Chapter 4 #2
“Apparently not.”
She looked down at Edenlo.
“Shadow doesn’t answer Light.”
I said nothing because she was right. Shadow fought Light.
Shadow consumed it if the wielder was strong enough.
Light burned Shadow away if its wielder was stronger.
They countered. Collided. Destroyed. They did not reach for one another.
My shadows had never reached for anything.
The map brightened. Silver-blue flooded the western Hollowlands and the sensation hit me again.
Smoke. Blood. Fire. Someone screaming. Then grief.
That fucking grief. My hand curled at my side as the room disappeared for half a heartbeat.
A girl crying. No. I couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t see her.
But the feeling was unmistakable. Loss so fresh it had no edges yet.
Then the other thing brushed against me again.
That vast presence. Farther away. Watching. My shadows recoiled.
“Kieran.”
Halos’s voice brought the chamber back. I looked at him. His eyes had narrowed.
“What did you feel?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t.”
The word was quiet. He had known me too long. Calis watched us. I looked back at the map.
“Smoke.”
Halos waited.
“Fire.”
“From Edenlo?”
“I assume.”
“What else?”
I didn’t answer. The silver-blue light flickered. Calis moved immediately.
“Something’s changing.”
The wardmasters returned to the wall. The point beneath Edenlo weakened once, then again. My shadows shifted.
“Is the wielder dying?” Halos asked.
Calis lowered her hand, her Light spreading over the map.
“No.”
“Certain?”
“Yes. Unconscious, perhaps. The manifestation is collapsing.”
The light went out. Every shadow in the chamber surged west. Darkness ripped from beneath my boots and crossed the map before I could stop it, spilling over the carved Veil and across the Hollowlands straight to Edenlo.
One of the wardmasters stepped backward.
Calis’s Light flared instinctively. My Shadow swallowed the place where the silver-blue point had been.
“Enough.”
The command left me quietly. The shadows froze.
I pulled. For the first time since I had manifested, my magic fought me.
Not enough for anyone else to understand what that meant.
Enough for me. I pulled harder. Darkness tore backward across the map and gathered around my boots.
The chamber went silent. My pulse remained steady.
Everything else inside me did not. Halos looked at the place where my shadows had crossed the Veil, then at me.
I gave him nothing. He turned toward one of the wardmasters.
“Notify an emissary.”
“Coren is on rotation tonight.”
“Send him. One additional collector. Northern crossing.”
The wardmaster nodded and left. That was it. The Sanctum had found a new wielder. The Sanctum would retrieve them. The machine moved exactly as it had hundreds of times before. Only nothing about this felt routine. Calis remained near Edenlo.
“Whoever they are, they’ll need to be assessed immediately.”
Halos nodded.
“By you.”
“If the reading remains Light.”
“It is Light.”
Calis’s gaze moved to me.
“Then explain him.”
I looked at her. She didn’t mean me. She meant the darkness around my feet. I said nothing. Neither did Halos. There was no explanation. Above us, the morning bells began to sound. The Sanctum was awake. Halos looked toward the remaining wardmaster.
“Candidates are told only that a manifestation triggered the wards.”
The wardmaster hesitated.
“They saw the color.”
“They saw an unfamiliar ward response. Nothing more.”
“The location?”
“Restricted.”
“The strength?”
“Restricted.”
His gaze moved toward me.
“And this?”
“Didn’t happen.”
Calis dismissed her Light. The chamber dimmed until only the faint ward-script along the walls remained. She looked at Edenlo one last time before leaving. The wardmaster followed. Halos stayed. Of course he did. I stared down at the western Hollowlands.
“You felt the wielder.”
I didn’t bother pretending I misunderstood him.
“Something reached me.”
“Light?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always know.”
I looked at him.
“Not tonight.”
That silenced him. Halos had seen enough of my magic to understand what I meant.
Control had never been my problem. Power had never frightened me.
Not mine. Not anyone else’s. I knew exactly what Shadow felt like in every form I’d encountered.
I knew what Light felt like when it struck me.
Fire. Earth. Water. This had been none of those things and somehow Light at the same time.
“What else did you feel?”
I considered saying nothing. Then I remembered that pressure beyond the manifestation.
“Hunger.”
Halos’s face changed. Barely. But I saw it. Interesting.
“What?”
“Describe it.”
“No.”
“Kieran.”
“You heard me.”
His jaw hardened.
“You felt something strong enough to concern you, and you’re refusing to explain it.”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Then describe it.”
I looked toward the Veil carved into the floor.
“We weren’t the only ones who noticed the manifestation.”
The words sounded wrong once spoken. Halos went completely still.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Beyond Edenlo?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“The Veil?”
“I don’t know.”
“The western territories?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
Silence. Halos studied me. I hated the way he did it. Not because it intimidated me. Because it meant he was thinking.
“Did it notice you?”
That question I didn’t like. I remembered the moment the pressure had shifted. “I don’t know.”
It was the third time I’d said it in less than a minute. Three times too many. Halos looked down at my shadows.
“What happened to them?”
“Nothing.”
“They crossed half the map without your command.”
“I noticed.”
“They resisted you.”
My eyes lifted to his. That he had noticed bothered me.
“Briefly.”
“Your Shadow doesn’t resist you.”
“No.”
“And you don’t know why.”
“No.”
Halos looked toward Edenlo. Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
“The wielder will be here soon.”
I knew.
“Calis will assess them before they’re placed.”
I knew that too.
“If anything changes before the emissaries return, you come to me.”
I almost told him no. Instead, I looked down at my shadows.
“Fine.”
He left. The hidden door closed behind him, and I remained alone.
The map had gone dark. Edenlo was nothing more than a name carved into black stone again.
I stepped closer. There should have been nothing left to feel.
The manifestation had ended. The wards had settled.
The unknown wielder was alive. An emissary was already being dispatched.
That should have been the end of it. I crouched beside the map.
Edenlo sat beneath my hand. I didn’t touch it.
My shadow did. A thin strand slid over the stone, slowly this time.
Not violently. Not beyond my control. I let it move.
It crossed the Veil, reached Edenlo, and stopped. I stared at it.
“What are you doing?”
The darkness did not answer, but it remained there, curled over the name of a village I had never visited, around a wielder I had never met.
I didn’t like that. I stood. The shadow returned.
By the time I reached the upper levels, dawn had begun bleeding through the eastern windows.
Candidates crowded the halls. Whispers followed me.
“Every ward.”
“I heard someone manifested in Elyndor.”
“No, it came from beyond the Veil.”
“Nobody manifests out there.”
“Someone did.”
“The light was silver.”
“Light isn’t silver.”
I walked through them. Conversations died as I passed.
People moved. They usually did. A pair of first-years flattened themselves against the wall before I reached them.
One stared openly at the shadows following my boots until his friend pulled him away.
I kept walking. This was what they knew of me.
Shadow instructor. Nyxara. The man they were warned not to test unless they wanted to discover exactly how badly an Elemental Convergence exercise could end.
That was enough. It was better than enough. They didn’t need the rest. No one did.
I stepped through the western arch into the courtyard.
Morning had begun to break over the Sanctum.
Gold touched the eastern towers. The western mountains remained dark.
Beyond them stood the Veil. Beyond that, the Hollowlands.
Edenlo. I stopped. My shadow stretched behind me.
West. I didn’t command it. This time, I didn’t stop it either.
Somewhere beyond those mountains was someone between eighteen and twenty-one who had gone to sleep yesterday without magic and would wake today with a life that no longer belonged to them in quite the same way.
They would be frightened. They would be frightened.
Injured, if their manifestation had been violent.
If what I had felt was real, they had lost someone.
Several someones. None of that concerned me.
The Sanctum would retrieve them. Calis would determine what they were.
Halos would decide where they belonged. I would have nothing to do with it.
My shadow stretched farther west. I stared at it. “Enough.”
It stopped but didn’t return. My jaw tightened.
I could force it. I didn’t. Because beneath the irritation was curiosity.
Worse, it wasn’t about the manifestation.
It was about the person who had survived it.
I had felt their terror. Their grief. Their power.
For one heartbeat, across hundreds of miles, I had felt them.
And my Shadow had done more than feel. It had answered.
I looked toward the Veil. I didn’t know their name.
Didn’t know their face. Didn’t know whether they were man or woman, noble or farmer, frightened of magic or waiting their entire life for it.
I knew one thing. My shadows wanted west. And for the first time since they had manifested beneath my skin, I didn’t know why.