The Manor of the Silver-Blood family sat nestled in the whispering woods of Aethelgard, a place where the trees were said to hum in tune with the ley lines of the earth. It was a house of light, of laughter, and of steady, reliable magic. But on the night Elera was born, the light flickered, and the laughter died in the throats of the midwives.
He labor had been silent. No screams echoed through the halls, only sound of rising wind that beat against the stone walls like a thousand frantic wings.
When the baby finally arrives, she did not draw breath wail. She simply lay in the midwife's trembling hands, her small chest rising and falling in a rhythmic, ancient grace.
"She...she isn't breathing right," the midwife whispered, her voice cracking.
"Give her to me," Lady Elena, the mother, gasped, her face pale and drenched in sweat.
As the child was placed in her mothers's arms, the heavy velvet curtains of the room suddenly billowed inward. The candles, dozens of them, snuffed out at once, plunging the room into a thick, suffocating darkness. In that void, two things happened simultaneously.
First, the infant opened her eyes. They were not the soft, hazy brown of her father or the the deep emerald of her mother. They were a startling, liquid grey-silver, like moonlight caught in a pool of mercury. They were eyes that didn't belong in the face of a child, they were eyes that looked through the ceiling, through the sky, and into the very fabric of time itself.
Second, the prophecy whispered through the room, it didn't come from a throat, it came from the shadows.
"When the moon bleeds gold, the queen shall return to finish what she started."
The words were so cold they frosted the windowpanes. The midwife collapsed into a dead faint. Lady Elena clutched her daughter in her chest, her heart hammering like a trapped bird. For a heartbeat, she saw it " A tall, terrifying silhouette standing in the corner of the room, a man made of smoke and night, with eyes like glowing embers of a dying fire."
And then as quickly as the darkness had come, the candles flared back to life. The shadow was gone. The wind ceased.
The infant Elara blinked, her silver eyes fading into more natural, though still haunting grey. She let out a soft, tiny coo, and the world began to turn again.
Five Years Later.....
The sun was warm weight on Elera's shoulders as she sat in the clover fields behind the manor. At five years old, she was a creature of quiet edges, While her older brother, Julian, spent his days practicing "Spark casting" the basic fire magic of their lineage. Elara spent hers watching the way the shadows moved under the oak trees.
"Elara! Watch this!" Julian shouted, snapping his fingers. A small, orange flame danced on his fingertip. He grinned, his chest puffing out, "Father says I'll be a Grade A Caster by the time I'm Ten. Why aren't you practicing?"
Elara looked down at her own small hands. She tried, she really did, she closed her eyes and reached for the "well of light" their father told them about. But every time she searched for her magic, she didn't find fire. She found vast, cold ocean, it was deep,silent, and felt like it was locked behind a door made of mountains.
"My magic is sleepy, Julian," she said softly, her voice carrying a cadence that was too rhythmic for a child.
"It's not sleepy, its broken," Julian teased, though not unkindly. He sat beside her, "Mother says you're just a late bloomer. But your eyes.....they're doing that thing again."
"What thing?"
"They looked like they're made of mirrors," he whispered, leaning in. "Sometimes, when you look at me, I feel like I'm looking at a stranger. A scary one."
Elara tilted her head. She didn't feel like a stranger. But she did feel...watched.
It had started a year ago. At first it was just a feeing of hair standing up on her neck. Then, it became sighting. A tall man in black cloak standing at the edge of the woods. A figure reflected in the water of the well that wasn't there when she turned around.
She didn't tell her parents; the last time she mentioned the "Shadow Man," her fathers face had filled with such terror that she decided to keep her secrets.
That night, the nightmare returned while the sky screamed. Millions knelt in the dust, roaring for mercy. In her hand was a staff of twisted starlight. High above, the moon was a deep, sickly gold. Dripping liquid fire.
"I am the end," she heard herself say. "And I am the beginning."
Elara bolted upright, her nightgown soaked in cold sweat. The room was freezing, ice had formed in lace-like pattern on her bedpost.
"Mama?" She whispered. Only the clock answered.
She looked toward the corner. The shadows there were moving, swirling like ink in water. A man stepped out. He was taller than her father, dressed in clothes of forgotten era. His skin was the color of moonlight, his hair black as a raven's wing. But it was his eyes that froze her "a piercing, lethal crimson."
The man didn't approach. He watched her with an intensity that felt like physical weight, as if she were long lost treasure.
"Who are you?" Elera breathed.
A voice echoed in her mind, cold, velvet, and filled with a thousand years of longing. "Sleep little spark. The world is not ready for the fire you carry. Not yet!"
Elera blinked, her vision blurred with magical heaviness. When she opens her eyes a second later, the corner was empty. The ice melted. She scrambled out of bed and ran to her parent's room.
"The moon!" She cried as her father caught her. "It was bleeding gold, Papa! And the Shadow Man was there. He told me I was a fire!"
Her father, Alistair, went rigid. He looked at Elena, whose face was deathly pale, "Its just a nightmare, sweetheart," he said, his voice tight. "There is no Shadow Man, and the moon is just the moon."
"But he was there!" Elara insisted, "He had red eyes!"
Elena pulled her into a hug, her hands shaking. "We will put protective runes on your door. It was only a dream Elara."
But as her mother held her, Elera looked out the window. High above, the moon was white but for a flickering second, a drop of gold passed across its surface.
Deep in the woods, a wolf howled, a long mournful sound answered by hundred others. The world thought the Queen was dead, they thought the darkness was sealed, They were wrong!
In the shadows outside, the Vampire prince Valerius stood on a branch, his red eyes guarding her, his sword dripped with the black ichor of three demons he had just slaughtered in her name. The Queen had returned. And this time he would not let her die.