PROLOGUE: A WORLD REBORN
KRYSAALIS
Without knowing where I’d come from, I was spirited into the deepest darkness I’d ever experienced. I froze and yet, I could feel that the darkness would be my return to the light.
-Excerpt from Anguish of the Heart, First Book of the Revelations from the Lost Soul
Palace of the Torryaenen, Vespyr, Vespria
Edowyn, 6th of the Blind Hunt, 5th Circle of Vesprian Arc 104
Krysaalis felt a deep void within her, where grief, rage, and confusion collided. Yet, her outward composure betrayed none of the turmoil beneath—a mask of calm concealing the storm. The urge to cry pressed against her, yet no tears came. She felt everything—and nothing.
“Krysaalis, please stand here a moment while I introduce you,” said Lirynel Torryaenen. Krysaalis nodded stiffly to Lirynel and stood in the doorway of a grand room, its simple elegance contrasting with the overwhelming scale of the Torryaenen Palace. The palace towered over the city, its sprawling halls and soaring spires unlike anything Krysaalis had ever seen in all of her nine years.
An elderly shandaryn woman sat across the room in a plush chair, a blanket draped over her lap. Morning light poured through tall, ornate windows, framing a stunning view of the city. Beyond it, Krysaalis glimpsed a vast expanse of water—so immense she couldn’t see the far shore. It stretched endlessly, a sight beyond anything she had ever imagined.
“Great mother, I have brought the young survivor you requested, Krysaalis a’Ciermanuinn” Lirynel said in a tightly controlled voice. Krysaalis watched Lirynel cast a long shadow across the room. Her boots echoed on the stone floor as she approached her great-grandmother, Carielyn Torryaenen, the Qyen of Vespria. Lirynel, though several Arcs older, had been a constant presence in Krysaalis’s life. Despite her age, Lirynel’s experiences were not vastly different from Krysaalis’s own. The young Princyn was in her sixth Arc—more than five times the single nine-year Arc Krysaalis had nearly finished. The girl remembered her mother had called Lirynel, Liryn and Lady Lyn. With the memory came the reminder of a somber melody her mother sang absently whenever they had talked about the wolves.
The young Elowyn waited from the doorway. Lirynel stooped affectionately over the family’s matriarch and shared a hushed exchange Krysaalis could not hear. Lirynel still wore her loose-fitting leather trousers tucked in light, sturdy boots halfway down her calf. Marks of paint, black and deep blue, smeared as lines on her forehead and cheeks. Lirynel reminded Krysaalis of the younger girl’s father.
Softly, Krysaalis began to sing to herself her mother’s song of the wolves. Another wave of cold uncertainty chilled her blood as her thoughts hurried past the last time she saw her father, causing a slight falter in her otherwise quiet, rich melody. Both elder shandaryn heard the young girl’s voice and stopped talking. The Qyen said one final thing to her great-granddaughter and motioned the young shandaryn forward.
Cautiously, Krysaalis stepped forward into the brightly lit chamber, still singing to herself unconsciously. Sunlight illuminated her golden hair, its reddish hue reminiscent of rose petals—a shade some called Rosemilk. She wore it in a thick braid down to her neck in intricate twists, the rest of it spilled loose down her back in soft curls from the end of the braid. Unlike Lady Lyn, Krysaalis wore a simple gown of pine-needle green, trimmed in gold and tied with a delicate golden rope around her waist. In that moment, Krysaalis felt Lirynel looked more the Elowyn and Krysaalis closer to the Vesprian noble.
Carielyn, the venerable Qyen of Vespria, pulled the blankets up over herself delicately. Lirynel stood straight as Krysaalis approached the aged Qyen. Carielyn’s skin was thin and crinkled like ancient paper, yet her eyes held a sharp, perceptive light undimmed by the ages. Every slow, deliberate movement seemed weighted with the gravity of centuries. Krysaalis’s gaze drifted past the Qyen to a vast tapestry on the far wall, its threads depicting the founding of Vespria. She recognized the legendary figure of Torryaen the Great, and with a dizzying lurch, she saw the same determined set of the jaw in the ancient woman before her. The realization washed over Krysaalis not as a number, but as an impossible, crushing weight: this was not just a ruler, but a living relic, a woman who had known the founder not as a legend, but as a mother. The thought was a wave that threatened to pull her under. It was impossible to be that old.
“Krysaalis, is it?” The Qyen’s voice rasped as her gaze shifted to the young girl. “Yes, I remember now. Does your name mean...‘Dawn of Wind?”
Krysaalis could not help but smile at the Qyen’s attempt at translation. It was close, but not quite right. Others in Ciermanuinn had told her that her name meant "crystal sunbloom." The harmonious voice of both parents returned to her. In their voices, Krysaalis remembered how they described her name as the Winged Dawn, for you will usher in the light. She always loved the harmony of her parents’ voices.
“Winged Dawn, my Qyen,” Krysaalis said and tried to suppress the bittersweet memory. The younger girl bowed stiffly, completely unsure of the proper etiquette for conversing with a Qyen.
“Winged Dawn. Yes! That’s right! Clever,” bubbled the Qyen. The memory brought a vibrancy to the monarch which disarmed some of the anxiety gripping Krysaalis. The smile of the elder woman’s sudden exuberance proved contagious, tugging even at the lips of the usually stoic Lirynel. Krysaalis felt suddenly emboldened to stop hiding her own small smile. The elder shandaryn cleared her throat and looked up at Lirynel from her chair. “And not what I expected. I remember now. Liryn, would you kindly leave me with our young Elowyn, please?”
Lirynel’s brief smile faded and did as she was bid with little more than a nod of deference in quick acknowledgement to the Qyen. Krysaalis watched Lirynel depart with the soft clicking of her booted heels. Having no siblings of her own, Lirynel became like a surrogate sister to the young Elowyn. The last the young shandaryn saw of Lirynel was the light from the chamber’s window catch her long and bound dark hair, revealing the midnight blue within. The princyn closed the chamber door as she left.
Krysaalis grew light, uneasy breaths. She was alone with the ancient matriarch, the fourth ruler in Vespria’s near-millennial history. Carielyn, the sole surviving child of Vespria’s founder, had outlived all her grandchildren. Krysaalis, on the other hand, was the only child from the coupling of a devotee to Selyne the Night Hunter and one of the Warden protectors of Ciermanuinn. She could think of nothing about herself which would warrant being left alone in the room with the Qyen. Krysaalis understood Qyen Carielyn ruled over all of Vespria and as far as the young shandaryn knew, her home of Ciermanuinn was but a small place in Vespria’s vast realm.
“It’s alright, Krysaalis,” Carielyn saidin a raspy and gentle voice. “I can feel your discomfort. Please, come here. Take my hand.”
A sudden heat bloomed around Krysaalis’s eyes, a familiar warmth that spread across her temples. She knew the tell-tale strawberry hue was painting her skin, a betrayal of the calm she fought to maintain. Carielyn’s ancient eyes softened with understanding as she extended a bony hand, her smile acknowledging the silent, colorful confession of the girl’s anxiety without a word.
Hesitant but longing for comfort, Krysaalis reached out. She observed she could find no hint of such a tell upon the old Qyen, but knew that age brought better control over such impulses. When her young fingers touched the soft, dry skin of the monarch, a sense of peace and comfort—maternal and protective—flowed from Carielyn into her. Krysaalis took the Qyen’s hand and Carielyn enclosed it between both of her own. The feeling soothed the young girl. Her fears and concerns slowly faded like a once scared child swaddled against their mother’s chest.
“There now, child. Have nothing to fear. With me, you are safe. You will always be safe,” Qyen Carielyn said in a reassuring voice.
Slowly, the mask of strawberry receded from the Elowyn like a tide going out and being replaced with a calm she had only ever before known with her mother. Yet, despite her easing anxiousness, the young Elowyn still failed to grasp a reason for the ruler of all of Vespria to see her privately.
“You know the Silver Wolf, don’t you Krysaalis?” the Qyen asked.
Krysaalis nodded. Her mind spun right back to a moment less than a day before, still unaware at that time how drastically her life was about to change. The last time she saw both of her parents together occurred in her last moment in Ciermanuinn. She had seen her parents die while she narrowly avoided being crushed by the stone arch of the Ov-aerish’n Hyn’anantha, the Alabaster Gate. She remembered it stood taller than the ceiling of a second-floor room. Twin pillars of the most pristine white framed the gate, each representing the two progenitors of the Torryaenen. Together, the pillars bore the eponymous Torryaenen Arch, which provided the unifying link between them.
The collapse of the Alabaster Gate marked the end of escape from Ciermanuinn’s besieged vales. In the girl's final moments with her parents, they spoke of the Silver Wolf—a guardian against the encroaching Darkness. Her father’s final words lingered: “Darkness hunts the Silver Wolf, Krys. But even in shadows, hope endures.”
Her eyes grew warm once again but this time dewy tears made her eyelashes cling together. Carielyn pulled the girl
close. “I knew her, too. Once.”
“You did?” Krysaalis blinked in confusion. “I thought the Silver Wolf was just a story my parents told me to give me hope?”
“The Silver Wolf is a story, Krysaalis. A story of which we are both a part. My part in the story came long, long ago. Before my own mother returned to the world with the Final Flame,” the Qyen said. She guided the young Elowyn into a bright stream of light from the window—behind her, Krysaalis appreciated. Carielyn examined the girl as if deciding what to make of her.
Krysaalis’s thoughts drifted to her parents. They had revered the Night Huntress, Selyne, whose divine face she saw every night in the great moon that dominated the sky. To them, Selyne was the sole, beloved child of the Great Mother and Father. But learned in this Vesprian palace, they spoke of the Ashta Vespri—the Seven Sisters and their father, Elos. She remembered her own father explaining that the Vesprian Elos and the Elowyn Great Father were one and the same, a bond between their peoples. But who, then, was Carielyn’s Great Mother? If Torryaen the Great was the founder, had she been also one of these Sisters made flesh? The questions were too vast for her young mind, another layer of confusion in a world that no longer made sense.
For a fleeting moment, Krysaalis became insignificant in the vastness of creation. But the tension eased, replaced by a wry smile as she imagined the Qyen feeding from the discomfort she took from others. Taking away the pain of others must fuel the Qyen. Krysaalis could not comprehend an alternative.
“What’s so funny, young one? Care to share?” Carielyn asked; her aged skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes.
“I had a thought. A thought you could eat my bad feelings to feel better,” Krysaalis said.
The little humor which had begun to climb the Qyen’s face fell away, leaving her crestfallen.Krysaalis did not know if she had just offended the Qyen, but for a short moment believed she had said the wrong thing. The Qyen’s own Mask came to life. Her own unique shade of olive green spread from her stormy grey eyes to the pointed tip of each of her ears; a lock of her fully silvered hair tucked behind them. The donning of her Mask lasted only a moment and the young Elowyn briefly thought it almost resembled a bruised shade. If the younger shandaryn had looked away, she would have missed the entire flash of the Qyen’s Mask.
“I suppose that is so,” Qyen Carielyn said, finally.
Krysaalis cocked her head to the side, trying to understand what the old Qyen meant, and whether or not there lay a jest within. Their eyes met; the turbulent grey of the Qyen held the scared, sad, eager, and curious eyes of young Krysaalis, bright with the innocence and color of a clear sky.
“I’ve lived a long time, Krysaalis, and I’ve remained here to shield us from the weight of despair. And as I look on you now, I can see in you the shadow of the Silver Wolf I knew. My father’s last words stayed with me. ‘The wolves,’ he said, ‘intended to bring a final end to Darkness on wings of a light reborn,’” said the Qyen. “‘And the appearance of the silver fanged wolf means the end has begun’ he added. I had no idea what it meant. Wolves and fangs? But I knew it meant Na’iira, my father’s sister. Na’iira passed with my own mother. I watched them both go. I knew Na’iira must have been the Silver Wolf. You, Krysaalis, are must be a child of Na’iira.”
An astute child, Krysaalis understood the parallel between the name her parents gave her and the last declaration of the Silver Wolf the Qyen claimed to have once known. But, the girl still did not understand the deeper implication meant by the Qyen. However, Krysaalis could feel it. She understood that the elder woman saw within her a connection to the legendary Silver Wolf. The feeling filled the young girl like an imperative from the Qyen—a silent, emotional plea to find and understand the connection the Qyen felt.
Long wavy strands of golden hair caught filtered light giving it the hue of a faint reddish sunset as Krysaalis softly shook her head. She sputtered, “I…no. My Qyen, I am not…”
The Qyen smiled and eased back into a more grandmotherly demeanor. “Krysaalis, I do not know what lies before you any more than any of us know the path of any other. I do know one thing for certain–you are no ordinary Elowyn child of Ciermanuinn.”
There were three Torryaenen in Ciermanuinn at the time of the attack, Krysaalis remembered. The girl brushed her red-gold hair behind her pointed ear, then looked up suddenly at the Qyen, “No one has talked about Ryn, my Qyen.”
“No, Krysaalis, they have not. It seems you and Ryssa were the last to see him before…” the Qyen tightening throat choked off the rest of her explanation. She covered her lips.
Krysaalis remembered. She had been there herself and saw what happened. It literally had been only the night before. The Mother of Ciermanuinn, who also happened to be a close friend to the girl's own mother, had coordinated a hasty retreat to the Alabaster Gate.
“Before the last of us came here,” Krysaalis quietly finished.
The old matriarch nodded. Krysaalis chasm left in Ryn's wake washed over the Elowyn in heavy waves. It felt like the shallow end of the girl's own deep pool, where shock alone had prevented her from seeing just how unmoored she had really become, or how dark of a shadow that last memory of her parents cast across her heart. Her final moments in Ciermanuinn felt like a jumbled series of images, each frozen in their own time.
In those thoughts came a dragon of shadow. It could only have been from the same stories she knew about the Silver Wolf. Her father’s unique sword struck the shadow dragon where everything else seemed to pass through it. He had the beast’s attention, trying to draw it away from the refugees who fled through the Alabaster Gate. Krysaalis saw a flame of violet void consume her father, like the inverse of an actual fire. At the same time, Illyrissa’s birthbonded brother, Illiryn screamed in impotent rage and dashed from her side toward the center of the black circle spreading from where her father had stood.
“Why do you suppose he ran away as he did, Krysaalis?” asked the Qyen softly.
The girl's father had become something like a mentor for Illiryn “Ryn” Torryaenen. She believed the heir saw her own father as a surrogate for his own, whom he had never seen. Krysaalis often wondered why Ryssa went through the Gate instead of racing to her father’s side like Ryn had done. And yet, the girl knew there really had been no choice. Ryssa did not think, no one understood what was happening. Not even when the young Elowyn's own mother, whose task was to return the three Torryaenen safely to Vespyr, reacted reflexively to chase the Vesprian princyn.
“Ryn spent a lot of time with my father, my Qyen,” Krysaalis responded almost automatically. Her voice sounded as if she thought out loud. “Seeing what happened probably made the same open pit within him I felt. He ran toward the danger…and I ran away.”
“No, Krysaalis, no. That is not true. Illyrissa told me herself she pushed you through,” said the Qyen compassionately and drew the young Elowyn into another embrace. For Krysaalis, Carielyn’s arms wrapped like twigs around her small body–frail in size as well as strength. But a strength remained. Perhaps not a physical strength, but the woman's strong and brilliant light gave a warmth that left no mistake. The girl's eyes grew warm and glassy, once again signaling the inevitable return of her red Mask.
“According to my granddaughters, you would have been crushed if you’d followed after either your mother or Ryn. Was it not the very next moment when the arch collapsed?” asked the Qyen.
She the elder monarch was right. Ryssa had shoved the younger shandaryn forward in that last moment; it was long enough for Krysaalis to have seen what happened. She saw the shadow dragon strike at Illiryn and miss because her own mother pushed him to the ground. The young Elowyn's mother become the dragon’s victim instead. Fangs of black void pierced her mother in multiple places. The dragon caught and lifted the girl’s mother into the air with jaws nearly as big as the Alabaster Gate. A flash of silver shone in the consuming flames of shadow. Suddenly, the dragon swung right toward Krysaalis with the girl’s mother limply impaled on a jagged point. At that moment of terror, a shove from behind made Krysaalis stumble forward through the portal, Illiryssa tumbling down protectively over the young Elowyn.
But that was not the last thing Krysaalis had seen. As she crashed to the ground on the Vespyr side of the portal, the Ciermanuinn side collapsed, struck by the dragon’s head rather than passing through it as it had other structures.
“Yes, my Qyen…Illyrissa saved me,” Krysaalis acknowledged after a long pause.
The Qyen lightly brushed the refugee’s golden red locks. “Krysaalis, your parents gave their lives defending Ciermanuinn and our people—including trying to save Ryn.”
Soft sobs bubbled through the young girl's thin facade of stoic strength. Somberly, Krysaalis nodded in agreement against the Qyen’s loose-fitting white gown. The refugee had seen her mother killed. She had seen her father consumed by the Darkness in shadow. Only in that moment did Krysaalis finally acknowledge what she refused before to believe. She was an orphan. She had no family—her mother and father were all that she knew. Ryssa and Liryn were the closest she had, the only people from her old world who knew her.
“Until we can return you to your mother and father, you will stay here, safe within the Torryaenen Palace in Vespyr. At the request of my great-granddaughters, I will sponsor you as a Ward of the Torryaenen. You will have all the privileges of those raised here. And to honor your heritage, you will be known as Krysaalis a’Ciermanuinn.”
The pronouncement rendered Krysaalis speechless. Had the Qyen just given her a home, a place to live where she would could stay near the Torryaenen cousins so like sisters to her? The world started to spin around the girl. Qyen Carielyn had given her the name Krysaalis of Ciermanuinn, burdening the younger shandaryn with a constant reminder of a place she no longer lived with people she could not see.
“Do you know why I grant you these privileges, Krysaalis?” the elderly shandaryn asked and looked Krysaalis in the eyes.
Krysaalis just shook her head, looking unfocused in the direction of the Qyen. Her mind grew numb and tingly, like the prickling sensation of a sleeping limb roused from slumber.
“You saved the people of Ciermanuinn, Krysaalis,” the Qyen said, her voice steady and certain.
Drawn from her brief reverie by a pronouncement that did not make sense, Krysaalis focused on the grey storm in Carielyn’s eyes. Her? How could she have done anything to save anyone from Ciermanuinn? Someone did not make it through because she had. She shook her head again, “No, I could not. I was only one of the many trying to escape, my Qyen.”
“You are so much more than that, Krysaalis. Don’t you remember how the Gate opened?” the Qyen asked.
“I…yes, my Qyen. I think…I think I did somehow,” Krysaalis stammered. What she was saying had to be impossible. Simply saying it sounded like confirming a fiction as fact.
Qyen Carielyn nodded. “I think you did, too. Illyrissa believed Lirynel opened it, which Liryn initially denied. Lirynel is the only other in Vespyr who saw what you did and believes as I do. She has claimed the falsehood opening the way back to Vespyr. So, you no one should question you about that matter.”
“But how? I don’t understand! I don’t know how it could happen! I don’t know why it happened!” Krysaalis frantically began to cry as more of the Qyen’s implications came to her.
“Do you know why my grandchildren did not open the Alabaster Gate that night, Krysaalis?” asked the Qyen.
Krysaalis shook her head once. And then an argument between her mother and the Mother of Ciermanuinn came flooding back to her. Illyrissa instigated it, arguing against the decision to keep the Gate closed, despite the imminent danger. Her mother had called it pride. Still, Krysaalis did not remember anything about why Illyrissa could not herself have run down to the Alabaster Gate and trigger it.
“Because no one person can open the Alabaster Gate on Middark. One night in every Arc Ciermanuinn becomes vulnerable, which is why I order extra defense from Vespria each time. If not for that, I hesitate to imagine the alternative,” Qyen Carielyn said. “Whether or not the claim is true of the Elders preventing the Gate from opening in a timely fashion, with one of the three Torryaenen there, quiet the Alabaster Gate remained until awoken by you, Krysaalis. You saved everyone.
“Ryssa knew she needed her brother or Lirynel to open the Alabaster Gate, she believes her brother opened it with Lirynel. Saving everyone.”
“Not everyone,” Krysaalis responded without thinking. Then quickly added, “My Qyen.”
“No Krysaalis, I suppose not,” the Qyen admitted. “Not everyone.”
