Once upon a time, far to the north where even the wind had teeth, there lived a hidden race among the frozen tundra of Russia. They were not human, though they walked in human shape. They were extremely pale beings and their backs bore silver and white butterfly wings like the breath of winter itself. They called themselves the Seryen, children of the cold skies.
They lived in silence and secrecy, worshiping the auroras and singing to the storms. But one winter, a child was born who should never have been born.
Her wings were not silver or white. They were not even gray.
They were black as a starless night. Within the feathers, hundreds of eyes blinked open and shut like living embers. They saw everything. They saw too much. When the midwife saw them, she screamed. The village elders gathered, whispering prayers and curses. They declared the child a blight sent by the demons who envied their purity.
But they did not kill her. They were too afraid. Instead, they cast her family into exile.
Her parents, still bearing their silver wings, built a home of ice and timber on the edge of the tundra, where the auroras twisted like ghosts and the snow wolves sang at night. They raised her with love that the world did not deserve. Her mother taught her gentleness and her father taught her strength.
But beyond their walls, hatred festered.
The village children threw stones when she strayed too near. The adults crossed themselves, muttering "Plague-born." Even the elders avoided the direction of her family's smoke.
She only wanted to see the laughter inside the walls she was denied. Once, when she was ten, she disobeyed and wandered toward the village. The people saw her and the screaming started. They pelted her with stones until her blood steamed against the snow. She ran home with torn wings and a face full of tears.
That night, she asked her parents a simple question.
"Why am I cursed? Why do my wings see things yours do not?"
Her parents could not answer. Her father only held her tight, his voice shaking as he gave her an answer only a child would see as cruel.
"The world fears what it cannot name. You are not their curse. You are their warning and it scares them."
So they raised her not as a child, but as something the world would one day regret making.
She learned to fight the snow wolves that came at night. She learned to harden her skin with Xana until even steel broke against it. She learned to fly through blizzards that could tear a village apart. By eighteen, she had become something feral and unoly.
Then the soldiers came.
They arrived at dawn, when the frost still clung to the breath of the living. Russian soldiers descended on the tundra like a plague of red ants. The first gunshot tore through the silence of centuries.
Her village, the last of the Seryen, burned.
Wings of silver and white burned like kindling. Flesh sizzled. Children's screams froze in the air as bullets ripped through them. The snow turned crimson and stayed that way. She saw a soldier spear a boy through the chest, his wings twitching as they died. Another soldier laughed as he set a woman's feathers aflame just to watch her writhe.
Then came their leader.
He was tall, pale, and carved from the kind of cruelty that no longer needed reason. His medals gleamed even as he stepped over corpses. When his men dragged her from her hiding place, his eyes lit up.
"Take her alive. We'll bleed the devil out of her."
Her parents fought back. Her father was bayoneted through the stomach. Her mother's skull split open by a rifle butt. She screamed so hard she coughed blood. They forced her to kneel between their corpses. Her mother's blood soaked into her dress. The commander raised his pistol, met her eyes and shot her father in the head.
"Demons don't deserve graves."
When she woke up, she was in chains.
The facility was underground with metal and concrete and the stench of disinfectant. Scientists circled her like vultures. They took blood. They plucked the ash off her wings. They whispered theories while her screams echoed down sterile corridors. She begged for death. They gave her vivisection. And in that period of torture, something inside her broke.
When the scalpel touched bone, the eyes in her wings opened. They looked at the world that had condemned her. The restraints shattered.
The first scientist to approach her died choking on his own lungs. The second tore his face off with his bare hands. Every breath she took filled the room with black dust that burned through flesh like acid. Bullets melted in midair. Skin sloughed off bones.
By the time she broke through the facility roof, half of Moscow was awake to the sound of her shrieking. The sky went dark with ash and the killing began. Buildings melted under waves of corrosive dust. Air turned to poison. Flesh turned to sludge. People fled into the snow only to drown in blood. Streets overflowed with what used to be human beings.
By dawn, Moscow was gone. Two hundred forty thousand were dead. Not a single scream was left uncounted. That day was written down in censored reports and burned in secret archives as The Massacre of the Unknown.
But the survivors named her what she truly was.
The Moth Maiden.
Her wings had grown monstrous, spanning the city. Each beat carried the sound of mourning. Her eyes wept black teaes. The world had made her a weapon, and she became its executioner. Russia sent its greatest Fluxers. It summoned ten of the best and three hundred Officia Fluxers. They didn't come to win. They came to seal.
They bound her in chains forged from their own souls, each link humming with sacrifice. Even while being sealed, she took half of Russia's ten strongest with her. They dragged her north, screaming. Every cry cracked glaciers and killed flocks of birds midflight.
When they reached the Arctic, they buried her beneath miles of ice.
This happened on July 27th, 1941.
Russia called it a victory. Those who survived called it a truce signed in blood because they all knew that even sealed, the eyes in her wings never closed. And then, decades later, transmigrators wearing the faces of government officials stumbled upon her prison and thought to "free" her.
The first thing that escaped was her sigh. And then, in the darkness below, a thousand eyes opened again from her wings.
"Russia will burn. And I will watch it glow."