The nest was not of twigs, but of woven star-grass, glowing faintly like embers caught in frost. Around them, the world of Luthra stretched infinite, its skies laced with violet rivers of current where the Great Avians once carved their paths. He, Corveth of the Emberwing, perched at the edge of their roost carved from cloudstone, his wings flaring in the twilight like fire unraveling into feathers. The air below was endless, scattered with floating isles, their mossy tops glittering with crystals that hummed in the night.

Near the heart of the nest lay their children, hybrids of fire and storm, their tiny bodies swaddled in down. Half-formed wings twitched in sleep, their hair glowing faintly with iridescent hues—embers softened by rain. They breathed in fragile, tremulous rhythms, unaware of the shadows gnawing at their mother’s heart.

She, his mate—his luminous, untamable one—rested with them pressed to her chest. The stormcaller blood within her had always burned wild and unyielding, but now her colors had dulled, her hair-feathers, once streaked in silver lightning, lay flat against her face. She was dim tonight, wings heavy with the silence of a sorrow she did not name.

Corveth’s thoughts circled like a hawk riding wind. He remembered when she had danced at the rim of skyfalls, laughter scattering storms, her body unchained and alive. Now, motherhood had bound her. Sacred though it was, it had carved hollows in her spirit, trading her wildness for exhaustion, her freedom for weight. And he—he could shield her from talons, from beasts, from rival wings in the sky. But not this. Not the shadows nesting inside her own bones.

His people’s lore whispered of such times: when a mate’s flame waned, the other must burn twice as bright, feeding warmth until the embers reawakened. But he knew it was not heat she needed. She was storm as much as flame—storms cannot be tamed by fire. They must be honored in their silence, in their brooding.

So he wrapped them all—her, the little ones, even her sorrow—in the shelter of his ember-feathers. His vow was silent but etched into the marrow of his wings: to hold the sky for her until she remembered the strength of her own storms.

The nest pulsed with its faint star-grass glow, a cradle of magic as old as the heavens. Corveth listened to the hatchlings’ breathing, each inhale a fragile hymn to life. The sky above trembled with auroras;