Chapter I: The Mirrors of Mevra — On the Ninefold Soul of the Catfolk

In the epoch before language solidified into stone, when gods still whispered in the hearts of beasts, there came into the world a line of beings called the Velinari—known in later centuries as the Catfolk, and in sacred tongues, those who carry nine fates.

They were not born as others were. Each was chosen by reflection.

In the Temple of Mevra—long since sunken beneath the Blackwine Sea—stood the Nine Mirrors of Fate. Crafted from moonglass and godbone, these mirrors could only reflect that which had not yet occurred. When a child was born under the crescent eclipse—the Veiled Fang as the old calendars called it—they were brought to the mirrors. If nine reflections formed around them, and not just one, they were of the Velinari.

Each reflection was an echo of a path—a life unlived, or perhaps, a truth hidden. The child would not live once, but nine times. Not through reincarnation, but through layering. They would carry all lives simultaneously, and bleed between them as need or fate demanded.

These beings were treasured, feared, and hunted.

Some said they were born from the goddess Velantris, a cat-headed divinity who leapt between timelines with a blade in her teeth. Others whispered they were cursed descendants of a cursed union: the goddess of memory and a forgotten beast-king who swallowed stars. No one agreed on their origin—but all agreed on their power.

The catfolk were born plural.

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On the Nine Lives: The Keys of Identity

It was said among the scribes of the Daggered Library that each Velinari bore within them nine identities:

1. The Joyful Self – The one who chooses light even in shadow.
2. The Wrathful Self – The one who strikes when the leash breaks.
3. The Armored Self – The one who hides, who endures, who does not bleed.
4. The Shadow Self – The one who watches from within.
5. The Ghost Self – The one touched by death, or perhaps... already dead.
6. The Child Self – The one who remembers the first wound.
7. The Glowing Self – The one touched by celestial flame.
8. The Pirate Self – The one who breaks rules, laughs at storms.
9. The Serene Self – The one who accepts.

Each was both a mirror and a door. Each could seize control at a time of stress, pain, or ritual. This was their strength—and their curse. For some lost themselves in the shifting hallways of their soul, never to return.

And yet, among all Velinari, there was one foretold in the Book of Flickering Names—Ai, Breaker of Sharks. She would not merely bear her nine selves—she would command them.

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The Girl with Ten Reflections

Beneath the sleeping dunes of the Singing Coast, in a temple so old the runes had eroded into silence, a girl was born during the Veiled Fang. Her cry echoed through the obsidian halls like a blade being unsheathed. They named her Ai, a name which in the Old Tongue meant mourning, and in the Deep Purring Language of the Catfolk meant edge between dreams.

The priestesses of Mevra, their faces marked with soot and gold dust, took her under starlight and candle. They brought her, swaddled in ash-grey cloth, to the Nine Mirrors. Not every child summoned reflections—some only cast a single echo, others a lie. But Ai…

She summoned all nine.

And one more.

A tenth reflection flickered for a breath—dark, formless, unclaimed. A reflection with no shape, no face. The mirror cracked in its presence. The priestesses fell to their knees in awe and dread. This had never happened.

In that moment, Ai opened her eyes—not as a child—but as one who saw everything at once: the joyful laughter of a girl on rooftops, the bloodlust of a warrior in chainmail, the cold silence of a ghost drifting through time, the roar of the pirate in a storm, the calm of the monk whispering to trees. These lives lived in her already.

The tenth reflection lingered behind her mind like a sealed door.

They did not speak of it.

They did not keep her.

Fearing what she might become—what the Tenth might unleash—they made a decision cloaked in ritual and cowardice. On the seventh night after her naming, beneath a sky without stars, they wrapped her once more in ash-grey cloth and left her at the edge of Sakana Cove, a salt-bitten port where ships moaned in the fog and rats fought gulls for fish guts.

There, among the ropes and rusted anchors, she was abandoned.

There were no priestesses to raise her. No scrolls, no mirrors, no chants of Velantris. Only drunken fishermen, pickpockets, smugglers, and the stink of brine. The world was cruel—but it was real. And Ai, unloved and unsheltered, bloomed.

She did not break.

She listened—to the whispers of her other selves.

She learned to steal bread with the Pirate's grin, to walk unnoticed with the Ghost’s hush. The Wrathful defended her from men who thought stray girls were prey. The Serene taught her to breathe through pain. In the smoke-wrapped backrooms of gambling dens, among crates of salted shark meat and illegal moonsilk, she honed her mastery—not with books, but with survival.

Every bruise was a lesson. Every betrayal, a mirror.

Sakana Cove, for all its filth, gave her space the priestesses never dared: to become.

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The Ninth Blood and the Law of Fractures

The Velinari followed an unspoken Law: never let all selves awaken at once.

Each reflection was a tool, but tools must rest. To awaken all nine without mastery was to fracture—to become unthreaded. Some had tried. They were now called the Whispering Claws, feral things that roamed the Outer Tundra, echoing voices of nine souls in one mouth, limbs twitching with mismatched memories.

But Ai was different. She dreamed in structure. Her nine selves did not fight. They sat around an inner table, a parliament of facets.

As she grew, she did not train as others did. She was taught by hunger and heartbreak.

She would sit alone beneath creaking docks, staring at oil-slick puddles, willing her reflections to emerge. She practiced stepping into rage, then stepping out again. Joy, then silence. Armor, then fire. She could slip between lives like knives between ribs.

But the Tenth… the Nameless Self… remained sealed.

Until the day the sharks came.

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The Day the Tides Went Wrong

The coast that held the Temple of Mevra was protected by reef and god-salt. No beast of the sea dared enter the shallows.

Until that summer, when the stars wept salt instead of fire, and the blood-tide rolled black. From the sea came a school of sharks, too many to count, their eyes filled not with hunger—but purpose. They moved like they were sent, like soldiers answering a cruel flute no one could hear.

Villagers screamed. Priests fell. The tide took the outer sanctum.

And Ai, thirteen years old, stepped barefoot into the water.

Nine selves awoke, one by one:

• The Pirate smirked: Let’s fight.
• The Ghost whispered: They are not real.
• The Wrathful screamed: They are ours to kill.
• The Child remembered drowning once.
• The Glowing One burned beneath her skin.
• The Serene One sighed: Be still.
• The Armored took her stance.
• The Joyful said: This is beautiful.
• The Shadow said nothing.

And then the Tenth Mirror shattered.

She became Ai, Breaker of Sharks.

What happened in the water is still debated in myth, but all accounts agree: the sea turned still. The sharks, dozens of them, froze—then scattered. Some say they shattered like mirrors themselves. Others say Ai spoke a word older than water. One tale insists the Tenth Self—the Nameless One—rose behind her and reached into the realm beyond cause and effect, and simply unmade their will to attack.

When she returned, her red sash was wet with brine, and her eyes no longer belonged fully to a child.

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Eschaton in Fur and Flesh

From that day forward, the catfolk began to whisper of lineage. For the Velinari are not born of blood—but refraction. Ai’s descendants would not be defined by flesh, but by which mirror shattered when they were born.

Some would break the Pirate, and become rebels and sea-kings.
Some would break the Ghost, and walk between the realms of death.
Some would break the Joyful—and wander the earth healing the forgotten.

But only Ai had broken the Tenth.

And so, the line of the Nameless Self began. Her children would not merely be reflections—they would be creators of new mirrors. Explorers of identity, enemies of fate.

And some say, still, if you walk the docks of Sakana Cove, and the tide is wrong, and your shadow splits just so—
—you might hear her voice behind you:
“Choose which of you will survive.”

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