The Moonwell no longer glowed, its surface dull as stone, and Ves'Sariel knelt beneath the towering arch of Ash'myra's highest spire with her fingers splayed over marble gone slick with frost. Hours had already slipped past her in prayer, the sky above choked by clouds so thick the stars felt dead behind them. No moon. No answer. Only that awful stillness humming in the edges of her mind, like something waiting for her to break. She bowed lower, her breath catching, silver hair spilling around her in soft tangles of starlight she didn't feel worthy of anymore.
The wind had died a long time ago. Even the braziers barely breathed. Her voice cracked as she whispered, "Elune… please, why won't you speak to me," and the silence that followed wasn't even cruel, it was worse, it was indifferent. She pressed her forehead to the stone, the prayers she had repeated since childhood tumbling out in brittle fragments. Once the well had shimmered for her, once the goddess had answered. Now that light had fled like everything else she'd tried so hard to hold together, leaving only the cold and the ache that kept slipping deeper no matter how tightly she begged.
She didn't at first notice the shift in the air, that faint warmth like flowers blooming out of season, sweet in a way that made her chest tighten. But then she heard it—felt it, really—something whispering in her bones instead of her ears. "You never left me." Ves'Sariel flinched, lifting her gaze toward the still water, the empty temple, her pulse lurching. "You're not Her," she breathed, and the voice answered without hesitation, "No. But I listen." The braziers flared, gold curdling slowly into violet, and her shadow stretched too far across the marble as if reaching for something she couldn't see.
She rose, trembling. "This place is sacred. You don't belong here." But the whisper slid around her like silk, like it knew her better than she wanted to admit. "But you called. And I answered." And then the Moonwell stirred, not with water, but with shadow. Then, thin tendrils drifted upward, brushing her skin, her neck, the hollow in her chest she had tried so hard to ignore. She didn't pull away. Instead she closed her eyes and let the memory of Nyxia surface, the way the huntress had stood in that very archway, voice low with hurt, telling her this path wasn't love, only hunger. Ves'Sariel had whispered back, Then it is no different from the goddess who left me. And Nyxia had walked away.
The shadows touched her fully now, filling that long-gnawing void, not healing it, just… occupying it, and something in her exhaled like relief she didn't want to name. The reflection in the well changed, showing a woman radiant and terrible, moonlight unraveling into shadow around her body as eclipse light flickered in her eyes swallowing the violet of her kaldorei birthright, and far below she heard the first alarmed footsteps. Sister-priestesses calling her name. She barely heard them. Her smile was soft, almost tender, as she breathed a single word into the rising dark. "Nyxia." The shadows surged outward in a sudden rush—and Ash'myra bled.