Lady Morveth stood still beneath the arching branches of the Court Garden, her silks untouched by the breeze. The once-pristine courtyard had dulled in recent weeks — vines strangling the stone lattice, lanterns dimming before they ever flickered to life. Flowers that once opened for moonlight now kept their petals curled shut, as if mourning something unseen.
A fine mist clung to the marble paths, curling around her ankles like smoke too polite to rise.
She ignored it.
Behind her, a steward finished listing reports — grain shortages, misaligned rites, unrest near the South Quarter. He spoke carefully, as one does when near a woman whose silences held more weight than her words.
Morveth raised a hand, and the steward stopped mid-sentence. His breath hitched.
"That will be all."
He bowed low and fled.
Only when his footsteps faded did Morveth exhale — not in relief, but in irritation. The mist had returned that morning. Again. The sky had refused its proper color. Again. The runes beneath the western altar had trembled, and a novice had reportedly collapsed during a dawn offering.
Again.
She turned slightly, gaze drawn to the pale blossoms at the garden's heart. Nightjade — sacred, stubborn flowers that only bloomed under full moonlight and silence. Tonight, they were half-open. Listening.
Morveth narrowed her eyes.
From the shadows of a nearby archway, a cloaked guard stepped forward — not in warning, but in ritual.
"My lady," he said, voice low. "The herald was seen again. Northern parapet. No one harmed, but three sentinels speak nonsense."
Morveth said nothing.
She stepped forward instead, letting the mist curl higher up her gown. It did not chill her. Not anymore.
"Burn the witness logs," she said quietly. "Triple the incense for the night offerings. And send the dreaming ones to the Black Spire infirmary. I'll deal with them myself."
The guard hesitated. "And the herald?"
Morveth finally looked at him — just once.
It was enough.
"Do nothing," she said. "What watches cannot always be stopped. But it can be… endured."
The guard bowed and disappeared into the dark.
Alone once more, Morveth reached for a nightjade bloom. Her fingers stopped just shy of the petals.
For a moment, she saw Luceris again — not as he had stood in the War Hall days earlier, proud and radiant in his false return — but as he had looked when she first sent him into the wilds. Controlled. Sharp. Loyal.
Or so she had believed.
And now?
Now the flowers didn't open right. Now the mist disobeyed.
Now she dreamt of golden eyes that did not belong to anybody of this world — but burned just the same.
She let her hand fall away from the flower and turned back toward the garden arch, her voice drifting softly behind her:
"Let them bloom or wither. The garden does not rule me."
But behind her, in the reflection pool's still surface, something stirred. Not petals. Not leaves. A shimmer. A blink.
A single flicker of golden light — and then it was gone.
By the time Morveth reached the inner sanctum of the Grand Hall, the mist had already begun to recede from the palace arches, obedient only in appearance. Attendants rushed to prepare the dais, the air scrubbed with incense and iron polish — but the scent of rot still clung faintly beneath the perfume.
She stepped through the tall doors not as a noble, not even as a shadow ruler — but as a figure carved from tradition, forced into the light beside a minion she no longer recognized.
The banners of Valaris hung in rigid rows — crimson velvet edged with silver thread — but even their weight seemed hesitant today. Beneath them, the court gathered like well-dressed shadows, their applause measured, their eyes too sharp.
Luceris stood tall at the center of the dais, cloak falling in clean, regal lines from his shoulders. The heir. The returned blade. The silence he carried filled more space than his presence.
Morveth stood at his side — half a step behind.
She wore her finest black and pearl, her expression carved from ivory: serene, unreadable, rehearsed. The courtiers bowed as she raised her hands, voice ringing through the chamber with flawless grace.
"Let it be known," she said, "that the heir of House Vaelmont returns not in defeat, but in strength — tempered by trial, sharpened by captitvity."
Applause rose, brittle as frost.
Luceris did not speak. He didn't need to. The hall bent around him already, cautious of his silence, drawn to his distance.
Morveth smiled as required. She did not look at him.
He was forged in my shadow once. Now I cannot see the edge of him.
She gestured toward him again, palm lifted — the act of an attendant,
They cheer for him. They forget who summoned the mist. Who bled for the runes. Who whispered into the dark when all others clung to light.
The nobles applauded again, some with true fervor, some with wary glances at her hands — hands that once signed orders of quiet execution, hands that still smelled faintly of sulfur when the mist clung to the palace gates.
Luceris gave a single nod.
It was enough.
Morveth lowered her hands slowly.
Let them believe I stand behind him. Let them kneel when he passes. But I do not serve boys who forget who opened the gate for their return.
When the hall emptied, her smile did not linger.
And when she turned to walk away, her footsteps made no sound at all.
The applause from the Grand Hall had long since faded, but the taste of it still clung to Morveth's tongue—sweet, then sour. She stood in the shadow of the old columns now, robes traded for a cloak of slate velvet, eyes sharper without the mask of ceremony.
A captain approached, helm tucked beneath his arm, breath hitching not from exertion, but unease.
"High Lady," he said quietly, bowing low. "We have… a situation."
She said nothing. Only turned.
He led her through the inner courtyard, down a narrow stair few ever used. Beneath the barracks, the air grew colder, damper — and the walls carried echoes not made by footfall.
Three guards stood at attention beside an iron gate. Inside, slumped but awake, was a woman in tattered priestess garb—too pale, too still. Her wrists were bound with silver-threaded cord. Blood darkened her lip, but her gaze… it glittered. Not with defiance. With knowing.
"She was caught in the ink wing of the temple," the captain said. "Claimed to be delivering ash votives. But when we checked her satchel—"
He held it out. Morveth opened it slowly.
Inside: false holy seals. A cracked pendant bearing a fractured circle, lined in threads of gold and dusk.
The breath in her chest stilled.
"I don't recognize this symbol," she said at last.
"No one does."
The woman smiled. Slow. Razor-thin.
Morveth stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "Who sent you?"
"I walked through your walls," the woman murmured. Her voice was velvet soaked in old blood. "You built no doors for me."
The guards stiffened. One swallowed hard. The youngest among them whispered, too loud in the silence:"She said she came from within."
Morveth's voice turned to iron. "What are you?"
The woman tilted her head, baring a glimpse of fang. "Not what you should fear. But what follows me."
Morveth didn't flinch.
"Execute her. Now."
The guards hesitated.
"Now!"
Steel sang. The blade met flesh. No scream came — only a faint sigh, as if the woman had waited to be released. Her body crumpled like parchment. Blood pooled — but no shadow moved.
Morveth turned before the body hit stone.
"Burn the corpse. Salt the ground. And find me the damn Prexies. All of them."
And as her footsteps faded up the stone stairwell, the mark inside the satchel pulsed faintly — as if it had not been drawn, but awakened.
The storm had passed, but its breath lingered in the windows — a cold that touched no skin yet whispered down the spine.
Morveth stood alone.
Her sanctum was sparse by noble standards. No tapestries. No gold. Just stone, old and quiet, and the mirror.
It stood as tall as she was, rimmed in rune-steel, its surface a blend of polished obsidian and enchanted mercury — the last relic of her line's private rites. A mirror not for vanity, but for truth.
She lit no candles. The mirror lit itself.
At first, she saw what she expected — her face, drawn, regal, eyes rimmed with sleeplessness.
But then—
The reflection didn't blink.
Her breath caught.
Slowly, her hand rose.
So did the one in the glass.
But not in time.
It blinked.
She did not.
The eyes in the mirror flared—gold, unnatural, gleaming like coin melted into bone. Not hers. Not even human.
And then they smiled.
Morveth stumbled back, striking the altar behind her. The flame in her palm — meant to steady the scrying — flared and died.
She whispered, hoarse: "What are you?"
No answer.
Only the shimmer of motion—not behind the glass, but behind her.
Then A elf appeared in the mirror was it him?
A breath, warm and wrong, brushed her neck.
Then:
She screamed so loud the ward shattered.
The mirror cracked — not from impact, but rejection. Fractures bloomed like frost, splitting her reflection down the center. One half remained her face. The other — hollow, golden-eyed, smiling.
When the mirror finally fell silent, Morveth was on her knees, blood slick on her palms from the broken shards.
She looked up.
And saw nothing.
Only her reflection.
And even that… blinked twice.
Then it spoke — not aloud, not in any tongue she knew, but deep within the marrow of her bones.
"You called the mist. But it did not come for you."
A crack ran through the wall behind the mirror.
Dust fell.
And somewhere beneath the city, something answered.