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I try to imagine my mother—her world shattered, finding solace among strangers. It feels impossible, a story that belongs to someone else.

“But after your birth, a leanbh…” Her tone shifts, her words chilling to the core. “Your mother saw something, as I told you the other day.”

“She felt your significance the moment you took your first breath.” Amelia’s voice grows quieter, as if afraid to speak the words too loudly. “That night, she had the first dream about what you were to become. She dreamt of you. In a different time, with a face that had aged.” Her lips quirk into a sad smile. “She said you looked so much like your father. It was almost as if it were him she was looking at.”

She turns her face away, but not quickly enough to hide the single tear that escapes. A knot forms in my throat, as if the weight of her words has wrapped around it.

Amelia’s voice trembles as she adds, “Losing Robert was hard enough, but when Sarah realised she would lose you too… she couldn’t handle it.”

The words sink into my chest like stones.

She pauses, her hands trembling faintly as they clutch her skirts. “Sarah stopped eating, stopped tending to herself,” she whispers. “She succumbed to her sorrow one day, unable to hold on any longer. She let it take her, just as she said you both had been taken from her.”

Her words hit me like a physical blow, but Amelia’s gaze remains steady, anchoring me. “Your mother saw so much of the world’s pain, Triona. She carried it like a weight on her shoulders, and she didn’t know how to let it go.”

Tears blur my vision, but I keep my focus on her as best I can.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Auntie,” I say, my voice thick with emotion. “For losing your sister. For carrying this pain all these years.”

Amelia stares at me, her lips parting in awe. “Oh, Triona,” she utters softly, her voice breaking. “How is it you… after all I’ve told you, you still have this strength in you to comfort me?”

“Because I see the love you’ve carried for her. You didn’t fail her. You gave her hope when she had none, and now you’re here for me. If that isn’t strength, I don’t know what is.”

A deep sadness is present in her features, but something else lingers too—pride, perhaps. “Sarah saw a strength in you, a grand purpose,” Amelia notes. “One she knew was destined, though she could not see it fulfilled. And that is why you must not falter, a leanbh. You are her legacy, and through you, she lives on. I think you’ve felt it. That pull to resist what is normal. The strength you once did not possess. You might have even had dreams of your own…”

I nod, many things coming to mind—being able to spar with Callan and Bran, besting both of them. The wounds on my back, healing in record time. Dreams of my fragmented past. Nightmares of chaos and ruin.

“You must try to listen,” she pleads, her voice trembling. “With your heart wide open.” She pauses, gathering herself as though bracing for a storm. “What I have to tell you won’t be easy to hear. You won’t understand at first, but I’m asking you to believe the impossible right now. I’m asking all of you to believe that. Can you do that?”

My heart thuds painfully in my chest, but I nod, knowing I would do anything she asked of me.

“What is it?” I whisper. My voice feels small, like a child’s, desperate for answers but terrified of the truth.

Then, as if drawn by an unspoken oath, the men gather tightly around us. “You were never meant for normalcy in life,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “You are something far greater than you realise.”

The room seems to draw closer around us, the flickering fire casting long shadows on the walls.

“Ireland wasn’t always the way it’s known now. There was a time when the land and its people were one, inseparable, intertwined in ways you can’t imagine.”

Deidre steps into the room, as if sensing Amelia’s unease. The faint clink of porcelain chattering breaks the silence. “Here, love,” she murmurs, pressing a teacup into Amelia’s hands. Their eyes meet for the briefest moment—steady, knowing—before Deidre steps back, fading into the background.

Amelia exhales slowly, her grip tightening around the cup as she gathers herself. “Then came the Milesians,” she continues, her tone sharp, tinged with bitterness. “They arrived with their ships and their swords, but they did not claim Ireland through conquest—not truly. They made a pact with the Tuatha Dé Danann. The kings of old, as they were known,” she says, her voice steady, “were bound to Ériu herself—the very spirit of Ireland. You know this story, aye?”

I nod, and she presses on. “It wasn’t a crown or bloodline alone that made a ruler legitimate. It was Ériu’s blessing—her sacrifice. She gave herself to the land so that her kings could rule justly. And when they did, the land thrived. Crops grew plentiful, rivers ran clear, and the people knew peace. But when a king was unjust…” She stops, her gaze meeting mine, her lips thinning. “The land withered. Famine and sorrow followed.”

A chill runs down my spine despite the fire’s warmth. Amelia’s storytelling has a way of making myth feel like history.

“That’s the version you’ve been told?” she asks, her brow arching.

I nod again, unsure where this is leading.

“Well,” she sighs, leaning forward, her voice dropping as if revealing a long-buried secret, “here’s the part lost to the destruction of time itself—ancient scrolls and tomes stolen or destroyed by those who seek to claim what is not theirs.”

Her gaze holds mine. “The Fomóire—or Fomorians, as they’re called in modern tongue—are hostile and monstrous beings that come from under the sea and deep within the earth. They are personifications of chaos, darkness, death, blight, and drought. And they have a singular purpose: to steal the very magic that works to keep their primal destruction at bay.”

I swallow hard, the weight of her words settling over me.

“They learned long ago that they could never harness their own magic. But they discovered they could steal it—drain it from the land, from people, from anything tied to the earth’s essence.”