Page 36 of The Nymph King

Imani couldn’t move as she took in the full scale of the battle raging around her.

With a brief touch to her arm, Ellisar urged her forward. Steeling her spine, she moved with him through the press of soldiers, and even amid the chaos, the reaction rippled outward. Heads bowed as they passed, bodies turning to make space without being told. Eyes followed her, drawn not only to her presence but to the crown woven from her own form, staring with something deeper than curiosity—reverence and the uneasy awareness of what she might be.

They stopped at a cliff overlooking the beach and sea below.

Norn soldiers held the shoreline in scattered ranks, some braced in the surf with weapons raised, others retreating step by step as waves surged around their legs. Beyond them, Norn-built ships cut across the water, their hulls angled defensively as spells flared from their decks toward the advancing line.

Lochheim vessels pressed in from the open sea, darker and lower in the water, moving with a predatory glide that defied the tide.

Figures moved between ship and sea with disturbing ease, rising from the water as if it welcomed them, closing the distance faster than the Norn line could stabilize.

Lochheim.

Until recently, the name had meant almost nothing to Imani. A sealed third kingdom somewhere beyond Essenheim and Niflheim, cut off from the rest of the Mesial Realm for longer than she knew. She first heard whispers of it in Tanyl’s rooms, where he spoke of unrest along the borders and strangers testing weaknesses in the Fabric.

Her grandmother had once told her something similar years ago, back when Imani had been too young to understand the warning. When one realm began to fail, its people did not always wait for it to collapse around them. Sometimes they searched for a way into another. At the time, Imani had thought Ara was speaking in generalities.

But looking at the ships bearing down on the Norn coast, she no longer believed it.

Spells tore through the air in jagged arcs, colliding mid-flight in bursts of light that shattered and scattered across the water like glass. Bodies moved without rhythm or formation, as soldiers broke ranks to dodge, strike, and drag the fallen back before they disappeared beneath the surf. Shouted orders were swallowed by the noise the moment they were given. What had begun as a coordinated defense had collapsed into a looser, more desperate reaction among the mass of elves.

The attackers moving between ship and sea had to be Lochheim breeds. Imani had never seen their people before and knew almost nothing about what lived inside the sealed kingdom, but their bodies made one thing obvious: whatever Lochheim was, its people had been shaped by water.

Some swam beneath the surface for impossible stretches before rising again. Others cut through the sea with powerful, fluid strokes that no Norn could match. She caught flashes of webbed fingers, slick skin, long hair plastered against unfamiliar faces, and bodies built to move through currents as naturally as Norn elves moved through the Draswood.

Kelpies? Merfolk? Something else entirely? She couldn’t tell, but these were not land-born witches forced into the sea.

The sea belonged to them.

A wave rose at a Lochheim breed’s command, cresting high before igniting midair into a roaring arc that slammed into a Norn vessel and exploded on impact. Their magic twisted together, fluid and volatile, shifting between states in ways that made it impossible to predict or counter. The impact splintered wood, buckled decks, and hurled men like debris, spreading destruction outward as if the sea itself had turned against them.

Imani watched their coordination closely. Their attacks flowed together smoothly instead of scattering like the Norn’s. Their method was a highly skilled system. Lochheim was becoming a far more formidable opponent than anyone had anticipated, and the purpose behind the attack grew harder to ignore. Every formation drove toward Essenheim rather than merely striking Norn ships, and the vessels behind them carried far too many people for a simple military incursion. Figures packed the decks who were not fighting at all.

Behind the armed Lochheim witches, ordinary people crowded every available stretch of deck, packed so tightly that some had nowhere to sit. Women held children to their chests while older boys and girls grabbed sleeves, skirts, and railings to keep from being thrown down by the waves. Bags were piled around their feet, overstuffed satchels, bundles tied in blankets, and small trunks that looked hastily packed rather than prepared for a journey.

One child hugged a wooden toy to his chest while another dragged a soaked cloth doll by an arm. A mother crouched over two little girls near the mast, shielding their heads whenever magic flashed across the water.

More civilians waited on the vessels farther back, still dangerously close to the fighting because there was nowhere else to go. No one knew how long the slip would remain open. Lochheim was forcing as many people through as possible while the passage existed, sending soldiers ahead to hold the route while families followed behind them into a battlefield.

Imani’s hand went to her mouth.

If what she had overheard in Tanyl’s room was true—if the Fabric beyond Essenheim was failing badly enough that entire kingdoms were seeking safer ground—then Lochheim must be desperate. Desperate enough to attack them in search of a safer place to live. Whether they intended conquest, refuge, or both, Imani could not know for certain. But no one brought this many people through a collapsing border merely to win a battle.

Past the deluge of ships and soldiers lay the slip. It stretched beyond the melee, enormous, warping the air into a slow, rippling wave that held its shape with eerie, unnatural strength.

The one that had taken her parents had been uncontrolled, with the Fabric tearing itself apart, unstable and collapsing even as it consumed everything around it. This slip had not just morphed into an event. It held, spreading wide against the horizon, sustained in a way that looked intentional.

Magic around the slip bent and distorted, with spells veering off course or unraveling mid-cast as if the Fabric itself refused to hold them. The sea churned unnaturally beneath it, its currents twisting against one another and ripples of instability spreading outward, unsettling everything they touched.

Ellisar stayed just behind her, his eyes sweeping the shoreline and the sea as if recording every change rather than reacting to the chaos. While others cried out and hurried around them, he focused on what mattered and ignored the rest.

“This is your opportunity. We’re nearly as close as we can get from here,” he said, pointing toward the slip.

She drew a deep breath, unable to respond to Ellisar in the face of such death and magic.

“Only a queen has the power to control raw Fabric magic like that,” Ellisar said, leaning near her ear. “If you can’t, it proves everything we need to know.”

Imani studied the roiling tear, her grip on her wand tightening just enough to betray the strain she refused to show. “You brought me here to close that?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.