Azfar’s eyes softened—not with pity, but recognition. “You can’t stop what you are. But you cancontainit. You can let it pass through you without claiming it. The first step is unlearning control.”
Rakhal exhaled sharply. “And if I fail?”
“Then I’ll end you.” Azfar’s tone was serene, almost gentle. “Better ashes than a mouth that never closes.”
The orcs bristled, but Rakhal lifted a hand and they went still. The promise between them had always been there, old and binding.
“Agreed,” he said.
Azfar nodded, satisfied. “We begin at first dark. No blades. No torches. You’ll sit in the soil until the dead stop mistaking you for one of their own.”
He turned toward the forest, his shape dissolving into mist even as he spoke. “Remember, Rakhal—every shadow hungers for purpose. Feed them patience, not blood.”
And then he was gone.
The forest exhaled. Sound crept back in fragments—a drip resuming, a bird testing its song, the rustle of leaves returning to wind.
“I hate when he does that,” Shazi muttered, sheathing her blade.
Rakhal gave a humorless smile. “So do I.”
He stood for a long while, staring at the empty space where Azfar had been. The shadow beneath his skin shifted warily, aware, as if it too listened for a command that hadn’t come. The sunlight filtering through the canopy felt too bright, too clean.
Eliza crossed to him and laid a hand on his forearm. The contact eased the whispering in his blood, dimming it to a low, manageable hum. He met her eyes.
“Do you trust him?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “But I trust that he wants me alive.”
“Because he cares?”
“Because he’s curious.”
Her mouth twitched. “Then we’ll bore him by staying alive.”
A rough sound escaped him—something that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt. “Endure,” he murmured.
Her reply came soft and certain. “I am here.”
The forest stirred. The shadow in Rakhal’s veins uncoiled, then lay still.
When night came, he would sit in the dirt and learn to let the dead pass through him like wind through branches—to find the part of himself that still remembered his name.
For now, he stood beneath the thorn trees, the sunlight burning faint along the edges of his shadow. It stretched long across the ground, darker than the others, but steady.
For this moment, that was victory enough.
Chapter
Fifty-Four
The forest had a rhythm of its own—a pulse that hid beneath the roots and bones. By dusk, he could feel it waiting.
Azfar said nothing as he led Rakhal away from the camp. The others had already learned to keep their distance. Even Shazi, who had faced warlords and beasts, would not step past the edge of the glade once the lesson began.
“No blades,” Azfar said quietly. “The shadow respects only what is bare.”
Rakhal stripped to the waist. The air was damp and cold; his breath hung pale against the dark. He sat cross-legged on the soil, feeling its throb through the soles of his feet. It was faint but steady—the heartbeat of a land fed on centuries of blood.
