Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
AZRAEL
The shadows settle behind us, sealing the path back to Prague. The throne room accepts my return without a sound, silver flames bending toward me in silent acknowledgement.
The thief collapses the moment we materialize in my throne room. To her, the crossing must have felt like violence. To me, it is only a fold in the darkness. A seam in the world parting beneath my hand, closing behind me before lesser creatures even realize there was a door.
I catch her before she hits the obsidian floor, and she jerks away from my touch as if I have burned her. She scrambles backward on her hands and knees, breathing in short, panicked gasps that echo against the vaulted ceiling.
There are gentler places I could have taken her. Safer-looking places. But none more secure. Every inch of this chamber knows my magic, and nothing enters or leaves without my permission.
“What...? Where...? That’s not...” Her words tangle over each other, broken and frantic. “We were in Prague. We were just in Prague. How did we get here?”
“Dimensional travel.” I turn away from her, already finished with the conversation.
Kieran approaches from the eastern corridor, his expression grim. That is never a good sign.
“You will adjust.”
“Adjust?” Her voice spikes. “Adjust? I just watched the sky tear open and monsters, actual monsters, pour out and attack people, and then you, you...” She pushes herself upright, swaying slightly. “What are you?”
I do not answer.
Kieran reaches me, and the look in his eyes tells me the situation is worse than anticipated.
“My lord.” He keeps his voice low, though the thief is close enough to hear. It hardly matters. She will understand soon enough how thoroughly she has ruined everything. “Three major cities on Earth are reporting attacks. New York, Tokyo, and London. The rifts are spreading faster than projected.”
My jaw tightens. “Casualties?”
“Unknown. Human authorities are calling them terrorist attacks, mass hallucinations, experimental weapons.” His gaze flicks briefly toward the thief, who is staring at us with growing horror. “They do not have words for what is happening.”
“And the courts?”
“Storm, Flame, Earth, and Frost are all demanding an immediate audience. They know the final seal broke.” His expression remains neutral, but the warning in his tone is unmistakable. “They will want answers. And blood.”
Perfect.
Five years of hunting, bargaining, threatening, bleeding in secret chambers beneath dying cities—and one torn glove has undone it all.
The thief makes a strangled sound. “New York? Tokyo? Those things are in...” She presses her hands to her head.
“No. No, this isn’t happening. This is some kind of...
I don’t know… psychotic break. Stress-induced hallucination.
I’m still in Prague. I’m unconscious on the museum floor, and this is all... ”
“You are in Aethermoor. The Shadow Court palace, specifically.”
I turn to face her fully. She is pale, shaking, and still trying to reason her way out of reality. Admirable, in its own futile way. Most humans scream when the veil is torn from their eyes. She is trying to build a theory. Incorrect, naturally, but still a theory.
“Magic is real. Other dimensions exist. And you have been stealing magical artifacts for five years without realizing it.”
She laughs. The sound is sharp and wrong.
“Magic. Right. Magic is real. And you’re what, the Shadow King?” Her eyes are too bright now, shock settling in deep. “Is this a joke? Some elaborate setup?”
“Enough.”
The word cracks through the throne room. She flinches.
“You want answers? Fine. Sit down and listen, because I will only explain this once.”
She does not sit. Stubborn.
I move to the throne and lower myself into it, letting the shadows coil and writhe around me so she can see exactly what I am.
“Aethermoor is a parallel realm to Earth. We are not aliens. Not demons. We are human, evolved differently. Born with the ability to manipulate elements.”
I gesture, and shadows gather in the air between us, twisting into shifting forms. They become flame without heat, waves without water, mountains with roots of black glass. A storm forms next, lightning flickering silently through a miniature sky of smoke.
“Fire. Water. Earth. Air. Lightning. Frost. And Darkness.”
Her gaze follows the movement. Wide. Uncertain.
“We call ourselves Elementals. We are organized into courts based on our primary abilities. The Storm Court commands weather and lightning. The Flame Court wields fire. The Earth Court shapes stone and growth. The Frost Court controls ice.”
The shadows dissolve slowly into nothing.
“And the Shadow Court.” My voice lowers slightly. “My court. We control darkness itself. We move through it, shape it, use it as both weapon and shield.”
“That’s...” She swallows. “That’s not possible.”
“You watched me materialize from shadows thirty minutes ago.”
She has no answer.
“For centuries, Elementals have moved between Earth and Aethermoor freely. Some live among humans on Earth. Others remain here. The barrier between our worlds is naturally thin, easily crossed with the right knowledge.”
I lean forward.
“But there are things in the spaces between dimensions. Creatures that hunger for both our realms. The rifts you saw opening lead to the void. To chaos. To things that will devour everything if given the chance.”
Her lips part. “The mirror...”
“Was the keystone of a seal network. Seven artifacts. Seven seals. All working together to keep the major rifts permanently closed.”
My voice cools further.
“I spent five years locating them. Hiring you to steal them from collectors who did not understand what they possessed. I intended to bind them together, reinforce the barriers, and prevent exactly what is happening now.”
Understanding dawns across her face.
Horror follows.
“Every artifact you stole for me was saving lives. Protecting both worlds.”
I rise from the throne and descend the dais toward her.
“And then you touched the final piece with your bare hands and shattered it. The seal network collapsed. Now rifts are opening across Earth and here. Creatures are pouring through. People are dying.”
I stop directly in front of her.
“Because of you.”
She trembles. “I didn’t know...”
“Ignorance does not absolve you.”
I turn back to Kieran, who has remained silently at attention.
“Status on the mirror pieces?”
“Secured in the vault. Both fragments.” He hesitates. “They are still resonating. The break created feedback across the dimensional barriers. It will take time to assess the full damage.”
Time we do not have.
I dismiss him with a brief gesture. He bows, sharp and efficient, and vanishes into the shadows. The darkness consumes him completely.
The thief lets out another broken sound.
Now that she is still, I take the time to study her properly.
She is tall for a human woman, perhaps five feet nine, with the lean muscle of someone accustomed to climbing and running.
Her black tactical gear is torn in several places, marked by her struggle with the rope.
Her dark hair is pulled back into a braid that is loosening.
Beneath dust and shock, her skin appears pale.
But her eyes.
Green-grey, like sea glass. Wide now, pupils blown, but sharp beneath the fear. There is intelligence there. Fire, even through the panic.
She will need that fire for what is coming.
“I want to go home.” Her voice is smaller now, the earlier defiance cracking. “Just... send me back. I won’t tell anyone. I will say that I do not remember. I will...”
“You cannot go home.”
“Yes, I can. You brought me here; you can send me back.”
“The rifts are unstable.”
I return to the throne, carved from a single piece of shadowstone so dark it seems to drink the surrounding light, and sink into it.
My head pounds. The shadows beneath my skin writhe, agitated by the breach between worlds. I force them down, locking them back into place.
For one breath, my vision fractures at the edges, the world thinning into black veins and open mouths. I clamp down on the corruption before it can answer the rift’s call.
“Travel between worlds is dangerous right now.”
I gesture toward her dismissively.
“And you are human. Fragile.”
My gaze settles on her, steady and cold.
“The transit alone almost killed you.”
She touches her nose. Her fingers come away smeared with blood.
The sight irritates me more than it should. Not the blood itself, I have seen oceans of blood, but the proof of how easily this place can break her.
“That is from dimensional pressure,” I say flatly. “Your body is not built for this. Another trip right now would rupture the vessels in your brain. You would die screaming.”
The color drains from her face.
Good. Let her understand exactly how precarious her situation is.
She stands there for a long moment, swaying slightly.
I can see her mind working, trying to process the impossible.
The throne room is not helping. It never does, not with humans.
The air is too cold for them, the kind of cold that does not sit on the skin but slips beneath it.
The shadows drink warmth here. They always have.
The chamber smells of black stone after rain, and the faint metallic trace of magic embedded too deeply in the walls to ever fade.
Black glass walls reflect nothing. Twilight hangs without a sky. Shadows move along the corners and ceiling, independent of any source. The architecture defies human understanding. Archways lead to doorways that should not exist. Corridors spiral upward into darkness.
Everything here is designed to unsettle. To remind visitors they are in a place where human rules do not apply.
She presses her palms against her eyes. “This is insane. You are insane. I am insane.”
“You are in shock.”