Far beyond the mortal realm, where time unravelled into threads of starlight and fate was woven into breath, the goddess stood barefoot on the edge of her skybound sanctuary.
Her name was forgotten to most.
Nythera, the MoonBlood Goddess.
Mother of prophecy. Keeper of the balance.
Watcher of the girl below. Mother, of the girl below.
She exhaled a slow, trembling breath. The storm had been brewing for hours. Not in the skies...but in her soul.
Her divine realm shimmered with iridescent beauty: floating mountains wrapped in crystal vines, rivers of liquid silver that sang lullabies, creatures born of dreamstuff drifting lazily through starlit gardens. Her palace pulsed with moonlight, elegant and wild, shaped by emotion rather than logic. Every curve and arch bent around her mood.
And today?
It bent in fear.
Lightning arced across the clouds, but it was not summoned. It was felt. A reflection of her unrest.
In the heart of her celestial observatory, a great pool glowed, its waters connected to the mortal plane through a tether of blood and soul. She hovered above it, robes flowing like smoke, eyes carved from the void between stars.
And in the pool?
Rhiannan.
The girl. The vessel. The piece of her that was never meant to awaken this soon.
Nythera whispered her name, voice echoing like forgotten lullabies. "Child... you burn too bright already."
She watched the girl sleeping in the arms of her second mate, magic still humming in her bones. Watched the wolf mark flare. Watched the stars twist tighter around her timeline.
"She's sealing the bonds too quickly," Nythera said, knuckles white around her moonstone staff. "The prophecy was not meant to unfold at this pace."
She paced the observatory, her bare feet sparking stars across the floor. The runes carved into the black marble pulsed with her energy.
The Silver Star shall fall…
Bound by six, hunted by one.
Peace or ruin shall rise in her wake.
She whispered the lines again, trying to unravel them, to stretch the future open, but every time she reached toward the path ahead, the shadows blocked her.
Something wrong had entered the weave.
Something hiding.
Something watching back.
"I see you," she hissed, voice shaking. "I feel you in the threads...but I cannot touch you."
She extended her hand over the scrying pool. The liquid shimmered. Shifted.
Black tendrils slid across the surface, formless and cold.
A whisper, not a sound, but a sensation, slithered through her mind.
Mine.
Nythera recoiled.
The pool cracked. The room dimmed.
Lightning forked across the sky. Her palace groaned.
"No," she growled. "You will not reach her. Not yet."
She turned, storm trailing in her wake, and ascended the glass staircase that led to the Heart Loom, the core of fate's tapestry. Thousands of glowing threads stretched between towering spools, each one humming with life, love, death, choice.
Rhiannan's thread pulsed violently. Silver. Brilliant. Tied now to two others, Arwen's ink black string, Kaleb's glacial white. The bonds shimmered.
But just above them… hovered something foreign. A thread of void. Not color. Not dark. Just absence.
It didn't belong.
It wasn't woven.
It was injected.
Nythera snarled. "You've poisoned my loom."
She reached for it, but her hand passed through. A wave of nausea hit her.
She could shape reality. Mold creation. But this thing… it had come from beyond the veil. Beyond her.
A shadow whispered past her ears again.
She is mine to break.
Nythera raised her hands, and the storm answered. "Touch my daughter and die!" She boomed.
The sky opened. Rain fell in shards of starlight. Thunder cracked the world's spine. Her power trembled through every divine peak and hollow.
She would not abandon Rhiannan. She could not. Her destiny was to important. It would be her that United the people and saved the world. It would be her that ushered in the change so desperately needed in the world of Andopeer. Things were dire. Ruthless evil in leadership. People starving, suffering, being abused.
Nythera could not stand to watch her people suffer, but watch she must, as she was helpless to intervene. Her daughter would shake the foundations of this planet and change the stars themselves. Peace would prosper and the people would flourish. She'd seen it. Dreamt it. Repeatedly.
She could not intervene directly, divine law held fast, but she could still nudge. Still protect.
Still warn.
She summoned a glowing orb, pure moon essence, and whispered a message into it.
"Beware the demon man. He comes cloaked in beauty and rot. He is owned by the Entity."
She sent the orb hurtling through the veils of the realms.
A warning.
A whisper in a dream.
A small act of defiance.
And as she collapsed to her knees beside the loom, hair tangled, eyes wet, she whispered a prayer she hadn't spoken in millennia.
"Please, let her survive what's coming."
The storm raged around her.
And below, the goddess' vessel stirred.