High on the slopes of Biokovo mountain, where the air grew thin and sharp as a shard of ice, and the bones of the world lay exposed in jagged ridges of grey stone, time held its breath. This was a place untouched by the frantic pace of the world below, a realm of eternal rock and fleeting cloud. The wind that swept across the barren plateaus did not carry the scent of salt from the Adriatic or the perfume of Dalmatian pines; it carried the memory of glaciers and the whispers of a time when gods walked openly among men.
Here, in a natural amphitheater carved by forgotten ice, the ancient council convened. They were the Stari Bogovi, the Old Gods of the Croatians, and they were gathering for the first time in three human lifetimes.
The first to arrive was Perun. His presence announced itself not with sight, but with sound—a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through the very stone, a pressure building in the air. Then came the scent of ozone, sharp and clean. Finally, he manifested, a figure of immense power and stormy grandeur. He was tall and broad, with a beard the color of a thunderhead and eyes that crackled with barely contained lightning. In his hand, he held not the legendary axe of lore, but the essence of one, a weapon of pure, crackling energy that shimmered in the alpine light. He wore modern garments that seemed to strain against his form—a simple, dark tunic and trousers—but they could not conceal the raw, untamed power that radiated from him. He was the god of thunder, rain, and law, and his mood dictated the weather of the entire Dinaric Alps.
Next came Morana. Where Perun's arrival was a clamor, hers was a silence. A patch of frost bloomed on a sun-warmed rock. The air grew cold, and a thin film of ice crystallized over a small, trapped puddle. She appeared as if woven from moonlight and winter shadows. Her hair was the white of first snow, her skin so pale it was almost translucent, revealing faint tracings of blue veins like rivers on a marble map. Her eyes were the pale, chilling blue of a frozen lake. She was beautiful in the way a perfectly preserved corpse is beautiful—eternal, serene, and utterly devoid of warmth. As the goddess of winter, night, and death, her presence was a necessary counterbalance, a reminder of the silence that followed the storm, the sleep that followed the harvest.
Then, the earth itself seemed to shift. A warmth spread through the ground, and from between a fissure in the rocks, Vida emerged. She was the goddess of life, water, and the eternal, nurturing spring. She looked like the land itself in its most benevolent form. Her hair was the color of rich, wet soil after a spring rain, tumbling in loose curls over her shoulders. Her eyes were the deep, clear green of the forest canopy, and her skin had the warm, golden hue of ripening wheat. She wore a simple dress the color of the Adriatic shallows, and where she stepped, tiny, tenacious alpine flowers—saxifrage and edelweiss—pushed their way through the stone to bloom for a single, glorious moment before fading. She was the quickening, the source, the comfort.
Svetovid, the four-faced god of war, fertility, and abundance, was already there, though no one had seen him arrive. He sat on a throne of natural stone, his four faces looking simultaneously to the past, present, future, and into the hearts of men. His presence was complex, a mixture of the warrior's grimace and the sower's gentle smile. He held a great horn that was both a drinking vessel of celebration and a war trumpet.
Lastly came Mokoš, the great mother, the earth herself. She did not manifest as a human form, but as a profound, grounding presence. The mountain seemed to grow more solid, more ancient, with her arrival. The weight of millennia settled over the council. She was the weaver of fates, the protector of women, the deep, patient consciousness of the soil.
Perun's voice was the first to break the silence, a rumble that echoed off the surrounding peaks. "He is awake." It was not a question.
"Juraj stirs," Vida confirmed, her voice like the gentle trickle of a hidden spring. A soft smile played on her lips. "I felt his essence rise on Korčula. The soil there sings with his presence. It has been too long."
"It is not just his presence," Perun boomed, his brow furrowed like a gathering storm. "He is not merely walking the land, tasting the new wine, or stirring the sap in the trees. He is… focused. Distracted."
Morana's voice was the whisper of wind over frozen grass. "Distraction is a mortal ailment. What could possibly hold the attention of the Green Lord for more than a passing season?"
Perun's lightning-filled eyes narrowed. He raised a hand, and in the space between them, the air shimmered. An image formed, hazy at first, then clearing. It was a view from the edge of a pine forest, looking into a sun-drenched lavender field. And there she was. Ina. They watched the silent, moving picture: Ina harvesting her lavender, her movements graceful and intent. They saw her pause, feel the disturbance in the air, the hum of Juraj's awakening power. They saw her brush it off, a tiny, vulnerable figure in a vast field of purple.
"A mortal," Morana stated, her tone flat and cold. "He watches a mortal woman."
The image shifted. They saw Juraj, manifest in his powerful form, standing in the shadows, his dark, soil-colored eyes fixed on Ina with an expression of such intense, primal fascination that it was palpable even through the scrying vision. They saw the way he looked at her—not as a god observing a curious insect, but as a man beholding a miracle.
Then, the scene changed to the interior of "Lavanda." They watched the first meeting, saw the jolt that passed between them at the touch, saw the way Ina's sea-blue eyes widened with a fear that was already mingling with attraction.
"This is more than watching," Svetovid spoke, his voice a chorus of four overlapping tones, from the deep bass of the warrior to the higher pitch of the seer. "This is fascination. This is the beginning of an obsession."
"The Spring God is distracted by a mortal," Perun boomed, his voice shaking loose a small avalanche of pebbles on a distant slope. "It always ends in tragedy. Always."
A wave of grim agreement passed through the council, a shared memory of eons.
"Remember the Weaver from the age of the Neretvans?" Morana's icy voice cut through the air. "A river nymph who loved a fisherman. When he grew old and died, her grief flooded the valley for a decade. The villages were washed away."
"And the Shepherd," Svetovid's war-face grimaced. "A minor god of the flocks who loved a shepherdess. When she was taken by a fever, his despair made the wolves mad with sorrow. They turned on their own young and then on the villages. The land was stained with blood."
"It is the nature of the bond," Perun declared, his voice final. "We are eternal. They are a flicker. To love them is to attach your immortal heart to a candle flame. It is beautiful, bright, and then it is gone, leaving only darkness and the stink of smoke. Juraj's passions are the passions of the earth itself—fierce, creative, and destructive. If he attaches that power to a single, fragile human life, the imbalance could be catastrophic."
Vida, who had been silent, her green eyes soft with the vision of the lavender field, finally spoke. "But look at her," she said, her voice gentle but firm. "Look at the care in her hands. She is not just any mortal. She is tied to the land. She tends it. She loves it. Can you not feel it? The soil of that field is happy. It loves her back."
"What does that matter?" Perun thundered, rounding on her. "She will age. She will wither. She will die. In a handful of decades, she will be bones in the earth, and what then of Juraj? What then of his domain? Will spring cease because his heart is broken? Will the vines not fruit because he is lost in grief? His sorrow could bring an eternal autumn, a blight upon the land!"
"Perun is right," Morana said, her frozen gaze fixed on the image of Ina, who was now laughing with Juraj in a sun-drenched market square. "The connection is already deepening. See how she responds to him? She feels the pull. It is a dangerous game. Her mortal soul cannot comprehend what he is. The revelation alone could shatter her."
"We must intervene," Perun stated, his decision made. "We must remind him of his duties, of his nature. We must show him the folly of this path before his passion roots too deeply."
"And how would you propose we do that, Thunderer?" Vida asked, a challenge in her gentle tone. "March down to Korčula and command him to cease? You know Juraj. Commanding him is like commanding a vine to grow backwards. It will only make him more stubborn."
"We do not command," Svetovid's four faces intoned. "We test. We remind. We show him the chasm that lies between their natures. We make him see the inevitable end."
"A test," Morana mused, a flicker of interest in her icy eyes. "A taste of the winter that awaits his summer love."
"A reminder of the fragility of the vessel he seeks to fill with his immortal wine," Perun agreed.
Vida looked from one stern, ancient face to another. A deep sadness filled her heart. She saw the truth in their words, the long history of pain that such unions brought. But she also saw the light in Juraj's eyes when he looked at the woman, a light she had not seen in him for centuries. She saw the joy in Ina's laugh, a joy that seemed to bloom under his attention. To snuff that out felt like a crime against the very life force she represented.
"Be careful," she warned softly. "In trying to break this, you may only forge it stronger. Passion defied often becomes passion perfected."
"Then we will break it completely," Perun said, his voice devoid of doubt. "For the good of the land. For the balance. His fleeting happiness is not worth the risk of an eternal sorrow that could poison the very springs of life."
He clenched his fist, and the scrying vision shattered into a thousand motes of light that were swallowed by the wind. The decision was made. The council had spoken. The Old Gods would intervene.
High on the mountain, the wind howled its agreement. Down below, on a sun-kissed island, a man who was a god made a woman laugh, utterly unaware that the very forces of nature had just convened and deemed their love a threat to the world. The first, gentle breezes of a coming storm were beginning to gather, far out at sea.