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The Assassin Priestess: The Silver Wraith, Ch. 2

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 18:41:37 GMT

Chapter Two: The Gifted Star

On the afternoon I turned ten, a caretaker opened the door to the workroom and began calling us into the courtyard.

“Yvellis-Zero-Eight. Antyrir-Four-One. Isha-One-Three.”

She continued until every child in the room had been named. We set down our needles, awls, and scraps of cloth, then stood. No one asked why we had been summoned. Questions were permitted only when an adult expected one, and even then it was often safer not to ask.

I knew it was my tenth birthday because one of the caretakers had told me the date when I was six. She had been checking the orphanage ledger and complained that I had been entered on a winter day when the ink froze inside its well. She told me I had been born on that date, then struck me for asking what time.

The knowledge meant little to me back then.

Birthdays were not observed at the orphanage. A child received no gift, extra food, or relief from work for having survived another year. Each day began with the same bell and ended when the lamps were extinguished. Winter made the rooms colder. Summer made them hot, stagnant, and smell worse. Those were the most significant differences.

While I might have been ten years old, I remained no larger than a human child of five. My body was narrow from hunger, my wrists thin enough for an adult’s fingers to close around them twice, and my short silver-white hair had been cut with a dull knife three nights earlier. Had I not known the date, I would not have felt older.

All I felt was hunger.

We had received no supper the previous night. That morning, the breakfast bell had rung, but no bowls were brought. At midday, the caretakers entered the workrooms only to count us and ensure no one had hidden food on them.

By afternoon, hunger had ceased to be an emptiness. It had become a pressure beneath my ribs, a weakness in my legs, and a sour taste that remained no matter how often I swallowed. Several of the younger children had stopped speaking. One had vomited water and been struck for soiling the floor.

The omission of three meals was deliberate. We all understood this, though we did not understand its purpose.

The caretaker led us through the central corridor and outside.

Snow lay in thin ridges against the courtyard walls. The stones had been swept, but ice remained in their cracks and beneath the covered walkways. Our breath clouded before us. Most of us wore only work tunics, stockings, and shoes too worn to keep out the wet. We drew close together for warmth until the caretakers separated us with switches.

All sixty-four children of the orphanage had been summoned.

The orphanage director stood near the center of the yard. I had seen him often, though he rarely spoke to us himself. He left correction to the caretakers and appeared only when visitors came, when a child was being sold, or when a punishment required an audience.

On this day, a stranger stood beside him.

The first thing I noticed was the black.

Dark clothing was common in Assyrial, but the stranger wore no grey, blue, or silver to soften it. His fitted coat, high boots, gloves, and long mantle were all black. Even the metal fittings upon his clothing had been darkened so they did not reflect the winter light.

He carried more blades than any person I had seen. Daggers rested at both hips, crossed his chest, and lay against his forearms beneath fitted straps. Others protruded from his boots. I could see the shapes of still more beneath his coat, though I did not yet know enough about weapons to identify how each was secured. The only piece of jewelry I observed was a black circle surrounded by gold hanging on a blackened chain on his neck.

Years later, I would wear my blades in many of the same places. Along with that necklace.

At ten, I thought only that no one carried so many daggers unless he expected to use them.

Then he looked at me.

All Vael’sarí possess silver eyes. Shades vary, as do the rings and patterns within the iris, but the white around them remains white.

His did not.

The sclerae of the stranger’s eyes were jet black. His irises were so dark a silver that they nearly vanished within them, and from where I stood his eyes appeared to be two balls of polished obsidian. They reflected light without seeming to contain any.

I had seen men kill children. I had watched Usayir die. I knew that adults did not require a reason to cause pain.

That man’s eyes frightened me more than the director’s whip.

He examined each row as the children entered, but his attention returned to me. The first time, I told myself I had imagined it. The second time, I lowered my face. When I looked up again, those black eyes were still upon me.

There was interest in them.

I did not know then that interest could be more dangerous than anger.

The caretakers arranged us along one side of the courtyard. Some children leaned against one another until a switch parted them. Antyrir-Four-One found a place two children to my left. He was six, small even for his age, and had been ill for much of the winter. His cheeks were hollow. A bruise darkened the skin beneath his right eye.

I had begun watching over him several months earlier.

The resemblance to Usayir had not been deliberate. I had seen an older child take Antyrir’s blanket and had followed her until she left it unattended. I stole it back and returned it without telling him how. After that, I sat near him during meals, showed him where to hide crusts, and struck those who tried to take his portions when I believed I could win.

I was not as kind as Usayir had been. I wish to state that plainly.

I resented sharing food. I sometimes became angry when Antyrir cried. Once, when he woke me during a nightmare, I told him I would leave him alone if he did it again. He believed me, although I did not mean it. I had wanted to become for him what Usayir had been for me, but wanting goodness and possessing it are different matters. At the time, I was just mimicking Usayir’s actions.

Still, Antyrir trusted me.

He looked toward me now. I gave him the smallest nod I could without drawing attention. His shoulders lowered a little.

In the center of the courtyard, one caretaker placed five wooden balls upon the ground.

They were old things, each roughly the size of a small apple. Their surfaces had darkened with years of handling, and the grain had risen where water entered cracks in the varnish. One had a shallow split along its side. Another bore tooth marks.

Sixty-four children watched him arrange them in a straight line.

All the while, the stranger in black watched us.

When the caretaker stood, he rested both hands behind his back.

“You have received no food since yesterday’s midday meal,” he said.

This was not entirely true. A few children would have hidden something. Others might have caught insects or eaten candle ends. None corrected him, however.

“You will receive none today. You will receive none tomorrow. For the next seven days, food will be given only to the five children who obtain one of these balls and keep possession of it until the contest is ended.”

No one moved.

The words took time to settle over us.

I looked from the five balls to the rows of children. Five would eat. Fifty-nine would not.

A younger girl began to whimper. The child beside her covered her mouth before a caretaker could hear.

“Any child who refuses to participate,” the caretaker continued, “will be sold to the slavers before nightfall.”

At his declaration, the courtyard became very still.

The slavers had last come in autumn. We had been ordered into these same rows while prospective buyers walked among us, inspected our teeth, gripped our arms, and asked the director which of us obeyed best. Many had been interested in me, but the director had told them no for some reason.

Issylir-Four-Six had been chosen by a nobleman.

Issylir was eleven. He had a long face, large eyes, and a habit of pressing his lips together whenever he was frightened. He answered every question correctly. He knelt when commanded. A young nobleman who purchased him killed him in the courtyard before taking him through the gate.

There had been no argument and no provocation. The young man had wanted to discover what it was like to kill someone.

He laughed, paid the director for the body, and chose another child. Yanna-One-Six. She was fourteen.

I remember Issylir’s face. I remember the nobleman’s as well. One held terror; the other, mild amusement. For a very long time, I believed amusement was the crueler of the two because it required so little from the person who wore it.

Every child in the courtyard remembered what had happened.

No one refused the contest.

The caretakers moved us to the far end of the yard. The five balls remained perhaps forty paces away. Ice made the stones uneven between us and them. Children began shifting within the lines, checking the distance to the wooden balls, and to one another.

Antyrir edged toward me.

“Stay behind me,” I whispered.

He nodded.

I did not have a plan for what he should do after that.

The stranger spoke quietly to the director. The director listened without looking away from us. When the stranger finished, his black eyes found me once more. I shuddered under their gaze.

The caretaker raised one hand.

“Prepare yourselves.”

Children crouched. Some placed one foot behind them. Others curled their hands into fists. A boy in the front row began crying silently, though his body remained ready to run.

I knew what the caretakers intended.

They had used hunger against us many times. A single loaf left upon a table could turn friends into enemies. A cup of broth promised to the child who reported theft would ensure that no hiding place remained secret. If we distrusted one another, we would never stand together against those who harmed us.

I understood this at ten, if not in those words.

Sixty-four children outnumbered the director, the stranger, and the six caretakers in the courtyard. Had we all refused to participate, they could not have punished us all at once. Had we all rushed the kitchens rather than the wooden balls, some of us might have eaten.

But hunger does not encourage thoughts of us.

Hunger reduces the world to me and mine.

I knew the contest was meant to turn us against one another.

And I was still going to fight.

The caretaker lowered his hand.

“Go.”

All sixty-four children moved.

The first row fell almost at once. Those behind crashed into them, climbed over them, or were pulled down in turn. A body struck my shoulder. An elbow caught my mouth. Someone seized the back of my tunic, and the cloth tightened against my throat until I twisted free.

There was no room to run. We pushed forward in a single mass, each child trying to pass through spaces that did not exist.

I struck a girl in the ribs because she blocked me. I pulled another child backward by his hair. When a boy caught my wrist, I punched his face with my free hand until his grip loosened. Someone kicked the side of my knee. I stumbled, stepped upon a hand, and heard its owner scream.

The wooden balls vanished beneath legs and grasping arms.

Children who reached them were buried beneath those who followed. One ball appeared above the crowd in a raised fist. Three others seized that arm. The ball fell. A child caught it against her chest, and another bit her cheek until she released it.

The caretakers shouted encouragement as they laughed and placed bets.

Not instructions. Encouragement.

It was all a game to them.

Their laughter angered me more than the blows.

I drove my shoulder into the child before me. He fell against two others and opened a narrow path. I forced myself through it, taking a fist beneath my ear and a heel against my shin.

Then Antyrir appeared in front of me.

I do not know how he had passed me. Perhaps the crowd had carried him forward. He stood between me and the nearest ball, his eyes wide, one hand reaching toward it.

For an instant, we recognized one another.

He might have expected me to help him.

I placed both hands against his chest and pushed.

Antyrir left his feet. He struck another child and fell hard upon the stones several paces away.

His face changed before he landed.

The surprise vanished first. Then the hurt. His mouth closed, his eyes emptied, and every part of him became still. It was the face children in the orphanage learned to make when pain came from someone they had trusted. A schooled face. A face that revealed nothing because revealing pain invited more of it.

Usayir had never looked at me that way.

Antyrir did.

I had wanted to be like Usayir for him. In that moment, I became Enthalir instead.

I knew what I had done. And I immediately hated myself for it.

I still turned toward the ball.

Another child struck me across the jaw. I answered with my fist. Fingers closed in my hair and pulled until my head bent backward. I clawed at the hand, caught two fingers, and twisted until I heard the fingers snap. Someone drove a knee into my stomach. The air left me. I fell to one hand, rose, and was kicked between the shoulders.

Pain came from every direction. Hunger hollowed me. Anger filled what remained.

I was angry with the children who struck me. I was angry with Antyrir for having stood between me and food, though he had done nothing wrong. I was angry with the caretakers, the director, the laughing nobleman who killed Issylir, and the black-eyed stranger who watched, face unreadable, as though our suffering had been arranged for his benefit. Most of all, I was angry at myself for hurting Antyrir when I wanted to help him.

Most of all, I was angry because I understood the contest and obeyed it anyway.

Then I felt the warmth.

It began in my chest, near my heart.

At first, I thought someone had struck me there. The sensation was small and concentrated, no larger than a coin beneath my breastbone. Then it moved. Warmth spread across my chest and through my stomach. It entered my legs and arms. Strength returned to muscles that had begun to fail.

The courtyard sharpened around me. I could almost see a flow to the air.

I heard each child breathing. I felt the scrape of every shoe against stone. The air itself almost demanded to be controlled, as though it rested against my skin and waited for me to move it.

I did not know the word aether.

I knew only that something inside me had awakened.

A boy wrapped both arms around my waist and tried to drag me from the balls. A girl seized my wrist. Someone struck the back of my head.

I wanted them away from me.

All of them.

Go away. It was a simple thought.

The warmth answered.

It rushed outward from my heart faster than I could breathe. For one perfect instant, I felt stronger than than the hunger, stronger than the pain, and stronger than every hand upon me.

Then the strength became agony.

Fire passed through me from the inside. It filled my chest, climbed my throat, and drove behind my eyes. My bones seemed to burn within my flesh. I tried to scream, but my body had forgotten how to draw breath.

My vision narrowed.

There was a sound like stone breaking beneath the courtyard.

Then came the boom.

Hands tore away from me. The weight at my back vanished. Screams rose and moved outward as though the sound itself had been thrown.

Darkness covered my sight.

I remained conscious, though only barely. I knew my knees had struck the ground. I felt stone beneath my palms. Cold air entered my lungs in a ragged breath, followed by another. Sweat ran from my face and fell between my hands.

When my vision returned, I was alone in the center of the courtyard.

The five wooden balls lay near me. Two had rolled apart from the others, but all remained within reach. No child stood between me and them.

As I looked around, no child stood within thirty feet of me.

They had been thrown in every direction. Some lay upon the stones. Others had struck the walls or the covered walkways. One child hung across a low railing before sliding to the ground. Several cried. One clutched an unnaturally bent arm. Another tried to stand and fell again, blood pouring down from a cut on her forehead.

I looked for Antyrir.

He sat near the courtyard wall, holding one shoulder. His face had lost its careful emptiness. He stared at me with undisguised fear.

He was alive.

They all appeared to be alive.

Relief came first. Shame followed it.

I tried to stand and could not. My arms shook beneath me. The warmth had vanished, leaving a coldness deeper than the winter air along with a pain behind my eyes. Dizziness pulled the courtyard sideways. I closed my eyes until the world stilled.

No caretaker went to help the injured children.

The only one who moved was the stranger, slowly walking twards to me.

His boots stopped beside the nearest wooden ball. I stared at their black leather because I was afraid to raise my head. One of his daggers shifted softly within its sheath as he knelt.

“Look at me, child,” he said.

His voice was gentle. Kind even.

I obeyed unconsciously.

The black eyes were close now. I could see a narrow ring of dark silver within them, but the sclerae remained as black as polished stone. His face was long and composed, his white hair trimmed short. He appeared neither old nor young to me. Children raised in the orphanage often judge age by kindness; the older someone was the more likely they would cause pain. So far, his actions, nor his voice, had yet to result in any pain.

He smiled.

At ten, I believed it was a warm, sincere smile.

I had little experience by which to judge one. The mother in the street had smiled at her daughter, and Usayir had smiled at me before he died. I believed sincere smiles were evidence of affection because the few smiles given to me had been.

I know better now.

Looking back, there was satisfaction in the stranger’s face. Possession as well. His smile did not welcome me. It marked the instant he decided I belonged to him.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Isha-One-Three.”

“No.” He raised one gloved hand and brushed damp hair from my forehead. I flinched, but his touch remained gentle. “You are now Isha.”

No adult had ever called me that.

He extended his hand warmly.

“Come with me, my daughter. I shall be your new father.” His smile widened. “I very much look forward to watching so gifted a star as you grow. You are gifted.”

His daughter.

My father.

I had dreamed of a mother, but a father belonged to a family as well. I knew this from stories. Fathers protected their children. They taught them crafts, brought food into the home, and punished those who tried to harm them. I did not yet understand that a person could use the language of love while intending none of it.

I looked at his waiting hand.

“Will I eat?” I asked.

“Yes, Little Star.” His black eyes held mine. “You need never be hungry again, so long as you obey me.”

It was not a promise of care. It was the first condition of my captivity.

I placed my hand in his willingly.

I would soon learn his name was Thalir.

The contest had never concerned five wooden balls. The hunger, the threats, and the violence had been tools used to force sixty-four frightened children beyond their limits. Thalir had come to see whether aether would manifest among us. Perhaps he had already suspected me. I have often wondered what the director’s ledgers said about Isha-One-Three, and what signs Thalir recognized before I felt the warmth near my heart.

I never asked him.

There are questions to which an answer grants no peace.

I remember looking back as he led me toward the gate. Caretakers had finally begun ordering the other children to stand. One bent to collect the balls. The contest was evidently over, though I do not know whether anyone was fed. None had obtained any of the balls. Antyrir remained near the wall. He did not look at me again.

Thalir had called me gifted.

For years, I believed my unconscious use of aether in that courtyard had saved me. That it prevented my sale to the slavers. That it removed me from the orphanage. It had given me food, training, status, and eventually power greater than any child in that yard could have imagined.

I was wrong.

My aether did not save me.

It merely revealed that I was valuable in a different way.

The aether I released that day nearly burned through me. A little more power, drawn with the same ignorance and desperation, might have burned my soul out entirely. My heart could have stopped before Thalir reached me. I would have died upon the stones with all five wooden balls close enough to touch.

I have spent much of my life rejecting the belief that death is mercy. The Children of the Night used that word to excuse murder and cruelty. They made oblivion sacred because it allowed them to call acts of evil a kindness.

Yet when I remember my tenth birthday, honesty requires me to admit something I would rather deny.

Had my soul burned out in that courtyard, it would have been a mercy. For me, and my many future victims.

I would never have learned the truth of Thalir’s so-called love. I would never have carried so many victims of my own. I would never have been taught how quietly a person dies when a blade enters from beneath the ribs. More than a thirteen hundred faces would not follow me into my nightmares.

Thalir’s smile remains among the clearest of them.

I remember the careful warmth he placed upon it. I remember the frightening black of his eyes and the gentleness of his hand around mine. I remember believing, for a few breaths, that my wish had finally been granted; that someone had chosen me because he intended to make me his child.

The ritual by which I entered the Kol family of the Morren clan was worse than anything that happened in the courtyard. It required obedience, a dagger, and dedication to a life I did not yet understand. And one I could never take back.

Three days later was when I first killed someone in order to join the family. That woman was someone who had tried to escape the life I was entering.

That was where I lost what remained of my innocence.

The courtyard was only where the man who would take it found me.

Saint Ilain, the Great Prophet of Ætaine

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:50:11 GMT

The Golden Son of the Goddesses

Few religious figures survive serious historical scrutiny with their reputations intact. Saint Ilain of Ætaine, called the Great Prophet of the Gods and, more affectionately, the Golden Son of the Goddesses, appears to be one of the few that does.

His childhood and youth are almost entirely unknown. No reliable record identifies where he was born, who raised him, or what occupied the first two decades of his life. The only personal detail that appears consistently in later accounts is his extraordinary affection for his unknown mother, whom he praised often and credited with helping him understand his place in the world and giving him the courage to start his mission for the Goddess of Light. Ilain himself enters reliable history only in 844 ÆC, in the city of Ætaine, at twenty-one years of age. He remains the only person known, and verified according to temple records, to have borne the blessings of the Goddesses of Light, Fate, and Magic simultaneously.

For the next fifteen years he wandered much of the continent preaching an exceedingly simple doctrine: cherish life, and each other, beneath the Light; show kindness where cruelty would be easier; and never assume any person has wandered so far into darkness that redemption has become impossible.

His prophecies were equally remarkable. Numerous surviving accounts record predictions he attributed to the Goddess of Fate that later occurred with uncomfortable accuracy. One such example being the accurate prediction of the volcanic eruption of Mount Anataiya in the Kingdom of Kristin. His healing abilities were even greater still, and quite honestly, unbelievable. In 847 ÆC, following the collapse of a massive tenement in Ætaine’s poorest districts, contemporary records claim Ilain healed several hundred injured people at once. I have found accounts from temple officials, city authorities, soldiers, and ordinary residents; all carefully preserved by the Ætaini Temples of Light, Fate, and Magic. Irritatingly for the skeptic in me, they agree on nearly every important detail, including his skill with aether. To someone who has witnessed great healing magics, the idea that someone could heal more than one individual at a time is incredulous. But it happened.

Ilain usually traveled alone. However, frequently enough, his family and disciples joined him on his mission; occasionally he marched alongside Ætainese armies, though he apparently cared little whose banner flew overhead. After battles he healed Ætainese and enemy wounded alike. This earned him considerable admiration and, inevitably, enemies. Several attempts were made upon his life during his ministry, and on more than one occasion his followers physically placed themselves between their prophet and those who wished him dead. The most notable example of this occurred in 857 ÆC, where a dozen of his disciples died thwarting a pale-aelvar assassination attempt while they were in the city of Krystin.

In the summer of 859 ÆC, during one of the many wars and battles between Ætaine and Drak’nir, Ilain was captured by Drak’niri soldiers while healing the wounded from both armies. Following a turn in the battle against the Drak'nir Empire, they executed him. The surviving accounts state that he healed the very soldiers ordered to execute him. When he was killed, witnesses across the battlefield reported a burst of golden light brighter than the midday sun. Every injured person, no matter how dire, within several leagues was said to have been healed.

Ordinarily, I would dismiss such a story as the inevitable embellishment surrounding a martyr. Unfortunately, there are simply too many contemporary, independent witnesses from both sides.

Ilain remains the most widely venerated saint among those who worship the Righteous Gods, and his teachings concerning compassion, joy, peace, and redemption have survived him far better than most kings have been survived by their vainglorious monuments. His wife Theophani, and two young sons Elain and Nalain, disappear from records soon after, their fates unknown.

I have noticed something else, though I do not know what to make of it. Isha venerates Saint Ilain more deeply than I would expect from someone so outspokenly uncomfortable with saints, holy figures, and organized church structure even though she is the Light's Blade of Valmark, the defender of the city's faithful. I have found her more than once kneeling before his statue in Valmark’s Temple of Light when I sought her out, sometimes remaining there long after her prayers should have ended.

Perhaps she sees in him an example of the person she wishes she could become?

Or perhaps… there is something I do not know.

With Isha, there usually is.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Assassin Priestess: The Silver Wraith, Ch. 1

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:15:13 GMT

The Silver Wraith, Chapter One: The Fourth Way

My first memory was of the color red.

In it, there was a woman crying. I felt myself moving, though I could not tell whether she carried me or whether the world itself moved beneath us as her voice shook close to my ear. I recall something warm and wet touching the side of my face and beyond her shoulder. Regardless, I do remember a lot of red in my vision.

That is where the memory faded.

I believe I was only a few months old, though I cannot prove this. Memories do not bring dates with them unless I happened to know the date myself, and that one is too indistinct for me to judge my size by what surrounded me. Try as I might, I do not remember the tone her words, nor what she said. I do not remember where we were going, what terrified her, or whether her arms held me tightly out of love or desperation.

Most troubling of all, I do not remember her face. And for some reason, that makes me feel sad when I think about this one particular instance. In all others, I pray that I could forget their faces.

I am apparently unique in that facet of life.

Faces have never faded from my memory as they do for others. I can close my eyes and see people whom I passed once in a crowded market centuries ago. I remember the precise set of a dying man’s mouth when he realized it was my blade that pierced his heart, or the shocked face and pleading eyes of a human countess as I strangled her with a cord of silk in her bedchambers. I remember the final looks of every man, woman, and child I failed to save, and every person I was ordered to kill in my three hundred years of life.

Time has softened none of them.

Yet the first woman of my memories is without a face.

For many years, I tried to give her one. I imagined high cheekbones, a narrow jaw, silver eyes like mine. All Váel’sarí share our snow-white skin, our silver-white hair, and our metallic-silver eyes, so those details revealed nothing. I could make her resemble anyone. That meant she resembled no one.

I know now that the red was blood.

I still do not know whose, though I doubt it was mine. I do not recall having any scars in my earliest memories.

My next clear memory came when I was four years old, after I was informed my name was Isha-One-Three; before I was given the cursed name I would try to bury.

Asyr’Isha Kol’Morren.

Among my people, I was physically little more developed than a human child of two, although I was often told that I learned too quickly and understood too much for my age. The caretakers at the orphanage told this to visitors when they came. They would rest a hand upon my head while they smiled their insincere smiles, call me an unusually capable child, and speak as though my quickness reflected well upon them. Their goal was to get rid of me.

When there were no visitors, the staff called me an annoyance. I stopped asking questions early on to prevent me being the focus of their anger.

I had learned to dress myself before the other children of my age. I could carry a bowl without spilling it, follow several instructions in their proper order, and repeat words after hearing them only once. The caretakers therefore moved me into a room with older children. I remember them saying I no longer required the attention given to the babies or other toddlers.

In truth, they just wanted me gone, like they did with all the children there.

There were too many of us and never enough food. Breakfast was thin grain boiled in water. At midday, we were sometimes given a piece of dark bread with a smear of rendered fat. Supper was whatever remained. I did not know then that hunger was supposed to end after one ate. I believed food merely made the aching lessen for a time. Though only given occasionally on special days, I fondly remember the treats of white bread and tiny portions of vegetable stew.

The older children were hungry as well, though even the oldest looked no older than a human child of seven. Some asked for part of my ration. Some just took it. Others struck me first so I would release it so I could not fight back.

I learned to eat quickly. I learned to hide bread inside my sleeve and to swallow even when my mouth was too dry, though I almost choked on the dark bread seventeen times before I turned ten. I learned that if someone watched my bowl, I should watch their hands. None of these lessons prevented everything.

There was always a bruise somewhere upon me, though not always given by other children. A yellow one fading beneath a new purple one. Finger marks around my arm. A dark place at my ribs where an adult’s boot had roughly woke me when I did not immediately rise before the dawn bell for prayers. The caretakers used switches when we spoke without permission, when we failed our chores, when we fought, and when we allowed another child to steal from us. A stolen meal was proof that we had been careless. Carelessness, they always said, required correction.

I did not think this was cruelty back then. I thought it was how every child grew up.

The orphanage was the largest building I knew. It had three floors, thick stone walls, an inner yard, and a gate reinforced with iron. Its windows were narrow, and most could be opened only far enough to admit air during the hottest months of the year. I had heard stories about castles, and at some point I decided the orphanage must be one.

I live in a castle, I would think whenever hunger kept me awake.

It seemed a grand thing when named that way.

One night, soon after I was moved to one of the older children’s rooms, I made my way onto the roof while others were fast asleep.

An older girl had once loosened the hatch above the linen room connected to our sleeping space. I had watched her slip through it and had remembered where she placed her feet. The hatch was high, but there were shelves beneath it. Near the outer ledge, I could reach a rain channel cut into the stone roof and pulled myself onto it.

The climb frightened me less than returning to the sleeping room. If I fell, the fall would hurt once. If a caretaker caught me up and about after dark, the switch would hurt many times. At the time in my life, this seemed an important distinction to me.

I lay flat against the cold tiles until I was certain no one had seen me. Then I crawled to the roof’s edge and looked out over the city.

Assyrial, the capital of the Váel’sarí Empire, was busy, even this late at night. Lamps shone along the streets and behind high windows. Carts rattled over the stones. Pale figures passed beneath me in colorful cloaks, their silver-white hair catching the light whenever their hoods slipped back. I could smell smoke, damp stone, cooked meat, and something sweet I had no name for.

I had never seen so much of the city at once. Until then, Assyrial had been a few streets glimpsed through bars and the upper portions of buildings beyond the orphanage wall. From the roof, I saw doors opening and closing. I saw people enter shops and emerge carrying wrapped parcels. I saw them turn down streets without asking permission, which surprised me. We had to ask permission for everything.

Then I saw the girl.

She appeared to be near my age. Her hair had been divided into two neat braids, each tied with a dark ribbon. She wore a blue cloak with silver stitching at its edges, soft boots, and gloves that matched. Her face was rounder than mine, with full cheeks and a small space between her two front teeth.

I remember each detail because she looked up.

The woman beside her said something I could not hear. The girl tipped back her head and laughed. The woman laughed as well, then bent to straighten the clasp at the girl’s throat. She took her time. When she finished, she brushed one thumb across the child’s cheek and left her hand there for a moment.

The girl smiled at her.

I had heard other children laugh in the orphanage, but such laughter was often followed by someone else crying. This was different. Neither the girl nor the woman had won anything. No one had been embarrassed or hurt. They laughed solely because they were together.

I knew what a mother was. I knew the word and its meaning, despite my young age. A mother was the woman from whom a child came, though I did not learn the specific details for a long, long time. I even knew some children got to live with theirs, unlike us. Until that night, however, a mother had been like a distant city or a creature from a story: something I accepted as real without understanding what its existence meant.

The woman reached for the girl’s hand and the girl gave it to her freely. They continued along the street, still speaking to one another, until another building hid them from me. I always wished I could hear them talking, though I could only read lips close up. To this day, I still find it difficult to read the lips of any other language than my mother tongue, A’lárian.

That night, I waited for them to return.

They never did.

That was when my castle became a prison. One that I longed to escape from.

Nothing about the orphanage had changed. The walls had not grown taller. The iron gate had not acquired a new lock. I had simply seen a child pass on the other side of them and understood that she could go wherever her mother led her, while I could go only where the caretakers permitted.

According to the stories we were occasionally read, a castle was a place where someone kept you safe.

A prison was a place where someone kept you locked up away from society.

That fall night, I remained on the roof until my hands became numb from the chill. I stared at the corner where the girl had vanished and tried to recall every movement of her face. I could not have said what love was. Had someone asked, I would likely have repeated a definition I had been taught.

But I had seen it.

I want someone to look at me that way, I remember thinking.

Once I understood that such a thing existed, I could no longer stop wanting it.

Usayir-Three-Three began looking after me a few weeks later.

He was eight, which made him twice my age and, in my estimation, nearly grown, though in reality he was still only a young child barely larger than myself due to how slowly our people age when compared to humans. He had the same snow-white skin, silver-white hair, and silver eyes that I had, as did everyone around us, but I would never confuse his face with another, even to this day. His chin came to a slight point, and his left eye narrowed more than his right whenever he suspected me of lying. Or when he lied himself.

Enshalir-Zero-Four, who was thirteen, had taken my midday bread three days in succession. On the fourth, I hid what I could not choke down beneath my tunic. He followed me behind the washroom, struck me hard enough that my lip split, and forced me to the ground in order to steal the dry, dark bread. He was kneeling upon my chest when Usayir found us.

Usayir could not have defeated him. He tried anyway.

He leapt upon Enshalir’s back and bit his forearm until Enshalir released me. Enshalir beat both of us for it. When it was over, Usayir wiped the blood from my mouth with the cleaner side of his sleeve and told me I should not hide food in my tunic tomorrow.

After that, he sat near me during meals when he could. Enshalir still stole my food and struck me on occasion, but he was less willing to do it when Usayir watched.

Our first long conversation took place on the roof a few weeks later.

Usayir had followed me through the linen-room hatch one night, although he claimed he had found the way himself. We sat behind the highest ridge, where we could not be seen from the inner yard. My back faced him as he drew a small wooden comb through my hair.

“Hold still, Isha-One-Three,” he said.

“I am still.”

“Your head moved.” He patted the top of my head softly.

“You pulled it.”

“Your hair is tangled.”

“Then do not comb the tangled part.”

He considered this and chuckled. “ All of it is the tangled part.”

My hair was kept short, like everyone’s, to prevent lice and minimize the tangled mess my hair had become, but no one brushed it unless a visitor was expected. I did not like the way the comb caught when they did. I did, however, like the careful pressure of his other hand against the back of my head. He held each lock between my scalp and the knot so that there was less pain as he combed.

No one had done that for me before with such gentleness.

When he finished, he moved around to sit beside me. From beneath his orphanage-issued, worn, and ill-fitting white tunic, he withdrew a small piece of brown bread. It had been pressed nearly flat and was missing some of its crust.

“Here,” he said.

I stared at it. “Where did you get that?”

“The kitchen.”

I looked at him skeptically. “They do not give bread at night.”

“They did not give it.”

I paused for several seconds, cocking my head to the right, then stated, “Usayir-Three-Three... you stole it.”

His left eye narrowed. “It is still bread.”

I took it, then tried to break it in half. As I attempted to split the hard, dark brown bread, he closed my fingers around the whole piece.

“Eat it all.”

“You are hungry too.”

“I ate some already.”

He had not. I know that now. I may have known it then, based on how his left eye once again narrowed, but my own desperate hunger made the lie easier to accept.

I took a bite. The bread was dry and sour, as usual. It still remains one of the finest things I have ever eaten when I think back on my time in the orphanage since it was the first gift I remember receiving from anyone else.

Usayir watched the street below while I chewed.

After a long period of silence, he said, “There are three ways children leave.”

I looked toward the linen-room hatch. “There have to be are more. I leave that way.”

“That does not count. You come back inside.”

“Only because the roof is cold.”

“You still come back.” He pointed through the darkness toward the orphanage gate. “I mean leave forever.”

I stopped chewing, instantly interested in his topic of conversation. “How?”

“Sometimes a crafting family chooses one. You have to be chosen before you are fifteen.”

“What craft?”

“Any craft. Shoes. Stone. Metal things. Cloth. Whatever they think you can do.”

“Can they choose two?”

“Maybe.” I could tell from his tone that he did not believe it.

“Then we can go together.”

He did not reply my naive statement.

“What is the second way?” I asked at length.

“If magic does not come and no family chooses you by fifteen, they sell you.”

I knew that things were sold, I just did not fully grasp the concept then. “Children are not things.”

“They will sell us anyway.”

“To whom?”

“Slavers.”

“What do slavers do?”

“They take you somewhere else and make you work. Like in mines or on farms.”

“Crafting families make children work.”

“This is different.”

“How?”

He pulled one knee against his chest. “You cannot leave when you get older. You have to do everything they say, even if they hurt you.”

I looked back at the roof hatch through which we had climbed. “That is the same.”

Usayir’s face tightened. “Maybe.”

“Do slavers give food?”

“They must give some, but probably not much.”

I ate another small bite while I considered whether that made the second way better or worse. “What is the third?”

“Magic.”

“Magic is not a way.”

“If it comes to you when you are ten, the Temple comes for you. Then you belong to them.”

“Do they sell you?”

“No.”

“Do they hurt you?”

“I do not know.”

“Do they give food?”

He frowned at me. “You ask that about everything.”

“I like food.”

He laughed. It was quiet, but it was not cruel. For one moment, I thought of the girl and her mother.

Then his laughter ended.

“I heard two of the caretakers talking,” he said. “They thought I was asleep. One said it cost too much to keep all of us. She said they should just kill us now.”

I waited for him to tell me why this was important.

“The other one laughed,” he continued. “He said it would be a mercy, with whatever happens to us once we leave.”

“What is ‘mercy’?”

“It is when you stop someone from hurting, I think.”

“They stop hurting you?”

“No. I think you stop the hurt itself.” He paused for a moment as he thought. “Maybe.”

I considered that as well. I understood the words, but not the difference. “How does them killing us stop the hurt?”

“Dead people cannot hurt.”

“They cannot be hungry either.”

“No.”

“Maybe that is mercy.”

“Do not say that!” His voice became sharp enough that I flinched. He saw my reaction and lowered his head.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it is not a mercy for you if you are dead.”

“Why?”

“Because you are going to leave this place.”

“Which way?”

He looked toward Assyrial. “A good way, I hope.”

I finished the bread and licked the crumbs from my palm. “I know the good way.”

“You do?”

“A mother will choose me.”

He turned to me.

I told him about the girl I had seen. I described her blue cloak, her two braids, and the way she had laughed. I told him how the mother had fixed the clasp at her throat and touched her cheek and described each of their faces in detail. I explained that they had held hands even though neither of them was trying to pull the other anywhere.

“My family will be like that,” I said. “They will give me enough food, and I will learn to do what they want very quickly. I will do every chore correctly so they do not have to strike me. My mother will brush my hair softly like you, Usayir-Three-Three. She will be glad when I come into the room. They will be happy I am their child.”

Usayir said nothing.

“I shall tell her to choose you too,” I added. “You can be my brother.”

The pain that crossed his face lasted no more than a moment. I remember it more clearly than the city beneath us: the slight parting of his lips, the way his eyes lowered, and the effort it took him to smile when he looked at me again.

At four, I thought he was sad because he did not believe a family would take two children.

Now I understand that he knew wanting a thing did not cause it to exist. He may also have understood that being chosen for one’s usefulness was not the same as being loved. He could have told me and ruined my hopes. He could have laughed at me, as many of the older children would have done. What they would eventually do, without telling me why.

Usayir did neither.

“I hope you get your wish, Isha-One—“ He paused a moment. “Isha.”

Then he took the comb and began working at a knot he had missed.

For the next year, Usayir remained as near to me as the caretakers allowed. He showed me which floorboards I could use to hide bread without drawing rats. He taught me how to fall sleep with one arm over my stomach so a surprise blow from an older child would usually hit my arm or hand before my stomach and soften the impact. When Enshalir or another older child took my food, Usayir sometimes fought them to get it back or found something to replace it even when he was punished by the caretakers. Not always. He was a hungry child, not a god, and he possessed little more than I did.

What he had, he shared. I would always remember that.

Then, one day after the slavers came and took away several children for the mines, including Enshalir, he escaped the orphanage before our morning prayers to the Goddess of Darkness, Du’Tariál.

I awoke and the first thing I saw was his empty sleeping mat. I knew at once that he had not gone to the privy or been taken for punishment. His blanket was neatly folded. The small wooden comb he always hid away was tucked under my mat; it was his parting gift to me.

In my naivety, I thought he had found a fourth way to leave.

For most of that day, I was happy for him. The thought of him leaving on his own almost made me smile.

Almost.

The city guard brought him back shortly before the evening meal.

The caretakers ordered every child into the inner yard with shouts and switches. We were arranged in rows with the smallest at the front so none of us could hide behind the others. Usayir had been bound by his wrists to a post; a common punishment among my people. More dirt than usual covered his bare feet and the hem of his tunic. One side of his face was swollen, and there was blood beneath his nose, though his eyes remained open and alert, but afraid.

They found mine almost immediately, and he visibly bottled up his fear.

The overseer stood behind him with a whip.

“Look well,” she told us. “This is the fate of every child who attempts to run.”

The first stroke of the whip tore his tunic.

Several children cried out. A caretaker walked behind our rows and struck them until they were silent. When the second stroke fell, I looked down. A hand painfully seized my jaw and forced my face upward.

“You will watch, Isha-One-Three!”

So I watched.

The whip rose and fell. Usayir screamed at first. Then he bit his lip. Then he made no sound at all.

Red spread across the dirty white cloth and snow-white skin.

By then, I knew the color’s name.

The overseer repeated her warning again and again. I no longer heard every word. I heard the whip. I heard Usayir’s breath when he could still draw one. I heard two children behind me whispering a prayer to the Dark Goddess, and both were beaten for speaking out of turn.

I could do nothing.

That knowledge was not new, but it had never been so complete.

Near the end, Usayir lifted his head. I still do not know how he found the strength to do it to this day. His gaze moved across the first row until it reached me.

His mouth curved.

It was a small smile. It trembled and showed blood between his teeth, but it was real. He held my eyes, and his lips formed four words without sound that he knew I would understand.

I am free, Isha.

The whip fell again.

His face changed when he died. Every face does. Something leaves it as the eyes dim, the face relaxes, and finally freezes in place. At five years old, I could not have explained this. I only knew that Usayir, still bound to the post, was no longer looking back at me, his face half frozen in a tiny smile.

The caretakers continued for several more minutes. They wished to be certain we understood.

I did.

That night, I climbed onto the roof alone for the first time in a year. Assyrial looked exactly as it had before. Lamps burned. Carts moved. Doors opened for other people. I watched the corner where the mother and daughter had disappeared a year earlier, but neither of them returned. Looking back, I think I wanted to cry, but I could not. I still cannot remember why.

I thought about Usayir’s final words. At five, freedom at the orphanage meant only the absence of the caretakers. Now I know that freedom for him meant no one could starve him, beat him, sell him, or corrupt his soul at the Temple of Du’Tariál. He was beyond all of it.

His soul was now with the gods.

I also did not understand that, at the time, his smile had been one last kindness for me.

He had been afraid. I know this because I remember his face before the first stroke. Yet when he saw me, he hid that fear. He chose the last expression that I would remember of him, giving me the only gift he still could in the time that remained.

He knew I could never forget faces. We had talked about it often, among many other things, as we looked out upon the city.

Perhaps the crying woman in my first memory cared for me. Perhaps the blood was hers, and perhaps whatever she did that night saved my life. I have no face by which to judge her. I have only the color of red blood, movement, and a vague memory of her grief.

Usayir-Three-Three is the first person whose care I remember with certainty.

He was the first to give me food while remaining hungry himself. The first to touch my short hair without pulling it in anger. The first to stand between me and someone larger, though he knew he would be hurt. And he was the first to preserve one of my dreams when the truth would have destroyed it.

Though, I sometimes wished he had.

At the time, I did not have the words for what he gave me.

I do now.

Hope and love.

Usayir had told me there were three ways to leave the orphanage. He found the fourth.

Unfortunately, I could not find a fifth. There was no ‘good way’ for me to leave.

When I turned ten and my aether manifested, the Temple finally came for me.

On Kethyrstor II, "Kethyrst the Great"

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:47:13 GMT

Kethyrst the Great, of Ætaine

Few human rulers have altered the history of this continent as thoroughly as Kethyrstor II of Ætaine, remembered more commonly as Kethyrst the Great. He inherited the crown in 34 ÆC, at only fifteen years of age, after his father, Krethyr IV, was killed campaigning against the bloodthirsty Drak tribes of the west, the ancestors of those who would eventually found the Drak’nir Empire.

Youth, unsurprisingly, did remarkably little to moderate him.

Kethyrstor immediately continued his father’s war and, by 40 ÆC, had broken the organized resistance of the Drak tribes through methods even sympathetic Ætainese chroniclers describe with uncomfortable brevity. Their settlements were burned, populations displaced and centralized, and surviving rulers forced into submission or burnt alive. Having secured the western heartlands, he turned his armies eastward and spent most of the next four decades conquering, annexing, or intimidating nearly every kingdom between Ætaine and the eastern reaches of the continent, finally ending at the Ocean of Storms before he turned back west.

His name followed his armies. New fortresses, colonies, and conquered cities were renamed in his honor in much the same manner earlier rulers had named monuments after gods. Surviving charters and decrees preserve older forms such as Kethyrstoria, Kethyrstir, Kethyrstirion, Kethyrstine, Kethyrstale, and Kethyrstoriv. A thousand years of dialect and language shift have reduced these respectively to the modern Kethyr, Kethir, Kethrir, Krystin, Krystal, and Krystyriv. Most inhabitants scarcely remember whom their cities were named for; their human rulers surely do, as many still wish to emulate him.

His empire was never peaceful. Drak rebellions erupted repeatedly in the west, while conquered eastern kingdoms rose whenever Ætaine’s armies marched elsewhere. Kethyrstor suppressed each with characteristic severity and continued campaigning until age and declining health finally accomplished what enemy armies could not while on campaign near the Pale Ocean at what is now called Grey Harbor. He died in 86 ÆC, after fifty-two years upon the throne.

Within two decades, much of the Drak territory had successfully broken away. Yet the eastern conquests endured, and with them Ætaine’s language, laws, roads, calendar, and political influence. Kethyrstor did not create the Ætainese world alone, as later poets would have us believe, but he came disturbingly close.

His grandson, Kethyrstor III, inherited a realm already beginning to strain beneath the wars of his grandfather. Though he surrendered most of the western Drak territories, realizing he could no longer keep their savage people under control, he reorganized the remaining empire so effectively that history remembers him not as another conqueror, but as Kethyrst the Wise.

There is an important distinction between greatness and goodness that historians too often neglect. Kethyrstor II was unquestionably great. Whether those who lived in fear of his armies would have considered that a compliment is another matter entirely.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Chains of Memory

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:34:47 GMT

On Memory

Memory is not an archive, however much scholars wish it were. I write because, after more than five centuries of life, I have learned that basic facts may remain while the smaller truths decay or warp: the exact turn of a phrase, the sound of a friend’s laughter, what I felt before later knowledge altered the recollection. Ink preserves the moment before memory begins adapting it.

Isha is the nearest exception to this that I have encountered. Her recall borders upon the eidetic. She can repeat conversations held ten or twenty years earlier with unsettling precision if given a name of a person she has met. She stated she can recall the words used, where each person stood, even pauses and changes in tone; she claims that each memory is linked to the face of the person. Yet her memory is, unfortunately, a gift she cannot set aside. At times, I have watched her face as some unwanted recollection surfaced without warning: her expression tightening, her eyes losing focus, the present moment briefly displaced by something only she can see. Those old voices and memories intruding upon the present, with faces, words, and feelings she would rather forget remaining as clear as those beside her now. That level of recall I would consider a true nightmare.

Esriella remembers differently. Her childhood remains bright, as do her recent years of travel with the White Wing, and nearly every detail concerning her son Valin. Other periods are strangely indistinct. She recalls little of her enslavement; whether because the memories were never firmly laid down or because some merciful part of her mind sealed them away, I know not. Matters of state fade from her almost as soon as they are resolved, leaving space for the people affected rather than the petitions themselves. Her most vivid memories, she has told me, are all linked to sights, smells, and music of our people.

I remember the past neither as Isha does nor as Esriella does. I retain patterns, arguments, and conclusions, but lose the lesser details of daily life. So I write. Not because my memory is poor, but because even a strong memory seems to choose what sort of past it wishes to preserve in our own minds.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, Magi “the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

King Levak I of Valmark, of the Royal House of K'far

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:30:34 GMT

The Biography of Levak

To most of the world, he is King Levak. To soldiers and petitioners, Your Majesty. To me, depending upon circumstance and how thoroughly he has tested my patience, he has always been Levak… or simply Lev.

I knew his parents long before I knew him. Etharon and Isoli K’far, the exiled crown prince and princess of Valmark, traveled beside Sartrel, Alren, myself, and the others of the original Company of the White Wing. For ten years we crossed the continent together, until Isoli’s pregnancy with their first child, Isobel, persuaded them to exchange the road for a quiet life in the village simply known as Shad’li. At the time, I firmly believed they had finally escaped the reach of Etharon’s younger brother, King Albric, who had stolen both his throne and the name of his city.

I was wrong.

When reports reached me that Albric had employed pale-aelvar assassins, I returned as quickly as I could. Not quickly enough. Shad’li had already been attacked, and nearly everyone I had once known there was dead. Levak and his twin brother, Kavel, survived only because they had been away from their home. I found two young men standing amid the destruction of everything they had understood their lives to be.

Yet Levak remained, somehow, bright. He was headstrong, kind, outgoing, and possessed of the curious conviction that every problem might be solved by charging directly into it. A typical human trait that I still admire. In Valmark, then known as Westgate, he proved this by deliberately provoking a riot during a slave auction and freeing as many captives as he could reach. Several were of my own people. One was Esriella, who would eventually become his wife, queen, and the one person most capable of tempering his more catastrophic human impulses.

The new Company of the White Wing gathered around us: wanderers, exiles, and wounded souls with nowhere else to go. Unfortunately, unknown to me, the bond between the brothers began to fray. Both fell in love with Esriella, though only Levak’s love was returned. When she chose him, something within Kavel appeared to break. After a bitter quarrel, he abandoned the Company, and the brother Levak had saved from Shad’li became another person he could not protect.

After a while, I told Levak the truth of his family and his claim to Valmark. I have never determined whether this was a blessing or a cruelty. He returned to Westgate almost at once, gathered supporters, and began a guerrilla war against Albric’s forces. With every village that joined him and every fighter he sent into danger, some portion of the young man I knew withdrew behind the face of a leader. Levak became colder in public, more calculating, and increasingly careful about when he permitted himself to show any feeling publicly at all. Leadership required him to order others toward deaths he would gladly have accepted in their place, and that necessity seemed to wound him more deeply than any blade.

Fortunately, Esriella remained beside him. On quiet nights, beyond the hearing of soldiers and councillors, I occasionally heard the old Levak laughing within their tent. It reassured me that the young man had not disappeared entirely. He had merely hidden himself where only she was permitted to find him.

When we finally reclaimed the city and restored its name as Valmark, the mask became harder still. Kingship demands that a person become a symbol, and symbols are rarely allowed ordinary grief. The birth of his son Valin changed him again. He grew sterner even in private, more cautious in judgment, and infinitely more afraid… not for himself, but of failing the child who would inherit both his kingdom and the consequences of all he had done to recover it.

I remained in Valmark for nearly ten years, though never continuously. There were obligations elsewhere that would not release me, however dearly I wished to stay. Each time I returned, Levak seemed older than the years should have made him, carrying his crown as though it were another wounded soldier he refused to abandon.

Perhaps that is who Levak has always been: a man forever charging ahead to save whoever stands before him, while quietly leaving pieces of himself behind with everyone he cannot.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, Magi “the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Scale of History

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 13:16:22 GMT

A Brief History of Our World

No historian should claim certainty regarding the ancient world, especially one who thinks they can know over 100,000 years of history when viewed from the present in 139,752 CC (1039 ÆC). Much of what follows is reconstructed from ruined cities, weathered inscriptions, and chronicles copied so many times that one must wonder whether the scribes or the centuries introduced more errors. Even among the aelvar, tradition has a troubling habit of becoming accepted as fact. Whenever possible, I have favored archaeology over legend. CC stands for Creation Calendar, while ÆC stands for the common Ætaine Calendar that most humans use.

All surviving evidence points to a catastrophe over 100,000 years ago unlike any other, taking place within a few centuries of 38,451 CC called "The Binding" at the time of the collapse. The civilization of the ancient A’lárians vanished, the continents were forever altered, and even the natural laws governing the world appear to have changed; some of the ancient tools that used to work no longer do in modern time. Every people traces its history or origin story to before or after this event, yet none can explain precisely what occurred.

For nearly twenty thousand years thereafter, little can be stated with confidence. The surviving peoples struggled simply to endure in a devastated world.

By approximately 58,000 CC, the pale-aelvar had established their first, and so far only, lasting kingdom far to the west on a large island chain. Of their early history I know almost nothing beyond scattered references preserved by my people, mostly from repeated raids to obtain slaves that appear to have driven the early fore bearers of the high-aelvar steadily toward the mountains and away from the coasts.

Around 70,000 CC, permanent city-states of the Saelarí, my people, emerged among the eastern and western mountain ranges, while the wood-aelvar, the Lethari, united into their first great forest realms. Their languages had by then diverged enough that the ancient tongue had become all but unknown.

The dverger seemed to recover more slowly, though they share little of their history with outsiders. Their oldest surviving records that I have accessed suggest that by approximately 85,000 CC, their great cities on the Ithkathzi island chain had become firmly established, preserving or reinventing many crafts that the rest of the world had long forgotten.

Humans present a different story altogether. According to the oldest surviving high-aelvar records, they were never absent from the continent. For untold millennia they lived as scattered tribes of hunters and herders, raiding and warring amongst themselves while struggling constantly against the varvarski, who then dominated much of the northern wilderness.

Only in 135,459 CC (3,254 BÆC) did the first enduring human kingdom arise near present-day Athenasia, across the modern day Sea of Ætaine from the dverger's Ithkathzi homeland. Agriculture spread, villages became towns, and kingdoms slowly displaced the old tribal lands, forcing the varvarski steadily back into the northern mountains.

Human history thereafter accelerated with remarkable speed. Alliances between tribes and villages became kingdoms, kingdoms became empires, and discoveries that required centuries among the aelvar often spread through humanity within a single generation. Wars were fought between my people, the wood-aelvar, and the humans over lands long forgotten about by our short-lived friends, though I know many of my people who’s grandfathers or great grandfathers fought against these early human kingdoms over important locations and trade routes.

The defining event of the modern age came in 138,701 CC (12 BÆC), when more than two hundred thousand varvarski laid siege to Ætaine. Though half the city was destroyed during six months of fighting, the allied kingdoms prevailed. In the years that followed, Ætaine united much of the known continent, and its influence became so profound that its founding calendar, beginning in 138,713 CC (0 ÆC), remains the standard reckoning used by nearly every civilized nation. During the height of this short-lived - well… for us aelvar - empire, many smaller high and wood-aelvar settlements were abandoned to the humans, with the wood-aelvar traveling deeper into their forests and many of my people moving to our island home of Masithia.

The eventual decline of the Ætaine Empire reshaped the continent once again. Successor kingdoms emerged across its former territories, among them the ancestors of the modern Drak’nir Empire, whose ambitions continue to threaten its neighbors, despite its seven centuries of existence.

The Kingdom of Valmark, in its present form, is comparatively young, having only been resettled some four centuries ago atop an older city destroyed in the human wars following the Ætaine Empire’s collapse. By the standards of the aelvar races, it has scarcely reached adulthood, or one lifespan of a dverg. Yet history repeatedly reminds us that the age of a nation and the significance of its people are rarely measured by the same scale.

Should future scholars prove portions of this chronology incorrect, I shall count that not as failure, but as progress. History advances one recovered piece of knowledge at a time.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, Magi “the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Welcome to the site

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:34:57 GMT

Welcome to the official home of The Assassin Priestess.

This site is still taking shape, but the world is already here. You'll find character profiles, district information, and Magi's own research notes on the history, magic, and races that shape this story.

There are a couple of extras up too: the full Prelude, and a standalone short story set in Isha's past, long before the events of the novel.

More is on the way, including regular updates on the novel itself. Thanks for stopping by.

- KL Miller

Seven Days

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:10:03 GMT

I had worked a forge for seven hundred and thirty-two years when a nightmare entered my workshop.

At age seven hundred and eighty, I had earned the right to shorten my days. I no longer opened before the first Temple bell. I left the heavy striking to my apprentices when the work did not require my own hand, and I accepted only the commissions that interested me or brought sufficient honor to my family.

Retirement was still nineteen years away.

I had selected my successor. My eldest daughter, and apprentice, had served me for two hundred and sixty-three years and could produce a soldier’s blade with no flaw that an officer would notice. In another twenty years, she might produce one with no flaw that I would notice. My family would retain the workshop, my name would remain stamped beneath its mark, and I would spend my final two centuries advising rather than working.

That was the order of things as laid out by the Goddess of Darkness.

I had earned respect. Members of the Twelve High Clans sent their stewards to my door. Officers waited years for my work. I had forged the ceremonial blade carried by the youngest son of the new Hivran High Family when he was declared an adult. I had repaired a spear belonging to one of the Night Sovreign’s personal guards. Three times in my life, I had been granted the honor to work aeteri steel.

No one hurried me.

But my peace was shattered when a child entered.

I saw her through the heat above the central forge. She passed beneath the black stone arch without announcing herself and stopped just inside the workshop.

My youngest apprentice moved toward her. “Orders are received at the front chamber,” he said, lacking the respect I would have preferred.

The child looked at him.

The apprentice froze.

It was not her appearance that warned him. She wore a plain black robe fitted closely enough that it could not catch against a weapon. The sleeves ended above her wrists. Her hair, like all of our people, was silver-white and bound behind her head. Her face was smooth and young. She could not have been more than forty-five.

She was still a child, not yet old enough to celebrate the First Declaration that marked a Child of the Night’s passage into adolescence. A right I had undergone with my family at sixty.

My apprentice bowed so quickly that his forehead almost struck the floor. I almost failed to notice the dark stain spreading from his trousers and pooling between his legs.

That is when I saw it myself. She wore the black sun emblem of Morren Clan at her throat.

“Forgive me, Pr-priestess,” my apprentice stammered.

She gave no indication that she had heard him.

My mouth went dry, and I had to lock my knees to keep from stepping back from the young Morren girl standing in my shop.

She ignored us as her eyes moved across the workshop.

They passed over the three coal furnaces, the stone quenching troughs, the racks of tools, the unfinished weapons, and the six people who served under me. Two apprentices were our people, the Children of the Night. The others were thralls assigned to the workshop by my family’s estate overseer. She looked at each of them once.

The human thralls quickly prostrated themselves on the floor.

I lowered my eyes.

Commoners like me often claimed that they could recognize a Morren before seeing the clan mark. They spoke of unnatural silence, their perfect composure, or some change in the air around their clan. Most of those stories were nonsense told by people who wanted to appear observant.

They were all fools. The Morren Clan were the Night Sovreign’s enforcers against heresy. They watched the Twelve High Clans, carried out sanctioned executions, and granted the Goddess’ Mercy to those judged dangerous to the Empire’s order.

A hammer remained raised over a bar of heated iron. The apprentice holding it did not lower his arm until I ordered him to do so.

“Put it down, Yvalla,” I said.

The sound of the hammer touching the anvil rang out too loud in the silence workshop. The thralls tried to sink further into the ground.

The girl turned her silver eyes toward me.

I had been considered large from the date of my Second Declartion of my adulthood. My shoulders had broadened during my first century of work, and over seven centuries at the forge had given me more muscle than most soldiers retained outside active service. My hands were marked by burns. My right forearm was thicker than the girl’s waist.

None of that mattered. I knew instantly I would stand no chance against her daggers or her priestly magic.

I removed my leather apron, set it on the bench, and bowed. “Welcome to my forge, Priestess. I am its master, Asyr’Seyvyl Ys’Yuvel. How may I serve the Morren?”

I heard her approach as I kept my eyes locked onto the stone floor.

Her steps were short because her legs were short. She did not hurry. She stopped an arm’s length from me and raised her face to look in my eyes.

I had expected a child’s softness despite the emblem. There was none. Her expression held no pride, impatience, uncertainty, or curiosity. Children assigned to the Dark Lady’s Temple service often imitated the discipline of their instructors, but small betrayals remained. They glanced toward the fire. They stared at the weapons. They shifted when adults studied them.

This one looked only at me. Those dead eyes told me she had already given the Dark Lady’s Mercy to many.

“I am Aysr’Isha Kol’Morren,” she said. “Nightfang of Darkness.”

The hammer slipped from my apprentice’s hand and landed on the packed floor behind me.

No one moved to retrieve it.

This child, no, this priestess, was a Nightfang.

And she was one of the zealots of the Kol family.

I had heard the title during ceremonies and imperial announcements. Most citizens knew what it meant, although we were not expected to discuss the details. A Nightfang was not merely a priestess who killed. The Morren had many of those: the Veilshadows. Nightfangs were sent when a death carried significance. Heretics. Traitors. Clan rulers. Supposed prophets. Foreign commanders. Those who believed walls, guards, or secrecy could preserve them.

As for the Kols, they did not simply worship the Goddess. They devoted every breath, every prayer, and every killing to Her service. If the Dal’Morrens sold death, the Kol’Morrens worshiped it.

I focused on the small face in front of me.

Forty-two, perhaps. No more.

Someone within the Kol’Morren family had declared her old enough. No authority in the Empire would question that declaration.

I bowed more deeply.

“Your presence honors this workshop, Nightfang.”

“It does not.” Her voice was quiet, holding in it no emotion whatsoever. Fortunately, she did not sound offended.

I remained bent until she spoke again.

“I require a weapon.”

I straightened.

“Of course, Nightfang Isha.”

She removed a narrow black cord from around her waist. Several keys hung from it. She selected one and placed it on my workbench.

“Bring the chest.” Her tone was soft, barely loud enough for me to hear over the din of the outside street.

For a moment, I thought she was addressing me.

Then two figures entered from the street.

They were adult Morren, both dressed in black beneath dark traveling cloaks. One carried the forward handles of a small ironbound chest, the other the rear. Neither had entered with her. They must have waited outside while she examined us alone.

They placed the chest beside the key.

The bench creaked beneath its weight.

One of them looked at me.

“You will dismiss everyone.”

I nodded. I felt bile rise in my throat.

“All of you, out!”

My eldest apprentice hesitated. “Master, the furnace—”

“Bank it and leave.”

She obeyed.

The apprentices covered the heated pieces, reduced the bellows, and hurried into the rear courtyard, all shaking in fear. The thralls followed without being told twice. I watched until the last had passed through the door.

The two adult Morren remained.

Nightfang Isha picked up the key and handed it to me.

“Open it.”

The lock was finely made. I turned the key once and lifted the lid.

There were three wrapped bundles inside.

I knew what they contained before I touched them.

The chest itself had told me. The way the two Morren had carried it with reverence had told me. Most of all, the fact that they had brought it to me had told me.

I unwrapped the first bundle.

The metal beneath it was dark blue, almost black where the forge light did not strike directly. It had not yet been shaped into a proper ingot. The surface was uneven and marked with pale mineral lines. There was enough for a long blade.

Aeteri steel.

I had seen nobles kneel in mud over smaller quantities, begging the High Families’ to intercede on their behalf to obtain some from the Temple.

The second bundle held refined silver, charcoal made from a wood I did not recognize, and several sealed containers bearing priestly marks. The third held pale leather, black wire, and a length of white material that I first mistook for bone.

I looked closer.

A grip core. Carved and prepared.

I did not ask what living being it had come from. Priests always collected their own materials apart from the metal itself.

“You will forge a bastard sword,” Isha said.

I kept my eyes upon the contents of the chest.

“A bastard sword.”

“Yes.”

“For you?” I was confused. A bastard sword was a long blade with a two-handed grip. Much too large for a girl of her size.

Her flat stare gave me my answer.

The question had escaped my lips before judgment could stop it. I lowered my head.

“Forgive me, Nightfang. I ask only so that the weapon may be properly balanced.”

“It is for me.”

I considered her height and reach. The top of her head barely reached the lower portion of my chest. A properly proportioned bastard sword would be practically impossible for her to draw at her age and stature. Its weight would pull against her shoulders. Even with aeteri steel, which could be worked thinner than ordinary steel without losing strength, the length would create problems.

I knew weapons.

I had spent more years correcting the requests of arrogant army officers than this child had been alive. A customer asked for what they imagined. A smith gave them what their body could use.

The wise answer would have been to agree.

“Nightfang,” I said carefully, “a blade of that length may not serve you as well as two shorter swords.” I was apparently not old enough to possess wisdom, or the habit of self-preservation, and could not keep my mouth shut.

One of the adults behind her shifted.

I continued before fear stopped me.

“Two blades would allow you to use the material efficiently. Their length could be fitted to your current reach, with sufficient additional weight in the pommels to preserve their use as you grow. I could forge matched short swords now and alter their grips later.”

Isha said nothing.

“The balance of a bastard sword—”

“Look at me.” Her voice had an edge to it.

I complied immediately, barely controlling the shiver up my spine.

Her eyes were metallic silver, like all of our people’s, but hers looked as if they would swallow me in.

Our eyes often reflected the light, but hers seemed fixed and hard. Her face remained calm. There was no tightening around her mouth. No anger. No childish resentment at being questioned.

I would have preferred anger. I would have preferred any emotion at this point. If not for her eyes, she would look like a standing doll.

“I did not request two short swords, Child of the Night,” she said.

“No, Nightfang Isha.” I felt my throat tighten.

“I requested a bastard sword.”

“Yes, Nightfang.”

“You have been selected because you are said to understand the crafting of aeteri steel.”

“I do,” I replied after hesitating. It took a moment for me to find my voice.

“Then you will forge the weapon I have ordered.”

My mouth had gone dry.

“I intended no disrespect.”

“I know what you intended.”

That frightened me more than an accusation would have.

She took one step closer.

“You believe my body is insufficient for the blade. You believe my age permits you to correct me. You believe your knowledge of weapons grants you authority within your forge.”

Each statement was accurate.

I could hear the low movement of the furnace behind us. No one in the courtyard spoke.

“You are permitted knowledge,” she continued. “You are permitted skill. You are permitted pride in the service those things provide. You are not permitted to mistake them for authority.”

I bowed.

“Of course, Nightfang.”

“You will forge a bastard sword. The blade will be long enough for the body I shall possess, but balanced for the body I possess now. It will be usable with one hand or two. The edge will hold aether evenly from guard to point. The weapon will not resist a sudden increase in the amount directed through it.”

That last requirement made me raise my eyes.

Aeteri steel did not merely carry aether. It responded to it. Poorly worked aeteri steel could develop dead portions where the energy moved unevenly. Too much aether could heat a flawed blade, break its internal structure, or send the force back into the wielder’s hand.

I had once seen another Nightfang lose three fingers because a lesser smith had folded the metal incorrectly.

“What quantity of aether?” I asked.

“More than you believe the blade should endure.”

One of the adult Morren watched me closely. I could feel his murderous glare.

I nodded.

“I will allow for the highest concentration the material can survive.”

“No.”

I froze.

“You will allow for the highest concentration I can survive.”

I did not know how much that was. She knew I did not know. “How am I to determine that, Nightfang?”

She placed her right hand over the raw metal.

The metal shimmered as if it had come straight from the forge.

I felt pressure behind my eyes, then pain along old burns that had healed centuries earlier. The dark metal under her palm began to give off a low hum.

I stepped back.

The workbench trembled.

The iron tools hanging above it struck against the wall. The lid of the chest shifted. One of the sealed containers cracked down its center.

The two adult Morren did not react.

As Isha removed her hand, the sound ended.

A faint shimmer remained within the lines of the aeteri steel for no more than a second, then disappeared.

I noticed blood dripping from her nose, mouth, and ears down her white skin. Her breathing had not changed, nor had she flinched in pain, despite the knowledge that using aether caused pain to the user. Other than the blood, you would not even have realizes that she used her magic.

I looked at the raw material, then at her hand.

“At least that much,” she said.

I understood then why she had been declared a Nightfang. It was not because the Morren had ignored her age. It was because her age had ceased to matter due to her skill with blade and magic.

“I will ensure it,” I said.

“Good.” She took an offered rag from one of the other Morren in the room and wiped the blood from her face and neck.

I waited for her to finish before asking, “When do you require it?”

“In seven days.”

I thought I had misheard her.

Aeteri steel could not be hurried. It needed controlled heat, repeated folding, careful cooling, and periods of rest between stages. The sacred metal punished imprecision. A single inclusion could ruin the entire billet. A week was enough to prepare the metal for shaping, perhaps enough to begin drawing out the blade if I worked without interruption.

It was not enough to make my best weapon.

“You said I was selected for my understanding,” I said.

“Yes.”

“A weapon worthy of this material requires time.”

“You have seven days. That is all you will need with your skill and knowledge.”

I looked toward the furnace.

“To complete the blade, guard, grip, pommel, sharpening, testing, and aetheric examination?”

“Yes.”

I stood frozen, knowing to defy her courted death, but I pressed on, “Nightfang, that is not possible.”

She tilted her head slightly.

It was the first movement that reminded me of her age.

“Do you refuse?”

“I could never refuse you, Nightfang.”

The answer came at once. “Then it is possible.”

I felt heat against the side of my face, though I had moved away from the furnace.

“My apprentices will need to assist.”

“They may assist with ordinary preparation. They will not touch the aeteri steel.”

“That will make the work slower.”

“You will work more quickly.”

I had not slept properly for several nights after my first commission in aeteri steel. That blade had taken four months. The second had taken three. The third, completed when I was at the height of my strength, had required six weeks.

“You ask for my best weapon,” I whispered.

“I do.”

“But you give me seven days, Nightfang.”

“Yes.” There was nothing else in her answer. No threat. No explanation. No concern for the contradiction.

I examined the metal again. There was enough, but little excess. If the first welding failed, I could not begin again. If I overheated it, I would destroy material that belonged to the Morren. If the blade carried her aether unevenly, it might break in her hand.

The Morren did not forgive damaged sacred metal. I knew this one would surely not.

The Empire functioned because each person fulfilled the duty assigned to them. The Saelith supervised grain production and distribution. The Nemeran administered law. The Hivran preserved what was lawful to remember. The Temple instructed us in endurance and our Goddess’ Mercy. The Morren, the assassin-priests of the Temple, removed those who threatened the order of our society.

I had believed this all my life. I still believed it.

A citizen who performed his duty had no reason to fear.

That was what I taught my children.

The difficulty was knowing whether the Morren believed you had performed it.

“What form do you require?” I asked.

She reached into her robe and removed a folded sheet.

The drawing was precise. It showed a straight double-edged blade, long grip, modest crossguard, and a narrow ridge beginning near the guard, giving the blade a diamond profile. The proportions were those of a bastard sword made for a grown Child of the Night, but the guard and grip included a second set of balance measurements.

She had already accounted for her size.

I studied the figures.

The pommel would have to be replaced as she grew. The grip could be lengthened without remaking the tang if I followed the design exactly. Until then, the heavier pommel would draw the balance back far enough for her short reach.

My original objection had been correct.

It had also been unnecessary.

“You designed this?” I asked hesitantly.

“My Father provided the required dimensions. I corrected the balance.”

I looked at her again.

“You understand weapon construction?”

“I understand the weapon I desire.”

That was not the same thing, but I did not say so. Near the bottom of the page, a line of Kol doctrine had been written in formal script.

‘Mercy must not hesitate.’

Beneath it was the personal symbol of the Nightfang.

“What edge geometry?” I asked.

“Thin enough to part ordinary steel under aether. Strong enough to strike stone without chipping.”

“That requires opposing qualities, Nightfang.”

“The material permits them.”

“Within limits.”

“Then find the limits, Child of the Night.”

I swallowed.

“Yes, Nightfang.”

“The blade will have no ornament beyond the marks required by Morren. The grip will be pale. The guard and pommel will be dark. You will place your maker’s mark beneath the guard.”

That surprised me. Weapons produced for the Temple’s use often bore no commoner’s name. The family or order received honor for the work.

“My mark?”

“You will be responsible for it.”

The honor disappeared. If the sword served her well, few would ever see my mark. If it failed, the Morren would know exactly whom to find.

“I u-understand.”

She turned toward the door.

The two adult Morren lifted the empty chest away from the materials, leaving everything arranged across my bench.

I should have remained silent.

Instead, I asked, “When should I expect an aetheric examiner?”

She stopped. She slightly turned her head, and her profile reminded me of when my daughter was young.

“At the end of the seventh day, I will return and test it.”

My stomach tightened as I felt the bile rise back into my throat. A proper examiner increased the flow gradually, checking for uneven conduction. A weapon could be corrected before final sharpening if a weakness was found.

She intended to test it herself.

“With the force you demonstrated?”

“With what is required.”

“And if it fails?”

She looked over her shoulder. Her face remained impassive, seemingly devoid of all life’s joys and ills.

“Then it was not your best weapon.”

She resumed her walk toward the entrance.

I bowed and kept my head lowered as she passed. The two adults followed her. No one spoke until their steps had faded into the street.

Even then, I waited.

I counted fifty breaths.

My legs began to hurt before I straightened.

The workshop was unchanged. The furnaces still burned. The tools remained in their proper places. Light entered through the high vents. Voices and carts continued beyond the walls. Assyrial had not noticed that Nightfang Aysr’Isha Kol’Morren had entered my life and left it again.

I released the breath I had been holding.

From the rear courtyard, my eldest apprentice called, “Master?”

“Remain there,” I yelled back. I placed both hands on the workbench and suddenly realized they were shaking.

I had faced furnace bursts. I had held a broken support while my apprentices escaped a collapsing workshop. I had stood before ruling-family stewards and told them their chosen designs were foolish. At six hundred and twelve, I had killed a thief who entered my home.

A child had just frightened me more than any of them.

No.

Not a child.

The Morren had declared otherwise.

I looked at the aeteri steel. The metal remained dark, seemingly drinking in the light of the room, but I remembered the shimmer surrounding it and the sound it had made beneath her hand.

Seven days.

I began calculating heat, time, and labor. The first preparation would take the rest of the day. The initial weld had to be completed before the next temple bell. I could sleep while the billet cooled, though no more than two hours. My eldest apprentice could prepare the grip materials. The others could maintain the furnaces, bring food, and ensure that no customer entered.

I would need to work every hour my hands remained steady.

My retirement no longer seemed close.

If I succeeded, a Nightfang would carry my blade. It might serve her for centuries. It might cut armor, stone, and the bodies of those the Morren judged deserving of the Goddess’ Mercy. Generations of smiths might study it after my death.

If I failed, my family could lose the workshop.

I could lose my name.

The Temple might decide that wasting sacred metal required more than execution. A public sacrifice would remind other artisans that age, reputation, and service did not excuse failure.

I closed my eyes to steady my hands and my thoughts.

The Goddess of Darkness granted each of us a place.

The wise remained within it.

I opened my eyes and reached for my tongs.

“Bank the lesser furnaces,” I called. “Clear every commission from the schedule. No one enters this room without my permission.”

My apprentices returned slowly.

They stared at the material on the bench.

“Is that—” the youngest began.

“Do not name it, fool!” I shouted.

He closed his mouth. He had made a fool of himself twice in one day.

My eldest apprentice, my daughter, looked toward the doorway through which the Nightfang had departed.

“How long have we been given, Master?”

I lifted the raw aeteri steel with both hands.

“Not even one Lesser Turn. Seven days.”

Prelude: Esriella I, “The Storm and the Light”

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 22:10:02 GMT

20th day of Redfall, in the Second Little-Moon’s Turn, year 1021 ÆC (Ætaine Calendar)

19 years ago

We had fought for years to achieve justice for the wrongs committed against us, and today it was finally close at hand. The stained-glass windows cracked beneath our boots, their shards glinting like gemstones in the Palace of Westgate.

No, not Westgate. Valmark.

Crimson, sapphire, and emerald glass spilled across the smooth marble floor. They were once beautiful, but now the remaining decorations were grotesque in their excess, a mockery of how a ruler should act. Looking through the visor of my sallet, the whole castle was gaudy, drowning in gold leaf and the over-embellished pride of its false, disgusting king. Every inch of it screamed opulence built on the backs of the suffering citizens and the illegal slave trade.

I had been one such slave in this city, about to be sold like cattle in the market’s auctions once again only a few years ago. I still had the scar on my face to show for it, despite my skill with healing magic.

And now, this decadent palace was burning around me.

Smoke drifted about from small fires, barely masking the smell of iron from the blood of the dead and dying. The taste of it touched the back of my tongue. An old memory flashed, my pulse quickening in fear. I pushed though it, my trained hand steadying me as I gripped my shield.

Breathe, Esri.

Screams echoed between marble pillars carved with the smug face of the usurper-king, my husband’s uncle. And in the thick of it all, I followed a storm of steel.

Isha.

She did not wear a helmet. She never did, though she had refused to say why. Her hood had long since fallen away, exposing her striking, pale-aelvar features. Her shoulder length silver-white hair flapped behind her like waves of silver thread between her long, pointed ears, catching the rays of the sun through the shattered glass. Her skin, white as snow and pale as moonlight like our two moons, seemed almost to glow beneath the blood splatter and dust. Her metallic-silver eyes that caught the fires’ light looked cold and emotionless as she went about her work.

The sight of a pale-aelv terrified and demoralized our enemy even before she crossed blades with them, with her skill with her dark-blue steel sword intensifying the effect tenfold.

Her bastard sword slashed and stabbed with every motion, a blur of steel and blood. Her movements were like that of a dance, flowing together, in constant motion. She was beautiful in many ways, so unlike my own perception of myself, despite my husband’s protestations.

Isha was elegant, merciless, and practiced beyond anything I had seen in my years growing up in a remote high-aelvar mountain village, studying to be a Priestess of the Goddess of Light. She was more deadly than the vile human slavers from this city who raided my home. More focused than Isha’s usual shy, reserved self, witnessed during my time traveling with her in my husband’s adventuring company.

In the four years I’ve known her, she had never moved so gracefully, yet lethally.

She wore a yellow, blood-stained knee-length gambeson under a short chainmail tunic made from the same, unknown metal as her sword. Her arms, flashing quicker than sight could follow, all the while cutting down our enemies, ended in articulated plate gauntlets and metal vambraces that were soaked in enough blood to hide the polished steel. A dancer made of blades. Twice as swift in movements than even the most skilled swordsman I had ever witnessed, the usurper’s ‘elite’ royal guard were no match for her. Her high leather boots carried her in a blur from one foe to the next without fumbling over the spilled blood and debris, each already disheartened from facing one from a race so steeped in vile, evil deeds and rumors.

Her movements were beautifully mesmerizing.

And they were wholly terrifying.

Isha cut down another guardsman with her sword, the blade almost shimmering, using both hands, his body severed cleanly in half with one fluid movement. That should not be possible.

Do not freeze. Keep moving.

I knew of no one who could match her with the blade, not even the supremely skilled swordmage Magi, another of our group who was off seizing the palace’s barracks with his own strike force. She also rivaled some of the greatest priests and mages I’ve encountered with her precise manipulation of aether and the raw strength and regeneration of her magic. Light preserve her… and preserve us.

As I followed, the flow of aether changed around her as a blast of wind burst from her left palm at point-blank range, sending a cluster of guards crashing into the mosaic walls. I heard the sickening crack as their bones shattered from the impact.

They did not rise again.

I felt the back blast as the concussive force rippled throughout the corridor, waves of invisible pressure washing over us all. My breath stuttered and steadied. Inhale for four, hold, exhale. By your Light, I thought, my teeth clenched.

Isha stumbled slightly from the exertion and pain, almost dropping to a knee. Her breath caught, chest heaving once before she forced herself upright again. The physical cost of using one’s aether by a priest or priestess was physical, unlike mages who felt no repercussions until they drained their foci dry of ‘vharin’ and just died. But manipulating aether was never free to us. And Isha was using powerful magic, so the cost was greater.

“One thousand six hundred twenty-one,” she whispered.

I heard her clearly, despite Isha’s soft, melodic accent. Even amidst the chaos of battle. It snagged on something raw inside me, and it caused me to slip and stumble on the blood of a downed royal guard, her words so stark against the din.

Regaining my balance, a lance of ice shot from her palm. One royal guard, frozen in place with terror, eyes wide, screamed before the ice ripped through his plate armor and pierced his heart, dropping him to the ground in a bloody heap.

Her arm trembled as I sensed the aether leaving her soul. The cold clung to her skin longer than it should have, her warm, blood-soaked gauntlet steaming with the aftermath of removing the heat from the air-gathered water.

“One thousand six hundred twenty-two.”

I heard Levak yell, interrupting my thoughts, voice muffled from inside his helmet. “Esriella, up!”

My pulse pounded as I glanced up briefly at his call to me. My round shield rose instinctively as arrows prepared to rain down from a balcony above. I called upon the Goddess of Light, drawing breath through my teeth.

I visualized it instantly. Compress the air. Spiral the pressure inward, hold just so… not too tightly or it collapses… then release!

The aether burned through me like a torch held against the body’s nerves, flowing from my heart where the soul resides through the pathways in my body. As I completed the thought, I raised my hand and swept it outward, coalescing the wind into a solid wall just above our heads. It erupted outward and seemed to solidify in a concussive burst, a wide-angle blast, that knocked the arrows away, shattering some, but sending a flutter of feathers, clattering shafts, and metal arrowheads to the blood-soaked marble floor. No arrow reached us.

It worked.

But gods, that hurt!

A sharp spike of pain bloomed behind my eyes and in my chest. My fingers tingled with the strain of rapidly shaping aether and manipulating the world’s base elements. Hold fast. Goddess of Light, let me stand.

Levak, my husband, suddenly charged forward, covered head to toe in his plate armor, wielding his family’s sword, the ancestral arming sword of this kingdom, and his own battered shield as my barrier above still pushed outward for a moment longer, shouting his father’s name, Etharon, like a curse to those who opposed us. Our archers returned fire as my barrier dissipated with a loud pop, taking out our would-be ambushers.

Instead of following, my eyes were drawn back to her.

Isha cut down another royal guard, separating his head from his shoulders with a spray of blood as her dark-blue bastard sword tore through his mail coif like it was paper, followed immediately by lifting her left hand to the group of shield-bearing royal guardsman impeding our advance, frost already gathering at her fingertips. A lance of ice the size of a dagger bloomed, laced with silver light, and tore through the shield wall. Three men dropped as her powerful spell ripped through each rank of guardsman in turn, piercing their shields and imbedding itself into the wall behind them, cracking the stone.

Our soldiers charged in during the confusion and cut the rest down in the enemy’s panic.

The recoil from her magic rocked her back slightly. She looked like she would collapse. Even I could not use magic so quickly and freely, and more aether clung to my soul than any priest or priestess I knew of, including her.

She paused, breathing heavily, eyes narrowed in pain. But only for a second. A drop of red blood streamed down from her nose to her lips across her pure white skin. She had sustained no visible wound. Magic depletion? Or simply the weight she insists on carrying alone?

“One thousand six hundred twenty-six.”

Before I could say anything, she was already in motion again, striking an enemy captain across his plated chest with the flat of her blade, knocking him off-balance before kicking him into a pillar. He hit with a clang, sliding down to the floor. She did not even glance back at him as she moved onward.

One of Levak’s soldiers stabbed the man with a spear through his helmet’s visor with a spray of red ichor, violently ending that man’s support of the usurper.

The bodies were everywhere now as our small force of rebels pushed forward, Isha still in the lead. The few remaining nobles who took up arms to protect the usurper king, the mercenaries bought with the people’s taxes and the sale and smuggling of illegal slaves and goods, the palace servants conscripted in the last hour and handed nought but a spear all fell the same. Beautiful or pitiful, strong or weak, it did not seem to matter. Not to Isha. Not to her and her dark-blue sword, coated with their crimson blood. She fought more ferociously than a possession demon.

But those people mattered to me. Most were likely just following the orders of their vile king. Our Goddess, mine and Isha’s, taught that all life was sacred. And still, I remember the auction block. Some obey because they fear the whip.

Isha was acting nothing like the stoic, reserved, and kind-hearted pale-aelv that was normally so unlike the norm of her vile kin. Nothing like the person I had come to trust with my life.

She whispered to herself again, her voice impossibly loud in my ears through my helmet. "A little longer is all I must push." Then she glanced back.

Just a flick of her eyes. No words. But in that instant, I saw it. The deep sadness. The crack beneath the mask she always wore. The gap in the front she put up when called vile and despicable names solely based on her pale-aelv race.

She was not killing for joy, honor, or devotion. It was tormented resignation.

It was as if she were punishing herself with every slash or thrust of her sword. As if each death was a burden too heavy for her to carry. Don’t drown, Isha. Don’t drown where we can’t reach you, I silently implored as I focused forward.

The final doors loomed before us. Twice the height of a man, painted with a self-aggrandizing mural of King Albric cradling the sun itself.

Blasphemous bastard! I thought, jaw tight, pushing away the old tremor that sometimes came when men in power smiled as if they owned everything under the Light. I thought of my Goddess, the Maiden of Light, distracting myself from my thoughts on Isha.

But Isha did not slow.

She lifted her hand and took a breath.

Wind again. This time compressed into a razor-thin wedge. The impact was louder than thunder as the pressure exploded outward, snapping hinges and cracking the surrounding marble as the massive doors shattered and slammed inward. Two soldiers on the other side of the door were ripped to pieces as her spell tore the door apart and continued into the room.

She staggered as the spell discharged. More of her precious lifeblood dripped from her ear, the corner of her mouth, from the edges of her eyes. She was killing herself, burning through her own soul to use her aether. Past her limit.

For me and Levak.

Why? Because you think the Light demands more of you than it asks of anyone else? Because do you still not believe you deserve to live?

Her steps slowed for half a beat, her gauntleted hand tightened into a fist. That last spell had taken something from her. Her breathing was shallow. She somehow, impossibly, looked paler than her white skin should allow. Her jaw was clenched.

But she did not stop.

Without hesitation, she darted forward and led us into the heart of corruption.

The throne room was a shrine to vanity. Lapis floors, gilded arches, curtains of crimson velvet, tapestries depicting false events during the reign of the usurper. Nothing was shown about his illegal selling and smuggling of slaves that went against the Treaty of the East. He advertised nothing about his usurping and murdering the previous king, Levak’s grandfather, in his bedchamber. Nor forcing Levak’s mother and father into exile. And there was nothing about him hiring pale-aelv assassins to finish off his exiled brother and his family some five years ago.

At the far end, on a marble dais, the vile king waited in robes lined with gold thread and adorned with precious gems. His look was one of outrage, tinged with a dash of fear. Behind him, stained glass depicted his false, embellished rise to power, with children and peasants kneeling at his feet, nobles bowing in supplication. I caught my reflection in that glass, my scar, my visor up, no longer someone’s property. Not anymore. I felt my blood boil.

And from beside me, Levak stalked forward past Isha, ripping off his helmet and removing his mail coif, tossing them to the floor. He clearly wanted his uncle to see the face of his judge.

Levak’s short, white hair belied his young age. His face was set with determination, so unusual on a human so young. Some magical curse had changed his hair from the same shade of blonde as the usurper during the assassination attempt on his family. The attempt that succeeded in murdering his mother, father, and his first fiancé.

His cold, emotionless grey eyes looked like they belonged to a predator stalking his prey. Or maybe they were like those of a judge passing sentence on a convicted murderer.

Either could fit in this moment.

The defenders, still outnumbering us, but clearly terrified of our small ragtag band of rebels and peasants with clubs, parted for him. I followed their gazes.

To Isha.

Or… they are terrified of her, I corrected myself, seeing the destination of their gazes. Having a pale-aelv on our side clearly devastated our enemy’s morale. Regardless of if she acts like those of her race.

Levak continued to stalk forward, his sword readied, slick with the blood of those who died defending this garbage of a human. His shield was lowered.

King Albric stood contemptuously, looking directly at me. “So, the rumors are true. You’ve debased yourself by bringing in a half-breed-sky-hair aelv into the royal line?” He turned to my husband, taking a small step back when his eyes locked onto him. “You would kill your own blood, nephew?” He was clearly frightened now.

Levak did not respond.

He crossed the room in slow, measured steps. None of the remaining king’s guards dared to impede his progress as he mounted the raised platform where the king stood alone. Levak lifted his blade.

And drove it through the king’s chest.

Albric’s final breath was a wet gasp as he slumped back over the throne.

Dead.

Just like that.

No grand speeches. No trial. No glory. No honorable duel.

Just justice.

Justice, like the balanced scale emblazoned on Levak’s bloody and battered shield. The balanced scale, a visible symbol of his oath to his own god, the God of Justice, to right the wrongs done to his mother and father. To his first love. And for me, his wife.

God of Justice, witness. Goddess of Light, forgive. Let this end help more than it harms.

Our eyes locked for a moment and I saw relief in his grey orbs. A softness that he only directed at me. There were no words needed in that moment. I knew my past pain and torment could begin healing, just as his would, in time.

The room was silent, save for the crackle of distant fires, even the wounded and dying seemed to be holding their breath. I unbuckled the chinstrap of my sallet and removed it, shaking my long, light-blue hair free. Sky-hair indeed. I almost laughed. Though being called a half-breed instead of half-aelv or half-high-aelv did not hurt very much anymore.

Then Isha spoke again, in a whisper. “One thousand six hundred twenty-eight."

She paused. Her sword finally lowered, covered in crimson, its dark blue hue completely invisible under the layer of blood as it dripped down to the lapis floor. Her short, beautiful silver-white hair was matted with blood and frost, steam rising from her as the unintentional frost from her spells evaporated in the summer heat. Her gauntlets were slick with the lives she had taken today.

Her breath trembled, unevenly.

She took a step, wavering from the fatigue and pain I knew her to be feeling from her reckless use of magic. Even my head still hurt slightly from the little aether I had used in this fight, and she had used hers freely. She was so out of it that she absentmindedly sheathed her bloody sword in her sheath on her left hip without cleaning the blood off it. Something she would never do, always harping on equipment maintenance when interacting with our companion, the ancient dverg Shouglin, who seemed to never care about maintaining his.

Her gaze was far away, like she had left her body and was only dimly aware of what remained. I know that distance. I lived in it, once.

I turned toward her fully, slowly, unsure whether to reach out, and ended up stuck with my hand halfway to her, halfway from pulling away from her. She had truly frightened me today, more-so than in any previous battle or fight I had been in. I had never witnessed anyone move like her.

“Isha,” I said, finally, calling out to her.

She blinked. Her metallic-silver eyes, eyes I once thought were the mark of a race of butchers and murderers, looked down at her gauntleted hands, confused. She opened and closed them as if she did not understand why they were covered in crimson.

“Goddess of Light, I counted them,” she whispered with her distinctive soft, melodic accent, calling out to our shared god, for she was a Priestess of Light like me. “I forced myself to mark each one, my Lady, for I shall never let them be forgotten.” She still seemed to be somewhere else, as she had slipped into the archaic speech patterns she sometimes used when tired or stressed. She was older than me by two centuries at least, just as I was older than my husband by over half a century.

I did not quite understand her meaning, nor did I know what to say in response to her statement to our Goddess.

My magic had kept us alive. My sword had cut a few die-hard loyalists down. But she had led the charge and carved a bloody and terrifying path from the noble district, through the palace wall’s outer gates into the palace and its corridors, and finally into the throne room with her terrifying, blue-hued bastard sword and her wild, and overwhelming, use of strong magic. Without her, we would have needed to significantly divert efforts and resources from other key locations in the city to achieve our goal to liberate Valmark and overthrow the usurper. And many more of our soldiers would have perished.

Each spell she cast, each swing of her sword, was a toll she paid silently. Just like all of us did.

This was a world beset by violence.

And no matter how light and quick her step, the weight of all that death looked to be crushing her.

“Isha… are you okay? I do not understand what you are saying.” I paused. “What are you counting and what do you not want to forget?” I asked gently, trying to get her to elaborate so I could understand her meaning.

She looked up at me. It was as if she were seeing me for the first time.

Her silver eyes shimmered, slow tears beginning to mix with the blood that had fallen from her eyes due to her overuse of aether. Not tears of triumph or relief at the battle won.

But tears of obvious grief.

As if she had done something horribly, unbelievably wrong. Please, Isha. I know. I know that pain. It fades, but slowly.

“If I do not mark those I felled, then who will remember their deaths?” she finally whispered to me.

I froze.

She had been counting those she had killed. Why didn’t I realize it? It was obvious that was what she was doing.

But the numbers she spoke were impossibly off. That is why it did not register. It was orders of magnitude more than the two to three dozen lives she likely claimed in this justified revolt. After a moment, I shuddered, realization finally dawning on me.

By the Light! Has she really killed over sixteen hundred people? How is that even possible? Is she some type of monster?

I looked closely at her, forcing myself to not take a step back from her due to the unease bubbling up inside me at her ludicrous claim. Her tears finally began to flow freely, but I could not bring myself to say anything. Tears from a tortured, broken soul so unlike the person I had grown to know over the years, hiding it from the world. They continued to mix with the blood on her face as she turned from me and tried to compose herself. She ended up smearing more blood across her face from her gauntlets.

Oh, gods! Goddess of Light, forgive me for doubting my friend, I prayed silently, knowing that Isha clearly saw through my thoughts to my fear and horror underneath through the look on my face. “I am sorry, Isha,” I said to her, knowing my petty words would not make up for the obvious hurt I had given her. Let my apology be more than air, let it be hands and work and mercy.

Several groans and screams pulled my attention away from her. Looking around the throne room, the remaining loyalist guards, servants, and mercenaries had already dropped their weapons and shields, surrendering to us, the outnumbered “rebels.” I turned to one of my husband’s soldiers and saw his chainmail hauberk torn open on the arm with his life force, his blood, pouring out steadily from a nasty, deep gash. He would be in trouble soon if not treated.

It is not over yet. I walked toward him as I began gathering my aether from around my soul in preparation to heal him, feeling its burn, and to heal as many of the other wounded that I could. “Let us save as many as we can, Isha,” I called out to her, hoping the act of saving lives could ease her burden in some manner. “There is still some good we can do, but you have already used too much aether. Go to the Temples with several soldiers and have them come help heal the wounded on both sides.” I looked her squarely in her metallic silver eyes. “Please do not overdo it.”

Over the low moans and cries of the wounded and dying, I barely made out her reply as she bowed low at her waist. Her movements were abnormally precise.

“It shall be as you will it, your Majesty.”

Right... I’m now the Queen. I suddenly felt nauseous. And it was not from the child growing in me.

Goddess of Light, guide my hands. If I am to be seen, let it be for mercy.

High District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:45:03 GMT

The High District occupies a gentle rise overlooking the Shad’li crossing. At its center stands Valentien’s Fortress, originally built to defend the river and now serving as the royal palace of Valmark. Its commanding position and proximity to the crown have made the district the preferred home of the city’s nobility.

Broad streets divide imposing townhouses, walled gardens, government offices, and the residences of wealthy courtiers. Unlike the grey cobblestones found elsewhere in Valmark, the High District’s roads are paved with distinctive red brick quarried and fired near Valfort to the east. The streets are also wider, cleaner, and more heavily patrolled than those of most other districts, reflecting both the wealth of its residents and the importance of protecting the palace.

Western District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:45:01 GMT

The Western District is the oldest surviving part of Valmark, founded nearly four centuries ago where the Shad’li River could once be crossed during the driest months of the year. Although the city’s merchants later relocated to the newer Market District, the Western District remains an important entry point and a center of local tradition.

Its most notable landmarks include Analiy’s Orphanage, supported by the Temple of Light, and the city’s only bridge across the Shad’li, built over the original fording place. Old Ford Square beside the bridge hosts small markets, public celebrations, and street performers, while Westgate Commons provides travelers and laborers with inns, stables, alehouses, and inexpensive food near the city gates. Many of the district’s narrow streets still follow the paths of the original settlement.

Embersteps District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:45:00 GMT

The Embersteps District stands upon a low rise near Valmark’s southern wall. Once known simply as the slums, much of the district was destroyed by a devastating fire several decades ago. It was rebuilt in brick and stone, though its narrow streets still twist unpredictably between crowded homes, workshops, and small neighborhood markets.

Embersteps remains home to many of Valmark’s poorer residents, but regular patrols keep it safer than similar districts in most cities, even after nightfall. The Hearthlight Theatre offers inexpensive plays, music, and comic performances, while the Southgate Lantern is the district’s busiest tavern. Popular with laborers, soldiers, merchants, and travelers entering through the South Gate, it is known for hearty meals, loud songs, and crowded tables.

North District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:45:00 GMT

The Northern District is known for its workshops, warehouses, and small merchant houses. Although it sees fewer travelers than Valmark’s western and southern roads, much of the city’s timber, ore, stone, and other raw materials enter through its gates from the northern forests and mines of the Northern Mountains.

Craftspeople of nearly every trade can be found along its busy streets, from carpenters and stonecutters to metalworkers and leatherworkers. Near the district’s southern edge, close to the Market District, stands the workshop of Ettio, a respected dverg weaponsmith and armorsmith. His work is valued by soldiers, nobles, and mercenaries alike, and his shop is among the best-known establishments in northern Valmark.

Dawnspire District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:59 GMT

The Dawnspire District takes its name from the seven great towers rising above the Temple of Light within the enclosed Temple Court. The court contains shrines and temples dedicated to each of the Light-aligned deities, making the district the religious heart of Valmark.

Many of the city’s wealthiest merchants maintain homes and elegant shops along the streets surrounding the court. Twice each day, at sunrise and several hours before sunset, large processions gather as worshippers make their way to the temples. Some come to pray or hear sermons, while others seek guidance, blessings, or healing from the priests and priestesses. During these hours, the district fills with bells, hymns, and the steady movement of pilgrims from across the city.

East District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:58 GMT

The East District is the smallest of Valmark’s districts, built along the city’s busiest eastern trade road. Much of the commerce entering or leaving Valmark passes through its gates, and its streets are crowded with caravans, couriers, merchants, and travelers.

The district is filled with stables, taverns, alehouses, inns, and shops catering to those rarely staying longer than a night or two. Its best-known establishments include The Copper Stag, a lively tavern favored by caravan guards; Mara’s Hearth, a popular alehouse owned and operated by a local resident; and The Far Road Inn, renowned for its clean rooms, secure stables, and early breakfasts for travelers departing at dawn.

Market District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:57 GMT

The Market District contains few permanent buildings beyond its central counting houses, public scales, and covered merchants’ hall. Before sunrise each morning, traders arrive with carts, awnings, tables, and temporary stalls, transforming the open ground into a crowded maze of commerce.

From within, the district resembles a vast courtyard enclosed by the tall grey buildings of the surrounding neighborhoods. Nearly every kind of goods can be found here, including grain, livestock, clothing, tools, imported luxuries, and fresh produce from nearby farms. Fish, salt, timber, and cargo unloaded in the Docks District brought by river are carted inland each morning, while caravans supply goods from across the continent. By evening, most stalls have vanished, leaving only trampled ground and empty streets behind.

Docks District

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:56 GMT

The Docks District abutting the Shad’li River is the only part of Valmark not enclosed by the city walls, which end on either side of the district. Nearly all trade arriving from downriver passes through its crowded quays, while stone, timber, ore, and other cargo too heavy for overland transport are loaded onto barges bound for settlements farther downstream.

Warehouses, small boatyards, cranes, taverns, and merchants’ offices line the riverfront, and labor continues at nearly every hour. Dockworkers unload vessels by day, while night crews prepare barges for the morning. The district has a reputation as the least safe part of Valmark, attracting smugglers, thieves, and rough travelers. Even so, frequent patrols and guarded warehouses keep violence and crime far below what is common in the dockyards of many larger cities.

Isha

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:55 GMT

Isha is a pale-aelv born in Assyrial, capital of the Vael’sarí Empire. Raised in an orphanage, she was adopted by the Kol family of the Morren clan and trained as an assassin and priestess of the Goddess of Darkness. Her skill and devotion eventually earned her the title of Nightfang, making her the youngest senior priestess in the clergy’s history.

After fleeing the empire, Isha turned to the Goddess of Light and began seeking redemption for the lives she had taken. She spent nearly two centuries wandering human lands while evading the family sent to hunt her. Her journey eventually brought her to Bangwallop Pass, where she joined the Company of the White Wing. After helping overthrow King Albric of Westgate, she was appointed Light’s Blade, sworn defender of Valmark’s Temple of Light. She has remained there ever since, concealing her heritage from those who fear her people.

Valin

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:53 GMT

Valin is the Crown Prince of Valmark and the son of King Levak K’far and Queen Esriella K’far. He also has an older half-brother through his father, Alexsyndir Faaris. Raised with a clear understanding of the duties awaiting him, Valin spent much of his childhood studying history, diplomacy, law, warfare, and governance under a succession of tutors. He also studied languages under the renowned scholar and swordmage Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, better known as Magi “the Blade.”

Valin began training with a sword at six and has practiced almost every day since, becoming one of the most accomplished young swordsmen in the kingdom. Although deeply committed to his people, his sheltered upbringing has left him with little experience beyond Valmark’s borders. His position has also made him the target of several assassination attempts. Beneath his confident bearing, Valin longs for the freedom to choose his own path.

Other important characters:

Esriella

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:53 GMT

Esriella was born in the western high-aelvar village of Sylivar to an aelvar mother and a human father she never knew. When her aether manifested, she began training as a priestess of the Goddess of Light. At twenty, still a child by half-aelvar standards, she and her mother crossed the continent to settle near Valmark, where Esriella continued her religious studies even after reaching adulthood at forty.

Thirty years later, King Albric’s forces razed her village and carried its surviving inhabitants into slavery. Esriella endured nearly a decade in bondage before Levak and the Company of the White Wing freed her during a riot at a Westgate slave auction. She later traveled with the company, married Levak, and helped overthrow King Albric. When Levak reclaimed his inheritance and restored Westgate’s former name of Valmark, Esriella became its queen while continuing to serve as High Priestess of Light. She is a distant cousin to Sylr’Ren Navei’Wan.

Levak

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:52 GMT

Levak was born in the human village of Shad’li to Etharon and Isoli K’far, the exiled crown prince and princess of Valmark. He grew up alongside his older sister, Isobel, and younger twin brother, Kavel, and was engaged to a village woman named Angelica Faaris. His sister eventually ran away from home. When Shad’li was attacked shortly after his seventeenth birthday, Levak was rescued by the wandering swordmage Magi and believed that only he and Kavel had survived.

Together, they revived the Company of the White Wing, once led by Levak’s parents, and gathered companions while adventuring across the continent. Levak later fell in love with and married Esriella, even as Kavel eventually abandoned the company. After learning the truth of his heritage, Levak returned to Westgate and led the struggle against King Albric. With Albric overthrown, Levak reclaimed his family’s throne and restored the kingdom’s ancient name of Valmark.

Kastryph

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:51 GMT

Kastryph Nesher was born into a poor family in the southeastern kingdom of Kristen. His younger brother, Jakob, possessed extraordinary size and strength but developed far more slowly than other children. When their parents decided they could no longer support Jakob and abandoned him, Kastryph ran away from home rather than leave his brother alone. The two survived together for years before being taken in by the Company of the White Wing.

Recognizing Kastryph’s magical potential, Magi “the Blade” trained him in the use of vharin and helped him become an accomplished mage. Kastryph later fought beside the company during the uprising against King Albric and the restoration of Valmark. Following Levak’s ascension to the throne, Kastryph remained in the city and was appointed Valmark’s palace mage, serving the royal family and protecting the kingdom alongside the companions who had become his family.

Jakob

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:50 GMT

Jakob Nesher was born into a poor family in Kristen with a rare condition that granted him tremendous size and physical strength while leaving him with the understanding and innocence of a child. When his parents abandoned him because they could no longer afford his care, his older brother Kastryph fled home to remain at his side. The brothers wandered together for years until they were welcomed into the Company of the White Wing.

Because Jakob often relied upon his fists without understanding his own strength, Levak and Esriella taught him swordsmanship, discipline, and restraint. Within the company, he found friends who protected him without treating him as a burden. Jakob later fought during the overthrow of King Albric and helped restore Levak to Valmark’s throne. In recognition of his courage, loyalty, and service to the kingdom, Jakob was granted a knighthood.

Ren

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:49 GMT

Ren was born in the high-aelvar village of Sylivar, where he spent a peaceful childhood among the extended families of the Wan clan. He knew Esriella only distantly, as a younger, distant cousin. At sixty, still a child by aelvar standards, Ren was hunting beyond the village when he witnessed pale-aelvar assassins slaughter its inhabitants and leave no survivors.

He was rescued by the aging dverg adventurer Shouglin, who continued to raise him and carried him across the continent on his travels. Soon after, he undertook the ritual to become a mage, against Shouglin’s advice, from a mage they travelled with for a time. At 102, Ren and Shouglin encountered the Company of the White Wing, where they recognized Esriella and soon joined its ranks. Ren later helped overthrow King Albric and became Valmark’s representative to the wood-aelvar of the Forest of Unending Shadow. Though loyal and highly skilled, Ren retains a deep hatred of the pale-aelvar and was the company’s most outspoken opponent of allowing Isha to join them.

Shouglin

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:48 GMT

Little is known of Shouglin Anthkyri’s early life, and the old dverg rarely offers more than a joke when questioned about his past. Already considered an elder when he encountered the young Ren Navei’Wan, Shouglin found the high-aelv alone after the destruction of Sylivar and took responsibility for raising him. Rather than settle in one place, he brought Ren along on his travels, teaching him how to survive while pursuing adventures across the continent.

Decades later, Shouglin and Ren encountered the Company of the White Wing, where they were reunited with Esriella, one of Ren’s distant relatives. Both soon joined the company and later fought beside its members during the overthrow of King Albric. Despite his age and guarded history, Shouglin remains adventurous, dependable, and possessed of an enormous sense of humor, rarely allowing danger or hardship to prevent him from finding something to laugh about.

Magi

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:48 GMT

Magi was born in Zelyr on the high-aelvar island of Masithia. While still young by aelvar standards, he met and married Sartrel, then volunteered to become one of his city’s mages, accepting the dangerous ritual required to bind himself to vharin. The couple later left Masithia to study the wider world, traveling and adventuring with many companions before finding lasting friendship with Etharon and Isoli K’far.

After their friends settled down, Magi and Sartrel continued exploring ancient places until Sartrel was possessed by a demon and disappeared within a forgotten ruin. Magi spent years searching for her with few leads. When he learned that King Albric’s assassins had targeted the K’far family, he rescued Levak and Kavel and traveled with them, helping establish the new Company of the White Wing. A renowned scholar and swordmage known as Magi “the Blade,” he later aided Levak’s restoration of Valmark, though he has never abandoned the search for his wife.

Mazræl

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:47 GMT

Mazræl M’Cloy was born among the wood-aelvar but lost her mother in Ætaine while still a young child. Left alone in the sprawling city, she survived for decades as a thief and gang member, relying upon quick hands, hidden knives, and an uncanny ability to anticipate and outthink those around her. During those years, she briefly knew Isha, who fed and protected Mazræl and several other street children.

After being driven from Ætaine, Mazræl joined Levak, Esriella, and the Company of the White Wing, becoming one of its youngest, sharpest, and most unpredictable members. She helped overthrow King Albric and restore Valmark before eventually returning to Ætaine. There, she took control of its criminal networks, rallied the city’s common people and temples, and helped bring down its king. Mazræl later became Ætaine’s first Elected Queen, determined to reshape the city whose streets she once struggled to survive.

Alexsyndir

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:46 GMT

Alexsyndir is the eldest son of King Levak K’far and Angelicia Faaris. Born after the destruction of Shad’li, he spent his early childhood traveling with his mother in poverty, knowing Levak was his father but believing him dead. He was not present during the overthrow of King Albric and only discovered the truth years later, when he interrupted a royal procession and found Levak alive and ruling Valmark.

Recognized as Levak’s son, Alexsyndir was granted Valmark’s sole ducal title and established the Faaris branch of the royal family. He studied swordsmanship under numerous instructors, later earning a knighthood and rising through the kingdom’s military ranks to become a general. Despite his position, he remains deeply devoted to Angelicia and is a loving, steadfast supporter of his younger half-brother Valin, placing family loyalty above any personal claim to the throne.

Yonas

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:45 GMT

Yonas Bardur was born in the southern continent of Arkimia and spent his earliest years surviving on the streets. At seven, he stowed away aboard a ship bound for Ætaine. When his aether manifested, he entered the Temple of Luck, but his small reservoir left him unable to pursue the traditional priesthood. After briefly returning to thievery, Yonas enrolled in the newly founded College of Voice Magics at twelve, learning to influence emotion through music and storytelling.

He graduated at sixteen and traveled north to establish himself as a singer of tales. Within months, he encountered the Company of the White Wing in the village of Bangwallop and joined their adventures. Yonas later helped overthrow King Albric and restore Valmark under Levak and Esriella. He has since become a widely known traveling bard, valued for his kindness, humor, keen observation, and skill with a crossbow.

Magi on Isha

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:44 GMT

When I first met Isha, I thought her an enigma to be studied: a pale-aelv severed from the dark machinery of her people, carrying mysteries she clearly had no wish to share. In time, I realized she was something far simpler and sadder: a tortured soul, which is to say, not so different from the rest of our group in the White Wing.

I should have recognized it sooner. Perhaps living so long beside my own grief has made me too practiced at overlooking it in others. Yet I did little for her.

I did not know how to approach someone who had built her entire life around distance, and my search for Sartrel kept drawing me away whenever I might have tried. Isha held everyone at arm’s length with almost admirable discipline. Until, at last, she found one person she could not keep there. In the end, it seemed that love and grief together would succeed where all gentler things had failed, binding her at last to a life she might yet cherish… or suffer all the more for having something left to lose.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Why the Races Can Interbreed

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:44 GMT

Why is it that all the so-called “races” of this world can produce viable offspring with one another despite clear morphological, magical, and cultural divergence? My dear friend Esriella, herself a half–high-aelv, now carries her first child from a human man, Levak; this is but one of many such unions I have observed. If we were truly separate species, such consistent fertility would be improbable at best. I am increasingly persuaded that our differences are not the result of natural divergence, but of some primordial artificial shaping (magical, divine, or otherwise) possibly imposed upon a single ancestral people.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Before the Binding: The Two

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:43 GMT

Prior to the cataclysm later sources name “the Binding,” all extant pre-Binding records I have examined speak of only two deities, Light and Darkness, twin and opposed. Then, abruptly, the record ends; then nothing but silence for millennia. When written sources resume, the world’s peoples venerate fifty deities: the original two, plus forty-eight new names with distinct spheres and cults.

Over the ensuing near hundred millennia, those fifty have dwindled to thirty-two, with whole divine lineages simply… absent. What, precisely, was the Binding, and what became of the civilization that thrived before it? By what mechanism were dozens of new deities introduced into the world’s consciousness? And conversely, how does a god vanish? Forgotten, destroyed, or something stranger still? It vexes me that I have no answer.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Aether and Vharin Are One

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:42 GMT

Priests speak of aether as though it were some rarefied “gift of the divine” diffused across the world, and I confess their hymns and sermons make it sound very dignified and miraculous. Yet, for all my teasing, I must give them their due: they wield that same force without first severing and binding a fragment of their own soul into a focus-crystal, as any true mage must. The uncomfortable truth, for them, at least, is that all magic is one. Aether is vharin, and vharin is aether; the distinction is terminological, not real. We mages keep this point quiet because, according to the less-sanitized chronicles, the last time priests realized it tens of thousands of years ago, they attempted to exterminate us.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Where Magic Runs Deepest

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:41 GMT

There are regions where vharin, or aether to priests, is markedly denser; its currents slower and more readily grasped and absorbed. The Wizard Kingdom of Yettyr upon the eastern Ocean of Storms and the Mage Conclave of Thessiar in the far southwest are the most prominent examples. In these lands, the Mage-King of Yettyr and the Supreme Council of Thessiar routinely work enchantments of a scale and precision that would be prohibitively difficult, if not impossible, elsewhere. Geography, it seems, can be as much a factor in arcane potency as talent or training.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Ætaine, Greatest of Cities

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:40 GMT

Ætaine is, by any reasonable measure, the greatest of the world’s cities: over one million souls clustered along the vast Ætaine River that cleaves the continent in two. Though styled a city-state, its direct control extends far beyond its walls: northward into the strangely-named Bangwallop Valley where almost every known mineral and gemstone may be found and south to the Sea of Ætaine. For centuries it served as a primary hub of the western slave trade… a stain only recently scrubbed away in law, if not entirely in memory. Since the ascension of my friend Queen Mazræl the First, however, the city has begun to change. Ordinary citizens now possess a meaningful voice in governance, selecting many of their own officials rather than receiving them as gifts (more likely burdens) from the throne. I watch this experiment with great interest, for if it endures in Ætaine, it may yet reshape the whole of the continent.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Possession-Demons

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:39 GMT

Possession-demons remain maddeningly elusive, particularly the one that seized control of someone dear to me. Every trail I have followed thus far has ended in ash and rumor. Intriguingly, no record of such entities exists before the so-called Binding a hundred millennia past; the first credible account appears only after several of the “new” post-Binding deities vanish from the chronicles. Coincidence, or consequence? The records list only two possession-demons by name, both of which gradually altered their hosts while granting them grotesquely amplified magical strength and skill in vile, corrupting dark magic.

Recent study of ancient high-aelv texts stolen from my homeland suggests a possible method to forcibly expel such an entity. Now I must simply find this one.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Masithia, My Island Home

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:38 GMT

Masithia, my island homeland, haunts my thoughts more with each passing century. From the terraces of Zelyr, my birth-city, one could look down from the mountain slopes across unbroken forests, the canopy rolling like a green sea to the distant cliffs and glittering coves. Our masons carved the city from the living stone, each arch and balcony a testament to patient craft and quiet pride.

I was the one who volunteered to take up the mantle when the old mage’s life neared it’s end, trading the certainty of a long life for the perilous rite that would bind vharin to my will. I do not regret the choice, as it resulted in more life for me to live. Though, I sometimes wish that the duties I assumed for my people, and the promises I made beyond our shores, had not kept me so far from home for so long.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Chosen by the Gods

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:37 GMT

The gods, insofar as we can discern their workings, seem to choose their mortal instruments from all walks of life and burden them with “gifts.” Esriella, for example, carries within her an extraordinary reserve of what she calls aether, far larger and more potent than any natural endowment I have ever measured, wrapped tightly around her soul like a second skin. Levak, by contrast, appears able to perceive the weight and shape of a person’s past evils with unsettling clarity.

They are merely two of many: consider the famed High Priestess Zyr’Tellyria Selia’Sethan of my birth-city, who, so the records claim, held back the Mountain’s rockslide with her bare hands, her vharin, and her very life’s blood, buying Zelyr’s survival at the cost of her own. The stories insist she was blessed by the gods; I only hope those same gods know what they are doing in choosing their agents, for I remain convinced that mortals deserve to make their own choices without divine strings pulling at every thread.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Drak'nir Empire

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:36 GMT

The Drak’nir Empire remains a blight upon the western half of the continent: a realm sustained by mass slavery and the systematic crushing of dissent, projecting its will through armies whose primary purpose is to instill fear rather than maintain order. That most western polities have formed a loose alliance to counter Drak’nir’s ambitions is a small reassurance, but not a guarantee of peace. More curious is Drak’nir’s decision to retain “the Dragon” as a court mage. A woman whose defining characteristic, so far as I can tell, is weaponized unpredictability. It is an audacious choice for so rigid a regime; I suspect, in time, it will prove a catastrophic one.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Kindling Flame with Vharin

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:35 GMT

To kindle flame with vharin (what mages call aether), one must first define the desired outcome with precision: heat, light, and combustion localized to a specific volume of air or material. The mind’s image must be grounded in physical reality: air driven into swifter motion and compression, temperature rising past ignition, and finally fuel catching for a sustaining burn rather than some vague notion of “fire appearing,” and must shape their vharin accordingly. In practice, it is far easier to amplify or manipulate an existing flame than to call one from nothing; true creation from ambient conditions demands considerably more vharin and far sharper visualization of vharin patterns and knowledge of heat transfer, fuel, and airflow. Most apprentices fail not for lack of power, but for lack of specificity.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Shaping Wind into a Blade

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:34 GMT

To shape wind into a cutting edge with vharin, one must first gather and compress the air along an imagined line, as if drawing a narrow plane through the world and pressing all within it together, through proper visualization and manipulation of their vharin. The smallest parts of the air must be driven to swifter motion, their flow constrained so that pressure and speed increase along that narrow path rather than diffusing outward. The sharper the mental image of that invisible edge, such as length, thickness, direction, and point of contact, the cleaner the cut. Most attempts fail because the caster pictures “a blade of wind” in the abstract, instead of a tightly confined current honed to a razor’s breadth.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Twelve Blue Crystals

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:33 GMT

The twelve blue crystals of the ancients appear again and again in pre-Binding fragments; always described as “all-powerful,” never accompanied by a single concrete example of their use. Were they engines of transmutation? Anchors for the gods? Devices to reshape geography, species, even time itself? The sole surviving description of the Binding speaks of the world “breaking by twelfths” in the dual-sided tongue of that age. A phrase that can just as readily be read as “twelve broke the world.” If so, the crystals may not merely have survived the Binding, but caused it. Whatever truly happened, the event hurled civilization back by many thousands of years, and we still sift through the rubble a hundred millennia later.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Isha and the Ancient Tongue

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:32 GMT

I am now all but certain that our new pale-aelv companion, Isha, speaks the tongue of the ancients. A’lárian. I have heard her murmur it to herself while awake and slip into it in her sleep, and the moment I listened closely, the pattern was unmistakable: its sounds and structures lie beneath both high-aelvar and wood-aelvar speech like buried roots. If A’lárian is the progenitor of our languages, then were the ancients themselves pale-aelvar, or something so close as to be indistinguishable? And if that is true, how did our kind change so profoundly, in body and custom, across the hundred millennia since the Binding?

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Old Companions on the Road

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:30 GMT

Some nights my thoughts stray from tomes and chronicles back to the road: to the long years wandering with the exiled prince and princess, Etharon and Isoli K’far; with our friend Alreni; my wife Sartrel at my side; and with the rest of the original Company of the White Wing whose faces I can still summon more sharply than yesterday’s sunrise. Now word reaches me that the King of Westgate, Etharon’s own brother, has loosed assassins to finish what exile did not. I must reach him in time. I cannot lose another friend well before their natural hour.

Why do the gods insist on punishing me so with so long a life as to witness the deaths of so many friends?

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

On Dragons

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:30 GMT

Dragons are best understood as colossal, mountain-adapted avian reptiles, averaging nearly one hundred feet from snout to tail. Their dorsal scales, coated with a clear down, are a dark, rock-grey that blends seamlessly with cliff and scree, while their underbellies shade toward grey-blue. With elongated necks, they have the ability to look in any direction with their forward-facing eyes, similar to those of a hawk’s. The forelimbs have become true wings, like an enormous bird’s, leaving them poorly suited for ground-level locomotion. Their wings, while mostly bare and leathery like those of a bat, have the vestiges of feathers that match their bodies.

Crucially, they cannot achieve flight from a standing start; they must launch themselves from elevated perches, hence why they are found almost exclusively among the greater mountain ranges. They hunt in loose packs, gliding above the slopes before stooping in sudden, brutal dives to seize prey with their hind limbs. A specialized gland in the throat produces a naft-like fluid that ignites on contact with air and clings to whatever it strikes, making even a glancing exhalation devastating. They are most vulnerable when trapped on the ground and denied the air. Yet even then, it takes a disciplined, well-armed company to bring one down with any hope of surviving the attempt.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

On Varvarski

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:29 GMT

Varvarski are enormous humanoid creatures, rarely exceeding the wit of a human child of five, yet dangerous in the extreme. They stand up to nine feet tall, with thick, grey-and-white mottled skin that serves as both armor and camouflage against snow and stone. Most wear crude furs for clothing and wield rock axes and spears of their own making alongside whatever metal tools they manage to steal in their raids on isolated villages and poorly defended towns.

They dwell primarily in mountain caves or in ramshackle settlements clustered around sites they revere as holy. Communication with them is possible, but laden with peril; they are quick to fear and quicker to violence. Sailors and traders speak of other varvarski across the sea with different hues, living in different climes, but if such varieties once walked this continent, they were likely exterminated millennia ago by the forebears of humanity as they pushed outward to dominate most of the land.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Why the Temples Were Founded

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:27 GMT

I am increasingly convinced that the first temples were not founded to honor the gods, but to control those born with a natural affinity for magic: those we now call priests. The gods are real, so far as my observations and the accumulated records suggest, but temples that stand apart from royal authority and answer to no crown are a relatively recent innovation in the long history of the world.

Perhaps one child in two hundred is born able to channel what they name aether in some capacity, and I will concede that it is a mercy to train such children before they maim others or burn themselves out by accident. Yet the stories that reach me about pale-aelvar society turn my stomach. The ordeals their gifted children are forced to endure in the name of “discipline” and “devotion” make even the harshest human temple look like a refuge by comparison. If this is piety, I want no part of it.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Dverger: Hills-People

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:26 GMT

Among humans and aelvar alike, we call them dverger (singular dverg), but the oldest inscriptions from Ithkathzi render the word as dovargr: a compound of dova (“foothills, piedmont”) and argr (“kin, people”). Over the millennia, dovargr in trade-tongues eroded to dverger: quite literally “hills-people,” an apt description for a people who build their great walled cities at the very feet of their mountains and then burrow inward for ore, gems, and the perfect stone for more walls and fuel for their crafts that they perfect through their entire life. Their clan-bonds are so tight-knit that even the wood-aelvar look loose by comparison.

Every young dverg is expected to leave Ithkathzi upon reaching adulthood, to practice a chosen craft abroad for several decades and bring back new methods and ideas. Those who remain in human lands, most often as mercenaries or weapon-smiths, are quietly regarded as having failed some unspoken duty, pitied by their people, more than hated. Their race refuse the use of magic entirely, banning those born with an aptitude from practicing and judging the risk of soul-fragmentation of a mage intolerable for a people who commonly live for four centuries. For the hills-people, it seems, even magic is unacceptable, despite its benefits.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Vamlycht

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:26 GMT

Among all the world’s horrors, there is only one true undead I acknowledge: the Vamlycht. Every such creature was once a mage. The danger arises when one binds a tenth focus-crystal or beyond; the mage’s soul has the risk of becoming so fragmented that the foci begin to draw in the fuel of life itself (what we mages call the spirit) devouring it in an instant. The body does not die so much as refuse to admit it: the mage, or Vamlycht, continues, but only by stealing the spirits of others through magic, drawing fresh life into themselves through magical means. They do this, from my personal experience hunting the vile things, at least once each month.

A Vamlycht’s body cools as the heart stills; blood ceases its proper motion. Their skin slowly pales, then shrivels, clinging tight to bone until they resemble a desiccated corpse walking on stubborn habit alone. The process can take years, or even decades. If you ever encounter such a being, the only sensible response is to run. Should flight be impossible, there is but one hope: every focus-crystal they have ever bound to, and must wear on their person, must be found and destroyed.

Miss even one, and the Vamlycht will heal itself and resume its endless hunt for spirit.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Voice Magic and Song

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:24 GMT

Voice magic (what most laymen call bardic magic) first appears in the written records a mere twelve thousand years ago, which makes it a late and curious development. Some children who awaken to the use of vharin/aether around their tenth year possess so meager a reserve that they are deemed no threat and thus unsuitable for temple training. Those who still hunger to wield some form of power, in modern times, seek out the sole school in Ætaine that blends priestly and magely visualization with deliberate vocalization, allowing such weak-blooded practitioners to raise or cast down the hearts of others through song or speech. Their methods are closely guarded, but from what a companion has shared, the essence lies in how they picture vharin/aether and then shape it with tone, pitch, and resonance. Further study is warranted, though I have found myself unable to employ this technique at all. Perhaps it depends upon having only a narrow trickle of vharin to guide, rather than the large reservoir a mage or priest commands?

How the World Fears the Pale-Aelvar

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:23 GMT

Reactions to the pale-aelvar vary wildly by culture, though none could be called welcoming. Among humans, commoners tend toward panic and violence (typically riots, thrown stones, raised pitchforks, and torches) at the mere sight of one. Their nobility, by contrast, are more afraid with them than of them: pale-aelvar have earned a reputation as peerless assassins who’s names live through the centuries, so nobles either try to have them killed quietly or, more insidiously, attempt to hire them to settle their own disputes in blood. Though, I must say, that usually backfires as pale-aelv assassins typically kill (or grant “mercy”) on behalf of their Goddess alone.

Most high-aelvar harbor a deep, almost doctrinal hatred, viewing the pale-aelvar as heretical monstrosities and attack on sight when they can; given the long history of atrocities between us, this is less irrational than it first appears. Wood-aelvar, more superstitious in this regard, pity them but keep them at bow and spear’s length, convinced that pale-aelvar presence brings misfortune to their forests, and will drive them away if warnings are ignored. Dverger find them simply abhorrent. Believing them treacherous, manipulative, and without honor, and deny them entry to their cities, sometimes escorting that refusal with hunting parties. Of all these responses, the human one is the most tangled: equal parts terror, loathing, fascination, and opportunism.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

How the Races See One Another

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:21 GMT

To most humans, those of us who are not human are equal parts marvel and menace. High-aelvar, wood-aelvar, and dverger all live far longer than they do, age more slowly, and bring with them levels of craft, magic, and harmony with the world that most humans cannot hope to match. This inspires awe; but also envy and resentment. The greatest divide is in how humans view my own people. Commoners usually meet high-aelvar with a mixture of curiosity and nervous respect, grateful if we heal, teach, or simply pay fairly for goods.

Human nobles, however, are another matter. They praise our “exquisite beauty,” treat us as living ornaments at court, and mutter about “corrupting influence” that they know nothing about even as some of them pay handsomely for high-aelvar slaves in the darker corners of the world. Wood-aelvar, by contrast, are regarded as mysterious, though dangerous, forest-dwellers. Half admired as guides and healers, half feared as “woodland spirits” who might curse crops or twist game-trails.

Dverger are respected, if grudgingly by humans, as master-smiths, artisans, and unyielding warriors: gruff and humorless (which is wholly incorrect), but reliable, so long, as the human saying goes, as one pays on time and does not ask too many questions. Sometimes humanity sickens me. I can understand why so many of my kind look down on them. Yet I find I prefer the company of human commoners, or those of similar mindset: they are, more often than not, kinder, more honest, and far more respectful than my own people or those humans who wear crowns and silk.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Festivals of the World

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:21 GMT

Each people I have studied encodes its history less in books than in festivals. Among my people, the high-aelvar, celebration is a deliberate work of art: Moonfalls Night under the full moons weave music and poetry into a living archive of ancestors and lost cities, while the Bloom Rite each year renews the pact between settlement and surrounding wilds. It is an elegant reminder that refinement without balance leads to ruin.

Wood-aelvar rites are quieter but no less instructive: the Whispering Hunt, in which unarmed youths shadow a forest animal, teaches that survival depends on restraint, patience, and listening; Rootdancefollows the cycles of bloom and migration, turning seasonal change into a choreographed memory of old journeys; and Bonecarving Tales literally inscribe family history into bone, heirlooms that outlast the flesh that carved them.

Dverger, as ever, bind meaning to craft. The coming-of-age Forging Ceremony ensures every adult carries their history in hand; Greatfeast honors not just artisans but the wilds around their settlements as a generous provider; the Ember Oath given before great works preserves the belief that every masterpiece is a threefold collaboration of maker, item, and history.

Humans tend toward a noisier, more volatile record: harvest fairs and solstice rites blur into worship of this or that god, while rulers eagerly stamp their own marks on the calendar. Even my dear friends fell into this with none more so on point than Valmark’s Liberation Day Festival, commemorating the overthrow of a tyrant slaver-king. In their revels, they retell the story of chains broken and a city reclaimed, though I note each year the people seem to edit the tale a little further in its own favor. I was there, so I know what truly occurred.

Humans can be humorous at times.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

On Fate

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:20 GMT

Fate, both as deity and concept, has occupied more of my thoughts of late than I care to admit.

After a long night’s argument, Esriella explained it thus: what we call “fate” is simply the chain of probabilities: each choice, each accident, leading from one outcome to the next, all of it shaped by innumerable events before it. I remarked that by such a definition, fate does not truly exist; there is only cause and effect, endlessly branching. She disagreed. If someone can see not just one choice, but the entire branching tree of possibilities, and weigh which branches are most likely to be walked, then they can see the “fate” of a person, a kingdom, even the world. That, she says, is what the Goddess of Fate does: she perceives the full pattern, while the other gods press their fingers upon particular branches to tilt the odds.

If fate is both certain in its great arcs and yet can be altered by will and intervention, I confess I do not see what use the word has beyond comforting the pious. I dearly love my half-aelv friend, but she trusts the gods too readily for my taste. I will accept probabilities and patterns, but I will not let myself be steered by “fate.”

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Relics of a Lost Age

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:20 GMT

Truly magical items are vanishingly rare in our age, and the more I read, the stranger that rarity seems. No pre-Binding text I have found describes the creation of such artifacts at all; they simply appear in ancient accounts as given facts. I am increasingly persuaded that what we now call “magical items” are remnants of the lost civilization before the Binding, stumbled upon and passed down as relics rather than crafts.

Take the so-called Sword of the Sky: not a sword in any honest sense, but a hilt-shaped device said to drink vharin from its surroundings and, at the wielder’s will, emit a solid beam of light that slices through anything it touches within a hundred feet, leaving only blackened halves behind. If that description is even half accurate, it would neatly explain the uncannily smooth cuts in ancient stonework across the world. Unfortunately, the last confirmed account places that particular relic on one of my people’s ships, lost at sea some twenty millennia ago. I have heard whispers of other such relics, but never laid hands upon one.

The closest modern analogue is the pale-aelvar’s aeteri steel, which drinks the bearer’s vharin (aether, if one insists) and uses it to bite through or turn aside most materials, depending on whether the blade was forged into a weapon or armor. It is impressive work, but still feels like an echo of something far older.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Tongues of This World

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:18 GMT

The human tongues of this continent are fewer than one might expect. The most widespread is Ætaini, whose nine distinct dialects cover nearly all of the eastern half of the continent. If one pays attention, you can make out similar words and grammar found in each. Unsurprisingly, it arose from Ætaine itself. The great river-city at the continent’s heart, split by the massive waterway that gives both city and tongue their name.

Even the dverger use Ætaini as their chief language when communicating with outsiders. Not even my ancient friend Shouglin has provided me with a straight answer as to if the dverger have their own native tongue.

To the west, the Drak’nir Empire speaks Drakari, a harsher, more formal language suited to edicts and marching orders.

Along the western and southern coasts of that same half, traders, sailors, and fisher-folk use Esuuli, a fluid speech shaped by centuries of maritime exchange. Other human languages certainly exist (I speak eight additional human tongues fluently) but they belong to peoples from beyond our shores: across the Sea of Trade to the south or over the Ocean of Storms to the east.

Here, among the elder races that live scattered throughout the continent and my island homeland, only two living aelvar tongues remain in common use: Saelarin, my people’s speech, and Letharin, that of the wood-aelvar. Rarest of all is the true ancestor: A’lárian, spoken now only by a handful such as Isha, though from hearing her whispers, I have been able to figure out it’s speech as I already knew the writing and grammar.

Personal Note: To my mild astonishment, Levak and Esriella’s son, young Valin, barely seven years old at the time, once asked me to teach him every language and dialect I know. I agreed, of course. How could I deny one with such hunger for knowledge and understanding? And yet… watching Esriella with her quarter-aelv child, I confess I do not understand how she bears the knowledge that he will age and pass long before she does.

I could not choose such a path.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Weight of a Long Life

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:17 GMT

For those of us who may see a thousand years or longer, with our bodies scarcely beginning to fail before nine centuries, the passage of time becomes less a river and more a slow-grinding glacier. Among my own people, and even in conversation with the dverger, whose four centuries seem short to us and infinite to humans, there is a shared complaint we seldom voice aloud: befriending humans hurts. By the time we have truly learned who they are, by the time their presence feels woven into the fabric of our days, age has already begun to steal them away from us.

I think of Etharon and Isoli, and how young they were when the years claimed them; of the long roads we walked together, now reduced to ink and memory. I marched beside their twin sons after them, Levak and Kavel, and now Levak himself is past forty, already approaching the ragged edge of a human span worn thinner by war and duty. Even Esriella, his half-aelv queen, and my dear, kind friend, has perhaps three centuries remaining if fortune and the gods are kind, while I may see at least four; if one was to exclude my intentional fracturing of my own soul to access vharin, and thus prolonging my own life. That is, of course, assuming my constant wandering and meddling do not cut my thread early. And now there is Valin, their son, a quarter-aelv who may see two hundred years if he is careful. I watch him grow, knowing I will likely stand at the edge of his grave as I did for his grandparents while I remain unchanged except for the growing pain inside.

It is a slow, accumulating pain, this business of outliving those one loves. Yet I accept it as part of my charge. Etharon and Isoli entrusted me, implicitly, if never in so many words, with the futures of their blood. Until I can no longer walk this world, I will watch over their descendants as best I can, even as I hunt the thing that stole my own future from me.

Duty, it seems, is the one companion time has not yet managed to take from me.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Goddess of Luck

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:17 GMT

The so-called goddess of Luck has always struck me as the most suspect of the pantheon. Fortune is, by its nature, noisy and prone to hindsight. I have conducted my own small experiments: coin tosses, lots drawn, wagers laid over months and years, and while individual runs rarely show more than ordinary variance, the aggregate patterns around certain individuals are difficult to ignore.

Consider Valin: It is not merely that he survives where others fall, or stumbles into opportunities at precisely the right moment; it is the way he reads a room. How he seems to instinctively sense people’s tempers and fears and then, without apparent effort, chooses exactly the right jest or gesture that shifts the outcome in his favor. One could argue that this is simply keen perception and empathy, but when such “coincidences” stack high enough, it begins to resemble a quiet manipulation of probabilities themselves. Much as it pains the rational part of me to concede the point, there does appear to be a measurable bend in the numbers and fortunes around those the priests name “blessed.” I dislike the word, but the blessings, it seems, have merit.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Written Scripts

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:15 GMT

Written forms of language reveal kinships that speech alone can hide. The pale-aelvar script, nearest in lineage to the lost ancient civilization, is the most distinct: fluid, continuous strokes that curl and weave like water. Soft, flowing, and, to my eye, undeniably beautiful. High-aelvar script appears to have been devised after the great cataclysm of the Binding; its lines are smoother and more regular, clearly adapted to a language that has shifted significantly from its ancestor, yet it still favors graceful ligatures and long, unbroken strokes. Wood-aelvar script is an outright divergence: angular, rune-like characters interspersed with small pictographic elements. It is built as much for carving into bark and stone as for ink on parchment.

Human scripts, and what little we have reliably observed of dverger markings, show unmistakable influence from wood-aelvar script. The earliest human glyphs mimic those forest runes in their blocky forms, but over time they have been systematically pared down into discrete symbols for individual sounds rather than whole concepts or syllables. In technical terms, the humans moved from a semi-logographic, rune-derived system toward more strictly phonetic alphabets. A practical choice for merchants and bureaucrats if not a particularly elegant one.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Monsters of the Deep

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:14 GMT

The open sea has its own bestiary, none of it comforting.

The most frequently lethal are the so-called shivarks: colossal sharks reaching eighty feet or more in length, with slate-grey backs and pale bellies that vanish in both deep and shallow waters. Their jaws are a double crescent of jagged teeth that regrow constantly, and their eyes show no more malice than a millstone, only appetite. They trail ships for days, drawn by waste and bilge, and are notorious for striking the moment a storm or damaged hull slows a vessel.

Next in line are the harkuut, giant squid of such size that the largest recorded specimen measured nearly three hundred feet from beak to the tip of its longest tentacles. Their eyes are the size of shields, adapted to the blackness of the deep. A harkuut rarely attacks a sound vessel, but a lone ship becalmed over deep trenches may find its hull tested by exploratory coils, followed by a sudden crush from below.

Rarest and most feared of all are the great sea-snakes: wingless, legless cousins to dragons, armored in overlapping blue scales and stretching up to one hundred and fifty feet in length. Their jaws conceal a specialized organ that compresses seawater and expels it in a focused, high-pressure jet capable of punching planks from a hull or sweeping a man from the deck like a toy. Fortunately for sailors, sea-snakes are territorial and uncommon; unfortunately, when one chooses your ship as an intruder, few things afloat can match its capacity for destruction.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Battle That Named an Age

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:14 GMT

In 12 BÆC, twelve years before the Ætaine Calendar was first set, a varvarski horde descended from the Northern Mountains in numbers no chronicle had ever recorded before: over two hundred thousand of the brutes. At that time Ætaine held perhaps half a million souls within its walls, yet its field army was shattered in the initial engagement, forced to retreat behind the city’s defenses. What followed was a six-month siege, during which allied hosts from multiple kingdoms struggled to push through the tightening ring. The western half of Ætaine, divided from the east by the great river, was eventually overrun and sacked, burned so thoroughly that only scattered foundations remained when the smoke cleared. The final relief battle, fought on both banks, ended in a decisive victory for the allies and the near-annihilation of the horde.

As ever, when it comes to humans, triumph bred new troubles. The prestige of saving Ætaine sparked rivalries among the victors, leading within two years to a chain of wars that toppled the city’s ancient monarchy. The new dynasty that rose from that chaos created the new calendar and spent the next two centuries subduing or absorbing half of the continent, both east and west, before collapsing under the weight of its own ambition. That is why, to this day, most of the eastern continent dates its years from the start of that era: the Ætaine Calendar does not commemorate the city’s founding, but the cataclysm and rebirth that nearly erased it and the empire that briefly remade the world in its aftermath. And that is why, I posit, Ætaini dialects dominate in the east.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Factions of the Gods

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:13 GMT

The human habit of assigning the gods neat titles: the Goddess of Light, the Goddess of Darkness, the Goddess of Fate, the God of War, and so on, has always felt oddly small to me, as though one were trying to label the ocean with a single word. What troubles me most is that, so far as I can tell, the gods draw no power from worship itself. They do not need temples or prayers. The temples, rather, need them: institutions that discovered early that invoking a god’s name made it easier to train children born with wild vharin (“aether,” if one prefers) and so built entire doctrines around obedience and devotion to keep such power contained.

Even the Goddess of Light’s own Book of Illumination reads strangely when examined closely. Why would She create a universe from nothing so that “the universe may know itself,” as the text claims? If self-knowledge is the goal, why give us genuine choice and then allow the Goddess of Fate to weave those choices into something that looks disturbingly like a pre-drawn pattern? And why, if they are so far above us, do the gods themselves appear to fracture into factions and quarrels?

One can chart, even from our mortal records, at least three clear groups: those who follow the Goddess of Light and her project of sustaining and refining the world; those who side with the Goddess of Darkness and her apparent desire to unmake it, to return all things to the quiet nothing before creation; and those who claim neutrality, tending to narrower domains, War for example, without pledging openly to either side. Then there is the Goddess of Chaos, who seems to constitute a fourth camp all her own. By every sign I can find, Chaos chooses her servants with no pattern a sane mind can discern. Yet can a deity go mad, or is what we call madness in them merely a logic so alien we lack the tools to grasp it? There are also fewer gods now than there once were, according to ancient records, which suggests that even they can be diminished, altered… or destroyed.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

On Time Travel

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:11 GMT

Time travel is one of those notions that refuses to die, no matter how often one buries it under arithmetic. There is a fragmentary, ancient A’lárian account, etched on a set of cracked slate tablets, that claims a mage stepped backward by a single day. How this was accomplished, the text does not say. Even setting aside the logical knots such an act would create: events undoing themselves, causes appearing after their effects, histories that cannot agree with their own pasts, the vharin cost alone would be staggering. To wrench the flow of time, even briefly, would demand more power than any single nexus of the world can provide; no mage or priest I have ever studied could hope to channel such a torrent and remain intact. If the ancient blue crystals truly were “all-powerful,” perhaps they could serve as anchors or engines for such a feat; but that is speculation piled atop legend.

My professional opinion is that the slate tablets record a story told to frighten or impress, not a repeatable spell. Some fairy tales are best left untested.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

The Vael'sarí Hierarchy

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:10 GMT

From Isha, I have pieced together a rough picture of pale-aelvar society, the Vael’sarí, and I almost wish I had not. Their order is a kind of weaponized hierarchy. At the summit stands the Night Sovereign, their Emperor, a nigh-immortal priest-king, believed to be chosen directly by Du’Tariál and obeyed as both monarch and high priest. Beneath them are the great bloodlines, the High Houses, old warrior-mage clans who rule fortress-cities and spend their days in intrigue, proxy wars, and the hiring of assassins.

The Children of Shadow themselves stands somewhat aside from the formal castes: assassins taken young, trained relentlessly, and permitted to move above noble law so long as they serve the Goddess’s will; Isha believes the assassins are from where the current Night Sovereign originated from. Below these come scholars and ritualists, who read omens, conduct blood rites, and guard the secrets of “soul-binding” (creation of mages) and “curses;” then soldiers and enforcers, the mailed fist that keeps the rest in line; then the ordinary artisans, farmers, and laborers, “protected” only insofar as they remain useful and are not chosen as offerings.

At the base of it all lie thralls: slaves, mostly human and other non-pale-aelvar. Spent on labor, spectacle, or worse: ritual sacrifice. Isha would not tell me precisely where in this structure she once stood, only that she grew up in an orphanage (from her tone it seemed like no orphanage I could imagine) and that her skill with aether and a sword were the sole reasons she survived as long as she did.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

On Curses

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:09 GMT

Curses are simply another branch of magic, albeit an especially vicious one. Where most workings shape vharin (“aether,” if one insists) around a target, curses are designed to seize and twist the internal flow of a person’s or object’s own natural current. The practice is virtually unknown on this continent; most mages and priests have only hearsay to go on. The pale-aelvar of the Vael’sarí Empire, however, appear to employ it on occasion, and the results are instructive: accelerated aging, sudden internal bleeding, organs warped or turned against themselves, and other grotesque failures of the body.

All reports agree that such workings are difficult and unstable, often requiring several casters to maintain the necessary precision. The only confirmed recipient of a partial curse I know personally is Levak. When pale-aelvar raiders struck his home village, some incomplete working left his hair drained of all color, turning from blonde to stark white while the rest of him remained unharmed. My best guess is that the curse was interrupted mid-weaving; whatever horror it was meant to complete itself into, I am quite content never to see it demonstrated properly.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

To Become a Mage

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:08 GMT

To Become a Mage:

These notes should not exist . What follows is usually spoken only in low voices from master to apprentice, and even then only after years of testing. But if you have found these pages, you likely already walk too near the line to be dissuaded.

Never share these details with anyone affiliated with any temple.

To become a mage, two things are required.

First: a white crystal focus, what we call an hithkazi crystal. They are always the same general shape; long, slightly twisting prisms with a milky-white, almost translucent body. You will know them by the fine cracks spiderwebbing through their length. They are found only where vharin (aether, if you prefer the priest’s term) pools thickest: high passes, deep caverns, places of power.

Second: a getzikar; a soul-gem. These are silver in hue, softer to the touch than ordinary stone, and far rarer than hithkazi. They appear, so far as we can tell, at random in the world, though they are most often discovered in mountains near my people’s halls or in forests close to wood-aelvar settlements. When they can be found with any regularity, they make a dependable trade good to humans mages for their apprentices.

To attune, the apprentice must keep the soul-gem on their person and remain near the chosen hithkazi crystal for several days, constantly thinking about it. The getzikar is psycho-reactive: it begins to weave a sympathetic link between the bearer’s soul and the cracked focus. You will know the connection has formed when you can feel the crystal’s presence as clearly as you might feel a hand on your shoulder, even with eyes closed.

Then comes the true trial. The apprentice must will the focus to cleanse and heal itself while still carrying the soul-gem. Under that directed intent, the getzikar begins to dissolve, its substance flowing into the cracks of the hithkazi and filling them. In doing so, it tears free a fragment of the caster’s own soul and binds it into the crystal… if the process completes.

This is the most dangerous moment. The pain is beyond any ordinary wound, worse even than what priests endure when they burn themselves out channeling their so-called aether. Many do not survive it. Success on the first attempt is, at best, even odds. Those of stronger will, with purer soul-gems and the ability to hold to their desire, to mend and purify the crystal above all else, even the mage’s own life; through the agony are the ones who live to call themselves mages.

This is one reason aelvar so rarely choose this path, though, to be sure, it is common among aelvar that live in human lands. We aelvar may live a thousand years; what sane aelv would accept a one-in-two chance of death simply to gain an art we were not born to, unless it were for the good of our people? The odds improve with each additional hithkazi bound, and with the quality of the getzikar used; but the first forging of that bond is always a wager with one’s entire remaining life. But binding to too many crystals has its own risks. See my prior notes on Vamlychts.

Where this process comes from, I do not know. Records pre-Binding reveal nothing but tales of so-called twin/double-bonding that are formed using a so-called “li’sélior’júrel,” meaning “great blessed/beloved soul-bond/bound.” Based on context, I believe the appropriate translation is “great blessed soul-bond.” What this is, I do not know. Nor do I know what they bound themselves to, though twin/double-bonding makes me believe it was a two-stage bonding process. How that would work, again, I have no answers. The earliest record of the modern process, according to my late master, mentor, and great, great uncle, Zyr’Sueli Vess’Lothen, is near ninety millennia old, several millennia after the first records of that world-changing cataclysm. I will continue my research into the ancients as I search the world, and will provide more notes if I am able to learn anything new.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

What Each People Eats

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:06 GMT

Food and drink tell you as much about a people as their banners and their gods. Humans, being humans, eat nearly everything that can be coaxed from field, forest, river, or sea. Wheat is their quiet tyrant: bread on nearly every table, from coarse black loaves in village hovels to airy white rounds in noble halls. Ale: thick, weak, or surprisingly potent, is their water’s safer cousin, consumed from dawn to dusk wherever wells are suspect. Stews of root vegetables, onions, and whatever meat is at hand are the default fare.

High-aelvar, perched along mountain ridges flanked by forest, rely less on broad fields and more on small, carefully tended terraces and orchards: hardy grains, root crops, herbs, and fruits that tolerate thinner soil and colder nights. We supplement this with animal husbandry and hunting of goats, mountain deer, and game birds, all prepared with a patience humans rarely match: slow-roasted meats glazed with herb wines, smoked cheeses, and soups so clear you can see the bottom of the bowl.

Wood-aelvar remain closest to the old hunter-gatherer pattern. Their villages and groves yield berries, nuts, wild greens, and mushrooms subtly encouraged rather than domesticated, while deer, boar, hare, birds, and even squirrels find their way into the cookpot when the season is right. Meals are often simple but fresh: spit-roasted meat over open fires, flatbreads of forest grains and ground nuts, fruit wines and lightly fermented berry drinks taken in communal gatherings.

Dverger diets resemble those of nearby humans at first glance: grains, root vegetables, meat; but the preparation differs. Living at the feet of mountains, they favor hardy crops and livestock that tolerate stony ground, then transform them with an exuberant use of spices and mineral salts from their own mines. Their stews are dense, their breads dark and heavy, and their famed stone-ovens yield smoked and baked dishes that can keep for weeks deep in their mines when excavating.

The pale-aelvar of the Vael’sarí, if Isha is to be believed, sit uneasily between human and aelvar habits. Nobles indulge in the regular hunting of great beasts such as stag, aurochs, even larger game when they can find it, all served with rich wheat breads and wines, while commoners make do with barley, lesser grains, and whatever meat trickles down from the high tables. Wheat, there, is not simply a staple but a marker of rank. Isha told me she grew up on coarse barley bread, thin ale, and occasional cuts of meat, with true wheat loaves appearing rarely enough to feel like holy days. In all of this, one sees how power decides not only who eats, but what counts as food.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Death and What Follows

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:04 GMT

Death, like taxes and foolish kings, visits every people I have studied, and each has found its own way to make sense of it. All races, in one fashion or another, acknowledge the gods: at the peak stand the Goddess of Light and the Goddess of Darkness, with the so-called “neutral” deities and their lesser gods arranged in uneasy orbits around them. Those who follow Light worship her and the gods aligned with her openly; those who give their hearts to Darkness tend to veil their devotions, honoring her lesser allies in hidden shrines and whispered rites.

Funeral customs differ as markedly as languages. Humans bury their dead in earth, from humble village plots to grand stone tombs, trusting soil and time to do their quiet work. High-aelvar cremate our fallen and carry the ashes up the mountain, casting them into the air so that the winds and snows may bear them back into the living world; it is said this blessing strengthens the generations that follow. Wood-aelvar return their bodies directly to the forest, exposed to sky, root, and tooth, seeing no clear line between flesh and the rest of the natural cycle. Dverger entomb their dead deep beneath their great fortress cities in vast catacombs (separate from their mines) with lovingly carved stone effigies marking each resting place. Pale-aelvar, by Isha’s account, burn their “worthy” dead and store the mingled ashes of a bloodline in a single ancestral vessel, so that descendants may venerate a literal concentration of their forebears. What makes them worthy, she declined to tell.

On what comes after, the doctrines split as sharply as their rites. Followers of the Goddess of Light hold that the righteous join her and her allied gods in their own plane, while those who did great harm are given other lives in the future to amend themselves. Souls that squander even these second and third chances are said to be confined to the “hells”; not a place of elaborate tortures, but a realm cut off from her Light, populated solely by those who proved incapable of redemption. Those who worship the Goddess of Darkness teach that all the dead, especially those granted her “Mercy”, or ritual death by her priests, return to the primordial Void that existed before creation, dissolving into her presence for eternity. To my ear, this sounds suspiciously like the hells described by her rival’s priests, only with different hymns attached.

As for what I believe… neither prospect is especially comforting to a skeptic such as myself. Yet if forced to choose, I admit I find the hopes of those who follow the Goddess of Light, and the gods who stand with her, far more appealing than the promise of everlasting nothingness. It would be nice to see friends long lost again.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

How Children Are Taught

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:04 GMT

Children learn in more ways than their elders care to admit. Among humans, the pattern is as uneven as everything else about them. The poor are fortunate to receive even a few years of letters and numbers; most learn their letters, if at all, in cramped temple-rooms or from a kindly neighbor with a bit of spare time. The wealthy hire tutors and sword-masters almost as soon as a child can hold quill and practice blade; five years old is not uncommon in noble houses. In cities such as Ætaine and Valmark, royal patronage has established free schools where any child from five to ten may learn their letters, basic sums, and a little history; those who wish to go further must either pay for the privilege or distinguish themselves enough to earn patronage and scholarships. Their games mirror this divide: street children play chasing, stick-duels, and rough ball-games in alleys, while noble offspring practice formal sword forms with blunted blades and re-enact famous battles on polished boards.

Dverger children are taught first at home, drilled in clan-lore, numbers, and the precise handling of tools. Once they reach a certain skill, they are apprenticed to a master of a craft (stonecutting, smithing, engineering, woodworking, etc.) and from there their education becomes indistinguishable from work. War, for them, is a last resort, but an extension of craft in their citizen-militias: shield-walls, formation drills, and the maintenance of arms are taught like any other trade, with a ban on magic so strict that even harmless tricks are frowned upon. Their games are puzzles, stacking contests, strategy boards played on carved grids; everything a rehearsal for patience and precision.

We aelvar, with our long youth, take a slower approach. From about ten years of age, high- and wood-aelvar children are gathered into communal lessons: language, lore, song, basic numbers, and the quiet disciplines of observation and memory. As our children grow, they move into apprenticeships: arts, crafts, healing, forestry, navigation, scholarship, and, for a minority, the martial disciplines. Training for war is careful and reluctant. High-aelvar drill in small, precise companies, emphasizing defense and de-escalation; wood-aelvar teach ambush and avoidance in equal measure, for the loss of even one life from a people who may live a thousand years is a wound that echoes through centuries. Our games reflect this: tracking contests, cooperative puzzles, dances that demand awareness of others, archery with blunted arrows that sting pride more than flesh.

Everywhere but in dverger society, any child who manifests a natural gift for vharin around their tenth year is taken to a temple; ostensibly to learn control alongside ordinary schooling. In most lands, such children are treasured and protected, though separated from their families; among the pale-aelvar, as I have recorded elsewhere from Isha’s account, “training” is a harsher word. For most of us, youth is something to shield at almost any cost. In the Vael’sarí Empire, it seems youth is something to be sharpened and spent.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Where People Gather

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:03 GMT

Every culture has its own answer to the question, “Where do we go to simply be together?” Humans, predictably, sort themselves by rank even in their leisure. In Ætaine, the noble salons are polished cages of politeness: high-ceilinged rooms where wine flows freely and ideas somewhat less so. Courtiers trade half-true rumors of border disputes, veiled barbs about rival houses, and scandalous hints about who is sleeping with whom, or what their Elected Queen might be plotting. Much of the city’s “policy” is born there, disguised as conversation over delicate pastries and string music.

‘Down’ in Valmark, by the gates, the air is thicker: smoke, sweat, cheap ale, and the smell of too many horses. Gate-side taverns are where caravans come in, mercenaries look for work, and soldiers forget the last campaign through copious consumption of ale and spirits. Stories trace the movements of armies and monster sightings: a varvarski raid three days ride away, a dragon seen in the northern mountains, a river-barge that swore it glimpsed an ocean sea-snake far down the river near the coast and lived. Secrets here are rougher and more practical: who is smuggling weapons, which tax collector can be bribed, which noble is hiring “discreet blades.”

Dverger gather in their great drinking rooms, long chambers built above the entrances to their mines, lined with heavy tables. Clan comes first, then family; guests are seated according to which clan vouched for them. Here, gossip concerns ore veins, new forging or woodworking techniques, marriage alliances, and the reliability or durability of a human kingdom’s trade goods. A whispered admission that a tunnel collapsed due to shoddy shoring might be more shocking than any tale of adultery.

Wood-aelvar prefer the open air. Their social heart is the communal fire-circle, where villagers eat, sing, and tell stories under the trees. News of the forest passes this way: where game has grown scarce, which areas of the forest have been restless, whether any human logging party has strayed too close. Secrets are spoken softly: who has been marked by the gods, where someone glimpsed a pale-aelv, and remembered for generations.

My kind, the high-aelvar, tend to gather in large family rooms: long, airy spaces in cliffside homes where three or four generations share meals, arguments, and quiet evenings. Less clan-bound than the dverger, we still hold extended kin in high regard. The talk is of scholarship, art, politics in distant capitals, and who among the younger cousins shows natural aptitude for vharin or swordplay. The deepest confidences: fears, doubts, and forbidden loves, rarely leave those rooms, though one underestimates children’s ears at one’s peril.

Of pale-aelvar society, Isha reports no true equivalent to these shared spaces. There are barracks, dormitories, and way-houses, all functional; none meant for fellowship. Leisure, such as it exists, is compartmentalized by rank and fear. Information flows downward as command, upward as reports, never as stories shared around a fire.

In the end, human spaces divide first by class, while the rest of us gather by clan, village, or family. But in every hall, tavern, circle, and salon, the same currents run: boasts embroidered into legend, fears trimmed into jokes, secrets traded like coin. If one wishes to know a people, one could do worse than to sit quietly in their favorite gathering place and listen.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Music and Memory

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:44:02 GMT

If language is how a people thinks, music is how they remember. Humans, true to form, have turned song into their most efficient courier: street fiddlers and lute-players in taverns spread news faster than most messengers, trading ballads about wars, scandals, and miracles for coins. A marching tune composed in Valmark can be heard, a season later, on a dockside in Ætaine; its words already twisted to flatter a different patron.

Wood-aelvar favor flutes carved from living branches, hand-drums of bark and hide, and choral singing that threads through the canopy; their songs map game-trails, water sources, and forest taboos, so that even a child raised on them could walk safely from one village to the next.

We high-aelvar prefer harps, long-necked lutes, and layered vocal pieces of absurd complexity. Our compositions are as much archives as entertainments: genealogies, histories, even philosophical arguments encoded in recurring themes and counter-melodies.

Dverger keep time with heavy drums, deep-voiced horns, and resonant stone chimes hung in their fortress-cities. Their work-songs synchronize labor; their epic songs recount city and clan histories, lost mines, metalworking guidance, and warnings about failed endeavors.

Pale-aelvar, by Isha’s account, reserve music largely for ritual and war: harsh chants and percussive rhythms used to enforce unity during marches or to glorify the Night Sovereign and the worship of the Goddess of Darkness. Across borders, melodies slip more easily than flags. A tune born as a hymn to the Goddess of Light might resurface in Drak’nir as a patriotic march, its origin forgotten but its shape still carrying the memory of some older, half-remembered truth.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

How the World Counts Its Days

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:51 GMT

The Ætaine Calendar would like to pretend it is the only sane way to count the passage of time, and for much of the East, it has succeeded. Most human kingdoms date their lives from its year-zero, and the rest grudgingly convert when doing business due to Ætaine’s dominance in commerce. Yet even in its own shadow, oddities flourish. Villages celebrate local saints and half-forgotten heroes on dates no one else recognizes. Eclipses and bright comets spawn their own short-lived observances: sudden fasts, impromptu festivals, or solemn processions, depending on whether the last time it happened brought good harvests or war.

The Drak’nir Empire, naturally, refuses to acknowledge Ætaine’s dating at all. Their calendar begins with the founding of Drak’nir, placing them roughly three centuries “younger” on paper, which suits their pride well enough. Official decrees there are dated according to imperial regnal years and founding year, and any scribe caught using Ætaine reckoning on state documents risks more than a reprimand. The dverger seem to not care about annual dating or tracking at all, just utilizing the standard calendar to mark the passage of days and months.

The aelvar realms ignore both systems. High- and wood-aelvar societies still use the old Creation Calendar, which counts from a mythic estimate of when the Goddess of Light first brought the world into being, some one hundred and thirty-seven millennia ago. The pale-aelvar, interestingly, retain the same numbering but have stripped their holy days of any reference to the Goddess of Light; the “Radiant Deceiver,” as they name her; in their version, the year is kept, but the light has been carefully written out of the margins and date it according to the First Sin.

In this as in so much else, our calendars say less about when things happened than about whom we have decided to honor, or erase.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Maps Lie

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:51 GMT

Maps lie.

They shows a single landmass with a moderate piece of land south of the Northern Mountains connecting each half of the continent with a river down the middle, and one might think, at a glance, that east and west speak to each other as easily as two people may converse. In reality, the Ætaine River is a wound across the continent: a mile and a half wide where it cuts through the city itself and broader still elsewhere, fast and deep enough that only one point of reliable, yet human-made, overland passage exists. The three Great Bridges of Ætaine are the continent’s throat; if they fall, east and west can only speak by ship… or not at all.

Major land trade routes radiate from that bottleneck. The paved highway between Valmark and Ætaine is toll-bound and well patrolled, its surface maintained by royal decree from both nations and merchant pressure as it controls all trade to the northeast above the mountain range that splits the east between north and south. Travel along it is never entirely safe (no road is), but brigands and beasts are rare enough that caravans worry more about tariffs than danger. Step away from such major spines, however, and you find the true face of travel: dirt tracks, half-swallowed by weeds, wagon-ruts turned to mud in rain and broken stone in summer. Most of these lesser roads see a patrol only when a lord remembers they exist. This is why mercenary companies thrive; merchants with any sense hire steel to fill the gaps where law does not reach.

The further north you go, the more the seasons rule your travel. Snows can close passes for months, and even Valmark and Ætaine may find themselves half-buried in harsher winters. Their networks of paved roads blunt the worst of it as clearing snow from stone is easier than from raw earth, but travel slows to a crawl all the same. In the unpaved north, a bad winter can isolate entire nations and freeze rivers. Mountain routes are perilous in any season if they are not under the watch of my people, the high-aelvar; dragons, varvarski, and lesser predators all favor the high ground. Forest paths under wood-aelvar protection are safer from beasts, but humans who wander too freely or arrive in numbers may find that the guardians of their forests consider them the greater threat.

The Drak’nir Empire, true to its nature, keeps its roads for war. Their causeways are broad, straight, and brutally efficient, built so their armies can march swiftly to crush rebellion or hurl themselves across borders at their tyrant’s whim. Other kingdoms land somewhere between neglect and pragmatism: some maintain decent roadways near their capitals and let the provinces fend for themselves; others rely almost entirely on river-routes and coastal shipping, leaving the interior to hardy traders and the occasional fool. Inns, waystations, and caravanserais spring up along the few truly busy roads like hardy plants in a narrow band of fertile soil, while most of the continent remains what it has always been: distance, risk, and the long, dusty silence between one walled city and the next.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Priests, Herbalists, and Healers

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:50 GMT

Among the healing professions there is more cooperation (and more hypocrisy) than most temples care to admit. Temple priests and priestesses, village herbalists, and chirurgeons with their tools all lay claim to the same enemy: pain, injury, sickness, and the slow rot of infection that follows ill-tended wounds. Our medical knowledge is better than our grandfathers would have dared hope to believe; at least now we understand that filth on a blade can kill as surely as the blade itself.

Herbalists and priests generally work well together. In remote villages, an apothecary’s shop and a few well-tended herb beds are often all that stands between a community and disaster, especially when no resident priest is assigned and temple healers visit only when they can. Herbalists mend fevers, soothe coughs, set simple bones, and brew salves; priests are called when the body’s own strength fails, or when wounds exceed what bark, root, and honey can manage. Many older priests, once they tire of city politics and endless rituals, retire to such places and become collaborators rather than rivals, spending their remaining years refining poultices instead of sermons.

The real friction lies between priests and chirurgeons. Temple healers will tell you, with some justification, that cutting into the body is an invitation to infection and needless suffering, and grumble that they are expected to burn vast reserves of their aether to fix the damage when surgeries go poorly. Yet those same priests quietly rely on chirurgeons’ knowledge of anatomy and technique when they must mend torn organs or shattered bones: much of what they know about where to send their power was first learned from watching someone else open donated corpses with a knife. Herbalists and chirurgeons, for their part, tend to get along tolerably; one eases the pain and wards off infection, the other does what steady hands and sharp steel can do that no spell or tea quite matches.

In practice, it is a symbiotic arrangement. Temples may sneer at “butchers,” chirurgeons may curse “sanctimonious priests,” and herbalists may shake their heads at both, but when plague comes, or war, you will find all three elbow-deep in the same blood, arguing about method while quietly depending on one another to keep more candles lit than snuffed.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Half-Bloods and Old Myths

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:48 GMT

The world is very fond of its monsters, especially the kind it can point at in the street. Tales abound of “beastfolk,” human–varvarski offspring, children with dragon’s blood, and hybrids of every stripe used to frighten children and excuse cruelties. In all my centuries, I have never seen a true human–varvarski cross, nor any convincing evidence one has ever existed; varvarski typically kill and eat their captives, not keep them long enough for… other uses. As for “draconic bloodlines,” I suspect those are families flattering themselves for having sharp cheekbones and bad tempers. Dragons are mere beasts after all.

Half-aelvar and quarter-aelvar, however, are very real, and the social weight they carry is heavy enough. Among human nobles, they are walking contradictions: coveted for their beauty and longevity, and despised for what their blood implies. The same lords who secretly yearn to look and live more like aelvar balk at mixing our blood into their own lines; they flatter us at court, then use slurs behind the backs of those with more power than they can safely insult to their faces; my half-aelv friend Esriella and her quarter-aelv son Valin among them. In realms like the Drak’nir Empire, where aelvar slavery persists in the shadows of the “noble” elite, any child born of such unions is usually “disposed of” quickly and quietly. Common-born humans and most dverger, by contrast, are often far kinder. Suspicion softens once they share work, food, or danger with a half- or quarter-aelv; familiarity does what doctrine and belief rarely does.

My own people are not innocent in this. High-aelvar tend to pity those who are not fully aelvar. My kind look at a half- or quarter-blood child and see a life cut short by centuries; for any aelv parent, the knowledge that their child is almost certain to die before them is a wound that never fully closes... no one wishes to outlive their children, nor burden them with the pain of not belonging anywhere, though many of us still treat them with respect. The wood-aelvar feel much the same, but their response is harsher: they will not allow a mixed child to be raised in their villages. They claim it is too great an emotional burden on clan and village to watch a beloved child’s life run out so much sooner than their own, and so such children are usually brought up among humans instead.

Of the pale-aelvar, I would rather write little here. From what Isha has told me, the fate of any child born of a pale-aelv master and a human slave is almost always the same, and it ends at the altar of the Goddess of Darkness. Such offspring are considered offerings to the Goddess of Darkness, not as members of a family. Pale-aelv who couple with other aelvar races are no better regarded and end in the same manner; in pale-aelv eyes, those children are tainted in precisely the same way. Pale-aelvar women who “sully” themselves in such a manner, are typically offered alongside their child. Such double-standards are disgusting.

To my knowledge, there are no dverger hybrids that exist. Whether if it is from inability or intention, I cannot say. Dverger, like usual, are tight-lipped on the subject.

There is one more, quieter category: full-blooded aelvar born of parents from different branches: say, a high-aelv and a wood-aelv. Such children are, in theory, accepted; in practice, they rarely feel they belong fully to either side. Many of them drift into the human world and stay there, often in the company of other high- and wood-aelvar who have left behind the rigid expectations of their homelands.

It is a curious irony that among humans; short-lived, impulsive, frequently cruel; those who do not fit in neat boxes often find the only homes that truly feel like theirs.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Life in the Border Towns

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:47 GMT

In the odd rare location, border towns and mixed settlements are where all our grand theories about race and purity quietly fall apart. You will not find many of my people or the dverger there who still care about family etiquette or clan politics; those who settle in such places are usually the ones who have had enough of being told what they must be. The humans are almost always commoners: traders, craftsmen, retired soldiers, and those with more curiosity than fear; with perhaps the local lord realizing the advantages to their fiefdom they can gain from allowing all in.

In these towns, perched near mountain passes, forest edges, or major crossroads, and mainly in the east, laws are less about ancestry and more about whether you pay your taxes and keep your sword or knife sheathed unless in self-defense. Aelvar knowledge and long-term planning meets human earnestness and industriousness with dverger skill, and somehow a working order emerges. The posted edicts are usually written in Ætaini, with a second line in Saelarin or Letharin if some industrious scribe has the skill or knowlege; in practice, half the bargains are struck in a muddle of trade-tongues, gestures, and whatever curses everyone recognizes. Prejudices do not vanish, but they are forced to compete with more immediate concerns: who can mend a broken axle, who has grain for sale, who is willing to stand watch when bandits or varvarski come sniffing around.

These towns are where half-aelvar and quarter-aelvar are most likely to find something resembling a normal life, rather than being insulted or used as ornaments in human courts or pitied in distant aelvar enclaves. It is also where dverger who turned their backs on their people can earn a quiet living as skilled craftsmen without hearing, every day, how they have disappointed their clans.

There is but one exception to this rule. Pale-aelvar, solely, are not welcome even in these locales. Old stories cling to them too tightly; most folk would rather bar their doors than test whether any individual pale-aelv might be different… I know of one who is, but Isha is the exception that proves the rule. The rule, from my own personal experience, is founded in facts and blood.

If you wish to take the measure of the world as it is, not as temples and kings claim it to be, do not start in palaces. Start in the markets of a mixed border town at dusk, when caravans roll in and everyone is too tired to hate each other properly. Listen to what they complain about, what they laugh at, and who they trust with their children for an hour. That will tell you more than any royal propaganda.

Ætaine and Valmark come closest to carrying these border-town ideals into true cities: imperfect, quarrelsome, but at least attempting to treat worth before blood. It is no coincidence, I think, that they are the only human realms ruled, in whole or in part, by those of aelvar descent, however much their entrenched human nobility grind their teeth at the arrangement. Though, I do find it interesting that their leaders grew up, at least partially, in human society. So I would not say that those of aelvar descent make the best rulers for humans, but perhaps a mixing of our differing cultures is necessary for the makings of a harmonious environment in large cities between the races.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

What Cities Hide at Night

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:44 GMT

Night is when cities show you the truth about themselves. Valmark, under my dear friends Levak and Esriella, is as close to honest as any I have seen. With roughly two hundred thousand souls within its walls, its streets remain surprisingly safe after dark. There are patrols, of course, and the usual tavern brawls, but smuggling is low, open cruelty rarer still. Even the poorer districts keep their lamps lit late; people walk home from inns and temples with less fear than most capitals manage at noon. There are secret shrines here and there: little unauthorized altars Chaos, Strife, or even Darkness, but they are small, usually hidden in cellars, more whispers than threats.

Ætaine is another creature entirely. A city of over a million cannot be governed so neatly by anyone. The main avenues are patrolled, and the plazas are lively well into the night with licensed taverns and “sanctioned” entertainments. Yet there are quarters even I prefer not to walk during the hours of darkness: the dockside warrens, where cargo disappears and men with too many weapons ask too few questions; the crowded tenements and slums outside the walls, where neither city guard nor temple cares to go unless in force. Illegal duels flare in half-abandoned courtyards, fought over insults, debts, or pure boredom, while blackmarkets trade in contraband steel, illicit drugs, and stolen goods under the guise of night stalls. Though I must say the illegal slave-trade is harshly, and quite viciously, stamped out. Ætaine’s government is, by the standards of cities, “good”… but no city that size is free of rot. It merely pushes the decay into shadowed alleys and calls the rest civilized. Yet the people of this city, and their Elected Queen Mazræl, seem to prefer it that way, cleaning up the bad parts only when necessary to better the people in some manner I barely understand.

Drak’nir’s capital does not bother with such pretenses. Curfew falls at sunset. Anyone found in the streets and alleys without explicit writ are arrested; many are never seen again. Its half-million inhabitants, a full third of them slaves, learn quickly to fear the sound of boots after dusk. Yet for all the iron discipline, illicit trade thrives beneath it: hidden cellars where nobles gamble on blood-sports, back-room markets for slaves (despite having a legalized slave trade) and stolen goods, then secret temples not to Light but to Darkness, Chaos, false deities and much worse. When law is a cudgel instead of a shield, vice simply digs itself deeper. Of all the streets I have walked, those of Drak’nir after sunset are the ones I will not set foot on again without extreme necessity, and much younger legs at my side.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Ætaine's Uneasy Crown

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:43 GMT

Ætaine remains the strangest monarchy I have ever watched take shape because its queen had to invent it on the fly. After Mazræl removed the thoroughly unpleasant Uthrek IV and styled herself “People’s Regent,” it took her two full years to hammer the present system into place: a crown that is strong, but leashed to a Grand Council of Three Orders. Every ten years, that Council: Lords, Temples, and Wards; elects an “Elected Queen” (or King) from among qualified citizens. In theory, any free Ætaini of sufficient age and standing may be chosen; in practice, only those who can convince at least two of the three Orders they are not a disaster stand a chance.

The Orders themselves are carefully weighted. The Order of Lords represents the nobility, but with fewer seats than either the temples or the people’s Wards; Mazræl saw to it that they could no longer simply impose their will due to birthright. The Order of Temples speaks for the recognized temples; their influence tied to the size and charity of their priests and their flocks. The Order of Wards is the loudest of the three: one councillor elected from each city district by local assemblies of residents and guilds. Laws must pass at least two Orders and then the full Council before the Crown signs them, and the monarch’s emergency edicts expire if the Council does not ratify them within a set span. In short, the Queen “rules,” but not alone.

It is an untidy arrangement, resented by old noble houses who remember when one strong-willed noble or king could execute a man on a whim, yet the city has prospered under it. Temples gain voice but must prove their worth in loaves, beds, and healings, not just incense; the Wards can recall their own representatives if they grow corrupt or complacent. Mazræl still holds real power (over the purse, the watch, and the courts) but she does so under the constant, watchful irritation of lords, priests, and commoners alike. For a city this large and this important, it may be the closest anyone has come to making monarchy and accountability share the same space without killing each other outright.

Though I must note, that Mazræl is given wide leeway in her actions by the commoners and the temples. All due to her popularity regarding her direct actions in curbing the “excesses” of the nobility who once had a monopoly on the city’s power. I would dare say she has overstepped her legal authority on several occasions, but was pardoned for her “extra-legal” actions by those of her supporters. It is interesting that in each election she participates, regardless of her wood-aelv blood and appearance, she gains new supporters, mostly from those noble houses that see that it is better to help her achieve her dreams of a prosperous Ætaine for all than try to bring back the “glory” days of the past.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Marriage Across the Races

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:42 GMT

Marriage customs say more about a people than most of their laws. Humans, predictably, show the greatest variety. Their unions are almost always officiated by priests or priestesses; ideally of the Goddess of Love, though any temple dear to the couple will do. The Temple of the Goddess of Light is common enough; Lady Luck’s clergy, less so, as few families wish to speak vows while thinking too hard about “chance.” Noble and royal weddings are grand spectacles: silks, banners, weeks of feasting, and guest-lists assembled less for affection than for alliances. Commoners wed more simply through shared meals, a borrowed courtyard, and neighbors as witnesses; in smaller villages, it is common for several couples to be joined at once when a priest finally makes their circuit. Human marriages tend to cluster in spring, summer, and autumn, when roads are passable and harvests either hoped for or are safely in.

Wood-aelvar do not speak of “marriage” so much as “bonding.” Their unions are marked by two ceremonies, one in each partner’s community, always in the fall when the forest turns and the year seems to slowing down. Family and clan elders officiate; gods are invoked, but the emphasis is on kin and village.

Dverger marry only on the summer solstice, which they treat as a people-wide festival of unions. The ceremonies take place outside their walls, under open sky, with the city’s clan council presiding. It is as if they must step beyond their rigidly structured lives for a moment to acknowledge that even they are not built entirely of it.

My own people, the high-aelvar, speak of our “life-bonding” in a way similar, but different, to the wood-aelvar. The rite is held in the temple at the mountain’s crown, with only close kin from each side in attendance. When the partners come from different villages or cities, the ceremony is always hosted by the community that will be losing a member; the logic is simple, if unspoken: they deserve the final farewell, as it could be centuries, if ever, before they see their family member again.

High-aelvar, wood-aelvar, and dverger who choose to live among humans usually adopt human forms while keeping the weight of their own marriage vows. Divorce, in any formal sense, is unknown among us and strictly forbidden. Courtship therefore typically stretches over decades, sometimes a century or more, as both sides make very sure they are choosing a partner that they will share the better part of a millennium with. Humans, by contrast, do permit separation, though it is frowned upon and typically requires the consent of the same temple that blessed the union in the first place. That is rarely given.

As for the pale-aelvar, I will only note that what Isha has shared of their “unions” resembles political contracts and obligations more than bonds of affection.

For the rest of us, however imperfectly we manage it, the ideal remains the same: marriage is a promise meant to endure until death, rather than by decree, war, or the whims of gods.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

How Long a Childhood Lasts

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:50:42 GMT

I trust I need not explain how children are made; if you require that level of instruction, you should probably be reading a different sort of book. What concerns me here is how long each people carries a child, and how quickly those children grow. Humans are the baseline most use without thinking: roughly nine months of pregnancy, and an age of “maturity” somewhere between fifteen and eighteen years, depending on the kingdom and how badly it needs new soldiers or workers. High-aelvar and wood-aelvar both carry children for about sixteen months. The growth is uneven. Rapid for the first six, then markedly slower, but the result is the same: we do not consider our young truly adult until around one hundred twenty-five years of age.

Dverger are peculiar in the opposite direction. Their pregnancies last only six months, and their infants are the smallest of any people I know, yet they take a full forty years to reach what they regard as adulthood. Half-aelvar fall somewhere between patterns. My friend Esriella, herself half-aelv, carried her quarter-aelvar son for ten months; her own mother, a full-blooded high-aelv, told her she carried Esriella for twelve. It seems human partners can “pull” the timing of aelvar pregnancies forward, shortening what would otherwise be a longer gestation.

Of the pale-aelvar, my notes are frustratingly thin. Isha does not know how long her people carry their children; an ignorance I find both strange and unsettling. I would assume that they are similar to my own people, and the wood-aelvar, in this regard. Among the Vael’sarí, “maturity” appears to be declared rather than reached; one is an adult when told so, though she notes that no one remains a “child” beyond one hundred twenty-five years. She agrees this is the most honest marker, as pale-aelvar at that age look much like human youths of eighteen. Still, it troubles me that something so basic has never been explained to her. It says as much about what the Vael’sarí choose not to teach their young as anything they proudly claim to pass on.

I find myself wondering what Isha’s own “coming of age” looked like, and at what moment some pale-aelv family member or superior decided she was an adult to be used rather than a child to be guarded; but, based on what little she has let slip, I suspect I do not truly wish to know. Even now, any talk of her people draws a shadow over her face that speaks of memories best approached with care, if at all.

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman

Rites of Passage

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:48:17 GMT

Of all the rites that mark the passage from child to adult, humans have managed, for once, to keep theirs the most grounded. Common-born youths rarely have formal “coming of age” ceremonies at all; just a small gathering of family and close friends, a shared meal, perhaps a simple gift and a few too many cups of ale. Noble and royal houses dress the moment up more finely, of course: tailored clothes, carefully composed speeches, and invited guests from allied families, but even then the gatherings are modest by their standards, more intimate than grand.

My people, the high-aelvar, are far less restrained. To turn one hundred and twenty-five is to walk into a storm of attention: a week-long celebration with family, friends, and the broader clan, feasts and dances that stretch long into the night, formal acknowledgments from elders, and no small amount of earnest advice from anyone old enough to remember when your parents reached the same age.

The wood-aelvar weave something similar into village life. When one of their own attains adulthood, the entire settlement celebrates for a whole day: songs, offerings to the forest, shared hunts or dances depending on the season. It is less a private milestone than a communal reaffirmation that the village has successfully carried another child to the far shore of youth.

Dverger make a test of craft the heart of their rite. Before they may be acknowledged as adults, each must fashion a tool suited to their chosen trade: a hammer, chisel, gauge, or other instrument; then present it to the clan elders for inspection. If the work is sound and the elders approve, a great feast follows with clan and family in attendance. Soon after, the newly recognized adult is often sent out into human lands to ply and perfect their craft, carrying the tool as both symbol and promise.

As for the pale-aelvar, I cannot say. I asked Isha once what celebration marked adulthood among the pale-aelvar, and the slight tremor that passed through her at the question was enough to make me change the subject. I have not pressed her since. Whatever they do, it is clearly not something she cares to remember… or I to record. What in the hells do pale-aelvar do to their own young, that the very topic makes one of their bravest shake?

— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman