19. Kael
KAEL
A soft hiss seals her inside with her ghosts.
I linger at the doorway, unable to move. A gnawing sensation eats at my mind—relentless, invasive. I wipe my face, allowing the smooth leather of my gloves to grant me a moment of reprieve against my skin.
The drawings are darker, more intense than I’d imagined. Fractured, manic lines forming a coherent pattern: a recurring crescent, a woman’s shadowed eyes—all pulling at a truth I had buried. It’s a beautiful, terrible mosaic of memory, and its familiarity hits me like a cold shock.
Years of studying the shadows have left my mind swarming with references I can’t quite place; distorted images and text blurring at the seams. I massage my temples, trying to force the thoughts into order. But it’s useless.
My jaw tightens. I unhook my glasses to rub the throbbing space between my eyes before settling them back into place. I need to regain my composure before reporting to Riven.
I start down the corridor, reaching into my source to feel the flames of Solan’s will flicker within. It’s a habit born of the Hollow—where my reserves ran too low and nearly cost me my life. Something I’m not willing to put to chance again.
Light in the upper halls softens into pink and orange hues, glass prisms scattering pastel shades across the marble until the air itself feels gilded. My boots click against the stone; it feels like walking inside a reliquary that has long since lost its god.
Riven’s door waits at the end of the hall, flanked by two sentries in mirror-bright armour. They step aside without a word.
Inside, he’s pouring wine again. The scent—sweet and heady—mixes with the ever-present cloy of honeysuckle oil.
“Kael,” he says, not looking up. “You have something to report?”
“She’s stable. Eating. Resting.”
He takes a sip, a slick of red coating his upper lip. “Anything else?” he asks, peering over the rim of his goblet before downing another mouthful.
“She’s been drawing.”
He raises a brow. “Drawing?”
“Covering the walls with murals. Maps, crescents, faces.” I hesitate. “They look… specific.”
“Specific how?”
“Like memories.”
Riven sets down the decanter and wipes his fingers on a cloth. “And where did she find the tools for such…artistry?” He raises an eyebrow in a sharp, silent question.
“She asked for something to draw with. I gave her charcoal. Nothing else.”
He stares, eyes fixed on me, pressing for the truth I’m withholding. I offer nothing in return. Grabbing his goblet, he takes another heavy swallow, leaving only a dark, red dreg at the bottom.
“Artistry from a monster. How…quaint.”
“She’s no artist,” I say. ‘It’s something else.”
His eyes glint like cut steel. “Tomorrow she will be examined. I want to see what the shadows have made of her.” His mouth twitches at the corner, exposing his red-stained teeth in a predatorial smile.
Examined. The word curdles in my gut. I know his examinations.
He steps around the desk, close enough for me to smell the sour tang of wine on his breath. “You will bring her to me at first light. We’ll see if the legends are true—if the Vessel carries her god within the flesh.”
I say nothing, but the crawling beneath my skin sets my teeth on edge.
His hand gestures vaguely, as if shaping invisible curves. “There are…marks…I must confirm.”
My features betray me, my lip curling in a distaste I can’t hide.
“She’s still a person,” I say, forcing the words through gritted teeth. “Not a specimen.”
He laughs softly. “Everything is a specimen, Kael. Even you.”
Power surges in my chest. I bite back a retort I want to unleash. Instead, I bow just low enough to satisfy him and turn for the door.
His voice follows, smooth as oil. “Be sure she’s clean.”
I storm past the guards, my cloak riding the whirlwind of anger that follows.
* * *
My library waits in a quiet corner of the east wing, tucked behind corridors no one uses anymore. The guards call it the Archive of Dust—a nod to the lack of hands that touch the scrolls within.
It’s become my solitude, a place for the introspection I crave when my superiors feel like a lingering presence that never fully retreats.
Some believe this room is tainted, marked by the information it holds. They think even stepping across the threshold invites the darkness in; it’s why the door was reinforced years ago.
Clicks echo in the silence as the hidden locks spring to life. The scent of old parchment envelops me as I push open the heavy, iron-clad door. My shoulders sag under the familiar comfort of the enclosure, finally releasing the day's tension.
Hundreds of volumes line the shelves—histories, banned treatises, fragments of pre-Luminary scripture. I use my power to light the nearest lamp; its wax is as crooked as Riven’s intentions.
The flame throws long, thin shadows that climb the walls, pushing the corners of the room into inky blackness.
On the desk, my notebooks lie open, ink dried in half-finished lines.
Books are scattered haphazardly, leaving no surface exposed.
The worn leather chair squeaks as I sit, its firm seat cradling the curve of my spine and loosens the strain I’ve carried all day.
I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve spent staring into these texts—nights where the words became a river, carrying me deeper into my own mind.
Seren and her drawings resurface. Squeezing my eyes shut, I begin the search within my internal index—the vast archive of findings I’ve stored over the years.
Her images remind me of something whose memory has begun to wither with the age of time. A story that changes as the years pass by. Our reasoning for why we do what we do, along with it. But what was the image?
Think, Kael.
In my mind’s eye—clear as day—I see the page I wrote years ago; an excerpt of a prophecy found in a forbidden text. Power burns fiercely within me, the memory of those shadows fuelling the flame.
My eyes snap open. My fingers frantically comb through the parchment littering my desk. There, buried under a stack of histories on Auria, lies my old notebook.
A single swipe of my hand sends a plume of dust rising into the candlelight, shimmering like a thousand flakes of golden glitter. I pull off my gloves and thumb through the pages; the cured paper catches my nail like dry leaves skittering on stone.
A calloused finger runs over the ink, as if touching it could summon the hand who wrote it.
Victory of light over dark. The Cleansing.
Whole chapters were missing. Incomplete.
I recall that day—I was deep in the trenches, studying the prophecy after the last Shadow-marked succumbed to Riven’s testing.
An unease buried in my subconscious had pushed me to look further into the history of the war, but every record ended the same way; abrupt. Incomplete.
A prickle runs down my neck, shivers dancing across my spine. My eyes turn to the volumes lining the shelves, especially the hidden tome I was given in the Hollow the night I received my scar.
Tucked in the darkest reaches of the library, I reach for the worn leather. Its weathered cover seems to sigh with the weight of decades.
Silver-flecked engraving on the front, stares up at me: On the Nature of Night.
Something stirs at the back of my mind—a fleeting sensation that vanishes quickly as it arrived. I shake it off, the spine cracking in protest as I force the book open, its pages heavy with forgotten knowledge.
My fingers turn the parchment instinctively until I land on the image I remember from an age ago. A crescent stares up at me alongside an open eye, watching my every move. Stars dot the ink like flies.
Then I see her. The woman on Seren’s walls.
The text beneath the image reads: Nyx, Goddess of Night.
The same goddess slain a century ago in the War of Sun and Shadow—the era when the Luminaries conquered the darkness and were reborn from her ashes. All shadow-marked we have ever seen shared no true connection to her, leaving her memory scattered like smoke from the pyres. Fractured. Intangible.
Until Seren.
Beneath her image, a single quote is inscribed:
“When light conquers, it forgets its own darkness,” the author wrote. “Yet the shadows remember.”
Slowly the pages close, as my mind opens further, trying to make sense of all I have seen.
She remembers—what they buried, not what they wrote. Those drawings are neither prophecy nor madness. They are memory—hers, or something living inside her.
Black lines peak through my grey tunic, the scar pushing past the cuff of my sleeve. The angry mark shimmers like a raven’s wing; absorbing all light, yet under the candle flames, its iridescent blues and purples glimmer. Heat prickles the flesh beneath, sensing my gaze.
Ever since the briefing on Seren’s shadows, the mark has been changing—reaching further up my arm, warming when I am near her. It grates on my nerves, a constant, low-frequency hum I can’t tune out.
I flex my fingers and dip the quill into the ink, the motion familiar and soothing. Notes scatter across fresh parchment: the markings from Seren’s wall, the symbols from the tome, the crimson liquid that pooled at the altar—not staining the ancient stone but consuming it.
I lean back, watching the ink sink into the paper, and comb my fingers through my hair to free the knots of the day.
Fatigue drags my thoughts, thick as mud.
The jigsaw pieces remain incoherent. No matter how many years I’ve faced studying the darkness, the truth of why we do what we do, always seems to slip through my fingers like ghostly ink.
My breath hitches in a slow, ragged sigh as the flickering candlelight causes the shadows to twitch against the wall.
Outside, the first bells of night ring out.
Tomorrow she faces Riven. I tell myself I’ll only watch, but I already know I’m lying.