The Entalia Bloodline

Prologue

In the Western Tower of the Neyfarian Palace stands a dark heart.
She gazes out across the world of Ciaselle with her hands pressed softly to her rounded stomach. Her body is not her own, in many ways. Too many.
Her webs are woven delicately and in a deadly fashion, all ready and waiting for her to pull the string and set off the apocalypse.
Trouble is, Armageddon doesn't like waiting for the green light. It's going to say hello tonight, in a highly unexpected fashion.

Her dark heart is aching. Her mind goes, unbidden, to the locked corners of her memories where her childhood shimmers. To the nights where her Mama would take her to the River Cahe and weave her voice, softly, sweetly into its liquid threads. Mama's stories were enthralling. She could dye the skies like fabric with her voice. Her words were hot treacle poured over harp strings and her green opalescent eyes flashed and glittered even in darkness.
The dark heart's favourite stories were those of the lands beyond Ciaselle. In reality there was nothing beyond the borders of their world - just emptiness, pure and foggy and thick. But in this fabled land, Mama said, there were rivers that lasted for miles and miles in all directions so that you couldn't even see where the water ended and land begun - and they were salty. There was one sun only, and at night the sky was filled with thousands of tiny little lanterns. "Where the waters run salty and the night sky is sprinkled with little flames, my darling."
This world always seemed like a less lonely place than theirs to the dark heart. More and more recently she finds herself wishing for a world far away from this bloody, twisted dynasty.
But now is not the time for dreaming - the fifth moon is rising.

She'd better start running.