A very well-written and interesting story. I don't normally read this type of magic-myth story, but I found myself reading through this one quite easily. Partly because I "know" the author, but also because it's a decent story with some interesting themes.
As a teacher / editor, I have one "correction. At numerous places throughout the story, you switch from past tense to present tense – and back and forth again. Several times, you switched tense even within a single sentence!
Of course, that's a minor stylistic error, and most general readers would not even notice that. (Or, if they did, it would not concern them in any way.)
But for me, as an editor who tries to ensure that any writing that gets read (by me or by others) is perfect, I'd suggest you take care in your future writing, and try to avoid such switches of tense.
Write on!
Your feed back is very much appreciated.
First, I'm glad that you like the story enough to read through it, because it held your interest.
That is the problem. I one of the general readers. haha That being said, I'm not understanding how to use the tenses in stories; like when to switch from one to the other or even do I switch and where would I switch? (Grammar flags me on this all of the time but I don't know how to correct my error without a paid subscription.)
Please, whenever the urge strikes to share your editing insight with me on my writing, I'd love to read it. I want to get better.
As a general rule, when telling a story, do not change tenses. Telling a story of something that happened dictates that it should be in the past tense.
If you write something about what you will do or something that will happen, then you will use future tense. But in such writing, you may also refer to things that are happening now (use present tense) or things that happened before ( use past tense).
Don't worry too much about that, and just keep writing. On Steemit, we have a fantastic platform for writers, so take advantage of it. I believe it will grow exponentially in the coming years.
Good luck!