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 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.