Frost clings to the roots of ancient trees, and the air tastes of rain long fallen. Paths wind through forests that shift when unlooked at, and rivers murmur in tongues older than the stones they pass. In this land, magic does not announce itself — it waits, patient as winter, until the moment it chooses to rise. Those who travel here will find beauty and peril braided together, and the choices they make will echo far beyond the sound of their own footsteps.
The Scrollkeepers Archive
Chapter 12: Family Reunion
The ravines below twisted in shadow, their depths swallowing sound and warmth alike. Above, the ridge offered no shelter, only exposure to the growing wrath of the storm. The wind bit without mercy, carrying the taste of rain and the promise of thunder. Lightning flickered behind the clouds, turning their edges a dull violet, whilst the company pressed onwards, heads bowed against the gale.
Chapter 11: Night in the Ravines
The hours had aged the camp, carving silence between the figures gathered close to the fire’s frail light. The embers pulsed in fitful rhythm, casting wavering silhouettes against the alcove’s stone, their forms both shelter and prison as the ravines beyond surrendered to blackness. The sky, heavy and implacable, withheld its stars, save for a lone silver moon strung low and watchful, its face blurred by drifting veils of mist.
Chapter 10: Voices in the Wind
Dream pressed on him like a tide. Nix knew he was sleeping, felt the weight of his body upon the cliff top, the cool stone beneath his shoulders where his wing wounds still ached. Yet he felt himself drifting, unmoored. He sensed his friends close by in their quiet watch, untroubled, unaware of Simi's presence, sharp and relentless, somewhere beyond the ravines.
Chapter 9: Wings
his slender hands traced patterns in the air, each movement trailing a fine filament of light that unfurled and twisted, weaving itself into delicate, fluttering shapes. Tiny motes gathered, coalescing into iridescent butterflies that danced and shimmered above the planks, wings glinting like fragments of dawn.
Chapter 8: The Threads that Bind Us
The Mistwing forged onwards, its flanks cleaving the quietly burgeoning breadth of the Emaris river. Each sunrise found the river broader than the last, the water’s mirror stretching in silky panes beneath a sky mottled with the slow drift of cloud.
Chapter 7: Beneath the Surface
Nix felt different, not like he had felt before when meditating on the deck of the Mistwing, when he had tried to become one with the pain, as his mother had taught him long ago, breathing into it until pain and self became indistinguishable. Instead, as he had begun to feel the presence of the creature in the river hunting him, he had expected his recently awakened natural predator, Tiorian Lightweaver, instincts to surface, to rise snarling and defensive, all fangs and readiness.
Chapter 6: The Floating Market
The first night on the river had shaken them all. The creature’s attack, the protective runes Nix had woven beneath the hull in those tense moments, the revelations about Ulfgar’s death and Lisera’s true nature, all of it had left the crew watchful and the brothers subdued.
Chapter 5: Knotwork in the Deep
The moon stood sovereign in a vault of crystal winter sky, its argent light tumbling down over the river mist, painting the world in spectral blues and silvered whites. Drakkensund held its breath beneath this cold blessing, still as a painting, the quiet broken only by the distant whisper of wind chimes and the occasional long, melancholy groan of river ice shifting beneath its frosted carapace.
Chapter 4: Drakkensund
Snow lay thick upon the track, crusted where the wind had hardened it, soft where the trees had sheltered the fall. Tavik led the way in measured silence, the watchfulness in his eyes as constant as the steam of his breath. Bran kept beside him, steps brisk, but his head turned often to glance back down the line, back towards the deeper forest they'd left behind. Each backward glance brushed against Nix's nerves like a burr, a small thing, made sharp by the knowledge it reflected.
Chapter 3: Lisera
In the shadow-lace nebula of Tiorial, where the stars gathered like watchful eyes and the winds whispered secrets of origin, the planet of Tioria spun into being. Far from MirMarnia, and yet kin to its realms, Tioria was born of a yew seedling, a fragment of ancient wisdom, curling deep into herself, longing for genesis.
Chapter 2: Root Guardian
Deep beneath the woodland's ancient lattice, where the thickest roots of oak and pine intertwined in darkness older than memory, the Root Guardians dwelled. They moved as slowly as the world's own heartbeat, their mossy shells shimmering with the dew of ages, their eyes deep and gentle as peat. Legends said they had watched over MirMarnia since the first beings pressed their palms to this soil, even before the first stories were spoken into the wind.
Chapter 1: Nix
Rain pocked the frost-hardened lane, sending shards of ice and grit skittering in startled bursts. The willows hung low over the path, their heads heavy and bent as the sky darkened and rumbled. The wind shifted and turned, shouldering the plunging raindrops sideways as the air bit sharper with cold.
Prologue: MirMarnia
In the vast unbroken quiet of the Cosmos, where darkness pressed in upon itself and silence was deeper than memory, a sentient being drifted. Time. She moved through the emptiness with patience that preceded stars, searching for meaning in the unbroken night.