The Butterfly Witch - Prologue 🦋
The old stories said butterflies carried souls.
Though, not all souls.
Only the ones that had nowhere left to go.
Long ago, people believed memories were living things. They believed a memory could linger after it had been forgotten, drifting through the world in search of someone willing to hold it again.
Like a flower, or a river.
Or a witch.
Perhaps if it was lucky, a butterfly.
Most dismissed such stories now.
The kingdom of Elarin preferred facts to folklore. Every birth was recorded, and every death was documented. Every significant moment was inked neatly onto aged parchment and locked away in the Royal Archives.
History was safe there. Contained, and preserved.
At least, that was what people told themselves. No one liked to consider how much of history had been lost.
Or stolen.
Or buried.
Deep within a grove forgotten by maps and memory alike, thousands of silver butterflies rested among the roots of ancient trees. Their wings glimmered faintly in the darkness, as though they had captured fragments of moonlight long ago and never let them go.
For centuries they had slept.
While kingdoms rose.
While kingdoms fell.
While children grew old and stories became myths.
They waited.
On the night they woke, no one saw it happen.
A single butterfly stirred.
Its wings unfolded slowly, scattering dust into the cool night air. Then it lifted from the branch.
One beat later, another followed.
And another. Then another.
Soon the grove shimmered with silver light, and thousands of butterflies rose into the darkness like sparks from a fire.
Across Elarin, people began to dream.
A baker dreamed of a little girl with missing front teeth who laughed when he spun her around the kitchen.
An old woman suddenly remembered the sound of her husband's voice for the first time in twenty years.
A scholar jolted awake and scribbled a name onto parchment before it could escape him again.
They did not know those memories had been missing.
Only that something inside them felt whole for the first time in a very long while.
Far away, in the Royal Archives, candles flickered.
Dust rose from shelves untouched for generations, while pages rustled despite the still air.
It was as though the records themselves were holding their breath.
Something forgotten was returning. Something erased was finding its way home.
And on the edge of the kingdom, in a village so small it barely appeared on official maps, a young woman slept beneath an open window.
A book lay forgotten beside her bed, while the candle on her nightstand had burned low.
Outside, crickets sang beneath a blanket of stars. She slept peacefully, unaware of the storm crossing the kingdom to find her.
Unaware that thousands of silver wings were beating through the darkness.
Unaware that every forgotten memory in Elarin was being drawn toward the same person.
Toward the last daughter of the Vale bloodline.
Toward the girl history had tried to erase before she was even born.
Toward Liora Vale.
And before dawn came, the first butterfly would arrive.
♡🦋♡🦋♡