Eryshae

Eryshae

Ruwan

The candlelight in the Eberflame manor's lowest chamber did not flicker. It burned unnaturally still, as if held by unseen hands. The stone walls of the room had once been wine storage, but now they were scrawled with glyphs painted in ash, wax, and old blood. Ruwan had made this place his own; hollowed it out from memory and marrow, a sanctuary of secrets far beneath the echoing halls where his father entertained lords and Cardinals alike.

Ruwan moved with purpose through the chamber's gloom, the flicker of torchlight licking across his face in dancing reds and golds. The room smelled of ancient parchment, old salt, and something fouler; something fermented deep below the stone, like rot preserved in power.

He stood before the altar barefoot, breathing in the metallic tang of iron, the smoky perfume of ritual oils. His breath steamed despite the heat. He wore only the ceremonial crimson wrap from shoulder to hip, its fabric marked with the Eberflame sigil; ember and serpent; though here, in this hidden hollow, it seemed more like a warning than a birthright.

He stared at it sometimes, that crest.

And he remembered his father's hands; steady, stern, wrapped around his shoulders when he was still small enough to feel safe beneath them.

"Our house was born from fire, son. It will rise again in fire. But it must first survive the cold." He would not let his father be passed over again. Not by the factions. Not by the Cardinals. Not by fate.

Tonight, the pact would be sealed. Ruwan stepped forward to the obsidian plinth, where the blade waited. Red and black, honed to a curve like a predator's smile. The dagger had no name, only a hunger. He had found it in the ruins of Old Kareth, buried beneath the bones of a forgotten god. It had whispered to him then. It whispered still.

He drew the blade.

The edge kissed his palm without resistance. A sharp line, a bead of blood, then a steady flow. It pooled in his cupped hand, warm and thick, before he let it spill onto the carved basin at the altar's base.

"My blood for your fire," he murmured. "My will for your witness." The glyphs along the chamber walls pulsed like a heartbeat. The basin churned. Shadows bent inward. His voice was steady, incanting the words he'd studied by moonlight, in the back of old ledgers hidden beneath his father's library. "Flame that sleeps beneath the world… wake. I offer you breath and blood. Let the fire consume the locks. Let the deep reveal the flame."

The first drop struck the runes with a hiss.

The second curled smoke from the stone.

The third;

The world changed.

Air bent. Shadows twisted into impossible geometry. The basin no longer held stone, but fluid; depth, glistening and black, rippling from some submerged truth. From within it, she emerged. She rose like a song meant to drown. A voice; like surf dragging stones across a drowned shore; sighed into being. "My sweet spark... you've summoned me again."The mirror-sheen surface of the blood shimmered.

Nimireth

The Great Elder of the Depths.

The Lady of the Green Mirror.

The Mermaid of Molten Grief.

Her form slithered upward as though surfacing from an unseen sea. Scales glimmered green to violet with each movement, her long red hair curling like tendrils of kelp and fire. Her eyes were a drowning forest; green, gold-flecked, and ancient. Her breasts rose above the surface with regal poise, adorned with bone jewelry and rings of dark coral. Her lower half, a serpentine fin, coiled languidly in the bloody water.

A tail of long, iridescent green-black scales shimmered as she glided forward in slow, serpentine grace. Her body was sensuous and terrible, impossibly perfect—sculpted curves marred only by the cruel glint of sea-spined ridges along her back and collarbones. Her lips were full, stained with garnet. Her hair floated behind her like a tide of crimson silk, drifting even where no water moved.

Eyes of bottomless drowning forest green, gold-flecked, and ancient met his.

And she smiled with a mouth full of fangs.

"You bleed prettier each time, Ruwan," she purred, one clawed hand tracing the sigils midair. "Have you come to beg? Or to burn?" He knelt, but not from devotion. From strategy. "I come to bargain."

"Your tongue is sharper than your blade. Speak." He lifted his chin, eyes bright. "My father will be Cardinal. I will not allow the Factions to snuff him out. This court pretends to value legacy; but they fear strength when it doesn't wear a mask."

Nimireth tilted her head, amused. "And what would you trade for this ambition?" Ruwan clenched his wounded fist, letting blood run fresh. "Whatever it takes." She drifted forward, water dripping from her fingers where no real water flowed. Her claws brushed his cheek.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Even your mind? Your soul?" He didn't flinch. "They belong to Envy already." The mermaid laughed, low and rich. "I have felt through the waters, a stirring of energy, a Root-Rip. Acquire this treespawn of my brother's, ripped from the world above and you will have your desires fulfilled."

The water did not splash. It rippled inwards.

Nimireth's gaze; glimmering green and gold and monstrous; held his gaze as silence descended like deep sea pressure. Ruwan's breath caught, though not from fear. It was awe. It was to be his purpose.

He opened his mouth to ask; but her smile deepened into something unreadable.

Then, without a word, she began to sink; gracefully, terrifyingly; into the basin. Her hair drifted atop the surface long after the coils of her tail had vanished into ink-black depths. Crimson silk and kelp, winding into spirals.

Nimireth's parting words slithered into his thoughts, not spoken, but felt in his marrow: "Now, Ruwan Eberflame... go. See. Burn them all, if you must. But do not forget who gave you sight."

Ruwan's voice tightened, laced with both frustration and dread. "Who is he?" he asked. "What did you see? What do you mean, touched your brother's realm? What are they to me?"

Instead, she began to sink; gracefully, terrifyingly; back into the mirrored basin. Her form undulated through liquid shadow, her serpentine tail trailing behind like ink bleeding through water. No splash, no ripple. As if she were never fully here to begin with. Her hair was the last to go, drifting like tendrils of blood and silk on a current that did not exist.

And then;

Stillness.

Silence.

Only Ruwan remained, blood drying on his palm. The glyphs dulled to ash. The candles did not flicker. The air did not move.

His questions hung in the dark, unanswered.

The stone steps groaned beneath Ruwan's bare feet as he ascended, blood dried and flaking along the lifeline of his palm. Each step up from the chamber below felt wrong; unnatural; as though he were moving not just through space, but between realities. He could still feel the pressure of her silence trailing him, like seaweed around the ankles of a drowning man.

He passed through the hidden passage behind the hearth, the panel sliding shut behind him with a soft click. In the grand hall, the velvet curtains had been drawn. The fire in the hearth burned low, lazy. Somewhere above, the sound of footsteps echoed; servants changing shifts, unaware.

Everything was as it should be.

And yet everything had changed.

Ruwan paused before one of the high windows, staring out at the courtly gardens that unfurled in neat rows beyond the glass. The moonlight was soft, silver. A false peace.

She said nothing. Not even a name. Only a command. Acquire the treespawn. Touched by her brother… what brother? What tree? And why did she smile like she already knew what I would do?

His hand twitched at his side. He had come seeking power to raise his father to the Cardinal's seat; but the price had grown roots before he could count them. The silence she left behind was heavier than words. It was expectation.

He turned from the window. The manor was quiet tonight. But not for long. Tomorrow would bring more whispers from the Court, more questions from the factions. More posturing.

Let them.

Ruwan Eberflame had made his offering. He had returned with something not one of them could touch. Ruwan moved through the upper halls of Eberflame Manor like a shadow come home. The torches flickered as he passed; some guttered out entirely, others burning taller, thinner, as if leaning away. The portraits on the walls, all ancestors painted in triumph or judgment, seemed to watch him more intently now. Their painted eyes carried the same suspicion he had known his entire life. But tonight… it didn't matter.

He flexed his fingers as he turned the corner into the east gallery. The tall windows mirrored his figure in passing; bare-chested, wrapped only in the ritual crimson. The blood had dried in strange patterns across his palm, shaped by the warmth that still coiled just beneath his skin. Heat without fire. Breath without air.

The manor should have felt smaller now. Safer. Familiar. Instead, it felt hollowed. Not empty. Waiting. Did she mark me? Does she watch even now, from the depths, from the dark?

His fingers brushed the stone banister. The carved serpent there had always been a symbol of cunning, of patience. Now it felt like kin.

He stopped before the double doors of the Eberflame war room. His father would be inside; speaking in hushed tones to spies and lords, plotting alliances with people who would sell them out the moment the wind shifted.

Ruwan reached for the handle. He felt a pressure down below pulse once, softly. A single note of pressure, almost imperceptible.

Not yet.

He let his hand drop. Let the old man have his night. Ruwan had just met a goddess and lived. The world didn't turn the same way anymore. Instead, he turned into the smaller study, the one where his mother used to read. It was still dimly kept, barely disturbed, a memory sealed in scent and stillness. He sat at the edge of the chair she once favored, and opened the hidden drawer beneath the desk. The old parchment still lay folded there, scrawled with names and promises. Blackmail, leverage, bloodlines.

He had always thought of it as a game he would learn to play. Now, he saw the board differently. I do not need to win the game. I only need to tilt the table.

Ruwan leaned back, the aged wood of the chair creaking beneath him, its groan echoing faintly through the still room. The papers in his hand; years of secrets, debts, sins buried in family crests; fluttered like dying leaves. He no longer saw names. He saw fuel. Every whispered scandal, every hidden betrayal: tinder for something greater.

He did not need to manipulate these lords and their petty ambitions. Not anymore. Nimireth's voice still curled in his blood, not a memory but a presence. Her promise had been barbed, tangled in expectation, but clear enough.

"Acquire this treespawn."

Touched by her brother, she said. A brother rooted above, in the world of bark and leaf. Druidic. Elemental. Alive in a way her realm only mimicked. And whoever the treespawn was, they were no mere bystander. A piece in the deeper game. A key.

Ruwan's jaw tensed. He folded the parchment with surgical precision and slid it back into the drawer. Not discarded; just... delayed.

He rose from the chair, slow and deliberate, and crossed to the window of the study. Beyond the glass, moonlight turned the hedgerows to silver bones. Somewhere in the forests past the court's edge, that presence waited. A child of her brother. A creature of the wild realm. An affront to the sea-bound goddess who had given him sight.

He would find them. He would break them open like a fruit of forbidden knowledge and drag whatever power they carried into the Eberflame fold. For his father. For the flame. For himself.

He exhaled, and the window fogged with the heat of his breath. The world above did not yet know it had been cracked open. That something ancient stirred beneath their feet and behind their mirrors. But Ruwan knew. And the treespawn would learn soon enough.

He turned from the window. Already, the first threads of a plan were forming; names, routes, contacts in the outer territories. There were rumors of disturbances along the eastern border, places where the woods moved oddly, where dreams tangled with root and rot. He would start there. And if this treespawn was guarded? Then he would burn.

Just like everything else that dared stand between him and the throne he intended to raise his father to; by blood or by ash. Ruwan's smile held no warmth now. Only promise. "Let the forest remember me," he murmured to no one. Then he left the study behind, and the candlelight did not flicker.