The valley lay at the edge of two worlds.
Beyond the hills, the cities glowed like lanterns strung against the horizon, their towers veined with runes that pulsed like the heartbeat of some vast machine. The light never faded. It painted the night sky a sickly silver, dimming the stars and confusing the roosters into crowing at the wrong hour. Everyone in the valley knew the glow — they called it the false dawn. To the city folk, magic was a tool: clean, efficient, as common as water. Spell-engines drove their trains, crystalline wards guarded their walls, and their children carried whispering slates that taught them history without ever needing a teacher.

But here, in the old valley, things moved slower. The houses sagged on stone foundations mottled with moss. Thatched roofs shed straw whenever the wind grew restless, and charms of bone and twine hung on doorframes, clattering softly in the night breeze. Smoke curled steadily from chimney holes, carrying the tang of peat and burnt rye. Paths were worn to mud, and carts creaked where the wheels had never known a smooth cobbled street. Stories were still traded like coin, and suspicion traveled faster than gossip.

The elders swore the fae had once walked boldly here, striding through fields and markets, crowned in antlers or wings sharp enough to slice through dawn light. Their songs, they said, could sour milk or heal a broken leg. But that was a century past. The fae had vanished, their courts shuttered like gates rusting on forgotten hinges. The world had moved on, embracing steel and spelltech. Only the valley lingered, as if afraid to breathe too loudly lest something ancient stir.

In one such house, firelight flickered low, shadows shifting across walls of rough-hewn timber. The hearth spat embers that crackled against the stone floor, the warmth barely reaching the far corners where damp clung stubbornly. A woman bent over her sons’ bed — little more than a wooden frame piled with patched quilts that smelled faintly of smoke and lavender.

The elder boy, Draven, seven years old, stared at the rafters where shadows gathered like dark birds. His brother Kaelen, five, curled tightly beneath his blanket, a mop of black hair spilling out like the tail of a fox kit.

Their father was absent again, off in the council house where men talked of grain taxes and boundaries with the neighboring villages. The house was quieter without him, though not gentler.

The woman smoothed back Draven’s hair, pressing a kiss to his warm brow.

“Tell us again,” Kaelen whispered into the quilt, “about when the fae still came.”

The woman’s eyes darted to the shuttered window, where a thin line of moonlight slid across the floorboards. The stories were not safe anymore. In the cities, people laughed at such tales. Here, they could earn her whispers of madness, or worse. But her boys’ wide, pleading eyes left her powerless. She drew in a breath that smelled faintly of ash and herbs, and began.

“They were beautiful and terrible,” she murmured. “Some could heal with a touch. Others could curse a harvest with a glance. They lived in great courts across the veil, and once… once they crossed into our world whenever they pleased. People feared them. Loved them. Fought them. Until, one day, they closed their doors.”

“Why?” Draven asked, his voice hushed but steady.

Her hand faltered on his blanket. I once knew, she thought, and it cost me everything. Aloud, she only said, “No one remembers. Perhaps they tired of us. Perhaps they feared us. Perhaps they had wars of their own.”

The boys exchanged a glance, then nodded, satisfied enough. Slowly their breathing steadied into sleep. The woman lingered by the bed, the shadows deepening around her ankles, thick and restless as though alive. The house felt too small, its beams leaning inward like ribs of a cage.

Outside the shutters, the valley whispered in the dark — frogs trilling from the marsh, branches knocking like bones in the wind, the far-off howl of something too wild to name. And always, above it all, the pale glow of the distant city pressed against the horizon, promising wonders her village would never touch.

Her wandering heart ached for more, but this was her world. All of it, neatly tied up in a package of smoke and shadows.