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Above, my familiar circles. It does not wait for command. Our bond is older than language, the raven reading what I intend before I fully form the thought. Its wings align with mine, its course mirroring the conclusion I’ve reached.

It will cost nearly everything I have left. But she is worth it.

Sereven completes his incantation, the crystal flaring with blinding intensity. From blue to white to something beyond normal light. A radiance that seems to emanate from between realities.

A pulse rips outward in a visible wave, distorting everything it touches.

It tears through my shadows like a blade through spider silk, unmaking in seconds what took decades to discipline.

The soldiers brace. Their weapons rise in unison.

They are waiting for the clearing of the field. For me to be exposed.

But I’m already moving. Already implementing a desperate plan.

Darkness folds inward around me, collapsing into itself, drawing tightly against my body. I let it consume me. A shield. A cloak. A passage.

Shadow transportation. My most demanding ability. One I’ve only used successfully once. It requires complete stillness, absolute focus. The kind of preparation that once took me a full night of breathing rituals and spatial mapping. The first time nearly killed me .

And here I am, attempting it under the worst possible conditions. Weakened, under disruption so severe I can barely hold my form.

The wave hits as I begin to vanish.

Shadows scream in protest. My structure falters. Existence bends. Sensation becomes noise. The barrier between self and spell thins until it cannot be told apart.

My familiar shrieks, no longer only sound, but feedback across the bond that links our forms. It’s caught mid-transition, half-formed, pulled in opposite directions. It flickers, flickers again, as I draw on its strength and it bleeds back into mine.

Agony blurs the edges. Still, I hold.

Through the agony, I fix my mind on a single place.

Not River Crossing where Ellie waits. That distance would kill me, and worse, it would bring Sereven’s soldiers to her side.

I choose the closer route. A clearing my familiar noted.

A pocket between trees. A hollow beneath old roots.

A place where shadow pools without interference.

A place chosen not for safety, but for recovery.

Once I have it in mind, I let go.

Darkness swallows me whole, and I surrender to its embrace. For a heartbeat, I exist nowhere and everywhere, suspended between moments in a void where reality’s rules bend to shadow’s will.

My consciousness fractures, scattered across multiple points of silence. Sound vanishes. Light ceases. Time loses shape. Only intent remains. The desperate need to escape. To survive. To continue.

For her. For what might still be.

Then gravity reasserts itself. My body slams back into the world, striking earth. The force drives the air from my lungs, leaves and broken branches scraping against my skin. The scent of rot and moss fills my throat.

The forest.

Real.

But something is wrong. The transportation is incomplete. Shadows unravel where they should hold. Sereven’s disruption has followed me through the void.

Blood soaks my side, a deep wound reopened. Warmth spreads across my ribs, fading quickly to cold. My vision frays. My left arm won’t respond. Nerve pathways burned or severed—by blade, crystal, or failed crossing, I can’t be sure.

Above me, my familiar circles low. Its shape flickers.

Where once it was made of certainty, now its wings blur with each beat.

I reach for it with what little energy remains, trying to draw it back into myself as I’ve done countless times before.

To preserve what’s left of our connection.

To save some part of myself that might survive even if my body fails. But it resists me, for the first time.

It cries out in denial. Not rejection. Refusal to give in. Refusal to leave me here. It dives toward me, talons extended as if to drag me from the forest floor where I’ve fallen, its determination flowing through our connection.

I lift one hand, palm upright, blood dripping between my fingers.

“No,” I whisper, the word catching in the fluid rising up my throat. “Go. Find her.”

Her face fills my mind. Silver eyes. A will that refused to bend. The woman who broke my prison and upended everything.

The raven shrieks once more, the sound laced with defiance and despair, then it launches itself downward again, passing through my arm like mist, the contact terribly final.

Then it turns, rising into the storm. Wings spread against the silver-lit sky, flying north. Toward River Crossing. Toward Ellie.

I try to rise. To follow. My limbs disobey. The wound in my side pulses in time with my failing heartbeat, lifeblood leaking into the forest soil. In the distance, thunder rolls.

Darkness closes in. Not the familiar shadow I’ve shaped since childhood, but something colder. An absence of self. The stillness that lies beneath all motion. The silence between heartbeats. The void that precedes oblivion.

The final threshold every Shadowvein Lord eventually crosses alone.

As consciousness slips away, one final thought anchors me.

What began with her arrival won’t end with my absence. The silver under her skin carries something beyond either of us. A power that responds to shadows but isn’t defined by it. A light that does not erase darkness, but walks beside it.

The woman from another world will herald a future I won’t live to see, but one I helped to create. In her, shadow and storm will meet. In her, everything will change.

Lightning splits the sky. For a moment, the forest turns silver. My familiar’s cry pierces the dark.

One final sound accompanying me as darkness claims everything.