AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When the fog peeled back to reveal the black sands of the beach and the ocean beyond, the man was already standing before a cluster of jagged boulders with his hands clasped in front of him. The crows I’d sent had landed on his shoulders, but he seemed unaffected by their presence. If anything, he only had eyes for me.
“Welcome back,” he said. Even after hearing it several times over, the rasp of his voice still made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Beside me, my beasts tensed.
“This is the last time,” I said, hoping the conviction I felt would become truth.
“Oh?” He leaned forward in his stance as his lips stretched into an eerie smile. “What makes you so sure?”
“This is my dream, and it’s one I’m tired of having. You are just a projection of what I used to fear.” I glowered at him as I gestured to the multitude of shadow creatures around me. “But I’m better now. I will not become you.” My gaze cut to his ragged appearance,to the frenzied mania that oozed from his frame and crept outward like a disease. No, I would never become that. Not now. Not ever.
“You are better now.” He cocked his head. “What a boon. It’s been so long since I’ve done this.”
An unfamiliar chill settled over my skin. “Done what?”
“Collected someone.” Bringing one hand to his shoulder, he beckoned for my shadow crow. It hopped into his palm and blinked up at him. “You’re certainly special. I might even be able to break free with your gifts.”
“This is a dream. The only one breaking free is me.”
“You keep saying that, but I’ve told you from the start: this is no dream.” A peculiar liquid sheen obscured his eyes as he brought the bird to his lips and whispered something beneath his breath. My crow shuddered, as if fighting against something invisible, and then stilled. The man whispered to the second crow. When both birds looked my way, their gazes were clouded with that same, liquid magic.
I felt my sense of surety faltering. “Who are you?”
“I am the Lost, and the Lost are me.” He took a step forward, toothy grin on full display. “And you, Gaige, are lost now, too.”
I backstepped into my beasts, and they darted around me to position themselves before the oncoming threat. The fear I’d suppressed hit me hard and fast. “We’re in the shadow realm, aren’t we?”
He nodded. “Very good.”
“But how?” I scanned the environment for a sign, for a way out. “Those lost to the realm never return to the world.” My eyes snagged on a jagged stone with a handful of sharpened points, and I silently commanded one of my shadows to inch toward it. As a squirrel furtively crept between the legs of my other creations, I returned my focus to the Lost. If I could keep him talking, I could injure myself badly enough to wake like I’d done previously.
“Isn’t it fascinating how the truth gets lost in stories andlegends?” He stroked the chest of one of my crows with a single finger. “You’ve left the realm before. You must know that’s not true.”
Or this really was still a very strange nightmare.
The squirrel snared the rock and quietly moved my direction. “Then why has no one ever made it back?”
Any second now and I’d be home free. My creature scuttled across the sand to sit by my feet, a jagged stone cradled between its paws. But just as I was about to drop to my knees and smash the damn thing against my temple, a black, endless void rimmed in moon-white sparks swallowed the creature whole. It happened so fast I hardly registered the gaping maw in the earth and its sudden disappearance, but I felt my jaw go slack and body freeze.
“Because I never let anyone,” he said.
Horrifying black spires of pure night erupted from the sand all around me. My beasts scattered or were speared, and suddenly the air was coated in wispy shadows as their forms disintegrated. The rest howled and lunged in the direction of the Lost, and he stood there with open arms as they converged on his body. The gnash of fangs and rip of flesh filled my ears, but his delirious laugh rose above it all. One by one, they stopped fighting and turned to face me, eyes alight with that lustrous magic.
The Lost regained his footing and pinned me with wide, bloodshot eyes. Deep gouges marred the planes of his stomach, arms, and legs, and his tunic was nothing more than tattered pieces of stained fabric on the beach. His skin was smeared in blood and grime, but the gashes were already healing at a rapid pace.
And then all at once his appearance shifted. Gone were his—my—blue eyes, instead replaced by a shade of brown so deep it bordered on black. His hair shifted to an ashy blond. A jagged scar climbed up his neck in the shape of a winding river, stretching from his collarbone to his earlobe.
Mage.
“I am the apex predator here.” He stalked toward me with languid ease. “I prey on the weak-minded undead. I bring them here, and I take what is mine.”
“And what is it you want?”
Something dark raced through his expression. “Power.”
With a brutal flick of his wrist, he summoned another round of spears from the earth, and I dodged one only to be gouged by another. The point went clean through my side, and white-hot pain arced through me as I screamed. A roar of adrenaline crested in my ears as my vision swam. This couldn’t be happening to me. I’d come so far. I’d finally found my place. My home. The images of the Council, of my newfound brethren at Cruor, of Kost, flooded my mind. I wouldn’t give up on them or myself.
Cursing, I force the spike out and crumpled to the earth. Sand wormed between my fingers as I steadied myself with ragged breaths. The wound would heal, but that wouldn’t stop him from striking again.
“I have been waiting for you, Gaige, for a very, very long time.” He circled me slowly, and the ground began to tremble. I rolled just in time to avoid another disastrous barb. “I assumed it was only a matter of time before one of your predecessors defiled the laws of magic by raising someone like you.”
