Chapter 2
DREAMS AND SHADOWS
TWO
“‘ . . . Of all Elements born, belonging to naught.’ —We have found her! Looking in the scrying bowl, I saw her magics surge. I’ve never seen anything like it. Incredible.”
—VALEN’S JOURNAL
AMARA
Idream.
There’s something ancient, just out of sight.
I try to call out, but my voice catches in the wind. I reach for something—someone—and the moment I touch it, it slips through my fingers like smoke.
Then—a flicker.
Light twists like flame in wind. Cold slithers in—heavy and wrong. The kind of cold that feels like grief before it has a name.
Smoke and heat rise behind me. I turn.
Lyra’s house is burning, flames climbing the thatched roof, crackling and alive. Shadowed figures shift through the alley—too many to count.
I spin. The village is ablaze, smoke coiling into the sky like a scream. And at the center of it—a figure. Silver eyes. White hair like moonlight. Lips blood-red.
He smiles, slow and wicked, like he’s seen this before. Like it’s already happened.
Liora is burning.
Then, a voice.
“Amara . . . my starlight . . . it’s time. Wake up.”
Not Mother’s voice. Someone else.
It wraps around my name like a caress.
And a command.
“Wake up.”
I jolt upright, heart pounding, breath caught in my throat.
Mother is there, crouched beside my bed, her hands on my shoulders. Her face is drawn in the moonlight, her brows pulled tight with worry.
“Amara,” she says again. “Are you alright? You were tossing, crying out—”
I grab her wrist. “Mother,” I breathe. “Something’s wrong.”
She blinks. “What do you mean?”
I throw off the quilt and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. “The village—something’s happening. We have to wake the Durnharts.”
She stares at me, startled. “But—Amara, it’s the middle of the night. What are you—?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense,” I cut in, already grabbing my boots. “But I felt it—saw it!”
The words taste strange in my mouth, like they weren’t mine to begin with.
Mother hesitates, eyes searching mine. I can see the doubt in her furrowed brow, the caution—but underneath it, something else.
Memory.
Because this has happened before.
One spring I dreamt of the river flooding, and father moved the tools before the water could take them.
Once, I told Mother not to let the chickens out that afternoon. An hour later a windstorm threw everything not tethered into the next field.
Last autumn, when I was watching the fire in the hearth, I saw fire consuming Old Merle’s home. We were able to save her life and her home.
Little things I felt, but I couldn’t put my finger on. Never anything I could explain—not so much a premonition as a really intense gut feeling.
But never this strong and sure.
She presses her lips together and nods. “Let’s wake your father.”
She moves quickly across the room. Father is still snoring, unaware.
I sit up in the narrow bed, the covers pooled around my waist, and glance toward him—his figure dim in the shadows, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm.
The room is too quiet.
The dream clings—smoke, shadow, fire, grief. Her voice.
Something is wrong.
We move as one, silent and urgent, and knock on the doors to Lyra’s room and her parents’. They answer a moment later, bleary-eyed and half-asleep, tugging robes around themselves.
I tell them about the fire, the figure and the feeling still curled in my chest like burning coal.
Galen and Tamsen exchange a look. They have known about my dreams since I was young, but I’ve never dreamed anything like this.
Galen speaks first. “If something’s coming, we need to warn the guard post.”
We dress quickly and slip into the night, every step laced with urgency. Outside, the Durnhart porch groans under our weight. Galen holds a lantern, the flame small and stuttering, casting long, warped shadows across the ground.
The village is cloaked in darkness. Not the peaceful kind, but the kind that waits.
The stillness is thick, pressing against our skin like a dense fog.
I glance at the sky—cloudless, starless, endless. Even the moon looks different. Duller. Pale.
The dirt road stretches ahead, but every step feels wrong. The way gravel crunches underfoot sounds too loud. The night feels . . . hollow.
Tamsen draws Lyra close. Galen scans the shadows with a soldier’s instinct, hand resting near the knife at his belt.
My mother’s fingers brush mine. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. We can feel it.
It’s already here.
The six of us move down the path, footsteps muffled by the dirt road. The lantern casts a feeble glow, just enough to light the ground ahead. The edges of the dark seem to press in tighter with every step.
The village ahead seems devoid of life.
Windows are dark. Doors shut. No flicker of firelight. No whispered voices. No clink of a late-night kettle. Just dark houses lined up like silent watchers.
A prickle runs down my spine. I glance back.
Nothing there, but the feeling doesn’t leave.
We pass a well, the rope creaking. But there’s no wind.
The flame in Tamsen’s lantern flickers violently, casting the shadows around us into jagged shapes that stretch and shiver. We freeze.
The flame steadies.
Then—something shifts.
Movement to the left, just beyond the Durnharts’ shed. A shape pulls back into the trees, too quiet to be natural.
Lyra steps closer to me. “Did you see that?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. But I did.
Another shape—this time to the right. A figure, or maybe a shadow, slipping between two homes, gone before Galen can raise the lantern.
My heart hammers.
We are not alone.
A scream splits the night. High. Distant. Human. Then—nothing.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Then the dark erupts.
Shadows pour from alleyways, from behind houses, from cracks in the earth. They writhe as they move, gliding low to the ground, trailing smoke like ink in water.
They slither. Then rise.
Forms stretch and blur—jaws where there should be none, limbs that split, spines that twist backward.
They latch onto homes like insects, tearing through wood and stone.
My friends. My neighbors. My home.
They move like smoke, but they’re heavier. Like something pressed through the world sideways.
And then I hear them.
Whispers low and insidious.
They curl through the air like poison, breath dragging across broken glass. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
They fan through the village, slipping into alleys, cutting off exits, herding people like livestock. Some stalk slowly, heads tilting this way and that, scenting the air. Their hollow eyes pass over the fleeing crowds, choosing their targets.
My father pauses, eyes scanning the chaos—tight, calculating. Then his jaw hardens.
“Fellborn!” he mutters, low but fierce. “Of the Shadow Forces. By all the Elemental gods . . . what the bloody hell are they doing here?!”
Panic seizes me.
Shadow Forces.
All around us, my neighbors dart through the streets—some clutching children, others wielding rakes and pitchforks that look pitiful against the monstrous shadows.
I’ve heard stories from travelers passing through our village of their attacks along the borderlands. But never this far north. Why here?
My father meets my gaze—steady, unflinching. Behind him, the sky glows with rising fire.
“We help our neighbors,” he says calmly. “Get as many out of their homes as we can. Lead them into the woods, the fields—away from here.”
I trust my father. Always have. There’s steel in him, buried beneath the quiet way he tills the earth or hums when Mother sings in the kitchen. He wasn’t always a farmer.
Now, that other part of him—sharpened, disciplined—cracks through the surface like stone split by pressure. The old warrior steps forward.
He looks at my mother, then me, then the Durnharts.
“We stay together,” he says, scanning the rooftops, as shrieks echo down the street. “If we’re discovered, if they see us, we run. Understand?”
I nod, throat tight. My mother presses a hand to my back—trying to steady both of us. The Durnharts nod. We move in silence.
Lyra’s scream slices the night. “Revan! We didn’t warn his family—we have to go back!”
She bolts before anyone can stop her.
“Lyra!” Tamsen cries, panic cracking her voice. But she’s already gone—swallowed by smoke and darkness.
Galen doesn’t hesitate, charging after her.
My mother grabs my arm but I break free.
I don’t think. I run.
But not away.
Toward Revan. Toward Lyra. Toward the fire.
The world unravels around me—homes collapsing, villagers screaming, shadows slithering through the smoke like claws in ink.
That familiar something stirs within me; that thread pulling taut. And a voice I don’t recognize shouting: Go!
I push faster, lungs burning, throat raw from smoke. When I reach the corner—they’re gone.
“Lyra!” I shout. “Galen!”
No answer, just the sound of something tearing. Shapes flicker at the edges of my vision—the night is alive with fire and panic.
I spin, disoriented. My ears ring and legs shake. There’s too much smoke. Too much noise. Too many people running.
And not enough escaping.
Then— “Amara!” My mother’s voice, faint behind me, desperate.
“Amara, wait!” My father, calling through the chaos.
But I can’t stop. I won’t. Lyra, Galen, and Revan are out there somewhere.
I take a step forward—something massive crashes to the ground. A house buckles inward, flames bursting from the roof as one of the Fellborn hurls a villager like a rag doll.
I flinch, ducking into the shadows beside a broken fence. My breath stutters.
Screams echo down the lanes. Whispers twist through the smoke. Wood splinters. Stone shatters.
I swallow hard, my pulse a steady roar in my ears.
What should I do? Where did they go?
I grip the fence rail, grounding myself. Smoke curls past, thick and sour. I press a hand over my mouth.
A too-close whisper. The shadows are shifting again. I need to move fast.