Lilith dreamed of bells.
They rang not with sound, but with light—soft pulses like ripples on water. She stood in a field of white blossoms, petals spinning upward into a dark sky. Somewhere beyond, the wind whispered words she couldn't understand.
She reached out. The wind pulled away.
When she awoke, her hands were cold.
The Zephyrian palace floated above the misted cliffs like a dream pinned to sky. Its marble floors were veined with silver, and its walls curved like the currents of the wind itself.
Lilith walked its corridors in silence, bare feet brushing clouds of dust left by ages. She passed no guards, no maids. Only courtyards of wind-chimes and drifting feathers.
Her father, King Cassel Olarith Zephyrion, watched her from a high balcony.
She paused suddenly.
Below, the sky shifted. The wind changed direction.
Cassel narrowed his eyes.
Later, he found her in the Hall of Whispers—a small circular chamber lined with fluttering silks and prism glass. It was a place used by past priestesses to scry signs in the wind.
Lilith stood at its center, her hands outstretched, eyes half-closed.
"You're not supposed to be here alone," Cassel said gently.
She didn't open her eyes.
"They're murmuring again."
"The silks?"
"No," she whispered. "The wind."
Cassel stepped closer. "What does it say?"
Lilith opened her eyes, slow and steady.
"It's looking for someone."
He didn't press further. He had learned long ago that Lilith's thoughts did not arrive in full sentences. They arrived as ripples—intuitive, scattered, but never meaningless.
And when she turned to him, her voice small, she asked,
"Papa... is something breaking?"
"No," he said, kneeling. "But something has begun."
She tilted her head. "Then we should listen better."
Cassel's breath caught—for just a moment.
"Yes," he said. "We should."
Far away, in a village tucked between the woods and a half-forgotten river, a priest of Luceria swept the front steps of a moon-temple.
The sky was clear. The bell had rung that morning. No children had come to learn their letters. No travelers stopped for blessings.
Only stillness.
He stepped into the main hall.
The altar was overturned.
The lanterns were extinguished.
And scrawled in black ash across the floor was a circle with a coiled mark.
A serpent—its eyes hollow, its mouth wide, as if devouring the light.
The priest dropped his broom.
Outside, the wind changed.