The first time Nyxia heard the Veil whisper her name, she was still a child.
She stood barefoot in the heart of the Kaldorei wilds, ankle-deep in the river that ran like a silver ribbon through her village. The waters shimmered under moonlight, untouched by the sun's tyranny, and she could feel the pulse of Elune's breath in the current. The air was cool and damp, fragrant with moss and old roots, and overhead the canopy swayed in solemn rhythm. But it was not the river that had drawn her from her bed that night.
It was the dream.
A dream of silver eyes glowing in the dark, of teeth bared in silent warning, and of a voice—not hers, but so intimately known—saying her name as if it were a secret only the wilds could understand.
Nyxia.
The name hadn't been spoken. It had been felt—as though the woods themselves had pressed it into the soil, into the air, into her bones.
She had followed that feeling, pale gown fluttering in the wind, moonlight dancing on her silver hair. No one had stopped her. No one ever did. Nyxia had always been different. The village elders called it "the Moon's Mark." Others whispered that she had been born under a cursed star—too quiet, too distant, too drawn to the untamed places beyond the warding stones.
But the truth was simpler.
The forest spoke to her.
And on that night, it called her home.
Nyxia's life had always felt like a thread dangling over the edge of something far greater. Her mother, once a huntress of great renown, had died defending the village from a voidspawn incursion when Nyxia was still young, just learning to draw her first bowstring. Her father—a reclusive beast tamer—had vanished a year later into the very woods that Nyxia now wandered nightly. Most believed he had been taken by feral beasts.
She didn't.
He'd been called, just like her.
By what, she couldn't say. But something ancient watched from the trees.
And it remembered her.
Years passed, and Nyxia grew.
She moved with lethal grace—muscle honed from hunts, hips swaying like poetry. Her skin, the color of pale moonlight, bore streaks of ash-gray warpaint she daubed in solitude, a silent ritual to connect her with whatever spirit haunted her dreams. Her hair, wild and moon-silvered, often fell in windswept tangles down her back, threaded with feathers and bits of bark. But it was her eyes that unnerved the villagers most—pitch black, without iris or reflection, as if the night itself had claimed them. Eyes that stared through flesh and lie alike, quiet and unblinking, like the gaze of a predator that had already decided your fate.
Most never got close enough to touch her, though many tried—entranced by the allure of a woman who was shadow and firelight—there, then gone.
But no suitor's gaze lingered long.
Nyxia belonged to no one. Not her village. Not the matron who tried to take her in. Not the priestesses who offered her safety and tutelage in the Moon Temple.
She belonged to the forest.
On the eve of her one hundredth year—the night of the Kaldorei Rite of Emergence—Nyxia stood alone before the Moonstone Pool, its waters gleaming beneath a thousand firefly lights and watching eyes. Most came cloaked in ceremonial garb, their families behind them, bearing talismans of love, tokens of pride.
Nyxia arrived barefoot. Bow slung across her back. A single white lily tucked behind her ear, left there by a child she had saved from a manticore nest weeks earlier. Her silence unnerved the elders, but none dared speak.
The Rite was not a performance.
It was a reckoning.
She stepped into the pool. Cool water climbed her calves, then thighs, as she approached the heartstone—a crystal floating just beneath the surface. It pulsed with silver light, humming like breath. The others watched, expecting a vision of Elune's blessing to crown her.
Instead, the water turned black.
Gasps echoed around the grove. One priestess stepped forward, ready to intervene.
But Nyxia didn't flinch.
She reached into the inky dark. Her hand touched something warm. Not the crystal.
A pulse. A heartbeat.
And then—a roar.
Light exploded from the pool, blinding and unnatural. When it faded, Nyxia stood soaked and still, eyes alight with moonfire. Her arms trembled, her lips parted in a silent exhale.
Beside her in the water stood a beast of impossible beauty—tall as her shoulder, silver-furred and semi-translucent, with glowing eyes like twin moons. A spirit beast.
A snow leopard.
Its presence was undeniable. Its name, unspoken.
Loque'nahak.
They had chosen one another.
Elune had not answered. Or if She had, it was through something She no longer controlled.
After that night, she no longer belonged to the village at all.
Some feared her. Others worshipped her. She didn't care for either.
Nyxia took to the wilds, Loque'nahak ever at her side. Together they hunted, studied, and survived where no elf dared tread. She tracked echoes of her father's path, gathering clues from broken wards, shattered sigils, and the lingering stench of shadow magic that infected the roots of trees older than kingdoms.
But the closer she got to truth, the more the world frayed.
The stars dimmed.
Storms rolled in from the east—twisting clouds that crackled not with thunder, but whispers.
And in her sleep, the voice returned.
This time, it was not alone.
One night, camped atop a ridge overlooking the scarred desolation known as the Forbidden Wastes, Nyxia stared into the void-choked horizon. The skies bled violet. Far below, unnatural shapes prowled like insects across shattered land. She could hear their howls in the wind.
Loque'nahak growled low beside her, his fur bristling with tension.
"This is where it begins," she whispered, her voice hoarse from wind and grit.
She didn't know what would come.
Not yet.
But she felt the others—souls flickering in the dark, scattered like stardust across a broken world. A priestess of healing flame. A rogue cloaked in smoke and seduction. A paladin with fire in his heart. A dracthyr of war and want. A mage of fire. A warrior of the void.
They would find each other.
Not out of destiny.
Out of necessity.
Because something had awakened beneath the Wastes.
And it wasn't just waiting.It remembered her name.