Chapter 1: Shadows and Starlight
The winds howled through the jagged peaks of Vanehelm, threading themselves through craggy spires like restless spirits. Clouds churned below the mountain summits, pale against the silver light of the moon, which cast sharp shadows across the valley. Somewhere high above, the sky itself trembled with the roar of dragons—majestic beasts whose scales shimmered like gemstones, whose wings carved the air with precision honed over centuries.
In a hidden hollow of the highest cliff, a nest glowed faintly in the moonlight. Within it, a silver dragon curled protectively around a small bundle: an infant wrapped in layers of silk. The mother’s breath steamed in the cold night, a plume of warmth against the icy wind. Her eyes—liquid pools of starlight—watched the world below with a vigilance born of millennia.
“Sleep, my heart,” the dragon whispered, her voice rippling in the air like music carried on the wind. “Dream of who you are, and know that one day… one day you will rise.”
But the night held darker plans. From the valley floor, shadows moved with unnatural precision. Figures cloaked in black, faces hidden beneath hoods, scaled the cliffs and slipped through the forests. Their weapons glinted with malevolent intent, and in their hands glowed sigils pulsing with forbidden magic.
The dragon’s eyes narrowed. She sensed them—hunters, intruders, thieves of life itself. A shiver ran through her scales, a warning that rippled across the mountain. She unfurled her wings, the silver sheen catching moonlight like quicksilver.
“They come,” she murmured, a low growl vibrating in her chest. “Take her… take her to safety!”
Before the shadows could strike, the dragon lifted into the air, powerful wings carving gusts that bent the storm around her. Lightning flickered across the clouds, illuminating the intruders for the briefest of moments: human hands guided by dark enchantments, reaching for what was not theirs.
A scream—a single, piercing wail—shattered the night. Morrighan, small and fragile in the dragon’s protective embrace, cried as if the wind itself had bitten her. The dragon fought, spiraling skyward in desperate arcs, but there were too many, too clever. A flash of steel and a pulse of dark magic struck her side. Pain seared, and with a roar that shook the mountaintops, she made a choice that would echo through time.
A bright surge of silver light enveloped the infant. Morrighan was lifted, almost snatched from the claws of fate, and cast into a swirling void—a world she would not yet understand.
The last thing she saw was her mother’s eyes, wide with both terror and hope, scales shimmering beneath the moonlight like shards of a fallen star. Then the storm swallowed her whole. Darkness and wind became one, and the echoes of Vanehelm faded.
In Midreign, a world gray and heavy, Morrighan would awaken one day not knowing where she had come from—but the silver in her hair, the fire in her spirit, and the amulet she would always wear, would never forget.
