Content Warning: Depictions and discussions of transphobia

Ahem! Today… I'll tell you the story of the Palace of Shadow. This palace has become infamous among the people of Rogueport, but it was not always this way. Once, long ago, well before it was known as the Palace of Shadow, before even the Mushroom Kingdom claimed Rogueport's territory for its own, the palace was a home. It was a massive structure taking up a fourth of the capital town, and it served as the residence of countless cooks, maids, guards, and, most importantly, the royal family themselves – a king, a queen, and their beloved little princess. This family was the jewel of the ancient sea town. Their joy lifted the citizens' spirits.

Until one day the queen grew sick. After that, the kingdom's jewel didn't shine quite so brightly. The king grew bitter, while the princess withdrew from the world altogether. It was as if a cloud of gloom had settled over the kingdom. What happened next is something that has remained a mystery to this day. At first, rumors spread around the cooks, maids, and guards, saying that the king and princess had been overheard having a heated argument.

And then… no more rumors spread. There was no one left to spread them. You see, this once-prosperous town is remembered now only for its destruction. In but a single night, the town was dragged into the depths of the earth by a terrible demon. A demon whose inky blackness could blot out the stars themselves. A demon whose name still brings nightmares to the heads of children and adults alike – the Shadow Queen.

Through her terrible powers, the Shadow Queen transformed the royal family's home into the Palace of Shadow. But eventually, as with all villains, the queen's reign was ended by a group of brave heroes. The demon was sealed away for a thousand years, until she was freed by… Well, you already know that story, don't you?

I'm not here today to tell you the story of how the Thousand-Year Door was opened. I'm here to tell you the story of one of the heroines who stood against the Shadow Queen. A heroine who was different from the others. A heroine whose bond with the Shadow Queen was closer than she could've ever imagined.

And I'm also here to tell you the story of a princess. A princess whose name was lost to history, buried beneath the earth. But could some trace of it still exist… within the palace…?

Her first feelings were of brick and stone cold as ice. The chill of a chamber deep underground. "Mama… Mama…?" the newborn cried out.

Her mother answered from the other side of a door. "I am behind here, my creation." Her sharp voice made the chill all the worse. "You, however, were born on the door's opposite side. I have drawn my strength over the centuries to create you, my shadow, my witch. You shall serve me from now in your cradle until you are my beldam."

The newborn didn't know what a beldam was, so she took it to be a name.

"You were made with but two purposes," her faceless mother spoke again. "Bring me the seven Crystal Stars and the body of a pure maiden to inhabit. Do you understand?" The child nodded. "Good, I should hope you do. Those ought to be the only thoughts in that little head of yours. Now go, and wear this, as is customary for witches."

Something poofed into existence a foot above the child and plopped onto her head. She would later discover it to be a pointy witch's hat stitched with blue and white stripes. But she didn't know that now, though, because it was big enough to fall halfway over her entire body. Or she was small enough.

Petal Meadows wasn't much different hundreds of years ago than it is today. The main difference was the lack of hostile Goombas, as this was well before so many sided with the tyrannical Koopa clan. No, the meadow instead hosted a Goomba child playing kick-shell with a Toad child. It would've been a rare sight in the modern Mushroom Kingdom, but the young Beldam did not appreciate this fact. She did not know what a Goomba was, or a Toad, or even what she herself was. All she saw were two other kids her age. That Warp Pipe had taken her somewhere much more pleasant than that underground tunnel she'd been wandering lost in, and so for the first time in her life, she was feeling joy.

"Hewwo!" She swayed up to them. Beldam hadn't yet learned to balance properly on the shadow-tendril that tethered her body to the ground. "Do you wanna pway with me?"

"Well, sure- WAAAAAH!" The Goomba had turned around. "It's s-s-some kinda freaky shadow-person! Run for it, Kroop!" The Goomba and Toad fled the scene, and at their warning, even the shell they'd been kicking around ricocheted itself off a tree and sailed away into the distance.

Beldam could just make out the horrified face of the Koopa child inside before the shell vanished over the horizon.

Beldam returned to the base of the Thousand-Year Door. Where else was she supposed to go? Her sobbing didn't stop until she could sense the frigid presence on the door's opposite side.

"T-T-They wan away from me," Beldam managed out.

The voice spoke in its harshest tone yet: "You were not created to socialize. Your one and only destiny is to do my bidding, understand?"

"Y-Yes, Mama-"

"You will address me as your queen."

"Yes, my queen."

"Have you even begun to search for those Crystal Stars? Was one of those children at least a maiden? Bah." Some spittle made its way through the cracks in the door. "Of course not. I should expect no better from a flawed creation like you with a brain capacity no larger than a squirrel's."

The child winced.

"My next creation will be superior…"

In the decades that followed, Beldam learned to bow as she approached the Thousand-Year Door. That always helped temper the Shadow Queen's temper.

Today was the day Beldam's sister would be born. Her eventual replacement, once Beldam dropped from old age. Beldam had grown quite hunchbacked already. She was going to name her baby sister "Marilyn." She'd always thought that was a nice enough name, and Beldam knew there wasn't an Ice Cherbil's chance in the Underwhere that the queen would bother naming her sister.

A little blob of shadows formed at the center of the pedestal that sat before the Thousand-Year Door. The same spot where Beldam had been born all those years ago. At first, Beldam thought her sister would emerge from the shadow blob. It took her a minute to realize the shadow blob was her sister.

A pair of glowing orange eyes opened from where presumably the blob's head was. "Guh!"

"Um, hello," said Beldam without approaching.

"Guh, guh, guh!" said Marylyn.

Beldam looked to the door. "Why does she only talk in 'guh's?' I could talk already at her age."

"Watch your tongue, worm!" the queen snapped. But then, a rare moment of the Shadow Queen's confidence faltering: "My… My second little shadow witch may have been premature, I'll admit. You know, there was once a time I could make monsters as easily as breathing. Dragons the size of buildings… Bah. Fine. Disregard that second creation."

But the queen's confidence was regained as quickly as it had been lost: "Give me a few more decades, and my third creation, yes, that one will be without flaw. It will have to be – I won't have any strength left." Her voice was picking up steam. "Muh huh huh… Yes, my third child won't be another witch like you two failures. I've decided I would like… a son. My only son. He will usher in my age of shadows. Muh huh huh huh huh! My prince of darkness!"

"Ooh!" Vivian traced the tube around her yellow lips. "This is a great shade for my skintone." She floated merrily down the trail of orange grass beneath an orange sky. You might have thought the sky being orange meant it was evening, but no. In this place, it was always that color.

Vivian was thrilled with her purchase from the town's Item Shop. There weren't exactly many purple people in the world, so finding the right color lipstick had always been a pain since the earliest Vivian could remember.

Hmm… What was the earliest she could remember? Vivian asked herself that question every so often, and the only answer was darkness. Maybe a dim recollection of the scowling face of a slightly younger Beldam. But mostly darkness.

Vivian watched as a group of Twilighter kids scurried past, tossing a worn, Bully-hide kickball beneath the perpetual-evening sky. The children giggled and taunted and made the occasional oink at each other (Oinking had become something of an inside joke in Twilight Town). Impulsively, Vivian hid from sight within a puddle of darkness. Without a good shade of lipstick, she hadn't put on makeup this morning, which meant that the outside world was forbidden from seeing her face.

After a while, one of the children's mothers emerged from a nearby house and ordered them to quit the racket. Vivian found herself staring somewhat morosely at the woman. Once, years ago, Vivian had asked Beldam if the Three Shadow Sisters had a mother. It had seemed a reasonable enough question. After all, if Vivian had older sisters, then it followed that she also had a mother and father. And a grandmother and grandfather, maybe some aunts and uncles-

No, now stop asking ridiculous questions and do as I say! Beldam's reply stung as harshly now as it had years ago. Vivian hadn't asked again, even after her sisters' plans had been foiled and they had promised to stop being mean. Vivian's adventure had helped her grow braver, but she hadn't grown that brave.

Maybe Vivian was only feeling so introspective because she was bored. She could always get a job or something. Strictly speaking, Vivian was dirt poor. Nearly all the coins her party had earned during their quest had gone into healing items and badges. If Mario's adventures ever turned a profit, he wouldn't be unclogging toilets for a living. But truth be told, Vivian didn't need the money. She'd eaten Zess T.'s cooking for the sake of recovering Heart Points and Flower Points in the heat of battle, but it turned out that people made of corporeal shadows didn't actually need to eat. And the Creepy Steeple didn't charge rent.

As soon as the Twilighters were safely out of sight, Vivian emerged from her Shadow Veil and drifted towards home. Actually, despite the name, Vivian found the abandoned steeple far less creepy than her previous place of residence. Before, the Three Shadow Sisters had lived in a house – or the remains of one, at least – in the ruins beneath Rogueport. It was especially unsettling now that Vivian knew exactly how those ruins had come to be. Brr… And besides, the Creepy Steeple was full of Boos, so it was a lot less lonely. Most people were scared of Boos, but Vivian didn't mind them. She could kind of relate to them, really.

Back in the ruins, whenever Vivian had wandered above ground, the people of Rogueport had been terrified of her. Living shadows had that effect on people. But that was before. Nowadays, it was hard to be scared by the adorable shadow witch with the stripey hat and cotton candy hair.

Vivian drifted through the steeple and towards her bedroom. She greeted any Boos she passed, but most of them hid their faces the instant she looked their way. Another trait Vivian could relate to.

Eventually, Vivian reached her destination. After checking for stray Boos, she shut the bedroom door behind her and undressed – which, in Vivian's case, meant only removing her hat and gloves. She couldn't help but breathe a content sigh as she took in her room. It was far nicer than her last bedroom, that was for sure. There was plenty of open space for her bed, her dresser, her poster of the Great Gonzales shirtless…

But the piece of furniture that commanded Vivian's attention the most was the dresser's mirror. Vivian retrieved her makeup kit and set to work putting on her face. Vivian might not have had much money, but she had plenty of makeup and cute outfits. Most of it had been donated to her by an overly enthusiastic Madame Flurrie. Vivian supposed this was another reason she might need a source of income, but she wasn't sure it was worth holding down a job for the sake of buying even more fashion accessories.

Vivian did the finishing touches with her new amber lipstick, then inspected her handiwork. She straightened a crease in her pink hair before moving on from the mirror. Vivian had gotten a bit chubbier now that her adventuring days were over. Nothing had made her exercise quite like keeping pace with Mario's athleticism.

Oh, Mario . He had been the first person to ever be truly kind to Vivian. The first person to act charming and interesting and have big, strong arms toughened from years of lifting plungers… legs strengthened from years of jumping… and that mustache. Ohhhhh, that mustache. Vivian could practically feel it tickling her lips.

"It's-a me, Mario!" A fat man in overalls sprang out from behind the bedroom curtains. "Vivian, let's-a go on a date!"

" Wha-? " Vivian promptly tripped over herself, sending makeup cases every which way. She knelt down to retrieve them, and when she looked back up, the charming man had been replaced by a grinning Duplighost. " Doopliss ." She rolled her eyes, not that Doopliss could tell with Vivian's curly bangs in the way. "That's not funny."

"No, but your face sure was!" Doopliss erupted into another laughing fit.

Like all Duplighosts, Doopliss appeared to be nothing more than a cheap Halloween costume, a plain white bed sheet draped over a young child. However, pieces of the fabric appeared to have been cut out to form a spooky face. These peepholes betrayed the fact that there was no child beneath the sheets, only a dim, blood-red glow where the eyes should be. Of course, what distinguished Doopliss from his spectral brethren was the trademark party hat on his head. "Freak-in-a-sheet" was one of the more charitable names Beldam had called him.

"Don't you know it's rude to sneak into a lady's bedroom?" Vivian retrieved her hat and gloves while she waited for her cheeks to cool down. "And aren't you supposed to be with Flurrie's troupe right now?"

"Yeah, but their new play is based on the time Mario saved the Sticker Festival." Doopliss shrugged, an act which caused his sheet to bob. "It sounded dumb and boring, so I decided to head back to the old homestead for a while. You been keeping my room tidy? Taking care of my bird?"

"Um, sure." Technically, setting that poor parrot free counted as "taking care" of it. "Don't you have anyone else to bother?" Vivian wasn't Doopliss's biggest fan after what he did to Mario. Unfortunately, Doopliss's family had owned the Creepy Steeple for generations, so he wasn't about to move out, and Vivian's sisters seemed to like it here, so Vivian was stuck with him. Well, Vivian supposed she could always move out herself, but the thought of living alone turned her stomach to ice.

"No one cute enough, no." Doopliss gave an unsubtle wink before heading for the door. Vivian's face went magenta in spite of herself. "Man, it's kinda dull around here," Doopliss remarked right before shutting the door behind him. "I ought to take a vacation one of these days."

That snapped Vivian out of her funk. Of course, it was so obvious! She threw her hat and gloves back on, then ran downstairs. Well, it'd be more accurate to say she floated downstairs. Vivian didn't have legs so much as a single shadow-tendril that tethered her to the ground.

After rushing past a few Boos and ducking through some trapdoor shortcuts, Vivian emerged into the kitchen. Back before the steeple had been abandoned, this was where Doopliss's ancestors had prepared the grape juice and crackers for every Sunday service (That wasn't a part of the Duplighosts' religion or anything. They just liked to snack).

As Vivian had suspected, her sisters were still floating by the dining table. Marilyn had spent the past half-hour feeding an uncooperative Beldam a bowl of hot soup.

Vivian couldn't help but get butterflies in her tummy every time she neared her sisters. The family resemblance was unmistakable. They were all three shadow-people with faces hidden behind their bangs, and they even all had matching hats and gloves, with Marilyn's and Beldam's hats sporting yellow and blue stripes respectively. She'd been dressing out for years now, but Vivian still felt a swell of euphoria from being allowed to wear the same clothes as her sisters. They looked adorable together.

The only major difference between the sisters was that Vivian was of an average body type, whereas Beldam was rail thin and Marilyn was the opposite. Age-wise, Marilyn was the middle-aged one, Vivian was the cute young one, and Beldam was the wrinkled hunchbacked one. It was a classic mother-maiden-crone dynamic, and that made Vivian the maiden – a fact which caused her brain to bubble with joy.

Beldam snorted at Vivian's arrival. She'd been a bitter old lady for as long as Vivian could remember, but lately, this trait had become more pronounced than ever. Beldam was no longer thin, she was skeletal. Her gaunt face was barely visible beneath her hat anymore, and she was so hunched that her nose dragged the ground.

Marilyn had taken it upon herself to become Beldam's personal nursemaid, hence the bowl of Spicy Soup she was currently forcing down her big sister's throat. It didn't surprise Vivian that Beldam was making such a fuss – That soup was made from Fire Flowers, and Beldam loathed anything warm.

"Marilyn? Beldam?" Vivian drifted towards the table, making her voice as sugary as possible.

"What do you want?" came Beldam's reply, followed by "I mean, what can we do for you, my lovely?" after a nudge from Marilyn.

"Well, I feel like we've all been a little restless lately," said Vivian, idly curling a strand of hair around her finger. "We don't know what to do with ourselves, and we're getting cabin fever cooped up in this steeple all the time. How would you feel about going on a vacation? It'd be just us Three Shadow Sisters spending quality time together."

"Ooh! A vacation?" Doopliss poked his pasty white head through the doorway. "I'm an honorary Shadow Sister. Can I come-?"

He was met with a simultaneous reaction of "No!" from Vivian and Beldam and "Guh!" from Marilyn.

"Aww…" Doopliss slinked off down the hallway, head drooping.

"So what do you think?" Vivian turned back to her sisters. "Doesn't that sound fun? Twilight Town is so gloomy. We should go somewhere sunny like Poshley Heights or Isle Delfino-"

" No, I hate traveling ." The violence of Beldam's reply sent her into a coughing fit.

"But Sis!" Vivian was taken aback. "If you would only give it a chance-"

"We're shadows!" snapped Beldam, sitting up from the table. "We don't belong in the sunlight, of all places."

"Guh!" said Marilyn.

"I am not sulking, Marilyn." Beldam swung her arm, spilling soup all over the carpet. Marilyn cried out and ran for paper towels, leaving Beldam free to float for the exit. As she was leaving, she muttered, "We weren't created to go on vacations..."

Vivian's purple ears perked up. "Then what were we created for?"

"Never mind that!" The door slammed in Vivian's face.

For a moment, Vivian stared at it. Then she took a breath and went over to help Marilyn clean up the mess.

All Marilyn could offer was an apologetic, "Guhhh..."

"I'll be alright, sis." Vivian sighed. All things considered, that had gone well. In the old days, Beldam would be dishing out the nastiest punishments imaginable right now. One time, Beldam had forced Vivian to scrub the entrance pipe to the Pit of 100 Trials until it no longer smelled like death. Vivian's arms still ached at the thought of it. But somehow, even if they hadn't been forcing Beldam to be nice now, Vivian got the feeling Beldam no longer had the energy for punishments.

Still, though, that last comment Beldam had made… Well, Beldam may have often accused Vivian of being a ditz, but that comment had gotten Vivian's gears turning.

The underground ruins of Rogueport were eerie, but the aboveground town put Vivian even more on edge. The number of pedestrians on the streets made her head spin. Vivian's every impulse told her to hide in her Shadow Veil, but she'd never reach her destination if she spent all day hiding. She had to suck it up and keep moving.

Funnily enough, Vivian was more concerned with her social anxiety than with the fact that Rogueport boasted the highest larceny rates in the Mushroom Kingdom. In fact, the only Bandit that Vivian had bumped into had sped right past her (Meanwhile, in a nearby alleyway, Swindell the Bandit was lamenting the fact that Vivian's billfold was empty).

It was a thankfully short walk to Vivian's destination. The sewer's exit Warp Pipe let out right next to the building, and Vivian had remembered to write her name on the inside of her hat, which for some reason was required to use the pipe out of Twilight Town.

The front door was unlocked, but Vivian thought it best to knock anyway.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," came a small voice. "Keep your knickers on." The door swung open. "Well, if it isn't Miss Vivian!" You'd be forgiven for thinking the man at the doorway was a gigantic Dried Shroom wearing swirly glasses, but he was actually an elderly Goomba. Professor Frankly's face lit up as he ushered Vivian inside. "What can I do for you, little lady?"

"Oh, I'm not sure, really. I guess I was just..." Vivian glanced away, face flushing. "...wondering who I was , exactly. You're a scientist, right? I was hoping you could help me figure it out. I've never met any other shadow-people besides my sisters." When she'd first met Mario, Vivan had gotten all excited thinking he was a shadow-person, too, but he had turned out to be your average everyday human being who could jump super high and had his body stolen by a Duplighost. Garden variety stuff.

"Ah, yes, the search for identity! One of the core tenements of philosophy." As he spoke, Frankly sifted through the piles of books on the floor to reach a small kettle. Professor Frankly's house was a pitifully small, enclosed space, every cubic inch of which was covered in volume after volume of scholarly research. There was, however, a sliver of the house reserved for a stove top, upon which rested some boiling water.

Frankly offered Vivian a cup, which she accepted. Vivian had once asked Goombella how exactly Goombas were able to hold things without limbs, but Goombella had said she tried not to think about it too hard.

"The questioning of identity is an integral part of adolescence." Frankly nodded approvingly as he sipped his tea. Vivian sipped hers, too, then made a face and stealthily poured the rest into a potted plant. "Why, I remember when I was a lad, bemoaning my status as a lowly Goomba, draft-dodging my way out of Bowser's army. In fact, this one time, I-"

"Does that mean you know what species I am?" cut in Vivian. "Do you know who created me, or if I have any other family, or-?"

"Oh, yes, that." The question seemed to shake Frankly back into reality. "Well, Miss Vivian, as fate would have it… I HAVE NO IDEA!"

Vivian performed an anime-style face fault.

"I'm an archeology professor," Frankly continued. "So unless you're actually an ancient fossil, I'm afraid I can't be of much help to you. Of course, in my studies of the Thousand-Year Door, I've often wondered how Beldam came into the Shadow Queen's service, but Beldam's refused to answer any of my questions." He gave Vivian a hopeful look behind his swirly glasses. "You wouldn't happen to know how your sisters met the Shadow Queen or how they came into possession of the Magical Map, would you?"

Vivian picked herself off the floor, then shook her head. "I'm sorry. I'm so much younger than Beldam, and she'd been trying to open the Thousand-Year Door for my and Marilyn's entire lives. Beldam never answers my questions, either." Vivian clutched her temple. "The farthest back I remember, we were living in the ruins beneath Rogueport." She sighed. "Sorry for bothering you, Professor. I'll be on my way."

But before she could make for the door, Frankly blocked her path. Vivian sensed he would've put a hand on her shoulder if possible. "Don't be too hasty, Miss Vivian. I may not be able to help you, but I have a colleague who can."

Waves crashed against the hull of a cargo boat. The sea was exceptionally stormy tonight, but Vivian couldn't let her fears get the best of her. No matter the size of the waves, she had to get to Toad Town. That's where she would find the answers to questions she'd been asking herself her entire life.

Vivian felt guilty about using her Shadow Veil to stowaway on a ship, but she didn't have time to save up money for a ticket, and she didn't want to trouble Admiral Bobbery. Within the dark dimension of the Veil, Vivian took a steadying breath. She wished that Mario, Goombella, and the others could've been here, but Vivian had to learn to stand on her own. She could do this. She could do this.

And so young Vivian set sail for Toad Town… unaware of the horrifying revelation awaiting her.