Nix is fourteen years old, blue-skinned and storm-haired, and his magic has just torn through him in the middle of a winter forest, eight years before it was ever meant to arrive. It left a wound in his chest and something dangerous loose in the world, and now he is running. Three brothers find him bleeding in the Sentinel Forest and do not turn away. What follows is their journey together through MirMarnia, an ancient world of breathing forests, river magic, and creatures older than any name for them, as four unlikely companions discover that the things hunting Nix are only the beginning of what this world has in store.
The Scrollkeepers Archive
Chapter 21: The Speaker of the Æthelweave
From the heart of the gathering, she emerged: a petite Druidess, yet her presence sturdy and deep, like the tide of a river in full flow. Her eyes, clouded and opaque as morning mist, saw everything; they seemed to absorb the world entirely, reaching beneath the veil of ordinary sight. Along her brow and cheeks, delicate branch-like patterns meandered, neither quite tattoo nor scar, nor entirely grown, but something liminal, as though the forest itself had inscribed its mark upon her flesh.
Chapter 19: The Æthelweave
The trees soared skyward, not in gentle increments, but with abrupt, breathtaking ascents that challenged the senses. Their trunks swelled from merely vast to truly monumental, bark forming plates as broad as barn doors, whilst roots arched from the earth like the ribbed vaults of ancient cathedrals.