She shouldn't be here.
Not in this forest. Not beneath this sky. And certainly not standing before a tree that should be ash.
But there it was.
Teldrassil.
Whole. Glowing. Alive.
Its great trunk stretched into the heavens, massive branches shrouded in violet leaves that shimmered under moonlight. The roots wound through the coastline like resting titans, humming with ancient, untouched magic. Lanternflies hovered in swarms, blinking between the petals of dreamboughs.
Nyxia stood at the treeline, chest hollow, throat tight.
It was real.
She could smell the salt in the sea air. Hear the soft lull of waves breaking against the cliffside. Feel the night wind, cool and damp with mist, brushing her cheeks.
This wasn't a dream. But it had to be.
I watched you burn, she thought. I heard you scream.
She staggered forward a step.
She remembered the fire.
Not firsthand—she'd been far from the tree that day, scouting west for signs of Horde movement. But she'd felt it. Like a soul being torn from the land. Like someone had screamed through her bones.
Teldrassil had lit the sky like a funeral pyre. The smoke was so thick it had reached the edges of the Barrens. Nyxia had dropped to her knees beside a dry riverbed and screamed into a sky that did not scream back.
She remembered clawing the ground until her fingers bled. The ache in her chest had never left.
"I should have been there."
But now?
The tree stood untouched. Birds nested in its boughs. Moonlight danced across the soft stone lift that led to the city above. There was no soot. No ash. Not a trace of the graveyard it had become.
Her legs moved before her mind caught up.
Each step felt unreal—like walking through memory, or someone else's prayer.
At the lift platform, two sentinels stood watch. One leaned on her spear, humming a song Nyxia hadn't heard since she was a child. The other looked up, then did a double take.
"Nyxia?" she said, blinking.
Her name hit harder than any arrow.
"You're back?" the second asked, tilting her head. "Thought you were off in Winterspring. Still chasing yetis?"
Nyxia's mouth opened, but no sound came.
One of the sentinels frowned, then softened. "You alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
She nearly laughed.
She was the ghost.
The lift began to rise, groaning quietly as it ascended toward the city above. Teldrassil's trunk towered around her, massive and silent. The sky opened wider with every foot climbed, stars spinning slowly above like a forgotten constellation.
Nyxia gripped the railing and stared upward.
If this is a dream, she thought, don't wake me up yet.
But deep beneath her skin, something pulsed. A warning. A weight.
Her right hand trembled slightly—enough that she pressed it to her chest to hide it.
There, against her ribs, she felt the crescent mark beginning to burn again.
Darnassus was as beautiful as she'd remembered.
Too beautiful.
White stone paths curved between living branches and flowering walkways. Lantern trees glowed with soft light, casting warm halos across open courtyards. Elves walked without armor, without fear. Vendors laughed. Children played near the moonwell. Somewhere, a priestess sang.
Nothing burned. Nothing bled. Nothing grieved.
None of them know, Nyxia thought. None of them remember.
She walked the familiar streets like a ghost drifting through a story already told. Her boots made no sound on the stone. The air smelled like lavender and memory.
Her feet carried her to the threshold of a curved wooden door set into the trunk of a flowering sycamore. Home.
It hadn't changed. The wind chime her father carved still hung beside the door, feathers tangled in the cords. The small garden was overgrown in exactly the way her mother liked it—wild, half-wild, untamable.
She stared at the door and didn't breathe.
Then it opened.
Her mother stepped out, dusting flour from her hands, a worn apron tied around her waist. Her hair was longer than Nyxia remembered, pulled back into a messy braid streaked with silver. Her eyes—sharp and silver like the moon—met Nyxia's.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then her mother's lips parted.
"Nyx?"
Nyxia's bow hit the ground with a wooden crack. Then her blades. Then her knees.
Her voice broke apart as she surged forward, collapsing into her mother's arms with a sob that came from somewhere older than her bones.
"I saw you die," she whispered.
"What?"
"Teldrassil burned. I was too far. I couldn't stop it—I—" Her voice shattered. "I couldn't save you."
Her mother stiffened—but only for a breath.
Then the arms closed tighter around her.
"I don't understand," she murmured, stroking Nyxia's hair. "But it's alright. You're home."
Her father arrived moments later, drawn by the commotion. He looked like a memory—taller than she recalled, hands calloused, beard braided with leather cords. His face shifted from confusion to awe to grief in seconds.
He wrapped both arms around them and buried his face into Nyxia's shoulder. She felt his chest shake.
None of them spoke for a long time.
Later, her mother made tea and honeybread as if nothing was wrong.
Nyxia sat at the kitchen table, hands cradling a clay cup she couldn't feel, staring at the walls she never thought she'd see again.
Everything was just as she remembered.
That was the problem.
There was nothing wrong.
Not a scratch. Not a crack in the wall. Not a misplaced plant or a creaky floorboard. No dust in the corners. No hint that anything had ever been burned or buried.
Her old room was untouched. Her journal was where she left it. The pressed flower in her window box—the one that had burned with the windowsill—was still there.
Perfect. Preserved.
Too preserved.
She looked up. Her mother was watching her.
"You seem… different," she said gently. "Older, maybe. Tired."
"I've had a long journey," Nyxia replied.
Her mother gave her a strange look. "You were only gone a few days."
Nyxia didn't answer.
Her hand drifted to the crescent mark on her palm.
Still glowing.
Still burning.
Still real.
The house was quiet.
Her parents had gone to sleep, trusting that tomorrow would come like it always had. Nyxia sat alone in the moonlight, perched on the balcony outside her old room, knees drawn up, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
She hadn't changed into sleeping clothes. She couldn't.
Her heart hadn't stopped racing since the moment she laid eyes on Teldrassil.
She stared at her open palm.
The mark was still there. Crescent-shaped. Faintly glowing, like it remembered something the rest of the world didn't.
No one else could see it.
She'd checked. Twice.
She exhaled and lowered her hand, trying to will her body into calm. Below, the city lay in perfect stillness—peaceful, alive, untouched.
Wrong.
Not because anything looked broken. Because it didn't.
She rose and walked the paths of Darnassus barefoot, ghost-like, moving through her old home as the lantern trees swayed overhead. The breeze carried soft scents—pollen, sea salt, night flowers. Every detail was correct. Too correct.
She crossed Moonrise Square.
And paused.
A young girl ran past her chasing a spectral owl. Laughed. Slipped. Picked herself up.
Then did it again.
Same run. Same laugh. Same stumble.
Three times in a row.
Nyxia's brows furrowed. She looked closer. The girl's braid swung the same way each time. Her foot caught the exact same stone. Her laugh ended on the same note.
On the fourth pass, the girl was gone.
Just… gone.
No owl. No echo.
Nyxia stood frozen in the middle of the square, breath caught in her throat.
Then someone passed behind her—an old druid, walking with a cane. She turned.
He walked past again.
And again.
Each time, his cloak dragged in the same ripple across the cobblestone.
This isn't real.
She turned back toward the main square. The lantern above the Moon Temple flickered once.
And then again.
And then again.
Same pattern. Same interval.
Like someone had copied and pasted the moment too many times and the seams were starting to show.
Nyxia backed away slowly.
The wind shifted.
Carried with it a single word, half-heard but unmistakable.
"Nyxia."
She spun. No one there.
Just the moon.
Just the tree.
Just the lie.
She returned home as the sky began to lighten. Her parents still slept.
She stood over them for a long time, just listening to their breathing. Just watching their chests rise and fall.
She memorized the sound. The shape of their faces. The smell of the room.
Because deep in her bones, she knew:
This world wasn't built to last.
And someone was watching to see how long she'd take to notice.