#raptoraem

[lullabyes22-blog]

Author’s Note: A New Chapter

Hi everyone,

This is a turning point for Forward but Never Forget/XOXO. Not an ending... but a rebirth.

I began this fic in 2022, thinking it would be a small character study of Silco and Jinx: grief-stricken, volatile, twisted. But the story grew. It became a chronicle of power, loyalty, and the quiet violence of love. Over three years, I poured myself into it, rewriting, layering, and imagining until the world outgrew its skin.

Somewhere along the way, Zaun was no longer Zaun.

It became something else.

That world is now called Raptoraem.

✺ WHY RAPTORÆM?

FnF/XOXO will always be where this began, but I realized I wasn’t just bending canon. I was building something entirely my own. During the course of this story:

I mapped new districts; I created original cultures, faiths, and uprisings; I envisioned rituals, politics, and histories that never existed in canon; I reimagined dynamics, relationships, backstories and wholly new characters; I designed a magic system rooted in memory, corruption, and transformation.

What I had wasn’t just fanfiction anymore.

It was a novel waiting to be named.

Raptoraem is that novel: a fractured, floating citadel torn from its empire, split into five corrupted straits with a molten, lawless heart called the Pit. A city of rot and reverence, where sovereignty comes at a price.

Its cast:

Erik Mordiger: a ruthless broker of power, haunted by betrayal and a broken bond with a fallen idealist.

Starling Blaskova: a half-anarchist, half-oracle, trapped between being a symbol and a weapon.

Many more: familiar echoes reborn with new scars, new stakes, and the same emotional weight.

Raptoraem is darker, stranger, and more surreal: where dieselpunk decay collides with mythpunk ruin, hallucinogenic storms swallow whole straits, and graffiti bleeds eldritch whispers through stone.

Raptoraem is a saga of survival, rebellion, and what remains when the revolution fails—yet the dream refuses to die.

✺ WHAT HAPPENS TO FNF/XOXO

I owe you clarity, and I owe you endless thanks.

This fic has lived because of you—your comments, your reblogs, your meta threads, your playlists, your late-night asks, your fanart. You’ve carried this world with me, brick by brick, until it became more than I could have built alone.

That’s why I will finish it, fully, before I let it go.

✺ THE PLAN

Act VII → November 2025

Act VIII → January 2026

Act IX → February 2026

Takedown → March 2026 (all fic, podfic, and extras removed from AO3 & YouTube)

✺ WHY A TAKEDOWN?

Because FnF/XOXO was the soil, and Raptoraem is the bloom.

I can only carry the new story forward if I also let the old one rest. This isn’t erasure; it’s closure. A ritual ending for a tale that has already given me everything.

MAL DE MER AND FROM THE ASHES (I RISE) WILL REMAIN UP AND OPEN FOR READING ON AO3 AND FFNET.

YOUR TIME TO RETURN

Until March 2026, everything will remain open for rereads, for downloading, for saving. I want to give everyone the space to say goodbye on their own terms.

After March, the fic will end permanently. Only the fanart (which belongs eternally to the wonderful, talented and generous artists) will remain.

I’d also ask, kindly, that after the takedown the fic not be shared in its raw form online. Let it rest. Let it transform.

MY PROMISE TO YOU

FnF/XOXO will be completed. I owe it that much—and I owe you that much.

Thank you for walking with me through its long chapters. Thank you for the patience, the encouragement, the persistent love. And thank you for carrying it far enough that it could transform into something new.

✺ ABOUT RAPTORÆM

Raptoraem is a nine-book dark fantasy series set in a mythpunk city of memory, transformation, and rebellion.

Every element—characters, factions, religions, histories, and the magic system—is wholly original and unique to this universe.

Disclaimer: Raptoraem is an independent work of fiction. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or related to Arcane, Riot Games, or Netflix.

It stands alone as an original creation with its own characters, mythology, literary voice, and world.

✺ A PERSONAL NOTE

I’ve been writing fanfiction since 2007. For years, readers, friends, and fellow writers have exhorted me to take the leap into publishing. This is that first step.

I’m still here on Tumblr for meta, headcanons, and general chat (because who would I be without super long weirdly specific Silco posts + spiraling in the tags with you?). But now I’m also building something I can truly call my own.

This story began with you: your comments, your reblogs, your late-night asks. And now, I’d love for you to walk with me into this next chapter, not just as readers but as allies.

Indie publishing survives on word-of-mouth. If you loved FnF/XOXO, help me spread the fire.

✺ HOW YOU CAN HELP

I’m publishing as an indie author, which means your support is everything. Preorders, wishlists, shares—those are the lifeblood of a project like this. If FnF/XOXO ever meant something to you, help me carry that fire forward.

Preorder Book I on Amazon KDP (launch: September 2026)

Explore more at www.raptoraemofficial.com

Add to your Goodreads shelf

Follow for teasers, lore, and art: Tumblr | Instagram

Join the Contraband Network newsletter for early fragments, artwork, and hidden extras

✺ FOR CREATORS

Fanart, playlists, meta, headcanons...these things have kept FnF alive, and they’ll keep Raptoraem burning too.

There will be a gallery on the official website to showcase artwork, lore fragments, and collaborations. The Instagram is already gaining traction thanks to the art that’s pouring in. And I’m currently collaborating with a few artists who carried me with their talent during FnF and continue to bring me joy in this new chapter.

If you’re a creator—artist, musician, writer—consider this an open invitation to join in shaping the world of Raptoraem. Your work is welcome, your vision matters, and there will be space made for it.

✺ FINAL NOTE

Thank you for carrying FnF with me from its beginnings to its rebirth. You’ve given me the courage to take this leap, and I can’t wait to share where the story goes next.

The city awaits.

Freedom costs blood. So does magic.

Coming soon: RAPTORAEM: BOOK I

[sibleyk]

🕸️How to Acquire a Questionable Guardian in One Easy Step🕸️

Most children get a bedtime story.

Starling Blaskova - soon to be Stryx - got a city boss, a cursed object, and several deeply concerning life choices.

Watch the moment a murderous little menace collides with the man known as the Black Maw in this animated scene from Raptoraem, beautifully brought to life by the incredibly talented @ichimakesart

🕸 Raptoraem: Book I is available for preorder now.

🕸️ Explore the city, lore, characters, and hidden corners of the web at the website.

🕸 Join the Contraband Network newsletter for early lorebook pages, exclusive art, soundbites, animations, field captures, and other things that are probably not approved by local authorities.

Begin your descent:

RaptoraemOfficial.com

Join the Contraband Network:

The Ferryman

Pre-order Book I:

Amazon Kindle

Join the Instagram:

SibleyK @ IG

[bromleynbones]

Inspo: Raul Cestaro

Clip Studio Paint + G Pen

Visit my Ko-fi

@lullabyes22-blog

[lullabyes22-blog]

SCENE: REVERENCE

or:

Sometimes a story ends. Sometimes it molts.

Note: One of the funniest things about writing Raptoraem has been realizing that Erik Mordiger was apparently standing just offscreen the entire time, waiting patiently like a haunted tax auditor sent directly from Hell.

So naturally I had to let him into Silco's office exactly once.

It goes about as well as expected.

"I'm the man who noticed your table is made of meat. And I brought my knife."

The window is a black rectangle of glittering rot.

Below it, Zaun breathes. Slow and slick, the way a man breathes when he's survived something that's colonized his lungs and made a home there. When both have learned to live with the infestation.

Silco stands with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the city's heaving exhalations. He feels, as he always does, that the city is watching him back. Calculating what he is worth. Deciding whether to live or die by it.

The door whispers open.

He doesn't turn.

The air has changed. That is the only giveaway: a shift in pressure, subtle as the first crackle of a joint about to pop.

"You're late," Silco says.

"Rooms need time to ripen."

Silco turns.

Erik Mordiger moves like something that had been taught to imitate grace and has learned, unerringly, how to twist its throat to make it sing. His coat, a flawless black serge, hangs from his shoulders without a single crease. Pale green eyes inventory the office—the desk, the books, the single exit—with the patience of a man counting windows in a house he intends to own.

He doesn't wait to be invited. He shuts the door behind him. A single soft click, as if sealing an urn.

It is a declaration: I am my own entourage.

It isn't a lie. Not exactly.

"Confidence," Silco says, "is often confused for immunity."

"And paranoia," Mordiger replies, "for control."

Silence.

Silco lets it pool between them. It congeals, then curdles.

Mordiger lets it rot.

"You," Silco says at last, "are requesting access to Zaun."

"Expansion." Mordiger's voice is soft: a softness lacquered over starvation. The green eyes don't blink. "The word matters."

"You're misreading your position."

"No."

Mordiger smiles, showing just enough teeth to be wrong. The green in his eyes shines, like the tips of his eyeteeth. Both glint with the same, precise cold.

"I understand it perfectly," he says. "I'm here to discuss yours."

Silence again.

Not empty. Clotted. The kind found at the bottom of wells, or in the throats of men who have forgotten how to scream.

Silco slips through it as if it were water.

He circles behind his desk, the wood's luster catching the glow from the neon-stained window. He doesn't sit. He stands over it, palms resting on its surface, a butcher behind his block.

"You asked for an audience," he says. "Sit. Speak."

Mordiger doesn't sit. He wanders instead—the fingers of his left hand grazing the back of a chair, the edge of a shelf, the rim of Silco's glass. Not touching anything long enough to claim it. But like fire, he marks everything.

His right hand stays loose by his side. Easy to forget it, but there's something strange in the way it flexes. The joints shift wrong. Too loose, as if they'd been dislocated and reset. Not quite human.

Silco notices.

"I've seen Zaun the past week," Mordiger says. "Felt its pulse. Its heat."

"And what did it whisper to you?"

"Power. Hunger. A throat to stuff full."

"And did you?"

Mordiger's smile isn't so thin now. It has the sheen of something hungry.

"It asked me what I could give it," he replies. "And I said..."

The smile lingers long after it leaves his face.

"...Everything."

Silco's good eye narrows.

"You're just another man," he says, "mistaking appetite for destiny."

"No," Mordiger corrects. "I'm the man who noticed your table is made of meat. And I brought my knife."

He moves toward the window. The glittering rot of Zaun reflects off his eyes. The green doesn't brighten; it dims. As if something inside them has started to consume the light.

"Your city is a masterpiece of chaos," he says. "But chaos isn't the same as value." He half-turns back to Silco. "I can give you value."

Silco doesn't move.

Mordiger continues. "Give my network a foothold. Let me show you what Raptoraem can do with Zaun's wounds."

"Zaun's wounds are its strength," Silco says. "They keep it sharp. Hungry."

"And hunger needs to be fed."

"Careful," Silco warns. "The only thing more dangerous than a hungry city is a fool who thinks he can sate it."

Mordiger smiles again, showing teeth. All perfect. Too perfect, like they were cut from bone.

"I'll grant you credit," he says, low. "Industrial ruin suits you. And, look. The view. It's not a window, is it? It's a soul. Spirit of Zaun in a frame."

Silco's hands don't move from the desk.

"You asked for a discussion," he says, his voice devoid of threat, "not a eulogy. Start speaking, or I'll have your mouth stuffed with soot."

Mordiger keeps smiling. "You're so graciously hostile."

"And you're stalling."

"No, I'm framing." Mordiger turns from the window. Again, the green eyes find Silco's. They still don't blink. "You have a vision of Zaun. One that is—how should I say?—less forgiving of filth than your reputation would suggest. I admire that."

"Admiration is a currency I don't trade in."

"Good." Mordiger's smile doesn't spread. Only sharpens. "Because I'm not here to buy. I'm here to take."

He occupies the chair without asking. Crosses his legs at the knee. Settles in with that particular stillness of predators in repose—the calm that isn't calm at all but simply appetite with its eyes half-closed. The right hand remains loose, relaxed in his lap, but Silco notices now that the joints don't bend quite right. They shift sideways, with an unsettling smoothness, as if they are made of something other than bone.

Silco doesn't comment on it.

"You're not like the others," he says. "Not the businessmen. Not the fanatics. Just... you."

"Yes," Mordiger agrees mildly. "Just me."

Silco waits. Mordiger delivers.

"Zaun's structure is brittle," he says, "because it's built on fear. Fear works... until it doesn't." He leans forward. The heat he holds is wrong for the hour. Not skin-warmed. Something crematorial. A whiff of myrrh in his wake. "You need something deeper. Something that doesn't break when the pressure comes."

Silco's good eye narrows to a slit. The bad one stays dead.

"I build systems," Silco says. "Zaun is the system."

"No." Mordiger shakes his head. "Zaun is the symptom. The system is what's underneath. The thing that makes the symptom necessary."

"You're talking about faith."

Mordiger's smile softens. The teeth are still too white. Too sharp.

"Faith," he says, "is the best kind of currency. It burns when you need it to."

Silence, and the city glittering in the window. Silco lets it breathe.

"You're not here to discuss business," he says. "You're here to recruit me."

Mordiger's head tilts. The eyes don't leave Silco's. The green is all but eaten by the blackness of the pupils.

"I'm here," Mordiger says, "to offer you a chance to be part of something that doesn't die when the lights go out."

"Death," Silco replies, "is the price of faith. You should know that."

Mordiger's laugh is short. Smokeless. It holds no echo.

"Oh, I do," he says. "I just don't pay it."

He straightens. The coat whispers against itself. The right hand flexes, the joints unlocking too fluidly. Silco sees it now, plain—a prosthetic. Well-made, but not quite right. Something has been done to it. Something that shifts underneath the synthetic skin.

Mordiger catches him looking. Smiles again, stranger this time.

"See?" he says. "Some things break. Some things don't."

He stands fully—slow, the way flame climbs flesh once it finds a corner to eat through.

"I'll have a district," Mordiger says. "Not your factories. Not your shipments. Something else. A place where appetite isn't managed."

"You're describing instability."

"I'm describing belonging. That's the difference." He lets it catch fire. "You control the bodies. I control the wanting."

The wanting.

Silco feels it—the distinction igniting into something, fat on oxygen. He doesn't like the way it burns. Too bright.

Mordiger stands just short of Silco's air.

"Give me a corner of Zaun," he says, "and I'll give you a city that lives."

Silco doesn't shift. Only his eyes cut up and down Mordiger's silhouette. Forcing him to retreat or be shredded. Mordiger does not retreat. They face each other across a distance of maybe two feet—two men who have learned long ago that the space between bodies is a kind of language.

"Why shouldn't I dismantle your city," Silco says, "and absorb whatever you've assembled elsewhere?"

Mordiger's expression does something strange then. Pleased. Genuinely, privately pleased—the look of a revenant finding a body to hollow out.

"Because," he says, "you cannot kill me."

Silence. And inside the silence, a challenge.

"Take my operations. My supply lines. My people. All of it." Mordiger's smile is a slow, slow unsealing. "But you cannot devour a myth."

Silco's voice goes low. The one that has preceded a great many unmarked graves.

"Zaun doesn't need myths."

Mordiger's eyes narrow. The green is completely gone.

"That," he says, "is the first lie."

Silence again. It holds the smoking dark of something recently burned. The city breathes it in. No, heaves. The kind of heave that warns a body too late.

Something moves behind Silco's eye in answer—his real eye, the good one.

Just as quickly, it ebbs.

"A single corridor," Silco says. "Watched. Integrated. You stay in your skin. No spectacle. No... whatever you call it."

Mordiger doesn't blink. He doesn't smile. He nods.

"And a warning," Silco adds.

Mordiger's head tilts. The smile returns, but crooked now. Sanded down to its sharpest point.

"If Zaun," Silco says, "doesn't like what you're feeding it—"

"It will spit me out," Mordiger says. "Or it will choke."

"If it chokes, you'll have me to answer to."

Mordiger's smile stays crooked. A flicker of green returns in his eyes. Only for a second. Just enough to show that it remembers the dark.

Then:

"No."

Silco goes still.

"I cooperate with you," Mordiger says. "I don't answer to you."

Silco rises from his desk. Very slowly. The kind of slowness that is itself a sentence.

"In Zaun," he says softly, "everything answers to me."

Mordiger holds his gaze. Doesn't blink, doesn't balk. Just holds it, the way a man holds something that wants very badly to cut him, and dares it to try.

"In Raptoraem," he says, equally soft, "everything comes back to me."

Moment balances on silence. One that could go several directions, all of them bloody.

"Then we'll see," Silco says at last, "whose world this is."

Mordiger's smile stays. Doesn't grow. Doesn't wane. It just—is.

He turns. The coat whispers like a flame catching.

At the door, his right hand finds the knob. The joints still move strangely, unnaturally, but Silco doesn't ask. His left eye, the bad one, throbs as blood beats through the damaged veins.

Mordiger pauses at the threshold. Doesn't turn.

"Zaun is a city of bones," he says. "But it's never learned how to read them."

A pause like breath trapped in a room long closed.

"I'll teach it what it's missing."

"And what is that?"

Mordiger turns his head. The green of his eyes has returned—but the green is all wrong.

It doesn't glint.

It gorges.

"Reverence," Mordiger says.

Click.

Gone.

The air is cold where he stood, like the place a pyre has been doused.

Silco stands in the center of it. The chill presses in from every direction, but his skin doesn't feel it. His mind is elsewhere, calculating the geometry of meat and knives. His hands stay on the desk. The window remains a black rectangle of glittering rot.

Zaun breathes.

And inside him, something that isn't quite hunger stirs.

His bad eye moves back to the window. To the wound of the city below, breathing its wet, patient breath.

A faint smile finds him.

Let's see what the knife costs you.

The door remains closed.

But in Silco's mind, it has opened again. And Erik Mordiger is waiting on the other side.

Smiling.

With all his teeth.

[sibleyk]

Y'know...

One of the strangest parts of being a fantasy writer is watching the news and realizing reality has shambled drunkenly into your notes folder yet again.

Circa April 2025 I began writing a setting built around maritime trade routes, strategic chokepoints, economic warfare, aging empires, and the idea that whoever controls the shipping lanes controls far more than the territory itself.

Come 2026 I open the news and have the deeply unsettling experience of going:

"Fuck..."

To be clear, Raptoraem isn't based on current geopolitical events. But the awkward truth is that current events keep being based on the same handful of human habits i.e.

Empires overextend.

Trade routes become pressure points.

Governments discover that maps are suggestions but geography is forever.

Everyone insists this time is ~different~

Mama Oceana, meanwhile, sighs and continues to collect receipts.

As a writer, the pattern is equal parts validating and deeply horrifying.

[lullabyes22-blog]

After I finish FnF (please god) I am tempted to do a humorous little post where Silco and Mordiger negotiate turf, just to illustrate the contrast between these two rotting, morally rancid beasts<3

[lullabyes22-blog]

💜 A little favor from the old guard 💜

If Forward but Never Forget meant something to you, the best way to help carry its spirit into the next stage is to give Raptoraem a home on your shelves.

You can add the book to your To-Read shelf on Goodreads: it only takes a second, but it makes a big difference for visibility while we’re in the Kindle pre-order stage.

To everyone who’s already left hype reviews and ratings there: thank you. Truly. Those words build the first bridge for new readers who’ve never touched FNF but might be swayed by your excitement.

And if you feel like chatting on the Goodreads page—sharing theories, hopes, or just dropping a line—that chatter helps keep the book alive in the algorithm and shows there’s an active community behind it.

Every click, every comment, every tiny spark adds up into a blaze<3

[sibleyk]

🕷𝕄𝔼𝔼𝕋 𝕋ℍ𝔼 ℙ𝕃𝔸𝕐𝔼ℝ𝕊🕷

Five lives.

One city.

Countless debts.

Erik Mordiger: He broke an empire's grip on his city. Now he must survive the cost.

Aurea Pallas: She was raised to embody an empire. Then she met the man trying to break it.

Vira Mitra: Loyal to the end—if she doesn't decide the end first.

Shryke: She survived a golden cage. Now she's hunting the man who threw her inside it.

Stryx: The gods gave her magic. Unfortunately, they also gave her opinions.

Their stories built Raptoraem.

Their choices may destroy it.

⚔️ Freedom costs blood. So does magic. ⚔️

Art by BromleynBones

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