Prologue
They called it Achyron, after the river of woe that once flowed through the gods’ own shadowed dreams. A land of impossible beauty —star-touched forests, crystal lakes deeper than memory, mountains crowned with thunder and of terrible wounds.
Long ago, the gods of the pantheon divided Achyron among their favored children.
The humans were gifted growth and abundance, their cities blessed with golden harvests and gentle seasons. From their kingdom of Eryndor, they built spires of marble and glass, prayed at altars shining with flame, and sang songs of triumph over death.
The fae claimed the wild places, weaving moonlight and power into magic older than any mortal tongue. They ruled hidden glades and crystal groves, kingnd lords of beauty and cruelty in equal measure.
The vampires were shaped from immortal hunger, scorned even by the gods, banished to the deepest shadows and the edge of the continent. They took their sustenance in blood, their courts dripping with red-stained jewels and secrets. Although not forced into darkness they preferred it.
But what was divided could not remain apart.
In secret, the fae and the vampires found each other, drawn by forbidden desire. Passion. Power. Blood. From those unions were born the nightbound— children carrying the fae’s grace and the vampire’s deadly magic in a single, unstoppable form.
The gods saw this as an unforgivable defiance. A union that shattered their careful order, so they cursed the land of Achyron.
They poisoned harvests in Eryndor, sending plague and famine to its once-rich fields. The humans watched their children starve, their prayers to silent gods going unanswered.
They poisoned the moon-kissed groves of the fae, blackening their forrests and waters twisting their magic into nightmares, leaving them lost and fragmented.
They sent endless storms across the nightbound kingdoms, scouring their towers with lightning, driving them to feed upon their own kind to survive.
From that devastation rose shattered thrones: Nythra, Calanthe, Eryndor, and Vierlla.
Generations have passed, yet Achyron still bears the scars. Its forests are full of whispers, its rivers choked with nightmares, its people still searching for a way to mend what the gods themselves chose to break.
And deep within the Veil in that thin place between death and life, something stirs.
What is broken rarely heals without a price.
Chapter one
Taken
-Maris, Human Kingdom of Eryndor-
She had never felt more alone in the heart of Eryndor's battered capital.
She lived surrounded by its crumbling walls and soot-stained battlements, that offered no sense of safety. Often a steady prickle danced along the nape of her neck, a silent warning that something darker waited just beyond sight.
The wind rattled broken shutters. The lamps sputtered with thin, orange light that barely pushed back the darkness.
They called it spring but there was no warmth in the air. The gods had stolen that with their curse on the land.
Maris clutched her worn shawl tighter around her small shoulders, though the rough wool scratched against the pale skin her mother once called porcelain. “My little porcelain doll,” her mother used to say, smoothing Maris’s inky black hair back from her brow, pride softening her voice.
But that was before.
Before the plague six winters ago that had swept through Eryndor like a scythe, stealing everything she loved in the span of weeks. Her mother. Her father. Two older brothers. Whole rows of neighbors. Gone and forgotten by the gods that had forsaken them.
Maris had been nineteen then, grown but still carrying a daughter’s heart, unprepared to bury her entire world alone.
The healers blamed the gods; the priests preached that prayer would save those who had survived that winter. But nothing had, hundreds died.
Now she was twenty-five, surviving on scraps and meger rations alone. She’d learned to mend torn cloaks for coins, to scrub filthy hearthstones in exchange for moldy bread. Her world had narrowed to a one-room loft in a crumbling tenement, where she sewed by a tiny, smoke-stained window until her fingers ached, pretending that beyond the walls, the world might still hold some kindness. Some evenings she climbed the hill to where the plague graves lay, a field of tilted stones. Wild thyme grew there, a stubborn, sweet scent in the breeze that always made her cry.
She had survived through famine, through loneliness, through cold, but tonight felt different.
