Chapter 4
KIERAN
The first ward screamed in the middle of the night.
I was awake before the second answered, though not because of the sound.
My shadows had moved. I lay still for half a breath, staring into the darkness above my bed.
Nothing in the room should have been moving.
The windows were shut against the night cold, the fire had burned down hours ago, and no light reached this side of the western tower.
Yet the darkness gathered along the floor had pulled away from me, every black edge stretching toward the western wall.
I sat up as the second ward sounded, followed almost immediately by the third.
A low metallic note rolled through the Arcane Sanctum, deep enough to vibrate through the stone beneath my feet.
Doors opened somewhere below. Ward-lamps flared beyond my windows.
The old magic buried beneath the Sanctum stirred awake through foundations laid long before any living instructor had been born.
Someone had manifested. That happened often enough.
Between eighteen and twenty-one, magic either awakened or it didn’t.
There was no ceremony to it. No warning.
Fire could manifest in the middle of an argument and take half a room with it.
Earth could split beneath someone’s feet.
Water could answer from a well, a river, anything close enough to be called.
Light came in flashes that left people blind for hours.
Shadow frightened people even when it did nothing at all.
The Sanctum’s wards felt every first manifestation.
They located the wielder. An emissary was sent.
Another Candidate eventually arrived frightened, arrogant, relieved, furious, or some combination of all four.
Routine. The fourth ward struck. The western tower shuddered.
I stood. That was not routine. A fifth note never came.
Every ward in the Arcane Sanctum ignited at once.
The force of it hit hard enough to rattle the glass in my windows.
Light tore through the grounds below, racing along ancient ward-lines usually invisible beneath the courtyard stone.
It climbed the walls, crossed the arches, split through the towers until the entire Sanctum burned beneath it.
Silver-blue. Not the gold-white I had seen from Light wielders a thousand times.
Silver-blue. My shadows disappeared. Completely.
For one heartbeat, there was nothing beneath the bed.
Nothing around the desk. Nothing in the corners.
Nothing at my feet. The silver-blue light had erased every trace of darkness from the room.
Then Shadow slammed back. The window cracked, a fracture racing through the glass beside me as power struck through the Sanctum and a feeling so foreign ripped through my body that I caught the edge of the desk.
Smoke filled my mouth. Heat against my skin.
Blood. Screaming. I saw none of it, but somehow I knew all of it.
Then grief hit. It was so sudden and violent that my fingers dug into the wood.
For one impossible moment, I felt someone else’s devastation as though my ribs had been pried open and the grief forced inside.
People were dying. Someone was dying. More than one.
The certainty came without explanation. Then another sensation rose beneath the grief.
The air in my room turned cold. Not Shadow.
I knew Shadow. This was older. Larger. A pressure scraped against the edge of the manifestation, distant enough that I couldn’t find its shape and powerful enough that every instinct I possessed told me not to try.
Hunger.
The word entered my mind without sound. Then everything vanished.
I stood with one hand braced against the desk, my breathing no longer as steady as it had been moments before.
I forced it back under control and looked down.
The shadows had returned around my boots, slowly, carefully, as though whatever had just happened had frightened them.
That interested me more than the pain. Darkness curled around the edge of my boot before stretching west again.
I hadn’t commanded it. I watched the thin strand cross the floor toward the wall.
“Stop.”
The shadow continued. My jaw tightened. I closed my fist and darkness snapped back so violently the nearest candle holder struck the wall. Silence followed. I stared at the place where it had been. My magic obeyed me. Always. Three strikes sounded against my door.
“Kieran.”
Magister Halos. I dressed quickly and opened the door.
He stood in the corridor in formal black, every fastening already in place, silver beginning to show at his temples beneath the ward-light.
If the manifestation had surprised him, nothing in his face betrayed it.
His gaze passed over me once before moving beyond my shoulder to the cracked window and the unnatural concentration of Shadow around my feet. His eyes returned to mine.
“Below.”
That was all. I followed him. The Sanctum was waking around us. Candidates crowded doorways as we crossed the western corridor, some wearing academy coats over sleeping clothes, others barefoot against the cold stone. Questions moved between them faster than we did.
“Was that a manifestation?”
“All the wards went off.”
“I saw blue.”
“It wasn’t blue.”
“Whatever it was hit the western tower.”
“Was it the Veil?”
A Candidate stepped into Halos’s path near the stairwell.
“Magister—”
“Return to your quarters.”
The Candidate moved. Halos didn’t raise his voice.
He rarely needed to. We descended, and the noise faded with every level.
The polished halls gave way to older stone.
Decorative arches disappeared. The ward-lamps became fewer until eventually there were none.
Candidates knew the Sanctum had lower levels.
They did not know how many. They certainly did not know what was beneath the western foundation.
The final staircase ended at a wall. Halos placed his palm against the center stone and spoke beneath his breath.
The wall opened. Cold air moved over us. He entered, and I followed.
The chamber beyond was older than the academy built above it.
There were no banners representing the elemental divisions, no portraits of former Magisters, no polished marble or carefully preserved relics displayed behind glass.
The Sanctum liked its Candidates impressed by history.
This room had no need to impress anyone.
Black stone covered the walls. Ancient ward-script had been carved into nearly every surface.
Five archways surrounded a circular floor, and at its center Alareth had been cut into the stone.
The five realms. The mountains. The old roads.
The Veil. And beyond it, the Hollowlands.
Mistress Calis stood over the western edge of the map.
Her pale hair hung loose down her back, and she’d thrown a dark robe over whatever she’d been sleeping in.
Gold-white Light hovered above one hand, illuminating the hard set of her face.
Two senior wardmasters worked near the wall behind her.
Neither looked pleased. Calis looked up when we entered.
“We found it.”
Halos crossed the chamber.
“Where?”
One of the wardmasters touched two fingers to the floor.
The map awakened. Thin lines of light spread through the carved stone, moving west, past the Veil and deeper into the Hollowlands before stopping.
A single point ignited silver-blue. I knew the name carved beneath it before anyone spoke.
Edenlo. Halos looked toward the wardmaster.
“Confirm.”
“Edenlo.”
The other wardmaster checked the wall-script.
“Same location on every reading.”
Halos’s gaze remained on the map.
“How strong?”
Neither answered. That made him look up.
“How strong?”
The older wardmaster swallowed.
“We don’t have a classification.”
“Then compare it.”
“The Elyndor manifestation three years ago reached two outer wards.”
Calis watched the silver-blue light.
“The Cindralith twins?”
“Three.”
Halos waited. The wardmaster looked at him.
“This reached all of them.”
Silence settled over the chamber. The point beneath Edenlo pulsed once. My shadows tightened around my boots. Calis crouched beside the map.
“Don’t touch it,” one of the wardmasters warned.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Gold-white Light gathered over her palm.
She lowered it slowly. The moment her magic neared the silver-blue point, both changed.
Calis’s Light bent toward it. Her eyes sharpened.
The silver-blue magic rose from the map in thin threads until Calis pulled her hand back and they collapsed. Halos watched her.
“Well?”
She remained staring at Edenlo.
“Light.”
One of the wardmasters frowned.
“That’s not Light.”
“It is.”
“That color—”
“I know what color it is.”
Calis stood. The certainty in her face had disappeared. Halos noticed.
“What aren’t you certain of?”
Her eyes remained on the map.
“Everything else.”
The silver-blue light pulsed again. My shadow moved.
Calis saw it. So did Halos. A strand of darkness slipped from beneath my boot and crossed the floor straight toward Edenlo.
I stopped it. The shadow resisted. Barely, but it resisted.
My blood went cold. I forced it back, and darkness recoiled around my boots. No one spoke. Calis looked at me.
“Did you do that?”
“No.”
The answer landed harder than it should have. One of the wardmasters glanced toward Halos, but Halos didn’t look away from me.
“Has that happened before?”
“No.”
Calis’s attention dropped to my shadows. Her Light was still burning over one palm. Mine didn’t move toward it. Didn’t acknowledge it. Didn’t care that it existed. The silver-blue point pulsed. My shadows strained west. I crushed them beneath my will before they could move again. Calis saw.
“That’s impossible.”