The Valkyries

At a glance

The order, reconstructed

The order

Who they were

The Valkyries were not a race but a title. They were drawn from every kind of Fae — usually recruited from birth or early childhood — and trained in another territory into a clan of female warriors renowned as better and braver fighters than even the Illyrians. Their signature was not the individual but the unit: fearless lone fighters whose true power came from acting as a single, drilled, harmonized body. They wielded their shields offensively, not merely as defense. Their history and training were never written down in a surviving corpus — they were passed ORALLY — which is why all that remains are secondhand fragments scavenged by passing historians, philosophers, and traders, and why Gwyn must reconstruct the order rather than simply read it.

The fall

Annihilation and chosen oblivion

The order was destroyed — wiped out — during the War, roughly five hundred years before the series. Per Gwyn, legend holds that the few who survived deliberately made themselves cease to exist, choosing erasure rather than living with the shame of their defeat. This is framed as speculation within the lore rather than recorded fact, in keeping with the order's oral tradition: even its ending survives only as a story relayed mouth to mouth.

The path

Novice, Blade, Valkyrie

Mastery climbed through three ascending stages — Novice, then Blade, then Valkyrie. Reaching the rank of Valkyrie was the highest honor in their land, the apex achievement and not merely a job. In the revival, Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie climb these tiers during training, moving from wooden swords toward the final qualifying rite. The order is also reborn deliberately as a synthesis: Gwyn proposes fusing recovered Valkyrie technique with Illyrian method to make something NEW rather than a pure restoration — the thematic heart of the whole arc, that the new can be as strong and unbreakable as the old.

The discipline

Mind-Stilling and the rock against the surf

At the core of the revival is Mind-Stilling — a Valkyrie meditative discipline Gwyn rediscovers in the library and teaches to Nesta. It means sitting and quieting the mind: deep breathing, body awareness, then learning to let go, practiced constantly. Its verbal anchor is the mantra Gwyn teaches: 'I am the rock against which the surf crashes. Your thoughts are the surf. Let them crash over you.' The self is immovable stone; intrusive thoughts and grief are waves that break and recede without moving you. It becomes one of the most important tools Nesta uses to govern her rage — and later, paired with 'Nothing can break me' / 'Nothing can break us,' a battle-prayer.

The rite

Cutting the ribbon

The Valkyries considered training complete only when you could slice a hanging ribbon cleanly in half with a sword. Gwyn reconstructs this as the qualifying rite, and it is brutally hard — for a long time only Cassian can do it. All three women fail repeatedly, then succeed one by one, Gwyn cutting it first, each declaring the mantra as she passes. Cutting the ribbon makes you an official Valkyrie. Cassian, watching, feels the moment as a hinge of history — 'Right then and there. That was when it all changed.'

The proof

Winning the Blood Rite

Theory became fact on the mountain. Cassian and Azriel had built a qualifier course that could only be beaten by a team of three — Valkyrie doctrine made into stone. In retaliation for the women completing it, Devlon's Illyrians abducted Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie and dropped them, drugged and weaponless and forbidden magic, into the real Blood Rite. Nesta's accidental enchantment on their matching friendship bracelets — wished into being by her unrefined Made power — let the three find one another across the mountain despite the ban. They chose the hardest route, the Breaking, through the Pass of Enalius. With healing suspended and Gwyn wounded, Nesta held the pass alone as a rearguard while Emerie carried Gwyn to the summit. The two touched the onyx monolith — winning the Rite, the first females ever to do so, and making Emerie the first female Carynthian. The order was reborn not in legend but in fact.

The order, reborn

Who carries it

From the page

Verbatim canon