Chapter 12 First Breaths

Chapter 12 First Breaths
The morning stabbed at my eyes.
Light from the tall window slammed into the long stone table in front of me, bouncing off wood scarred with ink strokes and melted candle burns. The air in the study hall still felt cold, but sweat already clung to my skin. Because of the dream.
I sat up straight... or tried to. My spine complained, my neck tightened every time the memory of that black metal bed and that unfamiliar mouth brushing mine crept back into the edge of my thoughts. My grip on the quill grew so tight the notebook in front of me trembled.
“Your Highness, Princess Castella.”
The High Priest’s voice arrived before she stepped into the light.
She crossed the threshold, white robes sweeping the floor. Her hair was pinned neatly, though a few gray strands framed his temples. Her gaze landed on my face, then on the shadows under my eyes.
“As always.” She drew in a slow breath. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“I slept.” My voice rasped. “Just… questionable quality.”
Her brow lifted. “If you climbed to the roof again last night—”
“I didn’t climb to the roof.” The truth was, I drowned under stars and dragons and lips that—
I cut the thought off and exhaled sharply. “Good morning, Priest.”
She walked closer and, without asking, tilted my chin toward the light. Her fingers felt cold. Nails short, clean. Hands that spent too long holding scripture.
“Dark circles,” she murmured. “Pale lips. If the Duke sees you like this, he’ll think I forced you into an all-night prayer fast.”
“If the Duke sees me like this, he’ll blame himself for ordering Lord Thalorian to escort me to my chamber,” I replied sweetly.
She clicked her tongue. “That name again. A god’s descendant, the nobles say. Trouble on legs, that’s what I say.” She released my chin with one neat motion and pointed at the chair. “Sit straight. If your back bends now, every future portrait will make you look like a crooked spoon.”
A short laugh escaped me, but I still raised my shoulders and straightened my spine. It always went like this. I joked. She scolded like some palace kitchen aunt. Then vanished into prayer and parchment.
She walked to the large front table and placed three scrolls and one thick leather-bound tome. Dust lifted when they hit the surface.
“Yesterday, we stopped at the Treaty of the Three Kingdoms.” She unrolled a scroll. “But you nearly fell asleep three times, your quill almost stabbed through your skirt, and the Duchess rescued you as if I intended to slit your throat.”
“Not my throat,” I muttered. “At most, my dignity.”
“I’ve chased your dignity across this palace since you were five,” she replied flatly. “Today, I intend to protect your mind, not political agreements rulers rewrite every decade.”
My hand froze over the blank page. “So… not years and dates again?”
“No.” The High Priest inhaled as if touching something rarely disturbed. “Today, you’ll hear something I usually reserve for senior priests.”
My head lifted. “You’re sure this room is holy enough for that?”
“Of course not.” She tapped the table three times with her finger. “But the world doesn’t wait for holy rooms. And you… don’t have the luxury of being ignorant.”
Cold spread from my shoulder blades to my neck. Not the sharp kind. The slow drip kind, always landing in the same place.
“All right.”
Just that. One word. Yet she turned fast, as if unused to hearing it from me without an argument attached.
“All right,” she echoed softly. “That may be the first time in a month you’ve said it without a ‘but’ after.”
“Don’t get too excited,” I replied. “This could just be the sleep deprivation talking.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, almost a smile, but she stopped it. Then she opened the heavy tome. Damp pages. Old ink.
“Castella.” Her voice shifted. Deeper. Closer to the voice that once hummed lullabies beside my bed when fever shook my body. “You know the story of Hannan, Elyra, and their siblings. Children love that story. But there was something before them.”
My hand clutched the quill again. A drop of ink clung to the tip. “Before the gods?”
“Yes.” Her eyes scanned the small script on the page. “Before names. Before prayer. The old writers called them… the First Breaths.”
“The first breath,” I whispered. “You’ve never mentioned them before.”
“I’ve never mentioned them to you before,” she corrected. “Some things you shouldn’t hear while running naked in hallways climbing Hannan’s statue.”
My lips tightened. “That was when I was six. You can’t keep—”
“And you fell on a servant’s head,” she added. “Then accused Hannan’s statue of stepping on you because it disliked being hugged.”
Heat flared across my cheeks. “A tiny detail.”
“The world is made of tiny details.” She flicked her hand as if brushing that memory aside. “Listen, Princess. The world didn’t begin with Hannan holding a glowing sphere like the paintings show. It began with something even our gods call… object.”
She turned the page. Her finger pointed at a faded illustration: a half-bowl shape surrounded by small rings like stars.
“The Root Cradle,” she said. “In the old tongue: Vessaryn. A vessel floating alone in the Void of Nyxthra, long before Nyxthrad became a forest. They believed everything ocean, stone, star once settled inside Vessaryn like water in a horse trough.”
I leaned forward a little. “A cradle… of gods?”
“Not gods.” The priest shook his head slowly. “Origin. Even Hannan, according to the oldest records, only called it ‘The Cradle.’ No titles. No embellishment. As if naming it would make it aware of itself and spill the entire world at once.”
The page seemed to shift. Not the ink, but my mind trying to form an image: a dark vessel hanging alone in nothingness, filled with something older than light.
“The First Breaths,” she continued, “were the four breaths that escaped Vessaryn when it cracked for the first time.”
“Cracked?” My tongue felt dry. “I thought—”
“Nothing is born without a fracture.” Her hand moved in the air, drawing small circles. “Aeshar, breath of fire and sky. Thalen, breath of stone and the world’s bones. Virel, breath of water and memory. And Nyxthra, breath of hollow night, giver of space for secrets.”
Nyxthra.
The name jabbed somewhere behind my head. The Nyxthrad Forest. The Hollow Night.
“Nyxthrad was named after it?” I asked.
“After the stories of it,” she answered. “People like naming their fears. It makes them feel brave.”
She tapped the page again. “Those four weren’t gods in a form you could paint. They were motion. Temperature. Space appearing and disappearing. But when Vessaryn cracked a second time, they blew the contents outward, and from the spill the gods rose.”
“Hannan,” I whispered, seeing the painted sphere in my memory. “Elyra. Vaelith. Neryon. Lyris. Zaharel.”
“Yes.” She glanced at me. “Hannan first, born of Aeshar’s radiant foam and Thalen’s endurance. Elyra from a spark that fell into Virel. Vaelith from the collision of stone and flame. Neryon from the deepest water. Lyris from the first place where foam stopped moving long enough to become soil soft enough to build a home.”
“And Zaharel?” My neck stiffened the moment the name left my mouth. As if my body knew I should’ve whispered it.
The priest exhaled. The only sound in the hall besides the distant hum of servants passing beyond the doorway.
“Zaharel,” she said at last, “was born when Nyxthra refused to blow the cradle’s contents.” She closed the tome for a heartbeat, weighing his next words.
“The earliest scribes wrote this with shaking hands. In those records, Nyxthra, the night-breath, kept a portion of the vessel for itselves. The bottom-most layer. The part untouched by light. Heavy. The part that fell back when the rest rose. From that remainder, Zaharel stood. Not from Hannan’s radiance. Not from Elyra’s foam. But from the depth the other gods disliked looking at.”
My fingers curled tight around the quill. “So… he was the oldest?” I asked.
“He was the closest to the First Breaths,” she corrected. “And because of that, the strongest. Hannan binds. Elyra illuminates. Vaelith strikes. Neryon drowns. Lyris shelters. Zaharel…” her voice lowered. “…represents the part of the world that wants to disappear and return to the Cradle.”
Silence dropped between us. A breeze slipped in from the tall window, brushing a strand of my hair aside.
“And the world?” I forced my voice steady though my pulse climbed into my throat. “The six kingdoms? The continents everyone claims drift farther apart?”
The priest pulled another scroll and unrolled it. A map. Rough lines. Large landmasses. Seas drawn with wavering strokes.
“Long ago,” she said, her tone shifting into something softer, almost reverent, “Vessaryn spilled evenly. Six lands rose from foam and stone like plates arranged around one table. One you know: Caeloria. Across from it, Velyndor. Between them, to the east, Tharvane: red land, home of Vaelith’s warriors. To the west, Mirenor: Neryon’s chain of islands resting on deep waters. To the north, Lysandrel: Lyris’ wide plains. And to the south, Asterra, always claimed by Hannan, Elyra, and Neryon at once, so to this day no one agrees whose it truly is.”
I pictured it. Six great plates. Six kingdoms. Not distant myth, but neighbors once reachable by ship and horse.
“Now they’re like lost islands,” I murmured. “Every story says the distance between them… impossible.”
The priest nodded once. “Because Hannan and Zaharel broke the table.”
My head snapped up. “A war of gods?”
“An argument.” Her mouth tightened. “But when beings of their power argue, the world calls it war.”
She tapped the center of the map, a small crossed circle.
“The scribes named it the Second Sundering. Hannan wanted to seal Vessaryn, to guard its remnants so it would stop reshaping the world. Zaharel refused. He wanted the Cradle to keep dripping, birthing things even gods couldn’t control.”
Like the gold light in my hands. Like something no one could name.
“Of course,” she went on, “the other gods wanted nothing to do with it. Elyra fled to the horizon. Vaelith tired of it. Neryon sank beneath the sea. Lyris closed her doors. They watched as Hannan and Zaharel pulled and shoved Vessaryn like two kid fighting over a toy.”
I saw it in my mind: two faceless figures clutching the vessel, the world inside churning, rising, falling.
“What happened?” My voice sounded smaller than I meant it to.
“The vessel cracked again,” she said. “This time the fractures had no pattern. Seas shifted. Land drifted. The six lands that once sat close began pulling apart. Not just in distance, but in folds. As if the fabric of the world had been crushed in a fist and then stretched open again, leaving permanent creases.”
Her finger traced the map, gently widening the space between Caeloria and Velyndor. The parchment creaked, resisting the motion.
“From then on,” she continued, “travel between kingdoms required more than ships and horses. It needed luck, weather, and the favor of gods. Sometimes ships sailed in a straight line yet vanished. Sometimes traders arrived from Mirenor, but their timing made no sense. One month to them. Three years to us. As if time itself was pulled.”
My chest tightened. “So… now?”
“Now every kingdom clutches its gods closer,” she said. “Caeloria bows to Hannan and Elyra. Tharvane spills blood for Vaelith. Mirenor sings to Neryon. Lysandrel lights a candle in every home for Lyris. Velyndor…” she paused. “…Velyndor whispers quietly to Zaharel. And Asterra pretends devotion to them all while staring at the sky searching for the missing Cradle.”
“Because Vessaryn vanished?”
“Because Hannan and Zaharel released it,” she answered. “In the final moment of their quarrel, the First Breaths Aeshar, Thalen, Virel, Nyxthra pulled the Cradle out of reach. But some believe… something remained.”
“Like what?” My tongue felt thick. My left hand drifted to my right wrist, right where the golden light had appeared.
“A drop,” she murmured. “Maybe half a drop. They call it the Remnant of Vessaryn. The world dismisses it as myth. Kings treat it as a reason to wage slow war. Because whoever finds it…” she closed her eyes briefly, repeating scripture. “…could summon one of the First Breaths back into the world. They could ask Aeshar to burn armies. Or Virel to erase debts from memory. Or Thalen to swallow a city whole. Or…” her eyes opened, sharper. “They could ask Nyxthra to carve another hollow like Nyxthrad beneath a rival kingdom.”
I swallowed. Nyxthrad. The forest I always searched for from the castle towers. The forest everyone called Velyndor’s curse.
“So the six great kingdoms…” My voice hung in the air. “…are hunting something not on any map. A piece of a vessel that might… not exist.”
“Not on a map,” she corrected. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
“And they want it for… what? Power? Immortality?”
“To reshape the world,” she said. “Depending on who finds it first. The king of Caeloria might beg for Thaldrun walls to circle all our lands. The ruler of Velyndor might ask Nyxthra to pull the world back into the Cradle and shut it from the light.”
My breath stalled. “And the beasts outside the walls? Morvane. Vyrkath. Sangrael. Gravemorne. Are they… part of that?”
She hesitated. Behind her eyes something shifted. A calculation. Maybe a memory of the child I once was, climbing divine statues and reading indecent books by moonlight.
“You won’t stop asking if I avoid the question, will you?”
I lifted a shoulder. “You already know the answer.”