Chapter 48
ISI
Iclimbed to my feet, sneezed, and waved my hand through the clogged air. It did nothing to settle what looked like years of dust and grime and…
A book lay on a low table in front of me, surrounded by nothing but circular walls made up of smooth, gray stone. The floor beneath the table matched the walls, and a thick layer of dust coated everything.
I approached the table and stooped down, blowing across the top of the book, moving layers of crud, revealing the title etched across the surface in a silvery scroll.
Shadow’s Fate and the Wrath of Ruin.
“Aren’t you something?” I asked, straightening without touching the book.
Pherin peeped, and only now did I realize she still clung to my shoulder.
Take, I could swear she said. Now.
She’d guided me well already, so, without hesitating, I snatched up the book.
The walls started trembling, each jerk bringing them closer. Closer. If I stayed here, I’d be crushed.
“Hold on,” I shouted, spinning and flinging myself at the wall I’d come through. It sucked me in and spit me out the other side. I landed hard on my knees, the book dropping from my hands to thud on the floor.
Pherin hopped off my shoulder and landed beside it. She ruffled her feathers and shook, sending dust in all directions.
I felt like doing the same thing myself.
Lexie latched onto my arm and dragged me to my feet while Kerralyn collected the book.
Derren peered over her shoulder at the front of it. “That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”
“Interesting title,” Kerralyn said with awe spiking through her voice. “Have you read it yet?”
“I wasn’t gone long enough for that.”
Derren shrugged. “You were gone half an hour or so.”
My breath caught. “It was only a minute. Maybe less.”
My friends shook their heads.
This was… I wasn’t going to think too hard about it right now. Had I traveled to a different realm? That might explain the dust on this book and the loss of time.
“When I fell through the wall, I found myself in a small room.” I described it to them.
“Old,” Kerralyn said. “Maybe not even of this world.” She strode to the wall and ran her hand across it. “It feels normal to me.”
“A hidden room in a different realm?” Lexie said with a grin. “You get to have all the fun.”
Derren put his arm around her shoulders. “No worries, love. You have me.”
She stood on her toes to kiss his cheek.
“I wonder if the librarian knew about it,” Kerralyn said.
“We can ask her.”
She scrunched her face my way. “I’d like to avoid her if you don’t mind.”
Derren snorted. “No wonder you tried to hide the last time we came here.”
“This is why I had the smithy make a second key. I knew she’d tell me to give it back, which she did.”
We left the library, locking the door behind us.
Inside my room, I shut and locked my door and settled on the bed beside Kerralyn, while Derren dragged over a chair and sat.
He pointed to his lap, and Lexie climbed onto him and draped her arms around his shoulders, holding tight.
The way Lexie fit against Derren’s side wasn’t just comfortable, it was inevitable, like puzzle pieces that had spent lifetimes looking for each other.
I laid Shadow’s Fate and the Wrath of Ruin on my lap and opened it carefully. The pages were so brittle they nearly fell apart at my touch, but the ink hadn’t faded. It had such tiny writing, I could barely make it out.
Using care, I sifted through the pages, pausing here and there. The illustrations were unsettling. Cloaked creatures with hollow eyes, their hands outstretched like claws. Whole villages of people lying on the ground, turned to husks. And a wasteland spreading out around them.
Beside me, Kerralyn shivered. We exchanged a look.
“Skathes,” she hissed. “They’re a recent thing; they came through the veil sixteen years ago, yet this book appears ages older than that.”
“Maybe whoever wrote it came through the veil with them,” I said.
Kerralyn frowned. “A very interesting theory.”
Outside my window, the castle settled into its nighttime rhythm, punctuated by the distant shuffle of guards changing shifts and the soft creak of ancient stones cooling after the day’s warmth.
A night breeze stirred the curtains, carrying the scent of camellias from the gardens where Trew had kissed me senseless only hours ago.
I flipped back to the start of the book, the ancient binding creaking like bones, grimacing again at the illustration on the first page. Skathes stood in organized formations behind a figure wreathed in shadows.
Turning the page, I found more drawings showing the wasteland spreading around them. A cloaked figure with their arms lifted as if they thought they could command mindless beings.
Another showed a shimmering wall with a fissure down the center. The crack in the veil that let them through?
I turned to the first chapter and started reading, skimming through background information we already knew until I reached a section that felt new.
“Listen to this,” I read aloud, my voice unsteady.
“‘From my studies of the Skathe I caught but did not kill…” I gaped at my friends. “This person actually captured a Skathe rather than kill it.” I flipped the book closed to look at the spine, holding my spot where I was reading with a hand. “Someone named Velacross Blyte wrote this.” I glanced Kerralyn’s way. “Is the name familiar to you?”
She shook her head.
“Velacross was brave,” Derren said.
Lexie scoffed. “Or stupid.”
“Both,” Kerralyn said, lifting her journal onto her lap to take notes.
“From my studies,” I continued to read. “The Skathe are feral creatures driven by one need alone: a thirst for energy. Magical power, to be exact. Without it, they die. I even had to carefully feed it some of my own magic to keep it alive. Sadly, before I could conclude even a quarter of my experiments, this one died. My attempts to take others were unsuccessful. They either knew what I planned, because they would wither before my eyes when I came near with my magical net or…”
I flipped the page, squinting, trying to decipher the scrawling handwriting that had faded in places and was smeared in others, as if water had been spilled on the book. I couldn’t read the rest of the sentence, but scrolled ahead to a cleaner section.
“Our belief that they come from beyond the veil is true,” I read. “And this is not the first time, sadly.”
Kerralyn leaned forward. “What?”
I held up my finger and kept reading. “We were able to heal the first breach, but I’m afraid we will not be able to mend the second.”
“This isn’t the first time the veil was split?” Lexie asked, her eyes wide.
“Why didn’t I read about this?” Kerralyn asked.
Derren grunted. “Maybe no one but Velacross knew.” He nudged his chin toward the book. “What else does it say?”
“The Shadow-Born, as I prefer to call them,” I read. “Exist as base creatures of instinct and hunger, knowing neither thought nor purpose.”
“Nasty things,” Lexie said with a scowl.
“They must either be killed by removing their heads or driven back from where they came from. But only one person—” I leaned forward, trying to decipher the smears. “The page got wet. I can’t read what it says.”
Kerralyn couldn’t either.
I had to skim a few pages ahead to find anything legible.
Pherin pressed closer to my neck, her feathers ruffling with unease.
“Ancient texts speak of those who learned to bridge the realms,” I turned the page, still reading, “to reach across the divide and impose their will upon the will-less. When realms divide, only living magic can bridge them. Ink and will are not enough.”
“What does that mean?” Derren asked.
We all shrugged.
The room grew colder as I continued reading. “Someone breached the veil once again and allowed them safe passage. Now they are massing an army. As a traveler—”
“What’s that?” Lexie asked.
“Someone who can pass through the veil to other realms,” Kerralyn said. “It takes a special sort of magic.”
“One Velacross Blyte may have had,” I said, continuing to read.
“I saw it with my own eyes. Thousands and thousands of Skathes, swarming through their realm. Hungry. Unless they’re stopped, they will overrun us all.
The key to stopping them is not with force, though they die like any other creature when you remove their heads. ”
“This is simple enough for those without will,” I read. “But an army being controlled by a person craving power is something else entirely. Some would say that to truly defeat them, we must destroy the one who controls them.”
Outside, a distant rumble of thunder made us freeze.
“That may very well be true,” I said, my finger skimming along the words on the page. “But I’ve always believed that the veil will respond to contact with its own origin. To mend a wound, one must offer the thread that matches.”
“They’re going to overrun us,” Kerralyn squeaked.
“The wasteland spreads with them,” I read. “Though I do believe this land could be reclaimed if we could find a way to send the Skathes back through the veil or kill each and every one of them. It thrives when they do but dissipates when they are destroyed.”
“Who controls them?” Derren asked. “We need to stop them before it’s too late. They’re coming for Syllavar, but I doubt they’ll stop there. Velmire will fall next, then Ebonridge to our west.”
“They’ll keep consuming us until they reach the northern sea, and then what?” Lexie asked bleakly.
Derren pulled her closer, kissing her temple in a gesture so tender it made my lungs ache. Watching them made me understand why people went to war for love.
“We’ll stop them,” he said against her hair, and the absolute certainty in his voice made me almost believe him.
“We need to tell the other courts,” Lexie said. “Instead of battling each other, we need to unify to battle the Skathes.”
His mouth twisted. “Assuming none of them are allied with whoever’s controlling the Skathes.”
“Why would they bring creatures like that here when they could destroy us all?” Kerralyn asked.