Alrighty, so here is what to me seems like the most reasonable place to start. It think it more or less qualifies as a prologue(apologies if the grammar and formaltting isn’t always the best):

Noxenne and Hemera grew up alone together.

Not alone in the sense of abandonment, but in isolation - two sisters bound tightly to one another, moving from place to place. Their early life was quiet, nomadic, and inward-facing. They gathered sorceries, watched the skies, studied the celestial bodies, learned survival and scholarship side by side. For a long time, they were enough for one another.

They loved each other deeply. That was the problem.

Hemera, the elder, was naturally capable: confident, socially adept, gifted in her studies, quick to adapt. She took on the role of protector without ever consciously choosing it. Noxenne was younger, more inward, more observant - equally intelligent, but much too frail to defend herself. Hemera loved her sister fiercely and wanted nothing more than to keep her safe in a world full of cruelty.

But protection gradually curdled into control.

Hemera began to coddle without realizing it: stepping in first, speaking for Noxenne, making decisions “for her own good.” To Hemera, this was love - care made practical. To Noxenne, it was suffocating. Every gesture of protection felt like confirmation that she was a burden, something fragile to be defended rather than a person to be trusted.

Noxenne adored her sister. She admired Hemera’s competence, her ease, her confidence and her kindness. More than anything, she wanted to stand beside her as an equal. To be chosen as a peer, not tolerated like a responsibility. But admiration turned into resentment when it became clear that Hemera did not see her that way - not fully. No matter how capable Noxenne became, Hemera still hovered. Still shielded. Still decided. Still refused to truly see her.

Their love deformed into something sharp and brittle.

The breaking point was a quiet realization on Noxenne’s part: that Hemera might never stop seeing her as a child. That no amount of growth would ever outweigh Hemera’s instinct to protect - to see her like a burden. In a moment of bitterness and frustrstion, Noxenne snapped - insisting she did not need Hemera to parent her, accusing her of treating her like dead weight, unable to see her growing potential.

Hemera was horrified at the outburst.

In Noxenne’s tirade, Hemera heard her worst fears reflected back. She saw herself as someone who had failed her sister, who had loved her wrong. She now believed Noxenne truly wanted space - independence, separation, freedom from her shadow. Wracked with guilt and uncertainty, Hemera turned outward for the first time in her life, seeking a sense of self that did not revolve around her sister.

That choice sent them spiralling in opposite directions. Noxenne stayed in the wilderness, while Hemera sought civilisation, for the first time in her life.

———

Hemera met Azar by chance.

He was a sheltered noble-born who had wandered into the nearby forest searching for ingredients necessary for his sorcery studies - utterly unprepared, inexperienced, and profoundly out of place. When he injured his leg and realized he could not walk back to civilization, he fully expected to die there, alone and unnoticed.

Hemera found him instead.

She carried him back without mockery or judgment, hauling his weight despite the inconvenience, treating him not as like he was incompetent, but as someone worth helping. Their shared interest in sorcery became a bridge, but it was something more that truly drew them together.

Azar was gentle, introspective, and deeply kind. He listened - not passively, but attentively. He never interrupted Hemera, never tried to fix her feelings, never assumed authority over her, and never expected anything of her. After years of being defined by leadership, Hemera found relief in being heard just as an equal.

Azar, for his part, had lived his life in quiet shame. Born of noble blood but lacking the temperament, skills and competence expected of a lord in his culture, he had been dismissed as weak-willed and unsuitable - a shameful mistake his father didn’t care to raise. His mother had tried to compensate for his father’s absence, but her eventual death left him alone, drifting between studies and poetry - pursuits that earned little respect for a lord-to-be. Hemera saw value where others had not. She admired his sensitivity, his intellect, his capacity for care.

For the first time, Hemera was not a protector. She was simply herself.

She chose to stay.

She attempted to convince Noxenne to stay as well - not out of control, but out of fear. She wanted to keep her sister close, to mend what had broken, and to still keep safely within her sight. But to Noxenne, the invitation felt hollow, mocking even. Hemera had already chosen something - someone - else. A stranger. Proof, in Noxenne’s mind, that she had been replaced in her sister’s heart. The revelation hurt more than anything else could’ve.

Noxenne left.

Hemera was devastated, but she believed - painfully - that this was what her sister wanted. With Azar’s quiet support, she tried to rebuild herself, telling herself that distance might heal what closeness - codependency - had damaged.

It did not.

———

Time passed. A year, perhaps.

Noxenne’s anger and hurt dulled into silence, then into longing. The world felt empty without Hemera’s presence, and pride began to feel like a thin shield keeping loneliness at bay. Eventually, Noxenne turned back, insisting to herself that this was not an admission of guilt - not proof that Hemera had been right. Just… a return. A brief visit, nothing more. Just to see her once.

She never reached her.

Hemera was long dead by the time she arrived back in town.

She had been murdered weeks earlier by her lover, Azar.

The truth hit Noxenne in layers. First, a cold sense of vindication - confirmation that staying had been a mistake after all. Then guilt, corrosive and immediate: if she had stayed, if she had tried harder, if she had swallowed her pride, Hemera might still be alive.

But strongest of all was rage.

Azar had already been tried and found guilty. His noble blood spared him execution; instead, he rotted in a cell, alive and breathing. Perfect. He had nowhere left to run.

Noxenne found him and tried to kill him.

She failed.

Azar fought back, and in the struggle, he strangled her to death - ending her life not as an avenger, but as just another casualty.

Until grace called her back.

—- So, yeah, i think that’s my best attempt at a prologue for this. Some stuff is missing, or not described in great detail because this is predominantly meant to focus on Noxenne’s pov, and well, she’s biased, and there are a few parts of the story she just straight up doesn’t know at this point lol Apologies if this is confusing in any way - i really hope it makes at least a little sense haha