Journal of Tasha
If you are reading this… then fate has finally brought the right eyes to these words.
I have fled.
Not out of fear, but out of knowledge. The future is a cruel thing to witness when you are powerless to stop it. The Feywild will one day be swallowed by a darkness so deep that even its oldest magic will tremble before it.
I have searched every path. Every spell. Every bargain.
No matter what I did… the outcome remained the same.
My mother, Baba Yaga, foresaw it long ago. I refused to believe her. I believed I could outsmart destiny.
I was wrong.
I cannot stop what is coming.
But perhaps… the ones I touched can.
During my travels I searched for those who might carry the strength the future demanded. Yet everywhere I looked, corruption had already begun to take root. The world’s champions were already twisted by ambition, pride, or fear.
So I turned to the young.
Children.
And the decision nearly broke me.
How could I burden innocent lives with such a fate?
For a long time I did nothing. I simply wandered, helping where I could. Then I encountered a desperate woman—human, frightened, and alone. She believed her unborn child would be rejected… perhaps even killed… because the child was not a pure elf.
I calmed her. I comforted her. I promised her everything would be alright.
And then I did something unforgivable.
While she slept, I cast my spell upon the unborn child.
Ambrosia.
Into her soul I wove courage… conviction… and the strength this world will one day need. But magic always demands a price, and I fear the cost of what I did will follow her all her life.
When the spell was complete, I left the mother somewhere safe until the enchantment faded.
I never saw them again.
The second child was different.
A small blue boy whose name I did not yet know. Fate whispered that his path required suffering… confusion… and contradiction.
So I cursed him.
Or rather… I made him believe he was cursed.
I twisted his mind so that he would think he could only speak lies. The weight of that belief would shape the choices he made and the roads he walked.
His name was Satyana.
I know he will not survive what is to come.
But the threads of fate required him.
And I hate myself for it.
After that… I could no longer bear to manipulate strangers’ children.
So I committed the greatest sin of all.
I had one of my own.
A tiefling boy.
Perfect.
Beautiful.
My son.
Zarathos.
Yet even as I held him, I knew the truth. I could not raise him. The future demanded he walk a lonely road. I gave him only one gift—the ability to glimpse the three souls whose deaths will shape the end of this story.
Perhaps… if he is clever… he will find a way to change what I could not.
Leaving him behind was the hardest thing I have ever done.
The final child came from a coven that worshipped the moon.
Selûne’s followers.
Even writing this fills me with dread. The gods hate the one they call the Destroyer, yet their hatred only fuels the catastrophe they fear. If they had simply left fate alone, perhaps none of this would be necessary.
But gods rarely know restraint.
In that coven I found a child still sleeping in her crib.
A tiny girl.
Her name was Ayla.
She was so innocent that my hands trembled as I worked.
To her I gave the gift of healing. The strength to mend what others break… and to hold together the fragile bonds between those who must stand against the coming dark.
Four children.
Four pieces on a board none of them chose to play upon.
I have left the fate of the Feywild… perhaps the world itself… in their hands.
And still, the visions show things I cannot understand.
The Shaper.
The Anomaly.
Their meanings remain hidden from me.
If you are reading this… then the threads have already begun to tighten.
My only hope…
is that they succeed where I have failed.
— Tasha