Delia
The Ember Vein Mining Camp, The Broken Plains
Almost an hour has passed since I confronted Alaric and Kael, and after a solid ten minutes of silence, some intense eye contact, and a mutual agreement not to throw anyone into a wall, we finally started talking.
They’re... alright.
I mean, for strange magical beings from another realm.
Okay, Demon Princes.
Lords of every freaking thing.
Supreme Nightfallers.
Whatever.
They’re still just guys, really.
And weirdly? I kinda like them.
They’ve got this ancient-brooding-battle-scarred thing going on, sure—but there’s something else beneath that.
Something oddly human.
Still, I cannot wait to meet their viyellas.
Two other Jersey girls, can you believe that? I can’t either.
What are the odds that three women from the Garden State would wind up in this dream-bent, ember-veined realm of fire and shadows, fated to fall for Princes of literal darkness?
Go figure.
“So... Demon Lords play games?” I ask, raising a brow.
“We do not play games—we wage battle,” Alaric replies as the two go about setting up whatever game they are about to play.
Looks like cornhole, but I’ll reserve judgement for when they begin.
We’re seated on a raised terrace, high above the flickering glow of the campground on one side, with the open wild stretch of the Broken Plains unfurling endlessly on the other.
The sky above us is vast—so vast it makes my lungs tighten just to look at it. Ink-black, velvet-soft, scattered with unfamiliar stars that glint like shards of glass.
They pulse gently, not cold, or distant, but strangely alive.
Watching. Waiting.
And then there’s the moon.
It hangs low and immense on the horizon, so close it feels like I could reach out and touch it.
One side glows pale, the color of old bone.
The other burns with the hue of rusted iron, like blood on ancient steel.
Two faces in one—split down the center like a secret it’s only halfway willing to share.
It casts warped shadows across the land, stretching the jagged obsidian spires into tall, twisted silhouettes.
