The Princess of the Mist

Prologue — The Broken Halo It began as a dream of ashes. The world was silent, emptied, a graveyard of cities swallowed by dust. Towers lay in ruins, blackened skeletons clawing at a starless sky. Streets that might once have carried laughter and music now held nothing but bone-white stillness. I tried to breathe, but the air was heavy, a weight of smoke and sorrow that clung to my lungs. My footsteps crunched against glass and grit, and each sound felt too loud, as though the silence itself disapproved of my being there. Something shimmered in the haze—a sliver of light, sharp as broken glass. When I crouched, it called to my skin the way cold metal calls to a tongue in winter: dangerous, magnetic. My fingers ached to touch it, though every instinct screamed to stay away. And then the whispers began. They slithered from the ruins, threading through the ash like veins of sound. Thin at first, then multiplying, until I could not tell if it was one voice or a chorus of shadows speaking through the same mouth. Seven fallen. Seven scattered. Seven waiting. The words seeped into me, ancient and cruel. I turned, searching for the speaker, but the city was empty—only shattered walls and hollow windows. Another whisper, colder still, sank like ice into my bones: When the Silvermist heir turns away, all that breathes will wither. All that stands will fall to ash. The ground trembled. Cracks split the streets, and smoke poured upward like blood from a wound. And then, sharper than all the rest, a voice that felt carved into the marrow of my dream: Choose, or be chosen. Claim, or be claimed. The world breaks, or bends. The light at my feet pulsed once, like a heartbeat, and the city collapsed inward—ash, ruin, and whispers swallowing everything. I screamed, but there was no sound. Only silence, falling like snow. And then, everything went black.