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Shadows Personified

EMILIA

M y lungs were starved of air and the muscles in my legs ached something fierce as we finally made it to the snowy peak where the door to San Gabriel Academy loomed. The trek had taken two days. We were dirty and starving and exhausted but—we were here . I stared at the giant wooden door that bore two golden symbols of the sun and moon.

It didn’t feel real. This place shouldn’t even have existed.

“Finally,” Venus grumbled, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

“My thoughts exactly,” Michael chimed in.

Venus shot him a glare, like how dare he agree with her. He ignored it. I was too tired to roll my eyes.

“Do you think the door will open?” Faye wondered, her voice rasped, emerald eyes weary.

“Only one way to find out,” Natalia declared. She was, of course, the first one to approach the door. We all stopped breathing as the make-or-break moment settled upon us. None of us had the means to break spells or crash wards.

Fear like no other seized my chest, horrible thoughts leaking into my mind. The door was going to be locked—the mountain was going to be drenched in protection wards that we could never hope to get past. We’d probably be zapped to death if we even tried. Maybe my sister was inside, but we’d never get to her. There was no way the door was just going to open and let us stroll inside. We were idiots to come. Stupid, naive idiots carrying out yet another fruitless fucking plot. As if my sister was going to be somewhere unprotected, where a group of stragglers could just waltz right—

The door opened before Natalia even touched it.

My jaw dropped.

The moment stretched in silence.

Eventually, Natalia turned to face us with her eyebrows raised. “Not even I saw that coming.”

“It could be a trap,” Venus said.

“It’s not like we can just turn around now,” Faye replied, though her features twisted with concern. “We came all this way.”

“We’re here now.” Michael trudged forward, his staff punching into the snow with each step. “Let’s go.”

The inside of the mountain was dark and empty. Gutted. The lanterns on the walls were incredibly sparse, giving us just enough illumination to make it from one chamber to the next. The ghostly interior of what I imagined were once grand, opulent rooms and corridors, were now nothing except weeping stone and whispering shadows. They loitered in the cracks and corners, hissing like hot steam.

“Fucking creepy,” Venus complained, sticking close to me.

I did have an uneasy feeling, but I’d seen too much to be afraid of the dark now. My magic thrummed inside me, freezing the tips of my fingers, just waiting to be unleashed. But shadows couldn’t be frozen, and none of us were firelings. The truth was, if the darkness decided to attack, we’d have no way to fight back. None of our selenite flashlights had made it through the portal.

We had no fire, no light.

I didn’t give a shit. If the shadows tried anything, I’d tear a hole between the worlds and steal a new power from another realm. Nothing was going to stop me from finding my sister today.

“Where would they be?” Michael wondered, sounding as if he were talking to himself.

“The top,” I answered instantly. The knowing was soul-deep. “They will be at the highest point. We need to find stairs.”

“I agree,” Natalia said.

It didn’t take long for us to find stairs. At the end of a long, narrow hallway, the doorway that led to them was pitch-black. No lanterns lit the way. We stared into the abyss, hearing the whispers and—within them, a deep, hellish hum. My heart tumbled as I remembered the aura shown to me by the High Lord. Solaris’s deathly black aura that had radiated the bone-chilling hum.

“Well, this looks fun!” Venus griped. She stumbled back, shaking her head. “We should have brought a fireling. I am not stepping foot in there.”

Destiny’s absence hung in the air like smog.

Natalia and I shared a look. Her expression was serious, her eyes passionate. “The path forward is unclear,” she whispered. “The Goddess will not show me.”

The ringing in my ears heightened in the threat of the unknown.

“What do you think, Emilia?” Faye asked me.

“Maybe we should just call out for her,” Michael suggested. “This place is so fucking empty, she’ll hear us even if she’s—”

“No!” Venus hissed, clutching her ruby necklace absently. “We can’t give ourselves away to Solaris!”

We erupted into a storm of arguments. None of us could agree on anything. We’d come all this way but no one was willing to ascend the stairway to the void. The darkness was too thick, and we could all hear that it was fucking alive. But we couldn’t turn around. We couldn’t shout for Nyx.

We’d gotten this far and it didn’t even fucking matter.

“I’ll go,” Michael finally declared, and his words silenced us all. “I’ll go up and if it’s safe, I’ll call down to you.”

My stomach dropped, fury ascending my spine. “No way! We’re not going to use you as fucking bait, Michael.”

“Why not? Your Goddess ‘Marked’ me, did she not? No magical attacks can touch me. Maybe she made me for this very reason.”

To my horror, everyone looked like they were about to agree with him.

“No,” I growled. “Shadows are different. You’re not going. I am. She’s my sister. I—”

A warm hand snaked around my wrist, tugging me back. Venus. “No, you’re not.”

“Well, one of us has to!” I cried, beyond exasperated.

“Shh!” Faye hissed, pressing her finger to her lip. “Did you hear that?”

“What?” we all responded in unison.

She pressed her finger to her lips harder, urging us to be quiet. None of us breathed as we listened to the sounds coming from the stairs.

Something in the staircase was growling.

Two floating orbs red as hellfire emerged from the dark mouth, the floor under our feet vibrating. I couldn’t hear the screams of my friends because the ringing in my ears had become deafening. My brain desperately tried to make me run, but I was rooted in place, watching this thing seep out of the doorway.

The orbs were eyes , furious red eyes fixed directly on me. A black mass for a body, its face carved straight out of a nightmare. It didn’t bother attempting to take the form of an earthly creature. It was shadows personified. Senseless and terrifying.

It lunged at me.

A hand violently yanked me out of the way. It was Venus—Venus shouting in my ear for me to RUN . I caught a glimpse of the horror on her features before my feet finally connected with my brain and we were running. Through the hall like bats out of hell.

The world blurred.

My heart was in a fit, body-checking itself against my ribs. My blood was frozen and roaring. Every inch of me was alive with magic.

We rounded the corner. The hallway ended.

Not with a door, not with a staircase. With a wall. A wall of stone that hadn’t been there before.

We crashed into each other, a commotion of gasps and cries.

The breath sawing in and out of my lungs was going to shred my chest to ribbons.

It was trapping us.

It dawned on me then, the terrifying truth: the shadows didn’t just exist here—they reigned here. A monarchy of nightmares and darkness. We had cleaved them from Solaris and so they had to find another place to dwell. They could manipulate the stone however they pleased, and they were not going to let us go.

We huddled in a group, the reality burning through each of us. We weren’t getting out of here.

Michael’s big brown eyes blared into mine. His chest rose and fell, his hand white-knuckling his staff. He reached out with his other one and laced his fingers with mine. Venus’s body was crushed against me. Faye and Natalia, too. We clung to each other, watching the nightmare stalk toward us.

It absorbed the hissing shadows from the walls, bloating its body, and deepening its growl. Its red eyes blazed, the promise of death dripping from its open, black jaw.

Michael stepped forward.

A protest got stuck in my throat.

And then the ringing in my skull imploded. I might have screamed. My body convulsed and closed in on itself. My vision was blown white.

My head had exploded.

The stone floor greeted my flattened body cruelly.

Ringing. Ringing. Ringing.

Time and space disbanded, dispersing through the cosmos to reform a world far, far away.

“Emilia?”

“Emilia, please, look at me.”

My face was wet. My head was throbbing.

A groan rumbled from deep in my chest. Forcing my eyes open took a frightening amount of strength and focus. Silver-blue light blurred around me. A figure loomed over me.

“There you are. Emilia, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

“Ouch,” I grumbled, touching my head. “I have a headache.”

Michael crouched beside me with one hand on my shoulder, the other gripping his staff. He was holding his staff as far away from me as possible. His breathing echoed off the walls. His eyes were bloodshot and wet. “You’re okay,” he insisted.

“W-what happened?”

“We have to go.” A new voice. Venus. She was standing, staring down at me with haunted eyes. She had blood pouring from her nose.

I gawped up at her, confused.

Faye and Natalia were sitting behind Venus, struggling to get up. Their noses were bleeding, too.

I wiped mine, my hand coming away covered in blood. “What…?”

“I’m sorry,” Michael breathed. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”

The nightmare beast was gone. Where was that strange light coming from?

“What happened?” I muttered, wincing as the pounding in my skull accelerated.

“The mortal boy’s staff exploded with debilitating sound waves!” Venus exclaimed, waving her hands in exasperation. “We can ponder the curiosity later! We need to go!”

Michael’s staff?

Venus stalked forward, shoving Michael away from me. She grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. I swayed like a dead tree in the wind. Her words echoed through my throbbing brain.

“Venus is right,” Natalia affirmed. Both she and Faye were standing now.

But I hardly heard them. I was staring at the tall, jagged black crystals that now lined the hallway on either side. And the blue flames trapped within them, writhing gently and illuminating the way for us with cool light.

I looked at Venus, but she just shrugged, “I don’t understand.”

Natalia knelt in front of a cluster of crystals. She ran her fingers down the base of one, gasping softly. Then she turned to Michael, her eyes watery in astonishment. “Mortal boy,” she whispered. “The Eighth Wonder.”

Michael had done this? Turned the shadows into crystals ?

His chest was heaving. Bloodshot eyes leaking tears that made my heart lurch.

I vanquished the space between us, crashing into his chest. His arms encompassed me instantly. I squeezed him, his heart rocketing against my cheek. “You are magic,” I breathed. “Of course you are.”

“What the fucking fuck?” a new voice rang out.

A voice I knew all too well, one that turned my spine to steel and lit my aching heart on fire.

Standing there with her face twisted into a mask of defensive incredulity, an enormous male at her back, was my sister.