Moira of the Wyron: The Song of Lost Snow

In the snow-laced peaks of the Butterdowns, where the sky kisses the jagged earth and wind carries whispers of ancient magic, the Wyron tribe stood proud and resolute. They were women of valor—warriors by birth, bound not by blood but by choice. Among them, none shone brighter than Moira, daughter of the long-lost Ailith, whose name still echoed in the silent valleys.

Moira’s tribe had long sworn their loyalty to the old ways—to unity, mental resilience, and the phalanx: a synchronized wall of shields that moved like one soul across the snow. The Wyron believed in harmony above all, and Moira had been trained since she could walk to uphold that creed.

Yet, peace never lingers long in lands stitched with prophecy.

Whispers from Baruvnal

It began with whispers. Traders who crossed the southern passes spoke of strange disappearances from Baruvnal, a mining town perched precariously at the edge of the dwarven realm. Entire families gone. Lights vanishing from windows. Only the sound of dripping water remained in the homes they left behind.

Moira’s elders debated in their council-hall, their voices a storm. Some feared that dwarven magic—once allied with the Wyron—had turned sour in the depths of De’Thorbelhak, the ancient under-mountain city. Others suspected something older, something not of this world.

When the moon rose red one twilight, casting blood shadows over the cliffs, Moira volunteered.

“I will go,” she declared, her voice like iron across snow. “I will find the truth buried in Baruvnal.”

The Frozen Path

Moira journeyed alone, armed with her blade forged from fallen star-metal and a book of runes her mother had once treasured. She passed the Veilwood, where trees wept frost and owls spoke riddles in forgotten tongues. She crossed the Singing Steppes, where voices sang from beneath the ice, tempting the lonely with songs of home.

In Baruvnal, she found silence—and something worse. Ice coated every surface, even hearths and cooking pots, though no snow had fallen in weeks. Footprints led nowhere. Faces were frozen into windows, mouths open in silent screams, yet their bodies were gone.

She wasn’t alone. From the edge of a hollowed-out barn, she saw tracks not made by man, dwarf, or beast. They moved in circles, like something sniffing out reality and bending it to its will.

The Depths of De’Thorbelhak

Moira descended into the mines beneath Baruvnal. There, she found runes etched in crimson—not dwarven, not elvish, but something older than language, vibrating with an energy that clawed at the mind.

There were survivors—dwarves, eyes hollow, hands trembling. They whispered of a curse that had awakened deep within De’Thorbelhak’s Third Vein. A mirror-vein, they called it. A tunnel of ore that reflected not light, but memory.

One dwarf, old and near blind, took Moira’s hand and rasped, “He calls to the broken. He feeds on doubt. He eats the self until there’s nothing left but snow.”

“Who is ‘he’?” Moira asked.

“The One Below Names. The Echo That Hunts.”

Elven Light and Ancient Lore

Moira left the dwarves with what strength they had and ventured to the elven city of Shaelys-Vael, the City of Singing Glass. There, light lived in towers, and memory flowed through pools shaped by lunar tides.

The High Elf, Seliraen, welcomed her. “You seek to bind what was never meant to be loosed,” he told her, reading the frost-shaped mark blooming on her palm—left by the mirror-vein.

From their scrolls, she learned of the Nigredo Threshold—a mythic realm beneath the world, layered between sleep and silence. It had no doors, only reflections. A force that once was banished by the gods for mimicking creation, birthing false worlds and false selves.

The One Below Names had returned.

And he had chosen Moira.

The Trial of Mirrors

Seliraen sent her with an aegis of light, a pendant of starlit glass said to hold one true self, a shard of soul untouched by fear or desire. To descend again was to risk never returning, for the One Below whispered every doubt she had ever buried: that she was a shadow of her mother, that unity was a cage, that her mind could be unraveled like thread.

In the final descent, the walls shimmered with versions of herself—some proud, some broken, some cruel. They spoke:

“You led your sister to die.”

“You want to rule, not protect.”

“You will vanish like all others.”

Moira faltered. But then she remembered the phalanx. Her tribe. The rhythm of feet in unison. Her name was not hers alone—it was carried by all who believed in her.

She shattered the last mirror with her sword and cast the aegis forward. Light bled into the darkness like dawn breaking through ages of night.

The One Below Names screamed—not a sound, but a disintegration of all illusion. The mine cracked. The curse lifted.

The Return and the Rebirth

Moira returned, changed. The Wyron knew it at once—not because she had aged, or because her eyes now shimmered silver—but because her silence was heavier, filled with stories that could not yet be told.

Baruvnal was repopulated. Dwarves and humans alike began rebuilding. The elves sent light-fountains to guard the mirror-vein’s remnants.

The phalanx of Wyron sang her name that winter under falling snow. And Moira, standing alone on the cliffs, watched the stars, knowing there were still echoes buried in silence.

But now, she knew how to listen without losing herself.

Moral of the Story

True strength lies not in defeating the darkness, but in knowing yourself within it. The battles we fight within shape the peace we create outside. Unity—of self and of people—is the only shield against a world that would tear you into fragments.