Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Shattered Idyll

In the verdant valley of the Walcounsouth City's charred remains, the village of Oakwood was an oasis untouched by the cataclysmic Mortim-armis Wars that had laid waste to so much of the realm. Here, amidst ancient oak trees that seemed to hum with the melodies of nature's magic, the villagers thrived in harmony with the land, attuned to the forest's eternal rhythms.

On this summer day, joyous laughter and folk songs drifted through the sun-dappled glades as Nycresia and Arriane Kendall, two sisters of the old bloodline, chased each other along the winding dirt paths.

"Catch me if you can, Ree!" Nycresia's breathless giggles mingled with the wildflowers dancing in her chestnut hair.

The wind in my hair, the forest at my feet – I'm naught but a wild sprite given flesh! The fanciful thought brought a beaming smile to the young girl's face as the familiar path blurred beneath her bare feet.

"You think those skinny legs can outrun me forever?" Arriane teased from behind, pink-cheeked but determined to catch her older sister.

She thinks too highly of her own speed! Arriane's eyes danced with sibling mischief as she pushed her stride, closing the gap. Let's see whose the true forest nymph!

They raced past the village's thatch-roofed cottages, where plumes of woodsmoke mingled with the earthy scents of crushed pine needles and damp moss. Wyla Tanner, the village elder and seeress, looked on with an amused smile as the two sisters dashed by in a whirlwind of youthful exuberance.

"Go on with your frolicking!" she called out with a toothy grin, shaking her wizened head. "Winter's chill will be here soon enough."

Bask in the sun's warmth while you still can, little ones, Wyla mused, her ancient features crinkling. The wheel of the seasons turns ever onward, as it has a thousand thousand times before.

Eventually, breathless and rosy-cheeked, Nycresia and Arriane collapsed beneath the gnarled boughs of the Elder Oak, its massive branches stretching protectively over them. Nycresia playfully tousled her sister's hair as they reminisced about braiding wildflowers into their father's beard earlier that morning.

Loric had tried and failed to maintain his typical stern demeanor, his eyes crinkling at the corners from suppressed laughter despite his best efforts. Though one of Oakwood's most feared and respected hunters, even brave Loric Kendall - heir of the Old Ones' bloodline - was rendered meek by his daughters' mischievous antics.

"To see our mighty father undone by a few wildflowers..." The memory sparked a warm glow in Nycresia's chest. His mock exasperation is sweeter than the nectar of Elandyr's blossoms. He may bear the mantle of our ancestors, but his love for us surpasses all.

Arriane joined her sister in quiet laughter, savoring the image of their normally formidable father made meek by such innocent gestures. In moments like these, with Cress and Mother and Father together, I feel the old magic stir in my veins. Our family is the true heart of the ancient ways.

As the sun began its descent and afternoon light waned through the trees, casting long, golden shadows through the forest, their mother Elara's haunting, ethereal singing beckoned them home. Despite being blinded by the Mortim-armis Wars, Elara's ethereal melodies flowed from her like a siren's call, enchanting even the wariest woodland creatures. Kren, a young fox cub, emerged cautiously from its burrow, amber eyes transfixed by the beauty of the somatic's ethereal song.

Home... Both girls' thoughts were in perfect synchronicity as matching smiles graced their lips. Mother's song is the essence of Oakwood - of peace, love, and the eternal embrace of nature's magic.

Yet their idyllic peace would soon be shattered by an unspeakable evil that fateful night. Without warning, the ancient oak trunks glowed like smoldering coals as raging, malefic fires engulfed Oakwood. The air grew choked with acrid, brimstone-laced smoke that stung Nycresia's eyes as she was jolted awake by terrified screams renting the night.

What is... this can't be... Her sleep-addled mind could scarcely process the nightmare suddenly unleashed around her. Even in the aftermath of the Mortim-armis Wars, their sequestered village had remained mercifully untouched. This can't be real. Not here in our haven...

One moment Nycresia was nestled in the secure embrace of her parents, the next she found herself thrust into a waking horror. Cloaked, chanting figures materialized through the hellish maelstrom, grotesque masks of leering beasts concealing their identities - markings of the dreaded Obsidian Veil, a clandestine and fanatical cult that serves Malyvorn, The Eternity Wraith, whose existence the villagers had prayed was merely cautionary myth.

Wicked, arcane-forged blades flashed, reaping a grisly toll on the villagers caught unawares. Crimson blossoms opened across vital flesh with each wicked strike, stealing life's essence from Oakwood's protectors in a gruesome danse macabre.

"The Obsidian Veil?!" Wyla's anguished whisper reached Nycresia's ears as sheer, primal terror gripped her heart. The cultists they had prayed were merely phantasms from the old tales were instead incarnate nightmares, laying siege to their pastoral haven.

Desperate, the young girl spun in dizzying circles, struggling to locate her family through the smoke and flame-licked shadows. Then, a bone-chilling, primal scream shattered all other senses - Elara's agonized wail lancing straight into Nycresia's soul.

Mother! The breathless cry ripped from her constricted throat as the girl careened toward the source of the unholy screams.

She emerged onto a scene of carnage. Her parents fought desperately against the Malyvorn fanatics - Loric whirling his ancestral blade in defensive arcs as Elara clutched Arriane protectively against her breast, one arm outstretched in a warding mystic mudra.

Yet for every cultist cut down by Loric's enchanted steel, three more seemed to coalesce from the hellish miasma itself, their runed daggers flashing with an unholy, souldrinking hunger.

A blade of blinding violet energy found its mark in her father's back. Loric's bellow of agony shattered what remained of Nycresia's innocence as she watched her mighty father crumple.

Time seemed to still as Elara shoved Arriane aside with a mystic pulse of force. The same murderous blade, pulsing with vile amethyst ichor, opened a crimson blossom across the somatic's throat as she shielded her youngest with her own body in one selfless motion.

"No!!" Nycresia's scream echoed through the aetheric maelstrom as her mother's life's essence began to dissipate like cinders on the night wind.

Elara sensed her gaze then, eyes were veiled in a perpetual haze, as if a thin, silvery mist had settled over them has mysterious sparks blazing with that immutable strength that had sustained their family line for untold ages. "Run..." Her lips flecked crimson as she summoned what remained of her elemental will. "Take your sister and run, child! Let hope endure!"

Hope? How can there be hope now?! Nycresia was deaf and blind to all but the anguished howl of her own shattered heart.

Yet before the world could fully unravel into the abyssal depths of despair, her mother's final words lashed her to this realm through sheer force of will: "Run, Nycresia...There is always...a light..."

Blind to all but that seared mandate, Nycresia seized Arriane's hand and fled from the immolating ashes of their ancestral home - their cherished Oakwood now the latest sacrificial pyre in the Obsidian Veil 's unholy crusade against the Light itself.

Villagers fell like wheat before the scythe all around them, their life's essence pooling amidst the muddy ashes as Oakwood burned. But Nycresia could not dwell on the unbearable carnage, focused only on her mother's final wish - protecting Arriane at all costs.

Don't look back... don't look... She clung to that mantra like a talisman against the encroaching madness threatening to engulf her psyche.

Behind them, the conflagration raged with an unholy hunger, as if the very fires were gorging upon the essence of nature itself. The haunting echoes of terror and pain pursued the two sisters into the night-shrouded forest like vengeful specters.

Branches whipped across their faces in a frenzied dance as they plunged deeper into the woodlands, blind and breathless. How long they ran, Nycresia could not say - seconds or hours, the flow of time itself seemed to warp and splinter.

At last, their mad flight ceased as they collapsed in a secluded grotto, the distant roar of the flames muted by the verdant cocoon. Only then did the magnitude of their loss descend with full, crushing weight.

Gone...they're all gone... Arriane's thoughts echoed through the delirious swell of anguish between them, their sibling bond of Spirit transmuting the other's torment into a reverberating waking nightmare.

Their parents, their friends, their home in the sequestered valley of Oakwood... An entire world of warmth and safety, reduced to smoldering ruin in a single night of searing annihilation at the hands of evil incarnate.

Was this my penance? Nycresia's mind reeled, fracturing beneath the weight of a grief too vast to comprehend. Was this the price of our bloodline's arrogance - to have everything we love maliciously scoured from the weave of existence itself?

A hollow, mirthless chuckle escaped her cracked lips, tasting of ashes, despair, and the faintest tinge of blood.

How could I have been so naive? Her thoughts descended into the abyssal depths of sickening realization. That our idyllic sanctuary could withstand the age-old hunger of the Obsidian Veil's Unmaker crusade...

This was no mere clash between mens, no mundane conflict borne of territorial ambitions or greed. This was an ancient spiritual war, transcending the mortal plane - the eternal struggle between the Radiant Incarnations of the old gods, and the eternal hunger of the Soulless Void bent on their annihilation.

And we stood in its path...

Tremors wracked Nycresia's slender frame, her spirit teetering on the precipice of irrevocable fracture. That yawning maw of oblivion, rimmed in amaranthine flames, yearned to consume the shards of her own soul.

Yet before that endless night could fully eclipse her, a tendril of stubborn will - that intransigent flicker that had sustained her bloodline through the ages - refused to be extinguished.

'Let hope endure...' Her mother's final, searing exhortation was a tether pulling Nycresia back from the brink, anchoring her in this realm.

Arriane. The name, the soul-bond, was a resounding gongstrike that shattered the creeping madness momentarily. Her sister - her twin soul from the same hallowed womb - remained.

I won't surrender us to the Void... Nycresia's eyes regained their lucid glimmer as she turned to take in Arriane's battered, kindred spirit with new determination. Not while my last breaths perdure within this vessel. Not while there is even a flicker of the ancient flame.

For long, aching moments the two sisters simply held each other's respective gazes - communing through the transcendent bond of spirit-kin in a manner far beyond mere words. Then, just as the first fingers of dawn speared through the verdant canopy above, they rose in solemn synchronicity.

No longer the carefree children of happier days, they were now the last survivors of an ancestral legacy inscribed in eternal cycle - the mantle of Radiant Perseverance passed to a new generation. And their path would take them into the cold and untamed embrace of the Ilvaren Mountains, toward an unknown future penned in strife and courage, blood and hope - and the enduring glimmers of the Infinite Radiance their family had sworn to shield, no matter the cost.

On that fateful dawn, as the smoldering pyre of their once-verdant sanctuary glowed balefully against the violet-hued horizon, Nycresia and Arriane set out on their harrowing exodus, the words of Wyla— the seeress echoed in their minds.

"The light of Oakwood dims, but your path leads to deeper roots. In the heart of chaos, you'll find balance. Remember, children - all things are connected."

Nycresia clutched her sister's hand tighter. "We'll figure out what she meant, Ree. Together."

Though the road ahead was draped in shadowed perils yet unknown, their path was illuminated by an all-consuming determination.