Nylessa's POV
The moon hadn't always laughed.
Sometimes it just stared—quiet, cold, all-seeing.
Tonight, it wept light across the rooftops of Darswich, a town that still believed it was whole.
I watched the trio at the edge of the plaza—three odd figures cloaked in tension. The tall, grim man with ember eyes: Clive. The woman beside him moved like a blade honed from war: Selvara. And dangling from Clive's shoulder, half-hidden by his pack, a skull with one glowing socket and a voice too clever for its own good: Grimpel.
They didn't know it yet, but they stood at the threshold of a grave.
Not just any gate—my gate.
And before I let them pass, the story must be remembered.
300 Years Ago — A Few Days Before the Festival of the Eye
The moon watched us.
Even back then, it never blinked. Never looked away. The Loud Moon hung low over Darswich's old skyline like it already knew what was coming. Like it pitied us. Or maybe it simply enjoyed the taste of doom it would one day drink from our bones.
My name is Nylessa. I was born beneath that moon, raised in the shadow of the Wyrmgate, and trained in the Arcanum Academy—where secrets were currency and truth was a weapon.
Three hundred years ago, the town of Darswich was a strange, living thing. Humans, beasts, and halfbreeds walked the same market paths. Vendors sold ash-fruit and memory wine under fluttering prayer flags. The cobblestone streets were paved with stories, and the inns smelled like dreams and soot. We lived together, not in harmony, but in tension held together by necessity.
The Festival of the Eye was only days away.
It was our most sacred celebration. An ancient pact wrapped in music and mischief, in masks and madness. It honored the veil between worlds. The loudness of the moon. The many eyes that watched over us—seen and unseen.
Children ran with painted skin and lanterns shaped like screaming gods. Elders whispered spells into clay jars to ward off lingering spirits. Lovers gave each other gifts shaped like teeth.
Darswich was beautiful once. Before the fall. Before the rot crawled under its skin wearing the mask of unity.
Back then, the Festival of the Eye wasn't a warning. It was a celebration. The town danced beneath the Loud Moon, unaware that it watched with more than amusement.
In those days, I still had a family.
My mother's skin shimmered like nightwater. My little brother had horns he was proud of, always polishing them with stolen napkins. My kind—the Shade Walkers—lived peacefully among the humans, beastkin, feylings, and others. The town was a mosaic of what the world could be if fear hadn't been taught so early.
I was Shade Walker-born. We live in the liminal spaces—between dark and dawn, between worlds and whispers. My people were not human, but we weren't monstrous either. Not until they made us that way. I worked as a guardian then—of wards, boundaries, and thresholds between what should be opened and what should remain sealed. The position was inherited, an old duty passed down our line since the moon first blinked.
The problem wasn't the magic.
It was the humans.
Not all. But enough.
Beneath all the laughter… something festered.
I felt it first in the silence between flute notes. In the cold stare of human soldiers lingering too long near the Shade Quarter. In the way our academy's library was suddenly forbidden to "non-essential students."
The humans were planning something.
And I wasn't the only one who knew.
A secret narcissistic and racist faction called the Conclave of Restoration had taken root beneath Darswich's cobblestones. Their goal? Purity. Restoration. The eradication of all non-human blood.
Grimpel had always been an oddity. Too clever for his own good. One of those mages who laughed too much in places that didn't deserve joy. We had trained at the Arcanum Academy in our youth—he was loud and sarcastic, I was quiet and deadly. We were not friends. But we knew each other. And in a place like Darswich, that meant something.
Now, he walked with a limp and a weight around his soul that no spell could heal. I had seen him arguing with the town's elder council. I had seen him leave the academy tower at midnight with scrolls stuffed into his coat. And I had heard the rumors.
That he was working on a ritual.
A ritual powerful enough to crack the veil.
Some said he meant to destroy the Wyrmgate.
Others said he wanted to resurrect someone.
I knew the truth was never that simple. It never is.
The only thing more dangerous than a human with power is a desperate man with knowledge.
And Grimpel had lost someone.
He never said who. Not out loud. But the look in his eyes, that unbearable grief wrapped in mockery.
The Shade Walkers had been guardians of the boundary for centuries. We kept the balance. We protected the shard gates—not because we wanted power, but because we remembered what happened the last time they were opened by unworthy hands.
Yes, the shards. Thirteen soul fragments scattered across the world, pulsing with pieces of what once was a god. Each one held a part of divinity—and madness. Only a few of us even believed the full tale anymore.
But I did.
Because Maedra, the witch of crimson breath, once whispered it to me as she remade my body in her hidden sanctum.
But that's a story for later.
This chapter isn't about Clive. Or Selvara. Or the talking skull dangling from a warlock's satchel.
This chapter is about the night I almost stopped the fall—and the reasons I didn't.
The eve before the festival, I stood on my rooftop, watching the town below dance itself into drunken delight. Laughter echoed from alley to alley. Magic bloomed in tiny colored explosions from children's wands.
I had painted my lips black and braided silver charms into my hair. Not for the party. For the warning.
I met with two others that night—elders from the Shade Council. Droneth, a beastkin scholar with three horns and no patience. And Mira, a soft-voiced oracle who bled starlight when she cried.
"The humans are meeting in secret again," Droneth growled, pacing on clawed feet. "In the western wing of the cathedral. They speak of bloodlines. Of purification."
"They've been whispering about the cleansing," Mira said quietly. "They plan to use the festival as distraction. They've asked Grimpel to power the wards that would weaken us."
I bit my lip until it bled.
Grimpel? No. He was reckless, but not blind.
"He doesn't know what he's enabling," I said. "Or he thinks he can control it."
Droneth snorted. "He thinks grief makes him invincible."
We stared out at the glowing lanterns. One floated too close to the moon, and for a second, I swore it turned to ash mid-air.
"I'll speak to him," I said.
Mira touched my hand. "Be careful, Nylessa. Some love their ghosts more than the living."
I found Grimpel by the river, alone, tossing stones into the mist. His coat was damp. His beard longer than I remembered. His eyes were the same—tired.
"Fancy seeing a Shade Walker out of the shadows," he said, not turning around.
"I know what you're doing," I said. "And I know why."
He flinched.
"You think you can outsmart grief. That you can use the humans to give you what the gods wouldn't."
"I'm not the villain here," he snapped. "You think your people are safe? They never were. They only pretended to be because they had you to guard the door."
"And you?" I asked. "What do you guard, Grimpel? What do you protect now?"
He didn't answer. But his silence cracked something in me.
I wanted to tell him everything. About Maedra. About the shards. About how I'd seen the edge of the veil myself and returned changed. But I didn't.
Not yet.
Because some truths must be earned.
Instead, I touched his shoulder. "When the blood begins to spill, remember this moment. Remember I tried."
Then I left him to his stones and his ghosts.
Now, the festival is only a day away. The town is louder than ever. The humans drink and dance with forced cheer. The non-humans smile with wary eyes. I see tension in every handshake. Fear in every toast.
And above it all, the Loud Moon watches.
Watching me.
Watching Grimpel.
Watching the future it has already seen unfold.
They don't know it yet. But this festival will be the last.
Not just for Darswich.
But for everything it once promised to be.
And I will be the one left to remember.