❖ Chapter 9: The Cold Tyrant Stirs
Far beyond the Wastes — beyond the rotted fields and hollow winds — a silence deep as unshaped time stirred in the Veil of Realms.
It was here that the First Fairie awoke.
Her eyes snapped open — not with fire, but with a chill like frost drawing lines across glass.
A throne of pale metal rose beneath her, not crafted, but conjured by her arrival — as if the world itself remembered her shape. Her skin glimmered like frozen light. Her hair, a cascade of silver shadows, fell down shoulders too regal for warmth.
She did not remember her name.
She remembered only the cold.
And the concept — the unformed pulse at the root of her being. Something sharp and absolute.
She was not born with kindness.
She was born with structure.
Law. Isolation. Order without warmth.
Her people — strange, half-luminous beings of nature and soul — felt it instantly. What had once been gentle spirits of the land now trembled under her rule. Forests no longer ligered with life...they stood in silent stillness. Rivers stopped meandering. Winds moved only in lines.
What she ruled was perfect. But it hurt.
Their bodies adapted. Their minds didn't. Those who strayed from the rules vanished — consumed by the invisible edges of her domain.
Some whispered of the old Fairies. But they remembered none.
Others — the few brave enough — dared to hope. Dared to say: "A wind will come. A crack will open."
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Back in the Realm of Mortal Wastes, beneath a sky choked in late dusk, Jio and Havella trudged along the broken path out of the ruins of the village.
No goodbyes. No prayers. Only the weight of absence behind them.
"There's a cliff ahead," Havella said, pointing with a dull blade. "Down past that ridge, there's a way through the eastern flatlands. But…"
"But what?"
She hesitated.
"…I've heard of a shimmer there. A… veil. Like a place you step through by accident."
Jio said nothing.
"You ever hear of the Realms?" she asked suddenly.
He paused.
"Maybe."
"Fairies," she added, as if the word burned. "Old stories. They say they're like gods, but colder. Less human. They don't talk to mortals. They don't even notice us."
"They notice us now?"
Havella gave a dark smile. "If they do… we'll wish they hadn't."
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And as they walked toward the shimmer, in the distant, structured realm of the First Fairie, a sound cracked through the frozen order — a ripple in the stillness, like breath fogging on glass.
The Fairie's head turned.
Something was coming.
She could not say what.
But she hated it already.
She stood from her throne.
And with eyes of frost that pierced across worlds, she whisp
ered her first words since awakening:
"Intruders."
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End of Chapter 9
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