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Some whisper that a war is brewing. I do not want to believe them.

Our love will keep us strong, no matter how much the gods continue to intervene.

I am scared every single day now. Hadrian talks in his sleep, he keeps mentioning the name of someone, someone that is not from this world.

I fear for him. They say there was a king once touched by the hand of a god, and he was driven to madness.

What if Hadrian has fallen into the same path?

What if the gods have found him? I must keep him safe. I must keep them all safe from them.

Tabitha Wysteria

The Forest of Silent Cries was silent.

Mal Blackburn listened intently, waiting—though for what, she did not know.

It was unnatural, this silence, this absence of whispering voices that usually wept through the trees, beckoning her deeper into their blackened embrace.

The air here was rarely stirred, locked in an eternal hush, but tonight, a breeze slithered through the white-barked sentinels, curling around her ankles and lifting the scent of rot to her nose.

She did not like it.

The skeletal trees stood taller, their obsidian leaves as motionless as death itself, their stillness almost mocking her. Something was wrong.

The soft wind wove through her raven hair, cool and insidious. Her bare feet dug deeper into the cold, unyielding earth, searching for something familiar, something real amid the eerie quiet.

‘Princess,’ came the whisper, deep as the abyss. ‘You are not welcome in this forest.’

Mal smiled—a slow, knowing thing, all wicked edges and quiet defiance.

‘So you always say, Seer,’ she murmured. ‘And yet, here I am.’

Through the gathering mist, beyond the veil of shifting darkness, stood her—the creature the world feared and called the Seer.

A woman, and yet not.

An owl, and yet not.

A thing born of despair, sculpted from nightmares, woven together by forgotten gods.

Her bones had been carved from the sorrow of ashes, her yellow, haunting eyes plucked from the skulls of the forsaken. Her feathered scalp shimmered with an eerie life of its own, stitched together by hands that had long since turned to dust.

Most who beheld her recoiled. Mal never had.

She would not fear her own.

The kingdoms beyond might tremble at the very whisper of their names, but Mal Blackburn had walked in darkness her entire life. The Seer was no different.

‘Rumours are spreading,’ Mal said, keeping her gaze locked onto the creature, knowing better than to look away.

If she did, perhaps the Seer might vanish with the wind, slipping back into nothingness.

‘They say the witches are coming for us. I need to know if it is true.’ She hesitated. ‘If they are coming for…’ Me .

But she would not speak the words aloud, would not give them weight. If the whispers about her were true—if the rumours of what she was becoming were true—Mal did not know if she wanted to hear it.

The forest stirred. Whispers slithered through the air like fingers curling around her throat, beckoning, taunting. The dead longed for her, called to her, promising an end to everything that ached.

It would be easy.

One step.

One breath.

One surrender.

And she would be theirs .

A simple slip forward, a careless reach, and they would unmake her. The weight of her bones, the torment of her thoughts, the hollow ache in her chest—gone, washed away into the soil that craved her.

A mercy.

The Seer did not move, did not blink, but suddenly she was closer—too close. Mal’s breath hitched.

A long, bony hand lifted, and those terrible yellow eyes leaned in until they were nearly nose to nose.

‘You are not allowed here without permission, princess,’ the Seer whispered, voice slipping through the cracks of reality itself. ‘It is not your time.’

For a moment, she saw it—her own fate—saw the blackened roots of the trees coiling around her lifeless form, saw the sockets of her own skull, hollow and empty, devoured by the earth.

And it did not frighten her.

The Seer cocked her head. ‘Do not wish for what is not yet yours, princess.’

‘Death belongs to us all,’ Mal countered, voice even.

‘But the young should not hunger for it.’

Mal’s gaze drifted past the Seer’s shoulder, towards the gathering figures between the trees—the restless ones. Their hollow eyes bore into her, their silent mouths speaking in screams she could not hear.

She inhaled their emptiness, the void where they had once been.

In her kingdom, death was not feared. It was known. It was expected. It was understood. But something about this—about them—made something inside her tremble.

‘They are looking for you, princess,’ the Seer said.

Mal lifted her eyes towards the sky—grey, motionless.

‘I need to know if the witches are coming,’ she said, quiet but firm. ‘If they are going to start a war.’

The Seer’s gaze sharpened into slits, glowing in the dimness.

‘If you wish to see , you must give .’

The bony fingers reached out, claws grazing her cheek—gentle, but only just.

Mal nodded.

A long exhale ghosted over her face, and then the Seer turned, vanishing deeper into the forest.

Mal hesitated. She knew what it meant to follow. Some part of her—the part still tethered to reason, to fear, to the memory of warmth—begged her to turn back, to return to the castle, to forget. But she couldn’t. She needed to know.

Bare feet met the darkened soil, and the ground welcomed her home.

With steady steps, Mal wove through the twisted trees, her breaths slow and even—though her heart screamed otherwise.

The creatures lurking in the shadows could hear it. Could smell it.

She had been granted entry by the Seer. That did not mean she would be allowed to leave .

Then—a presence.

Mal stiffened. A child.

A girl, no more than six, stood at her side, her swollen face blue from drowning, her empty sockets fixed upon Mal.

She smiled, wide and too knowing.

‘Stay with me, princess,’ the child whispered.

And then—a hand, small and clammy, latched onto her own.

The world shattered.

Mal awoke on the ground.

‘Drink.’

The Seer’s hut had not changed. Rodent bones dangled like wind chimes from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows in the dim candlelight. The scent of thick, cloying oils dripped from overturned pots, staining the wooden floor littered with the skins of creatures long since departed.

Mal exhaled sharply, swallowing down nausea.

A wooden cup was pressed into her hands. She knew what it was before she even smelt it. She grimaced. Drank anyway.

Bitter, thick, earthy. It never got better.

‘Still weak,’ the Seer chided, a hint of amusement in her rasping tone.

Then—pain. A dagger, swift and sharp, sliced across Mal’s forearm. She barely flinched. Her black blood pooled into the waiting cup.

The Seer raised it to her lips, drinking deeply, the dark liquid staining her mouth.

Mal did not look away. It was her blood. And soon, it would tell her fate.

The whispers of the dead coiled through the hut like tendrils of mist, rattling the walls with their hollow pleas. Mal did not heed them. Their voices scraped against the wooden beams, pressing, begging, yearning to be let in, but she kept her focus sharp, her gaze locked on the Seer.

The creature arched backward, her breath shallow and unnatural as her yellow eyes rolled into a blank, ghostly white. The effect of Mal’s blood took hold, winding through the Seer’s veins like an incantation whispered by forgotten gods.

‘Ask,’ the Seer rasped, her voice no longer her own, but that of the lost.

Mal's throat tightened, but she did not falter.

‘Are the witches preparing for war?’

‘Yes.’

A breath hitched in Mal’s chest. Her fingers curled against the fabric of her dress, her pulse thrumming like the war drums she feared she would soon hear.

‘What can be done to stop them?’

‘Nothing.’

The answer struck her like a blade. She leaned forward, her purple eyes burning with frustration.

‘There must be something!’

The Seer’s milky gaze narrowed, sharp as a dagger’s edge.

‘To end the curse, you must kill the Fire Prince.’

Mal went still. The words felt like an intrusion—something that did not belong to her, something that had no place in her world. A curse?

Her fingers trembled slightly, her mind turning, trying to stitch together meaning where there was none. The Fire Prince? What did he have to do with war? What did he have to do with a curse?

And what, in all the deadly gods' names, did she have to do with him ?

She had never laid eyes on the prince before. Their kingdoms had been at odds for a century, locked in a rivalry as old as stone. Mal had spent her life despising the Kingdom of Fire and everyone within its smoldering walls.

But if killing him meant ending a war… Could she do it? Surely, he could.

She had heard the tales. Whispers of a beast draped in gold, his hair kissed by the sun, his eyes the colour of sand on the brink of a storm. A prince born of cruelty, who hunted for sport and tortured for pleasure.

‘Is it true?’ she asked, her voice a breath above a whisper. ‘The prophecy? Does the prince have something to do with it?’

‘Yes.’ The word slithered into the air, settling in Mal’s chest like a sickness. ‘Two children were born to stop the curse; a cursed child and a chosen one. The chosen child must kill the cursed one in order to save the kingdoms.’

Mal’s blood turned to ice.

‘You said I must kill the Fire Prince…’ she said. ‘Does that mean I am the chosen one? And he is the cursed child?’

For the first time, something passed across the Seer’s withered face—something that did not belong. Fear . It nestled into the creases of her skin, dark and unwelcome, a wrinkle that no time nor spell would ever smooth away.

The Seer’s eyes darkened, returning to their eerie, yellow glow.

‘Now, you must leave.’

Mal parted her lips to speak, but the cries of the forest deepened.

They did not whisper anymore.

They shrieked.

A crackling force coiled around her skull, clawing inside, grasping at the edges of her mind like fingers of the lost, desperate to claim what was owed.

Run .

Mal did not hesitate.

She turned, her bare feet striking against the earth as she tore from the hut, the blackened trees stretching towards her like hands trying to keep her bound to the darkness.

She did not look back.