if by an unseen hand, until only a single, sickly crimson fire remained—a flame that burned without warmth, without light, without mercy.
From the depths of that unnatural fire emerged Syrrax, the Fire demon, its formless body wreathed in tendrils of smoke and the whispered regrets of a thousand broken oaths. Its voice was the crackle of embers, the hiss of molten metal meeting flesh.
"You have come to claim what was promised," it murmured, the words slithering into Nyxaria's ears like poison. "But are you prepared to pay the price? A heart of eclipse-born royalty, still untouched by time, in exchange for power beyond reckoning—dominion over both Courts, over light and dark alike."
Nyxaria did not hesitate. "I have brought my son," she said, her voice steady as the grave. "Prince Kaelith. His heart is yours."
Syrrax coiled over the child, its presence a suffocating weight. The babe did not cry out—Eclipse fae were not born with such mortal frailty—but his tiny body arched in silent agony as the demon's essence pierced his chest. With a sound like tearing silk, Syrrax withdrew its claws, and nestled within them pulsed a heart of deepest crimson, threaded with veins of liquid shadow. Without ceremony, the demon consumed it, the organ dissolving into ash upon its tongue.
The moment the heart was devoured, power surged through Nyxaria like a wildfire. The Eclipse Court's magic had always been hers to command, but now—now—she felt the golden threads of the Radiant Court's power twining through her veins, bright and searing. She saw the hidden corridors of the Sun Palace, heard the murmurs of the light fae who had fled her wrath. The union of these forces was intoxicating, a heady rush of fire and of dawn and dusk intertwined.
Syrrax's voice cut through her euphoria like a blade. "You are now the most powerful fae to walk these lands," it hissed. "But know this: your son will live, though his chest remains hollow. Have your mechanists forge him a heart of gears and dying embers, for the flesh you have bargained away is gone forever."
Nyxaria's lips curled in triumph—until the demon spoke again.
"There is one condition more."
The Queen stilled.
"Every blood moon, you must offer tithes of human warmth—joy, sorrow, breath, flesh. Their essence will sustain the power you have been given. Fail, and the magic will turn upon you. Your strength will wither. Your son will perish. And the Courts will remember you only as the queen who grasped for glory and found only ruin."
Nyxaria's eyes flashed with fury. "You never spoke of this!" she snarled. "The fae have no dealings with humans. We do not hunt them like common beasts!"
Syrrax's laughter was the sound of a forest burning. "This is the price of power, Nyxaria of the Eclipse. You desired the throne of both Courts? Then you will stain your hands with mortal blood to keep it."
For a heartbeat, the Queen hesitated. Then her resolve hardened like cooling iron. She had sacrificed too much to turn back now.
With Syrrax's laughter echoing in her ears, Nyxaria claimed the vacant throne of the Radiant Court, her shadow stretching across both realms. She established the Hollow Hunt—elite riders clad in armor forged from frozen screams—to scour the mortal world for tithes. Villages trembled at their passing. The earth itself seemed to weep where they tread.
And Prince Kaelith?
He lived.
The Court's mechanists labored without rest, crafting a heart of blackened gears and smoldering cinders, its rhythmic ticking a ceaseless reminder of the emptiness within him. He grew tall, his beauty unmatched, his eyes twin voids that reflected nothing at all. The perfect heir. The hollow prince.
Yet on nights when the tithes were delayed, when Nyxaria's borrowed power flickered like a guttering candle, she would find him standing before the great obsidian mirrors of the palace, his mechanical heart stuttering in his chest—
As if it remembered.
As if it ached.
And in those moments, the Eclipse Queen wondered if Syrrax's greatest trick had not been the bargain itself...
But the lie that it was ever her choice to make.