The Echo Behind the Flame

“Before she was chosen, she listened. And in the silence, the flame called her name.”

Every myth begins with a whisper.

Ríona was never meant to be a warrior. She was meant to remember. That was her first purpose in the world I was weaving — not to rise in battle, but to carry the echoes of those who had long since fallen silent. A priestess with ash-stained hands and songs older than the stones beneath her feet.

She came to me not with fire, but with silence — and in that stillness, I heard her voice.

From Ink to Embers

In the earliest drafts of Echoes of the Otherworld, Ríona was little more than a name in the mist. But each scene revealed her through loss, ritual, and refusal. She was shaped not by power, but by the cost of it. Her growth became a quiet defiance — the courage to walk into the Otherworld not because she was told, but because no one else remembered how.

The Morrígan’s Shadow

The Morrígan is not a gentle guide. She is storm and stone, oath and omen. And for Ríona, she is both patron and crucible.

Their relationship is not one of comfort, but of confrontation. The goddess tests her. Haunts her. Marks her. Yet never fully claims her. That tension — of devotion without surrender — became the heart of Ríona’s arc. She does not worship the Morrígan. She walks beside her, even when it scorches her path.

Voice, Silence, and Song

The most sacred gift Ríona bears is not her blade or her fire. It is her voice — not in a literal sense, but in what she chooses to speak for.

She sings the dead to rest. She offers breath in places where memory fades. And when she is stripped of everything, even that voice becomes a vow. Her silence is not absence — it is sacrifice.

Every lyric in the soundtrack. Every invocation. Every whispered name. They carry the weight of what she’s lost — and what she’s sworn to carry.

What Comes Next

Without spoiling Flame Without Voice, Book 2 will ask harder questions. What does it mean to become a myth? What does it cost to remember when the world forgets?

Ríona's journey is far from over. Her flame has only begun to rise — and in the chapters ahead, we’ll see how far she’ll burn to hold memory aloft.