Get the Bonus Backstories
Before the flame was lit, the bonds were already burning.
In the shadows before Woven in Flame, choices were made that would shape the war to come.
This exclusive collection of bonus scenes reveals the untold pasts of Chimera Cross’s most powerful—and haunted—players. From the moment a reluctant king touched the Crucible and awakened a long-sleeping curse… to the last confession of a Valkyrie who defied a god’s command… these stories pull back the veil on the events that lit the first thread.
- Discover the origin of Rhydan Thorne’s incubus curse—and the vow that came with it
- Witness Lucera’s blood-wrought bargains and what she sacrificed to protect Ship
- Step inside Artemia’s final vision and the sacrifice she always knew was coming
- Revisit the battlefield that scarred Helena and left her questioning the gods
- And walk beside Ship, whose pain has never been numb, only hidden
For readers who crave deeper lore, richer emotion, and the unspoken histories that echo through every chapter—this is the story beneath the story.
12 Threads of the Weave
| Thread of Fate | Gold | Destiny, choices, and convergence |
| Thread of Fire | Red | Passion, destruction, transformation |
| Thread of Sorrow | Black | Grief, regret, and the weight of memory |
| Thread of Ash | Silver-Gray | Unmaking, erasure, null magic, forgotten truths |
| Thread of Blood | Crimson | Loyalty, betrayal, inheritance, lineage |
| Thread of Stone | Deep Gray | Endurance, resistance, preservation |
| Thread of Storm | Tempest Green | Turmoil, upheaval, emotional volatility, transformation through chaos |
| Thread of Water | Deep Blue | Change, grief’s healing, adaptation |
| Thread of Echo | Pale Blue-Green | Memory’s repetition, voices through time, emotional resonance across past/future |
| Thread of Shadow | Indigo | Secrets, concealment, deception |
| Thread of Bone | Ivory | Mortality, Sacrifice, the Price of Power |
| Thread of Ember | Burnt Orange | Transitions, liminal space, crossing from one state to another |
Vampire Houses
And whether they are pro (+) or anti (-) Rhydan.
| Demon Vampire Houses | Witch Vampire Houses | Human Vampire Houses |
|---|---|---|
| House Thorngrave (+) | House Seradine (+) | House Severin (-) |
| House Dravyn (+) | House Nyvaris (+) | House Saelin (+) |
| House Belthane (+) | House Verrain (-) | House Zhavir (+) |
| House Veylan (destroyed, defunct) | House Rilathe (-) | |
| House Barain (-) | ||
| House Theryn (-) |
Magical Beings of Chimera Cross
| Celestials | • Primordial beings born from the original weave of creation. • Abilities: Cosmic magic, emotional resonance, creation and unmaking. • Notes: Rare, powerful, mostly unseen. Fallen Celestials (like Nerethiel) become great threats. |
| Empaths | • Mortals born with amplified emotional magic. • Abilities: Emotional projection, emotional thread manipulation, deep emotional sensing. • Notes: Extremely rare. Highly sought after — and feared — for their power to disrupt or strengthen magic tied to emotion. |
| Mages | • Mortals who study, control, and manipulate leyline and elemental energies through precision and theory. • Abilities: Elemental magic, ward creation, glyph crafting. • Notes: Some specialize (e.g., charmwrights, glyph mages); vulnerable to corruption by stronger forces. Notes: Mages are scholars of magic’s mechanics rather than its spirits or elements. Their strength lies in precision, structure, and control, often working to stabilize or weaponize ley line energies. |
| –Basic Mages | Masters of direct magic manipulation, spellcraft, and magical theory. They work through focus, incantations, and sigil-based power. |
| –Glyph Mages | A specialized branch who etch magic into glyphs and runes, binding spells into objects, places, or barriers for delayed or enhanced effects. |
| –Witches/ Warlocks | A divergent branch who draw power from ancestral ties, nature forces, elemental spirits, or primal covenants rather than academic magic. Their power is intuitive, wild, and sometimes unstable. |
| –Alchemists | Magic users who specialize in transmutation, potion-making, and the magical properties of physical materials. They manipulate matter, craft magical substances, and enhance or suppress magical effects through chemical and elemental means. |
| Necromancers | • Magic users attuned to death magic, spirit remnants, and the lingering energies of the Veil. Necromancers do not draw from elemental or structured leyline casting, but from resonance with decay, memory, and what lingers after death. • Traits: Ability to sense, summon, or bind spirits; channel magic through death resonance, not formal glyph theory; often intuitive or instinctive in their methods; not governed by mage academies or arcane codes; often walks the Veil between life and death—seen, feared, or forgotten. • Notes: Necromancers’ magic is spirit-aligned, not theory-based. Some train in glyphwork or warding to trap or stabilize spiritual forces, but their strength lies in resonance, not structure. Often called upon to deal with Hollowborn corruption, soul fragmentation, or death-magic anomalies. Necromancers are feared in many circles for their proximity to forbidden forces, but often essential in preserving balance when death becomes unrest. |
| Oracles | • Mortal-born individuals connected to the threads of fate. • Abilities: Prophecy, thread-reading, pulse-mapping, spirit sensing. • Notes: Burdened by visions; they can guide but not change fate. |
| Seers | • Mortals with limited prophetic sight focused on one type of vision (dreams, omens, emotions). • Abilities: Premonitions, emotional glimpses, dream-walking. • Notes: Weaker than Oracles; common enough to be mistrusted. |
| Valkyrie | • Celestial-touched warriors who enforce balance and cosmic law. • Abilities: Combat mastery, soul retrieval, oath-binding. • Notes: Rare, secretive, intervene only when cosmic laws are broken. |
| Vampires | • Beings who have undergone transformation through blood rituals or curse, gaining immortality at a cost. • Traits: Enhanced strength, speed, senses, and longevity; vulnerabilities to certain magics and relics. • Notes: Divided into multiple factions — each with unique traits and political tensions. Vampires are not inherently evil but are deeply tied to the world’s magical and emotional weaves. |
| –Demon Vampires | Vampires descended from ancient demon pacts; known for raw power, aggression, and darker magic affinity. |
| –Witch Vampires | Vampires entwined with magical bloodlines; skilled in spellwork, enchantments, and ley line manipulation. |
| –Human Vampires | Vampires closest to mortal origins; retain more humanity and adaptability but are often politically marginalized. |
| Wraiths | • A death-tethered being who exists and moves between the living world and the spirit realm. Wraiths are not undead, but liminal—part mortal, part spectral—often created through sacrifice, prophecy, or magical binding. • Traits: Ghostlike movement, hidden from normal senses, tied to the deeper weave. Voice and presence may carry spectral resonance—felt more than seen. • Notes: Wraiths are not undead, but exist between life, prophecy, and shadow. Some are created as guardians of spiritual gateways, Weave sanctums, or leyline gravesites. Their magic is not cast so much as embodied—woven into their very existence. They are deeply feared or revered depending on region; some cultures mistake them for ghosts, others for divine messengers. A Wraith cannot be made through study. It is a fate—chosen, cursed, or foretold. |
The Choir
Nerethiel’s minions
| Hollowborn | • Constructs created by Nerethiel, stripped of soul and emotion. • Abilities: Null magic erosion, ley line disruption, emotional erasure. • Notes: Empty vessels animated by Nerethiel’s will; move as extensions of his influence. |
| Mimics | • Emotion-fed predators crafted from fractured memory and stolen resonance. • Abilities: Emotional manipulation, illusion-mirroring of loved ones, destabilization of empathic and magical targets • Notes: Used to lure or break emotionally gifted individuals like Roma or Valkyrie; once engaged, their form fractures into hollow static. |
| The Dissonant | • Sentient minion specializing in suppressing emotional and magical resonance. • Abilities: Emotional nullification, severing soul threads, cloaking presence. • Notes: Functions like an assassin against emotionally resonant beings; erases more than kills. |
| Whisperborn | • Voluntary disciples of silence who surrender their emotions to Nerethiel’s vision. • Abilities: Social suppression, passive aura of numbness, Null field generation, doctrinal manipulation • Notes: Infiltrators seeded into cities and courts. Whisper stillness into the ears of power and peace into the hearts of rebellion—until nothing remains. |
| Eclipsed Spirits | • Souls intercepted mid-passage through the Veil and reshaped into weapons of entropy. • Abilities: Disruption of soul-tethers, ley hauntings, emotional inversion (joy into despair, love into fear) • Notes: Often appear in necromantic rituals or near ley ruptures. Target Darian’s soul work and Thalen’s glyph stability. |
| Choir Agents | • Twisted former seers, mages, and warriors loyal to Nerethiel’s ideology. • Abilities: Mass illusion casting, manipulation of perception, emotional suppression. • Notes: Infiltrators and saboteurs; spread stillness and weaken magical defenses from within. |
| Corrupted Celestials | • Fallen celestials who surrendered to Nerethiel’s vision of emotionless order. • Abilities: Dark celestial magic, soul suppression, ley line domination. • Notes: Rare but devastatingly powerful; embody the perversion of celestial purpose. |
| Null Priests | • Fanatical mortal followers devoted to Nerethiel’s cause of emotional eradication. • Abilities: Ritual magic, amplification of Null zones, suppression of resistance. • Notes: Perform ceremonies to thin the weave and open paths for Hollowborn incursions. |
| Hollow Heralds | • Messengers and harbingers carrying Nerethiel’s will across weakened territories. • Abilities: Pulse generation (to fracture ley lines), minor Hollowborn creation, prophetic Null visions. • Notes: Act as advance scouts; destabilize cities and magical nexuses before major assaults. |
| The Nullborne | • A singular being stitched from the soul-fragments of Nerethiel’s erased victims. • Abilities: Resonance inversion, leyline hijacking, soul-fracture cascade, mirror projection of emotional trauma • Notes: Used only in the final convergence. Unstable and tormented. Speaks in the voices of the forgotten. Capable of mimicking Roma’s emotional pattern as a corrupted reflection. |
| The Shroud | • A living field of magical suppression that expands across the continent under Nerethiel’s control. • Abilities: Emotional nullification, Weave suppression, cloaking Nerethiel’s agents, severing soul-tether resonance • Notes: Behaves like a semi-sentient organism; creates areas of stillness where no emotion or magic functions. Weakens the Flamebound the longer one remains inside it. |