The curse never lifted.It merely learned to breathe with us.
Generations passed after the fall of King Acastus. His golden city, once the pride of the western coasts, became a quiet, trembling place. The harbors that once carried silk and spices now carried silence. The skies, once gentle, now split open with storms. Rains came without mercy — or did not come at all. Famine walked beside pestilence; children were born beneath thunder and grew beneath gray.
The heavens had turned against us.Aureon's wrath did not end with Acastus — it endured, patient as the air itself.
Every spring, when other kingdoms bloomed with green and gold, ours rotted. Crops blackened before harvest, wells turned brackish, and lightning struck temples as if mocking our prayers. The priests said the heavens had closed their ears. It was as if the god of the skies himself had drawn breath only to curse us anew.
And yet we endured.We always endured.Because what else can the cursed do but endure?
The people rebuilt what they could upon the bones of the old world. They carved new homes into the cliffs, built temples from the wreckage of Acastus's palace, and whispered their prayers not to be heard — but to be spared.
They told their children: Do not anger the heavens.They told their kings: Remember what pride costs.
But memory fades like smoke after lightning.And even curses grow familiar.
By the time King Zeon — my father — sat upon the salt-eaten throne, the story of Acastus had become legend. The shrines to Aureon still stood, but their altars were cold. The Heart of the Storm — the jewel Acastus had stolen from the heavens themselves — was only a fireside tale.
Only the skies remembered.
The Oracle's Warning
I was not yet born when the gods stirred again.
That year, the rains refused to come. The rivers thinned to dust. What crops remained withered beneath a sun that seemed determined to burn us from the earth. Livestock perished where they stood; fever claimed the rest.
My father, desperate, went to the oldest temple that still stood — a ruin older than the kingdom itself. It was said the stones there could still hear the gods if one begged long enough.
He went alone, carrying no crown, only a bowl of ash and a sprig of dried wheat — the last his kingdom had to offer. For three nights, he knelt before the altar, whispering to the sky to take his crown, his life, anything — anything but his people.
On the third night, the air grew still. The torches went out. And a voice spoke through the mouth of the temple's oracle — a woman blind since birth, her eyes milky as moonstone.
Her body trembled as if thunder itself had entered her.
"The heavens have spoken," she rasped."The blood of Acastus has not paid its debt. Every first daughter born to his line shall serve the gods in flesh until their anger is soothed. She will leave her home and dwell in the temple by the shore — untouched by mortal hands, unseen by mortal eyes. And when the skies are pleased, she will be taken beyond the veil, to serve them forever."
When she fell silent, thunder rolled across a cloudless sky.
The priests bowed.The king wept.The curse had found its voice again.
The Birth of the Promised One
When I was born, the midwives did not cheer.They cried.
The sky that night was black with stormclouds. Lightning split the horizon, and rain lashed the palace roofs until dawn. They said it was Aureon's mark — that his eyes had turned once more upon our blood.
My father turned his face from me, his crown trembling in his hands. My mother clutched me to her chest, whispering apologies between sobs.
Even as a child, I felt the chill of the curse wrap around me like a second skin.
They called me blessed. But I learned quickly that blessing was only another word for burden.
From the moment I could walk, every eye that turned toward me was filled with reverence… and fear. The priests bowed as though the god of the heavens himself stood in my shadow, and the courtiers whispered when I passed, their words rustling like dry reeds before a storm.
I was the king's daughter — and the gods' offering.The living debt of Ephyra.
My father, King Lysander, tried to give me a childhood. He filled the palace gardens with fountains that sang even when the sky was still. He brought musicians from the isles to play songs of summer, hoping to drown the silence that haunted our halls.
But joy cannot bloom beneath a sky that refuses to forgive.
When I laughed, the servants crossed themselves.When I fell, they gasped, as if lightning might strike the moment I touched the earth.
Even my brothers — bold, golden sons of Ephyra — loved me as one loves a relic. They sparred in the courtyard, hunted across the cliffs, and returned with sunlight in their hair. I watched from the balcony, the wind tugging at my gown, pretending not to wish I could join them.
The kingdom worshipped me, but never touched me.
At festivals, they left wreaths of withered wheat and rain jars outside the palace gate — offerings for the girl who would one day appease the heavens. When I walked through the streets, mothers pulled their children close and bowed their heads.
I smiled back, though my heart ached. I wondered if they would still bow once I was gone — or if they would finally breathe easier, knowing the sky had taken its due.
I learned early to keep my silence. The fewer words I spoke, the fewer pitying looks I had to bear.
But loneliness has a sound:It is the echo of your own heartbeat in an empty hall.
But I did not pray.Not once.
When they raised their eyes to the sky, I kept mine to the earth. When they spoke Aureon's name, I bit my tongue until I tasted blood.
What mercy had the gods ever shown us? They took Acastus's pride and turned it into generations of suffering. They watched us starve, beg, and bury our children.
If that was divinity, then I would rather be damned.
At night, I dreamt of storms whispering my name.And when I woke, I swore I could still hear them — faint, distant, patient.
The Sea's Whisper
When the palace walls grew too tight, I went to the cliffs. No one followed me there. They said the sea was dangerous, that it swallowed those who strayed too close.
But I felt no fear. Only recognition.
The sea was the only thing that didn't demand I bow. Its voice roared louder than Aureon's thunder, and somehow, it soothed me. The winds that tore ships apart brushed my cheek like a promise.
I would sit for hours, watching the waves crash against the rocks, feeling something deep and wordless stir within me—a pull, as if the sea remembered me, as if I belonged to it.
When I wept, the tides rose.When I smiled, the winds stilled.
I didn't understand why.Only that the sea always answered—and the heavens never did.
I hated that too.
If the sea was a god, it was no better than the rest.
A Conversation with the Wind
Once, I asked my nurse if the sea could hear prayers.She paled and said, "The gods listen through the waves. Don't tempt them, child."
I laughed — a sharp, hollow sound. "Then let them listen," I said. "Let them hear how much I despise them."
That night, I went to the cliffs again. The wind howled, and the surf crashed below, silver beneath a clouded sky.
"I know you're listening," I whispered, not in devotion, but defiance. "All of you. You think I was born for your service, but I am no one's offering. Not Aureon's. Not yours."
The sea stirred, slow and deep. The air trembled. For a heartbeat, I thought I heard something answer — not a voice, but a pulse, steady and vast.
I turned away before it could speak again.Let the gods whisper. I would not listen.
Foreshadowing
I did not yet know that the sea's silence was not refusal — but restraint.That something beneath those waves was waiting, not in hunger, but in grief.
All I knew then was my hatred — fierce, righteous, alive.And in that hatred, I thought myself safe.
But hatred cannot save you from destiny.It only blinds you until it arrives.