They said the Fae could not fall.
That the moon would crack before their walls did.
But that night, the moon bled.
It began on a night thick with omen, rain threading through the heavens like unraveling silk.
Blood fell—not from wounds, not from war, but from the stars themselves.
And the moon, once a pale sentinel, wept red across the sky.
In the distance, war roared.
A grotesque symphony of clashing steel and shattering shields.
The earth itself groaned beneath it—slick with sweat, blood, and sorrow.
And still, the sky wept.
The Fae knights rode through streets choked with smoke, trying to tame panic already too wild to leash.
Screams flared through the alleys. Doors slammed. Lanterns died.
The air stank of soot and fear.
Then it came—a single thunderclap from the palace.
It cracked through the city like a divine curse,
and even the bravest soldiers paused,
as though the gods themselves had drawn breath.
The darkness grew teeth.
Fire leapt from rooftops, devouring homes like parchment.
Its embers danced through the city—bright, hungry, unholy.
And overhead, the red moon watched in silence.
The gates fell before dawn.
The Jhaljie carved their way through like floodwaters—
merciless, many, unstoppable.
Acacia's golden streets became rivers of ash.
Children wept. Mothers screamed. The old, whispered prayers to gods that would not listen.
Within the palace, silence reigned—a silence that tasted of dust and endings.
No trumpets. No cries.
Only the hiss of flame licking marble.
The stained-glass saints wept colored light over shattered stone.
Where once stood a kingdom of grace and lineage, now lingered only ruin—
and the bitter scent of blood.
At the heart of it, the throne did not stand empty.
It stood abandoned.
Far beyond the crumbling halls,
by the river's edge,
the princess collapsed.
Ash clung to her hem like rot. Her hands trembled, not from cold—but from knowing.
She had believed the Fae eternal.
She had believed the walls would hold.
But the sky had bled. And the earth had opened.
Behind her, her knight stood—
Raphael bloodstained and silent.
His sword dragged behind him like a guilt too heavy to sheath.
He did not speak.
And when she turned to him, she could not tell—
was it pity in his eyes?
Or blame?
Beneath the ruins, where the garden once bloomed in summer gold,
a forgotten chamber stirred.
Roots clawed the stone. Dust hung like breath.
And in the dark stood Kiara.
She did not flinch at the stillness.
Her fingers reached for the crystal core,
its hum faint—like a heart trying to remember how to beat.
She took it.
And the moment she did, the world shivered.
The hum became a call.
A current across the kingdoms.
It reached through marble and mountain, through temples and tombs.
Every bearer of a core felt it.
A pulse. A tremor. A truth.
Not power. Not promise.
But warning.
The beginning had come.
The Faeryn had fallen.
And the sea, in all its vastness, carried the dead weight of that truth.
Salt clung to the wind, masking the scent of blood, but not the memory.
They called it refuge, but it felt like burial.
Each wave against the hull a knell.
Each gust a voice reminding her what could not be reclaimed.
Winnifred stood at the stern, cloaked in borrowed wool.
The silk of royalty had burned.
All that remained was a threadbare covering that smelled of fish, smoke, and someone else's sorrow.
She did not speak.
Not even to Rafael.
He kept his vigil near the mast, sharpening his blade by candlelight.
The fire caught in the grooves of his gauntlet, flickering like distant lightning,
but he never looked at her.
Not once.
The crew gave her space, more from fear than courtesy.
They knew who she was—of course they did.
How could they not? The war had not ended in whispers, but in fire.
Yet no one said her name.
As if it would summon ruin once more.
Children slept in hammocks. Mothers clutched rosaries to bruised chests.
A man sang to himself in a tongue she did not know.
And one night, an old crone threw bones on the floor and gasped.
"She walks with a crown buried in her ribs," she whispered.
"The sea can carry her but not wash her clean."
Winnifred did not flinch.
She only turned to the dark horizon and let the wind lash her face.
On the twelfth night, the mists broke.
And there—rising from the shore like a second sun—stood the Sera Empire.
Its cliffs were red-gold, jagged like old teeth.
The spires of its capital rose in spirals, carved with runes too ancient to read.
Fires flickered on the outposts—signal torches or warnings, none could tell.
And atop the hill, the famed gates of Myrraden opened slowly, as if unsure whether to welcome or refuse.
This was no sanctuary.
Only another kingdom built on bones.
She disembarked at dawn, beneath a sky pale with mourning.
The harbor swelled with noise—merchants shouting, guards patrolling, incense curling through air still thick with the night's dew.
Rafael dismounted first, offering his hand. She took it.
But before her foot touched Sera's stone, she turned once more to the sea.
There was no Acacia behind her.
Only waves. Only memory.
Only the silence of the gods.
In Sera, she was no longer Winnifred.
She took no title. Claimed no house.
The court would not announce her—she had arrived not as royalty, but as ash.
Instead, she gave a name stolen from the dead.
Miriel.
A traveler.
A survivor of some nameless war.
She wore her hair in the Sera style—braided tight, bound with copper thread.
She spoke little. She bowed often. She listened.
But beneath the mask, her heart carved names into the walls of her sleep:
Armett.
Father.
Home.
Truth.
The Sera sun was sharp, brighter than Acacia's silver moonlight.
It did not soothe—it exposed.
And under it, Winnifred swore nothing.
But inside her, something endured.
Not hope.
Not vengeance.
Resolve.