Andesine

Mirtala was convinced she could bind any curse might befall their children, and initially, it seemed she was right. The beast that lay dormant in Feldspar did not linger over their first clutch of eggs, nor did it haunt their hatchlings when they broke free. And yet— something wasn't quite right. The trio were tiny, weak, frail beyond what any curse or lack thereof should warrant. And under the light of the moon's wide open eye, one by one, they stopped breathing.

Mirtala did that night what she had always promised she would never do. A little of something impossible, a little of something wrong, dipped into her own bloodline for a touch of what could have been and should not be. Oh, but there was nothing that could be less wrong than seeing her children breathe again. Everything as it was, these tiny lives again as they were.

Not quite.

But the consequences could wait, for another distant morning with the eye of the moon closed in sleep. Her first children would never inherit the curse of the beast, but she knew full well of what she hadn't told her lover.

There are worse things than beasts to be cursed with.

Forced to reckon with a curse of the blood, Andesine as firstborn of his litter was also the first to leave the Emperor's Wake. The Plaguelands, he reasoned, would take no issue with him, as death and blight were close companions of theirs. But it was through the tangled thorny hedgerows that separated Plague from Nature that he was rooted out and lured in.

Vestia saw something of herself in him, and in her Andesine saw something familiar, too. Enough to convince him to follow, treading deeper into the lush Labyrinth than he ever intended.

Andesine would never have stayed in the Blossoming Blight of his own volition. Too much life, and he was a danger to it— but something bound him stronger than any spell bound him to the Clan. It was love, a force he could not reckon with, and if only for the sake of Lailah he would battle his own demons with the determination to win.