Chapter 283

Daphne descendant POV

My name is Daphne Nyxclaw, named after the Daphne Nyxclaw, my great-great-great—well, many greats ancestor.

She changed the course of history. The first female Duke of Nyxclaw. The architect of the Consortage Laws that legalized same-sex marriage across the continent. One of the strongest warriors and strategists ever recorded. A figure shrouded in legend so thick it’s hard to see the woman beneath.

I stand in front of her tomb. It’s not in a cemetery, but atop the highest peak in the Nyxclaw range, a place of swirling mist and utter silence. Guarding the entrance is a statue carved from obsidian: a majestic, reclining panther, and curled trustingly against its forepaws, a small, detailed longear rabbit.

She also, they say, single-handedly changed the treatment of Longears. I’m told they were once at the very bottom of noble society, considered weak, fertile property. I can’t imagine that.

The Longear diplomatic corps nowadays is infamous—sharp, clever, and with their paws in every government system across the continent. Annoying, really. But bottom of anything? Impossible.

Nyxclaw is no longer a duchy of the old kingdom, but an independent state now. Has been for the past hundred years. We have our own rules. Our own mystique. And it all stems from her.

I walk into the tomb to give my offerings. It’s the duty of any heir to do so upon coming of age. The air inside is cool, dry, and smells of ancient stone and the faint, sweet scent of centuries of offerings.

I place the fruits and vegetables carefully on the small altar. They say if you appease her wife, she will bless you.

I hope for blessings—for strength, for wisdom, for a reign that doesn’t pale too terribly in her shadow.

My eyes are drawn to the center of the chamber. Not a coffin, but a massive, seamless stone box, like a giant, dark gem. No one has ever been able to move it. Not with machinery, not with teams of shifters, not with anything. It is simply... there. Implacable.

Which is why she’s practically deified. They whisper she wasn’t fully human, that five years after her lover’s death, she built this impossible place, walked in, and sealed herself inside.

Some even say she’s still alive in there, in a sleep so deep it’s like stone. I don’t know how true it is, but the legend is enough. It’s why other kingdoms, even the powerful Lion-Throne alliance, leave our borders respectfully alone. No one wants to risk waking the sleeping panther.

My duty done, I walk out of the tomb, blinking in the brighter light of the mountain pass.

My friend is waiting.

Felicia. Crown Princess of the United Kingdom of Phavia.

***

Felicia

I dare not take a step forward toward the tomb entrance. Not out of disrespect, but out of a bone-deep, scholarly caution. After being elected Crown Princess by the council, I gained access to the deepest royal archives. Including the private, unedited diaries of King Felix the Wise.

He brought about our age of prosperity. His laws on fair trade, species equality, and meritocracy are the bedrock of our modern society.

But reading between the lines of his careful, often anxious script, a different story emerges. A shadow behind the throne. Her influence. Her quiet, terrifying pressure.

According to a sealed appendix in his diary—a passage that feels less like history and more like a confidential report to the future...she was not entirely mortal. He described a grey world, a stopped moment, a bargain for a life.

I shudder, wrapping my cloak tighter against the mountain chill that has nothing to do with the wind. We call her a great reformer. A revolutionary. We have statues of her and her wife in the Equality Gardens.

But in King Felix’s handwriting, she is something else. A force of nature. A living check on the universe’s balance. And according to the most persistent legend, she isn’t gone. She’s in there. Waiting.

Daphne walks out, looking thoughtful, her Nyxclaw features sharp and proud. She smiles at me, unaware of the cold dread her ancestor’s possible, impossible presence instills in me.

"All done?" I ask, my voice thankfully steady.

"All done," she says. "Let’s go. The wind’s picking up."

I cast one last look at the obsidian panther, its stone gaze seeming to hold a secret older than kingdoms.

***

Headmaster of Ni-Academy in the Eastern lands of Nyxclaw

I stand at my window and watch as the students hop across the sun-drenched courtyards to their classes. The sight is a symphony of motion ;ears twitching, satchels bouncing, lively debates carried on the breeze. It’s still a marvel to me.

It’s hard to believe this place was once a humble orphanage, centuries ago. A refuge for Longear kits who had nowhere else to go. Now, it’s Ni-Academy, one of the most prestigious and innovative schools on the continent.

Some historians say this academy single-handedly changed the way the world views Longears. I tend to agree.

I move away from the window to my office. The walls are high, lined with rows upon rows of painted portraits. Due to our blessedly short and productive lifespans, we have had many headmasters. Their faces, each unique, form a tapestry of swift, dedicated lives. But at the center of the main wall, in a place of honor, hangs a portrait that defies time. The colors are as vivid as if painted yesterday, the details impossibly sharp.

Nima Nyxclaw.

They say the Duke of Panthers herself painted it. In the portrait, Nima doesn’t sit on a throne or wear regalia. She sits on a simple wooden chair in what looks like a sunlit library, surrounded by the first generation of Longear scholars—young, bright-eyed, and fierce with purpose.

She’s looking not at the viewer, but at them, a soft, encouraging smile on her face. One of them is showing her a sketch. Another holds a geometric model. The Duke’s skill captured more than likeness; she captured the moment a legacy was born.

Our school motto is engraved beneath the painting, words attributed to Nima, something she repeated to those first students: "To leave footprints deep enough, that even after our lives come to an end, we have left an impression."

Thanks to that philosophy, burned into our collective soul, Longears are known as the most relentless, cross-disciplinary strivers on the continent.

You will find a Longear mind behind every major invention, woven into every just policy, calculating every great mercantile venture, pioneering every medical advance, adding beauty to every era of art. There is not a single point of past centuries history were a Longear is not a part of.

I find it almost impossible to believe the old texts—that once, we were known only for our reproductive abilities.

Those same abilities, our rapid generational turnover, are now understood as one of our greatest strengths. While other species ponder for decades, we act. Projects are conceived by one generation and flawlessly executed by the next.

We have a constant, renewable stream of young minds, fresh perspectives, and eager labor.

I bow slightly towards the portrait, a daily ritual of respect for the founder who dreamed of footprints in stone, not just whispers in grass.

Then I turn and leave my office, ready to get some work done. There are curricula to update, research grants to review, and a new generation of students to prepare. The footprints must never stop being made.