Warning, this story contains: Violence, blood/gore, murder, cannibalism, adult situations, race-wide persecution/abuse/genocide, and main character death.

Please be sure to check out the great fanart and fanmixes tumblr users blackstar and tilliquoi have made for this story!
(Also, tbh, I highly recommend you read the AO3 version of this story by the same name instead, under my handle 'sleepmarshes'. It is a much better experience.)

one_Fathers

Thane

\\

Your father wears a bone-white mask. The curse has spread to his face, causing his eyes to roam in that crazed, unhinged way that tends to make the townsfolk nervous. You pour the tea, adding the exact amount of pungent, powdered herbs his healer has taught you to use.

He pats you gently on the forearm, taking the earthenware cup. "I regret the heavy burdens I have caused for you," he says, pushing his mask just far enough up his face to expose his black-tinged mouth.

"I am glad to carry them," you reply.

You take your seat on a worn floor cushion, pulling a roll of parchment from your sash that contains the latest progress reports of Iron Town. You brief him on the status of his burgeoning empire as you do every morning at dawn, the eastern sun dripping through your father's bedroom window to paint his blackened hand in reds and yellows.

Would that you could stay here and attend him; would that you could understand his sickness and rid both him and the score of infected townsfolk of it. But you can't watch your father every hour of the day- he has bestowed responsibility to you and you will not be neglectful. After discussing various events and listening to his input, you bid him farewell. You have a job to do.

\\

"But how are you to do your job if you keep injuring yourself," says Ox. Your personal guard is only two and a half years your senior, but he is loyal and dedicated in his protection of you. You trust his judgment in most things, so you attempt to sit and bear his scolding until you can no longer resist the urge to defend yourself.

"Had I not stepped in," you blurt, "we would have lost an entire cart of food and supplies." You try to breathe steadily as your father's healer slathers your ribs in an acrid poultice. "Not to mention the mules."

"And had I not 'stepped in', we would be bereft another leader as well." Ox pulls off his spectacles, rubbing them against the hem of his tunic to clear off the afternoon mist rolling off the mountain. He scowls, dryly adding, "I would rather we lose a few beasts and bags of grain than our 'village prince', sir."

You heave a sigh and instantly regret it- Moro had knocked you into the cliff face and your ribs are horribly tender. "I understand. I am, as always, in your debt."

"Damned right, you're in my debt. I'll take over the day's inventory, so do the town a favor and visit the bellows girls before they drive us all insane."

You groan, watching your right hand man stomp off through the soggy mud to the storage houses.

"Forgive his personality, my lord," the healer woman says as she cinches off the bandage supporting your ribs. "He was only worried for your safety. I, for one, am grateful for the supplies you protected- I have been waiting on this shipment of herbs for weeks. Going without would have been a setback."

Pulling your tunic back down to your waist, you gingerly test the limits of your sore chest with a measured breath. You knew very well what had been in that cart- the sick of Iron Town, including your father, depended on those herbs, so there had been no hesitation in risking your life. "Your work is impressive, as usual. And a boon to our town. We're lucky to have you."

Rinsing her hands in a bowl of water, she replies with small smile, "Between the Star Clan and the Empress warring across the Territories, one would be a fool to not take advantage of this safe haven. Sephtis has made something great, here." After drying her hands, she passes you a small jar of salve. "Put this on at night and wash off the remains in the morning."

You nod. "Please continue to watch over my father and the others in my absence."

"Of course," she says easily, golden braid falling over one shoulder as she inclines her head to you.

"My thanks, Medusa."

Maka

\\

You were to join this cold season.

Tsugumi had been promised to your mother's firstborn, the act of which would've formally cemented her outlander family to the close-knit community you call home. When you were born a year later, you were raised with the knowledge that you would one day support her and share a hearth, nestled among all the other dwellings in the thick forest of your Eastland village.

Towards this end, you were raised together. She is dear to you. She is about to die.

You had just returned from your snare run, clothes damp with morning dew, your game sack heavy with rabbit and quail. Astride your elk, something in the air made your hair stand on end just as you were about to pass through the brilliantly colored autumn trees that ringed the hidden clearing. Nothing seemed amiss in the village, tucked in the grassy valley below, but you stopped your mount, stilling before leaving the safety of the forest.

The air was tainted somehow, but it did not leave a taste in your mouth so much as an unwanted touch beneath your skin. Your elk sensed it too, trembling under your legs, his ears turning about, searching, searching-

A chill ran down your spine the moment he found the source of your shared dread.

The demon was a massive beast, a salamander greater than the largest building in the village. Skin all rippling, sickly shades of crimson, he moved so quickly that his limbs were simply a blur. He entered the valley from the western treeline, tail whipping behind him and flinging long, acidic tendrils of disease in its wake. Destruction and pestilence followed, leaving a clear path through the corrupted forest.

You dropped the sack of game. There was one singular moment of clarity amidst the intense fear blooming in you, the implicit knowledge that this demon would rip your village apart in mere minutes if you did not act.

As you urged your elk forward, you recall childhood tales about beasts of such size: ancient gods of old, kings of nature who rule their kind. They were portrayed as powerful, intelligent beings who were to be respected.

But those firelight stories never imparted a sense of fear or terror. No one had mentioned giant demons who would threaten life unprovoked. There had been no warnings for gods of madness.

You unsheathed your crescent-shaped dagger, bidding your elk to give chase though you hadn't the faintest idea what you could do to a god with a mere knife, and then you saw three girls turn the bend of the retaining wall of the village - two of whom you knew well; one you knew best. The girls laid eyes on the demon the same instant he spied them, and that barest heartbeat of a moment made your guts drop to the earth.

Meme shouted in alarm, and you watched as the three turned and fled for the village gates, the salamander darting after them with a roar. You frantically chased after all four, gaining on the demon with your mount. The elk stretched to keep pace with the god as you tried to grab his attention, shouting prayers and pleas, attempting to appeal to the intelligence the stories told of, but you were ignored. And in the dewy meadow grass ahead of you, Tsugumi slipped.

Anya stood her ground and drew her sword as Meme struggled to get Tsugumi back up. You all knew they would simply be trampled to death by the demon, with the village following shortly thereafter. There was no time left. You made the briefest of contact with Tsugumi's wide, familiar eyes.

You were to join this winter, and she is about to die.

So now, with a howling cry that makes your vision go white around the edges, you leap from the elk's back and reach for the salamander's slick face with your blade. You cling with a snarl, an angry beast in your own right, and as you carve out the god's eyes and feel his flesh searing into yours, an unprecedented hatred spreads through you.

\\

You wake in your father's house, his silhouette blurring with the morning light. He stands just past the entrance, hand outstretched with birdseed, looking shorter than you're used to without the headdress. The wind plays in his red hair.

Like your mother once had, he spends time in the morning to feed the birds, and has done so every day since her exile. Chickadees land on Spirit's fingers, snatching mouthfuls of food before flitting away again, their presence so fleeting that, if not for the disappearing seed, the brief moment could be mistaken as entirely imagined. This, too, is like your mother.

Though you and your father have not always seen eye to eye, your heart does stir at the somber and despairing tilt in his posture. You feel a vague guilt for being his daughter. You are a princess of this village, but you are also a princess who had thrown herself at the maw of a demon with little thought of the outcome.

In fact, you hadn't expected to win, much less live.

Your skin aches at the thought of the demon god. Upon weak-limbed investigation, you discover burn scars darker than a moonless night curling up your forearms and underneath the sleeves of your tunic.

You've been marked. When you hold your breath, something deadly whispers promises in your veins, voices slowly working on you from the inside- a colony breaking you down and carrying you away piece by piece to leave behind a rippling crimson thing.

You glance back over to the shape of your father, noticing, this time, the wet sheen on his cheek. You close your eyes and feign sleep just a bit longer.

Mifune

\\

The Loresingers warned of beings who walked between worlds in places like this.

You duck inside the decrepit entry of a ruined ivonhall, the wet autumn damp dripping from charred, rotting eaves onto your head. It's a shame, you think, that Angela couldn't see the halls in their prime, born too late to hear Songs that never seemed to stop even in the deepest of night.

Then again, neither will she ever know the misery of seeing such a grand thing fall. A decade has passed since its demise, but the hall still smells of war, stale with death. You bed down in a relatively dry corner of crumbling walls and pillars, listening as Angela begins to sing. Her Song lights a small fire to warm you both through the night, the echo of her voice in the ruins reminiscent of distant choirs.

Even with the fire, the ruins give you a continual chill down your spine, as if the life you've known to the core of your bones doesn't hold any truth in this space. If there's any truth to be had here at all, it may be in those old haunted tales the Loresingers keep: ghosts and spirits who only exist in doorways, in liminal pockets of the sacred, dancing between two very different worlds but ultimately part of neither.

You think you might know, in a small way, what it is to walk a path like that.

\\

Like the shadow of a bird cast by the midday sun, something passes behind your closed eyes and you snap awake just in time to see a figure drifting out of view.

The fire has burned to mere cinders. You unfurl yourself from around Angela, standing silently, willing your heart to still so you can listen for the sound of footsteps. Ears straining, you hear nothing save the barest suggestion of cloth dragging across the rubble of the ivonhall.

Quickly recounting all the people who may have seen the both of you yesterday, you try to remember any one of them who might have indicated a desire to come and claim Angela's head. You stalk after the stranger in the dark of the ruins, hand on the hilt of your sword. You slip around a corner and pause, watching as that shadowy figure passes through the doorway and merges with the night.

A ghost, maybe. If only you could be sure it was a ghost- the dead have no need for kindred flesh. But you won't risk letting anyone breathing know where the girl is hiding. You must cut them down before word gets out. You hasten after the figure, drawing your sword-

And then the very walls of the ivonhall seem to whisper with echoes of Loresingers long dead. Before you can step foot outside, the hilt of your weapon goes hot in your hands and, overwhelmed, you make the mistake of blinking.

The sword falls from your fingers and neatly lands between stalks of rich grass, blade stuck into earth. You are in a verdant village, sun at high noon, your eyes watering from the intense change in light. Villagers bustle about: three girls hauling heavy baskets of fish from a river; a dark-skinned man in ancient farseer's garb, eyes focused far away; a man in ornate robes struggling to settle a headdress comfortably over his red topknot; dozens of people surrounding you, heedless of you and strangely half-present, as if a fog shrouds them from direct sight.

Loud chirping pierces your ears, startlingly close. You whip your head to the side, finding yourself a few paces away from a large circle of carefully-built stone, forming a pit for a hearty fire. On its rim is a drab, tawny sparrow, which chirps at you with insistence.

You must get back to Angela- you know this as simple, irrefutable fact- but likewise you must also walk to the fire, beckoned by something you cannot resist. The bird flits away, the sun glinting off its tiny body and blinding you. Left in its place is a polished white stone engraved with an emblem. Picking it up and resting it in your palm, you recognize the symbol of the Empress: a rounded, fanged mask with two sets of eyes.

A blink and you're back in the ivonhall, curled around Angela as dawn approaches. She stirs, complaining about her everlasting hunger and asking for what is left of your nearly drained provisions. You nod towards your bag, and while she digs around for breakfast, you carefully uncurl your fingers and find the milk-white stone carved with the mark of Arachne in your hand, as warm as if it had been near a fire.

Black Star

\\

"I ought to kill you for merely making the suggestion," the Warbringer growls, steel-tipped fingers digging into your throat. You're several hand-spans off the ground, shoved against the wall by his sheer strength. You don't attempt escape, though you likely could with more ease than anyone else in the Clan - you think he knows this too.

He has eaten recently. His eyes have that gleam of distant stars, power-rich with stolen blessings. Energy rolls off him in stormy swirls. Out of all the Clan who've eaten the flesh of kindred, your sire retains the most of his self-control. Even if you feel nothing else for him, you respect this much, at least.

He sneers- the usual expression whenever you are present- and his fingers dig a shade deeper in your neck. "My own blood would renounce the Clan?" You are tossed aside like a doll, crashing into the rusted cage where White Star's next meal bares its fangs, spitting in fearful rage. "Of course it would be you. You have been a smear on my name since your first breath."

It's not your fault the way he rules Star Clan is both stifling and stale.

The kindred inside the cage you've landed on shoves you from behind the bars, tail whipping angrily as it claws you through your clothes. You hop back to your feet, rolling a shoulder. "I think we can both agree I am the thorn in your side," you say, detaching one of many spiked metal balls from your belt and casually flinging it at the cage to get the thing to quit her infernal hissing. "I'm of no use to you. One could question I'm even your blood."

"If you are suggesting I simply end your life, I will gladly consider it," he says, annoyed.

You shut your mouth. Perhaps you did not think this negotiation through well enough.

White Star stalks over to a heap of fine silks and cushions, the notorious Warbringer lounging on the pile like a satisfied cat. "You are wrong on two counts," he says, and you watch as Clan servants bleed from the shadows to silently attend him, serving him fresh drink and platters of neatly prepared kinflesh. "There is no doubt that the last wretched waste your mother bore is you."

The look he gives you then, blood dripping down his forearm to the stained floor as he sinks steel-tipped fingers into his meal, clutches at your spine with so much ice.

Voice as precise as the edge of a blade, he says, "And I will make use of you yet."

\\

You sometimes wonder if your sire had simply been irritated over having to find a replacement to bear his children after you were born, or if he had actually once held compassion for Fallen Star. You can't think about the latter option very long at all before you succumb to either laughter or nausea, but either way, White Star rests the blame of her death on you, and from day one on this earth you have owed a debt to the Clan that can't be repaid.

It's a crisp autumn morning when you sneak into the dining hall, though your caution turns out to be unnecessary- the guards are in a bloody heap on the floor, a dozen or so of your Clan siblings sprawled about the room, recovering from last night's feasting and brawling.

Despite being one of the chief's blood, you had not been given the honor of tasting the Clan's dish of choice, once again. There had been a time that this discrimination was infuriating, but you have come to think of your sire's undiluted hatred for you as a blessing of sorts, however unintended.

These days you'd rather vie for a few run-of-the-mill dumplings for breakfast, and you always win, because there's never any homicidal competition for pork in Star Clan. You pick your way around recuperating assassins to get to the dining table, and you nearly step on a rail-thin initiate trying to mop up the most recent bloodstains.

The man's arm is angry from the red half-star recently hammered into his shoulder. He had most likely provided last night's meal to buy his way into the Clan and earn a bed and two meals a day, which are the only reasons anyone joins the Clan anymore. After a length of loyal service, he too will be allowed to taste kindred, and then he'll never want to leave.

Though eating the beast-people gave a person an undeniable burst of sheer power, you have watched countless brothers and sisters go drunk with it, crazed, tactless, and altogether forsaking any other means of acquiring strength. The idea of not having absolute control over yourself does not appeal in the slightest. You're better off without- you're already twice the strength of Carmine, your father's second in command, and that old bastard's been eating kindred since you were ten, when the Doctrine War started.

The Star Clan is festering, deteriorating into something that bores you to tears. And though you still don't understand why, it's clear to you that White Star will not simply allow you to leave, even if your kindred-less existence undermines everything he uses to keep the Clan under his thumb. You want out- you could be so much stronger if you could seek power your own way, without relying on cheap tricks to touch the stars.

At the dining table you find some dumplings, pristine and untouched from last night's feast, and you squirrel them away into your supplies. You step over another body without bothering to determine if it is or is not still breathing, and look for a secluded place to enjoy breakfast.

In a dusty alcove of the southern wing of the compound, you stuff your face and try to work out the best plan to leave this frozen, stagnant pit. You could probably avoid being caught by most anyone that White Star would send after you, but if the Warbringer came himself- because your father has always enjoyed executing traitors with his own hands- you have your doubts regarding your survival, as wont as you are to deny it.

You're about to toss the last dumpling in your mouth when you sense the dagger flying at your head in the split-second before hearing the whistling blade. You catch it between two fingers before proceeding to eat the rest of your breakfast.

"What is it," you say around a mouthful, idly tossing the dagger end over end and catching it again.

A servant creeps into the light from the alcove window, starry eyes squinting in the sun. They hand you a roll of parchment, the seal already broken. "Orders from the chief," the servant sneers.

You unroll the note, a black star penned at the top in the Warbringer's hand. The bulk of the message is a sketched image of the cover of some book, the center of which displays an intricate insignia of bones and fangs that reminds you somewhat of the old ivonhalls. You curl your lip at this, not understanding what White Star wants with kindred artifacts.

Underneath the illustration is a message. It reads:

Bring this book to me. Let no eyes see it but yours.

Looking up, you see the servant still waits for your dismissal, though in all other aspects of life he is treated with more honor than you are by the rest of the Clan. You smile easily, waving the paper in your hand. "Did you read this?"

Blank-faced, the servant replies, "I did not."

You nod. You toss him back his dagger and he catches it with his throat, blood bubbling down his chest as he collapses.

"You lie better when you're on the floor," you say as you settle back into your alcove. Once more you look at White Star's message, a thrill you haven't felt in a long time tingling in your fingers and toes.

A special assignment meant only for you? Either your sire has found a use for you, or it's a trap to try to kill you. In any case, you're excited at the prospect. If you're lucky, it will help train you to become even stronger. You want nothing more than to be a force before whom even the gods would bow- to carve your name into the face of heaven.

\\