A long time ago ....
The sea hissed as it curled toward the white-sanded shore, clawing at the rocks like it wanted to climb inland and never go back. The sky above Valorian was low and colorless, soaked in the gray of Neptune's eyes.
Vajda stood barefoot at the edge of the surf, his boots abandoned behind him like a pair of dead animals. Salt crusted the hem of his black coat, and the stick of his office—bone-white, carved, wrapped with the talismans of the dying witch mother—was stabbed into the wet sand beside him.
He waited.
He did not pray. The Vlachy did not beg. He summoned.
"Salacia," he said, voice sharp as a blade being honed. "Queen of the Nereid."
The waves stilled.
Then rose.
Water surged, but not as wave or storm. It lifted with intent, a shape coalescing into form as cold as marble.
Her hair dripped seawater and her eyes shimmered with tides as the upper part of her body emerged.
"You dare summon me?" Her voice scraped bone.
"I summoned you," Vajda said, unmoved. "You need not have heeded my call. But here you are. Which means you know I can do something for you."
She blinked with her restless, terrifying eyes. She was once beautiful as the summer tide. All that remained of her beauty was scorn and hatred for her husband's dalliances.
"Well?" she said. "What do you want? Speak."
He did not bow. "There is a woman I love."
Salacia snorted.
"A deeply talented sorceress," he continued. "As you know, it is tradition that the witch mother remains unmarried. In service of our magic."
"Indeed."
"This girl," he said, and something changed in his voice, tightened like a noose, "I would have married her. I would have broken the law for her. For love, yes. But also because she is power. She is fire in the spine. She would make me immortal, if she let me."
"And she refuses you," Salacia said flatly.
"She clings to tradition like a dying dog to a bone. Says it would curse us. Says it cannot be done."
"And you want me to fix this for you?"
"I want her," Vajda said, every syllable like a nail hammered in. "I want her, Salacia. Do you hear me?"
She curled a lock of wet hair around one bony finger. "I can't make anyone love you. Or unlove you, for that matter."
He stepped forward. The tide didn't dare touch him. "Then give her fear instead. Pick her as your servant. Threaten her with the tail. You know the law. She becomes yours, she loses her legs. No magic, no tribe. Then she'll have no choice but to stay. And only the king of this land has authority to counter the queen of the seas."
Silence.
Then, a slow smile crept across Salacia's face. "And what do I get in return for this… kindness?"
"Name it."
"My husband," she said softly, "has a wandering eye. As you know."
The name made the waves shift behind her, as though even saying it was a risk.
"He's fallen in love with a Vlachy girl from your tribe."
Vajda's face did not change, but a vein in his temple twitched.
"I cannot interfere," Salacia said. "If I touch her, he'll know. He'll crush me for it. But you… you can. As you say, the only authority who can challenge the king of the seas is the king of these lands."
He exhaled. Once.
"You want me to kill her."
Salacia lifted her eyes, blue as the trench. "Unless you have a better idea of how to get rid of her?"
He said nothing for a moment. Only stared out at the horizon where the ocean swallowed the sky whole.
Then, choosing the cliff over the fire, he said, "Done."
Salacia smiled again.
The tide moved in, kissed his toes.
And retreated.
***
The streets of Aazor opened before Vajda like a hymn written in his own blood.
It had been little more than a scattering of tents when his grandfather was granted legs and emerged from the seas. He arrived with nothing but a cracked blade and an iron tongue. Now it was a city. A real one. Built by calloused Vlachy hands and held together by spit, charm, and a fearsome memory of famine.
Aazor smelled like fish guts and cinnamon—traders peddling spice from the southern caravans, goatskins full of saltwater wine, velvet stolen from the backs of dead sailors.
It was a city of the undesired, ruled not by nobles, but by need.
And the markets were Vlachy. Every coin passed under his shadow.
This land, however small, was his. Its pulse beat to his will.
Vajda walked through the noise and color like a blade moving through fabric. People bowed, or they moved. He did not acknowledge them. His stick—topped with the blackbird claw and the bells of the witch mother—tapped the cobblestones in time with his heartbeat.
It wasn't far now. Past the edges of the stalls and the tarps, past the little street with the dried herbs hanging in braids. Through the orchard grove and into the clearing where the lake began, still and sacred.
This was her place.
He didn't announce himself.
He stopped at the edge of the trees, breath caught like a knife in his ribs.
Milada.
His Milada.
In the arms of a boy.
No—not a boy. Areilycus.
The bastard son of Lucius. Pretty, soft-eyed, not worth the sweat on her brow. His hands were on her face like he'd been born to hold it. And she—her eyes were closed. Her mouth met his with the kind of kiss that was silent and forever. They were whispering, and though Vajda couldn't hear them, he knew. He knew. Lovers only ever said one thing when they thought no one could hear them.
Forever. I'll never leave. Only you.
He saw her smile.
He saw her fingers curl in Areilycus's hair, more golden than the sun above his head.
And something inside him broke.
Not shattered. No, that would've made a sound. This was quieter. A slow, cruel splitting.
Vajda turned and left the grove like death in a fine coat, limping as his old injury flaired to life.
***
By nightfall, the fires in the main encampment burned low and sullen. He sent for Lucius.
The man came quickly, as he always did, with that loyal dog's tilt to his head and one hand on his chest.
They'd bled together once, long ago. Fought side by side against the Volscians, the forest tribe that split from his grandfather's.
But Vajda had not come to remember.
He sat at the long table beneath his tent canopy. The bells of the witch mother's staff hung above them.
"Lucius," he said, without preamble as soon as the man sat down, "what exactly are your plans for your bastard?"
Lucius blinked. "Areilycus? I suppose… I've thought he might end up a healer. He's gentle. Like his mother. She—" His voice faltered. "She thinks it suits him. He's always had a touch for it."
"And what about your wife?" Vajda asked. "Does she approve of your bastard being trained in the arts of healing?"
Lucius frowned. "She's always spoken well of it. Why?"
"Perhaps she's already found him a teacher."
Lucius looked up, confusion plain on his weathered face. "I don't understand."
"No," Vajda said. "You don't. So I'll be plain, then."
He stood.
"I've seen your son's hands. I've seen who he puts them on. And if he doesn't take them off Milada, I'll have him skinned alive. That's a promise, Lucius. Not a threat."
Lucius paled. He dropped to one knee like a man who'd just watched his own future gutted in front of him.
"Yes, Vajda," he said. "It will be done."
***
That night, the witch mother lay shivering in her tent. Her breath rattled. Magic, the old kind, the kind that held back storms and sickness, drained the body. It was the price of keeping the land in balance.
Vajda stood beside her, but his eyes were on Milada who was comforting her soon to be dead predecessor.
"You'll heal me," he said. "Not her."
Milada steadfastly, stubbornly, knelt, patting the witch mother's forehead with a rag soaked in tincture, refusing to get up.
"I asked for your hands," he said again.
She stepped forward, beautiful, pink lips pressed tight, and placed her palms on his thigh—the one that never healed right from the campaign in the hills. He felt her magic like a cold fire under his skin.
And he smiled.
Because she would touch him now. She had no choice.
Let Areilycus whisper all he wanted.
Milada belonged to the land.
And the land belonged to him.
***
They came back to the camp holding hands.
Barefoot, sunburnt, soaked in seawater.
It was near dawn when the lovers returned from the coast, and the Vlachy, already rising to the sound of flutes and firecrack stew, fell silent as they entered.
Vajda stood at the edge of the great tent, flanked by guards, his staff in hand. The bells and bones hanging from it didn't chime—they hung heavy, as if even they dared not speak.
Milada stepped forward. Her hair was dark from the sea, twisted in wet ropes that clung to her neck. Her shoulders were bare. She looked like she'd been remade in the water.
"We are married," she said, not bowing. Her voice was firm. Tired, but defiant. "Salacia wed us beneath the third moon. We have taken the vow of the deep. You know what that means."
Vajda's eyes fell to their joined hands.
He saw the rings. Wrought of sea-glass and coral, the Queen's seal etched into the inner bands.
An unbreakable vow. Not of land. Not of tribe. But of ocean.
Neptune's laws were older than the Vlachy. Older than kings.
"You dare bring this filth to me," Vajda said.
"She is my light," Areilycus said softly, holding her fingers.
"She steadies me," he added, voice cracking. "She makes me real."
"He absorbs my chaos," Milada whispered, her dark eyes filling. "He's the only one who doesn't fear me."
Lucius, silent until then, stepped forward and struck his son across the face.
The boy staggered, blood dripping from his mouth.
Lucius didn't look at him again.
The witch mother - his bastard's mother - was dead. And Klara, Lucius's wife, stood off to the side with her arms crossed, gaze cold. She said nothing. She had no love to spare for the bastard boy of another woman.
Vajda didn't move. Didn't shout.
He only turned his staff in his hand, slow, deliberate.
He saw the way they leaned into each other.
The way Milada's fingers trembled from fear—but not from him.
From the thought of losing the boy.
And that… that was too much.
"Take them to the post," he said.
Gasps broke through the camp.
Vajda raised his voice.
"Strip them of food. Of water. Let no hand touch them. Let the sun crack their skin and the nights hollow them out. They want to love like gods?" His eyes glittered. "Let them suffer like mortals."
They were tied back to back.
Their wrists bound with the cords of the dead.
Two young bodies, starving slowly in plain sight, while the camp danced, ate, drank—pretending not to hear the poems Areilycus whispered into the dark.
Pretending not to hear Milada's voice call out to the lake, again and again.
Take me. Drown me. If I cannot have him, take me.
Children were kept away. Even the dogs stopped barking near them.
But Vajda listened.
He listened from the shadows.
And after the third day, when her voice began to crack from thirst, he turned from the fire, and he went alone to the shore.
The wind was colder than usual. The sea already seemed to sense what was coming.
He stepped into the surf until the water kissed his knees.
"Salacia," he said, his voice low and hoarse with rage. "Queen of the Nereid."
He raised his staff.
And summoned her again.
***
The sea did not roll.
It rose.
The surface cracked like glass beneath a storm's knuckles, and from the churning heart of it emerged Salacia.
Her hair was braided in wet ribbons, strands of kelp wound between silver strands. Vajda waited on the sand, tall and unbending until her tail touched the shore.
"You broke our deal," he growled. "You married them—her—to that boy. After I gave you what you asked for. After I—"
"You?" Salacia's laughter was the sound of waves breaking over jagged rocks. "You think you made a deal with me? Mortal king?"
"I killed her," he snarled. "Neptune's mistress. She's gone. You asked—"
"I made no oath, Vajda."
Her voice turned cold. The waves behind her hissed, pulling back as though preparing to strike.
"I asked. You obeyed. That was your choice."
"You said—"
"I said what I needed to say to a man who couldn't see past the swell in his groin," she snapped. "And now you think I'm bound to you?"
Her tail hit the shore. "Let me tell you something, land-king. Before you built your tents. Before your grandfather carved Aazor from the forest's throat. This whole world was nothing but water."
The sky above them deepened, darkened, as if remembering.
"Neptune's father, Cleus, ruled then. The sea was unbroken. There was no land. No men. Only us."
Her eyes turned distant. Cold.
"Then Valorian began to shift. The ocean floor rose. Mountains clawed their way out of the tide. And for every mountain that stood, another sank. And forests came. And eventually—Isla Rhea." She spat the name like a blasphemy. "Aazor. Earthborn city crawling up the shore like lice."
Vajda said nothing.
"My husband," she continued, "my foolish little empathetic prince… he took pity on your kind. On your grandfather. Ryeus. The one who served on Cleus's council before land even existed."
The scent of her was sharp — brine and storm.
"Ryeus got curious. Wanted to see the land rising. Wanted to walk it. Neptune gave him legs. And your tribe spread like rot over the world."
Her voice was soft now. Intimate. Dangerous.
"So don't stand here and scream about deals, Vajda. You built your empire on the bones of our mercy. Everything on Valorian belongs to the sea."
She tilted her head.
"And I'll be damned before I let another woman suffer under the hands of a man who cannot command his loins."
"But you punish your husband's women," Vajda spat. "You use me to clean up his filth."
"You are mistaken," Salacia said, her gaze like a freezing tide swallowing a fire.
"I save them. From him."
Her voice echoed in the waves, and for a moment the sea surged so high behind her that it seemed to block out the sky.
"Do not call for me again, Vajda. Not unless you're ready to drown."
Then, like a wave retreating with a mouthful of sand, she vanished.
The sea was calm again.
But Vajda stood alone.
Salt stinging his lips. And fury burning in his chest.
***
Vajda was not always Vajda. He was a boy named Kleitus who never wanted his father's throne. He liked to play in the sand, swim in the sacred lake, let the water bless his father to live an impossibly long life, so Kleitus didn't have to ascend to leadership.
He prayed for a brother - primogeniture existed in the kingdom of Neptune, but on land, and if so a younger son seemed more sound of mind, more inclined to rule, the Vajda would choose him instead.
But no boy arrived. No girl either. Kleitus remained an only child. Lonely and full of desire to explore the sea, become a privateer, find what small islands Valorian formed, what life lurked in the shadows of Neptune's realm.
Perhaps find himself a bride.
He used to dream of the sea.
Not the way other boys did, of ships and mermaids and treasure - but of the pull. The drag in his chest whenever he stood near the water. Like something remembered him. Like something called him.
Before the title. Before the staff. Before blood coated his name like lacquer, Vajda had been a barefoot child running through wet fields, catching fish with his hands, pretending the silver flash in the water meant something. Sometimes he'd sleep on the cliffs above Aazor, back when the city was still a story. He'd stare out where the black ocean met the stars and whisper things into the wind, wondering if something would answer.
And sometimes, it did.
Even now, even with salt drying on his skin and power pooled beneath his boots, he could feel it.
The sea was not done with him.
And perhaps… never had been.
Salacia's words haunted him more than her threats. Ryeus had served on Cleus's council. The Vlachy had been sea-born.
Maybe that's why they never settled. Why their homes moved like tidewater. Why their music never sounded whole without wind and salt and a horizon too wide to name.
Maybe the ocean hadn't gifted them legs. Maybe it had cursed them with them.
He stood in the shadows just beyond the firelight.
Watching the post.
Listening.
They were thinner now. Faces hollow, skin stretched.
But they held hands behind their backs, even in the bindings.
The moon was low. The camp was sleeping. But Vajda stayed still as bark, and he listened.
Milada's voice was weak. A ghost of the fire that always slept inside her.
"Tell me… the dream again."
Areilycus exhaled. His voice was raw but still gentle. "The one with the little house?"
Milada made a sound like laughter, or maybe it was pain.
He continued. "It's small. Crooked roof. You hate the door, because it sticks. But I fix it for you every morning and pretend it was just the weather."
Milada smiled through cracked lips. "And the bed?"
"We sleep in the same one," he whispered. "Even when you're mad at me."
"I'm always mad at you."
"Then we never sleep."
Her laugh turned to a cough. She wheezed, but she didn't stop smiling.
Two days without water now.
"I would have given you daughters," she murmured. "Four of them. All chaos."
"And I'd have let them braid my hair."
"You'd let me braid it, too."
"I'd let you ruin me," he said simply.
There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the hush of wind and the distant chirping of insects too far to care.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."
"You didn't."
"I did. I... I'm a curse, Ari. I've always been. Born with stars in my eyes and a monster in my spine."
"You're not a curse," he said. "You're the only thing I ever got right."
Her shoulders trembled. Her head tilted back, resting against his. "I love you."
"I'll never stop."
"Even when this ends?"
"Especially then."
Vajda turned away.
Not because he couldn't watch, but because he could.
Because the sea had never spoken to him so clearly as it did now.
And it said: This is what you will never have. This is what you broke, for wanting to possess it.
He gripped the staff tighter.
And walked into the dark.
***
The wind was colder now.
Vajda stood alone on the high cliffs above Aazor, where the stars cut through the dark. Below, the city slept beneath firelight and fog. The lake shimmered faintly in the distance. Somewhere, the lovers still barely breathed. He didn't need to see them to know it. Their life flickered like a wound in his soul.
But it wasn't Salacia's voice he heard in the wind tonight.
It was his father's.
Long dead, but still loud in memory. That low, smoke-worn voice that had once told him stories not meant for any child. Stories even the witch mother refused to speak aloud.
"There are other worlds, my son. Far beyond Valorian. Worlds you will never see. Worlds we are never meant to know."
"Why?"
"Because this world belongs to the sea," his father had said. "To Neptune, and his Queen, and their daughters of water and moonlight. To touch another world would be to betray this one."
But that wasn't all.
"There is one who walks between them."
"A man?"
"Not a man. Not exactly."
"A god?"
"No, my son. A demon. A sorcerer. A forger of worlds. He shaped some and swallowed others whole. He is made of stars and shadow. And he answers to no sea, no sun, no rule."
"What does he want?"
"Everything."
That was the first time Vajda had heard the name—the one whispered only in the dead hours of the night, when even spirits dared not stir.
And now… it echoed again in his mouth.
The Demon.
The thing his father warned him to never seek.
The thing only a Vajda—only the leader of the Vlachy—could summon.
One favor. One request. But only if he had something to give in return.
Vajda pulled the bone-handled knife from his belt. He knelt in the dirt and carved the sigil the way his father once did into bark—slow, steady, with the reverence of a priest carving into skin.
Then he cut his palm.
Blood met earth.
And the sky shifted.
Not the stars. The space between them.
It blinked.
The wind died.
And the ground, very faintly, began to hum.
Vajda stood, lips parted, eyes locked on the nothing that had begun to open above him.
He didn't know what the Demon would ask.
But he knew what he would offer.
Whatever it took.
He would unmake the ocean itself to have Milada look at him the way she looked at that boy.
But since no one, not even the Great Demon can make a person love another, he would make sure the love that did blossom would be punished.
***
The blood hissed when it touched the grass.
It smoked, black and thick, curling like vines over the carved lines in the earth. Vajda watched as the air shimmered, grew heavy—then cracked.
He lit the fire.
His blood burned bright red, then violet, then nothing at all—just absence, the way eyes hurt when they see something that should not be seen.
From it rose a figure. No form at first, only flame.
Then the fire coalesced. A shape peeled itself from smoke and heat: tall, spined, its face both young and ancient. Not human. Not beast. Eyes like eclipses. No true mouth, but when it spoke, its voice came from every shadow around Vajda.
"You have summoned me," it said.
Vajda stood his ground. "I have."
"One favor," the Demon said. "Name it."
"What do they call you?"
The thing tilted its head.
"Names are cages," it said. "People call me many things. But the most sacred of my works is this—"
It extended a finger of black smoke tipped in gold light.
"I assign. I give roles. Meaning. Suffering. Hope, sometimes. The people of my world call me the Assigner."
Vajda's mouth twitched. "Then I have just the task for you."
He stepped closer to the fire. The light licked his skin but did not burn.
"There are two members of my tribe," he said. "I want you to punish them."
The Assigner blinked—if it could be called blinking. More like a darkening of all the air around him.
"What is the crime?"
Vajda's lip curled. "Love."
The Demon stilled.
Then it smiled. Not with its face—but with the sky behind it, which trembled slightly, like a laugh rolling through the stars.
"One I never tire of."
"Make their punishment cruel. Unimaginable. Eternal."
It stepped through the fire. Not walking, not floating—simply there, suddenly, in front of Vajda. Close enough to make the king's skin crawl.
"In return," it said, "I want access. I want passage. Into the bodies of those who walk the land of Valorian. Let me root in them. Let me sow my names."
Vajda narrowed his eyes.
"What do you want with Valorian?"
"That," said the Demon, "is none of your concern."
But Vajda heard the silence. "You tried the sea," he said softly. "You tried her. Salacia."
The Demon did not answer.
"You asked to enter the oceans, and she denied you. This is your workaround."
Still, the Assigner said nothing.
But his shadow grew long across the sand.
"What will you do to them?" Vajda asked.
The Demon turned toward the night sky. Stars blinked out, then back again, as if his thoughts had rearranged their constellations.
"I will take them," he said. "I will grant them immortality in place of my children who were swallowed by the storm I unleashed. I will wipe their minds of each other. Their names. Their stories. Their sins."
"But?"
"But I cannot erase love. Not truly. Emotion lives deeper than thought. Deeper than memory. It is not mine to undo."
He looked back at Vajda now, and his voice was quieter.
"So I will make them siblings. Born of the same stardust. Not strangers. Not lovers. Family."
He smiled.
"And they will love still. They will ache for one another, without knowing why. They will cry in the same rooms, suffer beside each other. They will dream of kissing but wake sickened by guilt. Their touch will feel like fire. Their lives will be long, and empty, and utterly loyal."
A pause.
"It's the greatest sin there is," the Assigner whispered. "To love that which is forbidden to love."
Vajda's heart thundered.
He should have flinched. He should have screamed.
He did neither.
He only nodded.
"Very well," he said. "Take my body. I give you leave. Use it. Use me."
His voice turned iron.
"Enslave Milada and Areilycus. Let them serve your world."
The fire didn't roar.
It folded.
And the Assigner entered him.