Page 89

Another net flies. This one catches the hem of my cloak. The fabric sags, impossibly heavy, dragging me earthward. Light snakes through the weave, creeping across my skin, seeking deeper purchase. I tear the cloak off before it finds more than fabric and cast it aside .

“He’s weakening!” Sereven’s voice carries above the clash of steel and the rising wind. “Tighten the circle. Don’t give him space to recover.”

He’s right. The continuous exposure to whatever they have is draining my power faster than I can replenish it. Each shadow manipulation requires more effort, each extension of darkness slower to respond.

My hand brushes the ring in my pocket. I know what it would bring. Immediate strength. Complete connection. But to use it now, mid-combat, would mean vulnerability. Sereven would see it. He would recognize exactly what I’ve done. And he would use that moment to his advantage.

Time for a more dramatic approach. Something to buy me space and time.

I hesitate—for the span of a single breath.

Voidcraft will drain me faster than combat. Shadow is being pulled apart the moment it touches their weapons. I can hold back, conserve what remains, but the circle is closing. No options. No time.

I choose force. Even if it breaks me.

I abandon restraint, letting go of the control I honed over years of confinement. Shadow erupts from every part of me. Not a shaped extension, but an explosive surge, primal and wild. The release burns through me. Power unbound. Too much. Too fast.

Darkness floods the clearing like a dam shattered, a tidal wave that swallows light whole. Soldiers stagger backward, despite their training, some crying out as the void flows around them with hungry intention .

My familiar breaks free entirely, no longer content to remain beneath the surface.

Its form coalesces above me, feathers of seamless black forming from compressed shadow.

Its wings span wide, blotting out the last thin traces of sky.

Its eyes reflect nothing, absolute voids that consume light rather than return it.

It shrieks. The sound doesn’t move through air. It tears through substance. A vibration that resonates through bone and thought alike. Then it dives, talons extended.

Men scream. Armor splits. Flesh yields. Blood sprays black, life essence feeding the shadow that claims it. With each kill, the raven grows more solid, more real.

For a moment, savage triumph surges through me. The connection with my familiar amplifies the sensation, its predatory hunger feeding my own. I advance. Shadows wrap my form. Not weapon or shroud, but instinct. My blade finds its marks, lengthening mid-swing to reach before they close.

The Authority forces fall back, their formation breaking under my onslaught. Their order unravels. Some fall. Some flee. Others writhe, overtaken by shadows that won’t let them go.

They all scream.

Varam is gone. Vanished into the treeline. That part, at least, holds.

Then Sereven raises his hand, calm amid the chaos my shadows have created. That confidence alone should have warned me.

Something glints in his palm. A crystal that pulses with cold blue light. He speaks words that seem to bend the air around him.

Power erupts from the crystal, a concentrated wave of energy that collides with my shadows, and drives me to one knee. Darkness tears loose around me, unspooling under pressure.

My familiar shrieks, pain transmitted directly into my consciousness. Its form wavers. Wings that spanned the clearing begin to unravel, the shape no longer holding. My blade turns translucent at the edges. Shadows disappear into whispers.

The sensation is horrifyingly familiar.

Exactly the way I felt when they sealed me in the tower.

“Look at you,” Sereven says, advancing as his soldiers reform around him. “The mighty Shadowvein Lord. Vareth’el .” His lips twist as he speaks the title. “Once so feared that mothers used your name to frighten children into obedience, now kneeling before the very authority you swore to unmake.”

I fight to rise, muscles straining against invisible weight. My shadows reach for form, sluggish and slow. Each pulse from the crystal severs more. With each heartbeat, the suppression grows.

“Your power was always limited.” He stops just beyond reach.

The crystal glows between his fingers, its rhythm somehow matching my own pulse.

“Impressive, certainly. Even remarkable. But it’s ultimately constrained by what you are.

Nothing more than a man who stole power, and mistook it for conviction. ”

Blood drips down my chin, the copper taste filling my mouth. My familiar beats its wings against the pressure, its form breaking and reforming in frantic bursts. The connection between us is strained, but holding.

Shadows continue to flow from me, but they’re slower now, resistance growing with each passing second. The effort of holding even basic shadow manipulation is becoming increasingly exhausting.

“You speak of limitation,” I force out, voice rough with effort, the metallic taste of my own blood coating my tongue. “But even now, you don’t dare face me alone. Even with your crystal, you brought an army.”

Annoyance crosses his face, the first genuine emotion he’s displayed. I knew the barb would land. Vanity always was his weakness.

“That’s called prudence, not fear.” His tone sharpens briefly, before returning to its usual poise.

“Unlike you, I have never made the mistake of underestimating an enemy. I leave heroic last stands to fools and stories.” He studies me with clinical detachment, confident of his triumph.

“I have to admit, I expected more from you. I’m disappointed, Sacha.

Those years of imprisonment have made you soft. ”

He nods, and another net launches from somewhere behind me. I can’t avoid it, my body already committed to maintaining what shadows remain around me, my concentration divided between too many fronts. The weighted mesh enfolds me, the blue light flaring upon contact with my skin.

Pain lances through every nerve. Magic suppression driving inward with agony as its companion.

It threads beneath the skin like poison.

It breaks apart the bond between will and shadow.

My back arches, muscles locking beyond control.

The wound in my shoulder flares again, blue light blooming through my veins in jagged, branching lines .

My familiar screams, loud in the clearing and louder still inside my mind.

Its shape begins to dissolve, feathers stripping away in strips of smoke and wind, unmaking mid-flight.

Above us, storm clouds continue to build.

The sky fractures with silver light as thunder shakes the ground.

The pressure of it presses down on everything, as if the world itself is bracing.

I think of Ellie again, waiting at River Crossing, and wonder if she can sense what’s happening. Whether she feels the spiral tightening.

I dig deeper, beyond control and pattern, into something older. Past the place training made safe, and into the part of me that bonded with shadow before I understood what it meant.

When the word rises to meet me, I don’t stop it.

“ Aeren. ” The word leaves my lips as breath, not speech. Strike true.

Power wells hot through the break, rough and imprecise, but present. My familiar shudders once, then pulls itself whole. It lifts again into the air, wings stretching to span the clearing. Not complete. But enough.

Below it, soldiers falter, some stumbling back at the unexpected resurgence.

Fear takes hold of them. The fear I once inspired throughout Authority ranks, whispered stories of the Shadowvein Lord.

The man who can pull a man’s shadow from his body and use it to unmake him from within.

The one who kills with silence and leaves no trace.

The one whose shadow knows your name. That fear was always the first blow I struck.

For a breath, the balance shifts.

Sereven’s expression hardens, his confidence finally showing cracks as he sees the situation slipping from his control. He raises the crystal again, lips forming words of greater complexity.

The crystal’s glow intensifies to painful brightness. The air itself seems to vibrate with the power he’s channeling, distorting what little natural light remains as reality itself bends around the crystal’s influence.

Above him the storm grows darker, more concentrated—not a natural formation. Silver light pulses within the clouds like a heartbeat.

The world begins to constrict. Light flattens. Sound dulls. I understand Sereven’s intent a moment before it strikes.

This is not death. It is unmaking.

He means to sever me from the Vein and Void, to leave only the shell behind. Stripped of magic, stripped of identity. The same sentence they gave others like me. Quiet erasure. A death that never requires burial .

There is no more time to weigh the options. No path that doesn’t end in loss. But I know what I will not surrender.

The choice I’m left with crystalizes with brutal simplicity.

Stay and fight a battle already lost, or preserve what matters most.

Ellie .

Her name brings a cascade of images and sensations. The unexpected warmth of her hand when it first touched mine in the tower. The way she challenged me at every turn, refusing to be manipulated even when she had no choice but to help me.

The connection between us—unanticipated, undesired, undeniable. Something I never planned for, never expected to find after a lifetime defined by duty and distance.

The future that might exist beyond this moment if I survive. If she survives.

Power shifts within me as my decision takes root. Shadows rise along my spine, coil around my frame—not shaped for attack or defense, but drawn inward. Preparing for something else entirely.