ACOTAR Next Gen Headcannons Pt. 1
I’ve been extremely excited to make these! I love next gen stuff. I’m going to go in birth order, so starting with our very own Twilight baby, here’s Nyx:
Firstly: for the Illyrian tattoos, I am using images of tatau’s of the Polynesian culture. I see the Illyrian’s as the Polynesian people—which encompasses so many different tribes. The placements of tatau’s are symbolic and I’ve chosen the above images for Nyx for a purpose.
Also kinda nervous what the reception will be for this because the plot bunnies took me to some interesting places and I went super left field….
There are eight cousins. The Feysand kids are: Nyx, Orion, and Atlas. Nessian kids: Verena, Hera, and Aren. Gwynriel twins: Melody and Kallen.
The cousins all get a matching eight pointed star tattoo to commemorate their love and friendship for one another. It also has magical properties that, no matter how far they go or how separated, the star tattoo connects them and lets each cousin know that the others are okay. A surprise tool for later 👀
Nyx is very much his father’s son. He has Rhys’s clever mind and silver tongue—which makes him an accomplished politician. He’s a prodigy when it comes to intelligence and political games, but he has his mother’s artist soul.
“You look just like your father, but you have your mother’s eyes.”
He has an extremely deep well of power that is very similar to Rhys’s so this leads Rhys and Feyre to suspect Nyx will be their heir.
When Nyx needs to be alone and have space to think, he makes pottery. He was never an accomplished painter like Feyre (loooollll @ how the whole fandom has agreed Feyre can’t paint for shit) but he does have a knack for abstract painting.
His first steps were to Rhys 🥺
No one was expecting it to happen, but during an IC family dinner, Nyx just gets up and stands on his little legs. Rhys is like a deer in headlights as Nyx starts walking to him. For a moment, he sees his son who nearly died. For a moment, he sees his little sister whose first steps had also been to Rhys hundreds of years ago. His sister who did die.
He kneels, the stars on his knees on the ground, and holds his hands out for Nyx. Everyone watches on excited, bated breath as Nyx takes those first five steps. He stumbles into Rhys’s arms and the room bursts into cheers.
Absolutely Rhys lets out a little tear.
Nyx’s first word is fly. He’s in Rhys’s arms, watching his uncles fly in the sky above. He points at them, looks at his dad, and says a very clear, “fly!”
Rhys takes it slow, but he takes Nyx flying and it’s one of Rhys’s favorite days in his life. The sound of his son’s squealing laughter, the excited way he keeps saying “fly!” The glee in Nyx’s blue eyes, so like his mother’s, and the chubby face that is a mirror of Rhys’s own. It’s a gift. All of it is a gift.
Aunt Nesta is his favorite. Period. He’s kept every book she’s ever gifted him on their own special shelf.
He’s close with both his parents, but he does feel an obligation to spend as much time with Rhys as he can so that he can learn to be High Lord.
He’s seven when his sister, Orion, is born. He spends the whole day with Uncle Cassian and Aunt Nesta and his cousin Verena. They have a beach day and Uncle Cassian throws him whenever he asks. He builds sand castles with Rena, and Aunt Nesta even helps them bury Uncle Cassian in sand.
It’s one of the best days he’s ever had, but when the sun sets and they go get ice cream, Nyx can’t help but be sad. The chocolate has dripped down the cone and is sticking to his arm, but he can’t bring himself to eat anymore.
Aunt Nesta takes a seat beside him, wipes his arm clean, and asks, “You can tell me what’s wrong.” Nyx likes that Aunt Nesta never beats around the bush, that she is always straight forward. He wants to be like that, too.
His lips wobble as he says, “what if they don’t want me anymore? What if they like the new baby more than me?”
He doesn’t fight it when Aunt Nesta brings him to her lap and hugs him tight. He’s always liked her hugs.
“I thought the same thing when your mom was born.” Nesta brushes her fingers through his hair. “I thought I’d be forgotten. But listen to me, your mom and dad love you so much it’s incomprehensible. They would do absolutely anything for you. They could never, ever forget you.”
When it’s time to meet his sister, Nyx holds onto what Aunt Nesta said. He’s holding her hand tight as they walk into the River House, and he almost runs up the stairs to his bedroom, but his dad is kneeling on a knee with arms open wide for him.
“Come here, son.” His dad must have seen the hesitation in Nyx’s steps as the joy on his face fell slightly. When Nyx is standing before his father, eyes downcast, he brings him into a soft and comforting hug. “You made me a father. I love you, my son. Always. Don’t tell your uncles but you are my best friend.”
Nyx looks into his dad’s violet eyes. Nyx has an uncanny knack for knowing when someone is lying. His dad is not. “Really?”
His dad holds up a pinky finger. “I solemnly swear.”
Nyx throws himself into his father’s arms and that terrible weight lifted. He looked back to see Aunt Nesta wink at him. He tried—and failed—to wink at her, too.
Nyx never did learn how to wink.
Nyx is ten when his youngest sister, Atlas is born. At this point in his life, he knows he has extensive power and is primed to be the heir of the Night Court.
But, that begins to change when Atlas is born.
It makes him very uncomfortable that it is now uncertain as to who the heir is, because Atlas as a reservoir of power that is equal to Nyx.
Nyx adores Atlas. She’s his sister and he takes being a big brother very seriously, but they can’t help the competition that brews between them.
His Illyrian training is treated like another aspect of his schooling. He starts going to Windhaven when he’s eight for a few hours everyday, four days a week. He doesn’t, however, go all year long.
Nyx doesn’t like Windhaven. He doesn’t feel like he belongs. Unlike his father and uncles, Nyx doesn’t make any deep connections with the other kids. He’s a very private person, so he keeps to himself until his cousin Verena—Nessian’s oldest daughter—starts training with him. This is when the two become best friends.
His favorite color is the blue of the hottest fire.
Cassian, Azriel, and Nesta do most of the next gen training.
Nyx refuses to the Blood Rite without his cousins. He waits until Rena, Aren, Kal and Melody (the Gwynriel twins), and his youngest sister Atlas to do the Blood Rite together. Hera and Orion are the only ones who opt out the Illyrian ritual.
But—the cousins fight when they reach Ramiel. The physicality of the Blood Rite forces people to face themselves, who they are and their desires, and if they have what it takes to make the climb.
The cousins are kicking ass the Rite and are making historic time, but when they make it to the base of the mountain, all of their different reasons for wanting to climb—or for some not to climb—the mountain come out.
Nyx wants to become Carynthian because his father was one. He also wants his cousins to win with him because of ceremony and it’s how their fathers won. Nyx feels like this is how he proves himself the heir of the Night Court.
Atlas wants to make the climb, too.
They all argue about making the climb, and before they can all make a cohesive decision, the group of blood thirsty Illyrian’s they’d been outrunning the whole week is gaining on them. All of the cousins decide to fight them off, giving Nyx and Atlas a shot to make it to the top.
And the siblings do make it. It’s the hardest thing both had ever done. The mountain is unforgiving and the climb is brutal. Atlas nearly falls off the edge until Nyx catches her. But the climb bonds the two in a way that hadn’t happened for them yet. When they make it to the summit, exhausted and bloody, the two siblings have a moment of realization that the time to finally name the Night Court heir is fast approaching. They know it’s Nyx versus Atlas. They know they both want the slot. They know it will come down to a show down of power versus power.
But, not today. Today, they made the hardest climb in all of Prythian together–as family. Today, with joined hands, they touch the stone as united siblings.
For his 18th birthday, Feyre bought him his first studio. Only she and Rhys know exactly where it is in Velaris so that the studio can truly be his private place.
He is extremely close with his family and considers his seven other cousins to be his closest friends. He’s a very private person, so he does not trust anyone outside of his family, nor does he feel like he needs anyone outside of them.
Kal (Gwynriel son) develops a talent for tattooing, and gives each of the cousins an eight pointed star tattoo. Eight cousins, eight points on the star. A promise that no matter where they all end up in life, they will always be family. The star also tells them if the other’s are okay.
Kal also tattoos all of Nyx’s right forearm with the story of his family and words that remind Nyx to be strong in life and who he wants to be.
Nyx likes to visit Orion in her lab, and one day he comes to see her when she has a breakthrough. She’d been experimenting with expanding the scope of winnowing to reach to other planets. She wants to answer the question of what else is out there. It’s a pipeline dream and near unanswerable question, but with a machine she’s created she hopes it will amplify how far a person can winnow. On the day Nyx visits, she tries to send an apple with a tracking device to the nearest planet. She doesn’t expect it to work.
Nyx is watching from where he’s propped on a couch. The apple he’d been eating falls to the ground as he slowly stands. Orion gulps as she turns to her brother. The apple successfully winnowed to the next planet over, a red light blinking. All Orion can say in the face of the greatest breakthrough in Prythian’s history is, “holy fucking mother.”
They quickly call their parents to show them, but for some reason every other test subject fails. Orion feels defeated but Rhys is dumbfounded and can’t say enough how proud he is, how Orion must continue this work.
All the while, Nyx has the strangest feeling. Like a pull, or a long line getting tighter. It feels like fate.
If Nyx had to pick, Verena is his best friend. She’s his closest confidant. If he was in a world of trouble, like accidentally setting loose eight prisoners from the Prison because he was foolish and arrogant, Rena is his first call to get him out of trouble.
Nyx outside of the Prison watching the prisoners escape: “Rena, I fucked up.”
Rena, somewhere in Velaris: “Not a new thing for you.”
“No, like I really fucked up this time.”
Nyx, just past his majority, wanted to explore the depth of his growing power. Power that is beginning to rival his father’s. Power that is equal to Atlas. The two will have to battle soon, as custom requires. He can’t help but feel like he’s going to lose.
To test out his strength, he decided the best place to do this was the Prison, where he wanted to test if he was powerful enough to bypass his parents and enter the Prison.
It ends up taking the combined efforts of the eight cousins to try and wrangle the prisoners back in their cells. They try to do this covertly because Nyx swore them all to secrecy, and if their parents found out then uh oh.
Rena nearly looses an arm. Aren broke three ribs. Melody broke a leg. Kal’s neck got swiped at by a monster, nearly tearing his carotid. Atlas dislocates her collarbone. Hera and Orion both get concussions.
And Nyx almost gets his head severed off. The only thing that stops him from losing his head is his father intervening with the Inner Circle.
Nyx has never seen his father so full of rage as he fights off the monsters and puts them back in their cells. He finally understands why his father is called Death Incarnate, why he is the most powerful High Lord in all of Prythian.
It is then that Nyx realizes he’s not ready to lead. How utterly unprepared he is. He almost led his sisters and cousins to their deaths–all because he wanted to prove he was the heir.
After they are all healed, Nyx and his father have a heart to heart about what happened. There’s lots of hard discipline, but a lot of worry from a father for his son. Nyx understands what he did and why it was severely wrong, but he doesn’t feel ready to face his sisters and cousins. And certainly not ready to face his aunts and uncles. He tells his father that he needs to leave. That he needs time away to figure himself out. Rhys understands.
He tells his father he’s going to the Continent.
The only person he leaves a letter for is Atlas. He tells her she’s the strongest of them and that he’s always known. He tells her where exactly he’s going and to not tell anyone until the time is right. Finally, he tells her he loves her and that he’s sorry he didn’t say it enough.
Nyx goes to Orion’s lab. He follows that tug, the line that gets tighter and tighter. He has no reason to believe this, but he just knows it’s going to work. He trusts in that pull in his chest.
He feels himself winnow, focuses on the calculations Orion had for the next planet over, and he disappears into night, into nothing.
It’s the most painful winnowing experience he’s ever had. He feels like his body is being torn in every direction but he grips that pull, that line, and before he knows what’s happening it’s over.
He lands on soft grass. His ears won’t stop ringing and the wound at his neck and head feels like it’s opened up again. He turns over and vomits his guts out onto the soft, green grass.
He hears running coming towards him, but he can’t move. He’s in pain and he can’t care about where he is and how this suddenly felt like his second absolutely idiotic decision in the last two days.
He feels blood dripping down his back and knows he’s torn open his stitches.
“Are you okay?” He hears a female call out. She sounds far away.
“Fuck no,” he coughs, his head feeling like it did when Typhon tried to rip it off his shoulders.
Above him, he sees a blonde female with the greenest eyes looking down at him, worried and panicked.
“He came from literally nowhere,” a male voice said.
But he doesn’t care about what the male is saying. All he cares about is for a moment there’s no more pain. There’s just a cracking in his chest that doesn’t hurt but feels like the clearest breath of air. He feels that line, that thing that felt like fate, snap into place. The blonde female with the green eyes seems to be feeling something, too.
Right as Nyx is about to lose consciousness, he hears another male shout, “Go get Uncle Rowan right fucking now!”
The last thing Nyx sees before his eyes close are those green eyes.
I’m totally writing a fic on what went down at the Prison, now. That ending got a little meta and I’m not sure how to feel about it, but I couldn’t resist. I love the idea of a crossover and Nyx and Rowaelin’s daughter being mates.
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