9. Seren
SEREN
Run.
Seconds bleed away before my body catches up to the voice screaming in my head.
Grit wedges beneath my nails, grinding into the dirt as I scramble upright, my hands desperately hunting for my bags. I gamble a glance back to where he stood, but he’s nowhere to be seen—gone like mist in a sudden wind.
I don’t wait for him to return. I heave the bags over my shoulder, their weight crushing into my skin, a physical echo of the stone in my chest. I allow myself one last look over the smouldering expanse of the city: at the smoke rising from the pyres—at my older brother being unmade into ash and dust.
A palm presses against my heart, my fingers tangled and useless against the satchel’s strap. Tears film my eyes, turning the world into a warped blur, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
“Goodbye, brother.” The words are a shattered whisper, my cowardice choking the courage to give them voice. “Please forgive me.” My vision blurs into a broken mess as the first tear spills over, searing and unstoppable.
I turn my back to the rising smoke. There is no time for grief. Only the desperate need to outrun the stranger lurking among the trees.
Picking a path through the tangle of the descent, my feet skid and race faster than I can keep up. Shadows lunge out in front—wisps of blackness weaving through the charred wood—mapping toward the place I haven’t dared venture into for years.
Thoughts crash through my mind—the cavern, the black water, the faces. I know that place. I stumbled into it once as a child, wandering too far into the stagnant veins of the under-paths before fear dragged me back to the light.
Fear is a clutching hand, driving me back toward the very thing I should flee.
A certainty heavier than stone sinks into my stomach. The dream didn’t just show me the water—it’s pulling the tether.
The air sours with the acrid tang of sewage and decay as I reach the lanes, wedging myself into every crack where the shadows are deepest. Clipped voices ring nearby, forcing me to bolt behind a crumbling wall.
Their speech doesn’t weigh like ours. Their voices have a silken, melodic tune—words blessed by Solan himself—so unlike our shredded rasps, ruined by a lifetime of breathing our own waste.
I peer around the brick, its serrated edges slicing my cheek, as a flash of white and gold blurs into view.
Luminary Guards.
Three of them stalk through the street below, their unblemished cloaks dragging against the slick stones as the sewer-filth seeps into the white hems.
I hold my breath until my ribs strain, my pulse igniting into a frantic roar.
I send a desperate, silent prayer to the Divine Mother, Nyx, hoping the shadows anchor me before anyone looks my way.
The pendant pulses with a feverish heat in response—the only comfort I’m granted as their footfalls recede into the dark.
My shadow shudders, stretching toward the light like a hound scenting its prey. I crush the dark down with everything I have, my eyes squeezed shut in a silent, desperate plea; Not now, please.
A thread snaps at my spine. The shadows yank against their leash, forcing my eyes to open just in time to watch the black tendrils recoil into my skin.
The lead guard, his palm bleeding a soft yellow light, tilts his head. For a heartbeat, I’m sure I’m exposed, but his voice is smothered by the wild thundering in my ears.
His silver eyes rake over the crumbling houses where I hide. My fingers itch to unleash the dark, but the guards turn, their footsteps and their stolen light vanishing into the winding lanes, swallowed by the gut of the city.
Only then do I move, my footsteps feather-soft as the bags sway from the rhythm of my flight.
The streets narrow, houses falling away to cold rock and strangling roots the lower I go. Lanterns grow sparse, the damp thickening until my breath fogs in the air. Pale faces ripple from the depths of the inky water, taunting my vision until my steps falter into an erratic pace.
I know they won’t be there—I know it’s a cruel lie—but a small, desperate spark of hope refuses to die.
I slip further into the gut of the streets, clinging to the cliff wall where the light can’t reach. The paths become shards of stone, uneven and treacherous. Only the most unfortunate—the ones the city has already forgotten—live this far from the Lantern Market’s dying glow.
A door groans open above, and a figure stumbles onto a crooked balcony, her gaze snagging mine in the gloom. I freeze, my heart hammering so hard it feels like it’s trying to forge a hole in my chest. She looks familiar, one of the many faces that blended in with the market crowd earlier.
I lunge for the deep dark, but my own shadows betray me—they uncoil and reach upward toward the stranger, stretching like a ghastly greeting. No, don’t!
The whites of her eyes swell, two pale, detached moons in the blackness. Her hair lashes around her face as she scans for guards. My stomach plummets as her mouth opens, her voice slicing through the quiet like a rusted blade.
“The girl with the shadows!” she shrieks. Lights ignite in the dark, and the frenetic slap of boots against stone follows as the street vomits its people. Every eye follows the line of her accusing finger—pointing directly at me.
I run.
The satchel batters my hip with every stride, the contents of Yara’s heavy bag clinking in an agitated rhythm.
I plunge through a gap between two leaning houses, ducking beneath a sagging laundry line. I wind deeper into the innards of the slums, where the air clots with the stench of sewage and desperation.
The stone fractures into a dark grin; a sharp-edged invitation to hide. I squeeze into the tight space, edging back until the darkness swallows me whole. I hold my breath, waiting for the thunder of footsteps, but they never come.
Only the quiet sound of the walls shedding tears.
A prayer to the Divine Mother stumbles from my lips—an impiety I never thought I’d utter. I thank her for this velvet shroud, for the way the street’s blackest corners stitch me into the night.
I gulp down the air before slipping out, past the stagnant canals and into the dense, breathing forest of Wyrmwood Cavern.
My breath comes in sharp bursts as I collapse against a Dragonious tree.
Its spindly trunk towers over me, a skeletal hand reaching for a sun it has never known.
Above, the leaves are so dark they look bruised, forming a canopy that smothers the world below.
I scan the path behind me, looking for any blur of white among the soot-stained trunks. The forest is a graveyard of skeletal hands, and for now, it seems to have consumed my trail. A heavy breath releases into the quiet, a wisp of cloud following in its wake.
The bark is rough and scaled beneath my touch, mirroring the dragon-hide of its namesake—silent, prehistoric sentinels in this realm of stone.
Effervescent plants and fungi erupt from the blanket of leaves, their ghostly glow staining the bedding of decay. The ground is soft and yielding, a mulch of life and rot beneath my careful steps. It’s been years since I touched this hide; the texture is a childhood ghost rising to greet me.
It’s just as I remember. But instead of fear, I’m captivated by its eerie beauty. I am a creature of the dark, returning to where I belong.
I move deeper into the growth, my hands tracing the tree trunks as I go. The cave entrance widens before me like a mouth trapped in a frozen, jagged yawn. Bioluminescent ivy and moss braid across the stone, coating the walls like a layer of hair and skin.
A wave of feverish warmth catches in my chest, washing over me and thawing the perpetual chill from my marrow. My soul seems to settle into its hollow, finally locking into place with a silent, resounding click.
Home.
I take a tentative step forward, letting the phantom fingers of the dark draw me deeper, until the light of the forest is severed. I’m consumed by a deeper blackness—a void that doesn’t just hide me, but reclaims me.