And here is the prologue!

Prologue

June, 996 AD

The bioluminescent canopy of Liora was never meant to witness this beautiful death.

The distant screams reached our village long before the Iskar did. I was curled in the window seat, nose buried in an old book of star charts, when the first shrieks tore through the glowing trees, dimming the soft violet light filtering through the leaves.

Mother burst through the door, breathless. Glowing pollen was tangled in her long hair, casting a fractured light across her tight face. “They’re coming,” she said. “Iskar raiders. Two villages are already dark. They’re heading straight for our borders.”

My older brother, Oscar, shot up from the table, dropping his whetstone with a heavy thud. “How many?”

“Too many.” Mother reached for the heavy iron orbit chain coiled by the door—the exact weapon I would one day learn to swing. Father stood, his expression hardening into the grim lines he only wore during our world’s worst atmospheric storms.

I scrambled to my feet, heart hammering. “Let me help. I can carry supplies, or—or watch the younger ones.”

Oscar turned on me, his eyes flashing with protective anger. “You don’t even have your powers yet, Serenya. You’re only fifteen. You’re a liability.”

“Stay back, little light,” Father commanded gently, his voice carrying absolute weight. “Stay here where the canopy protects you.”

Mother gave me one last, terrified look, her skin already glowing faintly at the edges as her fracture stirred. “Promise me, Serenya.”

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

The moment the door clicked shut behind them, the terror in my chest turned into a driving adrenaline. I couldn’t let them go alone. Slipping out into the living glow of Liora, I ran.

The forest breathed around me, pulsing with an ethereal, predatory bioluminescence. Overhead, ancient trees arched like cathedral spires, their bark threaded with violet and teal veins. Beautiful, star-shaped flowers drifted through the humid air, trailing gold sparks. But I knew the deception of this paradise. I skirted the bloodthorn roses whose petals dripped paralyzing sap, and avoided the whispering nightlilies whose roots could drag a person into the dirt.

Keeping low, I wove through the glowing ferns until I reached the edge of the treeline. Crouch-hidden, I watched the raid raging in full, brutal color.

Iskar soldiers in dark, heavy armor moved like lethal shadows, their frost-cracked blades flashing a cold, blinding blue as they cut through our defenders. I locked my eyes on my family. Mother stood at the front of the vanguard. Delicate, geometric cracks of pink and purple light spread across her arms like living, glowing veins as she wove protective walls of blooming vines around the remaining villagers.

“Push them back!” Mother shouted, her voice ringing with a fierce strength. “For our home!”

Then, the atmospheric pressure changed. The air grew suffocatingly heavy.

An Iskar warrior broke through a gap in our line, blade raised. Mother threw herself forward, pushing her magic harder than I had ever seen a human perform. The glowing cracks on her skin suddenly widened, flaring into a violent magenta. The pink-purple vines exploded outward in a radiant, heartbreakingly beautiful bloom—thicker, wilder, and more alive than anything in existence. For one impossible moment, it looked like she might save us all.

But the bloom did not stop growing.

The fractures spread violently across her chest, her shoulders, her throat—too fast, too deep, too hungry. Her face twisted in agony as the raw power split her open from the inside out. The gentle light that had once sung me to sleep became a merciless, consuming monster. She screamed once—a raw, shattering sound.

“Momma!” The word ripped from my throat.

The radiant vines continued their terrible, lethal dance across her body, glowing brighter even as her physical strength failed. Her eyes snapped across the chaos, finding mine for one fleeting, devastating second. They were wide with overwhelming love, profound regret, and a final, desperate warning.

Then, the light consumed her completely. She collapsed.

The glowing vines flickered once, twice, and went completely dark, leaving nothing but a broken, still form on the cold, glowing ground.

“Mother!” Oscar’s voice cracked in pure devastation as he and Father rushed to her side, dropping heavily to their knees.

I couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed down my face, but beneath the sorrow, a dark, simmering rage took root.

That was when the agony hit me.

It started in my left wrist—a sharp, searing split, as if the Borealis itself had reached down from the aurora-lit sky and cracked my skin open like fragile glass. The pain raced up my arm, a violent tempest of fire, ice, and starlight ripping me apart. I gasped, doubling over as a delicate, geometric vine-like pattern burned itself permanently into my flesh, glowing a soft pink and purple against the dark earth.

My fracture had awakened.

Father reached me first, his strong hands pulling me upright even as his own face crumpled with unbearable grief. His eyes dropped to my wrist, to the new, bleeding, glowing scar that pulsed like a living thing. For a heartbeat, a raw, heavy understanding passed between him and Oscar.

They did not speak. They did not need to. This was how the Borealis claimed its due.

Father pulled me close, his arms trembling violently as he held what remains of our fractured family, while the last echoes of the battle faded into the weeping, glowing forest.

Five years later, at twenty years old, the Accord Treaty summoned me to Meridian under those exact same fractured skies.

Straight into the domain of more Iskar.

Copyright ©️ 2026 by Emma Eisenbraun All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. No part of this text may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of the author. Recommend the page, and the book, but please do not take screenshots, and upload to any other websites. This is a work in progress, and will not be the final, published piece.

Now, into the map of the Borealis System 🌌🚀

If you want to see more of what this world looks like, you can check out my mood board on pintrest here → https://linktr.ee/authoremmaeisenbraun

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What to expect next?

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Happy reading. 🌌❤️

Emma Eisenbraun