Prologue: Little Birds, Little Birds

Tara woke to the scent of blood.

It clung to her skin, thick and metallic, coating her lips like she had been drinking it in her sleep. Her pulse thrummed in her ears, a frantic, dizzying rhythm. The world around her was wrong—a place of ruin and rot, shadows stretching long and trembling in the broken light. Her breath came sharp, ragged. Where was she?

The house—her house—lay in blackened ruins. Glass crunched beneath her bare feet as she pushed herself upright, hands shaking as they pressed into the wet, sticky floor. The floor was red. She lifted her hands. Red.

A scream clawed at her throat, but she swallowed it down, pulse hammering as she scanned the wreckage. Her childhood home—once filled with warmth, books stacked high on the tables, her mother's plants sprawling across the window ledges—was now nothing more than a husk of death.

The walls were blackened with scorch marks, the furniture shattered and splintered like an earthquake had ripped through. Bodies—no, pieces—were strewn across the room. A severed hand curled lifelessly beside the hearth. The fireplace had once been a place of comfort. Now it was a tomb.

Her stomach lurched, bile stinging her throat. She scrambled to her feet, every muscle in her body screaming run, run, run—but she could not. Not yet. Not until she found them. Her parents. 

A sob strangled its way up her chest. She stumbled forward, stepping over the remains of the people who had once filled this house with laughter, her vision swimming. The walls felt like they were closing in, shifting in and out of focus as though she was trapped in some fever dream she couldn't wake from.

Then, she saw them. Her father, Dominic Stele, lay motionless near the shattered dining table, his body broken, his throat torn open like an animal had ripped it apart. His once-proud face—so full of fire and conviction—was frozen in a look of horror.

Her mother, Marabella, was slumped beside him, her delicate hands stained dark with blood. Her eyes were open, empty, but her lips—her lips were parted, like she had been singing until the last breath left her body. And suddenly, as if the memory had been stitched into the very air, Tara heard it.

"Éiníní, éiníní, codalaígí, codalaígí..."

(Little birds, little birds, sleep, sleep...)

The lullaby drifted through the ruins, soft, ghostly—the same lullaby Marabella had sung to her as a child, curling against her in the quiet of the night. But there was something wrong with it now. The melody wove through the silence, whispering from the darkened corners of the wreckage, seeping into her bones like a fever dream.

"An londubh is an fiach dubh... Téigí a chodladh, téigí a chodladh..."

(The blackbird and the raven... Go to sleep, go to sleep...)

Tara's breath hitched. The room tilted. No. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. She staggered back, gasping for air, her chest tight as if something heavy was pressing down on it. The lullaby twisted, the words stretching, warping, the voices no longer her mother's but something else—something old and watching. 

And then she saw it. Scrawled across the blackened walls, smeared in blood, was a single message. A warning.

MEND THE DIVIDE OR REND IT BEYOND REPAIR.

A shudder wracked through her. This wasn't a massacre. This was a message.

A wave of nausea rolled through her, cold and merciless. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees beside her parents, reaching for them with trembling hands—And then the shouts came. Tara snapped her head up. Footsteps. Voices. Soldiers. The Grand Convocation had found her.

Through the splintered doorway, figures in gleaming gold and silver armor surged forward, their weapons drawn, their faces etched with fury and disgust. One stepped ahead of the others. Tall, his golden-white hair glowing in the firelight. His fluorescent eyes gleamed with something almost like amusement. 

Bailon. The Supernatural President. The man who had worked alongside her father. The man who now stared at her as if she was a monster. And maybe she was. Because she still didn't know what had happened here. She still didn't know if she had done this.

Tara opened her mouth to speak, to beg for an explanation, but before she could, two soldiers seized her arms, yanking her to her feet. Chains snapped around her wrists, iron biting into her skin.

A voice—hollow, distant—spoke above the roaring in her ears.

"Tara Dianna Stele, you are hereby sentenced to exile in the Shade territories."

The room spun. Exile. No trial. No chance to explain. Just chains and darkness and the end of everything she had ever known. A sharp pain splintered through her skull. A heavy boot connected with her ribs. A sharp crack. Then—nothing. Darkness swallowed her whole. And somewhere, in the ruins of her home, the lullaby still whispered.

"Éiníní, éiníní... codalaígí, codalaígí..."

Little birds, little birds... sleep, sleep...