War wears many faces,
These are stories of those that remain.
What face will you wear?
I
Telescope
ASTRAIOS SAGE ARCANI
The old telescope whispers with
rust-laced hinges as Sage tips it toward the sky, following the doves in their endless rise against the blue. Their crash against the shimmering glass.
And he idly wonders if they can see deaths reflection right before the fall. If it would change anything.
Then another boy flies in — loud, chatty, alive with colors that clash with his morose quiet.
Something new takes root within the greenhouse, never seen before by moon-lit eyes.
III
II
Long ago, Anoras Skygrace cracked the earth, following whispers.
He had been everything, once.
A prodigy, a scholar, a monster — even loved. Haunted by what he became, and all those he failed, he retreats into his study. Surrounded ever more by memories that bite like winter.
The reality he helped shape spins on without him. But time, keeper of all magic, does not forget — and neither can Anoras.
Skygrace
ANORAS
Den Mother
MHAARA
A myth in motion, the Den Mother guides her star-bound people, like leading strays through disaster — across lands too young to remember their own history.
Fierce, unyielding, and hunted.
Her heart beats on for a lover not even fate can unmake, and with every step, every moment, she defies the cosmos that saw them separated.
Because her devotion does not go quietly.
It howls.
IV
Zenith
JUUROSE
The Zenith stands on soil that recalls nothing but blood. In the heart of the Nexus, where light and dark war across worlds, their golden scars burn with zeal, their eyes alight with divine providence, and on eternal battlefields they reign among the highest of avatars.
The last glimmer of their mortal life, their beating heart, reaches for a memory.
V
Affix
ROVEN CALVERT
The war ended, but Tenvrynn still smells of smoke. They call her champion now, but Roven remembers the gutter, the hunger, the blood on her hands and the atrocities suffered under shadow of white banners. The beast stirring within.
All that matters now is her brother’s safety—not the city, not the ghosts, not even the truth, will keep her from protecting the last of her family.
VI
VII
Fragile
ELYRIS ELENN ROSEVEIL
Every morning, the sun climbs S'enne's twisting spires, and Elyris greets it with the rituals that keep her whole: hair coiled like golden wire, stitches as precise as her magics, a smile that reflects nothing back. Yet in the spaces between silk and skin, breath and thought— the blood-warm memory of another life stirs within her chest.
When her kin returns, armored in gold touched by soot, carrying a message neither can name aloud, she stands in that heat, embers shifting beneath her skin, whispering of wings and ash and all the things even could never hold.
Wishbone
In the ruin-bitten halls of Haven, a boy of scales and shy eyes stumbles through the motions of ancient magic. One teacher is gentle, the other merciless, and the ancient northern snow obeys them both.
Torn between his mortal upbringing and ancient blood, Lleran's hesitant voice forms around spells with the warmth of his mother's song lodged in his chest.
Magic comes slowly, surely — like the first dawn of spring.
LLERAN
VIII
Blood Moon
"SUNNY" SANI
They say the blood moon calls old things from their graves, yet never returns them. In its wake, monsters crawl, and dead things walk—faceless, smiling, humming tuneless songs to the wheeling crows above. Sometimes they stop beside the broken and bleeding, as though seeing an old friend in the dying shape of a body. And as the crows weave and circle overhead, a living crown of fluttering eclipses, the rotten creatures bare witness to yet another unmaking.
IX
X
To Be Kind
To Be Patient
MYRIE THISTLEBLOOD
Her world was swallowed by fire, taking half her body with it. Myrie moves with a restless haste, the weight of unseen years pressing down on her like choking ash, maneuvering a tentative dawn like a ghost stuck in the past, forever marked. She wears the scars of survival with quiet determination. Yet beneath the warrior’s calm lies a restless spirit, rushing through stolen moments of youth, carrying burdens meant for older souls. Caught between a disciples' bluntness and frail uncertanty.
TEMDRAS THISTLEBLOOD
Temdras moves through the city’s empty streets like a jester with no audience, cracking wise to the echoes of the joined footfalls of his baby sister, clutching her hand like a lifeline, Temdras performs not for a crowd, but for the sister who clings to him like a ghost, her laughter fragile as the worn charm braided into his hair. The unshakable, old urge to run is like ice water in his gut — to leave behind the pain he cannot face. Yet in that twilight, a rare moment of fireworks and joy unravels something between the two. A moment of light in a world scorched by loss and monsters.
GALLERY
