Chapter 0
The Realm of Oskur
There are plenty of ways to realize someone wants you dead. A cryptic note slipped under the door. Poison in your chalice. A polite hint from a maid whose smile has just a few too many teeth.
I, however, was gifted a golden brand on my wrist.
The morning started spectacularly: I woke up, stretched, and spotted an intricate pattern on the back of my right hand that definitely hadn’t been there when I went to sleep. It was delicate, golden, and looked as though someone very diligent—and very sinister—had painted it there while I was snoring. The Mark of the Goddess. The sign of the Chosen.
In Oskur, being “the Goddess’s Chosen” is roughly equivalent to being the guest of honor at a victory feast—specifically, the part where you’re the centerpiece roast. They thwack you onto an altar, drain your veins, and the Council of Domains gives a satisfied nod before moving on to dessert.
I just had enough time to think, “Maybe it’s an allergy?” before my door swung open and my mother marched in.
Zeria, High Priestess of the Domain, usually looked like she’d never encountered a problem she couldn’t solve with a well-aimed death stare. But on this particular morning, something had cracked—a hairline fracture in the porcelain, visible only because I knew exactly where to look.
She took my hand. Stared at the mark. Her grip tightened—for a single second, no longer.
“Tonight,” she said. “Act as you always do. Pack nothing. Word to no one.”
And then she left.
High Priestesses don’t do explanations. They simply leave you with a golden death warrant and the advice to “act natural,” as if that’s the most logical thing in the world.
The day crawled by like slow-acting venom—leisurely, and with a full awareness of its own lethality.
I attended my lessons at the Citadel. I trained. I ate lunch. I offered polite nods to the other priestesses. Lira—my elder half-sister and the one who had, in fact, orchestrated this entire “Chosen” theatrical production—sat across from me, wearing the expression of a woman already mentally browsing fabrics for my shroud. I smiled back at her. Eighteen years in this family had taught me at least that much.
At midnight, Mother returned.
“Get dressed. Tunic and trousers—something you can run in.”
We descended the narrow stairs, past the servants’ quarters, deeper and deeper, until the dressed stone of the walls gave way to raw, damp cavern rock. My father’s laboratory opened up abruptly, and I caught my breath.
Silver runes coiled around crystals that hung in the air like stars on invisible puppet strings. The contraption shimmered, pulsed, and breathed—twenty years of secret labor manifest.
A portal to another world. Father had built it to return home. Then he had stayed—for Mother, for us. And now, this door was opening for me.
Elarion stood by the portal, looking like he’d been bleached. There were dark hollows under his eyes. He’d poured every last drop of his magical reserve into those crystals, and it showed.
“Listen closely.” He knelt in front of me, and I saw his hands trembling. His voice held steady; his hands did not. “On the other side lies Esteron. My home world. My parents and brother are there—your grandparents and your uncle. They don’t know about you, but they are mine. And you are my blood.”
He pulled a ring from his finger—a heavy thing, set with a dark stone that flickered from within. Father never took it off.
“This is the key to my study in the castle. Show it to the family; they’ll understand who sent you. In the study, you’ll find a communication glass. You can reach us through it. Beyond that... we’ll play it by ear.”
Mother silently pressed a leather pouch into my hands, heavy and bloated.
“Coins from your father’s world, and gemstones from me.”
Knowing my mother, there was enough in there to buy a small duchy. High Priestesses don’t do “modest,” even during a clandestine escape.
“And what about you?” I asked.
Father and Mother exchanged a look. And—this was the part that truly threw me—they smiled.
“Little flower,” Father said, resting a hand on my shoulder, “you were the only place they could hit us. Our only point of failure. In an hour, you’ll be gone. And then...”
“And then,” Mother finished, with the kind of tone that usually gave the Council priestesses a nervous twitch, “we are finally going to tidy up this Domain. It’s long overdue.”
She made it sound like she was planning a bit of light spring cleaning, rather than a scorched-earth campaign against the Council and her own eldest daughter. Then again, knowing Mom, they were effectively the same thing.
“When the dust settles, you’ll come back,” Father added. “There’s a twin portal in my study. The same one I used to stumble into Oskur twenty years ago. So, this isn’t a goodbye, flower. It’s... a business trip.”
“Keep us posted via the glass,” Mother said, her voice already snapping back to its usual business-like clip. “We’ll let you know when it’s safe to return.”
I looked at them—at my mother, who was already mentally listing the people who were going to have a very bad Tuesday, and at my father, who was only standing upright through sheer stubbornness.
Not forever. Just for now.
I hugged them both. Hard and brief—the Oskur way. Father slid the ring onto my finger. The stone flared once, bright and sharp, before dimming as it accepted its new master.
“Run, flower.”
Elarion triggered the portal. The crystals ignited, the runes hummed a low, vibrating bass, and the air tore right down the middle. The light wasn’t what I expected. Not white, not gold—it was warm.
The last thing I saw in Oskur was my father waving, while my mother was already turning toward the stairs. She had “tidying” to do.
The portal snapped shut behind me.
And the first thing I realized on the other side was that I was falling.
