Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Autumn
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Epilogue
Also by Marcela Carbo
THE STORY THUS FAR
The Empty Vessel begins in the first summer of Nothrin Ilor’Zauhune’s return from exile. As recounted in The Dusklight Oath, Joumina, high matron of Ilor’Zauhune, has lodged the first complaints against Ilor’Roturra’s vassals.
The Mornae of Vaidolin, high and low alike, eagerly await the first court and the bloody fights to come.
All but the high matron of Ilor’Hosmyr, third high house, for her house has a grave problem of its own.
Regret is a rot. Do not let it take root.
MATRON VAIDEA IN WISDOM OF THE MATRONS, COMPILED BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA
MAPS
For full size maps and appendices visit https://marcelacarbo.com/stories.
PRELUDE
When the exiles followed Savra across the Arms of the World into Vailassa, they didn’t know what awaited them. Savra had lured them away with a promise of individuated power, and once away, they soon experienced a terrifying reality.
In the beginning, they met tribes of people who’d been there before the Alcar made their first engine. These people had power, though it wasn’t the power the Alcar concerned themselves with, thinking it mundane and trivial. Certainly not the power that bound stars.
Savra had no such disdain. She predicted the need to use these other powers as step-stones to the Dark. And so, the exiles adopted previously unexplored forms of power, and through it discovered a ladder toward a more elusive one.
They developed deep connections with the native Vailassans. Those powers became part of their bloodline. When the Mornae finally found their footing, they’d become integrated with the various powers of the region, including the Dark.
Along with altered fruits and trees and beasts, the Mornae changed their features to match their newfound power and differentiate themselves from the golden Alcar. For they were now of the night, the moons, and, some would say, the Void.
Integration with the natives served the fledgling Mornae well, but a minor collaborator named Eruna Halnicor gained the most. She was of District Haln, in the southeast sector of Saylassa. She’d crossed districts with three hundred collaborators to learn from Savra. When the celestial council exiled Savra, Eruna and her people went with her.
When the Mornae conquered the crater, Eruna accepted the onerous task of taming the east valley, the least favorable of the four. It seemed an impossible task, but Eruna, later renamed to Runa to shed the Alcar functional designation, joined her people with the local inhabitants and learned from them how to cultivate that impossible terrain and transform it into the garden it is today.
What they found in the east valley defied understanding. Beneath an inch of dirt, they found an endless depth of worm-eaten kith, a chaotic honeycomb, coated in rich minerals and icy sludge. Water descended from the peaks and glaciers and pooled in the combs.
They discovered natural heat just below the frost.
Over time, everything grown there became like the blackness it was born from: fruits turned deep purple, bark and wood became black and hard as rock, leaves matured and passed through their death cycle in colors unknown to other parts of the world.
Together, they formed a perfect synergy of gifts. Gifts, they would say, even greater than the powers that built the stone monuments and towers within the crater, or the enchanted steel the Mornae are famed for. There is nothing more powerful than a living thing.
It was from the natives that Runa developed an affinity for the Fox constellation, Hosin, as the natives called him. She named her house after him and the goddess’s phase during his peak in the night sky: Hosmyr.
FROM MEMORIES BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA.
