My throat still tastes of metal.
I press a hand to my stomach as we cross the square, cold shivers rack my skin.I force the bile back down.I reach into my pocket, bleeding the last of the miren crystal’s power—and my own threadbare faith—in a desperate attempt to reignite the flame within.Not to fight, not to flee.Only to remember what it felt like to be steady.
The crystal hasn’t seen daylight in days, yet a small, familiar spark dances across my fingers and up my arm until it reaches my heart.I shudder as the wave crashes over me like a furnace being fed.
Do your shadow thing, and let’s be gone.Another ruin left in her wake.
The streets beyond the square glow faintly from the lanterns above.We have to reach the outer edges of the city before the sun rises and leaves us with no shadows left to hide in.
“This way,” I whisper, indicating the route.
We move through the alleyways, sticking to the corners where the dark still lingers.We are careful to avoid the market traders as they emerge from their homes, beginning the rhythmic, oblivious clatter of a new day.
My vision flicks through a montage of the last few days, and my role within them.What am I doing here?The glimpses I caught in the cavern were only a small, broken light.Reflecting off a truth I still don’t possess.I need more.
I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping the pressure of my people’s fate will subside.And that’s when I hear him.
An old man dressed in dark brown robes, wearing a half-obscured, cream-coloured mask, steps from his home.Seren gasps.My arm whips out, my palm covering her mouth to smother the sound.I glare at her darkened features as blackness swirls around her.I press an index finger to my lips, a silent command for her to be still.
But the man turns.He faces the shadows—faces us.
He takes a step closer, his head tilting as he searches for the source of the sound.“Hello?”he rasps.“Anyone there?”
Tendrils of shadow creep toward him.My gaze follows their path.I pull my hand from Seren’s mouth, my eyes begging her to spare this innocent soul.Before I can think, the connection between us snaps taut, and I shout down the thread:Stop them, NOW.
She looks down, her eyes squinting hard as the shadows recoil like scolded hounds.
Relief washes through me as the man shrugs and walks away.How close he came to meeting Solan today—and how close I came to letting it happen.
We move through the underways, past the drainage arches and the rusted pipes that feed the city’s fountains.The air tastes of ash and brine this far from the centre.Every step feels wrong, dragging me further from the life I once understood.I follow her because I can no longer live in a world built on gilded lies.My people deserve to know what their gods are capable of.
But shekilledhim.
Daren.
He was the only person in this blinding city I could call a friend.
And you let her, something answers—soft, cold, and not a thought of my own.
Nyx.Her voice threads through my skull like silk through cloth.He drew steel.He chose the sun.You made your choice, Lightborne.You chose her.You know what she is, yet you question the means to the answers you so desperately seek?
My jaw aches as I clench down hard on my teeth.“Get out of my head,” I growl.
Seren glances toward me, her brow furrowing.“What?”she whispers.
“Nothing.”
The shadows ripple along the warehouse walls, flickering at the edges with their own pulse.I can’t look at them without seeing Daren’s silhouette breaking in the dark.The sounds of his bones snapping will never leave me.
If you want the screaming to stop,Nyx murmurs, voice velvet over a blade,stop pretending you didn’t choose.
A hiss escapes me as I try to purge her voice from my mind.
“Kael?”Seren’s voice is smaller this time, tentative.
“Keep walking.We’re almost there.”
We reach the edge of the industrial tier, where the city thins to warehouses and sleeping docks.The towers behind us gleam in the early light—unbroken, untouchable.On the horizon, a thin seam of silver glows with the rising sun as the sky bleeds from inky black to shades of rose and gold.The sea to Palimora waits, a vast expanse of liquid silk lapping hypnotically against the rockface.
