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Chapter Twelve

SACHA

“The Vein does not demand allegiance. It reveals it.”

Writings of the Veinblood Masters

The night grows quiet around me. Stars wheel overhead. The caravan sleeps, forms huddled beneath blankets that ward against the chill. I remain the only one awake, seated at the edge of the shelter, listening to the night sounds of a world I am learning again.

I lift my hand. Shadows ripple between my joints, threading across my palm in shifting lines.

There’s a restlessness beneath my skin, not mere curiosity, but a hunger.

Freedom has returned, but it doesn’t satisfy.

The years have left behind an ache that stillness cannot soothe.

I need to know what is left of the world I lost. What the Authority destroyed. What might be reclaimed.

The mountain air tastes of pine and soil and woodsmoke, scents that stir memories I’d thought lost to time. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel truly awake. Not just alive, but returned.

Ellie sleeps fitfully behind me, her breathing catching now and then, most likely from dreams. Her journey from unwilling intruder to traveling companion has happened with remarkable speed, dictated more by necessity than choice.

She doesn’t trust me—why should she?—but she understands her survival here depends on the knowledge I possess.

Every time I look at her, the same questions rise. And I’m no closer to answering them.

Magic, as I once knew it, has been destroyed. The Authority made certain of that. They burned it from the land before I was taken, purging those who carried it in their blood. What remains now is what I hold, what they sealed away, believing it would never be loosed upon the world again.

I’m accustomed to understanding the magic I wield. Yet everything about Ellie resists explanation.

She is not supposed to be here. And I don’t understand what her presence means.

Ravencross lies less than half a day’s journey ahead. There, I can try to piece together what remains of the world I once knew, what has changed in my absence, and whether any of my former connections might still exist after so many years.

I shift position, easing stiff muscles. After so long inside the tower, my body has forgotten many physical discomforts, and while I still don’t need to eat or drink as often as other people, every little discomfort I do experience, I hoard. It proves I’m free.

A sound comes from the rocks above our camp. I remain motionless, extending my awareness outward through the shadows, between the trees, into the folds of night where light does not reach.

Something is moving along the ridge. A single observer. Human. Steady. Watching the caravan .

Not Authority. They travel in pairs at a minimum, and lack this level of subtlety. A bandit scout perhaps—sent ahead to assess, to count, to mark. It’s possible. The caravan has guards posted, but not enough to repel a full assault. Not if it comes fast, or well-timed.

Another sound. Further downslope. I send shadows out to investigate.

Three figures. Their formation is loose. Spread wide. Moving into position.

Not scouting then. Coordinating . I recognize the maneuver well.

I rise to my feet and send the raven into the sky. Its wings carve a silent arc over the camp, before climbing higher, the tether between us tightening as its senses merge with mine. From above, the pattern resolves itself.

Eight in total. The three I already saw closing from the south—fast, direct, loud. Bait. The others hold to the northern boundary, flanking wide, ready to attack when the guards are drawn off-balance.

Not amateurs. This is practiced. A split-force pincer, timed for collapse.

I don’t consider alerting the guard, and I don’t wait for the first blade to fall.

Threads of black rise from the ground to meet my steps. Magic moves within me. Not the shadows, but another form. Not hereditary but part of me, nonetheless. A second skin that fits as if I never set it aside.

I reach the first man before he knows I’m there.

“ Vauren .” The word is low, almost inaudible, and the shadows tighten, aligning with the beat of my heart .

His blade disappears. His hand with it. A splash of blood hits my cheek, warm and sticky. The void takes him without sound. The darkness doesn’t just swallow his flesh, it unmakes it. Bone, sinew, skin.

His eyes bulge in horrified realization as I send tendrils of darkness up his arm, burrowing beneath his skin like liquid serpents, tracing his veins in ink-dark relief against his pale flesh. The scream never leaves his mouth, as shadows cut through them like acid through paper.

The second stares for too long, caught by my eyes, and the hesitation seals his fate.

Darkness cleaves across his chest in a curve sharp enough to sever him in half.

The wound doesn’t bleed—the shadows cauterize as they cut, leaving blackened edges where flesh meets void.

His body slides apart in two clean pieces.

No cry escapes him. Just a wet hush as lungs cease to function.

The third turns. But his chance to flee has gone.

“ Hael devan. ”

The phrase summons a stillness deeper than silence.

The night thickens around him. I let the dark rise over his face and draw him down.

No noise. No struggle. Just the quiet compression of air as the night fills his lungs with death instead of oxygen.

He claws at his throat as it enters, penetrating every cell until he collapses inward like deflated skin. Not a corpse, an emptied vessel.

I move past him without slowing.

A sound breaks the silence, and I turn to find one of the caravan guards rooted in place, halfway through drawing a blade he wouldn’t have time to use.

His chest rises and falls in quick, shallow bursts.

I can see the effort it takes to meet my gaze.

His pupils are pinpoints of terror in a pale face.

Then he drops to one knee and presses a hand to his chest.

The raven arcs high above. Through its sight, I find the others, moving like wolves through underbrush.

Five men in staggered formatting, sliding between trees.

They haven’t seen the collapse of their distraction.

They believe the plan is already in motion, and the guards will fall for the noise and rush south.

They move without urgency. Confident. Blades already drawn. Spread wide enough to carve a channel through the camp in a single sweep. Timing is everything. One signal, and they’ll descend together.

But their signal will not come.

I slip into the forest’s edge. The trees here are low, the canopy thick. No light filters through, but I see clearly.

The first man doesn’t hear me. A coil of black winds around his ankle, halting him mid-step.

He stumbles, and the void folds over his face before he can cry out.

It presses inward—eyes, ears, mouth—filling him from the inside.

His body spasms, limbs jerking. When the shadows recede, his face is blank, wiped clean of detail.

The second turns, reacting to the fall. He finds me already there.

He backs into a low branch.

“ Aeren.” I shape a needle from nothing, and drive it through his chest. A clean hole opens where his heart once beat. He collapses to his knees, staring down at the emptiness. His mouth opens, but no words form.

And in the stillness that follows, I feel it. The pull. Power expanding. Not merely obeying, but converging. It flows within me.

Breathless. Certain. Willing.

I could bring the trees down. Strip the flesh from every man who ever looked my way in challenge.

The call is insidious, intoxicating. And for one breath, I let that possibility settle.

What would it feel like not to stop?

But I do . I stop because I choose to. Because power must be shaped, not surrendered to. Succumbing to temptation would turn me into the monster the Authority claims me to be.

The others scatter. I allow two to reach three steps.

One raises a whistle to his lips.

“ Seviran.” The void wraps tight around his neck like a living garrote. His windpipe caves inward. He crumples, clutching at nothing.

The other rises off the ground, suspended from branches that tremble without wind. I draw out what anchors him, thread by thread. Not killing, extracting. When he falls, he folds wrong. Boneless .

The last man runs—smart enough to see what’s happening, too slow to escape it. I let him think he’ll make it. Let him see the dark coming for him. Give him a moment to understand what walks beside this caravan tonight.

A black tether finds his limbs—four threads, cinching at wrists and ankles. A flick of my wrist and they pull in opposite directions. The bones do not break. They separate. Joint by joint. Something internal tears.

“Tharen var.” The words sink into his chest. The void does the rest.

He screams. The sound barely leaves his lips before the night swallows it. Shadows curl into his mouth and fill his lungs. When he drops, there’s nothing left of him but his shape.

The quiet reasserts itself. The world exhales, and the void withdraws, shadows following it, melting back into tree roots and rock hollows. Not banished or spent, but resting, waiting .

I haven’t used my power this way in decades. Not for this. Not to remind the night what it once obeyed. It came clean. As though the blade had never been sheathed.

But the magic didn’t just obey. It fed . Each death spilled into me, a pulse of returning strength. Not the same way my shadows returned, but something older, darker .

My hand is still open. A residue like oil clings to my palm. It slides between my fingers and vanishes.

There is no triumph. No satisfaction. Only the return of balance.

The men who died tonight won’t be missed. They kill for profit. For cruelty. For opportunity. And I’ve ended enough men like them to know their faces won’t be mourned.

But still, this is the first time since my return that the world has bled around me.