Timeline

CHAPTER 1

Aethyrian Races

This chapter is an encyclopedia-style overview of Aethyrian races, describing their origins, abilities, and distinguishing traits. It contrasts mortal peoples, immortal magic-wielders, and powerful or dangerous beings, establishing a diverse world shaped by bloodline magic, elemental powers, and ancient histories.

CHAPTER 2

PROLOGUE

Two hundred eleven years ago, Lady Rydainn is forced to surrender her infant son Zevander to the disgraced mage Cadavros, whose Emberforge ritual has already grotesquely transformed her eldest son, Branimir. At a vein of divine sablefyre, Cadavros brands Zevander and casts him into the flame, but the child survives—bearing a cursed mark and altered eyes, while Cadavros himself suffers pain. Lady Rydainn’s desperation gives way to grief and fury at her husband, as Branimir recognizes the mark’s ominous words: “What is taken will never return.”

CHAPTER 3

Chapter 1

At the edge of Witch Knell, Maevyth grieves her adoptive father’s death and fears that her cruel step-grandmother will force her into marriage or the Red Veils’ service, while she rails inwardly against the faith that has shaped her life. When a mysterious message appears on her letter—“God is Death”—the forest answers with an eerie voice and a burst of darkness, leaving a raven impaled at the archway; Maevyth frees the wounded bird and ends its suffering. The chapter’s ominous, grief-laden setting shifts from a threatening forest boundary to a moment of intimate mercy, revealing Maevyth’s defiance and compassion amid mounting supernatural danger.

CHAPTER 4

Chapter 2

In the winter woods outside Foxglove, Maevyth buries a dead raven, reflecting on the parish’s belief that she is cursed and on the cruelty of the faith that branded her an outcast. As the feared Crone Witch watches from her cottage and other ravens gather, Lolla hurries Maevyth away from the woods: the governor is arriving for the Banishing. Their exchange reveals Maevyth’s longing for acceptance and elegance, Lolla’s protective affection, and the dread surrounding an approaching event tied to a painful letter.

CHAPTER 5

Chapter 3

After returning to her family’s decaying cottage near the ominous Eating Woods, Maevyth tends a deep wound and watches clergy, soldiers, and Red Veils escort a prisoner toward the forest on Banishing Day. She confides in her sister Aleysia about their father’s death and fears that she will be forced into the Red Veils, while Aleysia vows to protect her; their teasing intimacy briefly lifts the gloom before Agatha’s cruelty and demands for more oils and poison restore the household’s oppressive tension. As the sisters prepare to leave for the ceremony, Maevyth’s unease deepens amid the family’s secrets, poverty, and looming danger.

CHAPTER 1

Prologue

Nineteen years ago, a mute acolyte is ordered to leave a silver-eyed newborn in the ominous Eating Woods after the child’s mother is killed for heresy and delivers a dire prophecy. When the acolyte is lured into the forest by the apparition of her dead mother and dragged away by a wrathavore, the Crone Witch finds the infant, protects her with a magical rose, and places her with a village winemaker, dimming her silver eyes to gray. In a world of cruelty and superstition, the chapter’s dread gives way to a guarded, uneasy hope as the child’s mysterious destiny begins.

CHAPTER 2

Chapter 1

Maevyth and Zevander recover her sister Aleysia from a hidden space beneath the cabin; though alive, Aleysia is unnaturally cold and unresponsive, while Zevander’s magic is weakening. As Maevyth stays beside her, a nightmare of a haunted forest and a voice urging her to kill ends with Aleysia choking her, leaving Maevyth trapped between terror and the desperate hope of saving her sister.

CHAPTER 3

Chapter 2

In a crowded market and the shadowed Black Salt Tavern, young Zevander accompanies his desperate father, Lord Rydainn, to confront a hooded seer who promised a vision to help them find Cadavros. As his father pleads for a cure to Zevander’s spreading curse, the seer insists the boy’s affliction is not what has stolen his face—and claims he belongs with her. The tense encounter erupts when the king’s guards arrive to arrest father and son, leaving the grotesquely scarred woman defiant as Zevander is dragged away.

CHAPTER 4

Chapter 3

After waking from a nightmare in which Morsana urges her to kill Aleysia, Maevyth learns that her sister may be unable to cross from Mortasia into Aethyria and remains unconscious under an uncertain spell or condition. As Zevander promises to stay and help, they discuss his cursed bond to black flame and the danger Cadavros poses, while Maevyth struggles between her fear for Aleysia and her growing reliance on Zevander. Their intimacy is interrupted by his painful memories of abuse, but Maevyth reassures him that their earlier encounter was wholly her choice.

CHAPTER 5

Chapter 4

In King Sagaerin’s eerie throne room, Zevander and his parents face Lord Belthane, who reveals that Zevander’s father murdered a Solassion woman and that the family’s forbidden bargain with the necromancer Cadavros has brought them before the court. Lady Rydainn’s plea for mercy turns to fury at her husband’s betrayal, then to desperate resolve as she offers to take her son’s place; instead, Zevander and his father are condemned to the Cinderbone Mines, their lives spared only to avert war. The scene’s ornate, moonlit grandeur frames a family’s collapse into fear, anger, and helpless grief.