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For a moment, savage triumph surges through me. The connection with my familiar amplifies the sensation, its predatory hunger feeding my own. I advance. Shadows wrap my form. Not weapon or shroud, but instinct. My blade finds its marks, lengthening mid-swing to reach before they close.

The Authority forces fall back, their formation breaking under my onslaught. Their order unravels. Some fall. Some flee. Others writhe, overtaken by shadows that won’t let them go.

They all scream.

Varam is gone. Vanished into the treeline. That part, at least, holds.

Then Sereven raises his hand, calm amid the chaos my shadows have created. That confidence alone should have warned me.

Something glints in his palm. A crystal that pulses with cold blue light. He speaks words that seem to bend the air around him.

Power erupts from the crystal, a concentrated wave of energy thatcollides with my shadows, and drives me to one knee. Darkness tears loose around me, unspooling under pressure.

My familiar shrieks, pain transmitted directly into my consciousness. Its form wavers. Wings that spanned the clearing begin to unravel, the shape no longer holding. My blade turns translucent at the edges. Shadows disappear into whispers.

The sensation is horrifyingly familiar.

Exactly the way I felt when they sealed me in the tower.

“Look at you,” Sereven says, advancing as his soldiers reform around him. “The mighty Shadowvein Lord.Vareth’el.” His lips twist as he speaks the title. “Once so feared that mothers used your name to frighten children into obedience, now kneeling before the very authority you swore to unmake.”

I fight to rise, muscles straining against invisible weight. My shadows reach for form, sluggish and slow. Each pulse from the crystal severs more. With each heartbeat, the suppression grows.

“Your power was always limited.” He stops just beyond reach. The crystal glows between his fingers, its rhythm somehow matching my own pulse. “Impressive, certainly. Even remarkable. But it’s ultimately constrained by what you are. Nothing more than a man who stole power, and mistook it for conviction.”

Blood drips down my chin, the copper taste filling my mouth. My familiar beats its wings against the pressure, its form breaking and reforming in frantic bursts. The connection between us is strained, but holding.

Shadows continue to flow from me, but they’re slower now,resistance growing with each passing second. The effort of holding even basic shadow manipulation is becoming increasingly exhausting.

“You speak of limitation,” I force out, voice rough with effort, the metallic taste of my own blood coating my tongue. “But even now, you don’t dare face me alone. Even with your crystal, you brought an army.”

Annoyance crosses his face, the first genuine emotion he’s displayed. I knew the barb would land. Vanity always was his weakness.

“That’s called prudence, not fear.” His tone sharpens briefly, before returning to its usual poise. “Unlike you, I have never made the mistake of underestimating an enemy. I leave heroic last stands to fools and stories.” He studies me with clinical detachment, confident of his triumph. “I have to admit, I expected more from you. I’m disappointed, Sacha. Those years of imprisonment have made you soft.”

He nods, and another net launches from somewhere behind me. I can’t avoid it, my body already committed to maintaining what shadows remain around me, my concentration divided between too many fronts. The weighted mesh enfolds me, the blue light flaring upon contact with my skin.

Pain lances through every nerve. Magic suppression driving inward with agony as its companion. It threads beneath the skin like poison. It breaks apart the bond between will and shadow. My back arches, muscles locking beyond control. The wound in my shoulder flares again, blue light blooming through my veins in jagged, branching lines.

My familiar screams, loud in the clearing and louder still inside my mind. Its shape begins to dissolve, feathers stripping away in strips of smoke and wind, unmaking mid-flight. Above us, storm clouds continue to build. The sky fractures with silver light as thunder shakes the ground. The pressure of it presses down on everything, as if the world itself is bracing.

I think of Ellie again, waiting at River Crossing, and wonder if she can sense what’s happening. Whether she feels the spiral tightening.

I dig deeper, beyond control and pattern, into something older. Past the place training made safe, and into the part of me that bonded with shadow before I understood what it meant.

When the word rises to meet me, I don’t stop it.

“Aeren.” The word leaves my lips as breath, not speech.Strike true.

Power wells hot through the break, rough and imprecise, but present. My familiar shudders once, then pulls itself whole. It lifts again into the air, wings stretching to span the clearing. Not complete. But enough.

Below it, soldiers falter, some stumbling back at the unexpected resurgence. Fear takes hold of them. The fear I once inspired throughout Authority ranks, whispered stories of the Shadowvein Lord. The man who can pull a man’s shadow from his body and use it to unmake him from within. The one who kills with silence and leaves no trace. The one whose shadow knows your name. That fear was always the first blow I struck.

For a breath, the balance shifts.

Sereven’s expression hardens, his confidence finally showingcracks as he sees the situation slipping from his control. He raises the crystal again, lips forming words of greater complexity.

The crystal’s glow intensifies to painful brightness. The air itself seems to vibrate with the power he’s channeling, distorting what little natural light remains as reality itself bends around the crystal’s influence.