Prologue
Pain was her lifeblood. Love was a poison she never planned to drink.
They said the Veytikiter were soulless. Shadows in flesh. Born from the ache between stars and the silence that followed.
Maybe they were right.
Aylamara Vale remembered the fire — but not the way others did. Not the screams of those who fell, or the smoke that choked the night. No. She remembered the fury inside her, burning hotter than any flame.
Her sister had been targeted. Marked. The hunters came for her — to break their bloodline, to erase their kind. Desperation clawed through Ayla like a storm.
Only two survived the night — Ayla and her sister — broken and bloodied, the echoes of destruction ringing in their ears.
Her sister’s eyes held no hope. Only fire. Only the silent question of what had become of them.
No tribe remained. No sanctuary. Only hunger — a gnawing ache beneath her ribs.
Pain was no longer just something to feed on. It was the wound she carried — a wound she had opened herself.
Love was poison, but guilt was a poison far worse.
Sometimes, when sleep came, Ayla was visited by a vision — a shadowed memory of that night, the weight of what she had done pressing cold against her chest. She woke with ash on her tongue and the certainty that the past was not done with her yet.
