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  "description": "The Wolf Stalks His Prey So Silently ",
  "path": "/shackles-and-shards-shattered-chapter-5/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-03T14:39:47.000Z",
  "site": "https://dreaming.daxmurray.com",
  "textContent": "This is a draft. Contents of this chapter may change between now and final publication. Last updated: 05/29/2026. This chapter is currently available for free to subscribers.\n\n* * *\n\n“She's waking up, do you have another dose ready?”\n\nHer head is throbbing, and opening her eyes causes another painful stab, hot and sharp.\n\n“Hurry up, she's moving!”\n\nTwo masked figures hover over her in the back of a dimly lit cargo carriage. The swaying churns her stomach and the little she ate before the ceremony comes back up all at once.\n\n“If we botch this, Volkov will kill us.”\n\n“She's one priestess, what can go wrong. We got the easy job.”\n\nOne of the figures curses while the other dips the corner of a cloth into an unstoppered bottle.\n\nShe smell hits her before the cloth descends and she has no time to think about what she is doing nor even fully recognize Zephyr's prescence in her mind.\n\nThe amethyst talisman under her robes chills as she draws power from it. She hasn’t practiced enough, and she has no idea what she is doing. But Zephyr guides her, takes over for her, moves her body and manipulates the aclaere for her.\n\nThe shadows at the corners of the carriage rear up like wolves and circle her captors. Their shock is all it takes.\n\nShe stands up, unsteady on her feet and leaps from the back of the carriage and into the waiting snow.\n\nZephyr shouts in her head, urging her to go, to run, somehow knowing the direction that will lead her back to the Temple.\n\nShe's still in the regalia of the High Priestess, but she pulls the Shroud off her head and shoves it into a pocket, briefly removing the circle and fixing her hair more securely behind her before pulling the hood over her head and securing it. Then, she starts running, ignoring the cold in her fingers and the dampness in the silken slippers.\n\n“Sister-sol!” Kiut Tshu calls out to her before materializing at her side. “Sister-sol, what happened?”\n\nShe keeps running. “Captured… carriage…”\n\nOut of the darkness and snow in front of them, Petra Hohenov gallops toward them, hir horse not even saddled.\n\n“What direction?” Kiut Tshu grabs Sresca's shoulders and forces her to look at her.\n\nSresca cannot breath, she cannot get a word out. She points over her shoulder.\n\n“They're coming back.” Petra leaps from hit horse and draws a sword. “They might be cold. Maybe we can warm them up.”\n\nThe air thickens and in the space of a blink, the sword is engulfed in vibrant blue flames.\n\n“But that’s illegal…Aclaere…” Sresca manages to say.\n\n“So is kidnapping a priestess.”\n\n“You said they had a carriage?” Kiut Tshu asks.\n\nSresca nods.\n\n“Must have cut the horses loose and looped back around. Three of them.” Petra laughs. “Kiut Tshu. Take the priestess back to the Temple. I can take care of these scoundrels.”\n\nBefore Sresca can protest, Petra hoists her up and tosses her like a sack on top of hir horse, then hands the reins to Kiut Tshu. “I won’t be long.”\n\nKiut Tshu does not bother to say anything more, just runs ahead, leading the horse in a trot to a tree line where a second horse is waiting. She ties the reins of the both horses to her wrist and they are off.\n\nSresca has no idea how much time passes before they arrive back at the Temple; whatever drugs she was subjected to had not fully worn off and her head is throbbing still.\n\nBut Yelena is waiting for them, as if she somehow knew.\n\nAnd perhaps she did. The Starfall is the leader of Dana's Mercy, but even the Starfall reports to the High Priestess using whatever divine power is granted by Dana.\n\nBut even as she tries to reassure herself that her sister knew at once that she was stolen and immediately sent a Mercy to bring her home, some small nagging part of her mind wonders if Yelena knew something would go wrong, knew that she would be the target, and asked her little sister to be a decoy…\n\nShe shakes her head. No. No her sister would never risk her life. If she knew there was a threat, she would have had more Duskwardens at the ready. She would have ordered the Starfall to post more Mercy around the Temple.\n\n“Thank goodness you are safe,” her sister says, running to her and helping her off Petra’s horse. “I am so sorry. If I had known…”\n\nSresca smiles, safe and home.\n\n* * *\n\nThe book is waiting for her when she arrives back in her rooms that evening. It’s thick, bound in leather, has a hole in the corner of the back cover. It was once one of the many tomes in the archives chained to the shelves.\n\nBut at some point, it was removed. Why? When? And where had her sister found it?\n\nShe opens it to the first page, her finger running across the text as she reads it.\n\n“A Compendium of the Forgotten Tales. Compiled during the Convention of Unification in 2785. Archived by Elizaveta Saukena of Romanii. Translated to Tsvetan by Mila Krollina.”\n\nShe frowns. Forgotten? More like false. Fables and folk tales that must have gotten mixed in with the truth of the Tudina. That was one of the purposed of the Convention of Unification. But she had heard of Elizaveta Saukena before, too. The wandering artisan and scribe who had been divinely inspired and crafted the sigils now used across Ahnlisen and then disappeared as suddenly as she had appeared, with none knowing where the strange woman was even from.\n\nBut also a peddler of falsehoods, apparently. Likely a follower of Bartalan, God of liars and decievers.\n\nHer sister had said it might be helpful, however. She flips the book to the back, searching for an index, anything that might mention the Evenstar,a watcher of walls, or maybe even obscura.\n\n“You should study and practice more before you leave for any quest.” Zephyr passes through her thoughts, not even bothering to check if she is well again before pulling her into the meadow. “You might not have needed my help the other night if you had. And I do not want you to find yourself in a similar predicament when you leave.”\n\n“I don't plan on leaving. I just want to know.” Part of her wants to know. But another part fears this book. It contains blasphemy, it is an insult to even suggest the Goddess of Death might ever die. The book is still in front of her, resting now among the flowers of her meadow.\n\nGods don’t die. It’s what seperates the gods from their children. They are eternal. But at least one story in here suggests otherwise.\n\nShe does not want to stain her mind any further.\n\n“You will not be staining your mind by simply knowing what others have believed. Nor by knowing what others once knew.” He curls himself slowly around a large rock sitting in direct sunlight. Somehow, in the meadow, it is always a sunny afternoon.\n\n“Are you saying some of these are true?” She picks up the book, closing it shut and staring at the cover again. It’s rather plain, the title embossed in the front but otherwise unadorned. And unassuming book hiding dangerous ideas.\n\n“I do not know. I have not read it.”\n\n“Listen to this.” She flips through the pages searching for familiar terms or names. “This one is a story about Yessenia. It says that she spent the start of her life living below the ground, that her skin was the blue-gray of an overcast sky and her hair was thar of ice, but she sought light, color, and warmth. When she ascended to divinity, she chose the sun as her charge so that she might give the world what she was raised without.”\n\n“What is wrong with that accounting?” He spreads his many wings out, his feathers all catching the warm sun.\n\n“It implies that Yessenia was not always a god.”\n\n“Is that what has always been believed?”\n\n“Yes!”\n\n“Except, clearly not. This written down some three hundred years ago. Someone at the time believed it.”\n\n“And the Clergy of the Convocation refused to include it in the kairov. For a reason.” She throws her hands in the air, not sure what is so hard for Zephyr to understand.\n\n“But someone did believe it. Enough to bring it to the attention of the Clergy and have it be considered for inclusion.”\n\n“We are mortals. We are not meant to live forever. These kinds of stories might make people believe that they can cheat death.”\n\n“And that scares you?”\n\n“It’s one thing for Dana to accept our goats and chickens as sacrifices, and then to decide to gift them back to us. But it’s Her gift.”\n\n“I see. But maybe this tale made someone hopeful. Someone who spent her life in shadows while longing for the light found a way to live how she wants and to help others do the same.”\n\n“I suppose.”\n\n“What else have you read in here?”\n\n“I haven't. Yelena told me one of the tales she read in here before giving me the book. One about Andrya and Dana being lovers before they became gods and were seperated by their new realms.”\n\n“A story of lovers unable to be together. A common predicament. Maybe this tale helped someone cope with their own seperation or their own loss.”\n\n“I don’t know. Maybe. There’s a folk tale similar to it. A miner who has to go below ground all day and her lover who served a princess in a tower. They would watch the stars at night and take solace that they were seeing the same moons.”\n\n“Very similar, indeed. These seem like stories meant to help people. Does it matter if they are true? Does it matter if the characters are miners and servants or gods and goddesses?”\n\nShe slams the book shut again and sighs. “I suppose.” She can’t bring herself to look at him right now. She knows he is trying to be kind, trying to help her. But she is so tired. She feels like she hasn’t slept in weeks, despite spending several days mostly asleep in the infirmary. “You have a point. I still don't know if I want to read it, but I will concede that there is no harm in reading it.”\n\nZephyr has never been able to smile, but he rests his head on a rock and flicks his tongue at her, as close as he can get to it.\n\nA knock on her door brings her back to her rooms. It’s far too late for any normal visitor. But she quickly hides her empty tea mugs under a towel and throws her dirty laundry in the bin before pulling open her door.\n\n“Hello, princess.” Petra is has one arm propped against the doorway, leaning in closer as Sresca staggers back. Sie is wearing a buttoned up blouse under their long jacket, but far too many of the buttons are not secured and too much of Petra's chest is exposed for Sresca's comfort. “I was already scolded by the Duskwardens and some priestess with a gaggle of children following her for trying to visit you this late. But I was hoping to get an answer from you.”\n\n“About what?” She wonders if Petra arrived here in such a state of semi-dress on purpose.\n\n“Being the priestess for Novakov. I said I would be your knight. Come with me, and I shall protect you.” Sie stands tall, a hand resting on the pommel of hir sword. “I shall make sure that none can harm you ever again.”\n\n* * *\n\nThe letter is written on expensive, heavy parchment in the dark red ink that can only be obtained from an atelier in Janeuq.\n\nNot what one would expect from those making threats while invoking the leaders of the Storm.\n\n“The revolution is yet unfinished. Business has been left undone for too long. The descendents of Nishki and Bezem still hold power in the Forum, and even children of Great Lords preside over committees. But the worst offense is that the people of Tsvetokrasa still pay tribute to the Tudina, the pantheon of pretenders. What are gods if not kings still in need of killing?\n\n“We are the children of the revolution, and we are here to offer true liberation. Execute the remaining nobles and renounce the Temple of Dana! If you do not, we shall put every temple in the nation to the torch.”\n\n“You were not the only one stolen, but you are the only one that has made it back.” Yelena is once again hidden behind the Shroud of Darkness. But Sresca can hear the pain in her voice. “Most temples lost at least three acolytes, and many of them lost their highest ranking Sibling. Many of the Enstarred are now missing.”\n\n“Volkov wants to eliminate the church?”\n\n“What?”\n\nSresca shakes her head. She’s been in the infirmary since she got back. The last several hours has been nothing but confusion. Petra returned shortly after she got back, all three of the captors bound and being drug behind hir. They were locked in cells beneath the Temple and then interrogated. But that is all that Sresca knows. “They drugged me, but I was waking up. Before they could knock me out again, they said they got the easiest job and Volkov would kill them if they failed.”\n\nShe hopes her sister does not ask her how she managed to escape, she does not want to explain Zephyr or obscura.\n\n“They wore old uniforms from the Cervenrasa… and they keep repeating a story similar to that of the letter left behind.” She folds the letter and shoves it into her pocket. “He was the chief advisor to Emperor Mikhail, he was always against the rebels.”\n\n“He was the last person I spoke to before I was taken. And…” Her face burns with shame. “He saw me. There was a gust of wind and he saw me.”\n\n“Oh.” she sighs. “I am sure he’s already on the road back to Krylla. But there is nothing we can do now.”\n\n“Did you send Kiut Tshu after me?”\n\n“No. Kiut Tshu had apparently thought another Mercy was in trouble. She felt…” Her sister stands up and turns away from her. “Secrets have a way of catching up. No matter how securely they are kept.”\n\n“Yelena?”\n\n“I am afraid, my sister. I am so afraid right now. She has gone silent. Even the Roses have not been able to speak to her. The last she spoke to me was of you, though.”\n\nSresca is terrified to ask what the Goddess told her sister.\n\n“I do not know what it means, but she told me that should things become dire, you must free the watcher of the walls and save the one rebirthed from moonlight.”\n\n“I do not know what that means. Did she say anything else? Is this about the Trials?”\n\n“She gave me a name. Shara'tha.”\n\n“That sounds Suan.”\n\n“It might be. I don’t know.”\n\n“But you said you wanted me to stay here. You said it was safest for me to stay here. And now you tell me that the Goddess has a mission for me?”\n\nYelena says nothing.\n\n“And I am not even safe here.”\n\n“She said only if things seem dire should I tell you.”\n\n“Things seem pretty dire now. Threats on the Temple and how many missing siblings?”\n\nHer sister does not answer. “When you are feeling better, we shall speak more. I shall have Sister Lora bring you food and water.” And then she is gone.\n\nSresca is already lost in her thoughts when food and water are brought, and Sister Lora is gone again before Sresca even notices.\n\nA watcher of the walls, one rebirthed in moonlight. She wonders if it could be related to the Evenstar. The Evenstar is kattu, maybe from Sua. Maybe her real name is Shara'tha.\n\nThe longer she mulls it over silently, the more convinced she is. The tallest tower is where she can be found, that is what she said. And maybe she know who the watcher of the walls is.\n\n“May I come in?” Petra Hohenov pulls back the curtain and peaks in at Sresca.\n\nSresca holds back a startled yell before nodding. “Of course. I owe you my thanks.”\n\n“For what?”\n\n“For rescuing me.” She hopes she is not blushing.\n\n“You seemed to be doing fine on your own. I merely assisted you, fair damsel. You had no need of a heroine.” Petra takes the seat Yelena had vacated and raises an eyebrow at the tall glass of water. “You should drink all of that, if you want my advice.”\n\nShe laughs. “Of course.”\n\n“I promise, though, I will find the radicals who are behind this. I will do my best as an electrarch to find your missing sisters and prevent any further harm be falling your order. I shall be your knight, and you the fair princess.”\n\nShe isn’t sure she should disclose what the captors said. She has no way to prove it, she might be dismissed. She was drugged, after all. She could have misheard or hallucinated it. But… the way Petra looks at her. Hir determination, hit willingness to bend the rules to save her. It had to count for something.\n\n“What's wrong, princess?”\n\nShe knows Petra is being playful, it something about being called a princess sets her on edge. “They mentioned they worked for Volkov-lir.”\n\nPetra raises an eyebrow. “He's a traditionalist, though.”\n\n“What does that mean?”\n\n“I know they are discouraged and to say this right after the Ceremony of Reflection… Dana forgive me.” Sie rubs the back of hir head. “It’s a name for a loose affiliation of political allies. People who share similar beliefs and values. And I promise you, Volkov would not seek to end the worship of any of the Tudina pantheon.”\n\n“But that is what they said. They told me Volkov would kill them if they failed their mission. I had just woken up from whatever drug they used, they were trying to get more…”\n\n“I believe you are telling the truth of what happened to you. But did they say ‘Volkov’ or ‘Volkov-lir’?”\n\nSresca closes her eyes and tries to bring forth the conversation. “They didn't use any honorific.”\n\n“If they did not use lir, then there is no way to know for certain they meant the electrarch. They may have meant a cousin, or even someone unrelated with the same family name. Or maybe they were trying to misdirect you.”\n\nSresca does not believe so. Not when he was the last of the civil servants to say goodnight to her. Not with that grin, not with the way he has been asking about a replacement priestess. But how to convince Hohenov-lir?\n\n“Listen, princess. I am the knight. I shall slay this dragon for you. Leave it to me. I was just planning on interrogating the people who abducted you.”\n\n* * *\n\n“They have called for a full inquiry into every member of the Forum who assisted with or had ties to the Semejh Cervenrasa.” A group of acolytes continues their gossip during the morning meal. Sister Lora discharged Sresca and sent her to the refectory, but she wishes she could have stayed another day in the infirmary.\n\nShe wants nothing to do with politics. They had sworn before the Goddess… they had sworm in front of her. The Goddess had accepted the sacrifices and yet. It was all for show.\n\nOnly a few days later, the new session started and already they are failing.\n\n“They should be looking for those who were abducted. Instead they are using it to take out their rivals,” another Acolyte says. “My younger sister was taken from a Temple in Danalov. She was going to ascend to the rank of Enstarred next month.”\n\nSresca rises from the bench and places a hand on the Acolyte. “Dana will not abandon her. She will never abandon her faithful. Remember her in your nightly rituals and I am sure she will return safely.”\n\n“Yes, Sister Sresca,” the Acolyte says, looking down at her fidgeting hands.\n\nShe smiles, holding the fear in check. Yelena had said the Goddess had gone silent. But she refuses to believe the silence is abandonment. It must be a test. It must be a Trial for her whole following; a Trial for all of Tsvetokrasa.\n\nShe places her mug and bowl in the mess bin and leaves the acolytes. She passes more Duskwardens than she had ever seen at once on her way to her sister's office.\n\n“How much unrest is too much for a person to live through?” Her sister is not in her chair at her desk, but sitting on a rug in front of her hearth. She is wearing the simple gray robes of those living in the Priory, nothing adorning her head or obscuring her face.\n\n“What do you mean?” She sits beside her sister. Something about it pulls at her memory, but they were never roomed together in the Priory when they arrived, and they never shared rooms once they took their vows. Yet she feels like she has spent many nights beside a hearth with her sister.\n\n“The War of Succession in 3013, the reign of Emperor Mikhail, the Storm…”\n\n“But we are at peace now. That is all in the past; safe in Dana's embrace.”\n\n“Is it? I want it to be. But some days I think that the past is something that can never die, not while people can still remember it.”\n\nShe has never seen her sister this distraught before. Yet she somehow knows what she must do. She leaves her sister's office and enters her adjoining bed chamber, plucking a worn, knitted blanket from the end of her sister's bed and brings it to her, wrapping it around her shoulders before sitting beside her again. “We are safe now.”\n\n“Volkov…”\n\n“He is far away.”\n\n“My sister, he is always plotting. You remember the rules of succession, right? Before the Storm?”\n\nShe does not. The disappointment on her sister's face is like a dagger.\n\n“You must have at least made it partially through the Trials. That must be why you seem to have forgotten so much.”\n\n“I don’t know. I am sorry.”\n\n“The Czars and later the Emperors could take as many spouses as they wanted. But their primary spouse must always be a commoner. Plucked from the masses, having no allegiance to a Great House or a bezem or nitski lord. Then they had their Noble Consorts. More like Noble Hostages. A spouse from each of the Great Houses.”\n\n“What does this have to do with Volkov?”\n\n“It was always supposed to be the child of the primary spouse that took the throne. No allegiances but to the people and the House of Yuriki.”\n\n“I understand, but—”\n\n“Emperor Mikhail was the son of Emperor Dmitri and Anastasia, Noble Consort of Volkov.”\n\n“But didn't Emperor Dmitri die without his primary spouse having a child? Wasn’t that what plunged Tsvetokrasa into the war of Succession?”\n\nHer sister chuckles. “You are thinking of Czae Nicola. His Czarina had no children and he failed to name an heir. Dmitri was his son by the Noble Consort of Khornov.”\n\n“But Dmitri—”\n\n“The second time he claimed the crown, he took Catalina, Princess of Garcelon, as his primary spouse and named himself Emperor. He broke custom. He did not take a commoner. But he wanted to solidify his power with a foreign alliance.”\n\n“Mikhail had an older sister…”\n\n“Yes. Oh my sister. I fear I have lost you already.”\n\n“What do you mean?”\n\nThere are tears in her sister's eyes, yet she ignores them. Does not wipe them away, but let’s them fall, unacknowledged. “His older sister was Princess Kyra, daughter of Emperor Dmitri and Catalina of Garcelon. Twice royal, but that made her dangerous according to then-Lord Leo Volkov. He argued that she could not take the throne as she was half-Garcelonian, and therefore impossible to be loyal to Tsvetokrasa. Her argued that the Garcelonian royal family was unstable; their queens and princesses had madness in them. He argued whatever he thought would sway those to accept Mikhail as the next Emperor.”\n\n“Mikhail was the son of a Noble Consort, that would make him biased to the House of his mother… A Volkov.” She knows this. She knows that she should know this. It comes back to her as her sister explains it, but she has no idea how she knows it. The knowledge is in her head but it doesn’t feel like _her_ knowledge.\n\n“He will scheme, he will plot, he will dissemble and betray as much as he needs to in order to gain power. He can never be trusted.”\n\n“So you do believe he is behind the abductions.”\n\n“Of course. I believe he was behind many staged attacks during the Wars of Succession. There are rumors that he poisoned himself at least twice and pinned the blame on his rivals. No one could prove it, and his rivals were executed. But this is exactly something he would do.”\n\n“And the rest of the Forum…”\n\n“Those who remember his actions from the days leading up to the Storm will see it for what it is. But the more… optimistic and naive in their ranks? I do not know.”\n\n“But it’s exactly the people who can see through him that are being blamed.”\n\n“Clever, isn’t he?”\n\n“Clever and vile.”\n\nHer sister pulls her to her, patting her lap. “Lay down. You are still tired.”\n\nShe does as asked, resting her head on on her sister’s leg. “Aren’t we too old for this?”\n\nHer sister runs her hands through her hair, twisting it and untangling it from her days laying in the infirmary.\n\n“Thank you, Dana. For relieving my sister of her painful memories.”\n\nSresca does not know what to say. She wonders just how far she got in her Trials, but trusts that any missing memories are safe with the Goddess; safe in the past and unable to hurt or hinder her.\n\n“I found an interesting book in the archives,” her sister says just as Sresca feels herself drift off to sleep.\n\n“Hmm?”\n\n“An old story, one that did not make into the thr Kairov.”\n\nThe Kairov; the holy text that tells the tales of the Tudina. A Convocation many years ago selected which scriptures to include. Many, though, were left out.\n\n“It says that once, Dana and Andrya were lovers. But when they ascended to divinity—”\n\n“That Is blasphemy. Dana and Andrya have always been goddesses.”\n\n“I know, my sister. As I said, it did not make it into the Kairov. It is just a story. But an interesting one. Shall I continue?”\n\n“Fine.”\n\n“Before they were goddesses, they were lovers. Their favorite thing to do was stare up at the stars late at night. But then they had to take on their responsibilities and Dana descended to the asphodaer and Andrya ascended to the heavens.”\n\n“That is rather sad.”\n\n“I know. But Andrya cried so hard and filled the sky with stars. Seeing them, Dana, her province being Darkness, was able to arrange the stars to make a map so that Andrya could find her way to asphodaer when their time as Gods came to an end.”\n\n“That's so sad. Tragic, but blasphemy. They have always been goddesses. And always will be.”\n\n“I know, my sister. But I think you should read the book. It is full of the tales that did not make it into the Kairov. Something tells me you might find answers there.”\n\nSresca sits up. “Fine. But I have my daily chores to attend to now.”\n\n“Of course. But if you overdo it…”\n\nSresca smiles as her sister but says nothing as she takes her leave.\n\n* * *\n\nThis is a draft. Final contents may change between now and final publication. Last updated 05/29/2026.",
  "title": "Shackles and Shards: Shattered - Chapter 5",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-03T16:40:36.835Z"
}