After Crimson Goose fell, the rebels who followed her crumbled like sand in a storm. Qianya had guessed right: those marching to the City of Woe still had no answer for the seal. They stalled before the palace gates, a tide dashed against stone. Fresh from her breakthrough, Qianya swept them aside like scattered autumn leaves.
In the City of Woe, the world shifted. Barren soil swelled into rich loam, and the air breathed magic like a spring that would not close.
Yet Qianya refused to move the capital. Solitary Shadow City lay in ruins, but its ashes were her cradle; it was the home she would not abandon, no matter the cost.
Rebuilding would take years, a slow river across rock. Qianya was willing to spend that time.
Once those matters were settled, Tangxue kept her promise and went with Qianya to a Blood Elf tomb. No murals cut the stone; only records lay sleeping, tracing events from over two thousand years ago like ink pressed in frost.
In the elder age, this land was a desert, a silent sea of sand. The Spirit Lord breathed life into it, and all beings honored Her as a god walking the earth, generation after generation raising statues in Her name.
She truly was a god.
The Spirit Lord was the progenitor of the Elf Clan, the second elemental deity born after the Dragon of Life—the Primal Ancestor of elements. She had no fixed form in the world, yet existed everywhere, like wind threading every leaf.
Compared to the Ancestor who had dissolved into the world’s elements, the Spirit Lord still kept a shape, a presence you could feel in prayer.
The elves were Her descendants. Wind Elves soared free in the sky like kestrels riding currents. Forest Elves nested among green leaves, veiled by moss and light. Moon Elves, lovers of darkness, kept their homes upon high crags under cold stars.
Her blessed kin lived unshackled across the land, until one day a mutation rose among the Moon Elves. Their bodies mirrored the Moon Elves, but their lives needed blood to endure, a scarlet hunger beneath pale moonlight. Among herbivorous elves, they were absolute outliers. Soon after their appearance, the Blood Elves were cast out by the Elf Clan and forced to wander beyond, like leaves blown across a barren plain.
Later, the Spirit Lord learned of it. Merciful and clear-eyed, She held no prejudice. To Her, Blood Elves or other elves, all were Her children, all threads in the same woven sky.
She personally gathered the Blood Elves from exile and gave them a slice of the land She had shaped, a haven like a green bay in a harsh coast. With Her mediation and time’s soft hand, the elves slowly released their bias, ice thawing under spring sun.
But the Blood Elves who returned had not forgotten the pain of being driven from their home, a thorn kept under the tongue. To thank the Spirit Lord’s kindness, they built the Duskmoon Kingdom in their own territory, a lamplight at twilight to shelter other races pushed out by mutations.
That was the first vow behind Duskmoon.
Later, Duskmoon sheltered Vampires who had fled from another world, shadows crossing a river between skies.
Ambition pulsed in the Vampire breed, a fire under ice. They refused to sink into comfort within Duskmoon. Across centuries, through marriages with local folk, they swelled their numbers without rest, like floodwater rising by night. In a scant thousand years, the Blood Clan’s population reached a staggering tide.
The Blood Elf chieftain saw their ambition, but by then she couldn’t stop the Vampires; the arrow had already left the bow. So she conceived another path.
Core members of the Blood Elf line began to marry into the Vampire royal house—only some, chosen like seeds saved for spring. The chieftain meant to work from within, to loosen their grip, rain wearing down iron.
Over time, the Vampires’ iron unity eased. Under the Blood Elves’ quiet influence, part of the royal family stopped backing those extreme policies to revive the Vampire race, a blade finally set down.
Yet this gentle method bred extremes of its own—like the crown prince, Vito, a hawk with eyes like cold steel.
When Vito finally leveled his blade at the Blood Elf chieftain, her face showed bewilderment and remorse, like rain trapped behind glass.
With her strength then, even ten Vitos could not have touched her, a mountain unmoved by wind. But Vito was cunning; he held the lives of every Blood Clan member entwined with Vampire blood as hostage, and she could not strike, caught like a falcon in a snare.
He would do it—she believed him. That man could spill his own kin’s blood. To prove his word, he killed his father on the spot, like snapping a branch without looking back.
At that time, almost all of the Blood Clan carried Vampire lineage. As a royal, Vito had the power to command their life and death, a black seal pressed on throats.
The chieftain chose the many over herself. She looked at Vito with a pitying gaze, like a mother watching a storm ruin the harvest, then took her own life.
She wasn’t a fool walking to death. She knew only that would truly safeguard that branch of the Blood Clan. And with Vito stepping so far past the line, only ruin waited for him, a cliff hidden in fog.
At the price of her life, the Blood Elf chieftain cast a curse upon Vito and the other Vampire royals. Never again could they control the life or death of their Blood Clan kin, the leash cut clean. She believed—someone would come to kill Vito, like thunder finally finding the tree.
And Vito’s reckoning came quickly.
Qianya’s father was a common Blood Clan man, while her mother held royal rank within the Blood Elf line, moonlight and clay from different banks. By status, the two could never have been together.
But Qianya’s mother was willful. For the one she loved, she fled her house like a bird breaking its cage. Together they hid within Moon Elf lands, under cliffs and cold stars.
They meant to live like that, quietly, with Qianya, always, a small fire in a hollow.
Until the day Vito sent a team of assassins, black blades under a new moon.
Afraid of Blood Elf vengeance, Vito wanted to cut the grass and pull out the roots, leaving no green to rise again.
Once he learned of Qianya’s mother, he didn’t hesitate; he dispatched his sharpest blades, wolves loosed at dusk.
By then, Qianya’s mother was the last pure-blood Blood Elf, the final candle in a vast hall.
Qianya can never forget that night. Moonlight was cold as ash. Her mother cradled her father’s body as it cooled, dry tear tracks crusted upon her face like salt. She looked at her child and forced a stiff smile, brittle as frost.
“Qianya… remember to take care of yourself. I’m… sorry.” Halfway through, Vinoina Qianyou broke into sobs again. No more tears would come. Only her ragged breathing and her daughter’s confused whispers filled the dark like wind through reeds.
Vito had underestimated Qianya’s mother. As the daughter of the Blood Elf chieftain, Vinoina Qianyou bore the clan’s highest talent and the strongest Authority—and a ruthlessness most Blood Elves lacked, a blade honed in winter.
Whoever stood in her way—old or young—Qianyou would kill without a tremor, a snowstorm erasing tracks.
Vito’s cruelty meant nothing before her, because she was crueler, iron answering iron.
In a single night, the palace of the City of Woe ran red with blood, a river pouring down marble steps under a silent moon.
