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I sway, breath catching, eyes narrowing as I fight to keep the horizon still. My balance returns with effort. I lock it down, not my power, but my current response to it.

“Which way do we go?” Her voice cuts through the maelstrom of sensation.

I scan the dunes. The same desert that watched me take my last breath of freedom, now witnesses the opposite. The same wind. The same silence. I orient myself by the sun, grateful that, at least, hasn’t changed.

“Sacha?”

I consider our options, though in reality, there is only one sensible choice.

“East. Toward Thornevale Ridge. The desert eventually gives way to more hospitable land. There’s a …” I hesitate, uncertainty washing over me for the first time. “Therewasan outreach town, Ravencross. We’ll go there first.”

Ravencross, if it still exists, will be our best chance of survival. It will provide us with water and shelter, and more importantly, it’s where I spent the final months before the betrayal. If any of my allies remain, they might be there … if any survived at all.

So much will have changed in my absence. There will have been alliances formed and broken. Powers risen and fallen. I need to understand the state of the world before revealing my return.

I start walking without checking to see if she follows. The sound of her breathing behind me tells me she does. She’s smart enough to know she cannot survive the desert alone.

My body remembers freedom better than I expected. Each step is painful and exhilarating, muscles straining against disuse, yet gloriously unbound. My balance is off, my stride uneven. The simple act of walking requires more focus than it should.

“Wait. Sacha, look!” Ellie’s voice stops me. “The tower … something is happening.”

I follow her gaze. The tower’s gleaming surface is losing its luster, turning dull. While we watch, cracks appear along its length, spidering like lightning across its once-flawless shell.

“Interesting.” My voice is quiet, almost clinical. “The binding must have been connected to the tower itself.” I watch with satisfaction as my prison begins to crumble. “Breaking one affected the other.”

The tower shudders visibly, even from this distance. Hairline fractures multiply, racing across its surface in luminous blue veins. Segments of the shell shear away, dropping to the sand with dull, distant thuds that I feel more than hear. The destruction accelerates, the entire structure convulsing, as though fighting against its own collapse.

With a groan that sounds almost sentient, pained even, it folds inward. The shape that held me for nearly three decades buckles, collapsing into the very void it once contained. In moments, nothing remains but a drifting plume of dust where the tower once stood.

“It’s gone,” Ellie whispers, her voice small and shocked. “Like it was nothing.”

“Yes.” The single word carries all my satisfaction, my relief, mytriumph. All those years of captivity scattered like ash. A strange lightness fills me, as if the tower’s physical destruction has severed some final invisible tether.

“We should keep moving. The dust cloud may attract attention, and I’d rather be far from it before that happens.”

We walk on, the site of my captivity shrinking behind us. With each step, the silence inside me begins to recede. Shadows edge closer, more responsive, as though they’re relearning my shape. But the power is still uneven, sometimes smooth, sometimes jarring. Once, I stumble mid-step, breath caught, and have to focus to still the current.

“You said you have an affinity with shadows,” she says after we’ve been walking for a while. “What does that mean?”

“I do.”

I don’t want to scare her, especially as I might need her cooperation for a while longer. But I also need to understand how she reacts to manifestation of power, if she is to remain useful, she cannot be ruled by fear.

“I can manipulate darkness.” I deliberately choose the most benign description of my abilities. Better she understands gradually. “I can control it, shape it, extend my perception through it.”

To demonstrate, I reach toward my own shadow stretching across the sand. With a flick of one finger, a gesture that once required no thought at all, the darkness stirs. It rises from the ground in a coiling spiral, fluid and deliberate, winding around my outstretched hand before dissolving back into the ground.

The cost is immediate. A fine tremor runs through my fingers. Power responds in pulses, not flow, and I have to concentrate harder than I should to shape it. Still, I betray nothing. I hold the moment in control, and offer the illusion of ease.

Ellie’s lips part, her breath catching audibly. “You can actuallymoveit.” Wonder and apprehension war in her voice.

“A minor trick.” I watch her reaction carefully. She doesn’t recoil as many would.

Interesting.

I wonder what other reactions she might surprise me with as she sees more of what I can do.

She falls silent, turning her focus back to the path ahead. The sun is draining her quickly. Despite my years confined inside, my nature grants me resistance to the sun’s effects that she doesn’t share.