Chapter 10
Trees shook as the violet sky darkened into a bloodied plum.
Wind tangled my hair and hissed past my ears as sparks caught the side of my face, falling like dust around us, and I looked on, numb, as my home erupted into flames.
Shadows of people, donning the garb of the Light Legion, marched from the depths of the Visstill, eyes haunted and faces hollow.
Others ringed the shadow-scorched edges of a burning pyre.
“They’re burning them,” I said slowly, tasting the foulness of my words and the air heavy with the smell of fire. It was the cremation of all things. Grass, root, pine, hair, flesh. It was all there, burning, mingling.
Wrong.
He tightened his grip on my wrist, pulling me in. “You can’t go to them. They will not see you.”
“But this is my home,” I protested. “I need to find Mother.” I twisted away from him, fury growing wild in my stomach.
“Father.” I ripped free. “Elliot.” I stumbled into the clearing.
Wave after wave of warm, fire-fed air pushed into me, drying my eyes and heating my lungs.
My home was an inferno of flame and smoke, cracking and groaning so violently, it was as though it were alive.
Dying, but alive.
The nearest legionnaire was tucked into the shadows of the Visstill, the golden metal of his breastplate charred and streaked with blood. He was gazing past me—eyes fixed on the pyre, the smoldering house, sparks exploding across the sky—and made to turn away, moving deeper into the trees.
“Stop!” I shouted, clawing my way through the smoke that drifted between us. “Please stop!” As I ran, darkness began to cloud the edges of my vision. “Stop!” I screamed again, crying out so forcefully that my voice cracked.
The legionnaire paused, turning toward the clearing—just as an explosion of red flame and dark, all-consuming smoke thundered behind us.
My home had collapsed into itself, releasing its innards to the earth.
I staggered sideways into the legionnaire, gasping, wild-eyed, and suffocating on both the smoke and my own panic. I should have fallen against the man’s metal front, but instead I fell through him, crashing to the ground as he walked forward and through me.
This isn’t happening.
I stumbled to my feet, lunged forward, and grasped for the legionnaire’s shoulder, only to pass through him in a wave of shadow.
This can’t be happening.
The Shadow Bringer emerged from the flame and smoke, shadows rolling from his shoulders in powerful waves.
Soot marked his skin under his mask, ringing his eyes and wrapping around the hollows of his exposed jaw.
I expected the legionnaire to notice, especially since the Shadow Bringer was wielding his sword, but he continued walking, completely oblivious to the Shadow Bringer’s powerful, inhuman presence.
“Where are they?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered, miserable and aching. “I can’t find them.”
I looked toward the pile of burning bodies. If they were purging the Corrupt, then would Mother, Father, Elliot—?
He interrupted before I could finish that thought. “No, not your family. Who caused this? This is a warped dream, based on your current reality. There must be someone powerful at the root of it. Who deals with your Corrupt?”
“Lord Mithras,” I said absently. “Our holy Light Bringer.”
“Mithras?” he repeated, eyes flashing in revulsion. “He is no lord.”
Another explosion shook the ground around us, filling the air with wood, stone, and debris.
And then fire rained down.
The Shadow Bringer threw up his arms, letting his blade fall to the earth, and from his hands he summoned a protective shadow that loomed as high as a mountain and crashed with the force of a storm-battered sea. It wrapped around us, forming a shield before the fire hit.
For a few silent moments, we were alone in the void, listening to the muffled crashing of my world—my burning, ravaged world—falling against our shield of shadow.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” I finally managed. “I died in the fire, just as my family did. That’s why I’m stuck in your castle and can’t wake up.”
“No, not at all.” He looked past me, eyes cold, as if he could see beyond his wall of darkness. “What you just saw was merely a half-truth, as most dreams are. It held parts of your reality, but not the whole. This isn’t real.”
I peered at the shadows, trying to see what he could see.
“You’re lying,” I said.
“I’m not,” he said simply, shaking his head.
“This is exactly what I left behind before I fell asleep and dreamed of you.” I cursed, a familiar rush of sorrow and fear ripping through me. “They’re dead. I can feel it. I can feel myself dying, too.”
Something snapped in me again, a familiar pulling of my ribs.
Only this time, instead of connecting me to some power out of my reach, it connected directly to him.
The Shadow Bringer turned to face me, eyes wild.
Part of his neck was left exposed by his helm; his hair curled damply against it, melding with the soot that marred it.
My attention drifted to his mouth. A smudge of ash was underneath his lower lip, all but enticing me to wipe it off.
And his eyes. Shadows swirled in them, eddying between darker and lighter variations with every breath.
They reminded me of stars—depthless constellations I wanted to get lost in.
And, Maker, he was so tall. Powerfully built and capable of great, terrible things.
He’s beautiful.
The thought surged up, unbidden, and nearly made me buckle.
“Again,” he asked, alarmed. “How are you able to call on my power? What are you?”
“I’m not a monster,” I snapped, finally releasing some of the pent-up emotion that I had been holding on to for days. “Don’t take me to be anything like you, demon.”
“Enough.” He held me by my shoulders, pinning me to a tree with a grip of iron. His sphere of shadow released its hold, falling back and blanketing the scorched, ruined land around us.
He wasn’t beautiful.
The Shadow Bringer would never be beautiful.
There were his powers—the way he could control darkness and make it bend to his will.
Then there were the demons that lived with him, haunting his castle with their screams. The tales had falsely professed his eyes to be red and his body fiendish, but he possessed many features that made him cold and cruel nonetheless.
“Enough,” he repeated, the color fading from his eyes, his lips. “Please.”
He looked at me with wild desperation.
But I couldn’t stop. The shadows roared.
“You’re a demon, a devil, a monster!” I screamed.
His expression forfeited what his silence could not.
“You killed my sister! You killed my parents!”
Emptiness ripped at my stomach and cleaved my heart in two.
It laid bare the space where I had a family who loved me and a home that protected me.
Mother and Father, no longer Corrupt. Elliot, safe and without tears.
A future and a hope for a better life. Without realizing it, I closed my eyes.
I was screaming, sobbing, begging—for what, I didn’t know.
For this vision to be a lie. For the Shadow Bringer to end it all.
And the dark roared louder.
When the chaos settled, the shadows dropped, circling the ground in a low-lying fog and leaving the Shadow Bringer and me exposed.
To my disgust, he was still holding my shoulders, and I was unintentionally leaning into him, face pressed into his armored chest. A quick shove sent him sprawling; he’d been drained of his shadows, which were now scattering to the wind and skimming the grass instead of returning to his body.
The sensation of us being watched snapped me to my senses.
Mithras, encircled by his Light Legion, was standing across from us, shoulders dusted with ash and boots marred by the Shadow Bringer’s low-lying shadows.
Peering through his mask, his eyes, golden and all-seeing, betrayed an expression of abject shock, and the legionnaires who had previously ignored us were now staring, mouths agape.
We were still in this dream, but they could see us.
They can see us.
The Shadow Bringer, half-crumpled at my feet, cursed.
“You’re the Havenfall daughter. Esmer,” Mithras began, taking a step forward. Light threaded around his fingertips, dissipating some of the shadows that clung to him. “And what is that monster doing at your feet?”
The Shadow Bringer staggered upright. The fog began to move, darting around ankles and rising to meet his outstretched hands.
The Light Bringer’s face paled. “You aren’t meant to be free.”
“Ah, Mithras,” said the Shadow Bringer, his shadows beginning to hiss. “Your death will finally bring me peace.”
“Monsters like you can never find peace,” Mithras spat, the color beginning to return to his skin. “You will be banished to your castle immediately.”
“No,” the Shadow Bringer said menacingly. In an instant, his shadows became serpents, grabbing legionnaires and slamming them into the ground with violent cracks. He laughed and the darkness rose, swallowing any legionnaire who managed to escape the beasts’ powerful bodies.
“After him!” Mithras yelled, but many of his followers were either incapacitated or drowning in the shadows.
I sidestepped a legionnaire who fell from the dark, blindly swiping a serpent off his throat only to catch a jab to the ribs from his comrade. I bent over, gasping for air. Fire stung my lungs as I tried to catch my breath.
It was here that Lord Mithras found me. He held his hands at his sides in a show of false civility, but his eyes were murderous. I stumbled backward, horrified by his anger and nearly tripping over one of the Shadow Bringer’s serpents.
“Did you free the Shadow Bringer, Esmer? He was bound to that castle in order to protect the entire Dream Realm. We will be eviscerated with him roaming free.”