TEN
UNMAKING
“Sylas’s journal says they faced a power so vast, so ruinous, that no path remained but surrender.
In a final act of defiance they gave everything: it sounds like they gave their lives to increase the magics that create the protective wards.
They named the power only ‘the Unmaking.’ There is a pattern, faint though it is, and ancient echoes are aligning.
The pieces are beginning to connect, and with them, a terrible truth. ”
—VALEN’S JOURNAL
AMARA
Ifollow Valen to the table, my grip firm around the steaming mug. The scent of the tea fills the air, but it does little to release the tension in my chest.
I take a seat across from him. Valen lowers himself into the chair with a composure that feels out of place at this moment. Thane sits beside me, silent. His fingers curl around his mug, but he doesn’t drink.
Valen lifts his mug, blows lightly across the surface, then takes a sip. When he sets it down, his gaze finds mine.
“The Unmaking,” he says, as if weighing the word.
He taps a finger against the table, thoughtful.
“I found a name for it once. Buried in a journal. It was more like a warning, without much of an explanation.” His gaze flicks to Thane, then back to me. “Sylas also wrote about it.”
The Shadow Butcher.
A name I was raised to fear.
A war criminal. A general of the Shadow Wars. The man the Fire Clan claims drowned cities in darkness, wielded forbidden magics, and commanded the dead.
The man who turned against the Elemental Clans.
Or at least that’s what the Fire Clan archives say about Sylas Veyne.
Finding his journal in the starlit chamber has shaken everything I thought I knew about the realm. The history I was taught, the righteousness of the Clans, even the war that shaped the world—it all suddenly feels as though it was built on quicksand.
The quiet hum of the tea kettle, the faint crackle of the hearth—it all feels distant, muffled against the heavy press of his words.
Thane doesn’t move beside me, but I can feel the tension in him, sharp and contained.
I force myself to breathe evenly. “What did Sylas say?”
Valen drums his fingers once against the ceramic before going still.
“Not much. And yet . . . everything.”
His gaze sharpens.
“What I know so far is it was something the Warden feared above all else. Something he was willing to sacrifice everything to contain. But he never described it outright.” He pauses. “Only named it.”
He glances down briefly, as if seeing the page again.
“An ‘overpowering invasive evil, corrupting everything with an insatiable appetite . . . blackening souls and seeding decay . . . ’” he quotes from the journal.
The words sink.
The Unmaking.
The room feels colder. Firelight flickers against the walls, shadows stretching and shifting with it.
I swallow. “Feared enough to seal in the Shadow Realm?”
Valen nods.
Thane’s fingers tighten around his mug.
None of us speak. The weight of it seems to smother.
Valen leans back, his expression unreadable. “I’ll need time.”
I blink. “Time for what?”
“To look deeper.” His gaze shifts toward the shelves along the far wall, lined with tomes, scrolls, and artifacts gathered over years. “If Sylas wrote it down, there’s more. According to what I’ve read so far, he wasn’t one to waste words.”
His attention lingers there. “I just need to know where to look.”
I nod, though the unease in my stomach doesn’t lessen.
Valen doesn’t add anything else. He’s already turning inward, his focus narrowing, fingers tapping once against the table before stilling again.
Across from me, Thane exhales, his shoulders rising and falling with a measured breath. Then he pushes back his chair. The scrape of wood against stone cuts through the quiet.
“I have to go.”
It isn’t a surprise. He told me this morning he’d be heading to the Water Clan outpost. Still, my stomach tightens. There’s too much we don’t know. Too much we haven’t seen coming.
I look at him. “It’s already time?”
He nods. “The strategy meeting.”
For a moment, I considered telling him to stay. Not because I need him here, but because I know the weight he already carries—and now we’ve added to it.
But I don’t. This is war. There’s no standing still.
Thane turns to Valen. “If you find anything, send word.”
Valen barely looks up from Sylas’s journal, already focused, already searching. “I will.”
Thane watches him for a moment longer, then turns to me. His gaze lingers.
“I shouldn’t be gone long.”
I nod, even though we both know there’s no telling how long he’ll be gone. “Be careful.”
Instead of answering, he leans in. His hand cradles my jaw as he presses his lips to mine. The kiss is brief, but there’s weight behind it; it is an anchor, a promise, something meant to last longer than the moment itself.
When he pulls back, his thumb brushes over my cheek, lingering.
“I’ll be fine.” he smiles reassuringly.
Then he turns and strides toward the door, his steps sure, decisive. The room feels different without him. Quieter.
I stare down at my mug, the warmth fading beneath my hands.
Across from me, Valen pulls another book from the pile on the table, already absorbed, already searching for answers to questions that keep slipping further out of reach.
For a while, I sit there, absently flipping through a book Valen left on the table, my thoughts circling in restless loops.
The Unmaking.
The word alone feels like a fracture in the air, something ancient and wrong, something that was never meant to be spoken aloud. I try to piece it together—what Valen said, what little Sylas recorded, the fear that the Shadow Wardens held for it.
A force that doesn’t conquer or rule; it only consumes, unravels and erases.
I think of the Shadow Realm. How it was never a sanctuary, never a home, but a prison. A cage built to contain something beyond death. Something dangerous.
But then—what if we’ve been wrong about that, too?
The Shadow Clan.
The stories I grew up with. They were spoken about like they were the threat. The aggressors. The ones who brought darkness into the world.
But that doesn’t fit.
Not with what we’ve seen. Not with what his father said.
The bond stirs.
A tug, low and insistent.
I still, my fingers tightening around the edge of the page.
Not with the way the shadows responded to Thane.
The bond tightens again, stronger this time, pressing against my ribs like something desirous of being noticed.
If the Unmaking is something separate—something that had to be contained—then what were they really fighting?
The thought settles, uneasy.
What if we’ve been wrong about the Shadow Clan? What if the Shadow Forces, the Unmaking—whatever this thing is—aren’t the same at all?
And if that’s true, if the Shadow Realm was sealed to stop the Unmaking, what does that mean for Thane? What does it mean for his bloodline?
If the Shadow Realm was a prison, and the Shadow Wardens were meant to stay inside it, then why did Thane’s ancestors survive? How did they leave when the realm was sealed? Did they escape?
Or were they forced out?
And whatever tether once bound the Wardens to their duty, to the Shadow Realm, to the thing they were meant to contain—it’s still there.
Still pulling.
I close my eyes, pressing my fingers against my temple, trying to quiet the endless storm of questions. But they don’t stop. No matter how I turn it, no matter how I try to fit the pieces together—one thought keeps rising. Relentless. Terrifying.
If the Unmaking is waking . . . then maybe something is calling Thane home.
My grip tightens around the cooling ceramic mug until the rim presses crescents into my palm. Finally, I push to my feet.
I glance at Valen. He is buried in his research, eyes scanning the pages with the kind of quiet intensity that means he’s working through something he won’t share until he’s certain.
The knot in my stomach tightens to the point I can’t hold the words in any longer.
“Valen, could the Unmaking waking up be the reason the curse is activating? And could it be calling Thane to the Shadow Realm?”
Although nothing changes in the room, goosebumps appear on my arms as if the temperature just dropped several degrees.
He looks up, lips pressed into a tight line.
“That is a possibility.”
He pauses, looking up at the ceiling, his expression pensive.
“If that’s the case . . . then it may not be recent. It may have started years ago. With Thane’s mother.”
He taps a finger across his lips, brows furrowing.
“That could explain why the curse hasn’t struck in earlier generations of Thane’s line.”
The words land hard.
My mentor looks back at me, and I know he sees it—the fear I can’t hide.
“My dear girl,” he says gently, “we will figure this out.”
His certainty doesn’t waver.
“For now, focus on your training. We have time.”
I let out a breath, then finally push to my feet. “Thank you, Valen.”
He nods, already turning back to his book and disappearing into the work before him.
I need a break. A breath. Something to pull me out of my own head before the questions drag me under.
So I go to find Lyra.
We’ve been in Lyra’s room for hours. Just being around her makes everything feel a bit more manageable.
I watch her face, the way she moves, looking for any sign that she died just days ago. The color has returned to her cheeks, but faint bruising still shadows her eyes.
“I can feel you staring,” Lyra complains, not looking up from the puzzle spread across the table as she turns two pieces in her hands.
Puzzles have always been our thing. Rainy days, quiet afternoons—hours spent fitting small pieces together until something whole took shape. It isn’t raining today, but I needed this. Something familiar. Something that feels like home.
She glances up, her green eyes still not quite as bright as they should be. “You and Garrick are driving me insane. I’m fine. Just tired.”
She drops the pieces and throws her arms into the air like she’s addressing the gods.
“I have risen from the dead by the all-powerful Spiritborn!” she declares. “I am unstoppable!”