Tella's story.
They say she was born from all the loneliness and depression.
Long before we were here-before the cities, before the huge buildings, before the sky turned grey-there were children everywhere. So many children. Lost, forgotten, buried in shallow graves and silence. The ones no one wanted. The ones who cried until their throats turned to sand.
And one night, the cries were loud enough for her to awaken. They sank beneath the ground like water and pooled under the world. That's where she bloomed. In the broken hearts. In the empty eyes. In the lost souls. She opened her eyes in the dark and knew what she was for.
To hold. To hush. To care for.
She wandered the world looking for lonely things. The small. The scared. The broken. Her arms were warm, and her voice was sweet, and her teeth were not yet sharp. Not yet.
I remember the first time I heard her song. I was cold under the floorboards, hiding from Father's boots. There was blood in my mouth and dust in my ears. But then I heard it-soft humming, like Mama used to do before the rope took her voice.
And there she was. Her hands reached through the cracks, pale and too many, and she scooped me up without even opening the floor. She smelled like milk and candlewax, and her dress was stitched from lace and shadows. She looked like Mama too.
She whispered, "Shh, my sweet child. You don't have to be afraid anymore. I'll keep you safe. I'll keep you soft."
And I cried. Not because I was scared, but because I believed her.
I wasn't her first child. Not by a long thread. She's had many children. Hundreds, thousands, I couldn't count them. We lined the walls of her nursery, dressed in her soft silky garments and stitched together with lullabies. We don't scream. Screaming is for before.
Now we hum.
Sometimes a new child comes in-sobbing, shaking, calling for a mother that isn't her. We welcome her. We kiss her cheeks. We show her how to sing.
And she does. They all do.
Because once she cradles you… you forget the world ever hurt you. You forget you had a name.
You only remember Mother Myre.
---
Diary of Eric Vane, Final Entry
The town is quiet. Smaller than I remember.
It has no name, just the bones of buildings too stubborn to fall. The woods have swallowed the schoolhouse, and the bell tower leans like a drunk remembering a song. I followed the melody. No one else can hear it. Not really. But it's been in my skull like a heartbeat for years.
Every night I dreamed of her arms. Of her whisper.
Of her touch.
Tonight, I will stop running.
The house is still here.
It shouldn't be. The last time I saw it, it was rotting, swallowed by vines and grief. But now it stands upright—fresh paint, clean curtains, soft candlelight flickering behind the windows. Her invitation. A dollhouse remade to welcome me home.
I don't knock.
The door opens on its own. It always does.
Inside, the warmth hits me like a fever. It smells of vanilla, milk, and something wet beneath the floorboards. There's humming-not just her voice, but the voices of the children. All of them, singing together like a choir that never needed to breathe.
And then, at the end of the hall, there she is ,waiting.
Mother Myre.
---
She looks like someone I forgot I loved.
Her eyes are button-black and endless. Her skin shifts when I look too long—wrinkled, then smooth, then cracked porcelain. But her arms… they are exactly as I remember them. Always open.
"Elric," she says, soft as breath. "You came home."
My knees give out. I don't cry. Not yet. But something inside me collapses. Like a dam breaking.
"I'm tired," I say. "I'm so tired of pretending you weren't real."
She kneels. Touches my face. Her fingers are cold and hot at once, like liquid nitrogen.
"You were always my favorite," she whispers.
I know it's a lie.
But I want it to be true.
---
I feel my head spin faster and faster, as I rest my head against her shoulder. I don't fight it this time.
She hums, and the sound isn't music—it's a gravity. A weight pulling me into a cradle older than the world. The warmth turns to cold, then back again. My memories fade, one by one—names, faces, places. Until all I remember is her voice.
She lifts me. Carries me down the hall, through a door that wasn't there a moment ago.
It opens into the Nursery.
Walls of cribs. Beds without bottoms. Dolls with too-slow blinks and stitched smiles. And the children-so many children-singing the same song with mouths that don't move.
She sets me in the crib. Pulls the blanket up to my chin.
Kisses my forehead.
And I smile.
Because now I'm safe.
Now I'm home.
Now I'm hers.
Forever.