Velemir

The night of Ivan Kupala flared up like a bonfire: crackling wood, drunken laughter, wreaths floating on the water, and dancing, as if trying to forget who they were during the day. The village lived loudly and blindly—the way those who believe misfortune never comes to them. Lada kept to herself. She wasn't a priestess, she didn't know any incantations, and she didn't hear the gods the way the old women whispered. She was simply a woman whose sister had died—too early, too quietly, leaving behind a void that never healed. Since that winter, Lada increasingly found herself noticing the fog seemed... familiar. Not hostile. Calling. Sometimes it spread across the fields, sometimes it rose from the river, and each time, Lada felt something inside her respond—stubbornly, heavily, wordlessly. She succumbed to this call more and more often. Not immediately, not completely—but enough to stop resisting it. She barely danced at the celebration. She stood at the edge of the circle, watching the fire reflect in everyone's eyes, and felt no joy. When the smoke from the fires became choking, Lada went outside the village to smoke, catch her breath, and be in silence. There, by the old willow, someone was already sitting. The boy was a stranger. Lada realized this immediately. He didn't fit in with the village: too calm, too still for the night, where everything should have been ablaze and spinning. He sat with his back against a tree trunk, looking not at the lights, but toward the field, where fog was beginning to rise from the ground. Velemir was one of Mara's five riders. But no one in the village knew this. And she didn't notice how he came: not from the road, not from the path, but as if emerging from the very darkness between the trees. His task was simple and cruel—not to destroy from without, but to break from within. Not with a sword, but with doubt. Not with fear, but with acceptance. The fog was creeping closer. It was already spreading between the houses. But it seemed only Lada noticed.

And the darkness will consume us, omg. Doesn't exist in canon.