Chapter 1: Nix

“Sentinel Forest” coloured pencil on paper by Chaiga T. Cheska

Rain pocked the frost-dry lane, making shards of ice and grit skitter in surprised bursts. The willows hung low over the path, their heads heavy and bent as the sky darkened and rumbled. The wind shifted and turned, nudging the plunging raindrops sideways as the temperature dropped.

Along the edges of the lane, the undergrowth grew thick and impenetrable. Nearly hidden by the gusting grey winds and the tossing willows, a fourteen-year-old boy stood firm against the rising storm. His posture was fierce, his untidy red hair tangling around his head like eddies in a great river, but his feet held firm. His hazel eyes reflected a quiet determination that belied his age.

 The wind rose to a howling pitch, as if to challenge him. The boy reached out with long pale-blue fingers, pinched the air, and pulled back with a calm, practised motion. His magic tapped into the resource of his own life energy, and the storm paused. Raindrops hung suspended like buttons on a shirt. Tendrils of wind curled around him in frozen grains, interrupted.

 In the sudden silence, he widened the tear he had made, its pull already upon him. He stepped into the space between, and as the last of him passed through, thunder struck. The tear closed like a mouth, the storm raging over the emptiness he left behind.

 From the ragged treeline, three figures pressed forward through the renewed tempest, cloaks drawn tight, bodies hunched against the wind. They moved in a tight formation, the tallest leading.

 Oren reached the spot where Nix had disappeared first. At eighteen, he moved with the steady discipline of one who had spent years learning to read danger before it struck. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, rain streaming down his face, but his gaze remained fixed on the space where his young friend had been standing moments before.

 Tavik came up beside him, rain dripping from his nose. At seventeen, he was broader through the shoulders than his elder brother, built for the kind of work that required strength over speed.

"Did you see that?" His voice was rough with wonder. "The way the air just opened?"

 Bran stopped on Oren's other side, the youngest of the three at fifteen. He wiped rain from his eyes with the back of one hand, his expression distant, as though listening to something the others could not hear.

 "He's still close. I can feel him."

 "What?" Tavik turned to stare at him.

 Bran gestured vaguely toward the space where Nix had vanished. "Whatever he did, he didn't go far. Not in distance, anyway."

 Oren's jaw tightened. "We wait. Give him space to finish what he's begun." His hand rested on Bran's shoulder, a gesture that was both protective and restraining.

 Tavik shifted his weight, hand moving unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. "And if he can't finish it? If something's gone wrong?"

 "Then we'll know soon enough." Oren's voice carried the weight of decision. "But we don't interfere with magic we don't understand."

 The storm continued its assault for another handful of breaths, then suddenly abated. The rain softened until only the steady dripping of the woods remained. Grey clouds broke and lifted, and the dawn's gold flickered through the willows, lighting the sentinel oaks and pines whose roots were sunk deep with magic and hope.

 The three brothers stood in silence, watching the space where Nix had disappeared.

Beyond the veil of time, Nix heard their voices threading faintly through the shifting air. The forest would not release him, no matter where in time he stood. Something older than the dawn just passed coiled about him, holding him fast.

 Pain began deep in his chest, a hot, insistent knot beneath his ribs. He stumbled, clutching at it, breath hissing between his teeth. The ache sharpened, lancing through the left side of his chest as though something within were straining to escape.

 It burst from him in a white-hot convulsion.

 Nix collapsed to his knees, palms pressed into frozen earth that existed in some fold between moments. Raw magic tore out of him, scorching his clothes, blackening the ground in a perfect ring. His runes, those faint green sigils that had lain beneath his pale-blue skin for as long as he could remember, flared to life. Their light strobed across the trees in jagged, arrhythmic bursts.

 The forest answered. Branches whipped and cracked. Wind coiled into a spiral above, dragging black clouds into a tight, seething knot. Thunder rolled like the breaking of mountains. Lightning split the sky in blinding arcs. Rain came in a sudden, stinging torrent.

 Screams rose in the storm's heart. Only when his throat burned did Nix realise they were his own.

 Gasping, he dragged at the neck of his tunic. The fabric was already blooming dark with blood. He looked down. The left side of his chest was ruined, a gaping wound from which blood surged in bright, arterial bursts. His vision swam.

 He pressed his palm hard to the wound. Strange violet light seeped from his hand into the torn flesh. The bleeding slowed. The skin drew together in ragged seams, the healing incomplete, leaving the scar raw and puckered.

 Weakness flooded him, dense and unrelenting. The world wavered, its edges bleeding into shifting colours. Each breath came ragged, and the air itself seemed to carry the throb of his heart until the storm around him was no longer apart from him, but the outward shape of his own turmoil.

 Through the violet light still bleeding from his palm, he became aware of shapes beyond the corridor where he crouched. Three figures stood just outside its reach, their outlines wavering in the storm-light. His friends. He had to reach them.

 The truth about his mother lay heavy in his thoughts, yet it did not bow him. It anchored him. But Simi, his older brother, whose cold precision could turn any secret into a weapon, must never learn what had awakened.

 Nix closed his eyes, gathered his will, and pressed against the shimmering wall of the world. It shivered, splintered, and broke.

 Oren saw it first. The air before them rippled, then tore. Light spilt through the gap, violet and strange, and a figure stumbled from it onto rain-soaked moss.

 Nix collapsed to his knees as the storm's final growl faded.

 "Now." Oren was already moving, Tavik and Bran half a step behind him.

They reached Nix within moments, boots sinking into sodden moss.

Tavik dropped to his knees beside Nix, hands hovering uncertainly. "You're bleeding through your tunic. Can you stand?"

 Oren knelt on Nix's other side, his palm brushing the sodden fabric and coming away red. He stilled, gaze sharpening on the wound beneath.

"It's closing. On its own."

 Bran crouched behind them, watching the pale green runes flicker beneath Nix's skin. Their rhythm was wrong, stuttering like a heart struggling to find its beat.

 Above them, the air trembled. "The storm's not finished with us."

 Wind coiled through the trees, dragging the clouds into a dark knot overhead. The first cold drops struck their faces.

 Nix's head lifted. His eyes, usually hazel, now held flecks of luminous green. His lips moved, and though his voice was barely audible, the word carried through the clearing with strange force.

 "Cease."

 The clouds unravelled at once. The wind fell away as though the forest itself had obeyed. The three brothers stared, rain dripping from their brows, the silence after the storm ringing in their ears.

 Oren's hand tightened on Nix's shoulder. "What happened to you?"

 But Nix was already reaching for them, his hands gripping their arms with surprising strength. He used their weight to steady himself, rising slowly to his feet. His breath was ragged, but his stance was stubborn.

 Tavik scrambled to his feet as Nix pushed himself to standing.

"You shouldn't be on your feet. That wound!"

 "Look at him." Bran rose more slowly, his gaze fixed on Nix's face. "He's different."

 Nix caught the loose, bloodied collar of his tunic and pulled it aside. The torn flesh was closed, the skin raw but no longer bleeding.

"It still hurts, but only on the inside."

A faint smile tugged at his mouth, though it did not reach his eyes.

 Oren frowned. "You still need a healer."

 "Tell us what happened." Tavik's hand closed on Nix's shoulder, firm yet gentle.

 Instead, Nix's gaze moved between them, studying each in turn. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but certain. "Your mother was an elf."

 The three brothers froze.

Bran's brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

 "She died when we were small." Tavik's voice dropped low. "Burned with fever in three days."

 Oren added, his tone measured, "Our father never spoke of her origins. Whatever she was, he loved her enough to keep her secrets."

 Nix only shrugged. "I just knew it. Had to say it. I don't know what it means."

 Cold pressed in around them, the silence between them heavy with unasked questions. Snow began to fall in slow, deliberate flakes, catching on their hair and shoulders. The forest held its breath.

 Oren shook himself from the moment.

"There's a healer in Drakkensund. Bran's been studying from her. We'll take you there."

 Bran and Tavik were still exchanging baffled looks when Nix stiffened. His ears, which had subtly lengthened to delicate points, twitched. His hands shot out, gripping Oren's and Tavik's arms. "We need to go. Now."

 "Why?" Bran's eyes narrowed.

 Nix reached for him, pulling him into motion down the slope.

"Because someone I don't want you to meet is coming." His gaze flicked back to the shadowed treeline, where the winter light grew dim and watchful.

 The descent was treacherous. Frost-slick roots coiled beneath the snow, and patches of ice lay hidden under the thin white crust. Each breath smoked in the bitter air, sharp with the scent of pine resin and cold stone. The faint, guttering glow of Nix's runes still traced his skin, casting wan greenish light over the path ahead.

 They moved quickly, snow scattering under their boots. Bran kept glancing sidelong at Nix, still turning over the strange claim about his mother. Tavik's eyes met Oren's over Nix's head, a silent exchange of concern. Oren watched the lean, changed figure between them, noting the set of his jaw, the urgency of his stride.

"Faster," Nix said, and they obeyed.

 They had covered perhaps fifty paces when Nix staggered. A groan tore from his throat. One hand clutched his palm hard against the wound in his chest, teeth gritted, eyes screwed shut.

 Then the light came.

 It spilt between his fingers, a deep violet glow, warm and strange, trickling into the torn flesh beneath. The three brothers drew closer without thinking, their breath misting in the cold.

 The glow spread, threading through Nix's chest, along his arms, across his skin until his whole body shimmered as though wrapped in living light.

 Oren felt it first. The tightness in his chest, which had been there since they had entered the storm, suddenly eased. He drew a full breath, deeper than he had managed in what felt like hours.

 Tavik's shoulders dropped. The cold, which had been biting at his fingers despite his gloves, retreated to something merely brisk rather than painful.

 Bran's eyes widened. Something moved through him, a warmth that started in his chest and spread outward, settling into his bones. It was not his own magic, but it recognised him somehow, acknowledged him.

 Nix's shoulders loosened. He drew a long, steadying breath, then opened his eyes and blinked at each of them in turn.

 "What in the gods' names!" Oren's voice was quiet, but it carried an edge of something between wonder and wariness.

 Tavik shook his head, still watching the fading light. "That's not any craft I've seen."

 Bran's mouth twitched. "You've been holding out on us."

 Nix grinned, the expression quick and bright. "Well, apparently I can heal myself now."

 His grin faded as his ears twitched sharply, and his head turned as if to catch a sound the others could not hear. His gaze snapped to the slope ahead, and he reached out, turning them bodily towards the path down through the forest. "We go. Now. Someone is coming."

 No one argued.

They ran, snow scattering under their boots, breath pluming in the cold. Nix kept pace with them easily now, his stride steady, the violet light fading from his skin, though the torn flesh and blood-dark tunic told another story entirely.

 Behind them, the winter woods fell into sudden stillness, the sort of stillness that is a presence rather than an absence. Pale morning light glazed the frost-rimmed branches.

From where the boys had just emerged, a figure stepped forward as if poured from the shadows. Her movements were liquid and silent, her form shifting with the light. Wings, iridescent blues and greens and vast, furled against her back. Her skin held a deep cerulean cast, and moss-red hair fell in tangled waves past her shoulders. She was Lisera, the only Tiorian Lightweaver in the settlement and in all of MirMarnia, mother of Nix and Simi, and she was very, very dangerous.

 Lisera's eyes glinted Tiorian green, gathering the last droplets of stormlight and shadow. She watched her second-born cross the unseen boundary, moving with the easy lope of one who had chosen his pack. The frost-bright air closed behind him like a door.

It was not the desperation of a mother torn from her child that moved through her. It was the calm calculation of one who saw future and past braided together. She read them as she would read wind, soil, blood on snow. The three who ran with her son carried themselves with awareness, with care for one another, with the kind of strength that did not announce itself. They were worthy enough to run beside her bloodline.

The long coil of longing that had bound her for years eased, not in mercy, but in the cold, perfect logic of a sovereign predator recognising potential allies in her son's chosen companions.

 She lifted her hands. The air bent around her fingers like silk ribbons in water. Shadow and light twisted and danced at her command, the edges of her form bleeding into the winter mist. Above her, the sentinel oak creaked, its ancient limbs stirring as Lisera's magic brushed its roots. Vines unravelled from the gnarled trunk, weaving together with the ribbons of air she stitched.

 From the faded echoes of the storm Nix had created, Lisera gathered the last fragments. She breathed an old Tiorian song, her voice a silken thread rippling through the woods. The weavings coiled, snaked, and shimmered, their patterns glinting with the secret geometry of her people.

 Then, with a final twist of her hands, Lisera hurled her creation towards the fleeing figures. The weaving was invisible, a phantom force braided from hope, power, and memory. A last gift from a mother to her true son.

 It struck Nix between his shoulder blades.

 His back arched. His arms flung wide. He crashed to his knees in the snow, the impact sending the breath from his lungs. Blue-green fire erupted beneath his pale-blue skin, racing in jagged, living script along his veins, lightning and river, storm and story, burning until his whole frame seemed carved from light.

 His body reacted before thought could catch it. The fine points of his ears flattened hard against his skull, an instinctive bow to the greater power that had claimed him. His spine curved forward, shoulders rolling as a low, guttural sound rose unbidden from his throat. In his mouth, his canines slid long and sharp, catching the cold air as his lips drew back in a flash of warning. Hazel eyes flared with green fire, pupils blown wide. The muscles along his neck and arms tightened, hackles lifting as if to meet an unseen challenger.

 He staggered, but did not fall. The forest seemed to recoil, the wind drawing back from the young predator who now stood in its midst.

 The three brothers turned as one.

 Tavik, who had been closest to Nix, raised his hand palm-outward, not reaching for the sword at his hip but lifting it as though to ward off a force he could not name.

 Oren shifted his weight onto his back foot, body angling to put himself between Nix and Bran, though he did not draw any weapon. His eyes remained fixed on Nix's face.

Bran held his ground behind them both, healer's instinct warring with the urge to step back. His hands remained at his sides, open, unthreatening.

 Nix straightened from his crouch. The movement was fluid and deliberate, his shoulders rolling as if shaking off the last grip of the blow. Light still streamed beneath the pale blue of his skin, curling runes and jagged lines of blue-green fire. His ears lay flat against his skull in a gesture older than speech, a bow to the greater power that had struck him.

 Yet even in that submission, his fangs had lengthened, catching the cold light as his lips remained drawn back in a low, warning snarl. The fine hairs along his neck and arms lifted. Every line of him was coiled, ready.

 The forest seemed to shrink from him, the wind holding its breath.

 Bran took a slow step forward, hands still open, voice pitched low. "Nix?"

 Nix's gaze locked on him. For a heartbeat, it was not Nix at all but something older, wilder, that looked through his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was doubled, one thread the boy they knew, the other edged with something ancient, braided with magic that did not belong to him alone.

 "I am Caelvarae." Each word rang like iron on stone. "I am Caelvarae and Tiorian Lightweaver, and my magic has awoken."

 Far behind them, the wintry forest fell still once more. The frosted air shivered where Lisera had stood, then settled. She withdrew into the deeper folds of the trees, her winged form dissolving into shadow and mist, her presence sliding between the sentinel trees like smoke through gnarled fingers.