Page 31 of Shadebound (Dark Fantasy #1)

Shadebounds weren’t made for grief. We’re made for survival. For blood. And vengeance. But vengeance burns, too. It scorches anything it touches, even the pieces we were trying to protect. There’s no clean way out. No balance between holding on and letting go.

To love is to go mad. But to live without love? That breaks us just the same. Either way, we unravel. Just at different speeds.

T he magical knowledge and history classroom was the first real classroom I’d seen at Mors.

No dripping ceilings, no blades on display, and no blood spattering over the floors.

It actually looked like a place meant for learning, even if barely.

Stark walls lined with dusty shelves. Paper stacked in battered trays.

Desks and chairs scattered in a rough attempt at structure.

It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t welcoming. But it wasn’t designed for violence. That, here , made it stand out.

I was seated at a table near the centre, the wood marred with years of rough treatment—deep gouges carved by claws, scorched patches from failed magic, and sloppily etched graffiti that probably dated back generations.

Zayden had slid into the seat next to me, settling close enough for our shoulders to brush.

Maya took the seat to my left, chatting quietly with Eris, who sat beside her.

Draven was at the far end, sharing space with the same wolf friends.

He smiled at me when I walked in, decently clean of blood and newly healed.

I almost smiled back until I saw the glare he shot Tyler’s way. Then the thought of smiling turned sour as my bones seemed to ache.

Phantom pain, I supposed.

Zayden lifted his pen, twirling it between his fingers before leaning close enough that I could smell the familiar scent of him.

For once, he had a shirt on. I was almost disappointed.

Which was disgusting. But honest. He’d said that this class was the only one the professor forced him to get dressed for when he’d snatched a fresh top from the dorm before lesson.

He angled his pen downward and started drawing across the back of my hand. Slow movements. Spirals first, then uneven lines, then a crooked little crown with one tip bent, almost snapped.

His tattooed hand was warm. The pressure featherlight.

I should have pulled away. I didn’t like being touched. Couldn’t stand the way it made my skin crawl, how it twisted something uncomfortable in my chest. But I didn’t move.

Because it was Zayden. And Zayden had been gone. For months.

And now he was with me, comforting me, trying to make me feel less... less like the corpse I pretended I was.

So I sat there, still as stone, while he traced meaningless shapes into my skin like he was making sure I was real.

The feeling didn’t repulse me. It didn’t irritate me.

It calmed me in a way I wasn’t ready to examine too closely.

Like a pressure valve released, or a lull in the storm, I didn’t trust to last.

I watched his hand move. Noted the slight drag of the pen. The occasional pause as he waited to see if I’d stop him. And like my brain had been blended and replaced with mush, I exhaled and unstiffened.

My pulse slowed. My jaw unclenched. My thoughts—always a relentless buzz—quieted. It was almost meditative. ASMR in real life, with me as the subject.

And even though I told myself it was nothing—just Zayden being Zayden—I didn’t want him to stop.

I didn’t pull away. Not even when he wrote his initials in a little heart.

Professor Rayla entered a beat later. She was tall and broad-shouldered; her robes were an elegant slate-grey that shimmered like oil when they caught the candlelight along the concrete walls.

Her long white-blonde hair was tied in a thick braid, and her features were carved into a resting expression of cool authority.

She walked into the centre of the semicircle with her hands clasped behind her back. Her eyes swept the class. Then settled on me.

She gave a short nod. Not warm. But not unkind.

“We have a few new faces today,” she said.

Her voice was crisp, clipped, but it filled the room with ease.

“So I’ll begin with a recap of prior material before assigning today’s work.

You’ll then pair up and submit a thousand-word paper on the origin of the Mortavian plague—and your personal theories on its cause. ”

A few groans rolled through the room as chairs scraped across the scuffed floor.

I stayed still, half-expecting someone to throw a desk.

Or set fire to something to avoid working.

Instead, Zayden leant in close. I could feel the heat of his breath near my ear, the quiet sound of it uneven.

The rough edge of his voice came next with the kind of tone that usually made me roll my eyes.

But this time it sent a ripple through me I didn’t care to examine too closely.

I just tensed, then immediately hated that I had.

Because he would’ve noticed. He always did.

“Better hope your partner’s not a moron.” He breathed.

“Shame. I wanted to partner with you.” I murmured.

His grin was instantaneous. “I’ll be the best moron you’ve ever met, Heartache. Don’t you worry.”

I smirked as Rayla turned to the massive chalkboard behind her, covered in faded runes and glyphs drawn in iridescent ink. With a flick of her fingers, the ink shimmered, reordering into animated illusions.

“Thirteen years ago,” she announced, “Mortavia fell.”

The projection shimmered and shifted, colours dulling into a thick, mossy green—a vibrant land swallowed by creeping darkness. Trees bent beneath it. Creatures tried to flee. It didn’t matter. The shadows rolled through without pause.

“It began without warning,” Rayla said, her voice steady but heavy with the weight of memory.

“There were black flames. Then black beasts. Creatures that tore through everything they touched. Cities fell. Forests burned. Entire bloodlines were erased . The shadows didn’t care who or what they went for.

They didn’t hesitate for the old, sick, or young.

There was no compassion from them. There was no mercy. ”

The room was quiet. Even the usually bouncy wolves had stilled, their gazes locked on the flickering illusion as if remembering something firsthand.

I didn’t blink. I barely breathed.

Because I knew what came next. I remembered enough of it, and not just because I’d been there to see it.

But because everyone hated me after that.

They hated that I was the personification of the same monsters that had slaughtered our people and ruined our land.

The projections shifted, showing the twisted creatures—spindly and skeletal—howling as they descended on screaming villages.

“Those who weren’t murdered by the shadow plague fled. Some to other magical realms. Most to the Mortal Realm, where shadows could not touch.” She paused, eyes roaming around the room until they met me. “At least, we thought that was the case. But we were wrong.”

Another beat of silence.

More eyes bore into me. Enough that, had I felt shame, I would have been red from it.

“Shadows found their way to every land we fled to, and though weaker, they still exist.” She stared at me. Face entirely blank. “They are still eager to feast on the magic in our veins, or the souls in our bodies, until there is nothing of us left.”

I already knew this. I’d been taught it, over and over, by my mother.

She’d insisted on it, though I never quite understood why.

She was a nature witch, with strange priorities and stranger interests—at least, to me.

She always said I needed to understand what happened to Mortavia, even when I was too young to grasp the gravity of it.

Too young to understand why people I had grown up with looked at me like I was the plague.

So I learned. Reluctantly at first, then with grim determination after Bells died and half of the people who claimed to love her had refused to come to her funeral because I’d been there.

I memorised everything she left behind from the lessons my mother had taken with her too. Every book, every torn scroll, every half-legible journal. And even now, it lived at the front of my mind—ready, waiting for the day it would serve a purpose beyond telling me why I was a freak.

But watching it unfold like this, with Rayla’s voice cutting through the room, it hit differently.

She went on, her voice level but threaded with the kind of weight that didn’t need to be emphasised.

“For the last thirteen years, our people have prepared for the expansion of the plague. Soldiers have been trained and deployed to our home, and we’ve attempted to reclaim what was taken.

The effort hasn’t been fast. And it hasn’t been without loss. ”

The illusion shifted again. Mors appeared.

“This is why Mors Academy changed. It’s no longer just a dumping ground for criminals.

Now it opens its doors to the strongest students.

The most promising minds. Even those who volunteered.

We’re building something here. A force meant to fight .

A generation trained not just to survive , but to end the war before it spreads further. ”

The air in the room shifted. Some students exchanged glances, their expressions cautious, uncertain.

Eris leant forward in her seat, her hands folded too tightly in her lap, shoulders held in a tense line.

Her jaw was locked, her eyes fixed on the illusion still hovering over the board. She wasn’t blinking much.

This was how her family had died. I could not blame her for being uncomfortable.

Could not blame her for the way I saw her dig her nails into her palms until she bled.

Beside me, Maya’s fingers moved, twitching against her knee like she was holding back the urge to act. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe it was instinct. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, but her gaze didn’t leave the front of the room.