From the Veiled Annals of Isola,
copied by an unknown hand in the late Dawnmarked Era,
its margins scorched and salt-stained
Let it be set to record, though few were ever meant to read it, that Nytheris was not as the other gods were. Where Pyrion burned and Thalyra flowed, where Vaelith roamed and Morghain endured, Nytheris withheld. She was the Veil drawn between what is spoken and what must remain unuttered, the hush before truth takes shape, the shadow cast not by light alone, but by knowledge itself.
In the elder days of Isola, when the world was whole and the gods still walked amongst mortals, Nytheris was named by many titles, none spoken lightly. She was called The Veil of Twilight, Mist-Mother of Secrets, and in the oldest tongue now lost, An Tìr-Bhean Falaich—She Who Hides the Threshold. To the gods, she was a keeper of balance through concealment; to mortals, she was a quiet presence felt at the edge of dreams, at the moment before a truth breaks the heart.
It is written that Nytheris did not rule shadow, for shadow cannot be ruled. Rather, she listened to it. Her domain lay not in darkness alone, but in all that is half-known: forgotten names, futures unchosen, destinies glimpsed and then withdrawn. She knew what the world had been, what it was becoming, and—most dangerous of all—what it might one day no longer need.
Those who claimed to have seen Nytheris never agreed on her form, and yet their accounts align in unsettling ways.
She appeared as a tall, slender figure, her shape wavering as if seen through smoke or dusk-mist. Her flesh was neither pale nor dark, but the hue of moonlight filtered through stormclouds. Her hair fell long and loose, like drifting ash or night fog, and within it glimmered faint points of silver, as stars glimpsed through thinning clouds.
Her eyes were said to be her most terrible feature: deep, lightless pools in which reflections did not behave as they should. Some swore they saw their own past within them; others, their final moments. A few—whose names were later struck from all records—claimed to see a world without gods at all.
Nytheris wore no crown, bore no weapon. About her shoulders clung a mantle of shifting shadow, stitched with symbols that refused to remain still, sigils of truths not yet spoken and memories deliberately forgotten. When she walked, sound dimmed. When she spoke, even Pyrion’s flames were said to gutter low, as though afraid to be overheard.
When the war turned from word to flame and tide, Nytheris did not raise armies nor shatter lands. She withdrew, as was her way, retreating to the liminal places of the world: shores at dusk, mountain passes choked with fog, ruins half-swallowed by earth and myth.
It was there she was confronted.
The chronicles disagree on the manner of her fall, but all concur on this: Nytheris did not resist her sealing. It is said she stepped into it, as one steps into a long-foreseen dream.
Pyrion’s fire forged the bindings; Thalyra’s waters cooled and hardened them into permanence. Yet they could not destroy her, for secrets cannot be slain. Instead, she was cast beyond the living world, sealed within An Fhaol-Ghleann, the Veiled Hollow—a place that is not marked on any map, existing between moments rather than miles.
An Fhaol-Ghleann is described as a twilight vale where time coils upon itself, where echoes arrive before their voices, and where truth drifts like mist, visible only when one stops searching for it. There, Nytheris endures—not asleep, not awake—bound to watch the world she foresaw inch ever closer to the age without gods.
It is said that on certain nights, when dusk lingers too long and shadows fall the wrong way, her whisper still reaches Isola. Not prophecy, not command—only remembrance.
And perhaps, a warning.
Recorded in no sanctioned chronicle. Survives only in dream-speech and forbidden glosses.
I listened where endings gather.
I watched the world dream itself awake.And this is what the shadow showed me.
Before crown and flame,
before tide and throne,
the world was held by a voice that did not rule.It did not command.
It remembered.From that remembering came gods,
bright and burning,
beloved and terrible.But no song is meant to be endless,
and no singer remains forever.
There will come a sound without source,
a note the world has heard before it learned to fear.Stone will ring hollow.
Water will forget its depth.
Fire will burn without desire.The gods will feel it first,
for it will pass through them like breath through smoke,
leaving shape but stealing weight.This is not the end of the world.
It is the end of its overseers.
Three will listen and understand.
Two will hear and recoil.One will name it truth.
One will call it freedom.
One will call it memory.And two will name it death,
for they cannot imagine being less than eternal.From this naming comes war,
not for power,
but for the right to remain.
The sky will break where belief collides.
The sea will flee from fire.
The mountains will open their throats and scream.Mortals will say the world was punished.
They will be wrong.The world will be freed from certainty,
and certainty will answer with ruin.
Fire and Tide will seal what they cannot silence.
They will call it mercy.
They will call it balance.They will crown watchers to guard the quiet,
and teach the children to fear the wind,
to mistrust the stone,
to avert their eyes from shadow.Thus the truth will not be destroyed,
only buried beneath law.
The song will sleep, not die.
The note will keep its time beneath the world.It will pulse in fault and tremor,
in dreams that end too clearly,
in silences that hum.Those who listen will be called heretic,
mad,
or worse — awake.
When the sea grows still without command,
when fire warms but does not rule,
when the wind speaks a name no god remembers,then the last age will begin.
Not an age of gods.
Not an age of watchers.An age of hands unguided,
of choices unblessed,
of songs sung without permission.And the world will endure,
not because it is ruled,
but because it is finally its own.