I stepped into the hollow

  that waited for me alone, a shadow,

  and I didn’t — and still don’t — know

  if I was being lifted out, stolen, broken,

  or if I were the bleeding sorrow,

  a broken tomorrow loose through the world. —Berdorf, E. Poems of a Wingless Princess. Unpublished manuscript, Summer.

  “Your Highness, are you alright?” The maid's voice seeped through the bathroom door.

  Eura stared at the surface of the bathwater—the bubbles sagging into one another, steam curling like soft claws. The water was getting hotter. She could feel it humming against her skin, warming past comfort, but she didn’t flinch. It didn’t bother her.

  “Your Highness?” Another knock. A little louder. A little more worried.

  Eura folded herself tighter, knees pressed hard to her chest. Her breath hitched as something knotted low in her belly. The pain of bleeding rolled through her pelvis in a slow, twisting drag. It crawled up her spine, down into her thighs, a heat that didn’t touch the air around her but burned under her skin.

  She didn’t know where the ache ended. The cramps pulled one way, the memory of her father’s hand on Lolth pulled the other, both rising in the same breath. The heat in her gut kept tightening, thick and insistent, as if her body and her anger had decided to climb the same rope.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead, cooled, then warmed again. Her throat felt scoured, as if she’d swallowed fire.

  “I’m fine. Let me be.”

  She waited for the latch to turn. The maids here never listened, never left her alone when she asked. The silence after her words was strange.

  The door didn’t open. For the first time, they actually listened to her.

  The water had gone still. Steam hovered above the surface in suspended curls, frozen mid-rise, as though the room had forgotten how to breathe.

  Eura blinked once. Twice. The steam didn’t move.

  A prickle crawled over her skin. She lowered her gaze.

  Light threaded under her hands, thin veins of gold unfurling beneath the surface of her flesh. They spread across her wrists, her forearms, reaching up her ribs and down her stomach in slow, blooming patterns.

  She waited for the sting. The burn. The bite of magic gone wrong.

  Nothing. No pain at all.

  The absence of it hollowed her chest more than any wound could have. Pain, she knew—pain made sense. This quiet, blooming gold? She had no name for it. And that, more than anything, scared her.

  She kept waiting for the gold lines to fade, but they stayed bright beneath her skin.

  At last, she wrapped her arms around herself and rose from the tub. Water slid down her legs in slow, reluctant sheets. The steam in the bathroom felt stale, as if it had been lingering there too long.

  She pulled on her robe by herself. No hands rushed in to help. No voices murmured behind the door.

  A first.

  Eura stepped into her room and came to a halt.

  Her faerie maids stood exactly where she’d left them. One crouched behind the door, nightgown stretched between her fingers, frozen mid-choice. Another hovered by the wardrobe, skirts suspended in the air. The third floated above the bed, wings held mid-beat, dust motes hanging around her like beads of light.

  None of them breathed. None of them blinked.

  How had the world… stopped?

  Worry pricked at her, and a shimmer of light answered beneath her skin as if something inside her had just woken up.

  Eura dropped her bathrobe and grabbed the first thing her hand brushed; the soft fabric caught in the frozen grasp of a maid, and pulled it over her head. The nightgown settled crooked on her shoulders, but she didn’t stop to fix it. The gold under her skin still glowed, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

  She had to see if the lines—if she—had anything to do with this.

  She eased open the heavy door and slipped into the corridor. The hallway greeted her with the same impossible stillness. A guard stood mid-stride, boot hovering a finger above the floor. A servant frozen in the act of collecting fallen papers, each sheet hanging in the air like trapped birds. A candle’s flame leaned sideways, caught in a wind that no longer moved.

  No footsteps. No rustle of clothing. No drip from the fountains down the stairwell.

  Nothing.

  The world held its breath, and Eura moved through it alone.

  She drifted through the frozen halls until her father’s doors rose before her.

  Part of her hoped Jaer would be there with some sign, some movement, but she didn’t dare lean close enough to look inside. The thought of opening that door tightened her throat.

  Heat gathered under her skin again, a restless warmth that made her palms damp and her breath short. It felt like danger pressing close, though she couldn’t name its shape.

  Her thoughts snagged on Lolth. If time had taken everyone else, it must have taken her too…

  Yet a thin, stubborn hope flickered anyway: what if Lolth had stayed awake, like her? What if she was out there somewhere?

  She moved through corridor after corridor, and the palace felt wrong. It stretched as if the silence had made the halls grow wider around her.

  A faint hiss cut through the stillness.

  Eura spun, searching for its source, until a thin thread of smoke curled past her leg. The hem of her nightgown smouldered, one bright filament of fire chewing slowly through the fabric. She slapped it out with her palm, the line of thin flame crumbling under her fingers.

  Her breath stuttered. If her dress was catching fire just by touching her…

  Was she burning up from the inside?

  Was she about to... No. No.

  Eura sped up, almost running now, panic scraping at her ribs.

  She turned a corner and froze.

  A giant spider loomed in the hall, blocking her path with its seven legs. Its many eyes gleamed like beads of ink, fixed on her as if the world wasn’t quite holding together there.

  Lolth was tired; she let her body fall over her bed. Today had been intense. She pressed her thumbs into the worn seam of her boot and pulled. The leather peeled off with a sigh, leaving her foot pale and marked. She rolled her ankle, trying to coax blood into it, trying to ignore the way every official event still clung to her like smoke. Dress like them, stand like them, walk like them. Always a performance. Always someone else’s stage.

  The lamp above her buzzed—then didn’t. Lolth blinked, confused. The sound hadn’t faded. It had disappeared.

  She looked up. Two mosquitoes hung in the air, wings parted mid-beat, caught in a moment that shouldn’t have held.

  She rose slowly. Her heel slid across the floorboard without a sound. Not a creak. Even her heartbeat felt too loud, as though the silence had grown teeth.

  Lolth tried to ignore it, excusing the tiredness, and reached the bathroom door, turning the faucet.

  The metal turned. The world did not. No water. Not even the ghost of pressure in the pipes.

  A memory stirred low in her gut. She had known this before—once. Ten summers ago, the world had halted for Eura's birth. She didn’t think she would see it again.

  Her hand braced the sink, knuckles paling.

  No. Not this again.

  She slipped her black robe back on, fingers clumsy, and stepped into the corridor. The halls of the palace were a collection of frozen moments.

  A maid balancing a tray mid-stride, skirt frozen in sway. A guard leaning against his spear, eyes half-lidded in boredom that would never finish blinking. Two nobles locked in the shape of laughter, wide open, wine arcing in the air like a glass-red thread.

  Lolth’s pulse hammered so hard it felt like something was slowly breaking inside her. Each beat shoved against bone, a slow, creeping split. The wolfing crawled up her spine, joint by joint, tendons pulling tight, muscles bracing for a shape she wasn’t ready to wear.

  She remembered what Jaer had told her:

  

  “The wolfing… It’s triggered by stress. Just drink tea and healthy sleep habits should fix it.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Tea. Right.

  She shoved off the wall and ran, forcing her legs to obey, aiming for Jaer’s quarter at the end of the hall. The corridor lights hung too still, shadows stuck in place, as if the whole palace had forgotten how to move. Sitting somewhere with a cup in her hands while the world did this was impossible.

  She was a step from turning the corner when a scream split the silence.

  Eura.

  “What are you doing?!”

  Lolth burst into the hall—and stopped dead.

  Her Spirit crouched over Eura’s small body, legs braced, weaving silk in fast, jerking motions. A cocoon clung to Eura’s torso and thighs, threads glistening like frost. Her eyes were wide, terrified, and her mouth was already sealed shut under a layer of silk.

  “Danger,” the Spirit hissed, mandibles clicking.

  Lolth stepped forward, her feet making a sound as they touched the stone. “What danger? Release her. Now.”

  At her command, the Spider drew back a fraction, legs curling tight against its body, but its eyes never left Eura. Lolth reached the girl’s side, breath catching as she finally saw what the Spirit had sensed.

  Light.

  Not reflected, boiling glow.

  Golden veins raced beneath Eura’s skin as if the sun itself was thrashing to get out. The silk strained against the heat, threads tightening.

  The Spirit hadn’t attacked her. It had tried to contain her. And now Lolth understood why.

  “What is the plan?” Lolth asked, dropping to her knees beside Eura. She raised a hand toward the Spirit, a silent command to stop weaving.

  The Spider’s mandibles clicked. “Ending her would be fastest. Cleanest. It would prevent the End of Times.”

  “I’m not killing my own—” The word caught in her throat. She swallowed hard. “If she has to destroy a world… then let it be one already ruined.”

  “The Shadow World,” the Spirit said.

  “The Shadow World.” Lolth nodded once. “We just need to find a portal.”

  “Can I be released now? I walk faster with my legs.”

  Lolth blinked in disbelief. The Spirit jolted back a step.

  “How did she free her mouth?” it asked, crawling closer, peering at Eura as if she’d performed a miracle.

  “She… burned it. Your silk isn’t good enough,” Lolth said.

  A soft pop echoed inside her ribcage, then another like twigs snapping in a quiet forest. She didn’t flinch. She couldn't. But the sound told her enough: her bones were shifting again, rearranging themselves without her permission. If it kept spreading, she wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer.

  She stepped toward the wall, palm gliding over the stone, searching for depth. A crease of shadow, the slightest dip, anything she could force open.

  Flat. All of them. Every shadow looked pressed down. There was no portal.

  “For fuck’s sake,” she breathed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “The time-stop froze the surge of portals,” the Spirit said, lifting Eura and settling her across its broad back. “It also means the ones that existed are trapped where they are.”

  Its legs shifted with impatience.

  “We must find one. Quickly. Our existence depends on it, and so does the world as we know it.”

  “Pollux is huge. Would we make it on time?” Lolth murmured.

  “What do they look like?” Eura asked from the Spider’s back, fingers curled tight in its silk.

  “They are made of pain. Sorrow. Despair,” the Spirit said, clicking softly as it moved. “Usually, those feelings belong… to the gatekeeper.”

  Its many eyes turned toward Lolth. “Where did you, Master, last taste despair?”

  “The dining room,” Eura said immediately, a small, almost proud lift at the corner of her mouth.

  “No. It doesn’t work like that.”

  Lolth began to pace, ignoring the quiet crackle of shifting bones beneath her leg.

  “Those feelings are right,” she continued, “but a portal isn’t built from passing emotion. They’re intentional. Shaped. They vanish as quickly as they form. For one to stay… it needs more. Something almost permanent.”

  “Like what?” Eura asked.

  Lolth drew a slow breath, steadying her voice. “Like… the loss of someone. Death, or something close to it.”

  “Who died recently?” the Spirit asked.

  “No one that I know of.”

  Another bone shifted under her skin with a soft, unnatural bend. She didn’t react, only tightened her jaw. “There was an incident a few Summers ago, Eura was four, I think, but there’s no one left alive to grieve it.”

  “Uncle Ludovic!” Eura burst out. “He died when I was four. Father kept all his things in the attic.”

  “A sanctuary of grief,” the Spirit said with clear approval. “That would hold a portal in place.”

  “Do you know the way?” Eura asked.

  The Spider didn’t bother to answer—its body tensed, and it launched forward, seven legs scraping fast across the frozen corridor.

  Lolth moved to follow, but her stride faltered.

  Her right leg buckled under her without warning, dropping her hard to one knee.

  The bones along her thigh shifted again, clicking quietly inside her like a clock winding the wrong direction.

  She planted her hands on the floor, breath steady, eyes narrowing.

  She pushed herself back up. But the pace was no longer hers to control. "Where is tea when you need it?"

  The journey to the attic took longer than it should have. Lolth’s uneven steps dragged at their pace, the faint click…shift…click of her changing bones sounding louder in the frozen halls than any cry of pain could. Her Spirit surged ahead, then slowed again, torn between speed and the pull of its Master.

  Eura's threads of silk hissed as they burned away in thin lines. A small warning snaps that Lolth pretended not to hear.

  They reached the attic doors at last. It was a vast quarter swallowed in webs. Dust floated unmoving in the half-light, caught mid-drift like trapped snow.

  Shapes filled the room: relics from a past no one spoke of, crates with broken labels, boxes of trinkets whose owners were long dead or long forgotten.

  Lolth wasn’t even sure what they were supposed to find. She had never known Ludovic, and Eura even less. But the princess’s eyes searched the attic with a strange focus, scrutinising every corner, every crate, even while hanging upside down over the Spider’s back.

  “I think you need to release her,” Lolth said, bracing a hand against the wall. Her breath stayed steady, but her posture sagged; the strain in her body was starting to show in the slackness of her shoulders.

  “It is too dangerous,” the Spirit replied.

  “Release her,” Lolth repeated. “She’s the only one who knows what we’re looking for.”

  “That’s right,” Eura said, trying to push her voice upward, but it came out thin. Tired.

  The Spider hesitated, the legs shifting, mandibles clicking in a small, uncertain rhythm. Then, with a quick, decisive motion, it sliced through the silk binding.

  Eura dropped free of the cocoon, landing on her feet with a wobble, strands of webbing peeling from her skin as she straightened.

  Lolth’s eyes widened. It was worse than she’d feared.

  The moment Eura’s bare feet touched the attic floor, the stone around her blistered. A perfect ring of scorched rock spread outward, glowing red at the edges. The heat was so intense that it almost seemed as though the floor might melt.

  “I think I have to hurry,” Eura said, and then she was gone, darting between crates, leaving faint smoking footprints in her wake, each one a warning of what was coming.

  Lolth pushed off the wall to follow, but her body lagged behind her intent. Her steps dragged, uneven. She glanced down just long enough to see her hand twist. Her fingers are bending at angles no creature's joint should allow, bone shifting underneath like a creature rearranging itself.

  Still, she forced herself forward.

  She forced herself after Eura as quickly as her shifting limbs allowed. A strange pressure crept into her nose as if the air itself were swelling.

  Lolth glanced back at her Spirit. “What is happening?”

  “The air grows warm. It is almost unbreathable,” it answered, legs twitching restlessly. “It has begun.”

  “I can’t walk faster. Could you—”

  She stopped mid-sentence.

  The Spider Spirit, the Weaver of the Veil, who had never once faltered, stood perfectly still. Every leg locked. Every eye was fixed on something she couldn’t see. A tremor shivered through its carapace.

  Lolth had never seen it afraid.

  She wasn’t sure she believed she could.

  “Are you—” she began, but the Spirit didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t even breathe.

  And that terrified her more than anything else.

  “This journey ends for me,” the Spider said. “I cannot face the Sun itself. I am not strong enough for what comes. Not like the Howling Night. Not like the others. I am as fragile as a veil.”

  Lolth heard it. The tightness in its voice, the small tremor under the words. Shame. Embarrassment. A Spirit admitting weakness it was never meant to have.

  “Stay here,” Lolth told her softly. “You’ve done enough.”

  She tried to shape it into a smile, something reassuring, but her lips barely obeyed.

  She pushed forward again, limping on the one leg that still held its shape. The other dragged slightly, bones shifting with each step, fighting her wolfing with every breath. Still, she kept going, pace uneven but relentless.

  Then she saw Eura.

  The girl stood before a portrait. An elf with silver hair, frozen mid-smile, the kind of smile that could conquer the world with kindness. Light from Eura’s skin reflected faintly over the painting, gilding his features in a way the artist never intended.

  Lolth stopped beside her, breath steady.

  Was that Ludovic? And how had he died?

  But her thoughts scattered the moment she looked at Eura again.

  There was almost no bare skin left. Gold had swallowed her arms, her throat, her cheeks, glowing in frantic pulses beneath the surface. And the effect around her was worse: the portrait of the vanished prince, the crates, the trinkets—everything within arm’s reach of her light began to crumble. Paint flaked. Wood split. Cloth unravelled to dust before they could even burn.

  That was the breaking point.

  Lolth didn’t think. Instinct took her, snapped through her like a whip. She lunged, body no longer following her elven lines. Her joints bent, strength coiled, maw opening where no mouth should be. She caught Eura in her jaws, not hurting, just holding, and threw them both toward the nearest shadow on the far wall. The shadow created by a golden bow, with no arrows or owner.

  They plunged through, hitting the ground hard and rolling across grey dust that puffed into clouds, coating their skin and clothes. The air tasted like stone that had forgotten what warmth meant.

  Before either of them could right themselves, a violent white flash split the gloom. Light was tearing across a world that couldn’t remember the last time it had seen a blue sky, all under Eura's shout of relief.

  Eura pushed herself upright, coughing dust from her throat, and turned.

  There was nothing behind them now. Nothing but drifting grey, soft clouds of it rolling and breaking against themselves, never settling.

  Nothing but the Shadow World.

  A strange name for a place with no shadows at all. Or… had she burned them away too?

  She lowered her gaze. Her hands were pale again. The gold light was gone.

  “Lollie?” Eura called, pushing to her feet. “Lollie?” The second time came out louder. "LOLLIE!"

  No answer. No sign of her. No sign of anything. No trees, no buildings, no horizon. Just a flat sweep of ground and a sky the same shade of dead grey. "I killed Lollie... did I... no, no… no…"

  A faint scrabbling sound rose behind her. Eura spun as the dust at her feet shifted. Dust becoming sand, sand grinding into shards of stone, shards clicking together into the shape of bones.

  Flesh knit over them in quick, twitching waves, dark skin spreading like spilt ink. Starlight freckles blinked awake across it.

  And then Lolth stood before her.

  “I thought I killed you,” Eura whispered. She looked around at the empty, ruined expanse. “Did I… do this?”

  Lolth didn’t speak.

  “Did I destroy this world?” Eura asked again, quieter.

  “It was already destroyed,” Lolth said.

  “I’m… is this going to happen again?” Eura’s voice pitched higher, trembling, breath catching on the edge of panic.

  Lolth saw it, the faint shimmer of gold sneaking back under the girl’s skin, thin lines pulsing like something waking up.

  She didn’t wait.

  Lolth pulled Eura against her, arms locking tight around the small, shaking body. “It’s alright,” she murmured into her hair. “No one was hurt. I'm here, my little Sunbeam. I’ll always be here.”

  Eura buried her face in Lolth’s chest, shaking harder. Lolth rocked her gently, letting the rhythm hold the girl together. “It’s alright, you’ll be alright.”

  Little by little, the gold ebbed. The veins dimmed. The light sank back into whatever place it came from.

  Only then did Lolth let out the breath she’d been holding. Her Spirit had been right.

  Eura was dangerous—so dangerous that the title The End of Times, her Spirit had used, no longer sounded like an exaggerated myth.

  It sounded like a living warning.

  

  In contrast to my mother’s alleged magical aptitude, of which no formal documentation exists beyond family hearsay, my father’s abilities were extensively recorded. They appear across scholarly treatises, manifestos, folk accounts, and even contemporary songs. The capacity to determine whether the sun rose over the horizon was entirely his own, and its manifestations were observed and verified by multiple independent sources.

  I did not inherit my father’s talent. My solar output is minimal, a diminished remnant of what should have been a hereditary potential. Without my cane to amplify this weakened solar field, it would have little practical application.

  The situation was markedly different for the Princess Heir of Sorgenstein. Like my father before her, she rapidly accumulated an extensive body of literature—studies, records, observational logs, and informal analyses. She was being examined continuously and, for the most part, without her awareness.

  The only mitigating factor, in retrospect, is that the scholars conducting these studies had no proximity to witness the full extent of her capabilities. Nor did I. Yeso Sternach was considered a living legend; by comparison, Eura Berdorf’s capacity exceeded classification. “Unspeakable” is, in this case, not a rhetorical flourish, but a technical limitation: there is no established terminology adequate to describe her upper threshold.

  —The Hexe – Book Three by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune, First Edition, 555th Summer.