Chapter One: The Thorn-Witch
Deep within the forgotten forest of Elowen, where even sunlight dared not tread, a dusk-fairy named Nyra lived alone. Her wings were frayed at the edges like burnt parchment, and her voice, when used, sounded like the sigh of a dying wind. Nyra had not always been this way. Long ago, she had danced in the twilight and spun moonlight into thread. But love had once touched her world—and when it shattered, so did she.
The dusk-fairies were different from their kin of light and laughter. Born from sorrow, they were guardians of endings, not beginnings. They watched over the crumbling of old magic and fed on forgotten dreams. Nyra was one of the last of her kind.
Elowen was a cursed forest, one that remembered too much. Trees twisted into the shapes of grieving lovers. Flowers bloomed only to weep dew like tears. Magic festered in the soil, ancient and bitter. And Nyra, with her tattered wings and dark eyes, ruled it like a queen of ghosts.
She had only one law.
Never fall in love with a human.
Chapter Two: The Stranger in the Thorns
On the night of the Blood Moon, the forest stirred. A presence—foreign, aching—slipped beneath its twisted boughs. The trees whispered and recoiled, but the forest did not reject him. It watched.
He stumbled into Nyra’s grove just before dawn, bleeding from a wound across his side. A man. Mortal. His hair was matted, his armor shattered. He fell beneath the thorn-tree where no creature dared sleep.
Nyra emerged from the mist, silent as smoke.
She looked at him and saw no crown or glory. Only pain. A deep, thudding sorrow that beat like a twin to her own.
She should have let the forest swallow him. Should have turned away.
Instead, she approached. Touched his face. Felt the warmth of his breath.
“Why are you here, mortal?” she asked.
His eyes fluttered open. Grey, like storms over a sea. “I have nowhere else to go.”
So she bound his wounds with thistle-thread. Fed him shadowfruit that kept death at bay. And when he slept, she sat beside him, wondering if the world had sent him to remind her what she had vowed to forget.
Chapter Three: Bloom and Wither
His name was Aeric. He spoke little, but when he did, his voice carried weight. He told her of war, of betrayal, of a throne that wasn’t worth the blood it cost. He never asked her name, but called her “witch,” and sometimes “lady of dusk,” and when he was dying again, just “Nyra.”
They walked the forest together. He laughed once, and it startled her more than any wound. He touched her wing and called it beautiful, though it was torn. She let him. And when he kissed her, she didn’t stop him.
Love bloomed.
And Elowen awoke.
The trees began to whisper louder. The shadows grew restless. And in the center of the grove, a flower bloomed—black as midnight, with petals like blades.
Nyra knew what it meant.
A dusk-fairy in love with a mortal was a tale the forest could not bear. The magic demanded payment. One soul, bound in root and bark, to feed the power growing beneath the forest.
She chose herself.
She prepared the ritual, quietly, while Aeric slept beside her. She carved her name into the stone and whispered her final breath into the soil. But as she stood before the flower, ready to give her life to spare his, Aeric stepped forward.
Chapter Four: The Twist
“You knew,” he said.
Nyra froze. “What are you doing?”
“Finishing what I came for.”
The shadows recoiled. The flower pulsed.
“I wasn’t lost,” Aeric said. “I wasn’t hunted. I came to claim the magic buried here. And you, dear fairy, were the last key.”
He spoke her true name, the one she had whispered in sleep.
And drove a blade of iron into her heart.
She gasped, not from pain—but from heartbreak.
She had loved.
She had trusted.
And it had been a lie.
Chapter Five: The Curse
As Nyra fell, the forest howled.
But dusk-fairies do not die like others.
When betrayed by love, they do not pass into shadow. They become shadow. Her blood turned to ash. Her wings shattered into thorns. And her heart, cracked and burning, sank into the soil.
Aeric reached for the flower.
And the ground opened.
Roots lashed out. Bark wrapped around his arms. His legs. His throat. His scream was silent as the forest devoured him.
He became a tree.
Twisted and tall, bark cracked with veins of silver. Leaves like shattered glass. And in his trunk, a face—forever screaming, forever remembering.
Chapter Six: What Remains
Nyra walks the forest still.
No longer soft. No longer curious. A ghost in flesh. She does not weep. She does not dream. She whispers to the trees.
Sometimes she sings.
And those who hear her song find themselves lost in Elowen.
They say she is searching for another to love.
Others say she is waiting for someone to try.
But the forest remembers.
And it never forgives.
