Sorceress: Echoes of Grayskull by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Sorceress-Echoes-of-Grayskull-1227228896

Sorceress: Echoes of Grayskull ANIMATION

The Veil of Moths

The first moth was found between the pages of a forbidden codex, its wings as thin as a breath, its color the black of bruised night. When the apprentice Librarian cracked open The Canticle of Serpents, the moth rose soundlessly, leaving behind a smear of venom that hissed like steam upon the parchment.

By the time the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull arrived, the Grand Library was no longer silent—it whispered. The sound came not from the books but from the darkness between them.

She entered through the eastern archway, her white and blue robes whispering like frost in a tomb. Her wings—half bird, half aurora—folded tightly behind her as she surveyed the gloom. The air smelled of ink and rot. Candlelight stuttered in protest.

“Seal the vault doors,” she said, her voice quiet but final. “Nothing leaves this chamber. Not even the dust.”

“Yes, my lady,” replied Tevar, her young aide, his trembling hands clutching a torch. He was pale from nights without rest, the dark crescents under his eyes like eclipses. “The moths have devoured half the north wing. They drink the light. The more we burn, the more they come.”

“Then we burn their hunger instead,” she murmured.

The Sorceress moved deeper, her staff glowing faintly—a sliver of dawn in that strangled dark. Thousands of tomes loomed on every side, their bindings slick with a thin, glistening residue. The moths had made cocoons from language itself. Paragraphs fluttered loose like dying leaves.

She extended a finger toward the shelves. “Lexomantic corruption,” she said softly. “They feed on meaning. Every word they consume makes them stronger.”

Tevar shuddered. “But how could they enter the library? The wards of Grayskull forbid intrusion.”

“Not intrusion,” she said. “Invitation.”

He looked at her, bewildered.

“Someone summoned them.”

They reached the heart of the Grand Library—the Spiral Scriptorium, where the oldest books were kept in suspended glass globes that turned slowly in the air. Once, this room had been a marvel of serene learning. Now, the globes were shattered. Each orb spilled fragments of ancient writing across the marble floor, letters crawling like beetles, trying to reform their sentences before the moths devoured them.

The Sorceress bent beside one of the fallen books, her fingers tracing a rune scorched into the stone. “This symbol…” she whispered. “An alchemical misdirection sigil. A student’s attempt to summon knowledge directly from the Void.”

Tevar paled. “You mean one of us?”

She gave a single, grave nod.

“And the Void answered.”

A faint fluttering echoed from above. Tevar raised his torch just as hundreds of shadow moths descended in slow, graceful spirals. Their wings shimmered with poison patterns, glistening like oil upon water. Each wingbeat released a dust that dulled the torch’s light.

The Sorceress raised her staff. “Stay behind me.”

“I—I can help—”

“Do as I say, Tevar.”

The moths struck like an obsidian tide. She swept her staff through the air, releasing a sphere of radiant frost. Light blazed—pure, searing—and the moths shrieked in a pitch that tore at the mind. They burned away like ink dropped into fire. But their ashes formed new shapes in the air—eyes. Watching. Counting.

The Sorceress steadied her breath. “They learn quickly.”

From the shadows beyond, a voice whispered. It came from everywhere and nowhere, like wind through grave grass.

“You guard a prison of knowledge, bird of Grayskull… and every prison dreams of escape.”

Tevar gasped. “Who said that?”

The Sorceress closed her eyes. “Not who,” she replied softly. “What.”

In the deepest crypts beneath the library, the ancient texts spoke of a being known only as The Eclipsed One—a consciousness that dwelled within the silence between written words. Once, it had been bound beneath Grayskull’s Grand Library to prevent it from infecting the language of creation itself.

And now, through the folly of a curious apprentice, it had found wings.

“Tevar,” she said, “find the surviving lexicons of sealing—the ones chained in the Subscriptorium. Bring me the Book of Mirrors and the Oath of Still Tongues.”

He hesitated. “And you?”

“I will distract our guest.”

The moths parted before her as she walked. They seemed to recognize her auth
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)