Chapter 6 Aurelia
Aurelia
The fire had burned itself down to little more than embers, its thin glow barely holding back the dark. For a moment I thought I’d overslept, that dawn had come and gone without me. I sat up slowly, expecting to feel the weight of eyes on me still. But now… now it was emptier than before.
Above me, the sky held the same dim hue it had since I crossed the Veil—light caught forever between dusk and dawn. Nyxarra’s endless in-between.
I had never felt so alone.
They had warned me this path would eat me alive.
Etherblooms belonged to rumor more than to earth.
Born, they said, from Kaerani’s grief—her tears made flesh.
Each petal carried divine force, capable of touching what no healer could: the mind.
But their gift came at a cost—the mind they mended was never quite the same, and those who took their blessing often lost the very things that made them human.
Colette once called it mercy without emotion—healing that hollowed instead of healed.
But whatever the blooms might take, the sickness was already taking more.
I remembered a girl from Synnex, Liora, who came back whispering to shadows that weren’t there. Hollow-eyed. Broken. Others never returned at all.
We read about them in the footnotes of dusty tomes, annotated in red ink by scholars who hadn’t dared venture past Nyxarra’s gates themselves.
The details shifted, as stories do. Some claimed they were devoured by the land, others that they joined the creatures haunting the Veil.
But every version ended the same way: they sought the Etherblooms, and they paid the price.
Nyxarra was said to be alive, a prison with no visible walls, holding its captives beneath an eternal twilight sky.
And King Talon, its collector of curiosities, did not like to let go of what he considered rare.
I had heard the rumors growing up, the ones my mother told us to ignore.
That Talon carved trophies from the bones of the divine.
That he bound entire bloodlines to his realm like trinkets on a string—valuable only so long as they served his purpose.
That his court was built on the backs of the broken.
But the Etherblooms grew only in Nyxarra. And so the desperate still came—offering bargains, blood, even their names, dedicating themselves to the realm in exchange for one last chance at peace. Desperation, it seemed, was the only currency the realm never turned away.
My legs protested, stiff from too little rest, but there was no time to linger. The longer I stayed still, the longer I was away from Aeryn.
So I climbed.
I hadn’t expected to make it halfway up the mountain, let alone this far.
But as the path crested, the slope leveled into a wide, snow-swept landing—and there, just a stone’s throw away, stood the very entrance I’d come for.
I looked up at the towering gates of Nyxarra, their black iron bars twisting like the ribs of some ancient beast, stretching so high they disappeared into the swirling clouds above.
The metal, slick with frost, pulsed with an unnatural chill that crept beneath my skin. Beyond the bars, the fog thickened.
My breath came shallow, visible in bursts before vanishing into the frost. The snow muted everything—my footfalls, the wind, even the rasp of my own exhaustion.
So when it happened, there was no warning.
A hand—ice-cold, gloved—clamped suddenly around my face, pressing my jaw shut, fingers digging into my cheekbones. I reeled backward and struck something unyielding. A chest, hard and cold as iron beneath leather.
Close. So close that I could feel the rise and fall of its breath, steady and unnervingly calm.
“State your name and business here,” the voice growled, inches from my ear. A man’s voice, though the voice was wrong. Too close, yet somehow frayed around the edges like it was unraveling, like it didn’t belong entirely to one place.
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t reach for my blade. My shoulders stayed loose; my grip closed quietly around the hook at my belt.
But my mind raced. Fast. A dozen connections clicked into place.
I steadied my breath. Swallowed the urge to strike first.
“Moirae,” I answered, voice calm despite the shiver crawling up my spine—thin and sharp as phantom spider legs along my neck, my jaw, the edges of my mind. “Aurelia Moirae.”
His grip faltered. Just slightly. But enough.
All those years of training kicked in before I could think. Hayat’s voice whispered in the back of my mind.
Use their weight. Take their balance. Don’t hesitate.
I slipped my arm through the man’s and twisted. He hit the ground with a muffled thud, the snow swallowing the sound.
My boots crunched as I stepped over him—not running, but not stalling either. Every movement measured. Deliberate. Panic begged me to sprint, but training held me steady.
Not because I wasn’t afraid—gods, I was—but because fear had never once saved me. I just needed to reach the gates.
I glanced back, every sense straining. But he was gone. Completely. The snow lay undisturbed. My spine went rigid. I scanned the shadows, hands relaxed at my sides—ready. The gates loomed ahead. I moved toward them, pulse ticking high beneath my skin.
The journey had been long. I was tired. Maybe too tired. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe I was dreaming again.
It happened sometimes—these slips. Unwelcome. Uncontrolled. Dreams tangled with memory. Memory tangled with truth. Sometimes I woke gasping with someone else’s grief in my mouth. Sometimes I wasn’t sure I’d woken at all.
But the ache in my muscles was real. The snow underfoot.
I bit the inside of my cheek. Pain bloomed. Awake.
I was making my way across the snowy landing when the mist found me—before I ever set foot inside Nyxarra.
Legends said the mist was alive—sentient. It didn’t roll in so much as it crept. A quiet predator coiling around tree trunks, winding through roots and stones, seeping into lungs and thought.
They said it began just beyond the Veil, past the last ridgeline where the cliffs fell away and the air thinned—where even the wind forgot its shape.
We called it the In-Between. Not the forest of Nyxarra. Not the upper woods. Just that: a nowhere place. Neither here nor there. A place where the laws of the living bent and blurred, where sound traveled wrong and time unspooled like thread.
Where the gods rarely listened.
The mist lived there.
Sometimes it breathed against your neck. Sometimes it waited. It never came all at once, but in pieces—tendrils first, tasting the air, testing your fear. Then thicker. Heavier. Until you couldn’t remember the shape of the trail you came from, or the name you answered to.
I felt it then—the first brush along my arm. A chill threading under my coat.
For a breath, I was a child again—huddled between rows of brittle scrolls in the farthest corner of Synnex’s library, the candlelight barely holding back the dark as the Elders whispered warnings to those of us foolish enough to listen.
I remembered the illustrations most. Grotesque sketches etched in fading ink.
Children, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, pulled by the ankles into the fog. Mothers clawing at the mist, their fingernails trailing ribbons through smoke. Faces pressed against a curtain of white—mouths open, but no sound reaching through.
Their screams, they said, were still out there. Just… waiting.
A surge of energy rippled through the fog. My pulse followed its rhythm—too fast, too loud—and I clenched my fists, fighting the pull.
Not now. Stay here. Stay in the present.
But memories had teeth, and they sank deep when I least expected it, dragging me backward into moments I thought I’d buried.
The mist closed in, slipping through the cracks in my mind. My vision wavered. I forced a long breath out. If I didn’t get this under control, it would get me killed.
Leather bit into my palms as I tightened my grip. My chest cinched. I quickened my pace toward the gates, boots crunching through snow.
The hairs at my nape lifted.
I wasn’t alone.
I turned, breath hitching, only to nearly collide with a wall of man.
His presence was suffocating. His skin was deep umber, rich and smooth, but there was nothing warm in the way he closed the distance.
He loomed, leaning down until our noses almost touched.
Each breath from him was a heat I wanted to recoil from, but the mist pressed in, trapping me.
Our eyes locked, and my lungs forgot their purpose. His gaze churned like molten gold, the outer rim darkening to bronze.
I was frozen in place—prey pinned beneath a predator’s stare.
He leaned in closer still—close enough that I felt the shape of his words before I heard them.
“Hello, little dove. Lost, are we?” he asked, his voice laced with an arrogant charm that crawled under my skin. It was the kind of voice that commanded attention, like honey laced with venom.
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. My throat constricted as though unseen hands had wrapped themselves around it, silencing me. Panic clawed at me as I reached for my neck, trying desperately to speak.
He took a step back and cocked his head, watching me with a mix of amusement and curiosity. “Strange…” he murmured, almost to himself. “That you’re still awake.”
My breath quickened. I reached for the dagger at my hip. His golden eyes gleamed.
“Sleep,” he commanded.
The word carried weight, like a hook in my chest. Shadows slid across my jaw, tugging me down. Snow rushed up to meet me.
The last thing I saw was a smile—too wide, too sharp. Bright white teeth gleamed, and among them, four predatory canines.
My blood went cold. There was only one kind of creature I’d ever read about that carried teeth like that—Vampyre. Born of night, they worshipped the creators of the gods who had vanished from the world. Every instinct screamed to run, but my body refused.
Impossible.