The dream came first—violent, jagged.
Lightning split the heavens, tearing them open like a wound that refused to close. A newborn's cry echoed beneath the thunder, swallowed almost instantly by the storm's roar. Shadows writhed behind the clouds, and the wind screamed as though the world itself tried to reject what had just been born.
Ivyra woke with a sharp inhale.
Her hand went instinctively to her chest, feeling for the mark beneath her tunic. It wasn't glowing. Not now. Not yet. But the skin there burned with a memory older than her body.
She sat up in the narrow cot, listening to the muted sounds of the village beyond the thin walls—a dog barking, wood being chopped, the faint creak of someone drawing water. Ordinary sounds. Fragile sounds.
They always felt wrong to her.
---
Long ago—though she didn't know how long—the sky had split for her.
The stories she'd been told didn't match the fragments she sometimes saw in dreams. The villagers said a cursed child had been born under a storm that wasn't natural. That gods had turned their faces away that night. That lightning had nearly burned the palace to its foundations.
The truth had been quieter. More cruel.
---
Elynn—her mother—had labored alone in the back chambers of a palace that did not want her there. She had been no queen, no noblewoman, just a maid whose silence had been convenient for a prince too cowardly to claim her.
The child came too quickly. Too violently. The midwife who helped her had whispered in terror, "Something's wrong. The power in her… it's unnatural."
But Elynn had not turned away. She had looked into her infant's eyes—silver even then—and felt fear, yes, but also something sharper. Love.
Outside the chamber, she'd heard the whispers:
> "This child will bring ruin."
"She's cursed. Just like her mother."
And still, Elynn had done what no one else would. She'd taken her own life-force, sealed half of it into the baby's chest, and whispered an old spell forbidden even to those who remembered the gods:
> "Not to save the world… but to save you from it."
The storm had stopped instantly.
But the silence that followed was worse.
---
They had been exiled by sunrise.
No trial. No choice. Just a decree written in gold ink by a furious princess-to-be:
> "Let them live if they must, but not within these lands."
Elynn, still bleeding from birth and ritual both, had been forced to walk—her newborn swaddled in torn linens, guards refusing to meet her eyes. Servants stepped aside, whispering as they passed.
Beyond the gates, there had been only snow-tipped trees and wind that cut to the bone. Frostmourne Forest. A place of old magic and older dangers, where maps ended and stories went quiet.
Elynn hadn't begged. She'd kept walking.
---
Years blurred.
The forest did not welcome them. It didn't kill them, either. It just watched.
Ivyra had learned to do the same.
She grew up with silence as her first language. She learned to read tracks in mud before she could read words. She learned which berries numbed pain, which roots hid beneath frost. Her mother's hands—always trembling, always cold—taught her to set snares, to sharpen stones, to move without sound.
By the time they reached their first village—half-starving, Elynn coughing blood—no one saw a child at all. They saw a ghost. Pale. Quiet. Eyes too old.
The villagers didn't welcome them, not really. They tolerated them. Elynn could heal, and healers were rare. That made her useful. Necessary.
But Ivyra?
> "She's strange," whispered the children.
"She doesn't laugh."
"Don't look into her eyes. You'll see shadows."
Ivyra said nothing. Always nothing.
Only one person ever spoke to her without fear—the elder midwife, blind in one eye, who once muttered:
> "You don't belong to this world, child. But neither do you belong to the stars. That makes you dangerous. And necessary."
Ivyra hadn't understood. Not then. She only knew that some nights she woke to find her mother pressing a shaking hand over her chest, whispering spells to dim the faint glow under her skin.
The seal still held.
But barely.
---
Elynn's fingers trembled as she pressed them over Ivyra's chest. The seal pulsed weakly, a faint ember rather than the strong barrier it had once been. She swallowed hard, forcing calm she did not feel.
But the forest around them… shifted.
Branches no longer creaked with wind; they hissed as though whispering to each other. The fog thickened unnaturally, crawling across the ground in deliberate tendrils. Elynn's instincts—honed by years of survival—snapped to attention.
"Stay behind me," she said, voice raw. She pulled Ivyra close, though the girl's silver eyes were already fixed on the mist as if she understood its intent. Too still. Too knowing.
Something moved inside the fog. A silhouette—low to the ground, wrong in shape. Then another. And another.
Not animals. Hunters.
Elynn's heart slammed in her chest. These were no villagers, no starving wolves. They were older things—shadows born from what leaked through the sky's rift the night Ivyra was born. Creatures drawn to power they could never claim but could destroy.
The seal on Ivyra's chest burned hotter. The child flinched, clutching herself as light began to bleed faintly through her tunic.
Not now. Please, not now.
Elynn knelt quickly, grabbing Ivyra's face, forcing her to look at her. "Breathe. Do not fight it. Do not call to it."
"But it's—" Ivyra's voice cracked, strange for a girl who rarely spoke. "—it's waking."
"I know." Elynn's eyes darted to the trees. "That's why we run."
The nearest shadow lunged, jaws opening wider than any living creature's should. Elynn flung her hand up, chanting a spell she hadn't dared use in years. Golden light snapped to life—a barrier between them and the first attacker. The impact rattled her bones. She coughed blood, staggering but holding firm.
"Move, Ivyra!"
The child obeyed, darting past her mother into the narrowest gaps between trees. Elynn followed, every step fueled by desperation. Behind them, the creatures shrieked—a chorus that carried hunger and something colder: recognition.
They knew what Ivyra was. Or what she carried.
The ground ahead dipped sharply, a hidden ravine swallowed by fog. Elynn grabbed Ivyra just before they tumbled, skidding to her knees on the edge. Stones tumbled into darkness. No way forward. No way back.
The shadows closed in.
Elynn turned her daughter to face her, hands framing Ivyra's small, pale face. "Listen to me. If I fall—"
"No!" Ivyra's voice was sharp, panicked. "You promised!"
"I promised to protect you." Elynn's voice broke. "Even from myself."
The seal on Ivyra's chest flared suddenly—bright, violent. Power rippled outward, making the fog recoil. The shadows shrieked as cracks of light split the air like lightning.
Ivyra gasped, clutching at her chest. "I can't hold it—!"
Elynn's decision was instant. She wrapped her arms around Ivyra, whispering a single forbidden word.
The ground beneath them gave way—not from the shadows' attack but from Elynn's spell. The ravine swallowed them whole.
---
The ravine swallowed them whole.
For a moment, there was no sound except wind tearing past their ears, no sight except jagged walls streaking by in flashes of shadow and stone. Ivyra clung to her mother, feeling Elynn's heartbeat hammering as if it wanted to break free.
Then—the world hit.
They crashed through a layer of brittle roots and into cold water below. The impact knocked the air from Ivyra's lungs. She surfaced choking, her small body dragged by the current.
"Mother!" she cried, voice raw.
Elynn emerged several feet away, blood running from her temple, her movements sluggish. "Swim—" she coughed hard, "—to the bank!"
The river wasn't deep, but its speed was merciless. Branches and stones battered their legs as they fought their way toward the edge. Ivyra's arms ached, her breaths short and sharp. She reached for Elynn's sleeve just as the older woman's strength gave out.
"Hold on!" Ivyra screamed.
The seal burned against her chest. Heat surged into her limbs, unnatural for a child, unnatural for anyone. She gripped her mother with strength that wasn't hers, dragging her toward a protruding root.
They collapsed onto the muddy bank, shivering, coughing, and bleeding.
For a long moment, Elynn just lay there, staring up at a slice of sky through the ravine walls. Her lips were pale. "Ivyra… you shouldn't have—"
"I didn't want you to die," Ivyra whispered, her silver eyes luminous even in the gloom.
Elynn touched her cheek with a trembling hand. "You're not supposed to burn yet. You have to stay hidden."
But the night didn't allow hiding.
From the ravine above, distant shrieks echoed—the shadows hadn't given up. Their forms flickered at the edge of the rim, unable to descend but unwilling to leave.
"We can't stay here," Elynn said, forcing herself up despite the pain. "There's a way out… there has to be."
They followed the river downstream. Roots formed a tangled ceiling overhead, and faint glows of fungi lit their path in eerie blue. The air was heavy, damp, and smelled of things long dead.
Ivyra's small hand slipped into Elynn's. "Will they keep coming?"
"Yes," Elynn admitted, her voice thin. "Until they're sure the seal is buried or broken."
The child said nothing.
After what felt like hours, the ravine walls sloped lower. They climbed out—mud-streaked, scraped raw—and found themselves standing in a valley shrouded in morning fog. Unlike the cursed forest behind them, this land smelled faintly of hearth smoke.
A village.
Not large. A cluster of crooked wooden homes leaned against each other like tired old men. Fields of dying wheat spread beyond them. A single bell hung from a splintered post, unmoving in the still air.
Elynn's body swayed. Her lips moved soundlessly before she whispered: "We're not safe here, Ivyra. But we have no choice."
They stepped forward.
From the nearest hut, a figure emerged—an older woman with one clouded eye and a knife in her hand. She didn't look startled. She looked like someone who had seen strangers crawl out of the mist before.
"State your purpose," she said flatly.
Elynn swallowed. "We seek shelter. I can heal."
At the word heal, the woman's gaze sharpened. She glanced at Ivyra, then at the blood on Elynn's tunic. "Healing is rare. Rare things cost."
Elynn nodded once. "I'll pay."
The woman didn't smile. She simply stepped aside. "Then follow. But keep the child quiet. This village doesn't take kindly to… unusual children."
Ivyra's hand tightened around her mother's, but she stayed silent.
Above them, hidden by the fog, something vast shifted. Watching. Waiting.
---