Yorika
The library refuses to give up its secrets.
I've spent three hours trying to access anything useful about Void Walkers. Every attempt meets the same response: books flying out of reach, shelves rearranging themselves, texts shifting into unreadable scripts.
"I need information about the Void," I tell the seemingly empty air.
P?ivi materializes from scattered index cards, her vellum skin covered in moving text that spells variations of 'no' in dozens of languages.
"You need nothing." She gestures and the book I was reaching for shoots forty feet up. "Your presence here is temporary. Your access is nonexistent."
"How am I supposed to understand this place?"
"You're not."
"Then how do I survive?"
"Survival isn't guaranteed. Check your contract."
"There was no contract."
"Exactly." Her smile is all paper cuts. "No contract, no rights, no access."
A leather volume on a lower shelf catches my eye: "Anatomical Studies of Shadow Beings." I drift toward it.
P?ivi blocks my path, becoming a wall of swirling text. "Don't."
"I was just looking."
"Looking leads to touching. Touching leads to reading. Reading leads to ideas above your station." The pages forming her face rearrange into contempt.
"You seem certain."
"I've seen it before. Humans arrive with weapons and plans. They last days, maybe weeks. Then they're gone, dead, dismissed, or mad from the impossibility of this place."
"Maybe I'm different."
"You're not." She starts dispersing, then pauses. "Although... you made him solid for seventeen minutes during training. That's unusual."
Before I can ask what that means, Mikaere's footsteps announce his arrival. He carries a tray, a bowl of steaming, purple stew that smells of mushrooms and lightning, and a flask of cool water.
"Meal," he says, setting it down.
I eat while he watches, the silence heavy. He's waiting for something. The food has an odd taste, not unpleasant, but unlike anything from my world. The water is impossibly cold, tasting of stone and deep earth.
"You're expecting me to attack," I say between bites.
"You will. The question is when."
"And you'll be ready."
"Always."
"Must be exhausting."
"Less exhausting than reconstituting my master from scattered shadow."
I set down the cup. "That's happened?"
"Three times this year. Each time takes more effort. Each time, he returns less solid."
"Why tell me?"
"So you understand what your delay costs."
"My delay?"
"Every hour you spend plotting is an hour closer to his dissolution."
"Maybe that's what should happen."
The temperature plummets. Mikaere's form shifts, crystalline veins pulsing with cold light.
"You know nothing. You see a monster who bought you. You don't see the being who held back the Void for two millennia. Who saved seventeen civilizations from extinction." He leans forward slightly. "You don't see the being who has hunted your sister's killer for three years."
My blood freezes. "What did you say?"
But Mikaere is already walking away. "The master has requested your presence tonight. Be ready."
"Wait, what about my sister?"
He's gone, the archway sealing behind him.
My mind races. How does he know about Melara? Was that a slip, or deliberate? A manipulation, or truth?
P?ivi pretends to organize books while obviously eavesdropping.
"You knew," I say.
"I know many things."
"About my sister."
"About many sisters. Many brothers. Many losses." She turns to face me fully. "Did you think you were the first to come here seeking revenge? The first to lose someone to the darkness between worlds?"
"He killed her."
"Someone did. The question is who."
Before I can demand answers, the temperature drops. Nezavek materializes between the shelves, more solid than this morning but still translucent at the edges.
"Leave us," he tells P?ivi.
She disperses without argument, but I catch her final look, something almost like pity.
We're alone.
He moves closer. I don't retreat. This proximity lets me see through him partially, shadows within shadows, depths that continue forever, and at the center, something that might be a heart or might be a dying star.
"Mikaere spoke out of turn," he says.
"Did he lie?"
"No. But he told a truth you weren't ready to hear."
"I'm ready to hear everything about my sister's death."
His eyes, those burning gold suns, study me. A strange warmth spreads across my skin, a tangible manifestation of his curiosity. His hunger. Not for death but for something else.
"You're planning something," he says.
"Always."
"Show me."
"What?"
"Whatever scheme you've designed. Whatever weapon you think will work." He spreads his arms slightly, an invitation. "Try."
The challenge ignites something in me. Fine. If he wants to play, I'll play.
I move closer, letting my body language shift from defensive to predatory. My hips sway as I circle him, the movement deliberate, calculated.
I've done this before. Make them want you, make them vulnerable, then strike.
His form solidifies marginally as I approach. I trail my fingers through the air just outside his shadow-form, close enough he can feel the heat from my skin.
"You want to know what I'm planning?" My voice drops lower, the tone I used to distract targets before the kill. "Maybe I'm planning to get closer."
I stop directly in front of him, close enough that the cold radiating from him makes my skin prickle with goosebumps. I reach up slowly, my fingers almost touching his face. He doesn't move, but I feel his attention sharpen like a blade being drawn.
"Maybe I'm planning to find out what makes a shadow god solid," I whisper, pressing my body against his shadow-form. The cold burns through my dress, but I don't flinch. My hand slides down toward where his heart should be, seeking something vital, something I can use or damage.
His hand catches my wrist. Not hard, but inescapable. Shadow tendrils manifest around his form, coiling in the air like smoke given life.
"Or maybe," he says, his voice darker than I've heard it, "you're trying to seduce information from me."
I meet his eyes, letting him see the calculation there. "Is it working?"
"No." But his form is more solid than it was moments ago, and the tendrils reach toward me before he pulls them back. "You're trying too hard to be something you're not."
The rejection stings. I press closer, letting my breasts push against his chest, my free hand sliding up his arm. "How do you know what I am?"
"Because I can taste your emotions, remember? This isn't desire. It's desperation. Manipulation." He releases my wrist, but doesn't step back. "The real you is much more interesting than this performance."
"The real me wants you dead."
"The real you wants someone dead. But you're not certain it's me anymore, are you?"
The words hit too close to the truth. I step back, anger replacing attempted seduction. "You know about my sister."
"I know about many things."
"Stop being cryptic."
"Stop trying to seduce me like I'm some mark in a bar.
" He moves closer, and I'm suddenly aware of how much larger he is, how the shadows around him could crush me in an instant.
"If you want answers, ask questions. If you want to kill me, try.
But stop pretending to be something you're not. It's beneath you."
"Fine." I plant my feet, refusing to give another inch. "Who killed my sister?"
"Not me."
"Prove it."
"I can't. Not yet. You wouldn't believe any evidence I could show you."
"Try me."
He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull away. His fingers touch my temple, and images flood my mind, but they're fragmented, unclear. A figure made of ice and bone. A woman's scream. The smell of crystallizing flesh. And underneath it all, a rage that mirrors my own.
I jerk away. "What was that?"
"A memory. One of many. I've been hunting him for centuries. Your sister was his latest victim, not his first."
"Him?"
"The Bone Collector. A Void Walker like me, but older. Crueler." His form flickers with emotion. "We were allies once. Before he discovered how to anchor himself using crystallized consciousness."
"You're lying."
"I don't lie. I don't need to." He turns away, shadows coiling around him in agitation. "Tomorrow, P?ivi will give you a book. Read it. Learn about what we are, what we're capable of. Then decide if you still think I'm your enemy."
"Why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't. But you're starting to anyway. I can taste the doubt mixing with your rage. It's... progress."
He starts to dissolve into shadow, then pauses.
"Your seduction attempt. It was well-executed but unnecessary.
When you want me, really want me, not as manipulation but as desire, I'll know.
And then..." The shadows around him pulse with something that might be hunger. "Then we'll see who seduces whom."
He vanishes, leaving me alone with my racing pulse and the uncomfortable realization that part of me, a part I don't want to acknowledge, is disappointed he didn't take the bait.
I sink into P?ivi's chair, mind churning. The Bone Collector. Another Void Walker. If it's true, if Nezavek isn't the killer, then I've wasted three years. But if it's a lie, an elaborate manipulation...
The cold of his form left an imprint on my skin, a memory my flesh won't release. When I close my eyes, I can still feel those shadow tendrils reaching for me, almost touching but not quite.
I need to clear my head. Need to think without his proximity scrambling my senses.
But when I finally return to my quarters that night, sleep brings no peace. Only dreams of shadow and silver, intertwined in ways that have nothing to do with violence and everything to do with hunger.