Chapter 37 #2
A woman with a shaved temple stared at me. “Completely?”
“Did I mumble?” Shadow disappeared reluctantly around the ring. They were all very good at shaping it when they could see it. Blades. Shields. Restraints. Half of them could make constructs impressive enough to earn applause in the Crucible.
Which was precisely the problem. They thought control meant making Shadow obey once they had already summoned it. “Pair up.” They moved. “Back to back.” More hesitation. I leaned against the low wall. “You have ten seconds before I choose for you.”
That solved it.
When everyone was positioned, I let my own Shadow slip from beneath my boots.
No dramatic gesture. No warning. It moved through the ring in a thin black sheet and put out every ward-lamp along the walls.
Darkness swallowed the court. Someone swore while another candidate immediately summoned Shadow.
Mine struck his ankle and took his feet out from under him.
He hit the floor hard. “Again,” I said.
“What the hell?”
“Your opponent is behind you. You cannot see them. You cannot use a weapon. You cannot summon enough Shadow to illuminate the ring, and if I feel you relying on sight instead of sensing the magic around you, I put you on the ground.”
Silence.
Then someone muttered, “This is insane.” The first attack came a heartbeat later.
The ring erupted. Bodies collided in the dark.
Shadow lashed out blindly, some of it striking stone, some of it missing entirely.
I moved through them without lighting so much as a spark.
One candidate tried to track his partner by footfall. I stepped between them. He swung.
I caught his wrist and redirected him into the wall. “You listened for a body.” He coughed, trying to recover. “You should have listened for the Shadow inside it.”
I left him there.
On the other side of the ring, someone shaped a blade. My Shadow wrapped the construct and crushed it. “I said no weapons.”
“I thought you meant physical weapons.”
“I meant stop hiding behind things you know how to hold.” She cursed me under her breath. “Say it with your chest.”
“Screw you, Nyxara.” The next twenty minutes were ugly.
They learned. That was usually how it worked.
A good training exercise showed candidates what they could already do.
A useful one exposed everything they were pretending they couldn’t.
By the time I lit the ward-lamps, half of them were bleeding somewhere and all of them looked offended.
I stood in the center of the ring. “We will do this again tomorrow.” A collective groan answered me. “And you’ll be blindfolded.”
Someone near the back said, “What was the point of putting out the lights if we’re blindfolded anyway?”
“So I can turn them back on and watch you fail.” No one had an answer for that. They started collecting weapons.
I was halfway toward the stairs when one of the newer candidates called after me. “Instructor Nyxara.”
I turned. He looked uncertain now that he had my attention. “When you were moving through us… you weren’t using sight either.”
“No, I was not.”
“So how did you know where everyone was?” I considered giving him the answer most instructors would have. Practice. Experience. Control. All technically true, and none of them were useful.
“Your Shadow knows where every other Shadow in this ring is before you do.” His brow furrowed.
“You keep treating it like a tool you summon after making a decision. Stop. Let it tell you what exists before you decide what to do about it.” He stared at me for a moment.
Then nodded. That one might actually survive advanced placement.
I left before anyone else developed questions.
Outside, sunlight hit hard enough to make me regret having eyes.
I had nearly reached the upper path when I saw Lyra.
Vareena was walking beside her with Emrin was on the other side, speaking quietly enough that I couldn’t hear.
Lidia followed half a step behind while Dax and Raiden were farther ahead near the entrance to Court Six.
Lyra noticed me across the path. Vareena followed her gaze, then looked between us with an interest I immediately disliked. I kept walking.
Lyra’s mouth twitched.
Menace.
I made it another twenty feet before the first crack sounded. Every Shadow in the ground recoiled. I stopped. The sound came again. It was not stone, but Wardglass.
Candidates near Court Six turned toward the lower retaining wall.
The third crack ran beneath my boots. “Clear the court,” I said.
No one listened. I was not their assigned instructor.
That lasted approximately two seconds. Shadow exploded across the path and slammed into the court gates hard enough to make every head turn. “Move!”
They moved. The instructor inside Court Six finally reacted, shouting for candidates to pull back from the eastern edge. Too late. The ground dropped. A section of the court disappeared with a sound like glass breaking underwater. Several people went down.
Vareena caught Emrin before she fell. Lyra staggered sideways and recovered. Dax did not. He slid toward the opening, caught himself on one arm, then twisted hard enough to grab Raiden when the Fire wielder went over the edge.
For a moment both men hung there. Below them, exposed ward-current lit the trench white-gold. Raw foundation energy. Enough to burn through flesh before either of them had time to scream properly.
I was moving before thought caught up. “Don’t use Fire!”
Raiden’s palm had already sparked. He extinguished it just as fast as he had called it. I was close enough now to see the fracture properly. The current wasn’t simply exposed. It was feeding on whatever touched it.
Emrin dropped to one knee and drove Earth beneath Dax’s boots, trying to give him firm ground to push against. Stone rose for half a second before white-gold energy tore through it and blew the support apart. She recoiled with a curse.
“Stop feeding it.” Dax’s grip slipped and Raiden dropped another inch.
There were too many people around the court.
Candidates crowded the upper steps, instructors were trying to move them back, and two ward attendants were already running toward us from the eastern passage. Lyra was close enough to help.
She knew it.
I saw her hands curl. Silver-blue Light gathered instinctively between her fingers. “No.” Her head snapped toward me. “The current is taking active affinity magic. Light will make it worse.”
“What do we do?”
Dax made a strained sound behind her. Raiden’s shoulder struck the broken edge hard enough that I heard it from where I stood.
We had perhaps seconds. My Shadow was already moving.
I sent it wide rather than down. Darkness shot along the perimeter of Court Six and climbed the fractured retaining wall, not enough to black out the entire court but enough to create a dense barrier between the break and everyone gathering above us.
“Back away from the eastern edge,” I called without turning. “The foundation line is unstable.”
The assigned instructor started toward me.
“Nyxara, what are you—” My Shadow struck the stone at his feet.
“ If that current jumps, you’ll take half your candidates with you.
Move them.” Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe it was my tone.
Maybe he had enough sense to recognize when someone else understood the problem better than he did.
Whatever the reason, he stopped arguing.
I thickened the barrier until anyone beyond it would see nothing except my Shadow.
Then I looked at Lyra. She understood immediately. “Mine will cover yours.” Dax looked between us. Raiden was in no position to look at anything. Lyra hesitated for less than a heartbeat. Then Shadow slid from beneath her skin.
Dax forgot to breathe.
It was contained, low to the ground and almost entirely swallowed inside my own darkness.
Anyone outside the barrier would feel Shadow and assume it belonged to me.
Only the people within it could see where hers began.
Lyra sent one tendril toward Dax. Another went over the edge.
I felt her magic brush mine as it passed, cool and familiar now in a way that should have been impossible after only weeks.
Silver threatened at the edges where they touched.
I smothered the reaction before anyone could notice.
“Not his wrist. Under the arm.” She adjusted immediately.
Her Shadow slipped beneath Raiden’s shoulder and wrapped across his chest. His head jerked up.
For one second he stared at the darkness around him.
Then at Lyra. Understanding hit hard. Dax’s other hand slipped. “Now, Lyra.”
She pulled. Her Shadow went taut. Dax came backward first, dragged across the broken court hard enough that he rolled onto one shoulder.
Raiden followed.
The ward-current snapped upward just as Lyra’s Shadow ripped him free. White-gold energy tore through the space his leg had occupied. He hit the ground flat on his back. Lidia was beside him before he had finished swearing. Lyra released her Shadow immediately.
I took everything else.
Mine flooded over the place hers had been, erasing the last visible trace before I let the barrier collapse inward.
By the time the rest of Court Six could see us again, all that remained was my Shadow retreating beneath my boots.
Anyone watching from outside the barrier had every reason to assume all of it had been mine.
Raiden was still staring at Lyra. Dax was too.
Neither of them said a word.
“Everyone away from the break.” The ward attendants arrived almost simultaneously. One of them moved directly toward the fracture with a stabilizing rod. I caught the back of his collar. He spun toward me. “What the hell—”
“The line is feeding on affinity magic.” His irritation disappeared. I released him. “Then how did you—”