Dear Readers,

This is my very first novel, and I am deeply grateful to share it with you. Writing these pages has been both a challenge and a joy, and your support means the world to me. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Dear Readers,

It feels both exciting and humbling to finally share this story with you. This is my first novel presented here, and though the pages belong to the characters, the heart behind it belongs to me. To write is to reveal a hidden piece of oneself, and to know that you are here, reading these words, fills me with gratitude I can hardly describe.

When I first imagined this tale, it came to me not as a grand design but as a soft whisper — a flicker of light against shadow. A girl who dreams of someone she has never met. A boy who feels the same yearning from across a realm divided. From that whisper grew voices, names, faces, and emotions that demanded to be heard. Seraphina, Kael, Lucien, Elira, Lyra — each of them stepped forward, carrying secrets, desires, and struggles that made them real in my heart long before they appeared on these pages.

This story is not merely about kingdoms or prophecy, but about the most fragile and powerful thing of all: connection. The pull between two souls who should not meet, yet cannot stop searching for one another. The silent ache of those who love without being seen. The choices between duty and desire, light and shadow, fate and freedom. Perhaps, in some way, you will find a reflection of yourself in these characters — in their longing, in their strength, or even in their mistakes.

As you walk with them through luminous gardens and shadowed halls, I hope you allow yourself to feel deeply. Let the tenderness of Lucien’s devotion touch you, even as his love goes unspoken. Notice the quiet ache in Elira’s heart, as she smiles through her pain. And most of all, listen for the voice of Kael, whose presence lingers in Seraphina’s dreams like a promise she cannot release. Every chapter is a thread, and together they weave a tapestry of love, sacrifice, and destiny.

I ask you, dear reader, to keep turning these pages. The story has only begun to unfurl. Ahead lies wonder and sorrow, joy and heartbreak, revelations that may shake the very foundation of this world. And yet, it is in the trembling that truth is born. The Veil that separates light and shadow is weakening, and as it does, so too will the lives of these characters unravel and entwine in ways they could never expect.

Thank you for giving your time, your attention, and your imagination to this work. Your presence here means more than you know. I hope that as you read, you feel not only the journey of the characters but also the sincerity of the hand that wrote them. This is not a perfect story — no story ever is — but it is one born from love and offered to you with honesty.

So come, walk with me. Step into this world. Allow it to unfold around you like dawn breaking across the horizon. Together, let us see where fate will lead.

With all my heart,

KAJANE

For as long as she could remember, Seraphina had dreamed of him.

The dreams came like whispers in the quiet hours of the night. A tall figure cloaked in darkness, wings vast and black, eyes glowing silver like twin shards of the moon. He never spoke, yet she felt him — his presence pressing against her heart, heavy with longing, as though he reached for her across a distance neither of them could cross.

When she woke, her chest always ached with an emptiness she could not name. Her hands trembled as if they had once held something precious and let it slip away. She told no one, for how could she explain such a thing? A maiden of light dreaming of shadows?

Yet what Seraphina did not know was that she was not the only one dreaming.

Across the Veil, in the endless night of the Shadow Realm, Kael too saw visions. Night after night, as he lay in the silence of his dark chamber, she appeared. A girl glowing like dawn itself — golden hair spilling like sunlight over her shoulders, eyes the color of the sky at its brightest, wings of soft white that shimmered as if painted by starlight. She would walk toward him in those dreams, her gaze gentle yet steady, unafraid of the shadows that curled around him.

He would reach for her. Always, he would reach.

And always, he would wake with his hand empty, his heart hollow.

At first, he told himself they were only dreams. Tricks of the mind. But each night she returned, and each night she felt more real. The warmth of her presence lingered long after he opened his eyes. The yearning grew, until it became a hunger he could not silence.

And then the night came when the dream stepped into the waking world.

The moon rose silver and heavy, its light spilling over the quiet forest that lay on the edge of the Veil. The air was still, thick with something unseen, as if the heavens themselves were holding their breath.

Seraphina walked softly beneath the trees, her white gown trailing against the earth. Her golden hair glimmered beneath the moonlight, each strand catching the glow as though the sun itself had woven it. Her wings, pale and bright, spread gently behind her. They glowed faintly, a light not of the sun but of her very being. She moved with caution, but her eyes, a clear and shining blue, searched the shadows without fear.

For she knew, somehow, he would be there.

And he was.

Kael stepped forward from the darkness, the silver of his eyes catching the moonlight. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his dark hair falling in loose waves that brushed against his collar. His black wings unfurled slowly, vast and powerful, their feathers swallowing the light around him. His presence was commanding, yet quiet, as though the night itself obeyed his steps.

When their eyes met, both of them stilled.

This was no dream.

Seraphina’s lips parted, her breath catching. “You…” Her voice trembled, soft with awe.

Kael’s chest tightened at the sound. He had heard her voice in dreams, but never like this — never sharp and clear against the silence of the night. “You should not be here,” he said, his tone low, steady, though every part of him wanted to step closer.

“And yet,” Seraphina whispered, her eyes fixed on his, “here I am.”

The forest seemed to bow to the moment. The leaves stilled. The wind hushed. Even the moonlight stretched between them like a fragile thread, binding light and shadow together.

Kael’s wings shifted behind him, the shadows at his feet curling like smoke. His silver gaze lingered on her glowing figure, on the way her wings caught the light, on the warmth she carried like a flame that could never be put out.

Seraphina, too, studied him. He was every piece of her dream and more — the strength in his stance, the sorrow hidden in his eyes, the quiet power that both unsettled and drew her closer. She should have been afraid. She had been told all her life that shadows consumed, that they left nothing behind. But standing before him, she felt no fear. Only a strange, aching pull.

For a moment, the world seemed to forget its laws.

But above them, hidden in the sky, the Veil stirred. It rippled faintly, unseen yet fragile, as though warning that something forbidden had been touched.

Neither of them noticed.

They only saw each other.

And in that moment, the night when darkness first loved the light had begun.