The moment the arrow left her bow, Nyxia vanished into the mist. Snow whirled around her like restless spirits, masking her scent, muffling her steps. Behind her, the warband's cries turned to screams—short, sharp, and silenced. Beside her, a pair of spectral eyes glowed in the whiteout, Loque'nahak's low growl vibrating through the stillness. Something was hunting the hunters now, and it didn't bleed easy. She crouched beside a frozen tree trunk, fingers brushing the blood-warmed snow. Not hers. Not Loque's. Good. The scent was wrong—too acrid, too human. She closed her eyes for a breath, letting instinct guide her. This wasn't just a patrol. It was bait. And someone had made the mistake of thinking a huntress with a scarred face and a ghost-cat was the prey. "You're not going to survive out there alone," the Sentinel captain had said, her voice low but not unkind. "You should stay. Let the wounds heal before you chase ghosts."
Nyxia hadn't answered then. She remembered standing in the doorway of the barracks, the scent of salve thick in her nostrils, her face aching beneath fresh stitches. The claw marks hadn't even scabbed yet. But something deeper than flesh had torn—something no healer could reach.
"They're not ghosts," she'd finally muttered, eyes fixed on the dark forest beyond the walls. "They're calling me."
The forest had been quiet that night—too quiet. No owls, no wind. Just the crunch of frost beneath her boots and the racing of her heartbeat in her ears. She'd followed the claw marks for miles, half-limping, half-dreaming, until the world narrowed to a clearing bathed in moonlight.
Then she saw him.
Loque'nahak stood at its center, spectral fur shimmering like starlight against the snow. His eyes locked with hers—not hostile, not afraid. Curious. Ancient. Understanding.
"You were the one," she whispered, voice cracking. "The one who left the scars."
He didn't growl. Didn't run. He simply stepped closer, slow and deliberate, until his nose nearly touched her bruised cheek. She froze, breath shallow, the pain of old wounds flaring—and then fading. The cold left her. The ache melted. And in that heartbeat, something passed between them. A vow not spoken, but felt in the marrow. A branch snapped to her right.
Nyxia's eyes snapped open. The memory bled away like fog under sunlight, but the feeling lingered—warmth, strength, the weight of a promise made beneath silver stars. She rose silently, drawing another arrow with practiced grace. Loque'nahak melted from the treeline at her side, his spectral form rippling like moonlight on water. He didn't need to speak; the tension in his body told her everything.
They were surrounded.
She smiled faintly, the old scar on her cheek pulling tight. Let them come. The girl who'd once limped through these woods was gone. What remained was a predator in her own right—and the wild would remember her name.
They came in fast—four shadows breaking from the trees in a pincer formation, blades drawn, eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hunt. Nyxia didn't move at first. She waited, still as frost, until the first one lunged.
Then she erupted.
Her arrow found his eye before his foot hit the ground. The force of it snapped his head back with a wet crunch, and he crumpled, twitching. The second raider barely had time to register the death of his brother before Loque'nahak struck—silent, ghostly jaws sinking into his throat with ethereal fire. He didn't scream. The blood hissed as it hit the snow, steaming.
Nyxia rolled under a blade swipe, came up behind the third, and drove her dagger into his kidney. He howled, spasmed, and she twisted the blade upward, carving a path through meat and muscle. His insides spilled onto the forest floor with a sickening squelch, heat rising in plumes from the gore.
The last one hesitated. Just for a breath. But that was enough.
She moved faster than thought—an arrow to his thigh to drop him, a boot to his chest to pin him. He choked as her blade pressed to his throat, wide-eyed and shaking. Snowflakes clung to his lashes.
"Who sent you?" she growled, pressing until blood welled beneath the steel.
"I—I don't know her name," he gasped, voice ragged. "She just said the scarred hunter wouldn't see another moon. Paid in gold. Void-touched eyes. Pale hair."
Nyxia's expression didn't change, but something inside her did.
Void-touched. She'd heard those words before. Long ago.
Without another word, she slit his throat. Clean. Cold.
Blood sprayed across the snow in a crimson arc, steaming as it sank. Loque'nahak padded to her side, nuzzling her hip softly.
She didn't look down. Her eyes were on the trees now—watching for the next threat. Or maybe, the past coming to collect its debt.
The bodies lay cooling behind her, but Nyxia barely noticed. Her breath came in controlled exhales, misting the frigid air. She knelt beside the corpse of the last man, fingers sifting through his belt pouches, searching for anything—coin, sigils, a letter. And then she found it.
A small scrap of parchment, half-burned at the edges, sealed with wax bearing the unmistakable swirl of a void rune. Her blood chilled. That mark hadn't been seen since the Battle of Starfall Reach—when whispers turned allies into monsters, and night elves tore at each other under the maddening pulse of the void.
As she broke the seal, she was sucked into a memory she wished she could forget.
The walls of Ash'myra wept blood.
Nyxia sprinted through a shattered hallway, boots sliding on marble slick with ichor. Shrieks echoed behind her—twisted cries in Zandali and worse, voices warped by Void magic that had no place in a temple of Elune.
Smoke curled from doorframes. A brazier crashed beside her, scattering coals across the ground like fallen stars. She leapt over them, breath ragged, arrows clinking at her back.
"Ves!" she called, voice tearing from her throat. "Ves, where are you?!"
She found her at the Sanctum Gate.
Or what was left of it.
The silver doors lay split in half, cracked down the center like a broken tooth. And there—kneeling in the middle of the wreckage—was Ves'Sariel.
Her robes were torn, soaked in ash and blood. Her silver hair was matted, plastered to her neck. The light around her flickered like a dying flame.
And in her arms—
"No," Nyxia breathed, knees buckling.
It was Sister Alyss. Her chest had been crushed, armor warped by magic too cruel to be fel or fire. Her mouth hung open, blood bubbling at the corner. Still breathing. Barely.
Ves didn't look at Nyxia. Her hands hovered over the wound, trembling.
"She's dying," she whispered.
Nyxia dropped beside her. "Then let me—"
"No," Ves snapped, too fast, too sharp. "Light won't work. I tried. Elune won't answer."
Their eyes locked.
Something lived behind Ves's—a flicker. Not madness. Not yet. But something reaching.
"I can stop it," she said. "But I need you to trust me."
Nyxia hesitated. Just for a second.
Ves didn't wait.
She pressed her palms to Alyss's chest—and shadows poured from her fingers.
They writhed like veins in water. Alyss arched, her body seizing, a scream caught in her throat. Her eyes rolled white.
Nyxia grabbed Ves's wrist. "What are you doing?!"
"Saving her!" Ves hissed.
Light and Void clashed in the air—one warm, the other cold as the grave. Smoke curled from Alyss's skin.
Then—stillness.
Alyss gasped, suddenly lucid. Color returned to her cheeks. The blood dried. Her ribs began to mend.
Then she looked at Ves.
And screamed.
Not in pain.
In terror.
Alyss scrambled backward, sobbing, eyes wide with horror. "What did you do to me?" she wailed, crawling toward the wall like a rat in a flood.
Ves watched her.
And smiled.
It was a small smile—tired, bitter, broken at the edges.
"She'll live," she said, brushing ash from Nyxia's cheek. "But I won't forget what it cost."
Nyxia stared, numb.
"What was that?" she asked quietly.
Ves's voice was gentle.
"Revelation."
They sat in the ruin of the Sanctum for a long time, as Alyss whimpered behind them, too afraid to speak. Blood still dripped from the archway like rain. The air was heavy with magic that no longer belonged to Elune.
"You'll understand one day," Ves whispered, leaning close.
She kissed Nyxia's brow with bloodied lips.
"The Light only delays what the Void accepts."
Nyxia gasped for breath as she came back to reality, gripping the note with whitened knuckles as she remembered one of the tragedies of the temple of Ash'myra.
The note was short. Brutally so.
"She remembers. Bring her to me."
No name. No sender. Just a smear of purple ink that shimmered faintly in the gloom—void essence, harvested from a living source. The kind only those deep in the practice could handle without losing themselves.
She stood, eyes scanning the treeline as if the words themselves had summoned something. And perhaps they had. Loque'nahak gave a low growl, tail twitching. His hackles were raised.
"I know who this is," she whispered, the words tasting like iron. "Ves'Sariel."
A name she hadn't said aloud in years. Once a priestess, once her friend and lover—now a revenant of shadows, twisted by the void she had sworn to master. Ves'Sariel had vanished after the war, her temple left in ruin, her acolytes either mad or dead. And yet, if she lived… if she remembered…
Nyxia clenched the parchment, crushing it in her fist.
"If the cultists were here, it meant Ves'Sariel was moving. And I can't let another tragedy happen again."
" Come on Loque, we need to go back to that place."
—
The temple was barely recognizable.
Once, it had been a place of serene moonlight and sacred rites—a sanctuary of the Elun'thir Sisters, tucked between stone and starfall in the cliffs of Ash'myra. Now, it was a bleeding wound in the land. Twisted trees groaned beneath the weight of dark banners, their leaves blackened, their trunks veined with void crystal. Statues of Elune lay shattered, replaced by crude effigies of Ves'Sariel—tall, faceless figures of writhing stone and bone, eyes socketed with screaming mouths.
Nyxia moved silently through the outer sanctum, Loque'nahak a wraith at her side. Her eyes scanned the pillars—each one pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat underground. The smell was the worst: incense mingled with rot, wet flesh, and something ancient enough to make her stomach churn.
Then came the chanting.
Low, guttural. Wrong.
She ducked into the shadows of a collapsed wall, peering into the central atrium. A ring of twisted night elves knelt before a blood-drenched altar, their bodies warped beyond recognition—spines arched like spiders, mouths torn wider to speak the void's tongue. Some had extra limbs. One dragged its entrails like a bridal train.
At the altar stood a high acolyte, draped in robes of living silk, her face hidden behind a mask made of flayed bone.
"She comes," the acolyte rasped, head tilting unnaturally. "The fated one returns to the womb. Make her bleed. Make her sing for our goddess."
Then the ambush sprang.
The ground beneath Nyxia exploded—hands clawing through stone, dragging her down. She rolled, lashed out, her dagger slashing through the eye of one attacker before its teeth could sink into her thigh. Blood fountained in a black arc, spraying her armor. Loque'nahak roared, spectral form erupting into primal fury. He barreled into the fray, ripping one cultist clean in half, spine cracking like dry wood.
Another leapt at Nyxia from the shadows—limbs too long, fingers like knives. She ducked, grabbed its jaw, and ripped it off. The scream gurgled into silence as she buried her blade through its temple, twisting until bone split with a sharp pop.
More poured in.
Loque's claws left viscera in their wake—one cultist's chest opened like a book, ribs snapping outward. He snarled and tore through a second, flinging its lower half against the blood-slick walls. Nyxia moved with grim poetry—arrows shot at close range, one shaft lodging so deep in a cultist's gut it pierced its spine and pinned it to a pillar. Another attacker got close enough to slash her cheek—she responded by shoving her dagger up through his chin and into his skull, his body spasming before going limp.
Breathing hard, blood dripping from dozens of cuts—hers and theirs—Nyxia stood amidst a scene of ruin.
Limbs littered the floor. The walls pulsed with fresh blood. And yet, behind the altar, a door had opened.
A whisper wove through the dark.
"You left too early, Nyxia. Let me show you what you've missed out on."
She stepped through the door, bow drawn. Loque'nahak lingered at the threshold, spectral eyes locked on her.
She looked back. "Stay."
This was hers to face.
The corridor breathed.
It smelled of moonpetals and decay, like memories rotting in sunlight. Her fingers grazed the old prayer chamber's doorframe—where once, her name had been etched in delicate druidic script. Gouged out now. Violently.
The sanctum opened before her.
It hadn't changed. And that made it worse.
Marble and silver, once pure, now overgrown with black vines that bled a faint violet mist. The altar still stood, though something pulsed beneath it like a second heart.
And there was Ves'Sariel.
She rose from the dais like a memory reanimated. Her robes clung to her like shadow-made silk. Hair poured over her shoulders like starlight drowned in ink. Her body shimmered with living void, veins aglow like cracks in porcelain. And around her throat—still—the moonstone pendant.
"You still wear it," Nyxia whispered.
Ves tilted her head. Her voice was quiet, almost tender. "Of course. It's the only piece of you that didn't leave."
The silence between them rippled.
"You sent your cultists to kill me."
"I warned them not to," Ves replied. "But hunger echoes louder than faith. They thought killing you would quiet me."
Nyxia stepped forward, jaw tight. "You're twisted. You chose this."
"I chose vision." Ves stepped from the dais. "I asked Elune for answers—and got silence. But the Void whispered truth. It showed me everything."
"I tried to save you," Nyxia said. Her voice cracked.
"I begged you to stay."
"You begged me to follow. Into madness."
Ves's eyes darkened. "Then let me show you."
Before Nyxia could draw her blade, Ves raised one hand.
Voidlight coiled outward like smoke—and wrapped around Nyxia's head.
The world shifted.
She stood in the temple—whole again.
Ash'myra gleamed in moonlight, undisturbed.
She turned—there was Ves, in her old robes, kneeling in a sanctum of polished moonstone. She was alone, lips moving in silent prayer to Elune. Hands clasped. Brow furrowed.
But no light came.
Only silence.
Then… a whisper.
"You are not forsaken. You are chosen."
Ves's head lifted. The air grew heavy. Shadows bent unnaturally across the marble.
A star winked out through the sanctum window.
She reached toward the moonlight.
And it split.
Tendrils of darkness slithered down her arms. Her breath hitched—but she didn't flinch. Instead, she welcomed it.
"Elune turned her face," Ves whispered. "But the void… listens."
Behind her, a sister stumbled into the room—bloodied from a battle outside.
"Sariel, help us! We're being overrun!"
Ves turned—her hand raised instinctively.
Voidlight poured from her palm.
The woman's wounds sealed.
And then—she screamed. Fell. Convulsed. Her body rippled, bones warping as the healing corrupted her from within.
Ves looked down at her hands.
She smiled.
Nyxia screamed.
The illusion broke like shattered glass. She dropped to one knee, vomiting bile onto the stone. Her eyes blurred with tears.
"You used Elune's name," she rasped. "While you butchered them."
Ves stepped close. "I saved them. I burned their blindness away."
"You infected them."
The vines recoiled from Nyxia's fury—but Ves didn't flinch.
"You think I've forgotten what we were?" Ves said, voice laced with ache. "Do you know how many nights I reached for your voice? For your scent on my skin?"
Nyxia looked up, trembling with rage and grief. "And do you know what it felt like watching you turn into something I couldn't follow?"
They stared at each other—warrior and priestess, lover and ghost.
Then Ves bent low and whispered:
"When the stars fall, you'll remember the taste of me."
She turned.
The vines hissed and slid back into the walls as Ves walked away—barefoot, robes trailing mist.
"You'll stay," she said without looking back. "Until you understand what it means to be chosen."
And then she was gone.
The door closed.
And Nyxia was left kneeling—shaking—with the scent of moonpetals and rot still clinging to her.