Excerpt taken from Unmasking the Thief. Volume 4: The Messenger
Penned by: N. B. Verilibros

The elemental threads were killers, but they were not intended to be so.

They had been shared as gifts.

Goddess Elayn had blessed her siblings with the threads; they had not been given as a curse. Certainly not as death. After all, the goddess was the Mother of Earth; the giver to soil, a nurturing tiller of seeds that sprouted and blossomed into restful shades and bountiful nutrients. Into rolling hills and towering snow-capped mountains. Into carved dens for the slumbering vyre-pup hunters of Belsynen. Into thick branches for the nesting phoenixes of Demue.

The messenger had never cared for The Tale of Earth's Deceit—the legend of the spiteful siblings of Goddess Elayn who, through trickery and lies, had stolen the seven elements from their eldest sister, renaming the threads as their own and diminishing the power of High Goddess Elayn. All except for Gaia, the legendary elemental sibling of purity. Of spirit. The youngest who had refused to take part in the treachery and had been revered above all the others: Air, Light, Darkness, Fire, and Water.

There were those who claimed in hushed whispers that it had been a Soleitian priestess who had reforged and spread that particular tale, molding and reshaping it in such a way as to place Spirit upon a fabricated pedestal of the Elementi Temple's pompous creation.

The Scribe who had become the messenger knew it to be true.

For the Goddess of Spirit was far from pure; Gaia spread curses as destructive as a dragon's seductive wildfire from atop her magnificent, crystal glaciers.

Goddess Gaia was the killer.

It was she who had killed the messenger's own sibling. Perhaps not a murderer in blood, for the Spirit goddess had not held the blade, but Gaia had been an executioner of the soul.

She, who had manipulated Corelei Lavrai into offering her own unborn child as a prophetic sacrifice.

Yet a redeemer is born from a motherless womb—

She, who had orchestrated Queen Corelei's soul as a vessel for deity possession.

A possession that resulted in lunacy and sparked the first embers that would burn a crater into the seven realms.

The Purge.

A war that the messenger intended to stop as she journeyed to Eyelesene with nothing more than the planned pleas of aid for the murderous deity who had struck through her family all those years ago. However, there was nothing she could do for Corelei's barren and brutalized body; her love now hinged on others. The others whose hope draped from her shoulders like a robe of honor she was proud to wear.

To save the Author who held her heart.

Pavel Kyiva.

Her Author. For the messenger was his Scribe.

And the thief, Corelei's daughter, the one whom Gaia had spited and abused for the sake of her prophecy, wanted Pavel dead.

Because Davina Salvera thrived to gather the elemental threads to redeem herself, to force herself into the role of the prophetic Author, to be the Saviour of the realms as Gaia had so meticulously planned, but if the thief hoped to be the redeemer, then Pavel aspired to be her sinner.

Redeemer and sinner can rise Earth or descend—

The age of Authors would have to end. Their creation had been an abomination to Goddess Elayn, for the Elvish queen had bestowed a gift upon a human mortal that had not been hers to give. As the tainted blood had spread and passed throughout generations, the elements had splintered across the realms.

In Galandreal, the once beautiful tree city of Lantholen began to wilt.

Light in the warrior Fae's veins began to fade.

Dragon-shifters grew unable to turn, some stuck in a half-mortal body with a barbed tail the length of an Elaerien Seraphim's incomprehensible wing span, which weighed down their human spine.

It was what Pavel had grown to accept: that to restore the realms of the Elementi, to preserve the elements of the lands, the Authors could not be allowed to exist. So, he sought to end them.

But then Pavel's priestess came to be with a child. A child who would carry his blood. Author blood.

How could Pavel be expected to have even the most fleeting of thoughts of ending his own babe?

He could not.

So, it became a burden the messenger would bear for the survival of the seven realms and for her beloved Author. The Scribal messenger journeyed to the Eyelesene Glaciers not only to ask Goddess Gaia to curse Niklaus's bloodline for his treachery, thus ending one of the last remaining Author families, but to alert the vengeful Spirits of Author Pavel and Priestess Aurelea's forbidden lover's tryst.

The betrayal would cost the messenger her soul, but her body would remain intact. Strong. Capable of fulfilling this final sacrifice because her Author could not.

"Sister!" Her cry carried into the bone-chilling wind, the icy snow beneath her boots crunching under her weight as the messenger braced an exhausted gloved hand against crystalline rock. She found a rough edge of the jutting mountain of glacier and sliced her palm upon it. "Bring forth your Spirit!"

Vibrant glows in hues of greens, purples, and yellows flashed across the deep obsidian of the skies. The Luminae Luerhn—Spirits' Glow—twisted and danced in response to the messenger's pleas, waltzing overhead in a beautiful display of wispy threads from those who had once walked amongst the living.

A flickering thread of lightest blues drifted across her cheek like a struggling flame against a wind.

Yet somehow it bore a stifling weight that pressed her torso into a stiff bow upon the cold embrace of the ground.

I am here, came the voice inside her mind, but not for long. Gaia watches.

The messenger sucked down a shivering breath, flecks of snow rubbing the tip of her nose raw. It clawed at her skull, the voice of her sister, each word a hook in her brain that threatened to drag her closer to the dead's abyss.

"Corelei." The name rasped from her frozen throat.

What discretion do you bring forth to the Eyes of Gaia?

Lights of Spirits' Glow swirled in madness from up above, angry colors splashing across the snow like the bright blood from the messenger's wounded hand. "Your daughter—"

Is already cursed.

"—No—" The messenger lost her breaths as the gathering Spirits jabbed nails into her spine from which they leaked, needling their way into her thoughts with hushed hisses and enticing lies, but she was stronger. She had to be—"I-It is her husband. Niklaus Verilibros."

We are aware of his betrayal against the elements.

Her next word faltered. "H-How?"

Author Niklaus came to us not even two days previously—

Silence, Lady Corelei.

The messenger's soul seized, the voice a fist to her heart. "Gaia."

Scribe.

A deity's words burned like the coldest of fires, but Goddess Gaia's carried the swiftest wafts of something sweet: smoking sugarcane. It seeped into the Scribal messenger's nostrils, agitating her four other senses until every nerve trembled, forcing her hidden truths from their sealed chest. Though she had come to reveal them, she suddenly did not wish to let them go.

Your resolve weakens your soul, Serah Lavrai. Lay down your Author's burden.

So, the messenger became the betrayer, and though her body remained whole, able to leave the Eyelesene Glaciers unscathed and into the human realm of Rainier, a piece of the Scribe's splintered Spirit would remain in Gaia's realm.

A forgotten token for the price she paid to save Author Kyvia from himself.

With a wizened grin, Goddess Gaia—the revered purest of Earth's siblings—turned a blind eye to the pregnant priestess who fled Soleita with the Black Quill despite the condemnation against the Spirits' that the unborn babe would possess.

For the plan Gaia had formulated since being shunned to these desolate glaciers by her dear eldest sister neared fruition.

The child of Spirit and Earth had fit into it with sublime ease.

An ease that would allow the spurned goddess to hold the final, assembled weapon needed to defeat the Mother of Earth. Splintered though Elayn had been since her Elvish kin had betrayed her with the human mortals, the High Goddess had yet to crack.

But she would.

When she did, Gaia would be there to pick up the shattered pieces of the elemental realms and steal what should have been hers from the start.

In that way, the messenger named Serah had been correct: Gaia had not been the purest sibling, but the wisest, and she had bid her time with the patience of a saint.

Until now.

Thus began the repossession of elements across Goddess Elayn's splintering tomb. 

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So it begins...we're so excited to share this continuation of Bash and Astrid's adventure. Please leave a vote and a comment. You're the best!