Rayne was born a slave and yet the scars carved in her flesh by her owner are the least of her worries.
Shamed and shunned her whole life by her cruel family and fellow slaves alike, the latter jealous of her power, the former scathing of her wish for freedom, yet she remains a good soul through all the pain, fighting to see another day, hoping it will be the one she will find a way out of the enchanted maze that suffocates her with mist and whispers and has brought her close to death on each of her continuous bids for freedom.
The cruel survival she was born into changes to life when a family of Firal rescues her while seeking to free as many Ailcarriers, those of Rayne’s race cursed with the magical ability to relieve others of wounds by bearing those same injuries in their own flesh, a power outside any Ailcarrier’s control and for which they were bound to serve the Rhite people: enormous otherworldly creatures, all standing at seven feet of height and above, with large eyes made of iris alone and ever-emitting a faint, unsettling glow. They are an ancient race built on long, wiry limbs of smooth, chalk-white skin with no visible veining and devoid of even the smallest of blemishes, as though a people of living statues, carved from flawless marble and tattooed in dark grey inks, all wearing ther silver hair long and adorning themselves with fine fabrics and precious jewels in their vain nature, their skull-like features prominent in their hollow cheekbones and nostrils like a snake's, creature with whom they share their cold blood.
Rayne enters the Firaven Kingdom of North: Arven, Stronghold of the Seven Falls, and finds herself immersed in a world she had never known, where people are steadfast and loyal, brave and gruff, caring and loving. Even being a different race to theirs, for the first time in her life Rayne knows to be amongst her people. She at last finds affection and warmth and the greatest joy in the most simple of gestures while, now freed, her cheeky nature, courage, playfulness and wit start to show.
She falls in love with a quiet and private man who is haunted by his past and shame just as terribly as she, but just like the two of them, none in Rayne's new family is as they would seem from a stranger’s eyes, as all but the younger generation carry their own heavy burden, whether scars or still bleeding wounds, raw, real and terrifying and yet they are each other's home and strength and walk their difficult paths together, the same as Rayne had always done, but no longer has she to do it alone as she now stands alongside the Ravenking's family, and yet, even so, she still must deal with all that was brought down upon her with the terrible acts and tortures carried out by those sharing in her magic and her enslavers.
Despite a past that she fears she can never lay to sleep, Rayne finally comes to know peace and what rest and safety feel like, yet she is painfully aware to the fact that her very owner, Guldur, crown-prince of his decaying race had let the Firal steal her away by design, as though to start a game, one for him to share with Rayne alone. Guldur is a man with a passion for unrestrained carnality both in pain and pleasure, a nobleman and a scholar endowed with elegance and eloquence as much as he is a fearsome warrior, standing proud and brazen at well over eight feet of height and always had he coveted Rayne, in no small part as he knew that in the whole of their land and history, only she could ever have power to match his. At last he steps into the fray he started for himself and his precious trophy, seeking to take her back, while walking his path to his greater and true goal at his leisure, sure of his victory and no less certain that he shall make Rayne, as the whole of the land of Runedain, his.
And yet, in his purpose and manic focus, never had Guldur been able to entertain the thought of things having been the other way around all along... and that it could be Rayne the single most powerful being to have ever been born to Runedain. The tables thus swapped, it could be the mighty prince of Rhites alone her only match in strength and power in the inevitable war brewing ahead, one that would see the world saved, or its every last piece of life brought down to the realm of Death himself.
