What was I born to be?

Who decided for me?

Stars, Fado, or ghosts of glory?

Who dares to dictate my story?

Berdorf, E. Poems of a Wingless Princess. Unpublished manuscript, Summer.

The night starlight was so bright over the camp that it was enough to fade the firepits. Scented with pine and spice, and laughter crackled alongside the flames. Menschen chug their cups, faeries filled the tables with food, and old fawns sat cross-legged, trading games and riddles like currency.

Jaer stood among them, but from afar, all like a memory resurfaced.

His feet were quiet, eyes scanning faces that felt familiar in shape if not in name. It had been too long since he'd heard this many voices raised in peace, too long since food was passed hand to hand instead of rationed in silence. Someone roasted roots the old way, and the scent hit him like a childhood he didn't speak of anymore.

He didn't sit. He didn't smile.

Lukutua noticed first.

She circled him with a smirk that didn't quite reach her eyes. "You look like a ghost that remembers soup," she said, "Missing your people?" she added, tilting her head. "Or is it just the stew?"

Jaer didn't answer.

The quiet stretched longer than it should've.

Her smile faltered. The laughter around them dimmed, not gone, but blurred—like a song shifting off-key.

"Mir Fado," she muttered, brows drawing together.

Jaer turned to her at last, "Who else did you tell?"

She dragged two stools from the fire's edge, the legs scraping softly against the packed earth. One for her. One left waiting. Jaer didn't sit.

She crossed her arms over her knee, head cocked like a challenge. "What exactly are you asking, Jaer? That the girl carries Sternach blood? That the elves rewrote genocide into scripture? That Veilla wore a crown no one ever chose for her?" Her voice honed with the taste of vengeance with each word. "Tell me—what part of history have you decided to forget?"

He didn't blink. "How many know?"

Instead of answering, she hiked up her skirt past her knees and cast a slow gaze around the camp—the shadows dancing, the murmured songs, the children chasing fireflies in the distance.

Then she looked back at him. "What do you see?"

"Why now?"

"A Dame was born four Summers ago," she said. "And this time, she'll be Menschen. Not some silken traitor who spreads her legs for a Noitelven and calls it unity. You know who was the father of the Mageschstea's twins."

The fire popped between them.

"You are giving me no choice."

She shot up from the stool, firelight catching in the whites of her eyes. "What choice? Don't lie to yourself, Jaer—you want this as badly as I do. You wear that mask of tolerance, but I can feel it. That fire in your gut. The hunger to finish what he started. It's his throne—and his blood deserves to sit on it. Yeso legacy lives!"

Jaer didn't flinch. But something in his shoulders tensed, just enough to shift his shadow.

"I thought maybe," he said slowly, "you'd listen to reason. That you could quiet your people. Help stop this before it spreads. Before you put her in danger."

He took a step forward, then another. The space between them shrank to breath and tension.

"But I was wrong. You don't care for a new dawn. You are stuck in a war that is long gone. Yeso hated it. He was a man who would choose diplomacy above swords. He was a Menschen of peace. And I had to learn it the hard way. Will you?"

His voice dropped to something colder, quieter. "I'll spare your life and your camp if you'll never learn or speak the name of Yeso's legacy."

Another step. His shadow swallowed hers.

"Otherwise, I'll see to it myself that you won't."

A flicker of wind stirred the fire, just enough to herald movement. A man with wings stepped from the shadows.

"Lukutua?" he said, voice calm but tight, as he eased toward her, sliding subtly between her and Jaer like a shield. "Everything alright?"

She touched his arm lightly, almost affectionately. "Just two old friends talking, my love. Nothing is worth worrying about."

But Jaer wasn't looking at her anymore.

His gaze locked onto the man's eyes—brilliant blue, yes. But ringed in gold.

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The fire snapped. His breath caught.

"You…" Jaer murmured, the words thick with disbelief. "The Hexe—it's spread?"

The winged man didn't answer. He didn't need to.

Jaer stepped back, as if the truth itself had struck him. "But… Yeso didn't—he never..."

He looked between them, and for the first time that night, he looked afraid.

She cut him off, "Seems you knew less about your friend than we did."

The firelight caught Jaer's face just as the expression shifted—shadow sinking into the lines of his jaw.

"No," he said, shaking his head slowly. "You think you knew him. But only three people ever saw Yeso for what he truly was—his kindness, his hatred… and his guilt."

He stepped closer, his eyes hard enough to hold flame.

"And you weren't one of them."

She slid past the winged man, voice rising with heat. "You knew nothing. He fought for us—he killed the invaders for us, he—"

Jaer leaned in, just enough that only she could hear. His breath grazed her ear.

"He wasn't even there."

She froze.

"It was my idea," he whispered. "The human dropping dead over Noitelven. Not his. Finnegan and I did that. We stopped the slavers from the stars. Not Yeso. His battle was somewhere else. The one who saved us was the one you hate the most, Finnegan Berdorf!"

He pulled back, straightened, and took two measured steps toward the man at her side.

"I put Finnegan on Sorgenstein's throne," Jaer said, quiet as rain. "And I tried to crown Yeso in Whitestone. Got one right. One wrong."

A faint smile ghosted across his lips.

"But that's the thing about mistakes." His hand moved faster than thought, a blur in the firelight.

"You live—"

His arm plunged straight into the man's chest. Flesh split. Gold light sparked from the wound like shattered glass.

"—and learn."

"Niurem!"

Lekutua's voice cracked like a whip, but the word barely left her lips before a thin line of blue trickled from the corner of her mouth.

The man collapsed first, knees buckling as the life drained from his glowing eyes. She reached for him—too late. Her fingers grazed empty air before her own legs gave out, folding beneath her like snapped branches.

Jaer stood over them, unmoving.

His hand slowly withdrew, slick with blood. His pulse thundered in his ears, but his face remained carved from stone. He didn't blink.

He waited.

Watched.

Waited for the fear to catch up to her eyes.

He wanted her to see it—

Her prophecy turning real. A Sternach was indeed sitting on the throne. Half-Menschen and half-Noitelven.

Above the camp, a silhouette spun like a storm—swords glinting with every turn. Bodies dropped in arcs of blood and silver, the air with the scent of steel and flame. The screams tore through the night as tents collapsed under chaos and secrets.

They were dying—every last one who knew. What about the children?

Lolth landed beside him in a gust of wind and ash, her breath short from the flight. Jaer didn't speak. He reached with his free hand and pulled the mask from her face.

She blinked, stunned.

Moonlight slid over her skin, dark as ink and flecked with soft, glimmering constellations. Her ears, unmistakably elven, caught the firelight like blades. The truth exposed—no more hiding.

From the blood-soaked ground, Lekutua's final word crawled into the air like a curse:

"Niurem!" The name of her Hexe.

Jaer didn't flinch. His hand closed, slow and final, around the heart of her Hexe—

and shattered it with no mercy.

Jaer wiped the blood on the grass. With a flick of his fingers, a ring of fire burst outward—tight and perfect—encircling what remained of the camp.

"The children?" He asked.

"They are safe."

"Do you have enough shadows?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

Lolth didn't speak. She simply nodded. Winters and Summers with him had taught her when not to ask why.

She stepped forward, barefoot in the ash, until she stood at the centre of the fire's halo. The flames twisted, casting her silhouette in every direction.

And then the shadows moved.

They crept toward her like ink drawn to gravity, folding in on themselves, crawling up her legs, her arms, her back—until the fire bent too. The air warped.

One by one, tents crumbled into soot. Weapons blinked from existence. Blood dried to dust. The circle shrank, swallowed, erased.

In a matter of breaths, the clearing was empty.

No bodies. No embers. No proof.

As if Lekutua and her people had never drawn a single breath.

Her eyes caught the flicker of the last flame dancing across Jaer's silhouette.

He didn't move. Just stared into the place where the fire had eaten silence.

She stepped closer, mask dangling loosely from her fingers. "Should I ask what this was really about?"

Jaer didn't answer right away.

His gaze drifted upward, tracing the stars like they were old friends he hadn't spoken to in years.

"Have I ever told you where I was born?" he asked quietly.

Lolth shook her head. "No."

Jaer lifted a single hand and pointed toward a slice of dark sky beyond the treetops.

"Somewhere out there," he said. "Before I became this."

Lolth studied him; this night made his features seem older.

"You were born from the stars?"

Jaer's mouth barely curved. "No," he said. "I was born in another world. Like this one. From dirt. From chains. I was a slave… from Noitelven."

"I… I didn't know. I don't know what to say... or even if I understand."

He didn't look at her. "No one's born a slaver. Or a slave. We all begin as children. We don't understand what is beyond our eyes." He let the words hang a moment. "But I had my revenge. Finnegan made sure of that."

"That's why," she said, almost to herself. "That's why you follow him. Why you never question him."

Jaer nodded once, the fire reflecting in his eyes like something long buried trying to rise.

The tiefling gave a lazy shrug, the corner of his mouth twitching. "That, or maybe I'm just loyal to his massive cock."

Lolth choked on a laugh, swatting his arm.

They both cracked up. As if they hadn't just decimated an entire Menschen camp from the Map.

"I just don't want the ghosts we dragged through the war to wrap themselves around her ankles. If she chooses Whitestone or Pollux… or vanishes into the wild with nothing but a stick and a grin. I want it to be her choice. And I don't care what I need to do for that to happen."

Lolth tilted her head. "You want her to be happy. Me too."

Jaer smirked. "Or find herself a massive—"

"Jaer! She's four!"

"I meant apple pie, you pervert." He grinned wickedly. "Honestly, Lolth. You need help."

There is a history before the Fall ever took the throne of Whitestone. It remains unspoken—not for lack of evidence, but because no one agrees on what counts as evidence anymore. And those who lived it are no longer among us.

What little I've pieced together suggests a civil war among the Elves. One side led by the House of Berdorf. The other... nameless, or perhaps deliberately erased.

But I'll offer this:

The war was not won by the blade or spell.

It was won at sea—by blood.

One surviving account claims the Elves placed their faith in a human plan. But what seems more logical is that a fleet was launched, not with soldiers aboard, but with sacrifices.

One hundred and two humans.

Bound. Bleeding. Cast onto the enemy's largest ship.

The infection, whatever it truly was, spread within hours. None survived. Not the enemy. Not the humans. Not even the ocean beneath them.

The Elves declared victory. The ship burned. The waters ran red for days. And so the sea was renamed. The Red Sea.

To this day, Red Blood is feared. But the numbers remain. 102. Always 102.

I am not yet at the height of my understanding. But I will be. And when I am…

I only hope I don't regret it. ——The Hexe - Book Three by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune, First Edition, 555th Summer

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