This is how it begins.

Before the fall. Before the silence. There is a hum Meda cannot place, a vision she cannot hold, and a kingdom preparing for a wedding that will never be.

This is a glimpse into the prologue of While Shadows Weep.

☙ ❧
Screams slid across a smooth glass surface. They were her mother’s screams. Why is Mother screaming? The glass cracked, a single fissure uncoiling like a snake—and in the splintered reflection she saw two glowing violet eyes, not her own, watching her.

The screams came again. The fissure spread. The glass gave way, falling in glittering pieces into darkness.

A droning hum spiralled—and inside the vibration, the rhythmic tread of thirty thousand men.

Meda woke, blinking against daylight through her window. Butterflies flapped frantically against the pane. She watched them—erratic, golden wings beating as if the air itself had turned wrong.

Beyond her stony walls, grounds-workers strung garlands through the castle gardens, stretching into leagues of dense jungle.

A bell tolled. Once, twice. Just a test.

One day this would all be hers.

☙ ❧

This moment is where the story first began to uncover itself to me. It always started with Meda having a vision, but the place and circumstance changed many times over the years.

Next time, we step into the world itself—through the eyes of a historian writing from within it. The Chronicler turns his attention to Aur: its jungle throne, its ancient blood, and the kingdom Meda stood to inherit before it was taken from her.