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Manem leaned slightly closer, the sharp edge of his sword drawing a tiny, single bead of crimson from Dellyn’s skin. “It won’t be speaking for much longer if you keep your jaw moving.”

With unyielding pressure, Manem removed him from the hall. Dellyn didn’t resist, but his eyes lingered on me as he crossed the threshold. He wasn’t angry; he looked deeply, terrifyingly interested.

I didn’t move when the chamber eventually emptied, the remaining lords filing out into the corridors in a sea of whispered conspiracies. I stayed right at my father’s side, staring down at the carved stone.

“Try not to look like you’re actively planning your own burial, Taur.” Aerynn’s voice cut through the dark spiral of my thoughts as his elbow lightly nudged my shoulder.

I glanced sideways at him, my jaw still tight. “I’m merely considering my options.”

“That’s dramatic.”

“That’s realistic.”

“That’s exhausting.”

The corner of my mouth lifted slightly. Aerynn stepped around my frame, grabbing a silver goblet of wine from a passing servant’s tray and pressing the cold metal firmly into my hand.

“Drink,” he commanded softly, his eyes returning to their usual warmth. “You think far too much when you don’t have a glass in your hand.”

“I think plenty when I do, Aeri.”

“Yes, but you seem to enjoy the misery significantly more.”

I took a small sip. The wine was sweet, bright, and heavy, tasting of deep Nymerian summer—strawberries and blinding sunlight. The heat spread through my chest, steadying my hands.

I looked down at the stone map beneath my feet, my eyes tracing the jagged lines of the borders. The trials were coming. The silver waters, the dragons, the vipers in silks. They wanted to see the half-breed burn.

Let them watch. If I was going to bleed for this crown, I was going to make sure the rest of the realm bled with me.

THREE

The silence of the royal archives at midnight felt less like a sanctuary and more like a tomb.

I traced a finger across the flaking parchment of a text older than the current dynasty. The air tasted of dried dust, old leather, and the lingering, sweet burn of the rye whiskey I’d swiped from Aerynn’s quarters. Outside these high arched stone ceilings, the castle was a sleeping beast holding its breath, but in here, my half-human brain was scrambling to map a lifetime of missing lore before the silver waters had a chance to dissolve my bones.

A little over a month. That was all the time remaining before the Lunareth Remnikai. Leaning closer to the flickering candle, casting long, wavering shadows across the thousands of histories I had spent the last three weeks devouring, I forced my eyes back down to the faded black ink:

At the absolute beginning of time, the old texts claimed, the realm of Elfain had been swallowed in a void.

It wasn’t standard night or the gentle shadow of a setting sun—it was a heavy, suffocating darkness that possessed its own physical weight. It left no room for light, shape, or sound. Three nameless sisters wandered that endless dark, stripped of titles or identity, searching through a barren landscape for something that resembled hope.

Eventually, the manuscript continued, the sisters stumbled upon a pool of liquid. It sat perfectly still, unbroken by the void around it, offering the first reflection in a world of absolute emptiness. They knelt at the stone edge and prayed. They didn’t direct their pleas toward the light or standard salvation; they called out to the god of the deep night.

Náttdrottinn.

My thumb skimmed the page, feeling the raised, coarse texture of the ancient ink beneath my skin. The title was inscribed far deeper into the vellum than the surrounding script, heavy and dark: Lord of Night, watcher of everything that existed before creation drew its first breath.

According to the yellowed pages, the three sisters begged him to shatter the suffocating void and turn the world into something more than a hollow grave. He answered not with spoken words, but by altering their very flesh.

My eyes traced the tight calligraphy down to the margin. One by one, the sisters stepped into the heavy fluid of the motionless pool. The water didn’t splash or ripple; it swallowed them whole as they walked toward the center, floating weightless between who they were and what they were becoming.

One sister sank into the dark, and above the realm, the first silver moon split the sky. The second followed into the depths, and a second moon ignited. The third submerged, and the final moon joined the heavens.

They hadn’t been saved by a higher power; they had been forged into the salvation itself—the Mani Goddesses. And the pool they left behind became the Mani Vatn: moon water, moon gift, moon trial.

I exhaled slowly through my teeth, the skin beneath my sleeves pulsing with a faint, phantom heat against my wrists. My fingers brushed the fragile page as I turned it. Here, the scribe’s hand changed—the script growing tighter, more hurried, as if chasing a fleeting memory.

The god of night had given silver light to the world, but kept none for himself. A heavy loneliness followed his creation, an ancient ache no realm could soothe. To balance his cosmic grief, he forged his exact opposite: Solvára. Lightbringer, dawn keeper, protector of white heat. The manuscript claimed he fell in love with her the exact second of her creation, chasing her across the horizon endlessly, tracking her footprints from night into day and back into the dark. It was an eternal pursuit—not because they were forbidden from meeting, but because the balance of the world required the chase.