“They say the outcast walks again,” the man said. “That Kardoc’s father’s son crawled back from the pit.”
Rakhal said nothing. He lifted his hand, and the Shadow unfurled across his palm like spilled ink finding its own terrible purpose. The ground at his feet shuddered once.
The rider’s face tightened before he fell to one knee. “Then the stories are true.”
Others came before sunset, pairs, small bands. Some carried old clan sigils torn and re-sewn, others bore nothing but scars. They didn’t kneel for blood or creed. They came because something in the dark whispered, and they wanted to hear it for themselves.
Rakhal spoke little. He offered no oaths, no promises. When one demanded proof that he commanded the darkness, Rakhal simply reached for it. The shadow pooled across his hand, thick and alive.
“Touch it,” he said.
The warrior hesitated, then touched the shadow with all the enthusiasm of a man poking at a coiled snake. When he survived, the relief on his face was almost comical. For a breath, the dark clung, shimmered, then receded, leaving the skin unmarked.
The next one wasn’t so lucky. The darkness flared white-hot. He screamed and staggered back, his palm burned black to the wrist. Rakhal felt a flicker of amusement and crushed it immediately. The scent of scorched flesh drifted through the camp like a warning.
No one else questioned after that.
By the second night, the valley floor shimmered with low fires. Not an army, just the beginnings of one. A gathering of those who had felt the pulse in their veins and come to stand near its source.
Shazi walked among them, her voice carrying in the dark. “He doesn’t call you as lord,” she told them. “He calls you as Shadow-born. Stand or walk away. The dark will sort the rest.”
They stayed. Not because of loyalty, but because they knew what moved inside him. Power recognized power.
Eliza stood at the edge of the firelight, her face turned toward him. The dark moved faintly under his skin, and though he saw her fear, she didn’t look away.
“They fear you,” she said when the last of the oaths were done, and something in her voice made him wonder if she should.
Rakhal looked out across the plain, the horizon lined with sparks of fire where others waited unseen. “Then they’ll stay close,” he said.
The wind shifted, carrying the low hum of distant horns. Somewhere far off, another fire flared. The word was spreading faster than breath.
Shazi came to his side, her face lit by flames, shadows dancing across her features. “It’s begun.”
Rakhal’s eyes fixed on the dark beyond the ridge. “It began the moment they felt it.”
The Shadow stirred again, alive and hungry. Every orc born with its mark would feel it now, the change, the pull, the old world waking in their blood.
Eliza stepped up beside him. “You called them,” she said quietly, like she wasn’t sure whether it was accusation or awe.
“I didn’t have to,” Rakhal said, his words carried by the wind into the night. “The Shadow remembers.”
Chapter
Fifty-Nine
Dusk gripped the plain, stretching into a long violet hour where everything sharpened: the cold, the edges of stone, the watching eyes. Rakhal straightened as the sun finally surrendered to night, his movements becoming more fluid, more certain as daylight's pressure eased. In the forest, light had pressed against him like a blade; here, under open sky, darkness welcomed him.
The Moot of Bones lay in a shallow basin surrounded by upright stones and ancient, cracked ossuaries. Bones jutted from the earth like a giant ribcage caught mid-breath. Femurs and tusks formed low walls, each inscribed with glyphs that caught the last light and gave off a sullen glow.
Eliza walked beside Rakhal, her cloak pulled tight against the wind, the taste of iron heavy in the air. For days, she had listened to Shazi's whispered lessons about Moot customs in the dark hours before dawn. She had memorized rituals older than the walls of her kingdom. Now she would put what she learned to the test.
Eliza took a deep breath, remembering Azfar's quiet lessons at the forest camp.The Shadow respects only what is bare,he had told Rakhal. Now she would stand bare before thisassembly, no titles, no armor but her courage. The river's peace felt distant here, replaced by the steady drumbeat of ceremony and ancient power. She felt Rakhal's presence beside her, solid and certain in a way he hadn't been before their time by the water. His control was evident in every measured step, in the way the Shadow no longer fought against his skin but moved with it. Together, they would face this challenge as they had faced the night—united in purpose.
Hundreds had gathered: warbands and loners, established houses and newcomers with fresh scars. Their banners were made from skins and shadow-dyed cloth. The Shadow-born among them gave off a faint heat that Eliza could see at the edges of her vision, like warmth rising above coals. She'd been around them long enough to recognize it. All shadow orcs carried some magic, even if just a thread. A few wielded it like a second spine—those whose eyes held a sleeping storm.
Not storms as dark and depthless as Rakhal's, but storms nonetheless.
Shadow orcs held ancient power. It made them what they were.
