They said no one returned from the Ashen Vale — not unchanged, not alive. But that didn't stop the cloaked figure from standing at its edge, unmoving, as the mist coiled like snakes around her boots.
Her name was Serelith.
She was not born of this realm, but neither did she come from the mortal world. Found at the gates of the Obsidian Temple as an infant, wrapped in thorns that didn't bleed her, Serelith had always felt the world pressing against her skin too tightly — like it didn't quite fit.
Now seventeen, her hands burned with runes she'd never been taught, and she dreamed of eyes watching her from behind shattered mirrors. Her mentors called it the Mark of the First Tongue — an ancient magic that hadn't spoken since the gods fell asleep.
Tonight, the winds had changed.
A voice — not hers, not mortal — whispered to her in the smoke: "Come to me. The Veil is breaking."
The Ashen Vale was a cursed place, where the gods sealed away a fragment of their own madness to stop it from swallowing the stars. The veil between realms grew thinner each cycle, and now, it was tearing.
And Serelith… she was its key.
She stepped forward.
Immediately, the ground beneath her shifted. What once had been crumbling stone turned to glass, and within it flickered visions — a city on fire, wings made of flame, a figure crowned in bone. But Serelith did not falter.
Deeper in the Vale, she found them: the fairies of the Hollow Court — not the delicate kind from bedtime stories, but ancient creatures with mouths of ivy and eyes like black suns. They surrounded her in silence.
"We know what you are," the tallest said, voice like rusted bells. "We know who you must become."
Serelith's eyes lit gold for the first time.
"I don't," she whispered.
"Good," the fairy replied. "The gods fear those who do."
Then came the crack in the sky — a jagged split through which golden blood dripped like rain, staining the earth and twisting the wind. A god was waking. Not a kind one.
And Serelith — child of two realms, bearer of the First Tongue, cursed and chosen — had just begun the story that would either shatter the realms or stitch them back together with threads of shadow and fire.