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I lower my hood and release my grip on the control keeping my shadows at bay.

I know what's happening without needing to see it.

I've felt this transformation countless times before.

Inky darkness bleeds outward, forming the living tattoos that mark me as what I truly am.

Shadows crawl across my face in familiar patterns, a sensation like cool water flowing along my jawline, spiraling across my temples, threading through the hollows beneath my cheekbones.

My vision sharpens as the change completes, the way it always does, shadows enhancing rather than obscuring my sight. I feel the familiar weight of power settle into my eyes, knowing they've deepened to the obsidian pools that have made hardened warriors look away.

The markings of the Shadowvein Lord return to their rightful place—my true nature asserting itself after too long restrained.

The air leaves the guard's lungs in a strangled sound, halfway between gasp and whimper.

His eyes go wide, pupils dilating so rapidly I can track the black consuming the iris.

His face drains of color, leaving his skin ashen with shock.

His fingers twitch violently at his side, caught in the limbo between drawing his weapon and dropping to his knee, survival instinct warring with ingrained reverence.

Sweat beads on his upper lip, gleaming in the lamplight.

A tremor runs through his body, visible in the quivering of his jaw, the sudden rigidity of his shoulders.

His gaze locks onto mine, and for a heartbeat, time suspends. Then his eyes break away, unable to withstand the weight of what I know he sees there.

“ Shadowverin ” he breathes—half prayer, half disbelief.

He drops to one knee without seeming to realize he’s moved, one fist pressed hard to his chest in a warrior’s salute. His shoulders tremble slightly.

“We heard rumors,” he chokes out. “But—” He swallows. “But we didn’t believe?—”

“As you can see, the rumors are true.” I touch his shoulder. “Please, stand.”

His movements are jerky as he obeys, his wide eyes flicking over my face, my clothes, the blood streaks on my hands—memorizing details to confirm later that this wasn’t hallucination.

Then something shifts in his posture. His breathing steadies, slowing in the measured rhythm of a trained fighter.

His hands, which had been trembling, now settle back at his sides .

“You encountered trouble?” His voice finds its authority again, though it still carries a note of awe.

“An Authority patrol,” Tisera answers. She glances at me. “It was handled.”

He nods grimly. No further explanation is needed. His eyes sharpen with professional assessment, the trained soldier now evaluating tactical implications rather than dwelling on the impossible.

“Lisandra has been waiting since Varam’s message arrived.

She knew Tisera was bringing someone, but—” He shakes his head, muscles working in his jaw as he tries to reconcile my presence before him with what he knows should be impossible.

His training fully reasserts itself as he straightens to attention.

“She wasn’t expecting you . No one was.”

He turns, then hesitates, and spins back. “Come.” The word emerges crisper now, as years of protocol and duty override his personal reaction. His stance has changed—back straight, movements deliberate.

His steps are precise as he guides us deeper into the stronghold, his soldier's discipline wrestling control from his shock. His breathing has regularized, but he still casts quick glances at me as we walk, but now they’re more assessment than disbelief, security rather than awe.

The trained Veinwarden escort has replaced the stunned believer, although the reverence remains in the way he positions himself slightly ahead and to my left—the traditional placement for a guide of rank.

The passage opens into a vast chamber carved from rock.

Torches flicker in their sconces, casting a shifting light across the stone.

The air is thick with the hum of movement.

Fighters train in combat forms, weapons clashing in rhythmic strikes.

Others cluster around rough wooden tables, maps spread between them.

Then someone lifts their head and sees me.

A veteran fighter freezes mid-strike, his practice sword hovering in the air. His weathered features transform, decades of weariness giving way to something long forgotten. His eyes widen, throat working silently.

Another whisper breaks free from somewhere to my left, hanging suspended in the space between noise and silence.

Shadowverin .

A sudden hush ripples outward, conversation faltering, heads snapping up in disbelief. Weapons lower mid-strike. A chair scrapes harshly against stone as someone stands too fast. The tension is a living thing, thick and thrumming, pressing into the silence that follows.

A younger woman beside him follows, though uncertainty flickers across her face. She knows the legends but has never seen the reality. Within moments, a third of the room kneels, while others remain frozen in place, suspended between action and reaction.

"It can't be," someone murmurs from the back.

"The marks on his skin—" another voice cuts in, awed and fearful.

One man reaches for a weapon, then thinks better of it when those near him shoot warning glances.

The shadows on my skin respond to the energy in the room, darkening, shifting more rapidly across my flesh.

I feel them pulse with each heartbeat, attuned to the storm of emotions surrounding me—fear, hope, reverence, suspicion.

Some faces show nothing but shock, while others reflect something deeper.

The rekindling of a faith long thought extinguished.

And then a figure pushes through the gathering crowd. A woman, tall and lean, her white hair pulled into a severe knot at the nape of her neck.

Lisandra .

The moment she sees me, she stops mid-stride. Her breath catches, loud enough to draw the attention of every fighter nearby. For a long moment, she simply stares—shock, disbelief, and something more complex that might be grief or relief or fury, or perhaps all three intertwined.

Then the mask descends. Her jaw tightens. The vulnerability vanishes as quickly as it appeared, and those sharp assessing eyes lock onto mine. Eyes that once followed my every command without question. Eyes that witnessed what the Authority did at Thornreave Pass.

Her hand twitches toward the dagger at her hip but stops short, her fingers clenching into a fist instead. A tremor runs through her before she stiffens against it, spine straightening, shoulders squaring. She looks like someone who has seen a ghost, and is refusing to acknowledge it.

“No.” One word. Uttered beneath her breath, but in the silence, it carries.

She takes another step forward. Her boots strike the stone floor. Her voice, when it comes, is taut, iron-edged .

“Varam’s message said nothing about you. Only that Tisera was bringing someone for refuge.”

For an instant, she sways, barely perceptible, then steadies herself, taking in a quick breath. Her fingers flex against the hilt again.

“But here you stand, looking like you stepped out only yesterday …” Her voice roughens, and her next words leave her mouth, almost against her will. Low but clear.

“ Vareth’el et’Varin.”

The ripple that moves through the room is different now. No longer fear alone, but something older.

Recognition. Memory. Allegiance .

Ellie shifts at my side. She holds her ground, but I feel the tension in her stance. The way she edges half a step behind me without meaning to.

Lisandra’s gaze cuts to her immediately, cataloging every weakness with the speed of a battlefield veteran. She takes in the stiff line of Ellie’s spine, the way her fingers tremble despite being balled into fists.

“And who is this?”

"Later." One word, but my voice sends new whispers through the cavern like wind through dry leaves. It carries a note of command that hasn't diminished with time.

Lisandra lets out a long breath, exhaling through her nose, steadying herself with visible effort. The struggle plays across her face—confusion, disbelief, calculation—before she finally inclines her head. Not quite a bow, but an acknowledgment.

“Of course. Follow me.”

The crowd parts before us as we move deeper into Stonehaven, whispers trailing in our wake like shadows. I don’t need to pay attention to know what they’re saying.

The Shadowvein Lord has returned. The tide will turn. The Authority will fall.

Years of imprisonment fall away with each step, replaced by the weight of expectation settling back onto my shoulders. I feel the shift inside myself. From survivor to leader, from fugitive to symbol. Duty, strategy, and the responsibility for every life in this mountain sanctuary reasserts itself.

My shadows darken in response, the patterns growing more formal, more structured, returning to the traditional markings of the Shadowvein Lord. I straighten my spine, and adjust my stride to the measured pace that once carried me through war councils and strategy sessions.

They need their lord returned from the dead, not the man who survived the tower. They need the symbol, the power, the name.

So be it. That is what I’ll give them.

As we move deeper into the stronghold, the air thickens with tension and whispers.

The torchlight catches on weapons and watchful eyes.

Fighters steal furtive glances, their expressions a complicated tangle of disbelief, hope, and naked awe.

Some press fists to hearts in the old warrior's salute. It’s a gesture I once took for granted, saw a thousand times daily, but now it feels foreign in its formality.

Others simply stand frozen, as though facing a ghost made flesh, their bodies rigid with shock that borders on religious experience.

A grizzled veteran with a scar bisecting his face steps partially into our path before thinking better of it, his eyes drinking in my appearance with desperate thirst. His lips form words I can't hear but recognize from the shape.

The shadows across my skin respond to his devotion, darkening slightly, acknowledging memory of prayers once offered before battles I led.

Paradoxically, Ellie shifts closer to me despite her evident fear, choosing the familiar danger over the unknown one.

Her shoulder nearly brushes my arm, her body language a contradiction of revulsion and dependence.

The scent of her lingering terror mingles with the earthy smell of the stronghold.

She doesn't understand what's happening, but she can read the room with perceptive eyes.

The way these hardened fighters stare. The force of their reactions.

The reverence and fear intermingling. Her pulse flutters visibly at her throat, quick as a trapped bird.

I wonder what will be worse for her. Discovering what I'm capable of, or discovering that others have always known.

That the violence she witnessed isn't an aberration but the foundation upon which my reputation was built.

That the man who walked beside her through the desert is a fraction of who I truly am.

"Do they all know who you are?" Her voice barely carries over the whispers surrounding us, but I hear the strain beneath the question.

“Yes.”

"And this is why you ... killed those men?" Her words catch slightly on killed , as if she's substituting a gentler term for what she actually witnessed.

"Yes." I glance at her, at the tension in her face, the way she won't quite look at me directly, her eyes finding a point just past my shoulder instead. "I told you, the stronghold would have been compromised if I didn't act."

She doesn’t respond, but the distance between us says enough. She sees me differently now. I'm no longer the prisoner who needed her help. I'm something far more dangerous. Something she helped unleash upon this world without understanding the consequences.

Now she knows. Now she understands. And she's afraid of what that might mean.

The shadows shift subtly, responding to the weight of expectation returned.

Of command. Of violence in service to something greater.

I can feel myself transforming with each step forward.

Features hardening, spine straightening, thoughts sharpening into the strategic clarity that once guided a rebellion.

Somewhere in the abyss between prisoner and lord, I’ve lost something precious—the brief moment when Ellie looked at me and saw only a prisoner, a man, and not a weapon. Not a legend.

I push the thought aside. Such luxuries belong to another life. One I never truly had.