The winds swirled and whispered through the golden leaves of the ancient oak trees. Their creaking boughs and rustling song was comforting, yet today they brought me no solace. I stood transfixed, peering into the soft glow of my seeing stone and the visions it revealed.

There before me flashed glimpses into the many ages of this world. Wars of fire and fury that would rend the land asunder. Great beasts with maws as vast as caverns laying waste to mortal armies. And the creeping shadow that waited, growing in the darkness just beyond the sunset. Then, as quickly as the scenes came, they faded, leaving nothing but smooth, glassy stone.

“Strange the visions my Lord Valkorin has seen this day,” I said softly, as much to myself as to the gray figure that had stepped silently from the trees. The Lady Shadrian touched my arm with slender, porcelain fingers.

Her ancient eyes, piercing blue yet soft as stars, gazed up at me. A faint smile curved her lips, and some unspoken understanding passed between us. “Destiny oft weaves its threads in mysterious patterns, young Mikral. Yet even in darkness, hope remains while the true hearts of Elves and Men retain their valor.”

Her words echoed in my mind as we walked together down mossy paths strewn with golden oak leaves. She spoke of the growing shadow, the rising threat in distant lands I had glimpsed swirling in ominous smoke inside the stone. Though her heart remained unshakable, a grim foreboding crept into her voice.

“Dark times approach. Not even the magic in my Mirror provides sight enough to pierce all the veils that hang before this age,” she said. “But come! Let us take some wine and refreshment. These visions weigh heavily this day.”

Later, as I sat alone beneath swaying boughs, her words returned to me. The images of blood and battle lingered in my mind, and try as I might, I could not reason why such terrible fate was woven into the destiny of my people. Long had we dwelled in this forest realm in joy and song. Why now did shadow encroach upon our borders?

I held my hands before my eyes, turning them as I lost myself in pensive thought. It seemed only a brief span of years since these hands, still smooth and Youthful in appearance, had drawn bow against the foul creatures from the North. When the Dark Lord Fetrys had raged wars against Alyma and the Elves, my grandsire Jeval took our people east, far beyond the Dragonspine Chasm where dark things stirred. Safe beneath the eaves of Evernight Forest we remained, even as evil rose and fell over long ages in distant lands.

But the images in the Lady’s Mirror proved otherwise. Now evil crept back, slowly, subtly, weaving itself like a poisoned vine amid the undergrowth and waiting to choke the life from these lands.

I turned my hands over, clasping them tightly as if I could divine the meaning of it all in their lines and hollows. In spite of the Lady’s timeless wisdom, uncertainty and doubt flickered in my heart. I gazed up at the dark boughs above as they bent and creaked in a cold night wind. The whisper of leaves surrounded me, but their comforting song could not still the tempest of my thoughts. Surely the Ardenn in their wisdom would not allow such evil to cover all the world in Shadow?

No answers came, only the soft groaning creaks of the woods and the sighing wind through countless leaves. This forest, my home, suddenly seemed strange and menacing in a way I had never known. Before me stretched only endless nights brooding beneath ominous trees as an unrelenting fate drew nigh. I froze at a subtle crack of a twig at my back, but it was only the silver form of the Lady passing like a ghost between the pillared trunks.

Wordlessly she settled beside me, her ageless face calm beneath her hood as she followed my gaze upward. “You were called here so that your coming was not by accident,” Shadrian murmured. “It was destined to be so from the foundations of this world.”

I turned sharply, a thousand conflicting emotions turning over in my breast. “But why? Long and joyful have my days been in this realm until now, when darkness threatens from lands afar. Why does such fate come even to the Silver Wood?” I gestured in desperation to the gloomy, creaking boughs above our heads that now seemed so ominous.

Sadness crept into her glittering eyes, turning them a piercing gray-blue in the gloaming. “The doom of this world falls upon all that dwell here, both sweet and bitter,” she answered. “But take heart! It is only the darkness before dawn. A new day will come.”

Her slender hand gripped mine with sudden strength, and images flashed in my mind unbidden—a mighty host gathered from all Elven kindreds in battle before an Iron Gate. Great and terrible, yet ruined, it crashed down in fiery ruin. The brilliance of an ancient, long dead tree flowering filled my sight, glowing ever more radiant before fading like stars at dawn.

The Lady released me, and I found myself on my knees before her. “What—What did you see?” I gasped.

She smiled softly, a glimpse of warm dawn after endless night in her radiant face. She lifted my chin until our eyes met steadily. “What you saw, Mikral Jevalson, was the glory of your destiny.”

Feature Photo by Johannes Plenio