Hexe | The Long Night

"Happy New Summer! A wish from Great Sand Radio FM! I'm John Marie, and Tane Ner is with me today! So, Tane—tell me, what are your wishes for this radiant new Summer?"

A pause. Then a breath. Then her voice—soft, a little cracked."I wish humans could stop fighting each other, so all of us, fae, elven, humans, could find true saat's peace."

The silence that followed wasn't long, but it stretched. John laughed—too quickly. "Well, don't we all want that!" Another laugh, sharper this time. "But you've got to admit, it's sorta the faes' fault, isn't it? I mean, if you all weren't out there hugging trees like each one was your grandmother's ghost, maybe we'd have more progress and less—"

The signal dipped again. A warble. A hiss.

Jericho twisted the dial with a grunt, cutting the radio mid-sentence—another recycled monologue of condescension hate, the same polished voices pretending the world hadn't already slipped off its axis. Silence filled the truck, and it was welcome. His stomach growled. His temples throbbed.

He adjusted the rearview mirror.

In the reflection, Esra leaned against the truck bed like a masterpiece of art, a painting, golden hair drifting in the desert breeze, smoke curling from the half-lit joint clenched between his fingers. Mushrooms, no doubt. Idiot was still trying to test how close he could lean toward death without falling in. Or maybe not. Maybe he really wanted to end it all.

Regal as ever, though—back straight, chin high, the ruined poise of a king who'd lost everything but pride and self-pity. Jericho hated how striking he still looked. Some creatures should be forbidden to be that beautiful.

Outside, the house groaned, flames licking higher into the night sky. Beams collapsed. Sparks fled upward. The whole structure folded in on itself like it had been waiting to die.

Jericho didn't know the full story—just that a lot of people hadn't made it out. But mostly, they messed with the wrong Menschen—the wrong Magi. The truck rumbled beneath him, loaded with old archives, brittle with dust and secrets that Professor Duvencrune thought were worth preserving.

He wasn't here for grief. He was here to pick up and drive.

From the flames, something moved.

At first, it was only the shimmer of bone—blackened ribs catching the light as they swayed forward, step by step, unbothered by the inferno roaring at its back. Jericho didn't blink. He'd seen this before—too many times. And still, his fingers curled tight around the steering wheel.

Flesh bloomed slowly. Tendons stretched, skin stitched itself into place like the air remembered what she was supposed to look like. Muscles pulsed into being, frame by frame, until she was whole again.

Lolth emerged untouched.

Her dark blue hair, slicked with soot, floated behind her like smoke with purpose. Eyes unfazed. Not a scorch mark on her dark skin.

Duvencrune had lectured him a hundred times—Noitelven are different. They don't break. They don't feel. They don't bleed like the rest of us. An extinct species forged with rules he'd never be able to understand.

Didn't matter.

She still scared the shit out of him. Even back then, at the camp of the Trial of Elements.

"Did you find anything else?" Esra asked, grinding the last glowing ember of his joint into the sand with his foot.

Lolth's bare feet whispered over scorched sand. "Besides corpses? Nothing."

She was bare—smoke trailing from her hair, skin unmarked by fire or ash but by small glimmering stars spread through her body like freckles. She'd look like she had walked through hell and had the nerve to come out beautiful and perfect.

Esra didn't look at her directly. He just reached beside him, pulled the black robe from where it had fallen on the truck bed, and held it out.

"Don't catch a cold," he said, dry as the desert.

"Funny," she muttered, slipping into the fabric. "Did you… keep something?"

"No... It's just diaries and reports she wrote," Esra said, his voice low, almost too casual. "I've read them a hundred times. Nothing new is going to appear like magic."

He turned away, crouched near the crates stacked in the back of the truck, fingers rifling through old folders and faded bindings like he was digging through old ghosts. Then he paused—too long. And when he rose, there was a notebook in his hand.

Jericho didn't even think.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The cab door flew open. He was on the ground in a flash, boots crunching the sand, voice sharp with panic.

"Hey! Hey!" His shout cut through the stillness like a gunshot. "That was not the deal!"

The distance between them closed fast.

"Leave that. It goes to the Professor." Jericho shouted.

The notebook didn't move. Neither did Esra.

"Oh shut up, Burnzey," Esra snapped, waving the notebook like it was a napkin and not a relic. "It's a doodle book. A kid's sketches. Scribbles about apple pies, elven ears and how much she hated dresses! Not world-saving prophecies."

Jericho's deformed mouth opened, already halfway into protest. "But Professor Duvencrune said—"

"Tell the Professor," Esra cut in ", that he can shove his shiny little man's cane where the sun doesn't dare to shine!" He turned to Lolth, the notebook still in hand, his voice dropping just enough to be kind. "I think you should have it."

Lolth took the notebook without a word, her fingers brushing over the worn label—The Wingless Princess. The ink faded, but it was still legible, still intact. She flipped it open, pages rustling gently in the dry air. Childish handwriting danced across the paper, uneven and heartfelt. She skimmed, then paused.

"How did you…"

Esra didn't turn. His voice was flat, almost careless. "She wrote it down a bunch of times. Same phrase, over and over." A beat."I wish Loli were my real mummy."

Lolth didn't move. Didn't speak. Her throat tightened, but no sound came. She wasn't even sure if the tears stayed behind her eyes or simply turned to smoke, lost in the heat.

She looked at him then—Esra, standing tall, pretending the world couldn't touch him anymore. The slouch in his stance, the shrug that came too easily. But she saw it. All of it.

The boy who had loved quietly, fiercely. The man who might've changed everything—if only he'd seen it in himself.

And she couldn't blame him. Not anymore.

Esra turned toward the house. Heat shimmered off the sand as embers spiralled into the dusk. He slipped the ring from his index finger and then hurled it into the blaze with a grunt that sounded too much like goodbye.

Both hands came up, fingers raised in a furious salute. "Go fuck yourself, human, you fucking whore!" he shouted, echoing over the crackling ruin.

And then—movement.

One shape burst from the smoke—jagged, fast, wrong. A blackened silhouette tore through the haze, limbs bending in ways they shouldn't, sprinting straight toward them with six wide-open eyes.

Esra froze, just for a heartbeat. "Shit."

Zora dashed for her car, hand reaching for the backseat where her weapon lay waiting. But the echo of gunfire stopped her cold like a war drum announcing its own victory.

Jericho was already handling it.

He walked slowly with a massive rifle steady in his arms. Each pull of the trigger sent out a searing lance of light—beams that looked like fragments of the sun tearing through the dusk.

The Lamia didn't scream. It didn't even fall. It simply vanished in the air, turning to cinders that disappeared into the wind and were swallowed by the sand of the Great Desert.

Esra watched it disappear, dust curling around his ankles, then turned toward Jericho with a lopsided grin.

"Well done, Burnzie."

"My name is Jericho."

"Burnzie sounds better," Esra muttered with a shrug, already losing interest. "It matches the handler better."

A beat. The smoke curled. The fire behind them hissed like it was finally giving up.

"Shit, that was a close one." Lolth didn't look at them as she slid into the driver's seat of her minicar.

"Are you going to Antares?" Esra asked, not moving.

"No."

She didn't elaborate.

He turned to Jericho, didn't bother with words, just gave him a look that said we're going anyway.

Jericho groaned, rubbing a hand down his burnt face. "For fuck's sake."

Esra climbed in.

"Don't steal anything," Jericho muttered. No one replied.

The truck growled to life, tyres biting into the sand, and they rolled forward into the waiting desert, the fire shrinking behind them, a flicker swallowed by the dunes.

Lolth stayed behind, seeing them leave. She just sat there, eyes fixed on the flames dancing in the distance, their orange light flickering across the windshield.

She opened the glove box. Inside, a neat row of burner phones waited in silence. She chose one. Peeled the box open. Tore the plastic seal.

The screen lit up. No hesitation. Her fingers moved without pause, the number flowing from memory, not thought.

The call connected.

"Ollo?" The voice on the other end was cracked, cautious—hope buried beneath weariness. "Little Spider… is that you?"

She didn't blink.

"I kept one of her diaries," she said, voice flat, like the words weighed nothing at all.

Silence stretched. Then, desperate—soft—"Little Spider, I need—"

"Fuck you, you stupid dimwit cunt!" Her voice cracked, raw and shaking. "I fucking hate you! And you should shove that cane into your fucking flat ass, you insufferable asshole!"

The words scorched the air between them enough to draw blood. Her chest heaved, fury barely holding back the tremble threatening to break her.

On the other end, the silence stretched—"When you feel ready… Just send it to me. Please. And—"

Her breath hitched. "And what?" she snapped, venom barely masking the crack in her throat.

"I miss you too."

She rolled the window down, the dry wind rushing in to meet her. The phone slipped from her fingers like an afterthought, tumbling into the sand below.

Not even a second later, the tyres lurched forward—no hesitation, no farewell.

The crunch beneath the wheel was subtle but final. That was the end of the call.

She didn't look back. The Long Night was gone over centuries ago, but it still hunted the Map. Even though it is now Summer.

Now that the Long Night has ended—on the first day, of the first moon, of the first Summer—it is finally time to tell the story of the Sun that now burns freely over land, sea, and sky.

Eura Zonnestra Mageschstea Berdorf.

Or, as those closest to her once called her, Sunbeam.

Truth be told, I never imagined I would be the one to write this book, to trace the arc of a life so radiant it carved its way into the pages of history. How a child, curious and stubborn, grew into a thoughtful noble youth, and then rose into one of the most extraordinary women ever known.

And yet—here I sit, staring down at a tattered notebook. Its edges are frayed, its corners ink-stained, its pages filled with half-formed thoughts, small sketches, and the restless scribbles of someone who couldn't bear to set their quill down. Scrawled across the front in faded, uneven lettering is the title:

"The Wingless Princess."

And so it begins.

END OF THE LONG NIGHT