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 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 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.