In the Beginning
INTHEBEGINNINGwere the Sisters and their Cradleworld.
Mirror twins. Sacred vessels. They contained the might of the four primordial Aethers: the Stars, the Waves, the Boughs, the Flames. Identical in appearance, but in temperament as different as the Cradleworld’s hours of Bright and Dim, the Sisters named themselves for the Dusk and Dawn.
The Dawn Sister practised Light Lore, using her body’s energy to weave the Aethers. All magic has its price, but the Dawn Sister’s magic was as temperate and balanced as she herself was, requiring only a fleeting tithe: chattering teeth for a warm breeze, wizened cheeks for a tree in bloom. But the Dusk Sister favoured Shadow Lore. She spun the Aethers using magic born of her blood and fed with her spirit. Powerful but volatile. Stronger magic came at a higher cost: chipping away at the Dusk Sister’s very soul. And unlike the body, a soul – even a godly soul – cannot restore itself. The toll for using Shadow Lore was permanent, irrevocable.
Together, the Sisters tended their Cradleworld, one working while the other slept – the Dawn Sister responsible for the Bright hours, the Dusk Sister, the Dim. Together, they devised fantastical incantations and used them to embellish their shared world, recording each one in their Book of Mysteries.
And, for a time, they knew peace.
But the Dusk Sister’s spirit sickened, twisted after casting so many Shadow spells. Discontent took root, consuming her like ivy does a crumbling wall.
One evening, as the Dawn Sister lay sleeping, the Dusk Sister used her magic to birth a companion to join her in the Cradleworld – a helpmate to ease the heaviness in her heart.
Born of Shadow, Want arrived in the shape of a man.
At first, he was a source of joy to both Sisters. They introduced him to their world, shared its secrets with him, taught him to care for its jewelled orchard, and the Dusk Sister’s spirits lifted. But, as time wore on, she noticed Want slept more often in the Dim hours than the Bright. That he gravitated towards her twin.
And discontent flowered into jealousy.
She spun a veil of darkness, laced it with curses, stitched it with spite. Sacrificing another piece of her soul, splintering yet more shards of her heart and mind. And in the early hours, before the Dim gave way to the Bright, she swathed her sleeping twin in the mantle, hoping to shroud forever the Dawn Sister’s beauty and win Want for herself.
When she awoke, the Dawn Sister tried to cast the veil aside, but her magic was no match for her twin’s. She could not unpick the bloodspell which knitted it to her brow.
The force of her twin’s resentment shocked the Dawn Sister, evidence of the damage Shadow Lore was inflicting, its gradual warping of her sister’s mind. So, she worked in secret for a cure, devising various incantations in the hope one might purge her twin of Shadow and free them both from its corrosive legacy.
But one morning, as the Dawn Sister sat by the banks of the glistening stream that watered the Cradleworld’s orchard, recording her latest attempt at a curative spell in the Book of Mysteries, Want presented her with a ring studded with the choicest of the jewels they’d harvested together. He told her she was more brilliant, more beautiful, than any of them, and asked her to be his. Again, he begged her to lift the veil so he might kiss her. And as Want slipped the troth ring onto her finger, bolstered by love’s bright burn, the Dawn Sister summoned the fullness of her powers.
This time, she lifted the veil. She only managed a scant inch to bare her lips, but an inch was all it took.
As she leant towards her Beloved, as her lips touched his, the veil at last wrenched free, but the curses embedded within it sparked to life. The Dawn Sister was cast out from the Cradleworld, into a great Void.
In vain, she tried to return, but her sister’s magic proved, once more, too strong.
In time, she gave up hope of ever seeing the Cradleworld or her Beloved again.
Deep in the Void, she crafted a new world from the jewels in her troth ring, naming it Arcelia, which means treasure. For she made it from the thing she treasured most.
A world of delicate harmony and perfect balance.
A haven the Dawn Sister believed safe from the horrors of Shadow Lore.
But even gods can be mistaken.
THE GIRL MADE INVISIBLE
LEILANI
Crystal Court, Meissa, Northern Realm of Estelia
Ruined Age: 800 Sunrings, 30 Moonsrisings Post-Sickening
TENMOREPACESTOTHEPALACEGATES.
Fighting the urge to check behind me, I draw the cowl of the grey cloak lower, inhaling my liegemaid’s crisp scent of starch and soap. The bitter wind pierces the thin fabric, lashing my skin. In accordance with my father’s laws, the mantle is cheaply made and lacks embellishment: drab, anonymous, perfect.
No one will look twice at me disguised in the garb of an indentured air-refugee. No one will shrink back or make the sign of the Star as I pass either. Not so long as I remember to keep my strange eyes lowered, my cursed hair and the marking on my wrist covered.
