Chapter 16
The Tomb of the Devourer was silent, heavy, and endless.
Half-delirious with exhaustion, grief, and fear, I stumbled forward, feeling my way through damp tunnels and crumbling stairs as I tried to avoid the Light Legion’s corpses.
Without torchlight or a moonlit sky, the tomb gnawed at me, flooding me with its ancient scent and eternal dark.
The walls were strange, thrumming with a soft vibration that made the space feel alive, somehow.
As though it had been waiting for me all along.
As though it wasn’t just the Tomb of the Devourer but my tomb, my grave.
This is what it must feel like to be buried alive.
I swallowed back tears, coughing as I breathed the dusty air. Where was the Shadow Bringer? He was nowhere in the silence, the dust, the rotting stone. My hand was searching the walls for a clue, a sign—when I tripped into something dry and rattling.
Bones.
As the sound echoed off the walls, I waited, silent, fully expecting that the Shadow Bringer would reveal himself. When he didn’t, after minutes—perhaps hours—had passed, my only companions, darkness and two skeletons, mocked me.
Maker, help me.
I paced around the chamber, dragging my hand along the walls for support as I went.
The movement reminded me of when I’d first entered the Shadow Bringer’s castle, encased in darkness; it wasn’t until my eyes had adjusted that the space had revealed itself.
But there were no lights here. No gilded chandeliers or candelabras, no mirrors by which candlelight could reflect.
Still, there had to be a door or a passageway.
His shadows had carried him somewhere—but where?
“You can appear anytime now, Shadow Bringer,” I said, my voice higher in pitch than I had intended. Perhaps the Shadow Bringer was dead. Maybe I was doomed to rot alone in this pit of darkness. “Haunt me like you usually do.”
I clung to the stone, slowing my breathing and counting to ten.
No.
The Shadow Bringer was here, somewhere. This prison was his, and he was within—in the dark, in the cold, in the shadows.
I could feel him. I pulled my arms in tight, fighting the chill seeping into my dress.
The vibration, that steady thrum of power, was back, this time closer than before.
It hummed steadily under my fingertips, calling me to the center of the tomb’s innermost wall.
Here the stone felt different, as though it was made from another material altogether.
Curious, I traced a finger over the wall, flinching as my hand passed through.
The stone parted like dust or smoke, swirling apart like a curtain.
I inched my hand forward, shivering as the substance lapped against my wrist, forearm, elbow.
Then, as though the substance was alive, it grabbed my arm and pulled.
I shrieked, mortified, as the wall passed over me in a quick, freezing blast. It was like jumping into a pond on a summer night and slipping under a crust of warmth left over from the sun’s scorching heat, to then reach the darker, colder depths below.
I pushed up against the hidden chamber’s floor, scrambling to get my bearings.
The space was surprisingly vast; my own home could have fit within it five times over, and I still couldn’t see past the shadows that obscured its edges.
Stones arched overhead, curling into a central orb that gave off a slow, meandering light.
A slab of obsidian sat underneath the orb, as if patiently awaiting a sacrifice, and thousands of blue quivering flecks illuminated the cavernous ceiling beyond, mimicking stars.
It didn’t take me long to find him after that.
He sat against one of the twisting, arching stones, leaning back with his neck exposed.
From his wounds spun thick tendrils of shadow, crystallizing as they drifted up toward the orb.
One of the deepest cuts—an ugly, unforgiving gash across his chest—gave off the blackest substance, trailing over his skin and tangling in his hair.
His helm’s caged mouth, along with one of its draconic horns, had broken off, leaving more of his hair and mouth exposed.
A beautiful and haunted man, indeed.
“End it,” he said to me, his voice echoing strangely in the cavernous space. “That’s why he brought you to me, isn’t it? Then end it. Finish what you started. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
A sound of disbelief escaped my lips. “I’m not here to kill you, Shadow Bringer.”
“Why not? Do you no longer see me as the monster you’ve been taught to fear? All it took was seeing your lord slaughter his loyal followers,” he bit out.
“You are a necessary evil,” I said simply.
It was a cold truth and perhaps not the entire truth, but the Shadow Bringer did not so much as flinch.
“You harbor demons that would otherwise overrun Noctis. So no, I can’t kill you.
But until I know the full truth behind Corruption and how to stop it, I can’t trust you. ”
“So, I am not a monster but a tool.” He let loose a sigh. It was the only proof he was even breathing. “Leave, Esmer. You don’t belong here.”
“I can’t. The Light Bringer sealed the entrance.”
“You should have escaped while you could.” He stood to his full height, and that strange dark smoke rippled around the lines of his body. Within a blink he was looming over me. “Do you know what it’s like to spend life in a cage?”
“I know enough,” I said, meeting his eyes as evenly as I could.
Maybe I was clouded by exhaustion, but I did not feel fear when I looked upon him.
“A lifelong sentence of Absolver duty to Norhavellis and never being able to leave the village. Corruption destroying families and leaking from the eyes of those too young to even know why. Not having a choice—or the ability—to say no to those with more power than me.” I stopped, frustrated at the emotion rising up my throat.
“My mother once told me that living a caged life is like being a wolf confined to some desolate enclosure,” he began, threading his fingers through some of the shadows that rose from his injuries.
“You snarl and howl, desperate to sink your teeth into something tangible, but you have no way to explore the vast wilderness just outside your reach.” He made a fist, squeezing a thread of shadow until it broke apart.
“You can almost feel the earth beneath your feet or the wind on your skin, but you’re trapped.
You ache for the unknown, where the rest of your life—every possibility, every hope for the future—waits, but you can’t move. ”
So, he truly had been mortal at one point. He had a mother. The tales never told of such an origin, never humanized him at all.
“I’ve felt that way before,” I whispered. “I desperately wanted to escape my life for something better, but I never could. And now I have nothing.” I brushed my hand across a shadow as it moved to touch my shoulder. “It’s a horribly accurate comparison.”
“It is, isn’t it? Ironically, my mother used to make that comparison to encourage me to dream.
Whenever I was facing some challenge in reality, she’d tell me to escape to the Realm and let the Weavers guide me.
” He looked away, swallowing hard. “If only she knew I’d spend most of my life imprisoned in the Realm, never having a choice. ”
“Did your mother pass before you were locked away, then?”
“My mother and father both died when I was a child. They never knew what I would become. And now you’re here facing the same fate.” His eyes slid to mine, gazing at me intently. “I know your pain, Esmer. I know what it feels like to grieve so deeply that it changes the essence of who you are.”
He was suddenly too close, too overwhelming.
Had the Shadow Bringer been a normal man, perhaps I would have felt the heat diffusing from his skin.
Instead, his nearness felt like a cool, tantalizing brush of midnight air.
He searched my eyes, breath hitching at whatever he found in them, and then spun on his heel to walk to the obsidian slab, pieces of his ragged clothing sliding across the floor.
“What is that?” I asked, following.
“A means to an eternal slumber,” he answered.
The slab, its edges curling upward, was surprisingly pliant to the touch, its surface reflecting the light from above.
“If you fall asleep here, the tomb will anchor you to the Dream Realm. But being physically joined to the Realm has its consequences. Your mind will slowly distort, and your memories will fade—all while you lie comatose.”
I nodded. “The tales say that Weavers took precautions against such a fate. They’d periodically wake so as not to lose themselves to the Realm.”
According to the tales, Weavers once rose from their sleep to attend the most extravagant and pivotal moments in Noctis’s history.
They were present for the crownings of kings and victories in war.
They were honored guests at citywide celebrations, deity-like in the fanfare they caused.
Though waking from the Realm was a risk—it made the Weavers susceptible to death and aging—they were protected and beloved by the people.
“Weavers be damned,” the Shadow Bringer snarled. “For five centuries I lay upon this stone, waiting for a release that never came. Death would have been preferable.”
A shiver coursed across my skin. He had been locked inside this tomb in an eternal sleep for centuries. I couldn’t imagine what he had lost during those years, what he had forgotten. I shuddered to think what I, too, would lose or forget if the Light Bringer chose to never release me.
“Do you honestly believe you were wrongly imprisoned?” I asked, lowering my voice. It felt as though I was broaching something forbidden. “Only your wickedness is recorded in the tales. There’s no trace of goodness in the stories we are told.”
“I don’t know.” The Shadow Bringer placed his forehead into the palm of his hand, clenching his jaw as though his thoughts physically pained him. “Threads of memory, broken moments in time—that’s all I have. And they don’t always tell me what I’ve lost or what life was like before.”
“That doesn’t seem like much, then.”
“No. But I do feel a deep hatred toward the Weavers and Mithras. That I know to be true.” He looked at me again, long and hard, as though he was considering a decision.
“I slept here for centuries as my soul withered. Perhaps I was good once, and perhaps I can change Noctis’s fate, but I don’t know that there’s anything good or worthy left in me. You need to understand that.”
Something didn’t feel right. It was in his eyes; in the way they shifted, lowering.
“You look as if you could use some rest,” he murmured, his voice a soft caress.
His words felt like silk or velvet—a deep, rumbling purr.
“Come, lie on this stone. Let me ease your burdens.” His words had an irresistible pull, and I found myself surrendering to the exhaustion that was weighing me down.
As I lay on the slab, the stone seemed to soften and embrace me, soothing my weariness.
I nodded in agreement, thanking him.
Didn’t I?
I sighed, my eyes heavy and warm. Or maybe I didn’t thank him. I couldn’t remember.
“You’re all that I have left,” I admitted quietly. “Do you know that?”
The Shadow Bringer leaned over me, exposed lips a breath from my own. “That isn’t true.”
“But it is,” I breathed. Tears ran down my face, bubbling up from where I had suppressed them earlier. “And it is heartbreaking.”
“I heard you scream for ‘Elliot.’”
“He’s my little brother,” I whispered. “The Light Bringer took him.”
I felt a hand—is it a hand or his shadows?
—slide around the nape of my neck, threading my hair with long, cool fingers.
I shivered, leaning into him as he held me, and marveled at the new shade of darkness spinning around us.
I reached out to touch it, to see what it felt like—and realized it was rippling from my own skin.
What is this? I thought I asked. What is this coming from my body?
But my eyes were heavy again, and the stone so soft and welcoming.
Something brushed my temple, my cheek.
And then I felt no more.