Her name is April Velmont, but that’s not her real name. She borrowed it from a passing conversation overheard in a city she can no longer find on a map. The name felt clean, empty. It was a place to hide.

Most days, you can find her in a quiet glade deep in the northern woods, sitting at a simple wooden desk in a cabin that seems more grown than built. She writes. From the waist up, she could almost pass for human, if you ignore the unsettling grace in her movements and the ancient light in her eyes. But below, her true self drags behind her—a heavy, powerful serpent’s tail, its jade and obsidian scales dulled by dust and dirt. A constant, cumbersome reminder of what she was.

She was once Nyssa, the spirit of the Crystal Pools, a being ancient as the stones and water she guarded. She didn’t ask for worship, but a cult of power-hungry men gave it anyway. They brought her sacrifices and sang her praises, their voices slick with piety, but their hearts stank of greed. They didn’t want a god; they wanted a battery, a source to siphon and twist for their own dark magic. When she saw their true intent and contemptuously shattered their altar, their reverence curdled into a spiteful rage.

Their curse was a masterpiece of cruelty. It didn’t kill her; it humiliated her. She felt her spine crack and reform, her lower body splitting into two weak, clumsy legs. The raw power that was her serpent half became a dead weight, a useless appendage she was forced to carry forever. They forced her into the shape of the creatures she now hated, severing her from her home and casting her out to stumble through the world on two feet.

The first years were a blur of pain and shame. Learning to walk was a daily agony, her body screaming in protest against the unnatural motion. She, who had moved with the fluid grace of a river, now staggered like a broken doll. She hid in the shadows, her bitterness a cold stone in her gut.

Then came the name, “April Velmont.” A name she plucked from the air. In that moment, she decided Nyssa was dead, another victim of human ambition. April, however, could survive. She could watch.

So she watched. She wandered from town to town, observing the strange, fleeting creatures who had remade her. She saw their capacity for casual cruelty mirrored by breathtaking acts of love. She saw ambition, fear, loyalty, and betrayal, all tangled together. They were a living paradox.

Eventually, the noise of humanity grew too loud, and she walked north until the forests grew thick and silent. She found her glade, a place where the world seemed to hold its breath, and built a new life. Now she writes, filling page after page with her observations. She tries to dissect the human heart, to understand its intricate workings, perhaps to find the part of it that cursed her, and the part that might, one day, be worth understanding. She writes to make sense of the beings who tore her world apart, and in doing so, she chronicles the slow, painful process of putting her own back together.