Expansion Bloodless Conquest: Grand Duchess Nepheli's Ascension over Giro and Guipui

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna did not speak at first.

Instead, she studied Nepheli in full—no longer through the lens of calculation, but with something closer to reverence. It wasn’t the kind reserved for kings or gods. No, it was rarer than that.

It was the kind reserved for those few beings in eternity who refused to bend, even when the world demanded it.

The dungeon murmured around them. Bones shifted. Dust sighed from the walls. But Hildrabrenna stood still, her head tilting with a predator’s poise and a scholar’s restraint, as though etching every word Nepheli had spoken into the runes beneath her skin.

“Good,” she said at last, and though the word was simple, it rang with the finality of a seal placed upon a pact.

“Then we understand each other.”

She stepped into the same circle of flickering light, her shadow touching Nepheli’s, the two bleeding together in jagged edges.

“You are no relic, no summoned shade.” Her voice was smooth now, stripped of theater. Blunt. True. “You are what remains after ruin. What refuses to break when the gods have already moved on.”

The flicker of something else ghosted across her features—not softness, not vulnerability, but respect so old and rare it almost ached to hold it.

“You are what the Night Court needs.”

She looked past Nepheli for a moment, down the corridor swallowed in gloom. “Marcus saw it in you—of that I have no doubt. But he was never made to love anything smaller than the world itself. Even his children are planets caught in orbit.”

Her eyes returned to Nepheli’s, steady. Eternal.

“But I am not him.” A truth offered like an edge across a throat. “And I will not squander loyalty that has already bled for our dream.”

A long breath passed between them. Hildrabrenna’s next words were quiet—too quiet to echo, meant for Nepheli alone.

“If you stand with me, you will stand beside me. Not behind. I will give you respect, purpose, and power in equal measure. And I will demand the same.”

A faint smile touched the corner of her mouth, sharp and sad and knowing.

“Because I, too, do not kneel.”

Their shadows broke apart as she turned slightly toward the next passage, where the dungeon’s breath waited like a curtain about to rise.

“Let it judge us then. Let it find that we are more than the sum of what came before.”

She looked back only once.

“Come, War Master. Let’s carve a path fit for gods to envy.”

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

Nepheli followed, but not as a subordinate. She walked shoulder to shoulder with Hildrabrenna now, the space between them no longer charged with testing, but tempered—like steel folded upon itself until it sang.

She said nothing at first.

Words, after all, were precious things. Not wasted when the soul already knew what it meant to say.

But as they reached the mouth of the corridor, where the air thickened into something almost sentient, she let out a slow breath. Not from fear. From certainty.

“I feel it changing,” she murmured. “The rhythm. The pressure behind the stone. The dungeon’s pulse is heavier here—less inquisitive, more… intrusive.”

Her gaze swept the passage ahead. No traps yet. No illusions. Just the sensation of watching. Of waiting.

“This trial will not test our restraint or our loyalty,” she said softly. “That was the first—the drawing out of impulse, the test of discipline. The second, the test of allegiance, of whether we stand alone or in pact.”

She tilted her head slightly, as though listening to something beneath the walls, where old magic whispered like breath through bone.

“This one feels colder. Tighter. Like the air itself is trying to slip beneath your skin.”

She paused, eyes narrowing.

“It will test memory. Grief. Perhaps guilt.”

Her voice did not waver, but it deepened—anchored in truth.

“I’ve heard of dungeons like this before. Not ones that challenge the body. But ones that peel back the soul, layer by layer, until the only thing left is the wound.”

The torch she carried sputtered slightly, reacting to a breeze that did not belong. Shadows warped, not away—but toward them.

She met Hildrabrenna’s gaze again, her jaw firm.

“This trial will try to turn us against ourselves. It will show us things we buried. Things we’d rather forget. Not to torment—but to weigh us.”

A grim, knowing smile touched her lips.

“Let it come. I’ve made peace with my dead. If they want to speak, I’ll listen.”

She stepped forward again, her voice a rasp of old thunder beneath velvet.

“And if they want to chain me…”

A pause.

“I’ll break the chains. Again.”

With that, she crossed the threshold—warrior, monster, memory-wrought thing—and let the dungeon show her what it thought she was made of.

Not knowing, but daring it to be wrong.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna did not follow.

Not yet.

She stood just behind the threshold, where the dungeon’s breath turned colder, sharper—where Nepheli’s silhouette vanished into shadow like a memory slipping beneath the skin. Her eyes did not narrow, nor did her breath quicken. But her fingers, clad in silk and spell-threaded rings, curled ever so slightly against her side.

She watched.

Not out of hesitation. But because this was a crucible Nepheli had named before it burned.

A trial not of blade or blood, but of the self.

The mage-queen had seen such workings before, in catacombs where the walls wept salt, in vaults that whispered names no tongue had spoken in centuries. And in the hollow places of her own making, where power demanded not strength—but sacrifice.

Memory. Grief. Guilt.

Yes. This trial would not lash at them. It would peel them apart.

And Nepheli—godsdamn her—walked into it like a flame daring the wind to snuff it out.

Hildrabrenna did not smile, but something in her gaze turned fierce. A quiet, crystalline pride that burned hotter than wrath. She watched the War Master walk deeper into the dark and saw no falter. Only defiance honed into grace.

She did not call out. Did not reach forward.

This was a battle one faced alone.

But her magic whispered along the seam of her gown. Her hands moved subtly, shaping sigils not for intervention—but for witness. She would not drag Nepheli back from the edge. But she would record the measure of her soul, should the dungeon try to lie.

Let the stone conjure ghosts. Let it dress old scars in new voices.

Hildrabrenna would see the truth beneath every illusion.

And should the War Master fall, it would not be into silence.

It would be into fire.

For now, she spectated—not in distance, but in solemnity. A keeper of rites. A steward of memory.

And when her own trial came, when the dungeon clawed at her history, at the secrets buried deeper than any tomb—

She would walk the path Nepheli carved.

Not because she had to.

But because she chose to.

As an equal.

As a witness.

And as a storm of her own making.


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

The chamber was not stone, not shadow—but something older. Something raw. A place shaped by thought and sharpened by memory, where the walls pulsed with breathless knowing.

Nepheli stood alone.

The air thickened. Glistened.

And then it parted.

She did not gasp when her mother stepped from the dark.

Alexandria of the Great Nephandi Caravan appeared as she had in life—her cloak sewn with starlight, her eyes fierce with the weight of generations. Her presence rolled through the space like thunder on still water.

“You left us,” Alexandria said, voice soft but serrated. “When we needed you most. You abandoned your people. Your blood. Your name.”

Nepheli did not flinch.

“I was seventeen,” she said calmly. “Barely grown. But already too large for the road we traveled.”

Alexandria’s eyes narrowed. “You could have returned. You could have led the Caravan into a new age, as was your right.”

“And been chained by it.” Nepheli’s voice did not rise. “You and Father raised me to be free. To seek my own sky. My own storm. I did not abandon our people—I forged a path so they might survive in a world that has no love for rootless souls.”

“You chose power.”

“I chose purpose.” A beat. “And you taught me to.”

Silence. Then—

A smile. Cracked and warm and breaking.

Alexandria’s form shimmered, the starlight in her cloak softening.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve always known.”

She reached out, and for a moment, Nepheli felt warmth—not illusion, not magic. Memory.

“I am proud of you, my daughter.”

And then she was gone.

Replaced by flickers.

Faces blurred by time, but voices sharpened by accusation.

“You left me to die—”

“I begged you for help, and you looked away—”

“You lied to save yourself—”

“You were too late—”

“You were too cruel—”

They came like rain on stone. Fast. Cold. Endless.

But Nepheli stood tall, wind-touched and unshaken.

“To each of you, I offer this,” she said, her voice cutting clean through the storm. “I did what I could. And where I failed—I learned. Where I hurt—I healed. I carry the weight of you with me, but I do not let it break me.”

Her hand clenched at her side, and thunder curled in her breath.

“I am not perfect. I stumble. I fall. But I rise. That is the path we all must walk, one step at a time. And I have walked it for centuries.”

The ghosts faltered.

“I have seen kingdoms fall. I have seen oceans rise. I have made peace with my demons, dined with my grief, and laughed with ghosts I could not save.”

She stepped forward, and the chamber shivered.

“I am Nepheli Nephandi Tzunidahr.”

Each word struck like a war drum.

“Stormlord of the Crimson Tides.”

Her shadow stretched, vast as the sea.

“Grand Duchess of Burganna.”

The air curled with power now—hers.

“And nothing shall stop me.”

The chamber broke.

The illusions shattered like mirrors struck by lightning, the storm of her conviction banishing every whisper of doubt.

Silence fell again.

But it bowed now.

And somewhere, in the deep beyond the veil, the dungeon whispered—

Worthy.

Nepheli offered no more than a soft exhale through the nose, shoulders losing tension.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

The chamber shifted.

Not with sound. Not with tremor. But with intent.

As Nepheli’s storm faded into the echo of final silence, the dungeon seemed to inhale once more—its pulse finding a new rhythm, like a second heartbeat beneath the first. Hildrabrenna stepped forward into the breach Nepheli had left behind, her presence different, quieter. She did not wear her power like armor, but like ink across parchment—fluid, deliberate, permanent.

The air curled around her.

It knew her.

This was her turn.

And the dungeon welcomed her like an old friend dragging out long-forgotten debts.

The room did not darken.

Instead, it grew brighter—painfully, searingly bright, until the walls dissolved into a sterile, flickering white. The scent of parchment and burned roses filled the air. Books lined walls that did not exist. And at the center, perched upon a throne of broken glass and law-bound tomes, sat her.

Alchera.

The first apprentice. The one who had loved her. The one she had sacrificed.

“Hildra,” Alchera said, voice as smooth and bitter as old wine. “You swore the blood-words. Promised we would endure. That our names would echo through the void together.”

Hildrabrenna did not recoil. Her hands remained folded. “And yet your echo came too soon.”

Alchera stood—robes trailing behind her like the dusk of a dying world. “You killed me for knowledge. You fed me to the Well.”

“I gave you to the Well,” Hildrabrenna corrected, eyes steady. “Because you asked me to.”

Alchera’s jaw clenched. “I asked for power. You gave me oblivion.”

“No,” Hildrabrenna whispered. “I gave you truth. You burned away because you were not ready for it. And I have carried your scream in my bones ever since.”

Silence hung. Then—

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

The answer came not coldly—but with the clarity of centuries. “You made a choice. I honored it. It broke me. I let it.”

Her voice tightened—not with guilt, but with gravity.

“And in that breaking, I became what I had to. Not because I wanted to. But because someone had to.”

Other figures emerged from the sterile light.

Old mentors turned bitter.

A brother with a burned face.

A mother with glass eyes and venomous prayers.

One by one, they stepped forward and condemned her.

“You left us behind.”

“You turned knowledge into weaponry.”

“You forgot how to love.”

“You outlived your soul.”

“You do not feel anymore.”

The final figure stepped forth—

—herself.

Not as she was, but as she had once been. A girl with ink-stained fingers and too much hope.

“You killed me,” the younger Hildrabrenna whispered.

And the woman before her simply stepped closer.

“I shed you,” Hildrabrenna said. “Because the world eats hope and pisses on flowers. I buried you because I could not bear to keep you alive in the world I chose to survive.”

The girl didn’t vanish.

She simply smiled—faint, sad, eternal.

And nodded.

The light dimmed. The ghosts unraveled.

And Hildrabrenna stood, robes untouched, eyes luminous with unshed storms.

She turned once to where Nepheli waited, her voice a murmur as the dungeon breathed its verdict—

“Worthy.”

Hildrabrenna smiled faintly. “We all carry graves. But some of us learn to grow gardens from them.”

She stepped forward.

“Come, War Master. Let us finish this trial.”


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

Nepheli stood where the trial’s shadows bled into clarity, arms loosely folded, eyes half-lidded beneath the low hum of power still clinging to the walls. Though she had not seen Hildrabrenna’s crucible, she felt it—the echo of it running like a chill through her bones. The kind of silence that follows only in the wake of ghosts being laid to rest.

When the sorceress stepped through the veil of that cursed chamber, Nepheli didn’t speak at first.

She simply inclined her head in a gesture not of formality, but respect. Not as a subordinate, not as a soldier—but as one storm survivor to another.

Then, with a faint smirk curling the edge of her mouth, she broke the stillness.

“Well.” She cocked a brow. “Good things come in three.”

She turned without waiting for a retort, her stride casual, shoulders rolled back in that impossible blend of irreverence and regality that belonged only to her.

But the corridor before them held no more illusions.

No monsters.

No tricks.

Just silence.

A long hallway stretched out ahead, ancient and unmarred, its stones bathed in a gentle, living glow that pulsed like the heartbeat of the world. The air was warm—clean in a way that cut through centuries of rot and memory. It did not promise safety. Only arrival.

The end shimmered like sunlight on the sea. Not a door. Not a gate. Just light. Beckoning. Waiting.

Their prize.

Whatever it may be.

Nepheli walked beside Hildrabrenna now, not ahead, not behind. The silence between them was not empty, but full—tempered by all that had come before.

And when she finally spoke again, her voice was softer. Reflective.

“I used to think trials were about testing who we are. But maybe they’re just reminders. Of who we’ve had to be… to make it this far.”

She glanced sideways at the mage-queen, a flicker of admiration in her whiskey brown eyes.

“We are not what they expected.”

Then, forward again.

Step by step.

Toward the light.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna emerged like a shadow peeled back from the edge of a long night—composed, poised, but laced with the fine fractures only one who had seen her ghost-self could carry with grace. Her eyes adjusted to the soft pulse of the corridor’s light, but it was Nepheli’s presence—waiting, solid—that truly grounded her.

She accepted the nod without words, a silent exchange between warriors who had survived not battle, but themselves.

The faint quirk of Nepheli’s brow pulled a dry breath of amusement from her—barely a smile, but enough.

“As they say,” Hildrabrenna murmured, her voice smoother now, less guarded. “One for blood, one for bone… one for soul.”

She fell into step without effort, their pace a quiet rhythm in the corridor’s hush. The dungeon no longer resisted. No weight pressed against their lungs. No whispers clawed at their minds. Only the quiet aftermath of endurance.

Nepheli’s words settled gently in the stillness, and for a moment Hildrabrenna didn’t respond. She walked a few paces more, gaze ahead, expression distant—until something subtle shifted in her tone.

“Reminders,” she echoed softly. “Yes. Not of identity, but of cost.”

She turned her head just enough to meet Nepheli’s eyes.

“We are the sum of bargains struck in the dark. Promises buried. Names spoken in rage and reverence alike. The dungeon never asked who we are—it simply forced us to remember what we sacrificed to become it.”

And still, there was no bitterness in her tone. Only understanding.

When Nepheli added her final words, Hildrabrenna’s lips curled—this time, genuinely.

“No,” she agreed. “We are not what they expected.”

A pause. Then, quietly—almost fondly—

“We are worse.”

Then she looked ahead once more, toward the waiting light.

And walked into it without fear.


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

It hit her like a wave.

Not revelation. Not awe.

Emptiness.

The corridor ended not in grandeur, not in relics or treasure or a truth too sacred for words—but in a chamber as hollow as a forgotten grave. Its ceiling arched high into shadow, lined with mural remnants long faded to dust. A pedestal sat at the center, ancient runes worn smooth with time and touched by too many hands. Upon it rested only a single object:

The core.

A pale, crystalline heart no larger than a man’s fist, pulsing dimly like a dying star. Pure magic, raw and unshaped, but not the prize. No, this was what remained after the prize had been taken.

After someone else had come before them.

Centuries ago.

Nepheli stood at the threshold of it all and blinked once. Twice.

Then she laughed.

Loud. Honest. Unrepentant.

It started as a low rumble, a storm caught in her chest—and then it broke loose, wild and ringing in the empty chamber like the peal of thunder that didn’t care whether anyone lived to hear it.

She doubled over, hands on her knees, shaking with it.

“Oh—” she gasped between breaths, eyes shining from the force of it. “We faced our ghosts. Tore open our pasts. Stared down the abyss—”

Another fit took her, laughter raw and glorious.

“—and the godsdamned prize is a rock!”

She turned to Hildrabrenna, still breathless. “A rock, your majesty. A fancy glowing rock!”

She laughed again, one hand sweeping toward the pedestal like she were toasting it. “And here I thought it’d be some forbidden weapon. Or a map. Or a chalice full of starlight and bad decisions.”

Finally, the mirth began to subside, her chest rising and falling with the aftermath of it.

Nepheli wiped at her eyes with a leather-gloved hand, exhaling one last chuckle.

“Well,” she said, voice rough but warm, “I suppose the real treasure was the trauma we processed along the way.”

She straightened, expression softening.

And with a wry grin—

“Shall we steal its heart anyway?”

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna stood just beyond the threshold, silent as Nepheli’s laughter echoed through the hollow chamber. The sound danced off stone and shadow alike, filling the space with something that felt almost sacrilegious—joy, in a place meant to wound.

Her eyes rested on the crystalline core. Pale. Small. Pathetic, really. After everything.

She stepped forward with quiet grace, her cloak whispering behind her like the trailing breath of some old god. As Nepheli caught her breath, Hildrabrenna circled the pedestal once, gaze analytical, almost bored.

“A rock,” she agreed at last, her voice bone-dry. “A glowing rock that hums like a half-sung lullaby and reeks of neglect.”

She looked up at the murals—ghosts of meaning clinging to ruined paint—and let out a long, thoughtful sigh.

“I should have known,” she added. “The kind of trial that feasts on memory rarely rewards with gold. The dead have no use for riches.”

Then, a glance to Nepheli—measured, then amused.

“But I confess, I hoped for something a touch more theatrical. At least a sword sealed in fire. Or a door that only opens when you bleed on it.”

She extended one gloved hand and, without ceremony, plucked the core from its resting place. It came free with no resistance—no curse, no sudden burst of power. Just a faint shiver, like breath held too long.

Hildrabrenna turned it in her palm, inspecting it like one might a bauble in a market stall.

“This,” she said, voice light with scornful elegance, “is what lesser mages would kill for. What kingdoms would crumble over. And yet…”

She let the pause stretch, then offered the core to Nepheli without reverence.

“…I much preferred the trauma.”

A faint, regal smile tugged at her mouth.

“Come. Let’s rob this ruin blind. We’ve earned the indignity.”


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

Nepheli took the core with the same gravitas one might give a soggy turnip at the end of a drought. She turned it over in her hand, expression unreadable for a beat—until her nose scrunched slightly, and she exhaled a snort loud enough to echo through the chamber like a derisive drumbeat.

She held the core aloft between two fingers, peering at it as if it had personally insulted her.

“Well,” she declared, “it’s ugly, underwhelming, and about as majestic as a barnacle with performance anxiety. I love it.”

She slipped it into a pouch with zero ceremony and clapped her hands once, sharp and authoritative.

“All hands forward!” she barked toward the corridor behind them, her voice rolling like distant thunder. “We’ve reached the end of the gods-blighted maze, and there’s not a single chalice, cursed crown, or blood-hungry spirit left to scowl at us.”

Bootsteps soon echoed in reply—her retinue advancing with the measured precision of soldiers and the barely-restrained curiosity of pirates about to be let off leash.

Nepheli turned to them with the expression of a commander barely containing glee.

“New orders,” she said, gesturing wide to the chamber. “Take everything that isn’t nailed to the floor. And if it is nailed, pry it up anyway.”

She let that hang for a beat. Then added, drier—

“If it whispers at you, bite it back. If it bleeds, tell me—I want it for my mantle.”

The soldiers fanned out like a tide, efficient and gleefully irreverent, already prying loose old sconces, carving runes off broken walls, bundling half-decayed scrolls and cracked relics into reinforced packs. One particularly spirited quartermaster was already sizing up the pedestal.

Nepheli turned back to Hildrabrenna, grinning now with teeth.

“No treasures. No truths. Just a magic bauble and a good laugh.”

She slung an arm loosely around the mage-queen’s shoulders—half camaraderie, half exhaustion.

“Not quite the ending I expected,” she murmured. “But then again, we never were the sort to leave quietly.”

She gestured ahead, where a pale light began to crack the ceiling above them.

“Let’s go home. I have a very dramatic report to falsify.”

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna did not flinch beneath the sudden arm slung over her shoulders—though her brows lifted, just so, in the aristocratic equivalent of “really?”

But she allowed it.

She watched Nepheli’s soldiers fan out like gleeful carrion birds, scavenging the chamber of its forgotten dignity. The pedestal was already losing a chunk to a dagger and a grin. Somewhere, a soldier had begun arguing with a sentient fresco.

The mage exhaled softly through her nose. Not a sigh. Not quite. More a slow, indulgent surrender to absurdity.

“This place was once a sanctum of ancient rites,” she said flatly, watching a young recruit stuff cracked bone dice into his tunic like holy relics. “Now it’s a souvenir stall.”

But the edge of her mouth curled.

Barely.

Her gaze flicked up to the ceiling—where the cracks in the stone had softened into light, gold and beckoning. A return. A reckoning.

“Good,” she murmured. “Let them take it all. History deserves a second chance to be misinterpreted.”

At Nepheli’s last words—“a dramatic report to falsify”—Hildrabrenna snorted.

Truly snorted.

It was an elegant sound, somehow still regal, but it was unmistakably real.

“I look forward to reading how we singlehandedly defeated a god, unearthed a forbidden relic, and narrowly resisted the seductive call of eternal power.”

A pause.

“And by look forward, I mean I will set it to music. Possibly commission a tapestry.”

She turned toward the light then, shrugging Nepheli’s arm off with a casual roll of her shoulder—not in rejection, but in preparation.

“Come, Stormlord. Let’s go lie to our people in peace.”

A beat.

“And next time, we raid a vault that screams when we open it. I require drama.”



Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

Nepheli let her arm fall away with a theatrical gasp, as if mortally offended—hand to chest, back ever so slightly arched like a spurned opera diva.

“Oh, I see,” she drawled, her voice thick with mock injury. “The cold, pitiless scholar grows a soul and immediately begins critiquing my affection. We survive death, madness, and a sentient ceiling fresco, and this is the thanks I get?”

She gave Hildrabrenna an exasperated once-over, then clicked her tongue.

“Fine. No more heartfelt camaraderie. I’ll save my shoulder for someone who appreciates me. Like the guy arguing with the wall. He gets me.”

She pivoted as if to storm off—dramatic strides, cloak flaring, everything—but only made it two paces before glancing over her shoulder, grin slanted, voice softer now.

“But I’m holding you to that tapestry.”

Then, in a lower tone, more sincere:

“History’s a lie anyway. Might as well make it artful.”

Nepheli faced the light fully now, one hand resting on the hilt of her sword, the other tucked behind her back. The golden rays split across her dark silhouette like the breaking of dawn—framing her not as a queen, nor as a warlord, but as something in between. A survivor with nothing left to prove. And no one left to apologize to.

The chamber behind them buzzed with the chaos of victorious pillaging. But ahead?

Silence. Sunlight. Freedom.

“Next time,” Nepheli said, with all the solemnity of a sworn vow, “we find a vault that screams, bleeds, or explodes. Preferably all three. And maybe there’s a dragon inside who speaks in riddles and demands blood sacrifices. I want drama too.”

She stepped into the light without flinching, voice trailing behind her like a promise made in smoke:

“But first… I want a drink.”

And with that, the dungeon passed behind them.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

The return to Mevala was not a quiet one.

The road unspooled beneath their feet in sun-drenched ribbons, winding from the gutted ruin of the dungeon through hills blooming with spring’s green defiance. Soldiers laden with relics sang bawdy songs and clattered with stolen treasure. Hildrabrenna rode near the front in measured silence, while Nepheli… Nepheli basked in the wind and the roar of her people’s future.

And when the gates of Mevala rose into view—gold-edged and sun-kissed, standing proud against the horizon—the noise began.

First, the bells.

Then the banners.

And then the city erupted.

They had been watching the roads. Waiting. Hoping. And when the horns blew to signal her return, it was as if every street burst into bloom. People poured from their homes like a tide. The wide boulevards swelled with voices shouting her name—Grand Duchess Nepheli! Stormbringer! War-Mother!

Petals rained from balconies.

Trumpets howled from every tower.

And Nepheli, riding at the vanguard of her small triumphant host, raised one hand—not in command, not in spectacle, but in greeting. The kind of wave that made legends feel real again.

Children were the first to break the lines of order. Dozens, then hundreds—some orphaned by war, others dragged forward by proud parents or sprinting barefoot through the dust. They shouted her name in shrill, bright tones. Reached for her hands, her coat, her sword-hilt.

A tiny girl threw herself at Nepheli’s leg before the horse had fully stopped. “You came back!” she cried, her hair wild and ribboned, cheeks stained with dirt and joy alike.

Nepheli laughed—truly laughed—and swept the child up in one arm, lifting her high like a banner of her own. “Told you I would,” she said, loud enough for the crowd to hear.

Another child grabbed her cloak. One offered her a crudely carved wooden sword. A cluster of boys shouted a chorus of victory chants while someone from the crowd began to bang a cooking pot like a war drum.

Nepheli turned briefly toward Hildrabrenna—cheeks flushed, smile unruly, a wreath of stolen flowers already half-tangled in her curls.

“I like this part,” she said.

And then the parade rolled on.

Carriages bearing relics and looted spoils followed behind them. Musicians struck up songs no one remembered teaching them. Windows filled with weeping grandmothers, toothless men, children and widows, all pressing hands to glass as the Duchess of Storms returned not as ruler alone, but as protector, mother, and myth.

She didn’t ride through the gates like a sovereign.

She walked them.

Surrounded by her people.

Beloved. Triumphant. Mortal.

And more than mortal.

The Grand Duchess had come home.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna stood still in the golden wash of dawn, watching Nepheli’s retreat with the weariness of someone who had stared too long at gods and found them wanting. The dramatics—the faux offense, the opera-arched posture, the muttered elegy for rejected camaraderie—none of it truly veiled the deeper truth.

Nepheli grinned like a knife with a story to tell. Always had. Likely always would.

“Let the wall have you, then,” Hildrabrenna called dryly after her, voice echoing through the half-pillaged sanctum. “It listens better than I do and smells only slightly worse.”

But when Nepheli looked back, softened by sincerity and that wry glint of something unspoken, Hildrabrenna’s expression shifted.

Not a smile—never quite that.

But something warmer. Something earned.

“I’ll hold you to the dragon,” she said, voice low. “You find it, I’ll bring the riddles.”

And then she stepped forward.

Past the crumbling chamber, past the pedestal, past the echoes of power long gone and prophecy rendered obsolete. Into the light, into the world that did not wait for permission to keep turning.

Not a queen. Not a myth.

But something far older:

Witness.

And accomplice.


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Hildrabrenna]

The return to Mevala was cacophony and color—too much noise, too much joy, too much life for someone forged in silence and fire. Hildrabrenna rode in quiet through the maelstrom, robes catching the wind like ink spilled in slow motion, her gaze unfixed yet keen. She noted the petals. Counted the bells. Read the faces pressed to glass like pages.

History, once again, unfurled around Nepheli.

And the city bent toward her like a flower toward its storm.

Hildrabrenna did not wave. She did not lift her hands. She did not ride for fanfare.

She rode for the ones who didn’t return.

And perhaps, just a little, for the one who did.

When Nepheli turned to her, haloed in flowers and firelight, smile wild and cheeks flushed with something brighter than battle, Hildrabrenna looked up—truly looked, past the pomp and ridiculous children’s swords and war-drums beaten on cookware.

“I know,” she said simply. “You were always meant for this part.”

She did not mean the glory.

She meant the people.

And as they crossed the gates—Nepheli walking, Hildrabrenna just behind, the core still pulsing in the depths of her pack like a forgotten promise—the mage-queen allowed herself one final thought before the crowd swallowed them whole:

Let them sing of her. I’ll remember the silence she bled to get here.


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

The moon hung like a silver coin over Mevala by the time the last reveler staggered home, drunk on joy and cheap wine, the cobblestones still slick with spilt honey-mead and flower petals trodden underfoot. Music lingered in the alleys like smoke, and the air smelled of oranges and oil, bonfires and blood memory.

But within the Grand Citadel, the night was a different creature entirely—still bright, but colder. Hungrier. Filled with waiting.

Nepheli sat upon her throne.

No longer the old battered seat of worn velvet and subtle disdain. While she’d wandered the Dungeon’s depths, her people had remade it—carved in her image, or at least in her myth. Gold rays crowned the back like sunlight through war banners, and polished stormglass coiled around the arms in jagged arcs. A throne fit for a Grand Duchess returned not only victorious, but necessary.

She lounged in it as only Nepheli could—legs slung over one arm, crown askew, a goblet of deep-wine swirling in one hand as if she were auditioning to play the part of a god’s favorite mistake.

Before her, the Council gathered in polished silence. Nobility with their stiff collars and stiffer ambitions. Lawspeakers. Military minds. Foreign guests with embroidered sleeves and careful eyes. All of them waiting for her tale.

And Nepheli told it.

Oh, how she told it.

The horrors were more horrific. The beasts had more teeth. The puzzles more impossible. She described a corridor that looped in on itself until time wept, and a room filled with mirrors that reflected not their faces, but their regrets. She claimed to have bested a three-headed shade with nothing but a torch and her left boot. The Council hung on every word, some out of wonder, others out of fear that missing a detail might cost them favor.

But at the heart of it—woven through the embellishments like steel through silk—was truth.

And when she spoke of Hildrabrenna, the room quieted in a new way. Not with awe. With respect.

“She walked through a dungeon that feeds on the mind,” Nepheli said, voice sharp as a drawn blade, “and it did not break her. She held the line when I faltered. Solved riddles I could not. And when the silence tried to devour us whole—she remembered who we were.”

She raised her goblet toward the dark-robed figure seated at the fringes of the chamber, only as visible as she chose to be.

“Hildrabrenna of La Roja,” Nepheli declared, voice rising like a tide. “Mage-Queen. Shadow-Walker. Survivor. In honor of your courage, and the bond forged in silence and fire, I name you and your kingdom a Cherished Friend of Burganna. Free to come and go as you will. No gate shall bar you. No question need be asked.”

The nobility shifted at that—some with surprise, others with the slow acknowledgment that a storm had crowned another.

Then, more softly, as if for Hildrabrenna alone: “This city is loud, but it remembers. As do I.”

She slumped back in her throne, grinning like a fox fat with triumph.

“And with that, my Council, I am dreadfully bored of policy. The wine is warm, the moon is high, and somewhere in this city, a bard is composing a song where I slay a god with my thighs. Let’s go see how badly they get the details wrong.”

She stood. She beckoned.

And the night rolled on.

@Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

Hildrabrenna did not rise when Nepheli spoke her name.

She did not bow her head, did not clutch her chest in theatrical surprise, did not so much as shift her weight in the high-backed, unadorned chair at the room’s edge. Cloaked in black, her presence blurred the way ink bled into old paper—there, unmistakably, but never intrusive. Her face was veiled not by cloth, but by intent. She had been watching—watching Nepheli recline on her throne like a god who knew she was only half-joking. Watching the court lean in like moths to a myth. Watching the tale spin itself into legend.

But when Nepheli raised her goblet, when her voice rang out like a forged title etched in blood and truth alike—

Only then did Hildrabrenna look up.

Eyes like dull garnet found Nepheli across the chamber. Steady. Unblinking. Alive in a way that spoke not of gratitude, but of dangerous memory.

She stood slowly.

Not in deference. In acknowledgment.

And then she stepped forward, boots whispering across marble polished by centuries of forgotten names. She came to stand not at the throne’s foot, but to its side—close enough that the room quieted again, like breath held beneath stormclouds.

When she finally spoke, her voice did not fill the chamber.

It cut through it.

“Stories grow teeth,” Hildrabrenna said. “And thrones breed shadows. You sit in one, and you spin the other. Be wary, Nepheli—what we survive does not always stay buried. Especially when it’s dressed in gold.”

She let that settle like ash before continuing, softer, with something nearly like warmth:

“But I will accept your title. Your friendship. Your gates.”

A pause.

“And your wine.”

That—finally—earned her the smallest smile, the barest curve of her mouth like frost melting from glass.

She turned to the council, and offered them no bow. Only words.

“La Roja has no interest in conquest. We remember too well what silence costs. But if Burganna calls—we will answer.”

Then, at last, to Nepheli alone:

“I’ll walk your city. I’ll correct the bards. And I’ll drink until their songs almost make sense.”

She stepped back into shadow just as easily as she had stepped into light.

And the night, ever obedient, swallowed her whole.

Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

The silence that followed Hildrabrenna’s departure was the kind Nepheli never trusted.

Too soft. Too final.

She remained seated on her sunburst throne long after the Council dispersed, after the ceremonial guards exchanged confused glances and slipped out to rejoin the lingering revel outside. The moon shifted in the sky. The wine cooled in her goblet. Still, she sat.

Waiting.

Watching the place where shadow had swallowed a woman whole.

When she did finally rise, it was without her usual dramatic flourish. No grand announcement, no wink to the rafters or smirk cast to the heavens. Just her boots echoing softly through the great stone halls of the Citadel as she walked its lengths, chamber to chamber, passage to alley, searching.

She tried to find her.

For hours, perhaps longer. She questioned sentries who hadn’t seen her go, interrogated the wind along the outer wall, stared too long at puddles that might’ve held footsteps had they not shimmered with stars.

But no trail.

Not a thread.

She even tried magic—low-level Finders, sympathetic links, a piece of cloth she’d taken from Hildrabrenna’s sleeve under the guise of fixing a tear. All to nothing. The enchantments failed without so much as a protest, like they too knew better.

Nepheli stopped looking around dawn.

She stood on her palace balcony, watching light pour over Mevala like honey down a blade, and sighed.

“She always did have a talent for slipping sideways through a room,” Nepheli murmured to no one in particular, “like she never belonged in any world but the one just left behind.”

And then, quieter, eyes half-closed: “By Tharizdun, I used to hate her.”

It wasn’t venomous. Not anymore. It was almost—amused. Wistful, even.

She thought back to the woman she used to know—or rather, the one she thought she did. Cold. Arrogant. Untrustworthy. Too poised to be sincere, too clever to be kind. An icy relic of a kingdom that spoke in riddles and never bled where anyone could see.

And yet.

And yet…

Down in the Dungeon, with the stone pressing in and memory unraveling like threadbare lace, it had been Hildrabrenna who stood when everything else bent. Hildrabrenna who steadied her hands, not with touch, but with presence. Hildrabrenna who never once asked for trust—but had earned it anyway.

Nepheli sipped her wine, now bitter with time and ash and quiet revelations.

“I was wrong,” she said aloud, letting the wind carry it wherever it liked. “About her. About what strength looks like. About what loyalty sounds like when it’s not shouted.”

She leaned against the balcony rail, fingers drumming a rhythm only she knew.

“I’ll do better,” she said. Not a vow, not quite. Just a promise spoken into the dawn.

“To her. To the next strange shadow who crosses my path. And to the one I misjudged for a hundred years.”

She paused, then smirked.

“Still think she owes me that wine.”

The city yawned beneath her, waking slowly. Somewhere, bells began to toll the hour.

Nepheli turned her back on the rising sun and returned inside, crown forgotten, but her mind sharp and strangely quiet. Like something in her had finally clicked into place.

She’d see Hildrabrenna again.

She was sure of it.

No one disappeared from her life completely. Not without leaving a trail.

Even if it was made of echoes.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna

 

[Hildrabrenna]

The wind that moved through Mevala’s high towers that morning carried a chill—not harsh, just honest. A reminder of the height, of the silence, of the way sky and stone can seem to blur together.

Far above the balcony where Nepheli had stood, speaking her quiet truths to the dawn, a shadow shifted.

It wasn’t magic, not quite. Just the kind of stillness that refused to be seen.

From that hidden perch, high above the city, Hildrabrenna watched. Not the crowds. Not the golden streets. Just Nepheli—alone now, retreating into her palace, her crown forgotten, her smirk fading.

And Hildrabrenna said nothing for a long time.

Then, just barely louder than the wind, she whispered:

“I hated you too.”

But there was no anger left in it. Just a little worn-out honesty. Like a weight finally set down.

She turned to leave—quiet as ever, just a shifting of her long cloak in the wind.

But then, she noticed something that hadn’t been there before: a small glass flask tucked into the stone railing.

It was sealed in wax, dark and cool to the touch. On the top was a mark—a question mark split by a bolt of lightning.

There was no note.

But when Nepheli would find it—maybe hours later, maybe days—resting by her throne or tucked into her chambers, it would carry a sharp, citrus scent. A little bitter. A little sweet. Like something shared under stars or stolen in the hush between wars.

And in her mind, Nepheli might hear the faintest echo of a voice:

“I never said I wouldn’t bring the wine.”

And just like that, Hildrabrenna was gone.

Not vanished.

Just somewhere else.

As she always was.

As she always would be.


Tag: @Nepheli N. Tzunidahr

 

[Nepheli N. Tzunidahr]

Nepheli found the flask just after waking, the sharp morning light spilling like gold across the stone floor of her chambers. It sat innocently beside her throne—impossibly placed, unmistakably deliberate. She blinked once, then again, and the sound that tore from her throat was laughter—real, unrestrained, echoing through the palace like thunder wrapped in silk. She laughed until the tears came, until she had to lean on the throne she so often ruled from, wine-dark eyes shining with the absurd grace of it all. “Damn her,” she muttered, grinning. “Damn her for knowing me better than I knew myself.”

---

The days that followed were quiet, as peace often is—not with silence, but with harmony. Burganna blossomed under the Stormlord’s reign, its streets echoing with music and work songs, with laughter and the ringing strides of unity. Guipui, once a thorn in her side, now flew her banner with pride; Giro, shrewd and stubborn, had bent only after witnessing what no army could offer—vision. The Grand Duchess ruled not with iron but with storms, and the people loved her all the more for it. She wandered the markets now and then, cloak tossed over one shoulder, wine in her hand, her hair tangled by the breeze and children still chasing her shadow for stories.

But even peace has its tides.

Beyond the southern shoals and the salt-stained maps, something new stirred. A whisper, a shape coalescing beneath the waves. Zenith. A word, a prophecy, a realm yet unborn but already called into being by her name alone. It shimmered on the horizon—not as conquest, but as culmination. A realm not above the world, but beneath it. Beneath its tides, its truths, its tangled histories.

And at the center of it all, as always, stood Nepheli Nephandi Tzunidahr.

Laughing still.

Crowned not in gold, but in stormlight.

Tag; @Hildrabrenna