Daughter of the Night (The Shattered Divine #1)

Prologue

This void is not a place mortals understand.

There’s no softness—no featherbeds of cloud or warm light behind the eyes. This is the seam where waking loosens its grip, where a soul can be touched if you know where to press.

Tonight, I press.

The dream-world ripples like black water, echoing with sleeping cities—heartbeats under stone, prayers whispered into pillows as if the dark might listen.

I hear them all.

And I choose one.

Yara drifts at the edge of the between, suspended in the part of herself the sun has never been allowed to see. Here, she is not the careful woman who grinds remedies and pours herbal teas. Here, her truth glows faintly: devotion so deep it has devoured the shape of fear.

Her dream is always the same.

A corridor of candlelight.

A door she never opens.

I move closer, drifting in a sea of smoke, the edges of her dream fraying with the bow of the candle flames.

“Yara,” I say—not with breath, but with inevitability.

Even though her body remains far away in bed whose sheets smell of lavender and lies, her dream-self shudders before dropping to her knees.

“My Divine.” The words come out of her like blood from a cut.

Devotion tightens in her face when she sees me. Relief. Terror. Joy. An ache she mistakes for holiness.

“You have done well, my faithful,” I tell her, the void brightening with a brief, cold satisfaction. Praise is a hook, one that I don’t often need with her—but it pleases me to see how quickly she bites.

Her breath catches. “Have I…pleased you?”

Pleased. What a small word for what she is to me.

“You have steadied the path,” I say. “You have remained a constant in the girl's life—kept the whispers from waking the wrong ears.”

A tremor passes through the dream-world. Somewhere in the waking realm, a dog barks. Somewhere else, a child cries and is soothed. My world and its people continue, ignorant of the teeth at its throat.

Yara’s gaze flickers down, reverent. “The time is coming. I can feel it.”

Not a question. A recognition.

I let silence stretch until she feels it as a weight on her lungs.

“Yes,” I say at last, relief sagging through her already aged skin. “It is near.”

The corridor’s candlelight gutters as shadows climb the walls like living things, reaching for her.

“The balance shifts,” I tell her. “The Light has begun to move its blade.”

“I can feel it,” she whispers.

“Yes.” I tilt my attention, and the void responds—showing her not a vision, not truly, but an impression: iron discipline, white stone halls, vows spoken over illuminated palms, a man shaped into weaponry by a court that calls itself holy.

Yara’s throat works. She understands without understanding.

“What is his na—” she starts.

I cut her off with gentleness that is not kind. “Do not reach for names.”

She bows her head at once. “Forgive me.”

The corridor behind her—the one she never opens—trembles on its hinges. Her dream-self turns involuntarily toward it.

“Things are about to change,” I say, my voice low as a lullaby sung over a grave. “A thread has formed. Now it is down to them to tighten it.”

Yara’s breath goes shallow. “I have done all that you have asked over the years. Is she…is she ready?”

Ready. Another small word.

“There is just one more thing she has yet to do,” I answer.

The corridor’s candles flare, casting sharp, trembling shadows across Yara’s face. For a moment, she looks younger—like the first time she understood that the Light was never there to save her.

Yara’s lips tremble, a tear sliding down her cheek—real, physical, falling somewhere in the waking world where her body lies still.

The corridor candles go out one by one, until only the door remains—glowing, waiting.

I release her from my touch.

As she starts to drift back toward waking, I give her one last kiss of voice in the dark.

“You know what you must do,” I whisper.

And somewhere far below this void, under a sky that does not know her name, the girl inhales—and the world shifts.