Join me in night painted with crimson and black.

Spring came in the song of birds, of new leaves and warm wind. Retreated so many times, to eventually stop its shifting. And stay.

The people from Venklann Valley slowly – reluctantly – began to thaw as well.

It came in small acts of courage. Returning home an hour later. Enjoying life more. Allowing children for more. The rowan and iron still protected houses – but humankind started to learn how to not hide.

A year passed since winter came back from where it seeped. Inamora would never feel fully safe – but it learned to not fear all the time.

Slowly.

Like a soul reborn, still remembering its past life – but trying to start anew.

Human lands became a newly born, very old soul – touched with night magic. But not surrounded by pain anymore.

That day, which before the fae invasion celebrated the first day of May, Inamora feasted and danced – old customs steadily reappearing. The meat was not anymore half-rotten, the trees gave first flowers. First spring after so many years of cold and uncertainty. Humans knew how to be grateful – to the weather, to the goddess, to the soil.

Yet – the one which allowed it all, who silently ended fae reign over Avras – didn’t feast and didn’t dance.

Noyd twirled with her brother in a dance around the fire. The night found Inamora wild, bathing in freedom. Everyday still was reluctant, marked by too much fear birthed in the past. But today…

… it was flaming.

Women surrounded the maypole, each ribbon attached to it, celebrating different sides of the goddess – green for the maiden, red for the mother and brown for the crone. Life and death, old and new. This night would start a new generation of Vennklan people – even if the retreating winter chill still bit. The first day of May was colder – still warmer than before.

Villagers already were leaving the square to join in body and soul. To start a new life. To begin new cycle.

Tiyan sat on the wooden log, far from the flames. He observed how Noyd laughed and every time her gaze fell on him, her laughter died. She belonged to human land – and he still to the fae realm. Though possibly he was a pariah in both.

His eyes fixed on flame.

So many things have changed.

Before he almost hoped spring wouldn’t return. He wasn’t ready; he craved winter as much as he craved Lorian’s harming touch. He didn’t speak of it, he tried to even not think of it.

But winter crept into his mind, with each Lorian sculpture, with each shadow creature that polluted the house.

Their house.

His house.

This house belonged to the past. Just like himself.

A relic of old, that latched only to pain, not allowing the remaining half of his soul to bloom with leaves and fresh moss. His moss was rotten and the leaves frozen.

Flames were dancing in his eyes, in darkness almost black. He stared into them, like hypnotized, allowing them to eat his fragmented soul and mind. Fire felt familiar, his element, his curse. He still felt safer when it blazed nearby – even if it produced shadow.

Maybe exactly because of that.

“How do you know that Reynardine steals women?”

“Because it’s known. All know fae steal girls!”

“Why not boys then? They go into the woods much more often. To cut trees and hunt.”

“Because… boys are less pretty?”

“Silly Tiyo!”

“And because boys have weapons. You know, steel and iron. Fae fear men, because they can harm them.”

“I like the theory of being less pretty better.”

“Women also aren’t knights.”

“I will be a knight.”

“Noyd, the king needs to name you a knight. And no king ever named a woman.”

“Why?”

“Hmm, maybe because they do not fit into armor? They are too small and have breasts.”

“That’s stupid.”

“And I heard from a wandering bard that women have weaker arms, so they wouldn’t be able to carry the sword.”

“Even more stupid. I am stronger than you.”

“That will change. I will grow muscles and go fight Reynardine and save all the girls he kidnapped.”

“He will kick your ass!”

“I will kick his.”

“You will need more than muscles to do that. Fae have magic.”

“I will have the magic of big muscles.”

“Ha! I would love to see how you tussle with a fae!”

Tiyan’s eyes filled with tears. The people around him celebrated, passionately abandoned to the light in darkness. Which in their hearts was tonight stronger than shadows. A burst of laughter near him. A naked breast in the bushes.

Eyes of Noyd gleaming in darkness, looking at him. Then, turning to her father, who handed her a cup of freshly brewed beer.

He stood up from the log and slowly, allowing his feet to carry him rather than going by his own will, he turned home.

The snow melted completely a week ago. The warm breeze carried the smell of primroses.

And somehow… also jasmine and violets.

He stood in place for a moment, inhaling the scent that terrified him and fascinated. The scent that became his terror and his deepest wish.

He entered the house, his steps firm. His room welcomed him with hundreds of Lorians. Shadows took this home in possession – he could feel them on his skin, hungry, devouring – a welcomed torment, an awaited punishment.

“Because it’s known. All know fae steal girls!”

He began to gather the sculptures. Some landed in a sack, some he took straight into his own hands. They carried the weight of his guilt. Each sculpture had eyes gazing into his heart, seeing horrors. Each of them – a part of himself, which he couldn’t leave behind.

He took them all.

When he was in the courtyard again, the wind attacked him with aroma of spring, hard. Even harder. Almost pushing the air from his lungs. He belonged to no spring and it was chasing him back into the winter.

He tossed sculptures on the ground. They made a sound – not even of wood falling into mud. It was a soft, sensual laughter of Lorian Ain’Dal.

“That will change. I will grow muscles and go fight Reynardine and save all the girls he kidnapped.”

You couldn’t save anyone, Tiyo. Even yourself.

He took tinder and flint and created – among the wood and memories – a small flickering flame. It danced lightly on Lorian sculpts until it fiercely started to spread. It spread fast in the wind. Hungry. Possessive. Finding a kindred spirit in the one who it ate…

“If I ever marry someone, it will be you, Noyd.”

“Silly Tiyo.”

“I say what I feel. And you are my best friend.”

“Would you save me from the fae, then?”

“From anything.”

“And everything?”

“And everything.”

“As long as you can fit into armor and lift the sword, I trust you.”

The black wood made fierce love with the flames. The fire bursted into the sky – savoring shadows and horrors intertwined. Lorian bathed in them – like he did in Tiyan’s flames. They suited each other – Lorian and fire. They ate and spread, one with lust and darkness, the second with heat and light.

And Tiyan felt they called him.

To the only embrace he ever belonged.

To the only love that he could accept.

To the only warmth that could heal his cold.

He was the last god of fire – devoid of powers, stripped of identity. Taken and used and put into the world who wanted to continue into rebirth – he wanted to decay.

The flames were the only home he could find solace in.

He stepped forth, feeling the heat warming his limbs, blood boiled in his veins. It was almost a caress – being understood by the power which was chosen for him. Which wrote a dark lullaby to him, before he was ever born.

His hair caught the fire first. Sparkles floated around him like small dancers.

Like fae.

Like wonders with teeth and promise of pain.

He entered the flames. Slowly, without screaming, like the pain belonged to another person. A person who still had life and still had hope. He welcomed it, when it started to crash against him, fire to fire, his heritage and last breath. A burning caress, painful, beautiful, charring the rest of his soul.

He was full again.

And he allowed the flames…

… to eat.

*

The fire burned all night. Fed with a god, it burned high and wildly. Its roar piercing the air, offering its son a funeral dirge.

The villagers reveled on the promise of the abundance. Their joyful voices resounded through the woods, filling them with more life that they possessed during all last years.

And the lonely dog lay next to the bonfire, his eyes reflecting the blaze. His muzzle on his paws, his wet eyes fixed on the flames.

Trying to understand.

Waiting for his owner to return.

Noyd took him home—his home, their home. It was their home now, rebuilt and breathing warmth that Noyd managed to create among the scattered memories—which should appease his hurting heart.

But it didn’t.

When Noyd took him, passionately, lovingly, the first night after his return—he almost believed it, that it’s possible to live without a soul. That all that happened during the last months can be unmade and one day, perhaps he will be able to reconcile with his path. It was dark—but he was still alive. He still breathed. His heart still pumped blood, red and human.

He hoped he could start anew. With Noyd by his side, as a proof that not all in his life was always cruel and these sparks of good one day will remind him how to breathe. Fully. Not choking on dry blood.

He loved Noyd that night. When his back bent with ecstasy, he almost cried. A touch not intrusive. A craving not hungry.

Yet… the fae were still there, deep in his mind. Lorian’s memory grinding it with iron thorns. His shadows, his power, his cruel seduction…

And he realized he can’t live without it.

Noyd was loving and pure. His past left a stain on him though. Her gentle strokes, her soft passion would be healing. Would be enough.

If he wasn’t destroyed.

His dreams were circling around violation and pain, he summoned Lorian’s imagery and power, to bathe in all of this. And wake up, painfully stiff—with sleeping Noyd but his side, who didn’t deserve it.

His mind still belonged to the fae realm. His body too. He couldn’t offer Noyd anything. Even if he wanted to.

He would fall on his knees before her and beg her to leave him. He somehow sensed he would harm her one day—not physically, but with his emptiness. He was going deeper and deeper into a broken well, eaten by moss and shadows. Parasitic night, that crawled into him and rooted deeply, tasting his nerves and sanity.

First weeks.

First months.

To villagers’ surprise, winter became softer. The freezing wind stopped stinging so much. Mushrooms poked from under the white—the ones that were born early spring.

One day, Noyd said that she saw a bird. Colorful, not raven or a crow. Not a scavenger. It was a spring bird.

Then, the frost and cold hit once again.

The world didn’t know what season to keep.

The winter king died—and with him the darkness. His spells were too powerful to just dispel.

The weather shifted and tossed in a cage. The bars rusted and soon, it will fly from its prison, bathing in sun the human realm needed and deserved.

Tiyan bathed in dreams of blood and pain.

*

He chopped the wood with one blow of the hatchet. His muscles amassed, now he was looking more like his father than his past self. He grew a short beard—not because he wanted to look older. It just grew, and he accepted it. Noyd liked it.

Seven months went from his return.

The villagers were seeing spring birds all the time. Tiyan heard their joyful yet still unsure song when he was going on the hunt. His hunting skills grew. He could only look in the animals’ eyes.

He was seeing himself in them.

The wood scattered over the stump.

The day was warmer. The sun still was dim and misty, but it brought relief to Inamora.

The villages started to thaw, not only his. They heard of shadows that took Arelt into possession—the whole city drowned in dark tentacles of night. They were spreading sometimes to nearby villages, eating what they met—some said that if you come closer to Arelt, you can hear heartbeats and moans of humans trapped there. Even now, more than half a year ago—the passerby people still heard silent screams and torment from those who lived there.

Tiyan knew it was Lorian.

And he was both craving the news and abhorred even thought of them.

Some nights, he was dreaming he lives in Arelt—surrounded by shadows, chained by thorns, moaning into the hand made of night that choked his throat.

He lifted a small chunk of chopped wood.

And he started to sculpt.

Meticulous moves, like in a dream. He carved and he didn’t even realize that with each carved shape, tears appeared in his eyes. The process took his whole attention, his flawed and incomplete being.

One of the tears fell on the almost ready sculpture, baptizing it. Tiyan touched with his thumb. The light wood darkened and took the water in when he smeared it over.

It was a fae. Not a little fae which still inhabited his—and Noyd’s now—bedroom.

It was an almost perfect depiction of Lorian Ain’Dal.

Tiyan looked at the sculpture with open mouth and tears falling down his chin. His body tensed, his veins pulsed under his skin like eager worms.

Then, he tossed it on the ground, among the wood chips.

It was the first Lorian sculpture out of many.

*

Spring moved through the Avras like a breath of hope.

Some saw an animal losing the fungi colonies and clawing the rotten flesh fro, itself. Which fell off him in a fountain of blood. That animal died. But hunters reported more of such incidents. Until one of them didn’t perish. Those who observed this phenomenon didn’t see that animal anymore. But one day, a hunter from Inamora spotted a healthy animal with cubs.

The magic retreated.

The fae were leaving Avras—busy with their own affairs.

Tiyan sculpted Lorian one by one. In a shadow form and in his royal robes. Each figurine more alive and each shadow more looming. He could feel the power radiating from them; even if it was only in his mind.

In his dreams, he begged Lorian to return. To wound him, and use him.

To give him a purpose again, even if it would be a purpose of a slave.

Lorian’s subtle violence haunted him and filled him with desires so different from what he truly preferred.

He always felt shame after it, not being able to look Noyd in the eyes.

“Tiyan… Tell me. Tell me all. Maybe it can heal you, if you open your heart to me. I am here.”

How could he tell her of all the atrocities he experienced in Ain’asel?

How could she tell her that he ate Mina?

Sometimes he remembered how he killed Noyda. In such moments, he felt void so deep that it was endless.

His well was shattered but was filling itself with rot. Slowly… yet inevitably. Its sweet, cloying scent was the only scent he wanted to feel.

Lorian sculptures polluted their house. He cut and drilled, like he wanted both to cut Lorian from his mind as well as bound his memory to himself even stronger. Noyd didn’t ask. Villagers—at the beginning happy from his arrival—often asked Noyd is she doesn’t want to come back to her family home. Her father and mother urged her too; for her own safety.

“He is fae touched” he heard once Noyd’s father. “Who knows when his mind fails him? Wasn’t it uncommon for those who returned from Faerie?”

Tiyan didn’t feel pain then.

Maybe it would be safer for Noyd to leave him.

*

Tiyan worked again.

Noyd was sleeping in the common room. She said those sculpts scare her.

He understood her.

They scared him too.

He painted them black—aside from eyes—these were white, like those of Lorian’s shadow form. They looked like particles of night; always watching, always observing. The more of them guarded him, the more intense and terrifying were his dreams.

Take me.

Ravish me.

Take my body.

As you took my soul.

Lorian and the whole Ain’asel called him.

Tiyan finished the last figurine. It had shadows spread in all directions, so finely made that they looked real.

He could see his own reflection in the sculpting knife he was adding finishes to the whole opus.

He lifted it, looking into it.

His face was not as famished since animals slowly started to return. Strong body. Firm jaw. He was not a boy anymore. What price did he pay to grow up? Would he not prefer to stay in childlike naivety? Perhaps Noyd would stay in their bedroom, if not his obsessions and his lack of…

… soul?

He moved the knife over his wrist—with a dull side. His missing fingers—a reminder of much colder days—haunted with nothingness.

His veins were more prominent and his hands more worn.

And next to him, a wooden shadowed creature. Beautiful. Tempting. Cruel.

Slowly sipping his sanity alive.

His soul suffered from lack of its half.

He carried himself through Ain’asel like a ghost. Not attacked by beasts, not bothered by the lesser folk. Like he was invisible for them – a being so hollow, it can’t even act as a feast. Like even his meat held no nurturing flourish. And as his empty well couldn’t fill with fear and despair – to properly feed the faery kind.

His road was just as hollow. Wind caressed him, not tore. Snow embraced him, not shackled in cold. The forest observed him – like a patient and very curious guardian who would put him on his path again, if he lost his way.

He was to leave Ain’asel – as it disliked soulless creatures. Broken dolls were pleasant only as fodder. It was the path to this state that fascinated the faery realm. Tiyan was useless to wind, snow and woods – he was a relic of his fathers, who perished, touched by the shadow.

So he went. An apparition, carrying the remnants of humanity in his frail body, disjointed from his mind. He was not a human anymore – he was a dark shadow in place of flame. He was fractured emptiness still – somehow – latched to this world.

He felt the last portal – the same which he passed leaving Avras. But not in the same way as for the first time. Now – the magic of faeries kissed him, not ravaged – a goodbye worthy of his role in Lorian Ain’dal’s rewriting of cosmic plans. A kiss, soft, and ethereal; wings and feathers in an aching place in which he long ago lost the feeling.

Ain’asel bid him farewell – in its own unpredictable way. A reminder of faery twisted nature.

He recognized places.

The one where they met the mangled human hanging on a tree. Now, it bloomed with strange, blue mushrooms – no sign of blood or flesh. Tiyan passed the overgrown colony – the mushrooms seemed to shiver as they sensed him. He would observe as they stretch on too-long stems, like his scent reminded them of something.

But he didn’t care.

When he approached the lost village, it was even more silent than for the first time. In a much calmer way – not ominous foreboding in its quiet un-life. He almost turned to the grove, involuntarily almost, like macabre and pain called him, tempted him – like he couldn’t anymore live without them. Lorian carvings urged him with blood and flesh.

He left the village as quickly as he realized where his steps carried him.

He wouldn’t help them like a human would do. He wouldn’t taste their endless torment as faeries would.

He was a passing ghost.

He recognized the place when he fought with a fae beast by Ona’s side. The wounded animal wanted him for his scar – just as even more dangerous monsters. The last time he checked his skin there, it was still there; but fading, as it was not a scar until now, it was a seal of a slave. Now… it lost all red and reminded him of times not perfect, but when he still had soul.

Lorian ate it.

He ate his soul.

And it felt like he ate him.

Which in fact, he did. He was not devoid of his core – but it was slowly chewed, leaving bloody strings in a dead god’s jaws.

Yet… Inamora – somehow – still called him. A masochistic calling to face his past and mourn what the present wasn’t. Another self-inflicted torment, which he couldn’t free himself from – and he didn’t want to.

It took him two months to reach it. He hunted to preserve strength. He drank water from snow. He used Ona’s knowledge to build houses from the snow, maybe not as warm as hers were, but allowing him to not lose more fingers. The skin in place of those Qhal cut off was stretched and dry. He had gloves, warm, wool-like; but not made of wool. Who gave them to him? He couldn’t remember. But they were saving him. He could hunt with them, he could survive winter – and when he passed the gate between the human realm and Ain’asel, he didn’t even need them. Winter in Avras was nothing he lived through in the fae realm. His limbs hardened, his skin too. He would laugh at how different his body – and even facial features – was now, compared to then. He looked like a man – not a twenty old boy he was not that long ago.

A man – with a hollow gaze, with strong hands, bent back, features of someone much older and with sadness etched on his face. He always hoped to reach this before. To let the boyish looks stay in his adolescence. He wanted to be like hunters – bold, strong, courageous. How little he knew what real power meant and how it breaks and sucks juice from people like him. And how many of his memories and thoughts will coil around power that destroys, claims and possesses.

Inamora greeted him with usual calm. Tiyan thought that no one would recognize him – he alone wouldn’t if he was in their position. People walked towards their daily duties, busy with everyday life. And he wasn’t even very surprised that he didn’t recognize anyone too.

Different life.

Different people.

Now, this village was alien to him, just as he was alien to them. These people didn’t live through the same thing he did. They faced their hardships with their heads held high and hoped for the better. He was already past the point he could lift his chin. He was shown where his place is, in the most terrifying way. How will he live among them now? Will he be seen as every human coming back from the fae realm? Maddened? Pariah? And if they accept him, how will he be able to return to this kind of life?

He found his house.

It wasn’t empty as he thought it would be. In the window, he found a glimpse of a lamp burning inside – it was an early evening, yet the winter days were short – dusk started to slowly claim the sky. Someone repaired the building, fixing the walls, painting the door and mending the roof.

It was here. Where he was born. Where he led his simple life, not caring about the next day.

Here, it all started.

And it looks like here it also ends.

He just stood there, not knowing what to do. Who took his house? Is there still a place for him in this village? Or they deemed him dead – and they had all reasons to. No one leaves the fae realm, and if they do, it would be better if they died.

Maybe it would be better if he died.

Scratching to the door. They moved a little, a small gust of wind – and a paw – jerked them open, making way to a medium-sized, brown dog. He ran at him, tail wagging, almost insane from joy and relief. He gave a happy bark and jumped at him, almost making him fall.

The dog paws supported his tights and wet and loving and eager tongue started to mark his hands.

Korr…

Korr barked again and Tiyan could swear that he saw a genuine smile on his face. He crouched and embraced his dog’s sturdy body, he put his face into his fur and inhaled the scent of…

… home.

The same. The very same home. Home, where he listened to the hunters’ tales. A not so big, but familiar place, where he wanted more and dreamed of more and where he and parents and… Mina…

The door was pushed wide open.

Korr was licking Tiyan’s skin in a welcoming frenzy. His tongue already found his face and now, it was showing him he was missed. And before him…

Noyd.

Tiyan’s heart rose and sank all at once. Relief and overwhelming panic seized his body.

It was her. She changed almost nothing. Her hair was the same vermilion. Her eyes had the same green leaves shade. Her trousers maybe were too big for her and her jacket hung over her like on a tree. But it was the same Noyd he left on the edge of Inamora that day, and promised to return.

And he returned. As promised.

He didn’t know if it was bad or good.

He changed more than her.

Her eyes widened – like in slow motion. A strange guttural sound left her mouth, almost choking. And she joined Korr. Tiyan would cry – from joy and pain and fear – if he was able.

“Tiyan… Tiyan…” her hands cupped his face and she left a hot kiss on his lips. She felt the same relief – and perhaps the same panic – as himself. “You returned. I almost lost hope…”

He was trying to form a thought, any thought that would be sufficient. but with Noyd, everything hit him again with full force.

And deep in his mind, he felt a fae—no, not simply a fae. It was Lorian Ain’Dal, taking his body and free will to the sound of shifting shadows and his own moans of pleasure. Drawing blood from his skin and pushing it deep inside him.

Nothing will be the same.

The village started to acknowledge him as well. Some people – unknown or forgotten – started to approach. Some arms embraced him, some worried words, some questions. There, farther between houses – a mayor’s wife. She still lived, she survived. Someone took his duty, which – if he had full soul – he would welcome with overwhelming relief.

He was home.

He returned.

And it changed… nothing.

When they came for him, he was already broken.

Two months had been enough for him to learn what had happened in Ain’asel during his absence. He had been feeding himself with loss and despair for so long, fueling a hatred so dull and heavy it was almost placating. And now he had been stripped of purpose so quickly, with such stinging precision, that he was shocked his limbs still moved and his lungs still drew breath.

Savior.

That was who he hated. That was who he wanted to stop.

His world had crumbled quickly and mercilessly.

He was a monster. That was what he had always told himself. Lorian Ain’Dal, the monster. But Lorian had done something that reduced Alnam’s hatred and pain to a small, irrelevant speck of pollen on the wind—insignificant beside the cosmic apocalypse that would have come, if not for him.

The small folk told him everything in minute detail. The pain Lorian had suffered for years—and Alnam realized that even then, when Corvel was killed, when his own voice was taken—the gods who could drain an entire fae land of life. The end of the world that had been stopped because Lorian had the courage to stand before the ancestor and tell them no.

His feelings were destroyed. His purpose taken from him. Death was the only sensible choice left—but even that had been denied.

He had to live and listen to the lesser folk chattering—of monuments raised, of temples being built.

They had found themselves a new god, one who could not answer their prayers. But weren’t all gods dead? And yet they still hungered for their blood. Maybe Lorian heard it all. Maybe he existed in a cosmic prism, somewhere between time and space. Maybe, as all the fae, he nourished a tree… looking with leafy eyes on the life he saved. Or maybe he couldn’t care less.

Alnam was left to himself—shackled in half-iron, half-silver binds that did not hurt but muted his powers completely.

He was a relic. And the purpose of relics is to crumble.

Was Lorian not the creature of shadow Alnam had believed him to be all this time? No. He had to be. His mind was collapsing under the weight of his pointless actions, loneliness and the lack of an anchor. To the other fae, he was a courtier who had stood against their savior, tried to destroy his plans, and attacked him.

Death was coming.

But when?

Those two months were like a limbo filled with stale, polluted water.

When. How. Where. The sentence never came, and Alnam eventually became too lost in his own world to care. They could come today. Tomorrow. Or in ten years.

It was irrelevant.

His life had ended when Corvel was killed. When his wife died.

When Lorian revealed himself as the herald of a new godless age.

When they came for him, he was beyond saving. They could be cruel enough to release him into the world, ordering him to live. To accept a realm in which Lorian Ain’Dal was a god and he was worth less than dust.

Perhaps that would be a fitting punishment for his blind belief in revenge and retribution. Ain’asel changed everything and everyone, even the fae who lived in it. It twisted purpose and pulsed through veins with the sweetest poisons. No one left it unchanged—humans, Seelie, Unseelie. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. All were faces of a land that liked to play with fate and life.

He didn’t know the fae who led the small procession accompanying him. She was one of Lorian’s Bean Sidhes, with wings as wide as the corridor and a beak instead of a face. It was black as obsidian; Alnam could see his reflection in it when she turned toward him.

But she did not speak—not at first. He so hoped to hear her voice.

Maybe human beliefs had been true all along. Bean Sidhes as heralds of death. She was leading him to his execution or to relocation—his death was already sealed.

She looked at him with an undecipherable, blank expression. Her eyes were pale—like Nymre’s. Alnam had heard that Nymre had taken the throne as regent. The king would soon be anointed—Lorian’s child.

Leira’s.

He wanted to feel hatred for her. But he simply couldn’t. She had enchanted him the same way Lorian enchanted lesser beings. The same way Lorian enchanted her. Wasn’t it ironic? The way Lorian’s hands had once landed on his spine, his mouth drinking his marrow, tongue deep in flesh.

He heard the Bean Sidhe’s voice at last.

“Open the door.”

A lesser faery from the palace guard leaned into the heavy silver doors, and slowly they began to open. The Bean Sidhe’s voice reminded him of Narlia. She was Higher Unseelie, yet her words were like a beautiful song made by Bean.

Torment yourself.

Open before all the memories.

Let them feast.

He stepped through the doorway.

The chamber was warm and dark, illuminated only by two lamps that cast faint light on the walls. The tiny shadows danced around him as if they knew him.

After all, they did.

In the center of the room…

…stood a fae-sized device.

Made of pure iron. He felt the radiation of the element even from here. The head and the body of iron, perfectly fit to his height and posture. Even he—an old Unseelie—knew it could not kill him, but it could injure and torment him. If prolonged…

The Bean Sidhe pushed him forward, not even hard. Almost delicately.

“The savior’s orders remain intact. He left instructions. As a traitor to the crown and the realm, you will be placed in the Iron Bed—for weeks. For years. Until you die. It will depend only on your body’s endurance.”

Alnam’s eyes met hers. There was no cruelty in them, even if he expected it. Only a sense of justice. A sense of duty he himself had awakened in faerie hearts many times. But those times were gone.

Maybe he deserved this. For letting Corvel down. For allowing Narlia to fall ill.

For letting himself believe it all had purpose.

But the real punishment wasn’t pain—and Alnam dreaded it most. He would be left alone, fed just enough to survive the Iron Bed.

Left to his thoughts, his shattered soul, and his memories. To his guilt, slowly fading in a prison meant not only for bodily suffering.

It was a prison for his mind.

When they dragged him inside, he felt nothing. No fear, just an emptiness in place of a heart, which bled blue, slowly releasing spores into the air around him.

He could numb himself to physical pain. He could make it almost bearable. But he could not numb himself to what had led him here.

Lorian …he had known it all along.

He would have offered him admiration for his foresight.

If he did not have a few lifetimes still ahead of him—an waterless mossy well full of wind and souvenirs of roads not taken…

Maybe in time he fill it with his unshed tears.

Nymre’s fingers curled around the balustrade. The same one. The one beside which he had embraced her so many times. Where they had stood together, looking into the night, while his shadows drained the living essence from the woods around them. She could still feel his breath on her neck—warm, hot, familiar.

She had cried for two months. Silently. Unseen, grieving loss. And then this day came. She felt hollow, like an old mossy well long emptied of water. But her tears had dried, and she understood she had to live. Her lips still needed his. Her body was cold, stripped of its flame. But this was the life she would live now. Until something inside her broke—and maybe, just maybe, spring would grow in her again.

Winter roots still clung deep within her, claiming her body and her heart. She would need to thaw. She didn’t want to—snow and ice reminded her of her love.

Flawed, cruel, painful. But real. Strong. A love that had given her wings stronger than her own. Now she had to rely only on the feathers and wings she was born with. Black and soft—but now made of shadows. Scattered beneath her feet like on the day of their first night together.

His cruel raven.

Her shadow king.

When she learned that Leira would bear Lorian’s child, she felt nothing. Her wet eyes, her hollow spirit—everything demanded she focus on her own pain. And when the day of the mossy well arrived, she saw the truth clearly. This child would be Lorian’s only heir. The only way to continue the Ain’Dal line. Nymre would never give him a child—an empty throne would pull the Unseelie into war. The court would fight and bleed itself dry until the Sacred Woods grew bored and chose the strongest… or the one it deemed most fitting to rule a new godless world.

So she did it for Lorian. To honor his line. As much as she had disliked Leira, the almost primal hatred had faded. Leira was only a human Lorian had taken, and she had been so certain he loved her. Perhaps he had, in his own twisted way. He had fooled them both—her and himself.

When Leira entered Lorian’s chambers—now Nymre’s—the raven faerie was sipping her herbs, her posture elegant yet not free of exhaustion. These months… these cursed months… had been hard, cruel, and had nearly destroyed her. But she felt his spirit beside her—Lorian’s spirit. Perhaps it still gathered shadows around her, because she could swear that at night she still felt their caress on her skin.

Warm. Hot.

Familiar.

Leira simply sat beside her. And Nymre smiled.

She had loved him too, foolish as she was. Perhaps a spark of him lived in her as well—just as it remained in Nymre.

Nymre disliked Leira. But she was the only other person who had felt his touch as an equal. The only one who understood how to love him—and how to be loved by him.

Now, Nymre’s fingers tightened around the balustrade.

“You are aware that my court demands your death.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Nymre scoffed.

“They do not want revenge. They want the throne.”

“They are terrified that his line may survive. They are scavengers feasting on a lion’s flesh—yet while he lived, they could only croak from afar.”

Nymre’s brow lifted.

“Lion?”

“A beast from the human lands, my lady.”

Nymre looked into the horizon. The snow ceased to fall, and the land bathed on faint sunlight. The woods around them seemed distant and alien, with a veil of mist surrounding them. She could hear the forest’s pulse. Dark—but at the same time, so full of hidden life.

“We live in dangerous times. The court knew they couldn’t act during the burial rites. But once the sanctuary rises, once they build enough obelisks and monuments for their savior, they may decide that my regency is an attempt to usurp his power.”

“My child is not enough to secure the throne?”

“Oh, they would love to reduce the matter to human offspring. I can almost hear them insisting that no king was ever born of a human.”

“But from what I know, many—”

“Of course!” Nymre laughed, bitterly. “But quietly, without ceremony. No king was anointed before his birth. No king took the throne years after the previous one’s demise.”

Leira’s smile twisted.

“No king killed the gods before.”

“That and only that holds them. He is a god to them now. A savior, a hero. These times are delicate… and I must handle them delicately. I hold no power over this palace. Dal’coler was mine only as long as Lorian lived. They despise the very idea of my regency… which is precisely why it is so satisfying.”

Leira’s eyes glimmered in the darkness with understanding.

“You truly mean to crown my son the moment he is born.”

“Yes. Snow will linger only as long as winter’s consort reigns. He will be able to choose his season. He will be able to choose…”

A shiver ran through her.

Again, she felt the brush of elusive shadows. Gentle, yet insistent. A kiss behind her ear, exactly where she liked it. And a surge of courage in her heart.

He would believe in her. Because even with all his cruel flaws—he knew she could do this.

And she would.

She would make this court bow.

“My lady… it is three months until—”

“Yes. You are safe. You are a petal of the old era falling onto new soil, a light from a dead star still echoing. I will not allow these power‑hungry fools to destroy everything.”

Leira’s smile widened.

She had feared that after the disappearance of her lover, protector, and enemy, she would be executed in the most terrible way. She had taken fae lives—not always with her own hands, but always standing where death arrived. She expected no one to defend her. Least of all Nymre, who she had once believed would peel the first patch of skin from her body.

Yet it was Nymre who came to help her. She knew it was to secure Lorian’s offspring… but she was grateful, surprised, and lost all the same.

The absence of Lorian in her mind was terrifying. For a month she couldn’t sleep or form a coherent thought. She was like a fish stranded on the shore, staring at the sea—so close, so unreachable. Her tears would not fall. Her heart was a wound.

She had hated him for so long—and loved him just as fiercely. He not only had been her lover and guardian, her tormentor. He had been her maker.

And that was reason enough to hate him even more—for going somewhere she could not follow.

A puppet abandoned by her sculptor.

An idea without purpose.

But then came the day when tears finally fell, wounds began to knit, and she felt like an empty moss‑lined well, dry but ready to open to the rain.

For him. For herself.

For the life she still wanted to live.

That was what bound them so tightly, wasn’t it?

That excruciating, ferocious will to live.

And then… amid all the ruin, amid all the despair—a single breath of wind carrying the faint scent of violets. A touch on her skin during nights when she choked on fear and loss. A whisper. A glimpse.

And she began to wonder.

Maybe Lorian had not become a god of flesh and blood. Maybe they would never love each other again. Maybe his presence would never stop her heart the way it once had.

But the forest remembered. And it carried him through Ain’asel, from the grove where he had rooted.

And…

… wasn’t that its own kind of immortality?

The chamber was quite. Too quiet. Like feathers of all ravens she gave life to surrounded her and hushed all sound.

Nymre’s limbs shivered like on strings. Her hair, blown out and dry like paper, fell on her face, taking also the sight from her eyes. She slowly, very slowly – like moving in honey – lifted a hand and started to brush them out.

The temple was half crumbled. The veins of roots buried in its walls marked the ruined stone. Natsel’lorl opened for the wind – there was no roof above her, the early morning was awakening among crisp frost.

She barely could stand up. She was like a human enchanted in a doll – remembering how to be a human, still, but unable to put that knowledge to use. Her mind was calm – but in a numb, stupefied way.

Her eyes saw a hand trying to crawl over the cracked stone. With dull shock, she saw it belong to Tiyan. His eyes were half lidded, his moves mechanical. He looked like a broken puppet, blood saliva hanging from his lower lip. But he was alive. She saw Lorian took his soul. How came he was alive?

She slowly stepped over the hand.

Lorian.

When she saw him last time, he was joyfully devouring the gods. The ancestors evaporated like the temple walls, dosclosing the beating flaming veins and under them – heart pumping molten iron. They screamed, so loud, until they disappeared in nothingness.

But where was Lorian?

She almost stumbled on a stone, that had to fall from the ceiling being destroyed. She only didn’t tripped her will was now stronger than her body – and the temple that was putting those stones under her feet.

“Lorian?”

She didn’t see him.

Did he left?

Left without her?

He wouldn’t, would he?

Half of her heart knew he would not. But another, tired and mangled part feared he is not her Lorian anymore.

“Lorian!”

A small gust of wind brought in something dark. A tiny shadow, so thin, that almost invisible. Nymre’s eyes widened, she would do everything now, to not lose that trail. She followed the shadow tendril, elusive like a mist. The day was so calm – like nothing happened. Her heart again started to beat, fast and dissonant, like a music she doesn’t know melody to, but her soul remembers.

But nothing prepared her for what she has found.

Lorian. He was there. He wasn’t surrounded by all powerful night anymore. He wasn’t beaming with shadows so dark that killed even the sun.

Blood trickled down his chin, golden and thick. He was naked and lay spread on the floor, small snow petals were falling on his bare body. Nymre could swear that his skin glistened with faint light, like he swallowed the star.

“Lorian…”

He seemed to not hear her. She fell on her knees and crawled to him. His limbs were bent in unnatural positions, his whole body was cold.

Yet… he opened his eyes. Black as night. A familiar void.

“Nym—re.”

Nymre’s throat clenched.

“Lorian… what… what happened…”

He tried to laugh. A not less familiar sensual laughter filled his throat, until it was caught out with a bloody spit.

“I. I took them all.”

“No.”

“I took them all, Nymre.”

“NO.”

This was not true. He soon stands up. And show in his usual grace, in his darkest of shadows. They will return to Dal’coler. They must.

Lorian coughed. Again with gold. He never coughed! He never—

“Nymre…”

“No!”

“Nymre… listen… ”

“Lorian…” her eyes filled with tears. Not unwanted even. She wanted them to pour.

Perhaps…

“I couldn’t—”

His black eyes were shining, still with this beautiful unnatural light. Nymre felt as her whole being falls apart. It was not real. IT. WAS. NOT. REAL.

“Nymre, I—-”

“Stay with me. Please.”

She would give her immortality to make him just stand up. To allow him for even a day of life. She would slit her wrists, only to feed him her blood, if that was to help him.

She would do everything…

“Please. Stay with me. I–”

His eyes stopped to shine.

An alone, single shadow was carried away by the wind.

And Nymre knew that they both won’t return.

Not anymore.

*

They say when a fairy dies, a tree loses its life too so the new one could be born, holding their soul. Maybe now, a whole burned forest crumbles into dust, somewhere at the end of the world. Maybe now, the wind carries the cinders over the mountains, to fertilize the barren land.

Tiyan crawls over the broken stone. His body just goes, unbothered by anyone. He doesn’t matter. He is no one. Another human, who can die or live. Without half of the soul, he will die either way.

Nymre, half bent, embraces the dead body of her lover. She will be sitting by his side for two days and two nights, even if her court tries to talk to her common sense.

Somewhere in  Dal’coler, Leira doesn’t feel a presence in her head, which she started to perceive as her own. Her eyes are dry. Her soul shatters.

And Ain’asel bathes in snow.

The Sacred Forest breathes life in.

And nothing is the same again…