My name is ‌Lila Voss‌, a soul forged beneath the stygian convergence of a yin year, yin month, yin day, and yin hour—an alignment so rare it fractures the boundaries between the mortal and the ephemeral. This celestial anomaly sculpted me into an aberration, a being straddling the liminal spaces where light and shadow wage their eternal war. My essence, a chalice brimming with primordial yin, bestows upon me the duovision: eyes that rend the fabric of reality, unveiling the spectral phantoms and tormented entities that writhe in the unseen strata of existence.

Yet providence, in its capricious wisdom, tempered this curse with privilege. I was cradled within the ‌Drakos dynasty‌, a lineage whose name echoes through centuries as arbiters of the occult. For generations, we have served as sentinels against the encroaching dark, our legacy etched in grimoires and whispered legends. To the uninitiated, the horrors I behold daily would unravel sanity—how grotesque, to glance upward and lock eyes with a headless apparition, its neck a jagged ruin, or a hanged spirit suspended in perpetual anguish, its tongue lolling like a wilted petal. But for me, these specters are neither nightmare nor affliction. Nurtured from infancy in the labyrinthine arts of exorcism, I am a weaver of thresholds, a guardian ordained by blood. My duovision, a birthright unearned, spares me the grueling rites lesser practitioners endure to pry open their third eye—no incantations scarred by desperation, no rituals steeped in sacrificial agony.

I drew my first breath in ‌Ravenhollow Village‌, a hamlet ensconced within the mist-cloaked embrace of the Obsidian Peaks—mountains said to pulse with the heartbeat of forgotten deities. On the night of my birth, serpents descended upon our ancestral estate, a silent deluge of scales and sinuous forms. They spilled from forest gullies and fissures in the earth, converging until our courtyard became a living mosaic of coiled bodies. Two serpentine sovereignties emerged, their masses divided by an invisible chasm, hissing in a wordless standoff that reverberated with ancient vendettas. Had a wanderer stumbled upon that scene, they might have believed the earth itself had cracked open to disgorge its serpentine brood for some arcane tribunal.

Even in utero, I was a tempest. For a day and a night, I churned within my mother's womb, resisting emergence until the first gossamer threads of dawn unfurled across the horizon, accompanied by the clarion cry of a rooster. The midwife, her voice trembling with awe, later recounted how the serpents—countless as the stars—lifted their heads in eerie unison at my inaugural wail. As one, they bowed thrice toward the birthing chamber, a ritual of reverence, before dissolving into the twilight like smoke. To this day, villagers recount the omen in hushed tones, their eyes alight with superstition. They proclaim me a child sanctified by serpentine benediction, a harbinger of fortune cloaked in mortal flesh.

Yet beneath their veneer of reverence, I discerned darker undercurrents. When the elders beheld me, their gazes shimmered not with unalloyed wonder but a discordant medley—pity, tenderness, sorrow, and an unsettling flicker of gratitude. Gratitude? For what? Though I yearned to dismiss these contradictions, my yin-steeped soul has ever been a lodestone for the unspoken, a mirror reflecting the fractures in human resolve. Their secrets clung to me like cobwebs, insidious and inescapable, whispering of truths too terrible to voice.

This dissonance haunted my every step. Why would a village recoil from an infant heralded by serpents, yet crown her with blessings? Why did ‌Ravenhollow‌'s elders guard their mysteries with such fervor, their lips sealed tighter than tombs? Our hamlet cradled a festering truth: the ‌Obsidian Enclave‌, a jagged ridge clawing at the heavens, its slopes studded with monolithic talismans whose sigils pulsed with forbidden power. None dared trespass there, not even the recklessness of youth. Whispers abounded of shapes that slithered in the Enclave's shadows, of voices that echoed from the rocks—a place where the veil between worlds grew thin as a moth's wing.

On that pivotal dusk, as the sun hemorrhaged crimson across the sky, I perched atop a haystack, transfixed by the Enclave's silhouette. The air curdled with the miasma of Zhongyuan Festival—the Ghost Month's zenith, when the dead stir hungrily from their slumber. A nameless compulsion gripped me, a siren's whisper threading through the wind, its cadence both alluring and ominous. Come, it seemed to breathe, cross the threshold, child of serpents. Yet as shadows stretched like skeletal fingers, villagers barred their doors, extinguishing lanterns as if to starve the darkness of its power. I fled homeward, the Enclave's call lingering like a thorn in my mind.

I halted at the threshold, ice pooling in my veins. My parents—whose harmony I had never questioned—were ensnared in a quarrel so venomous it seemed to poison the air itself.

"‌Ethaniel Drakos!‌" My mother's voice fractured, fury and despair entwined. "She is your flesh, your blood! How dare you consign her to this pyre?"

Father hunched on a low stool, pipe smoke coiling around his ashen face like funeral shroud. "It is her fate, ‌Selene‌. The Drakos blood demands it. The covenant cannot be broken."

"Your blood?" Mother's laughter was a blade, sharp and brittle. "She bears my ‌Chen‌ lineage too! I'll tear her from this accursed legacy. We divorce tonight. She will cease to be a ‌Drakos!‌"

The thud of her discarded apron punctuated the declaration as she stormed into their chamber. Father pursued, his voice fraying at the edges. "You cannot outrun destiny. Even if I relented, they would never permit it. The Enclave watches. The serpents remember—"

The door's slam severed his plea. I lingered in the hallway, adrift in a sea of confusion. Pyre? Covenant? Before I could press closer, the door groaned open. Mother emerged, her eyes twin conflagrations.

"‌Lila!‌" Her fingers bit into my shoulders. "Gather your belongings. We abandon ‌Ravenhollow‌ before moonrise."

"But why? What's happening? What did Father mean about a pyre?"

"No questions." She propelled me toward my room, her urgency infectious. "Hasten! The final bus departs within the hour."

Father stood motionless in the parlor, a specter of defeat. "It is futile, ‌Selene‌. The village binds her. The Enclave claims what it is owed. I've tried…"

Mother whirled, incandescent with defiance. "Lies! She attends school beyond these hills—she's no prisoner!" Her tone softened as she turned to me, a fragile smile tugging at her lips. "We seek refuge with your grandmother. You'll adore her orchard in autumn."

Grandmother's name—‌Lyra Chen‌—ignited my resolve. I revered her, the matriarch who sent parcels of candied ginger and tales of distant cities. As I flung garments into a satchel, Father extinguished his pipe and rose, his movements weighted with resignation.

"I will drive you to town," he murmured, the words a dirge.

The road to town—freshly paved last summer—unfurled before our rattling sedan, its asphalt gleaming like a serpent's spine under the waning light. Yet as the engine shuddered to life, dread coiled in my gut—a premonition as sharp as talons. My father's knuckles blanched against the steering wheel, his gaze darting toward the rearview mirror as if pursued by phantoms.

"Stay close to your mother," he muttered, more to himself than to me. "Whatever happens… stay close."

The engine's growl deepened as we accelerated, the village receding into a tapestry of shadows. But as we rounded the first bend, the headlights flickered—once, twice—before dying entirely. The car lurched to a halt, swallowed by silence.

"Ethaniel?" Mother's voice trembled. "What's wrong?"

Father did not reply. His breath hitched as he stared through the windshield, face drained of color. I followed his gaze.

The road ahead was gone.

In its place stood a wall of serpents—thousands upon thousands, their scales iridescent under the moon. They parted slowly, forming a path that led not toward town, but into the heart of the Obsidian Enclave.

"It begins," Father whispered, his words a requiem.

And the serpants began to sing.