Chapter 7: Sylara Vharanor
Nine years earlier, the fortress of House Vharanor did not exude discipline or the cold of stone—but panic, blood, and a sickening magic that clung to the air like a shroud.
In the main chamber, Daena Vharanor, the jewel of the House, the most beloved daughter, was dying. The birth had been successful; a healthy, strong cry echoed from a nearby cradle where a healer was tending to the newborn.
But the mother would not survive.
It was not a complication of childbirth. It was something older, darker. A curse.
It manifested the moment the child was born, swift and lethal. Thin black veins, like ink-drawn spiderwebs, began to spread from Daena's heart, climbing her neck and descending her arms. There were no cries of agony, only a rapid and terrible exhaustion, as if life itself were being siphoned from her with every pulse. The healers, the best that money and influence could buy, fell back, powerless. They recognized blood magic when they saw it, and against that, their potions and spells were useless.
Lord Tael Vharanor, the patriarch of the House, a man whose presence usually made warriors tremble, was kneeling beside his daughter's bed. His face, usually a mask of severe authority, was broken by grief. There was disappointment in his eyes, the pain of a father whose daughter had strayed from the path laid out for her, but beneath it all, there was an overwhelming and unconditional love. He held her hand, feeling the warmth drain away with each passing second.
"Father..." Daena's voice was a faint whisper, her violet eyes losing their light.
"I am here, my little flame," he answered, his voice choked.
"The girl..." she gasped, the effort visible. "She... is not to blame. My mistakes... not hers." Her eyes sought his, a final, desperate plea. "Protect her. Give her... a name. Our name."
Standing in a dark corner of the room, Kaelan Vharanor watched. His face was a mask of contained fury and bitter shame. His sister, his foolish and reckless sister, had brought this dishonor into their walls, dying because of an affair with some foreign wizard, leaving behind a black-haired bastard as proof of her weakness.
Lord Tael did not look at his son. His eyes were fixed on Daena. He saw the last breath leave her lips and felt her hand grow cold in his. The moment her heart stopped, the black veins on her skin glowed with a sickly violet light, and in seconds, her body disintegrated into a pile of fine, dark ash upon the sheets, as if she had never existed. The curse had not just taken her life; it had erased her very physical form, leaving nothing behind to be mourned or buried.
For a moment, the silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the cry of the child in the cradle.
Then, with a grief that transformed into a steely determination, the old Lord rose. He turned to the healer, who was holding the dark-haired newborn.
"Bring her," he commanded, his voice resonating with the power of a decree.
He took the small child in his arms. The baby's eyes opened, revealing the unmistakable mark of her lineage: one was the deep violet of the Vharanors, the other, an intense, ember-like red.
Ignoring Kaelan's furious glare, Lord Tael lifted his granddaughter.
"By the magic of the old decrees, as head of this House, I recognize her," he declared, his voice filling every corner of the room. "She is no bastard. She is my granddaughter. She is blood of my blood."
He looked at the child's face, the last living part of his beloved daughter.
"Her name shall be Sylara. Sylara Vharanor."
Lord Tael died only two years later, his heart broken, some said, never having recovered from the loss of his favorite daughter. And though his decree had legitimized Sylara on paper, it was not enough to secure her place in the family's heart. With the death of her only protector, the girl was left under the guardianship of her uncle, Kaelan. The proper treatment her grandfather had wished for never materialized, replaced by a cold indifference that was, in itself, a form of punishment.
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Present Day. Nine years later.
The first light of day had not yet touched the icy peaks of the Carpathians, but in the fortress of House Vharanor, a small shadow was already moving.
Sylara Vharanor's room was more a cell than a chamber. There was a narrow bed, a small wardrobe, and a single high window that looked out onto a stone wall. There were no tapestries on the walls, no rug to warm the cold floor. It was a space that screamed "obligation," not "belonging." The room of a tolerated niece, not a noble of the House.
At nine years old, Sylara already lived by a discipline that seemed more instinct than rule. The cold was her alarm. In silence, she dressed in the simple, dark clothes assigned to her, made her bed with an almost ceremonial precision, and washed her face in the cold morning water.
Her routine was a map of evasion. She knew the service passages, the servants' corridors, the times when the main halls would be empty. Making herself invisible was her primary survival skill, the first lesson she had learned under her uncle's roof. Crossing paths with Lord Kaelan or her cousins, Rhaegor and little Lyra, was to be avoided at all costs.
Before leaving, she paused before the only object of value in her room: a small, silver-handled hand mirror, engraved with a crimson flame—the symbol of House Vharanor. It had been her mother's.
She stared at her reflection. Her face was thin, pale. Her hair, a deep black, the mark of her foreign father, the visible proof that she was not like the others. And her eyes... the undeniable and conflicting mark of her heritage. One, a deep violet, her mother's eye, the eye of the Vharanors. The other, an intense, ember-like red, a rare peculiarity of her lineage, but one that in her seemed like something more, something otherworldly.
In the mirror, she did not see a victim. She saw only the reflection of what remained—the child who had learned too early to silence her tears. At nine, she had discovered that self-pity is a luxury reserved for the weak.
Before her, there was only the truth: cold, still, inescapable. She was Sylara Vharanor—a stranger in the home that should have called her daughter.
With her face held high and her heart wrapped in silence, she put the mirror away and left. A discreet but firm shadow, walking into the day she needed to survive.
Sylara moved through the narrow, dark passages of the fortress, a ghost in her own home. The service corridors were her domain, a labyrinth of cold stone that took her where she needed to go without being seen.
She emerged into a small antechamber that led to the kitchen. The smell of fresh bread and hot porridge hung in the air. An older maid, her face marked by weariness, was arranging a tray. Upon seeing Sylara, the woman did not smile, but she did not ignore her either. There was a trace of pity in her eyes, quickly disguised.
"Your tray is ready, girl," the maid said in a low voice, pointing to a small table in a dark corner of the kitchen.
It was always like this. Sylara did not eat in the great dining hall with the family. Not even with the higher-ranking servants. Her meal was a solitary one, taken in the gloom of the kitchen before the sun rose and the day's hustle began. A bowl of porridge, a piece of bread, and a glass of milk. Simple, nutritious, and served apart.
She sat and ate in silence, with the same efficiency she did everything else. The other servants who came and went from the kitchen avoided her gaze. Not out of malice, but out of fear. She was a Vharanor, legitimized by a decree from the old Lord, but she was also the niece the current Lord despised and a bastard in his eyes and those of most of the family. Interacting with her was risky. Indifference was the safest bet.
Sylara did not care. Silence was a familiar companion. Solitude, an armor.
Her meal finished, she left the plate in the sink, as she always did, and left the kitchen, returning to the shadows of the corridors. Her next destination was the training yard. Not the main yard, where Rhaegor and the other boys trained with swords, but a smaller, more isolated yard at the back of the fortress.
The place was cold and damp, surrounded by high walls that blocked most of the morning light. There, her "tutor" was already waiting. His name was Kareth, a burly man with a scarred face and small, cruel eyes. He was not a master-at-arms; he was a tormentor disguised as an instructor, handpicked by Kaelan.
"Late, half-breed," he snarled, though Sylara was perfectly on time.
She did not answer. She just stopped in the center of the yard, her hands at her sides, her posture straight.
Sylara's "training" did not involve swords or spells. Kaelan's goal was not to make her strong, but to ensure her power never again manifested in an accidental and shameful way. Kareth's method was simple: psychological cruelty.
"Your father was a weakling, you know?" he began, circling her like a predator. "A nobody. Ran away and let your mother die. And her? A fool who spread her legs for the first stranger who promised her something different."
Sylara remained motionless, her face a mask of neutrality.
"And you," he continued, his voice dripping with venom, "are the result. A stain on the Vharanor name. A freak with those eyes." He stopped in front of her, his face inches from hers. "Show me. Show me the monster. Lose control. Go on, I dare you."
Day after day, it was the same. The taunts, the insults, the attempt to break her composure to force a magical outburst.
But Sylara did not break.
She did not cry. She did not scream. She did not explode. Not anymore.
Instead, she retreated to a place deep within herself, a sanctuary of silence where his words could not reach her. Her eyes, one violet and one red, lost all warmth, becoming as cold and empty as glass. She felt her power, a hot, chaotic energy, bubbling under her skin, wanting to escape. But she would not let it.
With an iron will born of pain, she contained it. The fire roared within her, compressed until it became mere heat—silent, but incandescent.
Today, however, something was different. As Kareth continued his litany of insults, Sylara's empty gaze focused on a small pebble on the ground, a few feet from her instructor. She did not move a muscle, her breathing remained calm and even. But inside, she took a tiny spark of her contained power, that hot and furious energy, and directed it with a cold, precise thought.
There was no shadow, no light, no sound.
The small pebble on the ground simply trembled for a fraction of a second and then rolled silently to the side, stopping an inch from Kareth's boot. It was a minuscule, almost imperceptible movement, as if a phantom breeze had touched it.
Kareth noticed nothing. He was too busy admiring the sound of his own cruel voice.
But Sylara saw. And she felt it. The small wave of force that emanated from her, invisible and silent.
A small, almost imperceptible, ghost of a smile touched her lips before vanishing.
When Kareth finally dismissed her, snarling that she was a useless waste of time, Sylara did not run. She walked away with the same controlled calm with which she had arrived, leaving the cold yard behind. Her refuge was the library of House Vharanor.
It was one of the few places where no one bothered her. The vast room, with its high shelves full of ancient tomes, was silent and smelled of parchment and dust. It was a sanctuary. She sat in a dark corner, not reading, just absorbing the silence, allowing the core of power within her to settle after the tension of the "training."
The oak door opened with a soft creak, and Sylara instinctively tensed, ready to become invisible. But the figure who entered was not a threat.
It was Rhaella Vharanor.
Her older cousin, home during a break from Beauxbatons, was like a being from another world. With her long silver hair and a gentle smile that seemed to light up the gloom of the library, Rhaella was everything Sylara was not: graceful, loved, classically Valyrian. And, most importantly, she was the only person in that fortress who treated Sylara with genuine kindness.
"I figured I would find you here," Rhaella said softly, approaching. She was holding a small plate with a honey cake. "I thought you might be hungry."
Sylara looked at the sweet, then at her cousin, her heterochromatic eyes revealing a rare spark of uncertainty. She accepted the plate with an almost inaudible murmur of thanks.
Rhaella sat beside her, maintaining a respectful distance. Her gaze fell on Sylara's arm, where a red scratch, the result of a forced stumble by Kareth, stood out against her pale skin.
"He was hard on you again," Rhaella stated, not as a question, but as a sad observation. Before Sylara could pull back, Rhaella drew her wand—an elegant piece of vine wood with a veela hair core, which she had received at Beauxbatons. "May I?"
Hesitantly, Sylara allowed it. Rhaella pointed the tip of her wand at the wound, her touch incredibly light.
"Episkey," she murmured, her voice soft and focused.
A warm, golden light emanated from the wand's tip, enveloping the scratch. Sylara felt a pleasant warmth spread through her skin. The wound tingled for a second and then closed completely, the skin becoming smooth and unbroken as if it had never been injured.
Sylara pulled her hand back, staring at her arm, fascinated. She had seen magic before—the explosive, chaotic magic of her own accidental power, the cold, controlled magic of her uncle. But this... this was different. It was magic channeled through a wand, focused by words, used to mend, to ease pain. To heal.
Rhaella put her wand away with a melancholic smile. "It's the only thing I'm really good at. Much to my father's disappointment." She looked at her younger cousin, her expression turning serious and full of a compassion Sylara rarely saw.
"Sylara," she said, her voice low and sincere. "What do you want most? If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?"
The question caught Sylara completely by surprise. No one had ever asked her what she wanted. To want was dangerous. To want was to expose oneself to disappointment. Her entire life had been built on the absence of desire, on the acceptance of her reality.
She remained silent for a long moment, the honey cake forgotten in her lap. Rhaella's question echoed in the silent sanctuary she had built within herself, opening a door she had kept locked her entire life. What did she want?
Slowly, Sylara lifted her gaze. Her eyes, one deep violet and one burning red, fixed on Rhaella's with a sudden, overwhelming intensity, a force of will so palpable it made her cousin hold her breath.
For the first time, Sylara Vharanor allowed herself to want something.
And though no words left her mouth, the answer burned behind her eyes with the clarity of a supernova: power. Power enough so that no one could ever hurt her again. Power to break the chains of her uncle's indifference. Power to be more than a tolerated shadow. Power to shape the world to her will, just as she had moved that small pebble in the yard.
Whatever it took to get it, she would do it.